Jenksismyhero

QUOTE (juddling @ Mar 30, 2015 -> 09:02 AM) It moved a lot of pieces around for next season but that was about it. I liked the episode.....over all a pretty good season....hope they can keep it up next season Still, good finale and a pretty good season overall. Here's to hoping the spin off actually develops some characters and a storyline that doesn't revolve around the same tropes over and over again.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Mar 27, 2015 -> 04:56 PM) Why? What has Kenny Battle done to deserve an Asst. Coaching job? Bill Self didn't have any former players recruiting for him. Jimmy Collins wasn't an Illinois alum. What makes a former player uniquely qualified to recruit and coach at Illinois? And the complaints about recruiting seem overblown to me. This year, barring whatever happens with late signings, Illinois has the 2nd best class in the B1G. I know there isn't a PG in that class, but there is a top 40 player from Indiana - a guy who Illinois was never supposed to have a chance with because no Illinois coach ever landed a meaningful player from Indiana. Until the last 2.5 games of this season, was motivation, or guys not bleeding orange and blue a problem? If you want to complain about x's and o's, fine. Do that. But I fail to see why Kenny Battle is qualified to improve the staff there. Or why a guy who, to my knowledge has never recruited before (or with Deon or Roger ever successfully recruited at a high level) is going to make a huge impact on recruiting because he was a part of a famous Illinois team. This is and has been a rebuild. The talent in the program is on the way up. If the results on the court don't follow in the next year or two, then Groce will be done at Illinois. But I just don't understand why being on the '89 or '05 team makes someone uniquely qualified to lock down Chicago. I don't see the talent in the program being much higher than with Weber. Yeah, better than the last couple of years maybe, but overall Weber had the same types of 75-100 rated recruits as Hill/Nunn. JCL is the first really good recruit, but Bruce got Richmond and Leonard. Shoot, even the hind-sight terrible Abrams/Egwu/Henry/Shaw was top 15 in the country at the time. And I think having guys that sell the program is big, especially if the message is keeping Illinois guys home. You don't think someone like Dee would be an asset? It's the same reason they just hired Juice for the football program. You want to make inroads with Illinois kids and the best way to do it is using recruiters who were in the program and can really sell it. An asst coach selling the school when he's been here for 2-3 years doesn't work as well, IMO. I think Deon Thomas and Kenny Battle and those guys have some credibility throughout Chicagoland. Maybe not with the players directly but with their coaches, parents, etc. who remember who they are and what they did.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 08:29 AM) Kenny Battle comments on the current frustration surrounding Illinois program: http://m1.qconline.com/article.html#!/...e5f6780921abf77 100% agree with him. It's time Deon, Kenny, SOMEONE from those great Illinois teams gets a spot on the bench. Someone that bleeds orange and blue and can sell it. And can also coach them to be a good, physical team.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Mar 27, 2015 -> 02:26 PM) Elite Eight Memories: The Heart-Stopping 2005 Arizona-Illinois Showdown, 10 Years Later 10 years ago, sigh. After the 2005 sports year, I never thought the Illini and White Sox would combine for 4 postseason wins in the following 10 years. I thought both were signs of "we're here to stay for a good while." How f***ing wrong was that.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 27, 2015 -> 12:45 PM) Just to stress since lots of the garbage media is ignoring this; most people with depression, even most pilots with depression, do not crash planes into mountains. Most people do not have to inform their employers about personal issues or illnesses or even mental problems. Interesting viewpoint given your opinions on guns and how everyone with them is a menace to society capable of killing.

Wonder if this lets the airline evade liability. If this dude was hiding his medical condition from the employer, and he committed a crime, not sure how you can hold the airline liable for the crash. Obviously the families will sue under a theory that their protocols were not sufficient. I suppose that could be enough.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 11:11 PM) well Indiana's pro-bigotry law is markedly different in that it allows for bigotry between private parties. For everything wrong with the federal RFRA, it at least only control interactions with the state. the federal case that provoked the RFRA was Employment v Smith The fun part of the RFRA, which has been touched on in this thread, is that it essentially requires the court to accept any and all "religious objections" or get into the business of courts deciding which religious beliefs are genuine or not. Courts do this all the time anyway when it comes to accommodation cases. It's not a difficult analysis. This is what I hate about journalism and the law. It's incredibly easy to write headlines and articles about how terrible X decision/law will be because you don't actually have to present a case like you would in court. You can use broad generalizations and hypotheticals. People don't win lawsuits just because they file the paperwork. It's not a simple process. This doesn't open the door to mass discrimination of gay people or any other people. It'll be successful in a small number of cases, just like the Hobby Lobby ruling. Specific circumstances, not general applicability.

