Professional poker player David Peat was mugged by the DEA to the tune of about sixty large at the Detroit airport for buying a first class ticket with cash. They say he may get his cash and watch back later.

Someone needs to put the legal smackdown on these thugs. Seizing property without a criminal conviction is theft, plain and simple, and those who engage in it should be held accountable, from the agents doing the seizing to their supervisors to those who made the policy. It’s absurd, grotesque, and unamerican. Cash is not a crime.

Obama, as it turns out, is not a douchebag about White House dress codes; Bush had a standing policy of coat-and-tie-only in the Oval Office, even to the extent of refusing entry to folks who, on Saturdays or Sundays, were in what 99% of America would consider high business casual.

Hackers Crack Into Texas Road Sign, Warn of Zombies Ahead.

Check this out.

Rove and O’Reilly: Media are hyping economic troubles to help Obama. Riiiiiight.

People take these goofballs seriously. It’s astounding.

In Jackson, MS, the problem of “baggy pants” is apparently “bigger than the Constitution.”

Today, President Obama signed orders closing Gitmo and other extrajudicial CIA prisons.

And if that wasn’t enough, his directives regarding disclosure and transparency are worrying convervatives who think they might enable investigations of Bush-era crimes. Make no mistake; their worry is about disclosure, not about crimes, which is so wrong I’m sort of dizzy just considering it. Incidentally, this shift in policy — to lean towards disclosure, not secrecy — is essentially a return to Clinton-era rules:

[The Bush administration’s 2001 FOIA] directive encouraged federal agencies to reject requests for documents if there was any legal basis to do so, promising that the Justice Department would defend them in court. It was a stark reversal of the policy set eight years earlier, when the Clinton administration told agencies to make records available whenever they could, even if the law provided a reason not to, so long as there was no ”foreseeable harm” from the release.

… you should really read these two paragraphs from President Obama’s Inaugural Address:

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

There’s an op-ed today in the NYT that supposes any two-state solution for Israel and Palestine is by default untenable, since both groups have legitimate claims to the land. It’s an even-handed, thoughtful piece about the realities of this aspect of Mid-east politics. Some excerpts:

THE shocking level of the last wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence, which ended with this weekend’s cease-fire, reminds us why a final resolution to the so-called Middle East crisis is so important. It is vital not just to break this cycle of destruction and injustice, but also to deny the religious extremists in the region who feed on the conflict an excuse to advance their own causes.

But everywhere one looks, among the speeches and the desperate diplomacy, there is no real way forward. A just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians is possible, but it lies in the history of the people of this conflicted land, and not in the tired rhetoric of partition and two-state solutions.

It’s a calm call for the participants to please stop being fuckheads and just get along. And the author is Muammar Qaddafi, I shit you not.

(Via Rob.)

Ricardo Montalban, 1920 – 2009.

The Buffalo Beast’s 50 Most Loathesome People of 2008 is out. Some highlights:

Antonin Scalia:

it was Scalia’s asinine, compartmentalized semantic parsing on torture that we hoped would give pause to his lionizers. Arguing that torture isn’t “cruel and unusual punishment” because the subject hasn’t been convicted of a crime, so he can’t be “punished,” the so-called Constitutional Originalist puts the framers in the awkward position of saying that it’s wrong to beat up a convicted criminal, but it’s just dandy to kick the shit out of him before he is even charged.

Exhibit A: “Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.”

On Frank “worst impressionist ever” Caliendo:

The retarded man’s Rich Little … His TBS vehicle, “Frank TV,” is the least amusing thing to appear on television since the morning of September 11, 2001.

Sarah Palin:

In the end, Palin had the beneficial effect of splitting her party between her admirers and people who can read.

Rush Limbaugh:

The father of modern stupidity, Limbaugh spins reflexively, never struggling with issues, because he knows his conclusion must favor Republicans, and his only task is finding a way to get there.

Joe Lieberman:

After promising that he was “not going to go to the Republican convention, and spend my time attacking Barack Obama,” Lieberman went to the Republican convention and attacked Barack Obama. But that was just the beginning of his descent into a self-dug hole of betrayal that should have proved inescapable. Lieberman thought it was a good question to ask if Obama was a Marxist. He campaigned not just with McCain, but with Palin and down-ticket Republicans, another thing he said he wouldn’t do. But the most loathsome trait Lieberman exhibits is that most loathsome of all: Smearing dissent as treasonous. The kind of suppressive asshole who would accuse you of helping terrorists by beating him at checkers should not be Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, and is not someone worth rewarding for his own dissent.

Rick Warren:

Dubbed “America’s Pastor” by The Nation, he’s duped people from both sides of the political spectrum into thinking he’s the kinder, fatter version of James Dobson. […] Exhibit A: “God tells us that he created all the land animals on the sixth day of creation, the same day that he created mankind. Man and dinosaurs lived at the same time.” Can you feel the wisdom?

Peggy Noonan:

A Catholic hysteric who should be submitting poems about her kitty cats to online poetry-contest scams, Noonan’s call for “Patriotic Grace,” which is nothing more than a call for liberals to stop picking on Republicans for being wrong all the time, comes a little late, after actively helping the most despicable, character assassination-driven campaigns of her lifetime.

The site’s hammered; you may want to wait a day or so before trying to load it. But don’t miss it; they suggest Cheney be eaten alive by baboons, which is really hard to argue with on any level.

Barack Obama will appear in Spider-Man.