This Week in Puppycide: 09/30/17

• UNCLEAR | Cisco, TX (09/23/17): Police statement claims officer responded to a pit bull attack on a child, was charged by the dog, stumbled over and shot himself in the leg. Extent of cop and child’s injuries are unclear, but they’re expected to recover. Also unclear is whether dog was hit and/or killed.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Waynesboro, VA (09/24/17): Drug task force investigator arrives at residence, shoots & kills woman’s German shepherd that was leashed in its yard. Dog hadn’t shown any aggression towards other four deputies already present.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Jacksonville, AK (09/25/17): Officer arrives at a residence. Neighbor’s schnauzer jumps over fence to investigate. Cop shoots the dog in the head, then starts crying. Police statement claims the dog was “aggressive”.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Dayton, OH (09/27/17): Officers searching neighborhood for armed suspect shoot & kill family’s pit bull in her driveway. Cop claims the dog reared to attack, yet she never left her yard. Family says dog had no history of aggression.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

If you hear of any police-related pet shootings I haven’t mentioned, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Links: 09/29/17 – Price out

Tom Price

Oh, hey, my 200^th post. Look at that.

• Health Secretary Tom Price ^[pictured] has resigned over the ongoing scandal around his brazenly corrupt travel habits. If you’re wondering how many that makes, here’s a guide.

• Trump Justice Department lawyers demand personal information of thousands of Facebook users who may have visited “anti-administration” pages. The ACLU is vowing to quash the ridiculous warrants.

• Canadian bishops warn Catholic schools that providing the cancer-preventing HPV vaccine will “encourage” kids to be “promiscuous”.

• Australian Catholic Church calls for “month of prayer and fasting” to defeat the marriage equality plebiscite. Cool; they do that, and everyone else can work on securing marriage equality.

• Finally, isn’t it just tragic how many White supremacists are still getting arrested after Charlottesville?
  (via @fark)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Detroit mother prefers jail to vaccinating her kid

Brave vaccine martyr or stubborn fool?

Rebecca Bredow, of the Detroit area, told ABC News that she would "absolutely" rather go to jail than vaccinate her son.

“I would rather go to jail for standing up for what I believe in than vaccinating my child,” Bredow said, adding she believes the decision to vaccinate your child is a “personal choice.”

“I choose not to vaccinate, but that's my choice," she said. “I'm not against vaccines, it's everybody's personal choice."

If you’re willing to go to prison for defying a judge’s order to vaccinate your kid, you’re against vaccines. Further, if she goes to jail for taking a stand against vaccinating her son, she won’t be around to stop him from getting vaccinated by whomever becomes his guardian. That’s 0–2 for logic.

The problem with her position, as with everyone else like her, is that vaccines aren’t a personal choice. They’re a matter of public health. When people choose not to vaccinate, that reduces herd immunity, which makes it easier for vulnerable people (such as the very young, the very elderly, and those too sick to get vaccinated) to fall victim to vaccine-preventable diseases. And then they die. People who reject vaccines aren’t just hurting themselves, they’re endangering the people around them as well. That’s why some countries have started instituting mandatory vaccines with penalties for those who refuse. And that’s how it should be everywhere.

When your “personal choice” puts other people’s health at risk, particularly when that choice is rooted in stubborn denial of science and reality, it’s really no contest.

Alt-Right’s Ted Beale launches comic series to “trigger” the Left

Theodore Beale

In another life (and on another site), I once blogged about far-Right troll and über-bigot Theodore “Vox Day” Beale with some regularity, until it became apparent his only distinction from any other racist slimelord is his planetary-sized ego (hence the self-aggrandizing, coquettishly misspelled moniker). I am utterly unsurprised to see he’s since become a personality amongst the alt-Right – he certainly fits right in with the pro-Nazi crowd.

He also really hates “SJWs”, those delicate snowflakes who are also responsible for every societal ill nowadays, and he’s unveiled his new weapon: a terrible comic! No, really:

Beale told his fans that major comic makers are “methodically, purposefully, absolutely attempting to destroy every value—every American value, every Western value, every Christian value that they can get their hands on” by creating spinoffs of popular comic series that depict classic characters as black, female and Muslim. Beale’s answer to that perceived attack is to fund the creation of a comic series that features “triggering” white characters that smoke cigarettes, wear Confederate flag costumes and combat left-wing protesters.

