Bill O’Reilly has started a new program, much like Amnesty International, but a bit more narrowly focused: Prisoners of Conscience With Implants.

This segment of the Factor was originally titled Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, but Jared-Syn, as it turns out, had rather disappointing hooters, so it was renamed Metalstorm: The Destruction of Miss California.  But then it turned out that Metalstorm was the name of a concert event, sort of like Lilith Fair, but for German cover bands, and the Amon Düül II tribute group (Amon Düül II-7/8) threatened to sue, so Bill just wound up calling it Funbags sans Frontieres.

Checked on your freedom of speech lately?

Uh, no, actually.  I left it in front of the TV with a juice box and some Arrowroot cookies, but I’m sure it’s fine…

If not, consider the plight of 21-year-old Carrie Prejean, a student at San Diego Christian College who was selected first runner-up in the Miss USA pageant last month.

I’m not sure “plight” and “first runner-up in the Miss USA pageant” can legally be used in the same sentence.

Prejean was asked whether every state should legalize gay marriage. Smiling brightly, the young woman said: “I think that I believe a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anyone out there.”

Saying certain people should be treated unequally before the law is generally considered a bad thing, unless you smile when you say it (also, the disenfranchised group will be more likely to accept their second class status if you used a good tooth-whitener beforehand).

MSNBC allowed a guest to call her vile names, and the far-left cast of characters on that cable network has delighted in mocking and demeaning Prejean almost nightly. The left-wing blogs have been especially vicious

Oh God no, not the blogs!  This is going to be like when J. Edgar Hoover drove Jean Seberg to suicide all over again, except this time with obscure guys posting mildly snotty things for their dozens of readers!

She’s being investigated for possibly violating pageant rules by giving unapproved interviews. Of course, she gave those interviews trying to defend herself against media assaults.

Or maybe the pageant officials thought that Carrie cutting an advertisement for Maggie Gallagher’s National Organization for Marriage (”National Organization for Marriage and Carrie Prejean Launch New Ad Showing Intolerance of Gay Marriage Activists, Illustrating Threats to Religious Liberty”) was a bit pissy of her, considering.

This is a disgraceful exposition with wide implications for all of us.

Bill’s dreams of entering a beauty pageant have been shattered.

“I feel fucking pretty…And now I got nowhere to take it!”

Here we have an American citizen answering a direct question respectfully and honestly and being punished for it. You don’t get more un-American than that.

Hm.  Well, how about an American citizen being subpoenaed by Congress and interrogated about her personal political convictions, then jailed when she refused to implicate her friends and colleagues?  That’s maybe a skosh more un-American, don’t you think, Bill?  No?  Okay, tell you what, let’s compromise: I’ll weep for Carrie Prejean when she’s hauled before the House un-Pageant Activities Committee and cited for contempt of Swimsuit.

Where is the American Civil Liberties Union on this?

Laughing their asses off because you think this is a legal issue?

Once again, the ACLU displays its biased hypocrisy like a giant float-balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Because there’s no greater example of false piety than a helium-filled Underdog.

And where is the National Organization for Women?

Saying, “We told you beauty pageants were stupid and demeaning and you were wrong to take them seriously in the first place”?

A young woman is being victimized by hate speech, actually being called a “b*tch” on a variety of television programs, and NOW has no comment? Again, the hypocrisy is breathtaking.

When will these so-called “feminist” organizations stand up for the right of our beauty contestants to advocate denying equal rights to homosexuals without the gays getting all up in her silicone grill?

Finally, where is the homosexual community?

Oh darn, did they get out of the closet again?  I thought you were going to fix that latch…

Do they not respect freedom of speech? They don’t want to be punished for their expression, right?

Oh, no need for threats, Bill.  Miss Prejean felt free to say she doesn’t believe gays are entitled to the same rights she has, and some gays felt free to call her a bitch.  The system seems to be working.

It would be incredibly smart for a gay leader to pull a Voltaire and publicly state, “I don’t agree with what you say, but I defend your right to say it.” So, who’s going to be courageous and step up on this one?

Except Carrie’s right to spout antediluvian bias isn’t threatened, while equal treatment under the law for gays and lesbians is.  So maybe at this particular point in our social development, it shouldn’t really be up to them to defend her constitutional liberties.

