Bryan Fischer Suffers Asteroids Rage

Bryan Fischer, talk radio host, Renew America columnist, and leader of Bîøgraphy!, the world's only Peter Graves tribute band, took time out from his busy jihad against homosexuals, effeminate Medal of Honor winners, and grizzly bears to grab Antonin Scalia's face, kiss him full on the mouth and whisper, "I know it was you, Tony.  You broke my heart!"

Then he asked the Justice if he liked movies about gladiators.

Can Antonin Scalia read?

The normally dependable Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion in one of the worst Supreme Court rulings in this generation or any other. This raises the question as to whether he or the other six misguided justices who joined him have read or understood the First Amendment.

I know how he feels.  Reading a Fischer column will often raise similar questions about Bryan and the Bible (especially that one about the marine wildlife trainer at Sea World Orlando who was killed by an orca, which Bryan saw as a sign of the "ongoing failure of the West to take counsel on practical matters from the Scripture").  If Western Civilization had been less corrupt and degenerate, the killer whale would merely have swallowed the trainer, and vomited her up after three days and nights.

Scalia said California has no right to prohibit the sale of violent video games to minors that depict "killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being."

Players in the games that Scalia has ordered stores to sell to children without their parents' permission or knowledge use weapons that included guns aimed point-blank to the head of kneeling, helpless victims, chainsaws, scythes, fillet knives and electric drills, with vivid displays of splatter and severed body parts rolling around on the sidewalk. One game allows players to set unsuspecting bystanders on fire.

Screen capture from a typical violent video game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces.

One game involves chasing victims and shooting a never-ending stream of yellow urine at them.

Never-ending?  You don't even need to find power-ups, or loot dead opponents for beers?  You can just play the whole game in R. Kelly mode?

If there was ever stuff that parents ought to be able to protect their minor children from, this is it. This ruling, which prohibits any kind of parental involvement in the rental or purchase of such games, is a tragic infringement on parental rights. We're way past "Father Knows Best" and into "Nine Tyrants in Robes Know Better but Don't Have a Clue."

The Supreme Court didn't tell California parents they can't forbid their kids to play play violent video games.  They just said they can't delegate the job of "protect[ing] their minor children" to cashiers at Game Spot.

If these justices had teenage boys, and one of them brought something like this home, it wouldn't be long before they'd be saying, "You know, there ought to be a law." Well, there was, but the Supremes in all their benighted wisdom have disabled it.

It depends which one of the Supremes we're talking about.  If it was Scalia, I imagine he'd say, "I don't want you playing that in the house," to which the son would reply by flipping off his father.  Justice Scalia would then respond with the Vaffanculo, provoking the teenage boy to bite his thumb and grab his crotch, followed by a modified Vulcan salute.  Scalia senior would immediately interdict the Evil Eye with the Sign of the Horns, then tug on his ear lobe before quickly transitioning into a spirited display of Jazz Hands.  Eventually, their frantic gesticulations would become just a blur of motion, until they resembled two sailors attempting to communicate via semaphore while suffering simultaneous attacks of ergotism.

Then I bet Scalia would collapse to the floor, glazed with sweat, his pants bunched around his ankles after mooning his youngster in a desperate, but masterful coup de grace, and lay there wheezing and wishing that there was a law in California against selling Duke Nukem to minors.  If, however, the Supreme in question was Diana Ross, then she'd probably just have her son fired and replaced with Cindy Birdsong.

The First Amendment protects freedom of speech. The operative word here is "speech," Justice Scalia. It protects "speech," not "expression," not "images of decapitated bodies with blood spouting from the neck." This is not a hard concept to understand.

In Federalist No. 10, Madison wrote, "The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society.  Some men are content with such produce as the land may yield, others seek success in commerce or trade, while a third faction finds it both virtuous and cool to eviscerate zombies."  Unsurprisingly, Hamilton was a dick about it.

The First Amendment was intended by the Founders to protect a specific kind of speech, namely political speech. The sole purpose of the First Amendment plank on free speech was to protect robust debate over matters of public policy.

Plank?  The Bill of Rights is just a party platform now?  Or do supporters of Original Intent reject elitist words like "clause" and speak of the Constitution solely in brawny carpentry metaphors?  And do I still have a fundamental right to tongue and groove the person I love?

It was never intended to provide cover for pornography, obscenity, vulgarity, or violent imagery. The Founders would roll over in their parchment to see what Scalia has done here to their beloved Bill of Rights.

The Founders would also be surprised to find that they were buried in parchment rather than coffins, and that their ideas were in peril of being reinterpreted in light of two centuries of practical experience, while they themselves were in danger of being baked like new potatoes with 1 head of garlic, 3 tablespoons of flat-leaf parsley, and 1 sprig of thyme.

The fact that the Supreme Court even took this case at all is a sign of how used we have become to judicial tyranny. A right-thinking Court would have said, "Get this case out of this courtroom. We have no right even to weigh in on this case. This is for the people of California to decide, and your elected representatives have decided. If you don't like this law, then don't come to us, get yourselves some different elected representatives. End of story."

The Founders intended that when offered a case with serious and potentially far-reaching Constitutional implications, the Justices of the Supreme Court would leap unanimously onto the bench, hoisting their black robes to their knees and screaming, "Eek!" and "Kill it!"

Post-Friday Beast Blogging: The Laundry and Ladylike Edition

 

 Riley:  I've decided -- from now on, I'm gonna be dainty as hell.

Moondoggie:  That's weird...Suddenly my dreams smell April Fresh.

Congratulations to All My Gay Friends in NY

Please don't register somewhere expensive.

There's Always Room for Jell-O...to STFU!

Our second favorite writer on the Internets, D.Sidhe, explains on her own blog why Jell-o™ Brand Gelatin sometimes doubts her commitment to Sparkle Motion.  Click and learn about the Pudding Pop Putsch!

