The Justice Department is suing Georgia.

The Justice Department will file a federal lawsuit Friday against the state of Georgia for its efforts to enact new voting restrictions that federal authorities allege discriminate against Black Americans, according to people familiar with the matter.

Which would have been illegal under the 1964 Voting Rights Act, had it not been for the disastrous Supreme Court ruling in Holder v Shelby that killed the preclearance part of the Act. They said oh that’s all over now, and RBG said it will come right back if you take the protections away, and guess what that’s exactly what happened.

The legal challenge takes aim at Georgia’s Election Integrity Act, which was passed in March by the Republican-led state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp (R). The law imposes new limits on the use of absentee ballots, makes it a crime for outside groups to provide food and water to voters waiting at polling stations, and hands greater control over election administration to the state legislature.

It makes voting more difficult, and more subject to partisan interference. That’s not how voting is supposed to work.

Hayley Krischer at Salon December 2014:

So who is Charles Clymer? Clymer, who self-identifies as a Feminist Leader, has a Women for Equality Facebook page (which now seems mostly defunct) where he’s been alleged to verbally attack women as well as accused of deleting women’s comments who disagree with him. In an article for the Huffington Post last year, Darlena Cunha reported that a former moderator of his page, Zoe Katherine, disagreed with him and then was threatened with being kicked out of the group. “If we did it privately we were guilt-tripped, or simply ignored,” Katherine explained.

Who needs male “feminist leaders” anyway? Who asked him? Imagine Andrew Sullivan self-identifying as a Black Power leader; it would make just as much sense.

Twitter July 2021:

He’ll be rooting for

I bet the footnotes are a hoot.

Another residential school, another unmarked mass grave cemetery.

Leaders of Indigenous groups in Canada said Thursday investigators have found more than 600 unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school for Indigenous children — a discovery that follows last month’s report of 215 bodies found at another school.

The bodies were discovered at the Marieval Indian Residential School, which operated from 1899 to 1997 where the Cowessess First Nation is now located, about 85 miles (135 kilometers) east of Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan.

A search with ground-penetrating radar resulted in 751 ’’hits,″ indicating that at least 600 bodies were buried in the area, said Chief Cadmus Delorme of the Cowessess. The radar operators have said their results could have a margin of error of 10%. “We want to make sure when we tell our story that we’re not trying to make numbers sound bigger than they are,” Delorme said. “I like to say over 600, just to be assured.” He said the search continues and the radar hits will be assessed by a technical team and the numbers will be verified in coming weeks.

Delorme said that the graves were marked at one time, but that the Roman Catholic Church that operated the school had removed the markers.

And why did they do that? Covering their tracks? Sowing contempt? What?

Florence Sparvier, 80, said she attended the Marieval Indian Residential School.

“The nuns were very mean to us,” she said. “We had to learn how to be Roman Catholic. We couldn’t say our own little blessings.”

Nuns at the school were “condemning about our people” and the pain inflicted continues generations later, Sparvier said.

“We learned how to not like who we were,” she said. “That has gone on and it’s still going on.″

It was the whole point – to try to make the children into Catholic Canadians instead of First Nation people. It’s colonialism in the most literal sense.

Ah yes the old “crypto” ploy. They’re hiding so we can’t detect them but we know they’re there! We totally know. We know for certain. Even though they’re hiding.

Ooohhh deeeep.

Yeah don’t gender animals. That would be very wrong.

Anyone would think there were tumbrils rolling down the streets, or gulags swallowing the condemned.

Not only would one think of tumbrils and gulags, one would also think that the people filling them were feminist women. Forget Robespierre, forget Stalin, forget Hitler, the really dangerous people are feminist women who persist in thinking that only women are women and that thus men are not women.

Why does the wellbeing of women not “greatly concern” the vice-chancellor of the Open University? Why does women’s “feeling of being abandoned” not matter?

Rhetorical question. We know why. Women don’t matter.

NPR on critical race theory:

“Folks, we’re in a cultural warfare today,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said at a news conference alongside six other members of the all-Republican House Freedom Caucus. “Critical race theory asserts that people with white skin are inherently racist, not because of their actions, words or what they actually believe in their heart — but by virtue of the color of their skin.”

No, it doesn’t. That’s not what it is. That’s not what it is. I’m not saying there’s no one who thinks that or says that, I’m saying it’s not what Critical Race Theory is.