Gay marriage has been defined by some of its supporters as a civil rights issue. Isn’t freedom of speech a civil rights issue? Therefore, let’s call this Miss California deal exactly what it is — a gross violation of the spirit of America.

If America means anything, it means the right to treat certain of your fellow citizens as slightly less human, without having to hear them complain about it.

If a 21-year-old pageant contestant can be persecuted for uttering an opinion based upon a sincere belief, then all of us are at risk, as well.

Or as Bill once memorably said, “I have a dream that my two little children will one day live in a nation where you people will shut up!  Shut UP!  Cut their mic!    Fucking thing SUCKS!“

No Country For Old Men | 31 Comments »

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.*

“‘Okay Moondoggie,’ I said to myself. ‘You’re a tough guy. You’ve been sapped twice, choked, beaten silly with a gun, shot in the arm until you’re crazy as a couple of waltzing mice. Now let’s see you do something really tough - like putting your pants on.’”

*Raymond Chandler, Red Wind, 1938
**Murder, My Sweet, 1944

Wild Things | 2 Comments »

Sorry for the current blogging famine; I’ve been struggling to meet a Monday deadline (although I did take time off this evening to go see Star Trek, and while I enjoyed the revised mythos, I’m not crazy about the new Vulcan salute: “Cheaters never live long and prosper.”)

I also apologize for hijacking this Doghouse Riley comment from over to Roy’s place, but it’s a masterpiece of miniaturization, like the contents of a Fabergé egg, and really must be shared:

It occurs to me that “conservatism” (Nabokov said that “reality” was the only word which should always be surrounded by quotes; so, too, anything suggestive of principle attached to the modern American Right) has, in fact, been operating within a narrow Boom and Bust cycle ever since Americans left the farm in droves in the early decades of the last century, greatly reducing their opportunities for backwoods religious scams and sheep fucking. Glorious Patriotic War! followed by Okay Who Do We Invade Next, and, inevitably Wait, How’d We Lose That One? and its twin corollaries, We Couldn’t Lose, Not Really and Find the Fifth Columnists!

This is overlain by the sorts of biorhythms “reality” imposes on the body politic: you can’t just conjure up Great Patriotic Wars, and the people actually in charge don’t want to fight them (at least not since Well, at least it gets you off the farm stopped being an excuse), they just want to collect tax receipts as if they were about to. Elections, too, whose periodic intrusions may mean you find yourself conferring Constitutionally-mandated sainthood on a worthless drunk one minute, and accusing the holder of the same office of stealing stamps, having sexual intercourse, or eating alien mustard the next. Liberals–American liberals, fer chrissakes, the mild scratchy throat, non-productive cough, and two days bed rest of the international socialist pandemic–just happen to stand somewhere close to where these people have been directing a constant covering fire since 1931.

Further Dijongate-inspired thoughts from the Hoosier sage can be found here.

Now a word from our sponsor | 5 Comments »

First up, Dennis Prager, a pundit uniquely “attuned to the importance of words” poses an unanswerable conundrum to liberal smartypants:

Question to Left: If You Love America, Why “Transform” It? by Dennis Prager

If you met a man who said he would like to “transform” or “remake” his wife, would you conclude that he: a) thought very highly of his wife and loved her? Or b) held his wife in rather low esteem and therefore found living her rather difficult?

The answer is obvious: Those who wish to remake anything (or anyone) do not think highly of the person or thing they wish to remake.

Little is as revealing of Barack Obama’s and the Left’s view of America than their use of the words “transform” and “remake” when applied to what they most want to do to America.

How about if you met a man who was walking through a field with his wife, when suddenly a drunken Dick Cheney reared up from behind a bush and shot her in the face, blowing her ear clean off?  And how about if, while the wife clutched her bleeding head and screamed, “Find my ear, put it on ice!  Maybe they can reattach it at the hospital!” the husband said, “Honey, I loved you when you had two ears, and I love you just as much now that you’ve got one ear, and a cheek full of birdshot.  I don’t want you changing on my account.”  Then, suddenly, a drunken George W. Bush burst from the underbrush on an ATV and ran over the man’s wife, fracturing her leg.  What would you conclude if the maimed woman shrieked, “call 911!” but her husband simply shook his head and smiled fondly and murmured, “Baby, I’m not going to try to ‘remake’ you into someone who’s got a pair of ears, a buckshot-free face, and two sound legs; you’re perfect in my eyes.”  And as the wife’s pulse became thready and she slipped into shock, moaning, “Get an ambulance, you asshole — push the bone back inside the skin, set my leg, put it in a goddamn cast –!” he merely kissed her bloody forehead and softly crooned Billy Joel’s 1977 hit, “(I Love You) Just the Way You Are.”

