Frist: "Senator Daschle never did anything like this."
Somebody call the wahhhhhhhmbulance for the doctor. Boo hoo. Cry me a river, shithead.
UPDATE: MSNBC has video of Frist warbling on endlessly about how “disappointed” and “sad” he is at the lack of “common courtesy” shown by this “stunt.” MSNBC may be up for Worst Framing Award, too, choosing as their headline “SENATE SCHISM” with the subhead “GOP leaders blast Democrats for closed session on Iraq intel.” Considering the Dems were forced to do this since the GOP refused to investigate pre-war machinations, even after they promised to do so, I think it’s a bit ridiculous to cast the Dems as demons on this one.
Suck It
Giving ’Em Hell
Harry Reid’s whole statement on the Senate’s closed session is here. Key questions for which he’s demanding answers:
o How did the Bush Administration assemble its case for war against Iraq?
o Who did Bush Administration officials listen to and who did they ignore?
o How did senior Administration officials manipulate or manufacture intelligence presented to the Congress and the American people?
o What was the role of the White House Iraq Group or WHIG, a group of senior White House officials tasked with marketing the war and taking down its critics?
o How did the Administration coordinate its efforts to attack individuals who dared to challenge the Administration’s assertions?
o Why has the Administration failed to provide Congress with the documents that will shed light on their misconduct and misstatements?
We demand that the Intelligence Committee and other committees in this body with jurisdiction over these matters carry out a full and complete investigation immediately as called for by Democrats in the committee’s annual intelligence authorization report. Our troops and the American people have sacrificed too much. It is time this Republican-controlled Congress put the interests of the American people ahead of their own political interests.Yowza. Please let this be the headline news on every major newspaper tomorrow morning.
BALLZZZ!!!
CNN is reporting that by invoking Rule 21, Harry Reid just shut down the Senate!
Democrats forced the Republican-controlled Senate into an unusual closed session Tuesday, demanding answers about intelligence that led to the Iraq war.Fucking hell! This is so exciting! Signs of life! Come on, Dems!!!
Republicans derided the move as a political stunt.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Democratic leader Harry Reid said the American people and U.S. troops deserved to know the details of how the United States became engaged in the war, particularly in light of the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.
Reid demanded the Senate go into closed session. With a second by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, the public was ordered out of the chamber, the lights were dimmed, senators filed to their seats on the floor and the doors were closed. No vote is required in such circumstances.
"The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions," Reid said before the doors were closed.
[…]
Sen. Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, said Reid was making "some sort of stink about Scooter Libby and the CIA leak."
A former majority leader, Lott said a closed session is appropriate for such overarching matters as impeachment and chemical weapons -- the two topics that last sent the senators into such sessions.
In addition, Lott said, Reid's move violated the Senate's tradition of courtesy and consent. But there was nothing in Senate rules enabling Republicans to thwart Reid's effort.
As Reid spoke, Majority Leader Bill Frist met in the back of the chamber with a half-dozen senior GOP senators, including Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, who bore the brunt of Reid's criticism. Reid said Roberts reneged on a promise to fully investigate whether the administration exaggerated and manipulated intelligence leading up to the war.
Contemplating the Republic
Upon Alito’s nomination yesterday, I was despairing of the future of our country and cursing that each day seems to bring a new nightmare against which we must fight and struggle and battle. I felt tired down to my very bones, and so I emailed the oldest Methuselahan specimen I know and begged him to give me some historical perspective. Tell me, I said, that you’ve felt like this before—that there was a war on, and every day was a new barrage of bullshit, but it, too, did pass. Tell me, I said, anything that’s going to keep me from buying the next one-way airfare to Britain.
Dear old Mannion came through with a post of his usual eloquence on the worst of times. And he’s right, of course, in everything he said. The Republic has always been a mess, sometimes a bigger mess than others, but never perfect, never infallible.
