Homophobia and the NBA

The NBA came into full bloom this past week (or is that came out). The quotes from Tim Hardaway, John Amaechi, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O'Neal, and David Stern, in that order:

"First of all, I wouldn't want him on my team. And second of all, if he was on my team, I would, you know, really distance myself from him because, uh, I don't think that is right. I don't think he should be in the locker room while we are in the locker room."

When show host Dan Le Batard told Hardaway those comments were "flatly homophobic" and "bigotry," the player continued.

"You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people," he said. "I'm homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

Hardaway apologized but was removed from any NBA-related activities for this weekend's All-Star game.

"I'm actually tempted to laugh. Finally, someone who is honest. It is ridiculous, absurd, petty, bigoted and shows a lack of empathy that is gargantuan and unfathomable. But it is honest. And it illustrates the problem better than any of the fuzzy language other people have used so far.... His words pollute the atmosphere. It creates an atmosphere that allows young gays and lesbians to be harassed in school, creates an atmosphere where in 33 states you can lose your job, and where anti-gay and lesbian issues are used for political gain. It's an atmosphere that hurts all of us, not just gay people."

Amaechi is an impressive man. (I might have said 'articulate' if this had happened a few weeks ago.) Barkley:

"You don't think we've all played with gay guys? Of course we have. It has never been an issue. America, the more I live in it, the more I realize how full of it we are. If we're not bombing the wrong country, we're not fixing hurricane-relief areas. America is homophobic. It's so easy for (reporters) to say the other jocks won't like it."

Shaq:

"If he was on my team, I guess I would have to protect him from the outsiders."

And finally Commissioner Stern:

"This is an issue overall that has fascinated America. It’s not an NBA issue," Stern said, pointing to the ongoing debate over gay marriage at the state and federal levels. "This is a country that needs to talk about this issue. And, not surprisingly, they use sports as a catalyst to begin the dialogue."

February is Black History Month

Worthy of reminder until we get it right. I corrected a couple of misspellings but only wish I could write this well:

In what has been aptly described as the greatest speech of the 20th century, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in part, "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood." Dr. King was cruelly cut down by an assassin's bullet too soon to learn that science would give great weight to his stirring vision.

Within our cells are tiny organelles called mitochondria. They reproduce asexually, one indication of a possible origin as free living bacteria. Mitochondria are passed on to human children by the mother. Geneticists have analyzed that mtDNA use techniques that compare and contrast similarities in the individual letters of the genetic code. This molecular clock is one method to gauge how closely or distantly we are each related to one another. And it turns out that all humans alive today can trace their mitochondrial ancestry back to a single female who lived about 150,000 years ago. She's been dubbed Mitochondrial Eve.

MT Eve is not the only female ancestor shared by all humans. She's our most recent common ancestor exclusively via matrilineal descent. You have the DNA of your father's mother in your nuclear genome -- it's a fair bet we picked up an allele here or a sequence there from archaic hominid populations living around the same time -- but mitochondrial DNA comes from the female line, ultimately converging on Eve. Fossil evidence independently supports the idea that anatomically modern humans come from a small band of people that evolved near Kenya about 160,000 - 200,000 years ago.

February is Black History month. We honor the contributions of African-Americans and reflect honestly on the challenges many still face in fully securing the rights and privileges that others take for granted. But black history could also be accurately cast as Human History. Because biology reveals that we descend from such a small clan in the geologically recent past, the 'sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners' are brothers. The emerging scientific consensus is that each and every one of us belongs to a single African family, surname H. sapiens.

As a family, we have yet to reach the promised land of complete social equality that Dr. King envisioned. It is regrettable to say the least that some of our siblings still happily stoke the fires of prejudice for even a glimmer of political profit. But other family members have made great strides toward creating a just society, where our children are judged 'not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character'. Here's to hoping we swiftly finish making one African's Dream a reality for all.

There goes the judge

As we suspected, Harris County Judge Robert Eckels pulled the chain yesterday:

"A friend once told me, 'You never become what you want to be while remaining where you are.' Harris County is moving forward, and it's time for me to do the same."

I think that's "who" you are, Bob, but nevermind. Before we say goodbye (and don'tletthedoorhitchawheretheGoodLordsplitcha) let's note that we probably haven't heard the last from you:

He was set to run for attorney general or lieutenant governor last year if U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison had decided not to seek re-election and those top state officials sought her job. Instead, she sought and won another term, as did Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Attorney General Greg Abbott.

Eckels said he still aspires to statewide office and could run in 2008 or 2010 while working in the private sector.

"I'll be seeing you
in all the old familiar places ..."

Speculation may now center on his replacement. A few days ago a front-runner surged:

The three (Eckels, Jerry Eversole and Steve Radack, all Republicans) told the Chronicle last week that Ed Emmett (scroll to second entry) a transportation consultant and former state representative, was a possible consensus candidate for the post. But today, the judge also mentioned District Clerk Charles Bacarisse as a candidate for the job.

Houston's most diminutive blogger announces that former HCDP chair David Mincberg will run in 2008. Hat tip to the ubiquitous Off the Kuff, who blogs onward with his now-two young daughters in tow.

A Valentine's Day Teddy

Teddi, to be precise.

Chow mix, 8 weeks old, wonderful disposition. Going to get her shots in about two hours, then a bath. That's why she's pouting.

"It's not a bug, it's a feature"

Today the Texas Democratic Party filed suit against the secretary of the state of Texas, Roger Williams, claiming voter disenfranchisement. The electronic voting machines used in many Texas counties, called e-Slates, have routinely counted undervotes on straight-ticket ballots -- in effect subtracting a vote -- when a voter would additionally pick a Democratic candidate on their ballot. You can read the announcement here.

