For three years now your medical privacy has been protected by law. Of 20,000 complaints, Bush hasn't issued even a single fine.

We have no government. We have a tax-cutting war machine run by an incompetent moron.

From the Washington Post:

In the three years since Americans gained federal protection for their private medical information, the Bush administration has received thousands of complaints alleging violations but has not imposed a single civil fine and has prosecuted just two criminal cases.

Of the 19,420 grievances lodged so far, the most common allegations have been that personal medical details were wrongly revealed, information was poorly protected, more details were disclosed than necessary, proper authorization was not obtained or patients were frustrated getting their own records.

The government has "closed" more than 73 percent of the cases -- more than 14,000 -- either ruling that there was no violation, or allowing health plans, hospitals, doctors' offices or other entities simply to promise to fix whatever they had done wrong, escaping any penalty.

Read the rest of this post...

Newsweek: Bush "doesn't give a shit" about constitutional amendment banning gay marriage

From tomorrow's Newsweek:

Though Bush himself has publicly embraced the amendment, he never seemed to care enough to press the matter. One of his old friends told NEWSWEEK that same-sex marriage barely registers on the president's moral radar. "I think it was purely political. I don't think he gives a s--t about it. He never talks about this stuff," said the friend, who requested anonymity to discuss his private conversations with Bush.

(I have to admit that I can't believe I buried this quote in my post below. I'm bumping it up with its own post. I wonder if Bush is going to change his speech tomorrow and say "I DO give a shit!")

Of course, the larger lesson here is that even with a super conservative president, with a super conservative vice president, and a super conservative administration, these guys don't give a damn about the religious right's extremist intolerant agenda. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and the men at the Concerned Women for America will always, always, always be the crazy-aunt-in-the-attic of the Republican party.

And the even larger lesson here: Congress is being forced to vote on something incredibly controversial, and incredibly damaging to the Republicans' image with independents and moderate Republicans, right before a crucial election, and their own president isn't even on board.

And the final lesson here: Most Republicans in Congress probably don't give a shit about the amendment either. Read the rest of this post...

Who are the bigger chumps? The religious right or their followers?

It's a tough call.

The religious right is all excited because they get to go to the White House tomorrow for an event about banning gay marriage! Woo woo! And doubleplusgood, the Republican Congress is going to hold votes on the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage THIS VERY WEEK!

Now, sure, everyone knows the amendment isn't going to pass either the Senate or the House.

And sure, everyone knows that Bush isn't expending a lick of political capital to help get the amendment passed. Per Newsweek:

A White House official, who declined to be identified discussing strategy, says Bush has not made calls [asking members of Congress to support]... the amendment because "nobody has asked us."

Yeah, right.

And sure, everyone knows that Bush doesn't "give a shit" about the constitutional amendment, and I again quote Newsweek:

Though Bush himself has publicly embraced the amendment, he never seemed to care enough to press the matter. One of his old friends told NEWSWEEK that same-sex marriage barely registers on the president's moral radar. "I think it was purely political. I don't think he gives a s--t about it. He never talks about this stuff," said the friend, who requested anonymity to discuss his private conversations with Bush.

But what matters to these so-called religious right leaders isn't actually passing the amendment. What matters is getting a photo op with the president! According to Newsweek, some of them even get a private meeting with the president! Gosh gee willickers. What would Jesus do? Who cares - we get a photo op!

We all learned as kids that winning isn't everything. In the case of the religious right, apparently it isn't anything. Read the rest of this post...

Washington state may allow bigoted religious right pharmacists to turn you away because you make them feel icky

From The Stranger. Read the rest of this post...

Frank Rich on Iraq: Time to start bringing the troops home

The article is called "Supporting our troops over a cliff."

The current Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, has proudly put on this month's legislative agenda constitutional amendments to stop same-sex marriage and flag burning. "Right now people in this country are saying it's O.K. to desecrate that flag and to burn it," he said on Fox News last Sunday, though it's not clear exactly who these traitors are. A Nexis search turns up only one semi-recent American flag-burning incident — by a drunk and apparently apolitical teenager in Mr. Frist's home state, Tennessee, in 2005.

The marriage-amendment campaign will be kicked off tomorrow with a Rose Garden benediction by the president. Though the amendment has no chance of passing, Mr. Bush apparently still thinks, as he did in 2004, that gay-baiting remains just the diversion to distract from a war gone south.

So much for the troops. For all the politicians' talk about honoring those who serve, Washington's record is derelict: chronic shortages in body and Humvee armor; a back-door draft forcing troops with expired contracts into repeated deployments; inadequate postwar health care and veterans' benefits. And that's just the short list. Now a war without end is running off the rails and putting an undermanned army in still greater jeopardy. "Today, the Americans are just one more militia lost in the anarchy," Nir Rosen, who has covered Iraq since the invasion, wrote in The Washington Post last weekend.