And yet…even this strange optimism, rooted in what might be shorthanded as the chronic SNAFUness of our nation, doesn’t quite reassure me. It's the "other stuff" that's worrying—the media, voting irregularities, consolidation of power, disengaged electorate... Those who, as Mannion notes, "want to live in an aristocracy, a plutocracy, an oligarchy, or even a monarchy, anything but a democracy, because they want power over everybody else," have been presented with the sudden fortune of finding all the things that favor them in place all at the same time. The ability to undermine the Republic thusly feels imminent. It's always been fragile, yes, but has there ever been such an opportunity to strike the final blow by a collection of wankers with the distinct willingness to do so?
Avedon Carol leaves in Mannion’s comments this thought:
In the '60s, we had elite pluralism, but the elites were actually against each other in a solid way. The press was sleepy throughout Nixon's criminal abuse of government power right up until enough people were pissed off at him that they allowed impeachment proceedings to get started.Somewhere wrapped inside Avedon’s comment, I find my fear—not that those currently in power will do bad things, as surely they will, but that, unlike bad things of our past, we will not be able to undo them, once they are done.What's happened now is that all of the powerful seem to be on the same side and there's no one acting against them - it's not elite pluralism anymore, it's one big, unified elite, as far as I can tell.
I suppose this has happened before but with media consolidation and everything else I just don't know if you can say things are not different now. I feel like they are different now.
I think this is the first time I've really believed that 80% of the electorate could vote against those in power and it would make no difference at all.
What a Joker!
Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean joker; I meant sexist:
The Hill overheard Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) talk about how "he figured out in his first Senate campaign, as a 29-year-old, how to turn people out for a fundraiser."The Hill’s kind retort was, “No we won’t, senator. It’s just human nature.” (Via Political Wire.)
“Find enough beautiful women and enough guys will show up,” he quipped.
He quickly added, “The Hill newspaper is here, and they’ll think that’s a sexist remark.”
What I find most interesting about his comment is that it suggests women don’t themselves give money to political campaigns, or so little that they are more useful as bait for men who only show up and donate if they get to see a little T&A. Yet another example of sexism that manages to insult both women and men.
And no, I don’t give a flying fuck if it was meant to be a joke. You can make jokes like that when I see a fair representation of women in Congress and on the Supreme Court, how about that, dickhead?
(Note: To all the dumbasses who claim it's women like me who are the reason that the Democrats can’t win when we get pissed off about sexism in the Democratic Party, redirect your ire in Biden’s general direction.)
What the hell is wrong with conservatives?
With all the bloviating we hear about moral values from conservatives on a regular basis, you’d think that maybe they’d make some vague attempt to actually live up to their rhetoric, but time after time, it’s conservatives who prove to be the most corrupt, the most deviant, the most disturbed. Completely antithetical to the liberal theory that allowing people freedom of choice and expression will facilitate the development of healthy choices and self-expression, conservatives believe that repression is the key to goodness. But it doesn’t work. In fact, it has the opposite effect. Repression of normal desires can’t work forever, and once those normal desires have cooked in the dark recesses of the human mind for years on end, they bubble to the surface in a much uglier form. Sorry, but I’ll take a run-of-the-mill adulterous blowjob any day of the week over mule fucking, closet boytoy-trolling while advocating anti-gay rights measures, or online prostitution.
