Random Politics & Religion #00

No Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic World was immediately points off. :/

Suuuuch mixed feelings on him. I mean, have you ever seen him interviewed? The man doesn't act. Every character he plays is basically...him. He just goes on set and is himself for the camera.

Kind of like how Batman & Robin was just George Clooney playing George Clooney playing Batman?

No Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic World was immediately points off. :/

I think we're all forgetting the pinnacle of Goldblum here...

Kind of like how Batman & Robin was just George Clooney playing George Clooney playing Batman?

Suuuuch mixed feelings on him. I mean, have you ever seen him interviewed? The man doesn't act. Every character he plays is basically...him. He just goes on set and is himself for the camera.

Humans will be extinct in 100 years because the planet will be uninhabitable, according to Australian microbiologist Frank Fenner, one of the leaders of the effort to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. He blames overcrowding, denuded resources and climate change.

Fenner’s prediction is not a sure bet, but he is correct that there is no way emissions reductions will be enough to save us from our trend toward doom. And there doesn’t seem to be any big global rush to reduce emissions, anyway. When the G7 called on Monday for all countries to reduce carbon emissions to zero in the next 85 years, the scientific reaction was unanimous: That’s far too late.

And no possible treaty that emerges from the current United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany, in preparation for November’s United Nations climate conference in Paris, will be sufficient. At this point, lowering emissions is just half the story — the easy half. The harder half will be an aggressive effort to find the technologies needed to reverse the climate apocalypse that has already begun.

None of it matters as humans will be extinct in the next 100 years, regardless of any efforts.

A child born today may live to see humanity’s end, unless…

83 is a relief. We were in the 90s since last Wednesday and the heatwave only just broke yesterday. Being in the low 80s was nice yesterday, but today was awesome in mid 70s.

A federal appeals court has allowed a group of immigrants to proceed with a lawsuit accusing Bush administration officials of widespread constitutional violations after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a major ruling in a legal saga that stretches back over a decade.

The plaintiffs are eight men who were arrested for immigration violations and detained in the wake of 9/11 as part of the government’s aggressive efforts to root out suspected terrorists. The men allege that they were held for months in New York and New Jersey under unconstitutionally harsh conditions, solely because they were or were perceived to be Muslim or Arab. They have since been deported to various countries after being cleared of terrorist ties.

The ruling is the first time any court has allowed a group to sue and seek monetary damages from high-ranking law-enforcement officials for post-9/11 policies, one of the judges said in the ruling Wednesday. The case also raises questions about the balance between national security and civil liberties after the terrorist attacks.

The original lawsuit was filed in 2002 in Brooklyn, N.Y., federal court against former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller and a former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, James Ziglar, among other officials. In 2009, five of the original plaintiffs settled their claims against the government for $1.26 million.

The suit alleges that Mr. Mueller, Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Ziglar—who all served under former President George W. Bush—were the architects of the post-9/11 detention policies and should be held accountable for the alleged abuses. The top officials were aware of the alleged harsh confinement conditions and knew there was no legitimate reason to suspect them of terrorist ties, the plaintiffs allege.

In the 109-page decision, Judge Rosemary Pooler and Judge Richard Wesley of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the plaintiffs have plausibly shown that the officials exceeded the bounds of the constitution. “It might well be that national security concerns motivated the defendants to take action, but that is of little solace to those who felt the brunt of that decision,” they wrote.

Mr. Mueller and Mr. Ziglar declined to comment Wednesday. Mr. Ashcroft didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The FBI made hundreds of arrests soon after the attacks as part of a policy that targeted non-U.S. citizens who were Muslim or Arab and had been discovered to have violated their visa terms, according to the Wednesday ruling. The program ensnared people who were perceived to be Muslim or Arab but weren’t; one of the plaintiffs was a Buddhist born in Nepal who came to the FBI’s attention after a government employee observed an “Arab male” videotaping outside a Queens, N.Y., building that contained an FBI office.

