Wis. Stat. § 940.01(1)(a)

The Neenah woman whose suffocation of her 2-year-old son was preceded by Bible reading and communication with incorporeal beings intentionally caused the death of another human being, says the government, so she's looking at life in prison today (no DP in WI).

After Caleb died, Brenda Thiel laid in bed next to him for about 15 minutes. She apologized to him, kissed him and told him she loved him.

The stuff of Gothic novels.

[Neighbor Karen] Mulvey said she recalled Thiel telling her she had joined Christ The Rock Community Church in the Calumet County Town of Harrison. "She said it was the best thing that ever happened to her."

Competency hearing to follow.

No noggin exam for Bishop Bushey?

Sister Mary Bernadette a.k.a. Tammy Lewis of Necedah, WI is scheduled for a competency hearing May 27 in Juneau County related to her two felony charges of causing mental harm to a child arising from having left a deceased 90-year-old woman to "rot on a toilet" for nine weeks whilst the children at issue shat in a bucket.

No word yet on similar process (as against the identical charges) for Lewis's co-conspirator in attempted resurrection and religious "Superior," Bishop Alan A. "John Peter" Bushey. Lewis's attorney had a pretty good line in court yesterday, though.

Dan Berkos disputed comments of prosecutors that Bushey headed a cult. Berkos said almost any organized religion could be described that way.

Well, maybe so. But that doesn't mean this one is excluded from the definition. "Cult" may be overbroad or even underinclusive, but if it has any legal meaning at all, it must apply to these circumstances.

Ya think?

I wonder if Counselor Berkos has his experts booked yet. Any hearing involving the distinctions between mental illness and religious belief is bound to be interesting. That's why they should flog the Bishop in there too. And while they're at it, grab that Kenny Van Hoof dude.

Don't Worry, Kyoto

So Senator John McCain is concerned about climate change, and is even threatening to get all Kyoto-sanctionmonious about it. What's his point? If climate change is your issue, you're likely not about to be snowed by McCain's tepid rhetoric. No, the warmth McCain is concerned about is that emanating from his occasional manhug buddy, G.W. Bush XLIII, where a little global cooling is in order.

The real "Bush Derangement Syndrome" is a GOP affliction.

"Walnuts."

SCOTUS too conflicted to stop tort nightmare

Corporate exposure in the Billions.

How 'bout dat.

Monday Night Mailbag

An anonymous reader writes: "You should get caught up in your knowledge of human origin. May I suggest that you visit the New Creation Science Museum in Ohio? One of their directors was a top evolution scientist that finally openly admitted the flaws of the theory. Perhaps, you could also be open minded."

Dear Anonymous, Petersburg, KY isn't anywhere near the top of my list of places to visit before I die and I doubt I could be persuaded to patronize the said "museum." Not without the assistance of organic hallucinogens, at any rate. Besides, I've already seen everything they've got a hundred times or more. But thanks just the same.

The Creation Museum is the stillborn brainchild of a supercilious nincompoop from Australia called Ken Ham, who, amongst a miscellany of other slapsticks, insists the universe is 6,000 years old. Ken Ham makes you long for the days when they used to send the criminals to Australia.

But Ken Ham is at least consistent. He thinks every word in the Bible is literally true, and that if even one word of the Bible isn't literally true, then not one other word of the Bible is literally true either. It's a compelling logic for millions of Americans, it is said. It's also an extravagantly risible fallacy, but never mind.

Apparently it would also crush Ken Ham's otherwise indomitable Faith to learn that the sun didn't "stand still" in the sky, pi is greater than three, or the mustard plant does not bear the smallest of seeds.

Ken Ham claims that if you add up the generations of the Old Testament (which include a number of mythic heroes and longsuffering heroines alleged to have lived for several hundred years) then you arrive at the Biblically correct age of the universe.

W3 is a star formation region in the constellation Perseus (a mere) 7,500 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance it takes light to travel in one year at about 59 million feet per minute. If the universe is only 6,000 years old, then the light from W3 wouldn't have reached us yet, and we couldn't see it. Yet, there it is.

So much for Ken Ham. But still, hundreds of thousands of dupes flock to his Kentucky carnival. That would be two feet every minute, in P.T. Barnumese, albeit slower than the speed of light, or even the short bus in third gear on its way to the Creation Museum.

Here's the manner of rigorously scientific installation you'll encounter at "the creationist Disneyland":

A male teenager is shown sitting at a computer looking at internet pornography and a female teenager speaks with Planned Parenthood about having an abortion; both acts are blamed on their belief that the Earth is "millions of years" old. The climax of the tour is the life of Jesus Christ, with a three-dimensional depiction of the crucifixion.

Let's hope they got that much right. By the way, why is it that they never seem to tire of killing him? We get it; enough already.

