Cowards, wimps, pussies, and -- in some cases -- ass-holes whose sense of self-importance and entitlement is absolutely nauseating.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you today's Young Republicans -- especially those who support the war but refuse to enlist.

(My personal favorites are the individuals who state, "Frankly, I want to be a politician. I'd like to survive to see that," and "I think I could do more here... We don't have to be there physically to fight it.")

I'm always amused when I find myself agreeing with the conservative faction of the Supreme Court:

A divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth often is at war with individual property rights.

The 5-4 ruling represented a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.

As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue.

The justices in the minority -- the ones I agreed with -- on this 5-4 decision: Rhenquist, Scalia, Thomas & O'Connor.

"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," O'Connor wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."

O'Connor is absolutely right. If your home stands in the way of a Wal-Mart, guess who is going to win that legal battle.

"No one... I repeat, no one ever died for a flag. They may have died for freedom, which, by the way, includes... the freedom... to burn the fucking flag." -- Bill Hicks

(gakked from Pandagon)

I think I have to agree with Zoe Kentucky over at Demagogue. If the idiots in charge of our government do pass a constitution amendment banning flag burning -- and for the first time in my life I think they'll actually succeed -- what will really happen is an increase in flag burnings.

People love being martyrs for a cause -- especially if it only involves jail time and a fine. It will be like prohibition all over again, but only more open as people will want to really make a point about their displeasure with their government.

I've never burned a flag myself and have no plans to do so. However, when I was a teenager -- back when this whole fracas about ratifying such an amendment started -- I had a caricature of me done where I was holding a flag over a lighter. (Yes, I really have been a "flaming" liberal that long -- can I get a drum-roll please!) It's something I'm actually proud of and I hope that the fervent ultra-nationalism gripping this country doesn't lead to such a stupid change to our country's basic laws.

It's just getting utterly ridiculous -- I'm just waiting for Bush to create the Office of Propaganda (under a much friendlier name such as "Bureau of Government Affairs"):

The Bush administration, rejecting an opinion from the Government Accountability Office, said last week that it is legal for federal agencies to feed TV stations prepackaged news stories that do not disclose the government's role in producing them.

That message, in memos sent Friday to federal agency heads and general counsels, contradicts a Feb. 17 memo from Comptroller General David M. Walker. Walker wrote that such stories -- designed to resemble independently reported broadcast news stories so that TV stations can run them without editing -- violate provisions in annual appropriations laws that ban covert propaganda.

But Joshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Steven G. Bradbury, principal deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, said in memos last week that the administration disagrees with the GAO's ruling. And, in any case, they wrote, the department's Office of Legal Counsel, not the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, provides binding legal interpretations for federal agencies to follow.

Where's H. L. Mencken when you need him?

Current Music: Pink Floyd, "Another Brick in the Wall"

Howie Kurtz once again proves how clueless he is:

Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum is suffering psychological damage because of Capitol Hill:

"I've been in a rotten mood lately, a feeling that I blame on the 109th Congress. Here's a summary of their first few weeks of activity:

"Passed: A tort reform bill that makes it harder for ordinary citizens to sue corporations who harm them.

"Coming soon: A bankruptcy bill that will make it harder for distressed workers to declare bankruptcy and will increase credit card company profits by an estimated $1 billion.

"Coming soon: A transportation bill that adds two unpaid hours onto the work days of short-haul and long-haul truckers.

"In progress: Changes to Social Security that will almost certainly include benefit cuts for current workers.

"In progress: Making permanent a set of tax cuts that primarily helps the upper class.

"And it's only the middle of March. Can anyone name even one thing the Bush administration has done this year -- or is proposing to do -- that would benefit ordinary workers? Do they even pretend to care any more?"

I suppose the administration would point to prescription drugs, No Child Left Behind, etc., but Drum's litany is likely to form the basis of a new liberal critique.

THIS YEAR, Howie... THIS YEAR. Sheesh, is it too much to ask that a so-called "media critic" actually reads and comprehends what he is critiquing?

The morality police strike again in Kentucky, this time arresting a student because he wrote about zombies overruning a high school.

"My story is based on fiction," said Poole, who faces a second-degree felony terrorist threatening charge. "It's a fake story. I made it up. I've been working on one of my short stories, (and) the short story they found was about zombies. Yes, it did say a high school. It was about a high school over ran by zombies."

