Dog's Balls

So much for the myth of the liberal school librarian:

Yet there it is on the first page of "The Higher Power of Lucky," by Susan Patron, this year's winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children's literature. The book's heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

"Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much," the book continues. "It sounded medical and secret, but also important."

The inclusion of the word has shocked some school librarians, who have pledged to ban the book from elementary schools, and re-opened the debate over what constitutes acceptable content in children's books. The controversy was first reported by Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine.

I suppose now they'll defrock Laura Bush for telling a joke about her husband and another horse's dick.

One of the censorious librarians approached the scrotum from this angle:

Ms. Nilsson, reached at Sunnyside Elementary School in Durango, Colo., said she had heard from dozens of librarians who agreed with her stance. "I don't want to start an issue about censorship,” she said. “But you won't find men's genitalia in quality literature."

"At least not for children," she added.

On the upside, this will keep The Bible out of the hands of the kiddies.

Doctor, It Hurts When I Do This

From the apparently editorless front page of the New York Times On The Web:

Ugandans have flocked to see "The Last King of Scotland," which depicts an era they would like to forget.

Grand Old Police Blotter: Shut Down The Blood Alcohol Count Edition

Is lawlessness heredity? Is the daughter of someone drunk with power the child of an alcoholic? Will a sitting Supreme Court justice pervert the court of justice for his own family, or does he only do that for his party?

Following the example of the men her father installed as President and Vice President in violation of the law, the adult daughter of Nino "Fat Hands" Scalia has been arrested for Driving While Tinsleyed and child endangerment:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's daughter was arrested on drunken driving charges Monday night in Wheaton, police said.

Ann S. Banaszewski, a Wheaton resident, was arrested Monday around 7:30 p.m. at the intersection of Gamon Road and Longfellow Drive after someone reported seeing a possible drunken driver near the McDonald's at 2030 S. Naperville Road, according to a police press release.

Banaszewski's three children were also in the car, a 1996 Ford Ecoline van. At her request, the children were dropped off by police at a family friend's home, Wheaton Deputy Police Chief Tom Meloni said.

In addition to the drunken driving charge, Banaszewski was charged with endangering the life of a child. She was processed on both charges at the Wheaton Police Department and was released on a recognizance bond.

Meloni would not reveal the children's age, but said all three were under 17 years.

Banaszewski has hired a top shyster to file all sorts of motions Fat Tony would ordinarily sneer at. But I doubt Tony gives a rat's ass about his female offspring.

(Story via Martini Republic)

Marty In His Pants

Marty Peretz's marbles continue to clatter loudly on the floor in the virtual pages of The New Republic.

In this edition of The Spine, Peretz takes his arch-enemy, imaginary Nazi collaborator George Soros, to task over JetBlue's failure to deplane passengers during an ice storm:

I don't mean to be picking on George Soros. Particularly because it's not exactly his fault. But it's his money behind Jet Blue, and he must have had some say in the management....

The worst was a flight scheduled to take off for Aruba at 8:10 am. Let's say most of them boarded at 7:45. They were finally taken off the plane at 6:30 pm. In captivity: 10 1/2 hours. Passengers on other flights that had arrived but didn't disembark prisoners for eight to nine and a half hours [sic/wtF?].

They were also starving. The only "refreshments" served on Jet Blue are water, soda and crackers.

For the last few days I've been counseling Soros to get out of the foreign policy business. Maybe he'd due [sic] well to get out of the airplane business, as well. Jet Blue is not good for his reputation. Actually, pretty much like foreign policy.

Soros is a minority shareholder (9.7 percent) in JetBlue, not an operational manager or executive. He has nothing to do with the daily operation of the airline; nor do the owners of the other 91.3 percent (except for employees receiving stock as compensation). Only a lunatic would imagine that's how any airline is run.

Using the same analogy, you could make a (much better) case that Marty is personally responsible for every piece of crap in TNR written or edited by Andrew Sullivan, Lee Siegel, Fred Barnes, Stephen Glass and Ruth Shalit. Perhaps Peretz would dew/deux/dü well to get out of the magazine business, if TNR's former readers don't make that decision for him first.

But you've got to hand it to Marty for his use of rhetoric: "prisoners," "captivity" and "starving." Not subtle, but it gets his message across.

Meanwhile, what the hell is up with this post? Peretz wrote a piece for the McCarthyite Wall Street Journal in which he used the term "Democrat Party" to slander Dems. After he was called on it, he claimed that the phrase "crept" its way into his piece and "It was clearly not my intention for this construction to appear in the article." What Spinnin' Marty doesn't say is that he didn't write the words, or that someone at the WSJ changed his words. The only way for the words to creep in was for the creep to write them. Or maybe Marty could blame his stenographer.

