Shakesville

McCain: Screwed

Bush to McCain: Suck it, old man.

The President signed the Defense Appropriations bill on Friday. In his signing statement he did at least two notable things…

Most importantly, as to the McCain Amendment, which would categorically prohibit cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees by all U.S. personnel, anywhere in the world, the President wrote:

The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.

Translation: I reserve the constitutional right to waterboard when it will "assist" in protecting the American people from terrorist attacks. [UPDATE: Or, as Matthew Franck eagerly puts it over at the National Review, "the signing statement . . . conveys the good news that the president is not taking the McCain amendment lying down."]

Yeesh. Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings has more.

Bush and pals have been delivering one huge, heaping helping of abuse on McCain’s chocolate rosebud ever since the 2000 campaign. I guess the old man likes it, because he sure doesn’t seem to object.

In fact, an anonymous source within his campaign sent me a picture of a new look he’s trying out in preparation for 2008. I think it looks sharp. It’s nice to see him embracing his inner gimp.

Koufax Reminder

The Koufax Awards nominations will be closing soon (11:59pm tomorrow), so if you haven’t made your nominations yet, or want to put in some final good words for your favorite lefty bloggers, be sure to do so here before time runs out. (Info here and categories here.)

My humble and sincere thanks to those who nominated Shakes.

Thank a Progressive for the Luxury of Your Disdain

So, this morning I read some media plonker warbling on about how Hillary Clinton is infuriating the Right by positioning herself to win in 2008, and all I can think about is how every progressive I know despises her—her centrism, her moral values twaddle, her disingenuous posturing, her pandering, her Iraq hawkishness, etc. And it occurs to me that not only do allegedly liberal politicians continually marginalize the Left, but the rest of the country expects them to do so, because they do the same.

There seems to be endless tolerance for the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter and Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and James Dobson etc. etc. etc. In my experience, even moderates who don’t particularly like them don’t seem to find the same reserve of contempt for them that they do for the mere thought of an unapologetic liberal.

And you know what? It’s really beginning to piss me off.

Thanks to progressives, we have Social Security, a minimum wage, welfare, a 40-hour work week, overtime pay, job protections, equal opportunity, and labor unions—all of which are resoundingly supported by a plurality of Americans, and all of which are also perpetually under attack from conservatives.

Thanks to progressives, we have legalized birth control and safe and legal abortions—both of which are supported by a plurality of Americans, and both of which are also perpetually under attack from conservatives.

Thanks to progressives, we have equality (such as it is), and strides made toward full equality for all Americans are being made almost exclusively by progressives, as conservatives continue their assault on minority communities, women’s rights, and LGBT equality.

Thanks to progressives, we have voting rights and civil rights protections (such as they are), and efforts to ensure real and unassailable security of each are being made almost exclusively by progressives, as conservatives continue their assault on minority voters, fair elections, and civil rights.

Thanks to progressives, rural America has electricity, schools are desegregated, we have a National Endowment for the Arts, we have Public Broadcasting, and a conservative president’s vision—Nixon’s Environmental Protection Agency—is now bolstered by a national environmental movement, even in the face of an unprecedented battering of the environment by a neoconservative administration.

Of the Americans who criticize the current Social Security system, most don’t want to see it dismantled. Of the Americans who criticize our flawed welfare system, most still endorse its existence—if reformed—as part of an integral social safety net. Most Americans who don’t support equal marriage rights for gays still support a prohibition on job and housing discrimination. Most Americans who wouldn’t vote for a female, black, or gay presidential candidate still support women’s, minorities’, and gays’ right to vote. Most Americans who bitch and moan about the NEA still support publicly funded museums, libraries, university art programs, and theaters.

The America that most people want, and the America that most people live in, was brought to them by progressives, who still want to make sure every American, irrespective of skin color, sexual orientation, gender, religion, or class, can live in the America they want to live in, too. And on their behalf, I ask those who seek to marginalize the Left: How dare you?

The truth is, any American who disdains progressives probably has progressives to thank for that luxury.

