Huckabee and the Lakewood Cop Executions

I know that everyone by now has heard about the execution-style slaying of four Lakewood (WA) police officers over the weekend.

Lakewood is probably twenty minutes away from where I live, so this is awfully close to home. Especially coming so close after the Seattle cop shootings of a few weeks ago.

It turns out that the prime suspect in the Lakewood murders is a guy who was originally serving a lengthy sentence in Arkansas for armed robbery, but was let out by then governor Mike "Huckleberry" Huckabee because ... well, I don't really know why. Allegedly the guy convinced Huckabee that he'd "changed" and was going to be a good citizen from that point on.

So now Huckleberry is back-pedaling as fast as he can to try to put as much distance between himself and the alleged shooter.

It's the fault of the Arkansas justice system, he says, along with that of the state of Washington. Typical Rethug tactic, blaming everyone in sight for your own shortcomings. Or in this case, your own tragic misjudgment that resulted in the deaths of four police officers from small-city Lakewood.

Huckabee, you are supposed to be a big shot in the Xian community. It's nice that you had the compassion to let this fucker out of prison (probably because the prisoner claimed to have been "saved" by Jaysuss-uh!), but now it's time to stand up and tell the families of the murdered cops that you have compassion for them as well.

But chances are you won't take your share of the responsibility. That's too much to ask of a Repugnican...

Pretty much the only positive thing about all of this is that with this, his own "Willie Horton" moment, Huckabee will be pretty much out of the running for the GOOPer nomination in 2012.

Too bad.

Happy Holidays!

Happy holidays to everyone, and I'll see you next week.

My plan for the next four days is to eat to excess, drink beyond excess, suffer from hangovers, avoid pissing off most of my relatives AND have fun with my grandchildren, especially my great-granddaughter, Allie:

[Who, as you can tell, is the most beautiful baby in the whole world!]

Manhattan Declaration: It Always Comes Down to the Money

As most you will recall, the original Manhattan Project was the WWII project to develop the atomic bomb.

That was over 60 years ago. Now there's a new one that could also prove destructive. It's called The Manhattan Declaration, and at its core it says it's okay for people to disobey laws they don't agree with.

Well, isn't that special? I don't agree with the 60 MPH speed limit between here and Seattle. It offends my "deeply held religious beliefs". How's that going to stand up in court in Tacoma when I go before that notorious district court "hanging judge" up there?

This manifesto is, of course, the brainchild of the Religious Right. Sure, they go out of their way to couch it in religious/ethical/moral terms -- upholding "religious freedom", "traditional marriage" and all that anti-contraception anti-abortion "sanctity of life" crap.

In the words of DC council member David A. Catania "It's a shame they don't extend the same efforts to issues that really matter, like health care and homelessness."

So I guess they think that if enough of their sheeple followers start breaking laws, then those laws will become essentially unenforceable. And that's a handy-dandy giant step towards the theocracy they want to institute so much it makes them hurt.

But all that is just wild speculation. Here's what I really think is behind this is this: If you look at the list of declaration signers you will see a large number of religious organizations that have been granted the munificent largess of the federal budget to fund their "Faith-Based Initiatives" but they don't want to have to obey the federal laws regarding civil rights. Such as equality in hiring, recipient non-discrimination, etc. etc.

They had a free ride during the Baby Doc Maladministration, and now they are seeing the handwriting on the wall. Better to come in strong with a preemptive strike now than try to play catchup ball later on.

Come on, people. If you don't want to follow federal laws when it comes to how you spend federal money, then just don't ask for any! Problem solved.

Jeez, it does always seem to come down to the money with these people, doesn't it?

September 11 ... 1922

In the first few hours of the 9-11 tragedy eight years ago I was at work, with a cluster of my coworkers surrounding my cubicle listening to an Internet feed of the news reports coming out of WNYC, the National Public Radio station in New York.

I was a computer geek and had figured out how to configure Firefox to bypass the "net nanny" software that prevented everyone else from listening to the reports on their machines running Internet Explorer.

So I was a minor "hero" that day when we were all so starved for information, at least until WNYC went off the air for some reason or other. Then everyone sort of drifted off to their own desks wondering why we had been attacked, but I, Mister Analytical, was struck by the question "Why Sept 11?"

A bit of research on the Internets yielded this intriguing historical fact: On September 11, 1922, the British Mandate of Palestine was instituted, which provided, among other things, for a homeland for the Jewish people, to be carved out of land currently being occupied by Palestinians.

