I (heart) the ACLU

Of course my first reaction to the whole Senator-Craig-Gay-Bathroom-Stall-Saga was gleeful schadenfreude. When a powerful homophobic Senator gets busted for soliciting sleazy gay sex, that’s just too deliciously perfect! But the more I think about it, why are police officers going into our men’s rooms in the first place? Presumably the socializing going on in the Minneapolis airport bathroom is all victimless and consensual. The whole racket smells of entrapment. And today the ACLU agrees by filing friend-of-the-court brief:

"Sen. Craig has not always been a great friend of civil liberties, but you shouldn't have to endorse the civil liberties of others to keep your own," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero, alluding to Craig's history of voting against gay rights. "Sen. Craig has not always been a great friend of civil liberties, but you shouldn't have to endorse the civil liberties of others to keep your own," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero, alluding to Craig's history of voting against gay rights.

Hear, hear! You’ve got to admire that the ACLU supports unpopular people and causes who happen to be right with the Mother-Lovin’ Constitution. Our forefathers were pretty explicit that even enormous assholes have the right to privacy, free speech, etc. Also I personally love that even if the ACLU successfully defends the Senator in court, he’s still screwed. And not in the way he was hoping.

News Now

Cartoons Now Bust You on the Web

Republicans Now So Gay

Crazy Astronaut Was Temporarily Crazy, Now Fine

China Takes the Lead

Another distressing trend, the US is losing its leadership in a field where it's traditionally led the world: misinformed backwoods hijinx. Chinese peasants have inadvertently been eating fossils.

Villagers in central China spent decades digging up bones they believed belonged to flying dragons and using them in traditional medicines. These were dinosaur fossils, which were boiled with other ingredients and fed to children to treat dizziness and leg cramps.

So we have rural folks with some wildly misinformed beliefs; a distrust of doctors with their fancy doctorin'; and a willingness to put anything whatsoever in their mouths.

This is China, but could've just as easily been Georgia. Let’s bring the pride back home.

An Editorial: Scooter

With this pardon business, Bush is simply not respecting the system.

The system has been carefully designed to help all of us feel better; to help the public get some closure. The system provides that for every outrageous screw-up, exactly one sacrificial lamb (or scapegoat) be tossed to the wolves. Sad as it is, Scooter Libby is that lamb.

Much like when villagers tossed virgins into the volcano, this act appeases the gods and spares the village. When a scandal breaks, a jittery public gets angry--but after the sacrifice, they can rest easy knowing that the guilty scapegoat is safely fired/ in jail/ in rehab and that no more stupendously stupid screw-ups like the one that just happened, will ever happen again. Everyone wins.

Past examples:

Mike Brown. The FEMA guy who single-handedly destroyed New Orleans. He was a bad apple.


Whatshername from the Abu Ghraib scandal. She single-handedly tortured every Iraqi detainee in US custody. She was a very bad apple.

Martha Stewart did something bad with stocks or something. Bad apple.

These people went to jail and/or got fired...proving that the system works!

Scooter Libby is the designated scapegoat in this case, and as such, is expected to perform some very well-defined scapegoat duties:

1) Take the blame.
2) Frown, a lot. Practice his Mr. Frowney sad faces in the mirror.
3) Do a little min. security time: edit his memoirs / perfect his tennis swing
4) Learn a very important lesson about not doing whatever bad thing it was he did. Frown to show how deeply learned the lesson was.

With this early pardon, the entire system breaks down. Nobody is paying for this awesomely corrupt screw-up, whatever it was. The virgin has escaped the volcano and the public desperately needs some closure.

Bush should just say a hobo leaked that CIA agent's identitiy and be done with it.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus – Update

The case of the Bong Hits 4 Jesus banner has just been ruled on…

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court ruled against a former high school student Monday in the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner case -- a split decision that limits students' free speech rights.

Joseph Frederick was 18 when he unveiled the 14-foot paper sign on a public sidewalk outside his Juneau, Alaska, high school in 2002.

Principal Deborah Morse confiscated it and suspended Frederick. He sued, taking his case all the way to the nation's highest court.

