Not the Onion

You can get a slightly translation in the subtitles

A motorcycle gang from the Netherlands is going to Syria to fight ISIS:

Already battling air strikes from the US and its allies, including the UK, terrorist organisation Isis (Islamic State) now have a new threat to look out for – a motorbike gang from the Netherlands.

The Dutch bikers, who go by the name No Surrender, reportedly journeyed to Iraq to fight alongside Kurdish troops against IS militants last week.

Charged with commenting on the legality of that move, the Dutch public prosecutor said that the bikers are not necessarily committing any crime.

Prosecutor spokesman Wim de Bruin told AFP: "Joining a foreign armed force was previously punishable, now it's no longer forbidden."

"You just can't join a fight against the Netherlands."

If it weren't for the likelihood, that they are going to end up on the next ISIS beheading videos, the skills associated with being a bad-ass biker are not necessarily the same as those required for urban or desert warfare against a dedicated foe who is not constrained by the requirements of law enforcement in a western society.

This is not going to end well.

The Law Giveth, and the Law Taken Away

An appellate court for the 5^th Circuit has stayed a lower court ruling striking down the Texas voter suppression law:

A federal appeals court said Tuesday that Texas can enforce its strong voter identification requirements in the November election, temporarily blocking a lower court’s ruling last week that the law was an unconstitutional effort to suppress the votes of blacks and Hispanics.

The three-judge panel put off consideration of whether the lower-court decision, which condemned the law, should stand permanently. Rather, it said that with early voting starting on Oct. 20, a change in the rules could cause confusion among voters and poll workers, something the Supreme Court has sought to avoid in other cases.

“Based primarily on the extremely fast-approaching election date, we stay the district court’s judgment pending appeal,” Judge Edith Brown Clement wrote on behalf of the panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, based in New Orleans.

This likely to disenfranchise about something around 600,000 otherwise legal voters.

Needless to say, this sucks wet farts from dead pigeons.

There is, however a bright side to the case as it has progressed so far:

In a 147-page opinion issued Thursday, after a two-week trial, Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos had said the law “creates an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.” She noted the lack of evidence that voter fraud was a threat and cited expert testimony that about 600,000 Texans, mainly poor, black and Hispanic, lack the newly required IDs.

Judge Ramos ruled that the law was adopted “with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose.” If her finding of intentional discrimination is upheld, it could trigger new federal oversight of Texas election procedures, something the Justice Department is seeking.

I would dearly love Texas back under DoJ pre-clearance.

I am a Cynic

I think that the Supreme Court issuing an injunction against the most egregious parts of the Texas anti-abortion laws is just a ploy to push the political effects until after the midterms:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed more than a dozen Texas abortion clinics to reopen, blocking a state law that had imposed strict requirements on abortion providers. Had the law been allowed to stand, it would have caused all but eight of the state’s abortion clinics to close and would have required many women to travel more than 150 miles to the nearest abortion provider.

The Supreme Court’s order — five sentences long and with no explanation of the justices’ reasoning — represents an interim step in a legal fight that is far from over. But abortion rights advocates welcomed what they said was the enormous practical impact of the move. Had the clinics been forced to remain closed while appeals went forward, they said, they might never have reopened.

State officials said the law’s requirements were needed to protect women’s health. Abortion providers said the regulations were expensive, unnecessary and a ruse meant to put many of them out of business.

This is just a temporary injunction, and I'm thinking that either Roberts or Kennedy (Scalia, Alito, and Thomas voted against) will flip once it is sufficiently removed from the midterm elections.

Nope, No Voter Suppression Here ……… Move Along ………

In Georgia, the New Georgia Project registered 80,000 new voters.

After many months, 40,000 legal registrations have remained unprocessed by the Republican Secretary of State:

Over the last few months, the group submitted some 80,000 voter registration forms to the Georgia secretary of state's office — but as of last week, about half those new registrants, more than 40,000 Georgians, were still not listed on preliminary voter rolls. And there is no public record of those 40,000-plus applications, according to State Representative Stacey Adams, a Democrat.

Oh, yeah, did we mention: Georgia's Secretary of State Brain Kemp is a Republican.

The secretary's office says they are not doing anything different than usual in processing the voter applications. These things take time, they say. (Apparently months and months of time — as that is how long some of those forms have been sitting with the state without being processed.)

That's Kemp's story, and he's sticking to it … except this is also Kemp's story:

In closing I just wanted to tell you real quick, after we get through this runoff, you know the Democrats are working hard, and all these stories about them, you know, registering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines, if they can do that, they can win these elections in November. But we’ve got to do the exact same thing. I would encourage all of you, if you have an Android or an Apple device, to download that app, and maybe your goal is to register one new Republican voter.

Kemp said that in July, and in September, Kemp announced he was launching a fraud investigation into the registration drive, though the secretary's office has not produced a reason as to why the state suspects fraud.

………

Monday marked the beginning of early voting in a number of Georgia counties, making the case of the 40,000 missing voters all the more urgent.

To that end, Third Sector Development announced yesterday that, after weeks of fruitless negotiations with the state, they were going to court to find out the status of the missing registrations — or, more to the point, the eligibility of more than 40,000 potential voters.

