In addition to the usual and customary " I refuse to bake for gays, or provide flowers for a gay wedding, because sincerely held beliefs trump the rights of those seeking commercial services offered, the Georgia bill protects against being forced to attend a wedding if you do not want to, from the bill:

 "all individuals shall be free to attend or not attend, at their discretion, the solemnization of any marriage, performance of any rite or administration of any sacrament in the exercise of their rights to free exercise of religion."  

Clearly, a solution in search of a problem. But, then this is a trait of Republicans: guarding against voter fraud and, the newest one: fear of transgendered using a bathroom on the basis of gender by identity rather than by birth.

 North Carolina's Republican legislature and governor placed into law a bill that blocks Charlotte's ordinance on trans use of bathrooms, and, also, prohibits any NC city from passing such ordinances as well as passing any non-discrimination ordinances.

 North Carolina ignored federal law as well as the Supreme Court ruling, Romer v Evans (1996) that invalidated a Colorado measure that forbade municipalities from passing gay non-discrimination ordinances. The SC held, in that case, that the Equal Protection Clause forbids  singling out a class of citizens and imposing a disability on those persons alone, resulting in a bare desire to harm minorities.

A Ted Cruz-affiliated Super PAC, Keep the Promise I, donated $500,000 to rival Carly Fiorina's presidential campaign in July 2015.

The Rolling Stones arrived in Havana Thursday night, ahead of Friday's free concert at a sports arena in the Cuban capital, an event that's expected to draw more than one million people.

Around 2011 the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights sent a letter, knows as the "Dear Colleague Letter" to many universities threatening to cutoff federal money if they don't "get tough" on sex crimes.

Andrew Miltenberg, who represents the Brown student and close to 100 other male students accused of campus sexual assaults, said schools have become "hyper-aggressive" since the Dear Colleague Letter.

A common thread in his cases, Miltenberg said, is that they had some element of a consensual encounter, in which the two were dating or knew each other. Alcohol is often involved, sometimes a year or more has elapsed, and there are rarely witnesses.

The rest of the party is hurting as Bernie is taking those donations into his own coffers.

GOP Congress = Nothing gets passed.

He makes a few points:

Trump has exposed the rottenness of the consultant culture, and the squirrelly way politicians now talk to us. This is a moment for revived American nationalism. Trump's closed, ethnic nationalism is dominant because Iraq, globalization and broken immigration policies have discredited the expansive open form of nationalism that usually dominates American culture.

Move over, Franco, Rogen, and Hollywood.  The eighties are back.  Every obnoxious roll, tumble, zoom, and posterfried pixel of it.  Power Director!

It fulminates.  It culminates.  It's ten turkey fun.  

Tens of thousands of people have signed a petition calling for Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland to allow guns at the Republican National Convention -- all in the name of safety.

The Change.org petition, which had more than 26,000 supporters as of Saturday evening, claims that the arena's weapon ban makes those who attend the RNC in July "sitting ducks, utterly helpless against evil-doers and criminals."

It's addressed to Republican candidates like Donald Trump, who's quoted as promising to eliminate gun-free zones in schools should he be elected.

Keep on truckin Bern!!

Progressive icon Elizabeth Warren still isn't ready to endorse a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. But she says she's cheering on Bernie Sanders.

The Massachusetts Democrat's comment came Thursday in response to a question about whether Sanders, a democratic socialist, should drop out of the race against front-runner Hillary Clinton.

``He's out there. He fights from the heart. This is who Bernie is,'' Warren said, according to a video of the news conference. ``He has put the right issues on the table both for the Democratic Party and for the country in general so I'm still cheering Bernie on.'

While continuing to say he will get the magic number he is clearly not betting to heavily on that.

"Rules is rules. You have to get a majority," said a Virginia Republican who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously. "That's the problem with our country: No one ever wins anymore."

Nice bit of political jujitsu there, Anonymous Virginia Republican.

Cruz Enquirer

You will find it.

An Illinois prosecutor says he has found "clear and convincing evidence" that a former police officer was wrongly convicted of the 1957 murder of a 7-year-old girl in what is believed to have been the nation's oldest cold case to go to trial.

What's crazy is this guy wasn't convicted until 2012. You'd think after all that time the judge would error on side of innocence.  

Jack Daniel McCullough, a 75-year-old military veteran and former police officer from Seattle, was convicted in 2012 of the abduction and murder of Maria Ridulph from a street corner in Sycamore, Illinois, a small farming community about 65 miles west of Chicago. A judge hearing the case without a jury found McCullough guilty after a week-long trial.

Isn't it today that Sanders was asked to stop his negative attacks on Clinton and stick with the actual issues so as not to harm her as a candidate when the primary is over. I don't think she is reciprocating, after all.

So this bird thing happened at a Sanders rally in Portland.  

You can make this stuff up

The people who spend two bucks for chili at the Courtesy Diner at Laclede Station Road can't fathom why anyone would pay Hillary Clinton $225,000 to make a speech.

Nor can they understand why the U.S. Senate is taking a 17-day break for Easter after spending much of their time last week fuming over the Supreme Court vacancy. Somehow, people all over America are saying loudly and clearly this election year, Washington and its enablers - the media, the political pros and Wall Street - don't understand us.

That's why, all over this slice of middle America, exasperated people got up before dawn on a cold, 37-degree morning recently to spend four hours in a line so long that from its end people couldn't even see the Peabody Opera House, where they would hear Donald Trump. And it wasn't just Trump. In the next two days, other folks nearby lined up to hear the outsider talk from Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt.

This is a GREAT series.   DVR or binge you will not be disappointed.

ruffian I can almost guarantee you will like this.

It's not even February and, already, 2014 is shaping up to be a massive year for television. True Detective announced itself as the year's first new stand-out series. Against all odds, Dan Harmon and Community returned and are putting together a respectable comeback season. FX's fantastic and hard-working Justified continues to solidify its place among the greats of the past decade. And Girls` unique blend of comedy and drama is once again pushing the narrative boundaries of the half-hour series in its third season.

One series, though, is leading the charge at the beginning of the year. The most unlikely of heroes, Cinemax's Banshee, in just a matter of three weeks, has matured into something truly special - something a lot of TV writers refer to as "appointment viewing" when describing other series. With limited experience dabbling in co-produced original programming, Cinemax released Banshee - its first solo endeavor - this time last year. Created by Jonathan Tropper and David Schickler, the series follows an ex-con who is on a mission to take back the life he once led as a conman (this, of course, includes the woman he was partnered and romantically involved with). When he arrives in the town of Banshee, achieving that goal ends up being a little more difficult than expected. In a scattershot series of events, the man winds up taking the identity of the new, incoming sheriff of Banshee, Lucas Hood, who ends up being killed by thugs in the first episode

I just can't help but wonder how full of praise Joy Reid would be if this same water cannons were used on any protesters who did not happen to be right wing protesters.