Autumn and I have been passing on right-wing reaction yesterday’s historic Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality in California, but I wanted to reserve a post for this unique reaction from fundie Mike Heath of the Christian Civic League of Maine.

He’s basically cried uncle in terms of protecting the word “marriage,” and wants to get back to basics, which sounds a lot like extermination, if you ask me. Homos have been compared to all sorts of things, but I don’t think I’ve been referred to as a weed polluting a lawn. Via email from Blender Herb, who’s on the CCLM mailing list:

Some people are suggesting that California’s ridiculous Supreme Court decision on “marriage” yesterday is reason to renew Maine’s push for a constitutional amendment. Those people are dead wrong.

While I support any real efforts to amend the Federal Constitution to protect marriage, I don’t support a Maine constitutional amendment at this time. Anyone who has been paying attention to this issue in Maine for the past two decades knows that the entire Maine political establishment is in “love” with “gay” special interests.

The fight is over if we are going to protect the word marriage only. Most recommendations I hear for constitutional amendments will protect only the word marriage, and allow for civil unions and domestic partnerships. A cursory reading of the Massachusetts and California court decisions will reveal the folly of this approach.

We must attack this problem at its root. If you want to get rid of a weed you don’t pull off the leaves. You destroy the root. The root idea of so-called same sex marriage is special rights for citizens on the basis of sexual wrongdoing. That is where the fight must be engaged.

Our only hope in the short term is the people. If everyone will get behind the League’s referendum we can begin the process of righting the ship of state more quickly.

I call on all people of good will to support our referendum today. It is the loving thing to do. Let’s support marriage and equality. We can’t afford to wait.

And Mike’s apparently found yet another version of The Homosexual Agenda. See his discovery below the fold.
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UPDATE 2: Happy Happy Joy Joy! Here is The Peter:

How Will California Homosexual Couples Consummate their Counterfeit ‘Marriages’?

JUDICIAL ACTIVISM AT ITS WORST: This will always be immoral. California’s highest court has created a “fundamental” marriage right out of behavior - homosexuality - that is fundamentally wrong and destructive. At left is a homosexual male kissing scene as it appeared on the CBS soap “As the World Turns.” Everywhere Americans turn - TV, media, schools, in corporations and the courts - this unhealthy and immoral behavior is being promoted

(UPDATE: Bam Bam Barber of Concerned Women weighs in below the fold.)

Ah, before we get to the Freepi, how about this delicious reaction from the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, who believes civil rights should be determined at the ballot box.

It’s outrageous that the court has overturned not only the historic definition of marriage, but the clear will of the people of California, as expressed in Proposition 22. said FRC President Tony Perkins. The California Supreme Court assumed the powers of a legislative body by imposing same-sex marriage. However, in 2000, the people of California spoke loudly and clearly on the value of marriage when 61 percent of voters approved Proposition 22.

The California Supreme Court has taken a jackhammer to the democratic process, and the right of the people to affect change in public policy. Four judges discarded the votes of 4,618,673 Californians who approved the states Defense of Marriage Act. Voters understand that children should not be deprived of a mother or a father, added Perkins.

I can’t wait for the flying spittle from Focus on the Anus, Bam Bam of Concerned Women for America and The Peter. Right now, take a look at the swamps of Freeperland as they wail, and in one case seems to be calling for violence (big surprise).

It’s below the fold.
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Oh my. Just watch. This administration cannot end soon enough. Oh my. Just watch. This administration cannot end soon enough. Olbermann shows a pic of Dear Leader playing golf two months after he claimed he stopped playing “in solidarity” with grieving families who lost loved ones in his Iraq nightmare. That was bad enough, but his sacrifice wasn’t even his own idea, so his handlers even saw this as some sort of noble gesture to spin — it’s an administration of completely morally and ethically bankrupt people, and KO had enough.

Part 1:

A snippet:

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on two topics a lot of us had foolishly thought, had naively hoped, we would not again have to address… and a third topic nobody thought a president would ever seriously mention in public unless perhaps he’d just been hit in the head with something and was not in full possession of his faculties - how he expressed his “empathy” to the families of the dead in Iraq - by giving up golf.

The President has resorted anew to the sleaziest fear-mongering and mass manipulation of an administration - of a public life - dedicated to realizing the lowest of our expectations.

Part 2:

Full transcript is below the fold.
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(UPDATE: The GOP is in a panic over the legacy of this administration and its effect on November elections. See below the fold.)

We all know Dear Leader has no shame, but here’s yet another example of his terror alert leash jerking and fearmongering, intimating that electing a Democrat will lead to disaster if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq.