Even so, police say the nature of the story makes it a felony. "Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it's a felony in the state of Kentucky," said Winchester Police detective Steven Caudill.

Canada continues to look better with each passing day.

My sister-in-law's fiance is fond of saying that the Republican Party really isn't beholden to the Christian right and that he's tired of the liberal media claiming that it is. It's too bad that the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce is currently undermining his argument by attempting to make cable channels comply with FCC regulations:

Ted Stevens, chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation, said on Tuesday that he would push for applying broadcast decency standards to cable television, as well as subscription satellite TV and radio.

"Cable is a much greater violator in the indecency area," the Alaska Republican told the National Association of Broadcasters, which represents most local-television and radio affiliates. "I think we have the same power to deal with cable as over-the-air" broadcasters.

"There has to be some standard of decency," he said. But he also cautioned that "no one wants censorship."

[snip]

Stevens said he disagreed "violently" with assertions by the cable industry that Congress does not have the authority to impose limits on its content.

"If that's the issue they want to take on, we'll take it on and let the Supreme Court decide," he said.

I especially love the "no one wants censorship" quip. Bull-shit -- that is exactly what you are attempting to legislate. Furthermore, cable television, while relatively ubiquitous, is still a pay service. If you don't like what you're seeing, stop paying for it. Luckily, I think the Republicans are far more beholden to big business than the morality police, so I don't think that this will go anywhere.

Still, it's rather scary that the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce is seriously offering such legislation.

Poor Tom Delay, he's still trying to blame the Democrats for his problems even when he's leading the majority party in Congress. To whit, it's the Democrats fault that Social Security reform is going nowhere:

Frustrated that President Bush's plan to restructure Social Security (news - web sites) is failing to win widespread support, top Republicans on Wednesday attacked Democratic opponents and the country's largest retiree organization.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, criticized Democrats for refusing to negotiate with Republicans.

He also accused the AARP, a powerful group which claims more than 35 million members over age 50, of being "hypocritical" for criticizing private Social Security accounts as too risky while selling mutual funds to its members.

What ever happend to the notion of "bold leadership" from the Rethugs? Is it possible, just possible, that they know that if they push this through without bipartisan support than their hold on Congress will evaporate as quickly as the Democrats did in 1994 when they attempted to reform health care on their own? Of course they do, and for all their bluster about doing what's right for America, they know they have a lemon on their hands -- they just can't bring themselves to admit it out loud.

On behalf of blue America, I apologize to Canada for the following

:
Bob MacCready's already written to Canadian Liberal MPs who support allowing gays to marry, telling them he thinks it's against God's own law and everything that's decent.

Now he's thinking of sending a second letter to underscore his fervent opposition to Canada's pending same-sex marriage legislation, expected to pass this spring.

A conservative Christian who lives near Philadelphia, MacCready is one of untold Americans who've been flooding the offices of Canadian politicians with letters and calls in the past few weeks.

[snip]

Focus on the Family's B.C. chapter is backed by a massive organization based in Colorado led by James Dobson, who recently broadcast his opposition to gay marriage on 130 Canadian radio stations.

And the organization recently advertised to fill an executive director's position in Ottawa at an annual salary of more than $100,000 Cdn.

The Knights of Columbus, based in New Haven, Conn., says it's prepared to offer major help and has already spent about $80,000 on a postcard campaign.

I'm starting to wonder if whether the rest of the world will start quarantining the US in order to stop the spread of the insanity.

This has to be just about the best damn column attacking "intelligent design" that I've ever read:

But if we can't infer anything about the design from the designer, maybe we can go the other way. What can we tell about the designer from the design? While there is much that is marvelous in nature, there is also much that is flawed, sloppy and downright bizarre... In mammals, for instance, the recurrent laryngeal nerve does not go directly from the cranium to the larynx, the way any competent engineer would have arranged it. Instead, it extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done. If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety.

Such disregard for economy can be found throughout the natural order. Perhaps 99 percent of the species that have existed have died out. Darwinism has no problem with this, because random variation will inevitably produce both fit and unfit individuals. But what sort of designer would have fashioned creatures so out of sync with their environments that they were doomed to extinction?

