Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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The "obstructionists" are the Democrats ♦ Much hand-wringing and public posturing of late, over assorted proposals to end the filibuster in the Senate. It's all stupidity or backassery. There's nothing inherently wrong with the notion of filibusters, a tactic that's been used honorably and dishonorably in the past, and it's not necessary and not necessarily wise to end the filibuster.
A better and easier idea, suggested over and over again by the people who vote for Democrats and want to vote for Democrats, and ignored over and over again by the Democrats they've voted for: Just end the abuse of the filibuster by requiring filibustering Senators to actually filibuster. Democrats have a substantial majority in the Senate, but they haven't demanded that Republicans actually filibuster — you know, talk and talk and talk. And they never will. And don't even bother wondering why, because you know why. Most of the Democrats in the Senate are millionaires who ran as Democrats only because they're from states that are friendly to Democrats, but there's nothing progressive or principled going on in these Democratic politicians' heads. Most Dems in the Senate are only a smidgen less cro magnon than their Republican counterparts, and most Dems on the Senate aren't really annoyed about endless fake filibusters that block anything that helps real people, because most Dems in the Senate haven't met any real people outside of campaign handshakes in their entire pampered lives. So don't tell me Republican obstructionism is the problem. That's bull. Republicans are the opposition party and they're supposed to do all they can to obstruct. Cripes, if Democrats had been a fraction as obstruction-minded during the
The problem is the Democrats, the gang of Evan Bayh and Harry Reid and Max Baucus and Christopher Dodd and Arlen Specter and Kent Conrad and Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu and Richard Durbin and Dianne Feinstein and another dozen Senators owned by big business. These are the obstructionists in the Senate, protecting the problems and blocking any solutions, and they're Democrats, every one of 'em. ♦ Ian Walsh's view of America's future is, I think, as accurate as it is bleak, and it's pretty darn bleak. "Employment is not going to recover to pre-great recession levels for at least a generation, maybe more, in terms of % of people employed. The late Clinton economy is the best you or I will see in our working lives. "Politics will continue to be dominated by monied interests and that dominance will increase, rather than decrease. They will use their power to fight over the shrinking pie, rather than to increase it, and will make any real systemic restructuring of the economy essentially impossible. "A right wing “populist” will get in after Obama. Since the only sort of stimulus they can do is war stimulus, they will pick a war with someone. Who, I’m not sure. In economic terms they will have all the wrong solutions to various real problems. "Under both Democrats and Republicans the deterioration of civil liberties will continue. Click for more, if you're brave enough to handle a realistic glimpse at what's coming. # FREEDOM IS THE FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHT ♦ Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to renew three expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, after the Senate abandoned the PATRIOT reform effort and approved the extension by a voice vote on Wednesday night.
Disappointingly, the government's dangerously broad authority to conduct roving wiretaps of unspecified or "John Doe" targets, to secretly wiretap of persons without any connection to terrorists or spies under the so-called "lone wolf" provision, and to secretly access a wide range of private business records without warrants under PATRIOT Section 215 were all renewed without any new checks and balances to prevent abuse... President Obama, of course, promptly signed the legislation, though he spoke eloquently on the invasions of privacy and lack of respect for constitutional rights inherent in the PATRIOT Act, way back before he was President. That was then, this is now, and Obama's hope is nope. And forgive me for stating the obvious, but the President's almost daily double-cross of his Democratic base is only better and better news for Republicans in the 2010 elections, and in elections far into the future. A large chunk of Obama's 2008 electoral support came from young voters, who will quickly learn to be cynical, and who'll be whispering to themselves, I won't be fooled again... as they vote Republican. ♦ Large batches of e-mail records from the Justice Department lawyers who worked on the 2002 legal opinions justifying the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation techniques are missing, and the Justice Department told lawmakers Friday that it would try to trace the disappearance. It's hard and unwise not to be skeptical about that last sentence. (Login as unknownnews with password unknown.) ♦ The CIA's torturers wanted permission