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Archives for 04/19/2007 - 04/19/2007

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Frosty the Sn-oh my god he’s crazy

Posted by on April 19 at 11:28 PM

UPDATED: Video below.

Frosty Hardison, the parent of 7 who in January prevented Federal Way schools from screening An Inconvenient Truth was on The Daily Show tonight.

Holy. Shit.

I mean, the simple description above is enough to know this guy is nuts, but I had no idea he was actually, like, NUTS.

No video yet (come on Internet!), but here are some choice quotes:

“The global warming we’re experiencing right now would have to be God’s wrath… These are precursors to the rapture, which should occur in about, you know, 5 to 7 years…”

“If you have not accepted Jesus Christ, then you are basically left behind, and a bowl of God’s anger is poured upon the sun, that allows the sun to burn…”

“… waters of the earth, turned to blood, you can’t drink it…”

“… and God comes to live with us and we live with God, and I’m looking forward to having a recreational vehicle and spending a lot of time with my family.”

This bit came a little after he did a mock interview with Al Gore in which he played the part of both himself and Al Gore, that somehow segued into a Mickey Mouse impersonation.

So, not only is the school board listening to this lunatic, but he’s apparently allowed to be near children.

Bitter Irony

Posted by on April 19 at 9:14 PM

What happens when you have a hearing on nightlife in a neighborhood without any bars?

You get a hearing where all anybody wants to talk about is potholes, P-Patches, and traffic signals, as I learned tonight at the Bitter Lake Community Center, where council member Sally Clark presided (solo) over a “meeting” of her neighborhoods committee.

Residents, many of them white-haired members of the Bitter Lake Historical Society, lined up to kvetch to Clark about the “chuckholes” (look it up, kids) along Linden Ave. North, the lack of a P-Patch down the street from the community center, and the lack of additional city amenities (including a sidewalk all around the partially capped Bitter Lake Reservoir) in the neighborhood. What they didn’t talk about was the mayor’s proposal to create a Nightlife Advisory Board along the lines of San Francisco’s Entertainment Commission, which was the central item on the committee’s agenda. While council staffers Mike Fong and Ketil Freeman painstakingly outlined the differences between San Francisco’s commission and the mayor’s proposed one (basically, Seattle’s commission wouldn’t have true regulatory power, and it wouldn’t come with as much staffing as San Francisco’s) visibly disinterested Bitter Lake residents filed out of the room, slept, and tapped anxiously at their chairs with pens, awaiting the roundtable on neighborhood issues that followed the nightlife presentation. One could even be heard muttering, “Are you DONE yet?”

Maybe next time they could hold a hearing on Social Security at the Venom nightclub.

WASL Showdown

Posted by on April 19 at 5:44 PM

In addition to the budget, there’s one more big legislative skirmish knocking around in the legislature before the session ends this Sunday. The fight is about a WASL reform bill.

Citing high failure rates (about 49%) Democrats in the House want to delay the high school graduation requirement that says students must pass the math and science portion of the WASL.

However, Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe (D-1, Bothell), want to amend the bill to also delay the requirement that students must pass the reading and writing portion of WASL to graduate.

Neither the House nor the Governor (the bill was originally her’s) like the idea of delaying the reading and writing requirement.

However, the Washington Education Association does. Here’s the spin from their recent legislative outlook newsletter:

WEA supports delaying all sections of the WASL and using the delay to review, revamp and improve the current student assessment system. Math WASL scores have received a lot of attention, and there appears to be agreement about delaying that part of the high-school WASL. The House and Senate have passed versions of Senate Bill 6023, which delays the math WASL and makes other changes. But, looking at the state’s own statistics, it’s clear there’s a larger problem with the WASL and its use as a graduation requirement. According to the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, only 45.1 percent of Washington’s eligible high-school students have passed the reading, writing and math sections of the WASL. The 10th-grade WASL is required for graduation under current law. WEA has long advocated against using a single test to make high-stakes decisions about students and schools. WEA supports an assessment system that measures student achievement in multiple ways.

You’ll notice, however, that not passing math is included in WEA’s analysis. My suspicion is that it’s the math portion that’s dragging down the pass rate, not the reading and writing sections.

Indeed, Rep. Joe McDermott (D-34, West Seattle), who opposes Sen. McAuliffe’s amendment to delay the reading and writing graduation requirement, reports that the pass rate for the reading and writing sections of WASL are much higher than the pass rate for math and science sections.