Next up, fellow professional moralizer Michael Medved boldly advises Obama to Listen to Leviticus.

The core mistake of liberalism involves the confusion of charity and justice.

How do we know it’s a disastrous error to blur the distinction between these two timeless virtues?

Because the Bible specifically warns us against it.

“The Bible said it.  I believe it.  And that’s my column — thanks, I’m outta here!”

Allowing justice to be twisted by emotions of sympathy for the unfortunate is no less corrupting than bending toward the rich and powerful out of a sense of awe or admiration, or in hopes of personal advancement.

It’s just a lot less common.

In both cases, Jewish tradition suggests that the judge (or any other government official) has been, in effect, bribed.

As Dick Durbin complained recently of the Senate, the poor “frankly own the place.”  When will our government institutions finally reject the influence of Big Pauper?

Does this mean that a system of progressive taxation constitutes the blurring of justice and charity that the Bible decries? The answer is almost certainly yes […]  [I]t’s appropriate to recall the timeless and necessary Biblical separation between public justice and private compassion.

Separation of Church and State is a fundamental American ideal.  Except when Leviticus has something convenient to say about homos or the flat tax.

A little further down the page we find the latest from Dr. Professor Mike Adams, Ph.D., who contributes his penetrating thoughts on Liberty and Tyranny.

For the past few years, I’ve been arguing that those who like to be called “liberals” should instead be called statists.

“So far, no one’s been listening to me.  But the statists have had some success arguing that people who like to be called ‘criminology professors’ should instead be called ‘douchebags with an inexhaustible variety of novelty nozzles.’”

Edmund Burke was talking about these statists when he said “by (their) unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways, as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. Men would become little better than the flies of summer.”

Later, by changing just one word, Don Henley turned Burke’s pensée into a .

The statist may well say that he rejects traditional religion because it provides an opiate to the masses. But there is more to his opposition to religion than his fear of a disincentive to revolt against ruling classes. He also fears that religion leads to judgment and intolerance – the kind that reminds him of his inferiority.

Dr. Mike also has a Ph.D in Inferiority Studies.  However, since Democrats in Congress can’t even manage to cap usurious credit card interest rates, I kind of doubt that Arlen Specter, now that he’s a “statist,” is going to go on a Spanish Civil War-style pillage of the church.

As we bid a reluctant farewell to Townhall, let’s take a quick side trip over to RenewAmerica, where easily panicked electrical engineer Joseph Pecar believes that Barack Obama’s upcoming commencement address at Notre Dame “will indisputably increase the number of Abortions and therefore the number of victims of so-called ‘Botched Abortions’ — that is born-alive infants who either later die or who survive but are condemned to lifetimes of unimaginable suffering resulting from the pernicious side-effects of attempted Abortions that fail.”

He doesn’t come close to proving it, of course, but I was enchanted by Mr. Pecar nonetheless; despite larding his column with such grim phrases as “[Obama’s] pro-Abortion, pro-Infanticide, pro-Black Genocide quest” and “stabbing and crushing the head of a live baby,” the three exclamation points in the headline makes him sound less like an elderly crank and more like an overexcited tween texting on her Sidekick.

Live from the Asylum | 18 Comments »

Most people are cowed by the subjects of race and gender, and even people who are ordinarily rewarded for the pungency of their opinions have learned to issue odorless, colorless platitudes when the subject turns to identity politics.  But not NRO’s Andy McCarthy.  Like Lenny Bruce, he throws out the polite euphemisms, and dares to call a spade a spade, exposing this crazy vogue for diversity with the kind of cutting edge humor not seen since 1983, when Reagan’s Interior Secretary James Watt humorously reduced a coal-leasing review commission to its component elements: “a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple.”

Will a Lesbian Do, or Does It Have to Be a Trans-gendered Muslim Lesbian of Color?   []

We’ve gotten by fine with just the two flavors: White and Male.  What’s with the sudden yen for Tutti-Frutti?

At Contentions, Jen Rubin notes Politico’s report, “Lesbian Lawyers Eyed for Supreme Court” (the headline has since been changed to the tamer though less alliterative, “Groups push for first gay justice”).

Less alliterative and, I guess for Andy, more difficult to wank to.  Anyway, the Politico piece describes a gay rights group recommending an out lesbian for Souter’s seat on the Supreme Court, just as Hispanic rights groups have lobbied the president to appoint the first Hispanic justice, and feminist groups have urged him to redress the Court’s continuing and shameful imbalance between the sexes.  And while the thought of throwing any one of these alien spices into the bowl of lukewarm Cream of Wheat that is the current Supreme Court is laughable, nothing, apparently, would tickle Andy more than a twofer.

I was on the Lars Larson show last week right after the Souter announcement, so naturally the question of what we should expect in an Obama nomination arose. I answered, “I’m thinking a left-handed lesbian paraplegic.” I thought I was joking.

Sort of like when a man trips over a patio chair and falls off his hotel balcony, plummets eight stories, bellyflops into the pool, and — when fished out by the hotel staff and revived via CPR — remarks, “I thought I was diving.”

Speaking of deep thinkers, Joe the Plumbler has delivered his Sermon on the Septic Tank to Christianity Today, and one or two ex cathedra statements stood out:

People don’t understand the dictionary—it’s called queer.

Merriam has gay-married Webster!

Queer means strange and unusual. It’s not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that. You know, God is pretty explicit in what we’re supposed to do—what man and woman are for.

Well, what women are for, anyway (hint: the nasty)

Now, at the same time, we’re supposed to love everybody and accept people, and preach against the sins. I’ve had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children.

I sympathize, Joe, because I wouldn’t trust you to don a clip-on tie without lynching yourself.

We’ve lost our American history. Every state has “In God we trust” or “With God’s help” in their constitution. God is recognized as, if you will, America’s religion.

America:  Worshipping the God of Tautology Since 1789.

Who do you see as the emerging Christian leaders?

James Dobson. I love Dobson.

Yeah, you mark my words, that Dobson kid is goin’ places.  ‘fore you know it, every man in this country is gonna be punchin’ out dachshunds and takin’ his kids into the shower and waggin’ his papa-pipe at ‘em.

I heard some stories about George Bush, and how he wrote an original letter to each and every soldier that died. And his prayer life was listed to be pretty intense.

Of course, all those letters were returned, marked DECEASED, but you don’t get your prayer life on the A-List by doin’ things the easy way.

That kind of thing, it’s awesome. I would love it to be true. I would love to hear our leaders actually check with God before he does stuff.

“Are you there, God?  It’s me, George.  Listen, should I put a stop to this needless war of choice, and all the wanton slaughter I’ve caused, or should I just write thank you notes to the corpses?  Column A?  Column B?  B?  Awesome.  Good talkin’ with ya, Stretch.”

I Pity the Fool | 19 Comments »

The imminent collapse of the internet has put Pastor Swank in a reflective mood, and he waxes nostalgic about candy, postcards, and seizures.

There are studies “out there” that project that in a year Internet will crash.  Nemertes Research Corp is one of those prowlers. Conclusion:  Internet traffic will make cyberspace travel “unable to keep up with the demand.” Bandwidth will call QUITS.

I will call Bullshit.

Reason would conclude then that with emails going zip via Internet crash, stamp costs should plummet, rejoicing over the upswing in letter and card flow like when we actually used a pen to write on paper.

I’m not quite sure why the pastor is rejoicing over the upswing in card flow; it’s one thing to click on his Townhall blog, but I can’t really see myself sending him a self-addressed stamped envelope for this stuff.  He’s entertaining, but he’s no Pueblo, Colorado.

I heard this morning on a TV commercial the accent of frugality returning to our lifestyles. It’s because of the tight squeeze on the wallet.

Remember when your little body leaned against the candy glass case to pick out your several cents’ worth of bubble gum and Mary Janes?

The other day in the 5 & 10 in North Conway, NH, those eensy yellow-wrapped Mary Janes sold for 10 cents apiece. I about dropped through the case, flopping into an uncontrollable fit.

Ask your doctor if Mary Janes are right for you.  Side effects include tooth decay, epilepsy, and frottage with display cases.

With worldwide present-tense angst, I actually am looking forward to the future.

It may not be a pluperfect future, but it’ll be good.

I know that swine flu beckons and the Iranian thug head threatens to return his messiah via global smoke streams.

