Once again, Slacktivist posts a winner. This time around, it’s all about Leviticus, the Old Testament book that Fundies tend to use to justify their homophobia. Of course, they conveniently overlook all the other prohibitions of Leviticus, such as — and I’m not kidding — eating shellfish. Why is this?

Fred explains, but the bullet is this: in Acts — an epistolary book after the Gospels in the New Testament — there’s an oft-quoted story about Peter getting a vision wherein God shows him that all food is okay. It’s no surprise that Fundies take this on its face and gleefully eat ham, lobster, etc., while conveniently missing the story’s greater context and message. I’m paraphrasing here, so go read the post.

Turns out, this year’s Florida felon list — the one that took a lawsuit to disclose — has some pretty suspicious problems, too. Check it out.

Adam Felber points out the inherent contradiction in the Administration’s message(s).

Murdoch’s New York Post ran an editorial on 12 July insisting that there is no evidence anyone was actually disenfranchised in Florida in 2000 as a result of the overbroad felon list. MediaMatters.org shows this to be a lie.

We like Mykeru.com a lot. This time, he provides a bit of commentary on Bush’s snub of the NAACP:

Bush to NAACP: Fuck you, porch monkeys
Yeah, you think that’s a little bit hyperbolic? Maybe you think the choice of language conflates between Bush and Cheney, which is easy to do if you’re the sort of person who always got Shari Lewis and Lambchop mixed up. But for a president who claims again and again that he’s a uniter, not a divider, despite loads of evidence to the contrary and the dead bodies to prove it, Bush’s reaction to the NAACP, where he is content to be the first president in 70 years to fail to address this, the country’s largest and most august civil right’s organization, is puzzling.

There is, of course, more.

They’ve been sued in California under a whistleblower statute.

One of the plaintiffs? Bev Harris. We love her.

Fred Clark does it again. We like the way he thinks.

It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right. . . . Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife. Cornyn, advocating a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in a speech Thursday to the Heritage Foundation.

Via the Washington Post.

Homeland Security officials are looking into ways they can postpone the November election in the event of a terrorist attack on or near Election Day. (More coverage at Yahoo.)

Specifically, they have requested that such emergency power be granted to the newly created U. S. Election Assistance Commission, chaired by New Jersey preacher DeForest B. Soaries, Jr. More analysis at Agonist and Atrios, both of whom sum it up nicely. The biggest point is this, from Agonist, who first quotes Newsweek’s coverage: quoting and then commenting on Newsweek’s coverage:

The prospect that Al Qaeda might seek to disrupt the U.S. election was a major factor behind last week’s terror warning by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Ridge and other counterterrorism officials concede they have no intel about any specific plots. But the success of March’s Madrid railway bombings in influencing the Spanish elections–as well as intercepted “chatter” among Qaeda operatives–has led analysts to conclude “they want to interfere with the elections,” says one official.Newsweek

And then says

They’re gnashing their teeth over the “success” of the Madrid Bombings in influencing the elections. You bet they are. However, nowhere does Newsweek mention, that with all these warnings, they haven’t raised the threat level. Hmmmm . . . Makes you wonder: you think they might be a bit worried about their poll numbers?Agonist

This sort of thing reminds me of what Teresa Nielsen Hayden had to say (her line is the first comment, but read the entry, too) a while back: “I deeply resent the way this administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist.” Pay attention. The democracy you save may be your own.

Not of the GOP can help it. Paul Krugman compares the candidates on health care, as an example, and comes to this conclusion:

The Kerry campaign contends that it can pay for its health care plan by rolling back only the cuts for taxpayers with incomes above $200,000. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, which has become the best source for tax analysis now that the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy has become a propaganda agency, more or less agrees: it estimates the revenue gain from the Kerry tax plan at $631 billion over the next decade. What are the objections to the Kerry plan? One is that it falls far short of the comprehensive overhaul our health care system really needs. Another is that by devoting the proceeds of a tax-cut rollback to health care, Mr. Kerry fails to offer a plan to reduce the budget deficit. But on both counts Mr. Bush is equally, if not more, vulnerable. And Mr. Kerry’s plan would help far more people than it would hurt. If we ever get a clear national debate about health care and taxes, I don’t see how President Bush will win it.

Some right-wingers up north have decided to market republican ketchup — and hey, why not; it is, after all, a vegetable thanks to Reagan — as an alternative to Heinz, which they view as “unpatriotic” due to its tenuous connection to Kerry’s campaign (his wife’s family holds only about 4% of the Heinz food company at this point, and has no management role at all).

Yeah, that’s it: to these people, supporting a Democrat is unpatriotic. Rove must love it when people are this stupid.