While the godless may — and not a few do — point and laugh, professional theologians are genuinely concerned:

The Rev. Mendle Adams, pastor of St. Peter's United Church of Christ in Cincinnati, said, "My brothers and sisters in the faith who embrace [the creationist] understanding call into question the whole Christian concept" and "make us a laughingstock." Roman Catholic theologian John Haught [said] it will cause an "impoverishment" of religion." Michael Patrick Leahy, editor of the magazine Christian Faith and Reason, says that by replacing the scientific method with biblical literalism, the museum undermines the credibility of all Christians and makes it easy to represent Christians as irrational.

I wouldn't go that far, but a subset for certain includes at least Ken Ham and his nitwit apostles. Anyway, they present their own selves as irrational. There are a few comical tours of the Creation Museum online. These two are pretty funny, as well as lavishly illustrated:

Incest, child abuse feature at Creation Museum — BlueGrassRoots
Not just your average load of horseshit — John Scalzi / Whatever

World of Whorecraft

Ralph told the suspicious hookers he and the other teens were people of restricted growth working with a traveling circus.

Ralph's ambition is to become a Texas politician.

Off to a fine start, my little friend.

Elsewhere: Real carnies not so fun-loving.

Bill Maher Watch: Day 10

May 12, and there are still two giant Bill Maher posters in the glass entrance doors of the Riverside Theatre bearing the prominent legends, "American Welcomes."

Dear god in heaven won't somebody make the nightmare end.

Republicans need anger management training. Look at John Bolton — if you can. One, his hair's not speaking to his moustache. And two, the Republicans actually like the idea of our most sensitive diplomatic post being helmed by a raging psychopath. Asking John Bolton to represent you at the UN is like asking R. Kelly to chaperone the Miss Teen USA Pageant — you know someone's gonna end up pissed.

— Bill Maher, New Rules, p. 219

Nonagenarian decedent on toilet update

The Journal-Sentinel this morning has a bit more background on this week's unusual tale of the Wisconsin cultists who left a 90-year-old woman to, as the J-S reporters put it, "rot on a toilet since March 4." (I got the mistaken impression from an early AP report that one of the two cultists, a man and a woman, was the deceased woman's daughter. Duh. She's 35, and evidently no relation.)

Turns out Necedah, WI was the alleged site of some particularly hysterical "Marian apparitions," that is, personal speaking engagements by what the Catholic Church calls the Virgin Mary.

Reports the J-S, "The man and woman, now facing criminal charges, were the bishop and a nun of an offshoot Catholic church unrecognized by Rome and unaffiliated with the shrine that has drawn worshippers for half a century, authorities say."

More clearly, according to this Wikipedia entry, the Catholic Church doesn't recognize the shrine, either, nor any of the Necedah Marian shenanigans in toto. It considers the visions to have been false (full marks to the Catholic Church for that much). The best part:

Fidelity Magazine, a Roman Catholic periodical, quotes one of [Mary Ann] Van Hoof's messages, in its February, 1989 Issue as detailing that the devotees of the Necedah Shrine would be spared Armageddon when, right before the world's doom, a 1,200 year-old man named Joe will come in a spaceship to save them.

At least that last bit is unbiblical, I take it.

The Necedah Shrine has its own oddball website too, Mediatrix are for Kids, operated by a tax-exempt outfit called For My God And My Country, Inc., Jennifer Sparby, Proprietor.

From that site there is a link to this thing, Diamond Star Light Beacon, which is registered to a Kenny Van Hoof, likely a relative of the original "simple and poor farm woman" Mary Ann Van Hoof, the entertainer of the original apparitions (there were a whole bunch).

There is a lot of strange, strange reading at Kenny's website, where wildly imaginative End of Times paranoia and supernatural conspiracy theories abound. Check it out, it's a kick. Get it? Kenny Van Hoof.

There's some crazy peoples up in them thar hills.

I can't put my hands on my copy of Weird Wisconsin at the moment, so I don't know whether this shrine joint is in it. It should be.

Kohler, a Wisconsin company, has several very nice toilets.

Sure fire ego wall kiss of death

h/t Thoughtful Conservative

Gableman goes creationist

Remember Burnett County, WI Sheriff Dean Roland? He's the government official who sent out an invitation to his May 1 "prayer breakfast" on official government stationery indicating that Burnett County Circuit Judge Mike Gableman is "a man who is deeply committed to our Lord, his religion and his profession."

The pancakes were indeed served and prayed over, and the Burnett County Sentinel carried a report of the bizarre event the other day.

Sheriff Roland tearfully recounted an "angry" phone call he said he'd received from someone seemingly taking issue with Roland's temerity in officially claiming that there's such a thing as an official, government-sponsored and -endorsed "Our" "Lord" just for Wisconsin.

"No greater love hath man ... I'm willing to die for you," Roland shouted down the phone, "Are you willing to die for me?" While Roland interpreted the predictable silence as a Righteous Victory against the godless hordes, I'm certain it was more the result of unalloyed dumbfoundedness with Roland's crude and fallacious meanderings.

Seriously, why do these government officials insist on getting up in front of a plate of flapjacks and publicly declaiming their various religions and supernatural beliefs? All it ever is is embarrassing. No wonder the Constitution counsels against it, for that reason alone.

