Snake handling fundamentalist pastor dies from rattlesnake bite

I suppose this means the big outdoor festival that was due to have snake handling and people speaking in tongues is no longer on for this summer. Since his father also died from a snake bite, it's a wonder that he continued the risky practice.

Mack Wolford, a flamboyant Pentecostal pastor from West Virginia whose serpent-handling talents were profiled last November in The Washington Post Magazine , hoped the outdoor service he had planned for Sunday at an isolated state park would be a “homecoming like the old days,” full of folks speaking in tongues, handling snakes and having a “great time.” But it was not the sort of homecoming he foresaw.

Instead, Wolford, who turned 44 the previous day, was bitten by a rattlesnake he owned for years. He died late Sunday.

Mark Randall “Mack” Wolford was known all over Appalachia as a daring man of conviction. He believed that the Bible mandates that Christians handle serpents to test their faith in God — and that, if they are bitten, they trust in God alone to heal them.

Isn't it interesting to see what some states allow compared to what they ban when religion is referenced? Read the rest of this post...

Senate committee approves doubling of TSA taxes on airline passengers

Get ready to pony up even more to fly thanks to Congress. Not only will you have the pleasure of risking cancer with the porno-scanners and handing over your personal privacy to a system that is not known to be effective, but you will now pay more for it.

Only Congress and porno-scanner producers could think this is a good idea.

A Senate committee has approved a plan to double the fees charged to airline flyers to help fund the Transportation Security Administration.

Every flyer pays a $2.50 federal fee each way to help fund the TSA.

The proposal that just passed out of a US Senate committee would make that $5 each way or $10 per round trip.

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Yes, GOP, your nominee could be a Mexican

After reality star, and top Mitt Romney surrogate, Donald Trump's table-flipping interview with Wolf Blitzer yesterday, it's getting harder to ignore the screaming-subway-lady antics of Birthers. Sure, they're fun to mock like teasing my cat Henry with a cat-shaped laser pointer, but even he knows to eventually give it a rest and instead nap on my warm laundry.

There are really two points of thinking (I'm using that word generously) from Birthers concerning why they think Obama is ineligible to be president. The first is they believe he's ineligible because he was born in Kenya or Krypton or something. Of course, this thinking is only relevant when disregarding the fact that he was born here, and that both the State of Hawaii and the White House have two websites dedicated to educating the freaks who think otherwise.

Snopes says the birth certificate is real.  And Factcheck.org seems to agree.

(Side note: Remember when Republicans also accused all the white presidents of faking their birth certificates?)

The second Birther claim is by far the most hilarious: namely, that the Constitution states that both parents must be natural-born citizens of the United States in order to be president. The Philadelphia Convention must have written that clause in invisible ink, because nowhere in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution does it state that. The Constitution states that the candidate must only be born here (check), must be at least 35-years-old (check), and be a US resident for at least 14 years (check).

What makes the second thinking so hilarious is that under Birthers' very own logic, the GOP's 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney is also ineligible to be president - his papi was born in Mexico.

Mitt's dad George Romney was governor of Michigan for two terms, and even unsuccessfully ran for the presidency in 1968. But spanning his life back a few decades, today's anti-Mexican Republicans might be a little upset to know that George was born in present-day Chihuahua, Mexico, after his grandparents had fled the United States' pesky anti-polygamy laws a few decades earlier (now there's some family values). It might be interesting to ask Birthers where they were when George Romney was running in 1968, since his Mexican birth would seem to violate the whole "natural-born" clause thing.

Oh, that's right: He's white.

That aside, it would seem that under their very own logic, Mitt Romney is also not eligible to run for president, having only one parent who was a natural-born citizen. After all, it's what they claim about Obama, since his father was born in Kenya. Yet there seems to be no Birther faction questioning Mitt's citizenship and eligibility - they say he's qualified. In fact, Mitt is so qualified to be a US citizen, that he's even qualified to be a citizen of Mexico.

