Republican Values

Vicious Little Children

Contempt
Today the House of Representatives voted to hold two Bush aides in Contempt of Congress for refusing to testify about the Attorney General scandal.

Democrats passed contempt of Congress citations against two Bush administration figures Thursday after the charges had spent months in limbo.

They do so on the basis of executive privilege, despite Bush having not claimed said privilege to Congress.

"This is not a confrontation we have sought, and is one we are still hoping to avoid," Rep. John Conyers, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said earlier Thursday. "However, I believe on the merits our case is quite strong. Unlike other disputes involving executive privilege, the President has never personally asserted privilege, the Committee has never been given a privilege log, and there is no indication the President was ever personally involved in the termination decisions."

Michael Mukasey has already indicated that he will refuse to do his job and prosecute the contempt citations, because Bush told his minions to do it, and that makes it ok. If Bush told them to fillet small children and serve them tartare, I guess that would be ok as well.

Meanwhile, House Republicans staged a series of disruptive protests designed to shield their junta from embarassment, if not (likely any) legal jeopardy.

House Republicans staged a walk-out Thursday afternoon to protest the contempt vote and the failure by the chamber's majority members to bow to President Bush's demands on a controversial spying law.

The worst point in the day came when the GOP caucus stooped so low as to interrupt the memorial service for Representative Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor and long-time Congressman from California, to force the Dems to come running back to the House floor for a vote. Absolutely disgusting.

Sources: Raw Story
Americablog

Transgender Issues
Man those Republicans are insecure, aren't they? So insecure in fact that they have to viciously attack anyone who makes them feel 'weird'. The kind of 'weird', as Stephen Colbert put it, when someone disagrees with you about how to use their genitals.

Which is the kind of thing that only keeps you awake at night if you were obsessed with their genitals to begin with, as many Republicans seem to be. Then they turn out to be having cybersex with underage pages, or hanging out in bathrooms at the airport, and it all starts to make sense.

At any rate, today we have Fox News showing off their usual standards of excellence by attacking Transgendered people. In one case, a child. But first, here's your usual Fall of Rome bile from Laura Ingraham.

CODEPINK peace activist Medea Benjamin and pundit Laura Ingraham square off over a proposal to close down a Marines recruiting office.

The ballot initiative, which has already prompted retaliatory action in Washington, would ask the citizens of Berkeley, California whether or not to allow the Marines to continue to recruit within city limits.

Ingraham uses Benjamin's transgender status to counter such a proposal, suggesting that Americans are more accepting of war than they are of an upcoming transgender conference.

"A transgender conference is not killing people," Benjamin responds.

"Just killing the culture, maybe," Ingraham rebuts.

Naturally, this was on the O'Reilly Factor.

What kind of 'culture' is Laura referring to here, anyway? The Conservative 'culture'?

Is it really that easy to wipe it out? Hold some transgender conferences?

Honestly? Huh.

Can I host one? Please?

Source: Page One Q

Transgender Issues Cont.
I'm putting this one under a separate headline, because it really deserves its own space. Fox News Neil Cavuto, who really ought to have an illustration beside 'weasel' in the dictionary, went on a tear today about the news that a second grade kid with gender dysphoria (the clinical term for being transgendered) will be accomodated by their grade school.

Yes, this is the sort of thing that gets Cavuto frothing with rage: when a school accomodates a child with special and diagnosed medical or psychological needs.

In two clips, broadcast on February 12 and 13, Fox News' Neil Cavuto expresses his opinion, in response to one Colorado school's move to accommodate a transgender second grader, saying that the situation is robbing the students of their childhood at taxpayer expense.

"Can we just respect childhood enough not to put them through this nonsense at this age?" he asks.

Child psychologist Jeffrey Gardere calls for more schools to be sensitive to the needs of children with gender dysphoria, but Cavuto disagrees that such accommodations should be made in the sight of children as young as the Colorado student; he feels that they are being made more at the expense of the majority of students, rather than for the equal benefit of the minority.

"What we're finding out," contends Gardere, "is that these kids get these gender dysphoria issues as young as four, five, six years old; they believe that they were born into the wrong body."

