If you’re a United States Senator and your house burns down, you don’t have to sleep out on the street. You have money, a staff, and wealthy friends. In other words, you have options.

So it’s pretty telling that when Senator Brownback’s condo caught fire back in 2000, he moved in with the manic, apocalyptic preacher Lou Engle. We know this thanks to a new video unearthed by Bruce Wilson.

Watch Engle explain – as only he can – how his pairing with Brownback came about:

In case you’re not familiar with Engle, he leads the IHOP – the International House of Prayer – which works to hasten the End Times. He’s also the founder (and voice-over talent) of militant, right-wing prayer rallies like this anti-Prop 8 event:

Miraculously, Brownback didn’t come to hate Engle after living with him for 7 months. In fact, the former roomies appeared together last week at the Family Research Council’s “PrayerCast” against healthcare reform. Who knows…maybe having Engle around makes Brownback feel reasonable?

[Bonus footage: watch Engle talk about the “hot blood” of Latinos and claim that his spittle is holy water]

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December 15, 2009 BBC World

The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday called on the British government to end the "absurd situation" in which arrest warrants were being issued to Israeli officials over alleged war crimes in the Gaza Strip, warning that ties between the two countries could suffer as a result.

"Only actions can put an end to this absurd situation, which would have seemed a comedy of errors were it not so serious," said the Foreign Ministry, a day after it emerged that opposition leader Tzipi Livni had canceled her trip to Britain after a warrant was issued for her arrest. Read more at Haaretz

Politics in the Zeros: Populist Party Platform, 1892 (It could have been written for today)

Liberal Values: Nuclear engineer at Cern Lab arrested for alleged ties to al Qaeda

Alas, a blog: Every time a racist criticizes the president, someone cries, "racism."

Seeing the Forest: Modern Governing

AfterDowningStreet: Rep. Obey joins us idiot liberals

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: NYT out of ideas...Coffee talk...The Corner in a corner...Conservative gullibility...Bad faith and sloth...Politico Fail...Beachwood Reporter...Anatomy of a column...WaPo partisan goldmine...World Nut Daily...

From "Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains" (2007)

The Man From Plains makes a startling announcement:

Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God.

I HAVE been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world. So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries.

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

Read on...

You know, Jimmy Carter gets such an unfair rap in this country over his presidency, but this is my definition of a brave human being--taking a stand over what is right and moral not for any political calculation, but because it's right and moral.

I only wish more people would look in their heart and make the same kind of stand--one that champions equality and harmony instead of divisiveness and oppression.

Bravo, sir. Bravo.

From All Rebel Rockers (2008)

So I have this beautiful niece by marriage, whom I've known since she was a very little girl. She has recently graduated from college (Journalism degree, I didn't have the heart to tell her) and due to the vagaries of the economy, lost her very first job.

I've always told her that your 20s should be a time to explore. It's my personal belief that you're still fairly amorphous at that age, and it's the perfect time for you to go out and try different things and explore new places before the ties of jobs, spouses and children weigh you down. Well, my funny, smart, sweet niece is going to do that. She's announced to her family that's she's going to go to Egypt to teach ESL as part of her goal to travel the world.

So this is for B. as she gets ready for her new adventure. Because, darling girl, as you will soon discover, the more you learn, the less you know. But I do know that (we) love you.

Have a song that you'd recommend to someone just starting out in life?

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Sean Hannity couldn't have been too pleased last night when his "All American Panel" -- which he usually manages to keep nicely docile -- took a decidedly liberal detour on the subject of Nancy Pelosi's charge that the CIA lied to her.

First, Sunny Hostin, a former federal prosecutor, pointed out the obvious:

Why do we think that she is the liar?

Regina Calcaterra, a Democratic consultant, promptly chimed in:

It's a smokescreen. I think this is a smokescreen by Republicans, because Republicans are concerned about Congress holding the Truth Commission, which you know is going to be the parallel to the 9/11 Commission.

Later, Hostin raises the really relevant point:

The issue here is that everybody knows that waterboarding is torture. And that was an approved policy. It is torture! Everyone knows that. And that was the policy of the Bush administration. Why don't we talk about that?

Indeed. Because on Planet Wingnuttia, claiming that "Nancy Pelosi knew about it too" justifies the policy.

