In a video obtained by the Forward of an August 2007 television appearance by Gorka, the future White House senior aide explicitly affirms his party’s and his support for the black-vested Hungarian Guard (Magyar Gárda) — a group later condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for attempting to promote an “essentially racist” legal order.

Asked directly on the TV interview program if he supports the move by Jobbik, a far-right anti-Semitic party, to establish the militia, Gorka, appearing as a leader of his own newly formed party, replies immediately, “That is so.” The Guard, Gorka explains, is a response to “a big societal need.”

In his current position as deputy assistant to the president, Gorka, who immigrated to the United States and became an American citizen in 2012, serves as Trump’s chief consultant on counter-terrorism issues, and in particular on fighting jihadists. He has characterized the United States in this effort as a country “at war” and, in a recent interview, reaffirmed Trump’s call during his presidential campaign for surveillance of American Muslim communities. Neither Gorka nor the White House responded to emailed requests from the Forward for a response to the information the video reveals about Gorka’s support for the Guard.

Critics have questioned Gorka’s expertise in the field of terrorism, which was the subject of his doctoral thesis at Budapest’s Corvinus University, where he received his doctorate. Some have cited serious flaws in his thesis and noted his failure to publish any scholarship on the issue in peer-reviewed journals. But his August 2007 TV interview also raises questions about his understanding, at least at that point in time, of basic security structures and legal realities in key countries that are fighting terrorism.

thephan wrote:Reuters Headline: "Islamic State says U.S. 'being run by an idiot'"

The Crimson Cyclone wrote:

thephan wrote:Reuters Headline: "Islamic State says U.S. 'being run by an idiot'"

finding common ground with ISIS is a start

pacino wrote:I doubt Trump is an 'agent' of Russia

drsmooth wrote:

pacino wrote:I doubt Trump is an 'agent' of Russia

you're normalizing again. substitute "tool" for "agent"

The full bench of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 8-3 on Tuesday to overrule a series of prior decisions that held that a prohibition on sex discrimination did not extend to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Five of the eight justices in the court's majority were Republican appointees — a startling development that reflected the dramatic advances of gay rights in the legal system in recent years.

Writing for the court's majority, Judge Diane Wood concluded that bias against gays and lesbians amounts to gender discrimination because it treats individuals differently on account of their sex and their failure to conform to gender stereotypes.

Sykes also disagreed with the majority's central conclusion.

"An employer who refuses to hire homosexuals is not drawing a line based on the job applicant’s sex. He is not excluding gay men because they are men and lesbians because they are women. His discriminatory motivation is independent of and unrelated to the applicant’s sex," Sykes wrote.

Judge Richard Posner wrote an edgy concurring opinion joining the majority, but suggesting that the courts do sometimes have the ability to update laws to reflect a modern understanding rather than what Congress or the average person would have meant by sex discrimination at the time the law was passed in 1964.

"Nothing has changed more in the decades since the enactment of the statute than attitudes toward sex ... today 'sex' has a broader meaning than the genitalia you’re born with," wrote Posner, a Reagan appointee. "We understand the words of Title VII differently not because we’re smarter than the statute’s framers and ratifiers but because we live in a different era, a different culture. ... I would prefer to see us acknowledge openly that today we, who are judges rather than members of Congress, are imposing on a half-century-old statute a meaning of 'sex discrimination' that the Congress that enacted it would not have accepted."

traderdave wrote:Might be the wrong thread for this but if the snippet below doesn't tell us were we are as a society, I don't know what does:

A New Jersey teenager has been accepted to Stanford University after he wrote #BlackLivesMatter on his college application 100 times instead of writing a long personal essay. When the essay prompt read, “What matters to you, and why?,” only one thing came to mind for New Jersey high school senior Ziad Ahmed. And on Friday, he received his acceptance letter from Stanford.

“I was actually stunned when I opened the update and saw that I was admitted,” Ahmed said in an email to journalists at Mic. “I didn’t think I would get admitted to Stanford at all, but it’s quite refreshing to see that they view my unapologetic activism as an asset rather than a liability.”

When the times comes that my children are applying to the colleges of their choice (and it will be sooner than later) I sure as hell hope that they do not lose their spots to people like this.

http://www.thewrap.com/teenager-accepte ... plication/

According to Mic, the Bangladeshi-American teenager has been a strong activist and has a stellar resume, which most likely also led to his acceptance. He has been invited to the White House Iftar dinner and was recognized as a Muslim-American change-maker under the Obama administration. In 2016, he interned for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and in 2015, he gave a Ted Talk in Panama discussing the stereotypes facing young Muslim teens.

The publication reported that Ahmed was also accepted to Yale University and Princeton University.

pacino wrote:gee whiz, Sebastian Gorka supported an anti-semitic paramilitary group:

In a video obtained by the Forward of an August 2007 television appearance by Gorka, the future White House senior aide explicitly affirms his party’s and his support for the black-vested Hungarian Guard (Magyar Gárda) — a group later condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for attempting to promote an “essentially racist” legal order.

Asked directly on the TV interview program if he supports the move by Jobbik, a far-right anti-Semitic party, to establish the militia, Gorka, appearing as a leader of his own newly formed party, replies immediately, “That is so.” The Guard, Gorka explains, is a response to “a big societal need.”

In his current position as deputy assistant to the president, Gorka, who immigrated to the United States and became an American citizen in 2012, serves as Trump’s chief consultant on counter-terrorism issues, and in particular on fighting jihadists. He has characterized the United States in this effort as a country “at war” and, in a recent interview, reaffirmed Trump’s call during his presidential campaign for surveillance of American Muslim communities. Neither Gorka nor the White House responded to emailed requests from the Forward for a response to the information the video reveals about Gorka’s support for the Guard.

Critics have questioned Gorka’s expertise in the field of terrorism, which was the subject of his doctoral thesis at Budapest’s Corvinus University, where he received his doctorate. Some have cited serious flaws in his thesis and noted his failure to publish any scholarship on the issue in peer-reviewed journals. But his August 2007 TV interview also raises questions about his understanding, at least at that point in time, of basic security structures and legal realities in key countries that are fighting terrorism.

they couldn't even hire a knowledgeable racist