I want to separate this paragraph from the press release for some greater examination:

On the eSlate machines, when a voter chooses a straight-ticket vote and then continues to select candidates of the same political party to “emphasize” their vote, the machine actually records the vote for that race as a no vote. This is inconsistent with the tabulation of absentee paper ballots in those counties, as well as electronic voting machines used in other counties across the state. The irregularities relating to the eSlate voting system have affected the outcome at least one race, located in Madison County. However, there are 101 other Texas counties that employed these machines in the 2006 election.

Additionally, the Secretary of State’s office is required to test all voting machines used in Texas elections and knew of the irregularities related to the eSlate machines, which are manufactured by Hart Intercivic. Yet Secretary Williams allowed the machines to be used anyway.

Hart InterCivic was an old-fashioned printer for the state government before they got into the e-voting business. They got into that business shortly after Tom Hicks -- Bush Pioneer and owner of the Texas Rangers, aka the man who made Dubya rich -- invested heavily in the company in 1999.

Here's where things get interesting:

Hart representatives have always claimed that emphasis voting is not a programming error but a standard function of e-Slates. That explanation still puts their machines in violation of Texas election law, which states that votes must be tabulated and recorded "uniformly" throughout the Great State. Hart, though, is not named as a defendant in the litigation; Secretary Williams, as supervisor of elections, must certify the voting mechanisms in Texas. All of them, whether paper ballot or DRE. Thus the heart of the matter, and the basis for the voter disenfranchisement complaint.

The Office of Attorney General will defend Williams in this filing. There'll be more to say here as the case goes forward.

And some days it lifts you up

-- Dixie Chicks CD sales were up 1641% in the 24-hour period following Sunday night's Grammys, which they swept. On tap: Al Gore's Oscar for Inconvenient Truth.

-- The Washington state legislature wants to be the first (among many) to compel the US House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings. Against both the president and vice-president.

-- I had the luxury of watching some college baseball in Houston this weekend; specifically the tops-in-the-nation-ranked Rice Owls and the #5- ranked Vanderbilt Commodores. Suffice it to say that the Owls won't be ranked #1 again for some time. The Houston Press has a great story on everybody's All-American, Joe Savery.

-- "Why is Texas red???" I don't think it will continue to be much longer.

-- A special linky-dink for my regular commenter Bev. The de-geeked version (and yes, Bev and I are mad geeky about this) is: a vendor shill who gets to write voting system standards for the whole damn country -- with the EAC's blessing, of course -- is being investigated by the IEEE because some of the good guys, who are also IEEE members, wrote to them and complained. If the bad guys are sacked, there will likely be less opposition to e-voting standards that require simplified and standardized audit ability, reliability and that sort of thing.

More later today on what Texas Democrats are doing about their DREs.

-- apologies to James Blunt, but I agree with Weird Al that he's pitiful:

Never had a date
That ya couldn't inflate
And ya smell repulsive too
What a bummer bein' you

Well ya just can't dance
And forget romance
Everybody you know still calls ya
Farty Pants

But you always have a job well I mean

As long as you still can work that Slurpie machine

You're pitiful
You're pitiful
You're pitiful
It's true

-- muse's excellent Science Behind Driving to Florida in a Diaper is a Valentine's Day don't-miss.

Some days the news will bring you down

-- Amanda Marcotte has resigned from the John Edwards campaign. There's going to be some major payback for this. Update (today, p.m.): And now Melissa McEwan as well. We're going to the mattresses, you right-wing freaks.

-- North Korea appears to have rolled over on its nuclear program. It wasn't all a bluff, was it? Did they reach critical mass and then decide to cash in on some Western concessions, figuring they can restart quickly anytime they need to?

-- Ari Fleischer just might be the source of the CIA/Plame leak, at least according to the WaPo's Walter Pincus. Of course, he's been granted immunity, so ... so what? Novacula claims it was Karl Rove and Richard Armitage. Moneyshot quote from Patrick Fitzgerald, to NYT reporter David Sanger: "I believe you're the third Pulitzer prize winner to testify this morning."

-- A scathing indictment of the media by Sheila Samples. Leading off from Hunter S. :

Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits - a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage."

-- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Oh yesss, there's more:

If the Bush administration and the US mainstream media are united on any one issue, it's an absolute refusal to rock the political boat as they sail mercilessly through the seas of corporate profit on the good ship Terrorbush. For the most part, each group is an incurious lot -- undead creatures who neither care, nor dare, to glance over the side of the ship at the bloated, swirling bodies in the blood-red water below. From the beginning, their mission has been to perform so fantastically against a backdrop of such violent, explosive madness on so many fronts that we watch hypnotically but do not see -- listen intently but do not hear.

I can't add a thing. Read it all. Greg also has some less coarse but still worthy linkage on this subject, but per usual you have to rapidly scroll past his Hillary cheerleading.

-- an article in the Toronto Star ponders the "management" of environmental collapse.

-- the FBI is still losing laptops and weapons:

"Most troubling, we found that the FBI could not determine for 51 additional lost or stolen laptops whether they contained sensitive or classified information," the report said. "Seven of these 51 laptops were assigned to the counterintelligence or counterterrorism divisions."

You don't suppose someone could be selling them to someone else, do you? It's almost as nauseating as this:

But what was said to be an effort to protect the United States became a tool by which the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Pat Roberts (R-KS) ensured there was no serious investigation into how the administration fixed the intelligence that took the United States to war in Iraq or the fabricated documents used as evidence to do so.

-- and as the evidence accumulates that the White House is cooking up a similarly bad batch of intelligence on Iran, the media outside the United States report that we are almost ready to begin the air strikes.