I'm surprised it took this long! Earlier this week, conservative talk radio show host Rush Limbaugh called U.S. soldiers in Iraq who disagree with the American occupation "phony soldiers." His suggestion is, obviously, that real soldiers wouldn't disagree with the Iraq War. Limbaugh himself has never served in the military, as he received a deferment from going to Vietnam. Limbaugh frequently tells people that he received a deferment for a "football injury," but in fact, the deferment was due to an anal cyst. The cyst resembles Limbaugh himself.

For spending the last twenty years being a conservative hack, chickenhawk, hypocrite (especially when it comes to drugs!), blowhard, and all-around douchebag, Rush Limbaugh earns the title SEDHE Villain of the Forever.

Posted by Mark at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week, Fox News host John Gibson took the high road toward criticizing those who would dare to criticize the president and his Iraq War. On his syndicated radio show, Gibson played a tape of Daily Show host Jon Stewart's tear-filled post-September 11 monologue and ridiculed it. Show co-host (?) "Angry Rich" called Stewart a "phony" because, in Gibson's opinion, it is inconsistent for a person to feel badly about September 11 and criticize the president.

Forget for a moment that this doesn't make sense, and let's leap into the mind of John Gibson, Bush Acolyte. Bush has polarized the country, and he has polarized its opinions, especially for Republicans. I'm not sure that Republicans actually believe half the things they say, because if they did, then perhaps they should look into careers as mental asylum inmates. But for the sake of argument, let's pretend that they actually believe what they say. This means that Republicans believe that criticism of the government, President Bush, or his policies, including (but not limited to) the Iraq War, is a rejection of American values and an implicit endorsement of terrorism. Does it stand to reason that, because you're against the war, you are necessarily in favor of terrorism? Only in the tortured minds of Fox News correspondents does this hold true.

How disingenuous and irresponsible for John Gibson to suggest that it is impossible to simultaneously feel sorrow for September 11 and contempt for President Bush. How are these opinions inconsistent? Perhaps it's the delusion that President Bush somehow "saved" the nation after September 11? How would he have done this? He did send troops to Afghanistan, but shortly afterward, he diverted those resources to Iraq. Here's inconsistency for you: suppose that a nation attacks us. Our only logical course of action is to retaliate. Suppose, also, that there exists a nation that has never attacked us. Should we divert resources from the nation that did attack us to the nation that didn't? Even though that action sounds really stupid, it's what happened. Iraq never attacked us. Why did we attack them?

As Jon Stewart pointed out on last night's Daily Show, it's only Republicans -- only Republicans -- who are calling their opponents' patriotism into question. Why resort to this tactic in a debate? Is it because they're out of real arguments and have to resort to the ad hominem attack? Is it because they can't debate properly? Is it because they're immoral, selfish douchebags? I think the answer is "(D) All of the above."

Yes, John Gibson earns the distinction of being a SEDHE Villain of the Forever for being one of the aforementioned immoral, selfish douchebags. He also earns that distinction for not only mocking legitimate sorrow but also for encouraging another September 11 attack.

Posted by Mark at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Can you believe that I started this blog back in 2003? Four years later, we're at post number 600. Whoa! Of course, I've had help from people like Brian, Elizabeth, Mike, and Rich Erlich, who contributed articles. I mustn't forget them!

Post number 600 is about Rudy Giuliani, courtesy of Digg. Here, we have a speech made by Rudy Giuliani in 1994. He's talking about freedom, and here's what he thinks of it:

We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

So, what's presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani saying here? Earlier in the speech, he says, "We constantly present the false impression that government can solve problems that government in America was designed not to solve." So it appears that he's saying that authority can't solve our social problems. Then, in the above blockquote, he says that it's not authority that's the problem: it's freedom! Yes, if everyone would just submit to authority, we wouldn't have the law enforcement problems we have now. It's not that the government should be more forceful; it's that people should be more submissive to their governments! That way, we can have authoritarianism while still claiming that we have less government intrusion into people's lives.

