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Monday, June 16, 2008 1:48 PM

Another Letter The NY Times Wouldn't Print

June 12, 2008

To the Editor,

I read Adam Liptak's latest "American Exception" article ("Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech" ) with great interest, but can only hope that he will soon tackle another "American exception": Sexual speech. Only this time, the "exception" will be that America targets sexual speech for repression and prosecution in a way that is unheard of in many areas of the world.

In recent years, the Bush administration has begun more prosecutions of adult video companies and their Websites than the country has seen for 15 years, and with the recent indictment of Evil Angel Productions, the trend seems to be to prosecute more and more "mainstream" adult content. (Although, considering the religious bent of the Justice Department for the past eight years, perhaps Attorney General Mukasey simply didn't like this company's name.)

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It is a sad commentary on free speech in this country that if that speech is of a sexual nature, it can be suppressed on the airwaves, its sellers zoned into industrial areas of cities, specially taxed for what they sell and their hours of operation curtailed, and the speech's creators can be put in prison for five years or more and fined hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on how many examples of such speech the government decides to put on trial.

I must note one glaring error in Mr. Liptak's article: "The First Amendment is not, of course, absolute," he writes. This is clearly incorrect. (My English professor once told our class that we should always be wary of statements containing the phrase, "of course," since its use is meant to cut off debate by declaring its referent off-limits from analysis.) Regarding speech, the First Amendment states, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Nowhere else in that document is the word "speech" or the phrase "no law" qualified in any way.

Mr. Liptak rightly notes that, "The Supreme Court has said that the government may ban fighting words or threats," but surely that only makes the problem clearer. The way in which Americans change their Constitution is by amendment, not by Supreme Court edict. Conservatives, who constantly rail against "judicial activism," should be the first to recognize this problem.

But, many would say at this point, what about the laws against defamation, plagiarism and the so-called "fighting words"? I personally agree that some of those forms of speech should be banned - but there is a right way and a wrong way to do so. The wrong way is for the Supreme Court to simply declare this or that form of speech to be an "exception" to the First Amendment, although no such "exceptions" appear in the Constitution. If anything, the Ninth Amendment makes it clear that Americans have more rights than are enumerated in the Constitution, not fewer.

The right way to create an exception to free speech is by an amendment approved by two-thirds of both houses of Congress, and by three-quarters of the state legislatures. There can be little doubt that were amendments prohibiting, say, false advertising, defamation, plagiarism, or possibly even "fighting words" put before state legislatures, they would pass overwhelmingly. The same cannot be said for sexual speech - which may be why the Supreme Court took it upon itself to read such suppression into the First Amendment.

Mr. Liptak quotes Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' dissent in Abrams v. United States, "The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." It would seem, with sexual speech accounting for over $10 billion in annual retail sales in the United States - more than the sales of movie tickets, of music CDs and downloads, and of major league sports tickets - that it has passed Justice Holmes' test.

"I think that we should be eternally vigilant," Mr. Liptak continues quoting the Justice, "against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death."

Indeed! And, the Justice might have added, "or life," which, for humans, does not exist without sex.

Regards,

Mark Kernes, Sr. Editor

AVN Media Networks

(For the past 17 years, Mark Kernes has covered sexual legal issues for Adult Video News, the trade magazine of the adult video industry.)

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Friday, May 9, 2008 11:00 AM

Response To Review Of Nina...

Mr. Kernes...

I want to say that I am a really long-time fan of yours and have been since before you left Philadelphia. I think that your political commentary is often some of the most important available.

So, here comes the "but" - I think you really, really, really missed on the Nina ... review on just about all counts. I'm not writing this in any mean way because I know that you are almost certainly overloaded.

Anyway, I would like to (briefly) make the following observations:

1. The film is NOT about Nina Hartley's career, nor about whether she remarried nor whether she still dances. It is only about her in the sense that she is an archtypical pro-sex feminist activist. So, your harping on the film being "out of date" with regards to her current career is kind of petty and way off target. What is perhaps truly amazing is that interviews done eight or nine years ago are even more timely today!

2. I think that (probably because of your workload) you watched the film on fast-forward and missed a great deal. For example, Barbara Nitke's commentary, far from being a "downer" actually points out (in a very funny and eloquent way) that there is little or no difference between the porn world and the corporate world (she works in both).She also talks extensively about her court case, which you seem to have completely missed.