QUOTE (buhbuhburrrrlz @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 11:03 PM)

Rogers and Munn there cheering the Bdagers. Thats pretty cool.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Mar 24, 2015 -> 10:43 PM) I'd up your calorie intake for a bit. 1500 a day at 222 is ridiculously low so your metabolism is probably all out of whack at the moment. I might try that. I have cheat days built in, usually on a friday/saturday, when i eat like 2000. For a while I thought that did the trick of regulating my metabolism, but apparently not. I did drop a lb the last few days after being more strict than I was the last couple of weeks, so maybe i've been cheating more than I thought during the day.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 04:00 PM) There are 29 states where right now it is legal for an average employer to fire someone for no other reason than finding out they're gay. Or deny them housing for being gay. That is not being "close". Do we have numbers for how many people have been fired for that in the last few years? Obviously a difficult number to quantify, but just because employers have the right to under the law doesn't mean they are. And employes also can fire people/not hire people/not give them housing for being ugly, fat, having bad teeth, having a weird voice, being a weird person in general, etc. That's mostly all unavoidable/unchangeable as well. Should we be adding groups to the list of protected classes?

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 02:57 PM) To clarify, as stated in my post, according to the Wikipedia article, that day, each Chik-fil-A saw a 29.9% percent increase in sales on average for that day of the week. Based on Huckabee's anti-LGBT message. Society hasn't gotten to the point your posts have suggested. Furthermore, at what point does a law passed with discriminatory intent toward a minority group actually concern you? Does the vast majority of the country have the same views as Fox News? The numbers would suggest yes since they crush the ratings, but we know that's not true. He galvanized a group of people. You don't think the LGBT community does the same? I'm not pretending like there still aren't homophobs out there, but we aren't even in the same ball park as 10 years ago. It would concern me when the law has nothing to do with the protection of another constitutional right.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 02:15 PM) Jenks - here's the point I don't think you have addressed yet. I'm not clear if you are arguing that society, today, would run off discriminatory businesses that refuse to cater to LGBT individuals, or if you are referring to a "perfect" world distinguishable from ours. If it's the former, then I ask: 1) Why did Indiana (and other states) push this bill (and others like it) if not to allow small businesses to discriminate against the LGBT community? And doesn't that support necessarily run counter to your position. 2) As evidence of the above, according to Wikipedia, when Mike Huckabee organized that "Chick-fil-a Appreciation Day" in response to criticism of the franchise from same sex marriage supporters, more than 600,000 people RSVP'd to the event on Facebook, and a consulting firm projected that the average Chick-fil-a saw sales increase by 29.9% that day. Lots of progress has been made on LGBT issues since the 90s, but there is a long, long way to go before it reaches a point were it's not profitable for businesses to discriminate against the LGBT community throughout the US. Edit to include the Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-A_s...age_controversy I'm saying we're close. Probably not there yet for every type of person that could be discriminated against, but far enough towards it that i'm not sure how big a deal it would really be. You're always going to have people that are racist, homophobic, anti-religious group, whatever. So are we at a point where there is a concern that there will be a massive discriminatory push towards those groups ala the 1960's? No, I think we're well beyond that point. You would think the country would have gone all anti-Islam over the last 15 years, but we really haven't. Some nut jobs here and there, but not for the vast, vast majority of people. As to this law, I'm not some huge supporter of it. I'm actually against it more because it's just a waste of paper more than it being intentionally discriminatory towards a group. However, I will say that like the gay person at the copy shop example, if you vehemently disagree with someone or something about a person, you should, as a private person and business owner, be free to not serve that person. You can do that for literally millions of reason but a select few. Obviously the select few have a history of discrimination, but again, looking at the situation in 2015, are those protections necessary? If they are, what about in 10 more years? At some point, the fear of going back to 1960's segregation just doesn't exist. And if it does, enact new protection laws if you must. And no, even if this was pushed by some anti-gay intent, that doesn't really concern me. It's an incredibly small group that would ever be able to use this law as a shield from lawsuits. And we pass bills all the time that are supported by and/or intended for only a small minority of people. As to Chik-fil-a, they got a bunch of supporters (600k people clicking their mouse on the internet) out of how many millions of customers a day? I mean I think they're a perfect example supporting my theory here: they're openly Christian, they're openly against gay marriage, yet they've never shut their doors to the gay community even though in some states they'd be entirely within their rights to do so. There's too much at stake now for them to do that.