You Know Who ELSE Loved a Fuzzy Upper Lip?

While enduring WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah's latest spiel from the back of the Medicine Show wagon, I was reminded of this old Gary Larson cartoon:

Because it's reached the point with Joe's sales pitch that all I hear anymore is "blah blah HITLER blah blah blah blah blah NEGRO! blah blah blah BUY THIS CRAPPY BOOK! blah blah blah LOOK AT MY FACE-FUR!"

Godwin felon by day, Mustache Model by night, he is...the Most Predictable Man in the World.  Still, you've got to admire his work ethic, and this week Joe goes all out to grab your attention, until halfway through his disquisition you feel like you're being screamed at through a gas mask by an amyl-huffing Frank Booth.

Hitler was ineligible for presidency, too

The American political and media elite have determined, for whatever reason, that the Constitution's eligibility requirements for the presidency are not important.

That is the only conclusion one can draw from the misinformation, disinformation and disinterest they have shown to the serious questions swirling around not only the unique case of Barack Obama but also to the definition of "natural born citizen" in future presidential elections.

It's not unprecedented that failing republics dumb down eligibility requirements for the presidency. It's not unprecedented that failing republics ignore or obscure eligibility requirements for the presidency. It's not unprecedented that failing republics make tragic mistakes in permitting non-qualified candidates to serve in the presidency.

It happened in 1932 in Germany with a candidate named Adolf Hitler. 

Except Hitler wasn't elected to any office by the German people.  He lost the 1932 Presidential election to Paul Hindenberg, who later appointed him Chancellor, so this would only make sense as an analogy if  McCain had won the 2008 election, and then appointed Obama Speaker of the House.  Or if you were a sideshow grifter with a mean streak as wide as your mustache.

In fact, this tragedy, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of innocents and the utter destruction of the German republic, is documented in the biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas.

(Coincidentally, this biography is available in the WND Superstore, which, based on their list of titles, is sort of an Island of Misfit Toys for books.  "Nobody wants a 'Charlie and the Castor Oil Factory'...")

We learn that on March 13, 1932, the day the German national election was being held to determine who would be president, "Nazi rowdies rode around in the backs of trucks with megaphones, stirring things up. A month earlier Hitler was found ineligible to run since he was born and reared in Austria. But this problem was strenuously shoved through a loophole, and he would run after all."

On Jan. 30, 1933, Hitler became the chancellor of Germany.

Talbot Whittingham ran for the Winesburg School Board, but after the County surveyors were done, it turned out he actually lived across the line in the Spoon River District.  And yet, on Jan. 30, 2010, he was hired by the Winesburg District to coach after-school Pee Wee Football!  Believe it...or Nazi!

Anyway, I don't see how Germans giving a pan-Aryan pass to the Austrian-born Hitler has any relevance to Obama's election, since the latter was born in this country.

Imagine how the course of history might have been changed had that "loophole" not been found – if the German people, political elite and media elite had held firm to their constitution that required presidents to be German-born when Hitler clearly was not. 

Then the Enterprise wouldn't have had to deal with all those space Nazis.

I can almost visualize the reaction to what I am saying here: "Farah is comparing Obama to Hitler!"

No, I am not.

"...or at least, I'm not doing it well."

Hitler is in a unique historical class of tyrants and fiends and mass murderers. There's Hitler and Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. Together they are responsible for the deaths of more than 100 million people.

For perspective, Obama has merely contributed to the economic and moral degradation of the greatest country on earth. 

And yet, if Joe ever gets a hold of a Skynet-style time machine, I think we all know whose mother he will choose to shoot.  Which is just as well, as I imagine he'll find nothing but frustration waiting for him when he materializes naked in Kenya.

I use the Hitler illustration only to demonstrate there are real-world consequences to bending the rules in constitutional republics for political expediency.

That's what happened in Germany in 1932.

It is happening again in America in the 21st century.

Some people may think that by posting this photo I'm comparing Hitler to Farah.

No, I am not.

I use this illustration only to demonstrate that there are real-world consequences to allowing men to wear weird or excessive mustaches.

In 1932, Hitler had too-little mustache.  It was odd and unsettling.

It is happening again in America in the 21st century, with Farah, whose mustache declared sometime in the 70s that it required "lebensraum," and subsequently conquered a wide swath of his middle face, creating -- ironically -- a kind of "Polish Corridor" which cut off his nose from his chin, leaving it landlocked.

The media and political elite are in abject denial about the meaning of the U.S. Constitution's "natural born citizen" requirement for presidents.

Joseph has done a lot of research into this question, and apparently what the Founders meant by "natural born citizen" wasn't what they wrote in the U.S. Constitution, but what some Swiss guy wrote in a book called The Law of Nations 30 years before the U.S. existed.

It does not mean born in the USA. 

 Please...hasn't Bruce Springsteen suffered enough this week?

It does not mean the child of one citizen parent.

It does not mean a guy who offers up a phony and invalid birth certificate.

It does not mean a person who claims biological parentage by a visiting foreign student.

Actually, this is kind of a trick question, because the answer is "it does mean A. and C., but not B.,  meaning that Jose Antonio Vargas will never be President."  So at least Joe has triumphed over one brown person today.

It does not mean a person who claims an adoptive father who was a foreign national. 

It also doesn't mean squat, since adoptions before age 18 do not invalidate the citizenship of persons born on U.S. soil.

It does not mean a person who went to live with that adoptive father in his own country and registered for school as a citizen of Indonesia.

It does not mean a person whose very own citizenship was questioned by U.S. immigration officials in his boyhood.

It does not apply to a person whose "natural born citizenship" has never been investigated by any controlling legal authority in America.

And that little boy grew up to be...Hitler!  Now you know...the rest of the story.