And we all know what happened with that plan.

So here it is, eight years after our 9-11, and I don't believe anyone has yet made that connection. I remember telling my buddy Larry about the odd "coincidence" of the date, and told him that he'd "heard it here first".

And apparently last. Maybe it was just a coincidence after all. I mean there are only 365 days in the average year, so a lot of historical stuff has to take up a day that's already been historical.

For example, see this page, which gives a generous paragraph to several other historical incidents that occurred on September 11.

If the hijackers had waited one more year, it would have made a nice round 80 years -- I'll bet then the media would have picked up on it and spread it far and wide, since we as human beings like being able to put patterns on things that have no pattern.

Not to mention that the Muslim World even uses a different calendar, which means that the handy correspondence between dates that I see doesn't really happen with the Muslims.

Oh, well. It was an interesting theory while it lasted.

American Muslims and the Constitution

I've said on several occasions that the Muslim world doesn't see anything wrong with an Islamic theocracy. And it seems more or less true when you look around the world at nations that are primarily or overwhelmingly Muslim.

I think Turkey is about the only one that has any kind of representative democracy, and they seem to have the church and state thing under control.

Some time back I interviewed for a story I was writing a prominent and well-known American Muslim who had been in the national news just prior to my interview, and I pointedly asked him several questions about where American Muslims stand on the issue of church and state.

He was kind of cagey and seemed to dance around the issue, acknowledging that we do in fact have a separation of church and state in this nation, which is a good thing for Muslims as well as everyone else, but then the screw got turned a little more and I asked him what he thought would happen if Muslims became the majority and were in a position to institute Sharia Law, for example, in the US.

More dancing around, some hedging and hawing, and I didn't really get a definitive answer out of him. All of which more or less lent support to my previously-held stereotype of Islam and government.

Given that, it was with more than idle interest that I read Sheila Musaji's American Muslims must defend the Constitution of the United States over at the American Muslim website:

America is a secular and democratic nation with a clearly marked wall between church and state (thank God!). One of the reasons America has been a beacon to the world is the freedom that all Americans have to practice any (or no) religion. As an American Muslim I don’t believe that America can be defined as anything but a secular democracy (secular meaning neutral towards religion, not devoid of religion or hostile to religion) in which all religions are free to worship.
I don’t want to see Shariah, or Biblical law, or any other religious law replace the Constitution, and I don’t want to see any kind of a theocracy in place based on any religion. I agree with Rabbi Arthur Waskow that “When those who claim their path alone bespeaks God’s Will control the State to enforce their will as God’s, it is God Who suffers.”

Go ahead and real the whole thing. It was an eye-opening experience for me.

Sarah Palin's Genius Supporters Speak Up

Here are a couple of Sarah's Mensa-league supporters, caught on camera at her book signing in Michigan a couple of days ago:

It's scary enough that these people are allowed to vote, but they also have, I am sure, licenses to operate motor vehicles!

Sarah Palin: Going Rouge

One of my absolute favorite writers is a guy in Florida named Carl Hiassen, who writes a column for the Miami Herald and is also the author of a number of absolutely hilarious novels. I was waiting with baited breath (that explains the worm on my chin...) for his take on the new Sarah Palin "autobiography", Going Rouge Rogue, and he didn't disappoint me:

(Confidential response of Sarah Palin's book editor to the first draft of her upcoming memoir, "Going Rogue''):
Dear Sarah,
Thank you for turning in the manuscript so quickly. I thought only Stephen King could crank out 400 pages in four months! Seriously, there's some terrific material here, and all of us at Harper Collins are thrilled to be publishing your life story.
Before we move ahead, the fact-checking department has asked me to pass along a few notes and comments that may require some revisions on your part.
1. Eric Clapton spells his last name with a C. More significantly, his publicists tell us that you were not the inspiration for Layla, and that he doesn't recall ever having an affair with you. Is it possible you've got him confused with another rock star?
2. The mainland of Russia is indeed visible from parts of western Alaska during favorable weather conditions in the Bering Straits. Considering the ridicule you endured over this issue during the campaign, your desire to set the record straight is understandable. Still, 78 pages is a big chunk of the book. Perhaps it's possible to deal with the I-can-see-Russia controversy a bit more succinctly.
3. Our researchers can find no evidence that Tina Fey belongs to the Taliban. Could you send us the sourcing for that reference?
4. John McCain's campaign staff is vehemently denying the incident you describe in Chapter 13. Perhaps you could provide our legal department with the names of persons who actually witnessed the senator placing the duct tape over your mouth.
[Read more; it gets even funnier...]

