Islamophobia | Oil: Gulf of Mexico | Douchebaggery
• READ: Fists Fly at the Hookah Bar: As we’ve been reporting, there have been a flurry of incidents around the country in recent weeks in which people have tried to intimidate or attack American Muslims or people they believed to be Muslims. But along with these ugly incidents there have been a backdrop of no less unfortunate cases of people who seemed to want to commit a hate crime but were either too drunk, too stupid or too disorganized to pull it off or even give a really clear idea of what they were trying to do.
Meet Kevin Morris, 31, of West Haven, Connecticut.
• READ: Oil Platform Explodes in Gulf of Mexico: An oil production platform in the Vermilion Bay exploded today around 9:30am, with 13 people on board. One crew member was injured, and 12 are in the water in immersion suits. As of 10:30am the rig was still on fire. The Coast Guard is now on dealing with the emergency and has dispatched helicopters and ships to the platform. Vermilion 398, owned by Mariner Energy, is not a drilling rig but an oil “fixed, manned production platform.” [USA Today]
• READ: Not all patriarchal control freaks are men: I haven’t written about MRAs (men’s rights activists) in awhile, because what is there to say about a group of men organized around the principle that women shouldn’t have the right to say no? Because that’s basically what pisses them off: women who think they get to say no to sex, to staying in abusive marriages, to having their time occupied by any man who demands it, to having a baby when they don’t want. And they hide behind patriarchal sentimentality to justify their strong desire to control women. Not much else to say, because going at it with them is a lesson in hearing undeserved self-pity from those who were dumped for reasons obvious to everyone but them, and who have endless amounts of time and energy to dedicate to throwing their own pity parade.
I bring it up, because while most people who play this game are men, some women do it, too.
U.S. sues controversial Arizona sheriff in civil-rights investigation
Justice Department officials say Maricopa County’s Joe Arpaio failed to turn over documents in a probe of his agency’s immigration enforcement operations. Among his tactics are ‘sweeps’ of immigrant-heavy neighborhoods.
Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Denver —
The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday announced it had sued Joe Arpaio, the controversial sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona, for failing to turn over documents in a probe of whether his aggressive operations against illegal immigrants had violated civil rights.
The litigation came two months after a Justice Department lawsuit halted a tough new Arizona immigration law, which Arpaio strongly supported. The new lawsuit is unrelated to the immigration law and stems from an investigation into the sheriff’s immigration enforcement operations. The department said it was the first time in 30 years a police agency had not cooperated in a civil-rights probe.
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