#werefucked

[sarcasticcynic]

Trump tells evangelical rally he will put prayer in schools

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said his Democratic opponents would tear d...

Because FUCK THE FIRST AMENDMENT!

“A clause in the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from promoting one religion over the other, which means public schools don’t promote prayer or religious symbols.”

Oughta start using the past tense when you’re talking about the Establishment Clause, there.

[wiingedvirtues]

@we-re-fucked is blessed

virtue POUTS a little, looking up from the phone in her hands. hert trademark sunglasses are balanced on her head at present and she’s dressed in a bralet and skirt. she looks down at her herself and then says.

         “it’s NOT fair, i’m just as cute as her.. i should be     like dating a drug lord or something by now.”

[sarcasticcynic]

Supreme Court’s conservatives overturn precedent as liberals ask ‘which cases the court will overrule next’

Justice Clarence Thomas said overruling a 40-year precedent is justified because it wrongly interpreted the Constitution.

When the United States Supreme Court issues a published opinion ruling on a case, that ruling becomes precedent for future decisions. Under the legal principle of stare decisis (Latin for “to stand on the decisions”), the Court must abide by its settled precedents–even if individual justices may now disagree–unless there is a compelling reason to overrule the decision. This doctrine is designed to ensure that precedents are not routinely overruled whenever the Court gets a new justice who happens to lean the other ideological way.

Sometimes, of course, the Court does overrule its own prior decisions. In accordance with stare decisis, this typically requires a “special justification” beyond a belief that the original decision was wrong, such as significant legal developments since the decision. For example:

In the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation, ruling that “separate but equal” accommodations were sufficient. In the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, the Court unanimously (9-0) reversed its prior decision and held that the Constitution prohibited the “separate but equal” notion.

In the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick, a divided (5-4) Court upheld a statute criminalizing homosexual sex (“sodomy”). In the 2003 case Lawrence v. Texas, the Court voted to overrule its prior decision, holding that the constitutional right to privacy protects private consensual sexual conduct, whether heterosexual or homosexual. By the time the Court decided Lawrence, only 13 states still criminalized homosexual sex.

In the 1971 case Baker v. Nelson, the Court dismissed an appeal from a Minnesota court decision upholding a law prohibiting same-sex marriage. There was no written opinion, no discussion, no vote, and no consideration of the merits. Nevertheless, because of the particular procedural way in which the case reached the Court, that dismissal was technically a decision on the merits and became binding precedent. In the 2015 case of Obergefell v. Hodges, the Court voted to overrule its prior decision, holding that the Constitution protects the right to marry, whether heterosexual or homosexual. By the time the Court decided Obergefell, 36 states had already established same-sex marriage.

There is at least one Justice sitting on the Supreme Court today who has evinced an outright disdain for stare decisis: Clarence Thomas. Thomas has an extensive list of case he would overturn immediately if given the chance, including but not limited to:

Brown v. Board of Education (which he has explicitly criticized)

Lawrence v. Texas (from which he dissented)

Obergefell v. Hodges (from which he dissented)

Grutter v. Bollinger (from which he dissented), which upheld affirmative action policies that consider race as one factor among many others

Roe v. Wade

Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the constitutional right to privacy upon which Roe v. Wade is based

New York Times v. Sullivan, which protects statements about public figures from defamation lawsuits in the absence of actual malice

Loving v. Virginia, which held that bans against interracial marriage are unconstitutional

Thomas’s supposed justification for his extremely narrow views is that he considers himself a strict textualist and literalist. If it isn’t written expressly in the Constitution, then it doesn’t exist. For example, Loving v. Virginia held that the constitutional right to “liberty” in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments includes the freedom to marry. Thomas, in contrast, maintains that “liberty” has only its literal meaning: “freedom from physical restraint.”

Thomas has specifically declared that even long lines of settled cases should be overturned if they are (in his opinion, at least) “divorced from the text, history, and structure of our founding document.” Note, however, that on occasion Thomas somehow manages to compromise his supposed principles. For example, in United States v. Lopez, he argued that the Constitution gives the federal government no right “to regulate marriage … throughout the 50 States”; in United States v. Windsor, he subsequently voted to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act, in which the federal government defined marriage as “the union of one man and one woman” throughout the 50 states.