(And you've got to love the sensible progressives who subscribe to TNR and thus have the keys to Marty's chat room: "Michelle Malkin is wrong to describe Joe McCarthy as some sort of saint. At best, he was a very flawed man who dared to take the Democrat(ic) Party traitors to task.")

I actually thought the "BO" magazine joke [about Senator Obama] was funny. The only funny bit. People here didn't seem to get it though. It's making fun of Oprah's "O" mag, and making a pun at the same time.

(Comment at 2/15, 3:35 p.m.)

What The Last Post Was About

Howard Kurtz has a storyline and he's sticking to it: The media is giving Senator Barack Obama a free ride. The corollary and equally bogus claim from the Putz is that Willard "Muff" Romney is under attack by the biased press:

The press seems downright excited at the prospect of the first female president.

The idea of the first black president has journalists all but giddy.


But the first Mormon president? Whoa! That's a different matter.

The skeptical tone toward Mitt Romney's announcement has been impossible to miss. And the major reason is his religion.

"Will Mormon faith hurt bid for White House?" said USA Today's front-page headline on the day that the former Massachusetts governor announced.

Try to imagine a headline that said, "Will Jewish faith hurt bid for White House?"

I'll take that challenge.

Hmmm.... here's a query from the Putz's CNN colleague Paula Zahn, speaking to Holy Joe Lieberman immediately following his campaign announcement in 2003: "Do you believe the United States is ready for a Jewish president?"

Give me a hard one, Howie.

And let's not pretend that the media didn't run the exact same story about African-American and women presidents, and continue to do so, over and over again.

Now, try to imagine that Kurtz wrote an honest media criticism column.

Question For Willard

Q. "Do you hold your oath of office above your allegiance to Warren Jeffs?"

This is all kinds of creepy and ten varieties of stupid. Patrick "F" Fagan, another right-wing sex obsessive at National Review, offers the following:

Meanwhile, their non-virgin sisters who married after they had given their virginity to someone other than their husbands were all by no means doomed to divorce, but the data indicate the majority was [sic]. From Steve Nock's research on Virginia divorces, we know that roughly two thirds were initiated by the wives. Extrapolating from Rector-Johnson's research I bet most of the wives in Nock's sample did not come to their husbands as virgins, but before marriage were already used to rejection and rejecting and to moving on to another man. This is just a hypothesis and it may be proved wrong, but checking it out will make for a very interesting study.

Apart from the sheer illiteracy of this statement -- I believe Fagan means to write the "most of the wives in Nock's sample who initiated divorces," but he's not clear -- there's the utter stupidity of the paragraph. Why is only the wife's virginity relevant to the success of the marriage? Why is the identity of the spouse initiating divorce relevant to the cause of the divorce? A wife initiating the divorce could be doing so because the husband was unfaithful -- or a hundred other reasons not involving her wanting to have sex with another man (or a woman). And many an unfaithful spouse has no interest in leaving the marriage. The identity of the spouse initiating the divorce tells us nothing about why the marriage ended.

Of course, the creepy part is that Fagan is "very interested" in studying the virginity history and sex lives of married and divorced women. Beware of phone calls from heavy breathing researchers at The Heritage Foundation.

(On the other hand, National Review has seen fit to sell advertisements accompanying Fagan's article which promise "A complete and informative guide on the art of cheating to perfection" and "Learn[ing] how to have the ultimate discreet love affair." It's nice to see free market conservatism trump "family values" conservatism for a change.)

The Prattle of York-Clown

Politc-ho Mike Allen tells us that Byron York's crayon scribblings on the Scooter Libby trial are a "must read." And if you have an interest in flaccid reasoning, York's column has much to recommend it.

The floppy-haired twit believes that it's a defense to a charge of perjury that, althuogh you repeatedly lied about material facts under oath, the prosecutor asked other questions which you answered correctly. It doesn't work that way, Yorkie, and if Libby's defense attorneys have to make such an argument to the jury, Scooter might as well turn in his belt and shoelaces right now.

Grand Old Police Blotter: Ossified Limited Hang Out Edition

Another Grand Old Pervert from Pennsylvania:

(CBS/AP) A former U.S. congressman from Pennsylvania was accused Wednesday of exposing himself to at least two women at a Florida beach resort.

