Tea Party Presidential Hopeful Ben Carson Busted Plagiarizing From ‘SocialismSucks.Net’

BuzzFeed is at it again. After calling attention to passages in Senator Rand Paul’s 2013 book, Government Bullies, that were lifted verbatim from a Heritage Foundation Study, the website is now honing in on Dr. Ben Carson’s 2012 book, America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great. 

Some of the segments of the book that BuzzFeed highlights all draw from an un-cited source: socialismsucks.net, a website that started in 2002 but is now down. Researching a cached page on Archive.org on the history of socialism reveals the multi-paragraph plagiarism. It includes this passage below, from Carson’s book:

Anytime you give to government the responsibility and authority to provide government-made jobs, old-age financial security, “free” health care, and “free” education and indoctrination of children, it will control the lives of the people who live under its jurisdiction, and individual liberty and freedom of choice are sacrificed.

Looks like Carson could’ve used a little more “indoctrination” in the art of not plagiarizing.

It doesn’t end there, though; BuzzFeed also found passages from The Five Thousand Year Leapby W. Cleon Skousen. If that name sounds familiar to you, that’s because Skousen’s books have made waves before (relevant part bolded):

The book, for the record, tells the “story of slavery” by quoting “historian” Fred Albert Shannon at length; on particular quotation talks of white boys who envy the freedom of black slave children, and described newly sold slaves as “a cheerful lot.” It also said that abolitionists spread false rumors about the mistreatment of black slaves, and states that “slave owners were the worst victims of the system.”

Arizona schools were pushing his book, The Five Thousand Year Leap, in 2014. Skousen was a byproduct of the absolute worst of the 1950s, and good god if that’s not saying something. This odious human being was an ardent supporter for the John Birch Society, a historical revisionist, a New World Order conspiracy theorist, and an end-times crackpot. This also isn’t the first time Carson has had a run in with Skousen’s books, either; he was shilling for The Naked Communist on Fox back in July.

Sealey Yates, a spokes person for Carson, told BuzzFeed that “If it is determined that additional citations or attribution are required, the appropriate revisions will be made in subsequent printings.”

Judging by the BuzzFeed article, they’re going to need a lot more attributions.

GOP plan to roll back trucking safeguards gets unwanted attention

Sometimes in legislating, timing is everything.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) championed a measure last week to roll back, at least temporarily, trucking-safety regulations intended to prevent highway accidents. Her proposal enjoyed the enthusiastic backing of the trucking industry, but drew sharp criticism from a trucking union, vehicle-safety advocates, a group called Parents Against Tired Truckers, and regulators at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

When Collins’ measure was taken up in committee last week, very few noticed. Yesterday, however, as NBC News’John Schoen explained, it’s the topic of considerable conversation now.

The New Jersey Turnpike crash involving an allegedly sleep-deprived Wal-Mart truck driver, in which comedian Tracy Morgan was injured and his friend killed, comes just days after the trucking industry won Senate support to roll back new rules designed to make sure truck drivers get enough rest. 

Kevin Roper, 35, was expected to appear in a New Jersey court on Monday on charges of vehicular homicide, assault and reckless driving in connection with the crash that killed one passenger and left Morgan and two others in critical condition. 

Roper had not slept for more than 24 hours before the accident, according to the complaint. 

The high-profile crash comes days after a Senate panel approved a proposal to roll back new rules, first proposed in 2010, forcing truck drivers to pull over and log a minimum number of hours for rest.The new regulations, which the Obama administration considers “common sense” safeguards, would require long-haul drivers to honor “hours-of-service” rules, working no more than 70 hours per week – down from 82. The regulations would also force drivers to follow “restart” rules that require at least 34 consecutive hours of downtime between work weeks.

Collins and the trucking industry want to suspend both measures for at least a year.

US: Judge rules against ‘gay cure’ therapy group, could force them to pay damages

A judge in New Jersey has ruled against a group which practiced ‘gay cure’ conversion therapy, ruling that they could be liable to pay damages to people affected.

Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH), which claim to be able to cure homosexuality, are the subject of multiple lawsuits over claims their therapy is harmful.

According to LGBTQ Nation, on Friday Superior Court Judge Peter Bariso ruled that JONAH could be liable to pay three times the therapy costs of four men, who say they were left with psychological damage after JONAH’s program.

According to court documents, as part of the therapy men were at points required to strip naked in front of each other, to beat an effigy of their mother, and to recite words said by people who had in the past abused them.

The Southern Poverty Law Center filed the lawsuit against the group, founder Arthur Goldberg and counselor Alan Downing in 2012, alleging they violated the Consumer Fraud Act.

Legal director David Dinielli said: “These self-proclaimed experts inflicted grave damage upon our clients, who believed JONAH’s claims that it could ‘cure’ them of being gay.”

“These young men were left with guilt, shame and frustration.

“No amount of money can fix the damage JONAH caused, but recognizing that JONAH can be held accountable for the cost of repairing that damage is an important step.”

The trial against JONAH is expected to take place next year.

Federal Judge Blasts Homophobic Tea Party Gov. Scott Walker: ‘Traditional’ Marriage Was Polygamy!

If you haven’t already heard, Wisconsin recently became the 27th state to potentially allow for gay marriages. US District Judge Barbara Crabb struck down Wisconsin’s same-sex marriage ban, crushing every argument proponents of the ban put before her.

“Because my review of that law convinces me that plaintiffs are entitled to the same treatment as any heterosexual couple, I conclude that the Wisconsin laws banning marriage between same-sex couples are unconstitutional.”

