Hey, David Brooks! Now THIS is an Inquisition!

That doesn't look like either Ned Lamont OR Markos Moulitsas in the red robe. And I don't think either one of those guys is a tummler.

(hat tip: Pachacutec at firedoglake)

Movie Break: Weepies Edition

This morning I was watching the end of Field of Dreams while drinking my vanilla yogurt/flaxseed/wheatgerm/banana breakfast smoothie, and damn it if the damn thing didn't make me go all goopy AGAIN?

What are your favorite weepies (male and female categories)? Which weepies can you watch over and over again, and which have lost their charm? ARE there any male weepies other than Field of Dreams and Brian's Song?

Bush Monarchy Watch for Tuesday, July 11, 2006

The latest trial balloon:

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has frequently said he won't run for president in 2008, but he's never ruled out being a running mate.

And he didn't Monday when asked about teaming up with Arizona Sen. John McCain.
"I like Sen. McCain. I think he's a good guy," Bush told reporters after returning from a holiday in Maine with his family.

Bush, 53, would provide some age balance on such a ticket. McCain turns 70 next month.

When prodded about the likelihood of a McCain-Bush ticket, Bush hedged just slightly.
"There's all sorts of time to worry about the 2008 election," he said. Bush is prohibited from seeking a third consecutive term as governor by Florida law.

There's your quid pro quo, folks. McCain gets the endorsement of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade over the unacceptable Rudolph Giuliani in exchange for putting Bush the Youngest in the #2 spot.

If McCain is dumb enough to make yet another Bush scion his running mate, he'd better hire someone to taste his food before he eats it.

And the Democrats ought to stop this bullshit about appealing to evangelicals and start rehearsing how best to hang the corpse of Terri Schiavo around Jebbie's neck -- along with the mug shots and police reports of his children..

Best New Flavor

MMMMMmmmmmmmm.......tea. [/Homer]

(hat tip: Digby)

Ned Lamont: Bringing the Funny

Via Hoffmania comes this terrific campaign ad from Connecticut Senate candidate Ned Lamont:



This reminds me of an SNL sketch that Al Franken did back in the days when he was funny. He and Tom Davis played rival political candidates, each making ever-more scurrilous and increasingly ridiculous claims about the other. I don't remember the particulars, other than one of them claiming "We'll kill criminals BEFORE they can commit crimes", and Franken's tag line: "Vote for me. Pete Tagliani."

I suspect that Lamont's people remember that sketch too.

Why do people let it get to this point?

In 1971, unemployed accountant John List killed his wife, mother, and three children in Westfield, New Jersey, then disappeared for eighteen years until he was apprehended largely because the television program America's Most Wanted did a profile on the case.

I was sixteen, a classmate/peripheral friend of Patricia List. We were both in the community theatre group that had her father convinced that she was headed down the wrong path, away from Jesus. This was my first real experience with death, and my first experience with the Christofascist Zombie Brigade. It was a horrific crime that gained national attention and spawned a television movie and a slew of books.

We've seen high-profile cases in recent years of women killing their children -- Susan Smith pushing her car into a lake with her two children inside after receiving a Dear John letter from her lover stating that he didn't want to deal with them; a clearly unhinged Andrea Yates drowning her children in the bathtub. But it's been a while since we've seen another case that even approached the horror and grotesquerie of the List case.

Until yesterday, when a Bergen County man shot his two sons, age 20 and 14, while they slept, then turned the gun on himself.

It's virtually the same story -- a family living in the most prestigious section of a tree-lined suburban town, a 46-year-old father with financial worries, guns in the house, and interviews with shocked neighbors saying they had no idea there was anything wrong. At least Thomas Frazza had the decency to include himself in the carnage. Frazza's wife and 19-year-old daughter were at the family's shore house at the time, or they too would no doubt have been carted out with sheets over their faces.

John List was an accountant who couldn't seem to hold a job, living in a majestic house he couldn't afford. Frazza apparently ran a company that installs and maintains pay phones, which of course has not exactly been a banner business in recent years, living in a house he could no longer afford, with a beach house he was having problems selling in a soft real estate market. Perhaps he had succumbed to the siren song of the home equity loan to buy the SUVs and the wide-screen TVs that seem to be mandatory accessories of upscale suburban life. And now, with his business in tatters and a lifestyle he was unable to sustain, at an age when opportunities to shift gears are limited at best, he saw no other way out.

John List was a religious nutcase, but this seems to be a case of pure economics: a father so distraught at his inability to continue to provide his children with the lifestyle to which they'd become accustomed that he decided that they -- and he -- would be better off dead.

All of northern Bergen County has been a beehive of conspicuous consumption for the last few years. It seems that every block has a new McMansion, or an older home with a dumpster in front of it and an add-a-level AND a two-story addition in progress. It is a land of multi-car driveways and manicured lawns and more SUVs than there are licensed drivers in the household. It's not cheap to live like this, and the tendency is to borrow money for all this consumption rather than to save up to pay cash.

Two years ago, after four years of saving money, we had a new roof, new windows, and new siding installed on our house, along with some other minor work. Everyone who knows that almost nothing in my house had been updated by the previous owners wondered why we didn't just borrow the money and have the kitchen and baths remodeled while we were at it. After all, rates were cheap, why not get what we really want NOW?

