KXL death rattle heard

Joe Romm of Climate Progress says that Secretary of State John Kerry sounds like he will recommend to President Barack Obama that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline be rejected.

"We share nothing so completely as our planet." That was a key message in John Kerry's first major address as secretary of state in Charlottesville, Virginia, Wednesday.

Note recent tremor in north central Montana and its relative proximity to the Fort Peck Dam. The USGS tells us:

The first significant 20th century Montana earthquake occurred on June 27, 1925, when a magnitude 6 3/4 shock caused violent shaking over a 1,600 square kilometer area in southwestern Montana. The earthquake was felt over a 803,000 square kilometer area extending from the North Dakota line to Washington and from the Canadian border to central Wyoming.

Jehovah was a Republican. Gaia is a Democrat. Rewild the West.

Joy of sects: Cali court adds Wiccan prison chaplain

Debra J. Saunders is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. In today's copy she writes:

[T]he Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco issued a ruling Tuesday that revives a California inmate lawsuit to force the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to hire a paid, full-time Wiccan chaplain. A 2007 Corrections survey found 183 Wiccan inmates - compared with 42,666 Protestant, 28,884 Muslim, 23,160 Catholic, 8,296 Native American and 2,678 Jewish inmates. Wiccan Rev. Patrick McCollum, who has served as the prison's unpaid volunteer chaplain, told me the department skewed its survey because it "did not want to facilitate nor allow the Wiccans to practice at all." "We don't do anything bad. We don't sacrifice animals. We don't kill babies. That's a bunch of crap. We don't worship the devil. That's a bunch of crap."

The Pew (get it?) Forum recently published this map of US cults.

Joy of sects: Schoenbeck member of pedophile religious cult...and NRA

I don’t know mr welke [sic], but he should attend an NRA banquet and see what we look like – not exactly the people he has obviously heard about. On the bright side, there are many good Counselling [sic] options for him in the Aberdeen area, no matter what the delusion.--earth hater and member Church of the Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers, Lee Schoenbeck.

Smug little fucker. This guy says he's a lawyer and knows Bill Janklow raped Jancita Eagle Deer: think he doesn't have clergy for clients? My guess is that he has a tiny dick as well as shitty orthographic skills.

Astronaut Mark Kelley says the NRA employs extreme rhetoric.

Bennett Gershman is a professor at Pace University Law School and former Manhattan prosecutor. He writes in the online edition of the White Plains Journal News:

Indeed, the biggest fomenter of hysteria and paranoia over guns, the biggest fear-mongerer and bully of all, is the NRA and its leaders. Why would any responsible gun owner have anything to do with the NRA?

Powers dead; Means commemoration announced

Censored News reports that a celebration of Russell Means will be held 27 February at Pine Ridge School's Old Gym. There is media access: press credentials required.

And over at the War Toilet Steve Hickey self-fellates...too.

Montana's DOMA amendment doomed

This latter-day update comes on the heels of an announcement that another federal court of appeals ruled the Bush-era Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional; and, if the epidemic of judges overturning cases in Montana is any guide, the state's initiated law affirming DOMA is doomed in part because of another appeal before the Supreme Court of the United States.

From Chris Geidner's piece posted at BuzzFeed:

The Obama administration urged the Supreme Court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act's prohibition on recognition of same-sex couples' marriages in a Friday filing, arguing that laws that target gay people should face additional scrutiny by courts reviewing them. Under such heightened scrutiny, as it is called, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli says that Section 3 of DOMA, which defines "spouse" and "marriage" under federal law as only those marriages between one man and one woman, is unconstitutional.

The Roberts Court is still under fire for its judicial activism from frequent NPR guest, Jeffrey Rosen:

Essentially Roberts came into office telling me and other journalists that he would make it his goal as chief justice to promote consensus and avoid five-to-four decisions. He said it was bad for the court and bad for the country in a polarized time, for the court to divide along ideological lines.

From Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog:

Without creating any new constitutional right for gays and lesbians to get married, the First Circuit Court on Thursday ruled that Congress did not have the power to intrude on the choice of states — like Massachusetts — to create such a right under state law. The Circuit Court stressed, near the end of its opinion, that it was not relying on the challenge by gay rights advocates that DOMA had a “hidden but dominant purpose” of “hostility to homosexuality.” It conceded that some lawmakers had that in mind, but others may have had different reasons.

Having six members of the Church of the Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers where five rule on the same side each time a Vatican-lobbied case comes before an entrenched 5-4 Court should frighten everyone.