Legislation in the House of Representatives, H. R. 3687, would “amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes.” The bill actually lists words that are “profane.”
George Carlin once had a routine where he said the “seven words you can’t say on television.” [7KB wav file]. Note: This sound file contains seven words some might consider offensive.
Compare and contrast.
The Rittenhouse Review posts the Terror Alert Status. Here is the current status:
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford has his camera ready and wonders: Over 3,500 gay marriages and, what, no hellfire? I was promised hellfire. And riots. What gives?.
Morford also tells us:
(Oh, and while we’re at it, God also really hates shrimp. Maybe you didn’t know. Shrimp are evil, as are all shrimp eaters. Clams, too. Hey, it’s in the Bible. You can look it up. Why the Right is attacking homosexuals in love and not, say, Red Lobster, remains a mystery.)
Dahlia Lithwick at Slate has a different take on the Hiibel case, which NewMexiKen referenced a few weeks ago. Is your name really a deep, dark secret?
By a vote of 5-2, the editorial board of Baylor University approved an editorial in support of gay marriage. As claimed on its website, “Baylor is…the largest Baptist university in the world.”
Read the editorial in The Baylor Lariat.
Link via Eschaton.
Wouldn’t want anyone to overlook this report from the Los Angeles Times.
Reducing taxes for the wealthy and reducing entitlements for the rest of us:
Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan warned Congress Wednesday to take quick action to fix the nation’s swollen budget deficit — including measures that could cut some future Social Security payments — to avoid even bigger problems for the nation’s economy down the road.
The central bank chairman also repeated his assertion that recent tax cuts should be made permanent and said cutting spending was a better way to fix the deficit than tax increases.
From CNN Money
[Emphasis added by NewMexiKen]
Doesn’t the draft amendment prevent all new marriages?
Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.
that marital status…be conferred upon unmarried couples
What does that mean?
And for that matter, shouldn’t the language be neither this Constitution nor the constitution…?
Who wrote this soup?
And to think that the people responsible for suggesting that this abomination be added to the United States Constitution consider themselves patriots.
Josh Marshall on Bush and the marriage amendment:
One might suggest that the idea we should have in mind here is that old line about judging a man’s character and mettle by what he does when the seas get stormy rather than what he does when they’re calm. But I think the real metaphor to keep in mind is how dangerous and unpredictable an animal becomes when he’s cornered.
From The Washington Post:
Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige yesterday told the nation’s governors that the largest teachers union in the United States is a “terrorist organization” — a remark that prompted a torrent of criticism and an apology by the end of the day.
Paige made the comment about the 2.7 million-member National Education Association in a private meeting at the White House with the National Governors Association, less than a week after he announced the administration was relaxing testing requirements under the No Child Left Behind law. The landmark education law has come under mounting opposition, and the NEA has been among its strongest detractors.
From the Associated Press (don’t miss the part about the pink newlywed bags)№
BERNALILLO, N.M. — Gay and lesbian couples lined up Friday outside the courthouse to tie the knot after the county clerk said she would grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
At least 15 couples had been granted licenses by late morning, the Sandoval County clerk’s office said. A sign-up list had grown to 20 couples, with some waiting in line for applications in the hall outside the clerk’s office in this sleepy New Mexico town.
Among the first to get their license were two women who got married in a brief ceremony in front of the courthouse.
“When we heard the news this morning, we knew we couldn’t wait. We had to come down here,” Jenifer Albright said after she and Anne Schultz, 34, both of Albuquerque, exchanged vows in front of the courthouse.
James Walker and Michael Palmer took extended lunch breaks from work for a moment they said they’d waited 26 years for. The men were married in Toronto last year, but that didn’t give them rights in the United States.
Walker said a marriage certificate from Sandoval County “would give us a lot of rights and benefits that have been denied us as a couple, including the rights associated with property ownership and the rights associated with medical decisions.”
Bernalillo is a few miles north of Albuquerque, New Mexico’s largest city.
Victoria Dunlap, the county’s clerk, said Thursday that she was unaware of any laws prohibiting licenses from being issued for same-sex couples.
“This has nothing to do with politics or morals,” she told the Albuquerque Journal. “If there are no legal grounds that say this should be prohibited, I can’t withhold it . . . This office won’t say no until shown it’s not permissible.”
She said she made the decision after asking for an opinion from David Mathews, the county’s attorney, who said New Mexico law is unclear on the issue.
