I had a lively phone conversation with Saccone’s office before we produced this one, in which I kept listing all the Bible laws that might be inconvenient in our times.  The woman on the other end of the phone got VERY flustered and upset. At one point she said that “the Old Testament doesn’t count, Christians only follow the New Testament.” She also said I must be confusing my Bible with my Koran.

She was certainly letting her freak flag fly.

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont says he thinks a resignation by New York Congressman Anthony Weiner would be in the best interests of his constituents and the U.S. House…. Leahy also says he supports the House Ethics Committee investigation, but says he would welcome a decision by Weiner to resign voluntarily.

Jesus fucking christ. The dude has broken no laws, he hasn’t even had real sex with these women, but Pat Leahy who hasn’t said fucking BOO about David Diapers Vitter, Mary Titty-Lickin’ Good Bono, Larry Widestance Craig, or even Mark I-Like-Tennage-Boys Foley wants him to resign. What the fuck?

Then I saw one of the pictures Weiner took of himself, and jesus christing fuck, I think I knew what the problem is. So I called Pat Leahy’s office.

riiiiiiing….. riiiiiing

“Hello, Senator Leahy’s office,” sais a sweet-voiced young woman.

“Hi,” I said. “My name’s Brendan Skwire, and while I’m not a constituent, as a civil libertarian, I have always been a fan of Senator Leahy. I used to live across the border in Western Massachusetts, and I always liked his approach. I support him on reforming the PATRIOT ACT, on ending the wars, and getting our country back on track. I called yesterday to register my objections to his call for Anthony Weiner to step down…” and I listed all the of various politicians above and how Leahy hadn’t said anything about any of them.

“I was curious why he wanted Weiner to step down,” I went on, “because it didn’t make a lot of sense to me. But then I saw the totally nude picture, and i think I’ve figured it out.

“A lot of senators are really old, right? How old’s Pat, he’s gotta be pushing 80 at this point.”

[The fact is, Pat Leahy looks and sounds like a turtle who burnt out his vocal cords by drinking bleach of something. He's ancient.]

“And here’s this brash young guy, with this incredibly hot wife, he’s totally physically fit, and he’s… well, let me just say that if i was Anthony Weiner’s father, I’d be VERY proud of my genes–”

“OK SIR, WE GET IT,” the young woman began shouting over me.

“I mean, he’s hung like–”

“WE GET IT, SIR”

“…a freakin’ horse, he puts Ron Jeremy to sh–”

“WE GET IT SIR, WE GET–”

“–ame, and I think that Pat’s just jealous. Can you confirm that for me?”

CLICK. Or rather SLAM!!!

I have no patience for this nincompoopery. Anthony Weiner broke no laws. This is between him, his wife, and his constituents, 56% of who want him to carry on. Pat Leahy needs to shut his trap until and unless he’s ready to start calling for all these others to resign as well.

If not, I’m going to keep making fun of him, just like I’m making fun of Allyson “haha, I bankrupted you” Schwartz and nancy “my face is frozen from too much botox and I haven’t had sex in decades” pelosi.

So until I hear otherwise, my belief is that Pat Leahy and the rest of these scolds are simply jealous. Leahy’s in his 70s. And not to be mean, but his wife’s as ancient as he is. The dude probably hasn’t had sex without the help of Viagra in years.

I’ll admit, I’d be jealous too. But I’d also keep my mouth shut about shit that isn’t my business and doesn’t hurt the public interst, like a good team player.

O THE City of Brotherly Love has decided to extend that love even further.

Our fair metropolis is going to prevent employers from asking about a person’s criminal history before first interviewing him for a job.

So please line up, rapists, embezzlers and car thieves: Here’s your opportunity!

[...]
When you decide to break the law, you give up your right to be given the benefit of the doubt.

Once you have shown your propensity for lawlessness, you go to the back of the line behind people who would never consider living outside of the system. It doesn’t mean that you have to wear a Scarlet “C” for convict. And you might very well have reformed, and even developed valuable skills that benefit an employer.

But between two people with the same qualifications, an employer has the right to choose from the get-go the one who never thought about lifting some merchandise, beating his wife, smoking some weed or forging a few checks.

Of course, giving someone an interview doesn’t mean he gets the job. The employer can still do a background check to see who’ll make the first cut. But it’s Orwellian that we would deprive any business owner, particularly in this economy, of the right to have a full and fair picture of prospective employees from Square One simply because of some twisted sense of fairness.

It’s not, as Christine tells herself, “some twisted sense of fairness”. It’s that when people who have been convicted of a crime have paid their debt to society can’t get a job, they wind up back in the same cycle of poverty and desperation that led them to commit crimes to begin with.