So, not only is Rudolph Giuliani a shameless self-promoter and ignorant about foreign affairs, he is also for authoritarianism cloaked as willing submission to the government, so that it doesn't appear that the government is stronger.

Will Rudolph Giuliani win a Republican nomination? He would be a terrible candidate, so hopefully so (for the Democrats), but probably not, as I hope people aren't that stupid. With John McCain's most recent financial troubles, though, Giuliani might be the front runner. Are Fred Thompson's odds even that good? Does anyone really know who he is, outside of "that guy from Law and Order"? Oh, and he was in The Hunt for Red October.

If he isn't one already, I think I'll take post number 600 to make Rudy Giuliani a SEDHE Villain of the Forever.

Posted by Mark at 2:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales proclaimed that federal judges were unfit to rule on matters of national security. In scrutinizing federal judicial candidates, Gonzales said, "We want to determine whether he understands the inherent limits that make an unelected judiciary inferior to Congress or the president in making policy judgments."

Boy, I wish I could find the textual equivalent of a double-take.

Yes, folks; the US Attorney General just said that, in his opinion, the judiciary is inferior to Congress and the president. And it's a great opinion, except that it overlooks one little detail: the ... oh, what's it called? Constitution!

Did Alberto Gonzales even go to law school? Or did he "attend law school" in the same way that his boss "attended business school"? Gonzales is 100% wrong, wrong, wrong. The doctrines of both separation of powers and checks and balances ensure that each branch of government is equally powerful. The only places where you have executives that have far more authority than everyone else is in dictatorships or quasi-dictatorships (I'm looking at you, Venezuela and Bolivia).

Once again, George W. Bush -- the mouthpiece for Dick Cheney -- has asserted unilateral control of the country. And with what justification? Where is the evidence that the Constitution even considers the executive and the legislature superior in power to the judiciary? Yes, the Constitution gives the president the power to appoint judges -- with the advice and consent of the Senate -- but those judges are there for life. Furthermore, Congress can disband any federal courts inferior to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court can rule on the constitutionality of legislation and presidential actions.

The idea that judges don't understand "this post-9/11 world" is ridiculous on its face. Judges are there to interpret the law and strike a balance between the requirements of the law and the requirements of reality. Cheney doesn't want a judiciary; he wants a robot that automatically approves all of the administration's activities. Ostensibly, this is another "unitary executive" privilege that comes from the nebulous interpretation of the president as "commander-in-chief," as though being the head of the armed forces is a carte blanche for overriding the Constitution.

The Founding Fathers were intimately aware of government power, having lived through the various Acts designed to extort taxes out of the colonies (the Stamp Act, the Tea Act, the Townsend Acts). They were terrified of government power, and in creating the Articles of Confederation, initially designed a country that was too weak. Thankfully, the Constitution of 1789 struck the balance between an overbearing federal government and a weak one.

Dick Cheney would love nothing more than to undo that. Ever since he worked for Nixon -- and even as a senator from Wyoming -- Cheney has tried his darndest to increase the power of the executive while at the same time decreasing the power of the legislature and the judiciary. Because, you see, if the legislature and the judiciary can check the executive, then the executive doesn't have unbridled power.

For engaging -- and continuing to engage -- in sheer stupidity when it comes to understanding both the law on its own and how that law should be balanced with national security, Alberto Gonzales earns the distinction of being a SEDHE Villain of the Forever.

Posted by Mark at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has done some dumb things in his time, like trying to prevent people from "inducement" of infringement from copyright and then citing "the children" to support that bill (i.e., "We need to create a new theory of copyright liability so that kids won't have to deal with pornography on file-sharing networks. Can I get a woot-woot?")

But now, Hatch has forever earned my ire. In Cedar City, Utah, today, Hatch defended President Bush's illegal, poorly-justified, warrantless wiretapping on U.S. citizens:

"They're moaning and groaning in Congress because he didn't abide by what's called the FISA Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That act is very important, but it was enacted in 1978 and it is not applicable to today's world," Hatch said. "The president is using every methodology that we know ... to try to track down those al-Qaida people or people affiliated with al-Qaida."