Read the whole thing and you'll see why Hiassen is one of my favorites. I'm first in line when a new novel of his comes out, and if you haven't read him, you are missing out on some of the funniest stuff to come out of Florida since Flying Flagler and the Alligator Boys...

C Street Has to Pay Up -- Neener Neener!

Okay, I'm starting to sound like a spoiled-brat-fourth-grader with this shit, but give me a break. Most people would categorize me as a spoiled-brat-second-grader...

Anyway, it turns out that the mysterious Religious Right "retreat" at the infamous C Street address in Washington DC is essentially a dormitory for the the secretive religious organization The Family (membership including the likes of of Bart Stupak, David Vitter, Chip Pickering, John Ensign, Mark Sanford, James Inhofe, Charles Grassley, Sam Brownback, John Ashcroft, Edwin Meese -- you know, the "usual suspects", but also including such "liberal" luminaries as Hillary Clinton and Al Gore...) and is in deep tax trouble.

The DC tax authority recently held that the infamous C Street House does not qualify for a religious tax exemption, so consequently they owe some ten thousand dollars in property taxes for 2010.

Hmmm, it hardly seems fair, now that I look at it. That property is worth well over one million dollars, so you'd think that the property tax assessment would be a little higher. It's no wonder that DC is in bad shape financially. That's fairly close to the property tax that I pay on a one story 1600 square foot rambler in the city of Olympia WA, a house which is actually worth probably less than one-fourth of the assessed value of the C Street digs.

Something ain't right here...

RU Freakin' Kidding Me???

I've watched the battle in the upstate NY 23rd District with a certain amount of dispassionate pleasure -- after all, it isn't MY district, and the battle between the Democrats, the Rethugs and the new and improved "Conservative Party" candidate has been the basis of a lot of jokey cannon fodder.

But the latest development falls into the YCFMTSU category ("You can't fuckin' make this shit up").

Now, after being soundly trounced in the election by the Democratic candidate, the so-called Conservative Party candidate is going apeshit over the whole thing. First he conceded, then he un-conceded, then the latest is that he unconcedes his unconcession...

Fuck, the whole thing gives me a headache. The latest is, now that it's clear that he can't possibly win in a fair count, "fraud at the polls".

Does anyone besides me recall the 2000 election when the Rethugs (and their running-dog lackeys, such as the so-called Conservative Party of New York, which I believe in the year 2000 was nothing more than a PO Box) excoriated Al Gore for the very same thing????

Talk about you can have your cake and eat it too... It makes me fucking sick. That's all I have to say about it.

Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch

Jeez, every day I am reminded of the fact that it's not enough for the wingnuttery to smear the president at every possible turn, but they also have to just make shit up to get their unthinking sheeple to forward any and all emails about him that paint him in any kind of a bad light.

Since I am proudly and publicly a Vietnam veteran, I get a lot of shit by email that really isn't intended for an unabashed liberal/leftwing neo-Anarcho-Syndicalist veteran like me.

Case in point. I just received one of those "viral" emails with this photo, the latest of that whole "Obama won't salute the flag" meme left over from the campaign, this time couched a little differently:

And accompanying the photo was the following missive:

Check out this latest picture from Veterans Day 11/11/09 at the Ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. I don't know whether the National Anthem is being played, or the Flag is going by, or WHAT, but EVERYBODY in the picture is either saluting or has his hand over the HEART.

All except ONE.
Guess who.
I do not make this stuff up!

Yeah, YOU don't make this stuff up buddy because you lack the requisite number of brain cells to take a shit on a porcelain toilet, but you certainly don't mind passing this bullshit on to others.

Naturally, it ought to go without saying, it ought to be patently obvious to anyone with a working knowledge of how to negotiate to the nearest two-holer, it ought to be a non-starter in any political discussion, that the photo is likely a real one but the description is not.

I mean, come on! Do you really think that the President of the United States is going to do something like this at a public event???!!!

Jesus, people, just try to do the tiniest amount of research on this crap. Snopes is one of my favorite debunker sites, and they've already got the goods on this one: Check it out and be prepared to blast back at that IBIL* of yours when he brings this one up over the candied yams next week.

Context is everything!

