frouman.net

Were you, like us, not really watching the Prezzy’s speech about drones or Gitmo or whatever because BoRING, but it was on in the background because, fuck we don’t even know why? We guess it is sort of glancingly our “job” but screw that.

Well, perhaps Angry Hulk Obama made some news in there (who even knows, Twitter said it was like a declassification jamboree?), but since there was no buttsechs or hot pix of his busty white prom date, WHO CARES?

Well, Medea Benjamin, of Code Pink, still cares, and she ninja’d her way into the speech and she heckled and heckled and heckled and heckled and heckled and heckled and … and then after about five minutes of yelling, she … got to yell some more!

But here was the lovely thing: yes, some people clapped to drown her out, but they did not do that fascist USA! USA! drown out the dissenter thing that is so gross, and then?

B. Barry was like “yo, I do not even mind that this young lady is pooping all over my speech, because it is a topic that she should be passionate about!” And that was gracious, and non-tyrannical, and Nice Time!

But then she kept yelling for another hour and a half and then he sent her to Gitmo, because what do you think he is, NOT a tyrant? The end.

We all have family members who are fuck-ups, right? Uncle Larry who gives a creepy smile to the 14-year-old cousins at the family reunion, or Aunt Peg who has four DUIs. Back in Biblical times, the sins of family were sometimes used to punish innocent people. But that was long ago when people still believed that talking snakes handed out fruit at Eden’s Downtown Organic Farmer’s Market. We have evolved beyond such silly notions as “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation,” because we all know that the only part of the Old Testament that matters is the part about teh gays’ unnatural sexytimes and how they should be stoned to death because ewwww.

Well, the world’s worst Constitutional lawyer and elected member of Congress (HOWWW?!?!?!) Rep. Todd Cotton (R-Stoopid) is trying bring back the good ol’ days and find ways to punish family members for no other reason that being related to someone who breaks the law.

Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Wednesday introduced legislation that would “automatically” punish family members of people who violate U.S. sanctions against Iran, levying sentences of up to 20 years in prison.

Yes, you read that correctly – 20 years in the slammer because you are related to someone who violated sanctions against Iran. (So sorry, Liz Cheney!) Isn’t there some sort of really old document written about 200 years ago and worshiped by Teabaggers that might, maybe, kinda have something to say about that? Yes, in fact, there are about a GAZILLION FUCKING REASONS why this is awful and unconstitutional, so let’s wonksplain why.

First off, Article III of the GODDAM U.S. CONSTITUTION says this:

The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Now, Yr Wonkette is no fancy-pants Constitutional lawyer like fucktwit Rep. Cotton, but does have access to Google (and even Bing) and can easily figure out that Corruption of Blood is an Olde Timey British thingy that basically means you can’t punish an entire family because one person is a traitor.

But you know who does disappear and punish family members of suspected political dissidents? FUCKING NORTH KOREA, the absolute worst human rights abusing nation on the planet — we mean, they are EVEN WORSE than the IRS!!! Apparently Rep. Cotton hates Iran so much that he wants to borrow ideas from Dennis Rodman’s BFF.

But wait, it gets worse. Rep. Cotton, would you care to elaborate about your amendment?

Cotton also seeks to punish any family member of those people, “to include a spouse and any relative to the third degree,” including, “parents, children, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, grandparents, great grandparents, grandkids, great grandkids,” Cotton said.

“There would be no investigation,” Cotton said during Wednesday’s markup hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Hahahaha, investigations are for pussies. If some diaper-wearing 3-year-old is the great-grandkid of someone who broke the Iran sanctions law, throw that motherfuckin toddler in juvie, and toss away the key. Can’t have our preschools corrupted by his tainted blood. He might raise up an army of disaffected toddlers who will coordinate the world’s largest simultaneous diaper blowout, or something. Solitary confinement for all baby terrorists! No need for a trial, right, Rep. Cotton?

Hold on a sec! Apparently the Constitution has some dumb amendment that says, “no person … shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Maybe Rep. Cotton can only count to two, and since that’s the Fifth Amendment, he hasn’t read it yet. Or maybe he was jerking off to the sweet sweet sound of Rush Limbaugh’s derping and missed the class on the Fifth Amendment when he was at law school to BECOME A FUCKING CONSTITUTIONAL LAWYER.

Reluctantly, Rep. Cotton withdrew his amendment when basically everyone on the Committee informed him that he is a dumb, ridiculous piece of shit and a complete embarrassment to the entire state of Arkansas, and even to Congress. The GOP Committee chair basically laughed in his face and told him to go blow a goat.

Since Wonkette is not an investigative outlet, we could find no evidence that any of Rep. Cotton’s family has been convicted of a crime. And we would never outsource that type of work to Our Glorious Readers. If Wonkette allowed comments, readers might do so here.

[HuffPo]

In a concrete demonstration of what happens when insufferable jerkbag meets irredeemable boor, Dana Loesch and Piers Morgan had themselves a big ol’ Twitter fight Wednesday, the occasion being Loesch’s tweet in response to the decapitation of a British soldier by a pair of terrorists. Dana made a funny joke about why gun control is useless, because really, everything is gun control with these guys (when it’s not abortion or Benghazi, of course): “Was the guy with the machete a member of the NRA? Asking for a friend.” We totally get her point, because in U.S. Amercia, the radical Muslim terrorist would have been able to use an AR-15 and really do some damage, instead of just having to attack with a machete and a meat cleaver. That was your point, right Dana? In any case, it’s good to know that in the face of an ‘orrible murder, these asshats managed to make it All About Them.

