Castro retires

At least Bush is right about something for once in his worthless life: Not long ago, Disgeorge gloated that Fidel Castro would be out of power before him. Now the 81-year-old Cuban leader has resigned amid ailing health.

With regime change in Cuba, I hope someone in the U.S. Congress has the guts to speak the i-word sometime in the next 11 months so that the United States becomes the next country with a regime change. (Quite frankly, the Supreme Court Justices aren't getting any younger, so Congress has to act fast on impeachment.)

(Source: http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/newsmlmmd.fce074e0275fae2a0c16383ec4973c96.191.html)

More about the Hitlerage Foundation's rankings

I was examining the Heritage Foundation's latest rankings of the world's freest countries. (They scream it as they see it.) You know, the ranking where these right-wing whackjobs listed Singapore as second-freest while Venezuela is listed as "repressed." I read the entry for the United States, and it shows the type of criteria the Hitlerage Foundation uses for its rankings. At the bottom of the entry, it says the U.S. gets a fairly good ranking because "dismissing a redundant employee is not burdensome."

That's their idea of "freedom." They think being able to fire workers more easily is what makes a country "free."

These are the same kooks who give Singapore - a country that outlawed chewing gum - a score of 93.9% in its "freedom from government" category.

Never trust wingnuts.

War ruins Iraqi medical system

Look, we've actually found a place whose health care system is worse than the one the Republicans have made Americans suffer under!

In the 5-year-long war in Iraq, that country's medical system has essentially been gutted by the war. And - I feel sorry even to say it on a national holiday, but it must be said - it's all the fault of Bush and his merry band of warmongers. If not for the war, this would not have happened. Period.

In the past 5 years, countless doctors have been killed and cancer patients have had to find their own drugs, which are almost impossible to come by now. It was so bad that death squads used ambulances and hospitals to carry out their killings. Many hospitals don't even have electricity now!

What's the excuse, wingnuts? Are Bush's Movementarians going to yell "THE SURGE IS WORKING!!!" again, which is one of their all-purpose answers to everything war-related since last spring?

(Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/02/18/international/i111349S74.DTL)

Heritage Foundation tries to scare us, but its spelling is all that's scary

How do you know someone's fit to have their cart full of groceries violently slammed into lest they block you in the aisle at the store? If they're one of these freaks who go around babbling that Bush's warrantless wiretap program is so great and claims that anyone who opposes it is a traitor. If they think the country is at risk if the eavesdropping program is halted, they're pretty much a lost cause and a loser.

Admit it. Anytime you hear some Nazi saying that Bush's illegal wiretap program keeps America safe, you find it very hard not to let it come to blows. (Their whole ideology is practically a deliberate incitement to make you lose your cool.) But if you ask them how safe Bush kept us back in September 2001, their only reply is a few gallons of spittle. (Luckily I don't think I've ever met anyone in person who praised the phone spying program.)

The unconstitutional law that passed in August that illegally allowed some of these peculiar wiretaps was introduced by Mitch McConnell, the nasty little asshole from my state who I'm proud to say I've never voted for. The law expired yesterday under its 6-month sunset provision. Just prior to the law's expiration, the Bush cult cried that if the law wasn't renewed, America would be exposed to the elements of this Wide, Wide World Of Sports they fear so much. Regarding the loss of this law, bubble gum connoisseur McConnell sniffed, "What will happen at midnight tonight is much more significant than stump speeches, steroids, or superdelegates. On Sunday, the terrorist tracking program ... no longer will be fully operational."

Actually it expired because the Republicans bungled it so badly, so if the lack of the wiretap program is such a threat, they have nobody to blame but themselves.

The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, is making the most of conservatives' own fascism streak. Just before the law expired, the foundation's website featured a clock that counted down to their fantasized doomsday:

Ooh, we're rilly rilly rilly scared.

After midnight struck, things got stupider - as is so often the case in the fucked-up world of the conservative intelligentsia. The Hitlerage Foundation replaced the first clock with this clock, counting the amount of time the law had been expired:


"Extention"? You know, most computers these days have spell check software. You'd think Heritage Foundation would use it for something as important as all of us suddenly dying because Congress wouldn't extend Bush's law fast enough. (That's sarcasm, people.)

Now they've fixed the spelling error, but the clock is a day off.

This whole clock deal just keeps on giving, doesn't it?

Nobody gives a shit about this clock anyway, except the raving horse's asses who stick by the wiretap program. While these armchair chickenhawks call everyone else traitors, their friends at the Heritage Foundation have just released a ranking declaring the right-wing dictatorship of Singapore to be the second-freest country in the world (several notches ahead of the United States). Throughout the '90s, Singapore had one of the most anti-American regimes anywhere, but conservatives back then blasted Bill Clinton when he refused to adopt Singapore's repressive "quality of life" measures.

The real enemies of America are the likes of the Hitlerage Foundation and their fellow drive-by rightists. They're under strict orders to go fuck themselves.

(Source: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/16/protecting_us;
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/18/144651/132/558/459144)

NIU shooter took psychotropic drugs

When Bush expanded the Brady gun control law at the start of the new year, the reasoning was that it would stop tragedies like the one that took place at Virginia Tech. But I knew - just knew - it would be only a matter of time before another incident like this happened anyway, thus proving the Brady law expansion to be ineffective.

Sure enough, it did.

