Via Wil Wheaton’s Tumblr:

It somehow became an article of faith on the right that Obama is “the most extreme President in American history.” Although when they say that, I think what they really mean is, “He’s black.” — Bill Maher

Once Washington was a happy place where a girl and her mother could be groped simultaneously in good fun by a white supremacist. Sadly, it has all been ruined by Kim Kardashian and Ezra Klein.

It’s from this takedown of Sally Quinn in reference to her absurdly hilarious piece here, as quoted at Electrolite.

I think this makes it clear.

Rob notes: Originals here.

This disgusts me.

This cartoon is pretty clear.

This WaPo OpEd notices what I’ve been saying for years: The GOP is the problem. Before you cry partisanship, note that one of its authors is from the American Enterprise Institute.

Techdirt has more on the bogus way they just rushed CISPA through.

Fortunately, the White House is still insisting it’ll veto it.

Duncan “Atrios” Black’s formerly pseudonymous blog Eschaton is now ten years old.

It’s often been said that a DA can get an indictment for a ham sandwich if they want, but few notice just exactly how awful it is that this is true.

Mr Balko has a couple posts on the subject worth your time:

• One, noting that prosecutors don’t need to believe the guilt of those they try; and
• Two, wherein he (with Glenn Reynolds) proposes the state be on the hook for the defense costs of those tried but not convicted, and even reimburse for unjust pretrial confinement.

Criminal justice is broken. No system with immunity for state actors can ever be just, because there is no punishment (realistically speaking) for runaway prosecutors who abuse their office to improve their stats.

Charles Kuffner points out what’s wrong with the voter fraud story in Texas.

Hint: We don’t have a voter fraud problem. Voter ID laws are about reducing voter turnout, plain and simple.

The ever-popular Wisconsin governor has now decided to stop defending a law in the state that requires hospitals to treat gay partners as spouses for purposes of visitation. The end result is likely that said partners will be denied access.

What is the matter with this man?

More at Jezebel.

Widely hated Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has repealed a law mandating equal pay in the Badger State. Walker ally and enthusiastic repeal backer Glenn Grothman has done no favors for the GOP, opining that money’s just more important to men, see, and dames have different life goals. And besides, he tells us Ann Coulter told him that there’s not really an income gap anyway.

No, I’m not making this up.

David Javerbaum’s hilarious A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney is easily the funniest NYT editorial I’ve ever read. Highly recommended. (h/t to many, many heathen who sent it my way.)

My friend Andrea really nails it here, but I’m copying-and-pasting for brevity:

1. When Texas joined the Women’s Health Program, which officially happened in December, 2006, the rules were the same as they are now. Planned Parenthood was an approved provider. In other words, Texas knew that funds would be going to Planned Parenthood, and our state government was OK with that.

1. In December, 2006, and in the lead-up during our application process, George W. Bush (R) was the President of the United States and Rick Perry (R) was the Governor of Texas.

2. So, the Women’s Health Program (a.k.a. the Medicaid Family Planning Waiver program) was overseen by Republicans at the federal and state level. Republicans approved our state’s application. Under the rules that allowed Planned Parenthood to be a provider.

3. The Texas legislature, a majority of whom were Republicans in 2011, decided to change the state law in order to exclude Planned Parenthood as a provider. They did this knowing that the waiver would expire in December, 2011, and that Texas would need to reapply in order to continue receiving the highly advantageous and money-saving 9 to 1 federal matching funds.

4. The federal government, following the rules established during a Republican administration, warned Texas that dropping Planned Parenthood would terminate the state’s right to participate in the program.

5. The Republican Texas legislature dropped Planned Parenthood anyway.

I really wish ol’ Rick Santorum would’ve saved stuff like this for the general election.

His ongoing self-destruction is a real bummer for those who want to see him running after the convention. ;)

No, he’s not the brown-skinner foreigner with socialist tendencies who wants to give everyone free health care. You’re thinking of Jesus.

