A Quiet Revolution

Gay marriage seems to have come to New Mexico. Under the radar, and buoyed by a force no stronger than a simple reading of the law.

In July, State Attorney General Gary King noticed something that state Republicans would have preferred to keep hidden away. New Mexico law does not prohibit gay marriage. Of course, it doesn't specifically authorize it, either, but up until now, nobody has banned it. And any attempts to do so appear to be unconstitutional.

The Associated Press reports that King made the argument after the court asked him to weigh in on a lawsuit filed by a gay Santa Fe couple who were denied a marriage license. In his filing, King urged the court to approve more broadly of gay marriage rights in a ruling in favor of the men.

"New Mexico’s guarantee of equal protection to its citizens demands that same-sex couples be permitted to enjoy the benefits of marriage in the same way and to the same extent as other New Mexico citizens," King said in the filing.

On the strength of that, on Wednesday, Dona Ana County clerk Lynn Ellins, began issuing marriage certificates to gay couples in Las Cruces, NM. Nobody told him that he could - he simply noted that nobody could tell him that he couldn't.

And today, in Albuquerque, a judge ordered the county clerk of the most populous county in New Mexico to begin issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, stating that any seeming prohibitions in New Mexico statutes against same-sex marriage "are unconstitutional and unenforceable."

In his ruling, Judge Alan Malott quoted Article II, Section 18 of the New Mexico State Constitution, which is pretty straight-forward (so to speak).

No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor shall any person be denied equal protection of the laws. Equality of rights under law shall not be denied on account of the sex of any person.

So now, with roughly a hundred same-sex couples legally married in the state of New Mexico, any action by the state government (or our Republican governor Susana Martinez) will be met with an almost-unwinnable lawsuit.

So it would appear that gay marriage is here to stay in New Mexico. Not through what the GOP will undoubtedly be calling "judicial activism," but simply through strict adherence to the law.

That's gonna leave a mark - a big, rainbow-colored one.

The Daily Race-Baiter

So, there's this internet "news" site out there going by the name the Daily Caller. It was started by Tucker Carlson, a bow-tied right-wing twat-weasel who was once famously savaged by Jon Stewart.

Now, despite the fact that he staffed his little paper with GOP advisors and got most of his funding from Foster Friess, who famously bankrolls presidential candidates like Rick Santorum, Carlson likes to claim that "we're not enforcing any kind of ideological orthodoxy on anyone."

Which might even be true, except... well, they ran with this story on Monday. A fluff piece, about Obama buying a new dog. Another Portuguese Water Dog named Sunny, to give First Dog Bo a playmate. Cute, right?

Well, kind of. It's a story that means absolutely nothing to anybody. Man buys dog. Until, not even 50 words in, you come across the following sentence.

Apparently it’s a girl and it was born in 2012 in Michigan, where the unemployment rate was 8.8 percent last month.

OK, motherTucker, define "non sequiter" for me, will ya?

What exactly is that little factoid doing in the second paragraph of a human-interest fluff piece? Is it, maybe, to show that "Obama reigns over a failed presidency"? "Obama doesn't care about poor people"? How does that even belong there?

But that's not the gold. Oh, no. Here's the gold - the last two sentences in the piece.

With the addition of Sunny, the Obamas now have two black Portuguese water dogs.

The Obamas do not have any white dogs.

Yes, that's right. They aren't even trying to hide it anymore.

We now officially have a new definition for "dog-whistle politics."

Developments in Iran

There's a little story out there which isn't getting a lot of play in the American press, possibly because the corollary to the journalistic axiom would be "if it doesn't bleed, it doesn't lead." It's not a story of death, or destruction, or anything other than a possible hope for the future.

See, there's this country called Iran, and the Iranian president for the last eight years has been a fiery little Holocaust-denier named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Now, a lot of people don't understand how little power (comparatively) the Iranian president has, but he does have a certain amount of influence, and Ahmadinejad is now out of office.

His replacement is a reform-minded moderate named Hassan Rouhani, who, from 2003 to 2005 under former President Mohammad Khatami, was chief nuclear negotiator with the European Union. He campaigned on promises to improve human rights in Iran, restore the economy, and improve relations with the West.

Now, there are certain factions in America (and Israel) who believe that it's in their best interests to keep stirring up fear of Iran, and who will never believe that there are peaceful Muslims - Fox "News," for example, is trying to spin him as a Smiling Warmonger on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.

One of the fears that the Islamophobic crowd wants to keep alive is the terror of a "nuclear Iran!" Because that would lead to immediate nuclear annihilation of Israel!

(Despite the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency has found no evidence that Iran has been building nuclear warheads, but that they have a history of "failure in a number of instances over an extended period of time to meet its obligations under its NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) Safeguards Agreement... with respect to the reporting of nuclear material, its processing and its use, as well as the declaration of facilities where such material had been processed and stored...")

Despite the strident screams of the Rush Limbaugh's and Pam Geller's of the world, the White House today declared that they're willing to engage with Iran "to resolve the international community's deep concerns over Iran's nuclear program."

So, we might just be seeing the Middle East inching toward peace - expect the right wing to start pushing back against it as hard as they can.

Whatever happened to "citizen journalism"?

I've been wracking the lump of meat I jokingly call a "brain," trying to figure out when, exactly, we turned the corner, as a country, with regards to whistleblowers.

I've been wondering this for a while. It crops up in weird places: earlier this year, a hacker revealed that the police were ignoring blatant evidence that a rape had been committed. He's facing ten years in jail, while the now-convicted rapists only got two years each. Was exposing the rape a worse crime than committing it?

At what point did we start to think it was more important to keep secrets hidden, instead of dealing with the crimes being covered up by those secrets?

Edward Snowden is currently hiding in a Moscow airport, living on vending machine borcht and energy drinks (I assume); he's under fire for disclosing the fact that the American government is spying on American citizens. And everybody else on the planet. His guilt is just accepted, at this point: the focus of the argument against him seems to be "well, he ran to another country! And he's a traitor!"

But what's being ignored here? Maybe the nature of his crime? Maybe the fact that... well, let me just quote from some people who were much smarter than me.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Does anybody remember what the phrase "probable cause" means? I'm pretty sure that a global, sweeping review of every phone call in America isn't covered by "describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Yeah, but fuck that Fourth Amendment, right? The Second Amendment is the only important one!

I think the best response came from the Rude Pundit:

The reaction that most infuriates the Rude Pundit is that Snowden didn't do the nation any favors because, well, fuck, we all knew that our phone calls and other information was being monitored... Yeah, but there's a huge difference between strongly suspecting that your husband is fucking around and being shown pictures of him balling the babysitter. There's vast gulf between "knowing" and knowledge. The intelligence services have been forced to say, "Okay, yeah, you caught us." The twist is that they're adding, "And, oh, by the way, we're gonna keep boning the babysitter. Just try to stop us from fucking her."

But if we're honest with ourselves, Snowden isn't the problem. His story is just a symptom of a larger problem.

In Maryland, the closing arguments in the Bradley Manning trial have been made, and as I write this, we await the judge's decision. Was Manning guilty of espionage?

