Did you know that God isn't even mentioned in the US Constitution?

I never knew that.  Just realized it this morning.  So much for original intent.  Read it for yourself.  Time forn a constitutional amendment that simply reads: GOD.  Where's Rick Santorum when you need him?

(PS Apparently the far right likes to claim that "yes, God IS mentioned" because the date is described as "Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven." Uh huh. Except that that is how you said the date back then, it wasn't a conscious decision to invoke God in the Constitution.) Read the rest of this post...

Software helps you figure out what dog you are (it’s fun)

I have no idea if this page does what it says it does, matching your likeness to a dog in the local pound, but it's a lot of fun.

Here are some results from my attempts:

Me

Joe

Chris

Obama 

Boehner

Pelosi

Palin 

Bachmann

Gingrich

Katie Couric

Howie Kurtz

Ben Smith

Arianna

Markos

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US Chamber of Commerce fighting regulation of genital-deforming chemicals in every day plastic

In addition to being bigots, they really are pigs. From ThinkProgress:

As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — one of the largest and most influential big business lobbying groups in the world — fired a letter off to Cass Sunstein, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, telling him to block the regulation of extremely toxic chemicals in consumer plastics. Despite the overwhelming evidence of the dangers of such chemicals, the chamber letter declares that that EPA “lacks the sound regulatory science needed to meet the statutory threshold for a restriction or ban of the targeted chemicals.”

A wide body of scientific research has linked these chemicals, including phthalates and Bisphenol A (BPA), to declining birth rates, stillbirths, and an increasing number of birth defects. Many of the chemicals under review for increased regulation have already been banned in Europe and Canada.

In fact, studies have shown that these plastic chemicals are directly linked to an alarming rate of male genital birth defects such as hypospadias, a condition in which the opening of the urethra is on the underside, rather than at the end, of the penis. A report by the Center for American Progress’ Reese Rushing details many other risks associated with the chemicals slated for regulation.

The Chamber letter to Sunstein is signed by chief lobbyist Bill Kovacs. Why is Kovacs fighting so aggressively to continue to allow birth defect and miscarriage-causing chemicals to be used in household items and food containers? Perhaps it is because the Chamber is heavily funded by some of the largest plastics manufacturers in America. According to investigations by the New York Times and ThinkProgress, Dow Chemical and Proctor & Gamble have contributed millions to the Chamber’s war chest in recent years.

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OMG check out Google.com’s logo today

You can play with it. Run your mouse over it. Read the rest of this post...

Hillary talking about moving to World Bank

Reuters:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been in discussions with the White House about leaving her job next year to become head of the World Bank, sources familiar with the discussions said Thursday.

If Clinton were to leave State, John Kerry, a close Obama ally who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is among those who could be considered as a possible replacement for her.

Yes, because what we need is another contested election in Massachusetts. Read the rest of this post...

State Dept. pulls FSO working on Cong. Bill Young’s (R-FL) official trip to Italy because of her gender. Rep. not permitted to work with women, per wife.

A bizarre story that I just got from an impeccable source who has reason to know.

Congressman Bill Young (R-FL), the second ranking Republican on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, is in Italy this week on a congressional delegation. A funny thing happened to the female Foreign Service Officer who organized Young's entire trip, and was supposed to travel with him to two Italian cities (in addition to Rome). The "control officer," as her job is called, got removed from her job handling the congressman's trip. Why? Because, my source tells me, his wife doesn't permit women to staff the congressman.

Now, perhaps the Congressman has a weiner problem. I know of another now-deceased famous Italian-American congressman (Democrat) who tongued a friend of mine during a congressional delegation in the early 90s (she was shaken and mortified). So I get that for some of the guys it's important to keep them away from women. But...

This is America in 2011. We don't get to yank women, especially government employees, off of their jobs because the guy they're working with may be a perv (or because the wife may be unreasonable). That's the guy's problem, not the woman's. (Would they do this to an African-American FSO if the wife didn't like non-white people working with the husband?) And I'd submit that this might even be a violation of the executive branch's EEO policy with regards to discrimination based on gender. They can't remove a woman, who works for the executive branch, from a project because of her gender, her race, or any other protected category.

This is pretty scummy all around. Read the rest of this post...