A Possibility

Posted by on April 19 at 5:09 PM

Is there a possible connection between Sanjaya’s defeat last night on American Idol and the Virgina Tech massacre? Sanjaya Malakar; Cho Seung-Hui? Maybe this was the worst week in the show’s history to be an Asian male? The headline for a post on The Village Voice’s blog: “Sanjaya Malakar: America’s Long National Nightmare Finally Ends.”

Letters from the Lorax

Posted by on April 19 at 5:04 PM

A downtown resident sent in a letter and some photos, following up on my Vulcan piece from a few weeks ago.

Terry and Lenora 2004
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Then this happened:

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Dear Stranger,

Poor 2200 Westlake tenants. They fell for Vulcan’s sales pitch and watched their high end urban dreams lie in a heap - much like the pile of trees sacrificed for Paul Allen’s expensive “Motel 6.”

The disgruntled tenants may recoup their losses but no lawsuit can restore irreplaceable downtown canopy. Mr. O’Leary better hope the city protects bilked investors better than its natural resources.

L. Schaack

Because trees just couldn’t afford $600 a square foot.

Caged!

Posted by on April 19 at 4:59 PM

What are you doing in two hours? I, unfortunately, have to jet off to a preview screening in the U District, but you should definitely be seeing…

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… at Northwest Film Forum, 7 pm, $10. Read more about this great series, programmed by Three Dollar Bill Cinema, in my review/preview this week: “Good and Gay.”

Today the Stranger Suggests

Posted by on April 19 at 4:45 PM

Xiu Xiu

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(Music) Part of the fun of watching Xiu Xiu is imagining that singer Jamie Stewart could break down sobbing at any moment. But the band’s ill-medicated, bipolar pop swings from hesitant joy to abject grief with surprisingly little melodrama. Stewart’s wounded, whispering vocals are cushioned by carefully controlled atmospheres and highlighted by unlikely song structures. His lyrics find emotional extremes in both the mundane and the surreal. Live, Stewart’s energy is balanced by Caralee McElroy’s cool presence on keys and Ches Smith’s nimble drumming. (Neumo’s, 925 E Pike St, 709-9467. 8 pm, $10, all ages.) Eric Grandy

Alec Baldwin Is a Big Man

Posted by on April 19 at 4:44 PM

As TMZ reports:

An enraged Alec Baldwin unleashed a volcanic tirade of threats and insults on his 11-year-old daughter, Ireland, calling her a “thoughtless little pig,” and bashing her mother Kim Basinger—and TMZ has obtained the whole thing unfiltered and raw. And, we’ve learned, the tape could cost Baldwin his visitation rights.

You may hear the whole amazing thing here.

How Was It?

Posted by on April 19 at 4:17 PM

Kelly O and I were out with our microphone and camera this weekend: Soul Night on Eastlake; Soul Food at 25th and Cherry; and the Tattoo convention in Sea-Tac.

We’ve got one question. How Was It?

Speaking about Speaker Chopp

Posted by on April 19 at 4:10 PM

David Postman has a critique of the Chopp story I published in the Stranger last week.

Postman’s got two basic points. 1) You can’t blame Speaker Chopp for all the progressive bills that got iced this session.

(My story reports that the Dem leadership in Olympia has gutted, tabled or thwarted a number of no-brainer legislative items this session: comprehensive family leave, a cap on payday-loan interest rates, a bill closing the gun-show loophole, a bill to keep tabs on corporate tax breaks by including those de facto expenditures in the budget, legislation preventing employers from holding “captive audience” anti-unionizing meetings, regulations requiring disclosure from pharmaceutical-industry lobbyists, an overall cap on CO2 emissions, tenant relocation assistance and a cap on condo conversions, legislation preventing strip-mining operations on Maury Island, protecting student free-speech rights, a homebuyers’ protection bill, full funding for health-care workers in nursing homes, and a cool follow-up to the infamous $3.2 billion tax break Boeing got in 2003, making the money contingent on a requirement that the company doesn’t engage in union busting.)

And #2, Postman says I actually didn’t get a lot of people to specifically criticize Chopp on the record.

Let’s start with Postman’s first point. Well, he’s right that Chopp isn’t to blame for everything on my list. For example, it was the Senate that nuked one of my favorite bills this session, the student press bill, which passed Chopp’s House. Additionally, Chopp has to play ball with his caucus. He can’t just ignore stubborn committee chairs nor the politics within his caucus.

