Ninja Monkie Bacchanal

I don’t even know where to begin with this:

It appears the tolerance level of her neighbors was shorter than her dress. When 20-year old Kymberly Clem went to the Richmond Mall* wearing a dress she had bought there the day before, she apparently seemed too attractive to be allowed to stay. She was approached by a security guard who humiliated her and forced her to leave because he said that several women had complained to him that their husbands were staring at her.

No, the dress pictured is not the dress in question. I needed a dress image and I like that on. You can buy it here I think.

Ummm...From Senator McCain’s session at Saddleback Church this weekend:

McCain’s ... assertion that he would not have nominated any of the Supreme Court’s four liberal judges had social conservatives breathing sighs of relief. “I will be a pro-life president, and this presidency will have pro-life policies.” McCain said, to cheers from the audience.

Wait a minute...He voted to confirm three of those four. Ginsburg, Souter, and Breyer (Stevens was on the bench before the senator from Arizona was in the US Senate). What gives?

Senator McCain’s remarks at the VFW Convention yesterday:

With less than three months to go before the election, a lot of people are still trying to square Senator Obama’s varying positions on the surge in Iraq. First, he opposed the surge and confidently predicted that it would fail. Then he tried to prevent funding for the troops who carried out the surge. Not content to merely predict failure in Iraq, my opponent tried to legislate failure. This was back when supporting America’s efforts in Iraq entailed serious political risk. It was a clarifying moment. It was a moment when political self- interest and the national interest parted ways. For my part, with so much in the balance, it was an easy call. As I said at the time, I would rather lose an election than lose a war.

Senator Obama’s remarks today at the VFW Convention:

If we think that we can secure our country by just talking tough without acting tough and smart, then we will misunderstand this moment and miss its opportunities. If we think that we can use the same partisan playbook where we just challenge our opponent’s patriotism to win an election, then the American people will lose. The times are too serious for this kind of politics. The calamity left behind by the last eight years is too great. So let me begin by offering my judgment about what we’ve done, where we are, and where we need to go.

I almost peed myself reading this. The quote below is from #4:

Now there’s something a woman never forgets. You’re getting busy with your husband’s brother, he splooges on the ground, and promptly gets slain by the LORD. Talk about awkward.

Admit it. You don’t know what the 19th Amendment to the Constitution is about, do you? Sure, you know about the 18th (which outlawed alcohol) and the 21st (which gave it back - you lushes!), so why not the 19th? For my fairer-sex readers, it gave women the right to vote. It was ratified 88 years ago today. So go celebrate!

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

I think everyone should read this article before they vote this November.

[T]he moment I walked into the soup kitchen—the moment I acknowledged, publicly, that I could not provide food for myself or my children (which is why the soup kitchen is so much more difficult than the food bank)—is the moment that my ability to believe in the politics of this country was forever altered. I know why poor people have historically low voter-turnout rates. If you vote, you acknowledge that you believe in the system. And to believe in the system when you’re at the very bottom, when you’ve watched the chrome and ink-black SUVs drive by while you’re packing your own beater with dried beans and lentils, to believe at that point is fucking painful.

For the record, I am predicting that Senator Obama picks Senator Joe Biden of Delaware. 

From MSNBC.com/WaPo:

The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.

The proposed changes would revise the federal government’s rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation’s 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants.

Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes issued and planned by the Bush administration in its waning months. They include a recent executive order that guides the reorganization of federal spy agencies and a pending Justice Department overhaul of FBI procedures for gathering intelligence and investigating terrorism cases within U.S. borders

I am not even sure I know what to say about this. 

Ok, here is the setup: A local pastor gives an opening statement at a hearing of a committee of the California State Senate. Very polite and informative it is. He is interrupted by a nice piece of vulgarity. From whom you ask? A California State Senator. Senator Pat Wiggins. Don’t believe me? Watch…

Love All, Trust a Few. Do Wrong to No One - William Shakespeare

From his column in today’s Swampland Blog:

there is no excuse for what the McCain campaign is doing on the “putting America first” front. There is no way to balance it, or explain it other than as evidence of a severe character defect on the part of the candidate who allows it to be used. There is a straight up argument to be had in this election: Mcain has a vastly different view from Obama about foreign policy, taxation, health care, government action...you name it. He has lots of experience; it is always shocking to remember that this time four years ago, Barack Obama was still in the Illinois State Legislature. Apparently, though, McCain isn’t confident that conservative policies and personal experience can win, given the ruinous state of the nation after eight years of Bush. So he has made a fateful decision: he has personally impugned Obama’s patriotism and allows his surrogates to continue to do that. By doing so, he has allied himself with those who smeared him, his wife, his daughter Bridget, in 2000. Those tactics won George Bush a primary--and a nomination. But they proved a form of slow-acting spiritual poison, rotting the core of the Bush presidency. We’ll see if the public decides to acquiesce in sleaze in 2008, and what sort of presidency--what sort of country--that will produce.

Amen.

Quick question: Who is more of a federalist? Senator McCain or Senator Obama?  A quick search of Google should indicate their positions, right? According to Senator McCain’s campaign website:

John McCain believes that one of the greatest threats to our liberty and the Constitutional framework that safeguards our freedoms are willful judges who usurp the role of the people and their representatives and legislate from the bench. As President, John McCain will nominate judges who understand that their role is to faithfully apply the law as written, not impose their opinions through judicial fiat.

Sounds like he is advocating enumerated powers to me. According to this article in the Virginia Federalist, Obama is no fan of federalism.

So why am I asking?  This article in reason magazine:

When Owen Beck was 17, doctors amputated his right leg to stop the spread of bone cancer. His parents, desperate to find a drug that would relieve their son’s excruciating phantom limb pain, brought him to Charlie Lynch’s medical marijuana dispensary in Morro Bay, California, carrying a recommendation from a Stanford University oncologist. The marijuana not only eased the pain but also alleviated the nausea caused by chemotherapy.

Called to testify as a character witness in Lynch’s federal marijuana trial, Beck did not get far. When he mentioned his cancer, U.S. District Judge George Wu cut him off and sent him packing. Wu decreed there would be no talk of the symptoms marijuana relieves, no references to California’s recognition of marijuana as a medicine, no mention even of the phrase medical marijuana in front of the jury.

In short, there would be no explanation of how Lynch came to operate what prosecutors called a “marijuana store” in downtown Morro Bay for a year, openly serving more than 2,000 customers. Under federal law, which forbids marijuana use for any purpose, all that was irrelevant. So it’s hardly surprising that Lynch was convicted last week of five marijuana-related offenses that carry penalties of five to 85 years in prison.

The article points out that Senator McCain supports the raids and Senator Obama says he would shut them down. What we have here is a state law in California that was passed by the duly elected members of that legislature. Now the federal government comes in and prosecutes people for following that law. It is the very OPPOSITE of federalism. How can Senator McCain justify his support for federalism then? Only when it is convenient for him? Someone should ask him I think. 

BTW, it is not very often you will find me agreeing with Justice Clarence Thomas (when the US Supreme Court gave the federal government the ability to conduct these raids in 2005), but in this case I do:

Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything--and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.