Humor! On My Blog!

Well, only a link, not me actually being funny, because while my sense of comedic timing is not yet dead (insert requisite Pythonism here), I find very little funny in America at the moment.

But look! For Women Only! Quick! Only Women Are Allowed to Read This Post. Funny! Right here in our studio!

It's all right. I'll be funny again. Right now, I just say I'm saving it up for the tell-all book.

Big Corporation tramples the little guy.

Halliburton Protest: 16 Arrested, a Dozen Trampled by Horses

Metaphoric, don't you think?

Push Back on the White House Newsweek Scam

Push Back on the White House Newsweek Scam

Third, the public deserves to know what precisely the White House is asserting with respect to the mistreatment of the Koran by interrogators: are such reports categorically false or are they, in the words of one publication, "manifold?" For example, a May1st New York Times report indicated that a Koran was thrown into a pile and stepped on at the Guantanamo detention facility and "[a] former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans." The incident where a Koran was allegedly thrown in a toilet was also recounted by a former detainee in a March 26, 2003 article in the Washington Post, and corroborated by another detainee in a August 4, 2003 report by the Center for Constitutional Rights. The question is: are you categorically denying that the mistreatment of the Koran occurred, or are you simply denying the Newsweek report is accurate on hyper technical grounds?

I don't think so

Bill to renew Patriot Act would expand powers

"While we're fighting to bring provisions ... back into balance with the Bill of Rights, here we have the intelligence committee moving to give the government more power outside the judicial system to gain access to records of Americans," said former GOP Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia, a critic of the law.

Now, remember: this is the same US government that tortures people. Do you really want them to have more power to wade through your life whenever they feel like it, with no oversight whatsoever?

I don't think so.

Committee aides said the committee planned to meet in private when it considers the bill because the discussions would involve intelligence operations.

Top 10 Lies About Filibusters

The Top 10 filibuster falsehoods, from Media Matters.

My favorite is #10

Falsehood #10: Democrats have opposed "all" or "most" of Bush's judicial nominees

"Nuclear option" proponents have drastically exaggerated Democratic efforts to block Bush's judicial nominees, suggesting that they have opposed all of his nominees or all of his conservative nominees.

It's the Republican "oh, but we're oppressed victims" card in play.

In fact, the Senate has to date approved 205 judicial nominees, with Senate Democrats filibustering 10. The vast majority of Bush's nominees have received strong bipartisan support. For example, in April district court nominee Paul Crotty was confirmed by a vote of 95-0. Even among Bush's first-term appellate nominees, the Senate confirmed more than 70 percent.

Yeah. A 95% success rate is being an oppressed victim.

*Gasp*

You don't think Republicans might have filibustered, do you!?

Why, that would almost be too much to bear thinking. But I will anyway.

SEN. SCHUMER: Isn’t it correct that on March 8, 2000, my colleague [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold the filibuster of Judge Richard Paez?

Yep. It is.

Sauce for the goose, baby. If Republicans can filibuster, so can Democrats. To claim otherwise would be hypocritical, wouldn't it?

Moonlife Making Waves!

Whisperin' and Hollerin' Gives Moonlife's "Reach The Stars" a 9-star rating

Download some tracks and listen for yourself.

Newsweek, the Koran, and Racism

Newsweek "must do more"

"We appreciate the step that Newsweek took yesterday," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "It was a good first step. And what we would like to see now is for Newsweek to work to help repair the damage that has been done, particularly in the region, and Newsweek certainly has the ability to help undo what damage can be undone."

While offering few specifics, McClellan said Newsweek should explain "what happened and why they got it wrong, particularly to people in the region."

"They can also talk about policies and practices of the United States military. Our United States military goes out of its way to treat the holy Koran with great care and respect," he said.

Oh?

Angry clash over dog, woman's bag and holy book (October, 2003)

The confrontation began when Amal Karim, 28, showed up for work at the Oil Ministry in Baghdad yesterday morning and faced a routine search at the ministry entrance by US soldiers, who have guarded the building tightly since the end of the US-Iraq war last April.

When the Americans told her to submit her bag to a sniff-search by a dog, she refused, saying the bag held a copy of the Koran, Iraqi witnesses later reported.

Devout Iraqis often carry Islam's holy book with them, and Muslims consider dogs to be dirty, disease-spreading animals.

"When she refused, the American soldiers took the Koran out of her bag and threw it to the ground," said one woman, Zaineb Rahim. "Then the American soldiers handcuffed Amal."

(Official Retraction) The Newsweek Backtrack: Did the Right Win a Game of Chicken? cites last years Human Rights Watch report on abuses:

They were never given prayer mats and initially they didn't get a Koran. When the Korans were provided, they were kicked and thrown about by the guards and on occasion thrown in the buckets used for the toilets. This kept happening. When it happened it was always said to be an accident but it was a recurrent theme.