And that's who resides in the White House today because the media and political elite don't want to do their jobs in ensuring that the Constitution prevails.

Is that the media's job?  Because if so, they haven't shown up for work since 1981, and I would seriously consider docking their pay.

So we stumble along and define down what the Constitution says – pretending instead that it requires a presidential candidate to be born in the USA and pretending that the current occupant of the White House has demonstrated that he actually meets that criteria.

So, Joe, you finally admit that Obama was born on U.S. soil (but it somehow doesn't count anyway)?  Well, that's progress.  Say, what were you pretending back when McCain, who wasn't born here, ran for President?

Some 15 state legislatures were concerned enough about the Constitution that they introduced or even passed legislation requiring that future presidential candidates demonstrate eligibility before getting on the ballot. All of them claimed these legislative initiatives had nothing to do with Obama, but instead had to do with constitutional integrity. Yet, when Obama produced a document he claims is his birth certificate, these initiatives all went away.

So those state legislators were lying about their motives, but still had a rudimentary sense of shame.  Well, it's not exactly the climax of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but I'll take what I can get.

Not only are we about to allow Obama to seek re-election as an ineligible candidate, we are about to amend the Constitution by default.

Therefore, in the immortal, if paraphrased, words of Willie Nelson: "Mamas, Don't Let Your Blacks Grow Up to be President."  Because that kind of thing just whitens Joe's mustache.

The Swan of Dogpatch

You've probably seen or heard about this New York Times piece (My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant), in which Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas writes about the DREAM Act from the non-Republican, non-Tea Party perspective; that is to say, from experience.

Put on a plane at age 12, and sent from the Philippines to the U.S., Vargas grew up in California (as I did) and worked exceptionally hard in school (as I did not), assimilating with a vengeance.  It was only when he rode his bike down to the DMV to obtain a learner's permit (an all but inescapable rite of passage in California) that he discovered the adults in his life had left him in a legal limbo:

 I decided then that I could never give anyone reason to doubt I was an American. I convinced myself that if I worked enough, if I achieved enough, I would be rewarded with citizenship. I felt I could earn it.

As I say, you've probably read the story, but you likely didn't make the same mistake I did by following up with a visit to the cream of natural born punditry, West Virginia's own Don Surber (last seen here, daring liberals to bite him):

The 1st Amendment isn’t a get-out-of-jail card

Good reporter or not, kick the lying, illegal alien Jose Antonio Vargas out.

True, Vargas was brought here as a child through no fault of his own, and knows no other country, but he gamed the system using a deceitful combination of studiousness, hard work, and an almost quaint dedication to the American Dream; and now he's taking the journalism jobs and winning the Pulitzer Prizes that would otherwise go to ambitious natives who've been grinding out anti-immigrant screeds in Charleston, West Virgina for the past 27 years, so don't say the White Man hasn't paid his goddamn dues!

He wrote:

"There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own."

No, this is not his country.

This country belongs to those who were born here.  Unless they were born in Hawaii, because that's way out in the middle of the ocean, and as it turns out, birthright citizenship is water-soluble.

He did not come here legally.

He lied to stay here.

If he'd had any respect for this country he claims to love he would have gotten on a plane the day he turned 18 and flown back to that country he doesn't remember.  And if  he couldn't scare up the couple grand for the flight, then he should have skipped college and gone to work so he could save up, thereby compounding the felony.

He lied to get in the White House.

But unlike Jeff Gannon, he didn't have to blow anyone once he was there.

Not only should he be prosecuted, but his bosses as well because they should have checked his citizenship,

How about we leave him here and deport the HR Department?  Unlike the overachieving Vargas, they seem kind of lazy.

Liberals can pretend they have a perfect example of someone to symbolize this cause but actually he is an example of why we need to protect our borders.

Illegal aliens...If they're not starting forest fires, or beheading white people in Scottsdale, then they're writing for The New Yorker.

He is a journalist who lies. I put him alongside Janet Cooke and Jayson Blair.

Except in Vargas' case, it was his life that was a lie, while his reporting appears entirely factual.  Meanwhile, Don is the man who, in perhaps his most famous blog post, wrote:

For two years now, I have been called ignorant, racist, angry and violent by the left. The very foul-mouthed protesters of Bush dare to now label my words as “hate speech.”

To which WO'C veteran Chris Vosburg responded:  Would it surprise you to learn that a Google of "Don Surber" "hate speech" produces not a single incidence of anyone referring to Surber's writing as such, but instead endless examples of Surber referring to others' as such?

As Don's ideological forebears in 19th Century Germany were fond of declaring, nationality is determined by "blood and soil" (Blut und Boden) and the kind of "overripe bullshit only someone born in America could naturally produce (Blut und Boden und Kuhscheiße)."

My Heart Belongs to Daddy

 By Special WO'C Patriarchy Correspondent, Bill S.

Last month I wrote a Mother's Day column paying tribute to the worst movie moms ever. Thanks to some helpful suggestions from readers, I will be present a revised, expanded edition next Mother's Day. Something to look forward to. For somebody.

But today is Father's Day, so it's time to look at terrible movie Dads. And a few TV ones as well. Feel free to suggest additional candidates.

DR. AUSTIN SLOPER (Ralph Richardson) in The Heiress (1949).  Convincing his daughter she's a homely, undateable loser is awful enough. That she happens to look like Olivia DeHaviland makes it just that much worse.

LUCAS CROSS (Arthur Kennedy) in Peyton Place (1957).  Guilty of, as his daughter's doctor puts it, "the worst kind of child abuse".

MARVIN'S DAD (Malcolm Atterbury) in High School Big Shot (1959).  Allow me to offer this quote from Frank Coniff, taken from The Mystery Science Theatre 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, which pretty well sums him up:

"There is one scene that is just about the most depressing moment in any movie I've ever seen. It's the scene where his deadbeat dad asks the kid if he'll split his last five dollars with him. Now, both father and son can each got out on two-dollar-and-fifty-cent dates with gals they really want to impress."

