"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

There might be even one more benefit to a Schwarzenegger governorship:  Ruining BustaMEChA’s career.

“If the recall passes and if (Arnold) Schwarzenegger gets the governor’s seat, do you really think Democrats will ever think about running Bustamante again when he couldn’t win when it really counted the most?” Jeffe said.

Going into the 2004 elections, how great would it be to have a popular Republican governor and an inept, lame-duck, disgraced Bustamante in the junior seat?

Cruz Bustamante is currently running political ads where he is standing in his kitchen with his wife and two children by his side, asking for our “consideration” in the upcoming recall election.  Perhaps he should run a new series of ads featuring his sister.

“[S[he strapped on a burrito to her loins and called for white men to come up on stage, take a bite out of the burrito and absolve themselves of 500 years of the white man’s guilt.” The paper adds, “There was no shortage of ennobled participants, who knelt in front of the protruding offering, some taking delicate bites, others deep-throated chunks.”

Don’t miss the rest of the article, which calls her “the most embarrassing sibling performer since Roger Clinton.”

I really need to go back to college.

The University of Scranton received an anonymous letter detailing hazing allegations involving its basketball cheerleading squad, a university spokesman said.

The unsigned letter purported to be written by the parent of a freshman cheerleader who had recently made the team. It was addressed to the university’s president, the Rev. Scott R. Pilarz, S.J.

“We are, right now, vigorously investigating the situation,” university spokesman Gerry Zaboski said. “We are having some conversations with students and coaches and are trying to get to the bottom of it.”

The letter said the cheerleading squad was planning an Oct. 3 initiation ritual that its new members would be forced to attend. The new cheerleaders were told they would have to consume alcohol until they became sick and would have to perform oral sex on a male athlete, according to the letter. If they refused, the letter said, their lives would be made difficult.

Actually, I don’t really see college cheerleaders going for 33-year-old formerly obese doofuses, either.  Scratch that idea. :)

What would have been really outrageous is if the girls had to perform oral sex on enough male athletes until they made themselves sick, and then had to consume alcohol.

There’s one way to score brownie points with liberals, and that’s to take on Limbaugh.

Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark on Wednesday urged ABC to fire conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh for saying the media wanted Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb to succeed because he is black.

Clark, a retired Army general who entered the race Sept. 17, called the remarks “hateful and ignorant speech.”

Before McNabb led the Eagles to a 23-13 victory over the Buffalo Bills on Sunday, Limbaugh said on ESPN’s pre-game show that he didn’t think McNabb was as good as perceived.

“I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well,” Limbaugh said. “There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve. The defense carried this team.”

The thing is, Rush is totally right here.  It’s just like after 9/11, how reporters went around looking everywhere for a firefighter or rescue worker who wasn’t a white male, and found virtually none.  The media has blown McNabb’s reputation totally out of proportion with his performance, and I agree with Limbaugh that it is because of his race.

When the Williams sisters first burst onto the tennis scene, the media used to hire a black commentator to cover the sisters’ matches, specifically because the networks didn’t want a white person criticizing a black athlete.  The networks play these touchie-feeling PC race games, all Limbaugh did was point it out.

But back to Clark.  The final paragraph of the article sums everything up beautifully.

Clark, a supporter of affirmative action, has sought to burnish his credentials as a Democrat since entering the race amid criticism over his past support of GOP administrations.

So what better a way to try and erase yesterday’s support of the GOP than by taking on that great symbol of the American right?  Are liberals so stupid that they’re going to fall for this crap?

Yes.  Yes they are.

Wesley Clark is demonstrating his Democrat bona fides by coming to California and stumping for Gray Davis.  Oddly, he still hasn’t bothered to register as a Democrat in his home state of Arkansas.

A political opportunist?  You be the judge.

Linda Chavez just made a great point on FOXNews regarding Tom McClintock.  There are two questions on the ballot, whether to recall Davis, and who should replace him.  If McClintock drops out of the race, there will be a number of voters staying home from the polls because they don’t want to vote for Arnie.  Without those voters voting for the recall Davis could potentially beat it.

The Democrats are showing their usual level of respect for the constitutional democratic election process.

Setting the stage for a post-election legal challenge to the recall vote, Democrats are set to launch a national fund-raising campaign today to help pay for any legal action needed if Tuesday’s election on Gov. Gray Davis’ future is close.

Seeking to avoid what they called “another Florida-style fiasco,” the state party and a national Democratic group called Democrats for America’s Future said they hope to raise $100,000 to place poll watchers around the state Tuesday and to help with post-election legal challenges that may come up.

“We’re preparing for every possibility,” said Peter Ragone, communications director for Davis’ anti-recall campaign. “There’s a lot at stake here. We want to make sure every voice is heard.”

So, in other words, if Davis is recalled they’re going to drag this thing on and on and on in a deperate attempt to cling to power.  How pathetic.  How typical.

Here’s another burglar who won’t be burgling anyone else.

A woman shot and killed a man who fell through her ceiling while she was getting dressed, and police said the intruder was a burglary suspect who was trying to evade arrest.

Police said they believe the shooting Tuesday was justified, and they will submit a report to the district attorney.

