Not the smartest move for a wanted cop killer...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/12/01/washington.suspect.shot/index.html

I can't say I feel sorry for the guy. The last thing you should do when you're wanted by cops is to be uncooperative. Those cops had no reason to want him alive.

I'm glad the whole thing is over. Now if only Mike Huckabee had not let this guy out of prison... I think this might just be ol' Mike's Willie Horton moment.

Fail...

http://mediamatters.org/blog/200910130041

Glad to see that the NFL isn't going to allow Rush to destroy a team for the sake of his ego. It would have been nice though to have one less team to worry about in the postseason.

Idiots...

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/08/dont_need_to_be_a_rocket_scientist.php

Conservatives really are completely divorced from reality. Where exactly do they think Stephen Hawking lives?

Hypocrite...

http://www.sunjournal.com/node/101863

Pope Benedict XVI strongly criticized atheism in a major document released Friday, saying it had led to some of the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice" ever known.

The Pope accusing atheists of causing some of the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice" takes some balls. The Papacy is responsible for the most violent acts of religious repression, the most horrible crimes against humanity, the worst violations of human rights ever experienced on earth. Most of the horrible torture methods in practice to this day were invented by the Church in an effort to find ever more painful ways of punishing Jews and non-Catholics.

Stupidity...

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/8/8/763586/-Idiot-Nation,-Idiot-Press

Has Palin never had private insurance? They don't care if you get care or not, in fact they benefit by denying you care. There are many examples of private insurance companies denying people care right up until their death despite that person paying for their insurance all their lives. I would much rather have a government bureaucrat handling my case unencumbered by profit requirements or corporate boards than I would a private insurance company employee who only cares about how much he can stiff you in order to give the CEO a bigger bonus and give the shareholders a bigger dividend.

Pathetic...

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20090708_Phila__camp_alleges_racism_at_Montco_swim_club.html

It's disgusting that this is happening in 2009, in Southeast Pennsylvania which is supposed to be rational progressive country. Very little has changed in this country.

Grasping...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/28/AR2009062802436.html

What bullcrap. She's not the hero in all this. If anyone's a hero here, it's the media which didn't buy Sanford's staff's lies and dug up the truth about where he was. Sanford's wife enabled him just like everyone else. She knew, or should have known, he wasn't hiking the Appalachian Trail but instead of saying that she plead ignorance and said she didn't know where he was. She knew about the affair months ago and yet she didn't leave him, she hasn't even left him now that it's been made clear he continued the affair after she told him to break it off. She will probably never leave him and I don't consider that the least bit heroic. I know it's hard to find an example of a strong woman in the Republican Party, Republican men don't exactly value women for their brains, but give me a break.

Life of the Party...

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/from-the-white-house-files-a-fight-over-michael-jackson/

John Roberts would have been 29 in 1984. He must have been fun at parties...

Even then he was evidently a huge stick in the mud.

Double Standard...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/19/sotomayor.womens.club/index.html

It's absurd that she is being forced to resign from the organization. The organization only exists in the first place because the all-men's club wouldn't accept women. Considering every Republican President for almost 100 years has belonged to the all-male club, I wonder how many male Supreme Court justices also belong. It's quite ironic though that she's being criticized by Republicans for belonging to a gender specific club that sprang up as a response to a gender specific club that most well connected Republicans belong to. I wonder if Jeff Sessions, the former judicial nominee who was Bork'd for being a racist and is now the ranking Republican in the Senate Judiciary Committee, belongs to the Bohemian Grove.

(Oxy)moron...

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/11/responsible-white-separatist/

Setting aside for a second the oxymoron that is "responsible white separatist community", this is just more political posturing by a community that's been courting violence for decades. The leadership of organizations like this always tries to distance itself from the whackos who turn their rhetoric into violence but in the end the leadership is just as responsible as the one who does the act. We see this with the anti-choice leadership as well when abortion providers are killed. They advocate violence with their rhetoric, compare the targets with Nazis and say they're perpetrating a holocaust, and then when one of their sheep kills someone they swear they had nothing to do with it. The same is true with the white supremacist/separatist community. You can't spend centuries making the worst claims about a group of people and then claim ignorance when someone decides to do something about it.

Confusion...

http://www.freshconservative.com/Fresh_Conservative/Fresh_Conservative/Entries/2009/6/10_Holocaust_Museum_Shooter_Was_Left_Wing_Radical.html

Somebody needs to give this guy a refresher course in the left-right political spectrum because I think he's confused.