I for one very much appreciate the dedication and service of law enforcement — as much as anybody, I'm sure. Public demonstrations of piety do nothing to enhance that appreciation.

Next came the guest of hizzoner, State Supreme Court Justice-elect* Mike Gableman, who delivered a liturgy comprised of carefully selected historical tidbits straight outta conservative Republican activist and notoriously unreliable pseudo-historian David Barton.

Then Gableman had a few words about religion and science.

"He quoted Nobel Prize winner Max Planck, a founder of modern physics, as saying, 'There is evidence of an intelligent order of the universe, of which both man and nature are subservient.'"

"Science is catching up," Gableman added.

What's that supposed to mean? That science is proving God? Not exactly. Max Planck was a lifelong Christian. He accepted the existence of God entirely as a matter of subjective, personal faith. Not science. Planck was a believer long before he formulated quantum mechanics. And Planck's beliefs had little to do with the meddlesome Oriental deity about which Gableman is rambling.

In fact, Planck's position with respect to science and religion was precisely opposite of what Gableman suggested. "The faith in miracles," Planck said, "must yield, step by step, before the steady and firm advance of the facts of science, and its total defeat is undoubtedly a matter of time."

Planck would have found it odd to be invoked at a pancake breakast devoted to calling forth miracles from a god that tinkers about with cellular organelles and whatnot else. You're already seated comfortably in a nice restaurant, about to tuck into an infinite-cholesterol stack of Aunt Jemimas with syrup, and now you want a miracle also? Oy. I do and do and do for you kids ...

Anyway, there are plenty of scientists who believe in God. So what? As a matter of fact, one of the most vocal supporters of science education in America and by the same token one of the most vocal critics of so-called "intelligent design" creationism, Kenneth Miller, is a devout Catholic. So what? Nobody cares. That's his business.

The point is, "intelligent design" is a scam and a sham. So to suggest that because some scientist believes in god implies that science has proven god reflects a profound misunderstanding of both the limitless variety of personal theologies and science.

Gableman also mentioned the English philosopher Antony Flew. According to the Sentinel, "Professor Flew stated that developments in modern science had led him to accept the action of an Intelligent Mind in the creation of the world."

"Science is catching up," added Gableman.

Um, no. For one thing, Flew has contradicted himself on so many occasions over the last few years that it's nearly impossible for anyone, least of all Mike Gableman, to say what he thinks, or what led him where.

Most importantly, Flew's attitude toward a number of philosophical arguments for god have little to do with science. Flew doesn't even follow science. His idea of a scientist is Richard Dawkins. That's like me saying my idea of a musician is Hannah Montana.

The only people who care which philosophical argument for god Flew is accepting or rejecting this week are hamhanded apologists like Lee Strobel and Gary Habermas, who seize on Flew as some sort of poster child for Jesus, despite Flew throughout the "controversy" still categorically rejecting the existence of any of the Abrahamic models of god including the one Gableman and Sheriff Roland follow around.

And, same as Max Planck, for Gableman to suggest that science proved god to Antony Flew is just plain counterfactual and ridiculous. A better explanation is that Flew is losing his marbles or at least is having jolly sport at both his supporters and detractors.

After all, Flew came to America to accept something called the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth at an evangelical Christian college.

Just the inclusion of "Phillip E. Johnson" and "Truth" in the same sentence is enough to have them rolling in the aisles, including, I wouldn't be at all surprised, Antony Flew.

One may attempt to navigate Antony Flew's perturbations here.

All of which serves again to reinforce the brute fact that we're not currently putting our most thoughtful individuals on the State Supreme Court, only, in this latest instance, one merely capable of rehashing typically ill-informed and disingenuous conservative Republican propaganda.

* The phrase "Supreme Court Justice-elect" would surely cause James Madison to rotate in his crypt.

The Weekly Real Best of the WI-Blogs

Boots & Kittens

For a long while now, one of the smartest and funniest domains on the entire Quesosphere. And you don't even have to know anything about the blog B&K is making fun of. I'm still laughing at "Guess That Geographical Location — March 17, 2008" (scroll down a bit).

You'll never find Boots & Kittens on the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's "Best of the Wisconsin Blogs," but you will find, inexplicably and with disturbing regularity, the very blog that B&K is so deftly lampooning.

That fact is one of humanity's most perplexing conundrums.

A recent sample:

Dead Woman Found on Toilet

Sick.

This is ridiculous superstition. After all, every good Christian (that is, the ones at my church) knows that demons are responsible only for occultic games (such as Pokemon, World of Warcrack and Ouija boards), satanic rock music, false religions such as Wicca, Islam and Unitarianism, drug use, affection for rum and Romanism in general. If you're not my kind of Christian, you're pretty much demonic. Pray and fast, pray and have faith, pray and rebuke it! Follow the logic: Send the demon(s) into a pack of wild pigs, who will then drown themselves in a nearby body of water.