What? If FISA "is not applicable in today's world," then why did the USA PATRIOT Act amend FISA so that it became applicable to today's world? One of the good things the USA PATRIOT Act did was to bring FISA up-to-date so that the federal government could legally engage in foreign intelligence surveillance on packet-switched networks (i.e., the Internet), something that wasn't expressly allowed because FISA was enacted before the Internet. Hatch is wrong: FISA is not irrelevant.

What is Hatch doing? Either we repeal the USA PATRIOT Act and don't amend FISA, then engage in illegal wiretapping because FISA "is not applicable in today's world," or we don't repeal the USA PATRIOT Act and stop engaging in warrantless wiretapping. Bush wants both the USA PATRIOT Act and warrantless wiretapping.

FISA is applicable to today's world, but Hatch is so busy trying to play Bush apologist (so that the RNC won't destroy him when he goes up for re-election this year; cf. John McCain) that he ignores the primary problem with the Bush program: it's warrantless. Saying that FISA is irrelevant ignores the fact that the president broke the law. Arguing that a law is irrelevant and therefore shouldn't be followed isn't a defense for outright breaking it. If FISA were so irrelevant, why not amend it to make it more relevant, or to bring the president's wiretapping activities within the boundaries of the law? I'll tell you why: because the president is engaging in activities that would be reprehensible even to congressional Republicans, so much so that he knows he couldn't get support for such amendments, so he decided to go behind everyone else's backs.

Why couldn't he just go to a FISA court? Again, this is not an issue of "we need to catch the terrorists now; the FISA court moves too slowly." FISA allows the president to engage in wiretapping for up to 72 hours without a warrant, provided a warrant request is submitted to the FISA court within 72 hours. But even that wasn't good enough for Bush. Why? Presumably because his activities were so illegal that even the FISA court -- which has denied a total of four warrant applications since 1979 -- would turn it down. Bush couldn't risk the FISA court rejecting his wiretapping program, since they would then have known about its existence.

For defending Bush's illegal warrantless surveillance program and then purposely misrepresenting the issue, Orrin Hatch is a SEDHE Villain of the Forever.

Posted by Mark at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Remember last November, when Ohio voters decided that they didn't like the gays? The amendment to the Ohio Constitution prohibiting gay marriage went beyond mere marriage and said that state entities could not confer marriage-like status upon people who were not married. Gays could not get married, and therefore, they could not receive marriage-like benefits.

The summer before that November, Miami University's Board of Trustees voted to allow "domestic partners" to receive the same benefits as spouses. Onlookers suggested that, due to the wording of the Ohio constitutional amendment, such benefits could be interpreted as "approximat[ing] the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage." And we waited for someone to sue.

Well, wait no more! Ohio state representative Tom Brinkman, Jr. has filed suit against Miami University, "claiming its same-sex partnership policy violates an Ohio constitutional ban on civil unions that went into effect a year ago." Brinkman is also the father of two Miami University students.

Miami, to its credit, claims that it will not rescind domestic partner benefits, so it isn't scared by the prospect of a lawsuit. That's good, even for a university as conservative as Miami.

For attempting to take away the rights of an entire class of people, Tom Brinkman, Jr. is a SEDHE Villain of the Forever.

Posted by Mark at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It's about time for Bill O'Reilly to be a SEDHE Villain of the Forever. Here's a list of things he has done to put himself into such a nefarious group:

• Created a show with the tagline "the no spin zone" even though O'Reilly repeats the Republican talking points, which are themselves "spin"
• Suggested that Cindy Sheehan was not speaking for herself, but rather was a puppet of George Soros and the "hate America" crowd
• Made mistakes of fact and then refused to admit that he made such mistakes
• Sanctimoniously acted as though he were in a position to lecture Americans about morality, then was caught sexually harassing an employee
• Represented himself as a person with some sort of hard news background when in fact his job prior to working at FOX News was as an anchorman for the tabloid show Inside Edition

Well, last week, O'Reilly became incensed after San Franciscans overwhelmingly approved Proposition I, a ballot initiative that would prohibit military recruiters from being given information about public school students in order to recruit them. The city, though, cannot legally enforce such a measure, so the 59% of voters who favored the measure were making a symbolic statement.