Because sometimes you can't have everything you want NOW. Because sometimes you have to wait, or compromise, or do without, so that you don't find yourself drowning in debt. After all, a nice new kitchen doesn't do you a whole lot of good if you lose your job and you're lying awake nights feeling like monsters are gnawing on your intestines wondering how you're going to repay all the loans. But in these Jersey suburban towns, the "keeping up with the Joneses" is utterly ferocious. In my neighborhood, there are two guys whose families have been friends for years. One of them had a pool that he never used. He and his wife divorced, he remarried a woman with kids, and now they use the pool. A year after he started using his pool, the other guy decided HE had to have a pool too. We put a new roof, siding, and windows on our house two years ago because we had leaky windows and asbestos shingle siding that was cracking, and almost immediately THIS guy started making plans for doing even MORE remodeling of his already-updated house.

Most towns in Bergen County have undergone a revaluation in the last two years, and some have just received their new tax bills. The town in which this murder took place is one of them.

$3.00 gasoline. Four-figure property tax increases. Layoffs. Pensions being dismantled. Skyrocketing fuel costs. Rising borrowing costs. A flat real estate market. And the borrowing to keep up appearances continues.

Why do I think we're going to see more stories like this?

I guess the Freepers will say that this one asked for it too

Child rape: It isn't just for Iraqi girls anymore:

The rape of an 11-year-old girl may have involved as many as 10 men, most of whom are football players at local community colleges, police said.

Police arrested two men in connection with the rape Saturday night, and officials said they identified eight others as persons of interest in the case. Most or all are students at either Fresno City College or Reedley College, police said.

The victim, a runaway from a group home, went to a Fresno apartment complex Saturday night to visit an acquaintance, said police spokesman Jeff Cardinale.

While she was inside one of the units, she allegedly was sexually assaulted multiple times by several men, he said.

The girl then fled the apartment and sought help from a couple on the street who called police, Cardinale said.

One could argue that what happened in Iraq is the product of burnt-out, emotionally damaged soldiers stop-lossed into monstrousness by war. What the hell is THESE guys' excuse?

(hat tip: Pam's House Blend)

Iran: The Christofascist Zombie Brigade's wet dream

At least as far as its treatment of evil unchaste women is concerned:

Once again, another Iranian woman has been sentenced to death by the barbaric practice of public stoning. On June 28, 2006, a court in the northwestern Iranian city of Urmia sentenced Malak Ghorbany to death for committing "adultery." Under Iran's Penal Code, the term "adultery" is used to describe any intimate or sexual act between a man and a girl/woman who are not married. The crime of adultery is also used in cases where a girl is deemed to have committed "acts incompatible with chastity," which includes instances of rape. The punishment for "adultery" is death.

On the day of her punishment, the woman's hands are tied behind her back as she becomes covered from head to toe in winding sheets and is placed seated in a pit. The pit is then filled up to her chest with dirt and the dirt is tamped down. At that point, members of the community are invited to murder her by hurling rocks at her. However, to ensure that the condemned woman/girl receives the absolute maximum amount of pain and torture, the Iranian government has even mandated the size of the stones that are to be used in this barbaric act of public execution. By law, the stones must not be too small as to prevent ultimate death, nor must they be too large that they could cause the girl's death "too soon."

This kind of barbarity differs from wanting young girls to die of cervical cancer rather than be vaccinated; wanting women to not have access to safe, legal abortion; wanting to deny emergency contraception even to rape victims; only in the matter of degree, not of underlying sentiment.

(hat tip: Feministe)

Why I don't put bumper stickers on my car

This is why.

I wonder what's so terrifying about the notion of peace that some pencil-dick thinks he has to do this?

Please tell me this doesn't mean I have to say Adam Corolla is funny?

I still think he's a jerk. But last week Adam Corolla showed the rest of the media the only way to deal with Ann Coulter.

So does Bill Napoli think that Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi qualified to have an abortion had she not been shot to death?

Private Steven Green and his four cohorts didn't "rape a woman" in Iraq, they raped a 14-year-old girl before killing her and her entire family.

Think about it.

A 14-year-old girl.

How fucked up do you have to be; how far removed from your own humanity, let alone the humanity of your victims, to commit this kind of violation, even in wartime?

Yet this is what the Iraq war is doing to the people that George W. Bush is sending there.

Here's the ugly story:

Days after former private Steven Green was charged as a civilian in a U.S. court with rape and four murders, four serving soldiers were charged with the same offences, the U.S. military said in statement. It did not name the troops.

Another soldier, apparently a sixth member of Green's former unit in the 502nd Infantry Regiment, was charged on Saturday with dereliction of duty for not reporting the crime in March.

All five were charged with conspiring with Green, accused by U.S. prosecutors of going with three others to a house near the checkpoint they were manning outside Mahmudiya, near Baghdad, and of killing a couple and their two daughters. The five could face the death penalty.

Court documents described the raped daughter as an "adult female" and estimated her age as 25. U.S. military officials in Iraq say their documents have her as 20. Local officials and relatives had said she was 15 or 16.

Her identity card and a copy of her death certificate obtained by Reuters, however, show she was 14.

Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi was born on August 19, 1991 in Baghdad, according to the identity card, provided to Reuters by a relative. Issued in 1993, it features a photograph of her at 18 months, wide-eyed and with a lick of dark hair over her brow.

A copy of her death certificate, dated March 13, gives the same birth date. She was found at home by a relative on March 12 and had died from "gunshot wounds to the head, with burns", said the document, signed by doctor Wael Habib and a registrar.

No independent verification of the documents was immediately available.

The age of consent with parental approval in Iraq is 15, though it is not uncommon for girls to marry younger in rural areas.

Abeer's sister Hadeel was aged six when she died of "several gunshot wounds".

