HorsesAss.Org

The State Supreme Court issued a pretty damning opinion.

However, several justices nevertheless expressed concern about the issues raised, saying race is often a factor – conscious or unconscious – when lawyers use their peremptory challenges to dismiss potential jurors from cases.

“Peremptory challenges are used in trial courts throughout this state, often based largely or entirely on racial stereotypes or generalizations,” Justice Steven Gonzalez wrote. “As a result, many qualified persons in this state are being excluded from jury service because of race.”

When lawyers question members of a jury pool in Washington, they can ask prospects to be removed for cause, such as some evidence the juror would not be able to sit impartially on the case. They are also allowed three peremptory challenges, by which they can have jurors removed for no reason at all, as long as the effect is not purposeful discrimination.

Even though the Supreme Court upheld the conviction in this case, this is still a shot across the bow. And hopefully it will lead to actual changes.

I’m sort of already on vacation mode, so here’s a post that (a) is another damn library post and (b) has vacation planning as the intro. Also, (c) the post doesn’t really know what it wants to do and (d) is pretty short, but that’s just me being me. Sorry in advance!

I was at the library trying to find something light but interesting to take on vacation. I looked through the science section, and I came across a fair amount of intelligent design and similar nonsense mixed into the actual science and popular science books. I was rather startled, but I suppose it’s better than them not being available.

To be clear I certainly don’t want to be censorious or to tell librarians how to do their jobs. And if people want to read it, well then I guess it should be at the library. I mean, it isn’t the library’s job to say what books are good and bad science. It’s just surprising to see it.

– It’s too bad that the state’s unions have to justify their existence, but they do a good job of it.

– Everybody get your rotten tomatoes ready, Scott Walker is coming to town.

– Taking pictures is not a problem, and certainly not worthy of escalating a situation, King County and Seattle police.

– I’m on the record in the Hillary Clinton is great camp, but if she runs (and I’m not saying either way) there is going to be a lot of stupid. Even by the standards of the manufacturers of stupid.

– From the first day the first troll king pooped out his first troll-sac full of butt-eggs (and then told his placenta to eat less/exercise more, fatty), the conventional wisdom has been to ignore them. Ignore them and they’ll go away. Stop feeding them and they’ll starve. Except…has that worked?

– And a heads up: I’m on vacation next week. I may do a few posts, but will probably be more preoccupied with family stuff. Darryl will be around, and maybe the rest of the front pagers.

Fuck.

Two men were taken to Harborview Medical Center on Wednesday afternoon after reportedly being shot while driving on a freeway in Tukwila.

[…]

The victims, ages 23 and 24, sustained non-life-threatening injuries, according to the Seattle Fire Department.

I don’t know what to say except, please don’t shoot anybody.

There aren’t enough fuck-offs for whatever legislator this is:

Mayor McGinn described how a coalition of mayors presented a united front for transit funding, including Mayor Skip Priest (R – Federal Way). However, when the mayor talked with a Senate Republican leader, who he did not name, he was told, “We want Seattle to starve until we get what we want.”

Sen. Kohl-Welles said the votes were there in the Senate to pass the transportation package (House Bill 1954), but that leadership would not allow it to come up for a vote. In a telling sign that transit advocates did not have a presence in Olympia, the senator said “I wish you were down here with us.” She offered that “There is hope the governor will call a special session.”

It’s impossible to know for sure who said that, but it was either Rodney Tom or someone he has elevated to a position of power. Whoever it was, I’m sure they talk like that all the time, and so Seattle legislators must know who they are. It’s not OK that Seattle legislators aren’t pushing to starve their city or district.

But OK, fine. Our legislators favor a one sided congeniality over protecting their constituents. It’s terrible, but kind of understandable. What I don’t understand is that the non-Seattle legislators think Seattle will let ourselves starve.