to use "mock burials" as a torture technique. But John Yoo was in such a rush to approve waterboarding, he neglected to green-light putting people in coffins and shoveling dirt over their boxes. ♦ In 2002, long before America's policy of torture became common knowledge, 68 members of Congress had been briefed about all this. To nobody's surprise, none of them voiced any objections or said anything publicly. ♦ Remember those super-secret memos that former Veep Dick Cheney said would prove how marvelously effective torture was? Cheney was lying, of course. ♦ The U.S. Joint Forces Command liaison collected and disseminated information on U.S. citizens who were members of Planned Parenthood and the white supremacist group National Alliance regarding their involvement in protests and distributing literature, according to an intelligence-oversight report released by the Pentagon. The documents indicate that the JFC liaison was working with the FBI’s Olympic Intelligence Center at the time. This and other intelligence-activity disclosures appear in heavily redacted documents that were released to the Electronic Frontier Foundation... Planned Parenthood, and white supremacists — one of these things is not like the other. White supremacists have been known to commit acts of violence and probably merit some surveillance. Planned Parenthood, not so much. ♦ Bruce Schneier: "Remember the day after the 'underwear bomber', our Secretary of Homeland Security said, basically, that security succeeded on Christmas Day, and she was vilified for it, which frustrates me, because, you know, security did succeed. Think of what happened: we had no bomb explode, no plane crash, nobody die, and terrorist arrested. Sounds like a success to me, sounds like a phenomenal success. I think we should be very happy, and we should be laughing at this guy. "Instead, we went into sort of 'full fear mode', and, really succeeding in terrorizing ourselves, and this frustrates me. Here it is, this guy failed and yet he's succeeding and causing terror." ♦ The Utah legislature has passed a bill that would charge women with homicide for arranging an illegal abortion, and quite possibly make the same charge for having a miscarriage. The bill does specify that women can't be prosecuted for arranging a legal abortion, but with so many legal roadblocks to abortion already that's hardly reassuring. ♦ An outrageous Oklahoma law that required women undergoing an abortion to provide all sorts of information to posted on a public Web site, has been declared unconstitutional by a county judge.
♦ In a legal decision, Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler (D, of course) has declared that the state will now recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. Gansler's decision is of course going to be challenged in court, criticized by Catholic leaders, and the AG will face possible impeachment and be excoriated by right-wingers as an un-American pervert who ought to be arrested, hung, and possibly tried. ♦ UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has praised gays in Britain’s armed forces and criticized the US’s policy which stops out troops serving in the military. ♦ The Roman Catholic Church has won a special exemption to child abuse law in Arizona. ♦ Wayne Lajoie: "I have known many, many more functioning drug users than dysfunctional ones. I've done cocaine, speed, LSD and heroin, to name a few, with everyone from doctors, lawyers and stock brokers to carpenters, farmers and factory workers. That's not even to mention, a drug which I think a good third of the people I know use, marijuana. People are going to do what they are going to do. If you aren't physically harming anyone, a person should not be punished for, what some may consider, irresponsible personal choices. In my opinion you can't govern morality. When you try, you end up with worse problems than 'a tear in the moral fabric of a country'..." ♦ Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government. # GOVERNMENT OF THE CORPORATIONS,
♦ Quick reflections on Cornered by Barry Lynn, a book I'd recommend: You might spend a few minutes choosing between the several different brands of butter offered at your local grocery, but there's a pretty good chance that the butter came from dairies (or even the same dairy) owned by the same conglomerate. If an earthquake in Taiwan knocks out a semiconductor plant, that can cause immediate shutdowns of factories all across America, Asia, Europe, because those factories have no other source for that specific part. If this sounds like an insane and frightfully vulnerable system, it is. It's been brought about by a slow shift from the old way, where businesses had competition, and where inventors and engineers ran or were at least respected at decision-making levels within their own companies, to the new way, where competition is fake and the people who bring actual brains to a business are deemed subservient to the financiers, investors, and billionaires. Ending enforcement of anti-monopoly law was also a big contributor to the problem, leading to decisions being made farther and farther from the customer.
Consolidation of industry into the hands of a very small number of extremely huge corporations means competition is a charade, and in most fields there's little competition remaining. As a result, with rare exceptions, the quality of real things from a pair of pants to dinner at a real restaurant is a little worse today than it was a few years ago, when it was already a little worse than a few years before that. Until anti-monopoly laws are restored and enforced, that downward spiral will continue until America swirls all the way down the drain. ♦ The very valuable pro-free speech site cryptome.org was briefly taken off-line by webhost Network Solutions after a legal complaint from Microsoft. Cryptome.org had published Microsoft's internal documentation about it's breathtaking eagerness to cooperate with police and sacrifice users' privacy, and Microsoft's lawyers didn't like that, but faced with cryptome.org honcho John Young's refusal of the takedown order, Microsoft has since relented. At cryptome.org (scroll down), Young states, "Most repugnant in the MS guide was its improper use of copyright to conceal from its customer violations of trust toward its customers. Copyright law is not intended for confidentiality purposes, although firms try that to save legal fees. Copyright bluffs have become quite common, as the EFF initiative against such bluffs demonstrates. Second most repugnant is the craven way the programs are described to ease law enforcement grab of data. This information would also be equally useful to customers to protect themselves when Microsoft cannot due to its legal obligations under CALEA. "There are other means to maintain confidentiality of legal obligations as lawyers well know. Claims of copyright violation is merely the cheapest and quickest way to coerce a service provider, no expensive lawyers needed. And it is a cheap and fast way to hide information from competitors as Yahoo intended with its false copyright claim. "There are many firms with similar obligations to law enforcement who do not use copyright to hide the compliance process -- Cisco for one puts its compliance procedures online, as do others. "We think all lawful spying arrangements should be made public, not necessary the legally-protected information under CALEA. Microsoft should join the others who openly describe the procedures, and just may do so if there is a public demand for it." ♦ At least four separate investigations into Toyota's accelerator problems were scuttled one-by-one as the automaker hired former regulators to plead its case with the federal government. Please don't allow yourself the fairy tale belief that this is in some way out of the ordinary. The only thing out of the ordinary about such back-door back-scratching is seeing it mentioned in the press.
♦ With no warning or notification, Citibank closed a man's business account after someone at the bank decided they didn't like the content of his gay-friendly blog and business. ♦ Apple has acknowledged that child laborers build its computers at some of the company's outsourced overseas factories. ♦ GlaxoSmithKline knew its diabetes drug causes heart attacks, but didn't tell. If corporations are people, how is this not murder? ♦ After taking $19-million in stimulus handouts, Whirlpool has announced that it's closing another American factory, laying off more than a thousand workers. Just another day at the office for a typical "American" company, as the refrigerator factory in Evansville, Indiana, will be closed, and production relocated to Mexico, where workers will be paid a fraction of what the Indiana workers have been paid. ♦ The criminality of Erik Prince's Blackwater (which now calls itself Xe) continues dripping out, bit by bit. Here they're setting up a fraudulent shell company to hide the fact that they're getting yet another fat federal contract, and here they're stealing hundreds of top-line weapons from the US military.
♦ Most businesses are defenseless against the types of attacks that recently hit Google and at least 33 other companies, according to a report to be published Monday that estimates the actual number of targeted companies could top 100. Montgomery Scott points out and I can't find grounds to disagree, that if these giant companies with their presumably super-sophisticated security can be compromised, your little computer that you bought from Sears or Dell doesn't have a chance in hell of having any meaningful security. ♦ The good folks at AIG (just kidding, there aren't any) misunderestimated the public rage over its $182B bailout. ♦ In an interoffice memo from headquarters, AT&T is asking its managers and employees to oppose net neutrality. ♦ The delightful blog BoingBoing has the courage to fight back when it's sued by a well-heeled albeit scummy company, and the courage is nice, and they've won in court. Three cheers for BoingBoing and we love 'em, sincerely. But it goes without saying that having