Race, religion, ethnic origin, LGBT, & "discrimination"

[ccp]

look up slavery reparations on wikipedia and than link to the number 11 footnote.
It is a NYT article from Obama's notorius friend and Harvard professor who was made nationally famous for getting into the roe with the police officer a few years back;  Henry Gates.  Of interest he claims Obama's feelings about reparations are ambigious.  Obama is for it in theory but does not think it practical.

Interestingly he gives us a history lesson about slavery responsibility on BOTH sides of the Atlantic.  He points out that some African Kings and Kingdoms were very complicit in actually providing the blacks to the whites for monetary gain.  4 to 500 thousand Blacks were brought to the US while 12 to 13 million were sold overseas around the world.  The US was really only a small percentage of the total of recipient of blacks sold into slavery.

And members of their own race sadly sold them to the whites.  I was not really aware of the extent of this.  What all men, white black, asian will do to one another for money is part of history of humanity from day one.  Always was, always will be.

I cannot link it here because of network issues.

[bigdog]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/25/net-us-usa-internet-profiling-idUSBRE8AO01M20121125

From the article:

Instantcheckmate.com, which labels itself the "Internet's leading authority on background checks," placed both ads. A statistical analysis of the company's advertising has found it has disproportionately used ad copy including the word "arrested" for black-identifying names, even when a person has no arrest record.

Latanya Sweeney is a Harvard University professor of government with a doctorate in computer science. After learning that her own name had popped up in an "arrested?" ad when a colleague was searching for one of her academic publications, she ran more than 120,000 searches for names primarily given to either black or white children, testing ads delivered for 2,400 real names 50 times each. (The author of this story is a Harvard University fellow collaborating with Professor Sweeney on a book about the business of personal data.)

Ebony Jefferson, for example, often turns up an instantcheckmate.com ad reading: "Ebony Jefferson, arrested?" but an ad triggered by a search for Emily Jefferson would read: "We found Emily Jefferson." Searches for randomly chosen black-identifying names such as Deshawn Williams, Latisha Smith or Latanya Smith often produced the "arrested?" headline or ad text with the word "arrest," whereas other less ethnic-sounding first names matched with the same surnames typically did not.

[G M]

What is the actual rate of arrests for "Ebony" vs. that of "Emily"? Exactly the same, or is there a discernable difference?

[G M]

http://pjmedia.com/blog/major-hasan-syndrome-at-the-los-angeles-police-department/?singlepage=true

‘Major Hasan Syndrome’ at the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department?
Once again, incompetence and even criminal behavior get ignored for the sake of diversity.by
Jack Dunphy

Bio
November 28, 2012 - 12:00 am     Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people (and, lest we forget, an unborn child) and wounding 29 others at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009, had raised a number of red flags suggesting a disposition for committing, or at the very least having sympathy for, acts of Islamic terror prior to his massacre. The signs were ignored due to political correctness.

There is a price to be paid for the “inclusiveness” and “diversity” we’re all supposed to be so proud of. We can be thankful the price is seldom as dreadful as it was at Fort Hood, but sometimes the cost is a level of criminality less horrific but disturbing all the same.

Witness the case of Bernice Abram, a captain with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The Los Angeles Times has reported that since April of last year, Capt. Abram has been on paid administrative leave after being caught in a sting that revealed her relationship with Dion Grim, a suspected drug dealer.

According to the Times, a Sheriff’s Department detective was listening to wiretapped phone calls Grim had made when he recognized Capt. Abram’s voice on the line. In the ensuing sting, Capt. Abram was advised of a purported drug investigation being conducted near Grim’s home. Minutes later, as investigators listened in, Abram phoned Grim and warned him about the operation. She was immediately placed on paid leave, as was her niece, a civilian jail employee, who is accused of illegally accessing law enforcement databases on behalf of Grim.

Together, Abram and her niece have collected about $300,000 in salary since being put on leave, says the Times.