And I also knew - with 100% certainty - that Steve Kazmierczak, the gunman who killed 6 (including himself) at Northern Illinois University last week, would be found to have taken psychotropic drugs (as was known to be true of the Virginia Tech shooter). I was absolutely sure of it.

And sure enough, this has turned out to be true too. It's now known that Kazmierczak took antidepressants, including Paxil, before the shooting.

Let me be perfectly frank: I think it's another case where suburban society - where money reigns - expected perfection, and that's what put Kazmierczak in the condition that led him to be prescribed these drugs. But it was only after he started taking the drugs that the massacre happened.

This is what happens when we worship money and "success." America today is little more than a business. In the environment of suburban America, people are judged their whole lives, and they don't have the opportunities to channel their abilities. It should be no wonder that people feel like they can't live up to expectations and seek help from a pseudoscience like psychiatry.

This should be a national call to make the lazy media further examine the role that psychotropic drugs and the hypercompetitive, lockstep environment of suburbia play in these tragedies.

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080215/ap_on_re_us/niu_shooting)

Court shuts down Wikileaks

If you're actually naive enough to think the United States still has freedom of speech, that notion should be kablammoed out of your mind by this story.

There's a website called Wikileaks, which started a year ago and lets whistleblowers and dissidents anonymously release corporate and government documents from around the world. Part of the purpose of this site is to make sure journalists who are committed to government and corporate transparency aren't imprisoned for doing their job. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling had already deemed this mission to be constitutionally protected.

But now - following a lawsuit by Bank Julius Baer, a Swiss banking firm - the U.S. District Court for northern California has shut down Wikileaks. The court didn't just order Wikileaks to remove documents that may have exposed illegal activities by that firm. The court issued a permanent injunction shutting down Wikileaks altogether and disabling the wikileaks.org domain name.

This ruling is a clearly unconstitutional act of government censorship. Not like I expect the drive-by conservatives to give a shit what the Constitution says.

In addition, the court's order says Wikileaks must hand over the IP addresses and other data of anyone who accessed the domain name's account.

Fortunately, the right-wing federal court didn't count on Wikileaks also being hosted on servers in other countries. For example, Belgium and India have more press freedom than the U.S. does, and their copies of the site are still online. The Belgian site, for instance, can still be accessed at:

http://wikileaks.be

Luckily, Wikileaks is fighting the American court's order.

(Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7250916.stm;
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/18/91556/1784/766/458936)

Fascists push work-for-less measure in Michigan

A large chunk of America - especially in the South and West - is forced to live under so-called "right-to-work" laws. More accurately, these are work-for-less laws. These laws - which I believe to be unconstitutional - bust unions and depress wages, and they make it harder for workers to fight for good wages and on-the-job safety.

But now a group of right-wing extremists in Michigan is pushing for a work-for-less law in that state. The Detroit News even ran an editorial backing the proposal. To add insult to injury, this editorial appeared on Labor Day.

In Michigan, of all places!

The Wolverine State has relatively strong organized labor membership, but the Bushists think they can pull this shit there???

Work-for-less backers are trying to collect almost 500,000 signatures to put this measure on the November ballot. The misnamed National Right to Work Committee, which supports the effort, is made up of right-wing stink tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

In 2006, the most recent year for which data is available, 8 of the 10 states with the best rankings for health of their workers had no work-for-less law. But 9 of the 10 states with the worst rankings did. Average annual income in work-for-less states is almost $6,000 lower.

Several years ago, a similar drive in Oklahoma led to that state adopting a work-for-less law. It was an act of naked political extortion and fraud. Few would expect Michigan to follow that route, but the anti-worker greed machine is powerful.

Cell phones linked to oral cancer

This story is probably going to be swept under the rug by America's pop-up media, and if it isn't, people are going to act surprised by its contents. But who should be surprised that holding a device that transmits radiation next to your head is going to cause cancer?

It's been known since at least the '90s that cell phone towers transmit rays that cause brain cancer to people who live nearby. And a Swedish study from 2006 (also largely ignored by the American press) said cell phone use itself increases the risk of brain cancer. But now it's been found that people who use cell phones for hours each day are 50% more likely to develop parotid gland cancer than folks who don't use cell phones at all.

The study conducted at Tel Aviv University covered almost 500 people who had tumors in the salivary glands. The parotid gland is closest to where the phones are usually held.

How to prevent this? The report says to use speaker cell phones instead and limit cell phone use.

I'd love to see what the anti-science wingnuts say about this. They've denied that dioxin exposure or aspartame are hazardous, and denying this report is going to be even more far-fetched (unless they expect people to believe radiation is safe), but you know they'll try. So be prepared for a wave of denials.

(Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/18/nphones118.xml)

"Read my lips", revisited

Ever eager for votes, John McCain says there'll be no new taxes if he's somehow elected President. In an interview broadcast today, Mini-Me said, "No new taxes."

Gee, where have I heard that before?

Oh yes, it was Mad Dog Bush's "read my lips" promise from 1988 that he broke. This was yet another reason why Dukakis voters were telling the Bush crime family's followers "we told you so" 4 years later.

So if people buy this bullshit when McAin't utters it, they've got really short memories.

Since McCain shows no desire to end the war, why doesn't anyone ask how he intends to pay for it? Does McAin't have a magic money tree like Reagan tried to make people think he had?