The justices ruled 6-3 that Frederick's free speech rights were not violated by his suspension over what the majority's written opinion called a "sophomoric" banner.

The Supreme Court is wrong, wrong, wrong here. Whether the banner was “sophomoric” or the deepest E=MC-squared Shakespeare NPR shit, the First Amendment protects it. Or is supposed to. If high school students aren’t allowed to say sophomoric things, then how can they say anything at all? We might as well just cauterize their mouths. Which maybe isn't bad idea anyway.

In an ironic twist, the student in this legal case is supported by conservative Christian groups who rightfully fear that the ruling will have a chilling effect on speech – in their case religious expression in schools, such as speech that opposes homosexuality or abortion.

In a second ironic twist, the lead prosecutor against free student speech is none other than Kenneth Starr – famous for investigating Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky years. Back then, Starr was all about saying dirty, dirty things in public. Now he’s all “think of the children” and still a sexually frustrated pervert.

It's indicative of our upside down times, that the highest court in the land is enmeshed in debate that somehow gets Monica Lewinsky; conservative Christians and Alaskan stoners; on the same side. It's the case of the strange bedfellows.

In this court case, free speech is like a plucky Rocky boxing Apollo Creed. He takes punch after punch, getting bloodied and staggering, but refuses to give it up. The final bell rings and Rocky comes out swinging like a man possessed and that's when an asteroid strikes the boxing ring, instantly vaporizing everyone for miles around -- that’s how thoroughly free speech did not win today.


Related: Even Judge Judy has more sense than the Supreme Court

Spam King is a Local

One of the world's ten most prolific spammers, ever, has been arrested in Seattle. A dubious distinction for the city which promises so much, but just seems to give the world spam and flannel as fashion.

Spam King

Why Newspapers and Encyclopedias are Obsolete

Same goes for books, magazines and TV News. The future of journalism has displaced all of that into history's dustbin with the horse-powered Victrola.

An early wiki-edit from Wikipedia yesterday:

When there's late-breaking celebrity death news, there's just no time for grammar man. Find the heart of the story and run it on page one, above the fold. Wootah.

Via Wonkette

Update: Slate helps us remember the man, in his own words, and why it's ironic that he died in the way that he did, choking on an apparently well-endowed Pat Robertson.

And let's never forget, according to Rev. Falwell, the people responsible for 9/11:

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way—all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.' "

Whether you're a pagan, lesbian or ACLU lawyer, it just goes to show, when you put aside your differences and work together as a team, there's no limit to what you can achieve.

2nd Update:

One more choice Falwell quote: "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals."

Boy, Falwell is gonna be surprised when he gets to heaven and finds out that all they do up there is gay sex. And that God doesn’t even let women in at all. Has anyone proven otherwise?

News and Opinions That Nobody Asked For

Remember Jose Padilla the Chicago “dirty bomber” -- they picked him up 5 years ago for thinking about maybe planning a possible dirty bomb attack plan, possibly? Turns out he wasn’t, but this case was always unsettling for me not because I think dirty radiological bombs are “no biggie”, but because no charges were actually ever made and no evidence was actually ever presented against the guy. The Padilla story would make the shortest ever episode of NBC’s Law & Order because they cut out the law part, and the order part too.

Padilla is a gang member, an unattractive loser and most likely a bad man, but shit, US Government, you can’t just suck someone up off the street for 5 years without pressing charges. Dude’s a citizen--even Jeffrey Dahmer got a trial and he fucking ate people.

Just an FYI: US Post Office is raising the cost to mail a letter today, from 39 cents to 41.

I think that totally sucks--but that’s just my 2 cents.

With the new fare increase, less and less people are going postal now—just not the way they intended.

Limbo

Limbo, for those not in the know is a halfway house between Heaven and Hell. It’s where babies who died before getting baptized go. They’re innocent, so they can’t go to Hell; but they also didn’t have a baptism for acceptance into the church, so they can’t really go to Heaven either. But there’s a solution: Limbo. Limbo is also where righteous people who lived before the time of Christ go: Adam, Eve, Moses, Socartes, Fred Flintsone--there all there—hanging out with millions of fetuses and premature babies.