The trailer, which was debuted yesterday, features a character that is “doing the job the police don’t want to” and “cleaning up the streets one illegal at a time.” The series promises “storylines, not social justice” and revolves around a collection of superhuman heroes that defy a United Nations “Superhuman Protection Council” and act as vigilante crime fighters who apparently use their rogue status to target undocumented immigrants and left-wing protesters.

The comic’s name? Alt⭐️Hero. A bit on the nose; he’s certainly not hiding who the intended audience is. It also rolls off the tongue better than “Spank Rag for Fascist Wannabes”, I suppose.

Other than that, the silliness of Beale’s new project is evident in itself, so I’m gonna go back to forgetting he exists until the next time he’s mentioned in my RSS feeds, perhaps when he reiterates that Whites should secede from the US or that throwing acid in women’s faces is okay because it keeps them subservient, amongst other gems.

Edit (09/30/17 @ 12:51 AM ET): Slight wording edit.

Republicans about to let 9 million kids lose health insurance

It’s like every day brings a new demonstration of how evil and incompetent Congressional Republicans are. Their months-long crusade to repeal Obamacare at any cost has now put millions of children on the verge of losing their healthcare coverage:

On September 30, funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program expires. After Republicans took a rushed and ultimately failed run at repealing Obamacare one last time, the program’s spending authorization is now at imminent risk of lapsing.

[…]

CHIP is a health insurance program created in the 1990s to piggyback on Medicaid and it provides coverage for kids in families with higher, though still lower-middle-class to middle-class, incomes. The program also helps cover pregnant women in some states. It is designed much like Medicaid, with states and the federal government both paying a share of its budget.

About 9 million children across the country get coverage through CHIP, and it costs about $14 billion a year (the feds pick up about three-quarters of that bill). It is a smaller program than Medicaid and Medicare, but it is still a big reason why America has nearly eliminated uninsurance among kids.

States and organizations are scrambling to prepare for the sudden funding shortfall. Meanwhile, a preliminary CHIP renewal deal already exists, but thanks to their latest Obamacare-repeal attempt, the Republican-led Congress now has two days to take it up and pass it, so it’s virtually guaranteed to get left behind.

Then again, perhaps this shouldn’t be too surprising. Republicans clearly have no issue with leaving millions of American adults without health insurance, since that’s precisely what they’ve tried to do over half a dozen times. Why would they treat kids any differently? Judging by their actions, they’d probably consider it a compromise.

(via @fark)

Daily Links: 09/28/17 – DoJ argues companies can fire employees for being gay

• Trump’s Department of Justice argues against another federal government agency in favor of letting companies fire employees for being gay.

• As in North Carolina, Texas lawmakers have undermined the ability of bodycams to hold police accountable.
  (via @radleybalko)

• Washington State law forces hundreds of convicted sex offenders who have served their sentences to live on an isolated island with polluted water that’s possibly killing them.
  (via @radleybalko)

• Australian “wellness” fraud Belle Gibson fined $410,000 for lying about donating the money she raised from lying about defeating cancer she never had.

• Cop who’s suing Black Lives Matter over 2016 Baton Rouge, LA shooting of police has just lost a second suit against BLM, this one blaming the group for him being injured by a rock during a protest. Bonus: He also tried to sue the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Finally: You’ve heard of Bitcoin. You’ve heard of Jesus. But have you heard of … Jesus Coin?

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Cower before the fabulous Horse-Cthulhu, puny mortals

Who knew the ancient sunken city of R’lyeh had stables?

Now, I know what you’re saying. That it’s just a regular horse with a dapper mustache thanks to some whacky genes, and not Cthulhu the Elder Horse slowly emerging from the shadows to plunge the world under its unholy dominion. Of course, that’s just what Horse-Cthulhu wants you to think.

That said, this Elder God’s gonna feel pretty silly when you tame its world-destroying tendencies by offering it a carrot. Or possibly a comb.

(via Trixi Del Mar | Facebook)

Roy Moore is everything wrong with the religious-Right

Roy Moore
[source]

Last night, Roy Moore won his primary runoff to become Alabama’s Republican candidate for US Senate, beating out the Trump-endorsed and establishment-backed Sen. Luther Strange. Strange is already one of the most hardline far-Rightists in Congress, yet Republican voters apparently felt he wasn’t quite regressive enough, so they picked someone who basically represents church-state separation advocates’ worst nightmare: an open Christian Reconstructionist who believes Biblical law trumps the Constitution at every turn. And he’s more or less guaranteed to win against his Democratic opponent.

Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist explains why this is, as he puts it, an unmitigated disaster:

Moore wants to make it illegal for gay men to sleep together. He suggested that 9/11 was the result of godlessness is our society. He installed a Ten Commandments monument in the state Supreme Court in the middle of the night, then refused to remove it. He told probate judges they didn’t have to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples even when it was legal. He said evolution was incompatible with our Constitution. He said Keith Ellison shouldn’t be allowed in Congress because he’s a practicing Muslim.

He doesn’t give a damn about the law he’s supposed to uphold. He never has. If the Bible conflicts with the Constitution, Moore would find it heretical to side with the Constitution — even as a member of Congress.

[…]

He has no intention of doing what’s best for the American people. His only obligation is to please some imaginary friend in the sky, and if decent Americans respecting our laws get in the way of that, he has every intention of punishing them. Even as the most junior member of a hundred-person Senate, he would have far more power than he deserves.

You know how the Fox News crowd constantly freaks out about potential Sharia Law creeping into our nation? (Moore himself says it already has crept in… somewhere… even if he’s not sure where…)

Well, Roy Moore is what happens when Christian Sharia enters our government.

Moore believes his religion of choice trumps every other, and that religious law is or should be the law of the land, and that the government he wants to join should be subservient to scriptural doctrine; that people of other faiths (and especially those with none) don’t deserve civil rights and protections, and indeed are ineligible for them; that anyone who doesn’t conform to his narrow and rigid interpretation of his holy book is un-American.

He is the textbook definition of the American Taliban. And much like Trump, he’s the culmination of the bigotry and religious zealotry that the Republican Party has been fomenting for decades.

Daily Links: 09/26/17 – Graham-Cassidy repeal bill bites the dust

• Another Republican healthcare repeal bill bites the dust. Stay tuned for attempt no. 48 this time next week.

• The problem isn’t so much North Korea, which acts utterly predictably, as it is the unpredictable imbecile in the White House.

• Saudi Arabia to allow women to drive. What’s next, letting them get married without a man’s permission? Walk around with bare hair? I tell ya, give these feminists an inch …
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• North Carolina legislators have subverted the use of bodycams to make police even less accountable for abuse.
  (via @radleybalko)

• “The most devoted opponents of drug legalization or decriminalization are drug gangs themselves.”

• Be it Creationism or medical quackery: magical thinking is dangerous.

• Finally, as welcome as this is, it just looks … wrong:

This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence! https://t.co/TuHj51MsTu

— jack (@jack) September 26, 2017

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Links: 09/25/17 – Muslim activist convicted of terrorism for refusing to disclose passwords

Muhammad Rabbani

Should I be making more actual blog posts as opposed to lazily dumping everything into link posts? Perhaps. But that would require I not have new episodes of BoJack Horseman left to watch, so … you see the conundrum.

• Human rights activist ^[pictured] refuses to hand over computer & phone passwords to British airport police, gets convicted of terrorism. I’m sure the fact he’s a Muslim has nothing to do with anything.

• Canada denies entry to Chelsea Manning, deems her “inadmissible” over her whistleblowing conviction.

• Now it’s Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump who also improperly used their private email for government business. I’m sure the “party of personal responsibility” will spend months and months harping about this and bringing it up at every possible opportunity, right?
  (via @; RT: @radleybalko)

• These two Buddhists have something in common with “animal liberation” zealots who recklessly endanger ecosystems and kill countless animals over misguided beliefs.

• Finally, an administrative note: I’ve semi-retracted my September 19 post, “Survey shows most college students don’t get First Amendment”, as it now appears that survey was methodologically flawed.

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Twitter Nazis: Self-hating or just plain stupid?

I occasionally wonder how it is that alt-Rightists, White nationalists, racial supremacists – Nazis by any other name, really – are able to delude themselves into thinking that a society that enshrines White privilege into every thread of its fabric is somehow under grave threat of being torn asunder by multicultural minority groups who have little power and influence. Then I remember that, to be fair, most Nazis are very dumb, or possibly in denial about what they are.