The Times took care to note that Abram was a “respected captain with more than 150 deputies under her command.” To that characterization a question must be raised: respected by whom? Concerns about Abram’s relationship with Grim had arisen long before she was ensnared in the sting. Indeed, she had made no secret of her willingness to help Grim get through previous brushes with the law, going so far as to order him released from custody after he was arrested on a drug charge, and securing the release of his car from the impound lot without his having to pay the customary fees. Abram even picked Grim up from jail herself. She also used her position to fix traffic tickets issued to Grim and his sister.

It is inconceivable that Abram’s conduct wasn’t widely known among the rank and file deputies, both at her own station and at the one near where Grim lived. It is also inconceivable that word of her questionable ties to Grim did not reach people above her in the chain of command, people who in theory should have been able to correct her behavior.

So why did it take such a flagrant act of subverting her own department’s objectives before action was taken against her? Everyone knows the answer to that: Abram was given a pass because she is a black female working in an organization that values “diversity” more than competence, and even, to at least some extent, more than adherence to the law.

Just as Major Hasan’s superiors in the Army turned a blind eye to his descent into jihadism lest they be branded as intolerant, Capt. Abram’s superiors in the Sheriff’s Department were content to ignore her relationship with a criminal for fear of stirring the wrath of this or that group of racial grievance-mongers. That she so boldly interfered with the prosecution of criminal cases against her friend the drug dealer, even to the point of asking others in the Sheriff’s Department to act on her behalf, is an indication of the freedom she felt in flouting the law and the Sheriff’s Department’s regulations. She knew no one would dare touch her.

Lest my friends in the Sheriff’s Department accuse me of picking on them, my own Los Angeles Police Department is not immune to Major Hasan Syndrome.

Back in 2002, the Los Angeles Times reported that Maurice Moore, a black LAPD deputy chief, was for at least seven years laundering money for his drug trafficker son, who orchestrated the scheme from inside federal prison. Just as disturbing, the FBI informed then-LAPD Chief Bernard Parks about their suspicions as to Moore’s involvement in the criminal enterprise. Parks, who is also black, declined to take any action against his subordinate. Moore was allowed to retire without facing any departmental charges, and the statute of limitations precluded prosecution on most of the allegations against him.

Mr. Parks was denied a second term as police chief in 2002. But today, he serves on the L.A. city council.

“I don’t understand why this [investigation] was managed the way it was,” wrote Thomas Lorenzen, at the time an LAPD commander who wrote the department’s report on the Moore case. “If it would have been your average police officer, it would have been utterly different.”

Indeed it would have, as can be said of any number of incidents involving high-ranking officers whose ability to check this or that box on the diversity paperwork has saved them from demotion, termination, or prosecution.

Sometimes Major Hasan Syndrome serves to obscure not criminality, but the much, much more commonly observed incompetence. Off the top of my head, I can think of four LAPD captains, all of whom owe their current positions to belonging to one or more “under-represented classes,” and all of whom have performed poorly in every position and at every rank since the day they were hired. Nonetheless, they have continued to earn promotions even after demonstrating monumental malfeasance.

One was the key figure in a lawsuit in which officers were awarded millions of dollars in damages, mostly owing to her mismanagement of the division she commanded. She’s been promoted twice since then. Another, the subject of laudatory news stories chronicling her rise in the LAPD, has so poorly run her current command that crime in that part of town is up almost 20 percent from last year’s levels, by far the largest increase in the city. We can expect her to be promoted to commander any time now.

So we await to hear what will become of Capt. Bernice Abram. The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has declined to prosecute her on the grounds that there is insufficient proof that she knew Dion Grim was involved in any crime when she tipped him off to the investigation in his neighborhood. And maybe there isn’t, but the L.A. Times reports that the FBI continues to investigate her, even as she continues to draw her captain’s salary for doing nothing.

Perhaps, like former LAPD Deputy Chief Maurice Moore, she’ll be able to ride out the investigation until the statute of limitations expires, and then quietly retire.

But that’s just a small price to pay for “diversity,” right? And it pales in comparison with the price the Army paid for ignoring Major Hasan’s murderous predilections. But note well the rubbish that came spilling out of the mouths of people we had hoped knew better after the Fort Hood massacre. “Workplace violence,” it was called, as insulting a use of Orwellian language as has ever been seen. But perhaps the most galling was General George Casey, the Army’s top commander, who uttered this timeless gem of politically correct hokum:

Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.

