So what makes the legal reasoning so inflammatory? Most controversially, the Court held that sexual orientation discrimination should be treated just as skeptically as racial discrimination–a conclusion that the U.S. Supreme Court and the other state Supreme Courts have refused to accept. Social conservatives are already invoking contested science to question one of the premises of this conclusion: that sexual orientation, like race, is immutable. “There is no evidence to establish that a homosexual lifestyle is an immutable characteristic such as race,” a lawyer for Advocates for Faith and Freedom told The New York Times. There was no need to open this Pandora’s Box: The Court could have held more modestly that there are no rational reasons for limiting the label “marriage” to straight people and denying it to gays and lesbians.
Stuck at a progressive desk job/internship this summer, but wish you could get paid to paint the town red? Think you can turn your D.C. days and nights into witty fodder for keeping the city’s hungry young residents in the know? If so, apply to be a Campus Progress Social Capital Correspondent and help convince D.C.’s newcomers and summer transplants that no, they shouldn’t have just gone to New York.
Last night, students at Wesleyan University in Connecticut celebrated the end of finals as students usually do --with a big party. But this time 10 or more police cars showed up to try to disperse the crowd. The students didn't leave and what ensued involved pepper spray bullets, attack dogs, taser guns, and rubber bullets. Five students were arrested. Some students had to be hospitalized.
Full disclosure, I graduated from Wesleyan last year and have first-hand experience with some of the tactics the police use to break-up parties. There is certainly enough blame to go around. Students definitely become stubborn and don't want to give into authority. Some are disrespectful (and outright dangerous) to law enforcement officers and have an unjust sense of entitlement. Others have been racially targeted by police officers and attacked unfairly by overzealous cops with pepper spray, dogs, and taser guns. The police often seem intent on confrontation. I'm not sure why it was necessary to call in the police when the students were not bothering anyone prior to the arrival of the police officers. (The party in question was on a side street with houses only occupied by students).
Many questions come out of this incident that fit into a larger context:
One of the least reported but most important stories of this congress is their failure to renew the Renewable Energy Tax incentives necessary for industries such as wind, solar and geothermal to compete with the heavily subsidized death fuels (nuclear, oil, coal and natural gas). With the threato of a Bush veto and the inability to get enough votes to avoid a filibuster, the slim Democrat majority found itself in a stand-still.
Behind the heavy Republican opposition stand many of the big energy firms, from Big Oil, to large Utilities, desperately swimming against the current in order to maintain their profits in a rapidly warming world.
There is one corporation that is fighting back, and it shows a great example of how Market Capitalism can be regulated to make sure that Big Companies do Good Things.
Scott Jaschik has a long and thoughtful piece over at Inside Higher Ed in light of St. Louis' Washington University decision to award anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly with an honorary doctorate. What, Jaschik wonders, is the point of honorary degrees? In the case of Schlafly, the university is endorsing a free exchange of ideas, officials claimed. But, as Jaschik pointed out,
Most of those protesting the Schlafly degree say that they would not object to her giving a lecture on the campus. Some might picket outside, but they would never challenge the right of a controversial figure to express her ideas, they say. An honorary doctorate is different from a lecture, they argue, because it is an honor, because it takes place at graduation, and because a doctorate — as the highest degree a university can award — conveys a sense of institutional endorsement.
If WU is merely endorsing the Schlafly's right to express ideas rather than the ideas themselves then what's the point of the award. Universities already endorse the free exchange of ideas in the very tenants of the institution of education. By citing this as a reason, university officials are implying Schlafly is doing something brave and new by putting forth unpopular ideas -- but the ideas she purports are merely reinforcement of old stereotypes and a resistance to real science and education.
Furthermore, Jaschik notes that other universities have dealt better with this idea of doling out honorary degrees. The University of Chicago, for instance, only awards honorary degrees to scholars that are nominated by the school's professors. Cornell University avoids the subject altogether and just doesn't award honorary degrees. The question that Jaschik poses is a good one. With so many universities giving out honorary degrees, they can't all be to thoughtful scholars or those that make significant social change. In many cases, it seems that honorary degrees are nothing more than a publicity stunt or means of getting a famous person at a graduation ceremony. When so many people labor long and hard for years to earn real doctorates, the practice of awarding honorary ones seems silly and unfair. I'd be happy to see this convention junked altogether.
Gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry in California, the state Supreme Court said today in a historic ruling that could be repudiated by the voters in November.
In a 4-3 decision, the justices said the state’s ban on same-sex marriage violates the “fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship.” The ruling is likely to flood county courthouses with applications from couples newly eligible to marry when the decision takes effect in 30 days.
What’s interesting about this decision, especially considering the inevitable cries of judicial activism from conservatives, is that this is exactly what Governor Schwarzenegger wanted to happen. When the California legislature twice passed bills legalizing gay marriage, Schwarzenegger vetoed them, saying that he didn’t want to override Proposition 22, which prevented California from recognizing out of state or international same-sex marriages. He also explicitly stated that he was amenable to either a proposition or the courts settling the issue. And now the courts have settled the issue, despite the fact that there is sure to be another proposition passing a constitutional amendment to get rid of same-sex marriage. But I’m optimistic - it’s unlikely that a socially liberal state will want to nullify the thousands of marriages that are sure to happen before the next election. This would square the circle of the decision being viewed as democratically legitimate - if the people refuse to overturn it, they’d essentially be giving their stamp of approval.