President Bush warned in an interview Tuesday that the Democratic presidential candidates’ plans to withdraw abruptly from Iraq could “eventually lead to another attack on the United States” and would “embolden” terrorists.

In a White House interview with Politico and Yahoo News — a president’s first for an online audience — Bush said his doomsday scenario for a premature withdrawal “of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States.”

I hate to break it to his highness, but he f*cked up the whole region with his Big Military Adventure. It’s hard to imagine anyone screwing over both this country and Iraq any more than he has.

In the interview, he also shows how he prays away any guilt at sending young Americans to perish fighting military battles based on his bad judgment and Darth’s dark hand. God’s comfort is all these families need, not an apology from the man sitting in the Oval Office.

His Christian faith has increased in office, since “part of the faith walk is to understand your weaknesses and is to constantly try to embetter yourself and get closer to the Lord, and that’s a daily occurrence.”

“Obviously, there’s been some tough moments in here,” he said. “When you know that somebody lost their loved one as a result of a decision that I made, that’s a tough moment. If you’re a faithful person, you try to empathize with the suffering that that person is going through. On the other hand, there is a knowledge that the good Lord can comfort during these moments of grief. And that’s what I ask for in my prayer.”

And what can only be described as the public ramblings of a sociopath, our president said he shows his solidarity with families who have lost loved ones in his military misadventure by...not going out on the links anymore. I’m not sh*tting you.

See the video below the fold.
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Jeebus! It must be Americans for Truth Against Homosexuality’s fundraising quarter as we’ve hit the jackpot again, along with Box Turtle Bulletin. It’s completely over the top batsh*t insane beauteous:

The Left knows hate

In their continuing effort to steal the legacy of the real civil rights movement, homosexual activists and their allies posit an analogy between racism and “homophobia” — their smear term of choice to denigrate traditionalists. It is a deeply flawed comparison: what does unchangeable skin color and ethnicity have to do with aberrant, immoral and changeable sexual behavior?

…Moreover, the homosexualists are in the uncomfortable position of making actual descendants of slaves — like Pastor Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church and ex-lesbian Janet Boynes… — the target of their opprobrium. Men and women of color (like Crystal Dixon, a Black woman who recently was suspended from the University of Toledo after publicly making points similar to these) are mere “religious anti-gay bigots,” according to the homo-fundamentalists’ warped formulations.

Being lectured on intolerance by anti-Christian bigots like Tim Kincaid and Barney Frank — or run-of-the-mill leftist hate sites like Daily Kos — is like the USA being scolded for human rights violations by North Korea. If you think I jest, check out the hate-filled comments and vile anti-Christian insults that flow liberally on lesbian Pam Spaulding’s blog (try doing a search on “Jeebus” — a substitute for “Jesus” that secular snobs use to mock Christians).

Pam’s and Tim’s sites are further proof that nobody hates like the Left. And few on the Left hate like the homosexual activists (with radical pro-abortion-on-demand feminists a close second).

Past endorsements:

A “vicious anti-Christian lesbian activist.”
(Concerned Women for America’s radio show [9:15], 1/25/07)

“A nutty lesbian blogger.”
(MassResistance radio show [16:25], 2/3/07)

Related:
* Pam’s House Blend’s Peter LaBarbera files
* This I believe

Hat tip, Eva.

Am I behind the curve because I’ve never heard of one of these before?

A consumer report contains information about your personal and credit characteristics, character, general reputation, and lifestyle.

And how does the reporting agency get that information? By that most American of methods:

[I]nterviews with an applicant’s or employee’s friends, neighbors, and associates

I’m not crazy, right? This is a frighteningly invasive technique when it comes to employment, right?

Help me understand this batsh*ttery, please. From the great Sunshine State town of Land O’ Lakes…

Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.

But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land O’ Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own.

“I get a call the middle of the day from the supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, ‘Jim, we have a huge issue. You can’t take any more assignments. You need to come in right away,’” he said.

When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell that went much farther than he’d hoped.

“I said, ‘Well Pat, can you explain this to me?’ ‘You’ve been accused of wizardry,’ [he said]. Wizardry?” he asked.

Tampa Bay’s 10 talked to the assistant superintendent with the Pasco County School District who said it wasn’t just the wizardry and that Piculas had other performance issues, including “not following lesson plans” and allowing students to play on unapproved computers.

Piculas said he knew nothing about the accusations.

“That… I think was embellished after the fact to try to cover what initially what they were saying to me,” he said.

Hat tip to reader Beth, who said “I assume this is the result of some fundies and their anti-harry-potter obsession?”

Washington University students and faculty are in an uproar over the decision to award anti-gay, anti-feminist Eagle Forum fossil Phyllis Schlafly an honorary doctorate at its May 16 commencement ceremony. A Facebook group created to protest the move has over a thousand members.

