Grab a pitchfork and join the party

What's a beleaguered administration to do? Many of their members currently or soon to be brought up on charges, the NSA wiretap hearings, the Great Iraq Adventure slowly swirling down the toilet. Well in troubled times like these there's only one sure fire response, guaranteed to distract the feebleminded and incense the bigots, and so, with a mighty yawp of "The Queers are coming! The Queers are coming!" they release the hounds of the AFA:

Senate marriage amendment vote is slated for March

Pandagon comments:

The AFA knows that it wil be acted upon in March, and we don’t? I looked at the Human Rights Campaign site. Nada. National Gay and Lesbian Task Force site - zip...So Wildmon is either blowing smoke or he’s on the Frist bat phone. You guess which is more likely.

If you want to check out S.J.RES.1 for yourself click here. And you know what I'm going to say next, yep, contact your senators starting now. The sooner we get a start on this, the more resistance we can raise to this latest bit of hateful idiocy. Or, if you'd like to contact your senators and stick it to the AFA at the same time, why not use their own web form, change the stock message, and let the AFA send out an anti-amendment message for you? It's fun and satisfying!

el Presidente

Allow me to direct you to this post at Sadly No! A quick reminder why everyone should be paying attention to the NSA wiretap hearings:

If you were a brash right-wing billionaire, for instance, or a GOP party zealot, or a Straussian neoconservative, or any of a number of such characters, and you wanted to set up an apparatus of political repression in America in order to push your opponents permanently off the political map, how
would you go about it? It's both a legal problem and a logistical one -- these things don't simply happen on their own; they require planning and hard work. Purely instrumentally, you'd need either to change the Constitution in a way that would be quite difficult to achieve, and that people would tend to notice with all sorts of attendant mess and fireworks, or you'd need to find very specific ways around its protections.

Your to-do list would lack the shock of the unfamiliar. It's the standard panoply of generalissimo powers, issued in emergency decrees after every Latin American coup or African power-grab. You'd want to be able to conduct widespread surveillance on people of your choice without probable cause that they'd committed a crime, and if you decided to arrest and detain someone, you'd want to do it without judicial oversight and away from public scrutiny. There'd need to be some kind of setup for secret interrogations, with or without torture, and you'd have to be able to indefinitely 'disappear' people, if and when you felt it necessary, whether in prisons or (under your authority) by means of execution. This program didn't get off the ground, but it shows the kind of playbook you'd be using (it might have read better in the original East German edition). There's also the sticky, little-assimilated detail that Bush's NSA surveillance program was apparently authorized before 9/11 -- sticky details abound; it's quite a jam-smeared, sticky world in which we now live. But in any case, if you wanted to set up
something like that, with all the legal claims properly paper-trailed and all the operational links in their proper places in the chain, it would take time, canny lawyering, and a certain admixture of restraint and boldness, and you'd probably want to have a huge propaganda apparatus constantly pumping out fog so that America didn't understand (or believe) what kind of government you were striving toward. It might take several presidencies to get your 'permanent majority,' but you'd move forward with due alacrity when you were able.

But they wouldn't do that, would they? And as Katherine asked, at what point are we going to take their claims seriously?

And on a lighter note, our newest winner of the "Heckuva Job" award goes to:

George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said.

Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.

What, an up and coming GOP fundie rising star lied on his resume? Why it's unthinkable! After all this administration's appointees have all been the picture of competence, honesty and...oh hell, I just can't keep it up any longer. Excuse the immaturity here, but BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!

I feel like I'm on crazy pills here!

Holy. Fucking. God.

Indicted Rep. Tom DeLay, forced to step down as the No. 2 Republican in the House, scored a soft landing Wednesday as GOP leaders rewarded him with a coveted seat on the Appropriations Committee.

DeLay, R-Texas, also claimed a seat on the subcommittee overseeing the Justice Department, which is currently investigating an influence-peddling scandal involving disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his dealings with lawmakers. The subcommittee also has responsibility over NASA — a top priority for DeLay, since the Johnson Space Center is located in his Houston-area district.

"Allowing Tom DeLay to sit on a committee in charge of giving out money is like putting Michael Brown back in charge of FEMA — Republicans in Congress just can't seem to resist standing by their man," said Bill Burton, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

[...]

DeLay was able to rejoin the powerful Appropriations panel — he was a member until becoming majority leader in 2003 — because of a vacancy created after the resignation of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif. Cunningham pleaded guilty in November to charges relating to accepting $2.4 million in bribes for government business and other favors.

So they're putting the guy indicted for money laundering in charge of appropriations and oversight at the Justice Department. Somewhere I can hear Jon Stewart's head exploding...

*Ellie does happy dance around living room*

According to the latest Lumos update:

“Harry and the Potters” will be performing on Thursday night. If you caught them at “The Witching Hour,” you will know why “Voldemort Can’t Stop the Rock!” Opening for them is “Draco and the Malfoys.”


I don't care if I have to get up at 3 a.m. in order to make it there in time for this performance I will happily do it. Seriously, front row, man, front fucking row!

I have died and gone to heaven, seriously.

Many thanks to aelfsciene for pointing me at the newsletter, as a little gift for her, a quote I think she'll find particularly delightful just now:

"Equations are the devil's sentences."- Stephen Colbert

Hooray!

Yay for the return of Lost haiku recapping!

( ...an issue of trust. )