A Freethinker's Paradise

Write your local paper!

I think this is a really good idea, and I encourage those of you that live in the following states to contact your Senators and/or write a LTE to your local paper

(1) Pennsylvania (Specter & Santorum)
(2) Kansas (Roberts & Brownback)
(3) Maine (Snowe & Collins)
(4) Nebraska (Hagel)
(5) South Carolina (Graham)
(6) Ohio (DeWine)

Your one letter can make a big difference:  The Pen IS mightier than the sword.

George Clooney has balls. Why don't the Dems?

Is it because most Dems are also corporatists?

"I think it's important to be on the right side of history," Clooney said.

"I want to be on that deck of cards. And I want to be able to say that they boycotted my films... I want to be able to say I was on the cover of a magazine called a 'traitor,'" he said.

"I'm proud of those because those were badges of honor for me because that was when you did it when it was hard to do," the actor and director said.

Clooney has received critical acclaim for "Syriana" -- about oil politics and Islamic extremism -- and for "Good Night, and Good Luck," a reminder of the threat to civil liberties through a story about the anti-communist hysteria in the United States of the 1950s.

Ah yes.  Clooney is right.  I don't think Bush is planning on stepping down come January 2009.  I think Bush is acting quite monarchial at the moment about the Dubai ports deal.  Karl Rove even came out in public to try and calm it down.  Hopefully the internet will remain free (some companies are proposing charging for access to their lines) and the truth will continue to come out.  From my perspective, its been the 'lefty blogosphere' that's been doing the job of the media lately.

Scientists enlist clergy in evolution battle

Talk about strange bedfellows:

American scientists fighting back against creationism, intelligent design and other theories that seek to deny or downgrade the importance of evolution have recruited unlikely allies -- the clergy.

And they have taken their battle to a new level, trying to educate high school and even elementary school teachers on how to hold their own against parents and school boards who want to mix religion with science.

While they feel they have won the latest round against efforts to bring God into the classroom, the scientists say they have little doubt their opponents are merely regrouping.

"It's time to recognize that science and religion should never be pitted against one another," American Association for the Advancement of Science President Gilbert Omenn told a news conference on Sunday. The AAAS has held several sessions on the evolution issue at its annual meeting in St. Louis.

Sometimes you make odd alliances when important things are in the balance.  The scientists want to see science served well, and the mainstream Christian groups don't want to be labeled as crazy.

More Abu Gharib Photos

This is really sickening to me.  Freedom on the march, I suppose:

Nearly two years after the first pictures of naked and humiliated Iraqi detainees emerged from Abu Ghraib prison, the full extent of the abuse became known for the first time yesterday with a leaked report from the US army's internal investigation into the scandal.

The catalogue of abuse, which was obtained by the online American magazine Salon, could not have arrived at a worse time for the Bush administration, coinciding with yesterday's United Nations report on abuse of detainees at Guantánamo, the release of a video showing British troops beating up Iraqi youths, and lingering anger in the Muslim world over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

Bush administration officials had already been fending off a new wave of anger about the torture of detainees - following the airing of graphic images from Abu Ghraib on Australian television - when Salon posted a story on its website yesterday saying it had obtained what appears to be the fullest photographic record to date of the abuse.

It said the material, gathered by the army's criminal investigation division, included 1,325 photographs and 93 video clips of suspected abuse of detainees, 546 photographs of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, as well as 660 images of adult pornography, and 29 pictures of US troops engaged in simulated sex acts. Based on date stamps, all were recorded between October 18 and December 30 2003, the same timeframe as the original scandal.

This is what happens when a stupid America lets greedy people take the helm.  There was no scandal (that we know of anyhow) from Kosovo, but Clinton gets impeached for a blowjob?  What does Bush have to do before someone gets the balls to impeach him?

States Rights' vs. Controlling Women

I wonder what the GOP will say about this?

The Massachusetts Board of Registration in Pharmacy on Tuesday ruled in favor of three women who filed complaints claiming that the stores refused to fill their prescriptions.

Julie Battel, Katrina McCarty and Rebekah Gee filed suit against the company earlier this month.

Wal-Mart has until Thursday to comply with the ruling.

The drug, which is commonly referred to as the "morning after pill," or "Plan B," must be taken 72 hours after sex to prevent pregnancy.

Wal-Mart currently only carries the pill at its Illinois stores, where it is required under state regulations.

Coulter the felon?

Possibly, but she'll probably blame Ted Rall instead:

Coulter, who owns a $1.8 million crib on Seabreeze Avenue, should have voted in Precinct 1198. It covers most homes on her street. Instead, records show, she voted in Precinct 1196, at the northern tip of the island.