Ideally transit solutions will come from the state, but Seattle is pretty good at figuring out work arounds when the state doesn’t do its job. Think of the Families and Education Levy. Sure it would be better if the state would fund education at an adequate level. But Seattle didn’t wait around for that when the state failed year after year with Republican and with Democratic legislatures. We passed, and recently expanded the levy to make up some of that shortfall. Oh, and by the way: we didn’t have to share with the people who want to starve Seattle.

It’ll be tough to do something like that to save Metro funding without the authorization from the state. But I’m sure Dow, and some of the King County mayors, have staff and attorneys working on something. It almost certainly won’t be as elegant as what they asked the state for authority to do, but they aren’t just going to give up on Metro, just let it starve.

It’s the Tuesday before the primary. This is your chance to join us for an evening of electoral politics over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet every Tuesday evening at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm. Some people show up even earlier for Dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out another DL meeting over the next week.

The Tri-Cities chapter also meets tonight. And for Thursday, the Spokane and Tacoma chapters meet. On Friday, the Enumclaw chapter meets. And next Monday, the Aberdeen, Yakima, South Bellevue and Olympia chapters meet.

With 207 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting near you.

– Tents are a half assed solution to our homeless problem. But the people who opposed Nickelsville legislation don’t even want that.

– Kirby Wilbur is going to DC to chair the Young America’s Foundation so he won’t be the state GOP chair anymore.

– My sincere best wishes for Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler’s family.

– Obamacare? More like Obamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacare!

– At comparable points in their presidencies, for every day Obama has taken off, Bush had already taken 4.5 days off. Obama could stay on vacation for the rest of 2013 and still not be within striking distance of Bush’s hyper-lazy pace

Richard Conlin was on his bike and had a crash with a car over the weekend.

City Councilmember Richard Conlin is recovering from a painful broken shoulder blade after he collided with a car while biking in Madrona Sunday.

[…]

The Times reports that Conlin is back at work. He was struck by someone making a quick u-turn without looking at 34th and Pine

No fun. Here’s hoping for a full recovery.

– The campaign for Oregon to join the rest of the West Coast for marriage equality.

– Abortion is an extremely safe procedure that rarely results in serious complications, and despite anti-choicers’ vehement efforts to cloak such laws in feigned concern for maternal health, current medical practices are such that risk to patients won’t be reduced by restrictive rules requiring admitting privileges.

– I’ve never had Miss Marjorie’s, but now Steel Drum Plantains are all I want. (h/t)

– I remember thinking this when the column was written. And to think Douthat is considered one of the heavyweights of the conservative movement.

– Oops

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was a Hyundai factory near Montgomery, AL.

This week’s is related to something in the news from July, good luck!

Matthew 8:30-32
Not far from there a large herd of pigs was feeding. So the demons begged Jesus, “If you force us out, please send us into those pigs!” Jesus told them to go, and they went out of the men and into the pigs. All at once the pigs rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned.

Discuss.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Sam Seder: Republicans try to slash funding to EPA and the arts.

John Fugelsang: What to say to people who defend Walmart:

Pap and Thom: How GOP greed destroyed Detroit.

This Week in the Republican War on Women™

• Ann Telnaes: Boehner on what the American People want.
• Sam Seder: Judge blocks Republican abortion ban.
• Farron Cousins: The GOP War on Women™ Is alive and well.

Maddow: NC GOP continues despicable effort to thwart minority votes.

Thom: Holder to Perry….You feeling lucky?

ONN: The Week in Review.

Mark Fiore: Cruel and unusual blues.

Cuccinelli’s Bizarre Views:

• Cuch…Extremist.
• Ann Telnaes: Cuccinelli’s position on homosexuality.
• Young Turks: Cuch gets trolled HARD.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: One word to describe the Republican party today.

Alex Wagner: Feds target Texas’ racist voter restrictions.

Obama on The Economy:

Bashir: U.S. has highest first day infant mortality rate of industrialized countries.