"Following the logic" is a B&K leitmotif, apparently a favored device at the parodied blog. It's singularly hazardous to draw attention to one's logic, particularly when you're not actually employing any.

It is with great shame

That I now admit that, until May 8, 2008, I had never listened to Junior Wells.

And what is even worse than never having listened to Junior Wells is that the only version I ever heard of Messin' With The Kid was by the Blues Brothers.

At least, one of them was from Chicago, but even that tangential blues cred is completely negated by the fact that the other guy was a Canadian. I never felt so white in my life.

So I get a gig last week with my good buddy and occasional professional associate Mike Kettler. Kettler plays (and teaches) drums in a variety of contexts, from rockabilly to jigs, hornpipes, and avant-jazz and asked me to play with him and a guy called George Castro in Cudahy next Wednesday night. Fortunately Kettler doesn't know I haven't picked up my bass since July and my Ampeg 2x10 combo amp has been sitting in a garage in Whitefish Bay since then. (I'm coming Colleen, I'm coming ... )

I have another bass rig at home but it weighs 400 pounds and I'm getting too old to drag that thing up and down a flight of stairs. I don't do roadying anymore period. Unless there's food.

Who George is (apparently he used to have a band by the fantastic name of Castro's Cuban Missile Crisis), I can't say and I won't be meeting him until the job because we won't be rehearsing, just showing up and playing. Like back in the days.

What George is is a blues guy so the tunes will be pretty straightforward: three chords (but, the best three chords in just the right order). Besides, Kettler gave me a set list and some charts, which is cool, because I didn't know drummers could even read music, let alone write it. May wonders never cease.

So anyway, Junior Wells. After procuring Messin' With The Kid from iTunes and listening to it about 147 times in a row, I purchased the Junior Wells collection, Best of the Vanguard Years. I thought Vanguard was a classical label with a few folkies. Guess not. Junior Wells is, quite simply, one of the best singers I've ever heard in my life. And I've heard a couple.

The opening track, Sonny Boy Williamson's Help Me, contains what is possibly the greatest spoken introduction to a tune of all times:

I want to do this ... number. It's not mines. But I'm gonna pay tribute to a ... an old fellerow and a, nice outstanding musician. A tribute to him. It's a number that he made that I think that will. Linger in your hearts forever. It's a crazy little thing that goes like this: Baby. You got to Help Me.

You Know That I Know and Stormy Monday Blues are museum pieces. And Shake It Baby is a James Brownian rave-up with some of the best recorded drums you're going to hear (as do the other cuts).

It could be a pretty sad commentary on contemporary American civilization that we're so inured to all these synthesizers and various digital crap we don't even know what drums sound like anymore. Drums, of all things, the first musical instrument the nascent species learned to play. Maybe that's the real great shame.

Funny thing is, it's what they call R&B nowadays that takes the most mechanical automation to produce. It used to be a room the size of a small garage and three microphones, or maybe even just one.

Therefore as your attorney I advise you to obtain Junior Wells's Best of the Vanguard Years and play it at suitable volumes. Make sure you have lots of bottom end. And also make the trip to Cudahy this week.

George Castro, guitar, vocals
Michael Kettler, drums, percussion
Yr hmbl corresp, bass guitar

"Perform Messin' With The Kid and other Top Favorites"

Wednesday, May 14, 8 p.m.
City Lounge
"Urban elegance and Old-Fashioned Charm" — Cudahy Now
3455 East Layton Avenue
SMOKE-FREE

UPDATE

Just hours after posting this, I was informed that the gig is canceled. Apparently the club has two owners and the other one had booked a piano player for the same evening. Subsequently, the owner who booked the piano player prevailed during the inevitable flurry of averments and disputations.

I don't recall ever having had a gig canceled in my life. Although when I was about 17 I was in a band that booked a four-nighter, complete with a signed contract, and got fired after the first night for not being loud enough. The club owed us around $1200 and we never saw a penny of it, and the Musician's Union didn't do squat, even though we were required to be members and pay annual dues — for exactly these sorts of situations. The contract had the Musician's Union logo at the top of it and wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.

Come to think of it, I have also never once heard a complimentary word about the Musician's Union. Rather, nothing except savage tales of bitterness, horror, and feudalist exploitation. Anyway, just in case any of the groupies were wondering, you'll only find a lonely piano player in the club Wednesday night.

"They sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say, 'Man, what are you doing here.'" And in any event, we still have Junior Wells.

Creationist sentenced to Turkish prison

Today Harun Yahya, tomorrow William A. Dembski.

Already got Kent Hovind.

A Mother's Day Prayer

Religious materials everywhere
and hymns playing on the stereo

At least occasionally, the distinction between religious belief and mental illness is somewhat difficult to discern.

After God entered negotiations with a Wisconsin religious woman, the woman left her 90-year-old mother dead on the toilet in her home for nine weeks. According to the religious woman, God promised her he would revisit his celebrated Lazarus number on the dead woman if the religious woman prayed to Him hard enough.

