“Republicans were only more permissive than Democrats and independents on three measures, and they all had to do with the killing of people and animals.”
—The NYT’s Charles Blow, describing a Gallup poll asking Democrats and Republicans their opinions on morality issues.
“Rodriguez and Teixeira have just five homers apiece, although both singled in Tuesday’s 3-2 victory over Kansas City.”
—from an NYT article about the declining hitting power of the Yankees’ third and first basemen.
“The football team has been terribly hurt by this.”
—Pat Williams, a former Montana congressman and member of the University of Montana’s board of regents, on allegations that members of the football team had committed numerous acts of rape, including gang rape, over the past three years. (NYT)
According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, opposition to gay marriage has fallen to 39% of the American public, while support for it is at 53 percent. And the gap is only going to widen…
The group that’s holding out the most? African-Americans. Which is understandable, because they’ve never been victims of discrimination, so they don’t know what it’s like….
The Hudson from the air (looking north), May 17
…but also malevolent.
Now it tracks you online.
Felix Salmon continues the hatin’ on the Harvard-educated, tax-dodging greedhead.
“Love is at the heart of every Virginia vacation.”
—Virginia’s new tourism slogan—something I know because they keep sending me press releases—building on its long-time motto, “Virginia is for lovers.” (Just not gay ones or ones who need an abortion while visiting.)
Yesterday morning I took one step into the subway on my way to work when an African-American policewoman politely asked me if some cops could search my bag. This is a post-9/11 thing: You’re allowed to say no, but if you do, you can’t get on the subway.
In the decade since 9/11, not once has anyone asked to search my bag. I’d like to think it’s because of my honest face, but probably it’s because I’m white, and the vast majority of New York stop-and-frisks (thanks, Mayor Bloomberg) are inflicted upon black people.
Stop-and-frisks, if you don’t know, are also a post-9/11 phenomenon, and they are exactly what they sound like: For no reason that they have to provide, New York cops just stop and search you. It’s a staggering violation of civil rights, and it’s almost entirely directed against minorities. In the first three months of 2012, New York City cops stop-and-frisked people 200, 000 times. That is astonishing-200, 000 illegal searches. Almost all of them involved blacks and Latinos.
Funnily enough, this morning the Times reports that a federal judge has widened a class action lawsuit against the New York Police Department. According to the Times, “she was disturbed by the city’s ‘deeply troubling apathy towards New Yorkers’ most fundamental constitutional rights.'”
She’s not the only one. The New York City Police has grown out of control in the past decade, with its cops raping and stealing while searching anyone whose look they don’t particularly like.
So I guess yesterday they were trying to make amends—searching a white man instead of the usual darker-skinned ones. (And I didn’t even get the frisk that is part of the stop and frisk; they just searched my bag.) So violating civil rights is okay as long as you don’t target minorities?
I guess New York cops think they’ll make it up on the volume…
“Right now the Obama administration is involved in some very ugly killing of innocent people,” West tells the Huffington Post…