At least Capt. Abram and her accused drug-dealing friend haven’t killed anyone, at least not that we know of. But even if they had, would some hack politician or careerist cop out there say it was merely the price of “diversity” in the Sheriff’s Department? Someone would. You just know someone would.

[Crafty_Dog]

'Stop Being So Anglo' San Francisco's Möbius strip of discrimination
By JAMES TARANTO

"Allegations of racism and other discrimination against San Francisco Housing Authority Executive Director Henry Alvarez are flying in lawsuits filed by his subordinates," the San Francisco Examiner reports. It's a man-bites-dog story inasmuch as Alvarez is black and his accusers are white--the reverse of the usual race-discrimination stereotype.

In one lawsuit, Tim Larsen, a lawyer who works for the authority, alleges that Alvarez "told him to 'stop being so Anglo' and that he 'did not have enough kink in his hair,' " reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The Examiner adds that "Alvarez allegedly asked Larsen to climb a telephone pole to cut down some dangling shoes. When Larsen questioned why he was being asked to do the task when it was clearly not in his attorney job description, Alvarez allegedly replied, 'you and I are like Captain Kirk and Spock; you will never escape me.' "

Then there's this: "Larsen . . . claims Alvarez denied him a promotion based on his race, . . . admitting he would have granted the promotion 'if you had more melatonin in your skin,' according to court documents filed last month. The suit surmises that Alvarez actually was referring to 'melanin,' a hormone that determines skin pigment."

Sounds more like Archie Bunker than anyone from "Star Trek."

When we read about this case, it reminded us of another one, which we wrote about back in 2007. As the Chronicle reported then, San Francisco was defending "an affirmative action program for minority and female contractors," even though a 1996 ballot initiative banned all such racial preferences by governments in California. A state appeals court had just ruled in the city's favor, "saying a history of discrimination may justify preferential treatment despite California's Proposition 209."

This seemed odd to us:

[San Francisco] claims that its own employees have a history of "long-standing and pervasive discrimination" against female and minority contractors--even though for 23 years, city policy has required discrimination in favor of women and minorities.
If the city's claim is true, why doesn't it just fire the wayward employees? It could replace them with women and minorities and kill two birds with one stone.
That case, known as Coral Construction v. San Francisco, is still going on. In August 2010, it reached the state Supreme Court, which sustained the appellate court's ruling. The justices "said San Francisco could try to show that it had intentionally discriminated in the past and that the bidding preferences were needed to level the playing field," reported the Chronicle.

According to a blog post last month by the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represents the plaintiffs, a pretrial hearing in the case was scheduled for Nov. 16. PLF's Meriem Hubbard tells Best of the Web Today that it has since been postponed until Jan. 17.

Here's how the PLF post sums up the case:

Essentially, the city must convince the court that (1) it has been so powerless and inept that it has been unable to force itself to comply with federal and state constitutional prohibitions against discrimination; or (2) despite governing over a geographical area heralded for its progressive politics, tolerance, and diversity, the city has for decades deliberately enacted and enforced contracting procedures with the intent to discriminate against every category of racial and ethnic minorities and women."
To put it another way, San Francisco's argument is that two wrongs make a right: that it should be permitted to engage in racial discrimination because it has engaged in racial discrimination.

But wait. According to the lawsuits against Alvarez, there is "a pattern of alleged inappropriate and illegal behavior," in the Chronicle's words, some of it racially motivated and directed against whites. Moreover, as we noted in 2007, antiwhite discrimination in the form of "affirmative action" has been official city policy since at least 1984.

If San Francisco prevails in the Coral Construction case, the logic of its argument would dictate that its history of discrimination against whites justifies future discrimination against minorities. When you sanction discrimination in order to remedy discrimination, you make of the law a Möbius strip.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.youtube.com/5723michael

NSFW!!!