The good folks at Mediaite have preserved for posterity the following frank exchange of views:

Dana Loesch Was the guy with the machete a member of the NRA? Asking for a friend.
Piers Morgan You think the beheading of a soldier is something to be glib about??? > RT @DLoeschWas the guy with the machete a member of the NRA?
Dana Loesch As opposed to you calling me Nancy Lanza because I stood up for 2A rights? Get real, @piersmorgan.
Piers Morgan No @DLoesch – there is a time to shut up with stupid political wisecracks, and this is one of those times. Show some bloody respect.
Dana Loesch That’s rich coming from you, @piersmorgan . You stood on the graves of children and attacked my family. Get some consistency.
Piers Morgan Can’t stomach @DLoesch goading Brits with her outrageous tweeting re beheaded soldier story. Unfollowed, and banned from my show.

Jesus, you two, get a room!

But that’s not all! Loesch announced that she didn’t want to go to Morgan’s stinky old party anyway!

What’s more, Loesch’s Twitter profile now reads “Proudly banned from Piers Morgan’s TV show.” Ooooh, burn!

As for that initial tweet, it turns out that it wasn’t about the tragedy of the killer being limited to using sharp instruments, Loesch explained. It was really about the victim not having a gun. Even though she only mentioned the killer, remember? But really, she meant the victim, somehow, because now she says that’s totally who she meant:

There are a lot of people who want me to die because I think soldiers should be protected and able to defend themselves.

And yes, Loesch was the subject of death threats and violent fantasies on Twitter, which is totally NOT COOL, PEOPLE. We aren’t quite sure what part of her initial tweet was about the soldier, because it looks like none of it, but thanks to the magic of the interwebs, we at least know that a brutal (but apparently limited, because British gun control) act of terror in London is really about the rights of American gun fondlers. Also abortionghazi.

[Mediaite / Twitter]

True fact: Wonket has tired of being a mommyblog and a NewPopeLoveBlog and all of these things you people accuse us of when we don’t just make fun of Rick Santorum 24/7. So you probably won’t like it a bit when we announce that we are now your source for all things law news — a law blog! — a BLAWG. Deal with it. Today we’re gonna lawsplain to you all OVER the damn place about the Fifth Amendment and Congress and Darrell Issa and the IRS and STOP CLICKING OVER TO OTHER PAGES DAMMIT:

Yesterday was a stone cold bona fide circus up on the Hill as Darrell Issa, fighter for truth and justice if you just ignore the weapons and auto theft arrests, starred in a very special Darrell Issa production directed by Darrell Issa and starring Darrell Issa with a very special unwilling guest IRS official Lois Lerner. Since Ms. Lerner hadn’t signed on to appear in Issa’s Battle of the Bureaucratic Stars, she thought it might be friendly to explain that naw mang she wasn’t going to play:

IRS official Lois Lerner warned Congress yesterday that, if made to appear before the House Oversight Committee this morning, she would invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refuse to answer questions. Lerner was forced to appear anyway, and after reading an opening statement, in which she insisted that she had done nothing wrong, she informed Chairman Darrell Issa that, as promised, she would plead the Fifth.

Let’s look at that again, class. She unequivocally told Issa she wasn’t going to play his reindeer games but then HORROR OF HORRORS upstaged him by reading a brief opening statement. Darrell Issa was not happy about losing artistic control of this moment:

Issa suggested that, because Lerner had given an opening statement, she had “effectively waived” her Fifth Amendment rights. South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy could not agree more.

“Mr. Cummings just said we should run this hearing like a courtroom, and I agree with him,” Gowdy thundered. “[Lerner] just testified. She just waived her Fifth Amendment right. You don’t get to tell your side of the story and then not be subjected to cross examination — that’s not the way it works. She waived her right to Fifth Amendment privilege by issuing an opening statement. She ought to stand here and answer our questions.”

You SHOULD run it just like a courtroom, thunderdude! One pesky little problem, thunderdude. If you DID run your cavalcade of hostile dumbness like a court, you couldn’t compel her to testify in the first place you doofus. Take it away, Fifth Amendment expert James Duane:

Had this been an actual criminal trial, in an actual courtroom, and had Lerner been an actual defendant, then yes, it would not have been permissible for her to testify in her own defense and then refuse cross-examination on Fifth Amendment grounds. But a congressional hearing is not a criminal trial in two important ways, Duane tells Daily Intelligencer.

First, unlike in a trial, where she could choose to take the stand or not, Lerner had no choice but to appear before the committee. Second, in a trial there would be a justifiable concern about compromising a judge or jury by providing them with “selective, partial presentation of the facts.” But Congress is merely pursuing information as part of an investigation, not making a definitive ruling on Lerner’s guilt or innocence.

This view is not limited just to wussy ivory-tower-dwelling academics, no doubt to Issa’s chagrin. The libertarian freedom fighters over at the Cato Institute have something to say on the matter as well:

Before the House Oversight Committee, however, Lerner is merely a witness at an investigative hearing—and one compelled to attend by subpoena, no less—so she can “selectively” invoke her Fifth Amendment right not to answer particular questions that may incriminate her or to cut off questioning altogether.

YEAH WHAT THEY SAID.

For a little point-counterpoint here, though, let’s ask SuperLawyer Reince Priebus to do a little recap of the Issa Show for us, shall we?

During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Priebus said that pleading the fifth “implies there are some criminal aspects” of the IRS scandal. John Heileman, a writer for New York Magazine who was sitting on the show’s panel, cried foul at that characterization.

“But you don’t need to plead the fifth if you’ve done nothing wrong,” Priebus said.

YEAH WHAT HE SAID TOO because if Prince Riebus is on point with this … novel interpretation of fundamental rights, it totally gives us an excuse to take a little trip down memory lane and remember all the Republican heroes who took the Fifth:

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff invoked the Fifth Amendment at a 2004 hearing about his suspicious dealings and exploitation of Indian tribes with casinos…
Former Enron chief Kenneth Lay and four other executives refused to talk in 2002 about the giant energy company’s sudden financial collapse…
Charles Keating Jr. declined to answer questions in 1989 at a hearing on the collapse of his Lincoln Savings and Loan, which wiped out many investors’ life savings and cost taxpayers $3.4 billion…
Oliver North and John M. Poindexter, national security aides to President Ronald Reagan, initially pleaded the Fifth during the Iran-Contra hearings in 1986.

Guilty, so guilty, GUILTY GUIIILLLLLLLTTTY. Reince says so, so shut your piehole liebruls.

[New York Magazine/Cato/TPM/AP]

Time has some EXCLUSIVE prom photos of a young and suavay B. Barry Bamz, so we will let you go on over there for your fapping, because EXCLUSIVE should mean something, dammit!

But we will pick up this photo, because PLAYER BARRY totally hitting on his best friend’s girlfriend, WHUT? He is all you are so foxy let us totally bone while Greg is away, I will take you for a meal of the most erotic delights, basically. Let us read it, together, and imagine Young Beezy taking us away from our own dumb idiot boyfriends, who are dumb idiots!

Kelli,
It has been so nice getting to know you this year. You are extremely sweet and foxy1, I don’t know why Greg would want to spend any time with me at all2! You really deserve better than clowns like us; you even laugh at my jokes3!

I hope we can keep in touch with each other this summer, even though Greg will be gone. Call me and I’ll buy you lunch sometimes4.

Anyway, good luck in everything you do, and stay happy.

Your friend,
Love [heart]
Barry Obama

1 “Foxy” is a good word for letting a girl know you would be amenable to a bone. Like, when you are talking to California’s Attorney General and you are all “hey foxy, what is up,” and then she is like “LET’S FUCK!!!1!”

2 Just guessing, but “Greg” probably wants to spend time with you because he is your Pakistani gay-married husband.

3 This is not good feminism. Maybe you should laugh at her jokes, Barry! Did you ever think of that?

4 We don’t really need to explain this one, right? You only buy a meal for a girl you are trying to bone.

Sorry Greg, but if that’s your girlfriend she wasn’t last night.

[Time]

You probably heard that terrorists murdered a British soldier in London Wednesday, and of course it goes without saying that attacking people with machetes and meat cleavers to make a political statement is pretty much the definition of Very Wrong. Unless of course you’re the English Defence League, the gang of super-literate racist goons who responded to the murder by going out and trying to burn down some mosques, throwing bottles at police, and posting the image above on Facebook, saying that it was outrageous that such a monstrosity could be allowed to pollute English soil:

Idiot 1: Would look lovely in Saudi…
Idiot 2: Where is this to? [sic]
Idiot 1: This is one of the main roads down to the front in Brighton
Idiot 2: So that mosque is in Britain jesus christ the size on it!
Idiot 1: And that’s not even half of it

In a tweet, Conservative Party blogger Mark Wallace, calls the conversation

“A quick reminder of the #EDL’s appreciation of our national heritage: they thought Brighton Pavilion was a mosque”

The Royal Pavillion in Brighton was completed in 1811 as a seaside vacation home for notorious radical Muslim mullah King George IV. Ship it to Saudi Arabia where it belongs!

One of Wallace’s readers hoped that the EDL doesn’t find out about this Russian Orthodox church in Chiswick:

For our part, Yr Wonkette is concerned for the safety of any number of mini-golf courses:

Not to mention the possibility that the EDL will start smashing suspiciously Muslimy Lego sets:

[Gawker / Guardian / Twitter]

We here at Wonkette mostly luuuuurve our new pope, New Pope. He is a communist (communism!)! He saved and returned all his newspaper rubber bands every month (loves the environment!)! He went to the slums and did Mass for hookers (like Bizarro American Jesus!)! He did his own cooking and lived in a little apartment and took the bus instead of living in the bishop’s mansion (not greedy!)! He was against priests diddling little children (totally weird!)! He washed girl feet, and Muslim feet, and told the priests to get over themselves already (totally blasphemous!)! He was almost the pope last time around, which meant he was the choice of the liberal cardinals as opposed to Pope Nazi, FOR WHOM WE DID NOT PARTICULARLY CARE.

Some of you have your cavils with New Pope, including his reported participation in Argentina’s Dirty War. But others, including the Nobel winner who exposed it, said he was working behind the scenes to pressure the junta. (Perhaps he was not saintly enough to be martyred, but he was not an accomplice.) Do you care? No, you would like to believe the worst, because sometimes you are TERRIBLE. (Also, the billion-member Catholic Church isn’t going away anytime soon, so maybe stop being Naderites letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Lecture over? MAYBE.)

Anyway, the Vatican’s US legal advisor, Edward Peters, whom we do not luuuuurve quite so much as New Pope, said a true thing, and that true thing was this: He said that the dude who shot himself on Notre Dame’s altar, to protest France legalizing gay marriage, made anti-gay-marriage folk look like “kooks.”

That is about right, Edward Peters!

Then he went on to being a dick about it some more:

“When Dominique Venner killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head inside Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral (indeed, it seems, within the sanctuary itself) he desecrated that great church. If it turns out that Venner killed himself in protest over France’s new ‘gay marriage’ law, then, besides condemning the classical scandal his deed produced, one may further observe that all he really accomplished was to make opponents of ‘gay marriage’ look like kooks, and to deprive, for a time, the faithful of France of a particularly powerful place of worship from which to ask God’s help in preserving the natural and holy institution of marriage in their nation. Only the Evil One would take pleasure in that.”

Meh.

How is New Pope’s record on gay marriage? NOT AWESOME. He approved of civil unions in Argentina, but only as the “lesser of two evils.” Still, that’s more progressive than the 34 states right in Amercia that don’t allow civil unions at all.

Then he excommunicated this pro-gay punk rock priest.