On his syndicated radio show, The Radio Factor, O'Reilly had this to say to San Franciscans:

Hey, you know, if you want to ban military recruiting, fine, but I'm not going to give you another nickel of federal money. You know, if I'm the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, "Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead."

And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.

O'Reilly later tried to weasel his way out of this statement by suggesting that it was a "satirical riff" and that of course he wasn't really calling for terrorists to blow up Coit Tower. And I have no doubt that if a liberal talk show host had said the same thing, Republicans wouldn't pounce on that person, because Republicans would understand that the statement was meant satirically.

(That last paragraph was a satirical riff, by the way. Republicans would tear the talk show host apart and demand that he or she be fired, crucified, and shot into the sun.)

Military recruiting at public schools is a complex issue, and suggesting that recruiters shouldn't recruit on high school and college campuses does not -- as O'Reilly suggests -- mean that those who oppose such recruiting hate the military or love terrorists. I wonder if O'Reilly has even read the measure and understands what it means. Taking things wildly out of context would just be par for the course for him.

According to the text of Proposition I, the measure opposes "U.S. military recruiters using public school, college and university facilities to recruit young people into the armed forces" and suggests that the city provide college scholarships to underprivileged students so that they don't have to join the military in order to pay for college or earn money (what the measure calls an "economic draft").

Interestingly, the measure also mentions that the No Child Left Behind Act, in addition to leaving children behind, compels public schools to provide personal records of children in those schools to the military for recruiting purposes. Prior to No Child Left Behind, a piece of legislation called the Federal Educational Records Protection Act Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act made it a federal crime to disclose student records denied federal funding to schools that provided personal student information to anyone other than the student and the student's parents. But since we're living in a militaristic society, it's okay to violate FERPA make stupid exceptions for the purpose of sending more bags of meat to die in a pointless war. (And by the way, George Bush, Democrats did not receive the same intelligence you did prior to the war. They received only the intelligence that you elected to show them!)

Perhaps O'Reilly is unaware of a court case called Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (04-1152). Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR) is a coalition of over 30 law schools and faculties. In 1997, Congress added to an omnibus spending bill and the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill of 1997 an amendment called the Solomon amendment. The amendment allows the Secretary of Defense to deny federal funding to colleges and universities that prohibit ROTC or military recruiting on campus.

FAIR protested the amendment, calling it a violation of campus' freedom of expressive association. Forcing college campuses to accept military recruitment would foster the impression that the colleges condoned military recruitment, as well as the policies of the military. Especially at issue are the military's anti-homosexual policies. The colleges' ban on military recruitment was an expressive act protesting the military's ban on gays, says FAIR. The government says the Solomon amendment doesn't impinge upon freedom of speech; colleges are free to dissent by banning military recruitment, but the federal government is also free to deny them federal funding.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals didn't buy the government's argument and sided with FAIR. The court said that the Solomon amendment creates "compelled speech" by forcing students to support the military's stance on gays. This, of course, violates the First Amendment: the government cannot, through some action, compel a particular organization to take a stance on an issue that is counter to what that organization actually believes. (This is the flip side of the same coin that we saw in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 99-699 [2000]). The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Rumsfeld v. FAIR on Dec. 6.

For being the World's Most Colossal Jerk, Bill O'Reilly is a SEDHE Villain of the Forever.

UPDATE: § 9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires public schools to "provide, on a request made by military recruiters or an institution of higher education, access to secondary school students names, addresses, and telephone listings." This is not in violation of FERPA, as FERPA allows schools to release such "directory information" (as defined by 20 U.S.C. 1232g(a)(5)(A)) without the consent of the parent or student.