Her focus on weed is particularly galling, since if it wasn’t for obsolete laws that are being overturned in state after state (including in New York, where the implementation of mandatory minimum sentencing was a disaster, creating a wholly unnecessary criminal underclass), potsmokers wouldn’t even be criminals to begin with. And yes, the “conviction” box DOES constitute a significant challenge for blacks, who are far more likely to be targeted by the police for harassment: that’s why there are so many questions about Philly marijuana decriminalization policy, which has a pretty clear racial discrepancy.

What Flowers proposes is exactly what she says she doesn’t: she wants convicts to wear a scarlet C (just as she’d like women who’ve had abortions to wear a scarlet A), robbing employers of people with valuable skills.

But more importantly, Flowers is lying to her readers, and as usual her editors Sandra Shea and Michael Schefer aren’t doing anything to fact-check her claims. You’ll notice that nowhere does she provide a real analysis of the law which states:

Employers in Philadelphia who wish to inquire about criminal convictions will need to develop a criminal conviction inquiry form (focusing only on convictions) to give to applicants who have completed their first interview and to whom they wish to extend either a second interview or a job offer.

In this regard, employers should be careful to avoid the temptation to give the criminal conviction form to all applicants immediately following their initial interview to make things easier administratively. Why obtain information about applicants in whom you have no interest? Applicant may assume–and argue–the information was the basis for adverse action (even though it was not). At a minimum, there is the cost of defense.

It’s right there in black and white folks: if you make it to the second round of interviews, you may be subject to a background check. That’s a heck of a lot different that Flowers’ totally misleading claim that it’s a plum opportunity for criminals to commit more crimes. It took me less than two seconds to find that using Google, so it’s not like this is information Flowers didn’t have at hand: she simply left it out because it didn’t support the conclusion she’d already come to. And instead of being honest about that, she decided to tell lies instead, making it seem like your local McDonalds was about to be overrun by rapists and stick-up men.

Are some criminals irredeemable? Absolutely. But contrary to Flowers’ abject lies, employers do have a mechanism to weed out undesirable employees: banning the box does away with an unfair practice that prevents anyone whose made a mistake in their lives from getting a job based on their qualifications. It’s the same backwards thinking that keeps kids who got busted with drugs from going to college, practically ensuring they’ll be poor adults, and thus more likely to be involved with the criminal justice system. Perhaps that’s what Flowers wants: she’s a lawyer after all, and you gotta pay the bills.

But if lying was a crime (and in a court of law, it is), Christine Flowers would be serving a life sentence. She’s a liar and she has no place on an editorial page anywhere. Shame on the Daily News for publishing this garbage and lying to their readers.

I heard this song last night in a John Waters movie, and now it’s in my head.

According to a letter delivered to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this morning, Republicans will block all debate on all legislation until the tax cut impasse is bridged and the federal government has been fully funded — even if it means days tick by and the Senate misses its opportunity to pass DADT, an extension of unemployment insurance and other Dem items.

“[W]e write to inform you that we will not agree to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to any legislative item until the Senate has acted to fund the government and we have prevented the tax increase that is currently awaiting all American taxpayers,” the letter reads. “With little time left in this Congressional session, legislative scheduling should be focused on these critical priorities. While there are other items that might ultimately be worthy of the Senate’s attention, we cannot agree to prioritize any matters above the critical issues of funding the government and preventing a job-killing tax hike.”

It was penned by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and signed by all 42 Republicans.

the jokes just write themselves, don’t they. I’m not kidding when i say someone’s gonna pin a “kick me” sign to the president’s suit.

As I’ve been reading about the unnecessary loss of a home in Tennessee, and find myself wondering why this conversation is even occurring.

A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground.

The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn’t do anything to stop his house from burning.

Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay.

The mayor said if homeowners don’t pay, they’re out of luck.

This fire went on for hours because garden hoses just wouldn’t put it out. It wasn’t until that fire spread to a neighbor’s property, that anyone would respond.

Turns out, the neighbor had paid the fee.

It’s like the past 150 years never happened, when fire insurance companies had private firefighters. In Philadelphia, they would negotiate (ie, extort) good deals with the ill-fortune to be uninsured, which would often lead to fires spreading devastation for blocks. Or the Baltimore fire of 1904, a completely avoidable tragedy:

The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 raged in Baltimore, Maryland, on Sunday, February 7, and Monday, February 8, 1904. 1,231 firefighters were required to bring the blaze under control. It destroyed a major part of central Baltimore, including over 1,500 buildings covering an area of some 140 acres.

One reason for the fire’s duration was the lack of national standards in fire-fighting equipment. Although fire engines from nearby cities (such as Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. as well as units from New York City, Virginia, Wilmington, and Atlantic City) responded, many could not help because their hose couplings could not fit Baltimore’s hydrants.

Much of the destroyed area was rebuilt in relatively short order, and the city adopted a building code, stressing fireproof materials. Perhaps the greatest legacy of the fire was the impetus it gave to efforts to standardize firefighting equipment in the United States, especially hose couplings.