Conspiracy theorists are by and large usually right-wingers since those conspiracies usually have a healthy amount of "the government is always wrong" thrown in for good effect.

"Freeman" white supremacists are certainly not liberals. They think that non-whites should be removed from this country. They also have an unhealthy hatred/fear of the government.

Anti-Semites that think that Jews control the financial system, hate the Federal Reserve Bank, think that black people are inferior to whites and post on Free Republic to almost universal approval are not liberals.

The worst part is that this douche is using this to try to explain away the very real threat of violence from the right-wing, this episode very much included, and allow his followers (all of whom will eat this shit up) to pat themselves on the back and say "at least we're not those damn liberals shooting up museums" all the while still supporting the idiots who commit this type of violence.

Seriously though, no person with a working knowledge of politics and a working brain could possibly look at this guy's views and label him a liberal. There are plenty of whackos on the left, though our whackos are relegated to the far fringes while the right-wing ones have radio and television shows and get to meet the President, but none of what this guy did even approaches the views of those fringe radicals.

A Pattern is Developing...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/10/museum.shooting/index.html

This is such a sad story. It turns out the shooter was an 88 year old man with a long history of right-wing, anti-Semitic and anti-government violence. He evidently attempted to kidnap the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in the 80s. He only served 6 years for that crime. Now he's killed a man who was only doing his job. It's a good thing the security reacted quickly and stopped him before he could get to an occupied part of the building. Many more than that one brave guard would have died if that would have happened.

It deeply scares and saddens me the increased level of violence coming from the right-wing in recent months. It seems to get worse and worse. This is an entire movement devoted to nothing but hate and violence. I have no doubt this isn't the last we'll hear from these people.

The Straw...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/06/10/prejean.dethroned/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

It's about time she was removed. If she wasn't a darling of the extreme right-wing she would have been dethroned when she pulled this shit the first time. Because of her connection with the same people shooting up museums and doctors' offices, she was given a pass the first time. I guess this time they figured they should do something. I can't think of another legitimate job where you can refuse to show up and keep your job. I guess she figured that now that she's got her new job as right-wing hate bitch she didn't need the pageant anymore. After all, even though she lost the national pageant, I bet nobody can name the woman who beat her.

Terrorism...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/us/10abortion.html?_r=2&hp

This was the point of the whole thing after all. The anti-choice movement knows exactly what it's doing. This is exactly why laws like RICO should be used to prosecute anti-choicers who move from peaceful methods towards violence. The law may have been designed to prosecute the Mafia but in a lot of ways, the anti-choice leadership is acting like the Mafia. They're using violence, and the unending threat of violence, to force legal medical providers out of business. Even the "non-violent" protesters benefit from the violent ones since those inside the clinics know all too well that any one of those people running around outside with snuff films of dead fetuses could throw a bomb or pull a gun at any moment. It makes it a bit hard to run a business.

I can't blame the family, nobody can be expected to willingly risk their life. War has been declared and the pro-choice movement is completely unprepared because we don't practice violence. The worst part is that the women who most need abortions are going to be the ones to suffer the most, women who mostly wanted to have a baby but found out late in the pregnancy that the fetus was going to die or their life was seriously threatened. These women only had 3 options and now they only have 2. Soon, it will probably be just 1 and then none as the remaining two doctors are either attacked themselves or quit out of fear for their families.

This is the very definition of terrorism. I don't see why our government, especially now that there's a pro-choice President, doesn't treat these people accordingly. Randall Terry should be stewing in Guantanamo right now and learning just how serious waterboarding really is.

Concerned...

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/05/steele-sotomayor-white-male/

Wow, Steele is really worried about keeping his jobs. He's a real hero for standing up for the downtrodden white male. They're such a persecuted group. Give me a break.

So I guess if a white male is in mortal danger by going before Justice Sotomayor, then minority women are at an equal amount of peril going before the four Catholic male, and three white Catholic male, justices...oh wait, I guess they are. This argument that Sotomayor will side against white males just because she's a Hispanic female is racist, sexist and just plain stupid. Nobody argues that white male judges can't make decisions affecting other groups and yet they make that argument all the time about minorities and females (at least liberal ones, conservatives like Thomas get a pass from the establishment).

