March 26, 2006

Ohio’s Anti-Gay Marriage Ban Bites Straights

While domestic violence is no laughing matter, I cannot wipe the smirk off my face:

[Dayton, Ohio] — County prosecutors cannot charge some unmarried people under Ohio’s domestic violence law because it conflicts with the state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, this area’s state appeals court ruled Friday.

The 2nd District Court of Appeals is the first of the state’s 12 appellate courts to rule that the domestic violence law runs afoul of the Defense of Marriage amendment, passed by voters in 2004, and does not apply to “a person living as a spouse.”

The appeals court upheld dismissal of a domestic violence charge against Karen S. Ward of Fairborn, charged with assaulting her “live-in boyfriend” in Greene County…

Until the high court decides, unmarried defendants, who would have faced felony domestic violence charges, will be charged with misdemeanor assault charges in Greene County, [Greene County First Assistant Prosecutor Suzanne Schmidt] said. …

The amendment says the state cannot “create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the … effect of marriage.”

But the appellate court said the state’s domestic violence law, which includes protection for “a person living as a spouse,” conflicts with the amendment.

“The state or any subdivision shall not recognize these unions,” said Greene County Common Pleas Judge Stephen Wolaver, the trial judge who dismissed the charges against Ward. …

“The people who backed this amendment were not thinking about these types of unintended consequences,” [Montgomery County assistant public defender Michael R. Pentecost] said. “They got so overzealous.” …

Domestic violence law excludes some
Dayton Daily News
March 26, 2006

Take that, anti-gay voters.

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March 11, 2006

Rabid Homophobe Claude A. Allen Busted

A little weekend Schadenfreude, anyone?

Former Top Bush Aide Accused of Md. Thefts

Refund Scam Netted $5,000, Police Say

Claude A. Allen, who resigned last month as President Bush’s top domestic policy adviser, was arrested this week in Montgomery County for allegedly swindling Target and Hecht’s stores out of more than $5,000 in a refund scheme, police said. …

Washington Post
March 11, 2006

I might have shrugged this off as just another example of the rampant corruption galloping through the entire Bush administration — although I am quite amused that this idiot is so stupid to risk everything on such a small-time scam — but for the fact that his name jumped right off the page at me. I chuckled, quite nastily, to myself, having remembered blogging just once about Claude Allen, in 2003:

Finally, the Bush Assh- Nominee of the Day is Claude A. Allen — who has not only made his disdain for “queers” (in quotes this time because it’s his word) perfectly clear, and confirmed his enormous disconnect with reality by believing abstinence-only programs are the sole route to stopping the spread of HIV, but has demonstrated what must be an unfathomable amount of self-loathing, through his support of racist bigot Jesse Helms — who uses the N-word with the most casual aplomb; i.e., “I think all men are equal, be they sl-nts, b–ners or n—–s“. (Did I mention Allen is black?)

While You Were Sleeping
doublethink
May 4, 2003

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Junior Invites Criticism — Literally

Next time some dolt says it’s “unpatriotic” to criticize the President, repeat what George W. Bush said on Friday, March 10, 2006, at the National Newspaper Association’s Government Affairs Conference:

Q. … My question is about your sense of the free speech right in the classroom or in public to criticize you without being considered unpatriotic.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I think people should be allowed to criticize me all they want, and they do. (Laughter.) Now what are you all laughing at over there? (Laughter.) Don’t cheer him on. (Laughter.)

Look, there are some certain basic freedoms that we’ve got to protect. The freedom of people to express themselves must be protected. …

The right for people to express themselves in the public square is a freedom. Obviously, there’s limitations. If, for example, someone is inciting violence, or the destruction of property, or public — causing somebody harm. But the idea of being able to express yourself is a sacred part of our society. And that’s what distinguishes us from the Taliban. And that’s important for Americans to understand.