We can't pretend we don't know this is happening. It's happening in broad daylight. We know that "as the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down" is fiction, not reality. We know from the Pentagon's own report to Congress last week that attacks on Americans and Iraqis alike are at their highest since American commanders started keeping count in 2004. We know that even as coalition partners like Italy and South Korea bail out, we are planning an indefinite stay of undefined parameters: the 104-acre embassy complex rising in the Green Zone is the largest in the world, and the Decider himself has said that it's up to "future presidents and future governments of Iraq" to decide our exit strategy.

Actually, the current government of Iraq already is. On Thursday the latest American-backed Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, whom Mr. Bush is "proud to call" his "ally and friend," invited open warfare on American forces by accusing them of conducting Haditha-like killing sprees against civilians as a "regular" phenomenon. If this is the ally and friend we are fighting for, a country that truly supports the troops has no choice but to start bringing them home.

Read the rest of this post...

What is Bush's position on "caucasians marrying negroes?"

Bush says courts shouldn't be permitted to decide who can marry who. That's exactly what happened in Loving v. Virginia, and the public was NOT happy about it. So, rather than pull some cute argument about how blacks aren't like gays, Bush needs to tell us directly - if the courts aren't empowered to decide who can marry whom, then is the Loving v. VA decision wrong since an activist court overruled the will of the people? Read the rest of this post...

That adultery/divorced list

Okay, let's try this again :-)

I need names of current members of Congress who support the anti-gay constitutional amendment and who are divorced, have had an affair, or have in any other way jeopardized the institution of marriage, or more generally are family values hypocrites. I don't want links to Web sites listing hundreds of arcane Republicans. I want names of specific members (or senior Republican party officials, well-known Repblicans, etc.) and a specific link to an authoritative source proving that they're guilty as charged.

I appreciate the effort a lot of you have already done, but much of what I got was links to other Web sites with tons of names (most of which weren't relevant - I mean, Jimmy Swaggart? That's old news), and not a lot of "real" sources.

Okay, I'll stop bitching :-) We have the list of divorced Senators. I'd like divorced Republican House members (again, with solid proof), and CURRENT Senators and House members who have had family values scandals.

Thanks guy, JOHN Read the rest of this post...

Stephen Colbert gave a commencement speech yesterday

It's good.

He backed English as the official language of the United States — “God wrote (the Bible) in English for a reason: So it could be taught in our public schools.”

Read the rest of this post...

The decider's distraction strategy

Newsweek's "CW" nails it:

Iraq's a bigger mess than ever, Iran's digging in its heals on nukes. What's "the decider" focusing on? The same-sex marriage issue.

No crisis is too big for Bush to ignore so he can bash gays. That would also include gas prices and Katrina. Throw in a global warming, too. Read the rest of this post...

AP spinning for GOP?

What other conclusion could be drawn from this headline: "Prospective Democratic Chairs All Liberal"? Here we go. Scare tactics with the L-word. Straight from the mouths of the GOP. Read the rest of this post...

Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread

It's "Marriage Protection Sunday."

Unlike Bush and the Republican Senate who are obsessed with gay sex, it looks like the talk shows are going to be discussing issues that matter to the American people, not gay sex. Condi's probably not going on the shows to talk about her sex life -- but, hey, since her boss is making "marriage protection" such a huge issue, it is completely legit to ask Ms. Rice what she does to "protect marriage." But the media is only obsessed with the private lives of Bill and Hillary Clinton, so that'll never happen.

Otherwise, Iran, Iraq and global warming are the real issues of the day:

FOX NEWS SUNDAY...: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).

THIS WEEK (ABC...: Former vice president Al Gore , former labor secretary Robert B. Reich and author John Updike .

FACE THE NATION (CBS...: Rice and Time assistant managing editor Michael Duffy .

MEET THE PRESS (NBC.: Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr . (D-Del.) and Hans Blix , former chief weapons inspector for the United Nations.

LATE EDITION (CNN), 11 a.m.: Sens. George Allen (R-Va.) and Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Don Shepperd , retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste , retired Army Brig. Gens. James A. Marks and David L. Grange and Rice .

Note to FOX NEWS and CNN: Lindsay Graham and George Allen both support the anti-gay amendment. Ask them how they're protecting marriage. Seriously, ask them. We dare you. After all, Lindsay Graham isn't even married, so confirm that he's celibate. Otherwise he's a hypocrite. Someone really needs to ask George Allen why he's so obsessed with gays. Read the rest of this post...