Conservative Judge Rips Voter ID Laws - Brad Friedman in Salon

Conservative icon/federal judge changes mind on photo ID laws, issues blistering dissent against them.

Judge Richard Posner, the Reagan-appointed 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge, was the one who approved the first such Photo ID law in the country (Indiana’s) back in 2008, in the landmark Crawford v. Marion County case which went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Posner’s ruling was upheld.

His dissent includes a devastating response to virtually every false and/or disingenuous right wing argument/talking point ever put forth in support of Photo ID voting restrictions, describing them as “a mere fig leaf for efforts to disenfranchise voters likely to vote for the political party that does not control the state government.”

This opinion, written on behalf of five judges on the 7th Circuit, thoroughly disabuses such notions such as:

• these laws are meant to deal with a phantom voter fraud concern (“Out of 146 million registered voters, this is a ratio of one case of voter fraud for every 14.6 million eligible voters”);
  
• that evidence shows them to be little more than baldly partisan attempts to keep Democratic voters from voting (“conservative states try to make it difficult for people who are outside the mainstream…to vote”);
  
• that rightwing partisan outfits like True the Vote, which support such laws, present “evidence” of impersonation fraud that is “downright goofy, if not paranoid”;
  
• and the notion that even though there is virtually zero fraud that could even possibly be deterred by Photo ID restrictions, the fact that the public thinks there is, is a lousy reason to disenfranchise voters since there is no evidence that such laws actually increase public confidence in elections and, as new studies now reveal, such laws have indeed served to suppress turnout in states where they have been enacted.
  

The full article is available here

Why Travel Ban Would Only Make Ebola Worse - Julia Belluz in Vox

Public health experts unanimously agree: sealing borders will not stop Ebola spread and will only exacerbate the crisis in West Africa — and heighten the risk of a global pandemic.

The fear of spread is understandable, especially as an Ebola outbreak appears poised to grow closer to home. America recently recorded its first Ebola death with the passing of a Liberian visitor Thomas Duncan, and the CDC announced the first-ever cases of Ebola transmission to two of Duncan's nurses.

As Ebola panic peaks, conspiracy theories are spreading fast. So now is the time when we need to check our irrational reactions to this horrible crisis and avoid policies that will divert scarce resources from actual remedies. And we know from past experience that airport screening and travel bans are more about quelling the public's fears and political expediency than offering any real boost to public health security.

Public health experts unanimously agree: sealing borders will not stop Ebola spread and will only exacerbate the crisis in West Africa — and heighten the risk of a global pandemic.

There are three reasons why it's a crazy idea. The first is that it just won't work to stop the virus. The weeks following 9/11, when people stopped getting on planes, provided influenza researchers with a natural experiment in what a travel ban might do to viral spread. They found it didn't stop influenza from moving, it only delayed flu season by a couple of weeks.

In CDC Director Tom Freiden's words, "Even when governments restrict travel and trade, people in affected countries still find a way to move and it is even harder to track them systematically." In other words, determined people will find a way to cross borders anyway, but unlike at airports, we can't track their movements.

The second reason a travel ban won't work is that it would actually make stopping the outbreak in West Africa more difficult. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,said, "To completely seal off and don't let planes in or out of the West African countries involved, then you could paradoxically make things much worse in the sense that you can't get supplies in, you can't get help in, you can't get the kinds of things in there that we need to contain the epidemic."

The third reason closing borders is a bad idea is that it will devastate the economies of West Africa and further destroy the limited health systems there. The World Bank already estimates this outbreak could cost West African economies up to $33 billion. That's a lot for any country, but especially when you're talking about some of the world's poorest. World Health Organization director Margaret Chan reminded us that 90 percent of any outbreak's economic costs "come from irrational and disorganized efforts of the public to avoid infection."

The full article is available here

Students, Teachers Turn Out in Force Against Censorship of History - Deidre Fulton in Common Dreams

The proposal—to establish a committee that would review course materials to ensure they promote patriotism and avoid encouragement of "civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law"—was the catalyst for two weeks of student walk-outs and teacher 'sick-outs.'

Several hundred students, community members, and educators packed a Jefferson County Board of Education meeting in suburban Denver on Thursday night, lambasting the conservative-majority board's proposal to censor the district’s history curriculum.

The proposal—to establish a committee that would review course materials to ensure they promote patriotism and avoid encouragement of "civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law"—was the catalyst for two weeks of student walk-outs and teacher 'sick-outs,' the latter of which closed several high schools on two days in September.

While board member Julie Williams, who has cited the Texas Board of Education as a model, refused to recall the proposal entirely, the protests appeared to have brought about a partial victory.

"The controversy over a history curriculum in Colorado is an argument over a very much bigger issue," public education expert Jeff Bryant wrote Thursday at the Education Opportunity Network blog.

"It’s about how we’re treating our nation’s youngest citizens with a substandard form of education that emphasizes fiscal efficiency over learning opportunity and standardization over individual needs and interests. And it’s about how we treat students as learners, imposing education as something done to them rather than with them."

The full article is available here

Reza Aslan Takes Down Bill Maher’s “Facile Arguments” On Islam - Prachi Gupta in Salon

“To say Muslim countries, as though Pakistan and Turkey are the same… it’s frankly, and I use this word seriously, stupid!”

Comedian Bill Maher recently made some comments about Islamic countries that characterized them as more prone to violence, misogyny and bigotry, and now religious scholar Reza Aslan has called Maher out on his own “bigotry.”

These arguments are not unique to Maher, making Aslan’s nuanced argument an essential one to keep in mind as we increase military action in the Middle East.

Here’s Aslan’s point: “To say Muslim countries, as though Pakistan and Turkey are the same… it’s frankly, and I use this word seriously, stupid!”

“The problem is that you’re talking about a religion of one and a half billion people,” he explained, “and certainly it becomes very easy to just simply paint them all with a single brush by saying, ‘Well in Saudi Arabia [women] can’t drive,’ and saying that’s representative of Islam. That’s representative of Saudi Arabia.”

Saudi Arabia’s laws are “extremist,” he noted, not just to Westerners, but even within the “the rights and responsibilities of Muslim women around the world.”

He also pointed out the U.S.’s own hypocrisy in calling out ISIS for its brutality while partnering with Saudi Arabia: “Look, Saudi Arabia is one of the most, if not the most, extremist countries in the world. In the month that we’ve been talking about ISIS and their terrible actions in Iraq and Syria, Saudi Arabia, our closest ally, has beheaded 19 people.”

Aslan explained, “Islam doesn’t promote violence or peace. Islam is just a religion, and like every religion in the world, it depends on what you bring to it. If you’re a violent person, your Islam, your Judaism, your Christianity, your Hinduism, is going to be violent.”

The full article is available here