We’re in an ideological struggle. And one way for people to connect the ideological struggle with reality is to think about what life was like for people under the rule of the Taliban. If you didn’t agree with their view of religion, you were punished. … These people have a backward view.

So thank you for bringing that up; I appreciate it. People say to me, my buddies in Texas, how do you handle all this stuff? After a while, you get used to it. (Laughter.)

President Bush’s comments on Jay Bennish
Denver Post
March 10, 2006

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Molly’s Had It with the Do-Nothing Dems

I can’t remember seeing Molly Ivins quite so angry before — but I’m glad she’s saying what the rest of the mainstream media is too cowed to:

Enough of the D.C. Dems

… I don’t know about you, but I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there, and that includes Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I will not be supporting Senator Clinton because: a) she has no clear stand on the war and b) Terri Schiavo and flag-burning are not issues where you reach out to the other side and try to split the difference. You want to talk about lowering abortion rates through cooperation on sex education and contraception, fine, but don’t jack with stuff that is pure rightwing firewater. …

They’re talking about “a lobby reform package.” We don’t need a lobby reform package, you dimwits, we need full public financing of campaigns, and every single one of you who spends half your time whoring after special interest contributions knows it. …

Every Democrat I talk to is appalled at the sheer gutlessness and spinelessness of the Democratic performance. The party is still cringing at the thought of being called, ooh-ooh, “unpatriotic” by a bunch of rightwingers.

Take “unpatriotic” and shove it. …

This is not a time for a candidate who will offend no one; it is time for a candidate who takes clear stands and kicks ass.

Who are these idiots talking about Warner of Virginia? … And if there’s nobody in Washington and we can’t find a Democratic governor, let’s run Bill Moyers, or Oprah, or some university president with ethics and charisma.

What happens now is not up to the has-beens in Washington who run this party. It is up to us. So let’s get off our butts and start building a progressive movement that can block the nomination of Hillary Clinton or any other candidate who supposedly has “all the money sewed up.” …

Molly Ivins
Enough of the D.C. Dems
March 9, 2006

More than worth the click for the full read.

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March 9, 2006

Gavin Newsom Shames Los Altos (Good!)

Los Altos kids get support from SF mayor

Snubbed in February by its own city council, the Los Altos High School Gay Straight Alliance got a vote of support this month from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Newsom wrote the GSA March 1, saluting the GSA’s efforts to make “Los Altos High School an area of acceptance and support for its student population.” Newsom also proclaimed June 7 “Los Altos High School Gay Straight Alliance Day” in San Francisco and invited members of the organization to march with him in the San Francisco Pride Parade on June 25. …

“We’re looking at some more ways we can support the Los Altos GSA,” said Jimmer Cassiol of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services. “We think it is important that they know they have the full support of our community. We’re thinking of creative and productive ways to do that.”

Bay Area Reporter
March 9, 2006

Related:

Los Altos, CA: Red Island in the Middle of a Blue Sea
February 25, 2006

Latest from Los Altos
February 26, 2006

Lawyers We Love… And One We Don’t (or: Los Altos Gets Another Well-Deserved Slap)
March 8, 2006

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March 8, 2006

The Case for Impeachment: Now I Believe the Dam Might Burst

A must-read, and must-bookmark:

The Case for Impeachment:
Why we can no longer afford George W. Bush

…House Resolution 635 [introduced by Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D., Mich.), is not] a high-minded tilting at windmills but the production of a report, 182 pages, 1,022 footnotes, assembled by Conyers’s staff during the six months prior to its presentation to Congress, that describes the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq as the perpetration of a crime against the American people. It is a fair description. Drawing on evidence furnished over the last four years by a sizable crowd of credible witnesses … the authors of the report find a conspiracy to commit fraud, the administration talking out of all sides of its lying mouth, secretly planning a frivolous and unnecessary war while at the same time pretending in its public statements that nothing was further from the truth. …

Entitled “The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War,” the Conyers report examines the administration’s chronic abuse of power from more angles than can be explored within the compass of a single essay. The nature of the administration’s criminal DNA and modus operandi, however, shows up in a usefully robust specimen of its characteristic dishonesty.