Longtime Heathen R. supplied this anecdote from his father, who still lives in our former state. Both R. and his pop are, like Heathen, Cracker-Americans:

Went into vote in the primary. Went to the Democratic side, manned by three elderly black volunteers. “I want to vote.” “You don’t understand, sir, this is the Democratic side.”

Sigh.

We have a First Amendment in this country for a reason. Remember “Voltaire,” people.

Seriously.

DefendRush.org.

TSA Out Of Our Pants explains how the porno-cancer-scanners are effectively useless.

Which is, of course, no surprise.

The empathetic take on the pro-life movement is something I think few on the other side give much thought to, but it goes like this: If life really does begin at conception, and that single-celled embryo is a fully ensouled being, then pretty much any position on the issue other than “no abortions, ever, except maybe in medically necessary scenarios” becomes untenable.

Now, it should not escape notice that taking this position means you disagree with the notoriously liberal (?) American Medical Association about when biochemical life begins, but it is what it is: if this is where you are with the issue, then there are really no options for you if you’re an ethical person.

However, it’s not as simple as “gosh, if this is what all those folks believe, no wonder they act this way.” In fact, it’s worse than that, because while this is clearly the argument they’d like to make, it’s also abundantly clear that they don’t actually believe anything of the sort. They want to make this argument, but they have no interest in any implications of the argument beyond control of the reproductive process. Put another way, their actions (and lack thereof) make it abundantly clear that they only care about the single-celled embryos inasmuch as they allow control over women. Other contexts where such embryos are endangered, or in which they die, are completely uninteresting to them.

Read both links.

This about sums it up.

Seriously, I get that there exist fiscal conservatives with whom rational discourse is possible. I even know one or two. Where the disconnect happens is when some of these people support the GOP as it exists in 2012. Essentially zero secular fiscal conservatives exist in the Republican Party, and none of have any power or influence on the GOP’s direction, platform, or actions. The near-perfect “party discipline” imposed on Republican elected officials means that opinions outside the platform are essentially irrelevant.

There is no room for you in this party if you would take steps to allow gay Americans to marry. There is no room for you in this party if you think global warming is a problem worth addressing. There is no room for you in this party if you think we should work to ensure access to health care for all Americans, like every other modern democracy. And most of all, there is clearly no room for you in the GOP if you are at all interested in repudiating the excesses of its most conservative, most reactionary, and most hateful segments, because doing so might alienate the base. And so it remains in the GOP’s best interest to encourage precisely those excesses.

Vote GOP, you’re voting for more or less exactly what comes out of Mitch McConnell’s mouth, which differs from what Rick Santorum says only by slight degrees.

This country needs a functional conservative party that actually IS conservative and not some sort of frightening theocratic anti-science, anti-gay, anti-immigrant clusterfuck. It would be nice if the GOP filled that role, but it’s abundantly clear where they’ve made their bed.

Congress is considering a law that would make it illegal to protest near anyone with Secret Service protection. I smell lawsuits!

Via Heathen Rob over on the Twitters, we find this excellent quiz. Can you tell which lines were uttered by the theocratic dictator of Iran, and which by GOP presidential frontrunner Rick Santorum?

On Glenn Beck, Santorum has come out opposed to increased college education on the grounds that universities are “indoctrination mills.”

Stupid booklearnin’.

You just can’t make this stuff up. He’s like a complete parody of a reactionary, racist, homophobic, anti-education, anti-enlightenment candidate, and he’s the goddamn frontrunner.

At All Dead Mormons Are Now Gay, you can pick a dead Mormon or choose at random. Hit the button, and convert away!

Via MeFi.

Rick Santorum is opposed to early childhood education programs. It is, he says, the parents’ job to do this:

Of course, the government wants their hands on your children as fast as they can. That is why I opposed all these early starts and pre-early starts, and early-early starts. They want your children from the womb so they can indoctrinate your children as to what they want them to be. I am against that.

