Also-Rans

What about dear Snoopy? Oh right, yappy beagle and a little loopy with dreams of shooting down the Red Baron. That and his friend Woodstock’s heroin problem.

@ManchuCandidate: And don’t forget Santa’s Little Helper or Lady Bird.

Sam the Sheep-Dog rocked. Not only did he punch out at five, but he also punched out at noon to eat and have a smoke break of all things. Old school.

Meanwhile, oh hey look, the Boston Globe may be on the rack. If the Herald survives while the Globe does not (and notwithstanding the way of the Dead Tree leading to ruin), I may just give up entirely on civilization.

Krypto the Superdog Pro: Super powers Con: Alien

TJ: Talibunny’s latest EPIC FAIL.

Link error on SanFranLefty. Fix plz kthx.

And while you’re doing that, note that Mel Gibson’s wife is leaving him.

Notably: the divorce proceeding will be in Latin, with the judge speaking with his back turned to the audience.

@chicago bureau: For some reason it won’t let me copy the link in there. Try this:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-13/palins-new-disaster/full/

Palin’s New Disaster
by Max Blumenthal
April 13, 2009 | 10:14am

Rick Bowmer / AP Photo
The governor is reeling after nominating for attorney general a man who allegedly defended the right of men to rape their wives. Now, Max Blumenthal reports, she may dump him to save herself.

While priming her political machine for a likely 2012 presidential primary run, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has fomented a scandal that threatens to further erode her reputation in the Last Frontier. In March, Palin nominated Wayne Anthony Ross for attorney general. Ross, a colorful far-right lawyer and longtime Palin ally who sports his initials, W.A.R., on his Hummer’s vanity plates, was once considered a shoo-in for confirmation. However, his nomination was thrown into grave peril when his opponents presented evidence that he called homosexuals “degenerates,” hailed the “courage” of a student who lionized the Ku Klux Klan, vowed to undermine the sovereignty of Native American tribes, and allegedly defended men who rape their wives. According to two sources close to the confirmation hearings, Palin may ask Ross to withdraw before his appointment comes to a vote.

According to Burton, who detailed the allegations for me, Ross allegedly declared during a speech before a 1991 gathering of the “father’s rights” group Dads Against Discrimination, “If a guy can’t rape his wife, who’s he gonna rape?”

Palin’s hopes for a swift confirmation process were dashed April 10 when Leah Burton, a veteran lobbyist on children’s issues and domestic violence, submitted a letter to the Alaska State Judiciary Committee claiming that Ross publicly defended spousal rape. According to Burton, who detailed the allegations for me, Ross allegedly declared during a speech before a 1991 gathering of the “father’s rights” group Dads Against Discrimination, “If a guy can’t rape his wife, who’s he gonna rape?” (In a subsequent letter, Ross denied the remark and claimed, “I don’t talk like that!”)

Burton said Ross’s statement was consistent with his overarching attitude toward women’s issues. She claimed that he once said during a debate on the Equal Rights Amendment, “If a woman would keep her mouth shut, there wouldn’t be an issue with domestic violence.” Burton also maintained she has been in touch with “a number” of domestic-violence victims who witnessed Ross make “horrible” statements, but are too intimidated to speak out. “Alaska is a very small state and it’s terrifying for these victims to come forward because they’re afraid of retribution,” Burton told me.

Since Burton’s testimony, her father, former Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Richard Burton, wrote a letter of his own demanding to Ross that he withdraw his nomination. “You sir, speak and act like the kind of bully I met many times when responding to domestic-violence calls, some of the most dangerous situations police officers are often in,” Burton wrote. Ross reacted with characteristic fury to the Burtons’ broadsides, barking to reporters that if “anybody said that to me, we’d have a little confrontation because that’s a bunch of crap.” At the same time, a grassroots group raising support for Palin’s presidential bid called Conservatives4Palin; he attacked Leah Burton as an anti-Christian “fringe nutcase.”

