The Hollywood Liberal

Mosque, Synagogue and Church to Share Building
There are plans underway in Berlin to build the House of One — a new building hosting a church, a mosque and a synagogue all under the same roof. Construction begins next year for a 2018 opening. “We can see all over the world that faith can divide people,” said Markus Droge, a Protestant bishop in Berlin. “We want to show that faith doesn’t divide Jews, Christians, and Muslims, but instead reconciles them.” There’s a similar effort in Omaha, Nebraska, that will put a church, mosque and synagogue in the same park but different buildings.

Greg Norman Hurt in Chainsaw Accident
The Australian pro golfer Greg Norman has been hospitalized after almost losing his left hand in a chainsaw accident. Norman, 59, shared a photo of himself in a hospital bed on Instagram with the caption, “Working with a chainsaw ALWAYS be respectful of the unexpected.” A week earlier Norman shared a photo of himself with the chainsaw and wrote, “Time to trim the sea grapes today. Never ask someone to do something that you can do yourself. Love to work!”

Pia Zadora to have ankle surgery after accident
LAS VEGAS (AP) — According to her spokeswoman, entertainer Pia Zadora is resting comfortably at a Las Vegas hospital with serious injuries after a fall from a golf cart near her home.

Mother blames race for shooting of son by police
SARATOGA SPRINGS, Utah (AP) — A woman has criticized police in the Utah County city of Saratoga Springs over the fatal shooting of her 22-year-old son, saying she believes the outcome would have been different had he not been black.

Obama vows “relentless” fight against ISIS
President details America’s expanded military mission against jihadists with Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in his weekly address

Karl Rove: Obama “Squandered The Peace” That Bush Left Behind

From the September 14 edition of Fox News’ Fox News Sunday:

Previously: 

O’Reilly Confronts Rove: Bush’s Iraq & Afghanistan Policy “Looks Awful” To Regular People

Karl Rove Attacks Obama For Pursuing “Unprecedented” Iraq Deal That Bush Did First

What Obama Could Have Said in His ISIS Speech
Carl M. Cannon, RealClearPolitics
In “Hamlet,” the hapless and ill-fated courtier Polonius offers one sound bit of advice to his liege. “Brevity,” he counsels the king, “is the soul of wit.” Which leads to a question: Are modern U.S. presidents so lacking in wit—or is it soul? One hazard of covering the news is that occasionally a beat reporter thinks a politician, courtroom official, or other newsmaker has missed the mark in a big speech. I often thought this as a young journalist covering criminal courts, especially when a lawyer delivering a closing argument overlooked pertinent…

Hurdles for Obama Health Law in 2nd Sign-Up Season
Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, RealClearPolitics
WASHINGTON (AP) — Potential complications await consumers as President Barack Obama’s health care law approaches its second open enrollment season, just two months away. Don’t expect a repeat of last year’s website meltdown, but the new sign-up period could expose underlying problems with the law itself that are less easily fixed than a computer system. Getting those who signed up this year enrolled again for 2015 won’t be as easy as it might seem. And the law’s interaction between insurance and taxes looks like a sure-fire formula for confusion. For example: – For the roughly 8 million…

Law to set out crime victims’ rights
Crime victims in England and Wales are to be given legal rights for the first time, the justice secretary has said.

Latest opinion polls
See how political parties are doing in the latest opinion surveys

Jones urges more devolution plans
As Scotland prepares to vote on independence, Carwyn Jones says all political parties should set out plans for further devolution in UK next spring.

Carney: ‘Barely holding onto the Senate’ a ‘great’ outcome for Dems
“If there’s a national wave, the Democrats are in trouble,” Carney said. 

Domestic Violence in America, 2014: NBC Football Guy Chris Collinsworth Says You Should Play Until You’re Indicted
NBC color analyst Chris Collinsworth believes in a low bar of integrity on domestic violence. Sunday night he explained that bar during the San Francisco-Chicago game.

He emphasized that San Francisco defensive end Ray McDonald was not yet indicted on felony domestic violence charges against his fiancée, who was 10 weeks’ pregnant at the time of his arrest for an incident in late August. He said that unless McDonald is indicted, he should stay on the field. Play-by-play man Al Michaels offered no counter to Collinsworth’s moral standard, which appears to be: indict, and *maybe* we’ll bench the guy. Until then, no dice.

That’s pathetic, and it’s bullshit (or “batshit” as we say in Austin, Texas – we have a lot of bats and bat guano).

The so-called “presumption of innocence” isn’t what’s in play here. An arrest is in play here. A horrific accusation is in play here. The NFL’s standard of conduct and behavior is in play here. You should “paid leave” the guy pending the outcome of the investigation surrounding his arrest. If he’s indicted, he stays paid-leave pending the outcome of the indictment. Pretty simple. It should apply to either gender in any job, and it does, often.