Please, please, please GOP: nominate this boob.

They’re now pronouncing Lawrence O’Donnell’s statement that “critics of the GI Bill called it welfare” as “mostly false” despite in their own summary quoting several sources who referred to it as “relief,” “the dole”, and the equivalent of handouts.

Seriously? Maddow has more; go watch her takedown.

I mean, most intelligent folks wrote Politifact off months ago, when they declared Democrats’ claims that the GOP wanted to end Medicare a “pants on fire” lie of the year for 2011 — this despite the fact that this is precisely what the GOP set out to do. Politifact’s defense was that the GOP plan would still include something called Medicare, but given that their alternative had essentially nothing else in common with the Medicare of 2011 it’s hard to find this a strong argument for anything other than “Politifact has become a hack organization.”

Or, worse, someone is pressuring them to find “lies” from Democrats to balance the tons of bullshit generated by the GOP.

That’s inflammatory, but it’s also true. Going out and cultivating your own lone-wolf terrorist, given him the (apparent) means and opportunity to do something nefarious, and then arresting him is probably way safer than tracking down actually dangerous people, but you get the same amount of headlines and good press, so it keeps happening. It’s also partly our own fault for being taken in by such headlines, and for demanding such simple scorekeeping. “Hey,” we collectively say, “they’re catching terrorists left and right! That’s awesome!” Except most people never bother to ask themselves “gee, were those folks really terrorists, or were they confused dupes badgered into an ill-conceived plot by Feds who wanted a bust?”

It’s not just in terrorism where cops play this game. Manufacturing crimes to arrest people for is part and parcel of the drug war, too. For example, an undercover sting in Florida recently bagged a teenager for dealing weed only after the girl he was trying to date — a 25-year-old undercover cop — begged and pleaded for him to get her some pot. Nice. I’m sure we’re all much safer now that such a menacing character will have is life ruined.

Turns out, they only hate birth control mandates when Obama does them. When Romney does them, it’s fine.

In the US, we’re so accustomed to our “one man, one vote” election system that we’ve by and large forgotten that alternatives exist that can produce materially fairer outcomes.

C. G. P. Grey discusses the main problems with First Past The Post in this excellent video, which explains briefly why such systems — even if they start with multiple parties — inevitably devolve into a two-party duopoly that poorly represents most citizens. Go watch. It’s worth 6 minutes of your time, I assure you.

If you enjoyed it, continue for more over at his blog, where concepts like Alternative Vote (also known as “Instant Runoff Voting“) and Gerrymandering are explored in similar style.

Via MeFi.

Rick Santorum Want To Fight The Dangers Of Contraception:

Last October, Rick Santorum gave an interview with an Evangelical blog called Caffeinated Thoughts, in which he said contraception is “not okay,” and that this would be a public policy issue he would tackle as President.

This is your GOP frontrunner, people. God DAMN I’m sorry I ran off all the right-wingers from my Facebook feed.

As always, summed up with exemplary flair by Jon Stewart. It’s a good one. Don’t miss it.

(h/t Rob.)

…Rick Santorum is just plain dumb as a rock.

Herein he discusses the wide gap between the Catholic laity and their purported leadership, the bishops, and why it makes more sense to listen to the liaty as the voice of Catholicism on issues like birth control.

Here then are the two issues on which the consensus of the laity and the assertions of the bishops are in conflict: contraception and child rape.

The bishops teach that contraception is a grave moral sin. The laity know that it is not. The devout laity know this. They are sure of it. They employ contraception with a clean conscience and an untroubled spirit. Some may be troubled that their doing so is a form of disobedience to the teaching of the bishops, but the only guilt they experience is due to that disobedience, not because they believe the practice to be intrinsically wrong.