McCain's pledge contradicts one he made just a few months ago. Earlier, McCain promised to support the misnamed FairTax, a confiscatory national sales tax that in this form would be 23%. This tax was designed to shift the tax burden to the poor and working class, and that's why it's been a cause celebre of the Far Right. Mike Huckabee has made the UnfairTax a centerpiece of his campaign, and it also gained support from Republicans Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo, and Tommy Thompson, and Democrat Mike Gravel in their ill-fated campaigns. (Now you know why no one takes Gravel seriously.) Republican Fred Thompson also pledged to support FairTax, but later denied it.

Here's a message for the Republicans. Read my lips: Kiss my ass.

(Source: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MCCAIN_TAXES?SITE=CONGRA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT;
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=3428541&page=2)

Ha! It thinks it's people!

This story reminds me of a 'Simpsons' episode in which Bart's teacher says to an animal, "Ha! He thinks he's people!" In this story, it's a corporation that thinks it's people - and a federal judge was happy to oblige.

It's often argued that a corporation is really just a group of people doing business. If it was simply a group of people, corporations wouldn't be used as much by individuals to protect their own assets and asses. A corporation is actually a special type of entity that is supposed to have no personhood or human rights whatsoever.

But in America, it often does. In 1886 the Supreme Court declared in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company that corporations are people. Chief Justice Morrison Waite said that "the court does not wish to hear" whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to corporations as it does to people, because "we are all of the opinion that it does." There was no legal basis for this declaration, and the court offered none. The statement was not considered a binding precedent, but it set the stage for later corporate-centered thinking - from the robber baron era to today.

Jurists have yet to find any legal basis for this reasoning. When someone says corporations should enjoy the same rights as people, the reason is always the same: They have rights because they do. It's so because it's so. The fact of the matter is, however, corporations have no constitutional rights. None. Zero.

Not long ago, 2 of the 3 judges on a U.S. appeals court ruled that 4 men held at the Guantanamo Bay death camp were not legally people - because they were not American citizens and because Gitmo is not on U.S. soil - so they had no human rights to violate. But while individuals are denied human rights, corporations are granted human rights out of whole cloth. Last year, U.S. District Judge Paul Barbadoro - who was appointed by the elder Bush - gave rights to corporations that exceed even those of American citizens.

Barbadoro's ruling was a conservative ruling and an activist one - and it harms consumers. He struck down a New Hampshire law that protected doctors and patients by preventing greedy pharmaceutical companies from learning what drugs and the amount of drugs physicians prescribed. The law was there to stop drug companies from pressuring doctors to prescribe their wares - but now that law has been gutted. With it, patient confidentiality is gutted too.

Clearly, the Constitution gives New Hampshire the right to have such a law. It's a state decision, not that of some bossy federal regime that has Coprorate (sic) America in its dick pocket. The judge's excuse was that drug corporations have free speech rights because corporations are people, and that the state law infringed on them. Even the free speech argument is bizarre, because the law didn't actually stop drug companies from saying anything.

Now a federal appeals court is reviewing Barbadoro's wayward ruling.

The Constitution lists our rights so that we may be protected from oppressive government and by its equally wicked twin sibling, Big Business. These twin forces of loom and doom overlap heavily today, as each does the bidding of the other.

With corporate-centered policymaking the rule today, corporations are actually treated as if they have more rights than people. You can't grow your own medical marijuana for personal use, but a corporation that produces synthetic drugs can make doctors tell them whether they're prescribing their product. A corporation can buy every radio station in the area (save some noncommercial allocations), each with several thousand watts or more, but you can't even set up your own transmitter that broadcasts with only one watt.

If a corporation wants rights like a person, it should be punished like a person. I'm in favor of holding corporations' boards of directors personally responsible for criminal and civil penalties levied against their business. That these powerful individuals escape such penalties only underscores how corporations are often used to save a person's hide.

But corporations are not people. Even if they're made up of people. Am I an atom just because I'm made up of atoms?

If I had to support one and only one new amendment to the Constitution, I think an amendment abolishing corporate personhood would be it. It's been proposed by others before, and any national populist campaign should make it a priority. If I had to write the amendment anew, it would say that:

1) Corporations shall not be treated as having the same rights as people.

2) This shall not prevent corporate board members from being penalized if the corporation is held liable in any criminal or civil case.

3) This also shall not prevent the free flow of ideas or consumers' choices. Under this clause, my amendment can't be used as a back door to violate individual rights by imposing censorship or some nanny state bullshit.

4) The government would still be empowered to limit media concentration using rules like TV and radio station ownership caps.

This amendment would be a nifty tool in the people's arsenal against Corporate America's hoarding of power. This would make it clear that a corporation can't think it's people any longer.

(Source: http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?linkid=51986)

Obama enjoys biggest lead yet

A quick story to slip in here this Presidents Day weekend while the next round of primaries looms...

A Gallup poll shows that in the Democratic primary, Obama is enjoying the biggest lead he's had so far over Clinton - 49% to 42%.

This makes Wisconsin, which has its primary this coming Tuesday, even more exciting!

(Source: http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/02/16/obama_takes_national_lead.html)

A Peace Bike memory

After being introduced to the Peace Bike, you probably want to be regaled with more of the work the hulking velocipede and I have done together.

So peep this:


That's the Peace Bike in Covington, Kentucky, in July 2006. I had forgotten I had taken this photo, but here it is defying the Allowed Cloud that is the city of Covington (a town known for the Bush rally in 2000 that went awry). If you can't see the photo at full-size by clicking on it, it's at:

http://i6.tinypic.com/1z5hgsg.jpg

You'll notice the Peace Bike was engaging in a protest of sorts. As you can see from the sign, the city tried to bar "bicyles" (sic) from a public space, and the Peace Bike opted to take 'em up on it.

