Trump goes full racist over the weekend

Donald Trump out for a ride on his horse, Democracy

Donald J. Trump out for a ride on his horse, Democracy

Donald Trump had a big weekend. On Saturday, he told a rally of his supporters in Birmingham, Alabama that “we have to surveil the mosques.” After a half-dozen white attendees at that rally knocked a Black Lives Matter protestor to the ground and kicked him for a while, Trump went on This Week and told George Stephanopoulos that “maybe he should have been roughed up.” In the same appearance, he called for the return of waterboarding and said he would “not at all” rule out a database of Muslims living in the United States. Sunday afternoon, he tweeted “statistics” claiming that 81% of white murder victims are killed by blacks. According to the FBI as reported by the Daily News, it’s actually about 15%.

Continue reading

Antonin Scalia’s reduction to absurdity

I'm going to throw away these old giblets, unless anyone...

I’m going to throw away these old giblets unless anyone…

Monday in Princeton, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia defended his comparison of anti-sodomy laws to prohibitions against bestiality and murder. Speaking to gay freshman Duncan Hosie—who questioned whether it was appropriate to imply a connection between blowing a dude and shooting the Lone Ranger in order to penetrate his horse—Scalia said that “I don’t think it’s necessary, but I think it’s effective.” See, Justice Scalia only made that argument because it works. “It’s a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the ‘reduction to the absurd,'” he added. “If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?” Obviously, the answer is no; if we permit gay marriage, we have to immediately overturn state and federal laws against murder. Differences between that reductio ad absurdum and Scalia’s after the jump.

Continue reading