But as pro-Palin forces attempted to push back against Ross’s critics, dozens of op-eds Ross authored during the 1980s and 1990s surfaced as key exhibits in the case against his confirmation. Among them is a 1993 piece entitled, “KKK ‘art’ project gets ‘A’ for courage,” in which Ross cheered on a local college student who had offended an African-American classmate by creating a statue of a Klansman with a cross in one hand and a flag in the other. “It might have been fun to see [the African-American student] try to remove the display,” Ross wrote. “Then she could have been arrested and her future as a student of the university could have been resolved through the university disciplinary proceedings.”

During the early 1980s, while Anchorage residents grappled over renaming the city’s 15th Street as Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and state legislators mulled establishing a state holiday honoring the assassinated civil-rights leader, Ross wrote several manifestoes attacking King as a communist subversive, according to University of Alaska-Anchorage music professor and local progressive activist Phil Munger. Munger also told me Ross has routinely appeared at public events beside his friend, Don Tanner, a white nationalist who moved to South Africa for a period during the 1980s to support its apartheid government, and who reveled crowds of conservatives with anti-black “South African jokes” upon his return to Alaska.

A glance at Ross’s published archive shows he never limited his resentment to minorities. He taunted environmentalists (“It is time we quit crying over the oil spill” was the title of an editorial he wrote in the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster); he denounced homosexuals as “degenerates” during a 1993 legal fight over a local gay-rights ordinance; and announced that his final wish before dying was to overturn Roe v. Wade. While rising through the ranks of the NRA’s national leadership in the 1980s, Ross published a piece in the mercenary magazine Soldier of Fortune, defending the right to form antigovernment militias.

“Ross’s profile fits where Palin wants to go after the current legislative session ends,” Munger remarked to me. “She seems to be planning some behind-the-scenes movement to stir up the crazies, especially by convincing them the federal government is going take their guns away. So nobody here is surprised by this selection.”

While Ross sustained withering criticism for his views on social issues, Native American tribes denounced his vociferous opposition to their subsistence rights. The tribes were especially disturbed by his vow during a 2002 gubernatorial debate to “hire a band of junkyard dog” attorneys to gut federal laws guaranteeing natives subsistence preferences. “It almost looked like she was rubbing our face in Anthony Ross’s appointment,” said Tim Towarak, co-chairman of the Alaska Federation of Natives, told The Bristol Bay Times. “Like rubbing our face on the ground, saying ‘Here, take this.’” With increasingly powerful tribal groups mobilizing a united front against Ross, Palin was compelled to defend her own record, pleading, “Obviously I am not anti-Native and would never appoint anyone who is.”

If Palin withdraws Ross’s nomination, she could end another embarrassing political spectacle before it registers on the national press corps’ radar. Alternatively, if she manages to ram his appointment through, Palin can begin implementing a hard-right legal agenda that will appeal to the elements she is cultivating as the base of her likely 2012 presidential campaign. However Palin decides to proceed with W.A.R., by nominating him, she has staked out the culture war as the fuel for her national ambitions.

Roommate of Christian Church Head an Accused Child Molester – Superintendent communicated with mother of alleged victim.

http://www.abqjournal.com/abqnews/abqnewseeker-mainmenu-39/11892-540am-clovis-christian-school-head-put-on-leave.html

@redmanlaw: And Northern California’s church leader story of the week involves Sunday school teacher who allegedly murdered an 8 year old girl.

@SanFranLefty: When Mrs RML said a female suspect had been arrested, I asked “what church did she go to?” I was only a little smug when we heard the details later.

Mrs RML was born in the San Joaquin Valley, btw, while I was born in San Francisco – two members of native New Mexican families born in Cali.

@SanFranLefty:
Palin really knows how to pick’em.

@chicago bureau:
I thought the proceedings would be done in Aramaic, Mel gets to drink and call all the men “jeebus killers” and women, “sugartits.”

@SanFranLefty: Gosh, I mean, what’s the fuss. Ross didn’t endorse sucking out wives’ eyeballs and skullfucking them, for goodness sake.

ManchuCandidate: Well, I was going for the whole opposition to masses-in-the-vernacular thing with the whole Vatican II deal. But your joke works too. (Oh, Mel. Wondrous source of the comedy.)