Mary Ann Dzuback, the director of the women and gender studies department at Washington University agreed, said it was “grossly inappropriate” for the university to honor Schlafly with a degree.

“She’s spent her entire career speaking against women in the workforce and for them remaining in the home,” Dzuback said of Schlafly, who rose to prominence during the successful campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s.

…The university issued a statement Sunday defending its decision, saying it — like many other universities — chooses to honor those “who have become a part of the broad public discourse on vital issues of the times.” The statement cited other controversial figures, such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, whom the school has honored.

Steve Ralls of PFLAG National:

PFLAG and our St. Louis chapter are proud to join those on the ground in Missouri and call on school officials to do the right thing and, as executive director Jody Huckaby said today, “find a more suitable person to applaud.”

Steve also points out some of Mother Schlafly’s winning cultural touchstones:

On California’s SB-77, to protect GLBT students: The legislation “represent[s] a repudiation of 2,000 years of Christian moral teaching on human sexuality, marriage, and the family. The result is that California’s schools are now promoting behaviors and lifestyles that are physically and spiritually dangerous for children.”

On the idea of any protections for GLBT youth: “The bottom line is, don’t count on the courts to protect public school students from being subjected to the promotion of homosexuality.”

On sexual harassment laws: “Sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for virtuous women.”

Yeah. I think they could locate someone who isn’t terminally frozen in the dark ages.

Out. Of. Control. Dateline Kamloops, British Columbia - Three Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers apparently couldn’t subdue an elderly patient. The sadistic sickness continues. BTW, you can see pics of the man’s stun gun burns at the CBC site.

Frank Lasser, 82, appeared fragile Thursday when he showed the stun gun marks on his body and talked about the ordeal he went through Saturday.

“They [police] should have known I had bypass surgery,” Lasser told CBC News.

Lasser has had heart surgery and needs to carry an apparatus to supply oxygen at all times. He was in the Royal Inland Hospital Saturday due to pneumonia but has since been released.

RCMP said nurses called police after Lasser became delirious and pulled a knife out of his pocket.

Lasser told CBC News that he sometimes become delusional when he can’t breathe properly. He said he couldn’t explain why he refused to let go of the knife even after the Mounties arrived.

“I was laying on the bed by then and the corporal came in, or the sergeant, I forget which it was, and said to the guys, ‘OK, get him because we got more important work to do on the street tonight,’” Lasser said.

The article also refers to the Taser as “the conducted energy weapon.”

Hat tip, Shane.

The Blend Taser files.

Last night in another thread, I commented again about how poorly Hillary Clinton has been served by her hired campaign guns. Of course, the senator has stuck her foot in her mouth on her own as well, but nothing compares to this. From a new USA Today interview, she manages to top any dog-whistle race-baiting that her husband put out on the campaign trail with this naked appeal.

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

Wow. Just. Wow. That didn’t blow by without comment, even in the article.

Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Clinton’s comment was a “poorly worded” variation on the way analysts have been “slicing and dicing the vote in racial terms.”

Is that another variation on “misspoke”?

You see the problem and beauty of Senator Clinton’s statement is that it boldly embraces the undiscussed fear in this Reagan Democrat demographic, the people who do consider race a major factor — concern that white privilege is being threatened, that somehow Barack Obama as president would exact retribution against “hard working white Americans” for past or present institutionalized racism. You know, like this candid Kentucky voter:

I’ve talked to people-a woman who was chair of county elections last year, she said she wouldn’t vote for a black man.” Patrick said he wouldn’t vote for Obama either.

Why not?

“Race. I really don’t want an African-American as President. Race.”

What about race?

“I thought about it. I think he would put too many minorities in positions over the white race. That’s my opinion.”

The frame is specific — that’s why Clinton referred to hard working white Americans. What happened to “blue collar Americans?” Oh wait, there are a lot of hard working black and brown blue collar/working class Americans, and many of them they voted for Obama, so she had to slice that demo down to the bottom line. Dog whistles no more.

I want to believe that it wasn’t a purposeful slip of the tongue because it’s too painful to contemplate that the black vote is now perceived as a “problem” because it skews to Obama, and because there are more white voters who have a problem with him based on his race, we have to nail that demo.

Remember, the black vote has been the most reliable Democratic vote, not the Reagan Democrats. Black voters don’t turn out for Obama solely because he is black. I’ve blogged before about this bizarre train of thought — if the affinity vote is so powerful we would have seen a bum rush for Alan Keyes. What Clinton is saying is not inaccurate (polls slice and dice this way), but its use here is inappropriate and inflammatory. It’s because the last core demo left for her to appeal to is resistant to Obama for reasons that have little to do with policy differences, or 3 AM readiness. She’s brought the microtarget out into the light and it’s one many of us don’t want to face talking about, with a different name — scared white people.

