Ted Nugent--the Motor City Madman--He's got a new brand of justice he wants to unload on America.  Thing is--I'm not sure he wouldn't be a subject of that justice.  In a meeting of NRA supporters, the washed-up rocker went on a rant of his own:

With an assault weapon in each hand, rocker and gun rights advocate Ted Nugent urged National Rifle Association members to be "hardcore, radical extremists demanding the right to self defense."

"Remember the Alamo! Shoot 'em!" he screamed to applause. "To show you how radical I am, I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want 'em dead. Get a gun and when they attack you, shoot 'em."

But its unclear whether or not the Motor City Madman would survive his own brand of justice.  Take, for example, the lyrics to his 1975 hit Stranglehold:

Like a dog in heat
Tell it's me by the clamor now baby
I like to tear up the street,
And I been smokin for so long,
Ya know im here to stay
Got you in a stranglehold baby
You best get outta the way

Road I cruise is a bitch now baby
But no you cant turn me round
And if a house gets in my way baby
Ya know I'm tearing it down
You ran the night that you left me
You put me in my place
I got you in a stranglehold baby
You gonna cross your face

Apparently Mr. Nugent believes its OK to put a women in a stranglehold and scare them enough to cause them to make the Sign of the Cross.  Sounds like he's one of the "bad guys" he wants dead.

Speculation on which Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee centered on Lincon Chafee of New Hampshire, one of the most liberal GOP senators.  However, it appears that GOP Senate powerhouse Chuck Hagel may deliver the final blow:

"At this point, I will ... but I have been troubled with more and more allegations, revelations, coming about his style, his method of operation," said Hagel, the committee's No. 2 Republican.

"We need a uniter," he told CNN's "Late Edition." "We need a builder. We need someone who will reach out to our friends and our allies at the United Nations."

Don't count out Chafee yet, either.

abortion: Competing with new-comer "Persistent Vegetative State" in the hearts of single-issue voters.

bankruptcy reform:  What happens when "usury" loses all negative connotations.  Credit Card Company Protection Act of 2005.

Christians:  Far more diverse a group than seen on TV.

culture of life:  Not taken seriously after birth.  Still open to interpretation, especially among its adherents.

death penalty:  Better to err on the side of vengence.  (See culture of life)

Democrats:  Far too legalistic for "a nation of laws, not men."

ethics committee:  Almost as irrelevant as the House Un-American Committee in the early 70's.

federal judiciary:  Out of step.  Clearly the cause of everything wrong with America today. 

.50 caliber sniper rifle:  Designed for the battlefield but there to give you that little extra punch when engaging a deer at more than two miles.

I-Pods:  Hallmark of the everyman.... after all the President has one!

John Bolton:  Not to be approached if encountered in a dark alley or any public space.  Has spent much of his career redefining the word "diplomatic."

nuclear option:  Death of conservatism, writ large.

pandering:  Propelled to new heights in the current political environment.  Question: Has the death of the Pope always coincided with lowering "Old Glory" to half-staff?

Pope John Paul II:  Still deceased.  Evidently the prime mover behind all major international changes over the last twenty-five years.

separation of powers:  Should never get in the way of the will of the majority.

Tom Delay:  Martyr.  At least Boss Tweed was aware of his own fallibility.

 

Well, they have a special kind of logic down there in Texas, don't they?  Read the story of Merry Stephens, Basketball Coach--Lesbian. 

I had nothing against her as a person," Hale said, but if he stood up for "one lesbian" that would mean he was "for them adopting kids, and my morals and the Bible doesn't allow that.

Stephens said that she was blamed when one of her former players, now in college, revealed she was a lesbian. That player's parents insisted that the superintendent, Jerry Hendrick, fire Stephens because she had "converted their daughter,"  

This is exactly why anti-discrimination laws need to apply to gays and lesbians. 

"What companies that you know of would be interested in tort reform in Texas with asbestos problems that might support TRMPAC?"  

How about this company?

Brings $1 billion. Polls 83 percent in favor.

Oh Tommy, we hardly knew ye.

Move over Harry Potter.  Tyndale is at it again.  The highly profitable publisher of evangelical Christian vitriol and gore has just printed another installment of its "Left Behind: The Kids Series" propaganda novels.  Tyndale claims that they've sold more than 10 million copies of the books that are "great for kids 10-14."  One enthusiastic reader exclaims, "I absolutly [sic] love your books! These books are the best I've ever read, seriously. I've read all the kids books. The first time I picked up a Left Behind book I couldn't put it down. After reading those books I thought How can anyone read that and not believe in Jesus? Thanks for publishing these great books for everyone to read!"

The books depict the wacky adventures of a group of evangelical teenagers who join forces to convert Jews during Armageddon, lest they be annihilated and cast into hell for all eternity because they haven't embraced Jesus.  When they're not busy proselytizing, the kids are battling swarthy devils who hail from places like Romania.

Kudos to Tyndale for grabbing a hefty slice of the pie while competing with the steady stream of necrophiliac propaganda from Fox News and CNN.  The highly competitive market of calling evangelical Christians to arms against judges, abortion providers, evolution teachers, and Democratic politicians is saturated.  Yet Tyndale thrives.  Their Left Behind series of books has sold more 60 million copies, and two movies starring Kirk Cameron based on the novels are available on DVD at Amazon.  

Thank you, Tyndale.  With millions of youth being so indoctrinated, it won't be long before we return to the days of pogroms, autos da fe, Holocausts and Great Purges.

 

Terri Schiavo's death has spurred right-wing nuts to call for the murder (er, impeachment) of judges.  This is an excerpt from yesterday's Washington Post:

Conservative leaders meeting in Washington yesterday for a discussion of "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" decided that Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, should be impeached, or worse.

Phyllis Schlafly, doyenne of American conservatism, said Kennedy's opinion forbidding capital punishment for juveniles "is a good ground of impeachment." To cheers and applause from those gathered at a downtown Marriott for a conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," Schlafly said that Kennedy had not met the "good behavior" requirement for office and that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment."

Next, Michael P. Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said Kennedy "should be the poster boy for impeachment" for citing international norms in his opinions. "If our congressmen and senators do not have the courage to impeach and remove from office Justice Kennedy, they ought to be impeached as well."

Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."

Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.

The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence. But then, these are scary times for the judiciary. An anti-judge furor may help confirm President Bush's judicial nominees, but it also has the potential to turn ugly.

The column's author Dana Milbank perhaps was giving too much credit to Vieira.  Presumably, people who quote Stalin do not do so with the best of intentions.  And indeed, these are scary times for judges.  Milbank's column continues:

A judge in Atlanta and the husband and mother of a judge in Chicago were murdered in recent weeks. After federal courts spurned a request from Congress to revisit the Terri Schiavo case, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said that "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) mused about how a perception that judges are making political decisions could lead people to "engage in violence."

"The people who have been speaking out on this, like Tom DeLay and Senator Cornyn, need to be backed up," Schlafly said to applause yesterday. One worker at the event wore a sticker declaring "Hooray for DeLay."

The conference was organized during the height of the Schiavo controversy by a new group, the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration. This was no collection of fringe characters. The two-day program listed two House members; aides to two senators; representatives from the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America; conservative activists Alan Keyes and Morton C. Blackwell; the lawyer for Terri Schiavo's parents; Alabama's "Ten Commandments" judge, Roy Moore; and DeLay, who canceled to attend the pope's funeral.

The Schlafly session's moderator, Richard Lessner of the American Conservative Union, opened the discussion by decrying a "radical secularist relativist judiciary." It turned more harsh from there.

Schlafly called for passage of a quartet of bills in Congress that would remove courts' power to review religious displays, the Pledge of Allegiance, same-sex marriage and the Boy Scouts. Her speech brought a subtle change in the argument against the courts from emphasizing "activist" judges -- it was, after all, inaction by federal judges that doomed Schiavo -- to "supremacist" judges. "The Constitution is not what the Supreme Court says it is," Schlafly asserted.

Former representative William Dannemeyer (R-Calif.) followed Schlafly, saying the country's "principal problem" is not Iraq or the federal budget but whether "we as a people acknowledge that God exists."

Farris then told the crowd he is "sick and tired of having to lobby people I helped get elected."

The last quote is vintage sour grapes.  When the evangelical Christian maniacs were anointed by the media for delivering the election to Bush, they naturally expected more in return than 30 pieces of silver.  Now they want blood.