[Crafty_Dog]

Jamie Foxx has done some serious high quality work as an actor.  The author of this piece takes him to task for some things he has said recently.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/13/jamie-foxx-and-the-rise-of-black-bigotry/

[DougMacG]

I'm having a hard time figuring this out.  The media and others report it as racial, African Americans versus the Somalis.  Where do they think Somalia is and what race do they see?  It looks to me like local blacks' intolerance of minority, immigrant blacks - for being different?  Authorities will be reviewing surveillance footage.

A parent commented:  "You can't throw kids in a building and expect them to get along," she said. "It's a challenge for all of our students to live amid such rich diversity."

My two cents:  With a 50% graduation rate, how about we throw them into books and more math tests in place of the time we spend celebrating our rich diversity.

http://www.startribune.com/local/minneapolis/191259371.html
http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/21199424/south-high-school-locked-down-after-food-fight-escalates-to-brawl
http://kstp.com/article/stories/S2932193.shtml?cat=1
http://www.kare11.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=2165842137001&odyssey=mod|tvideo|news

Maybe their congressman Keith Ellison can bridge this gap and end the violence with smart liberalism, like Rahm did in Chicago.

[DDF]

I've said it before and I will say it again, multiculturalism has never worked.

In every instance in history, societies that have been multicultural, have at one point or another led to either the death of the weaker groups, the group's expulsion, or assimilation (through being bred into), the stronger group.

Nature dictates that there is no such thing as getting along. It doesn't mean that people are basically racist or hate each other. It just means that people intuitively seek to protect their subset.

Darwin and others were right.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=517&load=8066

[Crafty_Dog]

Incarceration rates for black Americans dropped sharply from 2000 to 2009, especially for women, while the rate of imprisonment for whites and Hispanics rose over the same decade, according to a report released Wednesday by a prison research and advocacy group in Washington.


The declining rates for blacks represented a significant shift in the racial makeup of the United States’ prisons and suggested that the disparities that have long characterized the prison population may be starting to diminish.

“It certainly marks a shift from what we’ve seen for several decades now,” said Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, whose report was based on data from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, part of the Justice Department. “Normally, these things don’t change very dramatically over a one-decade period.”

The decline in incarceration rates was most striking for black women, dropping 30.7 percent over the ten-year period. In 2000, black women were imprisoned at six times the rate of white women; by 2009, they were 2.8 times more likely to be in prison. For black men, the rate of imprisonment decreased by 9.8 percent; in 2000 they were incarcerated at 7.7 times the rate of white men, a rate that fell to 6.4 times that of white men by 2009.

For white men and women, however, incarceration rates increased over the same period, rising 47.1 percent for white women and 8.5 percent for white men. By the end of the decade, Hispanic men were slightly less likely to be in prison, a drop of 2.2 percent, but Hispanic women were imprisoned more frequently, an increase of 23.3 percent.

Over all, blacks currently make up about 38 percent of inmates in state and federal prisons; whites account for about 34 percent.

More than 100,000 women are currently incarcerated in state or federal prisons. The overall rate of incarceration varies widely from state to state, as does the ratio of blacks to whites and Hispanics.

But the trend is clear, Mr. Mauer said, adding that no single factor could explain the shifting figures but that changes in drug laws and sentencing for drug offenses probably played a large role. Other possible contributors included decreasing arrest rates for blacks, the rising number of whites and Hispanics serving mandatory sentences for methamphetamine abuse, and socioeconomic shifts that have disproportionately affected white women.

Alfred Blumstein, an expert on the criminal justice system at Carnegie Mellon University, said his own findings from research he conducted with Allen J. Beck of the Bureau of Justice Statistics also indicated that the rate of incarceration for blacks was declining compared with that for whites.

“A major contributor has been the intensity of incarceration for drug offending,” Dr. Blumstein said, “and that reached a peak with the very long sentences we gave out for crack offenders, stimulated in large part by the violence that was going on in the crack markets.”

But crack cocaine has become far less of an issue in recent years, he noted, a fact reflected in revisions of federal sentencing laws. And inmates serving time for crack offenses are now emerging from prison, “so there would be a disproportionate black exodus from prison that as a result would be reflected in a lowering of the incarceration-rate ratio,” he said.

Mr. Mauer said that especially for black women, the drop in incarceration compared with whites was “all about drug offenses.”

