I thought all the "activist judges" were crazy liberals.

Judge: Parents Can't Teach Pagan Beliefs (Indianapolis Star).

Protecting our freedoms and keeping the world safe for democracy.

?Threatening? T-shirt barred from TCC - Tucson Citizen

I should start keeping a log of all the times members of Congress, the Cabinet, and State legislatures call on God for help in making important political decisions. Here's the most recent, from Senator Voinovich:

"After hours of deliberation, telephone calls, personal conversations, reading
hundreds of pages of transcripts, and asking for guidance from Above, I have
come to the determination that the United States can do better than John
Bolton," Voinovich said.

Interestingly, despite God's and his friends' advice that Bolton might not be the best ambassador, he's decided to go ahead and give his tepid approval, allowing the vote to go to the Senate.

These people make my brain hurt.

Voinovich to Vote for 'Bullying' Bolton (Yahoo! news)

Setting aside my mind sense of distress at the fact of the 54th annual National Day of Prayer on Capital Hill, this is just too much for me. Tom DeLay, embattled Republican representative, gave a speech denouncing the sin of pride.

"Just think of what we could accomplish if we checked our pride at the door, if
collectively we all spent less time taking credit and more time deserving it,"
DeLay told the 54th annual National Day of Prayer gathering on Capitol Hill. "If
we spent less time ducking responsibility and more time welcoming it. If we
spent less time on our soapboxes and more time on our knees."

Ahh, such warm words from the King of Taking Responsibility.

Greater contradictions follow: "No matter what your faith, no matter what your political persuasion, your prayers for our increased humility, for our ever-humbler service to God and neighbor are needed and wanted."

Er.

I don't care if he spends the rest of his life on his knees, as long as he does it where he can't hurt anyone. Can this speech be considered his swan song? Can he just stop already? Blech.

Man, Washingtonian speech is getting trickier everyday. I love the subtlety of statments like this:

Asked if Bolton was a good choice [as ambassador to the United Nations],
Armitage replied, "It was the president's choice and I support my president."

Way to answer the question, Dick.

Bad news bears. The House Appropriations allocations aren't looking so hot. The biggest cut: I'll let you guess. Ready? Did you guess the EPA, Health and Human Services, and Education? Good job! Federal land conservation? Cut. Safe and drug-free schools programs? Cut. Energy and water programs? Cut (good thing we're trying to lessen our oil dependency). Community development block grants? Yeah, who needs those?

What I bet you didn't guess: "Among the winners are Congress itself, which would receive a 4.9 percent increase" (from the WashingtonPost).

Awesome.

You can see a break down of the allocations here, and read about it from the Washington Post here.

So, I've revived my page just in time for me to have absolutely no time to write anything on it at all. Another example of my excellent foresight. Would that I had time to really read the news these days; as it is, I just read Wonkette and pretend I'm well informed.

But if you have a question about postcolonial literary theory, I'm all over that. I can explain to you the minute workings of imperialism in E.M. Forster's novels, and maybe even throw in some stuff about Joseph Conrad, just for kicks.

Of course, I can't tell you anything about Merchant of Venice, which is problem considering I'm going to have to tell a class full of people, including my professor, something about it in a few days. Wheee!

Only five more days before this school debacle is over, and I can say it's officially summer. Ok, it would be officially summer if the temperature would just stay over 60. Boston sux.

Screw you freepin idiots. Screw all of you morons who voted for Dubya and only NOW start complaining about how he doesn't represent you, and you don't agree with his ideas for Social Security and tax cuts and Iraq. Fuck all y'all. Fuck you and your low approval ratings. Fuck you and your uncertainty about private accounts. Fuck you.

If you'd paid the least little BIT of attention to politics, as you SHOULD have been doing, having been given the PRIVILEGE of the right to vote in this FREEPIN country, if you'd spent half a freakin second reading a newspaper before you went and cast your ballot for this PUPPET of the ultra-conservative right (who are, by the way, only puppets themselves for the corporate interests who really run this county), we wouldn't be sitting here, engaged in useless partisan battles while we watch the White House attempt to piss away every benefit every given to people who aren't worth $12 million.

I fucking hate the mindlessness of American democracy, and I don't give a shit anymore how many people tell me it's my duty to stick around and watch it all go to hell, just so we don't entirely give the country over to the moronic vote. You know what? My vote doesn't begin to counterbalance all the fucking idiots who can't be bothered to pay a lick of attention because they're too busy watching American Idol.

