telescreen.org

Gotta love automated news-aggregator sites.

Glad the White House is finding humor in this.  Kind of like "please don't execute me" and the laff-riot search for WMDs in the Oval Office, maybe?

And if the White House really is "firmly behind" Chertoff, I guess they really should announce that they've rejoined the party, right?  Otherwise they might find themselves "sprayed" with birdshot.

A few questions regarding our trigger-happy VPOTUS:

• "Stable" is not a condition.  It indicates that a patient's vital signs are consistent.  What is Whittington's conditon?
• If Whittington "came up from behind" Cheney, why was he shot in the face?
• The White House is blaming Whittington for the shooting.  Will the NRA break its silence?  After all, Cheney violated its Gun Safety Rules.
• Why does the only statement from Cheney's office confine itself to the issue of the $7 Texas tax stamp, and not the fact that Cheney shot someone?
• Why did the White House defer to the wishes of the Armstrongs in informing the press "regarding what had taken place at their ranch"?  If McClellan had been Press Secretary in the Reagan Administration instead of James Brady, would he have asked the manager of the Washington Hilton if it was okay to tell people about the assassination attempt?
• Can someone ask Ray Salinas exactly what "not frequently, but often" means?  My dictionary conflates the two.  (And while we're at it, let's note that "Whittington's interview collaborated Vice President Cheney's statement."  I guess it would.)
• Why did the Secret Service prevent a sheriff's deputy from interviewing Cheney on Saturday, and was Cheney in fact not interviewed by law enforcement until Sunday?  And if that's the case, why is the sheriff's department stating definitively that alcohol was not involved?  13+ hours is time enough to sober up.

Josh Marshall is doing an excellent job piecing together the inconsistencies in the Cheney shooting story:

Here, here, here, here, here, and here.  (Mouse over for pullquotes.)

Because I think of this blog as a public service:

Top 10 Songs That Rhyme "Bacardi" With "Party"

Did you know that the blockbuster opening today isn't Curious George's first movie?  And that he has a secret past?

Go check out Bananas In Bedlam.

Sen. Russ Feingold on the domestic spying program:

This administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms somehow has a pre-9/11 world view. In fact, the President has a pre-1776 world view.  Our government has three branches, not one.  And no one, not even the President, is above the law.

Well put.

This could be fun.  Looks like Brownie is trying to shake down Dubya.

I think they should give him immunity.  After all, he's the smaller fish.  Let's start at the top.

Didja know that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln authorized electronic surveillance?  Neither did I.

(Hat tip to Czeltic Girl.)

Spread the word:  with a new sheriff in the House, the Republican culture of corruption is over.

Or did I type that too soon?

Actually, I guess I did.  Because it turns out that the new House Majority Leader -- the same man who handed out tobacco checks to lawmakers on the House floor -- lives in a lobbyist's basement.

As Newsweek points out, Boehner's not exactly Mr. Clean:

Only in Washington could an old pro like Boehner, an eight-term congressman with close ties to Washington's K Street lobbying culture, be seen as the fresh face of reform. Boehner's ever-present George Hamilton tan gives him the look of a man forever coming back from vacation. He does get around: over the years, he has made the most of controversial rules allowing members to accept free trips to luxury retreats around the world. Since 2000, Boehner has taken more than $150,000 worth of junkets paid for by private interests—ranking him in the top 10 of all members of Congress.

And what of Tom DeLay, the former House Republican honcho?  Well, he didn't do too badly, as it turns out:  he got a seat on the Appropriations Committee.  And, as it turns out, he got put on the subcommittee that hands out money to the Department of Justice.  The same Department of Justice, I hasten to add, that's currently investigating the Jack Abramoff scandal.  (Incidentally, Justice is apparently investigating the Abramoff scandal with slightly less intensity than before, now that Bush has nominated the chief of DOJ's Office of Public Integrity and chief Abamoff prosecutor for a federal judgeship, kicking him upstairs.)

Oh, and did I mention that DeLay will now be in charge of NASA's purse strings?  Good thing NASA was forced to fire the young Bush-appointed punk who thought it was his duty to add the word "theory" after mentions of the Big Bang and prevented scientists from talking to the press about global warming.  Turns out George Deutsch lied on his resume about graduating from college -- and don't you love the irony of a college dropout dictating the public release of scientific information?