“There was no legitimate governmental purpose in holding someone in the most restrictive conditions of confinement available simply because he happened to be—or, worse yet, appeared to be—Arab or Muslim,” the judges wrote.

The 2-1 ruling from a panel of the appeals court reversed part of a lower-court ruling made in 2013 by U.S. District Judge John Gleeson, who had concluded that the claims against the Bush administration officials should be dismissed because the plaintiffs hadn’t adequately shown a connection between the officials and the alleged abuses.

Appeals court Judge Reena Raggi concurred and dissented with parts of the ruling, arguing in a 91-page dissent that Congress, not the judiciary, should be deciding whether detained immigrants can be allowed to sue and seek monetary damages from individual policy makers.

Rachel Meeropol of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the plaintiffs’ lead lawyer, praised the ruling. “It’s huge that they allowed these claims to move forward,” she said in an interview. “It’s taken 13 years for us to get the green light from a court to actually move forward against [the officials] individually.”

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said, “We are reviewing the court’s decision.” She declined to saying whether the department would appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

The lawsuit also targets individual former wardens at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., where the plaintiffs say they were placed in tiny cells for over 23 hours a day. The Justice Department’s inspector general office released reports in 2003 that outlined the conditions at the MDC units where suspected terrorists were held, including the fact that detainees were strip-searched every time they left and returned to their cells, “even when they had no conceivable opportunity to obtain contraband.”

The plaintiffs argued that the strip searches violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure. A spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

Supposedly the Earth is overdue for a new ice age. So problem solved, maybe, it just has to hit within the next 100 years.

Rick Santorum joined the chorus of wingnuts commenting Thursday on the senseless murders in Charleston, on the Joe Piscopo radio show, which is apparently a thing. Being Rick Santorum, he started out OK, but then suddenly stepped in a puddle of wingnut ***. Let’s words our way through his comments, to see how it all went so terribly wrong.

Santorum starts off by saying this was “obviously a crime of hate.” Yes, correct! “What other rationale” could there be? He continued, “You’re sort of lost that someone would walk into a bible study at a church and indiscriminately kill people.” Still on the right track! He doesn’t mention that it was allegedly a white guy who shot up a black church, but he did say “hate.” It’s possible that he watched Fox News’s report and heard about how it was an anti-Christian hate crime and is just running with the assumption that the suspect, Dylann Roof, is probably a big old atheist.

Santorum seems to be at a loss for words and says all we can do is pray for the families and console the victims, and RIGHT THERE is where the autopilot in his dumb head kicks on. Did somebody say prayer? ARE WE EVEN ALLOWED TO PRAY ANYMORE?

OH REALLY, RICK SANTORUM? Are people being denied the right to pray for people? Is that a thing that is happening? And who, pray tell, does Rick Santorum believe is assaulting everybody’s religious liberty? Oh that’s right, it’s the gays. Remember how ANOTHER wingnut radio host, Steve Deace, asked Santorum if he believes that “the sexual revolution trumps the American Revolution,” or if “someone’s erotic liberty trumps your religious liberty”? And here was his answer, where he explained how religious freedom is way more important than gay erotic freedom:

And then remember that OTHER time when Santorum explained how the gays and lesbians were Hitlering all the good Bible-believing Christians, by forcibly compelling them to bake and arrange flowers?

These, little children, are the “assaults on religious freedom” Santorum is talking about, when he worries that maybe people won’t be able to pray real nice and good for the victims in Charleston. Because *** him is why.

Guy on CNN blaming Tea Party/Republicans for the deaths in South Carolina. You can't make this ***up folks !

Texas is trying to free themselves from the tyranny of Michelle's healthy eating initiative once again.

I find it amusing so many people stick to their guns of Nancy's absolute failure "just say no" campaign all these years later, but Michelle's initiative to get kids to be less fat -- something people constantly *** about, including conservatives -- is met with partisan cockwaving.