Obama on Trayvon Martin:

• Matt Binder: Obama, “Trayvon Martin could have been me”.
• Liberal Viewer: FAUX News race baits on Obama’s Trayvon Martin remarks.
• Stephen: FAUX News and Obama’s speech
• Thom: The G.O.P. is the biggest death cult in America

DEA raids medical marijuana dispensaries.

Bill Maher: Tweets from Pope Frank.

Pap and Sam Seder: Rep. Gohmert’s rhetoric echoes racist militia talk.

Red State Update: How freedom sounds fifth anniversary (Podcast 36).

Young Turks: Bill-O the Clown on black people.

Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Susie Sampson’s Tea Party Report: Week in Review.

Weinergate 2.0:

• Stephen: Anthony Weiner’s penis.
• Weiner gets the animation treatment
• John Oliver: On Weiner.
• Young Turks: Col. Morris Davis, Weiner is a victim of religious discrimination.
• Alex Wagner: What was the Weiner thinking?
• Sam Seder with John Fugelsang: The real problem with Weiner
• John Fugelsang and friends on politician sex scandals.

Ezra Klein : Holder cites evidence of racism in Texas.

Pap and Sam Seder: Liz Cheney’s crazy talk campaign.

Young Turks: NC voter suppression bill would ruin real democracy.

White House: West Wing Week.

Ann Telnaes: Exposing the media.

George H.W. Bush shaves his head in solidarity with 2 year old battling leukemia.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is a fucking bigot:

• Same old party: On Dreamers
• Stephen: About Steve King.
• Maddow: GOP compares immigrants to dogs…Part 1 and Part 2
• Chris Hayes: GOP’s drug-mule racism.
• Alex Wagner: King is the new ‘dog-face’ of GOP anti-Immigrant extremism
• Sam Seder: Asshat Steve King (R-IA) Says DREAM Act kids are drug mules
• Young Turks: King claims 99% of Latino Dreamers are drug runners.
• Ezra Klein: Rep. Steve King’s racist comments frustrate GOP Latino outreach.

Sam Seder: The silliest G.O.P. conspiracy yet.

Young Turks: Glenn Beck’s bizarre dollar bill conspiracy theory.

Obama on Education and the economy.

John Fugelsang: Exotic dancers of America, John McCain has your back.

Thom: Boehner brags about turning America into Detroit.

Mental Floss: 26 Weird Animal Mating Habits.

Ezra Klein : GOP political hooliganism over Obamacare.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

I’m glad that the city of Seattle is making a serious effort to crack down on wage theft.

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and other officials warned Thursday that the city will investigate and prosecute when businesses fail to pay employees what they’re due, after five fast-food workers filed police complaints saying they’d been cheated out of pay.

“Wage theft is a crime,” McGinn told a news conference and rally on the steps of City Hall. “An honest day’s work deserves an honest day’s pay.”

Seattle passed a law two years ago specifying that wage theft falls under the city’s regular theft statute and can be prosecuted as such, but no one ever has been charged with it. The law also allows the city to deny or revoke business licenses for those convicted of wage theft in the past 10 years.

Over at the SPD blotter, Detective Jeff Kappel lets people who have been the victims of wage theft know how to file a complaint.

They have opened the first segment of Bell Street Park (between 1st and 2nd). I walked through it the other night, and it looks pretty good. It’s concrete with some plants in between, more like sidewalk along the whole street rather than green. There were no benches; I don’t know if they’re coming later, or if the people who planned the park didn’t want it to attract homeless people or drug dealers (these were concerns of people I talked to before it opened).

It won’t compete with Seattle Center or Magnuson Park as a gem of the system, but it is nicer to walk through than it was before. Already it feels like a fit. I imagine that it will get heavy foot traffic, especially on Friday and Saturday nights when the sidewalks are already crowded throughout Belltown.