tens of thousands of dollars for legal expenses is a bigger factor than courage, when deciding one's response to such big-bucks intimidation. We've never yet been sued, and we've only received two cease-and-desist demands in a decade of blogging. Both times we ceased and desisted because both times it was instantly obvious to us that we were legally (in one case) or morally (in the other) in the wrong (in one case) or in murky waters (in the other). If it was a matter of principle, though, a matter of free speech or a matter of right and wrong where we knew we were in the right, and the bad guys had the money and desire to squish us ... we'd probably have to yield to their demands. I work at a laundromat. We don't have tens of thousands of dollars for lawyers. ♦ SeaWorld executives said they intend to review their safety and animal-handling procedures, after a captive killer whale notched its second or possibly third kill. Animal rights isn't one of my major political concerns. I'm a lot more motivated for human rights. But it's hard to muster much sympathy for any of the humans involved when a giant corporation (Blackstone Group owns SeaWorld) keeps killer whales captive for years on end, taunting the animals to provide entertainment for crowds, and the killer whales occasionally live up to their name and kill somebody. Boo frickin' hoo. # PLANETARY PROBLEMS
♦ Coffee producers say they are getting hammered by global warming, with higher temperatures forcing growers to move to prized higher ground, putting the cash crop at risk. ♦ Vermont's lawmakers have voted to deny renewal permits to the leaky, malfunctioning Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. Bearing in mind that there's a lot of money that wants to keep the facility open, I would say, don't count the Vermont Yankee as out of business yet. ♦ South Dakota's House of Representatives has passed a bill asking (but not requiring, as I read the coverage) the state's public schools to cover global climate change as if it's a controversy or an unsettled matter. Now we'll see if the state's Senate and Governor are as stupid as its House. ♦ Hey, why not teach the flat earth controversy too? ♦ Plugging in some extra Christmas lights warmed JBanholzer's heart but raised his electric bill, much to the cackling delight of the local power utility that officially poo-poos wind power. The news is pretty damned depressing and the unknown news is more depressing still, but I just plain like that guy's blog and his style. Reminds me of the good gut-vibe as you get from a good short story or something from Garrison Keillor twenty years ago, before he became an overblown parody of himself. # FROM BEYOND AMERICA'S BORDERS
♦ A coordinated attack early Friday, which killed at least 16 people and targeted a hotel and guesthouse in central Kabul, underscored the shifting tactics of Taliban insurgents and their keen understanding of geopolitical implications. The Taliban want to show that they can get inside the capital and strike at will. They want Afghans to know that the government can’t keep them safe and even one of the most heavily guarded areas of the country — Kabul’s City Center — is vulnerable. The fact that this area is a short drive from the Presidential Palace was also intended as a message to President Karzai. Namely, that insurgents can get as close to him as they like and his security apparatus can do little about it.
This is of course tragic, awful, obscene, and better than the American way — hunger strikers at Guantanamo just get tubes shoved down their throats.
# WHAT THEY'RE CALLING "HEALTH CARE REFORM"
♦ Let's start with a perspective on health care reform from Rush Limbaugh, a multi-millionaire who hosts America's most listened-to radio program: "If you don't have any teeth, so what? What's applesauce for?" ♦ And let's listen to a perspective on health care reform from Glenn Beck, another multi-millionaire who hosts shows on TV and radio: "I've read the Constitution ... I didn't see that you had a right to teeth" ♦ And here's a perspective on health care reform from Tim Pawlenty, the Republican Governor of Minnesota who's running for President: "Well, for one thing you could do is change the federal law so that not every ER is required to treat everybody who comes in the door, even if they have a minor condition. They should be -- if you have a minor condition, instead of being at the really expensive ER, you should be at the primary care clinic." ♦ "... In desperation, Robben’s friends and family have turned to local fundraisers to try to pay for her treatment. Over the weekend, they held a $5-a-plate pasta dinner in the hope of putting 'a dent' in Robben’s massive health care bills..." ♦ In Tracy, California, not too far out of Stockton, you get two choices in 9-1-1 emergency calls. You can pay $48 in advance to have 9-1-1 emergency services, or you can skip the pre-pay and you'll be billed $300 every time you call 9-1-1.
