News bits: Conflicts of interest at the Supreme court, etc.

What, moi?? Conflict of interest? Non mon ami! 

The Guardian writes:

Former members of Amy Coney Barrett’s secretive faith group, the People of Praise, are calling on the US supreme court justice to recuse herself from an upcoming case involving gay rights, saying Barrett’s continued affiliation with the Christian group means she has participated in discriminatory policies against LGBTQ+ people.

The former members are part of a network of “survivors” of the controversial charismatic group who say Barrett’s “lifelong and continued” membership in the People of Praise make her too biased to fairly adjudicate an upcoming case that will decide whether private business owners have a right to decline services to potential clients based on their sexual orientation.

They point to Barrett’s former role on the board of Trinity Schools Inc, a private group of Christian schools that is affiliated with the People of Praise and, in effect, barred admission to children of same-sex parents from attending the school.

A faculty guide published in 2015, the year Barrett joined the board, said “blatant sexual immorality” – which the guide said included “homosexual acts” – had “no place in the culture of Trinity Schools”. The discriminatory policies were in place before and after Barrett joined.

The schools’ attitude, the former People of Praise members said, reflect the Christian group’s staunchly anti-gay beliefs and adherence to traditional family values, including – they say – expelling or ostracizing members of the People of Praise “community” who came out as gay later in life or their gay children.  

Barrett said in her confirmation hearing that her personal religious beliefs would not interfere with her abilities to be an unbiased judge. Conservatives have also lashed out against any suggestion that her affiliation with a Christian sect could compromise her independence.

But some former members of the faith group say they see a big difference between judges who have faith and are religious, and Barrett’s affiliation with the People of Praise, a tight-knit community whose members agree to a lifelong covenant of loyalty to one another.

This is another aspect of what Christian Sharia and a Christian Taliban looks like and actually does to real, innocent people. Christian nationalist movement and its elites hate, hate, hate LGBTQ people. The movement wants to legalize open discrimination against whoever God says needs to be discriminated against. 

What stands in the way of the movement getting its way? Secular civil rights under secular law, e.g., the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act and some court decisions (Roe v. Wade, etc.). What directly and openly threatens to gut those civil rights? A radical right Republican Christian Sharia Supreme Court. Has the gutting of those right already started? Hell yes. Enforcement of the Voting Rights Act was gutted years ago by the radical Christian Supreme Court. We all know what has happened to abortion rights.

It would be a surprise to me if Barrett recused herself. She could always argue that (i) there is no conflict of interest here, and (ii) even if it is, her recusal would severely burden her religious freedom to discriminates against and oppress people who God says need to be discriminated against and oppressed. Well, actually, she cannot argue rationale ii. The optics would look bad, to say the least.

Musk’s Twitter Hellscape v. 2.0: An update

The Guardian writes:

‘Verified’ anti-vax accounts proliferate as 

Twitter struggles to police content

Platform’s paid verification system is being used to give sense of validity to accounts pushing health misinformation

Some tools, like verification on Twitter, were meant to address impersonation on the platform by verifying the identities of government officials, public agencies, celebrities, journalists and others.

But the tools are now being used to create a false sense of validity in order to spread dangerous falsehoods, including about vaccines. And groups on other platforms, like Facebook, continue to circumvent moderation by making minor changes to their names and the terms they use to promote anti-vaccine agendas.

Wheeee!! The poison is flowing copiously on Twitter. The Hellscape is upon us. The racists, cranks, conspiracy crackpots, religious zealots, anti-science nutjobs, grifters, freaks and trolls are rejoicing in this thanksgiving season of plenty of room to spread their poison and stupid. Huzzah!! for free speech. Dark free speech, that is.

On the latest mass shooting in Colorado

The AP writes:

Gay club shooting suspect evaded Colorado’s red flag gun law

A year and a half before he was arrested in the Colorado Springs gay nightclub shooting that left five people dead, Anderson Lee Aldrich allegedly threatened his mother with a homemade bomb, forcing neighbors in surrounding homes to evacuate while the bomb squad and crisis negotiators talked him into surrendering.

Yet despite that scare, there’s no public record that prosecutors moved forward with felony kidnapping and menacing charges against Aldrich, or that police or relatives tried to trigger Colorado’s “red flag” law that would have allowed authorities to seize the weapons and ammo the man’s mother says he had with him.

Those red flag laws do not seem to work very well, but maybe there is some data on that point. Oh yeah, here’s some data. PBS writes:

Chicago is one of the nation’s gun violence hotspots and a seemingly ideal place to employ Illinois’ “red flag” law that allows police to step in and take firearms away from people who threaten to kill. But amid more than 8,500 shootings resulting in 1,800 deaths since 2020, the law was used there just four times.

It’s a pattern that’s played out in New Mexico, with nearly 600 gun homicides during that period and a mere eight uses of its red flag law. And in Massachusetts, with nearly 300 shooting homicides and just 12 uses of its law.

An Associated Press analysis found many U.S. states barely use the red flag laws touted as the most powerful tool to stop gun violence before it happens, a trend blamed on a lack of awareness of the laws and resistance by some authorities to enforce them even as shootings and gun deaths soar.

AP found such laws in 19 states and the District of Columbia were used to remove firearms from people 15,049 times since 2020, fewer than 10 per 100,000 adult residents. Experts called that woefully low and not nearly enough to make a dent in gun violence, considering the millions of firearms in circulation and countless potential warning signs law enforcement officers encounter from gun owners every day.

Yup, claims that red flag gun laws powerful tool to prevent gun violence are a lot like claims of plastic being recycled.  Both are mostly propaganda myths propagated by . . . . . by whom? Take a guess about who backs the red flag law myth.

Yup, it's a gun law myth propagated by the morally rotted, fascist Republican Party, the morally rotted gun industry and its rotted lobbyists, the treasonous NRA, and blind, raging rank and file gun freaks. Talking about red flag laws is the same as talking about sending thoughts and prayers after each gun massacre.

My thoughts and prayers are with all of us. 🤨

By Germaine: The confused one this morning