Also, he is still kind of shitty to nuns.

BE MOAR BETTER NEW POPE.

[Joe.My.God]

It isn’t easy to be a concerned parent these days, with so many threats and dangers to children’s purity lurking around every corner. There’s Michelle Obama trying to teach kids to be healthy and not eat deep fried, bacon-wrapped potato chips with every meal. There are “doctors” and “dentists” trying to put “fluoride” in the “water” so kids don’t get “cavities.” (Thank the maker that menace has been defeated … for now.) And, worst of all, there are teachers trying to gaydoctrinate children by making them worship Harvey Milk:

Some parents in California say they will be keeping their kids home from school Wednesday because teachers plan to commemorate Harvey Milk Day.

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay person elected to public office in California.

Milk was elected to the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors in 1978. He is seen as a man who paved the way for future gay political leaders. Wednesday, students around the state will hear about his accomplishments.

But a group called SaveCalifornia.com is running radio ads in California cities calling on parents to boycott Harvey Milk Day by keeping their children home from school.

One radio ad says, “They’ll be taught an agenda that attacks our family values.”

Damn liberals, always trying to make kids healthy and gay! Thankfully, SaveCalifornia.com is teaching parents how to protect their children from all that nonsense:

Parents, realize there was NO advance parental notification of this happening or the opportunity to opt out your children. Even more, realize there was no parent permission sought, no opt-in form to sign. No, Harvey Milk sexual indoctrination, and other sexual indoctrination implemented, because of other perverse laws are being done behind parents’ backs and despite parents’ objections.

Realize that these “Gay-Straight Alliances” (GSAs are homosexual-bisexual-transsexual agenda clubs) are at many California public high schools (see the list). In May, they actively promoted the perverse Harvey Milk in public schools.

In addition to government schools nationwide having to permit GSA clubs (as long as any other non-curricular clubs are allowed), every California K-12 government school is under a state mandate to sexually indoctrinate children. See the list of these immoral California laws.

REALIZE, parents, realize! Other than the state of California enacting a law in 2009 — under that librullist of liberals, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — parents had no way of knowing that there was such a thing as Harvey Milk Day and that their children would be edumacated about it in school, where their teachers would force them to do gay to each other, along with all the other “immoral” things California law now mandates:

What your child is guaranteed in California public schools

Because of bad laws, lack of pro-family laws, and politically-correct trends, here’s what kids are guaranteed to receive in California public schools:

1. Homosexual-bisexual-transsexual indoctrination, without parental consent, including off-campus pro-homosexuality counseling. (Scroll down to see the laws.)

2. Pro-abortion indoctrination, “confidential” abortion referrals and off-campus “counseling”, without parental consent.

3. Condom/birth control pills indoctrination and distribution without parental consent; no teaching children how to truly avoid STDs; “abstinence-only” education prohibited.

4. Anti-God, pro-evolution indoctrination.

5. Political correctness.

6. Dumbed-down academics, less academic success, on average, than private school or home school.

7. Negative socialization and peer pressure.

8. Less safety, on average, than private school.

9. Anti-Christian indoctrination; widespread rejection of religious and moral values.

10. Anti-parent sentiments.

Danger everywhere! Perhaps it would be better for concerned parents to just keep their children home every day, where they will be guaranteed a solid, no-liberal-claptrap education about how the earth is 5,000 years old, gravity is just a theory, Jesus chose America to be extra special, and the zombied arm of Harvey Milk cannot fondle them from the grave to make them gay.

[ABC News]

Yesterday, we had a bit of a warm feeling where we’re told our heart should be when a Godless Arizona Democrat used his turn to give the legislature’s invocation to invite his fellow lawmakers to look around and see their common humanity, their fellowship, that whether they agreed on certain issues or not, they were all here at this moment in time to help better society for Arizona and mankind.

HAW HAW HAW DUMMY.

Well, by the end of the day, a Republican senator had “redone” the invocation cause it wasn’t to Jebus and didn’t count. Not only that, but when Rep. Steve Smith invited his fellows to redo the prayer with him, it was in “repentance” for having mocked God by not praying in the way commanded by Rep. Steve Smith.

Hooboy. Sorry Dok.

Republican Rep. Steve Smith on Wednesday said the prayer offered by Democratic Rep. Juan Mendez of Tempe at the beginning of the previous day’s floor session wasn’t a prayer at all. So he asked other members to join him in a second daily prayer in “repentance,” and about half the 60-member body did so. Both the Arizona House and Senate begin their sessions with a prayer and a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

“When there’s a time set aside to pray and to pledge, if you are a non-believer, don’t ask for time to pray,” said Smith, of Maricopa. “If you don’t love this nation and want to pledge to it, don’t say I want to lead this body in the pledge, and stand up there and say, ‘you know what, instead of pledging, I love England’ and (sit) down.

“That’s not a pledge, and that wasn’t a prayer, it’s that simple,” Smith said.

Did anybody else call out Steve Smith for getting to decide what is and isn’t prayer, and whose religion does or doesn’t count, and also, while we are at it, being a filthy cockjackal? Sure!

Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin, a Republican, was like, “Dude.”

“From my perspective I didn’t see an issue with Mr. Mendez yesterday,” said Tobin, R-Paulden. “I can appreciate what Mr. Smith was saying, but I think all members are responsible for their own prayerful lives and I think the demonstration that we take moments for prayer we all do collectively and in our own hearts.”

Then there was this lady, but she is probably not even white, so whatever.

Rep. Jamescita Peshlakai, who represents a northern Arizona district on the Navajo reservation, did take offense. She said Smith’s criticism of another member’s faith, or lack of it, was wrong.

“I want to remind the House and my colleagues and everybody here that several of us here are not Christianized. I’m a traditional Navajo, so I stand here every day and participate in prayers,” even without personally embracing them, said Peshlakai, D-Cameron. “This is the United States, this is America, and we all represent different people … and you need to respect that. Your God is no more powerful than my God. We all come from the same creator.”

Dude, tell it to Steven Crowder. His Jesus will kick your Great Sky Father’s ASS.

But let us get back to the only religion, Jesus. Did he have any words for this situation?

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.

That’s a little something we like to call “Matthew 6:5.” Aw, fuck it.

[AP]

Move over Galt’s Gulch! Get out of here, Somalia! Josephine County, Oregon, is here to show you how real rugged individualists do: by refusing to vote to raise property taxes, even though the county ain’t got no more police outside of regular business hours, and the sheriff says “every day” someone is the victim of a crime he cain’t stop (because criminals seem to have figured out this whole “business hours” thing), and by the way, if you’re planning on being the victim of a crime, he suggests (very nicely, really!) that you move.

Wait, you mean taxes might serve a purpose, like keeping this young lady from getting raped by the same ex-boyfriend who’d recently put her in the hospital, while she waited for the police that couldn’t come, because it was the weekend? Well perhaps she should have taken a little personal responsibility, and not been born a girl, did she ever think of that?

Josephine County has a household income below Oregon’s state average, so we are willing to give them the TINIEST benefit of the doubt about why they just, this week, voted against some new property taxes to restore public safety services. (Which went away when federal funding did, because you know how those conservative counties like to take care of themselves, and no takesies.) But if we are doing our math right, which we sincerely doubt, the average homeowner would have seen his property taxes under the new assessments triple. To $358. For the year.

ABOLISH THE IRS AND STUFF! AND FEDERAL SPENDING! AND ALL LAWS, FOREVER!

Amen.

[ThinkProgress, via Slog]

You may have missed it, but yesterday former MLB All Star and current Low Life Softball Salesman Jose Canseco tweeted the phone number of a woman he said was accusing him of rape in Nevada. He then deleted the tweet, and then tweeted that he did not ever delete tweets ever, and that is the last syllable you will have to read about tweets.

The real story now, you see, is about how we happened to have what we believed to be Jose’s cell number, and just happened to let it accidentally slip into the end of our blog post. Wonkette operative “Sean”  took this as a cue to text him and — hey, look at that! — he responded, in a way that is just dumb enough to confirm the number was totally his.

“Is this the number to contact to suggest that you don’t publish a rape accusers phone # on twitter?” our anonymous text person sent yesterday.

Somebody from Canseco’s number responded about 90 minutes later: “Freedom of speech and confront ur accusers.”

Huzzah! Somebody has been reading his pocket copy of the Constitution. Now, Yr Wonket is not as law-smart as some of the other, lawyery types hanging out around here, but it is probably pretty safe to say that the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment does not refer to confronting your accuser, you know, in the road, or anything. It’s a cross-examination thing, not a “tweet shit out and ask for polygraph tests on television” thing.

Speaking of tweeting shit out, you will be happy to know that Jose’s beloved “freedom of speech” he thinks is in the First Amendment is probably not in there! It’s a gray area, but harassment is not an unconditionally protected speech. Actually, hey! Look! Nevada, where the alleged victim lives, has a specific law against this kind of stuff!

1. Any person who willfully makes a telephone call and addresses any obscene language, representation or suggestion to or about any person receiving such call or addresses to such other person any threat to inflict injury to the person or property of the person addressed or any member of the person’s family is guilty of a misdemeanor.

2. Every person who makes a telephone call with intent to annoy another is, whether or not conversation ensues from making the telephone call, guilty of a misdemeanor.

3. Any violation of subsections 1 and 2 is committed at the place at which the telephone call or calls were made and at the place where the telephone call or calls were received, and may be prosecuted at either place.

So in Nevada, if it’s illegal to call (or try to call) someone for no actual reason other than to wreck their day, it is presumably also illegal to send out someone’s telephone number to half a million followers and suggest they give her a ring.

But, again, we are not experts, not like Jose. And here’s the email we got about that text message:

You would think the legislators of Oklahoma would have their hands full with that whole our-state-got-totaled-by-a-tornado (or maybe it was the government’s secret “weather weapons”) situation. But no, turns out they are staying focused on the single biggest threat EVAH: health care for ladyparts.

In the wake of one of the most destructive tornadoes in history, Oklahoma state senators passed a bill on Wednesday that would effectively defund Planned Parenthood.

Senate Bill 900, which re-allocates family planning funds to public providers and hospitals instead of private providers like Planned Parenthood, passed by a vote of 33 to 8. The state Senate was able to pass the bill somewhat under the radar because it was not posted on Wednesday’s legislative agenda.

Isn’t that nice? While Oklahomans are sorting through the rubble that used to be their homes, and the rest of America is crying about dead children and sharing videos of that one lady who found her missing dog, and the state’s U.S. senators are competing against each other for Biggest Dickhole, those sneaky rascals in the state Senate figured they’d slip a quick little “Fuck you, womens” bill through, all quiet-like. Because lord knows that what Oklahomans who’ve lost their houses and maybe even their children really need right now is to also lose their affordable health care too. Priorities!

But here is a nice silver lining sort of thing.

At least one Republican understands that cutting off funding for health care is, like, a bad idea. He is state Rep. Doug Cox. He is also a doctor, so he probably learned about the importance of basic health care when he was in doctor school, and, by the look of his failure to understand just how important it is to defund Planned Parenthood, his career as an Oklahoman Republican should be ending any second now. But until then, he’s planning to vote against the bill:

“To defund a program like Planned Parenthood would be a mistake,” he told The Huffington Post in a phone interview. “They perform a valuable service as far as breast cancer screenings, cervical cancer screenings, parenting classes, many things that benefit our state that we’re sorely in need of.”

That is some pretty smart talk, right there. Thanks, Rep. Cox, we hope you get to vote “no” before they recall you and send you to Gitmo for being, you know, reasonable.

[HuffPo]

We were pretty excited when Miss Kaili Joy came into the sekrit Wonket chatcave with this totally popular Salon tweet that had been liked by one egg.

Kaili Joy G: should we place bets on what he’s talking about? I haven’t clicked yet
Gary L: the immigration reform bill
Rebecca S: I know! I know!
HE IS SAYING THE MILITARY HAS A RAPE PROBLEM!

The rest of the chatcave did not find this to be a likely answer.

Rich A: I think we are misconstruing the metaphor. My theory is that he’s talking about something God endorses that the American people were totally asking for by wearing a metaphorical push-up bra

Gary L: I’ve told America a million times what will happen if it goes out at night wearing a short skirt and slathering on the makeup like a common trollop

But the real question is: Did Jose Canseco tweet America’s cell phone number?

OK, quick, make your guesses, and we’ll click through, with Egg, after the jump!

Oh, it is just American surveillance. Lame, Glenn Beck.

Government-run tornado machine or GTFO.

[Salon]

There are many wonderful ways to voice your dissent on political issues of the day. You could, for example, put a bumper sticker on your car, which is highly effective. Or you could write a sternly worded letter to the powers that be. Or wave signs. Or put on a funny-looking hat with teabags hanging from it. But you know what is ALL KINDS OF FUCKED UP? Shooting yourself in the head on the altar at Notre Dame (the actual Notre Dame, not that college in the middle of Nowhere, Indiana) because of THE GAYS. That, friends, is ALL KINDS OF FUCKED UP. Unless you’re Madame La le Bigot, in which case, it is a “spectacular” and peachy way to wake up your fellow countrymen to the imminent threat of les gays.

French National Front leader Marine le Pen has saluted the acts of a far-right activist who shot himself dead at Notre Dame. The man had earlier called on his blog for “spectacular action” to protect France’s identity. [...]

The suicide was hailed as a political gesture by Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right National Front. “All respect to Dominique Venner whose final, eminently political act was to try to wake up the people of France,” Le Pen said on Twitter, signing her initials to indicate that she had written the entry personally.

Le Pen’s far-right party, running primarily on an anti-immigration platform but which also opposes French government efforts to legalize gay marriage, is the third-most popular in the country.

The man was identified by police as 78-year-old Dominique Venner, a historian known for his far-right publications. A note on Venner’s blog, dated May 21st, had strongly criticized a law to allow same-sex marriage that was passed by the Socialist government last week.

Um, we are a little bit at a loss and don’t understand why Monsieur Venner felt the need to kill himself instead of just spewing incoherent hate slogans outside a court house or something, like our bigots do here in America. Sure, that hasn’t really stemmed the tide of states legalizing marry-whomever-the-hell-you-love marriage, but at least they feel they’ve made their point — even if it’s a really stupid one — and no one has to die, and also the priests don’t have to wipe your skull bits from the sacristy.

[DW]

Good news everyone — we’ve got a brand new story about Jose Canseco, the pathetic, washed-up, wife-beating, bankrupted pus-sac that hit a gillion home runs, got all his friends to do steroids, then wrote a book tattling on all of them.

The PED trailblazer has also jumped into new ways of abusing women: Moving on from his traditional “ram my wife’s car” maneuver, he’s decided to publically respond to rape allegations (bad idea) on Twitter (even worse) by tweeting his accuser’s name (horrible) and phone number (fucking impossible to get any more awful).

It’s not really clear what’s going on, because the super-tough Bash Bro deleted most of the tweets (and only had like, seven brain cells on the project in the first place), but it looks like he tweeted about being “charged with rape,” though Buzzfeed says charges haven’t been filed. He then tweeted what looks like photos of the woman he says is accusing him, and then, of course, he tweeted her phone number.

In case you were for some reason thinking this is the first time he has done this, it is not. Back in 2011, Jose tweeted the cell phone number of a bikini model who dumped him; this, surprisingly, did not go very well for her. He called Yr Wonket a piece of shit, back when we were but a small intern in Miami, so we put Canseco’s cell phone number in the newspaper.

“Piece of shit,” though, doesn’t seem very far off — posting somebody’s cell phone number is a pretty shitty thing to do, especially when you have, say 511,000 Twitter followers, and are doing it to intimidate a victim of an alleged sexual assault.

Anyway, the voicemail at 818-903-6598 still says it belongs to Jose Canseco, so maybe give him a ring and ask him how somebody constructed entirely out of diarrhea has the motor skills to answer the phone in the first place.

OK, so much for that “nice time” crap. Here’s a happy little children’s book to “sensitively” explain to children, “with love and compassion,” why God gets really, really worked up about whose genitals are allowed to touch, and why such limited touching must only happen inside a heterosexual marriage. It must be an excellent book, because it is endorsed by the American Patriarchy Association — which we suppose explains why, in defiance of American idiom, the book’s title has “Dad and Mom,” instead of “Mom and Dad” the way virtually everyone says it.

The publisher’s description of this awful turd of a book sums up its purpose:

This picture book for young children presents the traditional, Judeo-Christian view of the family in picture-book format. In school, young Michael learns that God made men to be fathers and women to be mothers. After school, his father takes him to the zoo, where he learns that animal families consist of a male, a female, and their offspring.

Obviously, Michael’s dad takes him to a decent Christian zoo that has euthanized all its gay penguins, as God intended.

(Seriously, we had no idea that there were so many gay penguin parents out there… in addition to the famous “And Tango Makes Three” penguins at the Central Park Zoo, it looks like there have been same-sex adoptive penguins in zoos in Spain, Denmark, and Germany as well — or so the gays and Germans would have us believe.)