That President George W. Bush comes to power with the intention of invading Iraq is a fact not open to dispute. … At the first meeting of the new National Security Council on January 30, 2001, most of the people in the room discuss the possibility of preemptive blitzkrieg against Baghdad. … Six months later, early in the afternoon of September 11, the smoke still rising from the Pentagon’s western facade, Secretary Rumsfeld tells his staff to fetch intelligence briefings (the “best info fast… go massive; sweep it all up; things related and not”) that will justify an attack on Iraq. …

By November 13, 2001, the Taliban have been rousted out of Kabul in Afghanistan, but our intelligence agencies have yet to discover proofs of Saddam Hussein’s acquaintance with Al Qaeda. President Bush isn’t convinced. On November 21, at the end of a National Security Council meeting, he says to Secretary Rumsfeld, “What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq?…I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.”

The Conyers report doesn’t return to the President’s focus on Iraq until March 2002, when it finds him peering into the office of Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor, to say, “Fuck Saddam. We’re taking him out.” At a Senate Republican Policy lunch that same month on Capitol Hill, Vice President Dick Cheney informs the assembled company that it is no longer a question of if the United States will attack Iraq, it’s only a question of when. The vice president doesn’t bring up the question of why, the answer to which is a work in progress. By now the administration knows, or at least has reason to know, that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, that Iraq doesn’t possess weapons of mass destruction sufficiently ominous to warrant concern, that the regime destined to be changed poses no imminent threat, certainly not to the United States, probably not to any country defended by more than four batteries of light artillery. …

By early August the Bush Administration has sufficient confidence in its doomsday story to sell it to the American public. …

Before reading the report, I wouldn’t have expected to find myself thinking that such a course of action was either likely or possible; after reading the report, I don’t know why we would run the risk of not impeaching the man. We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country’s good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world’s evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation’s wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal — known to be armed and shown to be dangerous. Under the three-strike rule available to the courts in California, judges sentence people to life in jail for having stolen from Wal-Mart a set of golf clubs or a child’s tricycle. Who then calls strikes on President Bush, and how many more does he get before being sent down on waivers to one of the Texas Prison Leagues?

Lewis H. Lapham
The Case for Impeachment:
Why we can no longer afford George W. Bush
Harper’s Magazine
February 27, 2006

Click the link and read the entire article.

Also read this: “Impeaching George W. Bush,” by Onnesha Roychoudhuri (AlterNet, March 6, 2006).

Finally, and most importantly, a 273-compilation of the Conyers report is here (PDF).

We’re almost home, folks. We’re almost home.

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Lawyers We Love… And One We Don’t (or: Los Altos Gets Another Well-Deserved Slap)

Written by the president of the Santa Clara County Bar Association:

City’s stifling of Los Altos High gay group
seems unconstitutional

The Santa Clara County Bar Association is dismayed at the Los Altos City Council’s exclusionary actions against gay students at Los Altos High School. One of the great hallmarks of America’s government and justice system is the right to public redress for wrongs, perceived or actual, to our government.

The city recently denied the Los Altos High School Gay/Straight Alliance’s request for a declaration of a Gay Pride Day in the city. The council went one step further and added language to an existing rule that prohibited hate speech based on race, religion, gender and sexual orientation. The new language they added to this section did not exclude a different kind of hate speech but instead specifically precluded discussion about issues involving sexual orientation, and in particular, bringing to the council issues involving Gay Pride Day.

While the city’s policy not to recognize Gay Pride day may or may not be debated, the indisputable fact is that these young people have an inalienable right to petition their city council and hold their leaders accountable for their actions. …

Regardless of an individual’s personal or religious beliefs, the community and the law simply cannot take sides and must endeavor to treat everyone the same. As elected officials, surely you know that you are elected to serve the entire community, not just those with whom you agree.

The Los Altos City Council is not only misguided but also may have violated federal law. In Romer vs. Evans, The U.S. Supreme Court held that a Colorado law that denied gay people any protections was an unconstitutional violation of their 14th Amendment rights to equal protection. …

Much like Colorado, the Los Altos City Council has no legitimate purpose to its actions, other than it does not want to hear the concerns of a certain group of people. In this case, it is all the more egregious because the wound was not simply in violation of their own stated mission or even directed at a “class of persons” but at their own children.

Christopher Arriola
City’s stifling of Los Altos High
gay group seems unconstitutional
San Jose Mercury News
March 8, 2006

I’d heard this was coming down the pike, and I applaud the SCCo Bar. I could almost kiss the SCCo Bar; they’ve got the weight and the authority (and no vested interest, other than doing the right thing) to make the Constitutional question stick.

You want to know what’s really ironic? Ron Packard, Mayor of Los Altos — and, I sincerely believe, the driving force behind the city council’s anti-gay stance — is a lawyer himself (Packard, Packard & Johnson, 4 Main Street): He should know better!

I can only conclude that either Mr. Packard is not a very good lawyer, or that prejudice is such a great force that it trumps both common sense and legal acuity. (Unless Mr. Packard was living under a rock, he could not have failed to notice the impact of Colorado’s Amendment 2; it was a major story in the U.S., and Romer v. Evans a huge victory for equal rights. Or perhaps Mr. Packard, like the nation’s Commander-in-Chief, just doesn’t read newspapers.)

As San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano said about the anti-gay faction of the Los Altos City Council: “Shame on them. I think they should be recalled and not because of their sexual orientation.”

A recall movement would almost assuredly fail (Los Altos is a backwater of bigotry, and the businessmen who control the city are as thick as— well, let’s just say they’re tight), but the idea is tempting — especially since there are legitimate grounds that have nothing whatsoever to do with the LACC’s anti-gay amendment. In January of this year, the city came thisclose to prosecution by the county district attorney for water-code violations (a sewer worker tipped off the D.A. to at least four incidents of raw sewage spilling into our once-pristine Adobe Creek) and, worse, for covering up the spills by failing to report them.

You know what stopped the D.A. from going forward with the case? The statute of limitations had run out — by just over two months.

Lucky, lucky Los Altos.

The sewer scandal isn’t over, however; guess who may file suit against the city for wrongful termination? You guessed it: whistle-blower Keith Amdur, the sewer worker who reported the water-code violations to the D.A. To this bystander, it appears as though Los Altos started “keeping book” on Amdur after he started keeping book on the city, digging back five years to come up with the most specious grounds for dismissal: a discrepancy on Amdur’s resume.

Packard, of course, says Amdur was sacked because of “normal work issues.” Or, more specifically, Packard said: “In my mind, it had to do with qualifications and work performance.”

In his “mind.” Interesting choice of words, Mr. Packard.

I won’t even begin to address the numerous complaints by city residents over sewer backups into their homes…

Suffice to say, there’s a lot of crap in Los Altos. They try to keep it underground, and when it bubbles over, the city council scrambles to stuff it back down again, so as not to tarnish the bright, shiny, Disneyesque exterior of “The Village.” But the seams are bursting, and the crap just keeps overflowing.

And I’m not talking about the sewage spills.

For background info, see:

Los Altos, CA: Red Island in the Middle of a Blue Sea (2/25/06)

Latest from Los Altos (2/26/06)

Related:

Cleveland, Georgia: Gun-Toting Teens OK, Queer Kids Not (3/1/06)

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March 6, 2006

Spineless Damned Dems

There’s going to come a day when I won’t have to comment at all on anything (don’t cream your jeans just yet, Patel*!), because everybody else has finally caught up with us Lefties, and is finally saying everything we’ve been saying since before Commander Cuckoobanas commandeered the republic. Yesterday, it was Bob Roehr; today it’s Doug Thompson:

Scum-sucking traitors to their country

The next time some loudmouth partisan puke Democrat gets in my face and starts yapping about how much better things would be if his party were running the government in Washington, I’m going to pull out the vote tally sheet for the USA Patriot Act in Thursday’s Senate session and ram it down his lying throat.

Where was his party when it came time to take a stand for freedom in this country? Hiding like a coward, that’s where. Only nine Democrats and one independent — former Republican Jim Jeffords — had guts enough to vote against reauthorizing the fascist piece of crap called the Patriot Act.

The rest, including Harry Reid, that scum-sucking capitulator who claims to be the Senate Democratic leader, dropped their pants, bent over, grabbed their ankles and handed George W. Bush the k-y jelly…

What about the leading contender for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination, the so-called “gentle lady from New York,” Hillary Rodham Clinton? Oh, she let Bush and the rest of the Republican party gang bang her like frat boys in a horny drunken brawl. …

This is the opposition party? This is the party that partisans claim will save this country from the abuses and excesses of too many years of Republican domination? …

Only these 10 voted against the act: Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Carl Levin (D-MI), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Ron Wyden (D-OR), James Jeffords (I-VT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Patty Murray (D-WA), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Robert Byrd (D-WV). The rest voted with Bush and against freedom.

Oh those who voted for the act will give us some propagandistic pap about adding protections for civil rights but those canges are just cosmetic crap. The act itself is a Constitution-evading invasion of basic American rights to privacy, and an abandonment of long-standing protections against illegal search and seizure. …

Scum-sucking traitors to their country
Capitol Hill Blue Blog
March 3, 2006

Oh, and, yeah, I am sorely disappointed in my senator, Barbara Boxer. (I’ve only got one senator; DINO Di-Fi Feinstein jumped the shark, in, like, the nanosecond between the time Dan White pulled the trigger and the moment she was sworn in as Mayor of San Francisco.)

Babs, you listening? Babs…?

Hmmm. No, I guess you’re not.

* Patel is an old nemesis of mine, from my earlier blogging days. I’m waiting for him to come back, tail-betwixt-legs, to admit I was right. But I’m not holding my breath.

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March 3, 2006

For LGBTs, Dems Have to Be Better Than Just “Not As Bad”

Bob Roehr sums up everything I’ve been saying since Clinton betrayed LGBT Americans with both DoMA and DADT:

The once happy marriage — or is it civil union? — between gays and the Democratic Party has hit a rocky stretch. And while it is perhaps too early to ask, “Can this marriage be saved?” there is no question that the relationship is at its lowest ebb since the rapture of Bill Clinton’s courtship during his quest for the 1992 presidential nomination.

Over that period of time the LGBT community has supplied not only votes, but also huge amounts of money, and large numbers of motivated campaign workers to the party. … But the return on that investment to that community has been minimal…

The antigay military policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was enacted while Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the White House. President Clinton eagerly embraced the Defense of Marriage Act and later faulted candidate John Kerry for not being antigay enough on the marriage issue during the 2004 campaign. …

Reorganization of the Democratic National Committee has stripped the party of its most visible LGBT presence, the post of director of gay and lesbian outreach. Chairman Howard Dean replaced all of the “political desks” with what he calls The American Majority Partnership. …

[Political scientist Ken Sherrill] called Dean’s reorganization “an extraordinary mistake. It’s not just a slap in the face, it’s a gratuitous slap in the face at a time when we thought we had educated political leaders.” He remembers how early gay money helped to make Dean a credible presidential aspirant in 2004. …

His research has led Sherrill to conclude, “Voters have learned that Republicans are bad on gay rights and that Democrats are not bad. Voters have not learned that the Democrats are good on gay rights.” …

Sherrill said, “The Democrats are making a very serious error in assuming that gays have nowhere else to go.” In a day when elections can be decided by a fraction of a percent, “staying at home can be devastating.” …

The failure of many Democratic candidates to embrace marriage equality for gays is a growing source of irritation. …

Alan Van Capelle, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda … said that Senator Hillary Clinton … is “a complete disappointment and does not deserve an LGBT fundraiser. … Supporting an LGBT fundraiser for Hillary Clinton will actually hurt our community.” …

“We have become a community that throws money at politicians and we demand nothing in return. And that’s what we get — nothing. It’s the wrong message to send,” Van Capelle said.

Gays, Dems hit rough patch
Bay Area Reporter
March 2, 2006

By the way, I’m still waiting for the DNC to respond to an enquiry I emailed more than a month ago, asking them to confirm or deny the original Washington Blade story on Dean closing down the LGBT outreach office.

Of course, that story has long since been confirmed — but the DNC’s deafening silence is telling.

And what it tells me is that the Democrats really don’t care about me.

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March 2, 2006

More MySpace Mayhem

The point isn’t that the kid who did it got busted — it’s that 20 kids who looked at it got busted:

Costa Mesa middle school student
faces expulsion for Web threat

A middle school student faces expulsion for allegedly posting graphic threats against a classmate on the popular MySpace.com Web site, a district administrator said.

Twenty other students at TeWinkle Middle School were slapped with two-day suspensions for viewing the boy’s posting on the social networking site, officials said.

According to parents of three TeWinkle students, the boy allegedly created a MySpace group on Jan. 3 that he called “I hate (girl’s name)” and included an expletive and an anti-Semitic reference. Five days later a second posting asked, “Who here in the (group name) wants to take a shotgun and blast her in the head over a thousand times?”

The posting was discovered by a TeWinkle teacher who was browsing MySpace.com, according to a police report. School officials and police identified 20 students who visited the site and suspended them last month.

… [Bob Metz, Newport-Mesa Unified’s assistant superintendent of secondary education] said the suspensions were appropriate because the incident involved the safety of students on campus.

Costa Mesa police said they’re looking into hate-crime charges against the boy.

AP
March 2, 2006

Well, that’s disturbing. Never mind what the little hatemonger did (he should be charged with a hate crime); what worries me is the idea of suspending a bunch of curious looky-loos.

Not, mind you, that I’m a big fan of MySpace.com, which strikes me as the best thing to come along for Internet pedophiles since the invention of the camera. MySpace.com was a good idea, in concept, but in practice… Well, let’s just say that my unshakable devotion to the rights of free expression and assembly is the only thing stopping me from suggesting that MySpace.com be shut down, permanently. If I had kids of my own, not only would I forbid them from visiting MySpace.com, but I’d probably turn into one of those completely hysterical parents and actively work to get the entire site shut down.

MySpace.com is a simply a swamp of teenybopper ramblings and suggestive pictures of 15-year-old girls too naive to realize they’re being played by fat old molesters cruising for their next victim. If MySpace.com survives, my suggestion would be that the Department of Homeland Security — if the DHS is really serious about stopping Internet child porn — stop bothering Google for Web-search data, and use MySpace.com as a front to lure pedophiles into the open.

Aside from protecting the children who use MySpace.com, there’s also the issue of protecting these same children from one another. I’ve had the extreme displeasure of viewing numerous MySpace.com sites to see who’s been hotlinking images from my hobby site (the problem is so widespread, I have half a mind to sue MySpace.com for forcing me to shut down a section of my site as a last-resort solution to stopping the hotlinkers), and I do not like what I’ve seen. When the MySpace.com kids aren’t being sexually provocative, they’re spreading a lot of racist and homophobic hate.

Remember Jacob Robida, the teen who walked into a bar in New Bedford, Mass., and then, after establishing that the pub was indeed gay, proceeded to hack up the patrons with an axe? I saw his MySpace.com site, and my stomach turned at the neo-Nazi filth he spewed. More troubling still was the gung-ho support of his apparent legions of fans (MySpace.com “friends”), most of whom left messages of “love” after Robida killed himself during a shootout with Arkansas police.

Were Robida’s actions the fault of MySpace.com? Heavens, no. But I lay the blame squarely on MySpace.com for failing to stop the spread of the filth — both sexual and violent — streaming from its servers. Yes, this garbage is found all over the Web; one can barely avoid it. The difference is that MySpace.com is targeted directly at teenagers, who, regardless of intelligence, values, or upbringing, are, as a group, highly susceptible to groupthink.

Having condemned everything about MySpace.com (although I did fail to mention that MySpace.com is now owned by Rupert Murdoch, King of All Media Whores), I will say that I am nevertheless disturbed that any of the TeWinkle Middle School kids would be suspended for merely viewing a Web site. Are we now convicting people (in this case, children) for thoughtcrime?

If Newport-Mesa Unified’s decision is not challenged, and the attitude of “guilt by association” is allowed to spread, then I fully expect to find myself in trouble for viewing, say, a White Stormfront site while researching the latest anti-gay rally in Podunk, Tennessee.

The school district’s decision was wrong. It should be rescinded, and the innocent bystanders (for they are innocent of any wrongdoing unless proven otherwise) who were suspended should receive an apology, at the very least.

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March 1, 2006

Buckley: The American Objective in Iraq Has Failed

Is right-winger extremist William F. Buckley, Jr., dying or something? I mean, a lot of hardcore political extremists make deathbed conversions, emerging into the light of reason after a lifetime of believing in their own destructive, divisive rhetoric. I can’t imagine any other reason (other than a religious epiphany) that would compel this tightest of the tighty-righties to admit that the war in Iraq is a failure — even if he still refuses to admit that the whole “mission” was bogus, and based on a host of lies:

One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. …

Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven’t proved strong enough. …

The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then infuriated, that Americans aren’t on the scene to protect them and to punish the aggressors. And so they join the clothing merchant who says that everything is the fault of the Americans.

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elucidates on the complaint against Americans. It is not only that the invaders are American, it is that they are “Zionists.” It would not be surprising to learn from an anonymously cited American soldier that he can understand why Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Sunnis and the Shiites from each others’ throats. …

One of [the Bush administration’s] postulates, from the beginning, was that the Iraqi people, whatever their tribal differences, would suspend internal divisions in order to get on with life in a political structure that guaranteed them religious freedom.

The accompanying postulate was that the invading American army would succeed in training Iraqi soldiers and policymkers to cope with insurgents bent on violence.

This last did not happen. And the administration has, now, to cope with failure. …

The failure in Iraq does not force us to generalize that violence and antidemocratic movements always prevail. It does call on us to adjust to the question, What do we do when we see that the postulates do not prevail — in the absence of interventionist measures (we used these against Hirohito and Hitler) which we simply are not prepared to take? It is healthier for the disillusioned American to concede that in one theater in the Mideast, the postulates didn’t work. The alternative would be to abandon the postulates. To do that would be to register a kind of philosophical despair. …

Mr. Bush … will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies.

Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.

William F. Buckley, Jr.
It Didn’t Work
National Review
February 24, 2006

Did you catch that? “It is healthier for the disillusioned American to concede that in one theater in the Mideast, the postulates didn’t work. The alternative would be to abandon the postulates. To do that would be to register a kind of philosophical despair.”

“Philosophical despair.” That, friends, is the key to understanding the brute stubbornness of the remaining 30% or so of all Americans who still think Bush is beyond criticism.

It’s called cognitive dissonance.

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I don’t normally believe in corporal punishment, but…

…in this case, somebody deserves a swift kick in the ass — most likely the little vandal’s parents for failing to rear Little Precious responsibly:

Boy, 12, Sticks Gum on $1.5M Painting

DETROIT — A 12-year-old visitor to the Detroit Institute of Arts stuck a wad of gum to a $1.5 million painting, leaving a stain the size of a quarter, officials say.

The boy was part of a school group from Holly that visited the museum on Friday, officials say. They say he took a piece of Wrigley’s Extra Polar Ice gum out of his mouth and stuck it on Helen Frankenthaler’s “The Bay,” an abstract painting from 1963.

The museum acquired the work in 1965 and says it is worth about $1.5 million. …

The museum’s conservation department is researching the chemicals in the gum to decide which solvent to use to clean it. The museum hopes to make the repair in two weeks and will keep “The Bay” on display in the meantime, she said. …

Holly Academy director Julie Kildee said the boy had been suspended from the charter school and says his parents also have disciplined him.

“Even though we give very strict guidelines on proper behavior and we hold students to high standards, he is only 12 and I don’t think he understood the ramifications of what he did before it happened, but he certainly understands the severity of it now,” said Kildee.

AP
February 28, 2006

Oh, give me a break. Any 12-year-old understands “the ramifications of what he did,” and if this one didn’t, then I can only surmise that he’s retarded. Literally.

I heard a lot of talk on the Web this morning about the level of responsibility society can expect from a “mere” 12-year-old, and all I can say is that the “blame society” crowd is out of their collective mind. Not once in my entire childhood (nor in my adulthood, for that matter) did I ever stick a piece of gum on anything, even under a table, nor did I ever toss a wad on the sidewalk. Why? Because it was ingrained in my head (thanks, Mom and Pop!) that it was a filthy, nasty, disgusting thing to do.

And at the age of twelve, I was teaching developmentally-disabled kids to swim as my year-long Confirmation project. So don’t tell me that 12-year-olds shouldn’t be held to a high level of responsibility. (And if something’s changed since I was a kid, then perhaps the churches should raise the age limit on Confirmations and Bar and Bat Mitzvahs from twelve to 30.)

If I had anything to say about it, the brat would spend every Saturday for the next year doing the dirtiest of dirty work (supervised, of course) alongside the museum’s janitors (the little delinquent might even learn to appreciate art while he’s there) — and his parents’ income would be garnished for the cost of painting restoration.

Not so sure if I’d slap the school district with a lawsuit for failing to keep their charges in check, but I’d consider it.

Harsh? Tough. There is a sorry lack of respect of this country for the value of others’ property (and for the value of others, period), and it all starts with incidents like this.

Don’t even get me started on the rotten state of parenting today — and how no acquaintance of my own generation would have so much as entertained the thought of acting up in a restaurant, or a theatre, or a church.

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Cleveland, Georgia: Gun-Toting Teens OK, Queer Kids Not

Obviously, this caught my eye because of its similarity to the Los Altos debacle. Is it a trend now among homophobes left in charge of our children’s well-being at the local level, this throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater approach in order to avoid the issue of equality altogether?

In any case, Atlanta must feel awfully lonely, surrounded by so many 16th-century villages:

School sued for ban on gay-straight club

A US civil rights group is to sue a school that refused to allow a gay-straight alliance club for secondary school students.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on Monday in federal court against officials at White County High School in Cleveland, Georgia, for banning a gay-straight alliance group.

In January of last year, several students at the school petitioned the principal to start a GSA on campus, citing the need for a safe haven from harassment they had faced.

Calling the club PRIDE (”Peers Rising in Diverse Education”), the founders hoped that its formation would help end the name-calling and taunts that were ignored by many teachers.

But school administrators stalled for several months after the ACLU of Georgia stepped in and negotiated on the students’ behalf. Finally, in order to deny PRIDE representation, administrators announced plans to ban all non-curricular student clubs from campus during the school year.

However, the school still allowed a shooting club and a school dance team to meet on campus. …

Gay.com
March 1, 2006

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