I wonder if Steele is equally concerned about non-immigrant minorities chances against Samuel Alito given this?

That word doesn't mean what you think it does...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/05/sotomayor.sessions/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

"You will get a fair hearing before this committee,"

I'll believe that when I see it. It's already been made clear that Sessions will do whatever it takes to advance the Republican agenda regardless of its negative effect on this nation. I have no doubt he'll try something to derail her nomination.

President Reagan nominated Sessions to be a federal judge, but the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected him 23 years ago this week.

Which, as you'll see, was the right decision.

"It was not a pleasant event, I got to tell you. It was really so heartbreaking to me," Sessions said.

It was such an injustice that they didn't confirm another racist to the federal bench.

His nomination to be a U.S. District Court judge was troubled from the start because of controversy surrounding his prosecution of civil rights activists for voting fraud.

How dare they question why he tried to throw civil rights activists in jail for registering blacks to vote? That was a common tactic among the racist governments of the south during the civil rights era.

Sessions' fate was sealed after Democrats called several witnesses who accused him of a pattern of racial insensitivity -- including calling a black lawyer "boy" and civil rights groups such as the NAACP "un-American."

That's not hard to believe. These are pretty good reasons not to confirm someone to a position of power. Evidently the people of Alabama don't care about this kind of record. Hell, they might consider it a plus.

"That was not fair. That was not accurate. Those were false charges and distortions of anything that I did, and it really was not. I never had those kinds of views, and I was caricatured in a way that was not me," Sessions said.

Nobody ever admits to doing these things. Even people who think they are correct to do such things know in their hearts that it's wrong and they should not admit to it.

The parallel to today, with conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh labeling Sotomayor a racist, is eerie.

No, it isn't. It's not even close. Trying to draw a parallel between the honest concern about Sessions record and the completely baseless and political charges against Sotomayor is borderline racist in itself. The charges coming from the likes of Limbaugh and Gingrich are being leveled for purely political reasons. The Senate had an obligation to investigate the charges against Sessions and came to the right conclusion when they found out the charges were credible.

She ruled for some cases that might be called affirmative action in which one group may have prevailed over another group and I think that raises questions.

Affirmative Action is not racism. It's certainly not comparable to the aggressive, and sometimes murderous, tactics used by law enforcement and government officials against civil rights activists.

Because he is the lead Republican on the committee holding Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, Sessions will have a big role in setting the tone of the opposition.

It is quite ironic that someone who was denied a position on the federal bench for acts of racism would now be in a position to derail someone else's nomination for the federal bench for racist reasons. I mean really, aren't there enough white Catholic males on the bench for them? Is one minority woman really too much for them?

A Movement Full of Killers...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/31/kansas.doctor.killed/index.html

I guess the anti-choice movement finished what they started in 1993. There was a period where it seemed this movement had abandoned violence. I guess they figured they were going to stop women's rights without violence. Now that we have a strongly pro-choice President, I guess they're back to old tricks. Don't believe the claims from the anti-women's lives crowd when they say they're horrified by this crime. They express sadness on the outside while rejoicing on the inside. They tried to kill him 16 years ago, they've been trying for years to imprison him for saving women's lives. They'll be throwing parties in Kansas and Washington, DC and anywhere where anti-choice leaders gather.

A /= B

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/us/politics/28abortion.html?hp

I do not see how the columnist who wrote this story looks at these cases and determines that Sotomayor is some sort of stealth anti-choicer. First he mentions that she agreed that women, as well as men, who faced forced abortions in China should be granted asylum. Even the most rabid pro-choice zealot doesn't believe women should be forced to have abortions. That doesn't mean she's going to turn around and say that women who want abortions should be denied. That's a strawman argument (legalized abortion=forced abortion) that the right-wing has been throwing around for years. Obviously, she should have to give her opinion on this case since it is the most important issue likely to come before the court but I wouldn't worry about it. Obama isn't going to nominate someone who is hostile to women's rights.

But in his briefing to reporters on Tuesday, the White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, was asked whether Mr. Obama had asked Judge Sotomayor about abortion or privacy rights. Mr. Gibbs replied that Mr. Obama “did not ask that specifically.”

Every President says that because they don't want to be accused of having an abortion litmus test for judicial nominees. Bush said the same thing and we all know how his nominees turned out. Obama may not have asked that question directly but I'm sure he's just as aware of Sotomayor's Roe bonafides as Bush was of Alito and Roberts.