Anyhoo, seeing all these heterosexual (and almost certainly Protestant) zoo animals raises a question for young Michael. A COUPLE of questions, actually, although the second one doesn’t strike us as something that would naturally spring to mind after a trip to the zoo, but sure, kids are weird:

Upon observing these phenomena, Michael asks his father two questions:
1. Why does his friend have two fathers?
2. Am I adopted?

We’ll take that last one first, since the catalogue description takes pains to note that Michael’s dad “lets him know that he is adopted and that he and his mother love him very much.”

You see, while the text of the book doesn’t really say anything about it, Michael’s mom and dad — pardon us, DAD and mom — are a post-Loving v. Virginia couple, which we’re going to read as a ploy to head off any unfortunate comparisons between Christians who opposed interracial marriage and Christians who oppose same-sex marriage. Look, you freaking liberals, Michael’s mom and dad and mom are an interracial couple, so they CAN’T be bigots! Besides, it’s been like forever since a majority of people anywhere opposed interracial marriage.

And here’s how Michael’s black-but-not-procreative dad “compassionately” explains Michael’s friend’s hellbound dads who are an abomination to both God and nature (at least as nature is seen in the book’s carefully managed zoo):

See? Very nice and kind and loving and compassionate, and doesn’t even say “degenerate,” at least not directly. “This timely book will help children to understand God’s plan for the family.” Which is that some families are good, and some are going straight to hell.

We also see Michael getting the God’s Honest Truth pounded into him at school, which we are hoping is a private school or we are calling the ACLU on Ms. Kenzie’s ass. (“Ms.” Kenzie? This book is full of radical feminism and may alienate part of its potential audience, don’t you think?)

And isn’t it nice of Michael to sit next to the boy with cancer like that? He is a good adopted boy (even if Joe Biden won’t send him a letter saying so), and we hope he is already saving up for the therapy he is eventually going to need after being exposed to all that hatred of gay people.

[Good As You / Bridge Logos Press]

Don’t you just hate when this happens? You’re desperately flailing about for years and years, trying to find just the right faux scandal to investigate so you can finally impeach President Obama (calm down, Jason Chaffetz, no, it isn’t time yet). Maybe it will be the fake-but-real birth certificate. Maybe it will be a rumor that he fathered TWO BLACK CHILDREN. Maybe it will be Benghazi, sorry, we mean BENGHAZIIII!!!!1! Maybe it will be how the IRS investimagated groups of radicals who wave their guns around in public, threatening to not pay their taxes and bring down the whole gubmint, before granting them a special “you don’t have to pay taxes because you are SO SPECIAL” waiver, and since the president probably knew about it all along, he must be investimagated and probably also impeached.

But … but what if the Republicans knew about it all along too?

Much has been made of the fact that senior Treasury Department officials were told about the investigation into the treatment of tea party groups in June 2012 – months before last year’s the Presidential election. Republicans who requested the investigation were also told about it at approximately the same time.

Oh MAN. When Rep. Darrell Issa finds out that some of his own knew about this IRS thing since last summer, he is going to be so steaming mad, he’ll just start investigating everyone and then — wait, what? What’s this?

In a letter dated July 11, 2012, the man who conducted the investigation – IRS inspector general J. Russell George – wrote to Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, telling him that he was investigating the issue and offering to keep him updated as the investigation progressed.

“The Oversight Committee knew about the audit because it requested it,” an Issa aide told ABC News. Issa released the letter, along with his own letter dated June 28, 2012 requesting the investigation, last week.

Oh MAN. Talk about awkward! Republicans are running around shrieking about how the Obama administration knew about this investigation last year, long before the election, but they kept it on the down low because EVIL NEFARIOUS SCHEMES. Except Republicans, including Issa himself, knew about it too. At the same time. And they didn’t say anything either. Wait — does that mean Republicans are in on it? Are they helping the Obama administration cover up Benghazi too? Maybe it’s all a cover-up! Hopefully, Darrell Issa and his fierce investigatin’ skills will get to the bottom of this.

Which may prove rather difficult if all of the people what Mr. Issa plans to investigate take the Lois Lerner approach:

Lois Lerner, the official who oversees tax exempt organizations at the IRS, announced at a House oversight hearing Wednesday that she will plead the Fifth Amendment and not answer the agency’s questions on advice from counsel.

But she insisted: “I have not done anything wrong. I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations and have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee.”

Well, okay, Ms. IRS Lady, it is your right to plead the Fifth. It’s in the Bill of Rights and everything, right after the Amendment what says you have an absolute right to gay bash people in the name of Jesus, and somewhere before you have the right to secede from the union if you think the black president is going to death panel your grandma. But then maybe you should not be in charge of the IRS, Ms. IRS Lady, if you do not want to answer question about the IRS? Maybe? Hopefully, Darrell Issa will figure it all out for us, just as soon as he’s finished investigating himself for knowing about the whole damned IRS clusterfuck all along, and obviously covering it up just like he says everyone else did. You know, before we have the great civil war and the American Holocaust.

[ABC News/TPM]

Former halfterm Moose Queen Sarah Palin has some Thoughts, and she has left her dumb ol’ Myface page for the Big League Pixels of Ghost Andrew Breitbart’s Internet Home for Wayward Wig Addicts to bring em at ya! Her thoughts are on the IRS, and how people “live in fear of them.” Sure, we’ll bite!

This IRS scandal is especially terrible because Americans live in fear of the IRS like no other entity because this monstrous bureaucracy has the power to take your hard-earned money. Your wages are the sum of your labors; hence, the IRS has the power to steal the fruits of your labors. Average Americans live in fear of making an error on their tax returns that could cost them massive amounts of money, plus their reputation and good name. If a small business makes a mistake, the IRS can shut them down and send them to jail.