A fave on the college speaking circuit and the occasional target of cream-pies-to-the-face, Coulter registered as a Republican (no kidding!) with the supervisor's office June 24. That's three months after she bought the home and moved to Palm Beach from Manhattan.

Here's the sticky part for The Right's Lady Macbeth: She wrote down an Indian Road address instead of Seabreeze on her voter's registration application. And she signed to certify the information as true.

"She never lived here," said Suzanne Frisbie, owner of the Indian Road home. "I'm Ann's Realtor, and she used this address to forward mail when she moved from New York."

Coulter didn't respond to requests for comment. But the blond GOP pit bull's former agent, Joani Evans, last year told Page Two Coulter left NYC to escape stalkers.

Is a desire to hold on to privacy the reason she gave the wrong address?

"I know but I'm not going to say," Frisbie replied.

No matter, Florida statutes make it a third-degree felony to vote knowingly in the wrong precinct. Lying on a voter's registration can cost up to $5,000 and five years behind bars.

Frisbie should tell why Coulter deliberately lied on her form.  I don't think the fact that Coulter is well known should let her break the law.

Cheney and Hunting

An interesting wrinkle in the Cheney hunting accident scandal.  What if the man he shot dies?

According to the state of Texas, manslaughter is defined as:

19.04.  MANSLAUGHTER.  (a)  A person commits an
offense if he recklessly causes the death of an individual.
(b)  An offense under this section is a felony of the second
degree.         

I wonder if the Texas AG would prosecute this if it turns out Cheney WAS reckless?

Kit, the terrorists likely knew we taped them before

C'mon Kit, do you really believe what you're saying?

The terrorist surveillance program could be destroyed if investigations and discussion by the media continue, Sen. Kit Bond said Monday.

The Missouri Republican and Senate Intelligence Committee member said he felt it was time to speak out before more details of the National Security Agency's program are released, potentially compromising it.

"The only way we have of stopping further attacks is by fortified intelligence," Bond said at a news conference at Lambert Airport in St. Louis.

Bond recently returned from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he said intelligence officers told him the recent disclosure of the program has harmed their surveillance.

On Sunday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., said public debate over the eavesdropping program has probably harmed its goal of detecting terrorist plots.

We all know the NSA program is useless because Bush started it BEFORE 9/11/01 and still couldn't stop the terrorists, since FISA's 3 day retroactive warrants weren't fast enough.

It's about damn time someone took Coulter to task

I hope Rall goes through with the suit:

Rall said there's obviously a chance he could lose a lawsuit if it was filed. But the cartoonist doesn't think a "just funnin'" defense by Coulter would be the reason for such a loss. "I doubt her claims of 'humor' or sarcasm will fly with a jury since she's not funny and her audiences take her literally and she knows it," he wrote on his blog.

The cartoonist concluded, in a comment e-mailed to E&P: "It's one thing to mock people for their opinions and quite another to make opinions up out of whole cloth and stuff them into a person's mouth. That's what Coulter has done here. She has absolutely no reason to believe that I am sympathetic to the Iranian government, a Holocaust revisionist or denier, or anti-Semitic. She has no reason to believe that I am less patriotic than any other American. Opposing the Bush administration does not make you anti-Semitic, pro-Iran, or anti-American, and no one has the right to equate them as she did before a large high-profile audience that included Dick Cheney. She has the right to attack me for what I say, do, and believe -- not to lie."

Of course Rall is completely correct.  That's what the Right has been doing for years, making shit up and the dumbed-down American Populace swallows it hook line and sinker.  If the suit is even filed (let alone won), Ann will get a closer look I believe.

More Ohio GOP fun!

Normally the commission would wait a couple of weeks before forwarding a case until it could approve the minutes of a meeting like Thursday's, said Phil Richter, the commission's executive director.

"The prosecutor would like to commence with proceedings as soon as possible," Richter told commissioners. A judge could impose a fine of up to $10,000 if Talbott is found guilty of concealing campaign contributions. The Elections Commission could have levied a maximum fine of $1,000. Talbott, a lobbyist, is a former aide to Republican Govs. Bob Taft and George Voinovich.

"We will move relatively quickly in filing the appropriate charges," O'Brien said.

He will consider this case as well as one referred by the Ohio Ethics Commission regarding Talbott accepting a $39,000 interest-free loan from GOP fund-raiser Tom Noe in 2002 to buy a vacation home in Lakeside, near Port Clinton.

Well well, looks like the low-level GOP people are falling down... too bad some people will get away with things like this.