Unfortunately, he forgot to keep the receipt.  Stupid thug head.

PS: I just heard on TV that Catholics will not be exchanging the peace via hand shakes in Mass due to swine flu. Also, communion wafers are nix.

I just don’t understand your kooky teen lingo.

Thank you, Jesus, for living in my heart. That will have to suffice—as always.

No, thank you, Pastor Passive-Aggressive.

Again, looking up, I anticipate cheaper stamps and candy sales like unto Miss Daisy’s Candy Store on North Market Street, Frederick, MD—where I twisted those Mary Jane taffies round my taste buds.

And apparently triggered an acid flashback.  Meanwhile, the pastor is still mad about The Boy:

B. H. Obama is proclaimed as the New Messiah who will be crowned king of the One World Order.  Well, devotees, here is your time.

You’ve set yourself up in a pinnacle of the temple, survived a deadly wound, slain Elijah and Enoch, and generally been an abomination that causes desolations.  Now comes Miller Time.

If there was ever an entry into Jerusalem for the Anointed One, it is when the globe drops prostrate before the pig flu.

Raise the palm branches. Let the shawls fling heavenward. The warblers are singing.

Obama, the mystic weaver, the mob hysteria creator, the Marxist Muslim claiming to be Pied Piper of the proletariat, come forth!

The Community Organizer can now go to it. The wordsmith to fool may position center stage. Time to spring forth as the Global Village Networker par excellence.

This is your brain.  This is your brain on Swank.

Revelation 13:1-10 specifically lays out the symbolic detail. What is intriguing is to figure out the literalism behind the symbolism.

Yes.  That should make things more surreal.

But for biblical believers, none of that is fanciful for it is the Christ vision afforded the Apostle John on the Isle of Patmos circa AD 95.

John was actually booked for seven days, six nights on the Isle of Lesbos but his travel agent screwed up the reservation, so he spent most of his time drunk in a beach cabana.

In the meantime, biblical enthusiasts lay the Scriptures down alongside newsfeeds, praying for God’s gift of discernment.

Otherwise known as “Google Reader.”

But now in present-tense it, seems as if, even apart from the discernment gift, one with half a brain tied behind his carbuncles, The Boy is ripe for filling the shoes of the One World Governor—pig flu oinking loudly.

Well.  What can you add to that?

Get the Butterfly Net! | 35 Comments »

Let’s check in with RenewAmerica’s resident urban guerrilla Sher Zieve and see what’s incubating beneath her helmet (cunningly camouflaged as Cousin Oliver’s hair-do from the fifth season of The Brady Bunch)…
As you probably guessed, it appears that Shermp, the Loneliest Stooge, has been busy in her backyard all day, shooting at low-flying U.N. helicopters and screaming “Wolverines!” — in between fielding complaints from her neighbor who seems to think a six-year old’s birthday party is more important that battling Obama’s efforts to “seize and retain — at all costs to humans living within the USA — power over We-the-People.”

Obama to ensure constitutional USA does not return

It seems almost impossible to keep up with the presidential usurper Obama’s actions but, I’ll continue to attempt to do so for as long as is possible.

Yeah, keep pounding that key, Sher, you’re a real goddamn Irving Strobing.

Today, we have Obama taking over the US banks…so that Obama and his fellow anti-USA and globalist buddies will be able to control ALL of America’s funds. No longer being affected under the cloak and dagger of night, this atrocity is being completed in front of us all. So, now he will own the banks — take that Hugo Chavez! Obama will also soon own US car companies — outright…he is taking them over in order that he and his United Auto Workers union can and will soon run them.

Management parasites will be executed by firing squad on the shop floor, while all decisions about production and labor quotas will now be made by the zavodskoy komitet of the UAW.  (Note:  Workers wishing to volunteer for Parasite Liquidation duty will find a sign-up sheet in the break room.)

We-the-People no longer matter. At best, Obama considers us pests and nuisances; at worst opposers to his pretender-to-the-throne status. In fact, We-the-People can go pound sand — or eat cake!

Or eat pound cake!  Mmmmm!

Besides, dismantling and destroying the country appears to have become the most recreational and fun activity Obama, his minions and adherents have ever had.

Then clearly the president has never owned a .

And as Obama continues to seize all of the assets of the American people and more and more power over them, the hammer and sickle of Obama’s totalitarian state will soon be directed at anyone who dares to oppose him and his policies.

So under this particular tyrannical reign, enemies of the state are eliminated by a game of Spin the Bottle played with farm implements?  Kinky.

As his latest Pièce de résistance, Obama has made the decision — unilaterally we assume — to trade US sovereignty for a high seat position on the UN Human Rights Council.

Then, finally, he will manipulate the well-meaning fools into declaring him Chancellor of the Galactic Senate!

One of the things Obama is said to be offering is the relinquishing of US citizens’ parental rights to international bodies. WND reports that if Obama is allowed to hammer

and sickle!

his plan through, parents will no longer have control over their own children — the state, Obama and other countries will.

Just as long as somebody keeps that kid from kicking the back of my seat all the way to Portland.

Left unchecked, Obama’s unrelenting frog-march of the USA and its people toward and into oblivion — until all of us have been successfully retrained or exterminated — will be a fait accompli.  His annihilation of the USA will be complete.

Really?  Geez, we were pushovers.

It IS coming.

This is the worst trailer I’ve ever seen.  I’m gonna hit the concession stand.  You guys want an Orange Fanta, maybe some Good ‘n’ Plentys…?

Those of you who voted for Obama need not even admit it. All you need to do to begin your own redemption is to work with the real freedom-loving people. But, sooner or later you’ll have to face it — you’ll eventually have to admit what you’ve done to yourselves.

Whew, I don’t mind admitting how glad I am that we don’t have to admit it until we have to admit it.  Or maybe I’m just in denial.

Get the Butterfly Net! | 15 Comments »

Despite the catchy name, Obama’s Tortured History isn’t quite as much fun as one might expect, since it contains quite a bit more torture and abortion than, say, Peabody’ Improbable History.

Obama’s Tortured History by Meredith Turney

President Obama took the occasion of his 100th day in office to publicly denounce the practice of interrogative waterboarding as torture.

I appreciate Meredith specifying which type of waterboarding she’s addressing, because I often get “interrogative” — the style traditionally used as torture — confused with “recreational” waterboarding, which is a popular combination of surfing and auto-erotic asphyxiation.

The “character of a country”—specifically America—is an issue every president grapples with. On the world stage, character—the ability to trust another nation’s integrity—is critical. A country with inconsistent morals is a nation whose character cannot be trusted. Under the Obama Administration, America is perilously close to losing our moral integrity regarding basic human rights

You mean we still had some left after the Bush Administration?  I guess they never found that Sucrets tin full of moral integrity Jimmy Carter hid behind a loose brick in the White House Situation Room on election night in 1980, after he’d had a bit too much Billy Beer.

…especially the right to life.

Sure we tortured people and lied about it, who hasn’t?  But what the other western democracies can‘t forgive is our stubborn refusal to shackle pregnant women to the oars of a trireme, while a sweaty, muscular slave-driver pounds a huge drum to the rhythm of their contractions.

President Obama has taken a seemingly unequivocal moral stand in favor of human rights by banning waterboarding, which he considers a form of torture. But juxtapose his moral outrage over torture with his nomination of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius to lead the Health and Human Services Department.

“Fine, our people betrayed America’s ideals, traditions, certain laws, a couple of treaties, and the founding charter, but is that really so bad, compared to your crappy taste in bureaucrats?”

During her twenty-plus years as an elected official in Kansas, Sebelius has forged strong ties to infamous abortionist George Tiller. For $5,000, Tiller will perform any abortion, for any reason

That’s why he’s known as the “Earl Scheib of Zygotes.”

It is the height of hypocrisy to ban interrogation techniques on militant enemies of innocent life while refusing to ensure innocent life isn’t carelessly discarded by ruthless abortionists.

But we’re getting valuable, actionable intelligence from these fetuses!  We don’t dare wait for the “smoking gun” to come in the form of a placenta.

Now in a much higher pay grade than when he was last asked about his position on abortion, the reporter asked whether the president still intended to sign the Freedom of Choice Act…Once again, President Obama hemmed and hawed, rambling on about what a difficult decision abortion is for women.

“Why does a man who’s black and white refuse to see things in black and white?!  He’s clearly one of those self-haters.”

Perhaps we walk a thin line in determining the definition of torture and its use in national security, but when it comes to preventing the needless pain and suffering of children, America should hold true to our ideal of protecting all innocent life.