On Wednesday, police in Necedah discovered that the prior negotiations had evidently got somehow scuppered, and the woman's mother was still dead. Since March 4. "Piled" on the toilet.

The religious woman, Tammy Lewis a.k.a. Sister Mary Bernadette, said she was acting in concordance with the instructions of her religious "Superior," a gentleman called Bishop "I Refute It Thus" Bushey. Two counts of felony causing mental harm to a child — one for each of Lewis's two teenaged children — were filed against both grown-ups today.

Sister M.B. told police her mother wasn't really fully and completely dead and besides, there was another toilet for the kids in the house, which turned out to be a bucket in a closet.

Investigators understatedly described the scene as "horrific."

Bishop Bushey had warned the terrified children they had better not run away, because Demons were conspiring to keep Sister M.B.'s mother dead, and if the Demons won out, then the teenagers would have to go to school and get jobs, because the dead woman paid all the church bills. So just shut up and keep praying, kids.

"Juneau County Sheriff Brent Oleson said he had no further information on Bushey's religious affiliation," the AP reports.

Does it matter which one? The problem is *A* religious affiliation.

It's unclear whether the Bishop of Necedah's god was the same omnibenevolent deity who didn't save an 11-year-old girl from a diabetic coma and death late last month after an untreated three-week illness during an attempted "faith healing."

Earlier: National Day of Custom Mattresses.

Later: A Catholic Splinter Outfit.

So it wasn't Sister M.B.'s mother after all.

Brawler unearths some WI-Nazis

Tell 'em, Jello.

The WI-Nazis have a discussion board, too. Only 31 members, if that's any consolation. Say hello to "Panzer Girl" and "whiteboy1488."

Tough call whether you want to give these folks free publicity, but I tend to favor knowing they're out there, in a neighborhood near you.

After all, conservative Republicans don't exactly want us to ignore "Rev." Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan either, do they?

Nein.

American TV welcomes Stephen Lynch!

"American Presents The Sick and Twisted Stephen Lynch," declares the full page color ad in yesterday's virulently pro-Catholic newspaper* The Onion, welcoming the "comedian" Lynch to Milwaukee's Riverside Theatre tomorrow night.

Search 'Stephen Lynch' at YouTube.com and find Lynch mocking the mentally and physically handicapped, homosexuals, and so forth, complete with foul and offensive language. He also sings about performing an abortion on his girlfriend by kicking her in the stomach and inserting a coat hanger into her vagina, among other things.

And, of course:

Priest

"How many Catholics do we have here tonight?" [Sparse applause] "That's way too fuckin' many." [Laughter]

sunday mass or bible class
i catch him in my view
so i close my eyes but there he lies
spread eagle on the pew
and when i see him in that frock
my conscience goes awry
i'll give him some communion wine
that's spiked with spanish fly

altar boy, altar boy
is it gonna be heaven or hell
you can play my organ all night long
if you promise never to tell

So, where's the fabricated outrage?

Anyone? Chuckles? McBueller?

*crickets chirping*
_____________
* This issue's top story:

PAPAL TERROR PLOT
Pope Returns To Vatican
With Comprehensive Plan
To Blow Up United States

Chillingly, the recording concludes with the phrase "May God bless America," followed by what is being called a "throaty, maniacal" laugh that experts have identified as the pontiff's.

(A near-perfect triple-decker headline, by the way.)

Ken Miller rips some Expelled

Despite these [numerous other] falsehoods, by far the film's most outlandish misrepresentation is its linkage of Darwin with the Holocaust. A concentration camp tour guide tells [Ben] Stein that the Nazis were practicing "Darwinism," and that's that. Never mind those belt buckles proclaiming Gott mit uns (God is with us), the toxic anti-Semitism of Martin Luther, the ghettoes and murderous pogroms in Christian Europe centuries before Darwin's birth. No matter. It's all the fault of evolution.

Stein, Mathis are fatuous, lying idiots

State executioners back in bidness

Georgia is first past the post

William Earl Lynd, 53, was put to death at Jackson state prison in Georgia late on Tuesday after a final meal of two pepper jack barbecue burgers with crispy onions, baked potatoes with sour cream, bacon and cheese, and a large strawberry milkshake.

He eats ate better than I do.

Here is an excerpt from William Earl Lynd's final (rejected) reply brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking a stay of execution. Bear in mind that a sentence of death requires a killing plus some aggravating factor(s), as defined by State statute.

[The Georgia Supreme Court's] flawed decision may now allow a man to be executed based on a fake doctor's manifestly and undisputedly false and misleading testimony that a woman shot in the brain could have revived and struggled painfully before being dealt a final, cold-blooded shot to the head by Mr. Lynd.

Had a competent medical professional informed the jury that in fact, Ms. Moore immediately died after being shot in the brain during her fight with Mr. Lynd, there would have been no evidence to support the kidnapping aggravator or the prosecutor's inflammatory argument that Ms. Moore died a lingering, torturous death, which came when a cold, calculating William Lynd fired the final, fatal shot.

It simply could not have happened that way. Because the jury heard otherwise, Mr. Lynd's death sentence cannot be said, by any stretch of distorted moral or legal logic, to be fair, accurate and reliable. Had Mr. Lynd been subject only to the remaining statutory aggravator in this case — aggravated battery — it is overwhelmingly likely that he would not have been sentenced to death.

In Georgia, only one other person has ever had a death sentence affirmed based solely on the aggravated battery aggravator, and that involved the murder of a child.

h/t SCOTUSblog

Earlier: Git-R-Done.

I'm so stressed with the USA

Let's see. The right wing wants to not give us access to low cost health care, they want to send our jobs overseas and make sure those that remain are low paying, they want to keep us under surveillance. Now they want to make us sexually repressed like they are. — krshorewood

h/t Le Roi de la Haine Gauche

Last time I use [blink]text[/blink]

Want to get outraged at something, try this.

h/t T.J.

Creationist Thread of the Week

"Hey, Sal, it isn't 1859 anymore."

Long (350+ comments), but hella worth it.

One True Messiah™ arrested

Just like Jesus was (except for the child molesting bit).

Did Ye Get Bent?

Kinda makes my point.

As does: Bible God voices direct woman to murder infant.

I'll take Spinoza's view of the Bible over hers, thanks.

John McCain says ... well ... nothing

"Blah blah blah activist judges blah blah blah legislating from the bench," sez John McCain. And, naturally, the conservatives eat it up. "Strong stuff," Charlie Sykes calls it. So is chicken manure.

The doddering septuagenarian presidential hopeful delivered what's being described as a "major speech" yesterday, reiterating all of the code words and secret handshakes that make conservatives vibrate with anti-Bill of Rights delight.

That none of them know what any of the words and handshakes actually mean is no obstacle to reliable conservatives like Tony Perkins of the "Family" Research Council rambling on approvingly by way of his deep seated terror of homosexuals and women's rights.

It was also an opportunity for McCain to criticize his two rivals, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, for exercising their constitutionally mandated prerogative to withhold consent from the confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court of Samuel Alito (all but three Democratic Senators voted "Nay" to the Reaganite careerist).

"Apparently nobody quite fits the bill except for an elite group of activist judges, lawyers and law professors who think they know wisdom when they see it — and they see it only in each other," expressed the straight talkin' McCain.

But within hours, Senator McCain had announced the formation of a "Justice Advisory Committee," comprised of, well, an elite group of lawyers and law professors* who think they know conservative activist judges when they see them — in each other. And also Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, because every committee needs its in-house lackey buffoon.

Trouble is, conservative mega-super-duper-hero Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was a law professor for 13 years, and in fact was a law professor when Ronald Reagan appointed him to the D.C. Court of Appeals in 1982. At an "elite" school: the University of Chicago.

And Robert Bork, the martyred conservative poster child who self-borked his own nomination by Reagan with his notoriously cramped reading of the First Amendment, has been an elite law school law professor since Jesus lost his sandals. Closer to home, conservatives look to yet another law professor to formulate their own views of the judiciary for them, Marquette's Rick Esenberg.

Conservatives have short memories too, because when McCain says he'll appoint judges "in the mold of Alito" (Eeew — what is that, a pizza?), they forget that a couple of other people who do their thinking for them, John Fund and Robert Novak, reported in January that McCain had described Samuel Alito as "too conservative."

It will also be convenient to forget — as many a septuagenarian would — that John McCain was one of the leaders of the so-called Gang of 14 Democrats and RINOs, which conservatives harshly criticized at the time as simply a cartel of elitist, liberal Senators dedicated to blocking George W. Bush's own federal judicial nominees.

There's a photo of McCain gang-tackling Bush on this very blog.

The Straight Talk Express, it would appear, has long since flown the coop, last seen flipping and flopping madly from here 'til November.

* But not Douglas Kmiec, I reckon.

Top Google searches

John McAdams, Despot of all Media

His Kampf: We Want The Airwaves.

To paraphrase the late great Graham Chapman, the old fool's got a persecution complex you could elect a pope in.

And Bill Maher is not an atheist. If McAdams wants to discuss religion, then why doesn't he? Because he can't. He doesn't even know what an atheist is, or how many believers despise organized religion every bit as much as Bill Maher does. Inter alia.

McAdams has much to learn, even as he thinks he knows it all. As a matter of fact, McAdams could learn a lot about religion from atheists. In many, many cases, they've studied it in considerably greater depth than have its actual adherents.

Because when it comes to the Bible, not believing in it leads to the most accurate scholarship and understanding. And I'm thinking just a bit more Baruch Spinoza than Bill Maher here.

What does McAdams think Jesus would have thought of all the farces and tragedies perpetrated in the name of religion? Or in his name, especially. Like Dostoevsky said, if Jesus came back to earth, the priests and the politicians would throw him in jail immediately, where he couldn't cause any more trouble.

