January 26-27, 2016::End of the day round-up

This is a long and exhaustive read but worth the time as Bartlett shines in his analysis concerning militias/patriot groups as a whole; not just the Bundy crowd in Oregon.

The Good, Bad and Ugly in Oregon Standoff Coverage

It’s easy to make fun of the Patriot/Militia movement. Some of their claims seem absurd: Obama is a Muslim and/or the Antichrist. Agenda 21 is a UN plot to control US land. Regulating guns is a prelude to black helicopters arriving with troops to impose tyranny.

Here is a starling reality check: There is no recent social science evidence showing that people who join the Patriot movement (or any social movement on the right or left) are mentally ill, suffer from paranoid delusions, or are more or less uneducated, ignorant or stupid than people in a surrounding batch of zip codes. They tend to be just like their neighbors. If, as a reporter, you are relying on social science—popular or scholarly—written before 1980, there is a good chance you may be relying on information that is outdated and in some cases has been refuted by sociologists using computer-based, data-driven analysis.
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The Patriot movement is heavily armed, and its supporters can be dangerous. They sometimes intimidate, threaten or assault people with whom they disagree. And they take over buildings or ranches and have standoffs with government authorities. This is not funny if you live in communities where the Patriot movement is active; especially if you work for the government, are a person of color, Mexican, Muslim, feminist, gay, a supporter of reproductive rights, etc.
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There is another reason to take the right-wing Patriot movement more seriously. The fears and anxieties spread by the growth of this sector has created a large constituency of primarily white people who fear immigrants, people of color, Muslims, gay people and liberals. Many of them take as facts the assertions they are fed by Fox News about the treachery of Obama and the plan by liberal big government enthusiasts to impose tyranny in the United States. Obscure phrases such as “Agenda 21” and the “New World Order” stand in for elaborate and longstanding conspiracy theories rampant on the right.

This South Carolina Republican Wants to Create a "Registry" for Responsible Journalists

Perhaps inspired by Donald Trump's recent call for a Muslim database, one South Carolina representative just introduced a measure to create a different kind of strange registry—this time to track journalists deemed "responsible" by the state.

The bill, proposed by Republican state lawmaker Mike Pitts, would establish vague requirements for journalists to submit to a registration process by the state. Journalists found in violation of the registry, by either not registering or breaking his rules, would be subjected to monetary fines and even criminal penalties—a lighter version of how the Kremlin treats its own pesky champions of free speech. As the Post and Courier reports, quoting Pitts, the Secretary of State’s Office would maintain a "responsible journalism registry" and create the criteria, with the help of a panel, on what qualifies a person to be a journalist—similar to the licensing for doctors and lawyers.

New “Touched With Fire” Movie—Finding the Beauty in Bipolar

The filmmaker hopes just the opposite will happen, though. At the least, he sees Touched With Fire as a conversation-starter, something that will get the average moviegoer to rethink stereotypes—to see “beauty in bipolar.” At best, he hopes those who live with bipolar will be moved to let go of shame and learn to like themselves—perhaps even nurture their own gifts.

When it debuted at SXSW in Austin last year, the movie was called Mania Days. The current title—borrowed from clinical psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison’s groundbreaking book Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament—syncs better with Dalio’s aims.

In her influential work, published in 1996, Jamison explores how creative genius and bipolar were inextricably linked in figures from Alfred, Lord Tennyson, to Vincent van Gogh. Dalio has called the book “a revelation” that fundamentally transformed his outlook—from viewing his disorder as a “genetic defect” to seeing it as something to take pride in.
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The renowned researcher became a heroine and a mentor to Dalio after his doctor introduced them. (Dalio said he wanted to meet someone with bipolar who was “actually happy,” and his doctor turned out to be friends with Jamison and put them in touch.)

Appearing as herself in the movie, Jamison tells Carla and Marco about arriving at her own sound relationship with medication. “I have felt infinitely happier, more productive. It’s been a godsend,” she concludes onscreen.

Jamison had a very similar discussion with Dalio in real life.

Supreme Court rejects new challenge to Obamacare

The U.S. Supreme Court, which delivered major rulings in 2012 and 2015 preserving President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, on Tuesday declined to take up a new, long-shot challenge to Obamacare brought by an Iowa artist.

The court turned away an appeal by Matt Sissel, who had asserted that the 2010 Affordable Care Act violated the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that revenue-raising legislation must originate in the House of Representatives, not in the Senate, as the healthcare law did.

The high court left in place a 2014 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upholding a lower court’s dismissal of the lawsuit, which was backed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative legal group. The suit targeted the law’s “individual mandate” that Americans obtain health insurance or pay a tax penalty.  [Previous story can be seen here.]

",,,[W]here its children and those from the community play." Without reading the full complaint etc, that is where the crux of the matter lays for me. Should Trinity be denied solely on the basis that they are a church?

Supreme Court agrees to hear case over separation of church and state

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear another legal battle over the separation of church and state, and will determine whether Missouri improperly excluded a church playground from a state program that provided safer play surfaces.

Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia applied to be part of a state initiative that recycles tires so that it could replace the pea gravel in its day-care center’s playground with a bouncier surface. Although the church’s application ranked high in the state’s 2012 Playground Scrap Tire Surface Material Grant Program, it was ultimately turned down.

A letter from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources said including the church would violate a section of the Missouri constitution that says “no money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect, or denomination of religion.”
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The conservative Alliance for Defending Freedom brought the case to the Supreme Court and said constitutional protections against the establishment of religion could not be invoked to deny the church’s application for a playground surface