Siege reminds us of Bill S Sienkiewicz Friendly Dictator Trading Cards.

The DNC is actually shooting back about the GOP’s “disrupt the town hall meetings with coached mobs” tactic.

Turns out, a certain Jackson lawyer isn’t a natural born citizen EITHER!

Happy Birthday, old boy.

(Make your own.)

(Is Barack Obama an American Citizen?)[http://www.hereticalideas.com/2009/07/is-barack-obama-an-american-citizen/] explains much about the birther movement. All you gotta do to understand their POV is reject objective reality. Utilizing three alternative frameworks of reality — one of which involves the Norse god Loki — the author explains how Obama may in fact not be the natural born citizen actual evidence show shim to be. Heh. Here’s a taste:

It might seem, to the average person, that the “Birthers” must have a tough time proving their case. After all, Barack Obama has released his Certification of Live Birth, which meets all the requirements for proving one’s citizenship to the State Department. The authenticity of the certificate has been verified by Hawaii state government. Moreover, Barack Obama’s birth announcement was found in two newspapers at the time, and such notices were provided directly by the Hawaii Department of Health.

Faced with this overwhelming evidence, the average person will no doubt shrug and consider the case closed. There is no question that the evidence points to the conclusion that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and is therefore a “natural-born citizen.”

No question, that is, if you accept the dominant paradigm of metaphysical realism. That is, the idea that things exist independent of the mind and that those things are perceivable and knowable. Moreover, those who insist that Barack Obama is an American citizen also rely on philosophic naturalism–the idea that reality is subject to objective, knowable natural laws that can’t be tampered with.

However, if one rejects these two philosophic concepts, it’s quite easy to demonstrate that Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and is therefore constitutionally ineligible to be President of the United States.

The best part? Such subtle takedowns are sure to be lost on birthers, at least one of whom will read this and, failing to understand the big words, forward it to all their like-minded compatriots.

Yesterday, Chris Matthews smacked around nutbird Congressman John Campbell on the “Birther” issue, and got him to admit that yes, Barack Obama is a natural born citizen of the US.

Add my right-winger cousin Chip to the parade of GOP types who can’t keep their dick in their pants. Odds are this affair, the divorce connected thereto, and the lawsuit his wife just dropped on him are the reason ol’ Chip’s not still in Congress. Good riddance.

Now it’s the turn of former Rep. Chip Pickering (R) or Mississippi, who appeared to be in line to grab Trent Lott’s Senate seat and was allegedly offered the gig by Gov. Haley Barbour (his office denied this to TPMmuckraker), but decided instead to leave Congress altogether.

Pickering and his wife divorced soon afterward and now she is suing the novelistically named Elizabeth Creekmore-Byrd for “alienation of affection,” i.e., for stealing her husband. What’s more, according to legal papers filed by Leisha Pickering, some of the “wrongful conduct” between Pickering and Creekmore-Byrd (I guess that’s what they call it down there?) took place at … you guessed, the C Street group home up on Capitol Hill.

The kicker? This “C-Street” location is notionally a Christian fellowship facility connected to the uber-right-wing Family organization.

(Chip’s grandfather and my great-grandfather were siblings.)

Hat tip: Mrs Heathen.

From the Jackson, MS Clarion-Ledger:

“I think it was a game changer; it was an election changer,” 3rd District Rep. Chip Pickering said. “The Republican ticket is the ticket of reform and change.”

“They can’t define us as the same old Republicans, or Bush Republicans,” Pickering said. “If you look at history, the populist ticket always beats the elitist ticket. (After Palin’s speech) we became the populist ticket.”

(Yes, cousin; if I’m doing the math right, he’s my second cousin once removed. Chip’s grandfather and my great-grandmother were siblings, and his great-grandfather and my great-great-grandfather are the same guy.)

Hat tip to Frank.

They’re talking about not releasing detainees even if they’re acquitted. Goddammit, people, is it so hard to do the right thing?

On this Fourth of July, imagine for a moment what Hunter Thompson would’ve done with this Palin situation — and with always-wrong Bill Kristol’s prediction that she resigned to prep for a 2012 run for the White House. The country’s less interesting without you, Dr Thompson.

The Minnesota Supreme Court has handed down its much-expected ruling in the heavily-litigated Minnesota Senate race from 2008 — and it’s a unanimous one — deciding against Republican former Sen. Norm Coleman’s appeal of his defeat in the election trial and affirming the lower court’s verdict that Democratic comedian Al Franken is the legitimate winner of the race.

More.

Update: Coleman has conceded. It’s over. Sixty, baby.

Heathen didn’t like shit like this with Shrub in charge, and it’s no more palatable with Obama in the White House. Detention without recourse or charge is contrary to everything we stand for as Americans, and it needs to stop. Just because you’re on the right side of more issues than George does NOT mean you get a pass on crap like this.

President Obama wrote a note for a 10-year-old who skipped (the last day of) school to attend a town-hall appearance.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Ten-year-old Kennedy Corpus has a rock-solid excuse for missing the last day of school: a personal note to her teacher from President Barack Obama.

Her father, John Corpus of Green Bay, stood to ask Obama about health care during the president’s town hall-style meeting at Southwest High School on Thursday. He told Obama that his daughter was missing school to attend the event and that he hoped she didn’t get in trouble.

“Do you need me to write a note?” Obama asked. The crowd laughed, but the president was serious.

On a piece of paper, he wrote: “To Kennedy’s teacher: Please excuse Kennedy’s absence. She’s with me. Barack Obama.” He stepped off the stage to hand-deliver the note — to Kennedy’s surprise.

(Updated: Link fixed.)

Granted, we can’t expect the Right to actually honor it, steeped as they are in the politics of fear and bigotry, but take a look at this analysis of their opposition to same-sex marriage. Hint: it’s got no rational legs.

The anti-gay-marriage soundbite, by contrast, makes no attempt at persuasion. It’s like saying you oppose the Bush tax cuts because “I believe the top tax rate should be 39.6 percent.” You believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman? Okay! But why?

The ubiquity of this hollow formulation tells us something about the state of anti-gay-marriage thought. It’s a body of opinion held largely by people who either don’t know why they oppose gay marriage or don’t feel comfortable explicating their case.

In a liberal society, consenting adults are presumed to be able to do as they like, and it is incumbent upon opponents of any such freedom to demonstrate some wider harm. The National Organization for Marriage, on its website, instructs its activists to answer the who-gets-harmed query like so: “Who gets harmed? The people of this state who lose our right to define marriage as the union of husband and wife, that’s who.” Former GOP Senator Rick Santorum, arguing along similar lines, has said, “[I]f anybody can get married for any reason, then it loses its special place.”€

Both these arguments rest upon simple tautologies. Expanding a right to a new group deprives the rest of us of our right to deny that right to others. If making a right less exclusive devalues it, then any extension of rights is an imposition upon those who were not previously excluded — i.e., women’€™s suffrage makes voting less special for men.

(Via JeffreyP.)

Updated: Link fixed; high-order characters removed from quote.

Enjoy.

NPR is reporting that David Souter may retire, thereby giving BHO his first shot at the Court.

Excellent.

Arlen Spector has crossed the aisle. When Senator-elect Franken is seated, the Dems will be filibuster-proof.

Bill “Wrong About Everything” Kristol just won $250K from some conservative group despite being demonstrably wrong just about every time he’s opened his mouth in the last 8 years.

What is wrong with these people?

This time, the victims are the TeaPartyTards. Check it out.

I spent the better part of an hour earlier today scanning the various sites and blogs to try and understand what specifically the Fox-Pajamas tea parties are about. Having absorbed about as much of the literature as I can, I have to say I’m still befuddled.

Option 1: It’s a protest of the bank bailouts orchestrated by Bush and now Obama. But surely these tea-partiers understand what would happen if we didn’t bail the banks out. Are they advocating letting major banks fail? Or are they advocating a Krugman-style government take-over? No idea.

Option 2: It’s a protest against tax hikes. But there have barely been any! Are they arguing that the planned return to Clinton era marginal rates is an outrage worthy of the colonists … only months after an election in which the winning candidate ran on exactly that platform?

Nice. As Jon Stewart said earlier this week, all these hysterical wingnuts seem to have confused “tyranny” with “losing.”

Stephen Colbert 1, Glenn Beck 0.

Mainstream conservative blog-and-news site TownHall (a property, it should be noted, of a Christian publisher) runs the “work” of Burt Prelutsky; HuffPo’s Chris Kelly delivers a nice smackdown in response to Prelutsky’s most recent hateful, racist blatherings.

Check it out.

Obama to overturn stem cell research ban.

NYT:

The secret legal opinions issued by Bush administration lawyers after the Sept. 11 attacks included assertions that the president could use the nation’s military within the United States to combat terrorism suspects and to conduct raids without obtaining search warrants.

[…]

The opinions reflected a broad interpretation of presidential authority, asserting as well that the president could unilaterally abrogate foreign treaties, ignore any guidance from Congress in dealing with detainees suspected of terrorism, and conduct a program of domestic eavesdropping without warrants.

Some of the positions had previously become known from statements of Bush administration officials in response to court challenges and Congressional inquiries. But taken together, the opinions disclosed Monday were the clearest illustration to date of the broad definition of presidential power approved by government lawyers in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

In other words, preparation for a police state. The author of many of the memoranda was, of course, John Yoo, who also opined that “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully” and that “the current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”

The Right side of the Net is all hot-and-bothered about the idea of raising income tax on incomes over $250K, and it’s brought out the wingnut John Galt contingent. Sadly, none of them seem to actually understand how income taxes work in this country, given how many seem to be cypherin’ out ways to make exactly $249,999 in 2009. MediaMatters, as always, is spot on:

ABC News reports on “upper-income taxpayers” who are trying to reduce their income so they avoid proposed tax increases on those earning more than $250,000.

According to ABC, one attorney “plans to cut back on her business to get her annual income under the quarter million mark should the Obama tax plan be passed by Congress and become law.” According to the attorney: “We are going to try to figure out how to make our income $249,999.00.” ABC also quotes a dentist who is trying to figure out how to reduce her income.

This is stunningly wrong.

The ABC article is based on the premise that an individual’s entire income is taxed at the same rate. If that were the case, it would be possible for a family earning $249,999 to have a higher after-tax income than a family earning $255,000, because the family earning $249,999 would pay a lower tax rate.

But that isn’t actually how income tax works.

In reality, a family earning $255,000 will pay the higher tax rate only on its last $5,001 in income; the first $249,999 will continue to be taxed at the old rate. So intentionally lowering your income from $255,000 to $249,999 is counter-productive; it will result in a lower after-tax income.

It’s like nobody is even capable of research anymore.

Update: Link fixed.

As it turns out, Rush Limbaugh really is a big fat idiot, as he is apparently unaware that the common document-distribution format PDF includes search features.

Well, either that, or he’s a lying asshole willfully misleading his listeners. I’m not sure which is worse.

I’m still pissed off about the Obama position on the extraordinary rendition lawsuit — that, basically, the whole lawsuit must be quashed because it endangers state secrets, which is exactly the position of the Bush administration. I think Glenn Greenwald at Salon pretty much nails it, along with what’s wrong with the press supposedly covering Washington and presumably entrusted with holding them accountable.

I was going to excerpt, but you should really just go read the whole thing, including Greenwald’s excoriation of the twin douchebags over at the Atlantic, Andy Sullivan and Mark Armbinder, who are now behaving more like stenographers than reporters.

Much — most! — of what the new administration has done since January 20 has been an unalloyed joy. We have unambiguous pledges to close Gitmo, to withdraw from Iraq, to comply rather than obfuscate FOIA requests, and the Mexico City gag rule is no longer in effect.

In many ways, such behavior makes the Obama administration’s stance on extraordinary rendition and state secrets all the more disappointing.

“I am seriously glad to be here tonight at the annual Alfalfa dinner. I know that many you are aware that this dinner began almost one hundred years ago as a way to celebrate the birthday of General Robert E. Lee. If he were here with us tonight, the General would be 202 years old. And very confused.”

Barack Obama, U.S. President.

Obama, apparently a bit of a dick:

(Stolen from Reddit, hosted here because the original is on some ephemeral photosharing site.)

New RNC chair told CNN pseudo-journalist Wolf Blitzer “Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job.”

Really? As TPM points out — and as every reasonably intelligent Heathen should know for themselves in Houston, of all places — this is utterly obvious bullshit. Thousands and thousands of people beg to differ, working as they do for organizations like NASA, or the military, or the park service, or any of an alphabet soup of Federal or state agencies that provide services we all take for granted.

Of course, we expect Republicans to traffic in absurdly transparent lies. What’s nearly criminal here is that Blitzer did nothing to challenge the lie. Tell us again about the “liberal media,” Republicans. Really.

What an asshole. And, btw, no, he is not some sort of exception; he’s a mainstream Republican from Texas.

Rep. Conyers has issued a new subpoena to Karl Rove in re: the US attorney firings. With Bush in the White House, this was a nonstarter — but the courts have rejected the absolute-immunity argument, and Obama previously called the claim “completely misguided.”

It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.

Update: Looks like it’s up to Obama.

Agitator Radley Balko put it this way: “Holy Crap!” Some excerpts:

[I]n a broad swipe at the Bush administration’s lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001.

It’s worth emphasizing again here these steps Obama’s taking effectively limit his own power. That’s extraordinary.

NYT:

Dennis C. Blair, the retired admiral who is President Obama’s choice as the nation’s top intelligence official, pledged in testimony to be delivered on Thursday that he would require counterterrorism programs to operate “in a manner consistent with our nation’s values, consistent with our Constitution and consistent with the rule of law.”

and more:

“I do not and will not support any surveillance activities that circumvent established processes for their lawful authorization,” he said in the testimony. “I believe in the importance of independent monitoring, including by Congress, to prevent abuses and protect civil liberties.”

In an unusual comment from a man who will head the most secret agencies of government, he said, “There is a need for transparency and accountability in a mission where most work necessarily remains hidden from public view.” He said that if confirmed, he would “communicate frequently and candidly with the oversight committees, and as much as possible with the American people.”

Imagine hearing that — or even the words “rule of law” — from a Bush appointee.

You heard right. Chief Justice Roberts bungled the oath.

Granted, this doesn’t actually matter; no oath is required; from Wikipedia:

Article 2 of the the United States Constitution states that the President must take the oath before he enter office. This was superseded by the 20th Amendment[5] which states that the terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January and the terms of their successors shall then begin. This would therefore allow the President to assume the duties of the office without requiring the oath to be administered.

Keep this in mind in the inevitable right-wing chatter about how Obama isn’t “really” the President.

He says the media shouldn’t be allowed to do reporting on wars. And PJTV is paying him to do exactly that.

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think journalists should be anywhere allowed war. I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what’s happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I think it’s asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you’d go to the theater and you’d see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for’em. Now everyone’s got an opinion and wants to downer–and down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers.

I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting. You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, “Well look at this atrocity,” well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.

The Economist on Bush includes some fantastic lines, including this:

Relentless partisanship led to the politicisation of almost everything Mr Bush did. He used his first televised address to justify putting strict limits on federal funding for stem-cell research, and used the first veto of his presidency to prevent the expansion of that funding. He appointed two “strict constructionist” judges to the Supreme Court, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, turned his back on the Kyoto protocol, dismissed several international treaties, particularly the anti-ballistic-missile treaty, loosened regulations on firearms and campaigned against gay marriage. His energy policy was written by Mr Cheney with the help of a handful of cronies from the energy industry. His lacklustre attorney-general Alberto Gonzales, who was forced to resign in disgrace, was only the most visible of an army of over-promoted, ideologically vetted homunculi.

Apparently, it “aggravated” Cheney that the NYT won a Pulitzer for its coverage of the illegal, warrantless wiretapping his administration pursued.

What a malignant weasel. Once again, Dick, don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out. I have little hope he’ll ever be tried for his crimes, but it IS nice to consider how many nations are essentially closed to him — i.e., that he’ll have to avoid to keep from being arrested.

Remember how the Obamas asked if they could move into Blair House early, so that their children could start school in January with minimal turmoil? And remember how the Bush White House said “nope, already booked?”

Yeah, turns out it wasn’t. The supposed booking — for one night, for right-wing darling John Howard, PM of New Zealand Australia (thanks, I.K.; mea culpa) — hadn’t happened yet. And Blair House? 119 rooms, 35 bathrooms. As the linked story points out, that’s more than enough room for a family of four plus a visiting dignitary for a single night. Hell, for a single night, it’s not at all clear why Howard couldn’t stay in the White House itself.

Classy to the end, these guys. Don’t let the doors hit you on the ass on the way out.

As head of the Office of Legal Counsel — the Executive unit that Bush used to spread the notion of the imperial executive — Obama has picked Dawn Johnsen, the Indiana U. law prof who has been publically assailing “Bush’s corrpution of American ideals” for years:

Upon the release last spring of a secret Office of Legal Counsel memo that permitted the aggressive interrogations of terrorism suspects, she excoriated the unit’s lawyers for advising Bush “that in fighting the war on terror, he is not bound by the laws Congress has enacted.”

“One of the refreshing things about Dawn Johnsen’s appointment is that she’s almost a 180-degree shift from John Yoo and David Addington and (Vice President) Dick Cheney ,” Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe said, referring to the main legal architects of the administration’s approval of harsh interrogation tactics.

John Bolton and John Yoo are in the Times today insisting on what amounts to rollbacks of Executive power.

They begin, again, without ANY note of irony whatsoever:

THE Constitution’s Treaty Clause has long been seen, rightly, as a bulwark against presidential inclinations to lock the United States into unwise foreign commitments. The clause will likely be tested by Barack Obama’s administration, as the new president and Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton, led by the legal academics in whose circles they have long traveled, contemplate binding down American power and interests in a dense web of treaties and international bureaucracies.

It’s much, much bigger than Bush, or Bush’s policies. Krugman nails it:

The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.

If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it was just following the advice of leading conservative think tanks: after the 2000 election the Heritage Foundation specifically urged the new team to “make appointments based on loyalty first and expertise second.”

Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well?

Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.

He concludes:

Will the Republicans eventually stage a comeback? Yes, of course. But barring some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that will not happen until they stop whining and look at what really went wrong. And when they do, they will discover that they need to get in touch with the real “real America,” a country that is more diverse, more tolerant, and more demanding of effective government than is dreamt of in their political philosophy.

Fox News Airs “Magic Negro” Message On New Year’s Broadcast.

(HT: Tom, who RSVP’d for NYE but never actually showed up.)

Giant swinging dick and all-around smart guy Zbigniew Brzezinski lays the smackdown on Joe Scarborough on his own show during a discussion of the Gaza conflict in the larger context of mideast relations in the last 20 or so years. Among other things, Z pointed out that under Clinton, we had a policy of engagement and discussion for both sides of the issue, and kept Israel and Arafat at the table — which cut down on violence. Until 1/01, when Clinton left office and Bush more or less abandoned that approach. Anyway, Joe said something stupid, to which ZB replied “You know, you have such a stunning superficial knowledge of what went on that it’s almost embarrassing to listen to you.” HuffPo has video. Don’t miss it.

During a lunch meeting two blocks from the White House, where he served under his longtime friend, President George W. Bush, Mr. Gonzales said that “for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.”

WTF, Gonzo? This blogger sums it up:

This is pretty much the most clueless statement I can imagine. The treatment Gonzales received concerned the program of politicizing the department he was in charge of, the Department of Justice. It came after a string of answers which showed Gonzales either didn’t know at all what was happening in his own DOJ, or was purposely misleading Senators with a string of “I do not recall” answers. Gonzales now doesn’t just fail to recall, he fails to understand the enormity of his incometencies. Look for no responsibility taken in this book.

Worse here is that Gonzales compares himself to the real victims in the War on Terror, the men and women who died on 9/11, the soldiers who died because of Bush’s policies, the tens of thousands of Iraqi dead. . . those are victims of the “War on Terror.” Mr. Gonzales is at worst complicit in some of those deaths in that he helped justify some ugly policies. At best, Gonzales is merely a bumbling incompetent.

More on the interview over at TPM; the TPM excerpt includes this heartwarming quote:

The Harvard Law School graduate, onetime corporate lawyer and Texas judge also hasn’t been able to land a job. He has delivered a few paid speeches, done some mediation work and plans to do some arbitration, but said law firms have been “skittish” about hiring him.

Some small justice, I suppose.

From HuffPo:

On Fox News Sunday today, host Chris Wallace asked Vice President Cheney, “if the President, during war, decides to do something to protect the country, is it legal?” “I think as a general proposition, I’d say yes,” replied Cheney.

…is if he was about to throw it at Rick Warren.

Obama is having douchebag hatemonger Rick Warren give his inaugural invocation. Fantastic. I’m already disappointed.