Of course you’ve heard about the teenager Jacob Robida who went on a rampage at a gay bar in Massachusetts with an axe and a gun, and who was later killed in a police shootout.
Checkout his myspace web page.
Too bad none of the people he hurt and killed get to have accolades on the internet after this terrible incident. I’m sorry I can’t find my way to forgiving him.
According to the Washington Post:
Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use.
Bush has recently described the warrantless operation as “terrorist surveillance” and summed it up by declaring that “if you’re talking to a member of al Qaeda, we want to know why.” But officials conversant with the program said a far more common question for eavesdroppers is whether, not why, a terrorist plotter is on either end of the call. The answer, they said, is usually no.
Fewer than 10 U.S. citizens or residents a year, according to an authoritative account, have aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their domestic calls, as well. That step still requires a warrant from a federal judge, for which the government must supply evidence of probable cause.
The point people seem to be overlooking — who is actually looking at this data? There are thousands of people in the NSA and Bush White House who have been looking at this data gathered — data about you! Make no mistake, even if you’re not on the list of suspects, your data has been gathered up and looked at in the course of this investigation. How do you know they people looking at your data are honest? How do you know they’re not selling your credit card number? Who’s watching the watchers?
UPDATE: Don’t believe your data is caught up in the NSA dragnet?
What the hell? Chris Matthews suggested that gay people are responsible for a series of church burnings that occurred last Thursday in Alabama. See the video of his suggestions (made with out any proof).
MATTHEWS: Is there anything in the papers down there where a Baptist church has taken a position on some social issue, gay marriage, something that’s hot, where that would have aroused somebody?
ATF AGENT CAVANAUGH: I haven’t seen that Chris, but it’s very viable because we had an arson at a Unitarian church in rural Virginia, back in the summer, and it was right after the church at a national level had embraced gay members. There was an attack on this church in Staunton (?), Virginia, so things like that can happen.
MATTHEWS: That’s why I’m thinking like that because the more liberal churches would drive some people on the right crazy and maybe a more liberal person, who’s gay for example, would feel that they’ve been terrorized by the beliefs of another church too. We don’t know.
Way to demonize gay people, Chris.
“I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice,” she said. “But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people” – Coretta Scott King
“Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood,” – Coretta Scott King
My brother Scott sent me this dandy link to a page on Wikipedia detailing a problem they’ve had with our elected officials. Seems some of the folks inside the beltway have been vandalizing wikipedia pages by replacing their own politician’s pages with slick PR copy, while trashing their opponents pages with derogatory, and sometimes obscene writings. Naughty, Naughty.
Now the admins at Wikipedia have banned the IP addresses from several congressional offices temporarily, and are discussing a permanent ban to prevent people who can’t play nice from being able to play at all.
Pretty sad commentary on our society, when a community like Wikipedia can find a way to work well together for the public good, but the people that we elect to protect the public good are trashing the community.
A great movie that anticipates what Bush’s State of the Union Address will be, with a guy doing a dead-on impression of Bush. It’s hilarious.
Our children must be literized, don’t forget.
Alberto Gonzales just claimed that the Bush Administration shouldn’t have to get warrants to spy on American citizens because “we’re at war, and there has to be a measure of secrecy.” But the court they get the warrants from, the FISA court, is a SECRET court. They have top-secret clearances, and everything is done quickly and secretly out of the public eye. There’s no chance that any enemy combatants would learn about the wiretapping from the court system.
Bush said he had a team of lawyers go over the program — but a team of lawyers isn’t going to protect us. Only the courts can make sure that people’s rights are not being compromised in the process. And as I’ve pointed out many times, the court is there not just to protect the rights of American Citizens, but to protect BUSH from criticism, and to provide him back up to show that what he’s doing is above board.
If he went around the courts, he’s doing it because he knows he can’t get warrants for what he’s doing. Which means the spying he’s doing isn’t on TERRORISTS at all. It’s on his political enemies. He’s spying on Democrats. He was spying on John Kerry and Kerry’s election team.
Bush should be impeached, then jailed.
Last week, NBC allowed Chris Matthews to say, on the air, that Osama bin Laden sounds like Michael Moore.
This week, though, when Rachel Maddow made a much more apt comparison on Tucker Carlson’s show, saying:
This is a global war on terror. This is a war for you or for us to win. You need patience…He sounds like Ken Mehlman when he’s saying that only less gay. I mean this is ridiculous.
NBC chose to scrub the transcript. Ken Mehlman, for those who don’t know, is the closeted gay head of the Republican National Committee. Here’s the transcript that NBC put online:
MADDOW: He sounds like Ken Mehlman when he‘s saying that. This is ridiculous.
CARLSON: I‘m going to blow by that comment. But I will say—you…
Apparently you’re allowed to dis Democrats but not tell the truth about Republicans.
The television show “Welcome to the Neighborhood” was supposed to be a huge hit. Seven families compete to win a McMansion on a cul-de-sac in an suburban neighborhood, with the winners being chosen by the neighbors. Turns out, the popular couple who won, by changing the hearts and minds of the redneck republican residents, were gay men. And ABC, fearing a backlash from the religious right in the form of a boycott of their pet film Chronicles of Narnia, killed the show because they thought viewers might object to a neighborhood embracing gay people as friends and neighbors.
Now the gay couple who won the house, and the neighbors who changed their minds to support them, are speaking out about what happened.
Chris Matthews also had this to say about the movie Brokeback Mountain on the Don Imus radio show:
MATTHEWS (1/18/06): Have you gone to see it yet? I’ve seen everything else but that. I just—
IMUS: No, I haven’t seen it. Why would I want to see that?
MATTHEWS: I don’t know. No opinion on that. I haven’t seen it either, so—
IMUS: So they were—it was out when I was in New Mexico and—it doesn’t resonate with real cowboys who I know.
MATTHEWS: Yeah—
IMUS: But then, maybe there’s stuff going on on the ranch that I don’t know about. Not on my ranch, but you know—
MATTHEWS: Well, the wonderful Michael Savage, who’s on 570 in DC, who shares a station with you at least, he calls it [laughter]—what’s he call it?—he calls it Bare-back Mount-ing. That’s his name for the movie.
IMUS: Of course, Bernard calls it Fudgepack Mountain…
Notice he called Michael Savage wonderful? That’s really frightening.