THE FATHER OF Rosemary's Baby (1968).  For obvious reasons.

BILL COMPTON (Dennis Patrick) in Joe (1970).  Not to be confused with the True Blood character. Bill's actions are motivated by his love for his daughter. But since those actions included beating her scumbag boyfriend to death, and then enlisting the help of a psychopath to track her down, he's not gonna be getting a "World's Best Dad" mug anytime soon. Not from her anyway.

NOAH CROSS (John Huston) in Chinatown (1974).  No relation to Lucas (see above) although some of his crimes were the same. But whereas Lucas was a white-trash loser who eventually gets what he deserves, Noah's a rich asshole who gets away with everything.

"BULL" MEECHUM (Robert Duvall) in The Great Santini (1979).  He was racist, sexist, and homophobic, and those were his GOOD points. He makes the list just for that basketball scene with son Ben (Michael O'Keefe, who was less tightly wound in Caddyshack...probably because the men in that film were better role models.)

JERRY BLAKE (Terry O'Quinn) in The Stepfather (1987).  Hey, all he wanted was the perfect family. So he has to kill a few people in the process. You can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs.

KING EDWARD I (Patrick McGoohan) in Braveheart (1995).  In Mel Gibson's historical epic, most notable for its historical inaccuracies, Edward is depicted as a psycho who inflicts countless acts of abuse on his son Edward II, hitting a low point when he pushes the prince's gay lover out of a window to his death. This didn't really happen, but hey, it was good for a laugh from the audience, wasn't it? (As you may have guessed, I'm not a fan of the film. I'd rate High School Big Shot higher)

FRANK FITTS (Chris Cooper) in American Beauty (1999).  Who'd have guessed that a man who rails against gays so much could turn out to be a raging closet case? Only people who've heard of Ted Haggard, George Rekers, etc.

ROYAL TENENBAUM (Gene Hackman) in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).  Very often when parents get divorced, kids feel responsible, but, as Royal explains to son Richie, "When you have children, certain sacrifices have to be made, but heavens, no." There, now doesn't that make you feel better, kid?

ADAM & FENTON'S DAD (Bill Paxton) in Frailty (2001).  A religeos fanatic/serial killer just isn't a good role model for children.

Worst TV Dads:

HOMER SIMPSON (Dan Castellenata) on The Simpsons. Strangling your son's not an approved parenting technique.

PETER GRIFFIN (Seth McFarlane) on Family Guy . Makes Homer look like Atticus Finch.

TONY SOPRANO (James Gandolfini) of The Sopranos. For obvious reasons.

FRANK REYNOLDS (Danny DeVito) on It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. "Insurance? I canceled that shit when you were nine!"

EVERYBODY'S DAD on Lost. Just about all the characters had a dad who was, in one way or another, completely effed up. Whose was the worst? Jack and Claire's? Sawyers? Locke's? Ben's? Ben's daughter? It's hard to pick.

In any case, Happy Father's Day to any dad reading this. Take some comfort in knowing that, however much you may think you've screwed up...at least you're not one of these guys. I hope.

-Bill S

Post-Friday Beast Blogging: The Butts 'N Digits Edition

Moondoggie:  I got me a piece of tail.  Heh-heh-heh.

Riley:  You got your thumb over the lens, genius.

Torquemada@Inquisition.org

As grateful as I am for email, links to videos of Japanese cats jumping into cardboard boxes of varying sizes, and updates from friends who keep me informed about when and where they are buying black olive ficelle and four leaf almond milk tea with tapioca pearls, the greatest thing about the Internet is that it contains the sum of human reason and experience.  Plus some pushy marriage advice from confirmed bachelors.

According to his bio, "Timothy Michael Dolan was named Archbishop of New York by Pope Benedict XVI on February 23, 2009." According to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), "Dolan conveniently brokered his promotion to New York just in time to leave Milwaukee before the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy."

The bankruptcy may have had something to do with the local Milwaukee brand of the Catholic sex abuse scandal that occurred on Dolan's watch, and which caused the diocese to pay out millions of dollars in settlements and attorneys fees. Or it may have been a legal move to keep Mr. Dolan out of court, since it was filed two days before he was scheduled to be deposed. But even the bankruptcy judge was flummoxed by just how poorly the Bishop had handled the victims of his employees.

Judge Susan Kelly told attorneys from the Milwaukee archdiocese that the church’s so-called victim “mediation” program established by archbishop Timothy Dolan in 2004 to address child sexual abuse by priests was “completely inept” and “not at all what had been described to her” by archdiocesan officials.
...
Clergy sex abuse survivors who testified before Kelly detailed how, instead of receiving healing and assistance from Dolan’s program, they were re-traumatized by it. One victim, for instance, described in painful detail how, if she was to receive any assistance through Dolan’s program, she was forced to travel to the church grade school where she had been repeatedly sexually assaulted and point out to a diocesan official each room and every hallway where she had been molested by the priest.

Anyway, the Archbishop thinks it's pervy for gays to marry, and he's a little put out about it.

The True Meaning of Marriage

The stampede is on. Our elected senators who have stood courageous in their refusal to capitulate on the state’s presumption to redefine marriage are reporting unrelenting pressure to cave-in.

Sounds like they're facing a desperate, Horatius-at-the-Bridge clash of sinew and iron.  I hope everyone oiled up properly before the battle. 

The media, mainly sympathetic to this rush to tamper with a definition as old as human reason and ordered good...

...although lately, especially if you're a victim of clerical molestation who's gotten the runaround from the manager of your local participating Catholic franchise, it seems like good is back-ordered.

