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Washington Times: Transgender People Are ‘Messed Up, Mixed Up, Insane’

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The Washington Times on Monday published an ignorant and downright offensive editorial criticizing transgender people as “messed-up,” “mixed-up,” and suggested they are insane, in response to a recent discrimination lawsuit filed against the New York City Health Department.

Questioning the validity of the terms transgender and transition by placing the words in quotes, The Washington Times’ piece, “The latest birth certificate scandal,” went on to state transgender individuals are part of a “radical agenda,” while referring to the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association as “confused medical circles.” The Times, an ultra-right wing D.C.-based broadsheet with an immovable national readership, identified members of the latter group as “shrinks” who offer “scientific (or pseudo-scientific) mumbo-jumbo.”

“The claimants want the bureaucracy to make it easier to change the sex that was recorded at birth, noting that parents fixing mistakes (typos) in listing a child’s sex only have to provide a letter from the birth hospital,” the Times editorial states, adding, “Knowing that it was a mistake in the first place, and having that fixed, is pretty important to me,” said Joann Prinzivalli, who was born Paul yet lives as a woman.

“Calling the accurate sex recorded at a birth ‘a mistake’ is the misleading yet predictable result of a creeping activist agenda quietly transforming the country.”

I decided to reach out to Joann Prinzivalli, the person The Times pointed to as someone who evidently, somehow, some way, is responsible for “a creeping activist agenda quietly transforming the country.”

Joann, a lawyer, was very generous in sharing a treasure trove of information related to transgender issues, and offered this response to me (via email) about the Times editorial. She writes,

“I wonder why the Washington TImes editors never bothered to take the time to look at the scientific studies that show that transgender people have brain structures that are the same as those of the sex not assigned, or the scientific studies that show genes that code for enzymes that explain why it is possible for an embryo’s brain to follow one sexed developmental path, while the genital tract follows the other path. My birth certificate should never have said ‘male’ in the first place. It is a scientific fact that my birth certificate is in error on that point. I have made it clear that I am asking for a correction, not a change. At the time I was born, neither the doctor nor my parents knew about the error. Based on the medical knowledge of the time, it was impossible for them to know. Now we know better.”

Indeed!

More offensive stereotypical snark from the Times editorial. “The old saying about giving an inch and losing a mile comes to mind. As Sam Berkley, born Samantha, complained in a press conference about the lawsuit, ‘I don’t feel comfortable with the government deciding whether I’m a man or not,'” state the editors, adding, “[s]trike ‘man’ and replace with ‘human’ or ‘sane’ and there’s not much of a difference.”

Really?

The piece goes on to ignorantly and falsely warn, “we’re accommodating mental illness in the name of misplaced sensitivity, inclusiveness or political correctness.”

“Misplaced sensitivity,” “inclusiveness,” and “political correctness,” all being right-wing key words for “we don’t like you.”

Not satisfied with taking a bigoted and ignorant swipe at the entire transgender community by calling them a “conflicted group,” and thus, the LGBT community at large as well, the Times editorial goes on to take a birther swipe at President Obama too, claiming the “continuing furor over President Obama’s birth certificate underscores the importance these pieces of history have for recording the truth.”

It should be noted that the only “continuing furor over President Obama’s birth certificate” comes from people who are generally ignorant — or wanting the votes of those who are.

Is this a relevant place to mention that The Washington Times reportedly is the newspaper Ronald Reagan read every day when he was president?

Michael Silverman, Executive Director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund — the group that filed the NYC discrimination lawsuit that so bothered the editors at The Washington Times — told me via an email that there is “nothing radical about an agenda for equal rights and equal treatment.” He rightly calls a birth certificate “a fundamental form of identification,” and says by “refusing to give transgender people accurate birth certificates that reflect who they are, the government subjects transgender people to harassment and discrimination in areas like employment where ID is essential to proving eligibility to work.”

Silverman says that “[p]roper ID is essential for full participation in society,” adding, that “as long as the government discriminates against transgender people by denying them accurate ID, transgender people will continue to be pushed to the margins of society.”

The Washington Times, for those unfamiliar with the ultra-right-wing rag, is extremely homophobic and transphobic. Founded and funded by Unification Church founder Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the Times has recently published editorials like, “Obama’s homosexual-Muslim conflict,” and “Obama’s homosexual America.”

(If anyone has seen Obama’s homosexual America, I’d like to know where it is. I’ve been looking everywhere! I won’t call it MIA, after he signed the bill for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal and decided to not defend DOMA in court, but, come on. “Obama’s homosexual America?” Really? I’d be married by now!)