Anyway, The New Yorker introduces a 1996 novel called The Apprentice by none other than recently indicted scumbag, Scooter Libby, as another in a series of questionable novels by prominent conservatives, and notes:
Like his predecessors, Libby does not shy from the scatological. The narrative makes generous mention of lice, snot, drunkenness, bad breath, torture, urine, “turds,” armpits, arm hair, neck hair, pubic hair, pus, boils, and blood (regular and menstrual). One passage goes, “At length he walked around to the deer’s head and, reaching into his pants, struggled for a moment and then pulled out his penis. He began to piss in the snow just in front of the deer’s nostrils.”Eugh. And it gets worse. The passage “He asked if they should fuck the deer.” is quoted, to which, The New Yorker notes, “The answer, reader, is yes.” And then there are the old stand-bys of conservative fiction writers:
Homoeroticism and incest also figure as themes. The main female character, Yukiko, draws hair on the “mound” of a little girl. The brothers of a dead samurai have sex with his daughter. Many things glisten (mouths, hair, evergreens), quiver (a “pink underlip,” arm muscles, legs), and are sniffed (floorboards, sheets, fingers).Perhaps the most disturbing, however, is this passage:
At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest.What kind of mind comes up with this shit, dreams up scenarios where children are raped by animals to train them in prostitution? Oh, right. A conservative one. One that has toiled under a lifetime of repression, and spent its time dreaming up legislation designed to control the sexual freedom of women and gays. It isn’t enough that men like Scooter Libby must repress their own sexualities; they have to oppress anyone who doesn’t succumb to exhortations to do the same.
They like to say that the sexual liberation of women and gays has some alleged detrimental affect on society, but I don’t see it. What I do see is a collection of perverts whose own sickness pours out of them given the slightest opportunity, and whose fervent belief yet that they are the moral ones encourages them to create a whole other generation of screwed-up people, as they legislate the promotion of abstinence, repression, in sex ed classes.
Scooter’s craptacular book may seem funny on its face, but it’s spawned of the same darkness that motivates a man like Alito to consider a wife her husband’s property and deny protection of gay children. There’s nothing funny about conservatives or their twisted views of sexuality, because they’re inextricably linked to denying freedom.
Jesus Makes Another Appearance
This time with two of his disciples at his side and on a wardrobe in Romania:
Valeriu Junie, 66, of Drobeta Turnu Severin, says he first noticed the images about a year ago, just before Christmas.
He said: "It all started one night when I was watching TV and noticed some shadows on our wardrobe.
"I turned on the light and saw the image of Jesus in the middle and those of St Peter and St Paul on the sides.
"I didn't say a word to anyone for a few weeks but then the images started to become clearer everyday. I decided to call the priests and since then lots of people come to my house to see the miracle."
The wardrobe is made from walnut and is nearly 50-years-old. Valeriu's wife, Geta, 72, got it as a dowry on her wedding day from her parents.Pray to images on their wardrobe? Really? I actually thought worshipping iconography was prohibited, but then again, I’m a wretched heathen.
Local priest Vasile Nuhaiu said: "I was shocked by what I saw there. There were three shadows on that wardrobe with the face of Jesus Christ in the centre.
"It is a miracle when Saints reveal themselves to us mortals and I crossed myself and started to pray. I told the two old people they should fast and pray to those holy images."
More recent holy appearances here, here, here, here, and here.
Oy
To orchestrate an effective block against Alito, we’re going to need some GOP moderates, but that possibility is already looking grim. The pro-choice Specter is signaling he will support Alito. Not good.
Some Republicans are also gleeful about Alito’s nomination specifically because it alienates liberals so thoroughly and will likely cause a constitutional crisis. Charming.
Meanwhile, Mad Kane registers her opinion in limerick form. I'm thinking a piñata might be my creative outlet.
BFG
After the Alito madness this morning, I just wanted to see things get blown up. Mr. Shakes had the day off work, so we went to see a cheapo matinee of Doom. First of all, we were the only two people in the theater, so that rocked. And then there was the movie—OMG. If you’re a video game freak, especially first person shooters, you will totally love this movie. It was like Doom and Resident Evil had an evil video game baby, and this film was a huge porno of that spawn making dirty, dirty love to the movie Alien. Loved it!
(Karl Urban is so supersexy. I thought I’d never find him dreamier than clad in his supersexy horse helmet as Eomer, but turns out he’s pretty much droolworthy all the time.)