Sure sounds Republican, doesn't it? When you're having chest pains you'll get quick medical care if you're rich, and if you're not rich you can hem and haw and do the math in your head to figure out whether you can afford emergency care, and while you're doing the math the major coronary will hit. ♦ The preposterous bipartisan summit on health care reform may have actually accomplished something — maybe it got the facts of the matter into President Obama's thick skull. He's finally, for the first time in my recollection, making noises about health care reform without further compromise with people who want to block all meaningful health care reform. ♦ Astonishingly, the health insurance industry is exempt from federal antitrust laws, which is why a handful of insurers have become so dominant in their markets that their customers simply have nowhere else to go. But that protection could soon end: President Obama on Tuesday announced his support of a House bill that would repeal health insurers’ antitrust exemption, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi signaled that she would put it toward an immediate vote. Ending antitrust exemptions for the insurance industry passed the House on Wednesday, but it's a gesture that means nothing until the Senate goes along, and still means nothing unless the Justice Department prosecutes anti-trust violations. ♦ While Anthem Blue Cross proposed a 39 percent rate increase on thousands of its California customers, its parent company gave 39 of its executives more than $1 million each and spent more than $27 million on 103 lavish executive retreats, congressional investigators said Wednesday. ♦ John Amato: "If the White House wants to save the 2010 midterms and possibly his job in 2012, he should allow either an expansion of Medicare or a public option to be introduced via reconciliation — preferably both. That would send shock waves throughout the country, electrifying the Democratic base and his most ardent progressive supporters. It would be the right kind of shock and would send the Villagers into a frenzy too." # POLITICS IN LIEU OF STATESMANSHIP
♦ Despite President Obama's pledge in the State of the Union address to "require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or Congress," the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says the Obama administration has been "fighting hard to stop the release of the names of these representatives." To be clear, it's not exactly unknown news that the Obama administration is being lobbied ferociously. That's what happens in unregulated politics and nobody would have expected anything different — except that Obama and his crew have bragged about their high ethical standards, their rules against lobbyists wielding undue influence. Poppycock bragging. ♦ Obama's proposal for a consumer protection agency as a central element of the plan to remake regulation of the financial system is being compromised away, to the surprise of no-one, and with help from Sen Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut), also to the surprise of no-one. So long as Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House, we the people are pretty much screwed. And in case they didn't cover this in your US Government class, Republicans always control both houses of Congress and the White House, regardless of elections. ♦ In news that's news to no-one, the House Ethics Committee has discovered that Congressman Charles Rangel (D-New York) is ethically challenged.
♦ When you're compiling a list of Democrats with spine, a rare species indeed, or Dems who can plausibly be said to give a damn about real people, make sure you remember Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-New York). “You gotta love these Republicans. I mean, you guys have chutzpah. The Republican Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of insurance companies.” ♦ The Obama administration is planning to (or hoping to, or saying it will) use the government’s enormous buying power to prod private companies to improve wages and benefits for millions of workers, according to White House officials and several interest groups briefed on the plan. (Login as unknownnews with password unknown.) By altering how it awards $500 billion in contracts each year, the government would disqualify more companies with labor, environmental or other violations and give an edge to companies that offer better levels of pay, health coverage, pensions and other benefits, the officials said. This is such a gloriously good idea that I'm tempted to applaud already, but proposing something isn't accomplishing it. I'm cynical by nature and the Obama gang makes me more cynical with every newscast, so let's remember the obvious — Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce and Fox News and Rush Limbaugh the rest of Satan's echo chamber will be furiously opposed to this. And if there's one recurring fact of the matter in the Obama administration and the "Democrat-controlled House and Senate", it's that things the right wing opposes do not happen.
But in the interest of fairness, we'll also give Obama and the Democrats a pat on the back when they get something right. This week... ... Well, this week we looked and looked for something Obama or the Democrats got right, and we didn't find diddlysquat. # IS THIS JOURNALISM?
♦ Here's another indication of just how limbo-low corporate journalism has sunk in America — Newsweek is unsure whether a guy who flies a plane into a building can be called a terrorist. Because the guy was white. And a Christian. And a hero to right-wingers. ♦ Why does the Washington Post think its arch-conservative columnists are entitled to their own facts? ♦ Here's another reminder, if another reminder is needed, that you're wasting your time if you're watching the Sunday political shows — ABC's This Week in this instance, but really they're all interchangeably awful. ♦ ABC News will lay off another 300 staffers, which presumably means that the network's World News Tonight and Nightline will become even shallower. But is that even possible? ♦ Yes, now that you mention it I can't disagree, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman is routinely dim and dishonest. ♦ The Miami Herald has halted its "tip jar" program. ♦ Maybe it was just edited for space, but when publishing a bombshell letter from an actress with Down syndrome blasting Sarah Palin, it sure seems peculiar that the New York Times edited out the hardest-hitting part of the letter. For the record, the rest of the letter, too hot for the Times, reads, "My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes." # LEFTOVERS AND STUPIDITY FOR DESSERT ♦ Chris Hedges "We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages. But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that — a fantasy." Yeah, that pretty much reflects my increasing state of pessimism. It's harder and harder to reach people with the truth while everything we say and do seems to be drowned out by a mass media dedicated to the illusion that everything is fairly ordinary and there's nothing to worry about. ♦ But that said, when I need a moment of optimism I keep hitting replay on this. And this classic still gets my heart pumping, 'cuz without hope, really, what's the point? ♦ Van Jones, who was hounded with merciless and vicious lies for the worst part of a year by Glenn Beck and his gang of liars, has finally responded directly to Beck. "I see you, and I love you, brother. I love you, and you cannot do anything about it. I love you, and you cannot do anything about it. Let’s be one country! Let’s be one country! Let’s get the job done!" I sort of envy the guy's class and character, of which I have neither.
