I got a speeding ticket from the thought police

First, some housekeeping: in the last 6 months, I have completed courses for a digital photo and video certificate through my local tech school, which should improve employment prospects; unfortunately, it also put a moratorium on job searching while I've been stuck in place. But done now: woo! I've also been promoted to full-time as a newspaper copy editor, which is a welcome development, and spent several months as a freelance writer on Elance before gradually backing out due to coursework and increased work hours; I may return now that classes are done.

I've not been posting much, obviously, in part because for a while I took a break from following much of the news (as much as one can while working as a copy editor). I think I was a little burned out after the high-grain focus of the govt. shutdown and Healthcare.gov rollout (I think I intended to write a blog post about that; at any rate, I had a draft with no text but the title 'who left the three stooges in charge' when I opened blogger after my long hiatus), and I've also been much more engaged in following local politics; our city government in general and mayor in particular have been up to shenanigans, most of which have been exposed and reported by us. In any case, I've lately been getting back on the horse, as it were, and resuming my regular perusal of national and international news, and once again am starting to encounter thorny issues about which I need to ponder. And as always, one of the best ways to test my own thinking is to write about it and see if my thinking holds up.

There are three recent incidents that I've been pondering: the brief and tumultuous tenure of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich; the racist spurging and subsequent ostracization of LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling, and the homophobic tweeting and shunning of Miami Dolphins player Don Jones. The third will undoubtably be a flash in the pan, and I'll not be surprised if the Wikipedia section I linked to is gone in short order, but it was big enough news to make it onto Google, and it ties into the other two.

The questions I'm puzzling over are to what extent, if any, the consequences these three gentlemen have faced for their positions are just, and whether or if at all their rights (moral, rather than legal) have been abrogated. I'm certainly far from the only one who is connecting these dots and asking these questions, but I've yet to see anyone come up with a result I'm fully satisfied with, so let's see if I can do better.

Why beat up the middleman?

So a few days ago at work, while I was pulling state wire stories, I came across one about an administrative ruling approving Enbridge to expand a pipeline across Northern MN and into Wisconsin. This MJS story is not the exact story I was looking at, but is on the same approximate topic and will serve to give readers an idea what's going on.

These WI/MN pipelines have been at a low burn for months or years; they make regular if unspectacular appearances on the AP wire, and I'm sure they are widely ignored by all readers save those already emotionally invested in the issue of pipelines. And even those readers likely give the issue short shrift when compared with the granddaddy of all pipeline issues: Keystone XL.

Keystone XL, of course, has been all over the news for years, and is hotly opposed by environmentalists and conservationalists across the country. Here is just one of the many articles, op-eds and treatises written to express that opposition. And I will admit that for a long time, I reflexively agreed with them, on the general assumption that oil is bad, oil companies are bad, we should fight them on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets. I've been thinking more about it, a process catalyzed by the AP story I came across at work, and I'm no longer sure that's the case.