The “Enemies Of The People” Versus The Enemies Of Democracy.

Since he began his campaign for the White House, Trump has lied to the media. Then, when they have fact-checked and reported on his lies, he has attacked them. Among other things, he has called them horrible, disgusting people. He has labeled the media “fake news” and, most recently, “enemies of the people.”

These so-called enemies are the people who risk their lives in war zones so that we might know the truth. They are the people who dig through stacks of financial documents in order to ferret out the cheaters and criminals. They are the people who sit through hours of mind-numbing meetings to report the actions of local governments to their citizens. They are the people who endure constant abuse to report on the actions of this corrupt and abusive administration.

The only media that seem exempt from Trump’s wrath are Fox News (Shepard Smith and Chris Wallace excepted), Breitbart, the Daily Caller, InfoWars and both Sputnik News and Russian TV. All of which report Trump’s legion of lies without question.

For the most part, the so-called patriots who identify themselves as Republicans have gone along with Trump’s attacks in order to accomplish their Koch brothers funded goals of reshaping the judiciary, further cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations, eliminating environmental and financial regulations, rewriting the Constitution, privatizing schools, and privatizing or eliminating Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the VA. If institutions such as news organizations stand in the way, so be it. Apparently, in the minds of Republicans, the sacrifice will be worth it.

In a recent poll, fully 43 percent of Republicans would give Trump the power to shut down media that he dislikes. Never mind that such action would be unconstitutional. Never mind that it would eliminate one of the very few institutions in a position to hold a corrupt administration accountable.

To far too many Republicans, it seems the ends justify the means. Even if those ends are achieved by destroying our government and, indeed, our democracy.

Thankfully, the vast majority of our news organizations and reporters are exercising their First Amendment rights. In defiance of Trump and his GOP enablers, more than three hundred newspapers across the nation have joined forces on this day to publish editorials in support of a free press and against anyone who would seek to diminish their responsibility to report the truth no matter how ugly.

And, given the actions of this administration, in the history of our nation, it has never been uglier.

So, today, in honor of real journalism, take some time to read the newspaper editorials and to explore reports from news media you don’t often read, watch or hear. Open your minds to the truth whatever it may be. It certainly isn’t coming from the White House.

Phoenix Demonstrations Expose Hearts And Minds Of Participants.

Last weekend’s so-called First Amendment demonstration really wasn’t about standing up for the Constitution. In addition to sending a message that, under the First Amendment, repulsive hate-mongers have a constitutional right to say whatever they want, it sent a message of religious intolerance. It was intended to deny Muslims their First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion. Of course, the right-wing idiots who congregated in the street outside a Phoenix mosque at prayer time to display their cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, also threatened to exercise their “Second Amendment” rights.

Hey, idiots, the Second Amendment guarantees you the right to own and bear arms as part of a well-organized militia in order to defend the United States. It doesn’t give you the right to threaten to shoot other Americans.

The people who resort to such threats have no concept of compassion, decency or responsibility. They hide behind the Constitution and the Bible, selecting only those few passages that support their narrow-minded views and ignoring the rest. They have no concept of what it truly means to be an American or a Christian. They merely want to provoke a violent reaction in order to have the satisfaction of saying “I told you so.”

That is the bad news.

The good news is that, despite the provocation and repugnant actions of the wing nuts, the Phoenix Muslim community showed great patience in the face of religious discrimination. There was no violence. And the really great news is that, this week, a group of Phoenix citizens came out to support the Muslim community. They assembled at the mosque to show that, even in Arizona, the hate-mongers are a tiny minority of the population…people who only care about their own rights while denying the same rights to others.

We would all be well-served to follow their example.

Does Freedom Of Religion Include Freedom To Discriminate?

As you know, the First Amendment of our Constitution says “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Unfortunately, there is a segment of our society that believes those words give them the right to infringe on others’ civil rights. Some of that segment are members of the Arizona legislature.

They’re called Republicans.

As proof, I direct you to SB 1062, a Teapublican-sponsored bill which if signed into law would allow businesses to refuse service to anyone based on the business owners’ religious beliefs. The bill is intended to target the LGBT community. But, as you will see, it impacts everyone. The bill reads: “Exercise of religion: means the practice or observance of religion, including the ability to act or refusal to act in a manner substantially motivated by a religious belief whether or not the exercise is compulsory or central to a larger system of religious belief.”

In other words, Teapublicans in the Arizona legislature believe that the exercise of religion includes the ability to deny civil rights to others.

We’ve seen this play out before. If SB 1062 is signed into law by our finger-wagging governor, it will be almost immediately challenged as unconsitutional. Like the ill-conceived racist law known as SB 1070, it will cost the state tens of millions in lost tourism and wasted legal fees. Indeed, Arizona is just now beginning to recover from that fiasco.

Worse, if the bill is somehow found constitutional by the constitutionally-illiterate majority of the US Supreme Court, it will open the door to more discrimination. We’ve already seen business owners file lawsuits to allow them to impose their religious beliefs on employees by refusing to pay for health insurance plans that include contraceptives for women while, at the same time, paying for men’s “boner” pills.

If business owners can arbitrarily refuse service to the LGBT community, what’s to prevent business owners from refusing service or employment to African-Americans, Asians, Latinos or Native Americans for supposed religious reasons? What if a business owner claims religious objections to refuse service to liberals, Democrats, Teapublicans, Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, military veterans, children, seniors, homeless, poor people, rich people, men or women?

As I’ve often said, there is no such thing as partial equality. The concept of equality is absolute. We either have equal rights or we don’t. Whatever god or gods one chooses to worship does not change that.

Given that this is an election year, and the fact that the same law is being proposed in other Teapublican-controlled states, I don’t think the bill’s sponsors seriously believe that SB 1062 will ever go into effect. As with all of the party’s previous “social issues,” I believe the real intent is to divide and distract; to rile the mouth-breathing Teapublican base into a religious fervor in order to ensure high voter turn-out. Meanwhile, it’s likely to serve as a distraction for Democrats and independents, causing them to spend precious time and resources on the issue instead of on candidates who can repeal such idiocy.

Similar strategies have worked many times in the past.