In a 2004 case, she largely sided with some anti-abortion protesters who wanted to sue some police officers for allegedly violating their constitutional rights by using excessive force to break up demonstrations at an abortion clinic. Judge Sotomayor said the protesters deserved a day in court.

So because she sided with defendants against police brutality she must be anti-choice? So if Alito sides with a pro-choice CEO against his minimum wage workers does that make Alito pro-choice? Maybe she just doesn't like police brutality.

Judge Sotomayor’s decision turned on a technicality, her opinion described in detail the woman’s account of how she would be persecuted in China because she had once permitted the escape of a woman who was seven months pregnant and scheduled for a forced abortion. In China, to allow such an escape was a crime, the woman said.

Again, pro-choice /= pro-forced abortion. Chinese abortion laws have nothing to do with a woman's right to choose and everything to do with the government's desire to control every aspect of peoples' lives (sounds like a religion) and the fact that China is suffering a population crisis and they can't come up with a better solution.

Phillip Jauregui, president of the conservative Judicial Action Group, said he was not convinced by any anti-abortion overtones to such rulings because, he said, even “the most radical feminist” would object to forcing women to abort wanted pregnancies.

See, even the anti-choice whackos admit it.

Mr. Waldman of BeliefNet.com also noted that Judge Sotomayor was raised Roman Catholic, although there are many judges who do not follow the church’s dogma — like opposing abortion and the death penalty — in their jurisprudence.

Because of course all Roman Catholics, even ones who can only be described as being "raised Roman Catholic", follow everything that asshole in a dress in Rome says...except of course for when they don't...

Moreover, he said, it is significant that as a group, Hispanics include a higher percentage of abortion opponents than many other parts of the Democratic Party’s coalition. Judge Sotomayor’s parents moved from Puerto Rico.

And of course while white people, and even specific groups like Irish, are unique and hold varying opinions on a number of issues, Hispanics are monolithic (despite being made up of many very different groups and cultures) and believe exactly the same things about everything.

“At the very least, she grew up in a culture that didn’t hold the pro-life position in contempt,” Mr. Waldman said.

Last I checked the culture she grew up in was America. Her parents are from Puerto Rico, not Paraguay. Just because the anti-choice crowd views the pro-choice movement as little more than murderers and sluts doesn't mean we have the same rigid, unthinking orthodoxy when it comes to them.

Obama's Choice for Supreme Court...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/26/supreme.court/index.html

I think Sotomayor is a great choice. Her judicial record is excellent, according to the White House she has more judicial experience than any Supreme Court Justice has had when they were nominated. The right-wingers will claim she's an activist judge or she was only nominated because she's Hispanic and female, and they'll simply overlook her long history on the bench, and that will be unfortunate. I hope she will win even with this absurd opposition. I guess they would have opposed anyone Obama put forward so it's good he went with someone good instead of capitulating and nominating a right-winger who they would oppose anyway just out of tradition. It's great that he is nominating a Hispanic (the first) and a woman (the third in history and one of only two on a 9 person court) but it's also good he nominated someone with actual experience who is qualified in her own right.

Equal Rights...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/26/california.same.sex.marriage/index.html

So much for equal rights under the law. Can you imagine if people had been allowed to vote on Civil Rights for women or African Americans? I bet the Falwells and Robertsons of the world are kicking themselves for not thinking of this in the 50s. They could have gotten resolutions on the ballot in every state in the nation forbidding mixed race marriages or desegregation. We'd still be sorting out the bloody mess. People should not be allowed to vote on whether their neighbor is entitled to Civil Rights. Public opinion always lags behind progress, if this had been allowed 50 or 100 years ago, women and blacks still wouldn't have the right to vote in certain states (and quite possibly the entire nation if the racists/sexists had tried to put through a federal constitutional amendment like they're trying with gay marriage).

Liberty University Stifles Student Speech...

http://www.newsadvance.com/lna/news/local/article/lu_pulls_plug_on_democratic_club/16172

Far more surprising than Liberty University's predictable stifling of student speech is the fact that there was a Democratic Club on the Liberty University campus in the first place. What Democrat in his/her right mind would want to get anywhere near that useless institution? Next you're going to tell me Bob Jones University has a chapter of the Black Panthers.