[*IBIL = Idiot Brother-In-Law]

Civics 101

Back in the days when I went to high school (you know, three years after we came down from the trees and two years after we discovered fire...) we had a class that was mandatory for all graduates, and that class was called "Civics".

Civics was separate from all other so-called Social Studies classes, in that we learned about government at all levels, and especially about the US Constitution. And those are lessons that have informed my world view about politics and about the necessity to get involved and stay involved.

In the ensuing nearly half-century(!) that has passed since then (Jeez, where did all that time go???) the teaching of Civics has kind of fallen by the wayside, having been subsumed into other courses, or -- more likely -- just not taught at all.

So it was with great pleasure that I read this story from Bremerton, a small city just 60 miles or so north of me:

Clutching the microphone, Rhys Kerr found himself in the hot seat Tuesday over the separation of church and state.
A majority of Americans are Christian. So, Emalene Renna asked, could Congress enact a law requiring everyone to be a Christian?
Rhys hesitated, but didn't appear nervous. Staring into the distance, he replied that such an action would unconstitutional. A few seconds more of silence to gather his thoughts and Rhys said: "We have the freedom of religion so the government can't just say you have to be Christian." Besides, he added, the judicial branch would find the law unconstitutional.
"You really get it don't you? You really get the difference between the Constitution and the will of people," Renna said.
Rhys and the rest of his classmates in Rita Zipp-Dearey's fourth-/fifth-grade class at View Ridge Elementary in Bremerton were all on the hot seat at one point or another Tuesday.
As part of a mock congressional hearing, they argued for and against the elements of the Constitution and took questions from judges, including Renna, who is a retired school administrator and teacher, retired attorney Scott Smith and retired nurse Joyce Maddock.
[read more ]

Yeah, Rhys Kerr really gets it! Congrats to teacher Rita Zipp-Deary and the rest of the Bremerton school system for teaching Civics again, and especially for their focus on the issue that is nearest and dearest to me, the Separation of Church and State.

Really, What Would Republicans Do if They Ever Had the Chance?

Considering the unthinkable. A story over at Alternet really has my panties in a bunch.

If I wore any...

Anyway, back to the topic. The Smirking Chimp has an article on Alternet called 15 Awful Things the Republicans Would do if They Had the Chance.

Go ahead and read it. It's too long to reproduce here, but it's really spot-on in its indictment of the weird world of the wingnuttery, and it's an eye-opening look at the kind of society we will become if those motherfuckers actually get the kind of control they are lusting after.

Boy Scouts to Holocaust Liberators: "Kill the Jews!"

As if we needed yet another reason to excoriate, abjure and condemn that paramilitary neo-Hitler-Youth homophobic gay-bashing organization, The Boy Scouts, here's some alarming news out of Great Britain:

A scout troop is being investigated by the police after its members shouted death threats and racist abuse at Jewish war veterans during a remembrance parade.
Dressed in full uniform, the explorer scouts, who were taking part in Remembrance Sunday service in Romford, Essex were heard to repeatedly shout "Let's kill the Jews" at Jewish second world war veterans.

Years ago I refused to allow my son to join the Scouts, and this was long before the whole homophobic thing came up. I just didn't want him to be in a brownshirt paramilitary organization which, despite their claims to innocence, primarily served as a get-'em-while-they're-young training camp for future cannon fodder for the military neocolonialists which were champing at the bit to stomp the shit out of any number of weak Third World nations, especially those in "our own back yard", Central America.

When my grandsons started getting to the age where they were potentially Scoutable, I was not really in a position to dictate anything to them, but by this time the Scouts had shown their true colors and I was able to reason with them and explain in a way that they could understand why they should not participate in an organization that was anti-freedom, anti-democratic and anti-human rights.

They listened to me -- mirabile dictu -- and I'm proud to say that all three of them are now human rights supporters and leftwing liberals.

But so are all of my children, which reminds me of that old "not falling far from the tree" saying...

Note to Catholic Bishops and Idiotic Democrats: Keep Your Filthy Hands off My Healthcare

It is now clear beyond any reasonable doubt that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops was instrumental in the insertion of the infamous "Stupak Amendment" into the new and barely-passed House of Representatives health care bill.

For those living under a rock, this amendment would not only prohibit the use of federal money to pay for an abortion (which we already had in the equally infamous Hyde Amendment), which is bad enough, but Stupidak's proposal goes way beyond that, to also prohibit paying any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion except in cases of rape, incest or danger to the life of the mother.

