#THISisAlitoDissenting

JUSTICE ALITO, with whom JUSTICE SCALIA and JUSTICE THOMAS join, dissenting.

Until the federal courts intervened, the American people were engaged in a debate about whether their States should recognize same-sex marriage. The question in dissenting these cases, however, is not what States should do about same-sex marriage but whether the Constitution answers that question for them. It does not. The Constitution leaves that question to be decided by the people of each State.

#THISisTruckingRidiculous

EEOC Sues Star Transport, Inc. for Religious Discrimination

Agency Charges Trucking Company Failed to Accommodate and Wrongfully Terminated Two Muslim Employees For Refusal to Deliver Alcohol Due to Religious Beliefs

PEORIA, Ill. - Star Transport, Inc., a trucking company based in Morton, Ill., violated federal law by failing to accommodate two employees because of their religion, Islam, and discharging them, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit filed today.

The lawsuit alleged that Star Transport refused to provide two employees with an accommodation of their religious beliefs when it terminated their employment because they refused to deliver alcohol. According to EEOC District Director John P. Rowe, who supervised administrative investigation prior to filing the lawsuit, "Our investigation revealed that Star could have readily avoided assigning these employees to alcohol delivery without any undue hardship, but chose to force the issue despite the employees' Islamic religion."

Failure to accommodate the religious beliefs of employees, when this can be done without undue hardship, violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion. The EEOC filed suit, (EEOC v. Star Transport, Inc., Civil Action No. 13 C 01240-JES-BGC, U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois in Peoria, assigned to U.S. District Judge James E. Shadid), after first attempting to reach a voluntary settlement through its statutory conciliation process. The agency seeks back pay and compensatory and punitive damages for the fired truck drivers and an order barring future discrimination and other relief.

John Hendrickson, the EEOC Regional Attorney for the Chicago District Office said, "Everyone has a right to observe his or her religious beliefs, and employers don't get to pick and choose which religions and which religious practices they will accommodate. If an employer can reasonably accommodate an employee's religious practice without an undue hardship, then it must do so. That is a principle which has been memorialized in federal employment law for almost 50 years, and it is why EEOC is in this case."

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EEOC Sues Star Transport, Inc. for Religious Discrimination

#THISisHomicideRates

Violent Crime and Sexual Offences - Homicide

To put the actual number of homicides in context, incidence rates show the volume of offences as a proportion of the resident population. The incidence rate for homicide remains relatively low, with 9.2 homicides recorded per million population during 2013/14, the lowest homicide rate since the late 1970s (for example, there were 8.5 homicides per million population in 1977). If the 172 homicides committed by Harold Shipman recorded in 2002/03 are excluded from the analysis, homicide rates peaked in 2001/02, at 15.2 offences per million population.

• Low - 0.92/100k
• High - 1.52/100k

#THISisBanningNothing

International evidence and comparisons have long been offered as proof of the mantra that more guns mean more deaths and that fewer guns, therefore, mean fewer deaths. Unfortunately, such discussions are all too often been afflicted by misconceptions and factual error and focus on comparisons that are unrepresentative.

Since at least 1965, the false assertion that the United States has the industrialized world’s highest murder rate has been an artifact of politically motivated Soviet minimization designed to hide the true homicide rates. Since well before that date, the Soviet Union possessed extremely stringent gun controls that were effectuated by a police state apparatus providing stringent enforcement. So successful was that regime that few Russian civilians now have firearms and very few murders involve them. Yet, manifest success in keeping its people disarmed did not prevent the Soviet Union from having far and away the highest murder rate in the developed world.

#THISisBenghaziPlanning

A Defense Department document from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), dated September 12, 2012, the day after the Benghazi attack, details that the attack on the compound had been carefully planned by the BOCAR terrorist group “to kill as many Americans as possible.” The document was sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Obama White House National Security Council. The heavily redacted Defense Department “information report” says that the attack on the Benghazi facility “was planned and executed by The Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman (BCOAR).” The group subscribes to “AQ ideologies:”

The attack was planned ten or more days prior on approximately 01 September 2012. The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for U.S. killing of Aboyahiye ((ALALIBY)) in Pakistan and in memorial of the 11 September 2001 atacks on the World Trade Center buildings.

#THISisBushDidntLie

Re-blog:

Liberals, please stop it with the Iraq war lies.

There is plenty of criticism that can be leveled against George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003, but he didn't deliberately mislead the country about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

With the new cool question for 2016 Republican contenders being “knowing what we know now, would you have invaded Iraq,” the debate about pre-Iraq war intelligence has once again come to the forefront. Predictably, some liberals have used the occasion to again trot out the wholly dishonest spin that the Bush administration concocted evidence and pressured the intelligence community into saying that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

#THISisIraqWarMasterpost

1986-02-18 > UN
United Nations Security Council Resolution 582
The Council then condemned the use of chemical weapons by Iraq.

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1988-03-16 > Wikipedia
Halabja chemical attack