Anyway, if the Archbishop's definition of marriage does indeed date to the dawn of reason, then this presents a serious problem, because that means homo habilis got married, and I didn't bring a gift.  It also screws with continuity a bit, since the Judeo part of our common Judeo-Christian heritage practiced polygamy, so we're going to have to have a DC Comics-style universe-wiping Crisis and retcon events so that Jews only existed on Earth-2, except for Jesus who crossed over to our dimension when the Flash accidentally used the Cosmic Treadmill to open a portal between our worlds.

...reports annoyance on the part of some senators that those in defense of traditional marriage just don’t see the light, as we persist in opposing this enlightened, progressive, cause.

After all, defenders of traditional marriage aren't threatening LGBT New Yorkers with some form of modern atimia -- they're still perfectly free to keep their second-class citizenship.  Which, when you think about it, is actually better than the deal these same traditionalists have offered the President of the United States, because his citizenship is a hybrid status so weird the Fourteenth Amendment doesn't even apply to him.  And if we take the Chinese view that crisis is opportunity, we could use this same approach to create a whole new caste system that would turn America into a giant, awesomely efficient desk organizer:

Second-class citizenship for gay men.  Second-class (with fetus clusters) for married women.  Third-class citizenship for black men (which will carry all the same rights and emoluments of second-class status, with the sole proviso that tertiary citizens can furnish, upon demand, two forms of photo I.D.).  Third-class citizenship for legal Hispanic immigrants; second-class (with oak leafblower clusters) for immigrants who keep the landscaping in good shape and don't bitch about their employers "forgetting" to pay their Social Security.

Or maybe we could take a tip from cigarette marketing, and just have brands of citizen, some more premium than others.  You could have have Newtizens -- citizens who've passed a Newt Gingrich-designed poll test and now have the right to vote.  Citizettes -- girls who may be sufficiently smart and well-informed to cast a ballot, but not emotionally mature enough to make decisions that won't haunt them for the rest of their lives -- who would enjoy all the perquisites of male Newtizenship, except Roe v. Wade doesn't apply.

We've already proven, by taking America back to the Gilded Age, that society-wide time travel is feasible; so I say set the WABAC Machine, and don't stop until we start mowing down serfs!

But, really, shouldn’t we be more upset – and worried – about this perilous presumption of the state to re-invent the very definition of an undeniable truth – one man, one woman, united in lifelong love and fidelity, hoping for children – that has served as the very cornerstone of civilization and culture from the start?

Well, the Romans were monogamous but polytheistic, so I guess if we really want to look to the past for guidance on the future, then the cornerstone of civilization is one man, one woman, and two dozen gods.

Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America – not in China or North Korea. In those countries, government presumes daily to “redefine” rights, relationships, values, and natural law. There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of “family” and “marriage” means. 

Yeah, last time I checked Google Maps, we weren't living in Vatican City, either.

But, please, not here! Our country’s founding principles speak of rights given by God, not invented by government, and certain noble values – life, home, family, marriage, children, faith – that are protected, not re-defined, by a state presuming omnipotence. 

I just did a quick search of the Constitution, and the words "family," "marriage," and "children" don't occur anywhere in the text.  "Life" does, in the section of Amendment 14 which prohibits states from denying "to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," and "faith" does too, in Article IV, which requires that "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State."  Unless it's something icky, like gay marriage.

Please, not here! We cherish true freedom, not as the license to do whatever we want, but the liberty to do what we ought; we acknowledge that not every desire, urge, want, or chic cause is automatically a “right.” And, what about other rights, like that of a child to be raised in a family with a mom and a dad?

I had that right?  Why didn't somebody tell me?  Whom do I sue?

Our beliefs should not be viewed as discrimination against homosexual people.

"Because it makes us look like oddly-dressed hypocrites who are trying to put the screws to local pols like any other greasy ward-heeler."

The Church affirms the basic human rights of gay men and women, and the state has rightly changed many laws to offer these men and women hospital visitation rights, bereavement leave, death benefits, insurance benefits, and the like. This is not about denying rights.

It's about a tax-exempt religious organization lobbying the legislature like it's Exxon-Mobil.

 It is about upholding a truth about the human condition.

And that truth is: Some people are jerks, and while you can stick a mitre on a jerk, that doesn't automatically make him no longer a jerk, it simply makes him a jerk who looks like he's just bitten into a piece of toast slathered with Imperial margarine.

Marriage is not simply a mechanism for delivering benefits: It is the union of a man and a woman in a loving, permanent, life-giving union to pro-create children. Please don’t vote to change that. If you do, you are claiming the power to change what is not into what is, simply because you say so. This is false, it is wrong, and it defies logic and common sense. 

Imagine if legislators had arrogated that right for themselves in 1868.  "This is a slave, and you're claiming the power to change what it is into not what it is -- a free man -- just because you say so?  This is false, it is wrong, and it defies logic and common sense!  Thus endeth the lesson, and I hope you all feel a little closer to Christ.  And don't forget to hit the tip jar in the narthax on your way out."

Yes, I admit, I come at this as a believer, who, along with other citizens of a diversity of creeds believe that God, not Albany, has settled the definition of marriage a long time ago.

...with various little tweaks, regarding the establishment, addition, or elimination of features and services such as polygyny, polyandry, consent, divorce, annulment...well, you should probably check our Terms and Conditions, since we update them frequently.

We believers worry not only about what this new intrusion will do to our common good, but also that we will be coerced to violate our deepest beliefs to accommodate the newest state decree. (If you think this paranoia, just ask believers in Canada and England what’s going on there to justify our apprehensions.)

And if you think it's unfair to criticize religious leaders for promoting anti-gay legislation, just ask gay people what's going on in Uganda.  By the way, padre, as NY State Senator Diane Savino says (via Roy):

"And I know there are many people in the religious community who feel that we're going to force this on them, when that in fact is not true.  We have never done that.  I'm a Roman Catholic.  The Catholic Church has the right to deny me the sacrament of marriage if they determine the person I choose to marry is unfit, or our relationship doesn't meet their standards.  City Hall does not have that right."