Hewing to the path of righteousness requires sacrifice, moral and intellectual consistency, and rigorous sense of self-denial.  Unless you want to pour water up someone’s nose until they choke; then there’s some wiggle room.

My Country Right, Wrong or Decline to State | 13 Comments »

Michael Goldfarb, blogging at The Weekly Standard:

Waaah! | 5 Comments »

Hey, great news everybody!   Author and conservative radio host Dennis Prager has offered to support a rigorous and independent investigation into Bush Administration torture policies!  Now this is quite the coup, because as you know, Prager is no ordinary drive time chat jockey.  No, far from it; in fact, he’s a thoughtful, literate, deeply religious man who is less concerned with scoring cheap partisan advantage, than with dispensing chalky pellets of moral wisdom like a self-righteous Pez head.  And all we need to do in return is to answer a series of questions about when we stopped beating our wives.

Nine Questions the Left Needs to Answer About Torture

Any human being with a functioning conscience or a decent heart loathes torture. Its exercise has been a blight on humanity. With this in mind, those who oppose what the Bush administration did to some terror suspects may be justified. But in order to ascertain whether they are, they need to respond to some questions:

As a member of the Left (oh don’t deny it, you’re pinker than Helen Gahagan Douglas) you may be wondering why you “need” to complete this pop quiz before you’re entitled to feel sickened by the U.S. government’s use of torture.  The answer is simple: Dennis is worried that you may be faking your revulsion in order to pass for human, which means you’re probably a replicant.  Fortunately, he’s developed a foolproof questionnaire designed to expose counterfeit empathy in androids.  Now, you’re walking through the desert, when you come upon a tortoise…

1. Given how much you rightly hate torture, why did you oppose the removal of Saddam Hussein, whose prisons engaged in far more hideous tortures, on thousands of times more people, than America did — all of whom, moreover, were individuals and families who either did nothing or simply opposed tyranny?

Wow, that question’s loaded like a Bacon, Chedder, ‘n’ Sour Cream-stuffed skin at 1 Potato 2.  Well, Dennis, let me put it this way:  I didn’t support starting a war to stop Saddam Hussein from torturing because that wasn’t the excuse we were given for invading Iraq; you may recall that at first the casus belli was a dessert topping, and only later did it become a floor wax.  Of course there are a multitude of countries which practice torture — in many cases, on clients we’ve referred to them — so the premise of your question raises another:  Are we morally obliged (let alone entitled) to invade and conquer (in a half-assed, Whack-A-Mole way), all those other countries too, or only nations ruled by dictators whose overthrow will prove at last to Barbara Bush that her first born’s dick is bigger than her husband’s?

So I guess my answer is, if I noticed a black widow spider in my neighbor’s garage, I probably wouldn’t feel entitled to respond by splashing gasoline around the front porch and setting his house on fire.

One assumes, furthermore, that all those Iraqi innocents Saddam had put into shredding machines or whose tongues were cut out and other hideous tortures would have begged to be waterboarded.

So you assume the Bush Administration invaded Iraq so we could put a stop to Saddam’s gruesome, Industrial Age torments, and introduce the populace to our more rustic and artisanal torture techniques?  Well, the good news is that a lot of those people did get a chance to be waterboarded, and they didn’t even have to beg.

2. Are all forms of painful pressure equally morally objectionable?

We’re making legal, not ethical distinctions.  I find you morally objectionable, but I don’t argue that’s legitimate cause for some GS-14 to force water into your lungs.

In other words, are you willing to acknowledge that there are gradations of torture

No.  Let’s move on to question number three.

as, for example, there are gradations of burns, with a third-degree burn considerably more injurious and painful than a first-degree burn? Or is all painful treatment to be considered torture? Just as you, correctly, ask proponents of waterboarding where they draw their line, you, too, must explain where you draw your line.

Oh, must I?  The line has already been drawn, torture is defined and proscribed in our laws, and I’m not inclined to play the incremental game of Well If I Can Do This, Why Can’t I Do That?  Because you guys are like some horny teenager in the back seat of a parked car on prom night, telling your date, “I’ll just put the head in, I promise.”  And we all know that can only end in one of two ways for us: bukkake or pregnancy.

3. Is any maltreatment of anyone at any time — even a high-level terrorist with knowledge that would likely save innocents’ lives — wrong? If there is no question about the identity of a terror suspect , and he can provide information on al-Qaida — for the sake of clarity, let us imagine that Osama Bin Laden himself were captured — could America do any form of enhanced interrogation involving pain and/or deprivation to him that you would consider moral and therefore support?