SCORCH MARKS AND BLOODSTAINS

The killers tried to burn the bodies and house to cover their tracks, relatives and local officials have said. Scorch marks and bloodstains can still be seen in the one-storey home.

Some relatives have said they would not object to exhuming the dead for forensic tests, a religiously sensitive process.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, balancing a dependence on U.S. firepower with a need to show Iraqis he is in charge, has voiced frustration with a mounting number of cases against Americans and wants a review of their immunity from Iraqi law.

Since revelations in March of a U.S. probe into whether Marines killed 24 people at Haditha, Mahmudiya is the fifth case of serious crime being investigated by the U.S. military. In all, 16 soldiers have been charged with murder in the past month or so -- as many as in the previous three years of fighting.

[snip]



"She was a beautiful girl," one relative said, asking not to be named. "She complained to her mother about trouble from American soldiers. She gave them no encouragement as we are a conservative and respectable family."

These guys stalked a 14-year-old girl for a week before raping and killing her -- and killing anyone else who happened to be home.

We in the United States like to think of ourselves as superior to the rest of the world. The janjaweed in Darfur rape and kill women, and we turn the other way because after all, it's in Africa, and "we're more civilized." Rape was a common outgrowth of warfare in the former Yugoslavia. Whenever you give men guns and tell them to kill, rape is sure to follow. Even on U.S. soil, where you have war you have rape.

Why is this? Does war make men feel invincible? Or does watching your buddies get blown to pieces turn ALL humans into just so much meat?

And why on earth target a 14-year-old?

And this is the course that Republicans (and Joe Lieberman) want to continue to pursue?

UPDATE:

Eric Blumrich's comments on this horrific crime perpetrated by Americans under the command of George W. Bush are worth reading. He also has a picture of Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi's identity card -- the one proving that she was fourteen years old. You'd better look at it there, because you can bet your life that the mainstream media, who are still insisting that this girl was 20 years old (and by implication, insisting that she was "asking for it" or at the very least, that raping and then shooting a 20-year-old in the head is somehow less heinous), won't touch it.

Can this Administration do ANYTHING right?

Yup, freedom is on the march:

Dateline Iraq:

Two car bombs struck a Shiite district in Baghdad on Monday, killing at least eight people and wounding dozens, officials said, as sectarian tensions rose following a rampage by Shiite gunmen killed 41 people, most of them Sunnis.

The violence began when a car parked near a repair shop on the edge of the Shiite slum of Sadr City blew up, followed within minutes by a suicide car bomber who drove into the crowd that had gathered near the site.

Hospital officials said at least eight people were killed and 41 wounded in the blast. AP Television News footage showed the devastated repair shop with a crumpled roof and the blackened hulks of cars on the street outside.

A roadside bomb also struck a police patrol near a restaurant elsewhere in eastern Baghdad, wounding three policemen, police Lt. Ahmed Qassim said.

And a bomb exploded in the Shurja market in central Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 18, police Col. Adnan al-Obeidi said.

In Kirkuk, a suicide truck bomb struck an office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the main Kurdish political parties in Iraq, killing five people and wounding 12 others, police Brig. Sarhat Qadir said.

A police patrol in the predominantly Shiite city of Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, also hit a roadside bomb, leaving one policeman dead and four wounded, army Capt. Hassim al-Khafaji said.

'A dangerous precipice'

The streets in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Jihad were calm on Monday after the deadly rampage the day before by Shiite gunmen, who dragged Sunnis from their cars, picked them out on the street and killed them.

Police said 41 people were killed, although there were conflicting figures. An official in the prime minister's office, Haidar Majid, said only nine people died in Jihad, while police Lt. Mohammed Khayoun insisted the figure of 41 was correct, with 24 bodies taken to Yarmouk hospital and 17 to the city morgue.

Some Sunni clerics put the death toll at more than 50 in Jihad, a once prosperous neighborhood of handsome villas owned by officials of Saddam Hussein's security services.

Sunni leaders expressed outrage over the killings, and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, appealed for calm, warning that the nation stood "in front of a dangerous precipice."

And all the while, President Delusional insists that it's all the media's fault, that the press isn't reporting the good news:

We occasionally are able to pop in with great success, like Zarqawi or 12 million people voting. But increasing electricity in Baghdad is not the kind of thing that tends to get on the news, or small business formation is not the kind of thing to get -- or new schools or new hospitals, the infrastructure being rebuilt that had been torn apart. And I'm not being critical. I'm just giving you a fact of something I have to deal with in order to make it clear to the American people that the sacrifice of those families is worth it. We are winning. And a free Iraq is an essential part of changing the conditions which causes the terrorists to be able to recruit killers in the first place.

But while Captain Codpiece is all snug in his bed, those who are seeing what's happening in Iraq have a different story, and say that it's even WORSE than the media are reporting:

FP: The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad recently sent a cable to Washington detailing the dangerous situation under which its Iraqi employees work. Is the situation in the Green Zone as bad as the cable made it out to be?

RN: Yes, it is that bad. [The cable] didn’t come as a surprise to me, except that somebody in the embassy was courageous enough to outline the hardships in very frank detail, and the ambassador was honest enough to put his name to it. It is exactly what our own Iraqi staff has gone through for years now. As early as 2003, the Iraqis who work for us were not telling their family or friends that they worked for Americans. At the time, we thought it was a ridiculous precaution—a throwback to the Saddam era—but as time went on, they proved that they knew their society a lot better than we did.

FP: Where do you get information about the insurgency?

