stcynic
Posts by this author
October 19, 2006
Rep. Curt Weldon is one of the more entertaining loonies in Congress. For sheer entertainment value, he ranks up there with James Traficant and B-1 Bob Dornin (and I really miss both of those guys). This is the guy who was deeply involved in the ceremony that crowned the Rev. Moon in a Senate…
October 18, 2006
While conservatives are busy saying, "Attacks on judicial independence? What attacks on judicial independence?", South Dakota has an amendment on the ballot this year allowing people to sue judges for making decisions they don't like. And that's not the half of it. The LA Times reports:
South…
October 18, 2006
More reaction to Condoleeza Rice daring to be gracious to a gay man's relatives over at the Freep joint. You're gonna love this one:
This is an issue that is going to affect the very foundation of our society. Soon "gay" marriage will become a reality putting the final nail in the coffin of the…
October 18, 2006
The Pensacola News Journal reports that the jury has been selected and the trial started today. I find Hovind's defense really funny in light of his history. He claims that he was completely ignorant of the law and didn't know what the IRS requirements were, but in the past he has railed about the…
October 18, 2006
Remember that webpage I spent some time fisking the other day with the bad anti-evolution arguments? Well some of my readers went over there and engaged the writers directly and boy are they getting the runaround. The hand-waving is rather fascinating to watch. For instance, Rich Hughes gave a…
October 18, 2006
Yet another post at the ADF blog about judicial activism, no better than the last few. This one is written by Matt Bowman, who seems to miss the point of the ambiguity of the phrase almost completely. He writes:
One can understand why Leftists don't want to debate the merits of court decisions that…
October 18, 2006
Radley Balko has a suggestion for Democrats on how to exploit the passage of the anti-gambling bill and I think it's sound advice:
Over the last week, some 10-15 million Americans who play online poker logged on to their favorite poker sites, only to get a message telling them that, thanks to the U…
October 18, 2006
And yes, I mean that literally. Read this report about a series of attacks in a predominately gay neighborhood in San Francisco, where gay men are being robbed, beaten and then raped by guys screaming at them and calling them faggots.
Mark Welsh said he was attacked as he walked from work to his…
October 18, 2006
Notice I said anti-gay, not just anti-gay marriage, which is how its backers are trying to push it. But as David Boaz points out at the Cato blog, gay marriage is already against the law in Virginia and this amendment goes far beyond just banning gay marriage. The amendment says:
This Commonwealth…
October 17, 2006
Pam Spaulding likes to pepper her posts with "actual Freeper quotes", that is, quotes from the folks at Free Republic. If you want to see the absolute bottom of the barrell, dumbest and most deluded right wing hacks and their take on any issue, that is definitely the place to hang out. In her post…
October 17, 2006
Or so says an anti-gay nut in Lincoln, Nebraska. As this blog reports, there was a proposal to give a small $1500 grant to a group to help prevent suicide by gay teenagers, a grant to PFLAG. Religious righters on the city council didn't like that the money was going to a group that supports gays (…
October 17, 2006
Came across these links while surfing and I have to say I'm very disappointed in a person and an organization I've respected in the past for their indefensible position on the issue. The first is Gary Trudeau, who is taken to task by Rogier van Bakel, and rightly so, for his recent comments on the…
October 17, 2006
Yesterday was yet another of those frequent religious right "conferences" - really just a series of ridiculous speeches to fire up the base with rhetorical red meat to get them out to vote in November. This one was disingenuously called Liberty Sunday, following on the heels of the equally misnamed…
October 17, 2006
Dale Carpenter has an excellent essay on the response to the Foley scandal from the anti-gay right. I think he correctly highlights what this episode tells us about the response of the religious right. I'll post a long excerpt below the fold.