And then, Digby, long before Newsweek triggered the Apocalypse, in The Horrors of Gitmo quotes from Composite Statement: Detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay:

[S]exual provocation, molestation....It did not come about at first that people came back and told about it. They didn't. What happened was that one detainee came back from interrogation crying and confided in another what had happened. That detainee in turn thought that it was so shocking he told others and then other detainees revealed that it had happened to them but they had been too ashamed to admit to it. It therefore came to the knowledge of everyone in the camp that this was happening to some people. It was clear to us that this was happening to the people who'd been brought up most strictly as Muslims.

But hey, this isn't about Islam. Remember Army Lt. General William Boykin, a deputy undersecretary of defense, who never got that particular memo and called Islam a spiritual enemy?

Well, actually, I do think it's not about Islam. My pronoun "it" now having shifted somewhat to being a little more abstract about America's inability to take Islam seriously and show (institutionally) real respect for it and for devout Muslims.

I think it's about racism. About brown people who just happen to practice another religion, which makes them even more "foreign" and therefore scary. But I think it starts with racism.

The New World was settled on the justification that the claim to the land of anyone non-white didn't matter because they didn't matter, they weren't white. Johnson v. M'Intosh. Part of it was that they weren't Christian, too, and I don't know which weighs more, I think by the end, racism did, because a lot of Christian slaveholders stopped freeing slaves after they'd been "saved" by Jesus, even though many originally did so because it would be a sin to hold another Christian in bondage. Holding a heathen in bondage and maybe trying to save their soul, wasn't.

We (European colonists) encouraged racism -- tacitly or deliberately or both, I don't know -- in order to justify taking over all those luscious resources North America represented. And we kept doing it, institutionalizing that racism by buying black slaves and building an agricultural economy off the sweat of their brows. That racism stuck around and kept on sticking, and keeps on sticking today.

I think it lies at the base of many US attitudes to other countries and our lack of respect for just about everyone.

Not the only thing, I'm sure, but a big element.

Christocrats

United States of Santorum

In Ohio, the Rev. Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church said at a gathering of 1,000 Patriot Pastors last week that the issues underscoring the filibuster fight transcend partisan politics.

"We're not Democrats. We're not Republicans. We're Christocrats," he declared.

Well, there you have it.

You know, the Republicans should change their name since they're not Republicans anymore.

But I know they won't, after all, why sacrifice all that brand-name recognition?

LA has Latino Mayor!

Los Angeles has its first Latino mayor since 1872

Hispanics in California are celebrating after a high school dropout who went back to school and turned his life around was elected mayor of the second-biggest city in the United States.

Cookies, regional cookbooks, and Top 50 Things Every Foodie Should Do

This is one of those personal blog-type entries with a strong puff pastry component, as opposed to politics, paramacia, or programming.

I think I have found "my" cookie. This may well be the Sidra cookie. I was making oil cookies (sugar cookies that use oil as their binder) for a while early last year, and then moved over to making roll cookies (which are rather like shortbread, very good with a little jelly dabbed on them, even better if you shape them for that exact purpose - so went the last of my precious fireweed jelly[*] from Alaska) after moving here (and with some intervening quick breads and brownies), and now it seems I'm in love with "refrigerator cookies", which use almost exactly the same recipe as my roll cookies, yet come out different. ("Refrigerator cookie", because you chill before slicing and baking.) Someday, when I have money, I'll splurge and add chocolate chips and walnuts to them, and oh, will they be good.

In the end, they're all sugar cookies, but it's remarkable how some simple changes make such a difference.

I put home mixed spices in my sugar cookies - curry powder, 10-spice, hot pepper - just for fun, and if someday I'm not too lazy, I'll try pfeffernusse. Laziness is an issue because rolling in powdered sugar is involved. And I'm lazy. Really, really lazy.

However, I won't give up the possibility of mysore pakku or cardomom fudge as becoming my next big thing.

One of my none-so-secret hopes of my trip to Ireland (I will be at the National University of Ireland, in Galway, attending a summer session on international human rights law) is that not only will I find some native yarn or roving to buy, but also come home with some regional recipes. I collect cookbooks, and my favorites are little local cookbooks that church auxilaries tend to put together.

[*]I was able to find rosehip butter at one of the local Russian groceries to make up for the loss. I expect I'll never find fireweed anything unless I go back to Alaska.


The top 50 things every foodie should do at least once. Yum, yum!

Huh. Is Newsweek Lying?

It's a sad state of affairs when the first thing I thought this morning upon hearing from NPR that Newsweek was potentially "retracting" their story about desecrations of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay was, "well I'll be, they pressured NW into lying".

Oh, look, Plaidder's got a tip on this one: Newsweek Got Gitmo Right.

"A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans." (Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt, "Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay," New York Times, May 1, 2005.)

"The behavior of the guards towards our religious practices as well as the Koran was also, in my view, designed to cause us as much distress as possible. They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet, and generally disrespect it." Center for Constitutional Rights, 2004.

MY HELL IN CAMP X-RAY, 2004.

Returning Afghans Talk of Guantanamo, 2003

The People the Law Forgot (Part One) (Part Two) Dec 2003.

So. How about that. That's three years worth.

