Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

Sen. Ted Cruz suggested Thursday that another seat on the U.S. Supreme Court will open up this summer, though he offered nothing to explain this premonition.

On stage at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Cruz also predicted that such a vacancy would prompt liberals to “go full Armageddon meltdown.”

“I think we’ll have another Supreme Court vacancy this summer,” said Cruz, a Texas Republican who fought against President Donald Trump for the GOP nomination last year. “If that happens, as much as the left is crazy now, they will go full Armageddon meltdown.”

Cruz isn’t the first person to note that Democrats will probably fight harder if Trump has the chance to nominate a second justice to the Court. He has already nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the late Antonin Scalia’s seat, but given that both are conservatives, Gorsuch would not change the Court’s ideological balance if he were confirmed. A replacement of regular swing voter Anthony Kennedy or one of the liberals on the bench, meanwhile, would substantively change its direction.

Cruz also isn't the first to suggest that another seat could open up before Trump leaves office. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, of the Court's liberal wing, is 83; Kennedy is 80. And President Barack Obama appointed two justices over his first term.

Still, Cruz’s remark prompted some snark on Twitter as users wondered whether he was hinting at a justice’s retirement plans or, more darkly, implying that one of the sitting justices might die.

Police Scotland has announced that the hijab will become part of its official uniform as it aims to create a more diverse force.

The force said they hope the move will “encourage women from Muslim communities, who may previously not have seen policing as a career option, to reconsider”.

In the past, Muslim police officers in Scotland were allowed to wear the hijab, but only once it was approved by senior staff members.

The Metropolitan Police introduced the hijab as an optional part of the force’s official uniform in 2001 as part of a similar drive to recruit a more diverse mix of officers.

In a statement, chief constable Phil Gormley said: “I am delighted to make this announcement and welcome the support from both the Muslim community, and the wider community, as well as police officers and staff.

“Like many other employers, especially in the public sector, we are working towards ensuring our service is representative of the communities we serve. I hope that this addition to our uniform options will contribute to making our staff mix more diverse and adds to the life skills, experiences and personal qualities that our officers and staff bring to policing the communities of Scotland.”
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The hijab is officially part of the uniform for Mounties in Canada

The announcement was welcomed by the Scottish Police Muslim Association (SPMA), a group that aims to build links between Muslim communities in Scotland and the police.

Fahad Bashir, chair of the SPMA said: “This is a positive step in the right direction, and I am delighted that Police Scotland is taking productive steps in order to ensure that our organisation is seen to be inclusive and represents the diverse communities that we serve across Scotland. 

“No doubt this will encourage more women from Muslim and minority ethnic backgrounds to join Police Scotland.”

But how can a country boast about being democratic and with a proper voting system then go daft?  No-one bothered their bums about the Electoral College thing until now.

.......A long history of murder, bloodshed and evil and where did much of the money to exercise the evil - the good ole US of A.

December 19, 2016

Donald J. Trump was confirmed as president-elect today by members of the Electoral College, winning at least 304 electoral votes. Texas put Trump over the top as it cast its vote after 5PM ET today. 304 is likely to be Trump's final number, as the three states yet to vote - California, Nevada and Hawaii - were won by Hillary Clinton on Election Day. Should those electors all vote as pledged, Clinton will end up with 228 votes.

In the end, there wasn't a lot of drama in the vote. There were 6 faithless electors, however, including 4 in Washington and two in Texas. While a small number, this is the highest number of faithless electors for president since the 19th century. There were attempts by electors in Colorado, Maine and Minnesota to cast faithless votes, but these were disallowed.

Trump will be sworn in as the 45th president at noon on January 20, 2017.

......... I call that ideology fascist! (You have a dictionary, right?    )

Kinda stifled the  fascist   struttin' turd there Oak......

It was an election and one side wins the other loses. That's it. In regular places it is called democracy.

Bill Clinton is not running. Republicans do know this right?

I read that Trump invited some ex Bill Clinton's lover woman to the first row at the debate with Hillary.
That's low, that's really low.