Let's remember what he's guilty of, shall we? He leaked documents that showed that, despite our noble words and fine sentiments, America was still torturing and killing innocent people. He didn't damage our war effort, or put any spies in danger. He just told us that the American government was lying to us. He showed us what our tax dollars are paying for. He didn't commit espionage - he committed journalism.

Julian Assange, who's "guilty" of the same "crimes," held a press conference by telephone last week, where reporters also got to hear from Daniel Ellsberg - Ellsberg, you may or may not remember, was "guilty" of a similar "crime." He leaked the Pentagon Papers, embarrassing the US government; he never went to jail for telling the truth. Why should Manning? Why should Snowden?

Why should it be a criminal act to tell the truth?

Adventures in shopping

I got thrown out of a K-Mart last week. But I ain't even mad.

I'll admit, I don't shop at K-Mart much - the ones around me are pretty much giant Dollar Stores, and I can usually get higher-quality items for around the same price somewhere else. But there's this one store to the north that's closing down, with the usual signs everywhere:

Everything up to 50% Off!!!

And here I was with this shopping list that included "Scratching post." (We have cats - I don't know if you're aware...) And I figured "what the hell, right?" So I wandered in, and, sure enough, I found a budget-priced post for a cat to try and destroy. Seemed like a win to me, so I took it to the checkout line.

Now, I'm not sure that you've lived in the Southwest in the summer, but it's not known for being cold in these parts. And I'm not sure if you've considered the problem, but when a store is closing, the owner isn't overly worried about repeat customers, so the air conditioning may not be running at peak efficiency, if you know what I mean.

So, by the time I get to the front of the line, I'm hot and cranky. But the girl behind the register has been there for hours, probably, and she's doing her best. So I figure why act like an ass, right? So I engage Smalltalk Mode.

"So, do they at least move you to a different store when this one closes?"

"If you've been here for six months, yeah."

That answer didn't seem to make her happy. "How long have you been here?"

"Five months."

Oh, damn. I literally had nothing to respond with at that point. So she rang me through and started into her rehearsed spiel. "All sales are final. Make sure you have the receipt available." And then she made the mistake of taking a breath, and... well, I have this genetic failing. I'm a smart-ass.

"What good does the receipt do me if all sales are final?"

That seemed to take her by surprise - as far as I could tell, nobody was supposed to ask questions at this point. "Oh... um... well, they're checking receipts at the door... and... um..."

That was apparently the point where the douchebag behind me with the sunglasses on his carefully-moussed hair lost patience. I guess he was late for his prostate exam or something. "Look, can we move it along here?!? Some of us have places to be!!"

You know, I'm not the most sympathetic of bastards, but I've never seen where it was a great idea to be a prick to the underpaid people who were ringing up my purchases. And this self-important fucknozzle just grated against my last overheated nerve.

So I turned to look him right in the eye, and I said, loudly and clearly, "You know, asshole, this store is closing. And these people might not have a job in a few weeks. So maybe they have problems of their own. In fact, maybe the last thing they need is another problem. Like you being an ass. So maybe you should just back the fuck off, OK?"

And I stared at him for just long enough for him to flinch and turn away.

It was right about then that I felt a tap on my arm, and the guy from Security asked me to please come with him.

You know, maybe I shouldn't have been as loud as I was. Maybe I shouldn't have cursed. And I've been thrown out of better places. But everybody waited as the cashier hit the last few buttons and handed me my receipt. And you know, the guy throwing me out never thanked me as he escorted me to the door before.

I don't make it a habit of getting thrown out of stores. But sometimes, that's what needs to happen.

Fly Me To The Moon

I was born in the Sixties. You might have heard that there was a musical revolution going on at the time, but there was also a second one, slightly less ground-breaking, that occurred around the same time. (Technically it started earlier, but was going strong during this period.)

Yes, there was a revolution in schlock.

By saying "it started earlier," please understand that Muzak Holdings, LLC was started in 1934. But although they are related, they aren't the focus of this little rant.

Frank Sinatra first got big as a teen idol in the Forties, but then had a career resurgence in the Fifties when he refocused his music to appeal to an older audience.

Unfortunately, because he was popular, a lot of people with significantly less talent felt that they should try to sound just like him. And they put out albums and appeared on TV shows, and the result was a style of "music" that culminated in Michael Buble: the "crooner," a.k.a., "lounge lizard."

There are certain songs that I can't listen to any more. They are indelibly associated in my mind with slicked-back singers in cheap tuxedos (possibly in pastel colors, possibly not), looking either earnest or with big cheese-eating grins, belting out certain "old standards," as if they had been possessed by the spirit of Old Blue Eyes himself.

That being said, there are some musicians who should have been more successful than they were. Who should have become household names, instead of just a legend among musicians. His name is Paul Gilbert, and he was featured in Guitar Player magazine at the age of 15. And he managed, in just a throwaway performance, to perform the only version of "Fly Me To The Moon" that I've been able to listen to, by choice, in years.

Somebody's trying to sound butch!

You have to feel sorry for David Dewhurst. It has to be rough to be the lieutenant governor under Rick Perry - I mean, Dewhurst is no Rhodes scholar himself, but when you're second fiddle to a brain-damaged chimp, you must spend a lot of nights curled around a bottle of cheap whiskey, rocking yourself and sobbing uncontrollably.

I mean, he was in charge of the Texas Senate as they tried to ban abortion, and he failed. Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, filibustered for over 12 hours, until they were able to take her off the stage with three challenges: two of them, that she didn't stay on topic, involved her talking about Planned Parenthood and invasive sonograms - both of which are directly involved with abortion. So, bullshit right there.

Then, forgetting that the world was watching, they held a vote after the Senate was required to close down, and tried to fake the record. But the public wouldn't let them get away with that, either, and the vote was declared null and void.

So Dewhurst, being a good'ol'boy from Texas, felt he had to talk tough to hide the fact that he was beaten up by a girl wearing pink sneakers. The sad part is, he isn't very good at it.

Apparently, having witnesses when you try to cheat and break the rules is now called "Obama-style, mob-rule politics" - which I suppose you can understand, considering the back-room nature of traditional Texas politics.

But I think the best part of Dewhurst's sad little rant is what he chose as a battle cry.

Come and Take It!

Why does that sound like a bottom, kneeling in bed and calling to his top? Somebody needs to give Dewhurst some lessons in looking macho before he embarrasses himself further.

Maybe Wendy Davis is available.

The Zimmerman Defense

So, in the upcoming weeks, we'll hopefully learn the facts about the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case. I know where I stand on it, based on what I've read, but it's always possible that there are details yet to come out.

But, for the moment, let's ignore the whole "Wild, Wild West," shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later attitude that the "Stand Your Ground" law engenders. Just for now, let's concentrate on the trial.

Let's also ignore the fact that the defense attorney opened with a knock-knock joke. A knock-knock joke that bombed.

"Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying," he explained. "So, let me — at considerable risk — let me say, I would like to tell you a little joke. I know how that may sound a bit weird in this context under these circumstances. But I think you're the perfect audience for it as long as you — if you don't like it or find it funny or appropriate, that you don't hold it against Mr. Zimmerman, you can hold it against me. I have your assurance you won't?"

"Knock, knock. Who’s there? George Zimmerman. George Zimmerman who?" West said. "Alright, good, you’re on the jury."

"Nothing?" he added when the jury apparently failed to laugh. "That’s funny. After what you folks have been through the last two or three weeks."

No, really, dude. If you're begging them to laugh, it was a bad joke. Trust me. I should know.

Instead, let's highlight another part of the defense attorney's opening statement. He tried to claim that Trayvon Martin was not unarmed.

"Trayvon Martin armed himself with the concrete sidewalk and used it to smash George Zimmerman's head; it's no different than if he picked up a brick or bashed it against a wall," Mr. West said, "and the law is very specific as to when you can defend yourself if the other person has a deadly weapon."

Really, that is an awe-inspiring defense. In order for it to work, you have to completely redefine the legal definition of the word "unarmed."

Because if Trayvon Martin was "armed," by the prosecutor's definition, then nobody who exists in a three-dimensional environment can ever be defined as "unarmed."

Godwin's Law Redux

There is a constant drumbeat from the right comparing Obama to Hitler. I mean, let's ignore the fact that Obama's signature legislation is a method to ensure that everybody can go to a hospital when they're sick without ending up living out of their car. Because that's exactly the same as slaughtering six million Jews and attempting to take over Europe in a bloody campaign of destruction.

Yeah, let's ignore that. Instead, let's ask ourselves why every single time that somebody disagrees with a politician, it's become de rigueur to compare them to Hitler? Why is the litmus test for political arguments the ability to reduce your enemy to the level of the worst dictator in history? Last week, I pointed out an unintentional violation of Godwin's Law, but let's consider the issue a little, shall we?

Following World War One, Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles. This treaty included Article 231, which is commonly called "the guilt clause":

The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.

Using this as a legal basis, Germany was forced to pay reparations to the rest of Europe. Unfortunately, Germany didn't think they'd lost the war - the German High Command told their citizens that the Army had never been beaten in the field, and the defeat was actually due to actions by civilians, particularly Jews, Socialists and Communists (the Dolchstosslegende, or "Stabbed-in-the-Back Legend").

That's right - Hitler didn't start the rumor that Jews were destroying the economy. Antisemitism was well-established in the German culture long before he was born.

So the Weimar Republic resisted the reparations, and defaulted on payments quite frequently. The French and Belgians, realizing that the Germans were able to pay and simply weren't, eventually invaded and occupied the Ruhr valley, which was the center of coal, iron and steel production in Germany.

Take this reduction in raw materials for the Germans and the resulting reduction in cash-flow, and add to it the fact that the German government funded a passive resistance movement among the citizens of the Ruhr by simply printing more money. This led to the famed hyper-inflation of post-WWI Germany.

Technically, the inflation started when the Kaiser decided to fund WWI by borrowing money instead of taxing his people and using his own fortune: the value of the German mark fell from 4 to 9 per US dollar. But the war ended in 1919; by November 1923, the American dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 German marks. Or in more concrete terms, in 1919 a loaf of bread cost 1 mark; by 1923, a loaf of bread cost 100 billion marks.

This was the situation when Adolph Hitler rose into power. During the course of his leadership, he brought his people back from the brink of ruin and ensured they could eat.

People want for life to be simple. They want their enemies to wholly evil, so that there's no question that "destroying them" is a bad thing. The reductive power of the human mind wants those we disagree with to have no redeeming features. Homophobes want gays to practice pedophilia and beastiality. Radical conservatives want liberals to be fascists and totalitarian dictators. Radical liberals want conservatives to be inhuman monsters who laugh as children starve in the streets.

The reality is that people are more complex than that. But to see that, to understand the forces that drive someone, is to understand that perhaps evil is not something simple. Perhaps evil and good are in all of us. That bad things are done by good people, and good things are done by bad people, and the world isn't the simple place we want it to be.

Would you like to see the most frightening picture of Adolph Hitler ever taken?

Hitler, holding hands with a little girl and walking in a park. Hitler loved children. He loved animals: he was a confirmed vegetarian and was opposed to vivisection.

Were you aware that Eva Braun took home movies?


Hitler was a human being. It challenges your worldview: he should be a monster, pounding on desks and ordering people to their deaths. But he lived, he loved, he laughed, he played with children.

He also destroyed much of Europe, threw the world into war, and established concentration camps where 11 million people were killed.

Perhaps "good" and "evil" aren't the simple concepts that some people want them to be.

Can Godwin come down and rule on this?

You know, the GOP keeps trying to claim that they don't have a "War on Women." They claim that they respect women (even though the womenfolk can't be trusted to make decisions regarding their own bodies). But then they'll stumble, and somebody like GOP candidate Todd Akin will try to claim that rape is not a reason that abortion should be kept legal, because, after all, nobody gets pregnant that way.

"First of all, from what I understand from doctors, (pregnancy from rape) is really rare," Akin told KTVI-TV in a clip posted to YouTube by the Democratic super PAC American Bridge. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Or you get somebody like, say, Trent Franks (R-AZ), who, after ten years in the House of Representatives, should know better.

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), whose measure banning abortions after 20 weeks was being considered in the House Judiciary Committee, argued against a Democratic amendment to make exceptions for rape and incest by suggesting that pregnancy from rape is rare.

"Before, when my friends on the left side of the aisle here tried to make rape and incest the subject — because, you know, the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low," Franks said.

Franks continued: "But when you make that exception, there’s usually a requirement to report the rape within 48 hours. And in this case that's impossible because this is in the sixth month of gestation. And that's what completely negates and vitiates the purpose for such an amendment."

Now, let's ignore the fact that The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, who make it their business to know such things, report that ten to fifteen thousand abortions due to rape occur each year, which makes statements like that "medically inaccurate, offensive, and dangerous." And we can ignore that particular piece of data because, after all, facts don't matter to this crowd.

Instead, let's all try and remember a wonderful little bit of information dug up by Tim Townsend and Blythe Bernhard for the St Louis Post-Dispatch following Akin's comments.

While U.S. Rep. Todd Akin cited only "doctors" as his source of information about the rarity of pregnancy resulting from rape, it is two pages, from Mecklenburg's 1972 article, "The Indications for Induced Abortion: A Physician's Perspective," that have influenced two generations of anti-abortion activists hoping to build a medical case to ban all abortions without exception...

In supporting his claim about trauma and ovulation, Mecklenburg cited experiments conducted in Nazi death camps.

The Nazis tested this hypothesis "by selecting women who were about to ovulate and sending them to the gas chambers, only to bring them back after their realistic mock-killing, to see what the effect this had on their ovulatory patterns. An extremely high percentage of these women did not ovulate."

Finally, Mecklenburg said it was likely that the rapists — because of "frequent masturbation" — were unlikely to be fertile themselves.

(I just threw in that last line as a bonus.)