It’s now pissing down rain here, so there aren’t many trick-or-treaters. Wah wah wahhhhh. I’m off to watch 28 Days Later, which is one of my favorite creepy movies. Zombiethon 2005 continues…
Happy Halloween! Mwah ha ha ha!
Who needs Karl Rove…
…to orchestrate covert conference calls designed to reassure conservatives about a nominee’s position on abortion when you’ve got Rose Alito?
Abortion emerged as a potential fault line. Democrats pointed to Alito's rulings that sought to restrict a woman's right to abortion. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Republican who supports abortion rights, said that Alito's views on the hot-button issue "will be among one of the first items Judge Alito and I will discuss."Isn’t that just precious?
Alito's mother shed some light. "Of course, he's against abortion," 90-year-old Rose Alito said of her son, a Catholic.
I’m bursting with pride that this is what the American judicial nomination process has come to—interviewing a nominee’s mother to make sure he’ll overturn 30-year-old cases protecting a woman’s right to choose.
(Hat tip No Blood for Hubris.)
Give Me a Break
Christopher at After School Snack:
Does this mean “garlic eater” is off limits?Hey, dimwits—don’t project your idiotic measuring sticks onto us. That ain’t the way we roll. I don’t give a rat’s tit if Alito is a straight white guy or a wheelchair-bound, multi-ethnic, queer deaf-mute with a glass eye. Anyone who wants to curb our rights is a turd onto which no amount of polish can be applied to make him look pretty.
They've gotta be kidding - the wingnuts are saying lib'ruhls hate Alito because of his ethnicity!
Earlier today on Fox News, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), a member of the Judiciary Committee, followed Matt Drudge’s lead and implied that opponents of Samuel Alito’s nomination may be motivated by Alito’s ethnicity. He warned senators “to be very careful here,” because a vote against Alito would be “held against them” by Italian-Americans…
Of course, I’ll never have the chance to prove it, since your
(And btw, nice attempt to disguise—as a “warning to Democrats”—a reassurance to the racist peabrains among your supporters that the vaguely swarthy Alito is, indeed, white.)
Caption This Photo
I can see right inside his head.
It’s dark. It’s eeeevil. I like it.
(Photo via The Left Coaster.)
White House Talking Points on Scalito
Here. They know his weaknesses, and here are their responses. Passed on by Charlie.
You know, the thing that makes me angriest about this is that Bush is still playing to his base, that 30% or so who think that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church, as if he’s still running for something. It’s always, always politics; it’s all they know how to do. Never has there come a time when he has seemed to recognize that he needs to govern instead of campaign, or that he’s president of the entire United States. He has never even remotely acknowledged that he is supposed to be a steward of this country for all of us, instead of turning the country into a utopian paradise for its cruelest and most self-interested elements. Prick.
Other Stuff to Read on Scalito:
LeMew’s got a good round-up here.
The Heretik: Roe, Roe, Roe Your Boat.
Pam, with more, including the celebration in Freeperville.
Ez says:
I've been trying to settle on the right word for the Bush administration's decision to start Alito off with a photo-op in front of Rosa Park's casket. For now, I'm going with "despicable", which just barely beat out "repulsive" and "enraging", but I'm open to other suggestions.How about ironic? Nauseating? Mocking? Sociopathic? Plain old fucking dumb? Grr.
Scalito Hates the Gays, Too
Reason #1 I support gay rights: Because I believe in equality for everyone. Period.
Reason #2 I support gay rights: Because attacks on the LGBT community are inextricably woven together with attacks on women. Anytime there’s some conservative nutwit with a demonstrable lack of respect for one group’s sexual autonomy, they inevitably have no respect for the other’s, either.
Scalito is no exception. This retrograde reprobate is not only hostile to women (believing they should be required by law to notify their husbands if they get an abortion, for a start), but is hostile to gays, too.
