Thursday Mashup (6/24/10)

I really don’t have much to say about the incredibly idiotic graphic above, except to point out that Mark Halperin manages to distill everything I hate about our corporate media in it all at once (here trivializing a vitally important matter that affects the well-being of our service people, lending a cartoonish tone to a very important issue of military and civilian executive command, implying that Halperin is somehow an “influencer,” to use Beltway parlance, making famous newsmakers do his bidding, etc.).

As Atrios says, our discourse is ruled by fools.

On matters close to home, two recent legal decisions made the news recently. The first is noted here…

A residents group can continue its legal fight against a proposed Aria Health hospital at Route 332 and Stony Hill Road in Lower Makefield, a Bucks County Court judge has ruled.

Judge Clyde Waite recently issued an order denying the motion by Aria Health, formerly Frankford Hospital, to quash an appeal filed by Residents Against Frankford's Relocation to the granting of a special exception by the township zoning hearing board for the hospital.

Waite's ruling is a preliminary one that keeps RAFR a player but doesn't decide the main issue of whether the hospital can be built, officials said.

The last I checked, the majority of the Lower Makefield supervisors opposed the relocation of Frankford from Middletown Township (near Sesame Place and the Oxford Valley Mall) to the location across from Stony Brook Farm), though Frankford (oh, excuse me…Aria Health) has thus far managed to sway a majority of the members of the LMT zoning board (a lot more info can be found on this here).

This is going to come down to citizen involvement, people. That’s the only way we’re going to be able to prevent what would be a horrendous move (and as others have noted, St. Mary’s is not much further than the site of the proposed Aria relocation, and a population that can access the current site near the mall via public transportation would no longer be able to do so).

The second decision is noted here…

The Boy Scouts can stay.

After deliberating for about seven hours, a federal jury found yesterday that the city violated the local Boy Scouts' First Amendment rights by demanding that they repudiate the national organization's ban on gay membership or face eviction from their Center City headquarters.

The local chapter, called Cradle of Liberty Council, built the 1928 Beaux Arts structure on city-owned land at 22nd and Winter streets, near Logan Square, and has maintained it since. Like other nonprofits that lease property in Fairmount Park, Cradle pays $1 a year to the city.

The city contended at trial that Cradle had to abide by the city's anti-discrimination laws if it wanted to retain the lease.

Attorneys for the local chapter hailed the jury's decision.

"We expect to get an injunction from the court," said attorney Jason P. Gosselin. "We've asked for a permanent injunction from trying to evict the Scouts because of the city's opposition to the leadership policy."

That means that Cradle likely will maintain its cheap lease.

I’m sure Christine Flowers is writing her “nyaah, nyaah, told you so” column as I type this.

And am I the only one who thinks this whole thing smells in part because Judge Ronald Buckwalter, who will likely now issue a permanent injunction that bars the Scouts' eviction based on their anti-gay policy, is an ex-Scout (noted here)?

So basically, anti-discrimination law applies to any special interest group except one with enough money, lawyers and corporate-friendly media to state the case of what they consider to be their oppression at the hands of “political correctness.”

I get it now.

Finally, we get another “Foto Funny” from J.D. Mullane of the Bucks County Courier Times here (along with a hilarious misrepresentation of a well-reasoned Daily Kos post on the subject of the change of military leadership in Afghanistan from Gen. Stanley McChrystal to Gen. David Petraeus).

And yes, for the record, the infamous MoveOn ad made some good points about the casualty figures Petraeus provided to his bosses concerning Dubya’s Not-So-Excellent Adventure in Iraq, though that was ignored in the kerfuffle over the stupid “Betray Us” language in the headline.

Still, though, I have to admit shock over Mullane’s statement that relieving McChrystal and replacing him with Petraeus is “an excellent move” by the president (yeah, that would be that “Abama” fellow, wouldn’t it J.D.?).