Tim Murphy

Reporter

Tim Murphy is a reporter in MoJo's DC bureau. Last summer he logged 22,000 miles while blogging about his cross-country road trip for Mother Jones. His writing has been featured in Slate and the Washington Monthly. Email him with tips and insights at tmurphy [at] motherjones [dot] com.

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Nooses and N-Words in East Texas

—By Tim Murphy

| Fri Apr. 16, 2010 2:39 PM PDT

Via the Texas Observer, this may be the feel-bad story of the day. Late last month, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charged a Paris, Texas, metal pipe factory with fostering a culture of Klan-era workplace intimidation (pdf), regularly harassing African-American workers with "unwelcome racial slurs, comments and intimidation, racial graffiti, nooses in the workplace and other symbols of discrimination." As one employee told the Dallas Morning News:

"I've been called colored boy, coon, monkey," said Dontrail Mathis, 33, a painter's helper at the plant in Paris who began highlighting racist conditions in December 2006. "When Obama won, they went off. My superiors said 'If he ain't white, it ain't right.'

"I saw nooses, swastikas on the wall," said Mathis, a father of three. "It was horrible."

When black employees—and a few white ones—approached management with their complaints, they were fired or ignored.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

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Florida Mulls Funding For Religious Schools

—By Tim Murphy

| Thu Apr. 15, 2010 12:02 PM PDT

Want your tax dollars to fund someone else's private-school, religious education? Move to Florida. Sunshine State conservatives are pushing a constitutional amendment for November that would repeal a 125-year ban on state funding for religious programs. Their argument is largely historical: the state constitution currently features what's known as a "Blaine Amendment," a relic of the anti-Catholic hysteria of the late 1800s (here's a terrifying illustration from Harper's) which prohibits any public funds for religious programs. Here's the language:

Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution to provide that an individual or entity may not be barred from participating in any public program because of religion and to delete the prohibition against using revenues from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.

The plan isn't as radical as it sounds—the Establishment Clause of the Constitution is still there, after all, so don't expect Gov. Charlie Crist to replace the law code with the Book of Leviticus any time soon. Beyond that, Florida's current statute is generally considered to be among the strictest in the union; a slight relaxation of the existing law probably wouldn't be so bad.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Gun Rally Too Extreme for Oath Keepers

—By Tim Murphy

| Wed Apr. 14, 2010 10:45 AM PDT

Oath Keepers, the controversial patriot group profiled in our March/April issue, is a national organization comprised of cops, firefighters, and soldiers who promise to disobey any order they personally consider unconstitutional. And while it's not the group's official line, at least some members say they are prepared to use force if that's what it comes to. So it's kind of a big deal for them to call someone else extreme.

But that's more or less the reason founder Stewart Rhodes has withdrawn Oath Keepers' name from a planned April 19 "Restore the Constitution" gun rally where Rhodes himself was slated to speak. Organized as an alternative to the Second Amendment March the same day in Washington, DC, this rally will be held in Fort Hunt, Virginia—which, unlike DC, allows people to show up toting firearms. The armed rally has come under fire for its timing and its aggresive tone: April 19 is a hallowed day in "patriot" circles, and not because of morning baseball; it's also the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, the siege at Waco, and the battles of Lexington and Concord (not to mention Oath Keepers' one-year anniversary). In a statement posted yesterday on the group's website, Rhodes attributed the decision to aggresive positions taken by other attendees of the event:

[B]ecause of published statements by some participants in the upcoming Virginia rally, Oath Keepers as an organization feels that a confrontational stance, such as has been published, places this event, in public perception, outside the terms of our stated and published mission...Confronting the government is not included in the Oath Keepers stated and published mission and as an educational organization focused on the current serving, Oath Keepers refrains from confrontation in deed and rhetoric.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Bob McDonnell's Next Target: Felon Voting Rights

—By Tim Murphy

| Mon Apr. 12, 2010 3:30 PM PDT

You can learn a lot about a political culture by how it approaches problems that don’t actually exist. For instance, while there's little evidence to suggest that rehabilitated felons exert an undue influence on our political process, many states have made registering to vote into the rough equivalent of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. If you're a former felon living in Mississippi, for example, you have to convince both houses of the state legislature to pass a bill specifically granting you the right to vote in state and local elections. Or, more likely, you won't even try—which is kind of the point. In Virginia, felons can vote only with the approval of the governor.

But don't worry, Virginia, because new Gov. Bob McDonnell is on the case. From the Washington Post:

McDonnell (R) will require the offenders to submit an essay outlining their contributions to society since their release, turning a nearly automatic process into a subjective one that some say may prevent poor, less-educated or minority residents from being allowed to vote.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

The Fowl Case Against HCR

—By Tim Murphy

| Mon Apr. 12, 2010 9:55 AM PDT

Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. United States Army Corps of Engineers is a nice little case about abandoned gravel pits, migratory birds, and the true meaning of the words "navigable waters." In a 5-4 decision in 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Water Act did not apply to man-made intrastate ponds (and their interstate migratory bird populations), and that Chicago-area towns could create a landfill on private property containing isolated bodies of stagnant water. Tough luck for environmental activists (not to mention the geese), but not exactly a landmark decision, either.

There the case rested, like the Ring of Power in the river Anduin, until late last month. That's when former Rep. Tom Campbell, the front-runner in the California GOP primary to take on Sen. Barbara Boxer, unveiled his constitutional argument against health care reform. In a blog post on his campaign site, Campbell suggests that the Supreme Court will use Solid Waste's narrow reading of the Commerce Clause to strike down the individual mandate:

In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal government’s attempt to exert jurisdiction under migratory bird legislation over man-made ponds. The federal government argued that the birds couldn’t tell if the ponds were man-made or not, and the availability of these ponds affected the interstate and international flight of migratory fowl. The Supreme Court held this was not sufficient for the federal government to exercise its jurisdiction. [The individual mandate] is a very close parallel to this statute.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]