Has McAdams ever heard Bill Maher criticize the ethical and moral teachings of Christ? Of course he hasn't. Maher's point — and it's certainly nothing novel or even remarkable — is that many people who call themselves Christians, in particular the loudest of the loud in this country, don't follow Christ's teachings at all.

They're called hypocrites, and Jesus wasn't much fond of them either.

Unfortunately you'd have to hit the university professor McAdams over the head with a solid gold tabernacle to induce him to see even that most glaring obviousity.

capper's got a point too. Marquette University's sports teams aren't called the Warriors anymore because it went out with a bunch of other nicknames that were considered offensive to Native Americans. But neither McAdams nor Charlie Sykes give a Ratz's ass if or when somebody else is offended.

And the Hitler Youth was a Nazi paramilitary outfit.

SOX DOLL BLOW UP

This morning's Chicago Sun-Times front page headline.

Open letter to Mr. Wyn Becker

May 6, 2008

American Furniture, Electronics & Appliances
2404 W. Beltline Hwy.
Madison, WI 53713

Attn: Mr. Wyn Becker
Vice President-Advertising

Dear Mr. Becker,

I couldn't help but notice your e-mail of May 5 to Milwaukee radio "personality" Charlie Sykes announcing your intention to disassociate American's corporate self from the July 24 appearance of humorist Bill Maher in our fair city. I'm writing to express my disappointment that your firm so quickly buckled under to the claimed offense taken by so few politically motivated and highly disingenuous individuals.

Several months ago, Mr. Sykes embroiled himself in a controversy over the "Coexist" bumper stickers. Perhaps you've seen them around town. The word "Coexist" is spelled out in a pictogram, using a variety of religious symbols. An area man devised a "parody" of the bumper sticker which, among other things, replaced the Jewish Star of David with a Nazi Swastika and the Crescent of Islam with the Soviet Hammer and Sickle.

Mr. Sykes published the "parody" bumper sticker on his website, which is maintained by Journal Communications, Inc. A number of individuals and groups, most notably the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee, took issue with the said "parody." Mr. Sykes, however, expended a considerable amount of resources in defending the "parody," going so far as to label it a work of "genius" and to cry righteously in favor of the parodist's — and his own — right to unfettered expression, regardless of the offense caused.

You may know by now that the entire Bill Maher "controversy" was manufactured by a Marquette University professor by the name of John McAdams. Prof. McAdams writes an internet journal, where he affords us the opportunity to gain insight into his fevered thought processes.

It's fair to say that Prof. McAdams is extremely intolerant of his political opponents, and especially against those who he only imagines to be his nemeses. He's actually something of an unintentional joke to many of us who follow the Wisconsin "blogosphere." To be sure, nowhere near as funny and incisive as
Bill Maher, but moderately entertaining on occasion.

In short, Prof. McAdams is a notorious local crank.

After Prof. McAdams learned of Mr. Maher's engagement at Milwaukee's historic Riverside Theatre, he became quite personally disconsolate, and published a series of scurrilous and unsupportable accusations against Mr. Maher. Some of us were puzzled by Prof. McAdams's initial reaction.

Among the reasons we were puzzled is that only days prior to becoming upset by Mr. Maher's Riverside Theatre engagement, Prof. McAdams had adamantly defended the Milwaukee appearance of another somewhat controversial figure, David Horowitz, a harsh critic of both U.S. academia (as is Prof. McAdams) and certain aspects of the Islamic religion (as is Prof. McAdams).

David Horowitz spoke at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. When some Muslim students at UWM criticized Mr. Horowitz for offending their religious beliefs, Prof. McAdams, on his weblog, arbitrarily and capriciously brushed aside the students' concerns, suggesting that their offense was merely feigned.

Prof. McAdams also took issue with some vocal demonstrators who attended Mr. Horowitz's speech, and has since erratically and irresponsibly (and, of course, ironically) accused "leftists" of being "authoritarians who want to shut up speech they disagree with."

But then Prof. McAdams found two or three far-right websites containing a number of statements made by Mr. Maher on the subject of religion (Mr. Maher, like millions of other Americans, is not a fan), but removed from their original context in either comic monologues or conversations with his guests on his HBO program, Real Time with Bill Maher.

Prof. McAdams then claimed to be personally offended by those statements. Interestingly, since the statements referenced Prof. McAdams's own chosen religion, he was not so quick to dismiss his own reaction in the same manner he had dismissed those of the aforementioned Muslim students in reaction to David Horowitz.

Indeed, Prof. McAdams vigorously defended Mr. Horowitz's right to offend, just as Charlie Sykes had vigorously defended the offensive potential of the Nazi Swastika and the Soviet Hammer and Sickle (and in particular the substitution of the Nazi Swastika for the Jewish Star of David).

And it was from Prof. McAdams that Charlie Sykes learned of Prof. McAdams's baseless tirades against Bill Maher, whereupon Mr. Sykes reproduced Prof. McAdams's intemperate ravings at his own website, where they presumably found a marginally wider audience.