(Although, as I did point out in my article, Chopp can control the landscape. He had longtime House Finance Chair, Rep. Jim McIntire, ousted because he didn’t agree with McIntire on tax reform. He also moved a tax break bill through committee even though he saw it didn’t have the votes. This is evidence that Chopp, obviously, has more power than most and should be held accountable for that extra power.

Still, Postman’s right that Chopp can’t be blamed for all the disappointments on the liberal side. And granted, that is what my headline said. Headlines though, as Postman well knows, are often beyond the control of the writer, and so, I’ll admit I wasn’t 100% happy with the headline. That said, I’m not backing away from the premise of the story, which is that Chopp remains weirdly risk averse when it comes to pushing a progressive agenda even though he has a commanding majority, and he has a unique and disproportionate amount of power within that super majority.

And so: He should also be held disproportionately accountable.

He’s the Speaker of the House. He sets priorities. It is not unreasonable to lay the failures (as progressives see them) at the feet of the leader—especially a leader who’s elected from the Dennis Kucinich 43rd. If Chopp can prioritize a tax break by yanking it out of a hostile committee, he can prioritize things like the pay day loans cap and yank them out of hostile committees? My story points out that he didn’t.

My story also points out that Chopp was on the receiving end of serious donations from the pay day loan industry, the building industry (with a targeted lobbying dinner too), and the Maury Island strip mining company, Glacier NW.

Postman’s second point is that I really didn’t have tons of people laying the blame on Chopp, specifically. (This critique grew out of a piece Public Radio reporter Austin Jenkins did where Jenkins reported how hard it is to get people to go on record criticizing Chopp. Jenkins went on to rehash an old story on Chopp’s centrist philosophy, which we all covered at the beginning of the session: the Dems made a lot of pick-ups in suburban swing districts in the 2006 landslide and didn’t want to “overreach” and lose those tentative seats. Leaders like Chopp believe that’s the blunder they made in 1994.)

Anyhow, Savage did a post yesterday showing that in fact, I had gotten several people to go on record about Chopp. Postman challenges that contention.

Continue reading "Speaking about Speaker Chopp" »

Warm, Bubble-Wrapped Beer

Posted by on April 19 at 3:54 PM

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The promotional swag rolls downhill here at the Stranger, so I’ve inherited Savage’s latest shipment of free booze, consisting of two warm, bubble-wrapped and zip-loc’d bottles of lager. The dilemma now is whether or not I should drink them before heading off to the EMP Pop Conference, or: Do pointy-headed music criticism and drinking mix?

Today on Line Out

Posted by on April 19 at 3:44 PM

Choice Voice: Kevin Suggs says how to successfully record vocals.

Love for Al Stewart: And his Love Chronicles.

Book Report: You’re not punk, and I’m telling everyone.

Shut Up: No, seriously. Local clubs want you quiet.

Need to Kill Some Time?: Terry has the playlist for you.

It’s hard to beat a baby hippo… but this baby zebra sure is sweet:

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5 Minutes of Silence For Seattle Nightlife

Posted by on April 19 at 3:17 PM

Tonight, to raise awareness about Mayor Nickels’ Nightlife Proposal, several Seattle bars will be observing five minutes without music or service at midnight.

Continue reading “5 Minutes of Silence For Seattle Nightlife”

Adoption Issues

Posted by on April 19 at 2:57 PM

Good column today—I enjoyed reading it as usual. I wanted to point out, though, that one comment you made to the effect that all adoptions should be open really struck me as naive. In a situation like the one of the young woman in last week’s column, yes it would be a nice option to have an open adoption.

In my case, my family of four (wife, me and two boys) adopted two kids from Ukraine in 2005. The littlest one was 18 months old at the time, and the elder was 3 1/2. The birth mom abandoned the little one at birth in the hospital, and the state came and took the elder one. She had—and has, as far as I know—severe alcohol problems, and is suspected of abuse (the elder has some pretty questionable scars). Do you think that she gives a shit? Do you think that if she ever wakes up and actually does give a shit that I ever want her showing up at my door saying “Mommy’s here!” or anything else, for that matter? Not a chance.