Reverend Moon, just so you know, is most-famous for holding thousands of “mass weddings” over the past 50 years, during which he the matches tens of thousands of men and women who have never before met and marries them in a “blessing ceremony.” The largest of these was in 2009, during which Moon “married” 80,000 men and women, creating 40,000 couples.

Moon, who has spent at least a reported two billion dollars keeping the paper running since 1982, once professed, “The Washington Times is responsible to let the American people know about God” and “The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world.”

When you spend two billion dollars on an instrument spreading the “truth” of God, perhaps it would be best to actually know what truth is before you print it?

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News

‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

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April 25, 2024

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Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is responding to Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court hearing on Donald Trump’s claim he has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution because he was a U.S. president, and she delivered a strong warning in response.

Trump’s attorney argued before the nation’s highest court that the ex-president could have ordered the assassination of a political rival and not face criminal prosecution unless he was first impeached by the House of Representatives and then convicted by the Senate.

But even then, Trump attorney John Sauer argued, if assassinating his political rival were done as an “official act,” he would be automatically immune from all prosecution.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, presenting the hypothetical, expressed, “there are some things that are so fundamentally evil that they have to be protected against.”

RELATED: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person, and he orders the military, or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?” she asked.

“It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act,” Trump attorney Sauer quickly replied.

Sauer later claimed that if a president ordered the U.S. military to wage a coup, he could also be immune from prosecution, again, if it were an “official act.”

The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor and an expert on Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs, was quick to poke a large hole in that hypothetical.

“If the president suspends the Senate, you can’t prosecute him because it’s not an official act until the Senate impeaches …. Uh oh,” he declared.

RELATED: Justices Slam Trump Lawyer: ‘Why Is It the President Would Not Be Required to Follow the Law?’

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted the Trump team.

“The assassination of political rivals as an official act,” the New York Democrat wrote.

“Understand what the Trump team is arguing for here. Take it seriously and at face value,” she said, issuing a warning: “This is not a game.”

Marc Elias, who has been an attorney to top Democrats and the Democratic National Committee, remarked, “I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act.’ I am in despair that several Justices seemed to think this answer made perfect sense.”

CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen, a former U.S. Ambassador and White House Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform under President Barack Obama, boiled it down: “Trump is seeking dictatorial powers.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

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Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

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6 hours ago

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April 25, 2024

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Legal experts appeared somewhat pleased during the first half of the Supreme Court’s historic hearing on Donald Trump’s claim he has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution because he was the President of the United States, as the justice appeared unwilling to accept that claim, but were stunned later when the right-wing justices questioned the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s attorney. Many experts are suggesting the ex-president may have won at least a part of the day, and some are expressing concern about the future of American democracy.

“Former President Trump seems likely to win at least a partial victory from the Supreme Court in his effort to avoid prosecution for his role in Jan. 6,” Axios reports. “A definitive ruling against Trump — a clear rejection of his theory of immunity that would allow his Jan. 6 trial to promptly resume — seemed to be the least likely outcome.”

The most likely outcome “might be for the high court to punt, perhaps kicking the case back to lower courts for more nuanced hearings. That would still be a victory for Trump, who has sought first and foremost to delay a trial in the Jan. 6 case until after Inauguration Day in 2025.”

Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the courts and the law, noted: “This did NOT go very well [for Special Counsel] Jack Smith’s team. Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh think Trump’s Jan. 6 prosecution is unconstitutional. Maybe Gorsuch too. Roberts is skeptical of the charges. Barrett is more amenable to Smith but still wants some immunity.”

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

Civil rights attorney and Tufts University professor Matthew Segal, responding to Stern’s remarks, commented: “If this is true, and if Trump becomes president again, there is likely no limit to the harm he’d be willing to cause — to the country, and to specific individuals — under the aegis of this immunity.”

Noted foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst and commentator David Rothkopf observed: “Feels like the court is leaning toward creating new immunity protections for a president. It’s amazing. We’re watching the Constitution be rewritten in front of our eyes in real time.”

“Frog in boiling water alert,” warned Ian Bassin, a former Associate White House Counsel under President Barack Obama. “Who could have imagined 8 years ago that in the Trump era the Supreme Court would be considering whether a president should be above the law for assassinating opponents or ordering a military coup and that *at least* four justices might agree.”

NYU professor of law Melissa Murray responded to Bassin: “We are normalizing authoritarianism.”

Trump’s attorney, John Sauer, argued before the Supreme Court justices that if Trump had a political rival assassinated, he could only be prosecuted if he had first been impeach by the U.S. House of Representatives then convicted by the U.S. Senate.

