I'm not a big fan of police tasering citizens, but in this case, I'm happy to make an exception. This all went down in Concord, New Hampshire (my home town). John Cantin's daughter Melissa was shot and killed by her estranged husband in Manchester, NH in 2009. John was also shot, but he survived. John refused to be silenced. Instead, … Read More
RIP Slim Whitman
I never heard of him until those ads in the 1980s, which spawned countless jokes. He was a serious musical influence on early rock. In the British Isles, he was known as a pioneer of country music for popularizing the style there. Whitman also encouraged a teen Elvis Presley when the young singer made his professional debut. He died today … Read More
Plan B Attack on Plan B
Now that Plan B is available to all women, conservatives are going to try to limit it at the state level. In Arkansas, for example, abortion opponents are already pushing the legislature to consider imposing either an age limit or a total ban on Plan B sales next year. Jerry Cox, the director of the state’s conservative Christian Family Council, told … Read More
GOP Priorities
In the constant internal GOP tug-of-war between "tone it down to appeal to sane voters" and "ramp it up for the wingnut base", guess which side is winning? The Republican-led House on Tuesday sought to shore up their support from conservatives with a vote on one of the most far-reaching anti-abortion bills in years. The measure to restrict abortions to the … Read More
Why Is Nobody In Jail?
Read this.
Snowden Is A Dick
I have been following with interest the various leaks from Edward Snowden, although I have not been writing about them much. I write this post to officially say that the so-called whistleblower really is a self-aggrandizing a-hole, and not the 4th Amendment crusador that he envisions himself to be. I join with others who ask — if he was so … Read More
Happy 84th Birthday, Anne
This footage, discovered within the last decade, was originally shot on July 22 1941. It shows the wedding of a person living at Merwedeplein 39, Amsterdam. For a few brief seconds, the camera shows a young girl looking down from the second floor at the events transpiring below her. This is the only known footage of Anne Frank.
An Uncomfortable Flight
Half an hour ago: A Newark-bound United Airlines flight is carrying a passenger who reportedly informed the crew that he "poisoned everyone on board." United Flight 116, from Hong Kong, is set to land at 2:05 p.m. The passenger is being restrained by other passengers. Law enforcement officials in New York and Washington, D.C., are aware of the incident and … Read More
Miss Utah Crowned As New Youtube Babbling Pageant Contestant
It’s been six years, but the memory of Miss South Carolina Teen USA contestant Caite Upton tackling a pretty straightforward question about the geographical ignorance of our fellow Americans with words fished out of the garbage disposal is as fresh as ever: “People in our nation don’t have maps, The Iraq, like, everywhere such as, something something schools in the U.S. should … Read More
Jan Brewer Is Too Crazy Even For Scalia
In an opinion by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, a 7-2 Supreme Court held this morning that an Arizona law requiring voting officials to reject voter registration forms that are “not accompanied by concrete evidence of citizenship” conflicts with a federal law requiring states to use a uniform voter registration form for federal elections. Scalia once justified an anti-immigrant opinion with … Read More
We Live In A Reactive World
Yesterday, two girls, fans of The Hobbit, posted a video of their reaction to Peter Jackson's video about the new Hobbit movie. They were very excited. So director Peter Jackson decided to get all meta on everybody, and have charactors from the movie react to the girls' reaction video.
Meanwhile, Back At The IRS Scandal…
The GOP line is quickly unraveling: A self-described conservative Republican who is a manager in the Internal Revenue Service office that targeted tea party groups told investigators that he, not the White House, set the review in motion, the top Democrat on the House watchdog committee said Sunday. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., released a partial transcript of the House Committee … Read More
US Majority Backs NSA Surveillance
A new Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll found that 56% of Americans consider the NSA's accessing of telephone call records of millions of Americans through secret court orders "acceptable." A 62% majority believe it's more important for the government to investigate terrorist threats, even if those investigations intrude on personal privacy. Support drops when it comes to government monitoring of emails, but even here, the … Read More
This Happened
What's remarkable is that it barely made the news, and has prompted little discussion. I guess the NRA won: Five are dead after a gunman rampaged through Santa Monica, CA, on Friday, ending at the local community college. The Santa Monica shooting marks the tenth mass shooting on a school campus in California since 1976. The suspect, 23-year-old John Zawahri, was known as an … Read More
Game of Dems
Is this supposed to be funny/clever?