caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

Bleeding

The blood runs thin
In the dark settings
the dangerous regions
where the ragged people
attempt to assemble themselves
people building meaningful identities
unwanted anywhere uptown
And when the blood spills
into the bleek gutters and rickety dwellings
those identities are so often
then erased
stolen in the night
discarded
just like the bodies of the people
who strove to own them

On this day we remember those lost souls. We remember their names, and try to summon memories of those who chose them.

The Evening Blues - 11-19-15

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues harmonica player James Cotton. Enjoy!

The recent spate of stories about the transgender teen in Palatine, IL has, among other things, drawn some real exhibition of lack of understanding...one might even call it ignorance...on the part of some of those commenting. It's the sort of thing one might expect to find from the right-wing commentariat rather than at Daily Kos.

It has made me question whether the 11 years I have spent posting at DK have done anything good whatsoever.

Tuesday's Editorial at WaPo An Illinois high school’s tragic discrimination against a transgender student serves a couple of necessary purposes beyond what I have written or what Kerry Eleveld has written about the situation.

First of all it will be read by more people. Secondly, it includes some facts previously not mentioned.

The writer begins by decrying the fear-mongering, which is good. When it comes to trans people, the Fearmongers Shoppe is always open.

The Fearmongers Shoppe, serving all your phobia needs since 1947.

With great sound and fury, French President François Hollande has promised to "lead a war which will be pitiless."
He then ordered a mighty fleet of warplanes to bomb Daesh militants into dust.
And drop many bombs those warplanes proceeded to do.

Here's one some of you guys might get a kick out of:

Plutocracy: Political Repression In The U.S.A.

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Detroit doo-wop and r&b incubator group The Falcons. Enjoy!

A federal judge in Michigan has refused to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a group of transgender people against Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson.

The six trans people and the ACLU are claiming their constitutional rights are being violated.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds found that the plaintiffs raised a cognizable claim that their constitutional rights to privacy are being violated by a state policy that makes it difficult or impossible to change the gender recorded on their driver's licenses.

Emani Love, Tina Seitz, Codie Stone and three other trans people claim that the under the policy promulgated by the state, the ability to change the gender on a driver's license is denied them.

Every single news media outlet reported the last week's massacre in Paris as the "worst in France since WWII". The meme was universal.

The Syrian civil war is a complicated, convoluted, FUBAR situation.
Without a solution to it, the refugee crisis won't end, the slaughter will continue, and Islamic jihadists will have a safe haven to export their deadly trade.

If you are like me, Laurence Tribe is a name that evokes memories, but you are not totally sure which ones. The professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School since 1968 taught the subject to Barack Obama, John Roberts and Elena Kagan.

As a lawyer he represented the National Gay and Lesbian Task force in 1985 in National Gay Task Force v. Board of Education v. Board of Education, a case that ultimately prohibited the State of Oklahoma from firing teachers because they had same sex attraction or spoke in favor of civil rights for LGBT people. In 1986 he was the losing attorney in Bowers v. Hardwick, but in 2003 he wrote the ACLU's amicus curiae brief in Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned Bowers v. Hardwick.

Tribe testified extensively against the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. And he represented Al Gore in 2000, arguing the initial case in Miami to continue to count the votes.

He is cofounder of the American Constitutional Society and was judicial advisor to President Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.

His voice is more likely to be heard than any of us. Yesterday he authored an opinion in the Boston Globe, entitled Achieving dignity for all. If the principle of equal dignity sparks a synapse, it was articulated in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court case that brought us marriage equality.