Posted by Mark at 8:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You may be familiar with Hugo Chavez. He's the democratically-elected president of Venezuela. He's also a socialist and doesn't like the United States very much. Oh, and he's bosom buddies with Fidel Castro.

The United States doesn't like Hugo Chavez much, either. Back in the early days of the Bush Administration, before we believed in crap like democracy and freedom, we wholeheartedly endorsed an illegal coup that replaced Chavez with someone who wasn't democratically elected. Rather than deride the action as undemocratic and demand that Chavez be re-instated, we formally recognized the new government hours after the takeover!

Memory hole? What's that?

Anyway, we don't like Hugo Chavez very much. And Pat Robertson really doesn't like him. Pat Robertson is a televangelist and founder of The Christian Broadcasting Network. He's an evangelical Protestant and is best friends with such notable asshats as Jerry Falwell. In the tradition of loving one's neighbor and turning the other cheek to your enemy, here's what good Christian Pat Robertson had to say yesterday about Hugo Chavez:

We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. [...] We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with. [...] You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop.

You know, Pat, you're right. Jesus would have assassinated Hugo Chavez. Because Jesus hates commies, as the Cold War proved beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Don't forget that on September 13, Robertson suggested on his show The 700 Club that September 11 was a punishment from God because America had fallen into sin:

The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this. And I know I'll hear from them for this, but throwing God ... successfully with the help of the federal court system ... throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad...I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America ... I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen.

For encouraging the murder of a democratically-elected president because he didn't agree with his politics, and also for suggesting that 3,000 people were killed on September 11 because of the homo-gays and the ACLU (of which I am now a card-carrying member; I actually got my card just now), Pat Robertson is a long-overdue SEDHE Villain of the Forever.

Posted by Mark at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Sen. Rick Santorum, R-PA and SEDHE Villain of the Forever, appeared on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show to discuss his new book, It Takes a Family. Among the things he discussed with Brian Lehrer were why the left is wrong about practically everything when it comes to morality, and why liberalism is destroying our country with its emphasis on individuality. (Excuse me? I thought conservatives were the party of staunch individualism and liberals were the ones who wanted the government to tell everyone how to think!) Here's what Santorum thinks that liberals believe:

SANTORUM: Personal autonomy is really the rule of how, of how the left understands the view of freedom, and I use a quote throughout the book, which some of your listeners may be familiar with, which I think is sort of the, uh, you know, the . . . the motto, if you will, of the understanding of liberty by the left, and it comes from the United States Supreme Court. And I'll quote it. Quote, "Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code." Quote, "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." That comes from Planned Parenthood v. Casey. It is the liberal view of freedom.

LEHRER: And what's wrong with that?

SANTORUM: If I have the right to define my own concept of existence, of what's right and what's wrong, it is personal autonomy, and it is not how societies function well.

LEHRER: Why isn't that a form of religious liberty? Again, something we value in this country.

SANTORUM: Again, I have no problem if people want to hold that view. And I have no problem if they want to bring that view to the public square. I just would make the argument that I don't think that's a healthy, uh, view of freedom.

[. . .]

LEHRER: And so, what liberals might say to you, with respect to some of your agenda, and your reaction to that quote, is that it looks like you want to impose your religion on them, that abortion hasa lot to do with religious ideas about when -- wait, let me finish the, the question -- religious ideas about when personhood begins, homosexual marriage is condoned by some mainstream Christian denominations, not by others, so who is one religious group to say that their religion has to be the law of the state?

SANTORUM: You don't think that people going around doing whatever they think is right is imposing a moral view on me? Of course it is.

LEHRER: Only if it affect--

SANTORUM: A different moral view. This idea that somehow or another that people doing whatever they want to do, and, and people finding their own concept of existence is not a moral viewpoint? Of course it's a moral viewpoint. It's a radically secular one, it is one that does not respect a common, a common virtues and values that communities must share and should uphold, but don't try to play off to me that there is no moral point of view being expressed in that. It is a, it is a decisively moral point of view, it is one that I don't agree with, it's one that has a right to be argued in the public square just like I have a right to argue my moral worldview in the public square, and let democracy -- let the democratic institutions, not the courts -- make the decision as to which direction we take.