She is naming her remaining trump card, and considering our country’s pitiful history of not frankly dealing with or discussing race — aside from painful, fumbling defensive fits and starts — we’re left to deal with the fallout of a “poorly worded” statement, lacking a sufficiently stocked toolbox to deal with the ramifications of courting a vote with implicit and explicit biases.

The question never explored is why are these people scared more about a black president (regardless of political viewpoint) than the prospect of a McCain presidency and four more years of failed economic policies that have left this very demographic high and dry? What do we want to do about this as Americans? Apparently nothing, that’s a third rail topic and there’s an election to win.

Naming it means acknowledging problems we haven’t dealt with, and exploding the myth of a post-racial America. Barack Obama may be the first post-racial candidate because of his personal heritage, but the United States of America is nowhere near “post-racial” when it comes to politics.

So does the clock at left stop? I didn’t receive a response from Sen. Dole’s pitiful Constituent Services Letter Generator^TM. No autopen-signed missive to help me pretend that I heard from my senator.

What I did receive this afternoon was a fax from Communications Director Hogan Gidley of the Elizabeth Dole campaign regarding the petition that I delivered last Friday on behalf of 1265 readers of Firedoglake, Pam’s House Blend, and BlueNC. The petition requested that the North Carolina senator ask Linda Daves of the NC Republican party to stop running the color-aroused anti-Obama ad called “Extreme,” which tries to draw some sort of connection between Dem gubernatorial candidates Bev Perdue and Richard Moore (both endorsed Obama) and Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

What was Dole’s response? I have no idea, since the response is from Mr. Gidley, there’s no way for me to know whether my senator actually read the petition. The letter I received is an exercise in predictable spin; it doesn’t address the NCGOP’s ad or her party’s involvement and endorsement of playing to people’s biases. Gidley:

Thank you very much for delivering the petition. As Senator Dole’s campaign spokesman, I would like to take the opportunity to respond. The political advertisement that you reference has nothing to do with Senator Dole’s campaign, nor does she plan on refereeing third party political advertisements.

So state parties can run amok. I guess it’s hands-off for Liddy.

What the Dole campaign laughably calls for, in letter to NCDP party chair Jerry Meek from Dole consultant Mark Stephens (the second page of the document), is for the NC Democratic Party not to run any advertising against Dole, to tell her Dem opponent to refrain from anti-Dole ads, and to tell the national party not to run third party ads against her! Oh, this is rich!

Stephens to Meek:

the Dole campaign extends an offer to enter into a written agreement with the North Carolina Democratic Party, your national counterpart committees in Washington, as well as the eventual Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate to disallow political party advertising in North Carolina. This will prevent the circumstances that you have described from happening in the contest for U.S. Senate.

Alrighty then. So if they cannot use traditional bottom-feeding ads, they propose no one runs any ads, even comparison of record ads, which do inform voters. Take their ball and go home. Well we know the GOP cannot run on its failed ideas, and Elizabeth Dole has a miserable Bush rubber-stamp record, so it’s no surprise that we received a non-starter response like this.
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*
That’s right: Gordon Smith, 2-term Senator, fake maverick, is running on a platform of change.

There’s a relatively obscure (at least in the US) musical from the 1990s called The Fix, and as I recovered from the early-morning shock of hearing this bullshit, I recalled a song called I See the Future, in which empty-suit Cal gives his first speech while running for city council:

I see the future,
I see a day when we are one
I see tomorrow
I see us striving for the sun
I see us working toward the promise
and answering the call
I see the future
I see the future
and I see it in the faces of the young

Of course, just like in real life the vacuous media and bored public eat it up.
———
* Transcript of the offending passage: Jeff Merkley, Steve Novick: More of the same, when it’s time for change.

I can’t believe I’m writing about even more Taser horrors so soon. Stop the f*cking madness. I just can’t take it any more. Via African American Political Pundit:

As reported by many News Outlets and USA: Amnesty International Nine months after Emily Delafield, 56, died after being tased by police, her family has few answers about the events that led to her death. “This has been a very tragic and sad situation,” nephew Ryan Delafield said… Ryan Delafield says he is his aunt’s personal representative. In the weeks after her death he needed a death certificate for matters of her estate. “May, June, July… it was three months before we got the death certificate,” Delafield said.

The officers have been cleared in the case - big surprise. From First Coast News (which has audio recordings from the 911 call).

Delafield, a schizophrenic, sounds calm at first on the audio tape. Police say when they got to her, she was armed with two knives and a hammer. Police say the wheelchair-bound woman was threatening to hurt herself and others.