I’m not suggesting that progressive policies are flawless, or that progressives have solved all of America’s problems (or are even capable of doing so). But I would like a modicum of perspective from those—including many of those in the wanking Democratic Party—who have benefited from scores of legislation derived from an inclusive but vast progressive movement, and now see fit to stand in judgment of progressives, condemning them to disenfranchisement from the political process and conflating them with the radical Right. Wanting drinkable water, breathable air, a functioning safety net, universal healthcare, alternative energies, true equality, fair elections, fair taxation, improved public education, and increased workers’ rights isn’t radical. It’s a worthy and achievable agenda, and, perhaps more importantly, it’s what America wants. Polled on issues alone, that is domestic agenda most Americans support.

And the conservative movement, including the current administration and the congressional GOP leadership, does not simply dispute progressives’ tactics for achieving these goals. They have systematically sought to undermine each and every last one of them.

Dems moan that the GOP is great at framing language and debates, and that’s true. It’s difficult to compete with the kind of mendacity that allows one to label a massive, orchestrated plundering of the environment The Clean Skies Act. But the Dems need to stop being ashamed of progressives. We are the history of much of what is right with America, and I’m sick and bloody tired of the compulsion to categorize us as anything less. You, and everyone else who looks down their noses at progressives, can shove your contempt for us straight up your arses, you ungrateful pricks.

Propagandapalooza

The pay-for-play continues:

A Pentagon contractor that paid Iraqi newspapers to print positive articles written by American soldiers has also been compensating Sunni religious scholars in Iraq in return for assistance with its propaganda work, according to current and former employees.

The Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations company…spent about $144,000 on the program from May to September. It is unclear how much of this money, if any, went to the religious scholars, whose identities could not be learned.

More on propaganda in Iraq here, and a recap of some of the propaganda at home:

The Bush administration was found guilty of violating the prohibition on using taxpayer money for propaganda after the Office of National Drug Control Policy produced and distributed television news segments about the effects of drug use among young people, and was also found guilty of the dissemination of covert propaganda after paying columnist Armstrong Williams to produce favorable coverage of No Child Left Behind. Later, it was revealed the Bush administration had also paid synidacted columnists Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus to endorse a Bush-approved marriage initiative. Additionally, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, ordered the removal of the words gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender from the title of a talk about preventing suicide in the GLBT community, and at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, made and distributed hundreds of television news segments during Bush’s first term, with many of them ending up in local news broadcasts across the country, without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.

That’s quite a record. You know, it almost gives the impression that Bush’s policies are so bad, that the only people who will publicly support them have to get paid to do it.

Ahem.

Kerry Can Still Taste It

John Kerry has never stopped running for president, so suggests the AP.

Borrowing a page from Republican Sen. John McCain's 2000 postelection playbook, Kerry has kept much of his presidential political organization intact. He has also used his fundraising prowess to aid Democrats across the country, collecting chits that could be called if he seeks the party's White House nomination.

There was a lot I liked about John Kerry in 2004. Though I was a Dean supporter long before most people had heard his name, when Kerry became the eventual nominee, I found plenty to support, and didn’t consider myself among those who had to hold my nose to vote for him. Particularly as an alternative to Bush, I loved him.

Some of his advisers—the usual “Democratic strategist” suspects, including the useless, loathsome Shrum—were a huge disappointment. Advising him to not fight back against the Swift Boat wankers was perhaps the worst recommendation in the history of presidential campaigns (running a close second to whomever set up that shot of Dukakis in a bloody tank). But I thought Kerry was a good man, and I was happy to cast my vote for both him and John Edwards—and I even argued immediately after the election that we shouldn’t be too quick to write him off for 2008. Losing an election is not, in my opinion, grounds for dismissing someone out of hand. The experience of having been well vetted and going through the campaigning process can actually be beneficial, helping one avoid the mistakes of a first-time candidate. I thought if he positioned himself as the leader of a shadow administration, and rebutted every bad Bush decision with a detailed Democratic plan, he’d set up himself—and the Dems—for a strong 2008 campaign.