Mr. Kernes, PLEASE give this film another look. It is an important political statement --one with which you will likely mostly agree-- and one that needs to be heard.

Lyssa

**

I replied:

Lyssa,

Thanks for your comments. I will give the movie another look, and like the first time, not on fast-forward.

Certainly, you make some valid points, but even Nina herself was surprised to hear that the disk was just now being released, with interview footage she gave so long ago. (I think her comment was, "Oh, God; was that when I was still married to Bobbi?!?") While I may have overemphasized the time element, I don't think it's unfair to expect that a statement on Nina's politics (or even on her role as an "archtypical pro-sex feminist activist") have some temporal connection to even the past couple of years, which none of the segments do. Moreover, although this may find a wide mainstream audience - and I hope it does - viewers familiar with porn will wonder why no current performers are featured or even mentioned. I've seen many documentaries that dealt with historical figures and non-contemporary events, but there's no sense that R.C. Hörsch knows how dated some of this material is.

I admit that this may partly be my problem; I am so steeped in current events that much of the politics covered in the movie struck me as "Been there, done that," and I suspect several of the participants would agree. Also, when I finish transcribing Nina's speech to California NOW from a couple of weeks ago, I think you'll see the vast difference between her feminist political expression now and what's expressed in this documentary.

Moreover, one thing I failed to mention in the review is that I don't think Nina ... is well-edited, in the sense that the interviews don't move smoothly from topic to topic; it has a very patchwork feel to it.

Finally, the documentary IS titled Nina ...; I don't think it's unreasonable to expect it to be mainly about her, her views and her life; hence the massage scenes, and the interview with her mother. If it's meant to be an examination of the state of feminism in porn, or the relation of porn and its performers to feminism in general, I don't think it succeeds as well on that level.

Again, thanks for your views, and if you don't mind, I will consider your email as a "letter of comment" on my article, and print it in AVN's letter column (omitting, of course, your email address).

**

Dear Mr. Kernes,

I am deeply honored that you have taken the time to write back to me!

I think you sort of nailed it when you described your perspective. To you, and the people in the adult industry, the content of the film is, of course, old-hat and dated. But for the billions who are not members of the choir, the material is truly eye-opening - and they are the intended audience. (The Nadine Strossen clip that you quoted is a prime example.)

Maybe think of it (the film) as an admittedly imperfect but important PR piece for your industry. The PC view of sex and pornography is rather [insert your list here but mine starts with schizoid] and the sex industry needs all of the help it can get. And I think that this film may really help. I mean, I showed my copy to my parents and they were truly amazed (in a very eye-opening and positive sense) by some of the things said in the film - things they have never heard from mainstream media and never will.

So that, for what it may be worth, is my suggestion: Present this film as a PR tool, something positive to show the people who don't get it.

As to the editing, I agree with what you said. The film is 80% talking heads and, from any standpoint, an organizational nightmare. But to me, it is what is being said that is most important.

Lyssa

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Wednesday, April 30, 2008 3:35 PM

Introducing The Lying Cocksucker Brigade

Following up on my call for the establishment of a "Factness Doctrine" here , I've decided to list some of the worst offenders of that doctrine: The jackasses I read and/or listen to on a daily basis, who wouldn't know (or at least pretend very well that they don't know) a fact if it sidled up, stuck its cock out (no offense, ladies) and came in their mouths. Since I'm writing off the top of my head here, the initial list may be somewhat short, but don't worry: I'll be adding to it. So, in no particular order:

Rush Limbaugh, radio talkshow host

Sean Hannity, radio and TV talkshow host

Bill O'Reilly, radio and TV talkshow host

Michael Medved, radio talkshow host

Glenn Beck, radio and TV talkshow host

G. Gordon Liddy, radio talkshow host

Laura Ingraham, radio talkshow host

Michael Savage, radio talkshow host

"Dr." Laura Schlessinger, radio talkshow host

John Zeigler, radio talkshow host

Dennis Prager, radio talkshow host

Bill Cunningham, radio talkshow host

Hugh Hewitt, radio talkshow host

Mark Levin, radio talkshow host

Bob Grant, radio talkshow host

Melanie Morgan, former radio talkshow host

Brit Hume, Fox "News"

Chris Wallace, Fox "News"