Delafield is heard on the tape saying, “You better get back.” Police debated what to do and then used their tasers. In the audio recording, you can hear Delafield screaming.

“My aunt was basically tortured like an animal or something,” Delafield’s nephew, Ryan Delafield, told First Coast News months ago.

Let’s just wind the clock back before the advent of Tasers. Certainly the officers would have been able to subdue this woman without resorting to quasi-lethal methods. And when these officers drew out the devices, they applied the Tasing with gusto. Read in disbelief below the fold.
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Any other country at any other time, and there’d be nothing complex about this:

Democrat Barack Obama took a hit yesterday when rival Hillary Rodham Clinton put up an Indiana TV ad highlighting his opposition to a summer-long suspension of the gas tax. Today he fought back with an ad that says the suspension would save consumers maybe $25 and wouldn’t bring down prices…

I’m here to tell you the truth. We could suspend the gas tax for 6 months, but that’s not going to bring down gas prices long-term. You’re gonna save about 25, 30 dollars…or half a tank of gas. That’s typical of how Washington works. There’s a problem, everybody’s upset about gas prices – let’s find some short-term, quick-fix, that we can say we did something even though, even though we’re not really doing anything.

Democratic support of the gas tax repeal is kind of typical: “We scoffed at Bush in 2000 for offering everyone ‘only’ a $300 refund, but we’re willing to smear each other over $30.” Democrats: Like Republicans, but 1/10th.

And of course, we wouldn’t even get that $30; the Tax Policy Center says prices would rebound almost “immediately.”

“Unless the goal is to temporarily boost profits for petroleum refineries and foreign producers, the proposal makes no sense,” says Len Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center.

And at least Hillary wants to replace the money with taxes on the oil companies, as unlikely as that notion is. McCain, as far as I know, offers no such compensation. Either way, as Matthew Yglesias notes, this kind of “[policy] gimmickry” is harmful to America:

But when national leaders act as if they believe current fuel costs are a passing phenomenon to be weathered with short-term measures, then at least some voters are going to believe them and make bad personal and political decisions that we can ill afford. A lot of electoral gambits are nonsense without being actually harmful, but McCain and Clinton are making problems worse just with their rhetoric.

(Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to see, say, truck drivers offered a repeal and consumers offered a boost in gas tax, but the average voter who doesn’t drive for a living would have to be crazy to make a gas tax suspension some sort of make-it-or-break-it issue.

The average American voter.

Would have to be…crazy.

Ah, shit.)

Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh. my. god. Where do you even begin in this fact-free screed from South Carolinian Nancy Morgan, news editor of RightBias.com?

Personally, I cringe when I see two guys swapping spit. Or when half naked transsexuals flaunt their sexuality in public places. I always wonder what they’re celebrating. A lifestyle that takes 20 years off your life? A dangerous, deadly and costly way of life that effectively undermines traditional families? The fact that gays and lesbians experience twice the partner abuse of straight couples? No, they’re celebrating their empowerment, leaving all other Americans to pay the social and financial costs involved. After all, they’ve got rights.

I’ve got rights, too. I have the right to pick my nose in public and wave it in someone else’s face (unless they’re gay or black - then it would be a hate crime). Good manners and a decent upbringing keep me from exercising this right. I also have the right to object when someone shoves their personal sexual habits in my face and demand that I not only tolerate it, but endorse it. That’s just plain rude. Hey, I’m still trying to figure out why weenie waggers are arrested while half nude trans-sexuals sporting fake organs have the right to wave them in public.

Gays are portrayed as victims of an unfeeling society. As such, they have been granted special rights not available to other Americans. The right not to be offended, the right to automatic respect, and the right to offend any person or group that dares to object. Imagine the outcry if Christians were granted these same rights.

The gurus of political correctness have decided that anyone who is not in agreement with the increasingly blatant homosexual agenda is a homophobe. Color me homophobic. I not only disagree with flaunting ones privates in public, I also disagree with exposing this behavior to children and telling them its their right, if not their duty, to put their sexuality above all other considerations.

What do you make of the unhinged obsession with half-naked transsexuals and wagging naughty bits in public? I haven’t noticed any transgender weenie wagging in my state. Is there something more egregious going on when you cross the state line into SC?

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper cracked down on the misleading and deceptive robo-calls by Women’s Voices. Women Vote that implied voters had to wait for and fill out a registration packet before they could vote. He stated that the calls are breaking state law. (Audio of the call here).