Case in point, this lovely individual on Twitter:

They call us "Nazis" because we are White. pic.twitter.com/ls7oDFqBjy

— Aryan State (@ONegrosko) September 21, 2017

Screencap:

(Click to open/close:) [−]

Actually, I was gonna call you a Nazi because your name is “Aryan State”. Then I saw the misogynistic shirts and thought only Nazis could be so proudly oblivious and self-hating. And then I saw the giant fucking Nazi flag hanging behind them, and I decided that not only are you an obvious Nazi, you’re also a flaming imbecile.

Daily Links: 09/24/17 – OH Repubs try to sorta-fix sexting problem

You try finding a decent “sexting” cover image

• Ohio Republican lawmakers propose a new law to ban sexting ^[pictured] between teenagers as an alternative to charging them with child porn. A well-intentioned first step … but why make sexting teens into criminals in the first place?
  (via @robbysoave; RT: @Popehat)

• Washington, DC appeals court rules police need a warrant to spy on a suspect’s cellphone communications.

• Wisconsin senator wants college student expelled for making an anti-police video, demonstrates his ignorance of the First Amendment.
  (via @Popehat)

• Australian primary school students organize $900 “Do It In A Dress” fundraiser to help send African girls to school. Local bigoted politician mocks them. Internet hears of this, quickly raises $250,000.

• Finally, renowned primatologist who’s spent decades studying aggressive chimpanzees says the current US president seems familiar to her, somehow.
  (via @fark)

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

When Black Lives Matter speaks at a Trump rally

[source: sceencap]

Last Saturday was the pro-Trump “Mother of All Rallies”, where a few hundred turned up at the National Mall for an event that had predicted a million attendees, continuing the Trumpalos’ pattern of severely overestimating how much of the country likes the orange buffoon in the White House. Because the universe loves a joke, they were drowned out by the coexistent Juggalo March on Washington, which drew about twice as many fans of the Insane Clown Posse for a fitting counterpoint in support of free speech and diversity.

The Trumpkin gathering was a funnier joke than anything a rally of clown fans could come up with, but one particular moment stood out. A crew of Black Lives Matters protestors showed up and after failing to get the crowd to ignore them, the rally organizer switched gears and invited the activists onstage to share their message, trying to cloak his about-face in a patriotic love of free speech (as if BLM had ever tried to silence anyone).

What happened next was fascinating: Hawk Newsome, President of Black Lives Matter New York and winner of today’s best name award, explained their cause in terms even the Trump fans could understand. And before long, some of them began to cheer.

These Black Lives Matter activists were invited on stage at a pro-Trump rally – and every American needs to hear what they said pic.twitter.com/m69yvgiQtw

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) September 19, 2017

Admittedly, getting jingoists to applaud at lines like “I am an American” and “God-given right to freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” isn’t exactly a magic trick, but that’s part of Newsome’s strategy for winning the crowd over, and it visibly worked. Not that everyone was a fan; some MAGA-hat-wearers liked to shout various racist and police-brutality-apologizing tropes, such as how a Black man who was choked to death by police was a “criminal” (he allegedly sold single cigarettes – clearly a crime that excuses being murdered by an illegal chokehold, right?) and that BLM doesn’t care about “Black-on-Black crime” and, of course, “all lives matter” – which brought Newsome to explain the reason BLM exists is that when a Black life is taken, no-one’s ever held accountable for it.

The best part came after the speech, when he was approached by various pro-Trump groups who wanted to shake his hand and say they agreed with him. It comes to show that when BLM’s opponents take the time to listen to what they have to say, they find BLM’s message isn’t easy to disagree with anymore.

(via @jk_rowling)