John Gibson, Fox "News"

Shepard Smith, Fox "News"

Greta Van Susteren, Fox "News"

Alan Colmes, Fox "News"

Tony Snow, CNN (formerly of Fox "News")

L. Brent Bozell, III, Media Research Council/Parents Television Council

Tim Graham, Media Research Center

Robert Novak, "journalist"

David Brooks, "journalist"

John Fund, "journalist"

Michelle Malkin, "journalist"

Ann Coulter, "journalist"

Fred Barnes, "journalist"

Stephen Hayes, "journalist"

William Kristol, "journalist"

John Gizzi, "journalist"

Charles Krauthammer, "journalist"

Tony Blankley, "journalist"

David Horowitz, author

Dinesh D'Souza, author

Al Regnery, publisher, Regnery Books

Joseph Farah, publisher, WorldNetDaily

Rev. Sun Myung Moon, publisher, Washington Times

Richard John Neuhaus, publisher, First Things

Pat Robertson, TV evangelist

John Hagee, TV evangelist

Don Wildmon, President of American Family Assn.

Tony Perkins, President of Family Research Council

Ken Blackwell, Family Research Council/former Sec'ty of State-Ohio

James Dobson, President of Focus on the Family

Phil Burress, Citizens for Community Values

Beverly LaHaye, founder of Concerned Women for America (CWfA)

Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America

Jan LaRue, attorney for various religio-conservative organizations

Peter LaBarbera, of CWfA's Culture & Family Institute

Robert H. Knight, of CWfA's Culture & Family Institute

Paul Weyrich, founder of Free Congress Foundation

Phyllis Schlafly, founder of Eagle Forum

Jay Sekulow, American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ)

Alan Sears, Alliance Defense Fund

Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel

Brad Dacus, Pacific Justice Institute

Kellyanne Conway, "pollster"

Frank Luntz, "pollster"

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.)

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Va.)

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.)

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.)

Fmr. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.)

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.)

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.)

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)

Fmr. Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.)

Fmr. Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.)

Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.)

Fmr. Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.)

Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform

John Bolton, Fmr. U.S. Ambassador to U.N.

Ben Stein, actor

Steven Baldwin, actor

And, of course ... Bush, Cheney and almost everyone who works for them

Anyway, these are the "founding members" of the Lying Cocksucker Brigade, or LCB, although they don't know it yet and wouldn't want to have anything to do with the Brigade even if they did — but be warned: Anyone who assumes as fact ONE SINGLE WORD from any of their mouths is doing him/herself a grave disservice.

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Thursday, March 13, 2008 1:30 PM

Spitzer Redux

 My recent article on why Eliot Spitzer shouldn't resign as Governor of New York engendered some criticism in a small newsgroup that I'm a member of. Here are some of their comments, anonymized to protect the innocent, and my responses:

Mr. A writes:

That's odd, I never have a bit of a problem living up to my personal standards, wonder why guys like Spitzer do.  Perhaps it's because the standards they say and the ones they actually practice (the REAL standards) aren't the same.  I always wonder about these guys in political office doing this stuff, have they learned nothing from all the people who have fallen for this?  Are their urges simply too powerful to ignore or do they just think they are not going to get caught?

I responded:

A bit of both, I think. Everybody (pretty much) likes sex, likes different kinds of sex with different people (whether or not they choose to actually do so), and most sex is still pretty private, since even though the media is fairly "sex-saturated," people rarely talk about *their own* sexual activities -- and if they do, they often lie about them. So I'm hardly surprised that a guy in a position of power with a shitload of money to fling around if he wants -- his family made it BIG in real estate, from what I understand -- would hire a prostitute at roughly $2500 per hour to do pretty much anything he wanted with her (including, if I read the FBI agent's affidavit correctly, sex without a condom) (which is still a Bad Thing). And he did it in D.C. -- no one's yet reported whether he was there on business, or just to fuck the woman -- where he figured he was at less risk of being caught, little realizing that the IRS had targeted the escort service because they'd been moving suspiciously large sums of money around.

And yeah, there's little doubt that the standards he claims to have had but violated and his *real* standards are two very different things.

Mr. A writes: 

Spitzer's problem is that his whole career is based on being the holier-than-thou, anti-corruption crime fighter.  This makes it as big a hypocrisy as the Pubs caught cheating, or being caught gay, after taking right wing stands on family values and passing judgement on others.

