Mukasey Welcomes Gay DOJ Employees

Reversing a ban that had been in place since 2003, the Justice Department announced last week that homosexual employees could use office space to host activities for DOJ Pride. As one of his first acts, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who was appointed as Alberto Gonzales's replacement, broke with President Bush's long-standing policy of refusing to sponsor gay pride events. ... What the DOJ's new boss fails to understand is that it's possible to treat all employees fairly without elevating homosexuals to a special status.

Family Research Council: Wednesday, February 6, 2008 "WU08B01"

Pro-Choice Latino Voters No Rarity

Thirty-five years after the legalization of abortion in the United States, 35 percent of Latinos registered to vote in New York, California, Illinois, Florida, and Texas are pro-choice, according to a recent poll by ImpreMedia – publisher of El Diario/La Prensa. But abortion and gay marriage aren't top issues of concern among Latinos.

El Diario/La Prensa reports.

Blackwater Protestors Given Secret Trial

The arrest of protestors who staged a "die-in" outside the gates of Blackwater's North Carolina base, and the subsequent five days they spent locked up in jail, is more punishment than any Blackwater mercenaries have received for their deadly actions against Iraqi civilians.

Alternet reports.

The big discrimination case before the Supreme Court

In last year's Supreme Court sleeper case, a woman named Lily Ledbetter lost her right to sue because she didn't go to court the first time her paycheck was docked because of sex discrimination, as opposed to when she later realized she was being shortchanged. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear a new employment discrimination case that could also shake up the law of the land and leave the court's liberal dissenters apoplectic. This one may not only prune back employees' rights under the particular statute at issue, but also help the Supreme Court's conservatives rein in discrimination suits more generally."

Slate reports.

Countering Conspiracy Theories on the Left

Conspiracy thinking is very deep in American culture. There's sort of a Protestant puritan ideology that is central to American culture: "Bad things happen because of bad people." God holds individuals responsible for bad things that happen. So, morally, ethically, legally... we have to find individuals to be responsible for bad things. The simplicity in that is that social reality is much messier. It doesn't take much at a time like 911, when emotions are running high, for political leaders to make vague references to shadowy figures that we don't know. That encourages the thinking that runs in the direction of conspirators and conspiracy. In the case of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, the fact that it's a non-Christian religious movement with very strong anti-Christian overtones has enough resonance with the same things that anti-Semitism brings to the surface. It enables a bonding between the religious and political sentiments.

Counterpunch interviews Jerry Lembcke, the sociologist and author of The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory.