World hero Muntathar al Zaidi faces trial in Baghdad this morning on charges of throwing truth to power, or as Iraqi prosecutors call it, “assaulting a foreign head of state”.

Zaidi has been kept in custody since December 14, when he greeted George W. Bush as a liberator. His lawyer reports that Zaidi has been beaten, presumably by American journalists enraged that he went off script. Conviction could bring a fifteen-year sentence.

Whatever Zaidi’s fate, all that remains of his world-historical shoes is videotape. Police destroyed the Freedom Footwear after testing for chemicals and explosives.

After praise, poetry, Iraqi shoe thrower faces trial [McClatchy]

Scooter-pie Has the Goods On Cheney. When Will He Talk?

Insane genocidal maniac Dick Cheney is living in obvious terror that Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby is going to fuck him over big-time for not securing the presidential pardon that was obviously part of the deal for Scooter-pie to take the fall for outing Valerie Plame, one of the largest and most damaging breaches of intelligence security in modern history as, no shit, Plame’s brief was nuclear non-proliferation, arguably relevant now that the Taliban are one short war away from securing a nuclear party favor of their own.

Anyway, here’s the deal. Cheney was quite used to a very orderly deliberative process in the executive branch. Petroleum company executives, lunatics from the Project for a New American Century, the American Enterprise Institute or sundry fascist front think-tanks and his old employers at Halliburton would call and tell him how they could make some easy money together or advance some lunatic ultra-rightist fantasy. Cheney would get up from his desk, march into Caligutard’s office, wake him from his usual drunken stupor, lift his penis and command Caligutard to chew the smegma from his genitals.

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As promised on the previous thread: a post about programs on the teevee that have no place in an advanced society.  My nomination:

Dateline NBC.  Seriously.  NBC is an honest-to-goodness news gathering organization.  And yet they devote two hours of primetime every week to fluff pieces.  Waste of time — as is CBS’s 48 Hours: Mystery and ABC’s 20/20.  Times are tough, people.  Hard news or GTFO.

Your suggestions for ejection from U.S. American television most welcome.

Now that the GOP is out of power, they’re pumping out even more batshit insanity in an effort to stay visible.  I have two pieces of Grade A wingnuttery for you (and one bonus nonpolitical piece of insanity).  Tell me about others you know of in the comments, and I’ll add them.

Q) Who is to blame for the economic meltdown?

A) Chuck Schumer and George Soros! (best wingnuttery begins about 5 minutes in).

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Lawmakers across the country are tyring to ban a drug we’ve never heard of because of dangers we can’t document.

It’s an herb called Salvia, it’s readily available online, and apparently it makes you freakishly happy. For five minutes. And then it’s over.

If anything, it should be banned for the letdown.

Of course, anything that makes you feel good without the imprimatur of the pharmaceutical, alcohol or nicotine industries is manifestly a threat to society, which is why politicians, with the support of your local Eyewitless News, are falling over themselves to outlaw it.

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Nice Vitteresque twist on this one:

A man held a woman captive in handcuffs and an adult nappy for three days while he read Bible passages to her in the US state of Ohio, police said.

Troy Brisport, 34, picked up the woman last Wednesday night in Detroit after she told him she had nowhere to stay, and brought her to his home in Toledo, about 90 kilometres away, police told The Toledo Blade newspaper.

The Bible passages might be the worst part.

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Per CNN: “In her first interview since giving birth, the teenage daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said having a child is not ‘glamorous,’ and that telling young people to be abstinent is ‘not realistic at all.'”

Bristol? Your mom’s on line one. This is the fourth time she’s called in the last half hour. You might want to take this call.

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