The laity have listened to the bishops’ rationale for their opposition to contraception and have not found it compelling. It’s too confusing, contradictory and inconstant to be understood. It changes and collapses back on itself. […] Unpersuaded by the bishops’ case, the laity thus choose to heed their own conscience and ignore the prohibition.

That decision is informed by and reinforced by the second, more vehement, disagreement — the matter of child rape.

For the Catholic laity, overwhelmingly, the rape of a child is considered a moral horror and one of the worst sins imaginable. For the bishops, it’s a regrettable act, but it’s not as bad as the public disclosure of it. For the laity, there can be no greater priority than ensuring that children in one’s care are not abused. For the bishops, there has been no greater priority than ensuring that abusers are not exposed. The paramount concern for the laity is the protection of children. The paramount concern for the bishops has been the protection of their own reputation.

Honestly, it’s amazing people are willing to listen to the power structure of the Roman church at all, ever, about anything until they address this. Because Fred is not wrong here, not even a little.

You may have heard that the White House sidestepped the whining of the wingnut portion of the GOP and some Catholic organizations this week by allowing the health plans offered by religious organizations to omit coverage for birth control — while still requiring the insurers to provide contraception free of charge. The insurers are on board (birth control is way cheaper than pregnancy), and if the GOP was really concerned about “requiring employers to pay for something they find immoral,” this should’ve shut down the debate.

That would’ve been nice. But that wasn’t all the position does: It also means that, if the GOP continues to bitch and moan and whine and say “but this isn’t enough!”, then they’re basically making it clear that what they REALLY want to to reduce access to contraception. Make no mistake: the pivot by the White House was a clever and pragmatic compromise, but also a very clever trap.

And, well, the Bishops and Mitch McConnell have led the GOP directly into it:

Not satisfied with President Obama’s new religious accommodation, Republicans will move forward with legislation by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) that permits any employer to deny birth control coverage in their health insurance plans, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Sunday.

What’s hilarious here is the angle he takes:

“The fact that the White House thinks this is about contraception is the whole problem. This is about freedom of religion, it’s right there in the First Amendment. You can’t miss it — right there in the very first amendment to our Constitution,” McConnell said. “What the overall view on the issue of contraception is has nothing to do with an issue about religious freedom.”

McConnell went on to embellish the argument, claiming Obama is being “rigid in his view that he gets to decide what somebody else’s religion is.” He said that “this issue will not go away until the administration simply backs down.”

House GOP leaders also said Friday they will move forward with legislation to repeal the birth control rule in its entirety. Republicans from both chambers are aligning themselves with the Catholic Bishops who say the new policy remains unacceptable.

Religious freedom isn’t about imposing your will on others. It’s allowing others to worship, or not, on their own. If your employees are getting birth control for free from the insurer, you ought not care. If you still do, you’re trying to control them, and that’s not “religious liberty” anymore. Check out what Fred Clark has to say about this version of religious liberty.

What’s even funnier is that a majority of both Americans and Catholics are in favor of the White House compromise, so the GOP’s rant here is going to become a giant poison pill. It’s a whole bunch of old white men insisting that birth control access be curtailed. Nobody is going to miss that message, I assure you.

Fred has another great rundown of some additional analysis on this that’s also worth your time.

Go read The Party of Lincoln is not the party of Lincoln; a bit:

The 1960s completed the weird reversal of America’s two political parties. The Radical Republicans brought about a second American revolution with the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. They were committed to a strong, large federal government, to public education and to expanded voting rights. A century later, Republicans were adamantly opposed to all of those things.

Today, if you hear a politician railing against public schools, or calling for voting restrictions, or for a smaller and weaker federal government, you know without looking that this politician is a Republican. Today if you hear a politician attacking due process, or citizenship for all born here, or equal protection, then you know without looking that this politician belongs to the party that bears the same name as the party that fought to enshrine all those things in the Constitution.

Then click through to the post that inspired him. (Fred’s link is to the blog’s home page; this is the actual post he means.)