"We live in a country where majority rules," counters Cavuto. He worries about what parents of the "other 99%" are going to have to tell their kids about, as he calls them, "Johnny who wants to be Jenna."

"I think many kids can grow from knowing that there are children who lead a different lifestyle, who have these psychological and physiological issues," says Gardere.

"You are robbing kids of their childhood," says Cavuto back to Gardere, "and forcing me as a dad to talk to my sons, sit them down and say, 'All right, now. Some boys like having that penis, now others don't.' And it's weird, doctor."

What's really weird is how you think an obscure news story 'forces' you to talk about penises with your kids, Neil.

Maybe you were just, err, looking for a reason? Just guessing here.

After just being FORCED to talk to his kids about something he clearly doesn't understand in the least, Cavuto responds by soliciting, and then airing, viewer mail attacking a SECOND GRADE STUDENT.

Wednesday's segment includes viewer mail, largely mocking the student. Cavuto calls the situation "stupidity" and "too much damn tolerance," repeating his disagreement with the notion that the majority have to "bend over backwards" for their classmate.

I agree. We have too much damn tolerance. For assholes like Neil Cavuto, that is.

Source: Page One Q

Schlussel
Debbie Schlussel is a real class act, I'll tell you that much.

Summary: In an entry on her website, Debbie Schlussel posted "Valentines," in the form of candy hearts, about Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. The hearts for Obama were black instead of the usual pastel colors and referenced widely debunked allegations that Obama is, or has been, a Muslim. A number of the candy hearts Schlussel posted for Clinton referenced David Shuster's remark, "But doesn't it seem like Chelsea's sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?"

Ha ha ha! Obama's black! We'll make him deny being a Muslim, like it's any different from being a Christian in any substantive way! Hillary's a pimp! Hilarious!

What a tool.

Source: Media Matters

Fear the Press
Dana Perino (Peroxide) is showing her usual high caliber gutlessness, refusing to call on a reporter after they asked one too many probing questions about her boss's little adventure in the desert.

I didn't think the question I asked Tony Fratto on January 17 was that outrageous. It merely questioned the huge discrepancy between President Bush's year-ago description of the Iraqi government's domestic security "plan," and Iraqi officals' recent statements about that "plan." But evidently someone in the White House didn't like the question, because since that date, Press Secretary Dana Perino has repeatedly ignored my attempts to ask questions during the daily briefings.

A press secretary who's completely unable to handle the press; another incompetent Republican hire.

Wow. What a surprise.

Source: Raw Story

2008: A Good Year for Whine
Virginia Republicans are mad, or were (sorry, slow at clearing out the clutter), at the idea that, gasp, they might have to support the Republican nominee, or, you know, resign from the party!

Members of the Republican Party in Loudoun County, Viriginia met last week, and took up a variety of business, including a requirement that members of the party's committee support all Republican candidates. With McCain looking set to march away with the nomination, some party members objected.

"I am really concerned that John McCain is going to become the nominee," Erika Jacobson of the newspaper Leesburg Today reported committee member Susan Falknor saying. "He has been against a lot of conservative values."

Look folks. You can vote for whoever you want. That's your right. But the GOP is a private organization; they can enforce whatever silly rules they want, within what few laws apply, like any other elitist club.

Man, I can't believe I just defended the GOP. I feel so dirty.

Source: Raw Story

Gibson the Alcoholic Anti-Semite
So Mel Gibson, famed anti-semite and creator of the submoronic Passion of the Christ (where for 'authenticity' he had everyone speaking a form of Latin that wouldn't exist for at least a thousand years... moron) is out of his court ordered supervision after the drunken tirade that landed him in the news, his career in the toilet, and his future Oscar chancers forever out of reach.

A California judge congratulated star actor-director Mel Gibson for fulfilling the conditions of his probation, a year and a half after he was arrested for drunk-driving, when he blurted out anti-Semitic remarks.

...

At the time of his arrest Gibson -- who was criticized for anti-Semitic portrayals in his 2004 Biblical film "The Passion of the Christ" -- swore at the officer who stopped him, cursing Jews and saying: "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."