AIPAC...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/will-congress-back-bibi-o_b_204328.html

So now AIPAC is not only trying to unfairly influence American policy to benefit a foreign power, and destroying the reputations of people who dare to disagree with Israel, they're also writing letters for Congressmen to sign telling Obama to stop trying to bring peace to the Middle East. I guess they figure if the US turns a blind eye, they can solve the Palestinian problem once and for all (hint: It doesn't involve giving them their own state). I'm guessing their desire for the US to "Butt out" doesn't extend to the arms that we sell to Israel so they can kill innocent civilians. I'm sure they want the US to continue those shipments. Just don't dare question what they're doing with those weapons.

Right-wing Conservative Whackos Protest Notre Dame Commecement...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/22605

It’s not just the few dozen graduates boycotting Obama’s 20-minute commencement address to protest his support for abortion rights and embryonic stem-cell research.

Wow, a few dozen out of a graduating class that probably numbers in the thousands. What a controversy.

Or the bus loads of protestors driving in from Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit, activists who might never have voted for Obama in the first place.

Many of whom probably aren't even Catholic and are just bitter because their guy lost.

His stance helped him win over more religious Catholics, too, who liked his policies on issues such as the economy and health care, and saw him as moderate enough on abortion that they were comfortable supporting him.

Everybody knew where Obama stood on abortion. The Republicans beat that horse to death for almost the entirety of last year.

But some of Obama’s policy decisions and appointments since take office have upset some in the anti-abortion community

Everyone knew that Obama would repeal the Mexico City Policy, if you didn't see that coming you weren't paying attention. The Catholics who voted for him knew what he would do. Most of them are probably pro-choice anyway.

The demonstrations will greet Obama almost as soon as he arrives on campus. Organizers say there will be a picket line near the entrance of Notre Dame, so anybody who gets off the interstate will see it. Already, airplanes have been carrying banners featuring aborted babies, and trucks doubling as billboards targeting Obama on abortion have been doing loops around the campus. Some protestors have been arrested.

Sure, that's a great way to make your point. Show gory pictures of dead fetuses that would make a serial killer blush and disturb the peace of an entire neighborhood. Do they realize that this is why most Americans view them as dangerous extremists and creeps?

“A commencement should not be a political arena,” explained Mary Daly, a Notre Dame graduate who is leading the student boycott. “It’s not the place for a dialogue.”

So instead you're going to hold an alternative commencement that concentrates solely on a political issue? You're the ones politicizing the commencement.

But Obama’s support has dropped among certain groups, including white Catholics who attend mass regularly, according to Greg Smith, a research fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. In February, two-thirds of white Catholics who attend mass every week approved of his job performance, and now less than half do, Smith said.

So if you ignore the huge amount of minority Catholics, and the majority of Catholics who don't attend mass every Sunday, he's hugely unpopular. And if you only poll white Southerners with hoods and Confederate flags in their pickup trucks, Obama is the least popular President since Lincoln.

Obama also comes to Notre Dame as a new Gallup poll found that for the first time, the majority of Americans are anti-abortion.

Everybody's jumping on this poll to suggest that abortion is suddenly unpopular. When you have polls going back years showing general support and then you suddenly have a result that deviates sharply from the statistical norm, you throw away the outlier. That's how statistics works. The question was rigged to get this desired result (if I went out there and asked "do you support laws that would force pregnant women to go to prison, and possibly die, if they seek an abortion" I could get a large majority of respondents to say they support abortion too). Also, considering that the number of Republicans in this country has decreased significantly in the past several years, due to the disaster they have made of this country, it's likely that Gallup oversampled Republicans in their poll since they generally try to get a certain number of Dems and a certain number of Reps for each poll.

16 years after Casey’s father, the former Pennsylvania governor, was denied a convention speech.

I'm getting sick of hearing this same old lie. They've been telling this lie for almost 20 years. He was denied a speech because he refused to endorse Bill Clinton, not because of his position on abortion. Would the Republicans have invited a speaker to their convention who didn't endorse the Republican candidate?

“There’s a lot of buyer’s remorse growing out there,” said Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center

Brent Bozell hardly represents the majority of Catholics. He's a member of a fringe conservative Catholic group. I can guarantee you he didn't vote for Obama in the first place.

“The anger is growing,” he said. “And the sense of outrage is growing because people are seeing the Obama administration picking unnecessary fights and challenging Catholics to political duels.”