So, are we clear on this? The GOP is trying to claim that there is no such thing as rape-babies, because the Nazis said there weren't. They are now basing their arguments on unscientific and inhumane experiments performed by Nazi doctors in death camps

Do you know how happy that one little fact makes me? I don't have to call the GOP racist, fascist, or Nazis! They're doing it to themselves!

Republikanische Partei über alles!

Aren't we tired of this yet?

Much like Benghazi, the Congressional Republicans, desperate for any scandal they can find, are trying to flog the IRS story into some impeachment-worthy conspiracy, when it's actually just a simple case of a group of bureaucrats trying to do their jobs.

The current version of the "conspiracy" here is: Obama ordered the IRS to investigate right-wing political organizations because he is a power-hungry tyrant!!

I think that pretty much covers it, but by the time you read this, it might have morphed into something that sounds even scarier.

The Republicans know that power-hungry tyrants do this kind of thing, because this is something that Republican presidents have done for decades: Nixon tried to use the IRS against his political enemies (it was one of his articles of impeachment), but wasn't allowed to; and the IRS under George W Bush was infamous for targeting liberal groups, like Greenpeace, the NAACP, and churches that spoke out against the war.

Congress has convened five hearings, and have turned up nothing but lies and half-truths in their efforts to smear the president. IRS officials have resigned or been fired, because people further down in the organization were trying to do their job as best they could.

The entire administrative structure of the IRS has been lambasted by the Republicans for their "lack of leadership" (completely ignoring the fact that there is no leadership because the Republicans in Congress have blocked every appointment Obama has made - including his appointment of an IRS director - for the last five years).

The IRS is an easy target, because nobody likes paying taxes. The fact that they already have a negative image in most people's eyes makes smearing them much easier. But, for once, they aren't the bad guys.

Let's start from the beginning. The tax code gives us a number of different classifications based on what we do. One of them, a tax-exempt status, is designated 501(c)(4), and it's defined as "Civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare, ...the net earnings of which are devoted exclusively to charitable, educational, or recreational purposes."

This allows groups to be formed to construct basketball courts for inner-city kids, build a gym for a high school, set up after-school reading programs, operate food banks, or any other activity that can be defined as "social welfare." And it goes further: to prevent people from arguing that defeating a politician would qualify as "social welfare," the IRS specifically excludes political organizations from this particular tax-exempt status.

(ii) Political or social activities. The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.

And that inconvenient fact is what the Teabaggers want everybody to forget.

So, after the Citizen's United ruling in 2010, the number of groups applying for 501(c)(4) status doubled, and an already overworked IRS tried to keep up. A couple of workers in the Cincinnati office realized that they could pull up a large number of the "bad" applications by searching for political terms in the applications. (Remember - politics are't allowed for these guys.) Unfortunately, all of the terms they came up with happened to be conservative - probably because conservative groups, and particularly Tea Party groups - had a long history of financial discrepancies.

But when the Cincinnati group explained their test to IRS exempt organizations division chief Lois G. Lerner, she objected to it and it was changed. A few months later, the IRS would release new guidance that suggested scrutinizing “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement,” and after that, “organizations with indicators of significant amounts of political campaign intervention (raising questions as to exempt purpose and/or excess private benefit.)”

Which showed that the GOP was just playing political games when they called for the resignation of the acting IRS Commissioner, since the language had already been corrected by the time he sat down in the big chair. The Commissioner in place when the "bad" language was there? Bush-appointee Douglas Shulman.

Were more conservative groups reviewed than liberal groups? Absolutely. And you know why? Because there were more conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

Conservative groups accounted for about 84 percent of the spending reported to the FEC — mainly through Crossroads GPS, Americans for Prosperity and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Liberal groups spent 12 percent of the dark money. Nonpartisan groups made up the rest.

In actual fact, the congressional investigation has not only found nothing, they now have evidence clearing the White House. But Darrell Issa (R-CA) is the chairman of the House Oversight Committee investigating this lack of a scandal, and he's been running one witch hunt after another since Obama came into office. And now, it turns out, he's sitting on the evidence.

House Oversight Committee ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings on Sunday said that the so-called scandal involving the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) targeting of tea party groups was "solved," but Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has refused to release the testimony of a "conservative Republican" IRS manager because it indicated that the White House was not involved.

Last week, Issa had told CNN host Candy Crowley that IRS agents "were directly being ordered from Washington," but he declined to produce complete transcripts of the testimony of IRS employees to back up his claims.

On Sunday, Cummings explained to Crowley that he had "begged" Issa to release the full transcripts. "He's the chairman of the committee, we're not in power," the Maryland Democrat pointed out. "If he does not release them, I will. Period."

"I’m willing to come on your show next week with the chairman, with the transcripts, if he agrees to do that," he added. "But if he doesn't, I'll release them by the end of the week."

These are some of the little facts you need to remember if the subject of the IRS "scandal" comes up.

In Memoriam - Just a damned cat

In 1997, we came back to the States from Germany, and somehow, somebody in the Pentagon figured that my operatically-trained wife and I needed to be in Wyoming. (See, "opera" and "opry" are really similar...) On our arrival, the Housing Office informed us that nothing was available on base for about a year. (This was not the last time they'd lie to us.)

Needing a place to live, we rented a crappy little house (that turned out to have been built by the Salvation Army, with the plans reduced 10% in size), and, in the first week or so, I left the Trophy Wife, my seven-year-old and two twelve-year-olds, alone long enough to get some groceries. The nearest grocery store was roughly a mile away, and as I walked out, I was accosted by a couple of kids with a plastic hamper containing a cluster of kittens.

Weirdly, the Trophy Wife (despite my best efforts to instill some sanity in her life) has always appreciated cats more than other animals. And here I am, with an armful of bread, milk and cereal, looking into a basket of black-and-white cats, and one tiny little runt kittn, apparently made of orange-and-white plaid. All "free to good home."

I walked to the car, put the groceries in the trunk, walked back and said "I'll take that one."

No cat carrier, so I walked back to the car with an calico kitten cradled in my arms, purring. Until I reached for the door and the little bastard leaped out of my arms and ran under the car, where she found the exact middle. Just out of reach from any angle, where she sat and shivered.

I'm pretty sure that was when I realized her name was, by necessity, "Bucket-head." Which shortened easily to Bucky.

Being intelligent (if underage) human beings, the kids agreed right away. The Trophy Wife did not. But she eventually caved under pressure, and "Bucky" it was.

We moved several times in the intervening years, and pets have come and gone. The most intelligent dog I ever had the pleasure of knowing came into (and out of) our lives. At least one cat (an idiot long-hair) escaped through a badly-fitted screen and never found her way back. But Bucky was always a constant.

She grew into a beautiful cat, but not a charmer. She had a voice like badly-tuned foghorn with a "nasal" setting, and she wasn't afraid to honk her anger when she didn't get her way. She never loved me, but learned to tolerate me (as so many people do). But as time went on, she became the favorite of the Trophy Wife. If only because she was always around, and always insistent that you love her (even if only from a distance).