Such disregard for economy can be found throughout the natural order. Perhaps 99 percent of the species that have existed have died out. Darwinism has no problem with this, because random variation will inevitably produce both fit and unfit individuals. But what sort of designer would have fashioned creatures so out of sync with their environments that they were doomed to extinction?

[snip]

One beauty of Darwinism is the intellectual freedom it allows. As the arch-evolutionist Richard Dawkins has observed, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." But Darwinism permits you to be an intellectually fulfilled theist, too. That is why Pope John Paul II was comfortable declaring that evolution has been "proven true" and that "truth cannot contradict truth." If God created the universe wholesale rather than retail -- endowing it from the start with an evolutionary algorithm that progressively teased complexity out of chaos -- then imperfections in nature would be a necessary part of a beautiful process.

Click here to read the rest.

I truly wish that all reporters were this honest when they conducted online interviews. Wow.

Jeff Gannon, the uber-hack with no previous journalism background whom the White House had lob softball questions during press conferences, was apparently a gay hooker who advertised himself on various websites with a military-esque sales pitch before he become a... ahem... stud reporter for Talon news.

That's right, the White House hired a hooker to make the President and his press security look better during press conferences.

Also, it's apparently okay for conservatives to make money off of homosexuals, so long as they don't do anything to actually advance their cause.

Quick... go see Anne Coulter lie through her teeth and not get away with it because it happened on a Canadian news show.

Now go watch her make a funny about her fantasies of American troops shooting journalists.

Bitch.

It's not bad enough they are paying reporters to spread their propaganda. No, the White House decided a fake reporter (i.e., a partisan hack with no previously established press credentials) was needed at its news conferences in order to lob the President a few softballs.

Once again, so-called media critic Howard Kurtz doesn't see the problem.

Daily Kos also has a few words on why this is so important, which includes some more detail not in the Salon article.

You know, after a while you really have to start applauding the sheet audacity of the lengths this administration is going to in order spread the propaganda. If the So Called Liberal Media was really doing it's job, then they would be all over the fact that the Iraqi woman in the balcony during Shrub's State of the Union address was a fraud.

This cursory investigation demands a deeper look into Ms. Sofia Taleb Al Souhail. Held up as a shining example of why we've spent $200 billion and wasted 1,500 lives and counting, it looks upon first glance that she doesn't live in Iraq, has been affiliated with right-wing organizations, her father was killed in Lebanon while planning a coup against Saddam, and her family claims the US was complicit in his assassination.

After they were done with that, they'd move onto the fact that the Bush administration keeps moving the goalposts in regards to the whole cutting the deficit in half goal.

The Republicans seem to have elected a Speaker of the House with some serious ethics problems. Do they consider asking the Grand Poobah of the Water Buffalo to step down? Of course not:

House Republican leaders tightened their control over the ethics committee yesterday by ousting its independent-minded chairman, appointing a replacement who is close to them and adding two new members who donated to the legal defense fund of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

Republican officials have spent months taking steps to ensure DeLay's political survival in case he is indicted by a Texas grand jury investigating political fundraising, and House leadership aides said they needed to have the ethics committee controlled by lawmakers they can trust.

Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), who clashed with DeLay so often that they barely spoke and was considered wayward by other leaders, was replaced yesterday with Rep. Richard Hastings (R-Wash.). Hastings has carried out other sensitive leadership assignments and is known as a favorite of Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who made the decision.

Ethics? We don't need no stickin' ethics!

Yet another reason why I hate living in Virginia. At least we can look forward to the inevitable court fights start over allowing license plates bearing the message from the opposing political viewpoint.

With all intended irony, "Virginia is for lovers" my ass.

Yes, Monday's elections in Iraq were a wonderful thing for the Iraqi people, but I'm not about to jump on the "Things Are Now Turning Around" bandwagon. We've had these moments before:

• The fall of Baghdad and the symbolic removal of the Hussein statue
  
• Bush's "Mission Accomplished" photo-op
  
• The capture of Saddam Hussein
  
• The "turnover of power" to the Iraqi Provisional Government
  

In none of these circumstances did the situation in Iraq improve. I'm sure you'll understand if I decide to wait a month or so before drinking the red Kool-Aid and deciding how much they really changed things for our troops over there.

Although I have plenty of reasons to hate living in Virginia, I must say that it could be worse: I could live somewhere where the police actually threaten to arrest you for an anti-Bush bumper sticker.