Alabamian.net

I cannot express how thoroughly disappointed I am that Senator Obama will not take a principled, and constitutional, stand against an unconstitutional ex post facto law.

The Constitution specifically prohibits ex post facto laws. You cannot legalize illegal behavior after the fact! If we sit idly by and allow this flagrant violation of the Constitution to stand it will not be long before we are dealing with laws that make legal behavior illegal after the fact.

Do you want to find yourself in court someday answering for a crime that wasn’t a crime at the time you committed the act? If your answer is no, as it rightly should be, then you must oppose the unconstitutional ex post facto legalization of criminal activities by the telecoms!

I will continue to view this as a giant black mark against Senator Obama until he finally agrees to stand with the people and the Constitution.

My freedoms and my rights are NOT NEGOTIABLE, Senator!

Barack Obama: My Position On FISA

The political world is abuzz over General Wesley Clark’s recent comments about John McCain’s qualifications for President of the United States of America.  Clark stated the obvious - being a POW does not qualify you to be President.  The McCain camp has responded with faux outrage over the ‘questioning’ of Senator McCain’s military service in an attempt to dodge the issue of his presidential bonafides.

Clark, former NATO supreme allied commander, said McCain’s combat experience as a fighter pilot did not make him more qualified to be president than Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

“Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president,” he said.

Speaking the truth, it seems, can be just as much a political gaffe as telling a lie.  Why is everyone responding with shock and outrage over a simple statement of fact?

John McCain has made his POW experience an issue in this campaign by running ads suggesting that it somehow qualifies him to be President.  This false assertion begs to be repudiated.  Unless Senator McCain can somehow explain why being shot down and taken prisoner qualifies one to be President, he needs to be called on his shameless ploy to garner sympathy votes.

Stating the obvious - that being a POW is not a qualification for POTUS - does not equate to questioning and disrespecting Senator McCain’s military service.  I’m glad that someone finally had the cajones to call McCain’s bluff.

To use McCain’s own words, being a POW “…certainly doesn’t do anything to address the challenges that Americans have in keeping their jobs, homes and supporting their families.”

New research is helping to put the final nails in the tired argument that homosexuality is a choice.  A study performed at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found similarities in brain structure and connectivity between straight men and gay women and gay men and straight women.

MRI scans found that the right hemisphere of the brain was larger than the left in straight men and gay women.  The hemispheres were symmetrical in gay men and straight women.  PET scans showed strong similarities in the connectivity of the amygdala - responsible for the fight-or-flight reflex and emotional learning - between straight men and gay women and between gay men and straight women.

“This is a very interesting study demonstrating a possible neurobiological relationship in brain size between gay men and straight women,” said Paul Sanberg, distinguished professor of neurosurgery and director of the University of South Florida Center for Aging and Brain Repair in Tampa.

“I do think this is pointing to some type of neurobiological underpinning [to sexual orientation],” added Keith A. Young, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine in Waco.”

Of course this won’t stop fundie nutters like Fred Phelps, John Hagee and Rod Parsley from claiming that homosexuals choose to have their brains develop like heterosexual members of the opposite sex, that the development of the homosexual brain is a sure sign of demon possession or some other ridiculous tripe. 

There isn’t much you can do to win over public figures who treat science and reason as little more than silly superstitions - except to ridicule them mercilessly in the public square and expose them for the ignorant, hate-filled bigots that they are.

Suck it, Fundies!

Gay Men, Straight Women Have Similar Brains

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Reichwing radio talk show host and son of former President Ronald Reagan, Michael Reagan, applied for and received his official Reichwing Nutter Badge this past Tuesday during the second hour of his show.

Upset with members of the 911 Truth Movement who are mailing DVD videos to US troops in Iraq, Reagan issued an on-air death threat and called for his listeners to “take them out and shoot them” and said that he would “pay for the bullets.”

Obviously Mr. Reagan has no respect for the Constitution or the law.  He thinks that it is the most American of ideals to assassinate political dissenters and to terrorize those who hold opposing points of view.  If Mr. Reagan truly believes that these individuals are guilty of treason then he should call for them to be prosecuted. 

Advocating their summary execution by a vigilante lynch mob is absolutely unamerican and Mr. Reagan should be publicly shamed and removed from the airwaves.

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Great little video from the Florida Democratic Party that illustrates McCain’s hypocrisy and lies and demonstrates that a McCain presidency would effectively be a third term for Bush.

Florida Democrats release web video blasting McCain

Katrina Kerfuffle

Barack Obama secured the Democratic nomination for President last night and made history by becoming the first African-American nominee to the highest office in the land, but Hillary Clinton wasn’t about to let him enjoy it.

Rather than give a gracious concession speech acknowledging her opponent’s hard won victory and begin the work of unifying the Democratic Party to defeat John McCain in November, Mrs. Clinton chose instead to take her party hostage with the veiled threat of its destruction if she doesn’t get what she wants.

In what was supposed to be a private conference call with the New York House delegation, Clinton said that if Obama offered her the job of Vice President she would accept.  The details of the conference call were then quickly leaked to the press.

By announcing her acceptance of a position that has not yet been offered to her, Hillary effectively sabotaged Obama’s freedom to choose, given the realities of the American political electoral landscape, whom he thinks would best complete his ticket  heading into the general election.

Wielding the cudgel of her 18 million strong constituency during her speech last night in New York, Hillary announced to Obama and the Democratic Party, “Put me on the party ticket - or else.”

Way to go, Hillary.  Way to put the party and the nation ahead of your personal ambition.

It seems that the circling of the wagons at the White House also includes everyone’s favorite manwhore and former White House reporter[wink wink, nod nod], Jeff Gannon.

The Bush administration’s favorite [in the closet]gay prostitute is parroting the White House on his blog.  In the post "Scott, We Hardly Knew Ye", Gannon, like Bush, Rove, and the rest of the gang, is puzzled by the new Scott McClellan.

Add me to the growing list of those who are having great difficulty understanding McClellan’s motives. I spent two years as a White House reporter, much of it during McClellan’s reign. At no time did Scott ever indicate, either publicly or privately, he had the misgivings he expressed in this book.

What I hear about the book does not sound like the Scott McClellan I knew for two years. I can say without fear of contradiction, that I knew Scott better than any other White House correspondent or Washington reporter.

Really, Jeff?  You knew Scottie better than any other correspondent or reporter?  How well did you know him, Jeff, and in what way?  One shudders to think.  Did you get to know him during the course of your many overnight stays at the White House?  Was Scottie a sucker for your ‘Hot Military Stud’ mangina?  Nevermind.  I really don’t want to know.

Scott, We Hardly Knew Ye

Wikipedia - Jeff Gannon

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Speaking at a news conference in Wales this past Sunday, Jimmy Carter publicly acknowledged that Israel is in possession of at least 150 nuclear weapons.  Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade was quick to try and lay the blame for outing the Israelis at Carter’s feet, saying "No one has ever talked about it, very few people are privileged to know about it, and almost no one speaks about it …"

The only problem with Brian Kilmeade’s assertion that Carter is to blame for outing Israel’s nuclear weapons stockpile is that it’s patently false.  Jimmy Carter has only confirmed what Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of Israel, admitted to a year and a half ago during and interview with Germany’s Sat. 1 channel.

Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, was yesterday trying to fend off accusations of ineptitude and calls for his resignation after he accidentally acknowledged for the first time that Israel had nuclear weapons.

After decades in which Israel has stuck to a doctrine of nuclear ambiguity, Mr Olmert let slip during an interview in Germany that Israel did indeed have weapons of mass destruction.

What is so upsetting about Carter saying what everyone already knows and that Israel’s PM has already admitted?  Why would the US and Israeli governments work so hard to deny that Israel is a nuclear power?

Simple.

US law forbids providing funding to countries that proliferate weapons of mass destruction.  In order to skirt the law and provide military aid to Israel, the US and Israeli governments must maintain the lie that Israel does not possess nuclear weapons.  Now that the lie can no longer be maintained, US aid to Israel is on very shaky ground.  Either the US will have to stop providing aid to Israel or it will have to change the law to legalize foreign aid to a proliferator of WMD, becoming an admitted hypocrite in the process.

Israel: Carter Offers Details on Nuclear Arsenal

Calls for Olmert to resign after nuclear gaffe

President Bush was supposed to be headlining at a planned fundraiser for John McCain this coming Tuesday at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona.  The venue had to be scrapped, but not merely because they couldn’t sell enough tickets to fill the space.

Sources familiar with the situation said the Bush-McCain event was not selling enough tickets to fill the Convention Center space, and that there were concerns about more anti-war protesters showing up outside the venue than attending the fundraiser inside.

Another source said there were concerns about the media covering the event.

I almost couldn’t stop laughing long enough to write this post.  You couldn’t make this up, lol!

Poor ticket sales, expected protests scuttle Bush-McCain fundraiser at Phoenix Convention Center

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Hillary Clinton has had something on her mind for a while now.  At least since March 6th, when she spoke off the record with Richard Stengel, Managing Editor at TIME magazine.  She voiced it publicly Friday while speaking to the editorial board of the Argus-Leader in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and giving her reasoning for staying in the race.

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it."

What the fuck, Hillary?!?  Are you so desperate to win the nomination and so incapable of accepting defeat that you are holding on to the dark hope that your opponent will be assassinated like Robert F. Kennedy?  Are you truly that batshit insane?

Get out now, Hillary.  GET. THE. FUCK. OUT!!!

Hillary Raises Assassination Issue