The next President could appoint as many as four Supreme Court justices. If you enjoy the implications of, say, Griswold, or you’re concerned about the degree to which copyright law is gaining power, well, you know what to do.

Microsoft is selling a DRM’d proprietary version of the US Constitution. For $2.99, you can download it; the license agreement prohibits printing it, and explicitly limit you to making two copies a year. (More here and here.)

Wacky, huh? Sure, this is pretty benign; the Constitution is widely available in a variety of forms, and free and un-DRM’d digital copies are, well, free. There are, however, interesting implications here; Groklaw has more analysis.

Pete McCloskey knows a thing or two about patriotism, having served in Korea and as a Republican member of ongress. Read what he has to say about it, about freedom, and about what’s really important.

The truth of the matter is that patriotism requires supporting the troops, but not necessarily supporting the foreign policy that sends them to Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan or Iraq. Patriotism is simply the willingness to fight, and if necessary die, for a cause reasonably believed to be in the nation’s interest. That is the patriotism July Fourth reminds us to honor. The word “patriot” is too precious to allow it to be used by the thundering rhetoric of politicians that patriotism requires not only “supporting the troops” but also supporting the foreign policy that puts them at risk.

It gets better.

Ironically, the politicians who most eagerly use the term “unpatriotic” have often declined to take the risks taken by Nathan Hale and the signers of the Declaration of Independence: facing hostile rifle and artillery fire, or worse, being hanged. Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay and George W. Bush somehow never chose to face machine-gun or artillery fire during the wars of their own youth. As patriotism justifies honor, it also requires honor on the part of those who would claim it.

Word.

J. Bradford Delong goes to town on a truly bizarre complaint by Nicholas Kristof (that we ought not call the President a liar). Read and enjoy.

(He also links to a great post by Tim Dunlop including “a handy list of what is important and what isn’t.”)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta quietly published new regulations concerning what Federally-funded organizations doing HIV-prevention work may say and do, and the rules run counter to virtually everything known about preventing AIDS. This LA Weekly article has more:

These new regs require the censoring of any “content” — including “pamphlets, brochures, fliers, curricula,” “audiovisual materials” and “pictorials (for example, posters and similar educational materials using photographs, slides, drawings or paintings),” as well as “advertising” and Web-based info. They require all such “content” to eliminate anything even vaguely “sexually suggestive” or “obscene” — like teaching how to use a condom correctly by putting it on a dildo, or even a cucumber. And they demand that all such materials include information on the “lack of effectiveness of condom use” in preventing the spread of HIV and other STDs — in other words, the Bush administration wants AIDS fighters to tell people: Condoms don’t work. This demented exigency flies in the face of every competent medical body’s judgment that, in the absence of an HIV-preventing vaccine, the condom is the single most effective tool available to protect someone from getting or spreading the AIDS virus. Moreover, the CDC will now take the decisions on which AIDS-fighting educational materials actually work away from those on the frontlines of the combat against the epidemic, and hand them over to political appointees. […] This means that, under the new regs, political appointees will have a veto and be able to ban anything in those educational materials they deem “obscene” or lacking in anti-condom propaganda.

Perhaps, in his haste to emulate Reagan, Bush is attempting to ensure AIDS is once again the health crisis it was when the Gipper shuffled out of office. Yes, that’s inflammatory, but in cases like this, what are we to think? It gets worse:

Under the new regs, it will be impossible even to track the spread of unsafe sexual practices — because the CDC’s politically inspired censorship includes “questionnaires and survey materials” and thus would forbid asking people if they engage in specific sexual acts without protection against HIV. For that too would be “obscene.” (Questions about gay kids have already disappeared from the CDC’s national Youth Risk Survey after Christian-right pressure).

So: No condom message, and also no information gathering for public health purposes. I’m sure this is going to work out just fine. It’s not as those there’s not already ample science behind the efficacy of condoms in the face of HIV, and never mind what a bunch of virgin priests want you to think.

READ THIS ARTICLE. The agenda of this Administration is absolutely contrary to all good epidemiological science where HIV/AIDS is concerned, and they’re doing their very best to make sure all the good science gets quashed. The human cost doesn’t matter to these people; all they’re concerned about is ideological purity.

There’s a fax number and an email address at the end of the article. These new regs are in a period of public comment; let them know how wrong this is, and that it’s time to stop letting the Christian Right determine science policy. Let them hear you now, and make sure you let them hear you in November.

More: This October 2003 Salon story covers the trevails of Advocates for Youth, a national nonprofit that provides comprehensive sex education information. AfY was audited three times in a year by the Bush administration; they contend the reason is that they’re openly contemptuous of abstinence-only programs. AfY is not alone. Again, we have an administration here that is using ideology to try and trump science. Check your history books for what happens when leaders try this particular plan.