I know it is highly unlikely, as she is half a world away. I also know that in the US, four weeks in re-hab, finding Jesus, and deciding she is a good mom after all is all most judges need to remove a child from a loving adoptive home. Precisely why we went to Ukraine. In Ukraine, the adoptive are, in the eyes of the law, and on the birth certificate, recognized as the birth parents.

Yes, it would be nice if everyone was nice, but it ain’t so. Some people just should not be around children. Doesn’t stop them from having them, though, does it? As you well know, if everyone had to go through all the trouble (and expense!) of adoption to get pregnant, the world’s population would plummet.

B.F.

I hear you, B.F. But not all “open” adoptions are alike—they don’t all involve high degrees of contact; some don’t involve any ongoing, real-time contact at all. Some bio parents are so unfit to parent that even phone calls, let alone visits, are a danger to kids they couldn’t take of in the first place. I still support “openness,” however, even for what, in practice, may be closed adoptions.

In your case, I hope that your kids know their birth stories, where they come from, how they came into your lives. I feel they have a right to that information—no secrets, no lies. That is open adoption too.

Also, B.F., in Oregon, where my boyfriend and I adopted our son, the state placed my name and his on the birth certificate, and our adoption could only have been reversed if fraud was proved—and then only in the first year. So not all open adoptions involve the kind of risks you’re concerned about.

Many parents that adopted in closed adoptions live in fear of their children’s birth parents precisely because they know so little about them and imagine the worst. (Maybe what you imagine to be true about your children’s birth mother is accurate, but maybe not.) In cases when it’s possible for an adoptive parent to know his or her child’s birth parents (and that’s most cases, I believe), having the birth parent’s blessing—to be chosen by the birth parent!—is tremendously empowering. It also honors the sacrifice that the birth parent is making. Knowing the birth parents can alleviate the anxiety—you don’t have to worry about the birth parents coming for the child if you’ve met them, they picked you, and they’re content with their choice.

In a closed adoption, the only way for the birth mom to ever see her child again is to sue for custody—to try and disrupt or reverse the adoption. In an open adoption—which, again, simply isn’t possible in cases like yours—the birth parent or parents can have some mutually agreeable degree of contact, and see or hear from the child, without having to disrupt or reverse the adoption. I don’t have stats but I would imagine that birth moms that have done open adoptions are, therefore, less likely to try and reverse the adoption—and, indeed, reversals of adoptions are pretty rare to begin with.

Thanks for writing.

Flaubert & Writing Oneself

Posted by on April 19 at 2:56 PM

Apparently, the Paris Review isn’t all that great anymore (right, Christopher? I can’t recall why or when it happened), but the new issue contains some never before published letters from Flaubert to himself. Maud Newton has an excerpt from a fascinating introductory essay explaining their provenance.

Here’s one of the letters, which were written on the occasion—and the subject—of friends’ deaths. This seems appropriate. I’ve been thinking a lot about inadvertent or sideways autobiography lately: Rachel Corrie’s letters and journals, meant for an imagined public, surely, but maybe not this public at the Seattle Rep; Cho Seung-Hui’s multimedia self-portrait as oppressed martyred madman, meant for NBC and the world—but while the images speak loudly, the words are nonsensical and censored. Also, our interest in both of these is a result of death (Corrie’s, Cho’s victims), and so death becomes in some sense their subject, even as they fussily preserve a life.

We’d be interested in Flaubert’s letters even if they weren’t about death, of course. But the fact of their being about death seems one reason why they were meant for himself, for a public of one—and therefore why they joined this odd species of incidental, morbid autobiography.

But I don’t know. I really haven’t read much Flaubert. (Don’t tell Mudede.)

Home of the Brave

Posted by on April 19 at 2:50 PM

Bomb scare in Lynnwood; ROTC practice causes scare at UW; students with loaded guns and extra ammo arrested at high school in Federal Way.

Today In Silly Internet Advertisements

Posted by on April 19 at 2:29 PM

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Let’s Stay Together

Posted by on April 19 at 2:23 PM

A few weeks ago, a friend introduced me to Roberto Bolaño. My friend handed me a copy of The Savage Detectives, Bolaño’s long Chilean novel about young poets in Mexico City. The first four sentences were exciting and fun:

I’ve been cordially invited to join the visceral realists. I accepted, of course. There was no initiation ceremony. It was better that way.