TBogg:

[…] I fear that Barack Obama will in all likelihood be facing a socially maladroit charisma-challenged gaffe-prone filthy rich religious cultist who claims to be middle-class and unemployed, holds no deeply held belief that couldn’t be swayed by a stiff breeze, enjoys making money by dismantling businesses, firing the employees and shipping their jobs overseas and then taking that money and stashing it in off-shore tax havens and who has recently been spending tens of millions of dollars fending off the likes of Newt Fucking Gingrich and Rick Fucking Santorum because, even faced with those horrible choices, most Republicans still find him as palatable as a semen-flavored popsicle.

Even with all of that, he will still be competitive because his opponent is a black guy and this is America.

I saw references to the Agenda 21 boogieman first on Facebook, in updates from a college acquaintance whose shop had been destroyed by the tornado last year. She was all up in arms about how the UN was gonna steal everyone’s land, and FEMA was in on it, and it was a giant plot, and RON PAUL RON PAUL RON PAUL WILL SAVE US, etc.

I wrote her off as a crank. Now it seems increasingly clear that some elements on the right, or within the Tea Party, are absolutely spreading these weird misconceptions about loss of local sovereignty as a means of riling up their base against projects designed to preserve green spaces, increase bike usage, and other completely reasonable steps generally seen as increasing livability and decreasing pollution. The point is not so much to preserve the status quo (though that’s surely part of it) as it is to distract the Tea Party dingbats from something that might actually matter, like lobbying.

Across the country, activists with ties to the Tea Party are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities.

Many are suspicious of environmental initiatives. Ed Elswick, a county supervisor, voiced criticism at last month’s meeting. They are showing up at planning meetings to denounce bike lanes on public streets and smart meters on home appliances — efforts they equate to a big-government blueprint against individual rights.

[…]

In Maine, the Tea Party-backed Republican governor canceled a project to ease congestion along the Route 1 corridor after protesters complained it was part of the United Nations plot. Similar opposition helped doom a high-speed train line in Florida. And more than a dozen cities, towns and counties, under new pressure, have cut off financing for a program that offers expertise on how to measure and cut carbon emissions.

It’s the same weird song-and-dance I saw on Facebook, writ large. Some doofus went to Tuscaloosa spreading this bullshit last spring, and hooked lots of scared people in the wake of the tornado, as part of an overall strategy of (as MeFi put it) getting people to worry about the wrong things. It’s classic misdirection, craven and cynical at its core, and unfortunately very, very effective with unsophisticated voters.

Since that’s most American voters, we are, of course, completely fucking doomed.

Via MeFi.

Tea Party Jesus takes Tea Party/GOP quotes, and attributes them to Jesus. Madcap hilarity ensues.

Their schtick is predictable, but this one’s a winner.

Rick Santorum — who, you may have heard, has a little bit of a Google problem already — has unveiled a new online initiative.

Gaze with wonder at his Conservatives Unite Moneybomb, and consider for a moment how such an acronym could have possibly been chosen by any politician, let alone one already associated with, well, Santorum.

I am not making this up. (H/T: Agent Triple-F)

The MPAA — an organization that once compared a household VCR to the Boston Strangler — is referring to the growing online protest against SOPA/SIPA as an abuse of power.

Lamar Smith — one of SOPA’s primary backers — insists it’s a publicity stunt, and that bill markup will resume in February.

The saddest part of all this is how absurd and awful the end of Chris Dodd’s career has become.

Once again, The Daily Show knocks it out of the park.

Emboldened by a stronger-than-expected finish in Iowa, Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum — a guy who, in December, insisted nobody ever died in America for want of health care — is doubling down on the crazy. Today he got in a pissing match with a college student over gay marriage, which is precisely the sort of thing that’s going to keep happening.

But the best gift he’s given so far is this:

One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a Libertarianish (sic) right. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. That is not how traditional conservatives view the world. There is no such society that I am aware of where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.