RN: There was a stage in the war when we could talk to insurgents and people representing insurgents. Now, it’s just too dangerous. There is no way to safely contact them. We talk to Sunni leaders who are in touch with at least the Iraqi insurgents, the distinction being that al Qaeda insurgents are mainly foreign terrorists. [Iraqi] groups have a political constituency among Sunni politicians and they are in touch. So we can and do talk to them frequently. In fact, so does the U.S. Embassy.

FP: Are journalists and the military seeing two different pictures in Iraq?

RN: Sometimes it’s hard to say. Many in the military are here on their second or third tour and they don’t want to feel that this is all a doomed enterprise. I’m not saying it is, but to some extent they are victims of their own propaganda. Two reasonable people can look at the same set of information and come to different conclusions. A good example: I traveled recently to Taji for the handover of a large swath of territory north of Baghdad to the Iraqi Army’s 9th Armored Division. This was meant to be a big milestone: an important chunk of territory that has lots of insurgent activity, given over completely to the control of the Iraqi Army. But when we spoke to the Iraqi Army officers, they said they didn’t have enough equipment. They are still completely dependent on the U.S. Army for their logistics, their meals, and a lot of their communications. The United States turned territory over to them, but they are not a functioning, independent army unit yet.

Bush insists that our presence in Iraq is keeping the carnage from being even worse than it is. Others who are there say that our presence is exacerbating the violence. What this means, given that Bush has anointed himself "the Decider" and no one seems willing to contradict him, is that more people will die, more American young people will be killed in the insurgency, more Iraqi civilians will die, more soldiers will flip out and we'll read more stories like this -- and nothing will ever change.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan (yes, the country from which Bush pulled troops so he could invade and ruin Iraq):

American and allied troops are engaged in their biggest operation against Taliban forces in Afghanistan since they drove the fundamentalist movement from power in 2001. These photographs were taken over two weeks in June with Charlie Company, Fourth Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, near Hazarbuz, in Zabul Province.

The Americans face the hard job of trying to tell local farmers from Taliban insurgents, who have gained strength across southern Afghanistan. The Americans set up a base, then probed into villages. They were soon ambushed. The Taliban can easily persuade or coerce villagers to assist them. They arm the villagers or equip them with radios. Almost any man is suspect. During one raid, which was typical, the Americans separated the men. Homes were searched, and the men were marched to the base for questioning.

The Americans feel the hands of those who claim to be farmers, to make sure they are rough. They check under the men's shirts for calluses from carrying rifle clips, or for bruises from firing rocket-propelled grenades. As often is the case, almost all are released for lack of evidence.

Col. Tom Collins, the American military spokesman in Kabul, said, "We have intelligence that leads us to a certain village where there are antigovernment elements and we take in those we find, screen them, and some are then let go immediately, but they still have to be questioned."

The day after the raid, the Americans were ambushed again, this time at their base. Automatic rifle fire sprayed just inches above a row of soldiers as they lay resting.

On the final day of the operation, a raid on a village sent several men fleeing for the mountains. They were met by American Ranger Scouts. Three men were captured. They confessed to being Taliban fighters and were brought back to the base to be handed over to the Afghan authorities.

Wait a minute....I thought we had the Taliban "on the run".

How long do we want to go on like this?

Happy Birthday, Tai Shan!

Because sometimes only cuteness can keep you sane in the face of an insane world, let's join all the other lunatics to wish Tai Shan, the panda born last year at the National Zoo, a happy birthday.

For more gooey, panda-y goodness, check out the birthday boy's photo gallery.

Air America Radio blows it again

In one of the most spectacular employee shaftings to take place since the demise of Enron, the latest group of revolving-door suits at Air America Radio has decided to deliver the Screwing To End All Screwings of someone who should be one of their marquee personalities by now, Marc Maron.

As most of you know, AAR brought in as CEO last year a man named Danny Goldberg. Goldberg is a longtime music industry guy who wrote a book called How the Left Lost Teen Spirit. This particular genius decided that the thing to do with Air America was to suck all the humor out of it by giving us a completely arid, unlistenable weekend lineup, and to cancel the brilliant and gonzo Morning Sedition, replacing it with two hours of dumbass sports talk, pre-recorded interviews, fifteen minutes of listener calls, and for some strange reason, the supposedly humorous comic stylings of Jim Hightower, all hosted by Mark Riley, who has been lost without his neurotic Jewish comic counterpart ever since MS was cancelled. Yes, there is also two hours of Rachel Maddow, aided tremendously by the funny and talented Kent Jones, but not even Maddow, who's as smart as a whip, makes up for the loss of Pendejo the Revolutionary, Sammy the Stem Cell, the Milfingtons, the Dream Diary, the Presidential Palm Pilot, and the other Manifestations of the Funny that Marc Maron brought to the morning hours.

In February, Marc Maron started a new show on KTLK out of Los Angeles, which he returned to after the cancellation of the morning show, along with sketch sidekick Jim Earl. This was his SECOND cross-country relocation at the behest of Air America. The show ran from 10 PM to 1 AM Pacific time, subject to change or cancellation due to Clipper games. First the show was live, which meant fun calls from die-hard Maronistas like Gypsy and Kristapea and Seanie the cross-country trucker. Then it was taped in advance, which meant a full hour and 15 minute podcast every day, but a loss of spontaneity. The show was supposed to be syndicated starting in April, but never was. And last week, one of the suits flew out to L.A. to tell Maron that his show was being cancelled as of the 14th, and with what AAR is presenting as "a better offer."

