I bet you were always wondering where these Supreme Court rulings were coming from. So now you know. Hardly a surprise, though.

Do the grandchildren of some of these justices just roll their eyes when their grandfather appears on the scene? “Really, grandpa – strip searches but no health insurance? What century are you from?”

This web site, Texts From Hillary,  is all the rage now, but I am sure I don’t have to tell my astute readers this.

I have been reading the packet of information that the Warren campaign gives out about what it means to be a Volunteer Team Leader.  One sentence really stands out for me.

It is Elizabeth’s belief that this campaign is not solely about an election in November, but rather a grassroots effort to build a collective voice to bring to Washington in January to overpower the special interests that have become so entrenched in our society.

That is exactly what I believe, too.  That is why a group of us in Sturbridge have banded together to be that collective voice.  Right now we are concentrating our efforts on getting Elizabeth Warren elected to the Senate.  However, we expect to continue our efforts long after the election is over.

I have said it on this blog in many ways – A good politician needs the voters to continue to force that politician to do the right thing after the politician gets elected.  I think the politician’s stand for supporting a policy is greatly enhanced when she can tell her colleagues that her constituents will be outraged if the policy is defeated.  I don’t think anything can get the run-of-the-mill politician’s attention as quickly as an outraged constituency.

Say what you will about either the Tea Party Movement or the Occupy Movement – they have give us recent proof of the power of an outraged constituency.  Of course, the Tea Party’s rage has been harnessed, fomented, and financially supported by exactly the people that do them the most harm.  When the Tea Party figures this out, and starts realizing that the Occupy Movement is fighting the same forces they are without having been captured by those forces, we may have a very powerful coalition.

See my previous post Elizabeth Warren – “I cannot do this alone” which is a nice complement to this one.

The article Scott Walker Hopes You Won’t Notice He Repealed Wisconsin’s Equal Pay Law could be subtitled What Republican War On Women? Oh, that one!

The email I received to tell me about this article said:

On Thursday, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker quietly signed a bill which repeals enforcement of Wisconsin’s equal pay law. In so doing, Walker took away any legal recourse for Wisconsin women who do not receive equal pay for equal work.

Walker signed the bill just before the holiday weekend, and his office did not return repeated requests for comment. Gee, it’s almost as though Walker is hoping his rollback of women’s rights goes unnoticed.

Does Walker think any of this will stand after he is recalled from the Governor’s office in June?  Does Scott Brown in Massachusetts think that sending him, a Republican Senator, back to Washington will be easy for women of Massachusetts to do in light of this national war on women by the Republicans?

Well, women of Massachusetts, what do you think?

I am sure some women in Massachusetts like the Republican party, but the truth is that the party does not seem to particularly like them.

I have taken to heart this video by Elizabeth Warren.

The reason my postings to my blog have slowed down in the last few weeks is because I have been devoting a lot of time to work with a small group to build a volunteer force in Sturbridge and the surrounding area to work for Warren’s election.

After listening to complaints (and making some of my own) that there was not a lot of action in this area for the Warren campaign, I decided to go back to that phrase my sister taught me when we were young, “Don’t just stand there, do something!”

So far our little group has collected over 400 signatures to get Warren on the ballot for the September primary. She needs 10,000. Last I heard, she had an estimated 40,000, but we aren’t stopping collecting until the deadline at the end of this month.

We are now about to reach out to many more volunteers in the area. We will be trying to engage them in as many activities to further Warren’s campaign as we can think of.

Suggestions welcome. Volunteering to join us is also welcome. If you live in this area, we may be calling you soon.

One reason that I think President Obama did not live up to my expectations of him, is that he and his team seemed to forget this message which he also espoused during his campaign.

He seemed to think he could deal with Congress on his own without enlisting the collective outrage of the voters. The Republican’s on the other hand were before the cameras and microphones several times a day trying to rile up the outrage of the voters over phony issues and using misinformation.

You might have thought that he would see the Republican’s tactic and say, “No fair. I thought of this idea first. I am going to do a better job of this than they do because this has been my specialty.” It is such a shame to see a politician think that the skills for running for office do not have any overlap with the skills needed to govern.