Gingrich campaign staff quits en masse

Tim-ber! Read the rest of this post...

Greenwald: Post-Weiner, the private sexual activities of public figures are inherently newsworthy and need no other relevance

This may be my last post on the Weiner frenzy, barring any political relevance (for example, to what extent will Weiner be even more wedded to the Clintons if he and his marriage to Huma Abedin survive?).

But as to the spectacle, Glenn Greenwald says exactly what I'm thinking (thus my emphasis):

There are few things more sickening -- or revealing -- to behold than a D.C. sex scandal. Huge numbers of people prance around flamboyantly condemning behavior in which they themselves routinely engage. Media stars contrive all sorts of high-minded justifications for luxuriating in every last dirty detail, when nothing is more obvious than that their only real interest is vicarious titillation. Reporters who would never dare challenge powerful political figures who torture, illegally eavesdrop, wage illegal wars or feed at the trough of sleazy legalized bribery suddenly walk upright -- like proud ostriches with their feathers extended -- pretending to be hard-core adversarial journalists as they collectively kick a sexually humiliated figure stripped of all importance. The ritual is as nauseating as it is predictable.

What makes the Anthony Weiner story somewhat unique and thus worth discussing for a moment is that, as Hendrick Hertzberg points out, the pretense of substantive relevance ... has been more or less brazenly dispensed with here. ... This is just pure mucking around in the private, consensual, unquestionably legal private sexual affairs of someone for partisan gain, voyeuristic fun and the soothing fulfillment of judgmental condemnation. And in that regard, it sets a new standard: the private sexual activities of public figures -- down to the most intimate details -- are now inherently newsworthy, without the need for any pretense of other relevance.

I'd really like to know how many journalists, pundits and activist types clucking with righteous condemnation of Weiner would be comfortable having that standard applied to them. ... If Chris Matthews or Brian Williams or any politician ever patronized or even visited a porno site on the Internet or had a sexually charged IM chat with someone who isn't their spouse, shouldn't that now be splashed all over the Internet so we can all read it -- not just the fact of its existence but all the gory details?

Read the rest; he drills down.

I think two point are worth considering.

First, Glenn's right about the relevance. There's none in the Weiner case. It's all about the ick. (Even the self-shot explicit photo is badly done.) This is basically a tabloid story, made more so by Huma's pregnancy (which Breitbart is calling a "PR attempt" — another ick).

It's a brave new world indeed, and only the brave should apply. The gun used against Weiner can and will be fired again. You might think the IOKIYAR rule applies in Village-land, and for all the Dainty Minds who rule the (air)waves, that will be true. They and the Republicans they love will be safe.

But at some point, someone will get even, again and again. There are a lot of frustrated someones out there. So watch for it. Got porn, Mr. Matthews? There have never been more ways of finding out.

Which brings me to the second point. Remember the John Ashcroft–James Comey hospital scandal in 2004? Recall that this was about Ashcroft and Comey refusing to sign off on a never-defined Bush-Cheney NSA domestic spying program, and Bush sending Alberto Gonzales to apply the screws.

Think for a second. Ashcroft and Comey refused to re-confirm a spying program. Now, Ashcroft and Comey are Movement Conservatives down to the decoder ring. Ashcroft "lobbies for and invests" in the homeland securities industry. Comey went on to be Senior VP at Lockheed before moving to Money Street.

What NSA bridge was a bridge too far for even James Comey to cross? The program he and Goldsmith wouldn't sign off on was never revealed:

In early January 2006, the New York Times, as part of their investigation into alleged domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency, reported that Comey, who was Acting Attorney General during the March 2004 surgical hospitalization of John Ashcroft, refused to "certify" the legality of central aspects of the NSA program at that time. The certification was required under existing White House procedures to continue the program. After Comey's refusal, the newspaper reported, Andrew H. Card Jr., White House Chief of Staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and future Attorney General, made an emergency visit to the George Washington University Hospital, to attempt to win approval directly from Ashcroft for the program.

Comey confirmed these events took place (but declined to confirm the specific program) in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on 16 May 2007. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, like Comey, also supported Ashcroft's decision; both men were prepared to resign if the White House ignored the Department of Justice's legal conclusions on the wiretapping issue.