But he didn’t do that.

And since then, he’s given me plenty of reason to write him off besides. And even if he hadn’t, I don’t think he can win. Someone needs to sit him down and reason with him. It’s over.

We’re Onto Ya

If there’s anything this administration has taught us, it’s that the more Bush and his minions say something, the less likely it is to be true. (See: WMDs; Plame leak didn’t come from White House; the GOP is a big tent. That ought to get you started, and once your mind stops spinning, I can give you further suggestions for investigation, if you like.) So I really like Bush’s most recent defense of his spy program:

President Bush on Sunday strongly defended his domestic spying program, saying it's a limited program that tracks only incoming calls to the United States…

"This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America and, I repeat, limited," he said.

Limited, bitches! Limited.

Cookies

The Dark Wraith offers a discourse on cookies—the computer kind, rather than the kind one might leave out for Santa (unless one is the NSA). Coincidentally, however, the Wraith’s offering does go down nicely with milk. (Also at Big Brass Blog, for those who have trouble with black backgrounds.)

Let the Eagle Soar…

<—— Remember that anti-gay, anti-choice, naked statue boobie-covering douchebag? Did you ever think you’d see the day when he seemed like a voice of reason? Neither did I, but compared to the fuckhead with a stranglehold on the Justice Department these days, Ashcroft comes away smelling like a level-headed rose. As does his second-in-command, James Comey, who was acting as Attorney General in Ashcroft’s absence in March 2004 while Ashcroft recovered from surgery—and during that time refused to certify central aspects of the NSA’s eavesdropping program.

A top Justice Department official objected in 2004 to aspects of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and refused to sign on to its continued use amid concerns about its legality and oversight, according to officials with knowledge of the tense internal debate. The concerns appear to have played a part in the temporary suspension of the secret program.

[…]

With Mr. Comey unwilling to sign off on the program, [two of President Bush's most senior aides - Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and now attorney general] went to Mr. Ashcroft - who had been in the intensive care unit at George Washington University Hospital with pancreatitis and was housed under unusually tight security - because "they needed him for certification," according to an official briefed on the episode. The official, like others who discussed the issue, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the program.

Mr. Comey declined to comment, and Mr. Gonzales could not be reached.

Accounts differed as to exactly what was said at the hospital meeting between Mr. Ashcroft and the White House advisers. But some officials said that Mr. Ashcroft, like his deputy, appeared reluctant to give Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales his authorization to continue with aspects of the program in light of concerns among some senior government officials about whether the proper oversight was in place at the security agency and whether the president had the legal and constitutional authority to conduct such an operation.

It is unclear whether the White House ultimately persuaded Mr. Ashcroft to give his approval to the program after the meeting or moved ahead without it.

The Senate Intelligence Committee, five of whom (Republican Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Democratic Senators Carl Levin of Michigan, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Dianne Feinstein of California) have called for a joint investigation with the Senate Judiciary Committee into the domestic-surveillance program, need to call Comey in (and probably Ashcroft) to find out what the hell was going on—hold Arlen Specter to his promise to launch investigations in the new year and get Comey’s testimony into the Congressional record.

(Aside: If Comey’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he was overseeing Fitzy’s investigation into the Plame leak, after Ashcroft recused himself, until Comey left for a job at Lockheed Martin in August. Something tells me this guy knows a lot about a lot of shit.)

Looking for Answers

The New York Times’ Public Editor, Byron Calame, has been trying to get some answers about why the Times delayed its publication of the NSA eavesdropping program story for over a year. He’s getting stonewalled, and he’s not amused:

The New York Times's explanation of its decision to report, after what it said was a one-year delay, that the National Security Agency is eavesdropping domestically without court-approved warrants was woefully inadequate. And I have had unusual difficulty getting a better explanation for readers, despite the paper's repeated pledges of greater transparency.

For the first time since I became public editor, the executive editor and the publisher have declined to respond to my requests for information about news-related decision-making. My queries concerned the timing of the exclusive Dec. 16 article about President Bush's secret decision in the months after 9/11 to authorize the warrantless eavesdropping on Americans in the United States.