As bad as it is that a purely religious lobbying organization can pretty much dictate to a couple of true-believer Democrats (Stupak is a member-in-denial of the secretive fundamentalist and religiously-toxic C Street Gang) the content -- even the actual wording -- of potential legislation, it is much worse that Nancy Pelosi and by extension Barack Obama are pretty much rolling over and taking it.

Somebody needs to remind the Democrats that the party is supposed to stand for something. I'm afraid that next year, when it comes time to vote, many people -- that muddled middle -- are going to be faced with voting for a real Republican, or Republican-Lite.

And we know where that's going to go. Why settle for pale weak margarine when you can have fat yellow butter?

So Democrats, for crissakes grow a couple and kick the rightwingers to the side. If you look back in history at the milestones of progressive legislation you'll see that the Rethugs were always the "party of no". Social Security, Minimum Wage, Workplace Safety, Child Labor, Voting Rights, Medicare: These were all passed pretty much without any Republican support at all. No, back then the Democrats were in the forefront of passing progressive legislation and if the Rethugs didn't want to go along, the answer was "fuck 'em!". And that's how we got these terrific programs that work for all of us, even those asshole Republicans who rended their garments over the slide into socialism that they represented.

All this namby-pamby catering to the bastards isn't going to work and it will only serve to make the Democrats look weak.

Give it up, dudes. Ignore the braying of the jackals, and pass a goddam comprehensive health care package that will provide health care for the 90% of this country who are existing in the bottom third of the economy.

Victory in South Carolina

A federal judge ruled last week that South Carolina's "I believe" license plate, splattered as it was with that faux stained glass window and the Xian cross, violates the separation of church and state.

Here's a shout out to Judge Cameron M. Currie of Federal District Court for her heroic nerve to stand up to the Religious Right and for upholding our First Amendment rights, saying out loud in open court that the case presents "a textbook example of the need for and continued vitality of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment."

Amen to that, Judge Currie.

One Andre Bauer, the lieutenant governor of SC and a prime mover behind the drive to add the license plate to the DMV lineup, of course disagrees. Apparently he was such a dick about the whole thing that the judge felt compelled to single him out in her decision:

Currie further noted that Bauer – in rallies leading up to the passage of the legislation – had characterized the issues in the case as a dispute between atheists, who were able to obtain a special plate, and Christians, who could not. That suggested the measure's aim was to foment political division along religious lines – "one of the principal evils against which the First Amendment was intended to protect," the judge said.
Bauer responded Tuesday, saying he was personally offended by Currie's ruling.
"For those who say proclaiming 'I believe' violates the constitution by giving preference to Christianity, I think this lawsuit clearly discriminates against persons of faith," he said.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State pushed back, arguing that the lawsuit actually prevents discrimination against persons of faith. The Washington, D.C.-based organization cited previous interviews when state lawmakers told media they would not support a Wiccan, Buddhist, or Muslim tag.
"The passage of this license plate made adherents of other faiths feel like second-class citizens," the group stated.

And also a big "good on you" to my friends at AU, who was involved in this case from the beginning. Way to go, gang!

It always floors me when the Religious Right insists on displaying their beliefs in public, anywhere and everywhere they can, especially in light of those pesky admonitions of Joshua Bar Joseph (aka Jesus) on the subject (KJV Matthew 6:5 through 6:8):

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.
[Of course there are other versions of this, depending on which translation you rely on, but I intentionally used the KJV, since that is the only "one and true" translation that the RR follows...]

Hypocrites. Their god and savior called them out on their bullshit two thousand years ago, but as I've said before, the so-called "Christian" Right really doesn't want much truck with that proto-hippie love-thy-neighbor forgive-thy-enemies wimpy-assed Jesus. It's all about Old Testament wrath for them.

I'm Back!!

I'm back from my annual trip to the Americans United for Separation of Church and State meeting in DC. It was great to see many of my old blog buddies, including Fran of There Will Be Bread , Doctor Z, Beth of Yikes!, Tim of Jesus General (where, if you look closely, you can see a picture of me...) and especially my friend Alicia Morgan of Last Left Turn Before Hooterville, who was this year's recipient of the annual -- and prestigious -- AU "Postie" Award for the best blog against theocracy.

So Alicia -- you go, girlfriend!. Now my goal for this year is to be next recipient of the award, but as a cursory examination of any of the Bloggers Against Theocracy blogs in the right column will show, it's a tough field to compete in.

