walk in the woods

It is a rather curious thing when court watchers can predict the votes of 8 or the 9 Justices before the case is actually heard (and at least one Justice telegraphed her vote well in advance). Makes one wonder about the character of all of them. Maybe Kennedy is the only honest broker on the entire bench.!

Sorry, when the councils started ignoring the rules they didn't like all the rules went out the door.

Well, when I hear two different sets of rules I consider this from the FAQ attached to the resolution (FWIW, I pulled the doc from https://www.scoutsforequality.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Adult-Leadership-Standards-Update-and-Resources-for-Key-3.pdf because it doesn't seem to be on any BSA websites): 12. Will non-religious chartered organizations have an option in this matter? No, but as they always have, all chartered organizations will select their leaders and can require adult leaders to demonstrate behavior that exemplifies the highest level of good conduct and respect for others. For example, units chartered by the American Legion may allow only veterans to serve as Scoutmasters. As a result, "Friends of" or home school associations or other private organizations don't get local option.

Of course, if you read the document detailing why the decision now, the excessive cost of litigation is high list of reasons. So, if it's too expensive to defend the current policy now, why should a chartering organization believe the BSA won't decide it's too expensive to defend the new policy later? As Mary Poppins once said, it's a pie-crust promise, easily made, easily broken.

Well, if look at it from the Little Sisters perspective the government's argument goes something like this. "We acknowledge your deeply held concern that murdering children is wrong. Please sign this waiver stating your concern and we'll do the murdering for you." It's not about denying anybody anything, it's about standing for their beliefs. The Little Sisters have said no, the courts have said yes. Thus, we have a government court forcing a religious body to submit to a government demand that violates their religious beliefs.

No doubt, this has gotten silly. Just a quick search on http://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Founding-Fathers-and-Slavery-1269536 shows that Washington, Jefferson and Franklin (among others) were all slave holders. So clearly they all need to be taken off folding money, monuments in DC need to be taken down, and Washington and Jefferson should be blasted off Mt. Rushmore. We should also blast Lincoln off of Rushmore since he once said if he could save the union by not ending slavery he would. Clearly not a team player. Now, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade, the Portuguese, British, French and Dutch were all on the African side of the slave trade. Given that "we" were British colonies at the time, we clearly need to purge all references to any cultural activity of any of those four nationalities. Boycotts of tulips, champagne, Dr. Who (and other bad Brit TV) and corks are in order. Clearly the State Department should ban travel to all four. The same article references centuries of African enslavement by muslim countries so clearly the Nation of Islam must be banned as a racist organization.

Uh, the link I posted was from yesterday. The Little Sisters refused to sign the paperwork to allow the government to provide abortifacients in their name. The courts ruled that wasn't allowed under their first amendment rights. Here's the key word and tricky phrase: While recognizing the sincerity of the sisters’ claim, the Court ruled that the accommodation “does not substantially burden their religious exercise under RFRA or infringe upon their First Amendment rights.†And who gets to define substantial burden? Well, the government of course!

So much for courts not ruling against religious organizations http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/obama-beats-the-nuns-on-contraception/398519/

Fair enough. Substitute "Traditional and Progressive" or "Inclusive and Exclusive" or whatever words you like in my previous thought. Regardless of the words the BSA has created two classes of units now. The argument still holds. For example, the FAQ said an American Legion post could still require SMs to be vets. Well, there are straight vets, gay vets, and atheist vets. Only two-thirds can be Scoutmasters?

Why not say? We all know what the other G's represent. The US SECDEF just ordered a review for how to integrate openly transgender members into service in the US Armed Services. How many times have articles referenced Gates' role in ending DADT? Now that the BSA has created, or is about to create, a religious and non-religious class of units, it will create the crack Athiests need. Along with the abandonment of that G as a requirement in the rest of the scouting world. Sometimes the honorable thing to do is just say no. Two saying come to mind. - Every improvement is a change, but not every change is an improvement - If all your friends jumped off a bridge would you jump to?

