Today, in a breakfast meeting with progressive bloggers and writers, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated that repeal of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell law, which prohibits openly gay and lesbian citizens from serving in the armed forces, is a priority that will be passed "when we have the votes." The Speaker said there was no timeline for the bill to be brought the House floor.Responding to a question asked by Advocate news editor Kerry Eleveld, the speaker referenced the work of Rep. Ellen Tauscher, the member who introduced a bill this week to reverse the law. Don't Ask, Don't Tell was passed during the Clinton administration and signed by the president into law in 1993. Eleveld asked the Sepaker if she thought the bill would be voted on by the end of 2009.
"The priorities have been Hate Crimes and ENDA, fully inclusive legislation in those two areas, so we'll have to have our strategy work around on how we can get those passed, as well as move forward on Don't Ask, Don't Tell," Pelosi said.
Cross-posted at http://www.tips-q.com/content/splc-hate-group-label-apparently-effective
Rabidly anti-gay Mass Resistance is whining about being identified as a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Presumably, the SPLC label has undesired consequences. Otherwise, Mass Resistance would remain silent or (as they have done in the past) wear it as a badge of honor.
This rather incoherent. long winded and illogical response really makes me feel sorry for them. They just couldn't resist that reference to the book "After the Ball." The wingnuts are convinced that the book is the origin of the "Homosexual Agenda." I am trying to figure out exactly who should "investigate" the SPLC. Then they seem to don their tin foil helmets and go off on some weird conspiracy theory which seems to suggest that they were uniquely targeted. Schmucks: You are not that important! Of course, ultimately their reaction to being called haters is to spew a bunch of hate-filled rhetoric. These nitwits cannot help themselves. They were born that way.
MassResistance declared "hate group" by extremist pro-homosexual "Southern Poverty Law Center". Other pro-family groups also named.
It's a common theme of the left, going back to the Saul Alinsky tactics in the 1930s, to demonize your enemies if they become effective. This was adopted by the homosexual movement. In their classic manifesto After the Ball, Marshall Kirk & Hunter Masden advised activists to compare people with traditional values to the Ku Klux Klan (which lynched blacks).
You can read the rest of the kvetch here.
And we all know that the response to this will not be to curb police thuggery or to investigate the use of tasers but, instead, to lobby the legislature to make it more difficult to sue those responsibile for murders like this.
From the Houston Chronk:
A Harris County jury on Monday awarded $3 million to the Houston mother of a schizophrenic man who was shocked, hogtied and later died as Precinct 1 constable’s deputies took him into custody on a mental health warrant four years ago.
After a three-week trial, the jury concluded by a 10-2 vote that three of the four deputies named in Shirley Nagel’s lawsuit used unreasonable and excessive force as the deputies detained Nagel’s son, Joel Don Casey, on Feb. 18, 2005.
...
The verdict came almost one year after Harris County agreed to pay $1.7 million to two brothers in an unrelated case that accused sheriff’s deputies of violating civil rights and using excessive force. The county settled last year’s case with Sean and Erik Ibarra without admitting any liability or accepting any fault.
Details of how Casey ended up dead after the flip.
Casey, described by his mother’s lawyers as a highly functional schizophrenic, was confronted on his 52nd birthday by officers with the mental health warrant at his mother’s home in the 4100 block of Meyerwood after she called his psychiatrist’s office to report her son had been acting oddly and had stopped taking his medication.
When deputies arrived, Casey was sitting on the couch smoking a cigar with his cowboy boots propped up on the table and listening to Alan Jackson on the stereo, Spence said. Casey stood up and put his hands behind his back as deputies instructed, but protested when one of the handcuffs hurt him, Spence said. Deputies then used a Taser on him one time, causing Casey to fall facedown on the couch, Spence said.
Another officer then zapped Casey with a 50,000-volt stun gun numerous times down his side, Spence said. All the while, Casey was yelling, “I’m your friend, don’t kill me, I’m your friend,” the attorney said.
Deputies then threw Casey down on the street in front of the police car and hogtied him before Cavitt dropped a knee on Casey’s neck and popped Casey’s head back, Spence said.
As officers threw Casey into the car, Nagel told them, “You’ve just killed my son,” Spence said.
Nagel’s attorneys said the incident was not a justifiable use of deadly force.
Jurors also concluded the county ratified the deputies’ use of excessive force and found the county’s failure to supervise and train the deputies was “a moving force” behind the violation of Casey’s constitutional rights.
Supervise? Train?
Well - I do wonder how much supervision and training $4.7 million could have bought.
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