Go surfers!

Poetic justice:

 A paparazzo trying to photograph Matthew McConaughey at the beach told police he was attacked by a mob of surfers who threw his camera in the ocean.

House of Representatives sodomizes the Constitution

The retroactive immunity bill passed. Easily.

Now things move to the Senate, where it MUST be blocked.

Heads I win, tails you lose

An excellent, must read opinion piece in the New York Times looks at the alleged “compromise” on FISA currently being debated in the halls of Congre$$.

The bill is not a compromise. The final details are being worked out, but all indications are that many of its provisions are both unnecessary and a threat to the Bill of Rights. The White House and the Congressional Republicans who support the bill have two real aims. They want to undermine the power of the courts to review the legality of domestic spying programs. And they want to give a legal shield to the telecommunications companies that broke the law by helping Mr. Bush carry out his warrantless wiretapping operation.

… Under the so-called compromise, the question of immunity would be decided by a federal district court — a concession by Mr. Bond, who originally wanted the FISA court, which meets in secret and is unsuited to the task, to decide. What is unacceptable, though, is that the district court would be instructed to decide based solely on whether the Bush administration certifies that the companies were told the spying was legal. If the aim is to allow a court hearing on the president’s spying, the lawsuits should be allowed to proceed — and the courts should be able to resolve them the way they resolve every other case. Republicans, who complain about judges making laws from the bench, should not be making judicial decisions from Capitol Hill.

Read it in full.

As usual, Greenwald leads a good fight.

Pawlenty of blame to go around

Reports suggest neglected maintenance was a contributing factor to the I-35W bridge collapse.

Transportation officials’ concerns that fixing or replacing a Minneapolis bridge would be a “budget buster” may have led to bad maintenance decisions before its deadly collapse in August, a report released Wednesday concluded.

Duh, ya think?

The seamy underbelly

It’s sad that is latent bigotry what Hillary has come to rely on:

For all the hope and excitement Obama’s candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed — and unreported — this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They’ve been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they’ve endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can’t fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: “It wasn’t pretty.” She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn’t possibly vote for Obama and concluded: “Hang that darky from a tree!”

Amazing to think there are still people who think this way in 2008.

More Republican’t family values

How special.  The latest defender of family values, R-NY Vito Fossella, was bailed out of jail when caught driving at twice the legal limit not by his wife of many years and mother of his legitimate children, but the girlfriend and wife of his illegitimate child.

His seat might have been in contention this year anyway. In the words of C&L:

I sympathize with the drunk-driving adulterer, but it doesn’t seem likely he’ll be able to defend his seat this year.

Measuring the Limbaugh sleaze

Joe Gandleman at TMV has a good analysis of the Limbaugh Effect - exit polling helps us measure the possible effects of Rush Limbaugh’s encouragement of GOP voters to cross party lines and vote for Hillary in the primary elections.

I won’t go into the details - follow the link if you want to, but the bottom line is if she pulls a victory out of Indiana, it appears her margin of victory will have been Limbaugh provided.

THAT is something the superdelegates really ought to consider, right before they announce for Obama.

Illegal anti Obama robo calls in Indiana

Apparently the wingnuts think it will be easier to face Hillary than Obama this November.

Hoosier voters also received an automated phone call — illegal in Indiana — Monday from an organization identified as the National Right to Life political action committee. The call urges the listener not to vote for Obama and claims he will legalize “partial-birth abortion” and allow “abortion on demand.”

The group’s PAC did not return calls seeking comment. On its Web site, however, National Right to Life PAC does not make a distinction between the abortion views of Clinton and Obama, calling them both “pro-abortion” candidates.

Well, sorry folks.  Obama’s all but certain to be the candiate.

HT: Firedoglake

Cleaning house

Ohio democrats clean house after improper behavior and abuses of power by a Democratic attorney general.

Sometimes, after someone is in office for a very long time, he or she starts to feel a sense of entitlement. These people no longer concern themselves with propriety because the power has corrupted their judgment.

But Dann just took office in 2006. He didn’t have time to let his office destroy his sense of right or wrong — Dann took his oath last year.

As for Dann’s party affiliation, Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern said the party voted over the weekend to rescind its endorsement of Dann and decided he would no longer receive any party resources or support. Redfern added that Dann is now “essentially an independent.”

Gov. Strickland added, “I think it’s important for Democrats to send a very clear message that we will clean our own house.”

Good for them. When Ohio Republicans’ scandals dominated state government a few years ago, the GOP tried to sweep the controversies under the rug, and defend those who’d committed crimes. It looks like Dems have learned quite well how not to follow Republicans’ example.

Had the Ohio GOP been so forthcoming with party discipline, perhaps they wouldn’t have needed (and deserved) the trouncing they got last election.

Ghosts of the past

A little video from the Clinton ‘92 campaign featuring a much younger James and George and…

Interesting that this would surface days before the Indiana primary.

UPDATE:

Probably less here than meets the eye, as expected. VERY curious this would come out just days before the primary.

Anything to win

Apparently the “anything it takes to win” mentality is as common among Hillary’s supporters as it is to the Clintons themselves.  Shaun Mullen reports at TMV:

WVWV president Page Gardner has apologized for any “confusion” caused by her group.

But it is obvious that Gardner is playing the news media and others for suckers because the more we learn about the high-tech suppression effort the more obvious it becomes that it was black North Carolinians whom the women’s advocacy group was trying to confuse in the service of getting one of their own elected — a proclaimed feminist who like them has mastered the manly art of dirty politics.

Quite.  And oh, the irony:

Speaking of ironies, there is none larger than the fact that North Carolinians of a certain racial persuasion and vintage could be forgiven for comparing the tactics used against them by women so desperate to succeed in national politics that they’ll do anything to the tactics that the white cracker establishment used for decades when they tried to vote.

Newsflash, Fox is wrong. Next up, water is wet.

Yeah, it’s focused on Fox, but note all the networks get their shots in. What a sorry, pathetic bunch of incompetents.

The whole point is an INFORMED electorate require a COMPETENT media. Alas.

GOP official innocent of rape

You know things are ugly when the noteworthy headline involves a Republican NOT guilty of something sex realted?

Of course there are always footnotes:

Obligatory snark provided by Dan Savage:

Forget about playing baseball with straight guys and beating pillows with tennis rackets—wanna turn gay people straight? Make us watch the Barclay tapes.

Tit for tat

Interesting. At least the good Christian folk can breathe easy that he wasn’t asking the girl’s FATHER for sex.

Winning the argument

It looks like clearer heads will prevail as the wingnut coalition tries to bring down Obama over his supposed “elitism.“

Check out the numbers.