It’s a whole new month, and so far a slow one, as hard news goes. And we’ve already talked about Lindsey Graham’s announcement.
Oh, well. Here are some talkers, if you are so inclined:
- Man does not quite bite dog — So it falls a bit short of news, but not for lack of effort. The guy is charged with biting a woman after his dog bit her child. Really.
- SCOTUS sides with Muslim woman over head scarf — WSJ says “The 8-1 decision heightened the duty employers have to accommodate workers’ religious practices, ruling that federal law requires ‘favored treatment’ of faith-based observances, not simply equal status with other activities.”
- Jenner on the cover of Vanity Fair: ‘Call me Caitlyn’ — So, disregard what he told Diane Sawyer the other day. That was May; this is June. There’s a picture of Jenner in a skimpy ladies’ garment, if you want to look.
Or, whatever interests you. Oh, one other thing: The head of SC DOT quit, but didn’t say why. I don’t know what to say about it, since before I read this, I could not have named the head of DOT — she’d only been in the job a year.
Related Posts
By the way, in case you missed this wrinkle on the Jenner story…
My wife, who’s from Memphis, recently brought to my attention this item written by Linda Thompson, who used to date Elvis Presley. The scene takes place during the 1976 Olympics in Montreal:
A little over a year later, Elvis was dead. Four years after that, she married Jenner.
Now how’s that for a quintessentially American story?
If you want the real story on,Elvis,Peter Guralnick wrote the definitive biography,a two volume set.It’s not just for Elvis’ fans,but anyone interested in America’s obsession with fortune and fame..
LAST TRAIN TO MEMPHIS -The Rise of Elvis Presley
CARELESS LOVE=The Unmaking of Elvis Presley
Cindi Ross Scoppe had an excellent takedown of the Richland County Council for its refusal to allow recorded votes. For once, she blamed the people and not the system.
Yes! Thanks for reminding me. I had meant to mention that column over the weekend. Good piece.
I had been feeling sorry for Cindi because she had to take on Warren’s burden of writing about metro issues in addition to her state beat.
But now that she’s watching them, she’s definitely on their case. Maybe I should feel sorry for our sunshine-hating council members instead. 🙂
Richland County Council and Sheriff Lott make interesting bedfellows. One would think that the comparison might awaken the Sheriff to the error of his ways…
Well, for once Clarence Thomas didn’t back Scalia–he was the lone dissenter.
I think that lone dissent speaks volumes about Judge Thomas, none of which can be repeated in polite society. I thought Ms. Scoppe’s piece was one of the best I’ve seen. It was clear and precise. Now we know how far we can trust our county council.
Which part of the dissent speaks volumes? And what’s not to be polite about? I think Justice Thomas is simply trying not to read the text too expansively, which is normal for him.
To me, this case seems like relatively dry statutory interpretation question with a little bit of fact-finding to be done, best resolved at the trial court level. Accordingly, it looks like the majority essentially remanded the case back to the trial court level to have the trial court address whether it would be an undue burden on Abercrombie to have an employee wear a headscarf. The text of the opinion is here.
On one hand, I can kind of understand Abercrombie’s position. They are essentially saying that they don’t allow head-wear of any kind, and that she was turned down because of her head-wear, which simply happens to be part of her religion, not specifically because of its religious import. To me, the rule is facially neutral, and I truly believe that it has nothing to do with religion. However, I concur with the result in that I think Abercrombie has to show an undue burden as to why they have this rule.
On the other hand, the rule does have a concrete result of precluding devout Muslims (or Jews, I would guess) from working at Abercrombie. So maybe there’s something there. To me, the issue turns on the nature of whether it’s an undue hardship for the employer, so I guess would side with the majority and remand the case back to the trial court.
For instance, it would be an undue burden on a strip club owner to employ a devoutly Muslim (or Amish) woman who said that her religion prevented her from taking off her clothes, but demanded employment at “Brad’s Strip Club.” I think it’s fact-specific as to the employer’s type of business (and target market), which makes this Abercrombie case so tough. Clearly, Abercrombie is going for a certain kind of “look” and style, and they’ve decided that part of that style is apparently no head-gear. It’s an interesting fact pattern.
