A reminder to watch out for computer viruses. I received today an e-mail with the sending address of the Washington Post Post ombudsman (ombudsman@washpost.com). He has never written to me, and I've never written to him. The message had all the classic signs of a virus message: The subject line was "test" and it had a 31k attachment. I just deleted it without opening it. (I'm sure it's not actually from Michael Getler or the Post.)

If you've sent me a message without a personalized subject line in the past couple of months, it's probably been deleted without opening. Safety first... Because Roger cares.

Oh, and use a prophylactic too. And a seatbelt. And put a coat on.

Brutus Beefcake's Cocaine Triggers Beantown Anthrax Scare

Greatest story I've heard in a long time. I heard this on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me and I'm surprised it's not already all over the blogosphere.

Former WWF pro wrestler Brutus "the Barber" Beefcake (aka Ed Leslie) was working as a fare collector for the Boston subway system. Someone spotted white powder in a fare collector's booth and thought it was anthrax, so the authorities ordered the Downtown Crossing station evacuated. Turns out the white powder was Brutus' "bag" of blow. Sadly, Brutus lost his job and is now in rehab.

And I always thought pro wrestling was a such clean and sober sport. Brutus' blunder is likely to give the sport a black eye.

Reader Philip Barnard writes:

re your Feb 19 piece on Bloch and Carlson.

I enjoy your blog generally, but I really have to object to the "University of Kansas and Bush Administration" headline! The entire university is likened to the Bush Administration because two right wingers went here (and left here! Gee, wonder why he's at Casper and not the U of Kansas....)? Really, I don't see the logic.

Obviously one can find right wing extremists at any university. Why pick on us? If you'd like to find out about the University of Kansas and the kind of intellectual work that's done here, I'd be happy to try and give you a little information. In intellectual and ideological terms you can find as many or more egregious right wingers at private, so-called "elite" institutions, if you care to go looking.

Don't public universities get enough misinformed pounding from the right in the culture wars?

I agree with you completely about these two characters, but how their extremism reflects on the U of Kansas escapes me.

Mr. Barnard is right. There was no basis for my swipe at the University of Kansas, and no reason to blame the U of K for the extremism of Bloch and Carlson. I stand corrected.

Grand Old Police Blotter: An Ass His Check Can't Keep Edition

Here's the future of the Republican Party, a young man destined to be a Senior Economic Advisor in the George P. Bush White House:

CONCORD - A 23-year-old state representative who faced possible expulsion from the Legislature resigned Thursday rather than defend himself against charges he abused his office....

"I'm very sad to leave the House. I really feel that I belong there," Kerns said afterward.

Kerns faced three ethics charges against him: passing a bad check with "State of New Hampshire" written on it; using his title to get a parking spot reserved for school officials; and threatening them when told to stop parking there.

Kerns said he felt forced to resign because he was afraid the Legislature would take up the matter before he was willing to address it. He also said he plans to spend the next few months recovering from an unnamed neurological illness and preparing to file for re-election in June.

After he allegedly wrote the bad check in Salem last summer, Kerns introduced a resolution declaring "misdemeanor offenses of any kind shall not constitute probable cause under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution." It was struck down in later debate.

And a philosophe:

"I was diagnosed with a serious condition that affects my ability to do my job and has exacerbated situations with my peers," Kerns said. "I am a human being, which means I speak my mind, support independent causes and have transcended the political process socially."

He certainly looks like a Puke.

Mission Accomplished

UggaBugga points us to this article, where Ahmed Chalabi has a good laugh at our expense. It's like the ultimate episode of Punk'd (or maybe PNAC'd), but with thousands dead and wounded (so far).

But many American officials now blame Mr. Chalabi for providing what turned out to be false or wildly exaggerated intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

During an interview, Mr. Chalabi, by far the most effective anti-Saddam lobbyist in Washington, shrugged off charges that he had deliberately misled U.S. intelligence.

"We are heroes in error," he said in Baghdad on Wednesday. "As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful.

"Our objective has been achieved. That tyrant Saddam is gone, and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important."

Mr. Chalabi added: "The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if [President Bush] wants."

"Hero" isn't the word I'd use.

Of course, once the Americans leave Baghdad, there will be a lot more folks looking for Chalabi and his cronies to fall upon the ends of swords.

When Hairfree Met Suzy

Ailes Exclusive! Top sources can reveal that two rabid Republicans -- one married! -- have been crossing state lines to swap spite in furtherance of their mutual hatred of Senator and Presidential hopeful John Kerry.