At sixteen years old, she had a long run for a cat. In the last several months, she developed a number of health problems; two nights ago, she had what seemed to be a stroke, and a very dignified cat (she may not have started out that way, but that's what she turned into) lost all control of her body.

Neither my wife or I has ever had a cat who lived this long. Last night, we said goodbye to a beautiful girl.

She was just a damned cat. Why am I crying? What the hell is wrong with me?

Freedom of the Press

In a column published in USA Today, Jonathan Turley is feeling a little cranky about the Justice Department investigating reporters; he even calls, in the headline, for the firing of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Turley is a very smart, highly educated man. This doesn't stop him from being wrong. Not completely wrong, I'll admit; but he is arguably incorrect in the larger sense here.

Turley's point, at its center, is that Holder approved the search of email and phone records for Fox "News" reporter James Rosen and (Turley mentions in passing) the Associated Press. Turley holds to the idea that a "free press," as delineated in the Constitution, is vital.

And he does make a point. It was a free press that showed Nixon as the abusive, power-hungry paranoid that he was. It is a free press that turns up scandals and crimes that are otherwise hidden from sight.

But what Turley is missing is that, just like free speech, a free press has limits. Or, to be more accurate, it has consequences: Turley and the AP both have the right to report on whatever they find, but they both have to take responsibility for any repercussions that might occur due to their reporting.

See, with Fox, the Justice Department got a search warrant from a federal judge, which gave them the opportunity to thumb through Rosen's phone records and email. And all because Rosen had reported on missile tests in North Korea; these tests were conducted as a response to the UN Security Council's condemnation of North Korea's bat-shit insane leader's nuclear aspirations. And Rosen learned all this from leaks of classified information which came from Stephen Kim, who has since been fired from the State Department.

North Korea is a notoriously paranoid and insular country, and the classified leaks allowed the North Koreans to cut off one of our few sources of intelligence from inside their borders.

The Associated Press story is a little more complicated, mostly because of the overblown hyperbole used by the AP in defense of their people. The AP published a story about a foiled bomb plot, and their story revealed the identity of a Saudi spy who'd been inserted into notoriously terrorist-friendly Yemen.

The Justice Department once again got a search warrant, as they should, and they used it to subpoena phone records from an editor and six reporters (including the Washington bureau chief, Sally Buzbee). Those seven people, though, used phones out in the common area of the AP news room which were used by every reporter who passed through the bureau; this allowed AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll to claim that the news service is "shocked" by what happened, and that the Justice Department cast a "very broad net" which pulled in AP operations "that have, as far as I know, no particular connection to the story that they seem to be investigating."

Sorry, lady, that's the way investigation works. To pull out the gold nuggets, sometimes you have to pan through a lot of pebbles. You'd probably know this if the AP did any actual investigation these days, instead of just stenography of other people's talking points.

Thanks to these two stories, we've lost access to one of the few available sources of information on the nuclear aspirations of a raving madman, and to a spy embedded in a terrorist cell.

And that's the real scandal.

The end of an error

Well, it happened. Michele Bachmann announced today that she won't be running. And comedians across the country suddenly feel the weight of a great depression.

I won't lie. She is, by herself, everything that's wrong with America today. Fear-mongering, stubbornly ignorant, and wildly partisan; but she brought so much entertainment into our lonely lives. Every time she opened her mouth, it was like the Muse of Comedy showered us with rose petals.

I mean, who can forget, back in 2009, her attempts to be disengenuous?

"I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence."

I mean, yeah, it's true that the swine flu epidemic happened under Ford, not Carter, but who are we to quibble over little things like "facts" when we've got talking points to manufacture, right? Or in 2008, when she called for a new McCarthyism?

"I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?"

But she was alway a uniter, not a divider, right?

Or her astute grasp of history?

"But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States... I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly -- men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country."

You have to admire the work ethic of someone like Adams, who would continue to work for 20 years after he left office - and even 15 years after his death! - to get the Emancipation Proclamation passed. That's the kind of go-getter we don't see any more.

Now, of course, the fact that she's being investigated for both financial and ethical misconduct has nothing to do with her dropping out of the race. Nothing at all. (It also didn't stop her from renewing her call for Obama's impeachment. Although, unlike her, Obama hasn't broken the law.)

She'll be back in the public eye soon enough; after all, grifters gotta grift. I'm figuring that, six months from now, she'll be a lobbyist, a Fox "News" contributor, or maybe a televangelist. But she's too much of an attention-whore to drop out of sight.

It's always possible that she'd run for Senator, but unlikely. Under Obamacare, Minnesota has been able to afford to stay on its meds, and the latest polls show Franken destroying her in a head-to-head match-up.

Of course, Bachmann claims that Big Government is destroying America. So you would hope that she's going to forfeit her pension from Congress, which, after eight years of misrepresenting the people of Minnesota, equals just shy of $24,000 a year, at this point. Somehow, I don't see that happening.

No Stars for the Lone Star State

Andrew Jackson was no intellectual. Sporadically educated but still a war hero and lawyer (and occasionally a slave owner and land speculator), he was unlike the well-spoken, educated and cultured men who'd been elected before him. And, much like in France after the Revolution, his election led to an unusual movement: education wasn't merely considered unimportant, it was actively spurned. The people began a celebration of the "common man," the "salt of the earth." You know, morons.

One result of this: in all but three states, the licensing requirements for doctors were repealed, to allow any man the ability to practice medicine. In 1850, in a survey for the Massachusetts legislature, Lemuel Shattuck reported that ""Any one, male or female, learned or ignorant, an honest man or a knave, can assume the name of physician, and 'practice' upon any one, to cure or to kill, as either may happen, without accountability. It's a free country!" (This also led to an astounding rise in the "patent medicine" (or "snake oil") trade, and America's long history of the "travelin' medicine show.)

(In case you were wondering about the etymology of that particular term: at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, Clark Stanley, dressed as a cowboy, strangled dozens of rattlesnakes on stage and wrung the bodies out over a bowl. He called the resulting liquid "snake oil" and claimed that a bottle would cure anything.)

That uniquely American attitude is with us today; or to be more accurate, it never left - it just shrunk for a while. But the innate distrust of book-learnin' has been a facet of the American culture ever since Jackson's time, and its most vocal adherents are found in today's Republican party in general, and the Tea Party specifically.

Oh, and Texas. A whole lot of stupid keeps coming from the state where I was born. (And yes, I'm not immune to that charge on my own, but at least I base my stupidity on facts, as opposed to strange conspiracy theories.)

The adopted state of George W. Bush and the home state of Rick Perry, the gene pool in Texas seems to have been badly polluted somewhere along the way, to the point where their main exports these days are shrieking and sweat.

The Governor of the once-great state, Rick Perry, who thought he could be elected despite being unable to name more than two government agencies at a time, is now spending Texas tax money to sign into law a bill which would protect every Texan's right to wish people a "Merry Christmas." (Perhaps he's doing it in May to get ahead of the rest of the "War on Christmas" crowd.)