For more on the complicated mess that is California, same sex marriage and the constitution, read Josh Patashnik.
Some of you may recall the story I wrote a few months ago about the new Target in Columbia Heights’ decision not to install bilingual signs – despite the region’s concentrated Hispanic population.
People commented that it’s a trivial issue, that Spanish-speaking folks don’t need signs to find shampoo, and that I was painting Target as anti-neighborhood when really they’re creating jobs for local residents and providing valuable products.
But it’s not simply the store’s lack of signs that merited the most attention, it's how the store decided not to install bilingual signs – and how this decision reflects on the store’s expected demographics.
The Target Spokeswoman told me “the Target team surveyed Columbia Heights’ demographics and commerce trends and concluded that the store does not fit the criteria for bilingual signage.”
What kind of survey did they conduct? Did they even conduct a survey? Have the surveyors ever visited Columbia Heights? The spokeswoman could not answer these questions.
Ward One Councilman Jim Graham had no idea that Target had no plans for bilingual signs. In an official statement from Graham he told me the city would immediately look into the issue.
Well, the city didn’t think the lack of signs was trivial. Now every major hanging sign in the store reads in both English and Spanish.
Hopefully this inquiry shone light on Target’s methods of conducting demographics and commerce trends.
And I could only hope that the newly installed signs will make navigation in the store for Spanish-speaking customers easier and more user-friendly.
In what may be another step toward some kind of dystopian teetotaling surveillance state, a grocery store in London is using secret photos that measure biometric facial features of folks buying booze and cigarettes to help prevent underage drinking. The photos are compared to a database of “known underage buyers,” and they are hoping to network the database with other stores across the UK.
Creepy. I wonder how long until grocery stores here start using similar technology.
New America's Higher Ed Watch blog has a great post by Ben Miller on how colleges and credit cards are teaming up to ensnare students into loads of credit card debt. (The post also includes an interesting fact I didn't know, which is that over 70 percent of students keep their first credit card for years -- now that's brand loyalty that companies would kill for -- and student credit cards often include much higher interest rates and more penalties).
Bob Reich also has a great post from yesterday on how credit card companies are similar to the mortgage industry in that they're dangerously underregulated -- they can raise interest rates at will and hide important information like how they calculate an outstanding balance. It also seems that the lobby in favor of keeping credit card companies that way is way more powerful than any force to enact legislation, and it's not just Republicans that are in the pockets of credit card companies. As Reich says "only 11 of 36 Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee have backed" legislation that would impose tougher regulations on credit card companies.
Well, this is depressing. Via the Economic Policy Institute, women start out of college with a nearly $3.00 an hour wage difference. That amounts to roughly $6,000 a year, and we all know your starting base wage has a long-term impact on raises (which are usually figured on a percentage basis) over a lifetime. Furthermore, women's hourly wages in the few years after graduating college seem to have stayed roughly stagnant since 2003, while men's wages have averaged an increase during that time. Furthermore, a second graph indicates that a college degree is becoming less and less of a guarantee for pension coverage and health insurance for both men and women.
America's youth are commonly viewed as apathetic and disengaged from politics (though those involved in Campus Progress know that to be untrue) therefore it comes as pleasant news to hear of a 19 year old college freshman being elected mayor of a sizeable (38K people, the state's 11th biggest) town in Oklahoma. Not only will he continue his studies and seek to fulfill his pledge of open government, he apparently will also become the city commander were martial law ever to be declared.
Mother Jones magazine is running a survey to figure out if young people like you think the future of activism lies in personal choices like buying environmentally friendly cleaning products or if activism is something else. Weigh in on their survey here.
As Free Exchange on Campus points out, the University of Colorado’s Chancellor is planning on raising $9 million for an endowment to fund a “Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy” in an effort to bolster the campus’s intellectual diversity. [Campus Progress is part of the Free Exchange on Campus Coalition].
Again, there's nothing wrong with seeking job candidates who either specialize in conservatism as a substantive area of study or who bring a conservative perspective to their field. However, rather than setting up a token conservative job opening - especially one that privileges political leanings over scholarship - CU should consider working with its faculty and academic departments to create positions for these specialties within the traditional university structure.
The Washington Post piece about racism on the campaign trail highlights examples of anti-black sentiment experienced by Obama volunteers - incidents that have gone largely unnoticed and/or unackowledged by both the campaign and the mainstream media.
While this culture of omission doesn’t surprise me in a social climate that has chosen to downplay our nation’s racial wounds rather than heal them, it is funny that America has been lulled into believing that racism no longer exists - overt or structural (despite constant reminders like the Jena Six, the rampant rise of hate crimes, the racial unrest in the aftermath of the Sean Bell verdict, the disparity in the war on drugs and the countless examples of unabashed racism that arise is discussions of America’s broken immigration system.)
The real take-away from this story is not that campaign staff are subjected to experiences that the candidate himself may be distanced from. It's the duh-connect-the-dots point that if a rockstar presidential candidate is the object of this sort of racism, imagine what the regular people of color that live in and around these communities must experience on a daily basis.
Tired of the adminstration censoring your voice? Frustrated that the daily paper won't cover certain issues or events?
Then do something about it.
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