Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

This fight is for everything.

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

“Alexa, change the president.”

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

We still have time to mess this up!

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

In my day, never was longer.

Let there be snark.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

The lights are all blinking red.

Find someone who loves you the way trump and maga love traitors.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

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Not Just Criminal, But Stupid

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Interesting op-ed in the NY Times from a former FBI agent with intimate knowledge of the process and debunks the “torture works nonsense” that is well worth a read, but contained this nugget as well:

One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him.

If I remember correctly, and I may not be, one of the things that used to just incense right-wingers was Jamie Gorelick and the ability of different agencies to communicate. It has been so long, I don’t even know if that was true and just more of the typical BS from these guys, but it would seem that they one-upped Gorelick.

I may be misremembering things, though, so if anyone can fill in the details, that would be great.

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There, but for the grace of God, torture I?

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Roger Cohen has become a mostly thoughtful voice on foreign policy at the Times, but this makes next-to-no sense:

To some degree, words failed us all in the aftermath of 9/11, a time of fear and disorientation. Journalists did not meet the challenge of holding the executive branch accountable, politically and morally, in the run-up to the Iraq war. Such failures, it is true, were not gross manipulations of the law in the service of inhumanity, but they were failures nonetheless. And they carried a human price.

So I’m wary of the clamor for retribution. Congress failed. The press failed. The judiciary failed. With almost 3,000 dead, America’s checks and balances got skewed, from the Capitol to Wall Street. Scrutiny gave way to acquiescence. Words were spun in feckless patterns.

[….]

That, of course, is Obama’s favorite word: responsibility. I think it demands some acknowledgment that, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

I understand being ambivalent about prosecutions. I am ambivalent myself, without knowing in advance what an investigation might unearth. But this “we all failed” stuff is just bullshit. There are plenty of dirty fucking hippies who opposed the craziness every step of the way. Words didn’t fail them.

And while I can sympathize with CIA interrogators who in some cases may have been following orders, how many of us really look at Dick Cheney, who may have in effect ordered most of this, and think “There but the grace of God, go I?”

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Yes, you are getting carried away

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This, from the New Majority blog, really cracked me up:

Republicans sticking by popular democratically established marriage policies, lightly challenging religious conservatives, and promoting mainstream conservative policies that the gay community would support over the objections of Congressional Democrats?

Not to get carried away, but this is how realignments happen.

The policy he’s referring to (something to do with HSAs) may be perfectly sensible and set Burkean bells a-ringing, but Republicans using pro-gay policies to affect realignment?

I may have to start using the phrase “Not to get carried away, but this is how realignments happen.”

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Go For It Lads

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The Republican rump:

House Republicans are calling on Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to step down or be fired in the wake of a controversial department memo that has sparked indignant battle cries from conservatives and some veterans.

“Singling out political opponents for working against the ruling party is precisely the tactic of every tyrannical government from Red China to Venezuela,” said Texas Rep. John Carter, a member of the party’s elected leadership who has organized an hour of floor speeches Wednesday night to call for Napolitano’s ouster. “The first step in the process is creating unfounded public suspicion of political opponents, followed by arresting and jailing any who continue speaking against the regime.”

These people are seriously not going to last four years. We should probably take out a few more of them in the 2010 elections just so they can take a breather and pull themselves together, because they clearly didn’t get the message in 2006 and 2008.

The Republican Study Committee is fundamentally no different from the wingnuttiest blogger.

*** Update ***

Speaking of the Republican Study Committee, I believe this guy is a ranking member:

The title of that video, hosted on Rep. Joe Barton on his youtube channel, is “Energy Secretary puzzled by simple question.” Barton then tweeted the following:

Yeah. You stumped the Nobel Prize winner. Like I said- wingnut bloggers ran the McCain campaign, and wingnut bloggers are all that is left of the GOP.

(via)

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The Village People

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Behold the next meme, sure to be coming to a talking head near you (via):

Arlen Specter is quoted (link when I can find one) as having said that prosecuting Bush administration officials would be like something done in a “banana republic” and like “Latin America.” John McCain says prosecuting will have a “chilling effect.”

Isn’t that the point of prosecuting crimes- to have a chilling effect on future potential criminals? I know deterrence is always cited by death penalty advocates.

I have no idea if Holder will decide to prosecute people for any of this, and realize that if it happens, DC will just explode, but at the same time, if these people did commit crimes, why shouldn’t they be prosecuted? And I’m sensitive to the fact that people may have done things in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 that they may not have done otherwise, but some of these memos are from years after 9/11. We have clear evidence how this stuff spread from Rumsfeld’s desk to Gitmo to Abu Gharaib. Hell, there are several dozen detainees who are still missing.

What are we supposed to do when our government has done this? Just look the other way because otherwise it might be politically difficult?

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Tomorrow’s Freakout Today

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You’ve been warned:

The federal government plans to announce today that it would allow the sale of the morning-after pill Plan B without a prescription to women as young as 17, making the controversial contraceptive available to minors for the first time without a doctor’s order, a federal official said.

The Food and Drug Administration agency is taking the action to comply with a judge’s ruling last month that the agency’s 2006 decision to limit availability of the contraceptive method to women 18 and older was invalid and politically motivated, the official said.

The FDA plans to notify the company that makes Plan B that it would approve sale of the pill to 17-year-olds at the company’s request.

Also, completely unrelated, but via TalkLeft, what appears to be some good news on the 4th Amendment front:

The Supreme Court yesterday sharply limited the power of police to search a suspect’s car after making an arrest, acknowledging that the decision changes a rule that law enforcement has relied on for nearly 30 years.

In a decision written by Justice John Paul Stevens, an unusual five-member majority said police may search a vehicle without a warrant only when the suspect could reach for a weapon or try to destroy evidence, or when it is “reasonable to believe” there is evidence in the car supporting the crime at hand.

The justices noted that law enforcement for years has interpreted the court’s rulings on warrantless car searches to mean that officers may search the passenger compartment of a vehicle as part of a lawful arrest of a suspect. But Stevens said that was a misreading of the court’s decision in New York v. Belton in 1981.

It kind of makes you wonder how the same court that issued this ruling seems to have no problem with school administrators fondling children at their whim.

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Feel The Love

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An actual phone conversation with my mom a moment ago:

Mom: Your dad and I just heard a story about a guy who lived to be 110. Who would want to live that long? All your friends would be dead.

Me: Well, in 40 years or so I could be at the old folks home with you.

Mom: Are you trying to prove our point?

I’m getting her nothing for Mothers Day.

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