First of all, the two quotes Santorum takes from Casey come from separate parts of the opinion. They are not a continuous sentence, as indicated by the break between them. Did you miss the break? Good; that was the point.

Second, Santorum is opposed to "personal autonomy"? Pardon my French, but, holy shit! "I don't think that's a healthy view of freedom"? I dunno, Rick, it sure sounds like "personal autonomy" is the very definition of freedom. If you'd like to debate liberty in societies where there is no personal autonomy, may I refer you to Iran, in which everyone's morality is officially the same, but no one appears to like it. Also, Iran is in the Axis of Evil. Everyone's morality is the same in China, too. Man, a lack of personal autonomy works great for them!

Third, Santorum omits the sentence immediately after "At the heart of liberty ..." which reads, "Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State." How curious that Santorum omits this sentence, since he would, if he could, define the attributes of personhood under compulsion of the State. In other words, your morals would be his morals. And when Focus on the Family decides to impose its morality on people, it's perfectly acceptable, not because their morals are better, but because Santorum happens to agree with them. This is hypocrisy at its finest. Better not tell him that his ideals are alive and well in Iran. Hell, maybe he'd be happier in Saudi Arabia.

Fourth, Santorum wasn't outraged about the U.S. Congress attempting to use the courts to impose their own moral worldview on Terri Schiavo. Even after a federal judge found that there was no reason to prevent Michael Schiavo from removing her feeding tube, Christian conservatives were outraged at the "activism" of the judge, even though he did precisely what the U.S. Congress asked him to do when they passed a measure allowing him to hear the case (which was ridiculous, since it was a Florida state matter, not a federal one). This is what Congress wanted Judge George Greer, chosen at random by a computer from a list of federal judges, to do:

After a determination of the merits of a suit brought under this Act, the District Court shall issue such declaratory and injunctive relief as may be necessary to protect the rights of Theresa Marie Schiavo under the Constitution and laws of the United States relating to the withholding or withdrawal of food, fluids, or medical treatment necessary to sustain her life.

Congress wanted Greer to issue an injunction, a court order that would bar anyone from removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, pending a trial. Congress, though, could not re-write the legal requirements for an injunction, which includes a reasonable expectation that the party petitioning for the injunction wins the case on the merits. Greer concluded that Schiavo's parents could not reasonably be expected to win a case on its merits, and so he did not issue the injunction. He determined the merits of the suit, and issued such injunctive relief as necessary which, in this case, was none, since there weren't enough merits to, well, merit relief. What Congress wanted the judge to do is decide in their favor; of course, they cannot command a judge to decide anything in a particular way. And so the judge weighed the law and decided that he could not grant injunctive relief. If he had, then he would have been an activist judge! But, suddenly, objectively weighing the law instead of deciding in favor of the Religious Right is "activism." Another reason why the word has no meaning anymore. [This fourth item had little to do specifically with Rick Santorum and a lot generally to do with conservative Christian attitudes toward the court system. Santorum is a member of the Religious Right, a synonym for "Christian conservatives," so I guess it applies to him tangentially. --Ed.]

For attempting to impose his own moral view on society, and then trying to say that he isn't, and then saying that he is, but that his moral view is better than anyone else's, so it's okay, Rick Santorum continues to be a SEDHE Villain of the Forever.

Posted by Mark at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Remember Robert Novak? Two years ago, he did a little thing called "publish the name of an undercover CIA agent." Yes, Bob Novak is the Republican sleazeball who "leaked" Valerie Plame's name -- though he maintains that he didn't know that was he was doing was wrong at the time. Novak is a neo-con lapdog on the order of Sean Hannity, pushing the administration's agenda every day of the week.