Texas can also be proud of native son Louie Gohmert, a distended rectum of a man, who recently told a woman that even fetuses with no brain function should remain in the womb (since otherwise he wouldn't be here to stain the memory of intelligent Texans everywhere). He recently had a meltdown when the US Attorney General explained that ignorance wasn't a the best foundation for an argument. As someone wiser than I explained it:

Then (Gohmert) moved on to his main issue: that he thinks the FBI is a bunch of fuck-ups who "blew the opportunity" to stop Tamerlan Tsarnaev from bombing Boston because the FBI didn't fully investigate the information Russia was giving it. Holder demurred on much of what he was asked because it is an ongoing investigation. Gohmert insisted that he knew all about the FBI's refusal to go after Tsarnaev and then he played to his base of evangelical dumb fucks when he said to Holder, "Look, the FBI got a heads-up from Russia that you have a radicalized terrorist on your hands. They should not have had to give anything else whatsoever. That should have been enough. But because of political correctness, there was not a thorough enough examination of Tamerlan to determine this kid had been radicalized. And that is the concern I have. On the one hand, we go after Christian groups like Billy Graham's group. We go after Franklin Graham's group. But then we're hands off when it comes to possibly offending someone who has been radicalized as a terrorist." Having tickled Franklin Graham's prostate but good, Gohmert's time expired.

Holder started to speak to say that Gohmert was wrong when, his blood all het up by gettin' backsassed by a Negro, Gohmert jumped in, "You point out one thing that I pointed -- that I said that was not true." Gohmert had to have his cross-burning ass smacked down by committee chair Bob Goodlatte (which is just the most awesome name for a Republican), who told Gohmert to shut the fuck up and let Holder answer.

And then Holder pantsed Gohmert in front of everyone and pointed out what a tiny little dick and balls the Texan has: "The only observation I was going to make is that you state as a matter of fact what the FBI did and did not do. And unless somebody has done something inappropriate, you don't have access to the FBI files. You don't know what the FBI did. You don't know what the FBI's interaction was with the Russians. You don't know what questions were put to the Russians, whether those questions were responded to. You simply do not know that. And you have characterized the FBI as being not thorough or taking exception to my characterization of them as being thorough. I know what the FBI did. You cannot know what I know. That's all."

What followed can best be described as Gohmert going into an insulted idiot rage, screaming and slapping himself, crying that the Negro had gotten so uppity as to tell him he's wrong, while the other Republicans, including Issa, realized they had let him out of the cellar for too long and tried desperately to shut him up and get him back into the basement to sit in his rocker next to the radio that plays Rush Limbaugh's show. Holder's look of barely contained amusement is pretty fuckin' sweet. It climaxed with Gohmert saying, and this is as clear as can be in the video, "The attorney general will not cast aspersions on my asparagus." No, really. And so, his asparagus defended, he was done.

Which brings us to Ted Cruz, a rising star in Texas politics (which is a similar title, these days, to "pees his pants the least"). This is the fine human being who said that sending money to victims of Hurricane Sandy was "wasteful" and Federal aid is "pork."

Or, at least it was. Until it was Federal aid for victims of the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas. Then, suddenly, he was "working to ensure that all available resources are marshaled to deal with the horrific loss of life and suffering that we've seen."

Of course, this is the same Ted Cruz who recently tried to denigrate John Kerry and Chuck Hagel as being "less than ardent fans of the U.S. military," implying that they wouldn't keep America safe from foreign attacks.

Now, it's important to remember here that Cruz is talking about two decorated war heroes. One Democrat, one Republican. While the only uniform Cruz has ever worn is that Reichsmarschall uniform he keeps in his basement.

And the stupidity isn't confined to the upper echelons of Texas politics, either. Let's consider the judge in McKinney, Texas, who decided to insert a clause in the divorce papers to keep a lesbian from living with her partner, or lose custody of her two children to a convicted felon who rarely bothers to see the children. Because the judge didn't approve of the wife's "lifestyle."

There are stupid people everywhere. But somehow, they seem to grow 'em bigger in Texas.

Kokesh and the Marching Morons

When you look into the career of Adam Kokesh, you realize that he's pretty much just a media whore, who bases his entire schtick on anarchy and "government bad!" In his opinion, governments shouldn't be able to stop people from doing whatever they want to do. That's pretty much the extent of his philosophical depth, as far as I can tell: "you're not the boss of me! I can do what I want!"

I'm pretty sure he isn't married: he couldn't share the spotlight. Life with him would be one constant tantrum-fest.

He likes to stage random events where he can demonstrate that the government is power-hungry and out of control. But most of his problems seem to stem from his own inability to accept authority. He's been reduced to social media and YouTube, since, ironically, even Russia Today (a Russian-funded propaganda channel) got tired of his bullshit.

In the larger sense, I guess I have to appreciate that Kokesh is happy to piss off both sides equally - I can't find a mention of him on any right-wing website that doesn't call him "paid Russian agent Adam Kokesh." But in the end, that isn't enough: he's too busy marketing the one product he has - himself - to be anything more than a self-absorbed yutz.

His latest gag, though, is exactly what a disaster looks like in the fetal state: it's a bad idea waiting to blossom into a nightmare.

On the morning of July 4, 2013, Independence Day, we will muster at the National Cemetery & at noon we will step off to march across the Memorial Bridge, down Independence Avenue, around the Capitol, the Supreme Court, & the White House, then peacefully return to Virginia across the Memorial Bridge. This is an act of civil disobedience, not a permitted event. We will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny. We are marching to mark the high water mark of government & to turn the tide. This will be a non-violent event, unless the government chooses to make it violent. Should we meet physical resistance, we will peacefully turn back, having shown that free people are not welcome in Washington, & returning with the resolve that the politicians, bureaucrats, & enforcers of the federal government will not be welcome in the land of the free.

There's a remote chance that there will be violence as there has been from government before, and I think it should be clear that if anyone involved in this event is approached respectfully by agents of the state, they will submit to arrest without resisting. We are truly saying in the SUBTLEST way possible that we would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.

Really, Adam? You design an event to appeal to the paranoid lunatics with a penchant for violence, and you don't see where it can go horribly, horribly wrong? So I thought I'd make a suggestion.

The DC Metropolitan Police Department has a contact email address right their on their site, so I used it.

You guys don't get enough respect to begin with, and now you have to deal with an internet-celebrity drama queen and his planned act of "civil disobedience." On behalf of the sane people of America, let me apologize to you. You're put in the unenviable position of dealing with a man who wants to attract paranoid gun nuts to try and start a confrontation.

This is an unsolicited suggestion, so take it for what it's worth, but perhaps what you want to do is not treat it as a show of force, but simply an act of crowd control and mass processing.

They've published their planned route, which starts by marching across the Memorial Bridge. Now, that goes right into the mall around the Lincoln Memorial, which is going to make this a logistical nightmare anyway. But if you close the Memorial Bridge off to vehicular traffic and use a lot of crowd-control fences to block them off when they're distinctly in the District, you'll have already disrupted their plans. Then you set up a bunch of folding tables and chairs so that you can process 40 or 50 at a time, and a person with a loudspeaker advising them "Are you aware that you're breaking the law? This is your opportunity to turn around." Then, for any of them that continue, have a smiling officer direct them to the next open table where they can sit for the initial processing.

