Small-Penised TSA Employee Jailed

Having a minuscule schlong is not an arrestable offense AFAIK, but criminal assault is.

A 44-year-old Transportation Safety Administration employee by the name of Rolando Negrin was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly beating up a co-worker. The perp worked as a screener at Miami International Airport. During a training session awhile back, he passed through one of those newfangled whole-body imaging machines, which apparently revealed a rather small schween.

The man’s co-workers have been giving him the business about the size of his dick ever since, and by Wednesday he’d apparently had enough. He’s accused of beating one of the alleged harassers with … um … a baton.

So in very short order this guy has gone from being the butt of jokes among TSA employees working Concourse J at Miami International Airport to being the butt of jokes among everyone, everywhere. Way to go, champ.

It’s Kagan

It’s not official yet, but insiders are saying that Elena Kagan, a Harvard lawprof currently serving as the U.S. Solicitor General, is President Obama’s nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.  The move is entirely expected, since Kagan has been the frontrunner since Stevens announced his retirement.

It remains to be seen whether Kagan’s comment that the Senate confirmation process has become a “vapid  and hollow charade” will come back to bite her on the ass.  I suppose she could just say that she was speaking not of the process but rather of Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Jeff Sessions, whose bona-fides as a vapid and hollow charade are beyond question.

Sen. Sessions tells us what we Americans want in a Supreme Court justice here. Turns out that what we really want is someone “committed to the text of the Constitution and the vision of the Founding Fathers” instead of “an activist who will shed a judge’s neutral, constitutional role to push a progressive policy agenda.”

We’re also “looking for judges in the mold of Chief Justice John Roberts, not Justice John Paul Stevens.” That’s good to know. Until reading that, I might have believed that I’d prefer a principled conservative jurist to a political hack. Silly me.

Nummy Num — Chocolate Milk!

Let it never be said that Republicans have a monopoly on flaming idiocy. Congressman Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) flew over the massive oil spill in Gulf of Mexico this weekend and declared it “not as bad as I thought.” In fact, the spill kinda looks like “chocolate milk” and t’ain’t no big deal because it’s breaking up all by itself.

Whew, that’s a relief!

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, the well at issue continues dumping 200,000 gallons of oil per day into the Gulf and the spill has tripled in size over the past  three days.

Az. Governor: If You Love Terrorism So Much, Why Don’t You Marry It?

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer took to Fox News the other day to offer a totally unassailable rationale for her decision to sign that overtly racist legislation:

“You know Arizona has been under terrorist attacks, if you will, with all of this illegal immigration that has been taking place on our very, very porous border,” Brewer said.

There you have it. Those poverty-stricken Mexicans risking life and limb crossing the border in hope of finding something that resembles a better life? Terrorist invaders is what they are.

As our old friend Illusory Tenant correctly points out, the U.S. Constitution places the job of protecting states from invasion squarely in the hands of Congress. The Justice Department, private attorneys, civil rights organizations and any others that might ultimately challenge the law in court would no doubt have figured out that angle on their own. Even so, it was awfully decent of Gov. Brewer to draw a big red circle around it.

Shrill, Baby, Shrill

Here’s my favorite lunatic Republican conspiracy theory (from the past couple of days, at least). According to conservative icon and morbidly obese OxyContin junkie Rush Limbaugh, the current environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico might just be the work of “environmentalist whackos.” That’s right — maybe, just maybe, said whackos blew up that offshore drilling rig, thereby causing an oil spill that may well end up worse than the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989,  to prevent us from achieving energy independence by making “Drill, Baby, Drill” our actual, literal public policy instead of just an idiotic Republican slogan.

Didn’t Fat Boy say he’d leave the country if “Obamacare” passed?

Palin-Beck in 2012?

Hey, don’t blame me. It’s Sarah Palin’s suggestion, apparently. The fact that such lunacy got so much as a nod from CBS News, much less the full-blown article it actually got, is itself a telling comment on the state of the media, the contemporary Republican party, or both.

H/T – The Legal Satyricon

Speaking of taking it up the ass …

… our old friend Ted Haggard in back in the news. No stranger to this blog, Haggard was the golden boy of the lunatic Christian right until three years ago when his career as a megachurch pastor and de facto Bush administration advisor disappeared in a blizzard of methamphetamine and cockmeat.

After a lengthy sojourn during which he solicited donations to pay his living expenses while he pursued a counseling degree, using a convicted sex criminal as his collection agent, Ted is back in his $700,000 house in Colorado Springs. He and his lovely wife Gayle hosted a big ol’ prayer meetin’ on Thursday night.  In true hebephrenic Christian conservative style, Haggard observed:

“For the people who come tonight, that means they believe in the resurrection in me,” he told reporters before the start of the meeting Thursday night. “Because I died. I was buried.”

So, yeah. Ted is now zombified. Or something. And that’s a good thing for some reason. Maybe he’s saying that the “good” part of him is still alive; only the part that was into penis and meth died. Or maybe not. If anyone knows what Ted is trying to say here, please be so kind as to pass it along.

Haggard also wants us to know that he was never, ever a hateful anti-gay preacher. All that stuff about gays being an abomination was love, you see.

In addition, going through that silly ol’ gay sex scandal “was good for me as a heterosexual evangelical Christian, father of five, 30-year husband of Gayle.” As a result of all those Christians THINKING Ted was gay and hating him for it, his “compassion for the homosexual community has gone up incredibly.” Accepting multiple dicks in his mouth and anus no doubt helped with the compassion thing as well.

