The Good

When I heard that the fanatical and hateful group Westboro Baptist Church was going to picket my high school in Michigan, I was dismayed. What were they doing there and why? They still haven’t said why, although considering founder Fred Phelps’ daughter was in town for a panel discussion at MSU, it seems it was a protest of opportunity. The community of East Lansing really rallied ’round. Members of the local Episcopal and Unitarian Universalist churches held a joint meeting that all East Lansing High School students were welcome to attend rather than go through the protesters and hear their hate speech. Hundreds of counterprotesters lined the streets and held up signs advocating love. And turns out only THREE members of that so-called church turned up with their “God Hates Fags” and “America is Doomed” BS. Love wins again!

The National Labor Relations Board may be moving toward once again allowing graduate students to unionize. Collective bargaining for all!

As Mike, who passed on this link, said, “Every once in a while, some fraudulent asshole does get his due.” This is especially encouraging, since all too often organizations that are meant to monitor their professions just end up protecting badly behaved members of those professions.

The Bad

Earlier this month, the white cop who shot an unarmed, restrained black man at a train station in San Francisco was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison. The many people who found this a miscarriage of justice for the slain Oscar Grant led a peaceful protest march against racism and police brutality — and they encountered, whaddya know, police brutality. If you want to donate to the legal aid fund set up for some of those protesters, go here.

Washington State Penitentiary has hit upon a cost-saving measure: as Choire Sicha writes, lockdowns once a month drive home the point that prisons are increasingly being used solely for incarceration, and not for rehabilitation at all.

The TSA chief has been testifying in a Senate committee meeting this week that the new body scan machines or full-body pat-downs are totally worth it to stop terrorism — but as this Newsweek article points out, this doesn’t take into account the many survivors of sexual assault who want or need to fly and will find these procedures genuinely traumatic. The last time I flew, they had a regular metal detector set up next to the body scan machine but they were sending every passenger through the body scan machine, and when I asked the TSA officer if I could just go through the metal detector, he said no, he’d have to get someone to do a pat-down search of me if I wasn’t doing the body scan. Then why have the metal detector at all? Seems that actual policy is to only send some individuals through the body scan machine, so why didn’t a TSA officer at a major airport like O’Hare know that? None of this makes me feel more secure about flying. Does it make anyone feel secure?  (Via Shakesville)

The Silly

Sessily sent me the link to this t-shirt, which shows the part of Illinois that is Chicago, and the part of Illinois that all the suburbanites claim is part of Chicago so that when they meet people they can say “I’m from Chicago.” Dig it! There should be one for Detroit too (Grosse Pointers, Bloomfield Hillsians, etc., I’m looking at you!).