Hannity's buddy Hal weighs in on "Deep Throat"

These are the writings of the man Sean Hannity befriended a few years back.

From Hal Turner's Web site today:

Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

What's up this Thursday evening? Read the rest of this post...

The Family Research Council is mad at me

You know you're doing something right when the Family Research Council personally attacks yours truly in today's email update.

In the latest Family Research Council "Washington Update," FRC president Tony Perkins weighs in on Scott Bloch, Bush's homophobic head of the Office of Special Counsel who is outright disobeying Bush's order to enforce the executive order banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in the federal workforce. Bloch tried to undercut the president and the policy last year, and got caught, and was forced to reiterate his support for the policy after Bush publicly told him to do his job.

Well, last week, Bloch again decided to disobey his boss and launch his own rogue activist operation to undercut an executive order from the president of the United States. Apparently Bloch thinks we live in some banana republic where the rule of law and the orders of the president mean nothing to unelected underlings more interested in carrying out a jihad than obeying the Constitution.

Anyway, the homophobic far right hate group Family Research Council went all nutso today in defending Bloch - apparently they think his job might just be in danger. They launched a personal broadside against me for the things I wrote about Bloch in this blog, which is really quite funny. First, they note that Senators are not happy at Bloch for launching his own rogue operation against the president.

Then they go off on me:

The Senators were merely the first salvo in what appears to be a concentrated attack on a dedicated public servant. The next shots are coming from homosexual activists who are trying to get Scott Bloch fired. One particularly angry activist, whose last claim to fame was harassing Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter in the last election, vowed to dedicate his life to ruining Mr. Bloch. The President should support those in his Administration who do the right thing, and he should stand by Special Counsel Scott Bloch.

Now, let's get a few things straight folks.

1. I'm not angry, I'm bitchy.

2. My "last claim to fame" was not harassing openly-dykey Mary Cheney, it was harassing Bill Gates, and before that, religious right sympathizer and $200 an hour GOP man-whore JeffJames GannonGuckert.

3. And finally, I did not dedicate my life to ruining Mr. Bloch. I've dedicated my life to ruining the Family Research Council and its pseudo-religious bigot buddies who blasphemously wrap their hatred and intolerance in the cloak of God like some new-and-improved version of the Taliban. Scott Bloch is simply a morsel on the way.

And btw, let's all thank for the Family Research Council for reminding me that I've got a number of internal US government documents to release next week detailing further Bush administration efforts to effectively repeal the executive order. Thanks for motivating me even further, guys. I'll be sure to give Scott my special $200 an hour attention all next week.

And let's all give Scott a little love - tell him he can thank the Family Research Council for inspiring us to check in with him:

Office of Special Counsel HQ
Tel: (202) 254-3600
Tel: (800) 872-9855

- Scott Bloch, head of the office and chief anti-gay bad guy: sbloch@osc.gov (not 100% sure this email is correct, but try it)

- Catherine Deeds, Director, Congressional and Public Affairs, cdeeds@osc.gov

And if any has any other contact information for Scott or anyone else at his office - phone, cell, email - please pass it along.

PS Is Tony Perkins H-O-T or what?! Read the rest of this post...

Sean Hannity's ties to racist Hal Turner

I hung out with Max Blumenthal today (very cool son of Sydney) at the Take Back America Conference. He revealed today during a radio interview on Sirius Satellite Radio's "The Young Turks" show that he has a story in Friday's (tomorrow's) "The Nation" about Sean Hannity's troubling ties to racist, homophobe Hal Turner.

More on Hal Turner here. And even more on Turner from Atrios.

The story will be on the Nation's Web site on Friday - stay tuned. Knowing Max, this should be good. Read the rest of this post...

Ohio GOP Coin-Gate: Tom Noe's Money and how he spread it around

Thanks to Paul at BringOhioHome.com for providing the listing of all Tom Noe's political contributions to the GOP. That guys sure doles out a lot of political money.

And, as today's Toledo Blade documents, Noe doesn't just give his money as political contributions to elected officials. He really spreads it around as the headline explains, 'Ex-Taft aide got $39,000 from Noe; 'loan' used to help buy house in Lakeside, Ohio.'