What is particularly egregious is that the calls went out after the registration deadline for the presidential primary — and were targeting minority neighborhoods, using a fictitious caller named “Lamont Williams.” In a measure of damage control, a press release landed in my inbox from WVWV in the late afternoon yesterday. A snippet is below the fold.
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In Tennessee, an attempt to curtail PDA in school leads to outing young people. This is wrong on so many levels.

A public high school principal who posted the names of two boys on a list of students believed to be couples, revealing their relationship to their parents as well as other students and teachers, violated the students’ constitutional right to freedom of association, the American Civil Liberties Union charged Tuesday.

In a letter to school board officials in Memphis, the ACLU demanded that the school reprimand the principal and take steps to ensure such actions never happen again.

In September of 2007, the principal at Hollis F. Price Middle College High told teachers she wanted the names of all student couples, “hetero and homo,” because she wanted to monitor them personally to prevent students from engaging in public displays of affection.  

The two students now represented by the ACLU, Andrew and Nicholas (who have asked that their last names not be revealed), were two A students who had been seeing each other for a short time and were attempting to keep their relationship quiet and private. 

Your tax dollars at work for the protection and security of white privilege — keeping those Negro agents in their place. Mind you, these are the folks charged with protecting the president, and currently, Barack Obama.

The U.S. Secret Service has placed a white agent on leave after an African American employee reported finding a noose hanging at the service’s main training facility outside the nation’s capital.

The service has acknowledged “an allegation of misconduct” at its J.J. Rowley Training Center in Beltsville, Md., and that an employee last week was placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation. The employee is a veteran agent with the service, according to fellow agents.

The noose was found by an African American officer in the uniform division of the service during the week of April 14, according to those familiar with the alleged incident. That division protects the White House and surrounding grounds. He reported the incident to his supervisor and it was sent up the chain of command. He declined to comment for this story.

…The alleged incident happened as U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson is expected to decide next month whether to sanction the service for failing to turn over evidence in a long-running lawsuit alleging that the service created a racially hostile atmosphere that tolerated discrimination.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Atlanta native Reginald G. Moore, alleges that the Secret Service routinely discriminates against black agents seeking promotion in favor of white agents who scored lower on promotional exams.

Nearly 60 black agents have submitted sworn statements to the court in support of the lawsuit’s allegations.

Related:
* Dallas: weapons screening halted at Obama rally
* Other posts on the security breach

Man wakes to unwanted sex surprise. Remember Glenn Murphy, Jr., the former Young Republican National Federation chair who, not once, but twice was busted for assault — pole smoking passed-out men? He must have a trainee –

A Brisbane youth worker who sexually assaulted another man as he lay unconscious at a party has avoided jail.

Brisbane’s District Court today heard Corey Lloyd Wensor’s 17-year-old victim was so drunk he was unable to move during the January 12, 2006 attack, but was vaguely aware of a “warm sensation” in his groin as Wensor, 21, forced oral sex on him and later massaged his genitals.

Crown Prosecutor Angus Edwards said the victim woke up during one attack but was unable to resist due to his level of intoxication.

…Wensor’s defence barrister, Bruce Mumford, said his client, who had only been “tipsy” at the time, had acted out of the mistaken belief the sex was consensual, because at one stage he had heard his victim make moaning noises.

Grasping at straws. This is ludicrous. The RNC is threatening to sue CNN and MSNBC for running this DNC ad, which simply uses John McCain’s own words against him. A little sensitive on that whole Iraq shebang?

Marc Ambinder:

The RNC is ginning up the threat of legal action to give weight to their criticism of the ad’s content. [RNC lawyer Sean] Cairncross would not say whether the party will sue CNN or MSNBC, the two cable networks airing the ad, if they refuse to kill it.

The RNC’s content charge is not black and white. The DNC wrote the ad carefully. Nowhere does the narrator or any chyron state that McCain is fine with the Iraqi war persisting for 100 years. The visuals — explosions, bloodied troops — take care of that association.

Don Wildmon’s screeching again, calling for action against the manufacturer of Pampers, Tide and Crest over the long-awaited kiss of a gay couple on As the World Turns. My how the mighty have fallen if this is the what gets Don worked up.

Procter & Gamble has resumed using explicit, open-mouth homosexual kissing in their soap opera, “As the World Turns.” P&G decided to include this type of content as a commitment to “diversity.” P&G stopped showing such scenes some months ago, but has now decided to again help promote the homosexual agenda which includes homosexual marriage.

Gay activists are hopeful that the P&G effort will desensitize viewers to the homosexual lifestyle and help make the unhealthy and immoral lifestyle more acceptable to society, especially to children and youth.

View a scene from the April 23, 2008 episode by P&G. WARNING - content is repulsive!

“As the World Turns” is owned and controlled completely by P&G. No network made this decision. P&G alone made the decision to support the homosexual agenda.