But of course that isn’t the only type of traffic in the area. I don’t drive Downtown when I can help it, but I’m sure people who drive in the neighborhood will miss the route and the parking. Bell has been closed there (and between 3rd and 4th) for a while, and people seem to have adjusted to it.

Tonight will be the first Friday night since it opened. It’ll be interesting to see if people use it.

I want to agree with Dan Savage here about Anthony Weiner.

Even if you find Weiner’s behavior disgusting, even if you’re mystified by Huma Abedin’s stand-by-her-mannishness (hey, maybe they have an agreement, people? Maybe she’s enjoys getting her virtual freak on too?), won’t you please think of the children? Think of your own children. I promise you, moms and dads of America, your kid is online right now sexting up a storm, swapping dick pics and boob shots, flirting with classmates, cranking up their BFs and GFs before school, during school, after school, etc., and all of their flirty chats, texts, IMs, and pics are going to wind up stored somewhere. Kids today: each and every one of them is creating a smutty digital trail that could be used against them one day—unless we defuse these ticking dick pic time bombs now.

That’s fine as far as it goes. However, I don’t think that Weiner’s penis is the one you want to hang your dick pic hat on.* The norms around these things are still evolving with the technology. They have new risks (like perminance) and new benefits (hotness, you’re not going to get a disease or preggers no matter how reckless you are with the pictures or texts you send). Still, those of us who want the rules to evolve into a reasonable direction should be defenders of consent and of honesty, and it’s tough to say Weiner lived up to either of those.

When the scandal first broke, what turned me from it’s none of my business to he should go was the fact that the pictures weren’t consensual (NY Times link).

“It didn’t make any sense,” Ms. Cordova, a 21-year-old college student in northwestern Washington State, said in her first extensive interview since Mr. Weiner confessed in a news conference Monday to sending her the photo. “I figured it must have been a fake.”

Ms. Cordova’s experience with Mr. Weiner appears to fit a pattern: in rapid and reckless fashion, he sought to transform informal online conversations about politics and partisanship into sexually charged exchanges, at times laced with racy language and explicit images.

Ms. Cordova, who had traded messages with Mr. Weiner, a New York Democrat, about their shared concern over his conservative critics, said she had never sent him anything provocative. Asked if she was taken aback by his decision to send the photo, she responded, “Oh gosh, yes.”

Surely those of us who think that sending pictures of your penis, or boobs, or whatever to strangers isn’t inherently immoral should be the ones who are strongest in trying to defend people’s right to not get unwanted pictures. Consent still ought to matter in our digital age.

Now, there has been no indication that his post-Congressional sending pictures was anything other than consensual. Maybe he has learned that lesson (I haven’t seen any evidence that he has discussed a lack of consent as a problem). If it’s intentional or not, it’s a step in the right direction. Still, he clearly lied to at least one of the women, promising to leave his wife for her (all of the articles I can find that I’d want to block quote use her name, even though she wants to stay anonymous so no link, I’m afraid; any comments with links to articles that name women who wish to stay anonymous will be deleted). That’s more forgivable, but it still seems creepy to me. I don’t think those of us defending the morality of sending pictures to people who want them should also feel an obligation to say lying to get pictures is no big deal.

And finally, there is the cheating aspect. Maybe Dan Savage is absolutely right, and Weiner’s wife, doesn’t mind or is in favor of it. But publicly, their stance is that she’s against it. And for the discussion of the ethics of sending pictures, I think we can say it’s wrong to go outside of the agreed upon boundaries of a relationship. We can do that even when we’re defending people’s right to define their relationships however they want. And look, I’m not going to judge their marriage from the outside: the fact that they have both decided to stay together, is enough, and frankly that part is still none of my business. We say that isn’t a deal breaker for electing people, and more generally that people probably shouldn’t be fired over it, but we can still say it’s not OK.

As I say, I agree with a lot of what Dan Savage says here. I just don’t think defending people’s right to send raunchy pictures means we have to defend Anthony Weiner in this case.

[Read more…]