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