But I also come at this as an American citizen, who reads our formative principles as limiting government, not unleashing it to tamper with life’s most basic values.

I like how the padre slipped a little Tea Party rhetoric into his sermon at the end there, to help connect with the Upstate rubes.  It's not like the Crusades, or the days of the Papal States anymore; if you're a radical cleric seeking to exercise supreme executive authority, you've got to give 'em the carrot and the crosier.  This racket has been a lot tougher ever since that Gutenberg bastard blew the gaff.

Therapeutic Beast Blogging: For D.Sidhe Edition

Our friend D.Sidhe is having a crappy week, so I thought perhaps the application of cats, like a cold compress to a fevered brow, might help.

Riley:  Some days, rubbing a dirty sweatsock on your face isn't enough.  Some days, you just gotta go right to the source.

Moondoggie:  I sure hope these Sun-In highlights start to take...Summer's almost here, and believe you me, you've gotta work twice as hard to attract the babes when you don't have any junk.

Update:  Thanks to Alice's comment, I can't stop thinking of this Kliban cartoon:

Alms for a Question-Beggar

Whenever I'm afraid we may be approaching Peak Wingnut, I need only visit American Thinker to remind myself that this land is rich and fecund and full of many deep, untapped reserves of crazy.  So let's get fracking!

Lee DeCovnick isn't prolific -- he's only contributed five articles to American Thinker -- but he's been at it long enough that his earliest effort dates from a time when AT still allowed author bios.  And while Lee's is brief, I think you'll agree that it inspires a peculiar kind of confidence:

Lee DeCovnick was a Senior Financial Analyst for a Fortune 500 company in the era of Lotus 1-2-3, 5 ¼" floppy disks, and monochrome monitors.

Which makes you wonder if Lee could possibly have imagined, way back when an entire computer Operating System could fit on a single floppy, that these primitive machines with their green-on-black text would evolve to one day permit him to communicate with the entire world, a capability he would  use mostly to annoy imaginary Jews.

Obama and his Jewish Supporters

Discussing the Obama's Administrations deceitful, deceptive, dishonest, double- dealing duplicitous betrayal of Israel with my Jewish friends has become increasingly hazardous to our friendships.

 His Jewish friends' habit of opening the discussion with a logical fallacy is particularly exasperating to Lee.

After we dogfight over the "real significance" of Obama's "'67 lines" speech, and the geographic minutia of the defensible borders, I drop the bombshell question, "Why do think Obama hates Jews and the state of Israel."

Of course, the Jews can't answer Lee's Sphinx-like query, anymore than they can answer their own eternal question: how many times is this coot gonna wander into my house during a dinner party before that nursing home across the road ties him to his goddamn bed at night?

Their response almost always elicits an eye popping, jaw dropping, red- faced righteous indignation, followed by some combination of shouted words and spittle that include

"Grabs some towels from the bathroom! And somebody get him off the couch before that stain spreads!"

"But...uh..he's the President, Israel is our .. ah ...one democratic ally... in the Middle East, AND I VOTED FOR HIM, and I could never have voted for someone like that!" 

Hm. Well, judging by this response, there are only two possibilities. Either Lee's friends are the stupidest people on the planet, or else he's making it all up, and has an uncanny ear for believable, realistic dialogue.

I'm gonna go with Number 1.

 Then, like popping a balloon, I ask, "So, David, why then did you get so angry and upset?  If Obama really doesn't hate Jews or Israel, you should have just tossed aside the question, laughed at its premise, and or simply said you're crazy? None of those things happened. What caused such an outburst? I think it's because you see the forceful actions this Administration, and thus the United States, is taking on behalf of Israel's blood enemies and you're unable to fit that into the framework of your thinking."

Ah ha! Caught, if I may quote Beyond the Fringe, in a logical cleft stick! This reminds me of the scene in A Charlie Brown Christmas, when Lucy says, smugly, "You do think I'm beautiful, don't you, Charlie Brown? [PAUSE] You didn't answer me right away. You had to think about it first, didn't you? If you really had thought I was beautiful, you would've spoken right up. I know when I've been insulted! I KNOW WHEN I'VE BEEN INSULTED!"

American Jews have found themselves a wolf in sheep's clothing, inside the hen house, happily gorging on chicken soup and matzo balls.

Or they've found a print of a previously unknown Salvadore Dali painting.

The question then becomes will there be any chickens left in the hen house before the deceitful wolf turns his attention to the farmer's cottage and the American Jews who think they're safe inside.

Meanwhile, the fox (equally deceitful, but a late sleeper), having found a transvestite wolf beating his time at the poultry coop, borrows a costume from the San Diego Chicken and goes down to the sheep meadow to gorge on lavash and string cheese, washed down with mulberry vodka, thus lulling Armenians into a false sense of security about the border dispute with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Doug Giles: How Can We Make the Sunshine State a Sundown Town?

It's been awhile since we checked with Pastor Doug Giles. As you no doubt recall, P-Do is the part-time minister of a vagrant church with no fixed address, although it can often be found crashing at the Residence Inn of Aventura, Florida, unless the Association of Stainless Steel Grommet Manufacturers and Suppliers are in town and need the ballroom for a slide presentation and buffet lunch.  He's also the host of a pretend radio show on the internet, and the father of Hannah Giles, a fake prostitute.  On the bright side, his stupidity appears to be genuine.

