Ninja Monkie Bacchanal

Nice. Nothing like fair and balanced.

Police in a Boston suburb are investigating threatening messages sent to members of the Arlington School Committee, following what school officials said were incorrect reports by Fox News that they had banned the Pledge of Allegiance in Arlington schools.

According to the Boston Globe, a police spokesperson described the messages as “offensive and hateful and potentially criminal” and said that some of them were anti-Semitic.

LMAO!

Beware! Nancy Pelosi is a colossal tax-dollar-engorged monster who ravages small towns and must be brought down by Republican ray guns.

Pardon me, but what reality is Senator Sessions living in?

With all the discussion at Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearing of the recent Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case, many Americans are probably in need of an easy primer to understand the decision, which holds that corporations, like individual citizens, can make unlimited political contributions. According to Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the top Republican on the Judiciary committee, it’s just like the time the Supreme Court desegregated public schools!

Last night, elaborating on his criticisms of former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Sessions made the unusual comparison of Citizens United v. FEC to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

How is this man elected to be the Commonwealth of Virginia’s highest legal officer?!?

“State universities are not free to create any specially protected classes other than those dictated by the General Assembly,” Cuccinelli said. “Your question is, why is that not a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Frankly, the category of sexual orientation would never have been contemplated by the people who wrote and voted for and passed the 14th Amendment,” he said.

“There are judges who think these things ‘evolve,’ is the word they like to use,” Cuccinelli said, but the correct approach to making such a change would be a constitutional amendment, he said.

It appears financial reform is finally coming. This is a complicated subject that I can’t do real justice to here. But google the news and you will find literally and ass-ton of material about it. However, for a quick run-down of what is in the final version of the conference bill, check out this post from ThinkProgress. It also includes a comparison of the final version with the Senate and House versions.

Sometimes, I wonder how the largest state in the lower 48 functions in the modern world:

[T]he state’s Republican party has voted on a platform [PDF link] by which their candidates will stand, and it includes the reinstatement of laws banning sodomy: otherwise known as oral and anal sex.

The party’s platform also seeks to make gay marriage a felony offense, which may be confusing to most given that the state does not sanction or recognize same sex marriages, meaning any such ceremony conducted does not bear the weight of law. Whether this means the GOP wants gay couples married in other states to be pursued through Texas as dangerous criminals, the party did not specify.

In addition to this, the Texas GOP seeks to end the state’s lottery, which provides millions in funding to public education; restrict citizenship to children born in the United States whose parents are citizens; end federal sponsorship of pre-kindergarten schools; impose a jail sentence on any illegal immigrant in the state; shut down all day-labor centers; cut off all bilingual education after a student’s fourth year in a U.S. public school; legalize corporal punishment in public schools; mandate that evolution and global warming be “taught as challengeable scientific theory”; and demand that Congress evict the United Nations from U.S. soil and end American membership in the global body.

Interesting. Seems like a logical question to ask to me.

As closing arguments ended Wednesday in the Northern California District Court trial on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the state’s voter-approved ban of same-sex marriage — a case that’s likely headed to the Supreme Court — the judge in the case wanted to know why defenders of the initiative put up only one witness during the first phase of the trial, reports the San Jose Mercury News.

Well, duh.

Linux has a powerful booster in the never-ending debate over what OS is safest from malware and spyware: Dell.

Dell’s Ubuntu site has a “Top 10” list of “things you should know about Ubuntu.” No. 6? Ubuntu is safer than Microsoft Windows

From Ezra Klein at Newsweek:

Most of us would call the BP spill a tragedy. Ask an economist what it is, however, and you’ll hear a different word: “externality.” An externality is a cost that’s not paid by the people using the good that creates the cost. The spill is going to cost fishermen, it’s going to cost the ecosystem, and it’s going to cost the area’s tourism industry. But that cost won’t be paid by the people who wanted that oil for their cars. It’ll fall on taxpayers, on Gulf Coast residents who need a new job, on the poisoned wildlife.

This is both sad and despicable.

How many headstones at Arlington National Cemetery stand above the wrong graves? How many graves have no headstone at all? The Army Thursday identified more than 200 cases like this, but the reality is that many, many thousands of headstones at Arlington may have the wrong names on them and a similar number of graves may have no headstone whatsoever.

Um...wow.

Professor Peter Lutz is listed in BP’s 2009 response plan for a Gulf of Mexico oil spill as a national wildlife expert. He died in 2005. Under the heading “sensitive biological resources,” the plan lists marine mammals including walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals. None lives anywhere near the Gulf.

The names and phone numbers of several Texas A&M University marine life specialists are wrong. So are the numbers for marine mammal stranding network offices in Louisiana and Florida, which are no longer in service.

From today’s Washington Independent:

“My problem is with immigration,” said a caller named Dana. “Except I wouldn’t even call it immigration, I’d call it an invasion.”

Dana went on to say that the present situation qualifies as such because people are coming here from other countries and simply taking advantage of U.S. social programs and taking jobs from Americans.

“I agree with you,” Foxx said.

We’ve heard from Congresswoman Foxx before of course. But who is this woman exactly? Let’s see what the Inter-tubes tell us. According to Wikipedia, her legislative record includes the following tid bits:

A)In April 2009, Foxx expressed opposition to the Matthew Shepard Act, claiming that the murder of Matthew Shepard was not a hate crime. While debating the act at the House of Representatives, which was attended by Matthew Shepard’s mother, she called the incident a “very unfortunate incident” but also “we know that that young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery. It wasn’t because he was gay.” She continued that “It’s really a hoax that that continues to be used as an excuse for passing hate crimes bills."[7]

B) In September 2005, Foxx was one of 11 members of Congress to vote[3] against the $51 billion aid package to victims of Hurricane Katrina.

C) She was also one of only 33 Republicans to vote against the extension of the Voting Rights Act in July 2006.

WaPo has a list of all of her key votes since she took office as well.