I thought we needed to answer nine questions, not one question reworded nine different ways?  Anyway, for the sake of clarity, let’s assume an alien lands in Los Angeles.  And not a handsome, suave, Michael Rennie in The Day the Earth Stood Still type, but a real Lovecraftian cephalopod kind of horror.  It slithers into your radio studio at the top of the hour and declares it has detailed intelligence about an impending invasion from outer space, and it will vouchsafe this information if it can fornicate with your (for the sake of clarity) young child, using all three of its penises at once, plus its prehensile ovapositor.  Also, the monster wants to videotape the act, because that kind of thing sells like hotcakes on certain hentai websites.

Anyway…Sorry, I got lost in my hypothetical.  What was your question again?

4. If lawyers will be prosecuted for giving legal advice to an administration that you consider immoral and illegal, do you concede that this might inhibit lawyers in the future from giving unpopular but sincerely argued advice to the government in any sensitive area?

I certainly hope it would inhibit lawyers from giving illegal advice to clients who can order torture and suspend habeas corpus.

5. Presumably you would acknowledge that the release of the classified reports on the handling of high-level, post-Sept. 11 terror suspects would inflame passions in many parts of the Muslim world. If innocents were murdered because nonviolent cartoons of Muhammad were published in a Danish newspaper, presumably far more innocents will be tortured and murdered with the release of these reports and photos.

You’re quite presumptuous, aren’t you?  If I had a martini right now I’d dash it in your face.

Do you accept any moral responsibility for any ensuing violence against American and other civilians?

Let’s put it this way:  If you were serving on the jury of a racially charged trial, and the prosecution proved the defendant guilty of murder beyond a shadow of a doubt, would you be morally responsible for any subsequent riots if you voted to convict?  Because according to my Field Guide to Conservative Tropes, the only people to blame would be the rioters themselves.

6. [N.B.  Question 6 was removed by curators from the Museum of Question Begging and placed on exhibit because it was considered such a flawless specimen.  However, feel free to click through the link above to Townhall if you wish to see the species in its natural environment.

7. Will you seek to prosecute members of Congress such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who were made aware of the waterboarding of high-level suspects and voiced no objections?

How do we know what they were told?  The briefings were classified and they were forbidden from discussing them even with their own staffs, let alone their colleagues, so how were they supposed to register an objection?  With music?  Should Speaker Pelosi have stood under Dick Cheney’s window, holding a boombox over her head that played “In Your Eyes (and Water-Filled Lungs)”?

8. Would you agree to releasing the photos of the treatment of Islamic terrorists only if accompanied by photos of what their terror has done to thousands of innocent people around the world? Would you agree to photos — or at least photo re-enactments — of, let us say, Iraqi children whose faces were torn off with piano wire by Islamists in Iraq? If not, why not? Isn’t context of some significance here?

Yes, but it’s not context, it’s moral equivalence.  Which, again, I thought you guys considered the epitome of a weak and mendacious argument.  And why don’t you leave the “re-enactments” to America’s Most Wanted and the Weekly World News?

9. You say that America’s treatment of terror suspects will cause terrorists to treat their captives, especially Americans, more cruelly.

Actually, that was the Pentagon:  “The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel,” says the document, an unsigned two-page attachment to a memo by the military’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency.”

It’s a common mistake; we sound very similar on the phone.

Did America’s far more moral treatment of Japanese prisoners than Japan’s treatment of American prisoners in World War II have any impact on how the Japanese treated American and other prisoners of war?

The Japanese weren’t signatories to the Geneva Convention, so they felt free to torture and summarily execute prisoners.  Yet, despite their willingness to make the tough decisions and do what needed to be done, they still lost.  Go figure.

Do you think that evil people care how morally pure America is?

I don’t actually care what “evil people” think, since I assume they’re capable of rationalizing any statement or action, no matter how false or despicable.  (If not, I’ll refer them to you for technical support.)  I do care if the rest of the world, particularly our allies, think of America as evil, because that Canadian flag patch I sewed on my backpack in 2003 is starting to peel off.

If you do not address these questions, it would appear that you care less about morality and torture than about vengeance against the Bush administration.

Consider Morality and Torture addressed, Denny.  When does the Vengeance start?

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