Ellen Tauscher Is an Ignorant Idiot

Either Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-INO) is an ignorant idiot, or the staffer on whom she palms off the job of answering letters to constituents is an ignorant idiot (which makes her an ignorant idiot of a manaager):

This is what she wrote in response to a constituent who called for her to support the impeachment of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:

The Attorney General serves at the pleasure of the president in a non-impeachable office. Unless convicted of an illegal act, the Attorney General cannot be removed from office without the president asking for or accepting his resignation. However, please be assured that I will keep your thoughts and concerns in mind as I review the circumstances surrounding recent allegations of impropriety within the Justice Department.

Sincerely,

Ellen O. Tauscher
Member of Congress

The Constitution — Remember the Constitution? People say it's the highest law in the land — says:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the united States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. [emphasis added]

Ellen Tauscher should serve out the rest of her term wearing a big scarlet 'M' — for 'Moron' — pinned to her bosom whenever she either appears on Capitol Hill or returns to her district.

(via Atrios)

Where White House Bipartisanship Comes From

What does it take to get the Bush Administration to reach out to congressional Democrats on matters of foreign policy?

As Steve Benen of The Carpetbagger Report tells us, Bush will do it when the Saudis order him to do it:

The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to eventually total $20 billion at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq. ... The Saudis had requested that Congress be told about the planned sale, the officials said, in an effort to avoid the kind of bruising fight on Capitol Hill that occurred in the 1980s over proposed arms sales to the kingdom.

Susie Bright Interviews Jamie Gillis

Susie Bright interviewed male porn star and director Jamie Gillis last week. That is, I think it's her interviewing him, but it seems like she did all the talking.

Gillis started making pornographic loops in 1970. Then the porn movie business exploded in the seventies (the "Golden Age"), and exploded again into videocassettes in the eighties. He invented the "Gonzo" genre of porn in 1990 with his video On the Prowl.

SB: For those people who don't know, what is gonzo? What did you want gonzo to be?

JG: All I wanted to do was just go out into the streets and meet people. Bring a girl out – maybe to a dirty bookstore or something — and just throw her to the wolves.

SB: Your first movie in that style was "On the Prowl." You took a pretty girl out and she said, "I'll fuck whoever wants to if you'll let us tape it." A lot of people will think everyone jumped at the chance. But of course, they didn't! There was a lot of tension. People were afraid of being conned, or that it wasn't real, or that she would cut their balls off in some crazy... There's this tension that they don't know if they can trust you with their nuts.

JG: It's a very unusual offer. Sure!

SB: (Laughing) Yes it is!

And in the late nineties, Gillis was a regular in the Oaks Club, playing (what else?) seven-card stud. That was where I met him and played against him from time to time. It's been a few years since I've seen him, but Susie Bright explains why in passing: he is living in New York now.

I got search hits a few days ago for "jamie gillis poker." It turns out that someone was asking about him on 2+2. According to rumor, he is now a poker pro. That's funny – he wasn't that good a player when I knew him. But then again, neither was I.

(via Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing)

Weekly World News to Cease Publication Next Month

image source: Wikipedia

The Weekly World News shunned the usual tabloid fare of celebrity gossip. Instead, it focused upon the weird, the bizarre, the fake. Although somebody somewhere believed its accounts of the Batboy, half-human, half-bat, found in a cave as an infant, or of the presence of aliens in the Clinton-era congress, it was clearly not intended to be taken seriously. Hipsters would pass copies around at parties and solemnly declare how the WWN was an important beta-tester of every new version of Adobe Photoshop.

American Media's reasons for closing down the paper are not clear. Some people point to declining circulation; others cite AMI's more general financial difficulties. But as Paul Krassner famously said about his satire zine The Realist, it's tough to come up with plausible satire in a world where Spiro Agnew regularly makes the headlines; and it is especially tough to publish a paper full of preposterous news when anyone with an appetite for falsehood simply need to tune to Fox News or read Matt Drudge on the Web.

(via Scott McLemee at Crooked Timber)

Congress Has the Power to Arrest, Imprison Those Who Defy Subpoenas

While the criminal gang of hoodlums and thieves known throughout the underworld as the "Bush Administration" express their literal contempt of Congress by claiming that the legal offices held by some of its members renders the gang immune to prosecution or even subpoena, the fact remains that Congress has the legal power and the legal resources to arrest and detain gang members who defy congressional orders to testify before congressional committees:

Yet under historic and undisturbed law, Congress can enforce its own orders against recalcitrant witnesses without involving the executive branch and without leaving open the possibility of presidential pardon.

And a Supreme Court majority would find it hard to object in the face of two entrenched legal principles.