Melinda Foster, a clerk’s administrative assistant, said people have been calling from across New Mexico, interested in filing. Dunlap was not immeditately available for comment Friday.
To get an application, would-be married couples had to show up with a photo ID, social security card and $25 to receive an application. In getting their stamped licenses, they were handed pink “newlywed bags” with coupons and other items.
Meanwhile, two state senators — one Democrat and one Republican — asked for an opinion Friday from state Attorney General Patricia Madrid. A spokeswoman for Madrid said an opinion could be issued next week.
Madrid “does realize that this is of great public interest and so has asked her staff to address this as thoroughly and promptly as possible,” spokeswoman Sam Thompson said.
Wow! NewMexiKen bets his Bernalillo T-shirt is worth something on eBay now!
NewMexiKen agrees with Electablog* where I first saw the link. This is a bad thing, why?
A 35-year-old Frenchwoman became both bride and widow when she married her dead boyfriend, in an exchange of vows that required authorisation from the French president.
The ceremony was performed at Nice City Hall on the French Riviera.
The deceased groom, a former policeman identified as Eric, was not present at the ceremony. He was killed by a drunk driver in September 2002.
Demichel told LCI television she was fully aware that “it could seem shocking to marry someone who is dead”, but said that her fiance’s absence from her life had not dimmed her feelings for him.
According to French law, a marriage between a living person and a dead person can take place as long as preliminary civic formalities have been completed that show the couple had planned to marry. Before the ceremony can take place, it must be approved by the French president.
Draft amendment —
Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.
Gallup —
About 6 in 10 Americans oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage, although less than half support the idea of a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as only between a man and a woman.
Article V
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress;…[emphasis added]
What a lot of smoke.
Gail Sheehy has written in The New York Observer about what was going on in the planes on September 11th.
NewMexiKen urges you to read this article.
Blogger Brad DeLong, Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley, found two clever ways to describe blogger Andrew Sullivan’s seeming change-of-heart about Bush after the Meet the Press interview.
“I’m shocked! Shocked to discover that gambling is going on in here!” “Your winnings, sir.” That’s Claude Rains in Casablanca. Lo and behold, Andrew Sullivan has his own Claude Rains moment this morning as he discovers that George W. Bush is either a bald-faced liar or “out of it… frighteningly unaware” of the most basic facts about his administration’s policies…
This is a full 100% Road to Damascus moment…
Read some of what Sullivan had to say — Attention Deficit.
From the Los Angeles Times
Deep down, Michael O’Hara knew the huge profits at Financial Advisory Consultants Inc. “were just too good to be true.”
So when his 70th birthday rolled around in 2000, and he had to start drawing down his individual retirement accounts, he hedged his bets by taking out more money than required by law.
O’Hara, a prosperous insurance agent from Placentia, regarded the $106,000 he had deposited in the 1990s in an FAC investment fund as “Vegas money.” And with the fund reporting annual returns of nearly 40%, O’Hara seemed to have hit the jackpot: Late last year, even after he had withdrawn $123,000, his FAC account balance was $700,000.
Then FAC crapped out. Two days before Christmas, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged the Lake Forest company and its owner, James P. Lewis Jr., with operating an elaborate, 20-year fraud.
An FBI raid of FAC’s office on El Toro Road turned up assets worth a bit more than 1% of the $813.9 million that Lewis’ clients supposedly had accumulated. Lewis, known to his family, friends and clients as an investment genius, was nowhere to be found. As of late Friday, he was being sought by the FBI.
Among the cruel twists of the FAC debacle is that so many investors, like O’Hara, were gambling with their retirement funds. Many lost virtually everything. According to SEC filings and attorneys involved in the case, the victims include Lewis’ computer technician, who mortgaged his house to invest with FAC, and the mother of Lewis’ live-in companion, who handed over her entire $250,000 in retirement savings.
Mitch Albom is back from vacation.
$1.5 billion to “promote marriage?”
How exactly does a government that can’t get people to conserve gas, save water, stop using drugs or put away the pornography get its citizens to put rings on their fingers?
It can’t. It doesn’t. And it won’t.
Even Andrew Sullivan has had enough.