Writing in his home newspaper, The Chicago Sun-Times, Novak insists that the biggest obstacle to a conservative Supreme Court ... is George Bush! Novak writes:

Conservatives who have spent more than a decade planning for this moment to change the balance of power on the Supreme Court are reeling from blows delivered by two dissimilar political leaders: Edward M. Kennedy and George W. Bush. Sen. Kennedy has succeeded with the news media in establishing a new standard of ''mainstream conservatism'' for a justice. President Bush has put forth ''friendship'' as a qualification for being named to the high court.

Bush is by far the bigger obstacle in the way of a conservative court. While Kennedy's ploy presents a temporary problem, Bush's stance could be fatal. The right's morale was devastated by the president's comments in a USA Today telephone interview published on the newspaper's front page Tuesday: ''Al Gonzales is a great friend of mine. When a friend gets attacked, I don't like it.''

Why does the Supreme Court have to be "conservative" or "liberal"? Isn't it enough that they come in at 8 in the morning, interpret the law, and go home? Why must they adhere to a particular political ideology when interpreting the law? Novak and others like him use the term "conservative" contemptuously when talking about Sandra Day O'Connor since, unlike Scalia or Thomas, O'Connor was a conservative who did not put conservatism ahead of interpreting the law! Where Novak would like a new Supreme Court justice to advance conservative political and moral ideals, any Supreme Court justice worth his or her salt would not come to the court ready to interpret the law through the lens of a particular political ideology, but rather, through the law itself.

Talk about activist judges! Neo-cons want Supreme Court justices who will take an activist approach in the conservative direction. They would like to use the court to re-write laws in ways that are favorable to neo-cons!

For leaking the name of an undercover CIA agent in an attempt to punish a critic of the Bush administration, for suggesting that the Supreme Court should have an overt political bent, and for being a general sleazeball, Bob Novak is a SEDHE Villain of the Forever.

Posted by Mark at 6:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As if Congress weren't already in the MPAA's pockets, given the recent Family Craptacular Act of 2005 that President Bush signed into law yesterday, Congress is also in the pockets of ... the for-profit weather data industry?

That's right, folks. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) has, ironically, done one of the gayest things a senator could ever do. This time, the pandering isn't even covert. It's the opposite of that. Some might say it's covert.

Last week, Santorum introduced S.786 into the Senate, "To clarify the duties and responsibilities of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, and for other purposes."

What are these duties? Apparently, they are to collect a whole lot of meteorological data. And then guess what Santorum doesn't want the National Weather Service to do? Give you these data for free! Currently, the NWS, a government agency, provides meteorological data for free. Under Santorum's revised "duties," the NWS would be prohibited from giving away meteorological data for free -- or in any other way "that might influence or affect the market value of any product, service, commodity, tradable, or business," since NWS competes with private-sector weather data companies.

I think this is probably the most asinine thing I've ever heard in my entire life. Pity the poor private-sector weather collection agencies. Sure, you can have your storm warnings -- for five dollars. Hey, we're just trying to make a living!

The old laws of economics once said that if you aren't making money doing something, it's time to do something else. The new laws of economics say that if you're not making money doing something, lobby Congress to enact legislation that will allow you to make money doing whatever it is you're doing. For example, if you're a guy in charge of a private-sector weather agency, and you're not making money because NWS provides its data for free, don't go into another line of work! Just find the most easily paid-off Congressman you can and lobby him or her to write legislation that eliminates your competition! (See also Digital Millennium Copyright Act [DMCA], in which media companies forced new markets and technologies to behave like old ones, so they could continue using old-and-busted business models instead of innovating.)

Also, EFF points out that you already pay for NWS information, since it's a taxpayer-funded agency. Santorum's bill would still allow -- and indeed, require -- NWS to provide weather data to private weather companies. Under Santorum's plan, then, you would pay twice for meteorological data.

For this reason (and others, definitely), Rick Santorum is a SEDHE Villian of the Forever.

Posted by Mark at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)