The Limits of Tolerance
Alabama Public Television refused to run an episode of the animated children’s show Arthur that depicted the marriage of two male characters—a rat and an aardvark. “It would be a violation of trust,” a network official said. The decision came after thousands of people signed a petition from an anti-LGBTQ group warning the network not to “glorify the homosexual lifestyle.”
Febreze, Please
The U.S. Department of Energy under President Trump has begun calling natural gas produced by environmentally destructive fracking “freedom gas,” which it says contains “molecules of U.S. freedom.” One agency official boasted that the United States is now “spreading freedom gas throughout the world.”
Build the Hypocrisy
Contrary to claims that Trump’s Mar-a-Lago uses the H-2B visa program to hire temporary foreign workers as cooks, servers, and housekeepers because U.S. workers don’t want these jobs, an analysis by BuzzFeed found that fifty-eight U.S. workers applied for these positions from 2014 through 2018 and only one was hired. As The Progressive has reported, H-2B workers can be readily cheated and exploited—and then expelled to their home countries if they complain.
The Limits of Compassion
Writing on TheFederalist.com, Georgi Boorman and James Silberman sharply criticized Alabama’s new law outlawing abortion even in cases of rape and incest—for not going far enough. The law, set to take effect in January, calls for penalties of up to ninety-nine years for doctors who perform abortions but nothing for women seeking abortions, an oversight the pair called “deeply misguided and immoral.”
Frontiers of Law Enforcement
Courtney Irby of Florida was jailed for six days on charges of armed burglary and grand theft after confiscating her estranged husband’s guns, which he was no longer legally able to possess because she had gotten a domestic violence restraining order against him. The husband, who spent one day in jail after allegedly ramming into her car following a divorce hearing, was considered the victim of gun theft.
Looking on the Bright Side
The Arctic Council was blocked from issuing a joint declaration because the United States, one of eight member countries, objected to what it said about climate change being a serious threat. To the contrary, argued U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, “Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new naval passageways and new opportunities for trade.”
Oh, Say Can You Just Make Stuff Up?
President Donald Trump, in his July 4 address to the nation, boasted that the Continential Army “manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports” during the Revolutionary War in 1775, “and when dawn came, their star-spangled banner waved defiant.” The first successful airplane flight took place in 1903.
Illustrations by Stuart Goldenberg.
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