And, as Josh Marshall notes, the reason there was a space on Appropriations in the first place is classic.  Quoth the AP:

DeLay was able to rejoin the powerful Appropriations panel he was a member until becoming majority leader in 2003 because of a vacancy created after the resignation of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif. Cunningham pleaded guilty in November to charges relating to accepting $2.4 million in bribes for government business and other favors.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

August Pollak points out that the right-wingers' manufactured "outrage" over the "controversial" comments at Coretta Scott King's funeral tends to ring, shall we say, a bit hollow:

I would tend to think that if you're actually concerned that the friends and family of a woman who fought for civil rights and peace and suffered government wiretapping would bring that up at her funeral, you shouldn't be surprised people at it would be upset with you after going to war, opposing civil rights, and ordering illegal government wiretaps.

But what do I know, I didn't know Coretta Scott King the way every conservative blogger on the internet did.

As threatened promised, Tony Hightower and I hosted trivia last night at the Baggot Inn (followed by exquisite-as-always cocktails at Pegu Club.)

The first round was the "general knowledge" round.  We'd been thinking about the upcoming Academy Awards, so we decided to do a round about the Oscars -- but with a twist:  all of these questions are about the 1956 Oscars (hosted by Jerry Lewis, Claudette Colbert, and director Joseph Mankiewicz in a bicoastal ceremony.) 

(Mouse over the parentheses at the end of each question to find the answers.)  Here we go:

1. All the Best Picture nominees in 1956 were epic, splashy, expensive movies, primarily to compete with the emergence of television.  For the first time, all five Best Picture nominees took advantage of a particular technological innovation that television at the time couldn’t compete with.  What new technology did they all share?  (They were all filmed in color.)
2. In another Oscar first, the category of Best Foreign Language Film was introduced as a regular category (it had been an honorary award only up until this point.)  The Italian movie “La Strada”, with Anthony Quinn, won the first Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.  Who directed “La Strada”? (Federico Fellini.  Fellini’s “The Nights of Cabiria” won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar the following year.)
3. The film that won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, oddly enough, didn’t have a single line of dialogue.  This 34-minute French children's movie was also the shortest film ever to win a screenplay award.  What was it?  (“The Red Balloon”, directed by Albert Lamorisse.)
4. Rock Hudson never won an Oscar, but his sole Oscar nomination happened in 1956, for the movie “Giant.”  The movie is an adaptation of a novel by what Algonquin Round Table writer?  (Edna Ferber, who also wote the novels that became the movies "Show Boat" and "Cimarron.")
5. The Academy Award for Best Song went to Jay Livingston and Ray Evans for “Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera.)”  It was the only song from an Alfred Hitchcock movie to win an Oscar.  What movie did it appear in?  (“The Man Who Knew Too Much.”)
6. The role of the King of Siam was played by Rex Harrison in “Anna and the King of Siam” in 1946, and Chow Yun-Fat in “Anna and the King” in 1999.  In 1956, the story was made into a musical that was a Best Picture nominee.  Who won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance of the King of Siam?  (Yul Brynner.  This was his only Oscar.)
7. Another “Best Picture” nominee this year (and the eventual winner) was a sprawling travelogue with a million-dollar cast that included David Niven, John Gielgud, Marlene Dietrich, Buster Keaton, George Raft, Trevor Howard, Frank Sinatra, Noel Coward, Charles Boyer, and Peter Lorre  Despite the megawattage of the cast, this movie based on a Jules Verne novel is one of the few Best Pictures with no acting nominations.  Which movie is this?  (“Around the World in 80 Days.”)
8. Four of the five Best Picture nominees also received Best Director nominations.  The odd one out was a remake of a 1923 silent movie by the same director, Cecil B. DeMille.  The 1956 version received only one win, for Best Visual Effects.  Which movie is this?  (“The Ten Commandments.”)
9. One of the nominees for Best Actor was the only actor to ever receive two posthumous, consecutive Best Actor nominations, for “East of Eden” in 1955 and “Giant” in 1956.  Who was this?  (James Dean.)
10. One of the greatest movies of 1956 was hailed in a New York magazine cover story as the most influential movie in American history.  It is one of seven 1956 movies on the National Film Registry, and one of only two 1956 movies on critic Roger Ebert’s list of “The Great Movies.”  However, it received no Oscar nominations whatsoever.  Directed by John Ford, this Western was promoted as “The Biggest, Roughest, Toughest ...and Most Beautiful Picture Ever Made”, and its other promotional tagline calls it “the story that sweeps from the great Southwest to the Canadian border in VistaVision.”  What movie is this?  (“The Searchers”, starring John Wayne and Natalie Wood.)