I even had the opportunity to do some lobbying with my two senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, over the issue of school vouchers in the DC school system. Not with the senators themselves, of course, but with their staff. And I learned that senators can't pick their neighbors -- directly across the hall from Patty Murray's office was the office of Tom Coburn (R-Idiot).

Anyway, after a lo-o-o-o-ong cross-country flight from Washington DC to Seattle by way of Charlotte NC(!) sitting directly in front of a screaming baby who squalled for three of the five+ hours we were in the air (he even got around my iPod's in-the-ear headphones with the volume turned all the way up; I was listening to opera, on the theory that if I had to listen to screaming, at least it would be set to music...) I got home about midnight Tuesday, only to have to turn around and go back to the airport the next day to pick up my son who flew in from Alaska.

So I'm still in recovery, but I'll be back full time in a few days.

As always, thanks for reading.

Outta Here

I'm leaving for my yearly "pilgrimage" to Washington DC for the annual conference of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Be back next week.

Treason: No More Mister Nice Guy

You may recall that No More Mister Nice Guy was the subtitle of the heavy-metal-ish album put out by, of all people, Pat Boone a number of years back in a pathetically embarrassing attempt to revive his career.

Okay, while that may have verged onto self-parody, even though it wasn't funny, it was nothing when compared to the product of his new career as ... a political commentator!

For Newsmax.

Wherein he wrote a column on Monday calling for the assassination of President Barack Obama.

Okay, he didn't really come out and say it in so many words. That would be treason and our boy Pat is 100% Amurrican. He's even a descendant of American icon Daniel Boone, for crissakes. At least he claims to be.

That aside, I wrote recently about this topic, that inciting someone to murder the president is treason, and this case is almost identical to that one.

Newsmax almost immediately took the story off of its website, but not before the cool kids over at Media Matters grabbed a screenshot of it. Check it out and you can find Pat bloviating about the White House need for "tenting" and a mob of exterminators to rub out the "vermin" that are inhabiting it.

Read it for yourself. No more Mr. Nice Guy indeed. In fact, as I've long known, the guy is a Religious Right asshole.

Saving Traditional Marriage

Finally! A petition drive that will really do something to save traditional marriage. In California there's an active drive to get signatures on a petition called Ban Divorce in California.

From their website:

Protect Marriage!! Let's ban divorce in California!!
How can the "yes on 8" people argue with that? It's so family-friendly. Besides, with the divorce rate being about 50%, divorce is a MUCH bigger threat to traditional marriage than is gay marriage. Divorce makes a mockery of marriage, and degrades the institution completely. It destroys children and encourages them to be future divorcees.
Come on everyone! Let's put it as a measure on the next California ballot!
What's that? Who am *I* to tell people they can't dissolve their own civil marriage contracts if they choose to? Well heck, a bunch of random people just told me that I can't ENTER into a civil marriage contract. I figure I ought to be able to tell them that they can't GET OUT OF their civil marriage contracts. Turn about is fair play, especially since "equal protection" under the constitution doesn't mean squat now.

I wonder how that "sanctity of marriage" crowd will view this one? Probably as another example of that intrusive Big Brother government sticking its nose into the personal business of its citizens...

Not so funny when it comes to your own life being affected, is it? Hypocrites.

Fox News Lies

Yeah, I know, that's a dog-bites-man headline. Ho hum.

But, thanks to the Thom Hartmann show this morning, I learned about something that pretty much flew under my radar.

Way back in the last century, a couple of enterprising reporters for a Fox News outlet in Florida tried to do a story on the harmful effects of a synthetic growth hormone introduced into the ecosystem by way of milk cows.

As a result, the Monsanto Corporation called up the local Fox News station and complained about the story. With the result that the local executives at the station told the reporters to "correct" the report.

After twenty-some rewrites, finally it came down to the local affiliate telling the reporters to LIE ABOUT THEIR FINDINGS.

They refused and consequently were fired. Then they filed suit for wrongful termination, which went to a jury trial and the local jury found in favor of the reporters.

So that was the end of it? Not!

The station appealed, and the appeals court (packed with Rethug appointees, need I bother to point out?) reversed the jury decision.

Why? Because Fox News with its "corporate personhood", had a RIGHT to lie. And the poor reporters who refused to lie for Fox News?

Out the door.

Read all about the case at www.foxbghsuit.com/.

And the next time that IBIL* of yours says that Fox News is fair and balanced, blast him with this.

[*IBIL=Idiot Brother-in-Law]