This Week in Puppycide: 09/23/17

• ATTEMPTED | Long Beach, MS (19/15/17): Officer investigating an attempted burglary is allegedly attacked by a “pit bull”, fends it off once, then shoots the animal in the paw when it “charg[es]” a second time. Owners took dog to vet for treatment. Despite no non-lethal weapons used and the discharge of five rounds in a residential neighborhood over a dog, the police chief calls the shooting justified.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• POSSIBLY JUSTIFIED | New York City, NY (19/16/17): “Pit bull” suddenly attacks its owner during a walk, then attacks her friend who tried to help; officer arrives and shoots the dog dead. Victims taken to the hospital. Witnesses say the shooting was justified. (The below-linked Facebook post says police tried to use a Taser, but I see no mention of that in the report.)
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• UNCLEAR | Enid, OK (09/18/17): Cop responds to man being attacked by three “vicious dogs”, shoots one that gets away and injures three people (including self and dog attack victim) when shotgun blast ricochets.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Troutman, NC (09/18/17): Cop serving warrant knocks on door; boy opens and family labrador rushes out, barking; cop tells family to get the dog, then shoots & kills her. No nonlethal weaponry used. Bodycam video cuts off before shooting.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• ATTEMPTED, POSSIBLY JUSTIFIED | Los Angeles, CA (09/19/17): Police respond to “pack” of loose German shepherds attacking people on the street after escaping their fenced yard; they try to corral the dogs and shoot one, though it survives. Neighbors say the dogs had never been aggressive before.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• And finally, JUSTIFIED | Rogers County, OK (09/20/17): Rabid pit bull attacks owners, severely injuring them and pinning them in their home; deputy responds, hesitates to harm the dog, but has no choice but to shoot it dead when it keeps attacking its family.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

If you hear of any police-related pet shootings I haven’t mentioned, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

What modern animals reconstructed like dinosaurs look like

All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals [2012] by Darren Naish, CM Kosemen, John Conway & Scott Hartman
[source]

Trying to figure out what prehistoric creatures looked like is rather tricky when all you’ve got to go on are millions-of-years-old fossils of bones and the occasional skin or feather print in ancient mud. So paleoartists look to modern animals – particularly reptiles like crocodiles in the case of dinosaurs – as references for determining those features that skeletons alone can’t reveal, such as skin texture and the distribution of soft tissues. But of course, this can only give us educated guesses that may well be entirely wrong.

To illustrate (pun totally not intended) just how wrong we might be, artists CM Kosemen and John Conway teamed up with paleozoologist Darren Naish to show us what modern, living animals might look like if we applied the same logic and assumptions to their skeletons that we use with dinosaurs. The results are equal parts spectacular and creepy as hell.

Baboons, for instance, turn into a cross between a thylacine and a viperwolf from Avatar:

The blubbery hippo, meanwhile, turns into a Tyrannosaurian hellbeast:

There’s more over at Atlas Obscura, which gets them all from Kosemen, Conway and Naish’s 2012 book, All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals.

Now we really need a time machine, if only to verify that the mighty T. rex didn’t look like a river-waddler or something.

(via Pharyngula)

Daily Links: 09/22/17 – Louisville, KY police bullies news station

• Louisville, KY police department refuses to release bodycam footage of a shooting, instead tries to bully a news station in court for video of their interview with a suspect.
  (via @radleybalko)

• Radley Balko has a bunch of interesting-and/or-enraging criminal (in)justice links you should check out.

• More self-identified Republicans now support tuition-free college than oppose it, according to a new poll.

• College professor investigated under Title IX for writing about being investigated under Title IX after she wrote about Title IX investigations.
  (via @Popehat)

• Finally, your headline of the day:
  (via @fark)

[Los Angeles Times]

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Survey: Canadians are ignorant about basic science

The skeptic Internet (myself included) is often hard on the US for its rampant scientific illiteracy, probably because of things like how more Americans believe in angels than in human-driven global warming, for fuck’s sake. But lest I get too cocky here on my Canadian perch, a new poll from the Ontario Science Center^* – conducted for Science Literacy Week (Sept. 18–24), no less – reveals that most Canucks don’t have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to mocking Americans for being dum-dums:

Are scientific findings a matter of opinion? Forty-three per cent of Canadians agree that they are, suggests a new poll.

The survey found widespread concerns about fake news — 66 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement that "false information reported as fact (so called 'fake news') is affecting your knowledge of science."

It also uncovered possible evidence of that happening, including a widespread belief in ideas contrary to scientific consensus:

• 52 per cent of respondents agreed that "genetically modified organisms are bad for your health." (This is an issue where there recently has been the biggest divide between scientists and the public.)

• 47 per cent (up from 41 per cent last year) agreed that "the science behind global warming is still unclear," despite what scientists have been calling for years "unequivocal" evidence.

• 19 per cent agree "there is a link between vaccinations and autism," even though the study that made the link was found years ago to be "an elaborate fraud."

