Resigning, a UK transgender judge writes, "Rosa Parks’ choice of seat was political because of the colour of her skin. More prosaically, for me..."

"... I am now political every time I choose where to pee. Less prosaically, the judiciary by continuing to let me be a judge is now at risk of being political.”

From "UK’s only trans judge quits over risk of ‘politicising the judiciary'/Victoria McCloud said she had become a target and was forced to be political every time she chose ‘where to pee'" (London Times).

McCloud kept her trans identity out of the public eye for much of her time as a judge until her status was revealed by a national newspaper in 2016....

"There are roughly three thousand sheriffs in America, in forty-seven states. Arpaio and Peyman are among the dozens aligned with the 'constitutional sheriffs' movement.'"

"Another is David A. Clarke, Jr., the cowboy-hatted Wisconsin firebrand who considered joining the Department of Homeland Security.... There are even more followers of constitutional policing across America among law enforcement’s rank and file. One group, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, or C.S.P.O.A., claims about five thousand members.  C.S.P.O.A. members believe that the sheriff has the final say on a law’s constitutionality in his county. Every law-enforcement officer has some leeway in choosing which laws to enforce, which is why it’s rare to get a ticket for jaywalking, for example. But, under this philosophy, the supremacy clause of the Constitution, which dictates that federal law takes precedence over state law, is irrelevant. So is the Supreme Court. 'They get up every morning and put their clothes on the same way you and I do,' Finch told me. 'Why do those nine people get to decide what the rest of the country’s going to be like?' To the most dogmatic, there’s only one way to interpret the country’s founding documents: pro-gun, anti-immigrant, anti-regulation, anti-Washington.... When [Richard] Mack launched the C.S.P.O.A., around 2010, he described it as 'the army to set our nation free.'... Mack personally disavows discrimination and infuses his lectures with the language of the civil-rights era. He likes to say, 'We should have never heard of Rosa Parks,' explaining that a constitutional sheriff wouldn’t have arrested her...."

From "The Renegade Sheriffs/A law-enforcement movement that claims to answer only to the Constitution" by Ashley Powers in The New Yorker.

It was the mention of the Sheriff of Malibu (in "The Big Lebowski") in the previous post that reminded me I wanted to blog that article. Remember that scene?



"We got a nice quiet beach community here... Stay out of Malibu, deadbeat! Keep your ugly fucking goldbricking ass out of my beach community!" Malibu is a city, not a county, so that guy is not a sheriff, but — as the screenplay says — the chief of police.

How did I miss this impropaganda?

"You could've at least let Rosa sit at the front of the logo @HillaryClinton."



That's from almost a month ago. I'm only seeing it now in this NYT piece "When Presidential Candidates Go Too Far on Social Media: #FeetInMouth." That is, it's part of a collection that has blunders from other candidates to dilute it.

The NYT has referred to it once before, not when it happened, but in the depths of a December 23rd article called "Hillary Clinton Is ‘Not My Abuela,’ Critics Say." And I must give the NYT credit for doing a full article on that Abuela thing, which, to self-criticize, I never attended to.

"2020 seems doable, and Jackson seems like the low-hanging fruit as Presidents on the currency goes, so I think they probably have a shot."

They = a group called Women on 20s who think there should be a woman on at least one denomination of U.S. paper money.

Jackson may be low-hanging fruit...

Jackson had strongly opposed the notion of central banking. Plus, he sought—and signed—the Indian Removal Act, which led to the expulsion of Native Americans from their homes.

But you can't beat something with nothing, so who is the woman supposed to be?

Think Progress sees fit to disparage the statement: "Today we remember Rosa Parks’ bold stand and her role in ending racism."

Can you see why this is worth scoffing at, other than that it's a tweet from the Republican National Committee?

First, you have to be enough of a douchebag to act like you don't see that "ending racism" is a process and that a person might have a role in that process even though that role didn't go so far as to entirely complete the process.

And then you have to think, here on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, that it's worth exploiting Rosa Parks for one more opportunity to bray at Republicans. Over nothing!

Utterly pathetic. Show some respect. (Hey, remember "civility"?)