Andrew Hartman, a history professor at Illinois State University, described the battle over critical race theory as typical of the culture wars, where “the issue itself is not always the thing driving the controversy.”

“I’m not really sure that the conservatives right now know what it is or know its history,” said Hartman, author of A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars.

He said critical race theory posits that racism is endemic to American society through history and that, consequently, Americans have to think about institutions like the justice system or schools through the perspective of race and racism.

It’s so tempting to say “duhhhhhh” like a child. Of course the justice system and the schools are not untouched by endemic racism, how could they be?

However, he said, “conservatives, since the 1960s, have increasingly defined American society as a colorblind society, in the sense that maybe there were some problems in the past but American society corrected itself and now we have these laws and institutions that are meritocratic and anybody, regardless of race, can achieve the American dream.”

Which is unthinking, uninformed, naïve, unreasonable.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has introduced the Combating Racist Training in the Military Act, a bill that would prohibit the armed forces and academics at the Defense Department from promoting “anti-American and racist theories,” which, according to the bill’s text, includes critical race theory.

So, anything that doesn’t stop at the I have a dream speech and the instant move to total meritocracy and color-blindness. Brilliant.

Matt Gaetz wants us to think the US military is too woke.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, responded sharply to questions from Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., on Wednesday about the examination of critical race theory in the U.S. military.

“I’ve read Mao Zedong. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist. So what is wrong with understanding — having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend?” Milley said.

He continued brusquely: “And I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military, our general officers, our commissioned, noncommissioned officers of being, quote, ‘woke’ or something else, because we’re studying some theories that are out there.”

Gaetz shook his head while Milley talked. Gaetz did! Pinhead Gates shook his pin head.

Until recently, critical race theory was anything but a household phrase. Rather, it was used to describe an approach to studying institutional racism, as NPR’s Barbara Sprunt has reported. But it has become a culture war issue, and the phrase has been stretched well beyond its initial meaning, as conservatives in particular have used the phrase to raise concerns about race in venues including state legislatures and local school boards.

Or rather, conservatives in particular have used the phrase to try to discredit any systematic inquiry into the history of racism.

Gaetz wasn’t the only member who asked about the military’s approach to addressing race. Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., cited a letter he received from West Point’s superintendent, Lt. Gen. Darryl Williams, which states that one course at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point teaches about critical race theory (Waltz’s office provided a copy of this letter to NPR). Waltz also referenced a seminar at West Point where an instructor reportedly taught about “understanding whiteness and white rage.”

In his response to Gaetz, Milley referenced Waltz’s concerns as well, saying that such education could be useful in understanding the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6.

“I want to understand white rage, and I’m white, and I want to understand it,” he said. “So what is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want to find that out.”

Gaetz on the other hand is on the side of the insurrectionists.

Originally a comment by Freemage on On thin ice.

To an extent, the whole Trans Debate has come down to which set of adjectives the nouns “man” and “woman” should be tied to–GCFs hold that those terms apply to “Male” and “Female”, while TRAs insist that they apply to “Masculine” and “Feminine”.

The TRA position falls apart once you give it a hard look under this light, because it’s trivially easy to point out that the latter adjectives have spongy, shifting definitions, and as categories have often had traits that swapped from one side to the other. Computer programming used to be a feminine occupation, for instance, because it was unglamorous and relatively low-paid. Once it became more rewarding, men invaded and it became a masculine domain.

(Actually, the battle’s a three-way. TRAs want to slave sex to gender (if you want to wear dresses, you’re a woman), Socio-Religious Conservatives want to slave gender to sex (if you’re a woman, you should wear dresses), and GCFs want sex to be a distinct category and ‘gender’ to be burned to the ground (wear a dress if you want to, it doesn’t make you a woman).

The Scotsman reports:

Ms Cherry, who will return to Arnot Manderson Advocates, said that as she no longer had front bench duties for the SNP in Westminster, she would take on “human rights and public law cases from time to time as my duties as a constituency MP allow”.

…

“I am grateful to the dean of Faculty for granting me a dean’s dispensation to reflect the fact that my availability to be instructed will necessarily be limited by the requirement to be at Westminster regularly and to fulfil my duties to my constituents,” she said.