But then things got a little dull. The story fell away into smoking pot, talking about girls, talking about other poets. My attention wandered. I picked up other books. (Daphne Merkin! I had no idea!) I felt bad about that. Not just because leaving one book mid-stream feels like a tiny breakup, but also because Bolaño is supposed to be all kinds of exciting. People compare him to Borges. I don’t see it.

Reading this review in Sunday’s New York Times (I know, I’m slow) felt like looking up an old girlfriend on myspace. Checking up, seeing what I’m missing, getting a flavor of the thing without having to actually do the work:

The best way to offer a sense of this writer might be to take a scene, and a sentence, from “By Night in Chile,” still his greatest work. The book is narrated by Father Urrutia, a dying priest and conservative literary critic, a member of Opus Dei, who comes to emblematize, by the novella’s end, the silent complicity of the Chilean literary establishment with the murderous Pinochet regime. In one episode, Father Urrutia is sent to Europe, by Opus Dei agents, to report on the preservation of the churches there.

Wow. It sounds like Bolaño and I got off on the wrong foot—Opus Dei and Pinochet trumps young poets with wispy mustaches any day. And then, when the character gets to Europe:

Father Urrutia discovers that the chief threat to the churches comes from pigeon excrement, and that all over Europe churches have been using falcons to kill the pests. In Turin, Father Angelo has a fearsome falcon called Othello; in Strasbourg, Father Joseph has one named Xenophon; in Avignon, the murderous falcon is named Ta Gueule.

Pigeon shit—funny. Awesome. And then the actual sentence:

Ta Gueule appeared again like a lightning bolt, or the abstract idea of a lightning bolt, and stooped on the huge flocks of starlings coming out of the west like swarms of flies, darkening the sky with their erratic fluttering, and after a few minutes the fluttering of the starlings was bloodied, scattered and bloodied, and afternoon on the outskirts of Avignon took on a deep red hue, like the color of sunsets seen from an airplane, or the color of dawns, when the passenger is woken gently by the engines whistling in his ears and lifts up the little blind and sees the horizon marked with a red line, like the planet’s femoral artery, or the planet’s aorta, gradually swelling, and I saw that swelling blood vessel in the sky over Avignon, the blood-stained flight of the starlings, Ta Guele splashing color like an Abstract Expressionist painter.

That is a hell of a sentence. I’m going to give our relationship another shot.

The Gonzales Testimony

Posted by on April 19 at 1:40 PM

TPM’s Joshua Marshall, who helped push the fired US Attorneys scandal into the public consciousness, says he’s only hearing bad things about Gonzales’s testimony before Congress today:

From the buzz I’m hearing today, if Alberto Gonzales were a stock, we’d be at that point when those automatic trading halts kicked in because so many people are trying to sell.

Here, also courtesy of TPM, are a couple of the day’s testiest exchanges, both of them between Gonzales and New York Senator Charles Schumer:

Letter of the Day

Posted by on April 19 at 1:32 PM

Who’s Worse? The Shooter or the Media?

Shame on the fucking media! NPR too! The media’s response to this shooting [at Virginia Tech] has been so sensationalistic, so sickeningly reactionary and so violence obsessed it boarders on fetishism.

What kind of sick people flock to the scene of such a brutal crime, and immediately begin interviewing children (18 and 19-year-olds) who are in a state of shock, and broadcast their images across the world? Within hours, they have swarmed upon this college community with a total and complete disregard for the well being of the people. It’s sick!

What is the media’s excuse? They look as though they’re foaming at the mouth! The reporters get to flex their acting muscles, putting on their condescending and phony gestures of disgust and solemn remorse. All the while, they fail to hide the gleam of excitement and anticipation in their eyes. They report on the tiniest minutiae as though they were unlocking the secrets to the universe. Are they providing the news? Hell, no! They’re creating a story to sell to us, in the form of a reality show; one that everyone will watch, full of drama, mystery and violence. Their purpose is singular: get people to watch so they can make more money. Then the whole event becomes a platform for the media to push the political agenda’s of their corporate sponsors.

And of course, there is everything that is not talked about, which could fill the pages of several books. Although public buildings in Iraq are being bombed daily it is reported on as a mere sideline. “Stocks fell 50 points today, continuing to feed rumors of a recession. In Iraq, 27 women and children were killed today when a car bomb exploded just outside a Baghdad hospital. (Momentary pause) In local news, Gov. Christine Gregoire discusses the potential for public funding of a new Sonics Stadium….”