This past Monday, Thomas managed to combine the worst of both worlds. In the 1979 case of Nevada v. Hall, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 that the Constitution does not immunize states from lawsuits against them in other states. In Franchise Tax Board v. Hyatt, the Court voted 5-4 to overturn that 40-year-old precedent and absolutely bar such lawsuits, throwing out a judgment against California in the Nevada courts after two decades of litigation.

Thomas authored the majority opinion on behalf of himself and the other four conservative members of the Court (including new Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh). Departing from his usual approach of textualism and literalism, Thomas admitted that “no constitutional provision explicitly grants that immunity,” but nevertheless held that sovereign immunity is “implicit in its structure” and “supported by historical practice.” (This is, of course, precisely the reasoning that led to the constitutional right to privacy, against which Thomas has railed so often.) He was thus comfortable declaring it to be “embedded in the text and structure of the Constitution,” even though it doesn’t actually appear anywhere in the text or structure of the Constitution.

Thomas further recognized that stare decisis should preclude the Court from overturning Nevada v. Hall without some special justification. Rather than try to find one–which he could not–Thomas simply brushed aside the entire doctrine and overruled the precedent on the sole ground that five out of nine current justices thought it was wrong: “Stare decisis does not compel continued adherence to this erroneous precedent.”

So Thomas believes in the strict, literal interpretation of the text of the U.S. Constitution… except when he’s the one who wants it to say something it doesn’t. And Thomas and his four fellow conservatives have now shown that they will freely depart from stare decisis and overturn any prior decision with which they now happen to disagree.

You know, like Roe v. Wade.

[sarcasticcynic]

States Sue Trump Administration Over EPA’s New ‘Dirty Power’ Rule

A group of U.S. states and cities sued to block the Trump administration’s “clean energy” plan, alleging it is an industry giveaway that will reverse progress in addressing climate change and prolong the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels.

“At Trump’s request, the Environmental Protection Agency created the Affordable Clean Energy plan to replace a landmark initiative under former President Barack Obama that capped carbon dioxide emissions on many factories. ... The Clean Power Plan was designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 32% from 2005 levels by 2030. ... The effort fulfilled Trump’s campaign pledge to rip up the Clean Power Plan and dovetails with his administration’s retreat from a global fight against climate change.”

[sarcasticcynic]

US pulls out of nuclear treaty with Russia

The US withdrawal from a Cold War intermediate nuclear missile pact raises fears of a new arms race.

tick... tick... tick...

[sarcasticcynic]

Putin to Trump: We'll develop new nuclear missiles if you do

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Monday that Moscow would start develo...

tick... tick... tick...

[sarcasticcynic]

Researchers Say They've Figured Out Why People Reject Science, And It's Not Ignorance

One of the biggest cultural shifts in recent years is the rise of fake news - where claims with no evidence behind them (e.g. the world is flat) get shared as fact alongside evidence-based, peer-reviewed findings (e.g. climate change is happening).

Ignoring science is a Bad Thing™:

“Anti-vaccination movements cost lives. Climate change skepticism slows the global response to the greatest social, economic and ecological threat of our time.”

It’s tempting (and easy) to dismiss those who reject science as just foolish or ignorant. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case:

“Researchers found that people who reject scientific consensus on topics such as climate change, vaccine safety, and evolution are generally just as interested in science and as well-educated as the rest of us.”

So what is the problem? Good ol’ confirmation bias: accepting “facts”--even when they’re false--that support what one wants to believe, and ignoring actual facts that don’t:

”The issue is that when it comes to facts, people think more like lawyers than scientists, which means they ‘cherry pick’ the facts and studies that back up what they already believe to be true. So if someone doesn’t think humans are causing climate change, they will ignore the hundreds of studies that support that conclusion, but latch onto the one study they can find that casts doubt on this view. This is also known as confirmation bias, a type of cognitive bias. ... ‘People treat facts as relevant more when the facts tend to support their opinions. When the facts are against their opinions, they don't necessarily deny the facts, but they say the facts are less relevant.’ ... The results suggest that simply focussing on the evidence and data isn’t enough to change someone's mind about a particular topic, seeing as they’ll most likely have their own ‘facts’ to fire back at you.”

