Christian Leftist

Crazy Old ‘Uncle Pat’ has outdone himself again.

A brief rundown on the shenanigans: Pat Buchanan has been calling for Republicans to actually be more EXPLICIT in their bigotry against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. He wants them to call her an “affirmative action candidate” and shoot her down simply because she’s a Latina, because being the first Latina nominee, there’s no way she could actually be qualified for the post. /sarcasm

Rachel Maddow, whom I adore, btw, had a cringeworthy, high blood-pressure inducing discussion with him two days ago, in which he railed against the “reverse discrimination” against hard=working, middle class white men. Oh, the poor darlings! *sniffle*

When she asked Buchanan why 108 out of 110 of the last Supreme Court justices were white men, he responded thusly:

I think white men were 100% of the people who wrote the constitution, 100% of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close 100% of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country basically built by white folks.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that those of you reading this post are intelligent enough to know that there are many reasons why white men have made many of the decisions that shaped this country, a laundry list of them also being TERRIBLE, INHUMANE, and UNBELIEVABLY STUPID ones, and a lot of those reasons lie in their racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and various other forms of bigotry and the persecution and silencing of the members of the oppressed groups thereof. I won’t go into detail here.

However, if you want to view Rachel giving Pat a nice smackdown after he shows his ugliness for a good ten minutes, then here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAiN3DBchFU

I’m warning you, this is one of the most infuriating TV segments I’ve seen in a long time, and after watching two years of cable news coverage and YouTube clips on the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, that is saying something.

The choice seems pretty obvious to me, but we all know what Bush does when a vast majority of Americans voice their opposition to his decisions: whatever the hell he wants. The Senate has enough votes to override his veto, but the House doesn’t, so the Democratic leadership has pushed back the deadline for an override for two weeks while they try to scrape together 15 more votes from Republicans. Good luck with that.

The only reason we have out of control spending is because the Bush administration spends it on ALL OF THE WRONG PROGRAMS. It is a sham and a travesty that we are the only developed country ON EARTH that doesn’t have government-funded national health care. Yes, Mr. Bush, these children are uninsured, even if they’re middle class citizens. Private health care is too expensive.

No, I don’t think that asking the nation to pay for everyone’s health care costs is a bad idea. We make taxpayers inhale the foul air of smokers, poison ourselves with pollution from selfish suburban families with inefficient SUVs, and pay for bombs and bullets in the Middle East. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect something back.

Reuters covers the Bush veto on health care

Not very. Still, any scent of defeat for the Republicans, be it a whiff of stale roadkill or the rank, vile stench of rotting flesh ‘morality’ has them back at the drawing board. This time, their plan is downright ugly: usurping electoral votes through a referendum that is likely to pass unless we educate the citizens of California.

Several conservative lawyers and lawmakers in the Sunshine State have introduced the so-called “Presidential Election Reform Act,” which would give electoral votes to whatever candidate wins an individual county. That would rob California’s Democratic power of about 20 electoral votes and probably cost the Democratic candidate the presidential election.

The citizens of California don’t seem to understand the law because the conservatives haven’t bothered to explain it to them, probably because doing so would mean its demise at the polls. (Well, duh!)

I’m all for overhauling the Constitution and throwing out the Electoral College. A national vote is the fairest way to decide the president. But piecemeal manipulation of a system that is only convenient when it works for one party is deplorable.

Please spread the word about this nefarious state proposal.

We all knew it was only a matter of time before that whole “we’re-the-government-and-we-can-send-out-letters-and-tell-you-to-turn-over-private-information-on-your-clients-and-you-can’t-say-anything-because-of-national-security-risks” thing blew up like a spark in sawdust. Of course, I didn’t think it would take this long for some sane judge to finally bring the hammer down on a ridiculous provision that makes every U.S. citizen guilty until proven innocent, but better late than never.

Yesterday, Victor Marrero of the Federal District Court in Manhattan struck down the provision in the USA PATRIOT ACT that allowed the F.B.I. to demand civil and financial records from any business or institution with the mailing of a so-called “national security letter.” Some 143,000 of these “national security letters” went out to retailers, local governments and police stations, communications networks and institutions of learning between 2001 and 2006, many of which appear to have been issued under dubious pretenses.

This is a terrific, if possibly short-lived, victory for the ACLU against the Bush administration. But underneath all of the lawsuits, the threats, the rhetoric and the fine print, one essential truth has come to light:

Don’t f*** with librarians.

Justice is served.

Last week, the Bethel Park H.S. administration decided to expel one of its students after someone reported an airsoft gun in the trunk of his car. That’s right,: not in the school; in the trunk of his CAR.

Airsoft guns shoot plastic BBs. They are painful if you get hit on bare skin, but they rarely cause seriously injury outside of freak accidents and random bouts of idiocy by people whose parents never should have allowed them slingshots, much less air-powered toy weapons.

It’s the height of idiocy to kick out a kid because of an after-school hobby. The details aren’t important as long as he didn’t shoot at anyone in the school.

My brother owns a ton of airsoft guns and plays with them all of the time. He’s also one of the best-behaved, non-violent people you will ever meet. I can only imagine what a stink the local chapter of the ACLU could make of this case if it tried. Doesn’t the board have better things to do than to comb through cars in a parking lot looking for reasons to punish its students?