Now, I’m waiting for the impending rise in hate crimes towards anyone of Asian descent. This will be reported with that familiar tone of shock, and the media will exclaim that it is non-sense such violent behavior could occur in this day and age. All the while, the elephant sits in the middle of the room getting fatter and fatter as it gorges itself on a super-sized helping of ignorance and a side of corporate propaganda. If this had happened in any other part of the world (England excluded, maybe…actually, probably not) it would be just another sidebar, given the same airtime as would be given news of a movie star’s admittance to rehab, or a government official being charged for tax evasion. All of which is given less airtime then either sports or the weather. So, why can’t I turn the goddamn news off? Its like watching a car wreck. I’m compelled to do it! I’m caught in the media tractor beam. Help!
Todd

It’s in the Pee Eye

Posted by on April 19 at 12:38 PM

Wait a minute: I thought we were the juvenile paper!

P-I employees had no doubt who won this battle of the old media dinosaurs, immediately breaking into a daylong, celebratory bacchanal that culminated that night with a rented limo full of drunken reporters pulling up to Fairview Fanny… and unceremoniously emptying their bladders on the Times’ front lawn.

No, it doesn’t take much imagination to picture grizzled newspaper-war veterans sottedly writing their names in the grass, but the image of a certain female reporter squatting on Frank Blethen’s lawn — marking his territory as hers — that is sure to become an oft repeated tale of local journalism lore.

Once a bunch of Stranger employees snuck into the Weekly’s office, smoked pot, and stole a bunch of Seattle Weekly coffee cups. But we kept our dicks in our pants. Because we’re, like, adults.

Save $2.50, the Earth

Posted by on April 19 at 11:35 AM

If you haven’t been riding the bus and/or watching PBS’s America at a Crossroads series this week, you may not be aware that Metro buses are free, free, free all day Sunday, in honor of the Earth. (Speaking of honoring, check out the new MLK favicon on the King County websites. And you thought the logo was only for badass letterhead.)

On a normal Sunday, it would only cost $2.50 to get an all-day pass anyway, so you’re not saving much. (Other than, you know, the planet.) On the other hand, Sunday is the best day to go to Uwajimaya on the bus, because the 49 reverts to its old 7 route and you can go straight to the ID without transferring. I think I need some frozen wheat gluten.

Defending Our Freedoms

Posted by on April 19 at 11:24 AM

From my book Skipping Towards Gomorrah

Whenever some lunatic pulls out a gun in a school… and starts blowing people away, the National Rifle Association helpfully suggests that the problem isn’t too many guns in the United States but too few guns. If only the murdered teachers, students, or coworkers of the deranged shooter or shooters had themselves been armed, they could’ve returned fire and saved lives. Guns aren’t the cause of gun violence, the NRA insists, but the solution to gun violence….

Gun nuts talk and talk about needing guns to protect the rights and freedoms that all Americans enjoy, but when the rights and freedoms of Americans are under siege, guns nuts are nowhere to be found. I don’t recall seeing any NRA members, for example, ever protesting an assault on the free speech rights of Americans by the feds—or the federal government’s successful efforts to undermine our constitutional protections against government surveillance and unreasonable searches, their attempts to regulate speech on the Internet, limit abortion rights…

So while gun owners are always saying that owning guns is about defending freedom, the only freedom gun owners seem interested in defending with their guns is the freedom to defend their freedom to own guns. For a freedom fan such as myself, this seems a little limited. All that firepower—200 million guns—dedicated to defending just one freedom? Charlton Heston, the actor and president of the NRA, says he “cannot stand by and watch a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States come under attack,” and yet I don’t recall seeing Charlton Heston on television complaining about John Ashcroft’s recent assaults on, say, attorney-client privilege….

If gun nuts want to convince non-gun nuts of the value of an armed citizenry, perhaps they should use their guns to defend all of our freedoms, not just their freedom to own guns.

If American gun owners saw themselves as, say, the armed wing of the ACLU then our society would all benefit in some small way from our gun culture/fetish. As things stand, however, we get nothing in exchange for the risks we all must face thanks to all those fucking guns—nothing except death, bloodshed, and pain. It’s a bad deal, gun nuts.

Edwards in Seattle

Posted by on April 19 at 11:20 AM

He’ll be here May 1 to answer questions from union members as part of the AFL-CIO’s endorsement process.

(Via Postman)

Collegiate Massacres/Erosion of Women’s Rights/Continuation of Horrifying War Getting You Down?