Yes, GOP, your current nominee could be a Mexican.

Mexican law states that Mexico-born parents can register their US-born kids with the Mexican consulate, thus making them dual citizens of the US and Mexico, with full rights from each nation. George Romney was born in Mexico, so Mitt can be a Mexican citizen. This might not poll so well with a party willing to "joke" about electrocuting Mexicans in order to stop them from getting into the country. Of course, it won't make Mitt so popular with the Mexican side either, after Mitt kindly asked them to self-deport last year.

It's clear Birthers are willing to forgo harassing the white guy about his ineligibility, the same ineligibility they've already clearly defined for the Black one. But these are the same people who think the president grabbed Doc Brown and transported via DeLorean to 1961 in order to place his own fake birth announcement in Hawaiian newspapers, so there's that. But it's too late, GOP. Mitt is officially your guy. So turn the channel to Telemundo and start campaigning to make Romney el presidente. La Casa Blanca will never be the same again. Read the rest of this post...

Sununu criticizes CNN for Romney's embrace of birther Trump

Bad CNN. How dare they report the news. Especially when the news makes Republicans look bad. Doesn't CNN know that they're only allowed to report news that makes Democrats look bad?

One day after Donald Trump accused CNN of covering the birther issue in order to boost its ratings, Mitt Romney surrogate John Sununu accused the network of a fixation with the birther issue.

"Why is CNN so fixated on this?" Sununu, the former New Hampshire Governor, asked CNN's Soledad O'Brien. "It's CNN that wants to bring this up. I don't want to bring it up. Mitt Romney has made it clear that he believes President Obama was born in the U.S. You had Donald Trump on last night, and now you are asking the question this morning. It's CNN's fixation."

Sununu also asserted that CNN supported President Obama: "The fact is, this country has a jobs problem, and supporters of the president, like CNN, keep wanting to talk about other issues."

Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's news because for a short while Donald Trump was the most famous GOP presidential candidate in the race? And maybe it's news because whiter-than-white Mitt Romney continues to embrace Donald Trump, refuses to criticize Donald Trump, after Trump continues to spout racist birther accusations against an African-American President?  (And it's particularly interesting that Romney is refusing to distance himself from racists when he's a bishop in a faith with a long tradition of racism.)

It's really pretty disgusting that Mitt Romney is now helping to coordinate a counter-attack on CNN - and that's clearly what this is, a coordinated counter-attack - in order to permit Romney's surrogates to continue launching racist attacks on the President. Read the rest of this post...

Video: Suicidal Russian cats

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Looks like Pelosi speaks for Obama in moving the Bush-Obama tax cut offer to $1m

When last we left our heroes, the brave Democrats wanted the wicked Republicans to extend the Bush Tax Cuts (and after 2010, the Obama Tax Cuts) for incomes below $250,000 — and only those.

And they wanted the Republicans to do this ahead of the post-election lame duck session — when (obviously) all of them would regrettably cave to the billionaires who just financed their $2,000,000,000 combined ad buy (not including the primaries).

So that was the presumed offer on the table — $250,000 incomes and below get their Bush (and Obama) tax cuts renewed; they still have no jobs, but their taxes won't go up.

Then Nancy Pelosi pre-emptively moved the bar from that measly $250,000 to a full $1,000,000.

What was going on, we asked? Was Pelosi off the Dem reservation, doing a Cory Booker so to speak, and speaking out of turn?

Or was she front-running for Obama? (My bet was front-running, but that's me. I think if you notice what Dems actually accomplish, you have to admit they're good at it.)

Now comes Pelosi again to explain. Writing in USA Today, she renews her offer to Republicans to extend the Bush–Obama tax cuts for incomes below a full $1,000,000. Doubling down, as it were (my emphasis and some reparagraphing):

Democrats have always opposed the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Since President Obama's election, we have repeatedly called for an end to tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 a year.