Earlier this month, Mickey Kaus was seen trying to light a fire under the fabricated Drudge smear of Senator Kerry by referencing a non-story "from the 1998 Boston Herald, to which I was steered a few weeks ago by a skeptical and unaligned feminist Democrat." (See Feb. 12.) Seasoned media observers familiar with the hairless hater suspected the "Democrat" in question was the once-respected Susan Estrich, based on this Daily Howler report which placed Kaus in the Granite State at the same time as an unnamed loudmouth "Faux Democrat."

Incomparably, yesterday's Howler reports that Estrich shopped the same smear article to Brit Hume on Fox, and confirms that a "well-oiled" and "staggering" Estrich was the loudmouth in quo.

Accordingly, we have the following scenario: Kaus living out of a New Hampshire motel room around the same time he was swapping smutty press clips with a "feminist Democrat," and at the same time the lubricated Estrich was on the loose in Manchester. Was Susy (R) the mystery "feminist?" And where was the long-suffering "Mr. Estrich" [real name withheld] at the time?

This site certainly isn't accusing Kaus and Susan Estrich of adultery. We're sure they were just delivering resumes, in the Republican sense of that phrase. And sharing tawdry fantasies about John Kerry doesn't even qualify as sex as defined by Paula Jones' attorneys.

Unless these two claim under oath that they are Democrats, it's doubtful much more will come from this sordid episode.

Still Pistof, Still Fact Free

Atrios points to this disingenuous response to Katha Pollitt from Nick "Who's Your Daddy" Kristof, self-appointed Saviour of Third World Women. Here are some points to ponder:

1. Pistof doesn't address the most important new point in The Nation article, which, not surprisingly, he also doesn't link to. If the Feminist Majority Foundation is "AWOL" on the issue of sex trafficking, as Pistof claims, why did Pistof's assistant "spend hours" on the telephone with the FMF, discussing the FMF's activities on the issue, as Pollitt claims? (Note that Christine Cupaiuolo reports that the NYT edited that salient fact out of a letter from FMF President Eleanor Smeal which was published in the paper.) If you wanted to know, say, the details of the Dannelly Air Base in the early 1970s, would you spend hours on the phone with George Bush?

2. Kristof also dodges the criticism by changing the issue. In his column, he said that the Bush Administration had "led the way" on the issue, and that "Conservative Christians have called on Mr. Bush to do more," while feminist organizations were "complacent" and "shamefully lackadaisical" on the issue. Now Pistof drops the comparison, and simply says that "mainstream feminist" groups are provincial for not focusing more on gender-based discrimination abroad. But "mainstream" Christian conservatives in the U.S. and the Bush Administration have focused much more on their domestic agenda of outlawing abortion and gay marriage, prayer in schools, etc. than they have on sex trafficking (or genital mutilation, bride burning, etc.) in the Third World. If Pistof was honest, he'd be writing "[w]hy should a conservative religious agenda put more effort on banning gay marriage and pornography than on millions of children of God around the world who are denied education, health care or even life itself?" Or at least he'd admit that his original comparison was dishonest and disgusting.

3. Pistof then says that NOW is "a bit like a civil rights organization in New York in the 1960's saying: 'We're basically a New York organization with a local agenda, so we won't worry about the civil rights struggle in the south.'" Ignoring the dubious claim that New York State was a civil rights paradise in the 1960's, if one to were use Pistof's standard, one would criticize the 60s civil rights activists for focusing on the American South because there were places on the globe with fewer freedoms and poorer education, health care and living conditions than those available to African-Americans in Selma or Birmingham. And, of course, American feminists might be able to devote more time supporting the causes of their foreign sisters if the Bush administration and the religious right weren't devoting most of their time to denying reproductive rights and civil rights here at home.

4. As always, the real subject of any Pistof writing is how wonderful Pistof is. Pistof chides Pollitt (who he won't stoop to name) for not being like him and "actually going" or "actually traveling" to foreign lands and meeting women who are abused. Maybe Pollitt can afford such a trip, even if she can't get the New York Times to fund it, as Pistof did. But most American feminists don't have an underwriter or the spare cash (and time and lack of other obligations) for such an adventure. And he again pats himself on the back for "rescuing" the two Cambodian women with cold, hard cash, even though he previously told his readers that they shouldn't try to do the same thing. Only a worthy like Pistof is allowed that special privilege.

Bloch Head

Legal reasoning, University of Kansas and Bush Administration-style:

Scott J. Bloch, the agency head [of the Office of Special Counsel], said he ordered the material removed because of uncertainty over whether a provision of civil service law applies to federal workers who claim unfair treatment because they are gay, bisexual or heterosexual.

"It is wrong to discriminate against any federal employee, or any employee, based on discrimination," Bloch said.