Ironically, this space also features a war memorial. The memorial commemorates those who died for America's freedom, but the city tries to take away our freedom to use the best means of travel we have. Even more ironically, a device called the Peace Bike was showing more respect for the troops than the city was when it attempted to deny us this liberty. (This picture was also around the time the city bulldozed an encampment inhabited in part by homeless veterans.)

If you live anywhere near Covington, and you happen to stop by this public space, remember those who served - even as we all work for peace.

Wal-Mart bans snack supplier because he resembles bin Laden (a blast from the past)

Wal-Mart - a symbol of Bushist greed - is considered nothing but a sick joke in most foreign countries where it does business. Internationally, the retail giant is ridiculed for trying to export Michael Jerkoff-like panic to where it isn't welcome.

In Buenos Aires, Argentina, a Wal-Mart store wouldn't let a local man anywhere in the vicinity - because he looked like Osama bin Laden. The potato chip supplier had a long beard that resembled that of the terrorist leader. One day in 2004, after the 50-year-old had unloaded his crates of snacks at the Wal-Mart, the store manager detained him. After talking to Wal-Mart big shots who had flown in from the U.S., the manager told the man he couldn't supply chips for them anymore. "Orders from upstairs," was the excuse.

The manager told the supplier that the suits from the U.S. "think you look like Osama bin Laden. If you appear on any of the images recorded by the security cameras, I'll lose my job." The following day, security wouldn't let him enter the delivery area.

Folks in Argentina thought this was the most ridiculous bunch of bunk gas they'd ever heard. By 2006, the latest year from which I can find any information about the scandal, the ban of the bearded man had become a legal issue and had attracted the attention of national anti-discrimination groups. But Wal-Mart execs in the U.S. are so arrogant that they wouldn't answer his lawyer's calls. Wal-Mart then issued a press release explaining the store chain's dress code - but he wasn't violating that, because he was an outside supplier, not an in-store employee.

To get around the ban, the man hired a driver and hid under the dashboard of his truck to show him where to deliver.

Leave it to a multinational corporation like Wal-Mart to possess the assholism to come into another country and try to destroy a potato chip deliverer's livelihood all because Wal-Mart has its lips glued to Bush's shit-caked ass. If what Wal-Mart did happened in the United States, it would be prosecutable under RICO. I don't know what the law in Argentina is on racketeering, but if it's like RICO, there's a strong case against Wal-Mart.

(Source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,445882,00.html)

Legendary rocker blasts Huckabee for misusing song

If you're an old dude like me, you may recall the song "More Than A Feeling" by Boston, which was a staple on rock and pop radio back in my day. Now the guitar-heavy '70s smash is being played at rallies for Mike "Gomer Pyle" Huckabee's much-ridiculed presidential campaign.

This doesn't sit too well with the forces of Bostondom. The band's founder Tom Scholz, who wrote "More Than A Feeling", says Fuckapee is using the song without permission. This is all the more vexing because Scholz is an Obama supporter. Scholz said his band "has never endorsed a political candidate, and with all due respect, would not start by endorsing a candidate who is the polar opposite of most everything Boston stands for." Scholz also said Huckabee needs to "stick to music recorded by Far Right Republicans."

As we said in the '70s: Burn!

Already, the McCain campaign has had to stop playing John Mellencamp's "Our Country" and "Pink Houses" after Mellencamp - a John Edwards supporter - complained about this abuse.

With all the conservative music out there lately, you'd think the Republicans would be using that instead of misappropriating songs by political opponents. I guess conservative tunes don't exactly elicit excitement.

If there's any classic rock 'n' roll song that describes Huckabee, it's the Beatles' "Taxman."

(Source: http://www6.comcast.net/music/articles/2008/02/15/Huckabee.Boston.Band)

Boy who shot sister took psychotropic drugs

This is another example of what happens when we drug kids.

A 10-year-old boy in South Carolina shot his 9-year-old sister in the face over a bag of potato chips. Now it turns out he was taking psychotropic drugs after being diagnosed with a supposed hyperactivity disorder. Aside from the CNN clip about the incident, most of the pop-up media - which is always friendly to drugging children - has totally ignored that part of the story.

I can almost guarantee you the only major disorder he had was the one he got from taking the drug. He probably didn't have one before, but was probably sent to some quack of a shrink because his school wanted to make him more "manageable." I don't know the family, but you can bet your bottom dollar this is so. Almost any time something like this happens, it always turns out that the person involved has taken medications like this. This is why you see a lot more incidents like this now than 30 years ago.

I've witnessed the damage these poisons can do. With experience, it's easy to see how this new drug culture can lead to this level of violence. And if my suspicion that he was just fine before he took the drug is true, it's hard to say the boy should really be held responsible - because the shrink probably had him so loaded with the stuff he was barely functional. There's no question these drugs are overprescribed (despite the lies told in the various Internet forums where whiny grownups coach each other on how to medicate their kids), and schools and so-called professionals have been known to prescribe very large doses.

So pester the media until it covers that part of the story.

(Source: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/crime/2008/02/14/burkett.sc.child.shot.wbtw)

GOP lawmaker resigns after home searched for child porn

The Evil Empire is on a roll, aren't they? This is the second entry today in which a conservative Republican politician has been connected to child porn.