Maybe it’s a burden on Abercrombie, maybe it’s not. What do y’all think?
I do not own a strip club. It’s entirely owned by a third party who has no criminal record.
Bada-bing!
A line for Jimmy Metts…
Abercrombie amazingly took the position that it didn’t know her head scarf was an expression of her religion.
Look, Abercrombie’s raison d’etre is selling overpriced crappy clothes purporting to embue the wearer with “cool” to tweens, now. Their position, if that is indeed their position, that those wearing headscarves cannot ipso facto be cool, is offensive. A strip club’s raison d’etre is the display of nekkidness, so if one is unwilling, for whatever reason, to be nekkid, like if one is a Never Nude, one cannot perform the essential function. I’d analogize with the ADA’s reasonable accommodation. If you have PTSD flashbacks when you are around helicopter, you probably won’t get a job on a Medivac. If, however, you don’t get the flashbacks if you wear a headscarf, then they have to let you wear the headscarf, unless that otherwise would unduly interfere with your ability to perform.
Religious belief as disability—not gonna fly politically, but useful.
They should go back to selling high-end camping, fishing and hunting equipment to Ernest Hemingway. Or, since he’s not around, to Ernest Hemingway wannabes…
To me it seems that the burden would be on Abercrombie to demonstrate that the head scarf would prevent the woman from performing her job properly. A strip club is a different deal. There stripping is inherent in the job. If the woman is unwilling to do so, she’s not willing to do her job. Does the head scarf conflict with the woman actually doing the job she was applying for? If not, then her desire to obey her faith takes precedence. Refusing her a job based on her wish to wear the scarf becomes discrimination based on religion.
The argument is that part of the job of being an Abercrombie clerk is looking “cool.”
Not only do I think strip clubs are awful: gross and sleazy, I think men who like them are the same. Sorry, guys.
I was using a strip club as a clear example of an employer that would face an undue burden by having to provide a religious accommodation. As you point out, taking off your clothes is inherent in the job.
But the Abercrombie case is a lot less clear-cut. The question that the lower court will have to wrestle with is “Does it impose an undue burden on Abercrombie to require them to make an exception to their dress code for employees, when Abercrombie asserts that their dress code is part of their branding and marketing?”
That’s a question where I think reasonable minds could differ.
At some point here, I need to stand up, as our designated representative of the Faith and Family Left, and say that I WISH the court would be able to find a way to protect young women from the obligation to strip if they work in a strip club.
And then, of course, I would continue to the point of getting rid of strip clubs. (At the very LEAST, I’d like to see us get them off TV. My wife has this uncanny habit of walking into the room at the very instant that the camera is on a stripper, and saying, “WHAT are you watching?” To which I can only say, “The Sopranos.” Or “The Wire.” Which never seems to be satisfactory.)
But I take your legal point…
Regarding the Ariail cartoon, do we blame Nikki Haley for the inability of the legislature to come up with a gas tax bill? And now that gas prices are creeping up by about 40 cents from the earlier lows, is the window of opportunity gone?
Anyway, since Richland County has 7 million dollars of penny tax money to spend on a frill like the RiverWalk, I’m not convinced there really are roads that are crumbling. If we had crumbling roads, certainly NOBODY would be in favor of spending money on a path, right?
Riverwalk is NOT a frill. It was part of the package we approved.
A package of frills… why does the money have to be spent on this FIRST rather than on fixing the crumbling roads? The timing is very poor when trying to also sell additional taxes to fix the crumbling, crumbling roads. If the the crumbing roads are really crumbling and continue to crumble while the pathway is built, how can that be justified? I know – it’s other people’s money buying things well connected people wanted. That’s the way it works.
Do you buy patio furniture when your roof has a leak?
Riverwalk is not a frill. The rivers are the best thing going for Columbia.
Roads are just roads.
Well, since you mention it, Nikki Haley did everything she could to prevent action on roads with her ridiculous tax-cut plan and her threat to veto anything that didn’t include it.