The Facebook page for the march says that they want it to be "a non-violent event" and "if anyone involved in this event is approached respectfully by agents of the state, they will submit to arrest without resisting." So take them at their word.

You'll probably want to have some quick reaction teams nearby, but don't have them visible to the idiots. Just professional uniformed police officers.

Borrow a lot of gun racks from the National Guard, and do the minimum processing on the scene, including, obviously, confiscating their weapons ("Oh, no, sir. You'll get a receipt, and you'll get it back when this is all over.") Two-part receipt, with half tied to the weapon and the other half given to the owner. Quick frisk to find any other weapons, basic paperwork at the table, hustle them out of sight into GP Large tents set up on either side, and when you have good-sized group, put them on buses to finish the processing elsewhere.

Mostly, you want to break them into manageable groups, get the ringleaders shipped out fast where they can't make a spectacle (that being Kokesh's big plan), and keep them moving. And anybody who wants to go back across the bridge to Virginia? Don't stop them. Once a few of them decide they don't want to get arrested today and start walking back, more will join them.

Everybody you arrest gets fined, run them for outstanding warrants, check that the firearms are legal somewhere, and let them go. They get the various weapons back after all the checks are done and you know that everything is clean, if the owner goes to a specific location (a National Guard armory, for instance - someplace you can secure that many weapons), Monday through Friday from noon to four. (You're under no obligation to make it easy for them, are you?)

Like I said, mass processing. Break up their momentum. Let their "statement" fizzle out. Anyone who wants to be arrested gets their wish. Everybody wins.

But mostly, good luck.

The cops can't let the march happen, and a show of force is just a mistake. I have no idea what they'll do, but with any luck, Kokesh will end up looking like more of a fool than he usually does.

The rocky nook with hilltops three/Looked eastward from the farms

So, what is our takeaway from the Boston bombing? Three people were killed, and over 170 people were injured. What should we do about it?

Well, Senator Lindsey Graham (belle of the ball and well-known Scarlett O'Hara impersonator) believes we should take away the rights of American citizens, skip having a trial entirely, and pull out the whips and cattle-prods.


Wonkette published a list of people who they suggested should eat a bag of dicks on the subject. But I'm pretty sure Lindsey has dreams like that, and I'm not in the business of making him happy.

Over on the openly-insane side of the argument, we have Alex Jones of the conspiracy-theory site infowars.com saying that the Obama administration staged the whole thing in order to establish martial law and take away our rights. (On the other hand, a blogger at Forward Progressives makes an equally persuasive argument that Alex Jones’ desire for farm animals fuels his distrust for the government.)

Jones wasn't the only conspiracy theorist to go completely bugnuts over this whole thing. There was just too much misinformation out there for their tiny little brains to process. For one thing, the media certainly failed to do anything except look like incompetent idiots (here's a visual representation of who said what and when, if you're curious.) The most egregious lies, of course, came from publications owned by Rupert Murdoch: the New York Post, Wall Street Journal and Fox "News" Channel.

Easily the worst of those three was the tabloid NY Post, who decided to devote their front page to two bystanders who the Post implied were the bombers. Because, hey, they had dark skin, right?

One of them, a high-school track star, turned himself in to the police because he didn't want to get attacked by people who still believe that the NY Post covers the news.


Social media wasn't much help - Twitter and police scanners allowed the innocent people to end up smeared as "suspects," or sometimes, to create people who didn't exist.

Meanwhile, at 2:14am Eastern, an official on the police scanner said, "Last name: Mulugeta, M-U-L-U-G-E-T-A, M as in Mike, Mulugeta." And thus was born the newest suspect in the case: Mike Mulugeta. It doesn't appear that Mulugeta, whoever he or she is, has a first name of Mike. And yet that name, "Mike Mulugeta," was about to become notorious.

One of the things that spurred many a paranoid rant, of course, was the fact that a Saudi man was (or wasn't) taken into custody (or to a hospital, or escaped) after being seen planting a bomb (or running from the scene, or acting suspticiously), and then was released (or disappeared, or was taken up by the alien mothership).

Yes, "facts" became remarkably fluid over the course of last week.

What basically happened was a simple combination of paranoia and racism.

A twenty-year-old man who had been watching the Boston Marathon had his body torn into by the force of a bomb. He wasn't alone; a hundred and seventy-six people were injured and three were killed. But he was the only one who, while in the hospital being treated for his wounds, had his apartment searched in "a startling show of force," as his fellow-tenants described it to the Boston Herald, with a "phalanx" of officers and agents and two K9 units...

Why the search, the interrogation, the dogs, the bomb squad, and the injured man's name tweeted out, attached to the word "suspect"? After the bombs went off, people were running in every direction—so was the young man. Many, like him, were wounded; many of them were saved by the unflinching kindness of strangers, who carried them or stopped the bleeding with their own hands and improvised tourniquets....

In the midst of that, according to a CBS News report, a bystander saw the young man running, badly hurt, rushed to him, and then “tackled him,” bringing him down. People thought he looked suspicious.

What made them suspect him? He was running — so was everyone. The police reportedly thought he smelled like explosives; his wounds might have suggested why. He said something about thinking there would be a second bomb — as there was, and often is, to target responders. If that was the reason he gave for running, it was a sensible one. He asked if anyone was dead — a question people were screaming. And he was from Saudi Arabia, which is around where the logic stops.

He was cleared by the authorities. But not by social media. And he has now become another puzzle piece for the paranoid to obsess about.

And our right-wing media continues to fan the fear. We have columnists ranting in national outlets that this attack (which, as I mentioned above, killed 3 people and injured 170) was literally worse than 9/11, or the Oklahoma City bombing, or any attack ever, all the way back to the Great Flood!

Huh. If you think about it, the Biblical Flood was just another mass killing. What does that make God?... It is the Old Testament, so it could be argued that He was Middle Eastern...

Sorry. Seem to have gone off on a tangent, there...

So, what should we take away from this experience? Well, while there were more injured, there were less people killed than there were at Sandy Hook. We should probably react to this tragedy just the same way we did to that one. Just as much should get done because of this, as will get done because of that.

And maybe, just maybe, the media can get its head out of its ass, and go back to reporting facts, instead of rushing to get something (anything!) out there to the public, and to be first!

Somehow, I doubt that any of this will be the case. But we can hope.

Rape, and a Little Reality

So, another sad example of male privilege and victim-blaming came to light last week, when Canadian teen Rehtaeh Parsons hanged herself after the RCMP decided that it didn't have enough to act on, and closed the case. Despite one of the four boys having circulated evidence of him committing the crime (which also constitutes child pornography, incidentally). Despite the fact that it took hacker group Anonymous about two hours to find the names of the four boys involved.

Backed against a wall, the RCMP agreed to reopen the case. So, bravo, Anonymous.

