The Core 4

Dan Savage points out the idiocy of the fundamentalist arguments regarding homosexuality:

Boys are “made homosexual,” Pat Robertson says, “because of a coach or a guidance counselor or some other male figure… abused them.”

Who do you suppose is making homosexuals out of kids from fundamentalist Christian homes? Alen Keyes has a gay kid, Randal Terry has a gay kid, Dick Cheney has a gay kid, Phyllis Schafley has a gay kid…

Who’s raping all these Christian kids?

Not openly gay people. Fundamentalist Christian parents don’t allow their children hang out with openly gay men and women. Openly gay men do not get hired to work as a guidance counselors at fundamentalist Christian middle schools; out lesbians do not get hired to work as coaches at a fundamentalist Christian high schools; openly bi graduate students don’t get to serve as dorm captains at fundamentalist Christian colleges. So it isn’t out gay men and women—openly gay coaches and counselors and youth pastors—who are raping all these Christian kids and leaving them “confused” about their sexualities. Most fundamentalist Christian kids have never met an out gay or lesbian person. Which can only mean…

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Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As ‘Fun, Watchable’

BushCo had passed some midnight regulations in mid December as a gift to builders and developers.  It allowed government agencies to simply decide on their own if a given project would harm an endangered species.  No scientific oversight.  No investigation.  No gathering of evidence.  If a developer could get someone at the agency to simply decide in their favor, then they could lay waste to an area and not have to deal with those pesky scientists and their interfering knowledge.

Today, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that federal agencies will again be required to undergo scientific review on projects that could affect endangered species

“By rolling back this 11th hour regulation, we are ensuring that threatened and endangered species continue to receive the full protection of the law.  Because science must serve as the foundation for decisions we make, federal agencies proposing to take actions that might affect threatened and endangered species will once again have to consult with biologists at the two departments.”

Get that?  These guys want to actually use science as a foundation for making a decision!

“The United States does not torture people.” — George W. Bush, Oct. 5, 2007

Of course now we know that the United States in blatant violation of that quaint old Geneva Convention, does torture people. And witnessing the pretzel logic of the apologists and white-washers would be funny if it weren’t so damned tragic.

Unctuous Reagan fluffer, her highness Peggy Noonan in a ‘hear no evil, see no evil’ mewling:

It’s hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking oh much good will come of that. Sometimes in life you wanna’ just keep walkin’. … Don’t always be issuing papers and reports.

All that pesky evidence! Don’t always be presentin’ that evidence. Yes your honor, I did rob the bank and gun down the guards, but let’s just keep walkin’.

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2 Chickenhawks Talk Tough

Watching Hannity interview Cheney is kind of like watching Jerry Mahoney Knucklehead Smiff interview Paul Winchell. Maybe next time Slanity can mouth the scripted questions while sitting on the Dark Lord’s knee like the good wooden headed dummy he is.

Once again emerged from under his rock to protest the dangerous new president, Cheney calls to mind the ancient Tacitus quote:

Crime, once exposed has no refuge but in audacity.

Or the update on the same concept by Colonel Korn in Catch 22:

To act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of, that’s a trick that never seems to fail.

But the pressure appears to be building, and maybe for once it’s a trick that will fail. Particularly with today’s revelations on how we ramped up the torture desperate to prove the non-existent link between Al Queda and Iraq. Whatever it takes to justify Dick’s war. Sweat Dick. Sweat.

In America, this gets you three years in prison…

Bad Apple

But this gets you a life-time appointment to a Federal Court…

Patriot

March 14, 2003

Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee was confirmed yesterday as the newest judge of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Senators voted 74-19 to approve the president’s nomination of Bybee to succeed Judge Procter Hug Jr., who took senior status.

Both of California’s senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, voted against the nomination.

The other 17 no votes were cast by Democrats Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Jon Corzine and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Mark Dayton of Minnesota, Richard Durbin of Illinois, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Barbara Mikulski and Paul Sarbanes of Maryland, Patty Murray of Washington, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

Thank you Senator Schumer for supporting this creep. Almost as insightful as your greasing the skids for the travesty that was Mukasey.

Talk about sucking balls — in a cost cutting move, Faux News has taken over Fox Sports in this bit by Dan St. Paul, a pal of mine from that cesspool of subversion and perversion — San Francisco.