Eventually, some lawmakers managed to man up and promote a relatively sensible plan, and in the end the fringe in the Senate — Lee Bright, Tom Davis, et al. — managed to run out the clock on it. (Or at least, that’s the way it looks at the moment.)
So, if they had started the session without that threat from the governor hanging over them, could they have passed a good bill months ago, too far from the end of the session for the naysayers in the Senate to run the clock out? Maybe. There are a lot of variables.
But the bottom line is, she did everything she could to prevent reasonable action on roads.
It’s ironic to me that Doug, who always wants to see particular individuals blamed for things that happen in the Legislature — even when they are things done by MOST lawmakers collectively — complains when I justly blame a governor for his or her role in something that goes wrong.
Even though it is very, very clear when the governor does something, while what happens in the Legislature is generally the result of a complex interaction among 170 people.
When somebody filibusters, it’s easy to point to them. But you know what, even there, I blame the majority. The majority of senators refuse to take action to shut down filibusters, so individuals are allowed to hijack the process. So yeah, it’s a systemic thing, as much as Doug dislikes hearing that.
Total b.s. The legislature has REPEATEDLY passed budgets and then easily overridden Haley’s vetoes. She didn’t stop any votes. A threat of a veto means the legislature has to do it’s job and come up with a bill that WOULD be veto proof. They didn’t. They could have taken Haley’s suggestion and tweaked it a bit and put it out there for a vote. They didn’t. They could have gone to the people they represent and said “We need this bill to pass and we need you to contact the Governor to put pressure on her to sign it.” They didn’t. Where’s Vincent Sheheen, the face of South Carolina’s Democratic Party, going out and challenging Haley? Did he get whupped too badly to even have a voice any more?
There is no gas tax increase because Hugh Leatherman can’t get what he wants.
“There is no gas tax increase because Hugh Leatherman can’t get what he wants.”
Doug hit the nail on the head with this one sentence. Leatherman is the defacto governor of South Carolina but he has more power than Haley will ever have.
That’s an oversimplification, Bart.
Yep, Leatherman is the most powerful senator, in the post McConnell era. But EVERY member of the Senate has an inordinate ability to derail legislation.
The dominant dynamic in the Senate these days has to do with interactions between three shifting coalitions — the Establishment Republicans, the Tea Partiers and fellow travelers, and the Democrats. The split in the GOP, despite their nominal dominance, gives the Democrats a much stronger hand than they normally would have.
Issues get batted around among those three factions in interesting ways.
But bottom line, the Senate is the Senate, and is a place where House ambitions go to die…
I will respectfully disagree that it is an oversimplification. Sometimes we over analyze and look for the nuances to explain or define a problem with the inner workings of our state government.
Leatherman has been one of the most powerful men in the state for a very long time. His ambition to gain the power he enjoys predates your return to SC in 1987.
Of course, Leatherman is a big part of the problem. In keeping with Senate tradition, he opposed the House initiative because of the reform parts. Of course, he was far from alone in that — the Senate Democrats, if anything, are even more anti-reform.
Which is weird. Normally, it’s the folks in power who most oppose reform. Seems like, if Democrats were smart, they’d tell Pappy, “Well, people like that reform. Maybe we should get us some.” After all THEY’re not the damn incumbent…
But I guess they see themselves as better able to influence the current system.
A politically accountable setup would put the Republicans more firmly in charge of the agency, since they’re the ones who win elections.
Doug, what you say shows a lack of understanding of the way politics works.
When a Republican governor runs to the right of her party on an issue, especially taxation, Republican representatives do NOT think, Oh, well, I can go against her and explain it to my constituents. Because they know better.
What they think, immediately, based on bitter experience, is that if they dare to buck her on this, they will have a well-funded fringe candidate running against them in the next primary.
Because in modern party politics, it’s no longer about the candidate’s relationship with his constituents. It’s about national interest groups — to whom Nikki Haley, like Mark Sanford before her, likes to play — that will come in and overwhelm you with funding for a challenger who hews to their ideology.