Yep, a $39,000 "loan:"

A former high-ranking aide to Gov. Bob Taft accepted $39,000 from Tom Noe so he could buy a house in Lakeside, Ohio.

H. Douglas Talbott, who worked for Mr. Taft and former Republican Gov. George Voinovich, said he accepted the money as a “loan” from Mr. Noe in September, 2002 — after leaving the governor’s office in May, 2000, to become a lobbyist.

Mr. Talbott, 41, said he has not repaid the money to Mr. Noe, but he plans to do so with interest.

And, as the Blade notes, this guy is not the only Taft staffer to benefit from Noe's financial largesse:

Mr. Talbott is the second high-ranking Taft aide with a financial link to Mr. Noe.

The Blade reported May 12 that Brian Hicks, when he was Mr. Taft’s former chief of staff, twice rented a Florida home owned by Mr. Noe for family vacations and paid below market price for his spring-break stays in the home.

Mr. Hicks, who is now a lobbyist and consultant, said he did not disclose his vacations at the Noes’ $1.8 million home in the Florida Keys to the Ethics Commission because he felt he paid market value for the stay.

It must've been good to be Tom Noe when he had all that money to spread around....of course, with $12 million missing from the Ohio Worker's Compensation Fund, it's not so good to be Tom Noe...or one of his GOP pals now. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

The news of the conference is that Arianna bested Howard Dean at this morning's plenary. Not that she went after him - well, she did go after him, meaning she spoke after him - but all the reviews say that Dean was okay, but that Arianna rocked.

But of course, she's Greek :-) Read the rest of this post...

Zimbabwe faces massive homelessness problem after crackdown

Reports range from one million up to two million left homeless as a result of the crackdown in urban areas in Zimbabwe. Many of these people now have no home, no work and are in desperate need for food which is soon coming via the UN. I only hope that the UN ensures food delivery to these people and avoids distribution via the government or else the starvation problem will become worse. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Back at the conference... Read the rest of this post...

A follow-up question to my post below re Snowflake

Ok, you lawyers, what are the legal issues involved here. I know this is totally immoral discrimination, but is it legal discrimination at the state or federal level if Snowflake permits discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, etc? And can the courts enforce it? Read the rest of this post...

Bush's "Snowflake" adoption program discriminates on basis of religion, sexual orientation

I'm sorry, but how is it legal that this adoption program discriminates on the basis of religion? (Read the excerpt from the NYT article below.)

It's disgusting that they allow anti-gay discrimination too, of course, but religious discrimination is in the civil rights act. And this is not a church, it's an adoption agency. So how do they permit discrimination? Do they permit discrimination based on race too? You know, in case I don't want any of those dark folks adopting my sperm child. And would a court of law be forced to endorse religious or race based discrimination if the adoption agency refused to follow through on the donors racist or bigoted views?

Couples adopting or donating Snowflakes embryos are mostly Christian, and most embryo donors are white, Ms. Maze said. Some families are Roman Catholic, even though the church has historically opposed in vitro fertilization.

Couples must agree to adoption-like procedures: receiving families are screened and must undergo counseling, and Snowflakes allows donating and receiving families to designate criteria for each other, meet and maintain contact after birth. Adopting couples must agree not to abort any embryos.

Those conditions were fine with Bob and Angie Deacon of Virginia Beach, Va., who donated their 13 embryos after having twins and being discouraged from another pregnancy by a doctor. "With another program, to be honest with you, they could have been adopted by lesbian parents, and I'm totally against that," said Mr. Deacon, 35.

It took two and a half years to bring themselves to fill out the papers. On their forms, they said the adopting family must be conservative Christians and, ideally, include a stay-at-home mother.

Law or no law, these people were at the White House. AT THE WHITE HOUSE, at the invitation of the president. The president wanted this to be THE MODEL for the country - religious-based (and who knows, race-based?) discrimination as the model for the entire country.

So again, I ask the question - do they permit discrimination based on race? Against Latinos? Blacks? Irish? Muslims?

PS And how did the NYT totally miss this incredible aspect of their own story? Did NO editor read this and go "holy shit"? No follow up with the Snowflake folks about the legality of doing this, the morality of doing this, and whether they permit discrimination in other categories? Read the rest of this post...