I suspect that this "better offer" involves being second banana to someone else; perhaps a lame attempt to revive Morning Sedition, or as a comic foil for Rachel Maddow, or God only knows what. I also suspect that this "better offer" doesn't include Jim Earl, who is a brilliant sketch comic, but as a co-host can be curmudgeonly and self-righteous. I also suspect that this "better offer" involves yet another cross-country relocation, which I can't imagine anyone wanting to do for an employer that has already shafted him twice. As he said on one of last week's shows, it's like when your mom gets a new boyfriend who beats you, and she does nothing. Then after they break up, she tells you she loves you, but you never quite trust yoru mom again.

I've been a supporter of Air America Radio since the beginning. I paid to be an affiliate. I paid to be a premium member so I could get the podcasts. I'm an avid listener, even when Franken is boring. I only draw the line at the odious Satellite Sisters, who paid to take over Mike Malloy's airtime on WLIB in New York. But AAR is sorely trying my patience at this point.

With the gasbags of the right continuing to have unlimited outlets for their delusional spew, a clever, progressive alternative is vital for national dialogue. And to the extent that there IS now a debate in this country about Iraq, about how veterans are treated, about the NSA spying programs, and about black box voting, it's largely because Air America and the blogs, sometimes working together, have managed to get the word out into the ambient air. But however well-intentioned these attempts to somehow atone for Danny Goldberg's shabby treatment of one of AAR's brightest stars may be, they are being clunkily delivered, and I suspect will ultimately result in the permanent loss of this unique voice on AAR's airwaves.

Republicans: The party of, well, "Let's Party"

But only for their own.

First, Rush Limbaugh cops a plea bargain when charged with doctor-shopping to satisfy his addiction to Oxycontin. This is a guy who in 1995 said:

There's nothing good about drug use. We know it. It destroys individuals. It destroys families. Drug use destroys societies. Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods, which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.

What this says to me is that too many whites are getting away with drug use. Too many whites are getting away with drug sales. Too many whites are getting away with trafficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too.

Now it's Senator Orrin Hatch, who has decided that the best use of his time is in pulling strings to get a music producer released from a Dubai jail, where he's been sitting for bringing in a gram of cocaine.

Dallas Austin, 35, who has produced hits for Madonna, Janet Jackson and others, flew home to Atlanta on Wednesday, after being released after midnight on Tuesday from a holding cell in a Dubai jail. Hours earlier Mr. Austin had been sentenced to four years in prison for carrying just over a gram of cocaine with him when he entered the country on May 19 to attend a birthday celebration for Naomi Campbell.

Senator Hatch made numerous phone calls on Mr. Austin's behalf to the ambassador and consul of the United Arab Emirates embassy in Washington — Dubai is one of the seven emirates — and served as an intermediary for Mr. Austin's representatives, the producer's lawyers said.

"The senator was one of a number of people who were very actively involved," said Joe Reeder, the Washington lawyer, who, with an Atlanta colleague, Joel A. Katz, spent 10 days in Dubai working to secure Mr. Austin's reprieve.

Mr. Katz, an entertainment lawyer, represents both Mr. Austin and the somewhat less musically successful Mr. Hatch, a singer and songwriter who has recorded religious-oriented albums. After hiring Mr. Katz's firm, the senator last year took in $39,092 in income from music publishing, according to financial documents filed in May under the Ethics in Government Act.

The senator declined to be interviewed or to confirm details of his efforts on Mr. Austin's behalf, but he issued a statement acknowledging his involvement and said he was asked by Mr. Austin's lawyers to help.

A spokesman for Mr. Hatch said that the senator was a proponent of rehabilitation for drug offenders, and that he had worked to revise federal sentencing guidelines regarding cocaine, and, through legislation in 2005, had advocated treatment for nonviolent offenders and the easing of restrictions on medication to treat heroin addiction.

In the statement Mr. Hatch said he was "confident that this talented young man will learn from this experience." He did not say if he requested that Mr. Austin seek treatment.

Orrin Hatch supports:

• Increasing penalties for selling illegal drugs.
  
• mandatory jail sentences for selling illegal drugs.
  
• capital punishment for convicted international drug traffickers.
  
• expanding federally sponsored drug education and drug treatment programs.
  
• Increasing border security to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the US

In 1999, Hatch voted "Yes" on bill S.625, which would increase penalties on certain drug-related crimes and specifically targeted the manufacturing or trafficking of amphetamines & methamphetamines and possession of powder cocaine, and set stronger penalties for dealing drugs.

I wonder if he thinks increased penalties should apply to his friend Mr. Austin? Or is Orrin Hatch now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dallas Austin, Music Producer?

Someone please take away David Brooks' car keys

I am not making this up:

A man drove his car into a crowd at a New London waterfront festival Saturday afternoon, injuring more than two dozen people, police said. The car narrowly missed Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont, who was campaigning nearby, a spokesman said.

At least three of Lamont's campaign workers were hurt. One, Susan Goldman of Norwich, suffered a broken leg, said Lamont spokesman Tom Swan. The car missed Lamont by 6 to 18 feet, Swan said.

All 27 of the injured, many of them with scrapes, cuts and bruises, were expected to be treated at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital by late Saturday or early today and released, said Kelly Anthony, a hospital spokesman.

Just kidding about the headline. But it IS a good one, isn't it?

No charges had been filed against the driver of the car, Robert Laine, 89, of Wallingford, late Saturday. New London and Amtrak police were still investigating.

And from the whiny-ass titty baby (™ Atrios) file....