That’s why it was remarkable that Speaker Lucas managed not only to get his members, finally, to pass a roads bill, and even to do it by a veto-proof majority. But that edifice was too frail to last, in the face of Republicans’ terror at being labeled pro-tax.
I guarantee you that Hugh Leatherman doesn’t spend a minute thinking about any backlash from Haley. He’s bulletproof and not term limited like the governor.
He’s in a powerful position and not term-limited, but he’s not bulletproof.
That said, you’re right — he doesn’t really have to care much what the gov wants.
But he’s one of 170 who are mostly Republicans, most of whom ARE scared of stuff like that. And what matters is how the majority votes.
Never make the mistake of believing Leatherman is a Republican, he is not, just in name only. He is a Republican for convenience only. If there is one elected representative in Columbia who can be defined as amorphous, it is Hugh Leatherman.
Well, he’s a Republican the same way most of those conservative Democrats who switched parties are. Changing their label didn’t change their behavior.
In other words, he’s like most Republicans in South Carolina, if they’re old enough. They went along with the white flight from the Democratic Party, but they’re still the same people.
As for the younger Republicans who’ve never known anything else — well, they’re not all that different from their Daddies who were Democrats.
If those young white guys today who can’t imagine being anything other than a Republican had been around 50 years ago and politically active, they’d have been Democrats. 90 percent of them, anyway. Maybe more like 99 percent.
Maybe I should say 55 years ago, since 1964 was an important year in the shift. You know, that little thing called the Civil Rights Act…
I guess I can throw some gasoline on the fire. Comments about the (temporary?) demise of the Patriot Act?
Well, I’d have something to say if I knew more about what’s really going to happen and not happen going forward. But I don’t feel like I know enough.
So for now, all I can offer is what I said Sunday night, in two Tweets:
And it’s the second Tweet that I’m unsure about. I’m not sure to WHAT extent our intelligence-gathering capabilities have been, for the moment, damaged. But in the moment on Sunday night, I couldn’t resist the play on Nikki Haley’s catchphrase.
That said, I feel fairly certain that were Rand Paul to do as much damage as he’d like, it would be a good thing for terrorists.
“And it’s the second Tweet that I’m unsure about. I’m not sure to WHAT extent our intelligence-gathering capabilities have been, for the moment, damaged. ”
Maybe because the NSA hasn’t been able to describe any benefits of the program that justify the cost and potential for abuse? I’m sure if they could provide some heavily redacted information showing some attack that had been thwarted it would make it tougher for Paul. But they seemed to have rolled over on this one.
Given the extreme amount of attention the so called “terrorist ” threat is given by the man its not surprising that folks actually believe we’re in grave danger. But we’re really not. Bees have killed more Americans over the last decade than foreign terrorists. I believe I read that more toddlers have killed people with guns than foreign terrorists. the NSA data collection may not be as intrusive as its detractors claim but it’s certainly not needed.
“I believe I read that more toddlers have killed people with guns than foreign terrorists.”
I agree bud, we do need to get the number of terrorists killed by toddlers up. It’s hard though, because we have so few toddlers deployed to combat areas.
An excellent analysis of Tuesday’s Senate passage of the USA Freedom Act by David Cole, professor of Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University.
He writes about the importance of “sunsets” and “sunshine” regarding surveillance laws: sunset provisions that ensure that Congress will revisit an issue periodically, and “sunshine” meaning, as Cole puts it, “transparency about how the law is being used in practice.”
He goes on to say, “If we are to have meaningful democratic deliberation about new government surveillance powers—and technological advances make it certain that many such new methods will indeed be devised—the twin elements of sunset and sunshine need to be built into all surveillance laws that govern them.”
These reforms are a step in the right direction, and while there are still areas of great concern to which we need to continue to pay attention, it was encouraging to see the breadth of bipartisan support for this bill.
It amazes me. If an older teenager or adult takes a gun and shoots someone for no apparent reason, then the person who was shot should have carried a gun and shot his attacker first. If a toddler gets ahold of a gun belonging to an adult and shoots someone, either that adult or another person, then it’s a freak accident, and no one suggests that the victim should have shot first. And of course, no one suggests that gun access might be a problem.