Next up was a current events round, all drawn from yesterday's New York Times:

1. The Bronx Zoo has announced that it plans – at some indefinite future time – to shut down the exhibit for which animal?  (Elephants.  The zoo’s three elephants, Patty, Maxine, and Happy, could live for decades more.  But the zoo will shut down the exhibit if one of them dies and the other two don’t get along, or if two of them die.)
2. Yesterday, face transplant recipient Isabelle Dinoire gave her first news conference.  What happened to her face that required the transplant?  (Her black Labrador chewed it off while she was unconscious from taking sleeping pills.)
3. Coretta Scott King’s funeral was held today at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church outside Atlanta.  Before the funeral, her body lay in state at the Georgia State Capitol.  It also lay in repose at which historic downtown Atlanta church?  (Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was co-pastor, together with his father, from 1960 until his death in 1968.)
4. What Roman Catholic society is embarking on a public relations campaign to remind the public that “The Da Vinci Code” is fictional?  (Opus Dei.)
5. One of the laws discussed at yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on domestic eavesdropping was the 1978 FISA law.  What does FISA stand for?  (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.)
6. 39-year-old San Francisco musician Geoffrey Knoop said yesterday that his longtime partner, Laura Albert, had written the books attributed to what fictional writer?  (JT Leroy.)
7. British sculptor Marc Quinn is planning five life-size bronzes of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, in contorted yoga positions with her feet behind her ears.  What British model will be the model for Aphrodite?  (Kate Moss.)
8. Why is Nick Flynn no longer welcome at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England?  (He tripped on a loose shoelace, fell down a flight of stairs, and smashed three 300-year-old Qing dynasty vases valued at $175,000.)
9. Hasbro’s fourth quarter profits went up by 15 percent yesterday, largely driven by licensed merchandise from what movie franchise?  (“Star Wars.”)
10. The journal Science reports that what common laboratory animal can smell in stereo?  (The rat.)

Then we had a Top 10 list round, in which players were asked to name the top ten fruits produced worldwide last year (by total production weight, from largest to smallest.)

After a brief break to trade and grade papers, we resumed with the audio round -- players heard clips from ten standup comics and supplied their names.  Comics included Emo Phillips, Chris Rock, and Eddie Izzard (all of whom had birthdays yesterday), as well as Sarah Silverman, Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, Margaret Cho, Richard Pryor, and Henry Rollins.

We followed that with the visual round, in which players were asked to name ten famous showbiz dogs:

Tony and I won't be hosting together for a while, but Tony hosts the Drunken Smartass Olympics every Wednesday night (including tonight!) at 7:30 at Dempsey's in the East Village.

I would be remiss if I failed to note that tonight at 7:30, the estimable Tony Hightower and I will be hosting Tuesday Night Trivia at the Baggot Inn on West 3rd Street.

C'mon out and test your trivia mettle...we will have valuable prizes, and you might even wind up drinking for free.

The Lego Suicides.

While I think it's pretty silly for a vegetarian to picket a Honey-Baked Ham store, they certainly have every right to do so -- the First Amendment to the Constitution does guarantee freedom of speech and the right to peaceably assemble, after all. 

Except, evidently, in suburban Atlanta, where a protester was arrested for doing just that.  Did she hurt anybody?  Did she threaten a police officer or anyone else?  Did she violate content-neutral restrictions on time, place, or manner of speech?