That kind of nuanced analysis could get you a full professorship at the University of Tennessee.

Here's more on Scott Bloch, student of philosophy:

Casper College instructor Robert Carlson has been offered a position in the Office of Special Counsel to President George W. Bush, Carlson said Tuesday.

Carlson would serve in Washington, D.C., under Scott J. Bloch, who heads the office. Carlson met Bloch in the late 1970s at the University of Kansas, where Bloch was a student in a class Carlson taught as a graduate student.

If he takes the post, Carlson, who currently teaches literature and philosophy at CC, will be charged with providing counsel to Bloch on ethical issues.

...

Prior to his recent appointment as special counsel, Bloch headed up the Task Force for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in the United States Department of Justice. He was able to choose two special assistants -- one of whom could be a philosopher.

"He thought of me," Carlson said.

In 1998, Carlson and two other Casper College instructors introduced an anti-gay program at the school called Anchor. The instructors touted the program, part of SoFAITH, the Society of Families Anchored in Truth, as pro-family values.

Carlson and the other instructors, Jay Graham and Mike Keogh, created the Anchor program to counter the Safe Zone program, created in 1997, which promoted acceptance and understanding of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.

The Anchor program was denied endorsement by Casper College because of what President LeRoy Strausner described as Anchor's anti-gay agenda....

You'll fit right in, Bob.

More On Pistof

Does Katha Pollitt read Roger Ailes? Undoubtedly not. But she did read Nick "Pistof" Kristof's sleazy columns diminishing the work of feminists on the matter of sex trafficking, and had the same reaction as Roger:

I'm reminded of these good people because the New York Times's Nicholas Kristof is once again accusing American feminists of ignoring Third World women and girls. Last spring, he discovered obstetric fistula in Africa--the tear between the birth canal and the lower intestine that can happen during protracted labor and that, unless corrected, condemns a woman to a lifetime of physical misery and social ostracism. Kristof profiled Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia and wondered why "most feminist organizations in the West have never shown interest in these women." Perhaps, he wrote, "the issue doesn't galvanize women's groups because fistulas relate to a traditional child-bearing role." Right, we all know that feminists only care about aborting babies, not delivering them safely. The Times got a lot of letters (and published some, including one from me) pointing out that feminists, in fact, were behind numerous efforts to combat fistula and other maternity-related health problems in Africa, including the work of the UNFPA, praised by Kristof, whose funding was eliminated by the White House to please its right-wing Christian base.

You'd think he'd learn. But no. Now Kristof is complaining that American women's groups such as NOW and Feminist Majority don't care about sexual slavery and the trafficking of women and children for commercial sex. In a series of columns, he describes his efforts to "buy the freedom" of two Cambodian teenage prostitutes living in a sleazy brothel in Poipet and to get them home to their families. Evangelical Christians, he argues, care about girls like these; feminists are too busy "saving Title IX and electing more women to the Senate," he observed in a Times online forum. Right, why should American women care about equal opportunities and electing to office people who think contraception is as important as Viagra? Never mind that putting more feminists in the Senate--not more "women"--would mean more help for the very causes Kristof supports!

And here's another article telling Kristoff to piss off, with a very revealing detail:

In case you missed it, here's Eleanor Smeal's response [to Kristof's column], which the Times published Feb. 7. The letter was abbreviated; it does not mention, for example, that FMF provided plenty of documentation of the organization's past and current involvement in this issue to a NYT fact checker who called FMF the evening before the column ran. None of the information was included.

It like there wasn't room to fit both the globe-trotting egomanic's immense self-regard and the facts in the same column.

Camp Follower

Stunted right-winger Mickey Kaus isn't fooling anyone by claiming to be a Democrat, but he's now admitted he's a Bush camp whore.

Kauspiles, January 13, 2004:

Kerry advisor: "Everything is on the table. Everything." Heh.

Kauspiles, January 18, 2004:

"Everything is on the table" was immediately used by the Bush camp to depict Democrats as ready to smear.

Indeed.

Meanwhile, here's a political thug quote for the runtish Republican:

"We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!"

Who said that one, Mickey?

It Is Ass It Was

These are trying times for Peggy Noonan. Her best boyfriend is no longer talking to her, and numbers two and three are squabbling.

"[Hutton Gibson] even belittled the Pope's reported endorsement of 'The Passion,' recounting how Mel referred to the pontiff as an 'ass.'"

Now boys, don't force Nooners to choose between you.

Hutton also opined in a radio interview that Alan Greenspan should be hung, that Hitler's concentration camps were work camps and that Jews are anti-Christian "by being a Jew."