I suppose there’s some consolation in how only one in five Canadians still buy into the central tenet of antivax lunacy, though I can only hope most of them vaccinate their kids anyway. I also thought global warming denialism wasn’t as prevalent up here – and that it was going down, not up. The doubts over GMOs definitely fit into my expectations, though … which isn’t a good thing, since those expectations are that most people don’t understand a damn thing about GMOs and how many millions of lives they’ve saved.

Poor Sweden

Source: Scandinavia and the World

Myself, I’m safely nestled within NATO member Canada … at least until Drumpf decides to blow the treaty up because all the other member countries aren’t sufficiently deferential to the US or something.

Daily Links: 09/20/17 – Congress about to wreck online free speech

[source]

• Techdirt (and I) would like to remind you that Congress is close to passing an “anti-sex-trafficking” bill that would do nothing to actually stop sex-trafficking and would instead stifle free speech on virtually every website that exists.

• In case you were wondering, the US sex offender registry is still a horribly broken and cruelly unjust system that needlessly wrecks lives.
  (via @Popehat)

• Trump administration rejects an inconvenient study that shows refugees bring in more in taxes than they cost.
  (via @donttrythis)

• I don’t see why police charged these evangelical school athletes with felonies for kidnapping, beating and raping a younger student. After all, the school administration already punished them with community service and an eight-page essay.

• Study finds racist hiring discrimination hasn’t changed since 1989.
  (via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)

• Illinois court reminds police that flag-burning is absolutely legal. (I’d also remind them it’s just a fucking colored cloth.)

• Finally, Miami-Dade County has a novel approach to helping with the post-Irma cleanup: ticketing hundreds of property owners for code violations on their hurricane-wrecked properties.
  (via @Popehat)

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Survey shows most college students don’t get First Amendment [updated]

This post has been semi-retracted. See update below.

Protecting the people’s freedom of expression is one thing the US does uncommonly well, at least generally, compared to most nations. University in particular has long been called a free market of ideas, where students are exposed to a wide variety of different opinions. But according to a new survey by a UCLA law and public policy professor, a worryingly large number of them see this as more of a bug than a feature, and are willing to go to unconstitutional (and criminal) lengths to stop speech they don’t like.

To explore the critical issue of the First Amendment on college campuses, during the second half of August I conducted a national survey of 1,500 current undergraduate students at U.S. four-year colleges and universities. The survey population was geographically diverse, with respondents from 49 states and the District of Columbia.

[…]

The survey results establish with data what has been clear anecdotally to anyone who has been observing campus dynamics in recent years: Freedom of expression is deeply imperiled on U.S. campuses. In fact, despite protestations to the contrary (often with statements like “we fully support the First Amendment, but…), freedom of expression is clearly not, in practice, available on many campuses, including many public campuses that have First Amendment obligations.

The survey starts by asking students whether “hate speech” is allowed under the First Amendment (which it absolutely is):

Does the First Amendment protect “hate speech”?

Daily Links: 09/18/17 – Gov’t sues to suppress FOIA requests

• Government agencies have a new strategy for dealing with pesky citizens and journalists who ask for public records: suing them.
  (via @BillStade; RT: @Popehat)

• Washington Supreme Court continues the tradition of protecting minors from ruining their lives with sexting by ruining their lives with sex crime convictions for sexting.
  (via @radleybalko)

• New survey: Up to 72% of Scots aren’t religious. (A previous survey a couple month ago put that number at 58%.)

• Stanislav Petrov, the man who literally saved the world by averting a nuclear disaster in 1983, has died.
  (via @fark)

• Finally, French court bans couple from using ‘ñ’ in baby’s name.
  (via @associatesmind; RT: @Popehat)

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Now robots are taking over the music scene

First, mechanical arms learn to outperform us musically. How long before we kneel before our bass-shredding, laser-wielding robotic overlords?

Frankly, if they’re this good, I’ll allow it.

Also, lest you think it’s all CGI (as I did):

(via Pharyngula)

California legislature votes to become sanctuary state

For a xenophobic authoritarian like Donald Trump, the existence of sanctuary cities that refuse to kowtow to his anti-immigration policies must be maddening, especially with last week’s ruling by a federal court in Chicago that he can’t withhold funds to force their compliance. But if sanctuary cities are irritating, I can only imagine – with visions of exploding heads – how he’ll take the news that California is poised to become a sanctuary state:

California is poised to become a so-called "sanctuary state" after its legislature passed a bill Saturday that would establish new protections for people who are in the country illegally, sending a clear signal of defiance against the Trump administration's tough approach to immigration enforcement.