That's Prof. Frank Askin, who teaches at the Rutgers University School of Law and is director of the Rutgers Constitutional Litigation Clinic, writing an op-ed in the Washington Post.

Askin reminds us that:

• Apart from requesting assistance from the US Attorney to prosecute those who defy Congressional subpoenas for contempt of Congress, the sargeants-at-arms of both the House of representatives and the Senate have the lawful power to arrest and detain those who defy those subpoenas.
• This power has been upheld again and again by the Supreme Court.
• The power of pardon constitutionally alotted to whomever holds the office of President of the United States does not extend to civil contempt. The President has no lawful authority to compel the release of a person arrested by Congress for defying a Congressional subpoena.

It is high time that Congress used this lawful power to enforce its subpoenas of those gangsters who infest the Executive Branch.

(via David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo)

SF Chronicle Writer Doesn't Know Dick About Porn

Jim Mitchell died of apparent heart failure last Thursday. He and his brother Artie comprised the Mitchell Brothers, San Francisco's reigning sex impresarios and pornographers. As such they were key figures in the city's history, from the late 1960s through the '90s, when Jim Mitchell shot his brother to death in 1991, and served a three-year sentence on a manslaughter charge. The murder and subsequent sensational trial was the climax of a rich and colorful history at the intersection of sex, commerce, law enforcement, the counterculture, and local politics.

Steven Winn of the San Francisco Chronicle looks back today at the Mitchell Brothers' history and legacy. He doesn't seem to like that history and legacy, and peppers his brief history with wags of his finger about the alleged social harm caused by pornography, both in the Mitchells' heyday and as available now over the Internet. But he gets his facts wrong:

Now, in a digital age where Eros has become irreversibly virtual on the Internet, Mitchell's death punctuates the end of an era that he long outlived. Today's aspiring versions of the Mitchell Brothers wouldn't dream of investing in urban real estate or relishing public dustups with local politicians. They'd be operating under the radar, selling their Web wares from some garage in Bakersfield or a back bedroom in Fresno.

Aspiring sex impresarios don't invest in urban real estate? Someone should tell Kink.com's Peter Acworth about it. Far from flying under the radar, Acworth purchased the San Francisco Armory, on Mission Street, last January and is using the space for video production for his erotic Internet empire. The purchase even included . Come on, reporters are supposed to have a clue about what happens in their town, aren't they?

My First Disemvowelment

It started out with a claim provable with pathetic ease to be a lie, and it ended with another; and in between it was filled with vitriol unleavened by fact. In fact, it was a total driveby. The clown found As I Please through a Google Images search for "home," and thought that the right response to finding something he didn't like in an ill-refined search was to post a nastygram as a comment.

The nastygram is still there. Well, most of it, anyway.

Nebraska Governor's Censorship Endangers Nebraskans' Lives

Violet Blue calls our attention to how Nebraska's Republican governor Dave Heineman is putting his constituents' lives in jeopardy by silencing the Nebraska state health agency on matters of sexual health.

JoAnne Young of the Lincoln Journal Star reports that Heineman has muzzled the state Health and Human Services System, prohibiting it from using the words "sex" or "sexual," or including any "controversial content" in any public communication. All contraception is controversial, apparently. So is any mention that sexually-transmitted diseases are transmitted sexually. Apparently, unlucky Nebraskans are touched by the magic wand of the Chlamydia Fairy, at least insofar as the HHSS is able to communicate about the transmission of chlamydia.

Blue quotes from an email she received from a Nebraska Planned Parenthood worker:

My job as an sex educator is solely prevention and information. EVERY SINGLE DAY I talk to teens who are hurt physically and emotionally by the withholding of vital sexual health information. I have kids cry in my office because their parents, teachers, or other caregivers NEVER talked to them honestly about sex or healthy relationships. By the time one student made it to my office, she had two pregnancies, one of which was terminated because her much older boyfriend threw her down the stairs at 7 months pregnant. The other, a miscarriage at the age of 13...too afraid to tell anyone she bled profusely by herself. The mentor who brought her into my office later reported to me that she actually jumped up and down because she finally, FINALLY, had the sex talk with someone. This information served a good purpose, but how would her life been different if it had occurred years earlier????

Gov. Heineman asserts that his policy is motivated by his "pro-life" values. He asserts that Nebraska is a "pro-life state." His policy, however, jeopardizing citizen's lives by withholding from them information about life-and-death matters of public health, is more accurately described as "pro-death."

