Civics exam!

 Hypothetical: You are running for United States Senate in West Virginia. Your country has over 100,000 servicemembers stationed overseas and is weathering the worst recession in 70 years. How do you complete the following sentence from your stump speech?

“We need                   and we need [it/them] right now.”

a.) “jobs”

b.) “massive overhauls of our crumbling infrastructure”

c.) “a reevaluation of our inhumane and breathtakingly expensive drug enforcement policies and incarceration system”

d.) “1,000 laser systems put in the sky”

If you answered A-C, congratulations, you are a rational, compassionate, sane human being! If you answered D, congratulations, you are the frontrunner in West Virginia’s Senate race!

WI Senate frontrunner opposed bill that would have eased justice for sex abuse victims

Via TPM:

Ron Johnson, the businessman and Republican nominee for Senate in Wisconsin against Russ Feingold, is now coming under fire for a previous foray into a public position that he took last January: When he testified against a bill that would have made it easier for adults who had been victims of childhood sexual abuse to sue the responsible organizations such as the Catholic Church.

Earlier this year, the Wisconsin legislature considered a bill as a result of the Catholic Church’s abuse scandals, which would have eliminated the statute of limitations for victims to sue organizations responsible for sexual abuse, and created a three-year window for past victims to file new lawsuits. The bill, which failed to pass, was opposed by the insurance industry and church organizations — and by Johnson, who had served on the Green Bay diocese’s financial council. (Johnson is not Catholic himself, but a Lutheran.)

Johnson’s testimony was first highlighted this past June by political columnist Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Then in the past week, Bice again reported that the video was posted online.

“I believe it is a valid question to ask whether the employer of a perpetrator should also be severely damaged, or possibly destroyed, in our legitimate desire for justice,” Johnson told a state legislative committee back in January.

“This bill could actually have the perverse effect of leading to additional victims of sexual abuse,” he also added, “if individuals, recognizing that their organizations are at risk, become less likely to report suspected abuse.”

The victims’ rights group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) has now called upon Johnson to urge the Catholic Church to release the names of priests accused of committing abuse.

Johnson reportedly no longer serves on the financial board, but did release this statement that seems to fall a bit short of SNAP’s demand: “I call on the Diocese of Green Bay to provide the utmost transparency in order to answer any lingering questions or doubt among victims of child abuse and those who seek to prevent child abuse in the future.”

The TPM Poll Average gives Johnson a lead of 53.0%-43.1%.

This man is winning a race for a seat in the United States Senate.

I’m sickened by humanity.

“Dancing with the Stars” studio audience has better taste than you’d think

I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation:

Updates: There really is a resonable explanation.

DOJ will appeal fed. court’s striking down of DADT

Via The Advocate:

The Department of Justice asked a federal judge Thursday to continue enforcing the military’s ban on gay and lesbian service members, despite a ruling earlier this month that struck down “don’t ask, don’t tell” as unconstitutional.

In a 14-page filing, Justice Department attorneys argued that an immediate, permanent injunction against enforcing the law —one supported by Log Cabin Republicans, which successfully challenged DADT in court and has argued for a halt to all discharges of gay service members — would be “untenable.” (A PDF of the government’s brief is here.)

“Because any injunction in this case must be limited to [Log Cabin Republicans] and the claims it asserts on behalf of its members – and cannot extend to non-parties – plaintiff’s requested world-wide injunction of [DADT] fails as a threshold matter,” assistant U.S. attorney Paul Freeborne wrote.

DADT repeal advocates and attorneys representing Log Cabin Republicans immediately slammed the Justice Department’s filing. Dan Woods, lead attorney for the national gay Republican group, called the arguments “ridiculous” and said his team would file a response as soon as Friday.

“It’s our view that the objections fail to recognize the implications of the government’s defeat at this trial,” Woods told The Advocate. “This case was never limited to only Log Cabin members. And the request for a stay ignores the harm that would be suffered by current and potential service members during a period of the stay.”

In a late Thursday statement, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the filing “in no way diminishes the President’s firm commitment to achieve a legislative repeal of DADT — indeed, it clearly shows why Congress must act to end this misguided policy.”   

But Servicemembers United executive director Alex Nicholson, the only named plaintiff in the lawsuit, said the Obama administration “had a choice to take several different routes [with the injunction], from the moderate and reasonable to the extremely ridiculous. It appears that they decided to go with the latter end of the spectrum.”

Nicholson said the DOJ’s filing further erodes faith in the administration for many gays and lesbians seeking substantive change. “Lately a lot of us were holding out hope that there would be a semi-reasonable response to this judicial victory. It appears that [Obama] might be disappointing us yet again,” he said.