The bizarre thing about making this a "he said/she said" issue is that we already know for a fact that the CIA lied to Pelosi about the torture.

Marcy Wheeler points out that (as she's been reporting for weeks,) we already have documentary evidence that "when the CIA briefed Pelosi and Goss on September 4, 2002, it told them that waterboarding was not being employed."

Yet this was in fact a lie. Because we also know from Lawrence Wilkerson that the CIA had been engaging in waterboarding since at least February of that same year. As Marcy observes:

While we can't be sure of the date when Cheney started ordering people to be waterboarded even after they were compliant, we know this order had to have occurred before February 22, 2002--because that's when al-Libi first reported on ties between Iraq and al Qaeda.

... So sometime in February 2002--when Bush was declaring that the Geneva Convention did not apply to al Qaeda and when Bruce Jessen was pitching torture to JPRA--Cheney was personally (according to Wilkerson) ordering up waterboarding. The DIA immediately labeled the result of this session of waterboarding probable disinformation.

The Beltway pundits have been eager to cast Pelosi as a liar. (Wayne Simmons just called Pelosi a "pathological liar" on Fox.) Is Bob Graham a liar too? We're taking the word of the disgraced Porter Goss over the sitting Speaker of the House?

And gee, guess what we're not talking about here. Sonny Hostin, say it again:

The issue here is that everybody knows that waterboarding is torture. And that was an approved policy. It is torture! Everyone knows that. And that was the policy of the Bush administration. Why don't we talk about that?

I meant to get to this earlier in the week. It's so illustrative of the problems with our corporate media that the guy who wins a Pulitzer prize for investigative reporting is ignored - because he was investigating the corporate media for stacking the deck with paid sources to support the Iraq war:

On the April 20 edition of NBC's Nightly News, reporting on the awarding of the 2009 Pulitzer Prizes earlier that day, anchor Brian Williams stated that "The New York Times led the way with five, including awards for breaking news and international reporting." But Williams did not note that the Times' David Barstow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting that day "for his tenacious reporting that revealed how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended." Media Matters for America has repeatedly documented the unwillingness of the major broadcast networks, including NBC, to report on Barstow's April 20, 2008, Times article. Moreover, NBC joined ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC in reportedly declining to participate in a segment based on Barstow's article that aired on the April 24, 2008, edition of PBS' NewsHour.

In an April 29 post on his MSNBC.com blog, Williams responded to Barstow's April 20 article, describing NBC News analyst military analyst Barry R. McCaffrey and Wayne Downing, who died in July 2007, as "honest brokers" and writing that McCaffrey and Downing were "warriors-turned-analysts, not lobbyists or politicians":

All I can say is this: these two guys never gave what I considered to be the party line. They were tough, honest critics of the U.S. military effort in Iraq. If you've had any exposure to retired officers of that rank (and we've not had any five-star Generals in the modern era) then you know: these men are passionate patriots. In my dealings with them, they were also honest brokers. I knew full well whenever either man went on a fact-finding mission or went for high-level briefings. They never came back spun, and never attempted a conversion. They are warriors-turned-analysts, not lobbyists or politicians.

Glenn Greenwald has more:

Continue reading »

We blew the lid off of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's outrageous and treasonous statements regarding the secession of Texas from the union.

All the insane talk coming from the Limbaugh National Convention is spreading into the fabric of the entire GOP. Listen to Texas Gov. Rick Perry say:

Perry: Texas is a unique place. When we came into the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that.

We got a great Union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it, but if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that.

Media Matters recently released some very disturbing information about Perry:

Media Matters Action Network released a memo outlining Texas Governor Rick Perry's ties to a Texas secessionist group whose former leaders are responsible for numerous acts of domestic terrorism. "From bomb threats, to kidnapping, to planning attacks using biological weapons, the Texas Nationalist Movement has a long violent history that cannot be ignored," Media Matters Action Network Managing Director Ari Rabin-Havt said. "Governor Perry should be ashamed of his association with these domestic terrorists."..read on
Very disturbing indeed.

John Sharp is running in Texas against Perry and although I don't know much about him, he's not taking Perry's secessionist comments lightly.

During WWII my father was shot in defense of the greatest country on earth and I proudly wore the uniform of a United States Army Reserve officer. So I'm offended when it become acceptable for anybody to talk about Texas leaving the Union.