He said that. Really. The video is from a talking-head show, but it includes actual audio of Santorum explaining how it really is the government’s business what goes on in the bedroom. Remember, this is a guy who’s opposed not just to Roe v. Wade, but also to Griswold v. Connecticut and Eisenstadt v. Baird — cases that establish the rights of persons both married and otherwise to buy birth control. It’s hard to imagine today, but there WAS a time when it was considered Constitutional and acceptable for a state to outlaw birth control, or to outlaw its sale to unmarried persons.

That’s the world Santorum wants to return us to. So please, GOP, please please please nominate this man. I beg of you. Really. Bring the crazy. Bring it all the way to next November.

PS: The New Republic has a great list of the craziest stuff Santorum’s said so far, but look for that list to get even LONGER, especially if he wins a primary.

Cops who order or engage in the kind of behavior outlined here should suffer lasting, serious repercussions, including personal liability to lawsuits. We’ve gone far enough with this immunity bullshit; departments feel free to violate the rules because there are not consequences. The balance of power is entirely too tilted towards the state. Insisting police commanders and patrolmen be held accountable is an excellent step in the right direction.

I alluded in the last entry to a problem in modern “journalism:” the apparent need to balance a story about party A lying with a story about party B lying, in order to preserve the superficial appearance of impartiality. Even if Party A does lie more than B, we’ve reached a point where this can’t be pointed out without claims of bias surfacing from party A, and being echoed by party A’s loyal mouthpieces, which is enough to muddy the water and prevent any real discussion of the mendacity.

This approach has allowed one party — the GOP — to basically say and do whatever they wanted, knowing full well their lapdogs at Fox would protect them, and knowing mainstream journalists NOT owned by major donors would be too timid to point out that “hey, these guys lie WAY more than the Democrats!”

A logical outgrowth of this is something like the Politifact Lie-of-the-Year thing, where a factually true statement (the GOP sought to end Medicare as we know it) is instead presented as a massive falsehood precisely because the ledger at previously-trustworthy Politifact is so full of Republican lies already that people were claiming Politifact itself was biased.

And, as Krugman points out, this is par for the course today.

Politifact, in naming the Dems’ claim that the GOP was seeking to end Medicare their “Lie of the Year,” have basically destroyed any credibility they had. That’s a damn shame; they’ve basically allowed themselves to be bullied into picking a Democratic point (a true one) as their “lie of the year” to avoid appearing biased, since the vast majority of their analysis suggests that the GOP engages in regular and shameless mendacity. The fact, as they say, have a well-known liberal bias.

Briefly, they’re calling it a lie because, if the GOP got their way, there would still be something called “Medicare.” It just wouldn’t have much in common with Medicare as it’s known today — but hey, if it’s got the same name, it must be the same thing, right?

Washington Monthly has more, as does MediaMatters.

Politifact, for its part, just doubled down, not unlike certain douchebag “marketing” professionals we could name.

It’s no longer okay for you people to be completely clueless about technology. KTHXBI.

We get it. You think you can be cute and old-fashioned by openly admitting that you don’t know what a DNS server is. You relish the opportunity to put on a half-cocked smile and ask to skip over the techno-jargon, conveniently masking your ignorance by making yourselves seem better aligned with the average American joe or jane — the “non-nerds” among us. But to anyone of moderate intelligence that tuned in to yesterday’s Congressional mark-up of SOPA, the legislation that seeks to fundamentally change how the internet works, you kind of just looked like a bunch of jack-asses.

[…]

But the chilling takeaway of this whole debacle was the irrefutable air of anti-intellectualism; that inescapable absurdity that we have members of Congress voting on a technical bill who do not posses any technical knowledge on the subject and do not find it imperative to recognize those who do.

People are starting to notice that many of the so-called terror plots the FBI quashes are entrapment exercises created by the FBI in the first place.

This makes us safer how?