But it turns out he’s got no balls. They’ve issued an apology.

Confused? Here’s the deal: The Edwards campaign hired two fairly prominent liberal bloggers to run their campaign blog: Amanda Marcotte (of Pandagon) and Melissa McEwen (of Shakespeare’s Sister). Both bloggers have been unwavering in their support for, among other things, reproductive rights, and have occasionally — horrors! — used salty language in their postings. Furthermore, they’ve not been shy about pointing out how fundamentally antiwoman restrictive reproductive rights positions are, and that necessarily includes those of the church of Rome.

Disagreeing, even vigorously, with Catholic doctrine does not make one an “anti-catholic bigot,” except in the eyes of the wingnuts.

As if on cue, comes now ubercatholic bigot Bill Donohue, who loves to spew hate and bile about homosexuals and other groups whenever possible, who’s very unhappy that a candidate he’ll never vote for has hired people who don’t like his politics; in fact, his statement demands that Edwards fire the women.

Quickly following that, the right wing noise machine geared up to maumau anything Marcotte or McEwen might have said. We here at Heathen were hoping very much that Edwards would just tell these jackasses to get stuffed, but instead he’s rolled over and issued a namby-pamby pseudo-apology, though in his defense he kept the women on staff.

Even so, the whole tone of the thing is capitulatory — and it’s capitulatory towards an openly bigoted hatemonger like Donohue. The far-right Catholic League wins this encounter, but is still whining that Edwards didn’t fire the two, so at least they’re not actually happy. (They continue to insist that the bloggers are anti-catholic bigots, but it’s been clear to all who’ve read their words that their positions are not anything of the sort; it’s just more noise from the wingnuts.)

It’s going to be a long, long campaign season.

This week, VP Cheney’s lesbian daughter famously pronounced her decision to have a child of her own off limits in terms of political discussions, which is utter horseshit. Dan Savage says it better than we could:

Nice try, Mary.

Yes, it’s a baby, not a prop. My kid isn’t a prop either, but that never stopped right-wingers from attacking me and my boyfriend over our decision to become parents. The fitness of same-sex couples to parent is very much part of the political debate thanks to the GOP and the Christian bigots that make up its lunatic “base.” You’re a Republican, Mary, you worked on both of your father’s campaigns, and you kept your mouth clamped shut while Karl Rove and George Bush ran around the country attacking gay people, gay parents, and our children in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006. It’s a little late to declare the private choices of gays and lesbians unfit for public debate, Mary.

And so long as your party insists on making the fitness of homosexuals to marry or parent — or, hell, exist — a subject of public debate, Mary, your decision to become a parent is germane and very much fit for public discussion and debate. The GOP’s selective embrace of some pregnant dykes — only knocked-up lesbians with powerful connections will be treated with respect — is a disconnect that demands answers. From you, from your father, from your venomous mother, from the idiot president you helped elect. Is that fair? Maybe not. Want to blame someone? Go look in the mirror — and then come out swinging, Mary — for yourself, your partner, and your child.

Maybe Brother Heathen ought to get promoted to his own blog; here’s what he had to say about Charles Stimson in comments, below:

He should be disbarred. Alarmist on my part? I don’t think so. I worked by ass off to be admitted to a pretty exclusive group of professionals. A group who, ostensibly, purport to swear to uphold the rights of their clients within the bounds of the Constitution and the laws of their respective jurisdictions.

Making a comment like Mr. Stimson did is analogous to impeaching a criminal defendant’s counsel in front of a jury for stooping to represent the defendant. It is like asking a witness if they would lie on the stand when you have no basis to believe that they are, in fact, lying. For all the shit lawyers get, the one thing we do to deserve it is admit people like Mr. Stimson. He is a disgrace to an honorable profession. A profession that is fundamentally based on giving each party equal and responsible representation and letting the law figure out who is “correct.”

Mr. Stimson has shown that he values propaganda more than justice, fury more than honesty and prejudice more than liberty. He is a disgrace to the bar, the Justice Department and the Executive Branch (which is saying a lot considering the current resident of the White House). He should be disbarred. Draconian? Perhaps. But he has made is bed. And it is a disgraceful place to sleep.

Goddamn right, Brother. Well said.

We are absolutely SHOCKED by this, but it’s awesome:

Today, the Lone Star State’s Governor Rick Perry signed an executive order to require all girls entering sixth grade to be vaccinated against HPV, according to the Associated Press. Perry, a conservative republican opposed to abortion and stem cell research, avoided the battle such an aim would incite in the Legislature by issuing the order himself. Despite the fact that we can now successfully vaccinate against HPV — the most common cause of cervical cancer, which kills 4,000 women yearly — many conservatives are up in arms over the implications of inoculating young girls against a sexually transmitted disease. To do so would undercut messages about safe sex; possibly encouraging sexual activity, they argue.

