Good Morning!
I thought I’d start the day with some uplifting reads! This one from Seattle is wonderful!
A large pod of orcas swam around a Washington state ferry in an impressive display as it happened to be carrying tribal artifacts to a new museum at the ancestral home of Chief Seattle, and some people think it was more than a coincidence.
Killer whales have been thrilling whale watchers this week in Puget Sound, according to the Orca Network, which tracks sightings.
But they were especially exciting Tuesday when nearly three-dozen orcas surrounded the ferry from Seattle as it approached the terminal on Bainbridge Island. On board were officials from The Burke Museum in Seattle who were moving ancient artifacts to the Suquamish Museum.
The artifacts were dug up nearly 60 years ago from the site of the Old Man House, the winter village for the Suquamish tribe and home of Chief Sealth, also known as Chief Seattle. The Burke, a natural history museum on the University of Washington campus, is known for Northwest Coast and Alaska Native art.
Also on board the state ferry was Suquamish Tribal Chairman Leonard Forsman who happened to be returning from an unrelated event. As the ferry slowed near the terminal, it was surrounded by the orcas, Forsman said Wednesday.
“They were pretty happily splashing around, flipping their tails in the water,” he said. “We believe they were welcoming the artifacts home as they made their way back from Seattle, back to the reservation.”
The city of Heracleion sank into the ocean in the 6th or 7th centuray AD and has recently been uncovered. This blog writer has a round up of some pretty 
amazing pictures and stories. This city is known as the city of Cleopatra.
I can’t imagine how cool it must be to be an underwater archaeologist. If I’d have known this was a possibility when I was a teenager I would have had a different life. I started diving at about 14 and have Egypt has always held my imagination. I’ve written about this before but it seems that a lot more has been accomplished.
Thonis-Heracleion (the Egyptian and Greek names of the city) is a city lost between legend and reality. Before the foundation of Alexandria in 331 BC, the city knew glorious times as the obligatory port of entry to Egypt for all ships coming from the Greek world. It had also a religious importance because of the temple of Amun, which played an important role in rites associated with dynasty continuity. The city was founded probably around the 8th century BC, underwent diverse natural catastrophes, and finally sunk entirely into the depths of the Mediterranean in the 8th century AD.
Prior to its discovery in 2000 by the IEASM, no trace of Thonis-Heracleion had been found. Its name was almost razed from the memory of mankind, only preserved in ancient classic texts and rare inscriptions found on land by archaeologists. The Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC) tells us of a great temple that was built where the famous hero Herakles first set foot on to Egypt. He also reports of Helen’s visit to Heracleion with her lover Paris before the Trojan War. More than four centuries after Herodotus’ visit to Egypt, the geographer Strabo observed that the city of Heracleion, which possessed the temple of Herakles, is located straight to the east of Canopus at the mouth of the Canopic branch of the River Nile.
The Senate vote on making discrimination against GLBT in the workplace is really going to show the split in the Republican party. The discussion is about as bad–if not worse–than it was around the ERA. Drag Queens in Christian Book Stores! Federally Subsidized Sex Change Operations! Dogs and Cats having sex in the street!!!!
The anticipated vote comes four months after the Supreme Court invalidated a federal ban on recognizing same-sex marriages, and nearly a year after some conservative leaders warned that losses in the 2012 elections exposed the party as being out of touch with much of the country on social issues.
With the bill apparently just one vote short of the threshold to prevent a filibuster, the Republican senators believed to be the most persuadable — Rob Portman of Ohio, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Dean Heller of Nevada — were keeping their positions private.
Political strategists and congressional aides who have been lobbying for the bill say they have received private assurances that there will be enough Republican votes to move the measure forward on Monday, but none of the senators who plan to support it want to say so publicly out of concern that they could become targets by groups opposing the measure.
In the House, the best chance for passage this year seems to be to tack the measure onto a larger piece of legislation like the National Defense Authorization Act and hope that conservatives do not revolt.
“If you’ve been told your entire career that Republican primary voters are hostile on these issues, and people have only just started to educate you otherwise,” said Jeff Cook-McCormac, a Republican lobbyist who has been pushing to get the bill enacted, “it takes a little while for that to sink in.”
While opposition appears less organized than in previous gay rights debates in Congress, senators of both parties said the emotion surrounding the issue had complicated efforts to break a Republican filibuster attempt.
One senator recalled having to explain to a colleague that the legislation would not require insurance companies to pay for sex-change operations. Another spoke of phone calls from constituents who were convinced that their children could be taught in school by men wearing dresses. And conservative groups like the Family Research Council are warning their supporters that the bill would force Christian bookstores to hire drag performers.
