Return of the SideBlogs
SideBlogs (to your left - one for news and one for blogs) are back. I've been slacking lately, but I hope to keep them regularly updated with news and posts about stuff that I just don't have time to comment on in depth.
So start clicking already...
Killer’s punishment: ‘Go to your room! And stay there, uh, for a while!’
The formula is simple: hire an expensive lawyer, blame your (unlikely to be charged) relatives for tampering with evidence, toss the mother of the victims (who lacks the financial savvy to hold out for an equitable settlement) a pittance, and walk away scot-free.
Jennifer Porter, a white woman from a relatively wealthy family hit and killed some poor black children with her car. After the kids bounced off of her windshield, she failed to stop and render assistance – the children were still alive when she fled.
She called home, hid her car, supposedly had mommy and daddy wash off the blood and gore, and turned herself in almost a week later only after it became apparent that she would most likely be caught.
She was never placed in handcuffs, and now she will never see a day of jail time for her actions.
This is not surprising: justice is blind and deaf only to the pleas of the poor who cannot afford fancy lawyers.
There is little doubt that had the colors of victims and driver been reversed, a different result would be playing out right about now.
Killer Bee wrestles against tolerance
One time professional wrestler B. Brian Blair grew up speaking Pig Latin, but he constantly yearned for something more until one day he discovered the magical language of Carny. In fact, he has written the definitive text on the dying language of professional wrestling and has positioned himself to profit handsomely should Carny ever approach the massive popularity of other fake languages.
His latest venture is a book called Smarten Up! Say It Right, a virtual dictionary for both the behind-the-scenes wrestling lingo and the Carny language that wrestlers use.
The book came about after he heard Ric Flair on Dave Meltzer's eyada.com wrestling show saying that 'kayfabe' was dead. (Kayfabe, by Blair's definition, means to "keep secret; tighten your lips, don't tell" and refers to wrestlers keeping secrets, particulary from fans.)
Blair thought that it was maybe time to bring the back-room workings and lingo to the fans, comparing it to behind-the-scenes documentaries on movies. "I watched the Making of Star Wars, then when I went and watched Star Wars, the movie was ten times better to me because I understood how they did all this stuff. That's the best way I can compare it."
......Blair even hopes that Carny catches on again. "I even copyrighted a character and wrote a storyboard of a Lee Haney-type character who's a carny man. And it's very entertaining and would fit into a storyline," he said. "I did that because I thought that maybe carny would catch on just like Pig Latin did at one time. All of our parents spoke Pig Latin."
As a professional wrestler, he was never allowed to possess and prance about in the really cool belt that designates a champion. The belt is wide and fabulous, and the men in tight panties lust after it constantly as they grapple and sweat and perform fancy homoerotic feats for their homophobic fans.
But the belt can only be worn by the chosen ones, and poor Brian was apparently never a favorite of the WWF keepers of the belt – he was often promised that the prize would one day be his, but the mean beltkeepers never made good on their pledges.
However, Brian did manage to wrestle the title of County Commissioner from Bob Buckhorn last November, and now the trilingual showman is fighting mad about the county school board's recent decision to stop scheduling school holidays on Christian holy days.
See, in Brian's world, it's all about the show, and right now he's all pumped up to publicly attack the board for daring to allow children of all faiths to take days off without penalty as their culture dictates. Brian knows that the move is little more than an open attack against our nation's proud Christian heritage of hatred and narrow mindedness, and he simply refuses to stand by and allow such an atrocity.
Hillsborough County commissioners want the school board to reconsider its decision to eliminate some Jewish and Christian holidays as vacation days.
"Don't let them take this from us," Commissioner Brian Blair said. "Don't let them steal something precious from current and future generations."
Commissioners passed a resolution Wednesday, proposed by Blair, stating that the county has a long history of respecting religious beliefs as reflected in the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Pledge of Allegiance. Insisting the nation was founded on Judeo-Christian values, Blair said the school board's Oct. 25 vote, "if left unchallenged, will affect our entire community for generations to come."
......Blair said it might be "a good time to consider" recognizing other Jewish and Christian holidays, but not Muslim ones.
"That would open the door to other religious holidays," Blair said. "This is a Judeo-Christian nation."
More:
Hillsborough Commissioner Brian Blair said a recent School Board decision to drop vacation days tied to Christian and Jewish holidays was a vote to "abandon our heritage."
He won support from five fellow commissioners Wednesday to urge the School Board to reverse itself.
"Commissioners and fellow Americans: Don't let them take this from us," Blair implored.
The other commissioners said nothing to explain the reason they supported the request. Commissioner Kathy Castor was out of the chambers during the vote but said later she would likely have opposed Blair's motion, calling it an "overreach."
Blair, who appeared on the national Fox News Channel program The O'Reilly Factor last week to express his opposition to the district decision, again held court before television cameras Wednesday after the vote. Acknowledging that other school districts have also cut holidays, Blair blamed a small minority of people for trying to erode America's Judeo-Christian tradition.
"I think it's the far left that you're talking about right now and that's part of America's problem," Blair said. "Why are so (few) affecting so many in an adverse way?"
......District officials emphasized that their policy allows parents to take children out of school without penalty on various specified religious holidays, including each of the ones in question.
E-voting fraud: not just for Democrats anymore
Why is it that e-voting problems are seen as a partisan issue?