It's not picking unnecessary fights, it's doing his job. No group should have a veto on Presidential decisions just so their feelings aren't hurt.

Bozell won’t be voicing his protest at Notre Dame. But for those who are, like Stanek, the more immediate goal is “to make Barack Obama radioactive on any Catholic college campus,” she said.

Despite the media's attempt to portray it otherwise, Obama is still insanely popular among Catholics. According to a poll cited in this very article, 2/3s of respondents who expressed a preference thought Notre Dame was right to invite him. Those Catholics who voted for Obama knew exactly what they were getting and those who didn't don't matter. Obama shouldn't change everything about himself to satisfy a small fringe minority that will never vote for him no matter what he does.

Wrong Decision...

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003119332

I like Menendez, I voted for him and I think he's generally a terrific Senator but he's completely wrong here. I know he's playing to a rabid demographic in this case. I know he feels he has to pander to their bitterness to win elections. At some point though you have to stop pandering and start doing what's right. We have been torturing the Cuban people for decades now and we haven't hurt Castro at all. We're not going to change the government of Cuba, that's obvious. The only thing we're doing is hurting the regular people who share none of the blame for the situation in their country. If the OAS wants to admit Cuba, they should. We shouldn't keep playing the same old games of the Bush Administration, threatening supposedly independent organizations with money in order to accomplish our selfish goals.

Obsession...

What is the deal with the right-wing's obsession with Obama's choice of condiments? Aren't there more important things in the world than what the President gets on his burger? For the record, Grey Poupon is made by Kraft Foods, the same company that makes the Mac and Cheese, how much more American can you get? Is there some rule I've not heard of that dictates that you must get ketchup and mild mustard or you lose your citizenship?

Ego...

http://www.fannation.com/truth_and_rumors/view/101490-source-favre-cant-stand-green-bay?cnn=yes

Wow, way to burn bridges. He could have been a hero for all time in Green Bay if he just knew when to quit. Instead, he kept swearing he was going to retire and then going back on his word. Every year he did this. Finally, the Packers had enough and told him he couldn't keep stringing them along. Then he went to the Jets where he spent a mediocre year not getting anywhere. If he does get onto another team he'll probably just end up embarrassing himself. Now he's going to be hated forever in Green Bay, especially if he comes back on another NFC North team, and New Jersey isn't exactly going to be lining up to worship him. He went from one of the greatest and most beloved football players to a heel that nobody likes all because he couldn't quite while he was ahead.

Filibuster...

It looks like David Souter is going to retire from the Supreme Court soon. I wish it could have been one of the conservatives. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Obama's eventual nominee to be confirmed. The Republicans are going to filibuster no matter who he names, they're already planning for it I'm sure. They're going to make Strom Thurmond look like an amateur. All the bullcrap they pulled out when Bush's radical nominees were being held up will go right out the window. Back then, they were insisting that the nominees should be rubber stamped with no questions. Now all of a sudden they'll decide that things need to be held up, presumably just long enough that they can get a Republican in the White House or Obama just gives up and re-nominates Bork. A few years ago, the filibuster was a horrible tool that the Democrats were using to destroy the country, anyone want to guess how quickly they'll abandon that belief?

Interesting...

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/04/28/republican-senator-to-switch-to-the-democratic-party/

Wow, if this is true it's huge. He'd better start mending ties with labor if he wants to win. The last thing we need is Pat Toomey as Senator from Pennsylvania.

Racism is Alive And Well...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/25/texas-center-supreme-court-battle-voting-rights/

The community of Canyon Creek was ranchland rich with limestone and cedar trees when Jim Crow held sway in the South. The first house wasn't built until the late 1980s and not even a hint of discrimination attaches to this little slice in suburbia.

The people of Canyon Creek didn't sprout from the ground. They moved there from other places. They're not clean of the taint of racism that infests their state.

President Obama won more than 48 percent of the vote in November in this overwhelmingly white community northwest of the state capital.

Which means he lost that community. I don't see how this disproves racism.

Much has changed across the South and elsewhere in the country, not least of which is Obama's election, Gregory Coleman, the district's lawyer, has told the court.

Not a single state in the Deep South voted for Obama. The states covered by this law are covered for a reason. They can't use the fact that those of us in the rational parts of the US overruled them to argue that they should no longer be kept in check.

"It's insulting to me to be accused of having a racial bias just because you live in Texas," said Zimmerman, an engineer.