Limbo solved some awkward dilemmas for the medieval church. Jesus Christ is the only way to Heaven, but it looks really bad to say Moses and stillborn babies are roasting in Hell. It was supposed to be a pretty nice place, but not amazing like Heaven was. Probably only had basic cable, but souls confined to Limbo were said to be eternally content but wouldn’t know the over the top bliss of being one with God.

That worked well enough for 800 years or so, but last Friday the Vatican announced that Limbo was abolished. Gone. It’s like getting kicked out of a rent controlled apartment. Purgatory still exists as a Hell-Lite to work off your sins—but nobody wants to move there—souls suffer in torment and there’s no cable service at all.

Slate asks, what happens to all the babies who use to be in Limbo?

Raises some important questions: when celestial real estate gets bulldozed, where do the former tenants go? Are they flapping around homeless in the clouds? I’d imagine as eternal babies (or fetuses) they don’t have too many useful job skills and even less working experience on their resumes. Ex-Limbo dwellers are going to have a hard time getting back on their feet, assuming they had even developed feet.

Planting the Flags of our Fathers

U.S. troops used 'comfort women' after WWII

In post-war Japan, tens of thousands of women were employed to provide cheap sex to U.S. troops until the spring of 1946, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur shut the brothels down.

Funny, I don’t remember Grandpa including this in his war stories.

Kaburagi wrote that occupation GIs paid upfront and were given tickets and condoms. The first RAA brothel, called Komachien -- The Babe Garden -- had 38 women, but due to high demand that was quickly increased to 100. Each woman serviced from 15 to 60 clients a day.

60 clients a day? Assuming a standard 8-hour workday with OSHA approved coffee breaks…that means servicing a serviceman every 8 minutes. Now who’s the real war hero? Most troops only got shot at a few times.

But in all seriousness, this is pretty horrible. Comfort Women were often coerced, some say enslaved into prostitution for the Japanese armed forces. And these documents show that US troops were complicit in maintaining the heinous status quo after the war. Again, Grandpa never mentioned this.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus

It's a silly nonsensical message, but this Supreme Court case actually has important ramifications for free speech. Specifically can schools and other public institutions limit speech if it contradicts their "educational mission"?

I say no.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus

Coalition of the Swimming

In addition to chimpanzees and snow leopards, it looks like animal week continues here with local news story.

And it comes from Newsweek (full disclosure: I'm a self-loathing subscriber) which sometimes borders on parody. Like the following article, is this for real?

Actual Newsweek Title:Coalition of the Swimming

Actual Newsweek Graphic:

Actual story: The Navy said it needs to bolster security at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, on the Puget Sound close to Seattle.The base is home to submarines, ships and laboratories and is potentially vulnerable to attack by terrorist swimmers and scuba divers. The preferred plan would be to send as many as 30 California sea lions and Atlantic Bottlenose dolphins from the Navy's Marine Mammal Program, based in San Diego.

Dolphins are excellent at patrolling for swimmers and divers. When a Navy dolphin detects a person in the water, it drops a beacon. This tells a human interception team where to find the suspicious swimmer. Sea lions can carry in their mouths special cuffs attached to long ropes. If the animal finds a rogue swimmer, it can clamp the cuff around the person's leg. The individual can then be reeled in for questioning.


(1) Is America attacked so often by sinister SCUBA DIVERS to justify a program like this? Once snorkels are criminalized, only criminals will snorkel.

(2) If sea lions can really chase down and cuff a suspect, why is it the only jobs they get are clapping their fins at the circus?

(3) The dolphin to the left looks like it's packing some serious heat on it's starboard fin. Halt! You have the right to remain silent and squeeee-squek-squee-eeeee.

(4) Are sea lions going to make trustworthy cops, or will their integrity be compromised the first time a perp bribes them with a smelt?

World’s Oldest Person Dies Just Four Days after Becoming World’s Oldest Person.

Showing once again that the elderly simply don’t have the same strong work ethic of our generation. Do you think a motivated person in their 20s would give up a World Record after only 4 days? Especially if all they had to do was lay on their back?