The California Values Act would forbid state and local law enforcement agencies from providing information to or acting as the deputies for federal immigration authorities. The bill also prohibits police and sheriff officers from inquiring about a person's immigration status.

The bill was introduced just before President Trump's inauguration and met opposition from some in California law enforcement, including many local sheriffs who lobbied California Gov. Jerry Brown to intervene, as KQED's Scott Shafer reported.

A compromise hammered out earlier this week between Brown and California Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León carved out exceptions to the new restrictions.

[…]

The bill now heads to the governor's desk where he is expected to sign it.

An estimated 2.3 million undocumented immigrants currently live in California. The state legislature just ensured they can’t be targeted simply for lacking some government papers, regardless of their other activities. Damn good on the Democratic supermajorities for taking steps to protect the most vulnerable of their citizens. The outraged howling of Republicans that’s sure to come, not to mention Trump’s inevitable Twitter meltdown, will just be the cherry on top.

(via @fark)

Trump DoJ ends Obama-era police accountability program

There truly is nothing good that happened under the Obama administration that Trump won’t rush to destroy, especially if he thinks it’ll burnish his “pro-police” cred:

The Department of Justice announced Friday that it’s rolling back an Obama-era program created to help improve trust between police agencies and the communities they serve.

The department said it’s making significant changes to an office that investigated and issued public reports about problems it found in individual police departments.

DOJ said the changes to the program “will return control to the public safety personnel sworn to protect their communities and focus on providing real-time technical assistance to best address the identified needs of requesting agencies to reduce violent crime.”

The move falls in line with Sessions' tough-on-crime policies and President Trump's pro-police administration.

There’s a perverse irony to people who call themselves “tough on crime”, considering how their policies are consistently shown to worsen crime rates and deteriorate law enforcement’s relationships with the communities they serve. Sessions and Trump absolutely fit that pattern, the former because he’s a dinosaur and the latter because he’s too stupid and ignorant to know any better.

(via Joe.My.God.)

Another journalist assaulted by idiot protestor

Chase Karacostas (l) & Eric Nava-Perez
[source 1 | source 2]

There are two main schools of thought for dealing with racial supremacists and fascists. There’s the pragmatic argument, which states we should rebuke their hateful message with love, exposing the emptiness of their arguments by showing them how the targets of their hate are just ordinary people, a method that’s already used by anti-radicalization groups to deconvert bigots by the hundreds. Then there’s the emotional argument, which is to punch Nazis until they stop being Nazis, or something. (That’s how psychology works, right?)

I’m not going to pretend that watching endless remixes of Richard Spencer getting socked in the face isn’t mildly satisfying, but anyone who cares about accomplishing their goals (presuming those goals are to stop Nazis as effectively as possible, rather than merely “feel good for a brief while”) should oppose tactics that don’t work and that actively strengthen the other group’s cause, because that’s what happens when you beat on people who already believe themselves to be society’s underdogs. And even worse is when those tactics and the furor behind them lead to bystanders getting caught in the crossfire.

Bystanders like this college reporter, who was covering a small pro-immigration demonstration at the University of Texas at Austin when a protestor sucker-punched him, presumably because he didn’t look anti-fascist enough.

Chase Karacostas, a city/state reporter for the student newspaper, was conducting a routine interview with a bystander when, he says, a protester approached him, aggressively hitting Karacostas’ phone into his head, where it cut him near his eyebrow.

[…]

"It was really random," he told the [Student Press Law Center], noting that he was surprised, given that the protest was otherwise peaceful. "I’ve been at protests that were a lot more violent and a lot angrier and where lots of people had been arrested, but this one was pretty small by comparison," he said. The Daily Texan’s article on the incident reported that about 25 protesters were present.

Daily Links: Study blames clerical child abuse on mandatory celibacy and homophobia

• Major new study concludes the Catholic Church’s mandatory celibacy requirement and deeply homophobic culture are prime contributors to its perennial child sex abuse problem.

• Speaking of which, another “high-ranking priest” is charged with child porn possession. So of course the Vatican turned him in recalled him to safety in the Vatican.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s lawyer threatens to sue a Harvard Law professor over his criticism published in The Boston Globe. The professor schools him hard.
  (via @adamsteinbaugh; RT: @Popehat)

• “This is why we have racism”: Christians react to a Virginia school superintendent’s decision to take down a prayer plaque to avoid a lawsuit.