You know, we hate to sound like those police state proponents who say if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve nothing to fear, but … well. You know.

We do not “live in fear” of the IRS. In fact, not to be a better citizen than you, but not only do we love jury duty, but we don’t even hate paying our taxes! We go to the post office to mail out your Shut the Fuck Up Luke Russert coffee cups, and we brag to Cheryl, the lady there, that we are going to fill like AT LEAST THREE POTHOLES, and she is welcome!

Why might Sarah Palin “live in fear” of the IRS? Let’s do some hypothesizin’, dontchaknow, after the jump!

• Sarah Palin lives in fear of the IRS because Sarahpac is a giant slush fund of nonsense.
• Sarah Palin lives in fear of the IRS because “shipping and handling” didn’t actually cost $89.95 or whatever.
• Sarah Palin lives in fear of the IRS because you are not allowed to write off your Nordstrom purchases, especially if someone else paid for them, and we are gonna guess she totally does that based on only our intimate knowledge of her grifty, grifty ways.

Anyway, we did not read the rest of Lou Sarah’s “article,” because would you?

[Breitbart]

This week, we met E.W. Jackson, a conservative firebrand and Tea Party favorite who was nominated for Virginia’s lieutenant governorcy by virtue of the fact that the GOP skipped having a primary election this year in favor of letting their hardcore dingbats do it up convention-styley. This is like if California Democrats decided to turn over their nominating process to a meeting of the Oakland Greens, but hey, whatever floats Virginia Republican penises.

In that fun getting-to-know-you, we learned that Bishop Jackson (if you’re nasty) thinks Planned Parenthood is worse for black people than the KKK ever was (which, duh), and that Barack Obama hates Jews because he is black and from Chicago, and as a black person, Bishop Jackson knows just how RACISMIST black people can be! But does Bishop Jackson have other thoughts on race, thoughts which might reveal a not-real-good understanding of stuff? Well, we did say he is a Republican, right?

First, when he was a Boston minister, Jackson spoke out against desegregating public housing — where black people were being discriminated against by virtue of the color of their skin, in not just a public accommodation but a government-provided one. Why was he against desegregating public housing? Because it was “social engineering.”

You know, like the “social engineering” that had led Harry S Truman to desegregate the military — where proud veteran Jackson served, in the Marines, after that “social engineering” allowed him to do so.

So, that is … weird. It’s weird right?

Well how about this:

Now comes word that in 2011, Jackson explainered that the Three-Fifths Compromise was awesome for black people, because being three-fifths of a person is three-fifths more than being zero-fifths of a person! (MATH!) Even though that three-fifths personhood did not so much allow slaves to be people as it allowed their masters to be an extra three-fifths person! Let’s go to the tape:

The Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia has praised the Constitution’s original clause to count blacks as three-fifths of a person as an “anti-slavery amendment.”

In an April 28, 2011 statement while he was a Senate candidate, conservative minister and lawyer E.W. Jackson held up the three-fifths clause as an “anti-slavery amendment.” The context of his statement was to attack President Obama after a pastor at a church service he attended referred to the three-fifths clause as a historical marker of racism.

“Rev. [Charles Wallace] Smith must not have understood the 3/5ths clause was an anti-slavery amendment. Its purpose was to limit the voting power of slave holding states,” Jackson, an African-American, said in his statement.

Hmmmm. Nope. No. Not correct. Laughably unbelievably Tea Party-styley just fucking wrong.

Oh, well, at least he is running for Lieutenant Governor instead of for a job in any legislature that would require a working understanding of laws, and what they mean, and how they work, and what is legal?

Ha, we are just kidding. There is plenty of that already.

[TPM / TPM]

John McCain is a bit of an odd duck. When he is not yelling at his wife that she is a fucking trollop cuntwhore, he is seething with not-quite-restrained anger at “that one” and pushing ladies into walls and almost punching other old ladies in wheelchairs. WHUT?

Yeah.

But now he is using his fearsome temper for good — he does that sometimes, like we said, weird guy — and calling out the Ted Cruzes and their jerkbaby fellow Tea Senators for refusing to do their fucking goddamn shithead asshole trollop cuntwhore fucking jobs.

On one side, Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) insisted that the GOP must block any effort to name a conference committee to reconcile differences between the budgets approved by the Democrat-controlled Senate, which proposes nearly $1 trillion in new taxes over the next decade, and the Republican House, which proposes to eliminate the deficit within 10 years entirely through spending cuts.

What’s Paul’s and Cruz’s big problemo? Well, if they pass a budget, it will have to go to conference with the House, where changes to it will get made.

You remember the House, controlled by Republicans?

Well that is their story — not that if they actually pass a budget, they won’t be able to yell at Obama for not passing a budget anymore — and they are sticking to it.

On the other side, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine.) questioned that argument, noting that Democrats couldn’t do anything in conference without the approval of the House — which, McCain said, “happens to be a majority of our party.”

“So we don’t trust the majority party on the other side of the [Capitol] to come to conference and not hold to the fiscal discipline that we want to see happen? Isn’t that a little bit bizarre?” McCain said.

McCain and Collins also argued that the stall tactics look ridiculous after months of GOP complaints about the refusal by Senate Democrats to adopt a budget. The first Senate budget in three years won approval 59 days ago, and Republicans have been dragging their feet every since.

“What are we on my side of the aisle doing?” demanded McCain.

Sorry, Senator McCain, had you not met them? Is this in fact the first time you are hearing that nothing is to be passed unless it is a repeal of Obamacare, an abolishment of the IRS, and a government wand in ever benghina?

Good luck trying to talk your intermittent sense through the skulls of these fine fellas. Why don’t you just leave your moderate country club Republican thing at the door and join John Boehner in the jacuzzi? We hear the tea water is just fine.

[WaPo]