In most police departments, if a cop is involved in an on-the-job incident with a citizen involving a serious physical encounter or deadly force, they go on desk duty pending the outcome of the investigation. If the cop is involved in their own domestic violence arrest, they damn sure go on desk duty pending the outcome. Is there a difference in the jobs? Yes, cops can arrest citizens, and NFL players can’t.

This is a difference, true. But so what? Is the NFL’s position that they don’t have to set their bar of integrity as high as cops? Really? Why the hell not? (And what cops are we talking about? The cops in Ferguson, Missouri? The L.A. cops Rodney King encountered in 1991?)

The NFL claims to be “second to none” in the integrity department, and the patriotic department. They sell it, hard. TV networks pay billions to carry the NFL product, and make three-fold in advertising sales. Americans are even addicted to the meaningless preseason games. Collinsworth was a receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals in the ’80s. The NFL still butters his bread, even if NBC writes the check. Nobody is a “disinterested third party” in this passion play.

Employees of Fortune 500 companies are more and more frequently placed on paid leave pending the outcome when things like this come down and become public. A TV or movie star can get fired from their job. An NFL player is equally high profile, and they have an employer, the NFL. The entire society watches it, from our great grandchildren to our great grandparents. These athletes occupy a vastly overpaid and over-exalted place within our culture. They and their employer have every reason to be above reproach. This should be their bar of integrity.

The policy of “He stays until he’s indicted” — the Chris Collinsworth policy — is a policy that basically says, “Oh, yeah? Then prove it.” That’s classless. It sends the wrong signal in a world already too uncouth, too misogynistic, too sexist. You paid leave the guy pending the outcome, period.

Anything less is turning the other cheek to horrific behavior, and any decent person knows it. Or should.

Germans Rally to Protest Anti-Semitism Over Gaza War
Germany’s Central Council of Jews organized the rally in response to the anti-Semitism seen in cities like Berlin after protesters chanting “death to Israel” and “gas the Jews” at pro-Palestinian demonstrations over the summer had deeply unsettled many.

Op-Ed Contributor: To Stop ISIS in Syria, Support Aleppo
America and its allies must focus efforts on backing the beleaguered moderates in this vital rebel-held city.

Op-Ed Contributor: Scots Must Vote Nae
This show of petty nationalism is un-Scottish.

Despite Cease-Fire, Fighting Escalates in Eastern Ukraine City
The battle in Donetsk between rebels and Kiev government forces was one of the most serious clashes in a 10-day-old cease-fire.

Arab Nations Offer to Fight ISIS From Air
American officials have made it clear they do not want the airstrikes to get ahead of the ground action against ISIS, which they said would take time to mass.

Idaho Has Spent Over $70,000 Defending Its Ban On Same-Sex Marriage

…and there’s not much to show for it.

The post Idaho Has Spent Over $70,000 Defending Its Ban On Same-Sex Marriage appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Monte Neil Stewart arguing against same-sex marriage before the Ninth Circuit.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

So far, taxpayers in Idaho have spent $71,477 for the state to defend its ban on same-sex marriage. Most of that chunk has gone directly to Monte Neil Stewart, a private attorney contracted to prepare briefs and represent the state during arguments. Stewart’s contract charged $250 an hour, with a maximum charge of $57,000 — which was met.

That money has not been particularly well spent. Back in May, a federal judge overturned Idaho’s marriage bans, concluding that these laws “deny its gay and lesbian citizens the fundamental right to marry and relegate their families to a stigmatized, second-class status without sufficient reason for doing so.”

This past week, the Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments in the state’s appeal. The particularly liberal three-judge panel included Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who previously established that laws that target sexual orientation must be examined with “heightened scrutiny” to ensure that they aren’t violating the gay community’s equal protection under the Constitution. And Stewart’s performance was not particularly convincing.

During the arguments, Stewart kept asserting that the state is trying to maintain a “child bonding right.” If it were to recognize same-sex couples’ unions as marriages, he claimed, “It is Idaho’s sensible prediction that men… will weaken in their commitment to abide by the child’s bonding norm.” When asked why, if so concerned about man-woman marriage, Idaho doesn’t ban divorce, Stewart explained that no-fault divorce cannot be walked back, but said that the state is trying to avoid “more damage” to the institution of marriage. In his conclusion, he held up a poster featuring a young person holding her parents’ hands and asked, “Which is unnecessary, a mother or a father?”

Stewart is also defending same-sex marriage bans in Utah and in Nevada. In Nevada, where he represents a private conservative group instead of the state, he has made some particularly troubling arguments. In a brief filed in January, Stewart directly compared the marriage equality movement to those who tried to ban interracial marriage, alleging that both tried “to bend that institution” into a “new and foreign role.”

In another brief filed in May, he told the Ninth Circuit that any “practice” that was in place when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified should be up held. Though that would work for his cause of limiting marriage to a man and a woman, it would also allow the government to discriminate against women, it would allow schools to be racially segregated, and it would actually allow for those bans on interracial marriage Stewart claims to oppose.

The post Idaho Has Spent Over $70,000 Defending Its Ban On Same-Sex Marriage appeared first on ThinkProgress.