Joseph M. McDade, 75, was issued a summons on a charge of "exposure of sexual organs," a misdemeanor that carries up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

...

McDade was seen "masturbating on the beach and by the pool area of the hotel" by three witnesses on one day last month, according to police reports.

The Naples (Fla.) News reports that three police complainants detailed similar scenarios. The first witness said she saw McDade masturbating 10 to 15 feet away from her. The second said McDade followed his wife from the beach while masturbating, while the third said McDade watched her leave her lawn chair at the beach, and proceeded to follow her while masturbating, according to reports.

The third witness "thought Mr. McDade was a mental patient," according to reports.

McDade, a Republican, served in the House of Representatives from 1963 to 1999. He did not seek re-election in 1998.

Mac Dade-y has had other brushes with John Law: "He was the longest-serving Republican in the House when he was indicted in 1992 on charges he accepted gifts from defense companies in exchange for helping them win lucrative contracts." McDade, a graduate of Notre Dame, still works as a lobbyist. His clients include "Lockheed Martin Corp., Teledyne, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman Corp. and Raytheon, among many others."

It remains to be seen whether McDade is still able to secure votes on a handshake.

Labels: Wanker of the Day

Or at least fewer obvious dumbfucks.

(It's) Slammer Time

I'm really kind of curious as to why we're not hearing from Andrea Mitchell, who I gather the defense wants to bring out but for some reason the prosecutor has been resisting that. And I'm a little hazy on exactly why the prosecution is resisting that.

And, in a crushing blow for A.Q. Strata, the defense won't be calling Dick Armitage for his blockbuster testimony that absolutely everyone knew about Valerie Plame and her covert status.

Why, oh, why won't Libby's defense team listen to wingnuttia's finest legal minds? It's like they want to lose.

Who's The Bigger Dumbfuck, Frank Gaffney, Jnr. or A.J. Strata?

When a wingnut quotes Abraham Lincoln, the quote is almost certain to be bogus.

Frank Gaffney Jnr. starts today's column in the Moonie Times with the following:

Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.

-- President Abraham Lincoln

Gullible chuzzlewit A.J. Strata then humps the "wonderful quote" like a mad dog, asking "Now who is going to argue with Abraham Lincoln?" and stating "Alliances and connections to our brothers in the South were not a big surprise or limited, so Lincoln's comments must be seen in his desire TO END the war quickly to stop the bloodshed." (Whatever the fuck that means.)

But, of course, Lincoln didn't speak or write like a third-rate blogger with his pants around his ankles after watching 24. The quote is entirely fabricated, and it originated in another Moonie rag, Insight. And these morons didn't even spend the two seconds needed to confirm the quote is bogus.

But the facts don't really matter to these types. They lied to start the war, they lie to keep the war going and they'll still be lying after the war is ended.

Grand Old Police Blotter: Twofer Tuesday Edition

SAN DIEGO – Poway defense contractor Brent Wilkes and former high-ranking CIA official Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, childhood friends from San Diego who got entangled in the Randy "Duke" Cunningham corruption scandal, were indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury.

U.S. Attorney Carol Lam announced the indictments at an afternoon press conference, called the charges against the two men "breathtaking in scope."

The jury returned 11 counts against Foggo and Wilkes that include conspiracy, wire fraud, conflict of interest and money laundering. It charges Foggo with using his seniority and influence within the CIA to direct the awarding of contracts to Wilkes, his lifelong friend.

A second indictment, which included 26 counts, names Wilkes and New York-based mortgage banker John T. Michael, who co-owned a mortgage company that provided loans to Cunningham. It charges Wilkes with conspiracy, wire fraud, bribery of a public official and money laundering.

...

Court documents allege that Wilkes provided more than $700,000 to Cunningham in exchange for the former congressman corruptly influencing the appropriation of funds and the execution of government contracts to benefit Wilkes' company, Poway-based ADCS Inc.

Michael, 35, is charged with a single charge of obstructing justice, accused of trying to influence and impede a federal grand jury investigation by providing misleading and false testimony regarding Wilkes' role in paying off the $500,000 second mortgage on Cunningham's Rancho Santa Fe home.

...

The indictment alleges that Wilkes paid bribes to Cunningham in the form of cash, checks, lavish meals, trips, lodging, corporate jet travel, boats and prostitution.

The indictment says that on two occasions Wilkes provided prostitutes for himself and the congressman on two consecutive evenings on a lavish Hawaiian trip.

...

