Saturday the white supremacists came back to Charlottesville.

The prominent white supremacist Richard B. Spencer was a featured speaker at a rally on Saturday in Charlottesville, Va., where demonstrators reprised their chant of “You will not replace us!” and asserted that the South would “rise again.”

The gathering, which occurred eight weeks after a “Unite the Right” rally resulted in the death of a 32-year-old woman, was considerably smaller than the one in August, instead resembling a group of protesters who descended on the park in May.

The Charlottesville Police Department said in a statement that Saturday’s rally began around 7:40 p.m., included 40 to 50 people and lasted no more than 10 minutes.

Good that it was small, … Read the rest

How much did Pence’s flight from Las Vegas to Indianapolis in order to walk out of a football game cost us? CNN does the adding up.

Here is an estimate of just the air costs (which does not include costs of advance personnel, Secret Service or support on the ground):

According to the Air Force, flying a C-32, the model of plane used for Air Force 2, for one hour costs about $30,000. Pence’s flight from Las Vegas to Indianapolis Saturday took about three hours and 20 minutes, so it cost about $100,000
Pence then flew from Indianapolis to Los Angeles on Sunday, which took about four hours and 45 minutes, costing about $142,500.

The grand total: about $242,500.

The war on coal is over; the war on the environment has intensified.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt told coal miners in Kentucky on Monday that he will move to repeal a rule limiting greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants, assuring them, “The war against coal is over.”

Awesome. Let’s have more and more and MORE greenhouse-gas emissions so that the environment can crash even faster and more destructively than it already is. Those fires racing through Sonoma and Napa counties in California right now? There will be more of those! Yay! And as for the hurricanes – they’ll be like this year only more so. Fun!

“Tomorrow, in Washington D.C., I’ll be a signing a proposed

And in between threatening new wars and teasing us with military surprises and attacking senators on Twitter, Trump and his people manage to find time to continue their ridiculous fight with football players who have the temerity to protest racism.

Vice President Mike Pence left a football game between the Indianapolis Colts and the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday after some players knelt during the National Anthem, saying he did not want to “dignify” the event.

“I left today’s Colts game because @POTUS and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem,” Pence wrote on Twitter.

Except that it doesn’t “disrespect our soldiers”; that’s why they kneel instead of sitting: it’s specifically … Read the rest

I hadn’t heard of the cartoonist Ben Garrison until I was looking for something else a couple of hours ago and saw this masterpiece:

#InTrumpsAmerica The #FirstLady will be Great Again! #Trump2016 https://t.co/2FGmMQ1bBo pic.twitter.com/g2SOBjFXSI

— Real Ben Garrison Cartoons (@GrrrGraphics) May 13, 2016

ThinkProgress wrote about him last month:

Spend any time on some of the internet’s more devoted pro-Trump sites and you’ll likely come across one of Ben Garrison’s cartoons. Instead of using his artwork to mock the president, he frequently depicts Trump as a young, muscular, all-American hero, standing up to the Deep State swamp monster or slaying the dragon of Political Correctness…

Since 2015, Garrison has been the de facto chief cartoonist for right-wing communities online.

Of course he did.

Trump said on Saturday he had a good relationship with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson but that Tillerson could be tougher.

Trump, who made the comment to reporters at the White House, did not elaborate.

“Tougher” in Trumpspeak of course means a more heedless psychotic bully. Yes that’s just what we need more of.

Trump being tough this morning.

Senator Bob Corker "begged" me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said "NO" and he dropped out (said he could not win without…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2017

The scare quotes on “begged” are helpful. Corker didn’t really beg, Trump is just lying about it for effect. Thanks for the tip-off.… Read the rest

Harvey Weinstein sent the New York Times a statement after its story on him was published.

It begins:

I came of age in the 60’s and 70’s, when all the rules about behavior and workplaces were different. That was the culture then.

I have since learned it’s not an excuse, in the office – or out of it. To anyone.

Oh come on. The rules about behavior and workplaces were not that different. They were not so different that everyone – women included – thought it was just fine for powerful men to make job-seeking women come to their hotel rooms only to jump out at them naked and demanding a “massage.”

That was not “the culture” then.

The … Read the rest

CFI on the Trump administration’s new rule letting godbothering employers refuse to include birth control in their employees’ health insurance:

The Center for Inquiry condemned the new rules announced by the Department of Health and Human Services, dramatically curtailing the effectiveness of the Affordable Care Act’s Contraceptive Mandate.

Under the new rules, any employer may claim an exemption to the requirement to provide contraceptive coverage without co-payment, whether the employer’s objection is based on religious grounds or any other moral reasoning. This fundamentally undercuts the purpose and operation of the Contraceptive Mandate, a rule that was effective in ensuring broad access to reproductive health care for women.

The Contraceptive Mandate, a key part of the Obama administration’s signature health care

CFI is explaining to public school administrators about the First Amendment. It’s kind of pathetic that such administrators have to have it explained to them.

The Center for Inquiry challenged two high schools in Louisiana, as well as the administrators of public schools and public school athletics, to cease recent policies that fringe on the First Amendment rights of students.

In a joint letter from a broad swath of the secular movement, CFI told Waylon Bates, principal of Parkway High School, as well as others in charge of school policies in Louisiana, that threatening to discipline student athletes for protesting during the National Anthem is unconstitutional. CFI demanded retraction of the threat as well as a commitment that organized