LET THE KIDS PAY FOR IT: I’m talking about this $170 billion foray into space. After all, the next generation will be paying for a collapsed social security system, a bankrupted Medicare program, soaring interest on the public debt, as well as coughing up far higher taxes to keep some semblance of a government in operation. But, hey, the president needed another major distraction the week before the Iowa caucuses, and since he won’t be around to pick up the bill, why the hell not? Deficits don’t matter, after all. And what’s a few hundred billion dollars over the next few decades anyway? Chickenfeed for the big and bigger government now championed by the Republicans. This space initiative is, for me, the last fiscal straw. There comes a point at which the excuses for fiscal recklessness run out. The president campaigned in favor of the responsibility ethic. He has governed – in terms of guarding the nation’s finances – according to the motto: “If it feels good, do it.” I give up. Can’t they even pretend to give a damn?
Easterblogg on the Bush immigration plan.
Whatever else you think of the George W. Bush immigration plan, just focus on this: It will make life better for millions of the disadvantaged. How often does any government action achieve this? And shouldn’t a better life for the needy be among the first goals of government policy? Surely it should be among the first goals of liberal government policy. That a conservative president has done something to help millions of people with money problems, little power and an anxiety-filled life–the meek, in New Testament terms–seems such a departure from the script that the anti-poverty aspects of the Bush initiative are simply being ignored.
Also from Primary Sources in the January/February issue of The Atlantic
“After discovering that Saddam Hussein was both actively supporting Al Qaeda and deploying WMDs, the United States, with the full support of the international community, invaded Iraq in March, 2003.” This largely inaccurate statement was not torn from a premature draft of the official Bush history of the Iraq War. Rather, it was what roughly 60 percent of Americans believed—in sum or in part—in the aftermath of the war. According to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland, during and immediately following the Iraq War more than half of Americans believed that Saddam was a major supporter of al-Qaeda. Roughly a third believed that Iraq had deployable or deployed WMD and that most of the world supported the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The first and the third statements are known to be false; the second is widely accepted to be. So how did so many people get so much wrong? Part of the answer, obviously, is politics: Bush backers, according to the study, were much more likely to believe at least one of the three points than Bush bashers. But the media—and in particular one well-known “fair and balanced” news outlet—seem to have played a part in promoting false beliefs. Whereas only 23 percent of those who relied on NPR or PBS for information about public affairs believed one or more of the propositions, 55 percent of those who relied on CNN did—and 80 percent of those who relied on Fox News did. One might speculate that Bush supporters are more likely to watch (and believe) Rupert Murdoch’s news outlets than either Ted Turner’s or public broadcasting’s. But viewers’ preconceived political notions are clearly not the whole story: the Maryland researchers found that whereas 78 percent of Bush supporters who watched Fox were misinformed, only 50 percent of Bush supporters who got their news from PBS and NPR were.
“Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War,” Program on International Policy Attitudes/Knowledge Networks
NewMexiKen has been mulling the so-called “illegal” alien situation since the President announced his proposed “reform.”
In the mid-19th Century the United States used its superior military to take from the Republic of Mexico more than half its land. While some could argue that Anglos had settled east Texas, that claim could not be made for New Mexico, Arizona and California (the other area was unsettled). This was aggression pure and simple.
Now suppose that Mexico had retained its land. Suppose that Mexico controlled the California gold and Nevada silver. Suppose that Mexico controlled the west Texas and California oil reserves. Suppose that Mexico controlled the Pacific ports directly between the United States and Asia. Suppose that Mexico controlled the great valley of California, the world’s greatest agricultural land. Suppose that Mexico controlled the great ski slopes of the Rockies and Sierra. Just suppose.
Don’t we owe the people of Mexico something?
He should just say, “To infinity and beyond!” At least then our grandkids, who are going to pay for all this, would recognize it as a fantasy.
“President Bush’s proposal to send humans to Mars is potentially good news for an unlikely place – Maryland, the stealth space state.”
— Baltimore Sun
“President Bush’s plans to send a manned mission to Mars, as well as to establish a permanent station on the moon, could mean jobs, prestige and hundreds of million of dollars for Arizona universities and industry.”
— The Arizona Republic
“If President Bush announces next week a plan to set up a base on the moon and send people to Mars, he’ll likely turn to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center to help make it happen, a senator and former NASA officials said Friday.
Such a cosmic charter would be a major economic boon for the economy in Huntsville and the state, aerospace and economic development officials say. But they’re cautious about making predictions until they see Bush’s plan and whether it can gain the support of Congress and the public. :
— The Birmingham News