Guess what? Nationalism means shit to me. America? As a concept? As a nation to which I feel allegiance? I'm sorry, but I cannot, I refuse to feel allegiance to a nation represented by the apparent idiots running this one. All of those great things that are supposedly meant to attain to American citizenship? I think Ashcroft did enough to diminish those elements that I don't feel hugely compelled to remain an American citizen because of them. Give me a good reason--I'm begging for one. I don't want to expatriate myself (a shitload of hassle), but I do feel compelled to follow the spirit of representational democracy, and at least live in a country that even pretends to represent me.

I have tried to think historically, and to recognize that this is not the first time America has gone through freakish religious (slash moron) revivalism. History is cyclical. Someday sanity will revisit the nation. But I might be dead by then, and I'm not so sure I'm willing to spend the best years of my life in the midst of a fundy Christian nightmare.

How did this happen? When I was in high school, people seemed mostly sane! What is going on here!? Please, I need insight, because my brain is starting to ache in my attempts to figure this all out.

PS- God is dead.

You've come a long way, baby.

Ergh. I think our theory is right: someday in my lifetime, there will be a point when one giant corporation owns everything, including (especially) our entire governmental structure. There are signs of the coming apocalypse.

I especially love the paltry "help to the middle class" reasoning Congress uses as they give and give and give to their corporate puppeteers:

"Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., said the legislation would save American families an average $400 a year in higher interest rates now charged to consumers to recoup losses from those who abuse bankruptcy proceedings. "

Riiight. The benevolent credit card companies only charge high interests rates because they're forced to by the gamblers and compulsive shoppers, who declare bankruptcy for fun and profit. Once these secretly wealthy n'er do wells (you know, the millionaires and celebrities declaring bankruptcy) are curbed from their Chapter 7 tax code addiction, the credit card companies will lower interest rates. Because, obviously, their existence in our glorious capitalist system is only to allow consumers access to all the goods and services produced in this glorious capitalist country.

The free market rules. Obviously.

I feel nauseous.

The return of the aristocracy.

The estate tax issue drives me up the wall. The rhetoric used to discuss it, the lame compromises proposed by the Democratic faction, it all just makes me wrinkle my brow in disgust and frustration. Can someone please stop these scary neo-conservatives before they dismantle the entire government, and send us all into a scary, Hobbesian, tooth-and-nail world? Blech.

I don't read editorial's very often, but Rich's piece in the Times today is right on. Ahh, religious hypocrisy and mass media death obsession. I'm so proud to be an american.

While usually waaayyy over the top, Whitehouse.org does often make me laugh. And this article really nails, in a brutal and offensive kind of way, some of the strange idiosyncrasies of the Catholic church. Just don't read it if you'll be at all offended by a Pollack Pope joke, or the reference to Terri Shiavo as a "vegetard."

Um, scary? More like "power run amok," I think. Where does the constitution say Congress should have greater authority over the judiciary than the appointment of judges? Someone needs to bring these people back to earth: Passing bills to limit court jurisdiction in matters related to God's place in society? Mass impeachments of judges who've "overstepped their authority"?

I think it's especially touching that DeLay, after insinuating that it is the judiciary's overzealousness that led to recent violence against judges, has the gall to claim that he is aiming for "serious and rational discussion."

Oh that man hurts my spleen.

Hmmm. Well, I don't have a Gmail account, and I haven't really investigated Google's privacy policy on my own, so I'm not sure how much to take this article at face value. But it's interesting, nonetheless. Especially when read in conjunction with this.

This is my kind of activism. Pointed, concise, and funny as hell, in a completely ludicrous kind of way.

Besides, David Horowitz is an ass.

I'm back! Sweetles. (That was a special word just for Crystal.)

And I haven't had nearly enough coffee today. But at least I managed to accomplish this, despite being only pseudo-functional. Wheee!

Ok, more coffee. But I'll be making more irrelevant and half witty comments here soon. I'm sure you're all thrilled.

I'm wary of people who use the word "evil" in a state/military-building context, as did Mr. Allawi, Iraqi prime minister, when discussing the need for a bigger Iraqi military:

"We all know that the evil terrorist powers try to destroy the Iraqi structure
and economic facilities, and attack the oil facilities," Mr. Allawi told Iraqi
soldiers, police officers and reporters in Baghdad.

It's just thrown out there, seemlingly without a second thought. And it so immediately dismisses the opposition, without having to really consider their positions or desires, without having to look at why they are doing what they are doing. They're evil, therefore invalid, end of story.

It makes me very, very uncomfortable.

(NYTimes)

Hee hee.

"Every day, more than 1,000 people - 380,000 in 2003 - are caught watching television without a license. "

Doesn't it seem a bit disingenuous, in the face of recent disclosures by drug companies that their FDA-approved products are actually not so safe, to claim that drug importation is unfeasable because drugs from Canada aren't regulated by the FDA? Personally, I think I'm more inclined to trust Canada's regulatory agencies than our own. (Washingtonpost.com, NYTimes.com)