Here is Jon Stewart on the class warfare on the poor in World of Class Warfare – The Poor’s Free Ride Is Over.

If you have the same problem I do that the above video does not play for you, try this bug fix link for Comedy Central.

The trouble with this video is that you still have to have your own beating heart to realize why the “Poor’s Free Ride” is a laughable concept. Maybe Jon Stewart’s audience gets it without an explicit explanation from Jon, but I am sure the Faux Noise audience doesn’t even see what is wrong.

Jon also jumps to the same conclusion that Faux Noise makes. He assumes that the 50% who pay no income taxes are poor. I know a retired couple whose annual income plus annual increase in their net worth is around $100,000. They file a scrupulously honest tax return every year and yet have paid no income tax for a few years. How is that? Much of their increase in net worth is in their tax deferred investments none of which is considered to be income by the IRS. Whatever realized losses in their portfolio that occurred during the stock market crash were in their taxable portfolio. Hence years of capital loss carry over to compensate for any taxable income they have. Do you suppose this couple without the benefit of expensive tax lawyers and accountants are the only not poor couple that can figure out how to pay no taxes?

Thanks to BrianS for bringing this video to my attention.

The Truth Out article Medicare has the cartoon below.

The Real News brings us another interview with Gareth Porter in the story Iranian Diplomat Says IAEA Undermined Recent Talks to Satisfy Israel and West.

And here I thought that the Iranians just didn’t want the countries threatening to bomb them to have access to the targets they want to bomb. As it turns out, the Iranians and the IAEA had come to an agreement on when the site could be inspected, but the IAEA reneged and demanded immediate inspection.

Sort of like the Supreme Court here – it is not enough that you do what we say, but we have to humiliate you in the process. We won’t be satisfied with anything less. We just don’t understand why you won’t give in to our perfectly reasonable demand for humiliation.

The Chicago Sun Times carried this Associated Press article, Supreme Court: Strip searches OK .

Jailers may perform invasive strip searches on people arrested even for minor offenses, an ideologically divided Supreme Court ruled Monday, the conservative majority declaring that security trumps privacy in an often dangerous environment.

In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled against a New Jersey man who was strip searched in two county jails following his arrest on a warrant for an unpaid fine that he had, in reality, paid.

In their infinite wisdom what the Supreme Court “conservatives” may be telling us is that it would be outrageous for the government to insist that we stop bankrupting the country with emergency room visits and insist we buy health insurance, but  suspects of minor, non-criminal offenses can be strip searched.

The “moderate” justice Anthony Kennedy, had this sagacious comment:

Justice Anthony Kennedy said the circumstances of the arrest were of little importance. Instead, Kennedy said, Florence’s entry into the general jail population gave guards the authorization to force him to strip naked and expose his mouth, nose, ears and genitals to a visual search in case he was hiding anything.

“Courts must defer to the judgment of correctional officials unless the record contains substantial evidence showing their policies are an unnecessary or unjustified response to problems of jail security,” Kennedy said.
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Kennedy gave three reasons to justify routine searches — detecting lice and contagious infections, looking for tattoos and other evidence of gang membership and preventing smuggling of drugs and weapons.

What was Justice Stephen Breyer thinking, when he opined:

In his dissent, Breyer said inmates in the two New Jersey jails already have to submit to pat-down searches, pass through metal detectors, shower with delousing agents and have their clothing searched.

Certainly pat-down searches, passing through metal detectors, showering with delousing agents and having their clothing searched is not nearly demeaning enough for people suspected of a minor non-criminal offense.

It is almost worth it to coin a new Greenberg’s Law of Conservatives and Liberals.  Conservatives say that you can doing anything you want to my body as long as you leave my money alone.  Liberals say you can do what you want with my money, but don’t touch my junk.

OK, here is the rest of the story. The suspect in question was actually guilty of the heinous crime of being a passenger in a vehicle while black.

In the post Volcker Rule Would Cause Irreparable Damage to The Muppets – And Much More Broadly,  Simon Johnson writes:

This, of course, is elementary economics – dating back as far as Adam Smith.  If there is a profit-making opportunity to be had, then everyone will spurn it, unless they work for a massive international bank.

For those readers who are irony challenged, I suggest you look up tongue-in-cheek in WikiPedia.