Iraqi Insurgency -- Apparently It's Led By Iraqis

Yesterday, the NY Post ran a story saying that 40% of the suicide bombers dispatched by Al-Zarqawi were Saudis and only about 9% were Iraqis. That seemed a pretty remarkable claim since with most suicide bombings, there isn't enough of the attacker left to fill a Mason jar, much less make a positive ID.

How'd they determine this? The info came from the SITE Institute, a post 9-11 org founded to track terrorist networks and featuring an Iraqi-born head named Rita Katz. It seems to have done lots of work for the US government -- including with Richard Clarke -- and is quoted widely in the media. So how'd they back it up? Simply by looking at a Martyrs' List posted on the web by Zarqawi to commemorate killers. An "analysis" was done of 107 names listed. Since that list included their backgrounds, the "analysis" involved adding up the ones from Saudi Arabia, etc.

A couple points: the list is hardly comprehensive and surely it occured to someone at the SITE Institute that Iraqi-born martyrs would be far less likely to have their names listed on the web for all the world to see. That would invite reprisals from the government, soldiers storming into the homes of their families, reprisals from Shiite radicals, preemptive arrests of siblings to forestall further suicide bombings from a family that produced one, job loss for the parents, etc. etc. So their analysis should have said that in a list Zarqawi chose to post on the web, very few listed were Iraqis for obvious reasons such as....

Instead, expect this misleading bit of info to be repeated by the Limbaughs of the world as proof that the Iraqi insurgency is a sham and really just the actions of foreign actions. (Agents from Saudi Arabia, the ally we coddle, one might add.)

Don't expect them to acknowledge the LA Times article today that acknowledges early suicide bombers came from outside Iraq, but that things have changed. Suicide bombings -- unpopular at first among Iraqis -- have exploded. In other words, not many were done before and many of those were foreigners. Now they're a lot more common and Iraqis are leading the way.

In April, there were 69 suicide bombings, more than the entire year preceding the handover in June 2004. Yesterday, three suicide bombers killed at least 20. The US commander of multinational forces admitted that the axiom that all suicide bombers were foreigners may not be the case.

But others refuse to see this.

"There is no evidence this is being done by Iraqis," said U.S. Maj. Gen. John DeFreitas III, intelligence chief for the multinational mission that has about 150,000 troops in Iraq. "In every case we've seen, the driver has been a foreigner."

But whatever the dominance in this one tactic, even coalition officials acknowledge that the Iraqi insurgency is in fact an Iraqi insurgency.

Coalition officials acknowledge, however, that the numbers show an Iraqi-dominated insurgency. Fewer than 5% of those killed or captured were foreigners, one official noted. He also described the influx from abroad as making up a "very, very small part" of the estimated 12,000 to 20,000 insurgents.

Now someone tell Rush. Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

What's the buzz today? Read the rest of this post...

The EU Constitution debacle continues

62% of the Dutch voted "no" against the beast. It's not that people (for the most part) are against the EU, it's just that this entire process has lacked any link to democracy and is just the wet dream of the European political class who has failed miserably to educate the population and explain why a constitution is needed and how it will benefit the local populations. This watered down monster is now definitely dead in the water after the rejection by two of the founders in Europe.

I don't know yet how the Dutch will respond but Chirac's answer to his own failure was to dump the government and bring in a yes man who is unpopular both on the left and the right and who could not be any more of an establishment person. The rejections have had a lot to do with people in Europe being fed up with the establishment making decisions without interaction with voters. Hmm, who sees a problem here? Read the rest of this post...

Gulf Islands National Seashore the new oil drilling target

The national park in Mississippi was slipped into the recent emergency military spending bill which greases the skids for Big Oil to start seismic testing of the area which is home to wilderness areas where federally protected birds and fish live along with the the Gulf of Mexico's largest concentration of bottlenose dolphins.

Once again Big Oil dictates the rules in the US and instead of focusing attention and resources on getting the country out of the oil addiction, the focus is to help Big Oil screw up federal land that is for all of us. Who wants to go to the beach and look at oil drills offshore? Apparently the GOP does. Read the rest of this post...