Anyhow, Ted says he’s looking to make a “comeback,” and judging from the fifty or so cars parked outside his house for the prayer meeting he’s well on his way. A fundy and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place, and rarely stay together very long. In the final analysis, that’s a fundamental truth Haggard can really believe in. And exploit the hell out of.

Judge McConnell leaving 10th Circuit

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit announced yesterday that Judge Michael McConnell is resigning effective August 31. After seven years on the bench Judge McConnell is returning to academia. He’s going to be a law professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at the prestigious Stanford Law School.

Judge McConnell has served with distinction since being appointed to the Tenth Circuit in 2002 by President George W. Pencilcock. Here’s wishing Judge McConnell all the best in his new endeavor.

The Tenth Circuit’s official announcement, along with the resignation letter Judge McConnell send to President Obama, is available here (pdf, 4 pages).

Palin’s bestest buddy guilty as hell

Home Sweet Home

A federal jury found Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Of Course) guilty of all seven false statement charges against him. Essentially, filthy rich oilman Bill Allen and his cronies gave Sen. Stevens $250,000 in gifts and home improvements. Stevens failed to disclose the gifts on the financial disclosure form he’s required to file with the Senate. That nondisclosure was basis of the criminal charges.

Stevens is a cantankerous old bastard. At 84 years of age, he’s been serving in the Senate since 1968, longer than any other Republican. Like a fractious old hospital patient who’s pissed off that the pill lady is late, Stevens is putting up quite a fuss. He’s not resigning and his reelection campaign continues. The conviction, he says, was the result of prosecutorial misconduct rather than his own. Seems that Senate rules don’t prohibit a convicted felon from serving, and it would take 2/3 supermajority vote to throw him out.

Alaska governor, young earth creationist, inveterate liar and race-baiter Sarah Palin, once Sen. Stevens’ bosom buddy, was quick to shove the old fucker under the bus while at the same time tooting her own horn:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, also appeared to distance herself from her home-state lawmaker, using the conviction as an opportunity to trumpet her own anti-corruption credentials.

Palin, who has clashed with Washington’s Republican congressional delegation in the past, said in a statement that the verdict “shines a light on the corrupting influence of the big oil service company that was allowed to control too much of our state. It was part of the culture of corruption that I was elected to fight. And that fight must always move forward, regardless of party or seniority or even past service.”

Palin concluded: “I’m confident Sen. Stevens will do what’s right for the people of Alaska.”

But it wasn’t always this way. In happier times, before Stevens’ indictment and Palin’s selection as totally insane John McCain’s running made, i.e., early July of this very year, Palin had “great respect” for Stevens. Let’s remember the good times, shall we?

We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun

“Where is that marvelous ape?”*

The whackosphere has been all abuzz lately over the heart-rending tale of 20-year-old Ashley Todd, a supporter of John “Walnuts” McCain. Yesterday Ms. Todd told police that she she took money from an ATM in the lilywhite Bloomfield area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. No sooner did she clear the ATM’s camera when she was attacked at knifepoint by a gargantuan Negro and robbed of $60. The assailant was about to take his ill-gotten booty and leave when he saw a McCain bumper sticker on poor Ashley’s car.

At that point the attacker became enraged, as extraordinarily large Negroes are wont to do, and smacked Ashley around, giving her a black eye. The attacker also carved a backward “B” into the poor child’s face. See the photos at the above link.

If the story seems a bit suspicious to you, you’ll understand how the Pittsburgh police felt. The cops asked Ms. Todd to submit to a polygraph exam because her story didn’t sync particularly well with data at the alleged crime scene. For instance, had Ashley just gotten money from the ATM as she said, the machine’s camera would have recorded her. Oops. No such footage.

Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, describing Adam Smith’s vision of capitalism, famously said that the Invisible Hand is invisible because it isn’t really there.

In much the same way, Ms. Todd’s Invisible Giant Negro is invisible because he isn’t really there either. Ms. Todd, a McCain campaign worker, has admitted to fabricating the whole story.

So what does this development portend? Fox News Executive Vice President John Moody had this to say yesterday when the fake story first came to light:

If Ms. Todd’s allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.

If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting. (Emphasis added.)

Here’s hoping Mr. Moody is correct. McCain and his lunatic supporters go further beyond the pale every day. Enough is enough already.

You can follow the whole sordid mess from beginning to end here, a WordPress blog devoted exclusively to debunking Ms. Todd’s horrific racist bullshit.

Update: The Hillbuzz blog, the first link in this entry, has taken down its story about the nonexistent attack on Ms. Todd. “No egg on our faces! It never happened! lalalalalalala!” The second link in the entry is another PUMA site. That link still takes you to a breathlessly outraged story about the nonattack. Enjoy it while you still can.

More: Word around the campfire has it that media coverage of the fake story originated with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The Trib is owned by Richard Mellon Scaife, whose money is behind pretty much all the most odious and vile Republican smear campaigns.

More: No indication yet that the McCain campaign was actually behind this fraud, but they certainly did their best to throw gasoline on the fire:

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain’s Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, “You’re with the McCain campaign? I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the “B” stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.

. . .

The McCain spokesperson’s claims — which came in the midst of extraordinary and heated conversations late yesterday between the McCain campaign, local TV stations, and the Obama camp, as the early version of the story rocketed around the political world — is significant because it reveals a McCain official pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time.

More: Ashley Todd being hauled off to jail. Not only has she murdered the McCain campaign, per Fox Executive VP John Moody, but she’s set the crazy fat chicks rights movement back decades.

This is it, I promise (10/26/08): A Very Ashley Halloween

*Kudos to my sweetie for the title.