• Finally, London’s Science Museum and Natural History Museum are duking it out on Twitter and it’s a wonderful time to be alive.

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

This Week in Puppycide: 09/16/17

• Dayton, OH (09/10/17): “You killed my [expletive] dog”: Officer investigating a theft allegedly gets charged by a loose “pit bull”, shoots & kills it, then arrests its owner after he yells at the cop and punches his cruiser.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Kansas City, MO (09/11/17): Police shoot & kill a dog whilst arresting its owner during a drug search. Boilerplate police statement claims his two dogs “charged” and bit them; owner says they’re lying.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Las Cruces, NM (19/12/17): Police statement claims officer returning to an arrested suspect’s home to deposit personal belongings gets attacked by a “pit bull terrier” that escaped its fenced area, allegedly injuring the officer, who fires “at least one” round to kill the dog.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

If you hear of any police-related pet shootings I haven’t mentioned, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Atheists tour Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter

The gloriously-voiced Seth Andrews of The Thinking Atheist and the normal-voiced (but still awesome) Matt Dillahunty of The Atheist Experience recently visited Ken Ham’s Big Gay Boat, that $100 million Creationist blight on the Kentucky countryside. What they saw is just what you’d expect.

Creationism: Magical sky-fairies, dinosaurs, incest and geologically impossible events all wrapped up in a lie told to children.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Michigan teacher assaults student for sitting during Pledge

Stone Chaney
[source]

I spent part of my childhood in Texas – basically grew up there – and one thing I always thought was weird was how teachers made us stand to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. As a young French-speaking kid who was new to English, I didn’t know most of the words I was repeating by ear (luckily my voice was drowned out by the class, else the teacher might have thought I was mocking it), nor did I have a clue what the silly chant meant. I just knew we had to say it, so I didn’t question it.

Of course, I’ve since learned that reciting or standing for the Pledge is optional, with the Supreme Court ruling in 1943 that students cannot be punished for declining to partake in the mindless drone. Had I known that, I may well have chosen to park my keister and wait for the teacher to get back to actually teaching.

Then again, perhaps it’s a good thing I didn’t, or my teacher might have found it provocation enough to assault me, as apparently happened to this Michigan sixth-grader:

A Michigan teacher has been put on leave after being accused of “violently snatching” a black student from his seat because he refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

According to WDIV, 6th grader Stone Chaney was sitting in his homeroom class at East Middle School in Farmington Hills in his first week at the school when he was grabbed from behind by the teacher.

“The teacher consultant comes up behind me and snatches me out of my chair violently,” Stone explained to WDIV while demonstrating on his father how he was hoisted out of his chair. “I was so confused. I didn’t know what was going on.”

According to the 12-year-old, he was sitting during the pledge as he has done without incident since he was in the second grade.

“I don’t stand because I don’t pledge to a flag. I pledge to God and family,” the student explained, adding that the following day, another teacher yelled at him for the same offense.

The school district is doing the right thing, affirming their students’ right to ignore the Pledge and suspending the teacher pending an investigation. The second teacher, the one who “yelled” at Chaney, also needs to be investigated. I’d also suggest they arrange a conference for the teaching staff to educate them about the 74-year-old legal cornerstone that so many of them don’t seem to grasp.

(via @Popehat)

Daily Links: 09/15/17 – Pakistani man sentenced to death over “blasphemous” text

• Pakistani man sentenced to death for sending a “blasphemous” text with an allegedly anti-Islam poem.
  (via @sarahemclaugh; RT: @Popehat)

• Harvard invites Chelsea Manning to be a “Visiting Fellow” for a day. A few assholes complain. Harvard Dean rescinds their invitation with a shallow ramble about how they value free speech. (Meanwhile, Jason Chaffetz, Corey Lewandowski and Sean Spicer are still welcome.)
  (via @Popehat & Pharyngula)

• The latest employer to fire White supremacists: the US Military.
  (via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)

• Quiz: Breitbart headlines or 1920s KKK newspaper headlines?
  (via @fark)

• Finally, your headline of the day:
  (via @davidmackau; RT: @Popehat)

[source: BuzzFeed News]

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.