I e-mailed a list of 28 questions to Bill Keller, the executive editor, on Dec. 19, three days after the article appeared. He promptly declined to respond to them. I then sent the same questions to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, who also declined to respond. They held out no hope for a fuller explanation in the future…

The terse one-paragraph explanation noted that the White House had asked for the article to be killed. "After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting," it said. "Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted."

If Times editors hoped the brief mention of the one-year delay and the omitted sensitive information would assure readers that great caution had been exercised in publishing the article, I think they miscalculated. The mention of a one-year delay, almost in passing, cried out for a fuller explanation. And the gaps left by the explanation hardly matched the paper's recent bold commitments to readers to explain how news decisions are made.

Too often recently the media (and the Times, in particular) has been the news. An important underlying story gets mangled, and the news becomes a series of questions about the hows and whys and whens and whos of the bad reporting, rather than ferreting out the important issues surrounding the original story. Anonymity is too often afforded to allow administration shills to “catapult the propaganda” or hide criminal leaking behind the protections of the First Amendment. (Ironically, even the editors of “the paper of record” now won’t go on the record.) Reporting the facts, irrespective of whose agenda those facts may help or hurt, has given way to an irrational (and unjournalistic) insistence on playing a game of he said/she said under the guise of being “fair and balanced.” Allowing opposing sides of an issue to comment is a courtesy; not a prerequisite of news reporting, the primary concern of which should be passing along factual information.

We’ve lost all sense of what the news is supposed to be, and what the media’s role in delivering the news ought to be.

Coldplay Indeed

Here’s a cute story about the future of your listening displeasure. Via BoingBoing, Coldplay’s new CD comes with a list of interesting usage guidelines, which most buyers will probably only discover after they’ve purchased the CD.

Here are some gems: "This CD can't be burnt onto a CD or hard disc, nor can it be converted to an MP3" and "This CD may not play in DVD players, car stereos, portable players, game players, all PCs and Macintosh PCs." Best of all, the insert explains that this is all "in order for you to enjoy a high quality music experience." Now, that's quality.

Looking at that list, and assuming the disc wouldn’t play in my DVD player, car stereo, or PC, the only place I’d be able to listen to it is in my under-cabinet model in the kitchen, which has the crappiest sound and speakers. Although I enjoy some music while preparing dinner, which, admittedly, does take me a bit of time since I don’t even have a microwave, no less a rice cooker, I don’t particularly care for the idea of only being able to listen to a CD in one room of my house.

It's amazing how the labels always seem to come up with new ways of screwing artists: if they're not cheating them out of royalties, they're systematically alienating their fan-base.

In the end, I think labels are really just screwing themselves. Established bands will eventually get tired of being the air staving off the inevitable death rattle of record labels, and realize that all the services labels provide can be had ala carte with the help of a good independent manager. Once they find a way to do it without labels, the music industry will finally shed its outdated structure, and both bands and fans will be better served.

(Crossposted at Ezra's place.)

Happy New Year!

Mr. Shakes and I were busy celebrating Christmas yesterday (as I mentioned earlier, my family's a week behind with everything this year for various coordination-related reasons). So we went right from Christmas to New Year's Eve, which was kind of surreal, and by the time we were done with the former, we had no energy left over for the latter. We made it to midnight, though, and celebrated with a bottle of our next door neighbor's homemade wine.

Thanks, everyone, for a great 2005. It's amazing how much fun can be had by traitorous, immoral, liberal scum. I look forward to more of the same as we continue to fight the good fight!

Attention, Shakers...

Happy New Year.

That is all.

(And a special Happy New Year to Shakes, who I really really wish was joining me tonight. I'll drink a Mai-Tai for you, snoogums.)

Question of the Day

Great photo caption from the Telegraph:

Competence can be such an elusive mistress. Competence, competence; wherefore art thou, competence?