This case is remarkably similar to the Steubenville, Ohio rape case, in which two teens took advantage of a drunk underage girl to abuse her when she couldn't fight back. In both cases, the victim was blamed for being a slut, when they were both unconscious (or all but) at the time. In both cases, the police tried to cover it up, and members of Anonymous wouldn't let them.

The Far Right (and some other idiots) practically dryhumped the Steubenville story, trying to empathize with the rapists and saying it was the victim's fault (because, after all, all men rape - they can't help themselves, right?).

Easily the weirdest reaction, though, came from a libertarian college professor, who put it this way:

Let’s suppose that you, or I, or someone we love, or someone we care about from afar, is raped while unconscious in a way that causes no direct physical harm — no injury, no pregnancy, no disease transmission. (Note: The Steubenville rape victim, according to all the accounts I’ve read, was not even aware that she’d been sexually assaulted until she learned about it from the Internet some days later.) Despite the lack of physical damage, we are shocked, appalled and horrified at the thought of being treated in this way, and suffer deep trauma as a result. Ought the law discourage such acts of rape? Should they be illegal?...

As long as I’m safely unconscious and therefore shielded from the costs of an assault, why shouldn’t the rest of the world (or more specifically my attackers) be allowed to reap the benefits?

Now, I'm not going to try to refute his argument directly (if you aren't sociopathic, the answer should be obvious). What I'm going to point out is this:

A. Following that logic out to its obvious conclusion, there is no private possession of any item. This is more extensive than anything ever suggested by any follower of communism or socialism.

By this reasoning, nobody should ever be allowed to take their keys with them after they drive to work; while you're in your office, other people should be allowed to use your car. After all, if they refill the gas and return it before you leave for the day, there's no problem, right?

Nor can you lock your door: people should be allowed to have parties in your house while you aren't there, shouldn't they? As long as they clean up after themselves, no harm, no foul, right?

(Let's just pretend that there's no such thing as "depreciation" in the tax code: these are his thought experiments, not mine.)

B. Would you like to guess why the Right Wing is losing the idiotically-named "War on Women"? It's fascinating how this argument joins up with the abortion question: it's all the same. Dr Landsburg doesn't expand on his rape-apology in the way that I just did, because that's where it breaks down. In his view, not only is a woman's body just property (and not property that she controls, by the way), but it isn't even as important as his house, or his car. She's just there to be used by other people.

This is why the Right Wing is roughly as popular as chlamydia in most polls.

Quick English lesson

I'm currently (re)reading The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson. And it's one of the few non-fiction books that I will unreservedly recommend to anyone. It would be sad if a person who studied English couldn't be said to have a "way with words," and he most definitely does. The whole thing is written in an excessible, jovial style, and is simultaneously fascinating and educational.


And here is your vocabulary word for today: polysemy. That's where you take a single word, and give it a whole buttload of meanings. "Fine," for example: not to put too fine a point on it, but a man with fine hair can pay his fine to the court, and if he's got money left and is feeling fine, can go buy some fine art.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "fine" has 14 definitions as an adjective, six as a noun and two as an adverb. Its definition fills two full pages, and takes 5,000 words to explain. "Sound" and "round" are other fine examples.

The winner, though, is a three-letter monosyllable, "set." It has 58 uses as a noun, 126 as a verb, and 10 as a participial adjective. It takes the OED 60,000 words to explain the full range of its use. Apparently, like the Tardis, it's bigger on the inside.

Ironically, though, "polysemy" only has one definition.

What is it about Islamic fundamentalists?

Anybody who knows me (statistically, damned few of you) is aware that I am not a faithful churchgoer. And some of you probably worked that out from my nom de blog.

However, for all that unbelievers in America face discrimination, idiocy and occasional threats, we have it better than people in some parts of the world.

I tend to reserve most of my bile for Christianity, mostly because it's the religion that keeps trying to take over America. Which happens to be where I live. I don't happen to appreciate people trying to shove their beliefs down my throat - I'm not going to compare it to rape, but there are philosophical similarities. Much in the way that a house fire would be similar to a nuclear holocaust, but still...

In fact, due to the excessive and overwrought hatred of Muslims that is typically found among members of the Right Wing, I've tended to shy away from pointing out the less-brilliant aspects of Islamic beliefs. But let me just say this.

Muslim societies, on the whole, are less advanced than those of us in what they call the "West." Their educational levels frequently aren't even on a par with Mississippi, they are roughly as set in their ways as the Catholic church, and they share many beliefs with the Westboro Baptist Chuch. And they have an unpleasant tendancy toward violence similar to members of the NRA.

Bangladesh, for example, is nominally a secular democracy, but they seem to have forgotten what "secular" actually means. When Bangladesh gained independance from Pakistan in 1971, they set up a constitution that included "Four State Principles" - Secularism, Democracy, Nationalism and Socialism (factors which were upheld in Bangladeshi court in 2010).

However, with a population that is almost 90% Muslim (89.4% in 2010), they seem to be adding two more principles: Bigotry and Intolerance.

And Violence. So maybe three principles. (I could add "Murder," but it would rapidly grow into a Monty Python sketch about the Muslim Inquisition.)

See, there's an atheist blogger in Bangladesh named Asif Mohiuddin. In January, he was attacked in an apparent murder attempt, by three men who tried (but failed) to stab him in the throat. A month later, on 15 February, another atheist blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was hacked to death in a machete attack in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh.

For the crime of making himself a target, the surviving blogger, Asif, was arrested last Wednesday, and his blog on www.somewhereinblog.net ordered shut down by the government. He was the fourth blogger in two days to be arrested for "defaming Islam.".

The government is cracking down on athiests because Muslims are rioting. Which is, of course, the perfect response: you should always give in to violent threats. On 13 March, the Prime Minister's office formed a committee tasked with identifying "blasphemous" bloggers.

Earlier in the week, four online writers were arrested on charges of hurting Islamic religious sentiments in a country where 90 percent of people are Muslims.

Following recent protests over the war crimes tribunal, the government has blocked a dozen websites and blogs to stem the unrest. It has also set up a panel, which includes intelligence chiefs, to monitor blasphemy on social media.

Under the country’s cyber laws, a blogger or Internet writer can face up to ten years in jail for defaming a religion.

What is it about radical Islam that causes them to attack and kill anyone they disagree with? If girls try to go to school, they get shot. Cartoonists who draw pictures of Mohammed are attacked with axes. Being "too Western" or committing "sexual impropriety" will get a woman murdered by her family.

Now, among Christians, the percentage of fundamentalists varies: in the Bible Belt (sociographically, the "East South Central Region" - Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Alabama), it stands at about 58%, while in New England, it climbed slightly during the Bush era to 13%. If we assume that the same percentages hold for the Islamic peoples, that's still a buttload of fundamentalists. And in any religion, it's the fundamentalists who make the worst neighbors.

Here's the thing. Islam has been round for about 1400 years. Know what Christians were doing at about the same point in their history? Crusades and Inquisitions: killing people of other religions, and locking people up for daring to speak against them. The only difference is, modern Muslims have access to more technology than Christians did in the Middle Ages.

You have to wonder if this is a cycle that all major religions go through.