Dear Hindrocket, Trunk and Deacon.  Please, Please, Please keep talking about that memo.  Make sure you go over every single detail again and again and all of the statements by all of the players.  The more time you spend arguing what "Republican Leaders" and "Republican Senators" are or parsing out what it truly means for a noun to be in the plural the better. 

Its really important, because otherwise, you won't be discredited or bring shame on Republicans for their behavior in circulating the memo.

That's right, Arnold's approval rating plummeted 16 points in three months.  Only 43% of Californians approve of the job he's doing.  With Bush hovering at 45%, its a race to the bottom.  Pretty hard to be a tough guy when a bunch of nurses beat your ass up.

Over at In the Agora, Josh Claybourne was one of the first to speculate that the "Schiavo Memo" was a fake, based on GOP staffers who accused a "renegade aide" to Sen. Harry Reid.  After getting slammed by Michelle Malkin (who knew?) and others, Claybourne "retracted," stating: "I now have reason to believe that in unraveling a hoax I was hoaxed myself."   Of course, the obvious conclusion, that the memo was real, would have caused Claybourne's head to explode from cognitive dissonance.

Lo and behold, it came out on Wednesday that the memo was real.  So how does Josh take it?  Badly. Again he decides to believe every word out of the mouths of Martinez and the rest of the GOP caucus and then takes issue with the reporting on the subject because it wasn't "Republican Leaders" who distributed the memo and that it never circulated "amongst GOP Senators."  I guess a sitting Republican U.S. Senator isn't a "Republican Leader" anymore.  Still don't understand how something that "never circulated" amongst GOP Senators came out of a GOP Senator's pocket.  Large sections of the comments are devoted to the nature of a plural noun.

So I thought I'd post a comment for Josh and his buddies to read:

Please pay attention closely--
(1) Republicans say they have nothing to do with the memo.  You believe it.
(2) Martinez spokesperson denies having anything to do with the memo despite the fact that parts of it are lifted directly from his website.  You believe it.
(3) The Powerline boys, without any factual basis whatsoever, declare the memo a Democratic "dirty trick."  You believe it.
(4) Martinez then admits that the memo came from his staff and that he got it "unbeknownst to me" and personally pulled it out of his jacket pocket, never ever having read it, and then hands it over to one of the most liberal Democrats in the Senate.  You believe it.
(6) The Powerline boys declare that the memo wasn't distributed by Republican leaders or Senators, despite the fact that a Republican Senator admitted to handing it over to Harkin.  You believe it.
(7) Martinez did this four or five times during the Republican Senate Primary and the general election.  Martinez would be tied to slimy hit-politics and then some "rouge staffer" or an ad company guy or someone else would be "responsible."  Its called lying, ladies and gentlemen.  You believe it.
(8) You still think it wasn't a crass attempt to capitalize on a family's suffering.  I don't believe it.

Yesterday, I wondered aloud about comments made in the Washington Times regarding the "Schiavo Memo."  Seems that I was right to look closely at the statements made by Robert Traynham,  spokesman for Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.  I noted that his denial involved a very interesting parsing of the levels of staff who were not involved.

Turns out that a senior staffer for Senator Mel Martinez, an attorney no less, drafted the "Schiavo Memo" and that Mel himself "unbeknownst to me" had handed it out to Tom Harkin, Democratic senator from Iowa.

Predictably, the Powerline boys are spinning it just as my post yesterday anticipated they would.  See, it was a low level renegade staffer not Mel "Unbeknownst to Me" Martinez who was responsible.  Their new angle?  Why its all the fault of the "MSM" for misreporting the story as "Republican Leaders" distributing the memo.  But boys, a "Republican Senator" did distribute the memo.  Not only that, but Powerline's entire theory is based on the idea that everything coming out of Mel "Unbeknownst to Me" Martinez regarding the memo is the truth.  Yesterday, however, Mel denied being the source of the memo:

"Senator Martinez has never seen the memo and condemns its sentiments," spokeswoman Kerry Feehery said. "No one in our office has seen it, nor had anything to do with its creation.

Powerline's argument thus rests on very thin spring Minnesota ice.

I think a more likely reconstruction of the story is this:  Over the weekend, the sourcing of the memo was traced to Martinez's office.  The Republican Senate leadership, helped along by our favorite wingnut bloggers around Blogistan planted the "Is the Memo A Fake" story at the Washington Times to begin the job of damage control, based on the idea that "no Republican would ever do this."   Helps make the "unbeknownst to me" story go down easier. 

