"Eight of the other states on the lawsuit are led by Republican governors — Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Maine, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Utah. The other two have Democratic governors — Louisiana and West Virginia.
They're asking a federal judge to invalidate a Department of Education notice to schools that they must honor a student's declared gender identity. And the states challenge a memo from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission advising employers that denying employees access to a restroom corresponding to their gender identity amounts to illegal sex discrimination.
"Schools are facing the potential loss of school funding for simply following common-sense policies that protect their students," said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The lawsuit says that while civil rights laws governing schools and employers outlaw sex discrimination, the laws refer only "to one's biological sex, as male or female, and not the radical re-authoring of the term not being foisted upon Americans by the collective efforts" of the federal government." NBCnews
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Just watched Pamela Brown (newsie pseudo blonde on CNN) argue with her guest, the Attorney General of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, over the transgender toilet crisis. I thought news anchors were supposed to ask questions on a neutral basis to elicit information and the opinions of the guests. This woman sneered at Landry in the obvious belief that believing that men should not use women's bathrooms was evidence of a troglodyte, non 21st Century regressive attitude. Landry struggled with the absurdity of her position but managed to be polite. She said "well, your opinion needs to be heard." I suppose there could have been a less graceful statement on her part ... It used to be that there were only a few news anchors who acted like that. Bill Hemmer, the neocon at Fox used to be at one of the others. During the run up to 2003 I was on his show one morning and he said that no decision had been made to go to war in Iraq. I said he was wrong, and that the decision had long been made in the Bush Administration. He went nuts and said that he would not allow me to say such a thing. Laughable.
This kind of thing is all over the Borgist corporate media now. HC's and Obama's vision of a worldly utopia where the lions lie down with lambs is 150% supported against all comers. pl
VV,
Depending on one's metric I'm in the 5% but definitely not within the 5% and so are a number of others I know. Like you we still believe in the Republic.
Posted by: Fred | 28 May 2016 at 06:46 PM
Fred,
As small as "the left" is overall, it is still just big enough to have some smaller lefts within it.
The shrinking Labor Left is anti-Free Trade and "pro-Tectionism". But Free Trade has been engineered on purpose and with malice-aforethought to decimate the industries and industrial and thingmaking jobs, and the Labor Left is fading fading away.
There is also a Limousine Left . . . a well-to-do Lifestyle Left which supports Free Trade. Clinton wasn't quite part of it, but he shared some of its goals and motives. I have a theory about one of Clinton's much under-reported motives for supporting Free Trade. When he and Hillary were college students, they spent a summer campaign-working for McGovern. When Nixon defeated their beloved McGovern, they were heartbroken. When Nixon won in part with so many Labor Left union-member votes, Clinton was furious and vowed revenge on the unionized workers who had defeated his beloved McGovern. He bided his time and when he became President, he pushed Free Trade Agreements designed to exterminate the unions whose members had voted against McGovern . . . exterminate them by exterminating their industries. Am I being to pop-psychology paranoid here?
Posted by: different clue | 28 May 2016 at 06:51 PM
In regards to Alexander; his relationship to the Academy was akin to Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi's to Madressah - Al Beiruni, like Aristotle before him, marched with Sultan Mahmud to India - just like Aristotle marched with Alexander.
The full development of the Academy did not take place until after Roman Republic was overthrown and replaced by the Empire. Then there was a need for learned analytical men to help make decisions.
The Academy fled Orthodox Christianity to Iran of Sassanid, and helped create the early achievements of Islam - before, as the Americans would say, Muslims became too dumb, too happy, and too fat to care to think about anything.
And it was later, under Western Christians, when the Church expanded in the new territories that the need for learned men again became paramount and such universities as those in Paris and Bologna were established.
This answers your question about the Academy.
Alexander and the Greeks destroyed a 10,000 year long tradition of statehood in Western Asia over much of the Iranian plateau and Mesopotamia. Imperial order was not restored until the Greeks and their influence were ejected by Parthians.
Oh yes, I know, in Germany women can rent their vaginas and are covered by unemployment insurance, Indian women can rent their wombs without the benefit of the progressive labor laws of Germany.
I suppose that is called Diocletian Justice.
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 28 May 2016 at 07:30 PM
That is what the Iranians are saying: "We must need protect our identity."