State Del. Robert A. McKee of Maryland is a big Republican who was on Mitt Romney's presidential steering committee. The legislator ran unopposed last time, so he's really not even currently elected. (Yet another example where they tell you who you have to vote for.) In fact, he's currently not even a legislator - because this scandal has just forced him to resign.

Sheriff's deputies executed a search warrant on Robert McKee's home recently after being told there was child porn in his home. Investigators confiscated 2 computers, about 30 videocassettes, and gobs of magazines and other printed material.

The 58-year-old McKee was also the executive director of the local Big Brothers Big Sisters. Needless to say, he's gone from that post too.

What a weirdo.

(Source: http://www.herald-mail.com/?cmd=displaystory&story_id=186175&format=html)

Lieberman blurts out classified information as an excuse for torture

I can't believe I actually went to a rally to make sure this guy's votes as Al Gore's running mate got counted. Wait, actually I can, considering who the ticket was running against. But lately there's less and less difference between Joe Lieberman and Bush's followers.

Lieberman voted against the bill that passed the Senate that would ban the CIA from using waterboarding. And yesterday Lieberman asserted that waterboarding - which is more or less a type of drowning - isn't torture, because it's "not like putting burning coals on people's bodies."

In the interview with the Connecticut Post, Lieberman said, "We are at war." True, Joe, because you voted for this war. He warned, "I know enough from public statements made by Osama bin Laden and others as well as classified information I see to know the terrorists are actively planning, plotting to attack us again."

Uh, Joe??? Did you just blurt out classified information??? That ain't exactly the cool thing to do, Joe.

But I guess if Katherine Harris can do it, it doesn't exactly set a good example for other politicians. Harris, as you'll recall, divulged classified information about apparent terrorist plots - then boasted that "it's classified" but "obviously not classified to me."

If America loses a city to a terrorist attack, remember that Katherine Harris and Joe Lieberman haven't exactly been reliable about keeping classified information secret.

(Source: http://www.connpost.com/localnews/ci_8265434)

GOP sheriff candidate busted for child porn

Look at the photo at left. Now there's a face that's made for dartboards. He even looks like a big bully.

That's Scott Pruitt, a Republican candidate for sheriff in Forsyth County, Georgia. (Forsyth County was a major site of racist dumbfuckery 20 years ago, but that's another matter.) Running for office as a conservative Republican these days often means you have to have some sort of illegal sexual deviancy. And if the charges against Pruitt are true, he'd seem to be no exception!

Pruitt was fired as a deputy at the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office after he was charged with allegedly looking at child porn at work. Now he faces 20 felony counts of violating a computer child porn law for allegedly viewing the images on his patrol car computer.

Pruitt's website rants and raves about how tough on drugs he is, but once again I think this is an attempt to use the War on Drugs to hide one's own many failures.

After the Delbarton article and numerous entries on the old Conservative Fool Of The Day blog, I know what's probably going to happen here: Pruitt or one of his friends is probably going to log on to the comment section and cry about our unfairness for exposing the scandal. And they'll get a smackdown from the regulars of this blog and end up looking even sillier than before.

So go for it.

(Source: http://www.wsbtv.com/news/15288631/detail.html)

School district makes single-sex school mandatory

Folks in Greene County, Georgia, are furious at the school system's decision to implement mandatory single-sex education starting next school year.

With this move, Greene County is believed to be the only public school system in the country that requires single-sex schooling for every student. Elementary schools will have separate classes, but middle and high schools will be separate schools.

Surprisingly, Leonard Sax of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education is allied with opponents of the change. He said it's illegal because it makes single-gender schooling mandatory, not optional. Apparently, the law on single-sex education is a bit like what it's generally understood to be for another conservative gimmick - school uniforms - in that there has to be a way to opt out. Sax said Greene County's move to compulsory single-sex schools is "very embarrassing."

Greene County's switch to single-gender schools exempts a publicly funded charter school that has a very limited attendance zone. This charter school was itself criticized when it opened last year because its enrollment area created racial segregation. Most Greene County families can't attend this charter school because they live outside the attendance area.

If there isn't a lawsuit over this, I'll just bip.

Even though some data suggests that single-sex education creates better academics, this leaves out a key fact: Most single-gender schools in America today are exclusive preparatory academies that have much more resources.

So Greene County has made 2 mistakes: mandatory single-sex schooling and racial segregation. What's the third? A 6th-grade student was suspended for 2 days just for passing out fliers urging students to protest the change by wearing white t-shirts and jeans. Punishing someone for handing out fliers is a violation of the First Amendment right there. And if they punished students for actually wearing the jeans and t-shirts, that's a fourth mistake.

With all the illegal things the school system is doing, they sound like the school district where I grew up.

(Source: http://www.wsbtv.com/news/15305470/detail.html)

Prosecutors abuse law to throw new moms in jail

January 8. A woman gives birth at a hospital in Andalusia, Alabama.

January 9. The same woman gets jailed for a felony. She remains behind bars over a month later.

The number of meth labs has skyrocketed since Bush seized power. This led to a 2006 law in Alabama dealing with chemical endangerment. The purpose of the law was to make it illegal for parents to expose their kids to meth lab toxins.

Maybe that was the purpose of the law, but it's had a side effect that has nothing to do with meth labs. Zealous prosecutors are misusing this law to test new mothers for drugs and throw them in jail based on the test results - even though the law does not allow this.