David Brooks is all up in arms about those nasty bloggers being so mean to poor widdew Joe Lieberman:

What's happening to Lieberman can only be described as a liberal inquisition. Whether you agree with him or not, he is transparently the most kind-hearted and well-intentioned of men. But over the past few years he has been subjected to a vituperation campaign that only experts in moral manias and mob psychology are really fit to explain. I can't reproduce the typical assaults that have been directed at him over the Internet, because they are so laced with profanity and ugliness, but they are ginned up by ideological masseurs who salve their followers' psychic wounds by arousing their rage at objects of mutual hate.

Presumably at this point, Brooks had to loosen his corset, fan himself, and lie down langourously on a chaise longue.

Remember, this is a guy who is an apologist for people who think Ann Coulter represents civilized political debate.

Brooks just doesn't get it. Our disgust with Joe Lieberman isn't about hate for Lieberman himself; it's about his complete abandonment of everything that a Democrat should stand for in favor of the short-term political expediency of acquiescing to George W. Bush's notion of an unaccountable, imperial presidency.

So these days, for example, one hears that Lieberman is a crypto-conservative, a Bible-Belter. In reality, of course, this is a man who has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign. He has a Christian Coalition rating of 0.

But a lifetime's record is deemed not to matter any longer. For in the midst of the inquisition all of American liberalism has been reduced to one issue, the war. Just as some edges of the pro-life movement reduce all of conservatism to abortion, the upscale revivalists on the left reduce everything to Iraq, and all who are deemed impure must be cleansed away.

No, a lifetime's record doesn't matter -- not when a politician has done a complete turnaround on too many important issues. Staying the course in Iraq is an insane policy. Lieberman stood in front of a podium in last week's debate expounding on how wonderful things are in Iraq -- just like the Republicans told him to; just like the so-called "journalists" who are being vetted for embedding by the Administration only if they toe the party line on positive reporting. Whether one believes we should withdraw now because the insurgency is driven SOLELY by our presence, or if you believe we should set a timetable for a gradual phase-out, either notion is preferable to mindless adherence of a Bush policy that is going nowhere.

Planned Parenthood's endorsement of Lieberman is a mystery -- and appalling, in light of Lieberman's callous statement that "In Connecticut, it shouldn't take more than a short ride to get to another hospital" if a rape victim's closest hospital refuses to give her emergency contraception "on religious grounds."

In the recent NJ primary for the 5th Congressional District, I took a fair amount of heat from some people for having the temerity to believe that offering voters a choice of candidates, even in a primary, was a good thing. Brooks seems to believe that Lieberman, by virtue of incumbency, is to be somehow exempted from any scrutiny of his positions, and that a primary challenge is somehow unseemly. This is a disservice to the voters. It is for the Democratic primary voters of Connecticut to decide who should represent them, not armchair pundits.

But perhaps the most offensive aspect to David Brooks' apologia for Lieberman is his quite deliberate use of the word "inquisition" -- implying that the progressives' distaste for someone so callous about the lives of our soldiers and to the needs of rape victims is somehow related to anti-Semitism. I've been tubthumping about bigotry weekend, and believe me, growing up Jewish in a largely Christian town and then going to a small, church-related college where I was actually asked a) where my horns were; and b) why I drive an old car if I'm Jewish; I know what anti-Semitism is. But for Lieberman and his apologists to play the anti-Semitism card when there are legitimate reasons to oppose him for another term, is unconscionable, and all too reminiscent of Clarence Thomas trying to liken questioning at a confirmation hearing to being kidnapped, strung up on a tree and butchered. Asking Joe Lieberman to defend his position on the war is hardly the same as being tortured, then burnt at the stake, sawed in half, or slowly disemboweled, and frankly, it cheapens the suffering of Jews who were so victimized during the Spanish Inquisition by using this word to describe Joe Lieberman's so-called travails.

Republicans love to say that racism and bigotry no longer exists, until it's time for THEM to play the race or religion card. I suppose this is another example of "Everything is OK if you're a Republican."

Or if you fall in line behind them like a good little sheep -- or like Joe Lieberman.

American Bigots

Last night I was looking at a web site run by our local community gadfly, looking for information on the love letters everyone in town received from the tax collector yesterday as a result of our recent revaluation. This is a fellow who's clearly a wee tad unhinged, but performs a valuable public service with this site.

I'm well aware of how white my town is (96%). There are a few black families scattered around town, and a few Asian families, but were it not for the ubiquitous SUVs, the recent spate of McMansions being built to replace tear-downs, and the additions designed to put McMansion costumes on 1950's Cape Cod and ranch houses, one would often think one had been transported back to 1959.

One of our neighboring towns is somewhat more diverse, but does have what's quaintly referred to as a "black section" -- a neighborhood of homes that sell for upwards of $400,000; hardly the "blighted neighborhood" that some of the more ignorant denizens of the area who have never ventured therein seem to think it is.

One local resident recently posted a comment on this site complaining about the preponderance of Latinos at a local park. And lo and behold, it is as if a rock had been moved to reveal the maggots beneath. A sample from the poster's spew:

The grassy area to the right looked like warm ups for the World Cup, and not team USA either unless they're all some kind of latinos. As we walked around, aside from a small softball game going on, NOBODY spoke English. Spanish, spanish, spanish. Up close to the playground and litter was everywhere. The kids were throwing candy wrappers on the ground and their mothers weren't telling them to pick them up. They had water bottles and threw them on the ground when they were done. Boy, I never would have thought I'd see this in this part of Bergen. I mean years ago they would bus people into Van Saun, but then at the end of the day, usually a weekend, they would leave and the park would get back to normal...where the hell did all these people come from ? Are they renting rooms or houses along ****** Road, or are they coming from ***** Rd ? It was very disheartening to see that park today. We'd better wake up or one day we're going to wake up and hear that not much English is being spoken around Emerson anymore. I'm glad I don't live in ************. The people there should be furious.

