Saturday, June 16, 2007

Mike Gravel, Zen Presidential Candidate

This may be the strangest political ad I've ever seen. Oddly, it actually makes me want to vote for the guy.

Friday, June 15, 2007

Gee, Ya Think?

Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong, at his hearing to determine whether he'll be disbarred for his handling of the Duke Lacrosse Players case, says he'll quit as District Attorney.

"It does not contribute to the cause of justice in Durham for me to serve as the sitting district attorney for every time I walk into the courtroom [there are] people pointing a finger at me and saying there's the guy in the Duke Lacrosse case."

Well, that's a pretty shrewd judgment there, Captain Obvious.

When people are using your name as a term for bogus prosecution ("I'm getting Nifonged here!") and defense lawyers across the country are invoking your most famous case in their closing arguments as an example of why you should automatically have reasonable doubt about the arguments of the prosecution, then yeah, I'm thinking your effectiveness as District Attorney is pretty much porked.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Letters, Oh We Get Letters

From ThePilot.com :

This will be short and to the point. If John Q Public wrote a letter to your paper saying awful things like those that Dusty Rhoades said (column on Scooter Libby, June 10), especially if they were Republican, his letter would immediately be trashed.

I take exception to the nastiness of this man, whether he be Democrat or Republican. He writes for you, so let's just leave it at that. I feel that rant on Sunday was at best sophomoric and at worst mean-spirited. It will be an absolute crime if you do not print my letter and let this guy rant and rave every week.

I would just like to close by saying if we could all approach politics on a more gentlemenly [sic] level, we would all be much better served.

Well, you know what? He's right. And as soon as someone apologizes for six years of calling me and people like me who opposed Commander Cuckoo Bananas' insane war "traitors" and "supporters of terrorism," I may just try it.

I look back on the stuff I wrote before the Second Gulf War and I'm amazed at how moderate and reasonable I was back then...and I still got e-mails telling me I was a "Benedict Arnold" and suggesting I should be hanged. So I figured, well, might as well let it all hang out, since the Yay-hoos were going to trash me anyway. And ya know what? I never looked back.

You think I'm too nasty to poor Scooter? Well boo-hoo-hoo. As far as I'm concerned if you aren't also standing up and decrying "nastiness" when the Bill O'Reilly's of this world are insisting that liberals "want America to lose," then you can just sit right the hell down now.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

There'll Always Be An England

BBC NEWS :

A woman who ripped off her ex-boyfriend's testicle with her bare hands has been sent to prison.

Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage when Geoffrey Jones, 37, rejected her advances at the end of a house party, Liverpool Crown Court heard.

She pulled off his left testicle and tried to swallow it, before spitting it out. A friend handed it back to Mr Jones saying: "That's yours."

Monti admitted wounding and was jailed for two-and-a-half years.



Dayum. Remind me never to get an Englishwoman riled.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Life Imitates "Art" (Updated)

There's a moderately funny movie called "Born in East L.A". It's based on a single by Cheech Marin (of Cheech and Chong) that's a parody of Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." The record tells the story of a Hispanic guy who gets accidentally deported to Mexico because he can't produce a Green Card...and the reason he can't produce a Green Card is that he's American.

Turns out when it really happens, there ain't a goddamn thing funny about it.

The family of an American citizen who disappeared after apparently being mistakenly deported to Tijuana a month ago has filed suit asking the U.S. government to help find him.

Pedro Guzman, 29, a Lancaster construction worker, is developmentally disabled and penniless, and he hasn't been heard from since May 11, said his family at a news conference in Los Angeles on Monday.

His mother, Maria Carbajal, said she spent the last month in Tijuana living out of her car while searching in vain for her son. She said neither the U.S. nor the Mexican government has helped in her search for him.

Guzman was born in Los Angeles, his family said. He is light-skinned and 6 feet 5. He speaks English and Spanish, made it through the 10th grade and has a driver's license.

But his family said he cannot read or write, gets lost easily and, although he does not appear mentally impaired, can be taciturn and suspicious of strangers.

The situation began when Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies arrested Guzman for trespassing at an airplane junkyard in Lancaster.

His mother said he was sentenced in April to 120 days in jail, but that about a month later, he called to say he had been deported to Tijuana and didn't know why.


Sunday, June 10, 2007

Sopranos Final Episode

I'm struggling to find an interpretation of that last scene that isn't a major "fuck you" to the audience.

J.K. Rowling Is Sending Messages to Al Quaeda

No, really. I read it on myspace.com:

America is on a path to a greater threat then we thought. It is those wicked Harry Potter books. The reason why Harry Potter is a terrorist threat, for the spells in the books are speical [sic] codes for terrorist groups in the middle east. The characters represent well known terrorist [sic] who have attack [sic] our borders. This is why we should ban these books from our schools. So, that no child would be

influence [sic] by these materials of mass killings on a free country. There is also popular podcast like PotterCast, MuggleCast who are spreading words of prasie [sic] to this horrible book of evil. And they must be stop, [sic] so that they won't brainwash anymore children with their terrorist views and support. They are the reason for the VT shooting, causing that boy to commit an act of mass murder all because of a internet show that talk [sic] about the evil that is in Harry Potter.


And it seems that Laura Mallory of Loganville Georgia does more to fight the creeping menace of Potterism than just blog. This "mother of three faithful and pure children" went to court to get the Gwinnett County School system to take the Harry Potter books out of the school library. She lost, probably because she apparently failed to try to make the al-Quaeda connection in state court. She may, however, be taking her fight to Federal Court, where if she tries to make the terrorist/Virginia Tech connection, she might just win. I mean, look at all the other civil liberties they've been willing to forego any time anyone raises those particular boogeymen.