As my friends on the left are so fond of saying, your values are your values and you shouldn't try to force them on anybody else. The fact that you chose to stay in spite of disagreeing with the policy has no bearing on the value systems and/or decisions of others. Your understanding isn't required, just your tolerance for those with a different opinion. Unless of course you are trying to force people to change their value systems. See above. Plus, both of your arguments suffer from the assumptions that service to the BSA is the only way to serve boys and that the BSA's program is the only way to develop young men. Both are false. The forces of change have won the day and on July 28th those forces will need to stand and deliver. Revolution is a funny thing. Once won, the hard work of leading begins. Time will tell how that works out.

I don't really have a dog in the hunt and don't really care about gay scoutmasters. I do care about American leftist's tendency towards scorched earth against anything and anyone they oppose. I once took an oath to "defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic" and we have some domestic "enemies" these days, including our own government, in regards to portions of the first amendment (and the 2nd and 4th but those are another discussion ). Let's be honest, there will be no respite for the BSA until their policy reads, "all units must accept otherwise qualified gay adults." So, regarding this particular issue I don't believe anything will change on July 28th. In fact, I suspect the pressure will only increase. If I was a betting man I'd put money on seeing the first test case of a gay adult trying to join an LDS or Baptist unit before the summer of 2016, maybe even before the end of this year. And when it happens NBC and CNN will be blaring headlines about the bigotry of the BSA. Ending the Charter Org system is interesting. I'm not a BSA historian so others can let me know if I'm right or wrong, but, I think it's entrenched because it was the way the founders here got reticent organizations (like the LDS and Catholics) to join the movement to begin with. Ending it would likely end the BSA, certainly in regards to it's current size and scope. There are examples in the US of government-owned youth programs (4H) and organization-owned youth programs (GSUSA) but the transition would be difficult. Not the least of which would be convincing private charter organizations to transfer all their money and equipment to a BSA council.

It will be interesting to watch. Gates and Co. are pretty naïve if they think the social justice warriors will leave the BSA alone after the 27th. In the text from Zach Wahl's response on Scouts for Equality (below) you'll notice the explicit invocation of the local option as still imperfect: “Today’s announcement hopefully marks the beginning of the end of the Boy Scouts of America’s decades-old ban on gay leaders and parents like my two moms. In two weeks, the BSA’s national executive board will vote to ratify a resolution that has already been unanimously adopted by their executive committee. “For decades, the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on gay adults has stood as a towering example of explicit, institutional homophobia in one of America’s most important and recognizable civic organizations. While this policy change is not perfect—BSA’s religious chartering partners will be allowed to continue to discriminate against gay adults—it is difficult to overstate the importance of today’s announcement Here's another quote from Wahl's in WaPo: “This is a step in the right direction, but we’re still really concerned that there are still going to be groups that are going to be hostile to adult leaders,†Wahls said. The headline on slate.com "Boy Scouts Moves to Lift Ban on Gay Leaders, Will Continue to Allow Troops to Discriminate." The article also contains this quote: "Half measures are unacceptable and discriminatory exemptions have no place in the Boy Scouts," Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the national LGBT-rights group, said in a statement. "It's long overdue that BSA leaders demonstrate true leadership and embrace a full national policy of inclusion." The headline on CBS (cbsnews.com), "Boy Scouts move closer to ending ban on gay adult leaders." (Italics are mine) This resolution may resolve the hiring issue and it will make liberal groups feel good, but it won't ease any pressure on money flow or anything else. .

Interesting that the linked document includes this language: The change under consideration would eliminate the BSA’s prohibition on gay leaders, but it would be consistent with the BSA’s current policy of allowing each religious chartered organization to select unit leaders. The change in the BSA policy would still allow units chartered by religious organizations that as a matter of religious belief consider homosexual conduct inconsistent with their religion to limit adult leadership in accordance with that belief. Units not chartered by religious organizations could not exclude homosexuals who otherwise meet the BSA’s high adult leader standards and the chartered organization’s standards.