DOJ Attorney Speaks Out Against Corruption in His Department

John S. Koppel, a civil appellate attorney who has worked for the Department of Justice since 1981, wrote an op-ed for the Denver Post last week that is a scathing denunciation of the Gonzales DOJ:

As a longtime attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, I can honestly say that I have never been as ashamed of the department and government that I serve as I am at this time.

The public record now plainly demonstrates that both the DOJ and the government as a whole have been thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful. The unconscionable commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's sentence, the misuse of warrantless investigative powers under the Patriot Act and the deplorable treatment of U.S. attorneys all point to an unmistakable pattern of abuse.

In the course of its tenure since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has turned the entire government (and the DOJ in particular) into a veritable Augean stable on issues such as civil rights, civil liberties, international law and basic human rights, as well as criminal prosecution and federal employment and contracting practices. It has systematically undermined the rule of law in the name of fighting terrorism, and it has sought to insulate its actions from legislative or judicial scrutiny and accountability by invoking national security at every turn, engaging in persistent fearmongering, routinely impugning the integrity and/or patriotism of its critics, and protecting its own lawbreakers. This is neither normal government conduct nor "politics as usual," but a national disgrace of a magnitude unseen since the days of Watergate - which, in fact, I believe it eclipses.

Koppel is singularly aware of the risk he is taking:

I realize that this constitutionally protected statement subjects me to a substantial risk of unlawful reprisal from extremely ruthless people who have repeatedly taken such action in the past. But I am confident that I am speaking on behalf of countless thousands of honorable public servants, at Justice and elsewhere, who take their responsibilities seriously and share these views. And some things must be said, whatever the risk.

John S. Koppel is a hero. We need more people like him, both in public service and in the public at large.

Moonbats All Over Are Linking Universal Health Care to Terrorism

The reaction to Michael Moore's film Sicko must be scaring the guy at the keyboard of the Mighty Wurlitzer. All of a sudden wingnuts are popping up echoing the talking point that universal health care coverage fosters Islamic terrorism.

Here's Fox News' Neil Cavuto querying Jerry Bowyer, a flesh-and-blood sockpuppet manipulated by the hand of Richard Mellon Scaife:

Josh Marshall is on the case. He has found the talking point being flogged on MSNBC and in the New York Sun as well.

Of course, the link between national health care and terrorism is about as substantial as the case for sending US troops to fight the insurgency in Narnia. But that doesn't stop the Right-Wing Noise Machine. It's only a matter of time before talk radio hosts and Matt Drudge join the noisome chorus.

The Fourth of July

Light up the barbecue in the back yard. Fill the cooler with beer and spend the afternoon emptying it. Cover your hot dog with ketchup, mustard, relish, onions, maybe even sauerkraut. Find a good place to watch the fireworks, or maybe even set off a few of your own.

And all the while, remember that you are doing this because a two hundred and thirty-one years ago today, a group of men were gathered in Philadelphia to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause ending the rule of the greedy villains who were using the powers of government to rob them blind. The King was deaf to their protests and in fact was quite mad. Parliament would not act, but was in fact part of the problem. And so these men saw no other choice before them but to band together to refuse and resist the tyranny.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is in the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

Sicko Galvanizes Audiences to Activism

A spectre is haunting movie theaters — the spectre of Michael Moore's Sicko.

Cinema Blend's Josh Tyler went to a theater in a suburban Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex mall to view Moore's documentary about the state of health care in the United States. When the film was over, this is what he found in the lobby:

[T]he theater was in chaos. The entire Sicko audience had somehow formed an impromptu town hall meeting in front of the ladies room. I’ve never seen anything like it. This is Texas goddammit, not France or some liberal college campus. But here these people were, complete strangers from every walk of life talking excitedly about the movie. It was as if they simply couldn’t go home without doing something drastic about what they’d just seen. My redneck compadre and his new friend found their wives at the center of the group, while I lingered in the background waiting for my spouse to emerge.

The talk gradually centered around a core of 10 or 12 strangers in a cluster while the rest of us stood around them listening intently to this thing that seemed to be happening out of nowhere. The black gentleman engaged by my redneck in the restroom shouted for everyone’s attention. The conversation stopped instantly as all eyes in this group of 30 or 40 people were now on him. “If we just see this and do nothing about it,” he said, “then what’s the point? Something has to change.” There was silence, then the redneck’s wife started calling for email addresses. Suddenly everyone was scribbling down everyone else’s email, promising to get together and do something… though no one seemed to know quite what. It was as if I’d just stepped into the world’s most bizarre protest rally, except instead of hippies the group was comprised of men and women of every age, skin color, income, and walk of life coming together on something that had shaken them deeply, and to the core.