Islam as interrogation tool: need for limits?

Army Sgt. Erik Saar couldn't wait to get to Guantánamo Bay to help ferret information from the terrorists being held there. When the intelligence linguist arrived, however, he was startled to hear the Muslim call to prayer. Why, he wondered, would America make such a "concession to the religious zealotry" of the detainees?

Tell me, would anyone think that question if the detainees were Christian?

Yet as he worked as an interpreter in the cell blocks and interrogation rooms, Sergeant Saar's attitude changed. Methods that demeaned Islamic beliefs and tried to make detainees feel separate from God struck him as counterproductive. They not only failed to produce information, he says, but also fueled the sense there and abroad that the US is at war with Islam.

Well, duh. Not duh to you, Sgt, just duh. Of course they would have that effect. I mean, it makes sense, doesn't it? Once you know what the Koran actually means to Muslims?

Why Koran is such a hot button

Go Back to Con Law, Rep. Sensenbrenner

GOP Seeks More Curbs on Courts

Apparently, you need to be reminded that "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court....The Judges...shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour..."

So,

a) when Sesenbrenner says "In the early days of the Republic, the precedent was set that judges are not impeached for unpopular decisions," that's not quite right, unless the "early days" he's referring to are the days the Constitution was signed. Do you see, where it says good behavior, spelled all Britlike?

And what's the opposite of good behavior?

Unpopular decisions? Nooooo, I don't think so.

b) The judicial power of the United States is vested in one SUPREME Court. The Supreme Court, by definition, is the supreme judicial authority in these United States, which means you can't bump it down a notch and make its decisions subordinate to ("audited by") an Inspector General, because then the Supreme Court wouldn't be SUPREME anymore, it would in fact be overseen by this Inspector General, who is not mentioned in the Constitution at all.

Get it?

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said his party is "going to resist all of these encroachments because they compromise the whole idea of the separation of powers."

Well, good.

What About The Other Religions?

Air Force Chaplain Tells of Academy Proselytizing

One staff member who spoke on condition of anonymity said on Wednesday: "There's certainly an impression that evangelicals here have that the leadership is kind of on their side. And there's a feeling among people who are atheists or people who are other varieties of Christian that the leadership does not really accept them."

Do you know what that says about the speaker of this quote, and this is the person who is *worried* about the proselytizing? It says they've bought into the idea that in America, there are people who are our kind of Christian, and then there's people who don't believe in God.

Pharmacists Values

I generally applaud sticking to one's guns in morally sticky situations, so I do feel like I understand both sides of the debate, here:

On the one hand, a professional dispenser of medication who considers dispensing legal drug X for its legal use to be immoral.

On the other, a prescription for legal drug X, for its legal use.

Who should win that fight? Because it's not about the pharmacist's conscience, or not just about the pharmacist's conscience, it's about the relationship between the patient and their doctor, and the patient's right to control what treatment they undergo.

An M.D. wrote that perscription. An M.D. made the medical evaluation of the patient, and determined a course of treatment, and the patient agreed to pursue it.

When that pharmacist gets in the way of this course of treatment, they are violating a fundamental liberty of the patient's to accept or deny medical care, and to control what medical decisions are made that affect them. And, in this case, as in Griswold v. Connecticut, where a state law barred prescribing contraception, to control when, and how, a husband and wife expand their family.

The pharmacist who refuses to dispense medication places themselves in the driver's seat instead of the patient, and it's the patient here who suffers as a result.

No state can take your body and force you to do something with it. Force you to bear a child, or force you to abort -- states that think 13-year-olds will make fine mommies notwithstanding. And if a *court* is going to be asked to enforce a pharmacist's right to refuse to dispense medication, that's state action thats violating the patient's substantive due process right(s), just as a court being asked to enforce a racially restrictive covenant and kick a black family out of a house they bought in a white neighborhood (Shelley v. Kraemer) is (unConstitutional) state action[*].

(If a pharmacist should have the "right" to control whether they dispense emergency contraception -- beg pardon, to refuse to dispense emergency contraception -- as their moral values indicate, should strippers who object to taking their clothes off in front of other people, for religious reasons, of course, still be paid to be strippers?)

[*] There's a difference between race and gender when conducting a due process analysis of state action. The former is held to a "strict scrutiny" standard, and the latter to an "intermediate" one, where the state must show an important governmental interest being satisfied by a method substantially related to that end. Race analysis requires a "compelling governmental interest" be satisfied by narrowly tailored means. But I'm not sure intermediate analysis is the appropriate one here. Are laws that "protect" pharmacist's values ones that classify on the basis of religious beliefs, in which case a strict scrutiny standard may apply, or ones that classify by gender?

What important or compelling interest is being upheld by permitting pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions? And, is this about permitting pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions in general, or about permitting pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for women?

Conyers on Ohio Voting Irregularities

Ohio 2004: Ignoring the Canary

...what I found in Ohio was a series of massive irregularities, many of which were illegal under federal and/or state law, and every single one resulted in a loss of votes for John Kerry, not George Bush.