Nope -- she committed the apparently illegal offense of writing down the license number of an unmarked police car.  (One driven by an undercover Homeland Security officer who was photographing the protest.)

I assume it hasn't changed since I lived in Georgia, but license plates are publicly displayed right there on the back of the car.  They're not hidden -- and in fact it's against the law to obscure them.  So how exactly doess making a note of the information that appears on that plate constitute "disorderly conduct"?

She and another of her fellow protesters are suing, and I hope she wins big punitive damages.

Yep, we're living in the land of the free, all right.  Or does protesting cured pork automatically make one an enemy of America and a threat to national security?

How "Christ, What An Asshole" is Always the Answer to the New Yorker Caption Contest.

UPDATE:  Also please see Daniel Radosh's anti-caption contest.

I'm enjoying this compilation of dumb questions asked at Super Bowl press conferences.

I hadn't been planning to write about the clearly illegal arrest of Cindy Sheehan at the State of the Union on Tuesday, but this graphic (from this post by Glenn Greenwald) sums up my feelings nicely:

(What's in store for next year?  They rent the back room at Shoney's and only Tom Delay, Rick Santorum, Michelle Malkin, and Zell Miller are allowed to attend?)

The Wall Street Journal examines "Cookie Monster" vocals.

If "Faust" glorifies Satan, you're obviously not paying attention.

(and if you're trying to avoid works that glorify Satan, better keep the kids away from "Paradise Lost", too.)

Britain's Channel 4 News is reporting that, in President Bush's January 31, 2003 meeting with British PM Blair, Bush discussed using a US spyplane painted in UN colors to provoke an Iraqi attack which then could be used to justify war:

Channel 4 News tonight reveals extraordinary details of George Bush and Tony Blair's pre-war meeting in January 2003 at which they discussed plans to begin military action on March 10th 2003, irrespective of whether the United Nations had passed a new resolution authorising the use of force.

Channel 4 News has seen minutes from that meeting, which took place in the White House on 31 January 2003. . .

President Bush said that:

"The US would put its full weight behind efforts to get another resolution and would 'twist arms' and 'even threaten'. But he had to say that if ultimately we failed, military action would follow anyway.''

Prime Minister Blair responded that he was: "solidly with the President and ready to do whatever it took to disarm Saddam." . . .

President Bush said: "The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."

He went on: "It was also possible that a defector could be brought out who would give a public presentation about Saddam's WMD, and there was also a small possibility that Saddam would be assassinated."

Speaking to Channel 4 News, Mr Sands said:

"I think no one would be surprised at the idea that the use of spy-planes to review what is going on would be considered. What is surprising is the idea that they would be used painted in the colours of the United Nations in order to provoke an attack which could then be used to justify material breach. Now that plainly looks as if it is deception, and it raises some fundamental questions of legality, both in terms of domestic law and international law."

This could be big.  As yet, I've seen no response from the White House, and Number Ten has declined to comment.

It's really no surprise that the promised "ethics reform" in the House by the scandal-plagued Republicans turns out to be -- well, nothing of the sort.

So what was their first item of hard-hitting business?  To change the culture of corruption?  To send a clear signal that bribing politicians is bad (mmkay)?  To, as the utterly ineffectual, weaselish Rep. David Dreier said, "underscore the fact that the Republican Party has been and continues to be the party of reform"?

They decided that registered lobbyists wouldn't be allowed in the House gym.  Because, evidently, it's hard to craft good legislation between reps (or is that Reps?) if a lobbyist is handing you a towel.

The measure also kicks lobbyists off the House floor.  This was kind of a surprise to me -- who knew that former members could come back on the floor if they were registered lobbyists?  You'd think the one place you don't want a lobbyist whispering in the ear of a legislator would be the one place where the legislation is actually made.  (Don't they have the decency to at least put the bribes in an envelope?)

Which brings us to the new House Majority Leader, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio.  (Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.) 

Boehner presumably put the bribes in an envelope, but that didn't stop him from getting in trouble in 1995, when he handed out checks from the tobacco industry to representatives while they were deciding the fate of a tobacco subsidy.  And, what's worse, he had the gall to hand out the checks on the House floor.