Republicans have rejected this effort, holding tax relief for the middle class and small businesses hostage to permanent tax breaks for millionaires, Big Oil, and corporations that ship jobs overseas.

Democrats are committed to moving the process forward by asking the wealthiest to pay their fair share through the expiration of tax cuts for those earning over $1 million a year.

Here's how to read that, in my opinion. By acknowledging Obama's role and former bargaining position, Pelosi seems to be speaking for the whole Dem team ("we"), including Obama himself. Either that or Nancy has some serious 'spaining to do.

Pelosi will walk that back (don't hold your breath) or Obama's on board. Count on it.

Note, for good measure, Pelosi also doubles down on her confirmation of Simpson-Bowles Catfood-for-Gran:

Democrats are committed to using the significant savings to reduce the deficit. And in the future, Democrats are committed to reforming the tax code, closing special interest loopholes. Democrats and President Obama have supported a grand bargain to spur our economy and reduce our deficit[.]

More with the Grand Bargain.

It's coming, folks. Not only do all the elites want to send as much manufacturing overseas as they can (why else would Dems not fight for alternate-energy manufacturing in the U.S.?).

All the elites also want to fix your "broken" safety net. Not enough holes in it, I guess.

It's a two-fer for their billionaire masters — your jobs off to cheap-labor countries (so the billionaires get more money) and your safety net in shreds (so the billionaires get more money).

Tick-tick-tick.

[UPDATE: Some phrases tweaked for clarity.]

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Five more things the TSA would rather you not see

As if the list wasn't long enough with the humiliation of a 95 year old retired officer, banning an 18 month old baby, an 84 year old grandmother strip searched, creepy notes left inside luggage, not to mention the easy workarounds for defeating the porno scanners, the Huffington Post has more images and videos that you need to see.

It's the now familiar story of humiliation, mission creep and general ineffectiveness of the current TSA system. For an added bonus we now discover that the Philadelphia airport has a manager who was dismissed by the Camden, NJ archdiocese for allegedly molesting young girls when he was a priest. The hard reality of all of this is that the TSA has yet to find a single terrorist, though they did manage to miss at least one foreign flyer who went from New York to LA on someone else's ticket.

Why are we still funding this failed program? Is the political class really that afraid of taking corrective action? Read more about the latest TSA problems at the Huffington Post. Read the rest of this post...

Mitt Romney's iOS app calls for "A Better Amercia" (most spell it "America")

To be fair to Mitt, he was just talking about the crisis in education recently. It's sad to see that the situation is so bad, when Harvard has to accept people like Mitt Romney and George Bush. Clearly the system needs help.

The original screen capture is at Gizmodo, plus there's a new mock Tumblr page, Amercia is with Mitt, for your viewing pleasure - it's brilliant:

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How does "targeted assassination" work in the Obama administration?

Alternate title: Who is America's real Death Czar — Barack Obama or John Brennen?

We talked about Obama's assaults on civil liberties and his expansion of Bush II's definition of executive power a number of times. For example:

• Sy Hersh on Obama & Afghanistan: 'The stuff that goes on in the field, is still going on in the field'
• Yes, the NDAA really does authorize indefinite detention for U.S. citizens
• Weekend Thoughts on the Occupy Movement & Rule of Law

The latest group of stories swirling around the President's "Right To Execute Citizens" — is there any other way to put it? — are these, which I've been having a hard time reconciling. Who's in charge of the President's Executive Kill Program? Obama, or an executive assistant — an assistant in charge of execution?

First the candidates, then the answer.

■ Is John Brennan America's Death Czar?

Let's start with Adam Serwer in Mother Jones (all emphasis and reparagraphing mine):

The Associated Press recently reported that White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan is America's new death czar—the individual most responsible for overseeing the Obama administration's targeted killing of suspected terrorists.

Serwer goes on to question the "morals of targeted killing," a subject we won't get into here. If you come here often, you know where I stand.