Glenda Hood, tapped by Gov. Jeb Bush to steer Florida through the 2004 presidential election after the crisis of 2000, said Tuesday that she is resigning as secretary of state.
......The secretary of state is the chief election officer and is second in line of succession to the governor.
Although Hood, 55, was credited with avoiding the chaos that plagued the state and nation four years earlier, her handling of the 2004 election had its critics.
Democrats, in particular, demanded she require a paper trail for electronic voting machines, but Hood refused to order such a backup.
There's nothing partisan about the wish for votes to be counted fairly.
It's been nearly a week and a half since the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its 107-page report[PDF] confirming what many of us have been reporting for what seems like forever: That electronic voting machines are not secure, are hackable, and employ secret software that is frequently neither certified nor adequeately inspected.
The GAO report which The BRAD BLOG broke on October 20th, confirms that "[C]oncerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes."
Furthermore, it was released in tandem with a joint bi-partisan news release which lauded the report. The extremely rare joint news release was issued by six high-level U.S. Congressmen in the House of Representatives (three R's and three D's) all Committee chairman and ranking minority members including the Chair and ranking member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.
And yet, not a single wire service (AP, Reuters, UPI, AFP, et al) nor the NY Times nor the Washington Post has even run a single paragraph on the landmark GAO report or even the news release to our knowledge. Not one. Even though many of those same outlets reported on numerous occassions that the claims now confirmed as very real by the GAO were little more than "conspiracy theories" forwarded by "leftwing blogs" such as this one.
Why is it that e-voting problems are seen as a partisan issue?
Glenda Hood, tapped by Gov. Jeb Bush to steer Florida through the 2004 presidential election after the crisis of 2000, said Tuesday that she is resigning as secretary of state.
......The secretary of state is the chief election officer and is second in line of succession to the governor.
Although Hood, 55, was credited with avoiding the chaos that plagued the state and nation four years earlier, her handling of the 2004 election had its critics.
Democrats, in particular, demanded she require a paper trail for electronic voting machines, but Hood refused to order such a backup.
There's nothing partisan about the wish for votes to be counted fairly.
It's been nearly a week and a half since the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its 107-page report[PDF] confirming what many of us have been reporting for what seems like forever: That electronic voting machines are not secure, are hackable, and employ secret software that is frequently neither certified nor adequeately inspected.
The GAO report which The BRAD BLOG broke on October 20th, confirms that "[C]oncerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes."
Furthermore, it was released in tandem with a joint bi-partisan news release which lauded the report. The extremely rare joint news release was issued by six high-level U.S. Congressmen in the House of Representatives (three R's and three D's) all Committee chairman and ranking minority members including the Chair and ranking member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.
And yet, not a single wire service (AP, Reuters, UPI, AFP, et al) nor the NY Times nor the Washington Post has even run a single paragraph on the landmark GAO report or even the news release to our knowledge. Not one. Even though many of those same outlets reported on numerous occassions that the claims now confirmed as very real by the GAO were little more than "conspiracy theories" forwarded by "leftwing blogs" such as this one.
Brad Blog link via Suburban Guerrilla.
Dems got back?
Is the long period of spineless capitulation nearing an end? Might we finally have an opposition party? Call Harry and tell him thanks for growing a spine.
Reid's phone number:
(202) 224-3542
Just be sure to let the Dems know that this move is appreciated.
I gotta tip my hat to Harry Reid -- that was a sharp manuever he pulled off today, taking the Senate into secret session in order to punch a hole through the stonewall in Pat Roberts's Senate Whitewash Committee:
'After about two hours, senators returned to open session having appointed a six-member task force -- three members from each party -- to review the committee's progress and report back to their respective leaders by Nov. 14.'
In some ways, the reaction of the GOP grandees was an even bigger treat than watching the Democratic jellyfish rear up on its hind tentacles and sting someone. Outside of a nursery school, I don't know if I've ever heard such a chorus of crying and whining from a bunch of babies before. The Republicans have been in power so long now they've started to take on the pompous self-righteousness of those who believe power is their due. Frist's sound bite was particularly funny:
"They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas."
No convictions? That's, ahem, is not something the Majority Leader may be able to say about himself much longer.
......But I did enjoy the uproar that Reid caused today. It's the kind of thing that real opposition parties do. The Dems ought to try it more often. They might even learn to like it.
This past weekend, we witnessed the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, the Vice President’s Chief of Staff and a senior Advisor to President Bush. Libby is the first sitting White House staffer to be indicted in 135 years. This indictment raises very serious charges. It asserts this Administration engaged in actions that both harmed our national security and are morally repugnant. The decision to place U.S. soldiers in harm’s way is the most significant responsibility the Constitution invests in the Congress. The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really about: how the Administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions.
...
The troops and the American people have a right to expect answers and accountability worthy of that sacrifice. For example, 40 Senate Democrats wrote a substantive and detailed letter to the President asking four basic questions about the Administration’s Iraq policy and received a four sentence answer in response. These Senators and the American people deserve better.
They also deserve a searching and comprehensive investigation about how the Bush Administration brought this country to war. Key questions that need to be answered include:
-- How did the Bush Administration assemble its case for war against Iraq?
-- Who did Bush Administration officials listen to and who did they ignore?
-- How did senior Administration officials manipulate or manufacture intelligence presented to the Congress and the American people?
-- 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?
-- How did the Administration coordinate its efforts to attack individuals who dared to challenge the Administration’s assertions?
-- 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.