Foggo accepted tens of thousands of dollars in meals, gifts and vacations, and a standing offer of a senior executive position with ADCS. Foggo disclosed none of this to the CIA, according to the indictment.

...

Wilkes was a big contributor to Republican lawmakers who developed a series of businesses that specialized in landing federal contracts, with ADCS as his flagship.

Corruption, war profiteering and whores. Foggo and Wilkes are the embodiment of today's G.O.P.

Rape For Thee, But Not For Me

Does Professor Steven Bainbridge care about prison rape, or just about prison rape when the victim is a privileged endomorph like himself?

Linking to blogger citing an Ezra Klein post on the subject, Bainbridge states that prison rape is

an issue on which I have been writing for some time, as it is an important factor in evaluating the accelerating criminalization of agency costs.

In other words, prison rape should be considered in determining to whether prosecute CEOs, because a corporate head who's merely negligent or greedy but didn't defraud shareholders might be convicted and thereafter raped. Bainbridge also bemoans the fact that "when it comes to corporate executives, many people seem to see prison rape as an appropriate sanction."

Perhaps the Professor is equally concerned about the rape of dope dealers or burglars or of those falsely accused of crimes who are convicted because they can't afford competent counsel or they're a victim of corrupt cops. But I haven't seen that post. (The other posts the Prof links to criticize the prosecution of executives rather than the proliferation of prison rape.)

What I have seen is this:

Put bluntly, Dennis Kozlowski faces spending the rest of his life worrying about prison rape.

If we were confident that prosecutors could tell the difference between corporate criminality and mere bad corporate governance, and we were confident that prosecutors would content themselves with going after only the former, we might not care if the Kozlowskis of the world spent their days looking over their shoulders (so to speak). Yet, as the Kozlowski story illustrates, it's very hard to tell the difference between criminality and bad governance.

Indeed, as corporate law has long recognized, it can be difficult to tell the difference between good and bad corporate governance. As corporate law also has long recognized, there are serious costs associated with imposing high sanctions on executives.

So Bainbridge isn't really concerned with prison rape itself as much as the indirect economic consequences caused by risk-averse CEOs who place their own interest in not being raped ahead of the bottom line. And if you're not a top exec, whether guilty or innocent, don't hold your breath waiting for the Professor to champion your cause.

The Hack Strikes Back

From deep in the bowels of his online column (keep scrolling down), the Howie the Hack strikes back:

By the way, the Air Pelosi story seems to have crashed of its own weight. Once I found out that the House sergeant-at-arms had requested her plane--and I don't know why she didn't get that out right away--I agreed with Tony Snow that the whole thing was "silly." For those who wonder why I quoted two new and obscure bloggers as criticizing the speaker--along with David Frum, who kind of defended her--I often try to look for average bloggers in their pajamas (or dorm rooms or wherever) rather than just stick with the top 100. That doesn't give them the same weight as Instapundit or Kos or Power Line or the HuffPost, but it's another way of taking the cyberpulse.

Oh, really?

You say that:

Once I found out that the House sergeant-at-arms had requested her plane -- and I don't know why she didn't get that out right away -- I agreed with Tony Snow that the whole thing was "silly."

Maybe you should read your own hackery, How. Because on Friday morning, you wrote:

Pelosi has gone on the offensive, saying that Pentagon officials leaked the dispute for partisan reasons and that the negotiating was done not by her but by the House sergeant-at-arms. The flap made the network newscasts last night, although Tony Snow pointedly declined to pile on, calling the story "silly."

I don't see any agreement with Snow there, Howie. After you already knew that the Sergeant-at-Arms had requested the plane, and after Pelosi had gotten that fact out. (The Sergeant-at-Arms' statement had been out at least 14 hours by the time Howie's column went online.)

It's hard out there for ho, what with the internets and all. But just keep on lyin', and we'll keep on calling you on your lies.

The Psychotic Method

Professor Ann Althouse invents a revolutionary pedagogical technique.

I fear Ann's employment as the Larouche '08 campaign blogger is now in jeopardy.

Shut Up, Memory

Can't get your expert witness's testimony into evidence at trial? Well, then just get it into the Washington Post and hope for the best.

I have no trouble with a newspaper reporting on events of relevance to an ongoing trial, even if those matters are inadmissible at trial. It's up to the judge to ensure that jurors don't read extraneous material and up to the jurors to follow the court's instructions. But perhaps the Post's readers should be told that the court found the defense's purported expert memory testimony to be a waste of time after the prosecutor demolished the expert's credibility. Perhaps Linton Weeks just forget that.