In all my thirty years on this earth, I have never ever seen any movie have this kind of unifying effect on people. It was like I was standing there, at the birth of a new political movement. Even after 9/11, there was never a reaction like this, at least not in Texas. If Sicko truly has this sort of power, then Michael Moore has done something beyond amazing. If it can change people, affect people like this in the conservative hotbed of Texas, then Sicko isn’t just a great movie, seeing it may be one of the most important things you do all year.

(via Boing Boing)

Gordon Brown Makes His Saving Throw

Lynn Kendall views Friday morning's bombing attempts in the UK through the lens of role-playing games:

Gamemaster Karl Rove, "Gordon is the new PM in Britain. How do you react?"

Several players confer. "We bomb him! We've got a couple of Drummer Girl car bombs — Mercedes packed with explosives. And, uh, an SUV we can set on fire."

Gordon comes to table, balancing several rulebooks, a pint of Guinness, and a plate of munchies, and whines, "I say, fellows, that's not cricket. I haven't even had a chance to finish rolling for power, status, and charm."

Terrorist gives him a long, disbelieving look. "Why are you talking like Bertie Wooster?"

"Weel, I'm trying me best. Taking lessons in deportment and eeelocution from some Sassenach. He said I should try to talk like Hugh Grant looks. Vapidly English, ye ken."

Terrorists laugh so hard one of them chokes on a Twinkie and has to be pounded on the back.

Gamemaster sighs loudly. "Well, Mr. Prime Minister, *sir*, don't worry about rolling for charm. This is a guaranteed way to get a lot of approval points fast. Just don't piss them away like Dubya there."

Dubya, drunkenly waving a whiskey bottle, "I'm a Paladin! Anything I do is right! Anybody doesn't approve, they must be the Ack-ack-axis of Evil."

Everyone ignores him.

The GM says, "To get back to reality, guys, Gordon needs to roll for damage. Roll three D20s."

"Yes! Yes! Total of four, you terrorist bastards! Hah, see what you get for attacking the British lion!"

Rove consults a chart. "Sorry, boys, your Mercedes car bombs don't make it. One gets towed, and the other is discovered and disarmed. But the SUV...."

Terrorists hold their breath.

"The SUV doesn't explode on impact, and when you set it on fire, you're caught and arrested. Now roll for damages from the flames."

Bill O'Reilly Warns Nation of Lesbian Gangs

Did Bill O'Reilly mistake porn video director Winkytiki's magnum opus, The Rebelle Rousers [NSFW] for cinema verité journalism? Or has he been smoking the stuff they sell in Amsterdam's "coffeeshops"? (For the record, I didn't see him there.)

Watch this video of O'Reilly on Fox News on June 21. It defies description. Tom Tomorrow does a yeoman's job of trying:

The things I learn from Bill O’Reilly

The new menace sweeping the nation is Lesbian Gangs which force unwitting teenagers into lesbian sex by threatening them with pink 9mm Glocks.

The preceeding sentence was not a satire of Bill O’Reilly, but rather, an accurate summary of the report I just watched.

(via Violet Blue)

George Bush, Crook

George W. Bush, nominal head of the criminal control fraud conspiracy that is bilking the American people of uncounted billions of dollars, at the expense of thousands of American lives and uncounted lives of Iraqis, has used the powers of his office to commute the sentence of his co-conspirator Scooter Libby. Libby will serve no prison time for the crimes he committed to obstruct Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the same criminal conspiracy.

This is clear-cut obstruction of justice; and since Bush obviously benefits from buying the silence of his co-conspirator, it is clear-cut conflict of interest as well.

This is the smoking gun. George Bush is a crook. He must be brought to justice.

I had a lovely time last Thursday on a day trip to the Hague. I look forward to the day George Bush arrives the Hague for a rather longer time, for a sojourn before the International Criminal Court.

Update: Josh Marshall points out that the manner of Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence violates standing policy of the Justice Department.

Best. Poker Dream. Evar.

Alan Jaffray, in a Terrence Chan's LiveJournal, tells of a dream he had about playing a novel form of triple-draw lowball at the World Series of Poker:

I've never played live triple draw outsider of ARG events.

I had a nightmare about it, actually. I'd satellited into the $50K HORSE, but showed up a couple hours late, just in time for the triple draw round which had been added at the last minute. Instead of shuffling and dealing standard cards, the dealer gave each player a wooden box containing steamed buns over cabbage, the underside of the buns displaying the card value. I managed to use the provided spatula to peek at my bun-cards, but fumbled while preparing my discards - one of them broke open and my hand was declared dead. Then I woke up.

I'm reasonably sure this is not, in fact, a procedure commonly in use in live triple draw games.

(via Mason Kong)