Shortest ever reign for world's oldest person

"World's oldest person" was never likely to be the safest berth in the Guinness
Book of Records, but the title's escalating attrition rate has now claimed its
own place in the famous tome - "shortest ever reign as world's oldest person".

Emma Tillman, 114, a former nurse to Katharine Hepburn, was born to former slaves and lived to see 21 American presidencies.

Sadly, however, she lived to see little of her own "presidency" in the records book as she died
at a nursing home on Sunday - just four days after becoming the world's
oldest-known living person.

According to Robert Young, senior consultant for gerontology for Guinness World of Records, in dying so soon, Miss Tillman set a new record as her reign was the shortest so far recorded.

So she set a record, then she set another record concerning her record. Now she just needs another record about setting a record about setting a record* and she’ll be in the Guinness Book of Recursive Records.



*Like woman with the Most Shortest-lived World Records. Plus the Largest Beard Made out of Bees.

Is it Roe Vs. Wade Day already?

Jan. 22, 1973. Today marks the 34th anniversary of the controversial Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision. A decision that will be forever be remembered as *the* most important day in our nation's history, by a grateful bumper sticker industry.

Happy Birthday to you/
Happy Birthday to you/
Happy Birthday legalized abortion/
Thanks from me and my ex-girlfriend back in two thousand and two.

But obviously it's a somber topic that couldn't be more personal. That's why I'm especially appalled that the anniversary, like Christmas, has become too over-commercialized:



For shame Pizza Hut Corporation. For shame.

Killing a Satellite. How Cool is That?

It's official now: 3 nations in the world can do it
Apparently the Chinese changed their plea to 2nd degree satellite-slaughter.

Q13 News Gets the Scoop

Local Fox affiliate Q13 has become my new favorite local news team. Last night I watched with some interest as they described the driving conditions after the 3rd devastating snowstorm of the season.

They sent 3 on-air personalities to stand out in the cold at different locations around town telling the viewers how cold it was. That makes them a good channel. What makes them a great channel is that they interrupt the breathless snow coverage with this breathless BREAKING NEWS:

Sources tell us that something may have happened at Martha Lake in Snohomish
County this evening. There may be a police presence there--or maybe
not--nothing has been confirmed at this time. We’ll let you know when we
find out what’s happening. Back to our regular news.

To the casual viewer is seems like an extremely uninformed and unnecessary interruption. They ‘re missing most of the 5 Ws of good journalism: What, Why, Where, Who, & When--and were pretty vague on the rest.

But when you look at it deeper, it’s clear that most local news teams wouldn’t have the broadcast cajones to direct the viewer’s attention to the fact that said local news team does not know what--if anything--is going on in local news.


That’s the Q13 difference.

Surge is Like Totally Awesomextreme

This week President Bush announced a new plan for winning the Iraq war, a “surge” of 21,500 troops added to the existing 132,000.

Surge is an extreme product geared towards today’s active young man—whether he currently skates, snowboards or surfs—he’ll have a jolt of Surge in his future.

Facts about Surge:

• Surge can be habit-forming. Like Lay’s, a president can’t have just one.
• The President wants to introduce it soon—citing the popularity of Mt. Dew’s Islamic Code Red.
• Early marketing research indicates it may not be very popular with women, men, Americans, foreigners, generals and especially the important 18-24 year old Reservist demographic.
• Surge can cause sleeplessness and health problems, especially for the 18-24 year old Reservist demographic.

Snowmaggedon! Snowpacalypse Now!

The city of Seattle shut down completely because of the Winter Storm of the Century. Again. Only a month after the previous Winter Storm of the Century. The 21st century just started and is already spoken for.

Local Fox News is the best at getting hysterical about the weather. Snow is everywhere! We’ve never seen anything like this, Bob! Drivers trapped in their cars for 9 hours!

I love how they send the Q13 news van out to interview stranded drivers—but then drive off so their anchorwoman can go stand somberly in front of a frozen water main.

A great follow-up story would be “Local Man Upset Over Callous News Team with 4-Wheel Drive”. Find out why at 11 -- exclusively on Q13.