The South Fulton fire chief put an entire neighborhood at risk, and frankly both the family that lost their home and the guy next door should sue the department. I’m all for personal responsibility, but this Hobbes-ian, every man for himself approach to public services is unsustainable and dangerous. When someone’s house burns down it doesn’t just impact that individual: it drives down prices for the rest of the neighbors. And if an entire block is left to burn because the neighbors haven’t paid their “subscription fee”, entire communities can be devastated, costing significant government dollars in terms of renewal, lost revenue, lost business, and dealing with mass homelessness. And you can bet your ass that in THAT situation, government WILL pony up

The chief, by the way, is reaping the fruit of every-man-for-himself. The victim’s son gave him a beating for letting Dad’s house burn down: I’m surprised he didn’t go all-in and simple shoot the motherfucker in the face with a 12-gauge. I wouldn’t be surprised if more people in Obion County made the firefighters less than welcome at the local tavern.

I mean seriously, it’s come to this? What the fuck happened to e pluribus unum? How can we remain a country when so many of us don’t give a shit about our neighbors? It’s as if the entire notion of “the public good” has been disposed of and replaced with the twin philosophies of “every man for himself” and “you get [only] what you pay for”.

My dad makes the regular point that we are going the way of the old Soviet Union, and that eventually our political divisions will be such that when a state like Texas or South Carolina decides to secede, no one will fight to keep them in the Union. I think he’s right, and I think stories like this show how far we’ve gone down that path.

We can’t find money to create jobs in America; we can’t figure out how to fix our crumbling infrastructure; we’ve got 10% official unemployment (and probably closer to 20% unofficially) and we’re spending $27 billion on the Afghanistan National Police force, which spends its time getting high.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like getting baked as much as the next guy. But I’m not a cop, and I do that on my own time and my own dime.

Right wingers are fucking idiots. With Erick Erickson, doubly-so:

This is crazy. What gives the Commerce Department the right to ask me how often I flush my toilet? Or about going to work? I’m not filling out this form. I dare them to try and come throw me in jail. I dare them to. Pull out my wife’s shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door. They’re not going on my property. They can’t do that. They don’t have the legal right, and yet they’re trying.

First of all, the census doesn’t ask you how often you flush your toilet or how often you go to work. That’s just standard winger paranoia.

But this notion that the government doesn’t “have the legal right” to make you fill out the census is just 100% WRONG:

The U.S. Constitution empowers the Congress to carry out the census in “such manner as they shall by Law direct” (Article I, Section 2). The Founders of our fledgling nation had a bold and ambitious plan to empower the people over their new government. The plan was to count every person living in the newly created United States of America, and to use that count to determine representation in the Congress.

For someone who seems to always be bringing up the Constitution, he sure is fucking ignorant of what’s actually IN the document.

So like the bunch of morons they are, the right wing has been telling their flock not to participate, warning of internment camps for conservatives, and other nonsense. And apparently, it’s working: in Wingnutistan Texas, participation rates are incredibly low. Northern Michigan, home to a substantial wingnut population, also has low rates. And so on.

Then, the right-wingers realized something (as usual, too late): because the census counts PEOPLE, it has ramifications for your POLITICAL REPRESENTATION, including redistricting. So a mad scramble to get right-wingers to participate ensued: Karl Rove, of all people, was trotted out to plead for conservative participation.

So now, having pretty much squandering their opportunity to participate in the census, the conservatives NOW say the census is deliberately skipping republican neighborhoods.

These people are nuts.

The well-groomed brokers and traders bent on sticking up for Wall Street gathered on Wednesday in best-behaved form — no chanting, no shrill whistling, pretty much no noise at all — to mark the formation of the financial world’s modest alternative to the Tea Party movement.

Things had gotten entirely too annoying. First it was White House (and populist) complaints about Wall Street recklessness and greed (humongous bonuses). Now it was White House desire to attach new regulations and taxes to banks. Enough!

And so a rally was organized at lunchtime on the 23rd floor of 14 Wall Street, directly across the street from the New York Stock Exchange, in the cushy offices of John Thomas Financial, a three-year-old investment house. It was much more comfortable than, say, the street.

As Thomas Belesis, the 35-year-old chief executive of John Thomas who hatched the idea, put it, “It’s cold out.”

NY Times, New Embattled Minority: Wall Street Brokers

Deep thought: “John Thomas” is slang for “penis”. And apparently, the brokers and traders penis rally from Penis Financial didn’t go all that well:

The press alert promised a “rally with hundreds of brokers and traders.” In fact, about 30 of the attendees were from elsewhere on Wall Street. The rest were the brokers and traders at John Thomas. Since the rally was held on the firm’s 25,000-square-foot trading floor, where some 100 brokers had their desks, most of the attendees were basically working.

…but that’s probably because the participants are a bunch of dicks.

I also want to do a Cyberman playing a mandolin or an upright bass.