We continue to learn exactly how important appointments to the judicial branch are as we see women judges–appointed by Dubya–vote to place women in 
involuntary servitude to the state.
It’s been a day of body blows for reproductive rights. On Thursday night, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reversed a lower court’s decision to temporarily block a provision of the omnibus Texas abortion law that requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. The appeals court found that it’s constitutionally OK for the requirement to trigger the closure of fully one-third of the reproductive health clinics in the state, because the Supreme Court has found that “the incidental effect of making it more difficult or more expensive to procure an abortion cannot be enough to invalidate it.” The ruling will be catastrophic, measured in access for women to a procedure they have the constitutional right to obtain. The decision was written by Judge Priscilla R. Owen, a George W. Bush appointee, and joined by two other judges who are women—oh how the right is crowing—and also Bush appointees.
Similar admitting privileges provisions have been struck down by courts in Alabama, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. Judges in each of those cases saw these abortion restrictions for what they are—unconstitutional burdens on the right to access—and blocked them.
On Friday, morning, it was the turn of another extremely conservative woman chosen for the bench by Bush, Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Brown handed down a similarly dramatic decisionholding that the provision in the Affordable Care Act that requires companies to provide health care coverage that includes contraception “trammels” the religious freedom of an Ohio-based food service company, Freshway Foods, through its two owners, who claimed that the mandate violated its Catholic faith. This is a company we are talking about, not its owners. But following headlong in the wake of the Supreme Court’s wrongheaded finding in Citizens United that corporations are people, too, Brown found that the mandate violates the company’s strongly held religious convictions. To make the company provide a health care plan—from an outside insurer—that offers contraceptive coverage is a “compel[led] affirmation of a repugnant belief,” Brown wrote. The argument that a for-profit secular company has a religious conscience—separate and apart from the religious beliefs of its owners—is a notion that vaults the concept of personhood from the silly (“corporations are people, my friend”) to the sublime (also they pray).
It’s hard to overstate how radical these two decisions are. So it should be especially dispiriting for the left that the other really big thing that happened Thursday was the filibuster by Senate Republicans of Patricia Ann Millett, Obama’s centrist nominee to fill a vacancy on the D.C. Circuit, despite her exemplary credentials. Millett is no radical—no lefty retort to Owen and Brown. She’s a partner at Akin Gump who worked in the solicitor general’s office for both Clinton and Bush and has represented the pro-business U.S. Chamber of Commerce. She’s a military wife. That didn’t stop Republicans from claiming that simply by putting up a judicial nominee of his choosing, President Obama was attempting the “pack the court.”
Please Mr. President!!!! Pack the Court with less theocrats!!!
Governor Chris Christie is “tired of you people!” ”You people” would be teachers trying to do right by their students. He called schools “failure factories”.
New Jersey’s governor, Chris Christie, has a long history of teacher bashing – not just teachers union bashing, but teacher bashing. Even when he’s clearly in the lead, he can’t help himself: he has to take a swipe at teachers whenever he can. It’s almost pathological: even when he’s up by a sizable margin, Chris Christie just can’t turn down a chance to bash a teacher who gets too uppity – as he proved today”
Just think! He’s the one they all think is mainstream!!! Go read the interview with the teacher at the receiving end of his bullying.
Senator Charles Schumer has just endorsed Hillary Clinton for 2016. Wow! That’s getting things started a little early.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, used a speech to Iowa Democrats on Saturday night to endorse Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, another indication of how quickly the party is coalescing behind the former secretary of state.
Speaking in the state that helped lift President Obama’s campaign and dashed Mrs. Clinton’s hopes in the 2008 caucuses, Mr. Schumer said the time was right that year for Mr. Obama.
“2016 is Hillary’s time,” Mr. Schumer declared at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson Jackson Dinner. “And our nation will be all the better for it.”
While Mr. Schumer’s support for his former Senate colleague was not surprising, his endorsement one year after the 2012 presidential election underscores how much the Democratic Party elders want Mrs. Clinton to enter the race.
With Mr. Obama’s popularity waning, many party officials also want to try to clear the field for the former first lady in 2016. Last week, it was revealed that every Democratic woman in the Senate had signed a letter supporting Mrs. Clinton, a former senator from New York. She has not yet indicated her 2016 plans.
An aide to Mr. Schumer said his endorsement in such a high-profile venue had not come at Mrs. Clinton’s request.
“Run, Hillary, run,” Mr. Schumer said. “If you run, you’ll win and we’ll all win. With a strong platform and with Hillary leading the charge, we will vanquish the Ted Cruz Tea Party Republicans in 2016.”
Whoa! So, that’s it for me this morning! What’s on your reading and blogging list today?