One factoid you hear nothing about from the pop-up media is that drug tests - like polygraphs - are sometimes wrong. The most common drug test is wrong 25 to 30% of the time. If lie detector tests aren't admissible in court for being wrong 10% of the time, how can drug tests be used as evidence when they're wrong 30% of the time? Yeah, I know: It's a "war" - the War on Drugs that's been a known failure since the days of golf tee car door locks.

Even if the test is accurate, and even if the results are positive, what good does imprisoning a new mother and giving her a felony record do? These prosecutions break up families and hurt children, and the very policy itself discourages expectant mothers from seeking prenatal care. Who wants to start their life with their mother being labeled a felon? What's the logic in taking a day-old infant away from their mother and not letting the mother see the baby again for at least a month?

There is none. I think the prosecutors know it. Granted, anyone who'd snort coke while they're pregnant isn't too wise. But even if the test comes back positive, there's a 30% chance that they didn't. Nope, I don't think the prosecutors are as interested in the children as they are about continuing the War on People. One prosecutor said the cases are settled once the mother agrees to go to treatment, but since 30% of the mothers affected aren't on drugs anyway, what good does that do for them? This is almost like the "dry druggie" concept the programmies love so much. I think the authorities are trying to find a stoner under every nook just to cover up their own failings - which is what the War on Drugs has done for decades.

In the Andalusia case, the new mother remains in jail under an outrageously high bond of $250,000.

The whole situation stinks, and it's wrong. If you want to talk about broken lives, such will be the result of the prosecutors' zeal.

Even if the statute let authorities test and imprison new mothers, it would still be illegal under a Supreme Court ruling - and it would violate patient confidentiality. In 2004, the court ruled that a hospital in Charleston, South Carolina, violated new moms' rights by testing them for drugs without their permission and giving the results to prosecutors.

But that doesn't stop authorities elsewhere from flouting the ruling. I've been told that in Delaware it's mandatory for mothers who go into premature labor to take a drug test. (However I can't find a specific cite.) A couple years ago, officials in a jurisdiction outside Cincinnati wanted to just test all new mothers. The tyranny of the proposal shone through the strident babblings of officials who touted the plan in TV news interviews.

The ruling party has a prison state to run, I guess. If a child loses their mother to the corrections-industrial complex, that's just fine and dandy with the regime.

(Source: http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/120298055632310.xml&coll=2&thispage=1;
http://www.cocaine.org/drugtestfaq/index.html)

Bush to veto waterboarding ban

Almost anyone would agree waterboarding is a form of torture - and thus would be nixed as an interrogation method. Yesterday the Senate finally passed a bill that would have the CIA adopt the Army's rules against this drowning simulation and similar techniques.

It should have passed by a lot more than 51 to 45 - especially now that Bush is just going to veto the bill. "The President [sic] will veto that bill," boasted White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

Now Bush is going to go down in history as the so-called President who favored torture. Not like he wouldn't anyway, because it's torture just to watch him speak.

Incidentally, John McCain said waterboarding "should be banned" - but he voted against the ban anyway. So this is the type of doublespeak we're in for if so-called "maverick" McAin't becomes President.

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080214/wl_afp/usbushcongressintelligenceveto_080214161907)

Catholic school's ban of woman referee may be ruled out of bounds

A Catholic school has barred a woman referee from officiating at games - and now this may spell trouble with the statewide athletic association.

It happened this month at St. Mary's Academy, an utterly Neanderthal school in St. Marys, Kansas. On February 2, the school hosted a boys' high school basketball game. (It's unknown what school the team was playing against.) The refs bipped onto the court prepared for an exciting match-up.

But only minutes before the game was to begin, a school administrator showed up and declared that one of the referees would not be allowed to officiate - just because she is a woman. The school's "reasoning" was that it did not think women should be in authority over boys.

A male referee who served at 2 games just before that one was told by the school to stay on an emergency basis. But when he found out the so-called emergency was to replace the woman referee, he walked off in protest and refused to officiate - as did the male referee who was scheduled to officiate with the female ref.

The Kansas State High School Activities Association isn't too pleased about the school's action either. The KSHSAA's executive director says the episode is unprecedented. St. Mary's Academy is not a member of the league but is approved by the league to play member schools. Now the KSHSAA is going to reevaluate whether the school can stay on the approved list.

The KSHSAA has rules and bylaws, you see. Maybe one of those rules is that schools can't discriminate against women refs. If a school is on the league's approved list, it has to follow league rules when it hosts league teams. End of discussion. A school has no business expecting not to have to follow the rules everyone else has to follow. (Though some schools do expect to not to have to follow rules, as I've seen.)

Maybe this incident was unprecedented, but I guarantee you that stuff like it isn't, even in recent memory. The problem goes squarely to school bureaucracies that build up power for years and are above any challenge or criticism whatsoever. I'm pleasantly surprised the school actually received any criticism, because I've seen how private school bureaucracies get a pass.

(Source: http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/487355.html;
http://www.cjonline.com/stories/021008/pre_245553740.shtml)

Blue Dogs sounding like yellow bellies

I know the Democrats are supposed to have a big tent, but some stances are so far outside the mainstream that I can't believe the party lets anyone with these stances seek office under the Democratic banner - while disavowing candidates who support liberty. The Democratic leadership disavowed a congressional candidate in Missouri because he took the sensible step of supporting legalizing marijuana, but they didn't shun a kook like Merrill Keiser? I was a registered Democrat for 16 years and a member of the Northern Kentucky Young Democrats for 3 of those years, but I took more flak from my copartisans than the right wing of the party did.