And yes, it’s getting worse:

“We grew up in an era when it was just presumed that reason and evidence were the ways to understand important issues; not fear, vested interests, tradition or faith. But the rise of climate skepticism and the anti-vaccination movement made us realize that these enlightenment values are under attack.”

And yes, it’s primarily the fault of politicians and others who try to bolster their most insupportable positions by turning everything into a political issue:

“A big part of the problem, the researchers found, is that people associate scientific conclusions with political or social affiliations. ... people have actually always cherry picked facts when it comes to science - that’s nothing new. But it hasn’t been such a big problem in the past, because scientific conclusions were usually agreed on by political and cultural leaders, and promoted as being in the public’s best interests. Now, scientific facts are being wielded like weapons in a struggle for cultural supremacy.”

[sarcasticcynic]

How a powerful Russian propaganda machine chips away at Western notions of truth

After a botched assassination attempt of Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, the Kremlin spread dozens of false stories in a highly coordinated effort to sow confusion. It worked.

“Intelligence agencies have tracked at least a half-dozen such distortion campaigns since 2014, each aimed, officials say, at undermining Western and international investigative bodies and making it harder for ordinary citizens to separate fact from falsehood. They say such disinformation operations are now an integral part of Russia’s arsenal — both foreign policy tool and asymmetrical weapon, one that Western institutions and technology companies are struggling to counter. ‘Dismissing it as fake news misses the point,’ said a Western security official who requested anonymity in discussing ongoing investigations into the Russian campaign. ‘It’s about undermining key pillars of democracy and the rule of law.’ ...

“The disinformation campaigns now emanating from Russia are of a different breed, said intelligence officials and analysts. Engineered for the social media age, they fling up swarms of falsehoods, concocted theories and red herrings, intended not so much to persuade people but to bewilder them. ‘The mission seems to be to confuse, to muddy the waters,’ said Peter Pomerantsev, a former Russian-television producer and author of ‘Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible,” a memoir that describes the Kremlin’s efforts to manipulate the news. The ultimate aim, he said, is to foster an environment in which ‘people begin giving up on the facts.’ ...

“There is a daily churn of false or distorted reports that seem designed to exploit the divisions in Western society and politics, especially on issues such as race, violence and sexual rights, and that are pushed by droves of operatives posing as ordinary citizens on social media accounts. While many of the individual stories are easily debunked, the campaigns have had a discernible impact, as measured by opinion polls and, occasionally, public statements by Western politicians casting doubt on the findings of the intelligence agencies of their own governments. ... Results such as these have encouraged what private groups say is a massive and ever-increasing investment by Moscow, which has placed numerous news outlets fully or partly on its payroll and operates at least one troll factory in which scores of employees disseminate pro-Kremlin messages using thousands of fake social media accounts. ...

“‘The strategy is to spread as many versions of events as possible and don’t worry that they sometimes contradict themselves,’ [former E.U. investigator Jakub] Kalensky said. ‘It’s not the purpose to persuade someone with one version of events. The goal for Russia is achieve a state in which the average media consumer says, “There are too many versions of events, and I’ll never know the truth.”’”

In case you were wondering: Yes, Trump has been a big help:

“Just as often, the stream flows in the opposite direction. False stories that first appear on obscure conservative news sites become fodder for Russian TV talk shows. Since the start of the Trump era, Russian channels regularly echo the U.S. president’s allegations about an American ‘deep state’ and his depictions of the mainstream media as ‘fake news.’ ... ‘As for who to believe, who you can’t believe, can you believe at all?” [Vladimir] Putin mused, before answering his own questions: ‘You can’t believe anyone.’”

Bonus: A convenient “justification” from even those who might see the possibility of truth through all the propaganda:

“In focus groups, [sociologist Denis] Volkov said, people sometimes acknowledged the likelihood of Russian involvement ... Russia was in a new Cold War with the West, and since the United States and its allies were lying, cheating and killing, Russia had to as well. ‘They’ll say, “Sure, yeah, we might’ve done it,”’ Volkov said. ‘“But what’s the problem? Everyone’s doing it. There’s a war going on, even if it’s a cold war, between Russia and the West. So it’s okay to do it. The main thing is to deny everything.”’ ”