Oh, never mind.

This is a really bad idea.

The "new Black Panther Party" is offering a $10,000 reward for the "capture" of Martin's killer, Zimmerman. When asked if this was inciting violence, the reply was Biblical: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." This will stir up the rightwingers who fear/hate nothing more than the image of the angry black man. And this will hurt Obama, despite his perfectly executed statements about the case.

Has anyone heard from him since December? I hope he's okay.

Surprise, surprise: when he attacks President Obama for not doing enough to fight pornography, Santorum doesn't much like questions about the degree to which the Catholic Church or Penn State (his alma mater) deal with child rapists.

[UPDATE: Just got a call from Larry Phillips office saying they "have no idea" how Phillips got added to that group. Phillips, of course, serves on the Sound Transit Board with Reardon, and I guess that would've been rather impolitic of him.

Turns out, I only go to Facebook to confirm friend requests, so I had no idea you could add people to groups without their permission, because hell... it would make no fucking sense for Facebook to work that way. But Paul assures me that it does, and since he's young and hip and everything (well, younger and hipper than me) I'm taking his word for it. So, um, my bad.]

Scandal-plagued Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon dodged one bullet recently when a recall petition was rejected on a technicality (the filer doesn't live in Snohomish County), but the recall movement is picking up steam... and picking up the support of some prominent Democrats.

A Recall Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon Facebook group was recently started, and among its early members are King County Council member Larry Phillips*, 1st CD candidate Suzan DelBene, and state Representative Hans Dunshee (D-44).

When members of your own party start calling for your recall, it may be time to look for another job... preferably one that doesn't give you the opportunity to carry on a longterm affair on the taxpayer's dime.

Oh, and by the way, if a Reardon recall petition is accepted, it wouldn't be the first time:

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10.21 pm [EST]. How could Ohio counties called Licking and Pickaway not vote for Santorum?

from Sullivan, of course.

UPDATE:
10.59 pm. A reader writes:

You mention Licking and Pickaway counties, but old favorites are Wood and neighboring Hancock counties. Oddly enough, both for Santorum.

But they changed his brown color on Fox News. For shame.

Maybe I misunderestimate the flexibility of Republican women. After the jump, from Jezebel . . .

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After the fold, we get to watch Republican douchebag bloggers attack each other like crazed weasels in a cage. Do not go below the fold if you don't like sophomoric jokes. You know who you are.

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I cannot put it in the post. After the jump if you dare. . .

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What a novel way to run rule a country!

Newt Gingrich has pledged that on his first day as president he will set up a constitutional showdown by ordering the military to defy a supreme court ruling extending some legal rights to foreign terrorism suspects and captured enemy combatants in US custody.

The Republican contender told a forum of anti-abortion activists ahead of South Carolina's primary election that as president he would ignore supreme court rulings he regards as legally flawed. He implied that would also extend to the 1973 decision, Roe vs Wade, legalising abortion.

"If the court makes a fundamentally wrong decision, the president can in fact ignore it," said Gingrich to cheers.

Rick Santorum:

“This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve been in tough races,” said the former Pennsylvania senator. “I’ve had the national media crawling up anywhere they could crawl . . . . It’s not going to be fun.”

Nope, Santorum never is fun, though santorum may be the by-product of fun.

But once again, Rick is uninformed:

Referring to his years in Congress, Santorum said his track record is “not perfect, and I’m sure you’ll hear from my friends about my warts. We all have them.”

No, only 80% of sexually active adults have HPV (the cause of . . . one sort of warts) and most people are asymptomatic. Why mix santorum and warts? Ask him, not me.

He also said something we can all surely agree with:

“I may have held my nose” because there were “bad things” in spending measures . . . .

Well, it takes a measure of spending to create santorum (or so I hear) but holding one's nose is just impolite.

. . . in so many different ways.

Lynn Sweet, long-time Chicago Sun-Times Washington correspondent, has some wisdom gleaned from David Axelrod as the Obama 2012 campaign gears up. Well worth reading if for nothing else than this anecdote/metaphor:

“I told my colleagues yesterday a bit of homespun wisdom that I got from an alderman in Chicago some years ago when one of his . . . colleagues wanted to run for higher office and he was really dubious. He said, ‘just remember the higher a monkey climbs on a pole, the more you can see his butt.’ So, you know, the Speaker is very high on the pole right now and we’ll see how people like the view.”

Axelrod told me afterwards that the alderman was [Dick] Mell.

Mell is Rod Blagojevich's estranged father-in-law. And ST's Mark Brown looked into the rules Blago's looking at living with for 12 or 13 years. I was most interested in the price list for commissary items:

Sweat pants, size large, will cost him $15.75. A thermal shirt goes for $7.80. Boxer briefs will set him back $7.25 for a two-pair package. Shower shoes are $4.45. Tennis balls are $3.65 each. Batting gloves are $10.40 for the right hand or $21.85 for a pair.

Iced oatmeal cookies 65 cents. Limit ten. Butterscotch pudding $1.35. Limit two. Tuna fish $2. Limit 10.

A Sony Walkman AM-FM radio costs $37.05. It’s the only such device offered. Throw in Koss headphones for $18.85 more.

Not Alcatraz, but not exactly Club Fed. . .

Go make fun of them!

Blago probably not going to Club Fed.

Rod Blagojevich, who tried to sell President Obama's Senate seat, gets 14 years.

Not in the way one might expect. (Skip to the 51 second mark in this video if you want the good stuff).

As in so many other cities today, OWS-allied movements took over various bridges, including the La Salle Street Bridge over the main branch of the Chicago River. The CPD, more known for busting heads and not bothering to take names than for delicate handling of anything, politely let the protesters occupy the bridge for a while. Then they talked to each protester, who agreed to get up and be cuffed and go away for an I-bond. No pepper spraying of 80+ year old women, no busting up of libraries. Let free speech happen. Whether this is the best strategy for the OWS protests to make some political headway, I'm ambivalent. Like Neil Steinberg and others, I agree that the OWS movement needs to register voters and elect people (even sellouts like Obama or other DINOs—who are indeed the lesser of two evils, but let's remember how much greater the greater of two evils can be). But I'd also say that anything which gets the local news to cover you and quote people making your talking points is a good thing for convincing the swing voters. Just let those voters drive home in a timely way. Which is to say, don't let Critical Mass take over this second phase of OWS.

...gets caught doing—well, you can pretty much guess, right?

Slog tipper Roz sent this along:

One of [Ohio's draconian anti-abortion] heartbeat bill’s staunch advocates is Ohio Rep. Robert Mecklenborg, a Catholic from Cincinnati who represents western Hamilton County. Mecklenborg loved the bill so much he was one of its nearly 50 co-sponsors. In fact, he led the fight to get it passed. He is all about family you see: he is a married father of three.

So, let's play fill-in-the-blank! Robert Mecklenborg was caught ______________ with a _____________. His blood tested positive for ___________.

If your imagination is taking you to dark places and you just want to be done imagining the horrible things a family values candidate does in his spare time, the answer (and link to the story, which has a spoilerific headline) is after the jump.

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