He later asked forgiveness, explaining that he had battled with alcoholism his whole life.

Yes, it was the BOOZE that made him a raging bigot. Not his lunatic fringe religious beliefs... Riiight.

Source: Raw Story

Stuff We Have to Ban Because They Just Can't Keep Their Hands Off
So Texas' law banning various sex toys from sale has been overturned by a federal court, mercifully relieving the world of the possibility of an endless series of CourtTV appearances by embarassed Texans whose closets got raided by Vice.

Thank the Lord.

FORT WORTH, Texas — A federal appeals court has overturned a Texas statute outlawing sex toy sales, leaving Alabama as the state with the strictest ban on such devices.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Texas law making it illegal to sell or promote obscene devices, punishable by up to two years in jail, violated the Constitution's 14th Amendment on the right to privacy.

Companies that own Dreamer's and Le Rouge Boutique, which sell the devices in its Austin stores, and the retail distributor Adam & Eve, sued in Austin federal court in 2004 over the constitutionality of the law. They appealed after a federal judge dismissed the suit and said the constitution did not protect their right to publicly promote such devices.

In its decision Tuesday, the appeals court cited Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 opinion that struck down bans on consensual sex between gay couples.

Ahh, yet again, Progress comes to the South at the end of a pen.

I'm fine with doing it at the end of a sword, if that's what they'd prefer, though.

Source: Houston Chronicle

Torturers
Torturers abound in the United States government, our response to gruesome injustice is further gruesome injustice.

The most famous journalist you may never have heard of is Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman who is on a hunger strike to protest abuse during more than six years in a Kafkaesque prison system.

Mr. Hajj’s fortitude has turned him into a household name in the Arab world, and his story is sowing anger at the authorities holding him without trial.

That’s us. Mr. Hajj is one of our forgotten prisoners in Guantánamo Bay.

Sigh. We're as low as we can go without finding a shovel.

There are the usual particularly gruesome details at the site, but I'm tired of pasting that stuff here.

Source: Firedoglake

Esser Ethics
An old ethics 'complaint' against Luke Esser, the man who cheated Huckabee out of the Washington GOP Primary, shows that people, glass houses, yadda yadda yadda.

Source: Horsesass.org

Private Stasi
Who says the Bush administration has a completely naive grasp of history? Bush has apparently decided to revive that most beloved secret police organization from East Germany, the Stasi!

"At its most basic level, InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector," the InfraGard website states. "InfraGard chapters are geographically linked with FBI Field Office territories."

In November 2001, InfraGard had around 1,700 members. As of late January, InfraGard had 23,682 members, according to its website, www.infragard.net, which adds that "350 of our nation's Fortune 500 have a representative in InfraGard."To join, each person must be sponsored by "an existing InfraGard member, chapter, or partner organization." The FBI then vets the applicant. On the application form, prospective members are asked which aspect of the critical infrastructure their organization deals with. These include: agriculture, banking and finance, the chemical industry, defense, energy, food, information and telecommunications, law enforcement, public health, and transportation.

Ahh, networks of secret informants, whatever could go wrong?

Oh, riiight.

One business owner in the United States tells me that InfraGard members are being advised on how to prepare for a martial law situation -- and what their role might be. He showed me his InfraGard card, with his name and e-mail address on the front, along with the InfraGard logo and its slogan, "Partnership for Protection." On the back of the card were the emergency numbers that Schneck mentioned.

This business owner says he attended a small InfraGard meeting where agents of the FBI and Homeland Security discussed in astonishing detail what InfraGard members may be called upon to do.

"The meeting started off innocuously enough, with the speakers talking about corporate espionage," he says. "From there, it just progressed. All of a sudden we were knee deep in what was expected of us when martial law is declared. We were expected to share all our resources, but in return we'd be given specific benefits." These included, he says, the ability to travel in restricted areas and to get people out. But that's not all.

"Then they said when -- not if -- martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn't be prosecuted," he says.

And people thought it was paranoid to worry about Bush declaring martial law and seizing power in a coup.

Sigh.

Source: Hullabaloo (Digby)