Let's say you were a relentless power-freak and culture commando who ran Bush's foreign policy from his office at the Naval Observatory. Let's say a 2001 disaster handed you the keys to the NSA spy capability and an unlimited domestic mandate. What would you do with that power?

Would you spy on just "the enemy" or "your enemies" (broadly considered)? What about political opponents? What about the press? And what better way to keep folks in line than via the nation's obsession with porn? If you could find out, for example, that one of the Dainty Minds noted above has "interesting interests" — what would you do?

You could buy a lot of fawning coverage and suppressed investigations, for starters, with some press schmuck's porn list in your pocket. And nail your share of opponents as well. (How do you think the FBI caught on to Eliot Spitzer? Lindsay Bayerstein thinks the Roger Stone story is a "red herring." Maybe the Feds were preemptively watching his bank transfers. Would that be a bridge too far for someone like Mueller?)

I'm concerned that these stories, and story-types, intersect. If so, we're just starting down a long and dirty road.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Alaska to release Palin’s emails on Friday

Oh dear, this should be fun.

On Friday, more than 24,000 pages of e-mails Ms. Palin sent as governor, mostly using private accounts, are to be released in response to public records requests first made in 2008.

The documents are to be released at 9 a.m. Alaska time on Friday — 1 p.m. in New York — and some news organizations are putting into place elaborate systems for scanning them and inviting the public to help search them online. MSNBC, ProPublica and Mother Jones magazine are working with a research company to create an online database of the documents. The company, Crivella West, created a similar database last year when the state released a much smaller set of documents related to the involvement of Ms. Palin’s husband, Todd, with state government. The company has not said when exactly its database will be ready.

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GOP’s favorite historian: Founding Fathers opposed Darwin, even though Darwin not born yet. (The FF used leeches too.)

Aha, so the reason Paul Revere was ringin' those bells and sendin' those warning shots was to warn the British about Darwin. (I borrowed that little quip from AMERICAblog commenter Nicho.)

A quite illuminating post from Mother Jones. Apparently, a good deal of the recent crazy talk from the far-right of the GOP (i.e., it's leadership) is based in the teachings of an amateur historian from Texas (of course). He's teaching them, among other things, that the Founding Fathers debated evolution vs. creationism, and ended up siding with creationism.

Funny, then, that Darwin wasn't even born until 1809, and didn't write the Origin of the Species until 1859. As MoJo notes, those Founding Fathers had to be pretty prescient to debate a theory in 1776 that wasn't fully formed until they were all long dead.

Not to mention, who cares what the Founding Fathers thought about a particular aspect of science in 1776. Are Republicans honestly going to apply a constitutional test to science now? We're only going to teach kids what was known, thought, in 1776? Check this out, from the GOP's quack historian:

"As far as the Founding Fathers were concerned, they'd already had the entire debate over creation and evolution, and you get Thomas Paine, who is the least religious Founding Father, saying you've got to teach Creation science in the classroom. Scientific method demands that!"

Well yeah, the scientific method of leeches.

Not to mention, as MoJo notes, Paine died in 1809, the same year Darwin was born. So it's not entirely clear how Thomas Paine debunked Darwin before Darwin even existed.

No, we wouldn't want to disagree with the prevailing scientific theory of nearly two hundred and fifty years ago. So let's explore some of those scientific beliefs the Republicans would have us teach our school children.

First off, no meteors. They don't exist. After all, as the French Academy of Sciences famously proclaimed at the time, “Rocks do not fall from the sky."

If you got sick in the 1700s, it was common for a doctor to bleed you with leeches. And there's no sterilization of medical instruments or hands, because germs don't exist.

No antibiotics in case you have an infection, because, as we just noted, germs don't exist - so if you get sick, you get herbs.

In good news, you did have a few choices beyond herbs. Two in fact:

In Edinburgh the writer and lecturer John Brown expounded his view that there were only two diseases, sthenic (strong) and asthenic (weak), and two treatments, stimulant and sedative; his chief remedies were alcohol and opium.

So which should we be giving school kids, opium or alcohol?  Maybe we should look at what Thomas Paine preferred.