Talk To The Hand

Dr. Alterman asks:

But if it's ok to pry into Kerry's sex life because Clinton lied about sex, what is to stop us from prying into Mickey's?

The gag reflex, Eric.

We know that the woman in question hadn't "recently fled the country," as the dick-tugging dirt-bag falsely reported.

Indeed.

Time For Some Accountability

A woman who has been the subject of rumors linking her to Sen. John Kerry denied Monday that she ever had an affair with the Democratic presidential candidate.

Breaking her silence four days after the allegations surfaced on the Internet, Alexandra Polier issued a statement to The Associated Press, saying, "I have never had a relationship with Senator Kerry, and the rumors in the press are completely false."

Kerry already has denied reports that he had an extramarital affair. On Monday, his campaign said he would have no further comment.

Polier's statement was released to the AP in Nairobi, where the 27-year-old freelance journalist is visiting the parents of her fiance, Yaron Schwartzman, an Israeli who was raised in Kenya. She previously worked as an editorial assistant for the AP in New York.

"Whoever is spreading these rumors and allegations does not know me," Polier said, appealing to the media to respect her privacy and the privacy of her fiance and his family.

Polier also took issue with reports that referred to her as a former Kerry intern.

"I never interned or worked for John Kerry," she told AP over the phone.

In a separate statement, Polier's parents, Terry and Donna Polier of Malvern, Pa., dismissed the "completely false and unsubstantiated" allegations about their daughter.

"We love and support her 100 percent and these unfounded rumors are hurtful to our entire family," the statement said. "We appreciate the way Senator Kerry has handled the situation, and intend on voting for him for president of the United States." -- AP, via sfgate.com

In honor of Presidents' Day, Roger Ailes, the blog, will be AWOL tomorrow.

Not that I would ever call Bush that.

President, I mean.

Enjoy the fine blogs listed to your right in the meantime.

All I'm Gonna Say

I'd hate to be Brent Bozell's calcified arteries when Brent does tomorrow's New York Times crossword puzzle.

Update (2/16): 24 Across: Pale, aging president (12). (Answer in Comments)

SULLIVAN: And it isn't like a flatulent horse, which is a silly bad joke. It's actually a part of the anatomy that we don't allow people to display on the streets, that we do restrict to privacy, and it's out there for anybody and everybody to see. And I think the lawmakers are grandstanding, but they have a point.

Sully did not expound upon whether a flatulent horse is similar or dissimilar to throwing a football in a tire.

The Republicans, meanwhile, have been out there all alone, looking for a lift. They just wanted to get home, have macaroni with the kids, watch a little TV. Even though when they did watch, when they turned on a cable TV news-talk show, what they were likely to see was an Inside Political Hotspot Beltway Hotbuzz segment that began with questions like, "Bush: Madman or Moron?" Or "Scooter Libby: Evil Force or Waning Power?" Or "Dick Cheney: Will the Bush White House Replace Him . . . or Kill Him?"

Now I haven't seen many of these cable shows recently. Hell, Nooner's probably been on more of them than I've seen. But can anyone point to a single instance of these programs where they ran even a non-exaggerated version of these topics? On Faux, MSGOP, CNGOP? Please.

Trent Lott called. He wants to hire Bush for his re-election campaign:

What started as a mostly civil contest turned ugly when the Blount campaign edited a Sparkman radio interview to make it appear that he favored mandatory busing, an explosive tactic in a state still struggling with great racial divides and the legacy of segregation. The Democrat's campaign team eventually found an unedited version of the interview and used it in the race's final days against Blount.

Sounds like something a Bush family friend would do.

Instant Parma, or, Lee Stoops to Rancor

Parma - Lee Stoop, the city's Republican leader, thought she was forwarding an immigrant-bashing poem to a few close friends for laughs.

But she inadvertently sent it to a much wider audience that included dozens of local officials and even New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. On Friday, few people in Cuyahoga County's largest suburb found it funny.

The poem describes turban-wearing immigrants flocking to America to collect welfare and goes downhill from there.

(Via the generous Buzzflash.)

She Wants A Guy Just Like Dad

The parallels are eerie. I predict years of therapy. Unless, of course, she runs Fabio over with her car first.

First Daughter Barbara Bush's dirty-dancing partner has been hot-footing it from the law.

Gotham gadabout Fabian Basabe - pictured in a hip-lock with Babs on the front page of the Daily News yesterday - is wanted on three warrants in California.

The social climber has been busted for speeding, driving under the influence and trespassing. He even jumped bail in one case, court records show.

Other court files show a string of infractions - but no open warrants - in Virginia, North Carolina and Florida, including two collisions.