♦ Former Congressman James Traficant (D-Ohio), fresh from prison, says he'll run for Congress again. ♦ What can you say when someone says something this astoundingly stupid and clueless? Here's Congressman Trent Franks (R-Arizona), talking about the badness of abortion: "Far more of the African-American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by policies of slavery." ♦ An emailer leads me to believe that the Coffee Party presents a rational alternative to the loony "tea party" crowd, which sounds amusing but alas, the group's website is instantly annoying and I clicked away after about twenty seconds. Holler if I'm missing something worthwhile. Sure, I'm a grumpy old fart, but I gotta ask — is there any reason anyone would want to see a distracting flow of tweets as they're posted, scrolling rapidly down the side of a webpage? What's the point, besides annoying the audience and making the page's purported content more difficult to dead? Grrr. Is there someone on earth for whom perpetually scrolling tweets makes a website more interesting, more informative or more fun or more valuable, or anything but something to click away from? Also, get off my lawn. ♦ An obviously gay man is saved from his obvious gayness, and Pat Robertson is there. ♦ Orly Taitz has appealed to the United Nations for protection from "death threats, vandalism, false complaints, and a suspected assassination attempt". ♦ Did the Devil make Benny Hinn's wife file for divorce? ♦ A group of 13 real ministers has asked the IRS to revoke the "church" status of the fundamentalist flophouse owned by the C Street Group (a/k/a The Family). "Is there public worship?" said the leader of the group of ministers, Pastor Eric Williams of the North Congregational United Church of Christ in Columbus, Ohio. "Is it open to the public? Are there trained leaders who serve the church? C Street really has none of those marks that make it a church." And if it is not a church, Williams says other questions come up — like whether the C Street Center's fundraising and other activities meet the requirements for 501(c)(3) charities. ♦ It's been four years since the last time Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke in court. ♦ There's been much silly commentary on the Left because some young woman who won a low-level beauty pageant has been taught to believe some of the nuttier nonsense from the Bible. People, please, there's nothing surprising when someone says gays should be killed because it's in the Bible. It is in the Bible, which is reason enough to stop taking that book seriously as a guide to anything. The alleged Miss Beverly Hills, Lauren Ashley, has said something hurtful and hateful and really, so what? Lots and lots of people share her absurd but utterly common religious views, and they're teaching and spreading and believing this stuff all the time. Disagree, tell 'em they're wrong, and tell 'em why they're wrong, but criminy, don't pretend it's an aberration when a few words of hate and hurt are spoken out loud. Ask random strangers on the street and you'll get a similar screed from about two out of ten of 'em. Welcome to America. ♦ Unknown News is updated once weekly, usually on Mondays. It's our attempt to spotlight news that was underplayed, ignored, or simply lost in the non-stop news cycle. Have a seat and some cheese puffs but please, no smoking. A tip o' the hat to Daniel D., the letter Z, AK for CSS help, JR Mooneyham, Bad Attitudes, Photography is Not a Crime, Right Wing Watch, Pharyngula, The Agitator, E & P in Exile, Progressive Review, Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog, Little Green Footballs, Jim B., Sherri B., Cassandra, Joseph D., Joe G., Lon Garm, J.S. (not the Watergate felon) Magruder at Eat the Blog, Andrea O., HughBris, Comrade Q., SirJ, Bill T., wlgriffi, our first web-home at pitas.com (1999-2003, and still a great place for publishing your blog), and the love of my life (who prefers to remain anonymous).
Recommended sites for gathering unknown or underreported news: Media Matters Pro Publica ThinkProgress Washington Monthly TruthOut
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