This line of reasoning is so loony, so unabashedly callous, it’s amazing to hear it so widely parroted. It essentially deems naughty girls who do not heed parental warnings about the dangers of unsafe sex as expendable — either to a HPV, a disease we can prevent, or, in the worst cases, cervical cancer. “The HPV vaccine provides us with an incredible opportunity to effectively target and prevent cervical cancer,” Perry said. “If there are diseases in our society that are going to cost us large amounts of money, it just makes good economic sense, not to mention the health and well-being of these individuals to have those vaccines available.”

More at the local fishwrapper.

Charles Timson, the Defense Department jackass who tried to organize a boycott of the law firms providing pro bono representation to the Gitmo detainees has resigned.

Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out, asshole.

Many have said this of presidents in the past, but in the US today, it’s a matter of public record:

LAST August, a federal judge found that the president of the United States broke the law, committed a serious felony and violated the Constitution. Had the president been an ordinary citizen — someone charged with bank robbery or income tax evasion — the wheels of justice would have immediately begun to turn. The F.B.I. would have conducted an investigation, a United States attorney’s office would have impaneled a grand jury and charges would have been brought.

But under the Bush Justice Department, no F.B.I. agents were ever dispatched to padlock White House files or knock on doors and no federal prosecutors ever opened a case.

The ruling was the result of a suit, in which [James Bamford, the author, is] one of the plaintiffs, brought against the National Security Agency by the American Civil Liberties Union. It was a response to revelations by this newspaper in December 2005 that the agency had been monitoring the phone calls and e-mail messages of Americans for more than four years without first obtaining warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Let’s compare:

• CLINTON lied about a blow job in an investigation of an ancient land deal in Arkansas on which he lost money: IMPEACHED

• BUSH admitted on national television that he was wantonly committing hundreds if not thousands of felonies by ignoring FISA, not to mention starting a trillion-dollar war with a country essentially unrelated to Islamic terrorism: UNIMPEACHED

Molly Ivins, 1944 – 2007. She was only 62.

Molly said this recently:

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush’s proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, “Stop it, now!”

One of her editors said:

Goodbye, Molly I.

Molly Ivins is gone, and her words will never grace these pages again — for this, we will mourn. But Molly wasn’t the type of woman who would want us to grieve. More likely, she’d say something like, “Hang in there, keep fightin’ for freedom, raise more hell, and don’t forget to laugh, too.”

If there was one thing Molly wanted us to understand, it’s that the world of politics is absurd. Since we can’t cry, we might as well laugh. And in case we ever forgot, Molly would remind us, several times a week, in her own unique style.

Goddamn right.

We figure it’s got something to do with his ever-dwindling approval ratings and the fact that Congress is actually holding hearings, but it’s good that this is getting out. Politicians have no business influencing scientific findings.

He’s holding the administration’s feet to the fire for an explicit answer to the question “Do you think you can go to war with Iran without Congressional permission?” Rice, et. al., have tried hard to avoid answering this question, but he won’t let it drop.

God bless that man.

He’s increasing his direct control over regulatory agencies, basically hamstringing them in what Henry Waxman calls “great news for special interests.”

Seriously, how much more could this guy SUCK?

Canadian citizen Maher Arar — the poster boy, if you will, for extraordinary rendition — will be compensated by his government to the tune of $10.5 MM (CN) for its role in his year-long ordeal. Arar was arrested at JFK en route from Tunisia to his home in Canada in 2002; after 11 days, the US officials sent him to Syria, where he was frequently beaten and kept in solitary confinement for the better part of a year before being released.

This is better than nothing, but the real problem is that the true architects of his torture and imprisonment are the US, who still refuse to remove him from their watch lists despite his having been cleared by a 2-year inquiry, and despite the fact that the only reason he was on US watch lists in the first place is because of the original Canadian error.

Here he is insisting there’s no such thing as a Constitutional right to habeas corpus:

This is really beyond the pale. From the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel:

“While Gonzales’s statement has a measure of quibbling precision to it, his logic is troubling because it would suggest that many other fundamental rights that Americans hold dear (such as free speech, freedom of religion, and the right to assemble peacefully) also don’t exist because the Constitution often spells out those rights in the negative. It boggles the mind the lengths this administration will go to to systematically erode the rights and privileges we have all counted on and held up as the granite pillars of our society since our nation was founded.”

(Quoted at Slashdot)

Honestly, this sort of absurd statement ought to be grounds for his removal and, frankly, disbarrment.