Glosswitch at the New Statesman takes issue with the way “genius” male movie-makers get a pass for obvious misogyny in their movies because Genius. Are they even Genius? she asks.

One of the many ways in which abusive men get away with terrible things is because we’re supposed to respect their genius (and assume that misogyny is somehow a necessary part of it). Right now we’re calling time on the misogyny, but why can’t we call time on the perception of genius too?

…

Men who don’t like women – and there are an awful lot of them – frequently make art that a male-dominated establishment considers to be amazing, but which a high proportion of women consider to

Princess Ivanka and Marco Rubio have an awesome new plan for Princess Ivanka’s pet project of family leave. It’s so genius. What you do is, you tell people to pay for it out of their savings, and then they can have it! The CEO and the WalMart employee alike can have paid leave if they pay for it with their own money! It only costs about $1.50 a week, right? And people are getting these huge raises of $1.50 a week thanks to the tax cut – except for CEOs and similar who are getting like $10,000 a week – so it all works perfectly.

Marco Rubio is starting to strategize with Ivanka Trump to win over skeptical Republicans on

Speaking of the difference between saying insults and violence are the same thing and saying they are related…Eve Wiseman at the Guardian starts a piece on Jo Brand with that subject:

It was early in November and, responding to a headline about an MP taking his personal trainer to the cinema, Ian Hislop had chuckled: “Some of this is not ‘high-level’ crime, is it?” But Jo Brand, hosting, didn’t smile. The temperature changed quite suddenly. “If I can just say,” she began, “as the only representative of the female gender here today – I know it’s not high-level, but it doesn’t have to be ‘high-level’ for women to feel under siege in somewhere like the House of Commons. Actually, for

Indonesia is often touted as that rare thing, a somewhat/comparatively liberal majority-Muslim state. To put it another way it’s touted as being not as bad as Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or Bangladesh or need I go on. But that’s one hell of a low bar.

Now it’s thinking of making all sex outside of marriage a crime.

Indonesia’s parliament is drafting proposed revisions to the national criminal code that could ban all consensual sex outside marriage, sparking alarm among activists who it would breach basic rights and could be misused to target the LGBT community.

The parliamentary commission drawing up recommendations to change the Dutch colonial-era criminal code has still to finalize its proposals.

But a draft, seen by

I saw this tweet before I saw the CNN story and I thought it had to be a parody, despite the blue check.

I mean come on. Even Paul Ryan can’t be so clueless that he thinks $1.50 a week is a meaningful pay increase. $1.50 won’t get you a bus ride, or a half gallon of milk, or a pair of socks. You could probably get an apple with $1.50, or a couple of carrots, or a small tub of Greek yogurt. How can Paul Ryan possibly think anyone would be “pleasantly surprised” to have an additional $1.50 a week? It’s meaningless. $1.50 an hour would be a small raise; a week is just nothing.

And yet – it … Read the rest

Another thought about the Trump versus the FBI melodrama:

Mr. Trump’s current campaign threatens the autonomy of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, which was seared into the public consciousness after Watergate, according to veterans of the legal system. “Starting with Jimmy Carter, every president has embraced norms that preserve the independence of the D.O.J., law enforcement and intelligence matters from the White House,” Mr. Goldsmith said. “What is happening now is a violation of post-Watergate norms.”

What that passage doesn’t quite make clear is what Watergate has to do with it. Watergate made it eye-scorchingly clear how crucial it is to have federal law enforcement be independent of the president, so that he doesn’t get away with committing crimes … Read the rest

How are they doing at the FBI? It can’t be easy.

In the 109 years of the FBI’s existence, it has repeatedly come under fire for abuses of power, privacy or civil rights. From Red Scares to recording and threatening to expose the private conduct of Martin Luther King Jr. to benefiting from bulk surveillance in the digital age, the FBI is accustomed to intense criticism.

What is so unusual about the current moment, say current and former law enforcement officials, is the source of the attacks.

The bureau is under fire not from those on the left but rather conservatives who have long been the agency’s biggest supporters, as well as the president who handpicked the FBI’s leader.

Republican

From the Classroom Vignettes file:

A teacher with Colorado’s Boulder Valley School District was placed on paid administrative leave following an alleged incident at the middle school, the school district said Thursday. CBS Denver confirmed the Lafayette Police Department is investigating reports that teacher allegedly assaulted a student who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Karen Smith, Angevine’s physical education teacher, was placed on leave Thursday.

This again. Football players MUST stand up with their hands on their chests (one hand per player) when a certain song is sung. God MUST be namechecked whenever a politician comments on an outburst of violence. Students MUST swear fealty to a piece of cloth and to God at the start … Read the rest

Pennsylvania Republicans are refusing to obey a court order to redraw their congressional map to make it not so grotesquely gerrymandered.

A top Pennsylvania state Senate Republican is refusing to follow a court order requiring lawmakers to turn over data that would redraw the state’s congressional map.

In a letter to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which struck down the map, state Sen. Joe Scarnati on Wednesday called the order unconstitutional and said he would not comply.
“In light of the unconstitutionality of the court’s orders and the court’s plain intent to usurp the General Assembly’s constitutionally delegated role of drafting Pennsylvania’s congressional district plan, Senator Scarnati will not be turning over any data identified in the court’s orders,” wrote Brian

To move to a less distasteful subject than rapey theocrats and constitution-trampling crooks, there’s this exciting story that’s been in the headlines for a couple of days of finding huge previously unknown Maya sites buried in Guatemala.

By raining down laser pulses on some 770 square miles of dense forest in northern Guatemala, archaeologists have discovered 60,000 Maya structures that make up full sprawling cities.

And the new technology provides them with an unprecedented view into how the ancient civilization worked, revealing almost industrial agricultural infrastructure and new insights into Maya warfare.

“This is a game changer,” says Thomas Garrison, an archaeologist at Ithaca College who is one of the leaders of the project. It changes “the base level

Tariq Ramadan has been charged with rape and is currently incarcerated.

I don’t see anything in English yet so this is from Le Monde:

Tariq Ramadan a été mis en examen, vendredi 2 février, pour viol et viol sur personne vulnérable. L’islamologue suisse a demandé qu’un éventuel placement en détention provisoire, requis par le parquet, fasse l’objet d’un débat ultérieur entre le juge des libertés et de la détention (JLD) et sa défense. Dans l’attente de ce débat, qui doit avoir lieu dans les quatre jours, il a été incarcéré.

Les enquêteurs du deuxième district de police judiciaire ont enquêté pendant trois mois, méthodiquement et sans laisser échapper la moindre information, avant de se décider à entendre, à partir