William Eskridge, a Yale law professor, has written that…
October 17, 2006
James Walcott has received the galley proofs for Dinesh D'Souza's new book, wherein he blames the "cultural left" for 9/11 because our horrible decadence makes the whackos so very angry. I think Walcott's reaction is about right:
It isn't rare that I take instant animus against a book like this.…
October 17, 2006
Here's a ridiculous little non-story for you. The religious right is now up in arms because Condoleeza Rice swore in an openly gay man as the administration's global AIDS coordinator. Because obviously no gay man could actually be qualified for a job or anything. They're also upset that during the…
October 16, 2006
The SCOTUS denied cert in the case involving the city of Berkeley and the Sea Scouts. The Sea Scouts, affiliated with the Boy Scouts, discriminate against atheists and gays. The city of Berkeley had a program of giving free slips at the city marina to non-profit groups, but not to those groups that…
October 16, 2006
While Jason Kuznicki has just started his new job with the Cato Institute, Radley Balko has just announced that he is leaving Cato and joining Reason magazine as a senior editor. An exciting opportunity for him, as he says, to be more of a journalist and less of a policy wonk. So while Cato is…
October 16, 2006
Justice Scalia participated in a televised debate with Nadine Strossen, President of the ACLU's board of directors, last night. The AP has a report about it, and there's one statement in it that caught my eye, and the eye of STACLU as well.
Arguing that liberal judges in the past improperly…
October 16, 2006
Here's an article about the new book by David Kuo, the former #2 official in the office for faith-based initiatives in the White House. The book is called Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction and it alleges that White House political operatives mocked evangelicals behind their…
October 16, 2006
Let me join Jason Kuznicki in applauding the Nobel committee for choosing Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Yunus is the man who pioneered the concept of microcredit, small loans that conventional banks would not give, targeted to the poorest of the poor to…
October 16, 2006
And it's from Michigan, from a blog that calls itself The Local Area Watch, run by William and Bridget Tingley (who have given each other funny titles like "executive director" and "editor". And they're not too happy with the school board's decision. Darwinism Isn't Science, they declare, and then…
October 16, 2006
The Detroit News had a terrific op-ed piece by Harry Cook, an Episcopal minister and rector of St. Andrew's Church, and Sherwin Wine, the founding rabbi of the Birmingham Temple, both in the Detroit area. In it, they make the argument that weakening the teaching of science with religious beliefs…
October 16, 2006
The American Association of School Administrators has devoted an entire issue of The School Administrator to the issue of what is and isn't allowed in terms of religion and public schools. They've invited folks like Charles Haynes to write articles on the subject. Haynes' article contains much good…
October 15, 2006
I've been doing a bit of research, spurred by this article by Allyn Jaffrey Shulman, on the legal status of online poker. And I've found that most of what Shulman says is spot on. She points to a Federal court ruling in the case of In re Mastercard International, the full text of which can be found…
October 15, 2006
My buddy Jeff emailed me a link to this group with the title, "Oh my god. I can't believe this is real." The Christian Boy Love Forum. I know, it sounds like something from South Park, but they're apparently serious. A sample:
Many boylovers who have attempted to change their orientation say their…
October 15, 2006
Fall is my favorite time of the year. Part of it is the weather, part of it is the smell and the crispness of the air, and part of it is that basketball is starting again. Midnight madness, the official kickoff for the college basketball preseason, is this weekend, and the NBA is going through its…
October 15, 2006
This one in New York. Guy goes into a gay chat room, gets to know a guy, arranges for a meeting. They meet, he drives the guy to a beach where 3 others are waiting for them. They beat the man viciously and chase him on to a highway, where he gets hit by a car and dies. Thankfully, they've been…
October 14, 2006
You've gotta see this amusing post from Gribbit about Pope Benedict and his now-infamous statement about Islam being spread by the sword. He says the Pope shouldn't have to apologize for his remarks, which I agree with. He shouldn't have to apologize for them because they were pretty much accurate…
October 14, 2006
I came across this post on another blog, and a comment by someone claiming that Dawkins, in his new book The God Delusion says that Thomas Jefferson was an atheist. Here's the comment:
I hate to bring up the name of St. Richard Dawkins too often, as I know he makes the biscuit worshippers come out…