@chicago bureau:

Re: Gibson.

Whoa. The Ka-ray-zee Eyes are strong with this one.

A phrase comes to mind for dear old Mel regarding his constant slandering of non-Cathaholics and humusekshals from a book he may have read. Something about people throwing stones…

And the last sentence of the story is the most mysterious and foreboding of all:

Since then, he has hosted Britney Spears at his home in Costa Rica, and continued his acting career. He stars in “Edge of Darkness,” scheduled for release later this year.

I was just wondering whether its more fun to pass the afternoon browsing through ebay or craigslist (the pictures in the personals can be interesting), and I think I have my answer, I found not one, but two offers of authentic relics of the True Cross of Christ for sale! Ya don’t get that kinda stuff on Craigslist.
http://cgi.ebay.com/BAROCQUE-RELIQUARY-CRUCIFIX-TRUE-CROSS-RELIC_W0QQitemZ290309671939QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item290309671939&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1307%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50

TJ/ From NYT via Daily Beast:

Justice Thomas Opens Up
Being a Supreme Court justice was fun, before all these “rights” came and spoiled the fun. In a meeting with high school students, Justice Clarence Thomas—who usually plays his cards close to his vest—opened up a little about his worldview. The most intriguing moment? When Justice Thomas explained his distaste of “a proliferation of rights.” Thomas, who often portrays himself as a Horatio Alger-type figure who rose to the top of the judicial world through his own dedication, explained that he is repulsed by the notion “that each of us is owed prosperity and a certain standard of living.” Reflecting on the challenges of his job, Thomas said that he can become pretty “morose,” and at times seeks solace in classic speeches and the film Saving Private Ryan.

He went on to wax nostalgic for the days when schoolrooms had a flag and a crucifix, and to ramble incoherently when asked how views of the Constitution have changed since the Civil War.

@Mistress Cynica: Oh, for the lost days of separate drinking fountains.

@Mistress Cynica: Oh! Really? I hope he keeps yammering away. I’m interested to see just how far he takes teh carazee. Dumbass.

@Prommie:

Depends on if the het Craigslist personals are more creative than the gay ones, since those are mostly kahk shots (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but how does one sum up one’s personal, authentic, inherent essence and contribution to the world in a kahk shot?).

@Mistress Cynica:

The most shocking moment of all came when one of the students informed Justice Thomas, after his near violent denunciation of Brown vs. Board of Education, that he is, in fact, a black, which he angrily denied and objected to most vociferously.

@Mistress Cynica:

But seriously, whenever I think of the words “incoherent rambling of a senile old psychopath,” I only think of Scalia.

@Original Andrew: I don’t look at the kahks, I don’t want to catch teh gay.

@Original Andrew: ::SNORT::

@Mistress Cynica:
What proliferation of rights? I don’t remember that Constitutional Convention.

“that each of us is owed prosperity and a certain standard of living.” I have agree with that to a certain extent, but I mostly see it in the folks he supports, you know, Republicans and who are the folks who think that taxes are for little people and that tax cuts are grand.

@Prommie:

Now now, it has been scientifically proven that catching The Ghey is more complicated than that.

It requires an artistically perfect BJ, HJ or RJ–or at the very least–a single kiss, especially one caught on a TMZ camera, in order to cause a permanent, insatiable craving for tha Meat Lover’s Special.

@SanFranLefty:

After reading of this latest debacle de Palin, I’m stunned by how much she resembles–no–she is the modern day Monsieur Valenod, the horrifyingly crass, unscrupulous village director from The Red & The Black:

…by utter disregard for all decency and self-respect… Monsieur Valenod had said to the grocers, “Let me have the two greatest fools among you”; to the lawyers, “Show me the two greatest charlatans in your court”; and to the health officers, “Give me your two greatest quacks.” When he had gathered the scum of each class, he had said to them, “Let us carry on the administration together.”

FSM help us, it’s as true today as it was in 1828.

@Original Andrew: I’m feeling like we’re on the cusp of the French Revolution, except Madame Defarge is blogging instead of knitting.