Posted by on April 19 at 10:52 AM

Before you indulge in suicide fantasies or whiskey shots before noon, please experiment with the rich narcotic properties of Boomshine. (For best results, hit your mute button.)

On weekends, I like to mix it with a bong hit and Sonic Youth’s A Thousand Leaves.

(Thank you, MetaFilter.)

Simon Cowell Cleared of “Eye-Rolling” Charges!

Posted by on April 19 at 10:37 AM

Yesterday we were debating the latest “controversy of the century™”—American Idol’s Simon Cowell allegedly rolling his eyes while contestant Chris Richardson was paying his respects to the victims of Virginia Tech. As expected, Simon issued a statement on last night’s episode claiming he didn’t hear what Chris was saying, because he was talking to Paula… hence the “eye-roll.” But here’s something unexpected! Instead of just taking his word for it, the producers put together a split-screen clip of what actually happened during that moment, and from all appearances it clears Simon of all “eye-rolling” charges. Ahhhhh. HE MUST FEEL LIKE O.J. SIMPSON!
Check out the video here (the part you’re interested in starts at the 1:15 mark).

Anal Wink

Posted by on April 19 at 10:27 AM

Anal Wink. Anal wink. anal wink. ANAL WINK. Anal Wink. Anal wink. aNaL wInK. A N A L  W I N K . Anal wink »

Speaking of, all your stuff are belong to gays.

The Sticks and Mud

Posted by on April 19 at 10:10 AM

The day after a day of bashing America (its shortsightedness, its weak perspective, its weak gun laws), let’s turn and bash Iran. From the New York Times:

The Iranian Supreme Court has overturned the murder convictions of six members of a prestigious state militia who killed five people they considered “morally corrupt.”
Now what is this nonsense? You can kill a person because you happen to believe they are “morally corrupt”? Yes, in Iran you can!
According to the Supreme Court’s earlier decision, the killers, who are members of the Basiji Force, volunteer vigilantes favored by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, considered their victims morally corrupt and, according to Islamic teachings and Iran’s Islamic penal code, their blood could therefore be shed.

The last victims, for example, were a young couple engaged to be married who the killers claimed were walking together in public.

Members of the Basiji Force are known for attacking reformist politicians and pro-democracy meetings. President Ahmadinejad was a member of the force, but the Supreme Court judges who issued the ruling are not considered to be specifically affiliated with it.

Iran’s Islamic penal code, which is a parallel system to its civic code, says murder charges can be dropped if the accused can prove the killing was carried out because the victim was morally corrupt.

This is true even if the killer identified the victim mistakenly as corrupt. In that case, the law requires “blood money” to be paid to the family. Every year in Iran, a senior cleric determines the amount of blood money required in such cases. This year it is $40,000 if the victim is a Muslim man, and half that for a Muslim woman or a non-Muslim.

Now that there is some real primitive shit. These people are nothing more than worms living in the mud. Even the 4th century Greeks had come to the conclusion that the execution of the law must not be in the hands of the house (oiko) but in the hands of the public (agora). Does Aeschylus’ trilogy, The Oresteia, have any other meaning? And here we are in the 21st century, reading on the internet that there are still places on this interconnected planet that allow individuals to take the law into their own hands, their own house—the locus of divine law and other such inhumane mysteries/miseries. It’s utterly amazing.

Thursday Morning Sports Report

Posted by on April 19 at 9:56 AM

“Gut feeling, I think Felix will be OK. I have nothing to base that on.”

So says Mike Hargrove. Let’s hope his gut turns out to be right. As Dave at U.S.S. Mariner put it:

Now we just hold our breaths and hope like crazy, because without Felix, rooting for this team is about as much fun as having your eyelids ripped out.

UPDATE: U.S.S. Mariner is now reporting some good news:

Preliminary reports are that there is no structural damage.

As for the game itself, watching Beltre hustling for home only to be thrown out by a yard and ending the game was painful in its own right. Thankfully, the Twins leave town after today’s game. 3:35 start. FSN, KOMO.

Also: The Mariners signed Jose Lopez to a four-year extension; White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle came within one walk of a perfect game; the Sonics ended their season on the bad side of a blowout; and Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher was fined $100,000 for wearing the wrong hat on Super Bowl media day.

Finally: Fantasy Football players, be wary of drafting Vince Young next year.