In New York State, for example, where the overall prison population has dropped substantially, for women “virtually the entire decline was a decline in drug offenses,” he said. Increasingly severe drug laws and stiff sentences for drug offenses resulted in disproportionate numbers of black women going to prison, he said, “and now they are disproportionately benefiting from reductions in that area.”

“We’re not going to see necessarily the same level across all 50 states, but the patterns are there,” he said.

One thing that has not changed, Mr. Mauer said, is that incarceration rates for women as a whole continue to increase at a higher rate than those for men.

“All we’ve seen is a shifting in which women are locked up,” he said.

[Crafty_Dog]

Are We Equal?

By Walter E. Williams · March 27, 2013

Are women equal to men? Are Jews equal to gentiles? Are blacks equal to Italians, Irish, Polish and other white people? The answer is probably a big fat no, and the pretense or assumption that we are equal -- or should be equal -- is foolhardy and creates mischief. Let's look at it.

Male geniuses outnumber female geniuses 7-to-1. Female intelligence is packed much closer to the middle of the bell curve, whereas men's intelligence has far greater variability. That means that though there are many more male geniuses, there are also many more male idiots. The latter might partially explain why more men are in jail than women.

Watch any Saturday afternoon college basketball game and ask yourself the question fixated in the minds of liberals everywhere: "Does this look like America?" Among the 10 players on the court, at best there might be two white players. If you want to see the team's white players, you must look at the bench. A Japanese or Chinese player is close to being totally out of the picture, even on the bench. Professional basketball isn't much better, with 80 percent of the players being black, but at least there's a Chinese player. Professional football isn't much better, with blacks being 65 percent. In both sports, blacks are among the highest-paid players and have the highest number of awards for excellence. Blacks who trace their ancestry to West Africa, including black Americans, hold more than 95 percent of the top times in sprinting.

By contrast, blacks are only 2 percent of the NHL's ice hockey players. But don't fret about black NHL underrepresentation. State underrepresentation is worse. Most U.S. professional hockey players were born in Minnesota, followed by Massachusetts. Not a single U.S. professional hockey player can boast of having been born and raised in Hawaii, Mississippi or Louisiana. Any way we cut it, there is simply no racial proportionality or diversity in professional basketball, football and hockey.

A more emotionally charged question is whether we have equal intelligence. Take Jews, for example. They are only 3 percent of the U.S. population. Half-baked theories of racial proportionality would predict that 3 percent of U.S. Nobel laureates are Jews, but that's way off the mark. Jews constitute a whopping 39 percent of American Nobel Prize winners. At the international level, the disparity is worse. Jews are not even 1 percent of the world's population, but they constitute 20 percent of the world's Nobel Prize winners.

There are many other inequalities and disproportionalities. Asian-Americans routinely score the highest on the math portion of the SAT, whereas blacks score the lowest. Men are 50 percent of the population, and so are women; yet men are struck by lightning six times as often as women. I'm personally wondering what whoever is in charge of lightning has against men. Population statistics for South Dakota, Iowa, Maine, Montana and Vermont show that not even 1 percent of their respective populations is black. By contrast, in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, blacks are overrepresented in terms of their percentages in the general population. Pima Indians of Arizona have the world's highest known diabetes rates. Prostate cancer is nearly twice as common among black men as white men. Cervical cancer rates are five times higher among Vietnamese women in the U.S. than among white women.

Soft-minded and sloppy-thinking academics, lawyers and judges harbor the silly notion that but for the fact of discrimination, we'd be proportionately distributed by race across incomes, education, occupations and other outcomes. There is absolutely no evidence anywhere, at any time, that proportionality is the norm anywhere on earth; however, much of our thinking, many of our laws and much of our public policy are based upon proportionality's being the norm. Maybe this vision is held because people believe that equality in fact is necessary for equality before the law. But the only requirement for equality before the law is that one is a human being.

[bigdog]

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/290977-boehner-no-excuse-for-youngs-wetbacks-comment

From the article:

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said there was "no excuse" for the comment, in which Young described Latino workers on his family farm as "wetbacks" in a radio interview Thursday.