I responded:

From what I've read previously, Spitzer was a damned good Attorney General, and put a lot of bad people out of business and/or in jail. The trouble has ALWAYS been that sex is too easy to prosecute: The religious give you major kudos for doing it, and nobody but people like me suggest it's a bad idea, that the laws against prostitution are bad, and that his time could be better spent prosecuting even more crooked Wall Streeters. So for him, there was no down-side to busting escort services -- which often do have "organized crime" connections -- and besides, it was probably a good source of contacts for him for when he wanted to hire an escort himself.

**

Mr. A writes:

And, according to that article you sent out earlier, the religious right were out to get him too.  Which makes what he did incredibly stupid.

I responded:

For "stupid," substitute "human."

**

Mr. A writes:

<<Mr. B wrote:

 

Spitzer's Folly: How Could He Think He'd Get Away with It?

By Chris Kelly, Huffington Post

It took a rare combination of arrogance, amorality and shit for brains>>

Someone who agrees with me on Spitzer's stupidity.

I responded:

Someone (or two) who's accepted and reinforced the Christian view of sexual behavior.

**

Mr. C writes:

Mr. Spitzer did not seem to understand on Monday what he owed the

public - a strong argument for why he should be trusted again.

I responded:

HE PAID FOR HOOKERS! If that's the criterion for untrustworthiness, most of Washington and all the state legislatures had better think about getting out of town quick!

**

Mr. C writes:

Up to 80K for hookers? And apparently he patronized these brothels

while prosecuting others for doing so in connection with his

investigations.

Jesus. This guy has issues.

I responded:

Besides being horny? Plus, I wouldn't take the 80K as gospel (as they say).

**

Ms. D writes:

<< Mr. C wrote:

>

> Reports are he and his wife are not speaking.>>

 

Especially with the revelation that he liked to do it without condoms.

What a pig.

I responded:

Hey, in that price range, he'd be more likely to give something to the hooker than she would be to him.

**

Mr. A writes:

What I don't get is why these wives always appear with their husbands

at the podium when they are confessing.  If it was me I'd tell her she

was on her own with that one.

I responded:

You understand we're only minutes away from comparing Spitzer's situation with his wife, to Bill Clinton and his.

**

Mr. A writes:

It's so annoying to watch the right wingers respond to this, they are

like rabid dogs.  The Republican leader of New York's legislation is

calling for impeachment if he doesn't resign by Thursday, and yet no

pub called for Vitter's resignation and he didn't resign.  I thought

he should resign and Spitzer should too, and he did this morning.

I responded:

Sexual indiscretions are one of the LEAST reasons someone should resign from public office. Everybody has sex (except some fundies); everyone lies about it (even the fundies). While I think couples should be completely honest with each other about their sexual desires and history, our culture doesn't encourage or support that, and that's why situations like this occur. This is truly a "blame the culture" moment.

**

Mr. A writes:

Under his circumstances doing anything other than living a squeaky clean life is stupid.  To go as far as he did is amazingly stupid.  It's the equivalent of jumping off the Empire State building and expecting to bounce when you hit bottom, and it's pointless to complain because you don't like gravity.

I responded:

The "inevitability" of someone's career being over because they fucked a prostitute or two is clearly false; see David Vitter and Larry Craig. Spitzer's best course of action would simply be to soldier on, ignore the press reports, and sooner or later it would all go away ... or at least come to be accepted that he was a flawed person who was doing a relatively good job as governor (which he was). Even the fact that he was a hypocrite about the whole thing wouldn't matter in the long run, as long as he didn't try to bust NYC's burgeoning bordello/escort industry.

It's fascinating that you put political scandals and their *possible* outcomes in the same league with gravity.

BTW, I think Glenn Greenwald agrees with me:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/12/prostitution/index.htm

**

Mr. A writes:

It's not about the sex, it's about the hypocrisy.

I responded:

So your argument -- seriously! -- is that because he prosecuted escort agencies in the past, and now has been found to have been using one, he should resign??? The time to call for his resignation on that one was when, as Attorney General, he busted the escorts -- who have every moral (If not legal) right to practice their profession -- in the first place!

**

Mr. E writes:

Well hey, just because there are people that are out to get you doesn't

give you a get-out-of-jail-free card when you commit a crime.

I responded:

That would be a "crime" he hasn't yet been charged with.

And which, of course, shouldn't be a crime in any case.

**

Mr. B writes:

You can bet he won't share her bed again, if he ever has in the last few years.

I responded:

One thing I've learned about humans is, making bets about which way they'll jump sexually is a good way to lose money.

**

Mr. C writes:

Guess a sex addicted governor is more important.

I responded: 

Not to pick to much of a nit, but "sex-addicted"? The guy just wanted to get laid, as far as we know, and didn't want to have to chance going to some bar to do it. Seems perfectly logical to me that he'd call an escort agency -- one that he'd used before. He and his wife may not be having sex at all, so just because he wanted sex doesn't make him "sex addicted."

**

Mr. B writes:

There are some things you can do discreetly and get away with, and then there are some you do at your own peril.

I responded:

Perhaps you're unaware of the scope of prostitution-by-escort-agency in this country and around the world. We're talking, just in the US, of thousands of transactions every day, with such transactions taking place in every major city, and most of them don't get busted, even though there are government agencies working diligently to do so.

Spitzer *apparently* just had the bad luck to have his attempted bank transfer to one such agency noticed by a bean-counter ... though I'm not sure the REAL story of how his patronage of that agency was revealed will itself be revealed anytime soon.

**

Mr. A writes:

It's almost like he wanted to get caught.  I've always thought that was an inane idea but it sure seems to fit in this case.

I responded:

I'm sure Sgts. Friday and Gannon would agree with you... but then, they're TV characters.

**

Mr. A writes:

 You have completely missed every point I've been trying to make.  You should think about that.

I responded:

And you should think about your buying into the concept that having extramarital sex with a prostitute somehow makes one unfit for public office, even if he were responsible for busting such outfits previously.

**

Mr. A writes:

It has nothing to do with what I personally think of the concept, it has to do with what the law actually is and what the consequences will actually be here in the real world.  Rant all you want about how things shouldn't be that way but don't try to pretend things are at all different.

I responded:

Perhaps you could go into more detail as to what those "real world" consequences are. He hasn't yet been charged with a crime -- in fact, johns usually aren't. He's not running for reelection soon. A recent president was accused, with some credibility, of having gotten blowjobs from one of his interns, was impeached but acquitted. He also suffered plenty of bad press for his actions -- still does, in fact -- but he apparently had more guts than Spitzer, since he didn't resign.

**

I'm fairly certain this will be continued ...

 

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Tuesday, March 4, 2008 12:30 PM

I'm Just Gonna take A Wild Guess...

... about this : Because guns hurt people and PORN DOESN'T???

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Sunday, March 2, 2008 6:30 PM

The Strip Club Non-Crisis

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), founded by Meese Commission counsel Alan Sears, and our favorite former federal porn prosecutor Pat Trueman have recently jumped on strip clubs here and here , implying that they're at the forefront of some sort of crime wave — and damnit, they've got the news stories to prove it.

Well, not exactly.

For instance, at the first link, dated Feb. 27, although the article's lead-in says, <<ADF Attorney, Pat Trueman asks, “Wonder what happens at strip clubs?”  His answer, “They are in the news every day.”  Here are some headlines from the last two weeks>> [my emphasis here and below], two of the headlines, Police search for Chelsea strip club killer and Shooting at strip club leaves one dead, two injured , are from the third week in January, while the story, Police stop drunken brawl in strip club , isn't even from the U.S.; it's about a club in Australia!

As for the second article, which claims "Crime sprees continue at strip clubs around the nation... The saga continues," the story beginning "TampaBay10 reports ..." is the same incident as this one linked in the previous story, while the story beginning "David Sommer reports on the Tampa Tribune " is the same incident as this one in the previous story, and the story beginning "Man reports robbery at Columbia strip club " is the exact same link as this one in the previous story!

Oh; and then there's the one beginning "WFTV.com reports from Daytona Beach ," which reports the horrific story that "The manager of Lollipop’s Gentlemen’s Club started to serve his six-month jail sentence Thursday for making illegal campaign contributions." 

So, out of 15 stories reported within "the last two weeks" between the two articles, two of them were over a month old; one of them was from Australia; three of them involved the exact same incident as three other stories; and one of them covers a crime that Repugnican lobbyists and contractors (think Jack Abramoff and Brett Wilkes) are going to jail for right and left.