Surgery was frowned upon. Then again, your surgeon was quite likely your barber as well, so it's understandable why it wasn't a welcome practice. (Fortunately, the barber-surgeon started getting phased out in the middle of the 1700s, but since germs didn't exist, nor did sterilization, you were probably going to die anyway.)

And during the 1700s, people still believed that the touch of a king could heal you, like in The Lord of the Rings.

Yes, let's do look to what the Founding Fathers believed about science.

Here's the quack informing us of what the Founding Fathers decided 250 years ago about the theory of evolution, which didn't fully even exist yet.

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When you have to go anonymous to say Romney doesn't flip-flop...

Kind of an odd thing to have to hide your identity for.  Then again, as Jesse Walker wrote on Twitter this morning, I'd hide my identity to if I had to claim that Romney doesn't flip-flop.

Speaking of Romney flip-flops, remember the time he said Detroit should just go bankrupt? Now he's claiming victory for the Obama administration's intervention to save Detroit. Not so fast... Read the rest of this post...

US covert war in Yemen expands

Yet another war is the last thing the US needs now and everyone who is funding it knows it. The public clearly has identified war as the key problem with the budget. We've seen this story before and it doesn't end well.

The Obama administration has intensified the American covert war in Yemen, exploiting a growing power vacuum in the country to strike at militant suspects with armed drones and fighter jets, according to American officials.

The acceleration of the American campaign in recent weeks comes amid a violent conflict in Yemen that has left the government in Sana, a United States ally, struggling to cling to power. Yemeni troops that had been battling militants linked to Al Qaeda in the south have been pulled back to the capital, and American officials see the strikes as one of the few options to keep the militants from consolidating power.

On Friday, American jets killed Abu Ali al-Harithi, a midlevel Qaeda operative, and several other militant suspects in a strike in southern Yemen. According to witnesses, four civilians were also killed in the airstrike. Weeks earlier, drone aircraft fired missiles aimed at Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric who the United States government has tried to kill for more than a year. Mr. Awlaki survived.

Read the rest of this post...

UN discussing Syria as deaths and alleged mutilations continue

It's hard to imagine Russia or China allowing any sanctions or formal criticism but if this continues, it just may happen. Al Jazeera:

A European resolution demanding Syria end its violent crackdown against pro-democracy protesters could be put to a vote in the coming days at the United Nations despite the threat of a Russian veto, the British UN envoy said.

The UN Security Council debated a draft resolution on Wednesday condemning Syria's actions.

The draft was submitted by France and Britain during a council meeting at which the 15-nation body was briefed by a senior UN official on the unrest in Syria.

"We would like a vote as soon as possible, before the end of the week," Mark Lyall Grant, the British representative to the UN, said.

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British archbishop slams "radical policies for which no one voted"

Sometimes the clergy can still do the right thing. Rowan Williams has not made any friends with the Conservatives today but hopefully he opened a few eyes.

The comments come in an editorial he has written as guest editor of this week's New Statesman magazine. Full extracts are not available , but Williams says the "anxiety and anger" felt by voters is a result of the coalition's failure to expose its policies to "proper public argument".

He writes: "Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is around such questions at present."

Williams accepts that the government's big society agenda is not a "cynical walking-away from the problem". But he warns there is confusion about how voluntary organisations will "pick up the responsibilities shed by government", and says that the big society is seen with "widespread suspicion".

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Russia declares "war on drugs"

Not just war, but "total war" because it's that much more macho. Sort of like taking the dial up to eleven. Just in time as the others are starting to realize that such programs have been a complete flop and expensive. It's been great for pumping cash into defense contractors, privatized prisons and the hands of third world politicians but there are some crazy types out there that question how valuable it has been to society. The Guardian:

Drug dealers are to be "treated like serial killers" and could be sent to forced labour camps under harsh laws being drawn up by Russia's Kremlin-controlled parliament.

Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of the state duma, the lower house, said a "total war on drugs" was needed to stem a soaring abuse rate driven by the flow of Afghan heroin through central Asia to Europe.

Russia has as many as 6 million addicts (one in 25 people). Every year 100,000 people die from using drugs, Gryzlov said in a newspaper. The scale of the problem "threatens Russia's gene pool", he said. "We are standing on the edge of a precipice. Either we squash drug addiction or it will destroy us."

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