One such argument given was that the “traditional view of marriage — between a man and a woman — has been recognized for millennia.” Judge Crabb blasted this claim too, reminding anti-gay bigots that “traditionally” marriage has more often been polygamy.

“Throughout History, the most ‘traditional’ form of marriage has not been one man and one woman, but between one man and multiple women, which presumably is not a tradition that defendants and amici would like to continue.”

Boom! Crabb goes on to state that, while tradition cannot simply be ignored, “there are darker traditions as well, which later generations have rejected as denials of equality.” While slavery, segregation, and denying women the right to vote were all once tradition, we have thankfully progressed from those ideas.

Crabb’s 88-page ruling tears apart one argument after the other, stating that their hateful claims are “bewildering” and “harken back to objections to interracial marriage”. In an especially amusing part of the ruling, addressing the claim that allowing gay marriage would somehow cheapen or otherwise injure straight marriages, Judge Crabb slams their nonsensical bigotry once more:

“Neither defendants nor amici cite any evidence or even develop a cogent argument to support their belief that allowing same-sex couples to marry somehow will lead to the de-valuing of children in marriage or have some other adverse effect on the marriages of heterosexual couples. Thus, it is doubtful whether defendants’ belief even has a rational basis.“

Double boom! With judges like Crabb willing to call these anti-equality thugs on their unconstitutional crap, there’s real hope for equal rights in the near future.Congratulations to all our fellow LGBT allies in Wisconsin!

GOP candidate runs into voter-ID problem in Arkansas

When voting-rights advocates complain about voter-ID laws as an unnecessary suppression policy, the right generally responds with rhetoric that might seem sensible: “everyone” already carries identification, so these laws are no big deal and the left’s concerns are exaggerated.

Evidence to the contrary is fairly common, and once in a while, even amusing.

Asa Hutchinson, who won the Republican nomination in the race for Arkansas governor Tuesday, forgot his ID when he went to the polls, despite backing the state’s new voter ID law, according to the Associated Press.

Christian Olson, a spokesman for the Republican candidate, told the AP that Hutchinson believed the situation was a “little bit of an inconvenience” and that a staffer retrieved his ID so he could cast a ballot. Olson said the former congressman still believes voters should be required to show an ID.

The larger takeaway from this should be obvious.

As the Arkansas Times’ Max Brantley explained, “Such an episode is an all-too-human reminder of how the law can be an impediment to the franchise. Hutchinson is a successful lawyer with an entourage and the day off to politic. He was going to get a ballot cast yesterday. The hourly factory worker trying to cast a ballot in the midst of a long commute to work who left his license back at the house? He might have a harder time setting things right. Never mind those who don’t have a valid ID at all and no ready means to get to the county clerk’s office to get one.”

Indeed, in this case, the gubernatorial candidate – the one who supports blocking voters from participating in their own democracy unless they show identification they never had to produce before in order to cast a ballot – dispatched an aide to go back to his law office to fetch his ID.

Ask yourself: how many voters usually go to their local precinct with paid staffers in tow?

What’s more, as Republicans impose new voter-ID requirements in states nationwide, all to address a fraud problem that doesn’t exist in reality, problems become more common.

In North Carolina recently, the new voting restrictions caused quite a bit of confusion. Not long beforehand, Texas’ state attorney general was temporarily disenfranchised by his own voter-ID law.

We’ve seen a judge nearly blocked from voting because the name on her ID didn’t match closely enough with the name on the voting rolls, and we’ve seen a former U.S. Speaker of the House get turned down for a voter ID.

None of this is necessary. Voter-ID laws, which have struggled recently in the courts, are a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, and creating new problems that didn’t used to exist.

In Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson was able to finally vote after one of his employees gave him a hand, and he went on to easily win his gubernatorial primary. But the fact that he was delayed from casting a ballot should have given him new insights into what might happen to others – most of whom don’t cast ballots while surrounded by aides.

“Conservative Republican” ran Cincinnati IRS office that investigated Tea Party

It was reveled Sunday, to little fanfare, that, far from the IRS investigation of Tea Party groups being a massive liberal plot, in fact, the man who runs the IRS’ Cincinnati field office, that targeted the Tea Party, is a “conservative Republican.”
Oops.
GOP Congressman Darrel Issa, who is running the Republican party’s Inquisition over the IRS brouhaha, has refused to date to release the full transcripts of his committees interviews with the local IRS employees.
Instead, Issa has been cherry-picking what information to release, in the same way congressional Republicans tried to leak, piecemeal, (fake) emails from the Obama White House about the Benghazi attack, in an effort to distort what actually happened.  It wasn’t until the full email record was released that we found out the GOP smaller leaks were a fake.
Thus, there’s a lot of concern out there about what Issa is hiding, and why he won’t release the full transcripts of the interviews his committee conducted with IRS employees about this issue.

What’s not to trust about a 59 year old guy
without a single gray hair?

Issa is being so tight-lipped about information surrounding these accusations, that he refuses to even fully explain his accusations of White House wrongdoing, let alone prove them.  For example, Issa recently accused White House spokesman Jay Carney of being a “paid liar” about the IRS investigation.  But when asked to explain what Carney actually lied about, Issa fell silent.
Issa has been so silent about details and proof that it’s almost looking as if Cong. Issa is sitting in the middle of his own conspiracy of deception.
And now we learn, via Cong. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), that additional transcripts show the head of the Cincinnati office to be a self-proclaimed “conservative Republican,” which appears to directly contradict Cong. Issa’s claims that Democrats coordinated the entire investigation.
More from CNN on just how much the new transcripts undercut Issa’s unsubstantiated claims: