Check out KnowThyNeighbor.org. The plan: anyone who formally signs the petition to add anti-gay-marriage language to the Massachusetts constitution will have their name and address listed on this site. (Via MeFi.)

FEMA flies refugees to right city, wrong state.

From TPM:

On the Al Franken show this afternoon I mentioned this article from today’s Salt Lake Tribune which tells the story of about a thousand firefighters from around the country who volunteered to serve in the Katrina devastation areas. But when they arrived in Atlanta to be shipped out to various disaster zones in the region, they found out that they were going to be used as FEMA community relations specialists. And they were to spend a day in Atltanta getting training on community relations, sexual harassment awareness, et al. This of course while life and death situations were still the order of the day along a whole stretch of the Gulf Coast. It’s an article you’ve really got a to read to appreciate the full measure of folly and surreality. But the graf at the end of the piece really puts everything in perspective, and gives some sense what the Bush administration really has in mind when it talks about a crisis. The paper reports that one team finally was sent to the region …

As specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew’s first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Go read this. Now.

From the SisterMachineGun Blog, via JWZ:

So, I’m trying hard to be non-partisan about this. I really am. I wouldn’t normally use an opportunity like this to score points on the administration. But I don’t understand a couple things here. (And I’d like to point out that I’m not being sarcastic at all.) Point: The first thing I don’t understand is why there isn’t a line of Chinooks and Sea Kings bringing food to that god-damned dome, and taking people away. The sky should be black with them. There should be a line of helicopters from Atlanta to New Orleans. Point: Why is FEMA, the one Federal agency that was once beholden to no one, and able to tell everyone from the Army on down what to do, now under control of the Dept. Of Homeland Security? Now, instead of being able to order goverment agencies to comply under their logistical control, they have to ask. As a result, the Coast Guard and National Guard, which used to have to drop everything at their behest, are now kind of operating on their own with no logistical advice. Point: Why are the national guards of, say, North Dakota and Utah still sitting in their houses watching CNN?

There’s more.

“New Orleans has become a casualty of the war in Iraq.:”

When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA. Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside. Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The [U.S. Army Corps of Engineers] never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security — coming at the same time as federal tax cuts — was the reason for the strain. […] At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars. In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness. On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, told the Times-Picayune: “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.”

Read This, which we found Tom Tomorrow’s site:

The unbridgeable divide between the left and right’s approach to Iraq and the WoT is, among other things, a disagreement over the value of moral and material strength, with the left placing a premium on the former and the right on the latter. The right (broadly speaking) can’t fathom why the left is driven into fits of rage over every Abu Ghraib, every Gitmo, every secret rendition, every breach of civil liberties, every shifting rationale for war, every soldier and civilian killed in that war, every Bush platitude in support of it, every attempt to squelch dissent. They see the left’s protestations as appeasement of a ruthless enemy. For the left (broadly speaking), America’s moral strength is of paramount importance; without it, all the brute force in the world won’t keep us safe, defeat our enemies, and preserve our role as the world’s moral leader….. War hawks squeal about America-haters and traitors, heaping scorn on the so-called “blame America first” crowd, but they fail to comprehend that the left reserves the deepest disdain for those who squander our moral authority. The scars of a terrorist attack heal and we are sadder but stronger for having lived through it. When our moral leadership is compromised by people draped in the American flag, America is weakened. The loss of our moral compass leaves us rudderless, open to attacks on our character and our basic decency. And nothing makes our enemies prouder. They can’t kill us all, but if they permanently stain our dignity, they’ve done irreparable harm to America. The antiwar critique of Iraq is that it is an immoral war and every resulting death is a wrongful one. Opponents of the war view the invasion and occupation as a dangerous and shameful violation of international law. Iraq saps our moral strength and the sooner we leave the better. Opposing the invasion on the grounds that the administration lied its way into it, they see every subsequent death, American or foreign, as an ethical travesty and a stain on America’s good name. They have held this view consistently since 2002. Millions marched down the streets of our cities before the invasion, believing that the administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein constituted a dire and imminent threat to the US was absurd on its face (whether or not the exact word Ôimminent’ was used is a semantic exercise, the implication was clear). Where the hawks screamed that Saddam gassed his own people, the war’s opponents countered that there is no shortage of murderous tyrants. Where the hawks said that Saddam wouldn’t hesitate to arm terrorists, the war’s opponents argued that there’s no lack of regimes that will help terrorists obtain lethal weapons. For the less gullible among us, the administration’s alarmist rhetoric in 2002 was a grim farce, and the unfolding of the nightmare we see today was a foregone conclusion. Saddam was no greater or immediate a threat — and arguably a lesser one — than North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia. Hindsight has proven these war critics correct. Few dispute that the threat from Saddam was over-stated – to put it mildly. And evidence continues to mount that the invasion was a fait accompli by 2002 if not 2001. Calling for an immediate pullout from Iraq has nothing to do with capitulation and everything to do with righting a moral wrong and undoing the damage done to America’s moral standing.

We’re not sure we can morally justify the “oops! Shouldn’t have done this! Have fun fixing the country!” pullout, but other than that: spot on.

From BoingBoing:

A group representing religious schools in California is suing the University of California system. At issue, the question of whether creationist courses in high school are counted as science credit for college admissions.

How does this even get traction? Maybe it has something to do with “Swift Boating” Science by the GOP; their hostility to fact and actual inquiry only grows.

For more on what horseshit ID is, see Show Me The Science:

…the proponents of intelligent design use a ploy that works something like this. First you misuse or misdescribe some scientist’s work. Then you get an angry rebuttal. Then, instead of dealing forthrightly with the charges leveled, you cite the rebuttal as evidence that there is a “controversy” to teach. Note that the trick is content-free. You can use it on any topic. “Smith’s work in geology supports my argument that the earth is flat,” you say, misrepresenting Smith’s work. When Smith responds with a denunciation of your misuse of her work, you respond, saying something like: “See what a controversy we have here? Professor Smith and I are locked in a titanic scientific debate. We should teach the controversy in the classrooms.” And here is the delicious part: you can often exploit the very technicality of the issues to your own advantage, counting on most of us to miss the point in all the difficult details. William Dembski, one of the most vocal supporters of intelligent design, notes that he provoked Thomas Schneider, a biologist, into a response that Dr. Dembski characterizes as “some hair-splitting that could only look ridiculous to outsider observers.” What looks to scientists — and is — a knockout objection by Dr. Schneider is portrayed to most everyone else as ridiculous hair-splitting. In short, no science. Indeed, no intelligent design hypothesis has even been ventured as a rival explanation of any biological phenomenon. This might seem surprising to people who think that intelligent design competes directly with the hypothesis of non-intelligent design by natural selection. But saying, as intelligent design proponents do, “You haven’t explained everything yet,” is not a competing hypothesis. Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists. But intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything.

Wonkette transcribes this excellent dialog between war apologist Hitchens and TDS’ Jon Stewart:

The thing about Christopher Hitchens is that no matter how wrong or drunk he is, he always sounds like he’s making sense. It’s an impenetrable articulateness that makes him a compelling talking head even when he’s talking out of his ass. He doesn’t often fail to get the last word, but Jon Stewart just beat him to it. After a sublimely cordial conversation that began with Stewart asking Hitchens to explain “why I am wrong about Iraq,” Hitchens bristled to Stewart’s suggestion that the war was just “the British and Churchillian method that we’ll just go into the Middle East and we’ll redraw the map.”

Stewart: The people who say we shouldn’t fight in Iraq aren’t saying it’s our fault. . . That is the conflation that is the most disturbing. . .
Hitch: Don’t you hear people saying. . .
Stewart: You hear people saying a lot of stupid [bleep]. . . But there are reasonable disagreements in this country about the way this war has been conducted, that has nothing to do with people believing we should cut and run from the terrorists, or we should show weakness in the face of terrorism, or that we believe that we have in some way brought this upon ourselves. . .
Hitch: [Sputter]
Stewart: They believe that this war is being conducted without transparency, without credibility, and without competence…
Hitch: I’m sorry, sunshine… I just watched you ridicule the president for saying he wouldn’t give. . .
Stewart: No, you misunderstood why. . . . That’s not why I ridiculed the president. He refuses to answer questions from adults as though we were adults and falls back upon platitudes and phrases and talking points that does a disservice to the goals that he himself shares with the very people needs to convince. [Audience erupts in applause] Hitch: You want me to believe you’re really secretly on the side of the Bush administration. . .
Stewart: I secretly need to believe he’s on my side. He’s too important and powerful a man not to be. Hitch: [Sputter, return to talking about his latest book.]

From the AP:

Bill Moyer, 73, wears a “Bullshit Protector” flap over his ear while President George W. Bush addresses the Veterans of Foreign Wars. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)

Via Eschaton, but all over the net now.

Atrios points us to this, a demonstration of just exactly how wacked out Deepak Chopra is. Even more offensive is the fact that Larry fucking King actually asked “… if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?”

And people consider this “debate?” Astounding. There IS no meaningful science behind “ID” at all. There is no “debate” in the scientific community about evolution. ID is not a theory. It’s not even a hypothesis, since it’s by definition untestable. At its root, it throws up its hands and says “God did it! Look! I’m done!” when faced with areas of science it doesn’t understand. It’s anti-intellectual, anti-inquiry, and anti-science at its core.

Which, of course, means that the Bush administration and the GOP embrace it wholly.

Via Kos and the LA Times. Summary: Robertson, et. al., are no different than Iranian mullahs. There is an American Taliban, but it’s not that misguided kid from Marin County — it’s a well-organized, well-funded group of would-be theocrats who have the ear of the White House and who are openly hostile to such basic things as privacy (their opinion on, say Griswold is well documented). Ignore them at your peril.

Or so says Chief Heathen Evangelism and Chilean Astronomy Correspondent R. N., in re: Pat Robertson’s call for democratically elected Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to be assassinated. Of course, this is a guy who’s been praying for deaths on the SCOTUS for years, so I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. His quote:

You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don’t think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United … This is in our sphere of influence, so we can’t let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with. Eschaton

Atrios’ summary: “He’s got oil, and if he won’t give it to us we’ll just have to kill him.”

Apparently, Roberts was staunchly opposed to “homemakers becoming lawyers” based on documents released this week. Of course, this was back in the 1980s, when we weren’t so evolved as we are now. Or something. From the WaPo story:

Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. consistently opposed legal and legislative attempts to strengthen women’s rights during his years as a legal adviser in the Reagan White House, disparaging what he called “the purported gender gap” and, at one point, questioning “whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good.” In internal memos, Roberts urged President Ronald Reagan to refrain from embracing any form of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment pending in Congress; he concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were “highly objectionable”; and he said that a controversial legal theory then in vogue — of directing employers to pay women the same as men for jobs of “comparable worth” — was “staggeringly pernicious” and “anti-capitalist.”

(Thanks Tom!)

We love the Rude Pundit. Today, he turns his guns on those bellicose fuckwits bent on Hating Cindy Sheehan:

So, like, when some crazed white collar redneck plows through a field of flags and crosses bearing the names of soldiers who died in Iraq simply because said crosses were planted by Cindy Sheehan and her fellow Crawford protesters, we can pretty much assume that said crazed white collar redneck, also known as Waco realtor Larry Northern, may have been acting out of a sense of impotence, rage, and fear, the same combination that has driven crazed rednecks since Bocephus Yankeebeater pissed on the first pair of shoes ever to make its way up the Ozarks to Fuckedmysister, Arkansas.

Read the whole thing. And when you’re done, follow the link to Operation Truth to read the open letter sent to the aforementioned waste-of-space jackass Larry Northern by retired First Sergeant Perry Jefferies. It’s much more polite than Northern probably deserves; it begins:

Mr. Northern: I am a Veteran of the Iraq war, having served with the 4th Infantry Division on the initial invasion with Force Package One. While I was in Iraq, a very good friend of mine, Christopher Cutchall, was killed in an unarmored HMMWV outside of Baghdad. He was a cavalry scout serving with the 3d ID. Once he had declined the award of a medal because Soldiers assigned to him did not receive similar awards that he had recommended. He left two sons and awonderful wife. On Monday night, August 16, you ran down the memorial cross erected for him by Arlington West.

Rush Limbaugh, in addition to being an evil fuck, a drug addict, a hypocrit, and a useless blowhard is now also the worst person in the world:

But the winner — oh, it’s the irrepressible Rush Limbaugh. On the radio, he said, quote, “Cindy Sheehan is just Bill Burkett. Her story is nothing more than forged documents. There’s nothing about it that’s real.” I guess she made up that dead-son-in-Iraq business! He also referred to her supporters as “dope-smoking FM types.” I guess the painkillers wipe out your memory along with your ethics. Rush Limbaugh, today’s worst person in the world!

Congrats, Rush!

We were planning to rant some more about the whole stupid Intelligent Design thing, but as it turns out the Onion has stepped up to the plate: Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory. (However, you should take a gander at this post over at Accordian Guy’s blog anyway.)

From Salon‘s piece on Novak:

Twice, Karl Rove was dismissed from George H.W. Bush’s campaign, in 1980 and 1992, respectively, for leaking to Novak.

Dobson’s hate-filled faux-Christian cult site offers tips on how to tell if your prepubescent child might be gay, and what to do as a result (“change is possible!”, they assure you, despite being wholly contradicted by the APA). Fortunately, Fafblog is on the case.

Yeah, as it happens, our government KNEW THAT ATTA WAS AN AL QUAEDA OPERATIVE as early as summer 2000.

Jon Stewart pokes fun at the absurd, pork-full appropriations bill by noting it includes, among other things:

…and $1.6 million for something called the American Tobacco Trail in North Carolina. Here’s all you need to know about the American Tobacco Trail: It starts at “slaves” and ends at “cancer”.

From tonight’s show. Excellent.

Read this piece on August 6, Presidential daily briefings, and the wonder that is the Bush administration.

Hundreds of years ago, scientists were branded (sometimes literally) as heretics and thrown in prison for discovering facts those in power found inconvenient (for example, heliocentrism).

Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX-Jackass) presumably wishes he was in power then instead of now. Barton is using his committee chairmanship to harrass scientists whose work supports a conclusion with which he disagrees, namely that climate change exists. He’s demanding they turn over not just data but also personal and financial informationMore information available at the American Institute of Physics. Even some Republicans are calling the move “misguided and illegitimate.” This, of course, matters little to Barton.

Between Rove and Roberts, this is getting little play in the mainstream media, but the House voted to extend the PATRIOT Act yesterday. Billmon reminds us why this is a very, very, very bad idea. PATRIOT is a hodgepode of expanded search & seizure powers protected by a veil of secrecy in the name of “national security,” and will end up being abused even if it hasn’t been already. Governments are loathe to give up power once they get it, and every government in the history of the world has abused the trust and power granted it by its citizens. Let your congresscritter know how you feel.

In the “useless security theater” department, NY will now do random bag searches on the subway. Like that’s gonna deter anybody from anything.

Finally, it looks like somehow we got the Irish drunk enough to give the CIA authority to secretly interrogate Irish citizens in Ireland even if they’re not suspected of any (Irish) crime. WTF? We proclaim we’re defenders of liberty, but we consistently behave as agents of government power trumping said liberty.

Supreme Court nominee John Roberts has only been a judge since 2003. We have more experience writing a snarky blog than he has deciding cases, but we don’t think we belong on some sort of supreme blog council.

Doesn’t a SCOTUS slot imply more bench time than that? Shouldn’t it?

Ol’ Man-on-Dog Rick Santorum is at it again, proclaiming the clergy molestations to be essentially consensual homosexual relationships, and then making it abundantly clear that he thinks State regulation of birth control is A-OK.

Fox’s John Gibson stated yesterday that Rove deserved a medal for outing Plame, and that she should have been outed “by somebody.”

The GOP spin machine is in full force trying to make it appear that Plame wasn’t an actual undercover operative, which would mean that Novak and Rove are off the hook. This is the new big lie. Fortunately, it’s hard to argue with actual facts.

We were too tired to post yesterday. To atone, we provide you with Billmon’s thoughts on patriotism. It’s a nice essay. Read it.

According to TPM, the Time/Cooper documents reveal the source of the Plame leak.

It was Rove.

If this is true, it couldn’t happen to a nicer cocksucker.

Atrios reminds us how openly hostile some in the GOP are to good science, extending even to the point of intimidation.

Turdblossom’s been in the news today for some pretty nasty comments about half the country made yesterday — and which the White House has fully supported:

“Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.” […] Mr. Rove also said American armed forces overseas were in more jeopardy as a result of remarks last week by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who compared American mistreatment of detainees to the acts of “Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others.” “Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year?” Mr. Rove asked. “Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.”

In other words, more “libruls hate America and want our troops to die” bullshit. From the President’s chief advisor. With the full support of said President. Jesus.

Anyway, Atrios’ response:

For the record, my motives aren’t to get more troops killed. If those were my motives I’d ship them off to a war on false pretenses without sufficient equipment them safe.

From Fred, who finishes with:

I don’t accept these new rules. Here’s what I believe: I believe that torture itself is dishonorable. I believe that failing to condemn torture is dishonorable. I believe that condoning the practice of torture empowers our enemies and puts American lives at risk. And I believe that by embracing the immoral, counterproductive and utterly un-American practice of torture we make America more closely resemble the kinds of infamous and evil regimes we ought never to resemble in the slightest. I believe that those who defend the practice of torture lessen America. I believe that the condemnation of those who condemn torture lessens America. I believe that Joseph Darby is a great American and that Jeremy Sivits is not. But I can’t believe that we’ve fallen so far that I actually have to say all these things. I can’t believe that we have reached the point where statements like “Torture is bad” and “It is good to condemn torture” are seen as controversial. A United States Senator spoke the truth. He condemned evil and called it un-American. And then he was forced to apologize. Jesus God.

Flag-Burning Amendment Advances in House. Which justice was it that noted that the freedoms the flag purportedly stands for extend even to those who may hold it in contempt?

We’re pretty sure we don’t need to point out where a nation is going when it feels the need to alter its Constitution in order to prevent some kinds of political demonstration and, in the process, restrict what can be done with private property.

Atrios points us to Howler, who express pretty solidly our feelings on Durbin being forced to apologize for speaking truth to power:

Indeed, the lunacy of the flap about Durbin shows the disturbing point we’ve now reached; if you’re a Democrat, a “firestorm” can quickly spread around you if you make remarks which are perfectly accurate. In this case, a Democrat actually did say something that’s about as mundane as “the sky is blue.” Have you read that FBI report–the report which Durbin was discussing? No one would associate the conduct it describes with the nation described in our civics texts, with the country you were taught to believe in as school kids. […] Durbin asked an obvious question: If you’d read that report, would you ever have thought that it was describing American conduct? Or would you have thought what Durbin said–that it must describe an evil regime, the type we have long denounced? The answer to that is perfectly obvious–and so is the state of our fallen culture, the culture being trampled under by the Russerts, the McCains and the Wallaces. But we’ve now reached a miraculous point in the crumbling of our discourse. We’ve reached the point where citizens are mocked by major scribes for wondering if we were lied into war–and where United States senators are told to apologize for denouncing the conduct described in that report. But then, lunacy has spread throughout our discourse over the course of the past dozen years. And your fiery “career liberals” have known to be silent. They looked away again and again. Now we see what that has bought us. Remember: If you’re troubled to think that we may have been lied into war, that makes you a “wing nut” to today’s “mainstream” press corps. And if you think that FBI report sounds un-American, you need to apologize to the Senate! McCain, Russert, Kristol, Hume, Wallace? They’ve turned their backs on sanity itself. Everyone has to fight this spreading press culture–and you have to ask more from those who kept quiet while this culture of insanity was born.

Back to back brilliance! Giblets, Fafnir, and the Medium Lobster provide us with some much-needed balance by explaining how our little gulag problem isn’t nearly so bad as Hitler, Satan, or Galactus:

Galactus, Eater of Worlds: He eats whole worlds — with people on em an everything! Where would you be if Galactus ate your world? Nowhere that’s where — or just floatin in space feelin real sad on accounta you don’t got a world. How many worlds has the US ever eaten? Maybe, yknow, like one. Well that’s nothin for Galactus… he eats worlds all the time. “So delicious Fafnir,” says Galactus. “Mighty Galactus cannot devour just one.” As of this writing Amnesty International remains completely silent on the issue of Galactus. [Emph. added.]

One can’t be too careful when deliberating over the shifting and byzantine web of confusion and doubt that is so-called “climate” “change.” Whom should we believe: the unruly mob of every reputable climatologist on the planet, or the selfless sages at Exxon-Mobil? Uncertainty abounds, even among higher beings like the Medium Lobster. We must examine all sides of the issue, take input from all corners: from the side of science, and from the side of oil industry whores paid to lie about science. Someday, somehow, between these complex and opposing points of view, we may just find an answer.

There is, of course, more.

Just fucking read Truth and Consequences, on Durbin’s speech.

So the Senate has passed a resolution apologizing for not doing more about lynching during segregation. You’d sort of expect this sort of pro forma gesture to go through without a fight, and in large part it did — except some senators refused to co-sponsor said resolution, and a few forced the Senate to pass it on voice vote instead of a “let’s see how everyone voted” roll-call vote, presumably because they think it’s bad politics back home to be seen as anti-lynching.

Kos and Atrios led with this, and eventually pointed to a list of those refusing to co-sponsor or publically vote in favor. Guess what? All three of the states in which we’ve lived are represented in this cowardly, craven, ridiculous, shameful group (the only one NOT from MS, TX, or AL is Lamar Alexander). They are:

• Shelby (R-AL)
• Cornyn (R-TX)
• Hutchison (R-TX)
• Cochran (R-MS)
• Lott (R-MS)
• Alexander (R-TN)

We’re not surprised by such behavior from the likes of Shelby, the Texas delegation, or Rent “Wish Strom had been President” Lott, but Cochran and Alexander are genuinely disappointing.

Fred Clark — a/k/a Slacktivist — opens his most recent post with this:

It was an experiment. The Initiative represented the government’s interest in not only controlling the otherworldly menace, but in harnessing its power for our own military purposes. The considered opinion of this council is that the experiment has failed. … The demons cannot be harnessed, cannot be controlled. It is therefore our recommendation that the project be terminated. … The Initiative itself will be filled in with concrete. Burn it down, gentlemen. Burn it down and salt the earth.

The context is a late 4th season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; the speaker is a high-level Pentagon type after the project went wildly wrong (big surprise). Fred’s using it to talk about Gitmo and our national experiments with what may charitably be called our less supernatural darker impulses in the wake of 9/11.

We’re supposed to be the good guys. Detention without charge, torture, abuse, extraordinary rendition, disregard for the Geneva Conventions and the unadorned murder of prisoners are not things that the good guys should tolerate, let alone actively embrace.

In fact, it’s at least part of the laundry list of post-WMD reasons Bush gave for invading Iraq. It isn’t enough to say we stand for freedom and justice. We have to actually act like it, too.

Gov. Goodhair’s comments have really pissed us off, so much so we actually wrote a physical letter. Text follows:

Gov. Rick Perry
Office of the Governor
P. O. Box 12428
Austin, TX
Dear Gov. Perry, As an independent Texan, I believe that that which governs least governs best, but within certain parameters; one activity that only the government can do is protect minority rights from majority tyranny. This principle is one of those that form the basis for our society; pure democracy, it has been said, exists when two wolves and one rabbit vote on what’s for dinner. Homosexuals are discriminated against in our country and in our state. Of this there can be no doubt. People of high ideals may disagree on why that is, or even that it’s justified according to the view of one faith or another — but the government must stand for all its citizens, and cannot let the dictates of the Southern Baptist Convention (e.g.) replace its occasionally unpopular yet profoundly necessary role in checking the power of the majority. I am ashamed that our state has joined others in the pointless exercise of marginalizing a portion of our citizens simply because their orientation is unpopular. Texans are an independant breed, set apart, and as such we should lead the way towards the right answer on this and other issues. Here we have failed, and thrown our lot in with those unaccountably threatened by the notion of homosexuality. I do not now, nor have I ever understood this response; even my Baptist mother is confused by this bizarre pursuit of additional marginalization for a group that wants only the protections afforded the rest of us. What I do understand, though, is that a truely conservative leader would not cotton to such distracting antics when far more pressing issues face Texas, our nation, and the world. Governor Perry, please stop kow-towing to the right wing of your party. Many Texans may live in that wing, but many more are offended by the blatently political machinations surrounding this crusade against our gay and lesbian neighbors. Stand up and be true to our state’s independent roots; stand up and fulfill the government’s duty to protect its minorities from the unjust tyranny of the majority. Stand for rights, not the abrogation thereof. Stand for protection, not governmental discrimination. Thank you for your time.

TPM points us to this NYT story echoed here:

“A White House official who once led the oil industry’s fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents. In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved.” NYT

It gets better:

Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the “climate team leader” and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor’s degree in economics, he has no scientific training.

No shame. These people have. no. shame.

Quoth Kos:

Local NBC Anchor: “Among the protesters were gay veterans and their partners. We asked the governor about his take on gay veterans, many of whom may one day have fewer rights than everyone else.” Rick Perry: “Texans made a decision about marriage and if there’s a state that has more lenient views than Texas, then maybe that’s a better place for them to live.”

Fuck him. Seriously. Fuck him.

Kuro5hin has more, but it’s about this bullshit.

Color us unsurprised.

From an editorial via Atrios:

In exchange for our uniformed young people’s willingness to offer the gift of their lives, civilian Americans owe them something important: It is our duty to ensure that they never are called to make that sacrifice unless it is truly necessary for the security of the country. In the case of Iraq, the American public has failed them; we did not prevent the Bush administration from spending their blood in an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes. Perhaps it happened because Americans, understandably, don’t expect untruths from those in power. But that works better as an explanation than as an excuse.

Yeah, it’s cut-and-past posting, but for a good cause. Read and do.

Subject: Please sign emergency petition to save our courts Hi! I just signed MoveOn PAC’s emergency petition to stop the “nuclear option” the far right wing’s plan to seize absolute power to stack our courts -Ð and I hope you will sign too. Starting Monday, the petition will be delivered straight to Congress every three hours until the final vote, and many of our comments will be read aloud on the Senate floor. Please sign right now at: http://www.moveonpac.org/nuclear Why is this an emergency? This Tuesday, the Senate will vote on Republican Leader Bill Frist’s “nuclear option” to break the rules of the Senate and give the Republican Party absolute control over appointing federal judges. For 200 years the minority’s right to filibuster has kept our courts fair, by making sure that federal judges needed to get at least some support from both sides of the aisle before they were given life time appointments. If Frist eliminates the filibuster, his next step would be to force far right partisan judges onto the powerful U.S. Courts of Appeals. The real targets, however, are the four seats on the Supreme Court likely to become vacant in the next four years. With that much power on the Supreme Court, the far right could strike down decades of progress on labor rights, environmental protections, reproductive rights, and privacy. The “nuclear option” will live or die by a final vote, probably on Tuesday, and the vote is still way too close to call. There are at least 6 moderate Republicans still on the fence and only 3 more votes needed to win. If we can get enough of our voices into congress and into the streets in the next 72 hours, we can still save our courts. Please take a minute to join me and sign the emergency petition today. http://www.moveonpac.org/nuclear Thanks!

For more on the context of judicial filibusters, check out Rude Pundit today.

It is now abundantly clear that this Administration always meant to go to war with Iraq regardless of intelligence. It’s all over the web. If we as a people think lying about a blowjob is impeachable, where is the fucking outrage over starting a war based on a lie?

Josh Marshall points out why this whole offensive by the GOP is predicated on lies. This is true for many reasons, but not the least of which is that Frist himself has supported the filibuster in the past.

Today’s gem: Top Ten Filibuster Myths, where “myths” means “lies the GOP wants you to believe.” Read.