Urban Beach Week Destroys South Beach … Again

Well, I’m going to be called a racist for this one, but here it goes:

Living in my elitist Hollywood bubble, I've lost touch with the way real Americans think.  In my jasmine-scented Emerald City, where it rains glitter, people commute to work on freeways paved with rainbows, and kids snack on Pixie Sticks filled with the granulated horns of free-range unicorns who died a natural death -- at home, after a long and fulfilling life, surrounded by loved ones -- and which fight tooth decay and contain only One Awesome Calorie, when a person thinks, "I'm going to be called a racist for this one," they often conclude that this, by itself, is a good enough reason to stop talking and go watch that West Wing marathon on Bravo.

What the heck is up with the hip hop crowd trashing South Beach year after year on Memorial Day? Is this how your crew celebrates the hard-won freedoms our nation’s heroes gave their lives for—by annually ransacking South Florida and shooting at cops?

Maybe they're celebrating the slightly different brand of freedom we gave the Iraqis.

The vast majority of people who give a damn about Dade County and our gorgeous beaches hate Urban Beach Week. Yep, I said it. They hate it … especially those who live in the condos and mansions along South Beach. 

They're trapped in their stately beach-front homes, forced to spend night after night staring into space, nursing a lifetime of grievances and regrets, while their second wives sit on the cold marble hearths of fireplaces built to comically medieval dimensions, obsessively working jigsaw puzzles.

If such a vision does not cause your heart to break, then your heart must also be made from the finest white Makrana marble, imported at great expense, in which case I compliment you on your elegant taste, and advise you to stay indoors until the Negroes leave town.

Why do they detest UBW? Well, it’s because of things like the insane 24-hour noise, the tons of trash on the streets and beaches, the increase in security that is reminiscent of Fallujah in 2004, and the radical spike in crime and arrests (including the ubiquitous vandalism of cars and homes).

According to the Miami Herald's piece on the event, "[A]rrests have decreased steadily over the past few years during Urban Beach Week in South Beach."  It notes that "for all the complaints about the ills of Urban Beach Week, it is not an unparalleled event, nor does it present unique municipal challenges never heard of before," and describes how "Daytona Beach, where MTV spring break events in the 1980s and 1990s earned the city of 60,000 an unwanted reputation as a rowdy party destination.  Adding to the city’s undesired attention were the high-profile murders of two college students in separate incidents years apart."

Not to mention the woes of Ft. Lauderdale, which has been coping since 1960 with a yearly influx of privileged young white men with names like "Ryder" and "Dill," who are looking to consume an immoderate number of Tiki drinks and get fresh with Yvette Mimieux.

This past weekend the Urban Beach people hit their nadir: They turned South Beach, America’s Riviera, into a war zone. Collins Avenue on Memorial Day was indeed memorable but in a tawdry, satanic sense as the Urban Beach Weekers made our Cosmopolitan playground look more like Cairo, complete with attempted cop killing.

A shooting is always shocking, especially in a place like Miami, which has never known violence.  (I vaguely remember a show called Miami Vice, but I'm pretty sure that was a wacky sitcom set in a hardware store).

Anyway, Doug, you were saying?  Tawdry Black people are spoiling your Cosmopolitan playground and keeping Bebe Rebozo up at night with their phat beats?

Yes, during this year’s festivities the Urban Beach Weekers trashed the historic Art Deco streets, screamed, yelled and blasted music 24/7

Screaming, yelling, loud music...As anyone who's attended Spring Break in South Florida can tell you, these are forms of celebration unique to the modern Inner City Satanist.

Young Anton LaVey (r) at historic Black Mass held at the Ed Sullivan Theater (1964).

Yep, one of the “tourists” tried to run over several cops with his vehicle and then shot at them, at which point a gunfight ensued between one of these winners and Miami’s cops that made anything John Yoo has produced look lame.

Wow.  Considering John Yoo has produced everything from legal opinions authorizing war crimes to rationalizations for crushing the testicles of a child, that's really saying something, Doug.  I'm sorry I doubted you.

Call me a racist, a gringo, honkey, cracker, or whatever.

"...just don't call me late for lynchin'."

But at the end of the day if Edgar and Johnny Winter, the von Trapps or the lost white tribe from Whiteyville (that listens to Pat Boone and only Pat Boone) came to my city year after year and screwed it up, as much as I love my Caucasian brethren, I would do everything in my power to bounce them away from my house. As in, for good.

I know when Rock 'n Roll first became popular, a lot of Baptist preachers issued thundering denunciations of this new "jungle music."  But I'm pretty sure this is the first time a Southern clergyman has concluded his sermon by threatening to shoot an albino.

Joseph Farah Likes His Coffee The Way He Likes His Mustache...

 ...black, and lots of it.  But as for other body parts -- or even whole bodies -- he'd like a lot less black, especially in that whole White House region.

Although WorldNetDaily kingpin Joseph Farah is an accomplished shearer of sheep -- maintaining a large and loyal readership which resembles nothing so much as a shivering colony of ruminant nudists -- like any really accomplished clip artist he is always on the look out for fresh sources of fleece; and as WND has proven time and again, even the rough wool of outrage, resentment, and racial antipathy can be spun into gold.  So after yesterday's announcement that he's suing Esquire and William Randolph Hearst himself for everything he's got! -- including Hearst Castle and Marion Davies' "rosebud" -- the grizzled, but sable-lipped old crusader has also declared that he's had enough with these uppity congress-critters popping up out of the briar patch to level accusations of racism!

The ill-informed race mongers

They're still playing the race card on people who insist the president of the United States should have to prove he is constitutionally eligible for office. 

They're never satisfied, are they, Joe?  You show 'em a PDF of your Soul Train Fan Club Card (personally signed by Don Cornelius!) from 1971 to prove that you've always had a great relationship with the blacks, but the conspiracy theorists continue to nitpick (Where's the original Fan Club Card that can be handled and examined by experts?  Is this a wet Don Cornelius' signature, or did some flunky use a rubber stamp?  Are these blotches smearing the date on the card artifacts of the OCR digital conversion process, or just semen stains?).  Questions remain.