…

Ms Cherry added: “I remain very committed to the law as an important instrument for upholding human rights and preventing discrimination and I am sure that there will be a synergy between the cases I take on and the values I have championed in elected politics, particularly respect for human rights, equality and the rule of law.”

The MP has been at the forefront of a bitter row within the SNP about the impact on women’s rights on proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act.

She had been the SNP’s Westminster spokesperson for home affairs and justice, but was removed from her role in February after a week of intense internal strife within the SNP on the divisive issue of a conflict between women’s rights and the extension of rights for trans people.

A battle with many fronts.

The revelation that she was returning to the bar came as a group of women protested outside the Scottish Parliament during First Minister’s Questions.

Dressed in costumes of the female characters in Margaret Atwood’s book The Handmaid’s Tale, the women said they were “protesting against Nicola Sturgeon’s policy program” which the claimed is “detrimental to the rights and safety of women and girls.”

They accused the Scottish Government of creating a “hostile environment” for women who do not support GRA changes.

La lutte continue.

Giuliani’s lawless behavior is catching up with him.

Rudy Giuliani was suspended from law practice in New York state on Thursday, after a state appeals court found he had lied in arguing that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from his client, former U.S. President Donald Trump.

The Appellate Division in Manhattan said there was “uncontroverted” evidence that Giuliani “communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public” in connection with Trump’s effort to overturn the election’s result.

“These false statements were made to improperly bolster (Giuliani’s) narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client,” the court said. “We conclude that respondent’s conduct immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law.”

The interim suspension takes effect immediately, pending further proceedings before an attorney grievance committee.

Let’s hope it converts to permanent.

Throwdown!

This is going to be BRILLIANT.

Oh for godsake.

“Let’s get four male people to discuss the rights and wrongs of letting male people intrude on women’s sports. Obviously let’s not get any women to do that because who cares what they think?”

Women, eh? Always wanting to be consulted when their rights are being given away. So self-centered.

In another part of the forest…

Defamatory?

The Gender Critical Research Network is an explicitly anti-intellectual attack on Gender Studies, trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people, and inclusive, intersectional feminist politics.

Including the word “explicitly” was…reckless.

Proponents of the “gender critical” perspective, including the Members and Affiliated Members of the Network, are adamantly and openly opposed to recognising trans people’s rightful and valid claims to their gender and their rights.

Again – “and their rights” – reckless.

Their efforts to undermine trans rights are particularly concerning now, at a time when trans, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people in the UK and elsewhere are already experiencing such immense restrictions on their social, medical, interpersonal, and political livelihoods.

Yes I’d call that defamatory. I’m not a lawyer BUT.

As numerous scholars and activists have documented, those espousing gender critical perspectives routinely make transphobic, discriminatory, inaccurate, and harmful claims about trans people specifically, and gender more broadly, that have profoundly negative effects on social and political life. Their unfounded viewpoints are inimical to intersectional feminisms and scholarly debate, and they contribute to the ongoing “anti-gender” attacks on the field. In refusing the concept of gender, and in framing “sex” as immutable, binary, and essentialist, the gender critical perspective runs counter to decades of scholarship from across the social sciences, humanities, and medical fields, and it relies on and invests in racist, colonial understandings of sex/gender.  

Stupid. Maybe defamatory too, but what jumps out at you is the stupid.

A school board meeting in Loudoun County Virginia got so rowdy that the cops had to break it up.

Many of the speakers were there to express support or opposition for a draft school policy that would require teachers to address transgender students by their names and pronouns, as well as grant transgender students access to facilities and activities that match their gender identity. Loudoun is pursuing the policy in accordance with a recently passed state law requiring school systems to revise their treatment of transgender students.

Well, the trouble with that is, by “revising” their treatment of transgender students that way they will be mistreating other students, especially the female ones. If boys who claim to be trans girls can use the girls’ toilets and changing rooms, that’s an intrusion on the girls’ rights.

Late in the evening, after the school board finished its work, chair Sheridan gave a short speech, saying she could not let the “disruption that occurred in our board room tonight go unaddressed.”

…

Sheridan noted that June is LGBTQ Pride Month. She promised that the Loudoun school board will continue to protect the rights of LGBTQ students. She said efforts to convert the county to “a political battleground” — rather than a place of learning — will ultimately fail.

There again – what about the L? what about the rights of L students? They may not want to be forced to pretend that boys who identify as lesbians really are lesbians.