Thank gosh the Obama administration is a fierce advocate for LGBT rights. Otherwise, it would look like he’s not doing a damn thing for them. Via Dan Savage:

Where was the President when the Senate was debating DADT on Tuesday? AWOL. He made no public statements, he couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone and call a single wavering Senator to ask for their vote. But he did have time to make at least one call on Tuesday: “Earlier today, President Obama called members of the Seattle Storm organization, to congratulate them on winning the WNBA Finals for the second time …”

BREAKING: GOP blocks DADT repeal

Senate Republicans, rallying behind former repeal advocate John McCain, blocked a defense appropriations bill that would have repealed the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. So the United States remains in the ranks of such illustrious nations as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Red Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea, which prohibit out-gays from armed service.

The two Democratic senators from Arkansas–one of the two states in the union to still fly the stars and bars in their flag–also voted against the measure. They are Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor. Direct your anathema at them.

Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid also voted against the measure, but only in order to exploit a quibbling parliamentarian rule by which he can reindtroduce a bill he voted against at a later date.

Personal note: Fucking hell. John McCain is such a sleaze-weasel. First he inflicts Sarah Palin on an unsuspecting nation, and now this?

News Corp. gives $1 million to Republican Governors Association

News Corp., Rupert Murdoch’s company which owns and operates the Fox News network, gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, making the corporate entity the single largest contributor to the GOP organization. Fair and balanced!

But, you see, it’s just like that time the owner of MSNBC Jeff Zucker gave $1 million to the Democrats. Or, not, because that never happened.

But a bunch of liberal journalists and columnists had each others’ email addresses, so they’re the outrageously biased ones.

An unequivocal denunciation

As if our side needed a Jonah Goldberg of its own:

America’s primary international enemy—Islamic radicalism—insists on government by theocracy, curtails civil liberties, embraces torture, represses women, wants to eradicate homosexuals from society, and insists on the use of force over diplomacy. Remind you of a certain American political party? In American Taliban, Markos Moulitsas pulls no punches as he compares how the Republican Party and Islamic radicals maintain similar worldviews and tactics.

This is (one of the multifarious reasons) why I dislike the array of web subcultures bound by a family resemblance called The Netroots. They have no rhetoric, and will never have any because they don’t much care to reconstruct how their opponents think. If they did, they would recognize the genuine qualitative differences between millenarian jihadism and the City on the Hill theoconservatism of the contemporary right–one doesn’t see Young Republicans shaving their chest hair to tape explosives under their shirt before walking onto a San Francisco marketplace; there are reasons for this. As Jonathan Chait wrote, the comparison is so broad and tenuous as to be considered intellectualy and morally “obscene” :

There are certainly tendencies on the American right that are less extreme versions of Talibanism — intolerance toward religious minorities, an insistence of shaping public policy according to religious dogma, hostility to science that contradicts religious texts — but the differences in degree are so vast that they are a difference in kind.The Taliban enforces totalitarian law through wanton torture and violence. Whatever you want to say about the GOP’s policies toward women and gays, it’s not this:

 Moreover, they would recognize skimming over these distinctions is tactical suicide, a means by which to alienate moderates and make enemies ignore you.

I consider myself to be of a different strand of left-of-center politics than Moulitsas and his Netroots allies. Their worldview is populist, idealistic if not radical, doctrinaire and fixated upon fixed principles. I am a technocrat, a realist tending towards pessimism, and a skeptic of creeds and given to pragmatic utilitarian calculation. But at the end of the day, Moulitsas and I vote for the same party, and advocate on behalf of the same. The manner in which Moulitsas does so, I think, paints our side in a bad light. In publishing this book under this title, he does its subjects more good than his allies.

Harry Reid’s GOP Senate opponent

Sharon Angle, who is running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV),  belonged to a far-right political party in the 1990’s which published a newspaper insert which repeatedly referred to homosexuals as “sodomites.” And that’s not the worst of it. Via TPM:

The far-right third party that Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle called home in the 1990s supported abolishing “the debt money system” and ran a vitriolic anti-gay insert in state newspapers that portrays LGBT people — or, as Angle’s party called them, “sodomites” — as child-molesting, HIV-carrying, Hell-bound freaks, according to documents obtained by TPM. As we reported earlier this month, Angle was a member of Nevada’s Independent American Party, a Christian conservative-cum-libertarian third party, for at least six years while she was getting her feet wet in politics in the 1990s. Independent American Party members told us that Angle switched to be a Republican in 1997 out of political expediency as she was preparing to make a run for state-level office.[snip]

In 1994, the party attracted considerable controversy by placing a 16-page advertising insert in Nevada newspapers promoting an amendment to the state constitution that would explicitly permit discrimination against LGBT people by businesses and government. Janine Hansen, the current executive director of the party and the editor of the ’94 insert, told TPM earlier this month that “in general [Angle] agreed with our position on the issues.” The ad insert, which approvingly cites an 1814 legal treatise titled “Consequences of Sodomy: Ruin of a Nation,” is a digest of articles that refer to LGBT people alternately as “homosexuals,” “sodomites,” and “brazen perverts.” The insert includes virtually every homophobic myth ever conceived. Sample headlines include: “Homosexual Curriculum In The First Grade” … “Flawed Science Nurtures Genetic Origin For Homosexuality” … “No Constitutional Right To Be A Sodomite.”