Here, folks, is the “explicit” kiss — maybe Don has access to some alternate hard core version we don’t know about.

Hat tip Joe.My.God.

***

While we’re on the AFA, take a look at its reaction to McDonald’s decision to partner with a pro-gay business organization.
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Come on, people. Instead of praying for lower gas prices, you need to v-o-t-e out all the Rethugs who rubber-stamped the current administration’s policies and warmongering that got us here.

Rocky Twyman has a radical solution for surging gasoline prices: prayer.

Twyman - a community organizer, church choir director and public relations consultant from the Washington, D.C., suburbs - staged a pray-in at a San Francisco Chevron station on Friday, asking God for cheaper gas. He did the same thing in the nation’s Capitol on Wednesday, with volunteers from a soup kitchen joining in. Today he will lead members of an Oakland church in prayer.

Yes, it’s come to that.

“God is the only one we can turn to at this point,” said Twyman, 59. “Our leaders don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. The prices keep soaring and soaring.”

…”God, deliver us from these high gas prices,” Twyman said. “That’s all they have to say.”

As one commenter at my pad said:

I wonder how God rates Twyman’s suffering from high gas prices as compared to the suffering of someone, say, raking through garbage on a steaming trash heap in the outskirts of Lagos, searching for something edible, or of someone who has lost his legs or eyesight from a bomb dropped last week on Sadr City.

Since Americans are God’s chosen people, perhaps Twyman’s suffering is paramount.

On the other hand, perhaps Twyman will go to Hell for paying taxes to the government that drops the bombs and enforces poverty in the Third World.

It was Andrew Lloyd Webber week on American Idol (cynics can click away now), and the judges’ consensus choice for best performance of the week was Carly Smithson:

So, naturally, she got voted off this week. To generally amazed reactions.

I don’t know why people are surprised. The moment I heard that she’d chosen this song - before I even heard her perform - I knew she was gone. She picked the most hated song of the most hated Broadway musical of millions of right-wing Christians. By singing “Superstar” she made an enemy of everyone between Idaho and West Virginia, because for some goddamn reason, people hate Jesus Christ Superstar.

I’m actually kind of surprised more people aren’t talking about that. The worst part is that Sir Andrew himself encouraged Smithson to sing the song, and what are you going to do? Refuse to sing a song Andrew Lloyd Webber wants - oh, that’s right, he basically sucks. Still, he really shafted her on this one.

He’s at it again. This time the “like-minded man” with Concerned Women for America is comparing homosexuality to smoking, drinking, toking and hitting the crack pipe. This, friends, is how he objects to the Day of Silence.

Can you imagine officials at a middle school, junior high or high school setting aside a day to promote “tolerance” for heavy smoking and drinking among children? How about a day where teachers encourage kids to “embrace who they are,” pick up that crack pipe and give it a stiff toke?

Neither can I. The public would go ballistic, and for good reason.

But that hasn’t stopped officials in thousands of schools across the country from promoting other politically correct and socially “in-vogue” behaviors that - both statistically and manifestly - are every bit as dangerous as the aforementioned frowned-upon behaviors.

That’s exactly what the homosexual activist “Day of Silence” is all about - advancing, through clever, feel-good propaganda, full acceptance among children of the homosexual lifestyle.

More below the fold.
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Oh, so that’s what happened to the economy (rolls eyes). I don’t know what to make of this. Given what women have had to deal with because of monthly hormonal surges, the idea that men are ruled by their hormones isn’t exactly a novel concept, but this kind stereotyping is useful…how?

The hormone that drives male aggression and sexual interest also seems able to boost short term success at finance. But what seems to start out well can turn bad, with elevated testosterone levels over several days possibly leading to irrational risk-taking, according to researchers at the University of Cambridge in England.

“If people want to get practical, it would be good for both banks and the financial system as a whole if we had more women and older men in the markets,” said John M. Coates, lead author of a study appearing in this week’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

OK — now this is worth a belly laugh…

Coates and Herbert’s study comes less than two weeks after U.S. researchers reported that young men shown erotic pictures were more likely to make a larger financial gamble than if they were shown a picture of something scary, such as a snake, or something neutral, such as a stapler.

Money and women trigger the same brain area in men, those researchers said.

Take that and run with it…

And it was caught on tape by Houston station KTRK. Add this foul man to the list of moralist sexual hypocrites.

The founder of a Christian school is confronted after 13 Undercover catches him soliciting sex from a parent, who’s trying to get her daughter a high school diploma.

At graduation ceremonies he talks about God, but you’ll hear the founder of a Houston-area Christian school not only talk about sex, but ask for it on tape.