The Blue Dog Coalition is sort of a soulmate of the DLC. It has some overlap with the DLC and consists of Democratic members of Congress who often have conservative positions much like the Republicans. Lately they've gone beyond conservative and have gone extreme.

Now 21 members of the Blue Dog Coalition in the House are endorsing the Senate version of the surveillance bill. The Senate's version grants retroactive immunity to telcom giants for their lawbreaking in Bush's phone spying scandal, while the House's version does not. The 21 lawmakers actually wrote a letter to Nancy Pelosi supporting immunity.

What a cowardly, wimpy, toilet-minded thing to do.

If the Senate version wins in the House, it'll be the Blue Dogs' fault entirely. I'm relieved I'm not in the party of these Bush enablers anymore.

The Blue Dogs and the DLC are such rubber-stamp appeasers that they ought to just call themselves the Vichy Democrats.

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/13/134654/941)

Town council backs DeMint's idiocy

If the drive-by rightists were such superpatriots, they'd be trying to bring the troops home from Bush's failed war - not trying to draw more troops in to feed this bizarre war fetish they have. Patriotism means acting in your country's interests.

That doesn't mean you're a big Iraq War hawk just because you're not a member of Code Pink. But when a city at the other end of the country makes an effort to keep its young people out of the war, you should respect it. It's that city's decision - not yours or mine.

Many Americans live under local governments that are out of step with the public they're supposed to serve. It happens in my area, as voters in central cities become more progressive while their governments trend to the right. And it happens in small towns not too far from here. Like Delbarton, West Virginia. In a lot of places like Delbarton, most folks aren't Berkeley liberals, but they damn sure aren't Bushists either: Bush lost Delbarton's county 56% to 43% in 2004, after the war was already under way.

Those are statistics, not ivory tower assumptions. Bush lost the area. Get over it. But that doesn't stop Delbarton City Council from telling its own citizens and the rest of the country what to think. If you think Berkeley went too far, don't do what Berkeley did. Simple. I'm a nice guy, and I won't boycott your town for it. But leaving another city alone isn't enough for Delbarton City Council, which has passed a resolution backing Jim DeMint's efforts to slash Berkeley's school lunches because of its politics.

So City Clowncil is going to bat for a right-wing demagogue like DeMint, who never served in the military but expects everyone else to?

It's bad enough that totalitarian chickenhawks like Jim DimWit abuse congressional power to punish cities for their politics. But now a town government is trying to impose its own views on another city by backing DeMint's bill!

If Delbarton City Council is going to poke its nose into Berkeley, then I'm damn sure going to keep an eye on Delbarton - seeing how most folks in Delbarton actually agree that their City Council is out of line. Geographically there's much less distance between me and Delbarton than between Delbarton and Berkeley, so who's a bigger threat to local autonomy: me or Delbarton City Council?

If you want to show your patriotism, how about passing a resolution demanding that the military stop stealing bonuses from injured troops when they can't complete their service? Such a resolution would do America's brave military personnel a lot more good than bellyaching about one city's supposed snub.

Meanwhile, Berkeley has softened its stance in this controversy. This may not matter, because any type of dissent against the war is enough to cause Bush's chickenhawks to go ballistic.

I say support the troops. And fuck Jim DeMint.

(Source: http://www.williamsondailynews.com/articles/2008/02/12/news/doc47b10090a7284842072974.txt;
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/13/berkeley.marines)

School system rejects uniforms!

Other than being against right-to-scab laws, there's few things I feel as strongly about as the issue of school uniforms. The long and short of it is, if I have any say, you cannot and will not require uniforms to be worn in public schools. You might be able to get away with it if you have a decent workaround, but most schools today are more interested in right-wing gimmicks and groupthink than in the Constitution, so I wouldn't count on the school to rectify it fairly.

I told you a couple weeks ago that the Edgewood City Schools in Trenton, Ohio, were planning on implementing a mandatory uniform policy. In the past dozen years, once a few activists in your district take a serious look at uniforms, it's usually all downhill from there. Almost always. Said school system usually emerges as a total wreckage at the hands of uniforms.

But today I learned that the school system north of Cincinnati has suddenly scrapped its uniform proposal! I couldn't believe what I was seeing! An American school district in the Bush era (in suburban Cincinnati, no less) actually rejected uniforms? I almost had to do a double-take when I saw the article! The news seems almost too good to be true, but it appears to be so.

The school system seemed hell-bent on instituting uniforms, but the superintendent found that studies show uniforms fail to improve academics or discipline. Gee, I could have told you that years ago. So now that gimmick is rendered a soggy pile of sawdust for the time being.

School board members now say it might be different if it was an inner-city school system where gangs are more prevalent, but that too is hooey. My experience was that gangs were far more of a problem in suburban schools than in urban schools, and uniforms wouldn't have prevented gangs anyway.

Relish our victory against the forces of loom and doom in Trenton!

(Source: http://www.journal-news.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2008/02/11/mj021208edgeboe.html)

Cop in YouTube video suspended

Guess what? No sooner did I post the entry about the video of the out-of-control Baltimore policeman roughing up a 14-year-old for skateboarding in public that it was announced that the officer was suspended with pay while the department investigates.

Frankly, I didn't have high hopes that anything would come of it. And I still don't. Suspending someone from their job with pay is like suspending someone from school while giving them a 100% grade on all the work they miss. The incident was caught on video, but things like this have been captured on video before only to end with no action taken against those who abused their position.