So, an anatomical boy who thinks he's a girl can join GSUSA but an anatomical girl, who may have been a girl scout for years, gets kicked out if she decides she's a boy? http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/07/07/exclusive-the-girl-scouts-and-transgender-secrecy/

The saddest part is the Obama DOJ won't bother to investigate the city's culpability because they aren't actually interested in justice.

Unfortunately Stosh the weak majority will submit to the false safety of the government and will voluntarily turn over their and our liberty to tyranny willingly.

All this confederate talk is booooooorrring. Let's talk about the criminally negligent sanctuary city of San Francisco and the blood on their hands for the recent murder on pier 14. The entire city council and the mayor should be jailed as accessories to murder.

Was thinking about this a little last night. Ultimately I suppose it was a fight between liberal New England elitist and Southern Plantation Aristocracy. It is curious though that within 50 years of the end of the Civil War we had company towns springing up throughout the north. I wonder where Pullman, Steinway, Hershey, Carnegie, Morgan and Rockefeller came down on the war?

Hmmmm. Not only military tactics for scouting but since the original program, at least in the US, also drew from Native cultures and pioneer culture, would Scouting 2015 draw from "heros" and traditions of the last say 50 years? Astronauts? Web entreprenuers? Che Guevara? Long haired hippie freaks? Survivorman? Bear Grylls? Naked and Afraid? Gordon Gecko? The mind races. Wall Street scouts would at least have a uniform !

I was hiking in the Porkies a couple of weeks ago (worth the trip if you are within striking distance of the UP btw) and ran into several groups of young people backpacking on the trail. I chatted with one group of young men (4 boy scout aged youth, 2 leaders I'd guess in their early to mid-20s). I asked if they were a scout group. As it turns out many of them were current/former scouts, but, they were with a separate "camp" program for the week, backpacking through the Porkies. I passed a similarly sized and aged group of young ladies as well. While researching a bit I found a few different YMCA programs that offered week-long camps that fit these groups description. On my "training" hikes I ran into a number of young people on the trails at a local state park. The Cub aged boys were almost always with the moms who were almost exclusively worried about mud and poison ivy. I say all that to suggest that the program might be less outdoorsy, if that's possible, at the Cub Scout level. I think the middle-school/high-school level could retain it's outdoor focus but it wouldn't be through monthly campouts with 30 boys in multiple patrols, but rather, more like small-group adventures on a less frequent basis. I also think weekly meetings would be shutdown rapidly with the slower pace of outings in favor of monthly meetings. I suspect advancement would be a thing of the past, replaced with just doing. And uniforms would certainly disappear, at least anything beyond a group t-shirt and jeans. In short, I think scouting 2015 would look a lot like Venturing, without the traditional oath and law.

I have a Garmin GPS 60. I enjoy being able to download the tracks to view on Google or Mapsource. Depending on conditions I get 2 or 3 days on fresh batteries. I used caltopo for the first time this summer. I likes being able to customize across boindaries. Not sure why I got contour lines in meters for a hike in MI though.

Sorry but IL has been run by the Chicago democratic political machine for decades. Oh we've had a couple of Republican governors but with the exception of two years our general assembly has been run by the same politican since 1984. He cut his teeth in old man Daley's machine. His daughter is the AG. Nothing happens in IL that hasn't been blessed by the democratic political elite in Chicago. That includes the gerrymandering of of congressional districts to eliminate conservatives to the advantage of connected elites. Of course we've lost representation in the last 3 or 4 census periods so they are pretty good at it. The good news is we have elected judges from the same political machine so the elites don't get much push back. FWIW, 10 dead 40+ wounded in Chicago last weekend. One of the deaths was the young son of a gang leader. The father had been arrested multiple times. No confederate battle flags, orange chargers or legal gun owners involved. Mayor bemoans lack of family values and judicial leniency as problems. Duh.

so basically you're saying SC is exactly the same as IL. and every other state in the union.

I suspect the left opposes the battle flag/navy jack for the same reason as their distaste for the Gadsden flag. Namely, those banners are used by those with a rebel/revolutionary streak who won't walk in lock step with the government or the current zeitgeist.