........the resurfacing of the scandals of the 1990s has brought about a rethinking among some feminists about how prominent women stood by Mr. Clinton and disparaged his accusers after the “bimbo eruptions,” as a close aide to the Clintons, Betsey Wright, famously called the claims of affairs and sexual assault against Mr. Clinton in his 1992 campaign.

Even some Democrats who participated in the effort to discredit the women acknowledge privately that today, when Mrs. Clinton and other women have pleaded with the authorities on college campuses and in workplaces to take any allegation of sexual assault and sexual harassment seriously, such a campaign to attack the women’s character would be unacceptable.

Back then, Mr. Clinton’s aides, having watched Gary Hart’s presidential hopes unravel over his relationship with Donna Rice in the 1988 Democratic primary race, were determined to quash any accusations against Mr. Clinton early and aggressively, former campaign aides said. Mrs. Clinton had supported the effort to push back against the women’s stories.

Much of her involvement played out behind the scenes and was driven in part by her sense that right-wing forces were using the women and salacious stories to damage her husband’s political ambitions.

Her reflex was to protect him and his future, and early on, she turned to a longtime Clinton loyalist, Ms. Wright, to defend him against the allegations, according to multiple accounts at the time, documented in books and oral histories.

“We have to destroy her story,” Mrs. Clinton said in 1991 of Connie Hamzy, one of the first women to come forward during her husband’s first presidential campaign, according to George Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton administration aide who described the events in his memoir, “All Too Human.” (Three people signed sworn affidavits saying Ms. Hamzy’s story was false.)

When Gennifer Flowers later surfaced, saying that she had had a long affair with Mr. Clinton,
Mrs. Clinton undertook an “aggressive, explicit direction of the campaign to discredit” Ms. Flowers, according to an exhaustive biography of Mrs. Clinton, “A Woman in Charge,” by Carl Bernstein.

Mrs. Clinton referred to Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern who had an affair with the 42nd president, as a “narcissistic loony toon,” according to one of her closest confidantes, Diane D. Blair, whose diaries were released to the University of Arkansas after her death in 2000.

Ms. Lewinsky later called the comment an example of Mrs. Clinton’s impulse to “blame the woman.”..........

Over the years, the Clinton effort to cast doubt on the women included using words like “floozy,” “bimbo” and “stalker,” and raising questions about their motives. James Carville, a longtime strategist for Mr. Clinton, was especially cutting in attacking Ms. Flowers. “If you drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find,” Mr. Carville said of Ms. Flowers. (Mr. Carville has maintained that earlier reports indicating that he had made the remark about Paula Jones, another Clinton accuser, were incorrect.)

Now that the stories are resurfacing, they could hamper Mrs. Clinton’s attempts to connect with younger women, who are learning the details of the Clintons’ history for the first time. Several news organizations have published guides to the Clinton scandals to explain the allegations to a new generation of readers.

Alexis Isabel Moncada, the 17-year-old founder of Feminist Culture, a popular blog, was not old enough to remember the 1990s, but lately she and her thousands of young female readers have heard a lot about the scandals.

“I heard he sexually harassed people and she worked to cover it up,” Ms. Moncada said of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton. “A lot of girls in my age group are huge feminists, and we don’t react well to that.”............continued

.....Now is the time for the Libertarian and Green Parties to rise......

Donald Trump is gaining support among African-American voters — whose enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton is eroding, a tracking poll released Saturday revealed.

Trump saw a 16.5 percentage-point increase in backing from African-American voters in a Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California tracking poll, up from 3.1 percent on Sept. 10 to 19.6 percent through Friday.

Meanwhile, the same poll showed Clinton’s support among that group plummeting from 90.4 percent on Sept. 10 to 71.4 percent.

Clinton’s nearly 20-point crash began Sunday, said Dan Schnur of USC. Sunday was the day Clinton was recorded collapsing while entering a Secret Service van at a 9/11 event.

The survey, which spanned through Friday, included the days in which Trump reignited the divisive “birther” issue — which critics contend is a thinly veiled attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the country’s first black president.......continued

......The problem is his softball questions........