Then change your state. Don't blame us for pointing out the obvious. When your Governor and at least one of your Representatives is threatening secession because the US elected a black President you can't claim that racism has been eliminated.

Evidence amassed at congressional hearings showed that hundreds of discriminatory proposals were rejected by the Justice Department or withdrawn when government lawyers raised questions.

They bury this, proof that the law is still necessary, right at the bottom.

Selective Amnesia...

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/04/21/mccain-demands-white-house-apology/

Has John McCain already forgotten Timothy McVeigh? He was a veteran of the first Gulf War, where some said he took particular pleasure in shooting Arabs, and decided to blow up hundreds of his fellow citizens. Nobody is suggesting that all veterans are going to start committing domestic terrorism but the militias would be crazy not to target a group of people with weapons training who are desensitized to killing people and often hold political viewpoints to the right of the average citizen.

Idiots...

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/04/15/tea-bag-toss-ends-white-house-protest/

How do you do something like this and not end up in prison? They didn't even have a permit to dump the stupid tea bags in the park, what did they think would happen if they tried throwing them towards the White House? They're lucky they didn't get shot.

Use the Nuclear Option...

http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/561612.aspx

It begins. The Republicans gave the Dems no end of crap when they blocked Bush's judicial nominees. Now that Obama's in office of course all bets are off. They'll lie and say the nominees are all liberal zealots (though they didn't have any problems with Bush nominating nothing but far right-wing conservatives), but everyone knows they just want to block everything Obama does.

The Death of Intellectual Conservatism...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/fashion/08conserve.html?hp?no_interstitial

It's pretty pathetic when one of the top intellectuals in the conservative/Republican movement is a 14 year old boy. I really hope he's just brainwashed by his parents and will eventually grow out of it because if he isn't, if he's actually this jaded and this anti-social at 14, he's going to grow up to be a complete ass.

Jonathan retorted, “Now that I’m a political pundit, I have the ability to influence people. I have to think about it!”

This would never happen in the liberal movement. I have nothing against 14 year olds, many of them will eventually grow up to be very influential. That being said, there is no reason for an entire movement to be waiting with baited breath for the next pronouncement from someone who isn't even in High School yet. Is your movement so wanting for any intelligence that you have to resort to this? That this kid has more influence than people who have been working in government for years and have actual firsthand knowledge?

Doug, a computer systems integrator, and Marla, a sales representative and former actress who teaches drama and speech to middle-school students, have been home-schooling their bright, curious son since the sixth grade.

That explains a lot. Why send your kid to school where he might learn to respect all people when you can keep him home and control every thought that ever enters his head?

Although the Krohns are conservative, they say Jonathan’s passion for politics is largely his.

Sure they are. Maybe they've even managed to convince themselves of this but it's just not so. He's home schooled and they're both staunch conservatives. He didn't just wake up one day and realize he hated the poor. They've been drumming this into his head since birth and they've been keeping him isolated with home schooling so he wouldn't dare realize the error of his ideology.

Jonathan said he became a political enthusiast at 8, after hearing about a Democratic filibuster on judicial nominations. “I thought, ‘Who goes to work saying, ‘I’m going to filibuster today?’ ” he said.

So I assume he's furious about the constant Republican threats to filibuster essential bills. I can only imagine the fury with which they will stall and obstruct when Obama's first judicial nominee comes up for a vote.

He still has the zeal of a missionary. His voice rising to a wobbly squeak, he grabs any opening to press the cause. “Barack Obama is the most left-wing president in my lifetime,” he said.

He was barely out of diapers when Bush assumed the Presidency. There should be a certain age limit below which you can't say "in my lifetime".

Mr. Krohn buried his face in his hands. “Oh, Jonathan,” he sighed.

Even his parents are ashamed of him. They can't talk though, they created this monster. I hope they're happy when he's leading some militia or bombing abortion clinics.

Anti-Democratic...

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1880977,00.html

Yes, please, get them all off the bench. Their absence would do more to advance the judicial system than pretty much anything else. If they value the opinions of some ex-Nazi in a dress and pointy hat over democracy they should resign immediately.

The Catholic Church has always been anti-Democracy. There's no trace of it in the Church itself. In their view Democracy is so messy after all, for when people have the freedom to make up their own mind, they sometimes make decisions that disagree with the Pope. We can't have that, can we? It's nice that they've issued a statement that so encapsulates this fact that anyone with a love for Democracy would have to be a complete moron not to understand it. If you love Democracy you cannot be a Catholic, that should seal it pretty well.