The photo (with its sassy caption) accompanies a story headlined: Embattled Bush seeks new ideas to inspire the nation. His search must be going well, because this sounds really fucking inspiring:

"The White House has realised it had too ambitious an agenda and is re-tooling as we speak," the Republican congressman Fred Upton told The Los Angeles Times.

"They are looking at what is achievable, versus the grand big picture."

God, that’s fantastic. My nipples are getting hard with the anticipation of hearing him stutter, mumble, and “heh-heh” his way through an entire State of the Union address filled with inspiring yet achievable goals.

I recommend starting small. Something like:

1. Don’t fall off bike for entire year.
2. Teach dogs to walk.
3. Learn name of artists on iPod.

Ya know—the little stuff.

So…what inspiring yet achievable goal do you think the preznit should include in his grand plan for 2006?

New Assholes

It’s the tearing season, friends. Sully gets a new one, care of Larisa. And Bill O’Reilly receives his from Steve Martin, and just in the nick of time, as his old one was almost worn out from falafel abuse.

Oh, Steve—this almost makes up for Cheaper by the Dozen 2. Almost.

Not that I saw it, but even the commercials nearly wiped my good memories of The Man With Two Brains and The Spanish Prisoner right out of my head.

Wicked Witches

If only I’d heard about it sooner, I would have put this book on my Festivus List:

Feminists eat puppies

That might as well be the title of Kate O'Beirne’s new anti-feminist book. Instead the former vice president of the Heritage Foundation (so you know it’s going to be good) decided to go with a slightly more verbose title: Women Who Make the World Worse and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports.

Oh is that all? Damn, ladies; we need to step it up! So many institutions to destroy, so little time.

PSoTD has more on this delightful tome. I noted in his comments: “I can't believe I'm not included in O'Beirne's book, what with all the world-worsening on which I've been diligently toiling away lo these many months.” Said PSoTD in return: “Just gonna have to work harder, I guess, Melissa.”

Indeed. That will be my New Year’s resolution—to make the world a worse place every day. It warms the cockles of my very heart to think how much devastation I can wreak with my radical feminism in a mere 365 days, if I really put my mind to it.

And speaking of women’s minds, my friend Joe and I were just having a look at the Ecosystem rankings…

Joe: Ever notice how all the conservative tee shirt models have large um brains? They shoot them in high contrast light to exaggerate it even. Look at me and my conservative boobs, damn it.

Shakes: At least some of the big conservative bloggers have boobs. And the rest are boobs. They’re very boob-friendly, unless it’s Janet Jackons’s boob, and then they’re very anti-boob.

Bonus commentary on the conservative blogosphere:

Joe: WTF with that LGF?

Shakes: They eat shit for breakfast, then spend the rest of their day regurgitating it into the ether.

Joe: Yes.

Delish

Reuters reports on the Kopi Luwak coffee beans, which cost $175 due their rarity—by virtue of having derived their flavor from the intestinal tract of a critter called the palm civet. Mmm, scrumptious.

I don’t drink coffee, but this wasn’t news to me. I learned all about the specialty poop beans on an episode of CSI. It’s amazing how much information one can absorb while drooling over Gary Dourdan.

Best Headline Ever

Dodgy kebab pain turns out to be baby

Coincidentally, I’ve had the pain caused by a dodgy kebab (is there any other kind in Britain?), and I thought I was about to give birth to an elephant. But it was just the kebab.

A woman who went to hospital fearing she had eaten a dodgy kebab was stunned when she gave birth.

Helen Smitham from Distington, Cumbria, had no idea she was pregnant when she felt stomach pain.

Her mum took her to hospital - and 60 seconds later shocked Helen gave birth to a 4lb 11oz boy.

[…]

Helen's boyfriend Mark Askew, 41, said: "She was at work until the Friday before Christmas and we'd gone out doing the normal things, like going for a drink, Christmas parties and socialising.

"When I got a call to say we had a baby boy it was amazing."