Here's more on Brennan's new toy from Glen Greenwald:

John Brennan’s new power
President Obama's counter-terrorism chief has "seized the lead" in secretly determining who will die by US drone

In November, 2008, media reports strongly suggested that President Obama intended to name John Brennan as CIA Director. But controversy over Brennan’s recent history — he was a Bush-era CIA official who expressly advocated “enhanced interrogation techniques” and rendition — forced him to “withdraw” from consideration, as he publicly issued a letter citing “strong criticism in some quarters” of his CIA advocacy.

Undeterred by any of that unpleasantness, President Obama instead named Brennan to be his chief counter-Terrorism adviser, a position with arguably more influence that he would have had as CIA chief. ... Given his history, it is unsurprising that Brennan has been at the heart of many of the administration’s most radical acts, including claiming the power to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA without due process and the more general policy of secretly targeting people for death by drone.

Now, Brennan’s power has increased even more: he’s on his way to becoming the sole arbiter of life and death, the unchecked judge, jury and executioner of whomever he wants dead (of course, when Associated Press in this report uses the words “Terrorist” or “al-Qaida operative,” what they actually mean is: a person accused by the U.S. Government, with no due process, of involvement in Terrorism)[.]

Greenwald quotes the Boston Globe, which says:

White House counterterror chief John Brennan has seized the lead in choosing which terrorists will be targeted for drone attacks or raids, establishing a new procedure for both military and CIA targets. The effort concentrates power over the use of lethal U.S. force outside war zones within one small team at the White House.

The process, which is about a month old, means Brennan’s staff consults with the State Department and other agencies as to who should go on the target list, making the Pentagon’s role less relevant, according to two current and three former U.S. officials aware of the evolution in how the government goes after terrorists....

Brennan’s effort gives him greater input earlier in the process, before making final recommendation to President Barack Obama. Officials outside the White House expressed concern that drawing more of the decision-making process to Brennan’s office could turn it into a pseudo military headquarters, entrusting the fate of al-Qaida targets to a small number of senior officials.

■ Wait — Isn't Obama his own Death Czar?

Then we got a taste of Obama the Decider in a major story in the New York Times. It's quite the profile. If war is your game, it will send a familiar tough-guy tingle straight up your leg.

If you're appalled at the killing, however, and appalled especially by "killed because of a data signature," you'll likely be stunned by Obama's blasé approach.

The piece by Jo Becker and Scott Shane is long; here's a taste:

Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will

Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret “nominations” process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be.

Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.

Can you feel the praise? There's quite a lot of it. And then there's this:

[The subjects of our interviews] describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands.

When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”

And (h/t Steve Hynd):

Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties [that] in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants ... unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

Still thrilled?

■ So which is it — Brennan or Obama? Who's really swinging that manly pipe?

Enter Marcy Wheeler to make the two stories play together. Her bottom line — Brennan is Obama's Dick Cheney, the deliberately obscured power behind the murdering (my phrase) throne.

She calls it an "Angler 2.0" story, a reference to Barton Gellman's book on Cheney, Angler.

Angler 2.0: Brennan Wields His Puppet Strings Differently

As I said earlier, the parallel between the Jo Becker/Scott Shane [New York Times] Angler 2.0 story and the earlier series by Becker and Barton Gellman is hard to miss.

But I’m very interested in how the stories are structured differently. With Angler 1.0 [Gellman's explanation of the Cheney–Bush relationship], the story was very clearly about Dick Cheney and the methods he used to manipulate Bush into following his advice.

Here, the story is really about John Brennan, Obama’s Cheney, portrayed deep in thought and foregrounding Obama in the article’s picture [see here]. Indeed, halfway through, the story even gives biographical background on Brennan, the classic “son of Irish immigrants” story, along with Harold Koh’s dubious endorsement of Brennan’s “moral rectitude.”