Way to go, ADF! And props to you, too, Pat! 

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Wednesday, February 20, 2008 2:45 PM

Birth Announcement

It's a wonderous thing to watch the birth of a new Republican Repugnican talking point. Here's the second mention I've seen in two days of this idea — the first one was here —with this one coming from the Evans-Novak Political Report:

"Congress recessed without renewing authority for eavesdropping because Democrats bowed to trial lawyers' demands not to grant retroactive immunity from lawsuits for phone companies that helped U.S. intelligence agencies. It shows greater Democratic reliance on contributions from trial lawyers than their vulnerability on the national security issue."

"Bowed to trial lawyers' demands"!!! The mind boggles!

Let's review: The Bush administration went to the telephone companies and asked them to turn over records and emails, allegedly in an attempt to ferret out foreign terrorists and their American co-conspirators, but actually to spy on their political opponents. The phone companies, being good corporate citizens, mostly said, "Sure, here you go!" (The one exception was Quest, which had the temerity to actually ask for a warrant!)

When all this came to light years later — December, '05, to be precise, when the NY Times, which had known about the problem for over a year but waited to print it because it allegedly "didn't want to affect the outcome of the 2004 election," ran a massive story in it — various groups and individuals filed lawsuits, rightfully claiming that their right to privacy in their communications had been violated by the telephone companies working in collusion with the Bush administration, which hadn't bothered to get any search warrants to do what it did, allegedly because it was all legal under the Authorization to Use Military Force — the same document that got us into the Iraq war.

Of course, that was horseshit: The AUMF gave no explicit authority to tap phones or examine emails, the FISA law had been passed in the late '70s to deal with just such a situation but Bush & Co. had decided not to use it ... and so about 40 lawsuits have proceeded — and it's got Bush scared silly. See, if any of those suits go to trial, the whole domestic espionage network the administration has put together will be made public, and lots of Bushies, including Bush himself, will be exposed for the criminals they really are. 

Obviously, such exposure would be bad for any Repugnican running in the '08 election, so those Deep Repugnican Thinkers, realizing that simply repeating the line that the wiretaps were legitimate wasn't working, came up with a new idea: The suits aren't going forward because the Bush administration and the phone companies committed any crimes and everyone who can read the Constitution and the FISA law knows it. Rather, they're going forward because the lawyers representing the various plaintiffs whose privacy was violated will be getting paid a shitload of money if they win at trial.

See; it has absolutely nothing to do with impeachable offenses — "Move along; nothing to see here" — it's just another greedy lawyer trick.

But the point is, watching the birth of a new political tactic is sort of like watching a slow-motion car accident: It's horrific, but you can't take your eyes off of it.

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Wednesday, February 20, 2008 4:43 AM

WWJD?

The fundies are none too happy with Americans United for Separation of Church and State anyway ... but when Rev. Barry Lynn, who heads the organization, recently filed a complaint with the IRS that one VPF (Very Prominent Fundie), Rev. Wiley Drake (why do I love that name?), had used his church letterhead and a church-based radio program to endorse presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, Drake did what any True Believer would have done:

Quoth Lynn: "Drake issued a Feb. 14 e-mail appeal to followers to engage in 'imprecatory prayers' (curses) against Americans United and three of its staff members. "

Wrote Drake, "In light of the recent attack from the enemies of God I ask the children of God to go into action with Imprecatory Prayer. Especially against Americans United for Separation of Church and State…. Specifically target Joe Conn or Jeremy Learing [sic] and their leader Rev. Barry Lynn. They are those who lead the attack."

Responded Lynn: "We deplore Pastor Drake’s reckless and repugnant antics. Introducing this kind of religious extremism into American life is reprehensible... Trying to turn God into some sort of heavenly hitman is repugnant.  There is more than a whiff of the Taliban in this action."

You go, Barry! 

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Tuesday, February 19, 2008 9:00 PM

National Lawyers Guild Agrees With Me

Well, part-way, anyway. I think Scalia should be impeached; they just think he should recuse himself from any Supreme Court cases involving the torture he thinks is okay as long as you do it like Jack Bauer would.

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Tuesday, February 19, 2008 5:00 PM

You Can't Make Up Stuff Like This

It's this article .

What can we say? "Go, Flatheads!" 

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