“I think anyone would agree you’d feel your life was in danger when a burglar falls through your ceiling when you’re just getting out of the shower,” police Lt. Tom Monahan said.

The intruder, a 31-year-old neighbor, had climbed into the crawl space to elude plainclothes police at his front door, police said.

Monahan said the woman bought the gun after her apartment was burglarized in April. Police suspect the man she shot committed that crime.

Heinlein said it best.  “An armed society is a polite society.” Of course, liberals would consider this woman morally superior had she stood there, quivering, waiting for the police to arrive while the intruder beat, raped, and eventually killed her.  Sure, she’d be dead, but at least she wouldn’t have had to use an icky firearm.

This kid deserves a medal.

A 19-year-old man with a history of mental illness was arrested and charged yesterday in the beating and burning death of a burglar trying to break into a Northwest Baltimore home, police said. 

The incident began about 11 p.m. Sunday, when Dwayne Gibson spotted a man in his grandmother’s back yard in the 3900 block of Grantley Road, police said. 

Gibson is accused of hitting the 43-year-old man on the head repeatedly with a crowbar, police said. As the victim lay on concrete steps leading to the basement, police said, Gibson allegedly poured a flammable liquid on the man and lit a match. 

The man was quickly engulfed in flames and suffered burns over 90 percent of his body.

Note to burglars: to avoid breaking into the house of an old woman with a mentally disturbed grandson, who subsequently beats you and sets you on fire, consider getting a real job.

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

The other day I blogged on the controversy at the White House about the alleged burning of a CIA agent’s cover.  I wrote, “There can be no equivocation here: if these people knowingly burned a CIA officer’s cover they need to be arrested immediately and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.  Anything less than full disclosure and cooperation on the part of the Bush administration is completely unacceptable.” Well, Drudge is reporting some disturbing news.  Apparently she had been an undercover intelligence agent for thirty years.  And he has a former CIA employee on the record.

I say this as a registered Republican. I am on record giving contributions to the George Bush campaign. This is not about partisan politics. This is about a betrayal, a political smear, of an individual who had no relevance to the story. Publishing her name in that story added nothing to it because the entire intent was, correctly as Amb. Wilson noted, to intimidate, to suggest taht there was some impropriety that somehow his wife was in a decision-making position to influence his ability to go over and savage a stupid policy, an erroneous policy, and frankly what was a false policy of suggesting that there was nuclear material in Iraq that required this war. This was about a political attack. To pretend it was something else, to get into this parsing of words.

I tell you, it sickens me to be a Republican to see this.

I don’t know all the specifics yet, and I’m still having trouble seeing the motivation here.  But this really disturbs me.  Bush needs to find out the truth here, and if someone did indeed intentionally burn this woman’s cover, they need to be publicly disavowed by the administration, prosecuted, and convicted.  I don’t see Bush himself giving the order to do this, but I can see Karl Rove or someone else being behind it.  No matter who it is, they need to be hung out to dry.  Politics is one thing, but if these allegations to turn out to be true, I place the intentional burning of an American CIA employee as being damn near tantamount to treason.

Not only does this make me sick as a Republican, it makes me sick as an American.

Where the hell do the Republicans find lunatics like this?

John Stoos, a key advisor in the gubernatorial campaign of Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock, has a dream:

“I dream of the day when a strong Christian majority is elected to a city council somewhere in America. This council could then pass a resolution declaring that abortion is now illegal in their city,” Stoos wrote this year in a conservative religious journal.

“Of course, the city attorney would quickly tell them that they cannot do this, at which point he should be fired and a good pro-life attorney should be hired to replace him,” he continued. “Next up would be the police chief, who would likely say he could not enforce such a law. Again, the council should accept his letter of resignation and hire someone who would “

Over the past two decades, Stoos has been an activist on issues from abortion to gun control to the primacy of the English language in the United States. Many of his views are reflected in essays in the Chalcedon Report, published by a conservative religious organization in Calaveras County. The group envisions a society in which biblical law is the law of the land.

Even accounting for the expected degree of hyperbole in the Times’ writing, this is the type of thing that prevents Republicans from getting elected, especially here in California.  To his credit, McClintock spoke out against Stoos’ opinions.

McClintock, who employs Stoos as his deputy campaign manager and until recently paid him $93,720 a year as his top legislative analyst, said in an interview last week that he was unaware of Stoos’ writings.

“I completely disagree,” McClintock said, with Stoos’ vision of the anti-abortion city council and “completely reject” the idea that the nation’s modern laws should be biblical.

“I was not aware that he was writing for this journal and I’m upset to find that out,” McClintock said Friday in an interview at the Sacramento airport, between campaign appearances. “That disturbs me greatly.”

It’s hard enough trying to convince swing voters that the GOP is not a party of fundamentalist crazies without someone like McClintock hiring one as his political advisor.  On this subject, Andrew Sullivan writes, “Stoos, like many such extremists, doesn’t much care for non-Christian Jews or gays. McClintock hasn’t fired him. Where does the Republican party find these kooks? And why hasn’t there been a bigger stnk about this? Or does everyone know that California’s GOP has become infiltrated with theocratic nut-jobs? One more reason to vote for Arnold. You cannot trust the Republican social right.” Sad but true.