Meet Rep. Jim Clyburn, the assistant Democratic leader in the House.

He gave an interview to the McClatchy News Service in which he claimed that those concerned about Barack Obama's eligibility are racists.

"I don't know why anybody didn't ask for John McCain's" birth certificate, Clyburn said. "He wasn't even born in this country."

Clyburn should read Jerome Corsi's "Where's the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible To Be President."

Released in paperback as "Everything I Need to Know About the Scholarly Method I Learned in Kindergarten."

The first chapter of the book recounts the forgotten media hysteria over McCain's eligibility issue. The New York Times and CNN and other major media outlets published and broadcast dozens of stories questioning McCain's qualification as a "natural born citizen" –

Dozens of stories?  Talk about a cover-up! WND publishes dozens of stories calling Obama a foreigner every day.

ultimately leading to a hearing in the U.S. Senate and a unanimous finding that the senator was eligible because both his parents were U.S. citizens white!*

That has always been the accepted definition of a "natural born citizen" since the day the phrase was included in the Constitution among the meager, but unique, qualifications for the office of president and vice president. 

It's like the Fourteenth Amendment never even happened.  Like it was all a dream...just a beautiful dream, like...Oz, or...the Maidenform Women showing up at the Inaugural Ball.

But even going by Joe's "accepted definition" of a "natural born citizen," which isn't actually defined in the Constitution, you have to admit that the Founders really dropped the ball by allowing Thomas Jefferson to serve as President.  Not only was he the son of a foreign-born mother, but she was English, a subject of the King against whom he had just fought a war.  Talk about your Divided Loyalties!  Is it therefore any surprise that we found ourselves fighting another war against England not three years after Jefferson left office.  And what's the deal with Andrew Jackson?  Both his parents were Irish, which is the same thing as English, except the soap, while manly, is also enjoyed by women.

You know, the more I get to know about the Founding Fathers, the more inept they seem.   It's hard to believe none of them ever served in the Bush Administration.

I guess it would be too much to ask that Clyburn read the papers and pay attention to what goes on over in the Senate. And, by the way, why didn't Clyburn, when he was in the leadership of the majority party in 2008, simply ask for John McCain's birth certificate if he was so interested? 

 Because Clyburn took McCain at his word that the Senator was born in Panama?

But it gets worse.
Did James Rosen of the Washington bureau of the McClatchy News Service correct the record in his story?
No.
Did he point out to his interview subject that, indeed, there were many calls for McCain to prove his eligibility?
No.
Did he point out the unanimous finding of the Democrat-dominated U.S. Senate in 2008?
No.
Did he ask him why he didn't, as a member of the House leadership, ask McCain for proof of eligibility if he were sincerely interested?

Probably because Clyburn wasn't terribly interested, not being either a racist, or a parasite preying on the easily bamboozled.

No.
He just let him play the race card – evidently because he liked it or because he was as ill-informed as Clyburn.
Another day, another couple of Washington insiders exchanging ignorances in public.

But consider what they are doing – labeling as "racist" those who insist the Constitution be enforced.

This is not only provably untrue, it is the polar opposite of truth. 

Now, perhaps Snidely Whipstash is genuinely aglow with righteous and altruistic indignation, or perhaps it's simply a case where the truth hurts -- at least enough to pierce the dry, brittle, puff pastry-like shell he calls his skin, and let some of the accumulated pus spatter onto his keyboard.  But more likely, Joe is preparing another windfall lawsuit, this time a class action against American Black People, which will no doubt result in an historic Supreme Court decision (WorldNetDaily v. The Sons of Ham, et al).

Let me point out that the white guy in the 2008 presidential race – the guy who had served in Congress for 30 years and previously run for president – was the one forced to prove his eligibility. The half-black guy – with three years in Congress, whose two fathers were both foreign citizens and who attended school in Indonesia as an Indonesian citizen, was not asked to prove anything! 

 Plus, he was the subject of a family-undermining public school textbook, Barry Has Two Foreign Dads, which has encouraged an entire generation of mixed race children to be fathered, then abandoned by Africans, adopted by Indonesians, then raised by White Midwesterners.  Which, if you've been paying attention to the network upfronts in New York this week, is the premise of half the new Fall sitcoms. 

If there's racism on parade in the matter of eligibility it would have to be anti-white racism, no?

So you and your website are only persecuting Obama's white half?

"Okay, I admit it -- I'm not as young as I used to be -- and occasionally I like to touch up my Black side with a little Just For Men."

Maybe Obama got a free ride because he was black?

Well sure.  I mean, that's traditionally been a FastPass® to the White House.

Maybe others were afraid to bring up the constitutional issue because yokels like Clyburn would smear them as racists? 

We would've made a lot more social progress in the 50s and 60s if only places like Clyburn's native South Carolina hadn't been filled with so many anti-racist yokels.

Maybe when you run out of intelligent arguments against enforcing the Constitution there's nowhere to turn but invectives? 

Whenever Joe makes a speech, at someplace like the anti-Park51 rally, or CPAC, he's played onstage to the reggae beat of Elvis Costello's Watching the Invectives.

Maybe there should be an IQ test before we allow people to run for Congress to prevent America from being embarrassed by the likes of Jim Clyburn and company?

Or some sort of poll test, at least.

Maybe now that a totally unqualified black man, who is ineligible to boot, has been elected to the presidency, we can stop whining about racism in America?

Yes, it does seem to have vanished, doesn't it?

Maybe I'm getting sick and tired of nattering nabobs like Jim Clyburn getting to spew this kind of drivel without any consequences – including being confronted with the truth by a reporter with half a brain?

I vote yes to all of the above.

You'll need to pass the literacy test first, Joe.

*Edited for clarity.