…

The ad insert, which approvingly cites an 1814 legal treatise titled “Consequences of Sodomy: Ruin of a Nation,” is a digest of articles that refer to LGBT people alternately as “homosexuals,” “sodomites,” and “brazen perverts.” The insert includes virtually every homophobic myth ever conceived.

Sample headlines include: “Homosexual Curriculum In The First Grade” … “Flawed Science Nurtures Genetic Origin For Homosexuality” … “No Constitutional Right To Be A Sodomite.” Here’s a passage from an item headlined “True Homosexual Character Revealed”:

Homosexuals argue that they are a peaceful and gay people. Yet … Dr. Paul Cameron of the Family Research Report writes “the top six U.S. male killers were all homosexuals.”

Probably the coup de grace of the insert is the article “Can the HIV Virus Survive in Water?”. Writer Lorraine Day, M.D., concluded that yes, the virus can survive in the water. Citing medical journal articles, she raised the specter of HIV infection through public pools, hot tubs, and municipal water supplies.

Independent American Party supporters could buy “Homophobia – No | Homonausea – Yes” bumper stickers for the special low price of $1.

Michelle Bachmann no longer funny

In a November 13, 2009 video message to the “Christian rock” band-cum-ministry You Can Run But You Can’t Hide, US Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) told the band,

It a tough job that you do, but someone has to do it. I thank God that he has given you the strength and the resolve to fight for our timeless values

The “timeless values” frontman Bradlee Dean fights for are violent hatred, dogmatism, intellectual laziness, and hysteria.  In one talk radio interview, Dean said the following things about LGBTple:

“Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America…This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do, because these people are livid about enforcing their laws. They know homosexuality is an abomination.”

…

“If America won’t enforce the laws, God will raise up a foreign enemy to do just that,” Dean said later. “That is what you are seeing in America.”

…

“The bottom line is this… they [homosexuals] play the victim when they are, in fact, the predator. On average, they molest 117 people before they’re found out. How many kids have been destroyed, how many adults have been destroyed because of crimes against nature?”

Andy Birkman at the Minnesota Independent has been covering the band and its ties to the GOP for some time.  Read his many stories here. The band was given a booth at the 2009 state Republican Convention. Dean has also called for “war” against liberal “criminals,” denies a secular foundation for American law., and described Obama’s appointee to the Dept. of Education Kevn Jennings as a “blatant homosexual.”  

Here’s a petition demanding Bachmann sever all ties with You Can Run But You Can’t Hide. And here is the passage from De Rerum Natura appropriate for the occassion:

 Such are the crimes to which Religion leads.
And there shall come the time when even thou,
Forced by the soothsayer’s terror-tales, shalt seek
To break from us.

The mainstreaming of conspiracy nuttiness in the GOP, cdt. (vol. II)

Via TPM:

The peculiar ideology of Sharron Angle, the Republican nominee challenging Sen. Harry Reid in Nevada, is perhaps no better illustrated than by her embrace of the patriot group Oath Keepers, whose membership of uniformed soldiers and police take an oath to refuse orders they see as unconstitutional — including enforcement of gun laws, violations of states’ sovereignty, and “any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.”

Back in April, Angle told TPMDC she was a member of the Oath Keepers at a press gaggle in Washington. On Monday, we decided to call Angle’s campaign to confirm her relationship to the group. Angle’s husband, Ted, picked up the phone.

“We support what the organization stands for,” he told us. “Sharron does.”

Members of Oath Keepers — whose motto is “Not on our watch!” — take a 10-item oath affirming that they will not, for example, force citizens into detention camps or invade a state “that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union.”

To be fair, the US did round up citizens without charge into prison camps which were to a large degree analogous to concentration camps–I am of course talking about Japanese interment by [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt’s administration. And it is the duty of anyone with an investment in this country and its ideals to refuse to comply with such a measure.

However, the US did round up citizens without charge or promise of either trial or legal defense–into Guantamamo Bay, under the [George Walker] Bush administration. Where were the Oath Keepers then, defending the rule of law as a vital component to national security? Something tells me of all the things they begrudge Obama, slowness in shutting down the black box of Gitmo and bringing formal charges against terror suspects aren’t two of them. In short: oath broken.