Bipartisanship...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/13/schneider.bipartisanship/index.html

It's not Obama's fault he can't get any bipartisan cooperation. The Republicans have decided that since the American people voted them out they're going to take their ball and go home. They've promised to bring Congress to a standstill by filibustering every single piece of legislation to come through. That doesn't sound bipartisan to me.

Obama listened to the Republicans concerns, perhaps too much, and made changes to the bill to try to satisfy them. What he didn't realize is that they don't want to be satisfied. They want to obstruct the business of the country at every opportunity. He could have made the bill nothing but tax cuts and they still would have tried to torpedo it. That's what they do. They don't actually have anything to run on in 2010, no ideas that might appeal to America, so they're going to make sure nothing passes in the next two years and then run on the idea that the Democrats didn't do anything. It didn't work for them in 2008 but then again the Republicans have always been the party of trying old failed ideas over and over again hoping they'll eventually work. If they had any new ideas they'd be Democrats.

As for Gregg, he volunteered for the position. This is quite suspicious for someone who once voted to abolish the Commerce Dept. He only wanted the job so he could run the census and make sure the Republicans won a bunch of extra seats. Once that was taken away there was really no reason for him to stay.

"All the talk about bipartisanship that we have heard over the last several months went down the drain," House Republican leader John Boehner complained on Friday.

Nice try there Boner. You have to give bipartisanship to get bipartisanship. The reason this didn't work out in a bipartisan way was because the Republicans didn't want it to turn out that way. They behaved in a hyper-partisan way and now they want to bitch about the Dems. It doesn't work that way. As far as the Republicans are concerned, bipartisanship means they get everything they want and Dems get nothing. That may have worked when they ruled the Congress with an iron fist but there's a new Sheriff in town.

No Do-Overs...

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/is-coleman-aiming-for-a-do-over-election.php

Coleman should not be allowed a do-over. He only wants it because his first and second attempts to steal the election (first during the actual election, second during the recount) failed. He shouldn't be allowed another chance to subvert the wishes of the people. The people of Minnesota have spoken. That should be that. They should seat Al Franken now.

Desperation...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18324.html

Wow, they must be desperate if they're relying on this undereducated rube to save their party.

Hack...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/29/weather-channel-founder-blasts-gore-global-warming-campaign/

I'm sure Gore is heartbroken that this hack disapproves of his anti-global warming advocacy. How do you go from being the founder of the Weather Channel to being a weatherman in a second rate market? Perhaps he did it by being completely wrong about everything and seemingly knowing nothing about the climate despite supposedly being a scientist whose job involves the climate.

I really think the station he works for should consider what impact his writings have on their reputation and think about firing him. He has no right to post his rantings on the station's website.

I guess this is why Gore is a Nobel Peace Prize winning hero and Coleman is a meteorologist in San Diego.

About Time...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/23/obama.abortion/index.html

It's about time. This rule shouldn't have been instituted in the first place. In a country that grants women control over their bodies, it's the ultimate injustice to make sure women in other countries don't enjoy similar rights. Figures it was instituted by Reagan.

I guess it's good not to antagonize his erstwhile allies in Congress by signing it on the anniversary of Roe but I would have loved it if he could have signed it then just to rub it in the faces of the hateful idiots marching on Washington that day to support returning to deadly back alley abortions. That would have been a sight to behold.

"Not even waiting a week, the new administration has acted to funnel U.S. tax dollars to abortion providers overseas," Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia, said in a written statement.

What? Was he supposed to wait a week, no doubt leading to deaths in the meantime, just to protect your delicate sensibilities? If he had done it next week they'd have criticized him anyway. They can't stand that the good guys are calling the shots now. Get over it, you lost, don't be a sore loser.

Appropriate name...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TOXIC_TOWER_INDICTMENT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-01-06-17-55-26

Hmm, John Galt Corp? How appropriate.

Hypocrite...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28495674/

So much for the loser bowing out gracefully. I thought Norm Coleman was all about getting on with things. I guess that was only relevant when he was "winning".

Braindead policies...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28554801/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28404637/

Not surprising. Israel could get public support on its side so easily but instead they choose to pull shit like this. And they wonder why people have such strong opinions against them.