Just talking about LGBTQ as if they all had the same needs and rights and wants isn’t going to work any more.

David Paisley had to intervene.

There was no hate speech.

Meanwhile of course DeWahls is getting the real thing.

The Guardian does its passive-aggressive thing:

The Royal Academy of Arts has apologised to an artist whose work was removed from its gift shop after it branded her views transphobic on social media, calling its initial decision a “betrayal” of its commitment to freedom of speech.

That’s an absolute car crash of a lede. The RA has apologised to an artist whose work was removed from its gift shop? What do they mean? Removed how, by whom, when? Did art thieves take it? Was there a smash and grab in the middle of the night? Did an employee of the gift shop take it home? Who removed the artist’s work?

The artist’s work was removed from its gift shop after it branded her views transphobic? The gift shop branded her views? Who cares what the gift shop thinks? And what is the connection between the removal and the branding? “After” tells us nothing except the chronology.

Her work was removed from its gift shop after it branded her views transphobic on social media? What was the gift shop doing branding her views on social media?

It’s absolutely crap writing and reporting, all in the passive voice with the actual agents rendered undetectable. Who did what?!

And this creepy evasive disappearance of agents and mention of anonymous “its” that could be the RA or the gift shop or a gang of thieves just underlines how cowardly and dishonest the Guardian is on this subject. As Orwell probably said a thousand times, writing this bad just screams of evasion.

Jess de Wahls, an embroidery artist based in London, became the focal point of the row after the Royal Academy decided to no longer stock her work after a 2019 blogpost – in which she outlined her views on gender identity politics – was deemed transphobic.

There it is again – that “was deemed.” That’s how they reported it in the beginning, and they must be pleased with the results, because there it is again. DEEMED BY WHOM?

And they hide the agency of the 8 people who “complained” to the RA while they somehow transfer the agency to Jess DeWahls. She “became the focal point of the row” – the hussy.

In a statement, the Royal Academy said it had mishandled the situation and that its internal communications had failed, which led to De Wahls hearing about the work being pulled via social media.

Yet another stupid badly-written evasive sentence.

They then quote from the statement and what DeWahls told them in response, and let us know that the culture secretary approves. Then –

De Wahls’s comments from 2019 are what led to accusations of transphobia, which the artist denied.

No her comments didn’t “lead to” the accusations. Some fanatics made the decision to punish her for her comments.

When the post was flagged, De Wahls’s embroidery work was removed from the Royal Academy gift shop, with the artist saying she was contacted by officials at organisation who told her they were investigating.

Who removed her work? Don’t just tell us it “was removed,” as if by magic invisible hands; spell it out.

And what gets the last word? In fact the two final paragraphs? None other than Peter Tatchell all over again – a reappearance of his response to the Guardian from a previous article. Why?? Why give the last word to Peter Tatchell? He’s not trans, and he’s a man, so his rights are not at stake in the way women’s rights are. Why give him the last word?

Courtesy of What a Maroon here is the actual “apology”:

Media Statement from the Royal Academy of Arts

There has been a great deal of debate around the RA’s recent communication about no longer stocking the work of Jess de Wahls in the Royal Academy shop. We have thought long and hard since then about this and the wider issues it raises.

One thing is clear to us now – we should have handled this better. We have apologised to Jess de Wahls for the way we have treated her and do so again publicly now. We had no right to judge her views on our social media. This betrayed our most important core value – the protection of free speech.

There was also a failure of communications internally which resulted in Jess de Wahls first hearing via social media that we would no longer stock her product in the RA shop. We will now reopen discussions with her regarding the restocking of her work.

Plurality of voices, tolerance and free thinking are at the core of what we stand for and seek to protect. These events raise some fundamental issues. Freedom of expression can open up debate, create empathy or respect for difference, it can also at times cause hurt and outrage. This has confirmed to us our commitment to freedom of expression and to addressing complex issues through engagement and debate.

We will continue to reflect on this and to look at our internal processes to ensure we learn from it. We want to make sure we navigate this better in future.

For further press information, please contact: press.office@royalacademy.org.uk

The struggle continues.

The Royal Academy’s oh so generous tweet:

Guess who is all up in there talking about both sides and rushing to pick one again.

Putting out a rude clipped sulky “Here’s a link to our fucking apology” is not apologizing.