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Alert Arizona’s Male Escorts!

Posted by on April 19 at 9:36 AM

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Everybody’s favorite disgraced pastor, Rev. Ted “Meth and Man Ass” Haggard, is moving his wife, kids, and 100% heterosexual self from Colorado Springs to Phoenix, Arizona. “Have a nice heterosexuality!” says Newspeak, Colorado Spring’s only newspaper, and to help Ted do just that Newspeak thoughtfully provided this link.

And because it’s still funny… click here to hear “Meth and Man Ass on a Sunday Morning.”

This is What Theocracy Looks Like

Posted by on April 19 at 9:21 AM

Okay, our Supreme Court is bad. But Iran’s is worse.

Six members of a state militia that routinely attacks reformist politicians and violently breaks up pro-democracy meetings had been convicted of murder by lower courts. But the Iranian Supremes overturned the lower courts’ decisions.

According to the Supreme [Court]… the killers, who are members of the Basiji Force, volunteer vigilantes favored by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, considered their victims morally corrupt and, according to Islamic teachings and Iran’s Islamic penal code, their blood could therefore be shed
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And what were these moral bankrupts guilty of? Well, one 16 year-old girl—immediately hanged in public after an improvised trial—was suspected of “chastity crimes.” A young couple—engaged to be married—was executed for walking together in public.

In other Iran news: John McCain jokes about bombing Iran…

Oh, New York Times Thursday Styles

Posted by on April 19 at 9:15 AM

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Will you ever fail to make my morning a bit better?

Morning News

Posted by on April 19 at 6:18 AM

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NBC Broadcasts Killer’s Video: Cho Seung-Hui declares,“You Brats.”

Iran Supreme Court: Condones infamous murders, a-okays lynch mob justice against “Immoral” citizens.

U.S. Supreme Court: A-okays ban on partial birth abortion.

Baghdad: More than 170 killed in a deadly day of bombings.

AG Gonzales: Testifies in front of Congress.

Wolfowitz: Top deputy tells him it’s time to go.

Yahoo Sued in U.S. District Court: For alleged role in cracking down on Chinese dissidents.

Okay. This one’s a big deal. At sunrise on April 19, 1775, after a late night slog from Boston, an estimated 800 British troops, under the command of Colonel Francis Smith and Major John Pitcairn, arrived in Lexington on their way to Concord to seize weapons. At the Lexington town green outside Buckman’s Tavern, the British regulars came face to face with between 40 and 70 American minutemen. A fracas broke out and shots were fired. No one knows who fired first. However, the Lexington skirmish left eight colonists dead and ten wounded. The British sustained one injury. (They also failed to capture Rebel leader John Hancock and rabble rouser Sam Adams, who—reportedly happy that violence had broken out—exclaimed, “What a glorious morning, this is!”) The British marched off to Concord—six miles east of Lexington—and arrived a few hours later, at 8am. Here, one large division led by Pitcairn and Smith searched the central village for military stores. (The minutemen, under the command of James Barrett and John Buttrick had surrendered the town, retreating to a hill above the Concord River, overlooking the North Bridge.) The British did not find much weaponry in town. Thanks to advance intelligence and Paul Revere’s warning team, most of it had been moved and hidden on farms. However, the British set fire to some of the empty artillery carriages, destroyed 60 barrels of flour, stormed through several homes, and occupied the main building in town. A separate British division, about 115 men, headed out to search minuteman John Buttrick’s property by the North Bridge where the minuteman maintained their position, gazing down on the plumes of smoke billowing up from town. About 35 British troops guarded the North Bridge, while another 80 men crossed the bridge. There, however, they ran into the minuteman contingent, which numbered about 500. The outnumbered British began heading back to the bridge, and panicking, fired—killing two minutemen. Patriot Buttrick called out, “Fire, for God’s sake men, fire!” and, indeed, the minutemen returned fire (“The Shot Heard Around the World.”) Three British regulars were killed. The British contingent retreated back to town rejoining the main force. Smith ordered the British troops back to Boston. The road back, particularly between Concord and Lexington, was flanked by inflamed minutemen and farmers who shot at the retreating British from behind trees, stone walls, and large rocks. When the British finally got back to Boston, they counted 73 dead with 200 others wounded. The Colonists counted 49 dead (not all military) and 41 wounded. The Seige of Boston and the American War for Independence was on. We win and grow up to emulate the British.