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 02:09 PM) That's some shaky ground. A belief loses popularity and suddenly isn't protected anymore... You're suggesting no limits at all? There has to be something, somewhere. Otherwise people would claim religious practice for any act that might violate a law. Speeding? I'm a devote follower of the God of Sound and i'm mandated to travel as closely to the speed of sound as possible. Drugs? I'm a follower of The White Powder Order, which requires me to do 5 bumps every day at work. The list goes on.

QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 02:04 PM) The bolded factors are legally irrelevant, at least with respect to religious accommodation under Title VII. The EEOC's official position is that religious beliefs can be "unique to an individual," so long as they are "sincerely held." Evidence as to what others believe is not necessary, given the "intensely personal characteristics of adherence to religious belief." http://eeoc.gov/policy/docs/religion.html#_Toc203359487 At some point the court has to decide whether your religious practice is a religious belief or a personal preference, as that link points out. An easy way to do that is if you and a billion others like you follow the same practice, versus you being the only one. I'd argue it would still be relevant to any analysis.

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 02:01 PM) Of course you can claim that. The government will respond that it has a legitimate interest in prohibiting slavery and personal executioners that override your claim. This would be wildly unfair to people with minority beliefs that simply aren't popular or established within a formal religious framework. This particular IN law is written vaguely like the federal law, but some of its supporters are clearly acting as if it has powers to allow discrimination (and want it to do so). I'm saying that wouldn't be a very realistic or believable claim. How popular the practice/belief is will be a factor to consider in determining the credibility/severity of the belief in question.

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 01:44 PM) Does it matter? Does a religious belief need a certain level of popularity before it becomes protected? Sure it does. You can't very well claim that I can sell my slave or stone someone to death as per my Christian practice when no one does that. Its a factor to consider. Again, sure you can. How many times have you said X. Do you teach it? Does your church teach it? How long has the belief been held, etc. etc. It'll be a factual analysis, and it's going to be on the Plaintiff to establish it. Again, the federal government already protects religious practice. The states are just molding these laws after the federal law. So there is case law on the books about what constitutes religious practice and what types of practice deserve protection, or at least factors to consider in making that analysis. They have, but I think there are far more supporters of gay people as well these days. I seriously doubt in most areas that someone screaming from the roof tops that gays won't be allowed would result in streams of people lining up to shop/eat there. So fine, we're not there YET. Again, this is my perfect world where that stuff is a minority opinion, which is the trajectory we're on.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 01:41 PM) I think the distinction is everything. Being able to treat people differently for any reason is discrimination and de facto segregation. But only about 6-7 reasons make it a violation of the law. Anything else is fair game.

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 01:32 PM) So your analogy fails. It's not about content. If a gay business owner discriminated against a person purely because they were a Christian, yes, they would be in violation of the law. And i'm saying given what they know about the person and what they intend to do, they should be able to say go jump in a lake.