My mom knew she was pregnant when she went into labor with me, but thought she’d eaten bad fish for dinner, which was causing the stomach pain she was experiencing. She didn’t understand why my dad was fine, and she was in agony. It was just me, making my debut—and I’ve been giving her pain in another part of her anatomy ever since.

Whistleblowing in the Wind

Guest-blogging at BradBlog yesterday, FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds made a passionate plea to America’s intelligence officials “to make yourselves available as witnesses and to serve the true supervisor of us all: the Constitution.”

High officials have perverse incentives to hide what is done in their orders by the employees below them. It is indispensable that Congress reach deep inside the National Security Agency and other agencies, seeking out employees at the operational level to determine how the President’s illegal order was carried into action. To assure that this occurs, we need for people with information from the agencies involved to come forward and ask to be interviewed by Congress. The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition calls on people with knowledge of unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens to contact NSWBC and let us know that they are willing to provide congress with information and testimony. Anonymity, if desired, will be scrupulously honored.

Meanwhile, as someone who did the right thing, and got her ass handed to her for it, appeals to others to similarly do the right thing, irrespective of the personal consequences, in an attempt to unearth the truth, the Justice Department has opened an investigation—not into the administration’s pernicious activities, but into who leaked the information.

The officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, said the inquiry will focus on disclosures to The New York Times about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks…

The Justice Department's investigation was being initiated after the agency received a request for the probe from the NSA.

Fabulous. Nice to see the wheels of justice turning so smoothly as they crush the truth tellers in their path.

It’s Cold in the Shadow of the Cold War

The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics, according to former and current intelligence officials and congressional and administration sources.

The broad-based effort, known within the agency by the initials GST, is compartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs, details of which are known mainly to those directly involved.

GST includes programs allowing the CIA to capture al Qaeda suspects with help from foreign intelligence services, to maintain secret prisons abroad, to use interrogation techniques that some lawyers say violate international treaties, and to maintain a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around the globe. Other compartments within GST give the CIA enhanced ability to mine international financial records and eavesdrop on suspects anywhere in the world.

…"Everything is done in the name of self-defense, so they can do anything because nothing is forbidden in the war powers act," said one official who was briefed on the CIA's original cover program and who is skeptical of its legal underpinnings. "It's an amazing legal justification that allows them to do anything," said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues.

GST? Fair enough; I guess KGB was already taken.

The interesting thing about this administration is that the majority of its members are leftover remnants from the Cold War—VP Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and National Security Advisor Condi Rice all got their respective starts in fighting the Red Menace, hawkish apparatchiks of the military-industrial complex one and all. (Tellingly, Rice’s most relevant credential when chosen as National Security Adviser was having served as a Soviet expert in Washington during the collapse of the Soviet Union.) For a little fun, you can trace the Neocon trajectory from Cold Warriors to Bush administration hacks here, which starts with roles in the Nixon administration and moves forward through six subsequent administrations.

And yet, these people whose political careers were built around defending democracy against the horrors of dictatorial communism seem resolutely determined to turn the American democracy into something as ugly and corrupt as that against which they once fought. They’ve become what they hated—which, considering their Cold War methodology seems a just fate. Unfortunately, they’re taking the rest of us down with them.

More from The Heretik and Linkmeister.

Frankly Speaking

Good characterization of the anti-gay crusaders who can’t give up the ghost in Massachusetts:

Massachusetss could face an "angry, divisive" fight if a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage reaches the 2008 state ballot, Rep. Barney Frank says.

The congressman blamed backers of the initiative petition for trying to provoke a new fight despite a lack of controversy over same-sex marriage.

"Basically, they're the disturbers of the civic peace," the Democrat said in a wide-ranging Associated Press interview Thursday. "We now have social peace in Massachusetts. They're the ones who want to stir it up ... This is a non-issue in Massachusetts."

That full marriage rights were extended to the LGBT community in Massachusetts, and the entire state didn’t immediately implode, is homobigot anti-marriage crusaders’ worst nightmare. God forbid there might be actual evidence (beyond common fucking sense) that legalizing gay marriage doesn’t immediately compel the Apocalypse.