Where does one begin with a sentiment like this? Language has been a huge issue in this county, largely in the towns closer to New York City that have seen an influx in Koreans in recent years, to the point that many shops in some towns post their signs in only Korean. But in the case of this individual, people speaking Spanish amongst themselves during a weekend outing opens the door to a vast stereotyping of everyone who is not an Anglo-Saxon-appearing Caucasian. It's especially amusing that this person believes only Latino children drop candy wrappers and water bottles on the ground. Anyone who has ever visited the strip mall in my 96% white town knows that no one has a patent on littering. As for the assumptions about where the "offending" people live, guess what -- those are streets in what's quaintly referred to as "the black section."

I wonder if this person uses a lawn service....or has had a new roof put on his house recently?

Because hatred of the "other" isn't limited to the Spanish-speaking, though Latinos seem to be the trigger point for these screeds in the aftermath of the shameful Republican exploitation of immigration as a campaign issue.

This particular piece of spew led of course into all the Usual Suspects of racist diatribe -- Prof. Leonard Jeffries, who's been out of the news for nearly two decades; Paterson drug dealers, even the apocryphal Reaganesque "welfare queen":

A black woman with really long, painted nails with the studs on them, lowering her talons into her Gucci bag to pull out FOOD STAMPS to pay for groceries, which she then loads into a white Caddy, a new one at that, and pulls away.
Just what happened at Shop Rite last week. What I want to know is what's up with that ? Her bag was nicer than mine and so was her car, and yet SHE had food stamps and I didn't. I guess welfare pays real good these days !

Aside from the fact that the poster of this comment has never heard of "designer knockoffs" and no self-respecting upwardly-mobile person has driven a Cadillac in years, the use of food stamps in Bergen County isn't all that unusual in an age of reduced incomes and high cost of living.

But when Americans are frightened about terrorism, about job insecurity, about skyrocketing property taxes (mine "only" increased by $700/year in this revaluation, far less than I'd expected), reduced pensions, an unstable stock market that holds their retirement funds, and a generally bleak future, it's far easier to blame dark-skinned people than to look at the corporatists in Washington who are the REAL villains in America's reduced horizons.

This fear and loathing of Latinos has been legitimazed by the immigration debates and has been absorbed into the general fear of terrorism. The recent Miami arrests of seven Haitian kooks who mused on blowing up the Sears Tower has expanded the bigotry to black Americans.

This mindset can be summed up by one particularly loathsome comment from an "elite" white resident of Bergen County on the aforementioned public web site:

The ELITE communities ... are populated by the best and the brightest, mostly WHITE families. These are the doctors, lawyers, engineers, the ACTUAL "prospective home buyers" who are paying from a half-million to upwards of one million to live near FELLOW ELITES. There are asian and indian families here as well, but these families assimilate into the upscale white society within which they live. These values are not racist at all. Should elite whites be apologetic for such ? Certainly not. This has nothing to do with hate and everything to do with choice. I hate no one and resent accusations of such. As an AMERICAN, I have the right to choose my neighborhood and my neighbors, and I choose to live among elite whites...It's not the white families who destroy real estate values. It's the black and mexican ones. This is documented fact for which no one owes an explanation save for members of these groups.

As I wrote yesterday, I grew up in Westfield, NJ -- a town in which most of the African-Americans and Jews lived on the south side and the fringes of town, and the so-called "real Americans" who went to good Christian churches like the Big White Presbyterian church in the center of town, lived in the stately old Colonials on the north side. It's appalling that some 50 years after the Civil Rights movement, racists are not only still denying that they are racist even as they spew their sweeping generalizations, but that racist scapegoating is still alive and well -- and still being exploited by those who actually DO bear the responsibility for the economic uncertainty that triggers Americans' anxiety.

King George doesn't think he has to live by Supreme Court decisions either

I can't say I'm surprised about >this, but it is truly horrifying the way this president thinks that the law is whatever he wants it to be. I read this in the Times this morning, and I've been shaking my head about it all day:

In his most detailed comments to date on the Supreme Court's rejection of his decision to put detainees on trial before military commissions, President Bush said Friday that the court had tacitly approved his use of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

"It didn't say we couldn't have done — couldn't have made that decision, see?" Mr. Bush said at a news conference in Chicago. "They were silent on whether or not Guantánamo — whether or not we should have used Guantánamo. In other words, they accepted the use of Guantánamo, the decision I made."

Mr. Bush's remarks put a favorable spin on a ruling that has been widely interpreted as a rebuke of the administration's policies in the war on terror. The court, ruled broadly last week in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that military commissions were unauthorized by statute and violated international law.

The question of whether Mr. Bush had properly used Guantánamo Bay to house detainees was not at issue in the case. At issue was whether the president could unilaterally establish military commissions with rights different from those allowed at a court-martial to try detainees for war crimes.

Mr. Bush has said since the ruling that he will work with Congress to figure out how to use military commissions to try detainees, a promise he repeated on Friday in Chicago.

What part of "unauthorized by statute and violated international law" does this man not understand?

First, they came for the Jews....