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 01:30 PM) I don't see how you can argue that "God wants the races separate" isn't an established religious belief. Serving black people would be as much a violation to people with that belief as serving gay people would be to a strongly anti-gay Christian. How can we expect the courts to just arbitrarily decide which beliefs count as legitimate? How many people practice it? How important is it to the religious traditions of Christianity? A court is going to decide that. They have in cases involving the use of federally banned drugs, facial hair of inmates, requests of inmates for prayer materials, etc. It's not some unknown issue. We can determine if someone's claim is credible or not to decide whether it would be a substantial burden. And for the third time, GOOD! Let someone make that claim. Let's see Twitter and 24/7 cable news do a story about the local restaurant that refuses to serve black people because he doesn't want to mix races. I mean look, I'm not sure if we're at that point yet, but we're sure as hell closer than we were in the 60's. I'm saying in a perfect world that would be the case.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 01:19 PM) And if you're looking for evidence that you're wrong, how many different states have now tried to pass "license to discriminate against the gay menace" bills. We ended this problem in the 60s because the law forced it to happen. It's the only reason it ended. Ignoring that lesson is ignoring reality and a defense of it happening. It's not ignoring a lesson, it's accepting that society has changed for the better. If anti-discrimination laws were eradicated you really believe "whites only" signs would be popping up everywhere?

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 01:18 PM) Anti-discrimination laws are about protecting the customer, not any content a customer might request. The gay people being rejected by bakers and florists aren't asking for any products that the businesses didn't already produce. So what? If i'm gay i'm sure as hell not wanting to serve a person like that. I should be able to tell the guy go f*** himself. But currently that person would be, arguably, in violation of the law for discrimination based on the customer's religion.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 01:15 PM) This analogy keeps getting used by people who don't understand these laws, and it is 100% wrong. There is no law that forces you to do something you do not already do as a business. You couldn't go into a Islam restaurant that doesn't serve alcohol and force them to serve you whiskey. You couldn't do it before, and you can't do it now. But what this new law does is allows an Islamic restaurant, even if you are ordering something that is on the menu, to say I will not serve you because you are Jewish, Christian, Hindu... whatever. I think this is a distinction without a difference. I'm not suggesting they have to do anything new, but they can be in violation of law for not serving people they might not want to serve due to religious practices. That's why this is incredibly narrow law that won't be applied very successfully in the vast majority of cases. If you're Christian and you're really against gay marriage, this affords you the protection of not being in violation of the law for refusing to work a gay wedding (arguably, who knows what the courts will say on that). The restaurant example really doesn't apply, I don't think, because what's the burden to the practice of Islam? Serving infidels food? And if that's the case, GOOD. That restaurant would rightly be outed and go out of business. Same with the photographer, hopefully. My other issue with these laws, currently, is that they clearly don't work if you read the papers. There's still a ton of discrimination in hiring. Wouldn't it be better to use the most powerful weapon we have, money, instead? If businesses are forced to go out of business for their discriminatory actions, good. Fear of losing your business is bigger than fear of getting sued every once and a while.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 01:11 PM) So you actually can't see where "I don't believe in miscegenation" is going to be the immediate reply with the specific example of this case? You can make that claim sure. But I have a hard time believing a person will successfully argue that service of a black person would be a substantial burden due to their disagreement with miscgenation. Is that even a commonly recognized issue these days? If not, just because you, individually, have that belief doesn't mean it falls under the religious practice/freedom umbrella. I'm confident a court's analysis would get to that conclusion given their past opinions on religious practices that are counter to federal laws. I get your guys' point. But I still think the best case scenario is that everyone can discriminate as they see fit, and let the world decide. Pointing back to the 1960's doesn't work anymore. We're far too PC to let anything like that continue on a massive scale.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Mar 26, 2015 -> 12:55 PM) Until the 1960s (when the federal government finally acted), society in the South was quite happy to allow its businesses to discriminate based on race. This isn't a perfect world and allowing "society" to determine if actions are acceptable allows the majority to trample the rights of the minority. 1) I said in a perfect world. A world that has progressed, much like ours has. It's not some uncommon thing to expect that some laws won't be necessary anymore. The SC has said as much with issues like affirmative action. 2) I'm not aware of any religion that would deem "being black" something that is an affront or objectionable under that religion. And before we go down the "well but yeah anyone can say their religion is whatever they want it to be" road, the SC has handled that numerous times in the past and rejected those attempts. Let's flip the switch here: a gay person runs a copy shop. A crazy, homophobic anti-gay religious person comes in and wants to order 1000 "death to queers" posters. I think that gay person should be able to say go jump in a lake. I don't think they HAVE to serve them. I don't think they SHOULD serve them. Even without the protection of religious freedom, they should be able to deny that service.