In 2001, Judge Alito authored a decision in Saxe v. State that declared unconstitutional a public school district policy that prohibited harassment against students because of their sexual orientation or other characteristics.In other words, to protect the right of bullies to go around and shout, “Four-eyes!” and “Fatass!” at their fellow classmates—you know, harmless fun like that—Scalito ruled unconstitutional a policy designed to protect gay students from harassment, even if it is so severe as to interfere with their education. I guess his position is best summarized as No Straight Child Left Behind.
The policy focused on harassment that had the purpose or effect of interfering with a student's educational performance or creating and intimidating, hostile or offensive environment.
Alito reasoned that the policy was unconstitutional because it could cover what he called "simple acts of teasing and name-calling."
Scalito
Does this doughy face look like
the stuff of nightmares?
Shaker Deborah passed on the link to Think Progress’ round-up of Scalito facts (not blockquoted due to length):
ALITO WOULD OVERTURN ROE V. WADE: In his dissenting opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Alito concurred with the majority in supporting the restrictive abortion-related measures passed by the Pennsylvania legislature in the late 1980’s. Alito went further, however, saying the majority was wrong to strike down a requirement that women notify their spouses before having an abortion. The Supreme Court later rejected Alito’s view, voting to reaffirm Roe v. Wade. [Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 1991]
ALITO WOULD ALLOW RACE-BASED DISCRIMINATION: Alito dissented from a decision in favor of a Marriott Hotel manager who said she had been discriminated against on the basis of race. The majority explained that Alito would have protected racist employers by “immuniz[ing] an employer from the reach of Title VII if the employer’s belief that it had selected the ‘best’ candidate was the result of conscious racial bias.” [Bray v. Marriott Hotels, 1997]
ALITO WOULD ALLOW DISABILITY-BASED DISCRIMINATION: In Nathanson v. Medical College of Pennsylvania, the majority said the standard for proving disability-based discrimination articulated in Alito’s dissent was so restrictive that “few if any…cases would survive summary judgment.” [Nathanson v. Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1991]
ALITO WOULD STRIKE DOWN THE FAMILY AND MEDICAL LEAVE ACT: The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) “guarantees most workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a loved one.” The 2003 Supreme Court ruling upholding FMLA [Nevada v. Hibbs, 2003] essentially reversed a 2000 decision by Alito which found that Congress exceeded its power in passing the law. [Chittister v. Department of Community and Economic Development, 2000]
ALITO SUPPORTS UNAUTHORIZED STRIP SEARCHES: In Doe v. Groody, Alito agued that police officers had not violated constitutional rights when they strip searched a mother and her ten-year-old daughter while carrying out a search warrant that authorized only the search of a man and his home. [Doe v. Groody, 2004]
ALITO HOSTILE TOWARD IMMIGRANTS: In two cases involving the deportation of immigrants, the majority twice noted Alito’s disregard of settled law. In Dia v. Ashcroft, the majority opinion states that Alito’s dissent “guts the statutory standard” and “ignores our precedent.” In Ki Se Lee v. Ashcroft, the majority stated Alito’s opinion contradicted “well-recognized rules of statutory construction.” [Dia v. Ashcroft, 2003; Ki Se Lee v. Ashcroft, 2004]
-----------------
People for the American Way’s fact sheet is here.
Scalito is about as repugnant as it gets. It’s filibusterin’ time.
Get Your Filibusterin’ Boots On
Bush has nominated Alito to the SCOTUS. Back in my February “Gettin’ Hip on the Judiciary” series, I said this about Alito:
Alito so closely emulates Scalia that he has earned the nickname "Scalito."Fuck.
If that doesn’t make your blood run cold, then nothing will.
A Halloween Letter
Dear Bush Conservatives,
There’s an eerie specter among you—haunting your dreams and whispering assurances that he is real, that if you reach out you can touch him. Sometimes I see you try, and when your hands come up empty, a closed fist wrapped around nothing but the puff of smoke where the specter has been, you knit your brows and reassure each other, "Yes, he is real," though all evidence points to the contrary.