And there was also the Republican State Senator who complained that Decalb County was making it too easy for people to register.

I really hope that Georgia gigged like a frog in court, and possibly end up back under a DoJ pre-clearnace regime under what remains of the Voting Rights Act.

Silly Rabbit, Stand Your Ground is for White Men!

I'm, not a fan of "Stand Your Ground", or as I like to call them, "Make My Day" laws, but the determination of prosecutors to ensure that it only applies to white males is unseemly:

Whitlee Jones screamed for help as her boyfriend pulled her down the street by her hair. Her weave fell from her head and onto the pavement.

A neighbor heard Jones' cries and dialed 911 on that night in November 2012.

But the scuffle ended before a North Charleston policeman arrived and asked Jones' boyfriend what happened. Eric Lee, 29, said their argument over a cellphone had never turned physical. The officer left.

A short time later, Jones went back to the home where she lived with Lee. She planned to pack up and leave for good.

But after Jones gathered her things, Lee stepped in front of her. Though authorities later contended that Lee didn't attack her, Jones said he shook her and blocked her way out, so she pulled a knife and stabbed him once. Lee died, and Jones was arrested for murder.

Nearly two years later, a judge found earlier this month that Jones, now 25, had a right to kill Lee under the S.C. Protection of Persons and Property Act, which allows people in certain situations to use force when faced with serious injury. But to the 9th Circuit Solicitor's Office, Jones is not the kind of person legislators had in mind when they passed the "stand your ground" law in 2006. It does not apply to housemates in episodes of domestic violence, the prosecutors argued.

Because, of course, a woman cannot be in fear for her life from an abusive partner.

I'm thinking that the prosecutors would need to worry about getting whacked by their wives if they stopped beating them.

The Handmaiden''s Tale is Alive and Well in Tennessee

That's where Lacey Weld got 6 additional years in prison for being pregnant:

Does being pregnant when you commit a crime make you guiltier than someone who is not pregnant? Vice reports that a group of reproductive rights organizations, led by the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, wrote to the Department of Justice recently to protest the sentence of Lacey Weld of Dandridge, Tennessee. Weld was picked up in an undercover sting at a methamphetamine manufacturing plant. As Kristen Gwynne of Vice writes, “despite her cooperation in the case and testimony against co-defendants, Weld (who pleaded guilty) was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison and five years of supervised release for her involvement in meth manufacturing.” Because of “enhanced sentencing” guidelines, six of those years were tacked on simply because Weld was pregnant at the time.

As the NAPW's letter states, giving a person an extra-long sentence because of her pregnancy status constitutes “separate and unequal treatment of pregnant women.” The justification offered by the judge in Weld's case is that Weld is extra guilty because she put her “unborn” child at a “a substantial risk of harm.” But Weld was not convicted of smoking meth. “According to the press release, the DOJ justifies the enhanced penalty in part because Ms. Weld apparently used methamphetamine while pregnant,” writes NAPW in its letter. “Drug use (rather than possession), however, is not a crime under either Tennessee or federal law—and as the press release admits, Ms. Weld was convicted of manufacturing, not possession of, methamphetamine.” Tennessee law allows enhanced sentencing if the victim is especially vulnerable, but Weld was not convicted of victimizing her son. Those six extra years were for a crime that isn't a crime in Tennessee at all.

This is contemptible.

Scott Walker is Betting that the People of Wisconsin are Unbelievably Stupid

The goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, as the inestimable Charlie Pierce calls him, is trying to sell himself as a pro choice candidate:

How do you know Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is in serious re-election trouble? He just tried to declare himself pro-choice.

Of course, he didn’t use those words specifically. What the Republican governor did do, however, is attempt to repaint himself as someone who is not an extremist when it comes to abortion and birth control, despite a decade in politics that shows otherwise.

It is impossible to deny Walker has an extensive political career promoted on blocking the right to abortion and birth control access. Walker’s legacy on women has been clear: He proposed cuts to Badgercare, the health care insurance program for low-income Wisconsinites; defunding Well Women programs, which provide free preventative health care screenings to women; limiting birth control access to teens; signing anti-abortion legislation that was so restrictive that it ended all medication abortion in the state (before a court overturned it) and later attempted to closed nearly every abortion clinic. He has been a one-man war on women. Signing bills on holidays to hide his actions doesn’t change that.

Now, in the waning days of his re-election campaign, all of these moves are coming back to haunt him. Walker and his Democratic challenger, Mary Burke, continue to be tied in the polls, and, when it comes to women voters, Burke is leading him by a whopping 14 points.

………

Walker, too, has been on a personal crusade against reproductive autonomy since he stepped into office, and yes, that means birth control, too. In the most recent example he attempted to use the Hobby Lobby decision to ban birth control coverage in Wisconsin’s own insurance plans, which is mandatory under the state’s contraceptive equity law. Pile that on top of the efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, quest that has shut down a number of clinics across the state that did not offer any abortion services, and it’s clear that contraception is just as big of a target to him as abortion is.

The question here is a simple one:  Whether or not the people of Wisconsin are so stupid that they cannot be trusted to cut their own meat, or not.

Anyone who buys Walker's line of baloney about his seeing abortion and contraception as an issue between a woman and her doctor should really be kept away from pointy objects.