It’s the middle of the day when a white pickup truck pulls into the back of a motel on 1960. Then it goes to the very back to park for a long while. We already know who the driver is. His name is LaVern Jordan and he runs Parkway Christian School.

There is a transcript of the foulitude and video. Read a snippet of what pious Jordan said — in very raw language — to the mom after the jump.
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Oh my, this is fun. The Peter is horrified that John McCain plans to meet with the Log Cabin Republicans — as if the Arizona senator is some sort of pro-homosexual/homosexualist Trojan horse.

CBS News chief political consultant Mark Ambinder, associate editor of TheAtlantic.com, reports that McCain plans to meet soon with executives of the Log Cabin Republicans.

LaBarbera, founder of the website Republicans for Family Values, says McCain should dump those plans. “I think this is significant. It was significant when George Bush … met with the Log Cabin Federation before he became president — and it doesn’t surprise me that McCain is doing it. I think the danger is that when you try to be pro-homosexual and pro-family at the same time, it doesn’t work,” LaBarbera contends.

According to LaBarbera, McCain would be wise to distance himself from a group that “spews anti-Christian bigotry.” That group’s crusade in favor of homosexual “marriage,” he argues, goes counter to the efforts of pro-family advocates who are fighting to protect marriage with constitutional amendments at the state and federal level.

“So, it becomes difficult for John McCain to say he’s supporting efforts to protect marriage and also supporting the Log Cabin Republicans,” LaBarbera points out. “I just think this is the problem with the ‘big tent’ [philosophy] in general in the Republican Party.”

As the article references Marc Ambinder’s post at The Atlantic, see how he describes McCain’s position on LGBT issues below the fold.
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One can only hope that this is satire. However, after the public ex-gay therapy madness of Richard Cohen (discredited even by his peers), this video about a “service” to help recloset gay men is easily plausible.

“The WorkOUT is a unique program that helps a man who is dealing with homosexual issues to go deep and understand that below the homosexual issues lies a lack of his own inherent masculinity and manhood.

The Workout offers a man three main things…the first thing it offers him is a Lifecoach. A mentoring relationship for each man. The second thing is it offers him a series of accomplished tasks whereby a man can feel his own sense of increasing manhood.

The third thing is what I call the 911 calls whereby a man can call anytime, day or night, to his mentor, in case he needs to talk to him for a few minutes if he is having a particular problem or challenge.

I love helping other men BE MEN. I feel great when I help another man really understand himself — and really help him see that change is absolutely possible…IF he’s willing to go through the tasks, and the accomplishments and the relationships he needs to go to, mainly with himself, to move into his own manhood.”

Start the journey today…

Who is this guy? His name is David Pickup. Jeebus, that has to be a stage name.

After facing and resolving these issues in his own life, David created The WorkOUT for men who want to change their sexual orientation by securing their full manly identity. David has made The WorkOUT available to all men wherever they live in the world no matter what their personal or spiritual belief systems may be. The WorkOUT exists to help men to feel their sense of masculinity and manhood so they can move more fully into heterosexuality.

So…batsh*t crazy or satire? Joe. My. God speculates.

OK, folks. You can have fun reading between the lines of this one…

H/t, G-A-Y.

Billionaire BET founder Robert L. Johnson, who has publicly done little more than make an ass out of himself in public as a supporter of Hillary, continues down the familiar bottom-feeding path of race-baiting, this time by lifting the wisdom of Geraldine Ferraro.

“What I believe Geraldine Ferraro meant is that if you take a freshman senator from Illinois called ‘Jerry Smith’ and he says I’m going to run for president, would he start off with 90 percent of the black vote?” Johnson said. “And the answer is, probably not.”

“Geraldine Ferraro said it right,” Johnson added. “The problem is, Geraldine Ferraro is white. This campaign has such a hair-trigger on anything racial it is almost impossible for anybody to say anything.”

Last time I looked, 90% of the black vote alone won’t elect you President of the United States. And it’s balls to say the Obama campaign has a hair-trigger on “anything racial” (definition, please?) when the Clinton campaign and its surrogates have not hesitated in playing upon the worst fears in people in regards to race, a topic that is rarely engaged on any rational level. Why Bob Johnson himself didn’t mind conjuring up stereotypical imagery himself back during the primary in South Carolina.

See below the fold.
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Bush’s Torture U.S.A - they all knew.

You’ll find out the one member of the administration who made the above statement below the fold. It’s hard to find any words to describe how sick this is. The ABC headline says it all: Top Bush Advisors Approved ‘Enhanced Interrogation‘.

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

…The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy. At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

I guess it’s bye-bye to that VP fantasy, Condi. Below the fold, there was only one member of that committee who had any reservations about the path of torture they were taking.
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