This specter makes you promises, and entices you to follow him, trust him, as he leads you ever deeper into the darkness. The form he assumes is nothing but an illusion, a deceit that conjures a mirage of strength and fortitude out of a thick fog that dissipates at any sign of challenge to its corporeality. You think it is clever defensive trickery, but fail to realize that is you being tricked. There is no substance; only mist.
Twice you have cast votes on this specter’s assurances and thinly fashioned figure, and as his image grows dimmer in the light of day, you continue to follow him deeper into the abyss where he determinedly leads you—the void where no sunlight can burn away his dew.
He makes you afraid of the things that go bump in the night, of monsters and ghouls, under your bed, in your closet, and in faraway places. He promises to protect you, but doesn’t tell you that he needs those summoned fiends to keep you scared and keep your eyes on him, believing in him, convinced he is real, ignorant to the reality that it is he of whom you should most be frightened.
I implore you to rub your eyes and see that the man you follow is nothing more than a figment of your imagination. He is not strong; he is not wise; he is not good. He is not your friend, he is not like you, and he does not have your best interests at heart. A specter, you see, has no heart.
The phantom in whom you’ve believed is not real. No treat; just a trick. It’s time to give up the ghost.
Happy Halloween,
Shakespeare’s Sister
Bizarro Kristof; Same Old Bush and Cheney
The only explanation I have for the NY Times’ Nicholas Kristof launching into a tirade which culminated in a recommendation of the vice president’s resignation should he continue his evasive silence, is that a day before Halloween, the evil spirit of a traitorous liberal has taken residence inside the normally empty space in his skull cavity and assumed control of his being.
Since Mr. Libby is joined at the hip to Mr. Cheney, it's reasonable to ask: What did Mr. Cheney know and when did he know it? Did the vice president have any grasp of the criminal behavior allegedly happening in his office? We shouldn't assume the worst, but Mr. Cheney needs to give us a full account. Instead, Mr. Cheney said in a written statement: "Because this is a pending legal proceeding, in fairness to all those involved, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the charges or on any facts relating to the proceeding."]Egad! Spooky.
Balderdash. If Mr. Cheney can't address the questions about his conduct, if he can't be forthcoming about the activities in his office that gave rise to the investigation, then he should resign. And if he won't resign, Mr. Bush should demand his resignation.
Meanwhile, appearing on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Sen. Harry Reid noted that Bush and Cheney chose to laud Libby’s dedication. (“Scooter has worked tirelessly on behalf of the American people and sacrificed much in the service to this country. He served the Vice President and me through extraordinary times in our nation's history.” – Bush; “Scooter Libby is one of the most capable and talented individuals I have ever known. He has given many years of his life to public service and has served our nation tirelessly and with great distinction.” – Cheney.) Neither took the opportunity to register a modicum of anger, frustration, or disappointment with Libby, should the charges prove to be true. I imagine that’s because they already know they’re true—and don’t bloody care, just like they didn’t care about preventing three-quarters of a million dollars of taxpayer money from being spent on an investigation into something to which they could have provided an answer two years ago. These apathies should be of particular concern to American voters, but since the media has seemed reluctant to clearly acknowledge them, perhaps it hasn’t been given due consideration.
Then again, if there’s one success the Bush administration has had, it’s solidifying the cynical and too-popular notion that the government is irreversibly corrupt, so no one can be bothered to be shocked anymore. Quite a legacy that is—the killers of hope that goodness and governance are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
(Crossposted at Ezra's place.)
Helen
Helen Thomas is my hero. One of the earliest signs of how truly loathsome the Bush administration actually is was when they relegated her to the back of the room during press conferences. Pigs.
Bill Maher had her on Real Time Friday night, and she was awesome. If you missed it, Crooks and Liars has the video here.
34%
Great line from the always-clever Tina Fey during SNL’s Weekend Update last night, after noting that support of Bush (on some issue—the Iraq War?) is divided: “66% do not support the president; 34% think Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church.”