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 28 May 2016 at 07:34 PM
Is deafness or blindness a defect? Or a malady? Or a pathological condition to be corrected?
Or is Deafness "Culture"?
What is Justice?
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 28 May 2016 at 07:52 PM
I'm not sure what study shepherd might be referring to. Wikipedia has an article that cites sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States
A quick look at PubMed found some papers, including this meta-analysis that concludes that the rate of "cases" depends quite a bit on what you define as a "case" - not surprising, of course, but the authors crunch the numbers
J Sex Med. 2016 Apr;13(4):613-26. doi: 10.1016/j.jsxm.2016.02.001. Epub 2016 Mar 25.
Prevalence of Transgender Depends on the "Case" Definition: A Systematic Review.
Collin L, Reisner SL, Tangpricha V, Goodman M.
Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. | 28 May 2016 at 10:54 PM
"The full development of the Academy did not take place until after Roman Republic was overthrown and replaced by the Empire. Then there was a need for learned analytical men to help make decisions."
Babak, I see you end on German woman, and yes I am in a hurry ... meaning: have not taken a closer look.
BUT: you need to help me read this. My ad hoc take or interpretation: before empirical Roman power, not the type of Greek power that spread the Greek language usually called Koine, the common shared language:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koine_Greek
there wasn't anything one could call the Academy of Athens? Or it wasn't yet fully developed since it hadn't yet handled military power successfully enough? ...
Greek philosophy and its representatives, especially Plato?, were somewhat 'underdeveloped' before the Romans took over some time around 200 BC/BCE and refined it?
"The Academy fled Orthodox Christianity to Iran of Sassanid, and helped create the early achievements of Islam - before, as the Americans would say, Muslims became too dumb, too happy, and too fat to care to think about anything."
What time are we talking about here? Are you suggesting around 200 BC/BCE the intellectual Greco-Roman elites fled to Iran and took the literature there, the church would lock up for common man after? That would make sense. But who were they?
Here I would be really interested in further reading, if I am not misreading in any way.
And what type of "Academy of Athens" did we have in the Roman empire? I seriously thought it was only the title of a painting, and no I never looked into why it was called that.
The Greek Agora in Athens and the related building with the columns Rafael alludes to several centuries later wasn't really important yet? As mental/spiritual/intellectual impulse? Is that what you suggest? For whatever reason, when I think of Greece thought that is one way or another still with me I would go back as far as the 8th century BCE? Concerning the Romans, I seem to be more aware that Michelangelo one of Rafael's contemporaries once buried a stature to make it seem to be a Greek antiquity. ... But yes, that's me and my limited female mind. ;)
Full discovery, from my own limited theological knowledge, I at one point in time seem to have accepted the "Protestant" argument of Anders Nygren, that the early Catholic churchfathers were heavily influenced by Greek philosophy.
Who exactly fled to the Sassanids, at the time Rome adopted Christianity? Is there any literature I can read, any specific Iranian literature or whatever type? Ideally of course something more recent and aware of earlier studies across divides since I surely have no time to study the topic. ...
Posted by: LeaNder | 30 May 2016 at 09:32 AM
"I'm in the 5% but definitely not within the 5%"
inside out, outside in? I don't like the 1% argument like anything that feels vaguely like something that uses a slogan that cannot ever grasp reality. But then I once was trained in PR. ;)
I came back here to ask VV, where he did pick the link to Anne Amnesia up.
Posted by: LeaNder | 30 May 2016 at 09:44 AM
I think it will be a good idea to do your own research.
Start with Momsen...
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 30 May 2016 at 02:28 PM
Momsen?
Theodor Momsen?
would he introduce me to Khosrow I / Chosrau I (German) the Sassanid Philosopher kin ... surfacing on a very, very, very limited search attend.
Why don't you allude to the specific and seemingly rare ideological emigrants (none of the big names) that emigrated in his reign but seem to get us into more difficult "waters" concerning West and East Rome? Besides not staying long. As nitwit "netizen" and not historian of the time, that is.
Hmmm, you may be alluding to one volume of his History of Rome, from a no doubt superficial nitwit perspective, which one? They are all feely available online.
Posted by: LeaNder | 31 May 2016 at 10:22 AM
I respectfully decline to provide further guidance to a self-proclaimed "nitwit"; I fear my efforts have been and will be wasted.
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 31 May 2016 at 01:08 PM