Even the mayor called the officer's behavior "unacceptable", but still I know better than to expect justice to prevail. It's possible that the truth will win, of course, but don't bet on it.

Of course, the spittle crowd has been e-mailing TV stations in support of the officer's actions, as they cry that the video is just a big hoax by "the liberals" and all.

(Source: http://wjz.com/local/youtube.salvatore.rivieri.2.651552.html)

Another outrage caught on video

Peep this video on YouPube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GgWrV8TcUc

I haven't read all the comments for this clip yet, but has anyone filed a formal complaint against the officer in this video over his unprofessional behavior that's unbecoming an officer of the law?

Shoving the youngster onto the ground is clearly an open-and-shut case of assault. When I saw this I was so angry I just about shit a hole in my pants.

What's most mind-boggling is when the cop yells, "When you go around doing this kind of stuff, somebody's gonna kill you!" Somebody's going to kill someone for riding a skateboard in public???

I almost guarantee you that if I had been shoved by a cop like that when I was 14, especially over such a minor "offense", my folks would have sued 'em to court.

A Republican congressman lost too!

Another incumbent representative loses a primary in Maryland. This time it's Republican Wayne Gilchrest (pictured here).

For a Republican, Gilchrest actually isn't all that conservative. And that's a big problem in a Republican primary, you see. So now he lost to a supposed "conservative's conservative" named Andy Harris.

The neat thing is, the Republicans might not win this seat in the general election now because of this! Man, that would be funny!

DLC congressman loses primary

The man you see here is Albert Wynn, a Democratic representative from Maryland.

Or more accurately, he's a DLC representative from Maryland. Too often, Wynn votes with Republicans even on major issues. That's what the Democratic Losership Council is all about, after all. He supported Bush's Iraq War, the Republicans' rogue bankruptcy bill of 2005, and the Bush regime's energy bill.

Well, even in a world where the DLC has too much sway over the party, Wynn has just managed to lose the Democratic primary to a local activist named Donna Edwards, who quite rightly criticized Wynn as too conservative. Wynn lost despite raising heavy corporate donations from powerful energy and banking interests.

So the DLC may finally be facing the beginning of the end of its misrule over the once-great Democratic Party.

Couple charged under Patriot Act after allegedly making out on plane (a blast from the past)

I'm bored talking about the primaries - Obama and McCain won handily today - so let's talk about what there's gonna be more of if Bushism doesn't receive the smackdown it so richly deserves.

This story apparently received some press in a few areas, but I hardly saw anything about it. In 2006, a couple was charged under the Patriot Act after allegedly making out on an airplane. I say allegedly because it appears they didn't even do that. On the Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Raleigh, the couple, both in their early 40s, was allegedly seen snuggling and kissing "inappropriately." An authoritarian prude who thought they saw such activity complained to the flight attendant to make the couple stop because it was making the complainant "uncomfortable."

Had the crybaby who complained ever left their own house before? The couple's alleged actions (even if they were doing what the complainant thought) weren't anything you don't regularly see in plain sight at public parks, on university campuses, or even on city buses. For Pete's sake! Get out of the 16th century!

When the attendant rudely confronted the couple and put his hands on the woman, the male half of the couple warned that he'd have to report the flight attendant to his superiors if he didn't let them be. The FBI and some news accounts put their own Captain's Quarters-like spin on it to make it sound like an unprovoked physical threat - which it clearly wasn't, if you read all the facts. (Now that's journamalism!)

Being charged under the Patriot Act could have landed the couple in prison for 20 years.

According to the FBI indictment, the man was "observed nuzzling or kissing" the woman's neck and then later with his face on the woman's "vaginal area" - also known as a lap, geniuses. Much, much worse than this, according to the FBI, the woman "was observed smiling." Gasp!

Now I know what the guy who I told the story of my bogus NKU trespassing arrest to meant when he said that soon there'd be "anti-smiling laws." These days, you have to watch out, because your happy attitude might get you 20 years.

Believe it or not, the man on the plane was actually convicted of interfering with a flight crew. You read that right. He was convicted over this! Charges against the woman were only dropped after a months-long ordeal. Late last year, the man was sentenced to probation. A former Navy man and '91 Gulf War vet, he reportedly lost his VA benefits as a result, because the offense is a felony. (Is launching bogus Patriot Act prosecutions how the government treats veterans?) Not only that, but the allegation that the couple was even making out seems to just be hearsay. It appears that the man actually put his head down because he was resting from chemotherapy.

It angers me that the government put the couple through such an ordeal. I'd file a lawsuit against Southwest and the FBI at once.

I hope I have all the facts on this case, but the pop-up media muddied the story so badly that I had to dig deeper.

Until the Patriot Act is repealed, malicious prosecutions are going to keep happening. The current Congress has a mandate to repeal it, but hasn't done so. So be prepared for more stories like this every so often. Bush lied (big surprise) when he said the Idiot Act was only going to be used against terrorists.

(Source: http://www.disgrunt.com/blog/2006/11/15/mid-flight-sexual-play-lands-us-couple-afoul-of-anti-terrorism-law;
http://consumerist.com/consumer/drunks-on-a-plane/man-convicted-of-in+flight-felony-his-face-was-pressed-to-vaginal-area-258218.php;
http://www.wwaytv3.com/man_sentenced_six_months_probation_in_mile_high_case/08/2007)