March, 2013 archive
Profiles in Cowardice 0
Conservative chicken littles conspire for continuing concentration camp cruelty.
Robyn Blumner looks back:
Raw politics have stymied Obama’s efforts to close Bush’s Bastille. Congress has imposed completely unjustified restrictions on the movement of Guantanamo detainees to the United States for trial or even for repatriation or settlement in other nations. A Fox News echo chamber equates Guantanamo’s closure and detainee prosecutions in U.S. civil courts with being soft on terrorists, an absurd but effective allegation.
(snip)
Why would a nation whose moral authority as a world leader derives from its commitment to the rule of law and due process establish a parallel legal system for foreigners only, designed to bend whatever rules are necessary to obtain a conviction? Here’s why: Vice President Dick Cheney, his legal attack dog David Addington and apparatchik John Yoo saw military commissions as the culmination of the president’s king-like authority. The Bush administration wanted “a permanent legal structure under the president’s sole command,” Bravin writes, with the power of life and death.
What folks are loathe to mention–especially members of the professional punditocracy–is that the Bush Administration was not only corrupt and incompetent, it was also cruel and sadistic, filled with not nice people.
Read the rest.
Wingnuts Take the Plunge (into Chavez Ravine) 0
Nothing and no one tick off contemporary conservatives more than someone who cares about working people, the exploited, or other victims of society, and does something about it.
Apparently, the wingnut-o-sphere is irate that Google chose to honor Cesar Chavez.
Via Balloon Juice.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Be polite to your significant other.
One of the males, a 28-year-old, fired a shot, striking his own 22-year-old girlfriend in the neck.
She was transported to Episcopal Hospital where she was pronounced dead.
The boyfriend told police he shot her by accident.
Had she been packing heat, she could have shot him back by accident, thereby restoring the balance of politeness.
NCAA Roundball 0
Please, Lord, make it go away.
Michael Smerconish’s Goose Is Cookied 0
The radio talker and occasional newspaper columnist wonders why he is being stalked by the spirit of Ann Richards, late governor of Texas.
It all started when he visited the website of a play about her life . . . .
This is one reason I have my browser set to delete all new cookies upon exit.
Young and Stupid 0
Kids do stupid stuff.
I certainly did. To outward appearances, I was a well-behaved kid, but I was quite the surreptitious smartass.
I think that stealing a stop sign and dumping it in a deputy sheriff’s front yard for all to see would fall into the category of “stupid stuff,” even if the deputy was more qualified to be a bozo than a deputy and the disrespect was well-deserved.
But I did it under cover of darkness, stealthily, late at night, anonymously.
(Embarrassed, he remounted the sign to the post with roofing nails–roofing nails, for Pete’s sake. The intersection was not 15 yards from his house. The next night, we re-stole it and re-dumped it in his front yard.)
I must say, though, I never did stupid sexual stuff. Oh, I wanted to,* but I was not part of that crowd.
Now kids do stupid sexual stuff on the internet, where you can’t hide and it doesn’t go away.
Remember, the internet is a public place.
I can find you.
Anyone can find you.
_______________
*That’s the dirty little grown-up secret that grown-ups don’t want their kids to know.
They wanted to.
That’s why they know what their kids want and don’t want them to.
The Voter Fraud Fraud 0
The Booman nails the lie. A nugget (emphasis added):
Now, the Republicans and much of the press respond that this is just of flip side of the Democrats’ push for vote-by-mail, early voting, etc. But this is a representative democracy, and encouraging citizen participation is not the flip-side of discouraging citizen participation. They are not equally partisan exercises. One act is legitimate, and the other is illegitimate. One act helps people exercise their rights, and the other seeks to take away their rights.
Read the rest.
A Shadow of Mallards 0
These two lounged in the shade a few feet from my deck. As the shadow of the tree moved, they moved with it.
Facebook Frolics 0
Instead of a status update, a poke(y).
But investigators say he got greedy, stealing $3,100 over a span of five days. Then, police allege, Ogbanna got cute, posting photos of himself on Facebook holding up the money and writing how he loved his job.
“A Flightless Bird with Hairy Feathers” 0
Readers of the BC comic strip will recognize the reference.
Residents of western Pennsylvania may recognize the bird.
The Bigfoot of Beaver County, it turns out, is a bird.
“It looks like an ostrich,” Sgt. Becze said a man told him a week ago, when the first call came in for a sighting of an odd creature standing in the middle of Route 588.
It may look like an ostrich, but the bird that’s been rambling through North Sewickley is a rhea, another flightless bird.
It’s the rhea thing.
The Voter Fraud Fraud 1
In my local rag, Roger Chesley tells the story of one of the persons the Republican Party of Virginia wishes to disenfranchise. A nugget:
When that card expired in 2006, the state wouldn’t renew it. The 9/11 attacks brought stricter regulations.
Carter, who spoke to me by phone from her Richmond home, told me she had to contact a genealogist, research the 1940 census and request help from the federal government. The six-year effort finally ended in 2012, when her new documents passed state muster.
She testified about this before lawmakers debating photo ID legislation.
Carter had voted for years in Virginia with no problems. But if the state’s new photo ID law – signed this week by Gov. Bob McDonnell – had been in effect, she would’ve been turned away at the polls.
Virginians will have to start showing photo proof as of July 2014.
Read the rest.
The true “voter fraud” is the Republican Party’s campaign to gut out the vote.
Droning On 1
So now it’s an industry already?
A Bumper Crop 0
Steven D. asks a question.
QOTD 0
Charles F. Kettering:
In America we can say what we think, and even if we can’t think, we can say it anyhow.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Be polite to your neighbors.
(snip)
Residents who dialed 911 described a man walking through the neighborhood, shooting at homes.