(See?  Dubya's lies in the State of the Union speech couldn't besmirch that august chamber any more than it already had been.)

And what about that election that installed Boehner?  Seems it ran into a little problem on the first ballot when more ballots were cast than there were members present.  I guess rigging elections has become downright reflexive for the Republicans -- they even try to tamper with their own internal votes!

Boehner, by the way, is the same guy who conspired (along with such ethical paragons as Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Dick Armey and others) to defy the House Ethics Committee and break House rules back in 1996.

And these next couple points aren't about Rep. Boehner specifically, but I'm throwing them in as yet even more examples of ethics-deficient Republicans:

--Didja know that the staffer who keeps track of defense appropriations for Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Hey Laaaaady! CA), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, is a military officer?  In violation of House rules and a definite conflict of interest?

--It seems that Sen. Rick Santorum's (R-Sphincter) problem of remembering what he's said continues.  Last week, Santorum categorically denied knowing anything about the K Street Project: 

"I had absolutely nothing to do -- never met, never talked, never coordinated, never did anything -- with Grover Norquist and the -- quote -- K Street Project." 

Too bad that on November 14, Santorum told the same paper:

"The K Street project is purely to make sure we have qualified applicants for positions that are in town. From my perspective, it's a good government thing."

If there are any Pennsylvanians reading this blog, can y'all chip in and get Santorum a Moleskine or something?  He really needs to keep his lies straight.

UPDATE/P.S.:  Demoting U.S. Attorneys the day after they start investigating Jack Abramoff is a bad idea, too.

Less than a day.

That's how long the promises last from our disgrace of a President.

From Knight-Ridder:

WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

Didn't. Mean. It. Literally.  Isn't it about damn time for the President to say what he means?  To finally quit spewing horse manure at the world?  To finally quit hiding in his own carefully-constructed universe, where he can wish things into existence?

He pledged to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."

Not exactly, though, it turns out.

"This was purely an example," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said. . .

Asked why the president used the words "the Middle East" when he didn't really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that "every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands."

Translation for those of us in the reality-based community:  "He used the words 'Middle East' because he wanted to scare us about those nasty A-rabs who control our petroleum lifeblood."

You'd think that this Administration would have learned -- by now, the sixth such speech -- that you need to be pretty careful about what you put in the State of the Union.  (Or does "sixteen words" not ring a bell?)

Heck, I'd be happy if he just quit lying every time he opens his mouth.

Coming soon to a courtroom near you:  The Grand Ole Docket.

(Feels like Groundhog Day now, doesn't it?)

The great Sarah Vowell, in the Times:

The state of our union is stunned. We democracy spreaders remain shocked, shocked, at the Hamas sweep in the recent Palestinian parliamentary election, never, ever, ever before having experienced a deficit of wisdom on the part of American voters. And that is not only a sarcastic shout-out to the loss of electoral innocence brought on by that time ''Dances With Wolves'' beat out ''Goodfellas'' for best picture at the Oscars. No, it is merely a weary barb borne of the ongoing grind that is the current presidency.

For there are American citizens who used to think that there could be no greater blow for representative democracy than a president worming his way into the White House thanks to one Supreme Court vote. That is, until the day said president was actually elected to a second term by an electorate that overlooked the previous four years of galling, irrevocable policies with upbeat, intelligence-insulting slogans -- ''Clear Skies,'' anyone? -- to say nothing of entering into an ugly war based on lies that has made the world a more dangerous place when it wasn't exactly all Davenport, Iowa, to begin with.

Thus the election unleashed four more years in which even a goody-goody nice girl, who was raised to believe that ''shut up'' is a curse, cusses at her morning newspaper with the foul mouth of a gangsta rapper who has stubbed his toe.

Except for that one creepy, silent breakfast when it hit her that her psychologist friend Kate, who counsels torture victims at the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, might someday have patients damaged by operatives of the United States.

In fact, it has been said that God is currently angry with America. But according to God's publicist, the Supreme Being would like to clarify that He's not angry, but that ''He would like His name taken off the credits.''

Wacky CNN.com hed of the day:  'Brokeback' fans want cowboy experience

All of them?

"I wish I could quit you.  Now let me get my branding iron."