[DougMacG]

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/290977-boehner-no-excuse-for-youngs-wetbacks-comment
From the article:
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said there was "no excuse" for the comment, in which Young described Latino workers on his family farm as "wetbacks" in a radio interview Thursday.

We will not judge people by the moisture content of their skin, nor by the validity of their documents.

[Crafty_Dog]

Pedophilia Is A Sexual Orientation Under CA Bill
February 7, 2013
http://www.rethinksociety.com/government/pedophilia-is-a-sexual-orientation-under-ca-bill/



California Congresswoman, Rep. Jackie Speier CA (D), wants to federalize a state law to prohibit counseling to change a person’s sexual orientation. That doesn’t sound that extreme, but pedophilia is a sexual orientation according to this bill as well.
 
Under the bill’s language, a mental health counselor could be sanctioned if there was an attempt to get a pedophile or gay individual to change his behavior or speak negatively about their behavior as it relates to sexuality.
 
The bill calls on states to prohibit efforts to change a minor’s sexual orientation, even if the minor requests it, saying that doing so is “dangerous and harmful.”  The text of the legislation doesn’t specifically ban “gay” conversion therapy. Instead, it prohibits attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation.  “Sexual orientation change efforts’ means any practices by mental health providers that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation,” the bill says.
 
Republicans attempted to add an amendment specifying that, “pedophilia is not covered as an orientation.” However, the Democrats defeated the amendment. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) stated that all alternative sexual lifestyles should be protected under the law, and accordingly decided that pedophilia is a sexual orientation that should be equally as embraced as homosexuality.
 
“This language is so broad and vague, it arguably could include all forms of sexual orientation, including pedophilia,” said Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute. “It’s not just the orientation that is protected—the conduct associated with the orientation is protected as well.”
 
Who Cares If Pedophilia Is A Sexual Orientation?
 
It also means that, if pedophilia is a sexual orientation, that discrimination laws also apply to pedophiles. That means you cannot block a pedophile from being a preschool teacher or any other high-risk occupation.
 
Recently, a United States District Court Judge, William Shubb, sided with Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) by granting their plaintiffs a preliminary injunction against the legislation, which is known as California SB 1172.
 
“Because the court finds that SB 1172 is subject to strict scrutiny and is unlikely to satisfy this standard, the court finds that plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims based on violations of their rights to freedom of speech under the First Amendment,” wrote Judge Shubb.
 
“This victory sends a clear signal to all those who feel they can stifle religious freedom, free speech, and the rights of parents without being contested,” said PJI President, Brad Dacus. “We at PJI are ready to fight this battle all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary.

“This will be a long, grueling battle with tremendous consequences for generations to come. We are grateful to those who are willing to support us in this critical time to preserve our freedoms and protect our children,” he continued.
 
Thankfully, for the time being, this legislation has been blocked, but many questions still remain.   This bill establishes a dangerous precedent for normalizing the behavior of pedophiles while stripping parents of their rights and peace of mind.

One can certainly make the argument that homosexuals are “born that way,” and we generally would not dispute that. However, when we have legislators that want to extend the “born that way” defense to pedophiles, this crosses a very dangerous line.
 
Whether a pedophile is born that way or not, it still does not make their behavior acceptable in any way.  If so, then you could declare rapists are “born that way.” They can’t help that they need to rape! Poor them!

Let’s be real.
 
Sex between an adult and a child too young to understand what is going on is not the same thing as sex between two consenting adults. The operative word here is “consenting.” Children—by both law and basic common sense—cannot “consent.” If Jackie Spier had a son or daughter, and an adult “had consensual sex” with him or her, we do not believe that what she would be so adamant about protecting them.

What liberals conveniently ignore is the fact that all societies who participated in pedophilia—such as the Hittites, Canaanites, Greeks, and Romans—eventually caved in on themselves due to corruption and depravity.  Further, let’s not also forget that their favorite form of entertainment was watching people get torn to shreds by lions, hacked to death, and burned alive.
 