The "purification" agenda of the Christian right is beginning to crawl out from under the rocks they have used to hide it for decades. It's directed at Jews, but also at everyone who doesn't adhere to their particular vision of America

First, we have the case of the family in Delaware forced to flee their home because they dared to fight back against the proseletyzing of Christianity and anti-Semitism in their children's schools:

A large Delaware school district promoted Christianity so aggressively that a Jewish family felt it necessary to move to Wilmington, two hours away, because they feared retaliation for filing a lawsuit. The religion (if any) of a second family in the lawsuit is not known, because they're suing as Jane and John Doe; they also fear retaliation. Both families are asking relief from "state-sponsored religion."

The behavior of the Indian River School District board's behavior suggests the families' fears are hardly groundless.

The district spreads over a considerable portion of southeast Delaware. The families' complaint, filed in federal court in February 2005, alleges that the district had created an "environment of religious exclusion" and unconstitutional state-sponsored religion.

Among numerous specific examples in the complaint was what happened at plaintiff Samantha Dobrich's graduation in 2004 from the district's high school. She was the only Jewish student in her graduating class. The complaint relates that local pastor, Jerry Fike, in his invocation, followed requests for "our heavenly Father's" guidance for the graduates with:

I also pray for one specific student, that You be with her and guide her in the path that You have for her. And we ask all these things in Jesus' name.
In addition to the ruined graduation experience, the Dobrich-Doe lawsuit alleges that:

• The district's "custom and practice of school-sponsored prayer" frequently imposed ... on impressionable non-Christian students," violating their constitutional rights.
  
• The district ignored the Supreme Court's 1992 Lee decision limiting prayer at graduation ceremonies -- even after a district employee complained about the prayer at her child's 2003 graduation..
  
• District teachers and staff led Bible clubs at several schools. Club members got to go to the head of the lunch line.
  
• While Bible clubs were widely available, student book clubs were rare and often canceled by the district.
  
• When Jane Doe complained that her non-Christian son "Jordan Doe" was left alone when his classmates when to Bible club meetings, district staff insisted that Jordan should attend the club regardless of his religion.
  
• The district schools attended by Jordan and his sister "Jamie Doe" distributed Bibles to students in 2003, giving them time off from class to pick up the books.
  Prayer --often sectarian -- is a routine part of district sports programs and social events
  
• One of the district's middle schools gave students the choice of attending a special Bible Club if they did not want to attend the lesson on evolution.
  
• A middle school teacher told students there was only "one true religion" and gave them pamphlets for his surfing ministry.
  
• Samantha Dobrich's honors English teacher frequently discussed Christianity, but no other religion.
  
• Students frequently made mandatory appearances at district board meetings -- where they were a captive audience for board members' prayers to Jesus.

The acceptance of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade among those at the highest levels of government, combined with the fearmongering in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, has resulted in an environment in which hostility to ALL non-Christian religions is on the rise.

In Illinois, a woman was fired from her job after disclosing that she is a practitioner of Wicca:

A Schaumburg company allegedly fired a woman, and one employee is accused of calling her a "devil worshipper" after she disclosed she practiced Wicca -- a pagan religion viewed by some as witchcraft.

Now, the woman is suing.

Rebecca Sommers said the company fired her in 2004, citing poor job performance. She had worked with the firm since 2002.

But Sommers insists in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday that Crawford & Company Inc. fired her because supervisors there didn't like her religion.

Crawford is a Georgia-based insurance adjusting firm with an office in Schaumburg. Representatives there could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Sommers, an accounts analyst, said when she requested a day off for a Wiccan holiday, she was told by a manager to keep her religion "to herself." She said another supervisor who knew she practiced Wicca called her a devil worshipper in front of other employees.

Sommers said that before revealing her religion she received a favorable review and a bonus. But after her supervisors knew about Wicca, she started getting warnings and told she wasn't returning customer calls fast enough.

And a girl in Hardesty, Oklahoma was kicked off her school's basketball team for refusing to recite the Lord's Prayer.

It's incidents like these that make me oppose ANY attempt to break down the wall between church and state -- because for these people, an inherent part of their religion is the forced conversion of others and the conversion of the U.S. into a "Christian Nation."

I believe I've blogged on this before, but when I was growing up in Westfield, NJ, the high school had a Christmas tableau every year, accompanied by the singing of Christmas carols by the choir. If you wanted to be in the choir, you were required to sing in the Christmas program. No Christmas, no choir. Instead of allowing nonbelievers to sing in other programs but opt out of the Christmas program, the high school held fast. In 1972, The Jewish Committee Against Religious Encroachment in Schools filed in Federal Court to have the Yule Pageant in Westfield, N.J. banned. The suit charged, "the pageant favor belief in religion over non-religion and favors the Christian Religion over others [Jews].

With this, the ugly side of the suburban town came to the fore. Anti-Semitic letters appeared in the local paper. Owners of Jewish-owned businesses found swastikas spray-painted on their storefronts. I don't recall what the outcome was, but it was a very ugly time to be a Jew in Westfield.

Those who say that we must be more accommodating to these people are mistaken. Accommodation means capitulation, and the result of capitulation is going to be pogroms against all those who do not adhere to a particular flavor of Christianity -- right here in the United States. It's happening on a small scale already. Those like Barack Obama who think we need to attempt to dialogue with these people are going to find themselves being likened to the Germans who pointed out which apartments were occupied by Jews in Hitler's Germany.

This country was formed as a secular nation for a reason. We decry theocracies in the Middle East when the theocrats are Muslim. Christian theocrats are no more enlightened.

(hat tip: Frederick Clarkson)