At the end, what do we have?  Two weeks of lies, Powerline boys desparately spinning "Crass Political Memo" into "MSM Misreported the Story" and Mel "Unbeknownst to Me" Martinez with a new nickname.

Interesting denial on the origin of the "Schiavo Memo" in the Senate from  Robert Traynham, spokesman for Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

In a nutshell, I can just simply tell you that no, we have nothing to do with that memo; no we have not seen that memo; we have nothing to do with circulating that memo. . . Senator Santorum had nothing to do with it. Neither did any member of his staff at the personal level or the leadership level.

Lots of detail about those levels there, hmmm.....  Of course, the Washington Times thinks that just because all Republican's deny giving out the memo, it must be a Republican Plant, despite the fact that passages were lifted from the website of Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida.  Under that set of logic, Nixon didn't do a damn thing.  Imagine that, Watergate with the Washington Times around.  Would have been different, I must say.

Front Page:  Washington Post: DeLay's 1997 Travel Questioned

Front Page:  New York Times: Political Groups Paid Two Relatives Of House Leader

Oh, Bugman, come out and plaaaaaaaay!

The mission of the District Attorney's Office is to see that justice is done by providing the highest quality legal representation for the public . . . A state-funded division of the office investigates and prosecutes crimes related to the operation of state government . . .

 

Go slow, Ronnie, go slow.

April 4, 2005

Hon. John Cornyn
517 Hart Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510

     Re: Comments on Senate Floor, April 4, 2005

By Fax and Mail

Dear Senator Cornyn:

It is with great disappointment that I read in news accounts this evening that you, on the floor of the United States Senate, have suggested that a recent spate of courtroom violence is the result of justifiable public anger at judicial decisions.  Your statement implied that the murderers of a state judge in Atlanta and the family of federal judge in Chicago were somehow justified in their actions.  Such remarks can serve only to undermine the respect for justice which is essential to a nation of laws and show a profound lack of respect for the victims of these senseless tragedies.  I ask that you retract your words on the floor of the United States Senate, and in a televised press conference so that the damage you have wrought may be undone.  I also respectfully suggest that a public apology to the families harmed by the recent violence is in order.

A close look at the words you spoke on the floor of the United States Senate this evening makes clear that the remarks were wholly inappropriate:

I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that's been on the news and I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in - engage in violence.  Certainly without any justification but a concern that I have that I wanted to share.

This statement implies that the murderers of Judge Rowland Barnes in Atlanta, Georgia and the family of U.S. District Court Judge Joan Lefkow in Chicago were somehow justified in assaulting officers of the court because they were rightly angry about decisions made by those jurists.  Although you sought to qualify your remark, the meaning of the first two sentences is clear—the current spate of judicial violence is the result of citizens’ justifiable anger at decisions made by judges. 

This statement implies that the murderers of Judge Rowland Barnes in Atlanta, Georgia and the family of U.S. District Court Judge Joan Lefkow in Chicago were somehow justified in assaulting officers of the court because they were rightly angry about decisions made by those jurists.  Although you sought to qualify your remark, the meaning of the first two sentences is clear—the current spate of judicial violence may be the result of citizens’ justifiable anger at decisions made by judges. 

The speculative nature of your statement does not excuse the error.  The mere suggestion that these acts of cold-blooded murder were the result of anything other than evil intent on the part of the killers gravely undermines the respect for law and order which is this country’s strength and demeans the memory of the jurists who gave their lives in the service of the community.

It is my understanding that these statements were made in the midst of a political debate about the use of filibusters during votes on federal judicial nominees.  While I understand that you are personally opposed to the practice, no political gain is worth the damage done to the institution of the judiciary and the families of those who have lost loved ones at the hands of these killers.

I therefore ask that you publicly retract your statements, not only on the floor of the United States Senate, but also in a televised press conference, where the effect of your retraction will work to undo some of the harm that they have done.  I also respectfully suggest that a public apology to the families of those brutally murdered in these tragedies is in order.

                                      Sincerely yours,

                                      RW

cc:    Hon. Willam Frist
        Pres. George W. Bush
        file