During oral arguments Thursday, MSNBC host Chris Hayes commented on social media, “Something that drives me a little insane, I’ll admit, is that Trump’s OWN LAWYERS at his impeachment told the Senators to vote not to convict him BECAUSE he could be prosecuted if it came to that. Now they’re arguing that the only way he could be prosecuted is if they convicted.”

READ MORE: Biden Campaign Hammers Trump Over Infamous COVID Comment

Attorney and former FBI agent Asha Rangappa warned, “It’s worth highlighting that Trump’s lawyers are setting up another argument for a second Trump presidency: Criminal laws don’t apply to the President unless they specifically say so…this lays the groundwork for saying (in the future) he can’t be impeached for conduct he can’t be prosecuted for.”

But NYU and Harvard professor of law Ryan Goodman shared a different perspective.

“Due to Trump attorney’s concessions in Supreme Court oral argument, there’s now a very clear path for DOJ’s case to go forward. It’d be a travesty for Justices to delay matters further. Justice Amy Coney Barrett got Trump attorney to concede core allegations are private acts.”

NYU professor of history Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert scholar on authoritarians, fascism, and democracy concluded, “Folks, whatever the Court does, having this case heard and the idea of having immunity for a military coup taken seriously by being debated is a big victory in the information war that MAGA and allies wage alongside legal battles. Authoritarians specialize in normalizing extreme ideas and and involves giving them a respected platform.”

The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal offered up a prediction: “Court doesn’t come back till May 9th which will be a decision day. But I think they won’t decide *this* case until July 3rd for max delay. And that decision will be 5-4 to remand the case back to DC, for additional delay.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

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Justices Slam Trump Lawyer: ‘Why Is It the President Would Not Be Required to Follow the Law?’

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8 hours ago

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April 25, 2024

By

Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court hearing Donald Trump’s claim of absolute immunity early on appeared at best skeptical, were able to get his attorney to admit personal criminal acts can be prosecuted, appeared to skewer his argument a president must be impeached and convicted before he can be criminally prosecuted, and peppered him with questions exposing what some experts see is the apparent weakness of his case.

Legal experts appeared to believe, based on the Justices’ questions and statements, Trump will lose his claim of absolute presidential immunity, and may remand the case back to the lower court that already ruled against him, but these observations came during Justices’ questioning of Trump attorney John Sauer, and before they questioned the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s Michael Dreeben.

“I can say with reasonable confidence that if you’re arguing a case in the Supreme Court of the United States and Justices Alito and Sotomayor are tag-teaming you, you are going to lose,” noted attorney George Conway, who has argued a case before the nation’s highest court and obtained a unanimous decision.

But some are also warning that the justices will delay so Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump will not take place before the November election.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“This argument still has a ways to go,” observed UCLA professor of law Rick Hasen, one of the top election law scholars in the county. “But it is easy to see the Court (1) siding against Trump on the merits but (2) in a way that requires further proceedings that easily push this case past the election (to a point where Trump could end this prosecution if elected).”

The Economist’s Supreme Court reporter Steven Mazie appeared to agree: “So, big picture: the (already slim) chances of Jack Smith actually getting his 2020 election-subversion case in front of a jury before the 2024 election are dwindling before our eyes.”

One of the most stunning lines of questioning came from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who said, “If someone with those kinds of powers, the most powerful person in the world with the greatest amount of authority, could go into Office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes. I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is, from turning the Oval Office into, you know, the seat of criminal activity in this country.”

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

She also warned, “If the potential for criminal liability is taken off the table, wouldn’t there be a significant risk that future presidents would be emboldened to commit crimes with abandon while they’re in office? It’s right now the fact that we’re having this debate because, OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] has said that presidents might be prosecuted. Presidents, from the beginning of time have understood that that’s a possibility. That might be what has kept this office from turning into the kind of crime center that I’m envisioning, but once we say, ‘no criminal liability, Mr. President, you can do whatever you want,’ I’m worried that we would have a worse problem than the problem of the president feeling constrained to follow the law while he’s in office.”

“Why is it as a matter of theory,” Justice Jackson said, “and I’m hoping you can sort of zoom way out here, that the president would not be required to follow the law when he is performing his official acts?”

“So,” she added later, “I guess I don’t understand why Congress in every criminal statute would have to say and the President is included. I thought that was the sort of background understanding that if they’re enacting a generally applicable criminal statute, it applies to the President just like everyone else.”

Another critical moment came when Justice Elena Kagan asked, “If a president sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary, is that immune?”

Professor of law Jennifer Taub observed, “This is truly a remarkable moment. A former U.S. president is at his criminal trial in New York, while at the same time the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing his lawyer’s argument that he should be immune from prosecution in an entirely different federal criminal case.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

 

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