But instead of telling the story of John Brennan, Obama’s Cheney, the story pitches Obama as the key decision-maker–a storyline Brennan has always been one of the most aggressive pitchmen for, including when he confirmed information on the Anwar al-Awlaki strike he shouldn’t have.

In a sense, then, Brennan has done Cheney one better: seed a story of his own power, but sell it as a sign of the President’s steeliness.

This is an excellent how-to-read-the-media piece. Good job; please do click over.

Note that Brennan's supposed "moral rectitude" is Obama's necessary ground cover. After all, Obama is the drone-joke president:



Is an alt-Obama characterization starting to assert itself, one that they need to tamp down? One can only hope.

Excellent work by Wheeler, Greenwald and Serwer. I suggest you read, if you do, in this order — first Greenwald, who catches the truth. Then Wheeler, who catches the PR job done by the writers at the Times.

Then read the Times story itself if you wish, to see the PR job for yourself. Finally, Serwer is excellent on the problem the muscular "Left" has when "the man who would be king" is one of their own.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Why do the Romneys think that Catholics aren't good enough Christians?

Mitt Romney says he's the great defender of the Catholic faith, and chose to wear his "pro-Catholicism" on his sleeve in order to bash President Obama over the recent contraceptive policy controversy.

It's therefore interesting that both Mitt Romney and his son have tried in the past to convert Catholics to Mormonism.  It's not exactly a stellar way to show how much you want to save Catholicism, by wiping it out.

Here's some of what I wrote about in an earlier post:

Mitt Romney's son went to South America to convert Latino Christians away from Catholicism and to Mormonism. Mitt Romney himself went to France in the early 1970s to, again, convert the French from Christianity - Catholicism, again, in their case - to Mormonism.

It's interesting that the Mormons bristle at the suggestion that they are not Christians, yet they do not seem to consider Catholics Christian enough to be exempt from Mormon attempts at conversion. After all, why would Catholics need to be converted to Mormonism, in order to be saved, if in fact we're all Christians?

Those are the kind of questions Mitt Romney would ask of Barack Obama if the Mormon shoe were on the other foot. But no one dares ask Mitt Romney the very type of questions he has himself posed to President Obama.

If Mitt Romney thinks Reverend Wright is fair game - an attack that many consider thinly-veiled racism - then isn't it at least fair to inquire why Mitt Romney and his son believe that Catholics are lesser Christians than Mormons?

I know that when I was in the Russian Far East in the early 1990s, and saw evangelical Christians proselytizing in the local Petropavlovsk airport, apparently to convert the "heathen" Orthodox Christians (of which I am a member) to the "only true" Christianity, I was supremely offended. Not simply that they considered my faith inferior, but that they knew we were Christians, just like they were, yet they still had the nerve to treat us like we were some kind of savage jungle tribe that needed saving.

Now that Mitt Romney has gone on the record as wanting to be president so he can defend the Catholic faith, it's relevant for us to have a discussion of just how good a defender of the Catholic faith Mitt Romney really is.

And judging by his, and his son's, efforts to convert Catholics to Mormonism in multiple countries, Romney's record in defending Catholicism isn't all that great. Read the rest of this post...

Syrian diplomats expelled as bombing continues

Obviously little matters at the UN until China and especially Russia come to agree with any action though Syria's actions have complicated the steadfast support of Russia. Later this week new French president François Hollande will host Russia's Putin to discuss the unraveling situation in the Middle East.

Al Jazeera:

Japan has joined 11 Western countries in expelling Syrian diplomats after the UN said most of the victims of the massacre in Houla village were summarily executed without decisively saying who carried out most of the killings.

The government asked Mohamed Ghassan al-Habash, the Syrian ambassador in Tokyo, to depart "as soon as possible", a Japanese foreign ministry official told AFP news agency on Wednesday.

The US, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Australia, Canada, Spain, Belgium, Bulgaria and the Netherlands said on Tuesday they were protesting against Friday's massacre in Houla of at least 108 people.

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