Recognizing sexual ‘orientation’ is walking a razor’s edge. Unlike gay-oriented legislation, pedophilia has victims who must be protected.  We don’t put pedophiles in prison to make them stop being pedophiles; we put them there because they threaten the safety of the most vulnerable people in a society.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.gopusa.com/theloft/2013/04/05/diversity-gone-wild-lifeguards-who-cant-swim/

[DougMacG]

We are talking about government licenses and definitions here, not comparing humans to animals.

Cats and Dogs and Marriage Laws
by  Stephen J. Heaney   Witherspoon Institute, Princeton NJ

A fellow walks up to the dog-licensing clerk and demands a license for his cat. The clerk points out that there is no such thing as a cat license, and thus he has no need of a cat license. Noting the man’s confusion, she explains that dogs and cats are different kinds of animals. Dogs tend to wander off and get lost, dig up other people’s yards, bite people, get into garbage, and leave their droppings in inconvenient places; cats generally do not do these things. Licensing would be pointless, for the government doesn’t need the same control over cats as it does over dogs.

The customer feels unaffirmed in his choice of a cat, and demands that the government recognize that his cat is just as important as a dog. Oh, but it’s not a question of importance, the clerk insists; it’s just that cats and dogs are quite different, and there is no government interest in licensing cats. He pesters her for so long that, eventually, the clerk, in sheer frustration, grabs a form, crosses out the word “dog” and writes in the word “cat” in crayon. The customer goes away pleased.

Unexpectedly, some of the man’s cat-owning friends soon follow suit. This raises concern for the licensing administrators. They really cannot justify taking money to license cats, yet it seems many people are made quite happy by having their choices validated. Finally, it occurs to someone that, since dogs are four-legged furry mammals with tails and claws, and cats are four-legged furry mammals with tails and claws—and after all, this really is the only set of characteristics that matters—then the obvious thing to do is to redefine “dog” so that it includes cats.

This decision is not without its detractors. Some sticks-in-the-mud point out that the definition is so broad that it also includes bears, rabbits, gerbils, and ferrets, not to mention the incredibly obvious fact that cats simply are not dogs, and that redefining them does not change this fact, and that changing definitions based on policy preferences will only lead to problems. These arguments fall on deaf ears. The city council makes it official, redefining “dog” to include cats. Why cat owners feel affirmed by having their cats renamed “dogs” remains a mystery.

Several more cities take up the call to rename cats “dogs,” but most towns resist because, as they point out, it’s simply not true that cats are dogs. The state legislature is besieged with efforts to rename cats as dogs. The state has always left policy choices about cats and dogs to local deliberations, but is now in an awkward position. It runs several venues that admit dogs but not cats; it has compensation policies that are differently affected by ownership of cats rather than dogs.

No state legislator or administrator has ever thought it necessary to define “dog,” since everyone knows what a dog is, and what a dog is has not changed in the entire history of humankind or caninekind. It is also plain as the nose on everyone’s face that dogs are not cats, and vice versa.

Failure to define the term, though, will only lead to confusion about employee compensation and mischief at state-run venues. The legislators recognize a simple fact: No matter how one defines “dog,” it cannot be the case that both definitions are true. Either “dog” will be defined according to its observable operations, or it will be defined according to its nonessential outward appearance. They decide to go ahead and define “dog” in the “traditional” way, according to the reality of dogs and cats, such that cats are excluded.

More at link: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/04/9716/

[ccp]

Professor Vermes.  Born Jewish in Hungary and became a priest to escape Nazism later studied the Dead Sea Scrolls has a fascinating view of Jesus. 
His scholarship in this area helped transform long held dogma about Jesus.   OF course there will always be debate.  And there will always be mystery.

He puts more emphasis on the fact that Jesus was Jewish.   That the Jews did not kill Jesus (though some of them may not have minded the Romans doing it).

Most of all he admires Jesus for being a genius and closer to spiritual truth then anyone but nonetheless he was still a man:

http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21578017-geza-vermes-jew-ex-priest-and-translator-dead-sea-scrolls-died-may-8th-aged

I recall being offended by Ann Coulter comment on Donny Deusch stating that Christianity is an improvement on Judaism.   After reading this article I would prefer that both religions are great with wonderful teachings we can all learn and hope to live by.