It's also worth noting that Prof. McAdams considered voicing his personal objections to the other sponsors of Mr. Maher's engagement, but ultimately determined that they would be unresponsive to his pleas. So he targeted his personal ire at American Furniture, Electronics & Appliances instead.

Prof. McAdams has taken it upon himself to decide what is and what is not appropriate speech, and even wrote that your company "ought to be more careful" about avoiding "embarrassment" if your company "wants to sell stuff to Christians." Perhaps I missed it, but I could find no evidence on your company's website that it specifically "wants to sell stuff to Christians."

I think you might also be interested in Prof. McAdams's characterization of your company and its employees — who, to my mind, are doubtless good and hard working people — that he expressed while determining his personal course of action, and just prior to receiving his personal satisfaction as expressed in your e-mail to Charlie Sykes.

Prof. McAdams compared your firm's sponsorship of Mr. Maher's engagement to its supporting "a Klan rally" and claimed that American was "either stupid or bigoted against Christians." So he quite obviously could not have thought very highly of your company to begin with. I seriously doubt whether you or your employees are "either stupid or bigoted against Christians."

As for myself, I had thought highly of your company. In fact I have made a number of substantial household purchases there, as have many of my friends and acquaintances. We have always been very satisfied with our purchases, and the kind service we received.

But if American is in the business of kowtowing to shamelessly hypocritical actors like Charlie Sykes and John McAdams, then we won't be shopping at American anymore.

Sincerely,

Highway to Heck

I-35 Can Stop Homosexuality — YouTube/700 Club, 5:09

"Christians are gathering at gay bars, strip joints, and porn shops."
"It was so big, it even attracted coverage in the local gay paper."
"I thought I was like tripping on acid."
"We're moving angels and demons. Right now."

h/t mixter

"Lord, come down in a mighty way and strengthen us so that we can bring down these high gas prices," Rocky Twyman said to a chorus of "Amens."

Why not just trade in the suburban assault vehicle for a hybrid?

God considers siphoning SPR for DC soccer moms

h/t Pundit Nation

Not really.

The man was handcuffed and sitting in the back of the car, arrested for soliciting a prostitute. A search of the man's backpack revealed that he was carrying two items: a Bible and a list of goals for his Bible study group. "Some of the guys we pick up, you'd be surprised," said Lt. Joe Erwin.

Whore-sting in Merrill Park.

McGift keeps on McGiving

"Nice to watch you lefties rally around Maher. It lets us Christians know where your hearts are." — McAdams

No "leftie" Christians, apparently. Only "us" Christians. Nice.

"Deep in the hearts of all the lefties is an authoritarian who wants to shut up speech they disagree with." — McAdams

Sheeshzeus. Miss the point much?

Courtesy folkbum's comments thread.

See also: American TV conned by whiny hypocrite.

I've half a mind to give Mr. Becker a little jingle tomorrow meself. Remind him that John McAdams thinks he's "either stupid or bigoted against Christians." Time to join the club, Wyn Becker!

And speaking of comment threads, McAdams has one going where he introduces the subject of homosexuals and then when he gets called on the ridiculous comparison, McAdams chastises the commenters, 'This thread isn't about homosexuals, please stay on topic.'

rofl

A proud moment for dissembling hypocrites

Noted staunch defender of free speech John McAdams (so long as the speech at issue is personally acceptable to John McAdams, that is) now claims he's convinced an American TV executive to pull the firm's logo from Bill Maher flyers. Still boorishly and ignorantly asserting that Bill Maher "openly hates Christians," McAdams once again proves that if you lie enough about something, enough people will believe you, a dictum most recently reinforced with particularly alarming effect during the Wisconsin Supreme Court election campaign.

Now for a heartwarming little love letter.

Dear Charlie [and Johnny (supposedly)],

We regret if our advertising co-sponsorship participation of the upcoming Bill Maher concert has [supposedly] offended [John McAdams and Charlie Sykes].

It is obvious, now, to us that Mr. Maher is a very opinionated political and social humorist who can easily ruffle the feathers [supposedly] of [John McAdams and Charlie Sykes] much more so than we expected.

Because this particular show has become much more [supposedly] controversial to [John McAdams and Charlie Sykes] than ever anticipated, we have chosen to drop our sponsorship of this particular event, if it is indeed [supposedly] offending [John McAdams and Charlie Sykes].

[Yours (supposedly) offendedly,]
Wyn Becker
Vice President-Advertising
American Furniture, Electronics & Appliances

Hey, Plaisted, buy your couch somewhere else.

[David] Horowitz is a highly controversial speaker, since he says things that are considered "offensive" (supposedly) to Muslim students. — John McAdams ("quotes" his, bold mine)

Mark that: considered "offensive" (supposedly) to Muslims.

Unbelievable. Even less so than God.

Harold and Kumar go to WPRI

Sometimes, I can't decide which is funnier: John McAdams or the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, a conservative "think tank" loosely based on all the other conservative "think tanks." The ones committed to selectively anecdotal outrage and moronic arguments.

Behold the latest tanking thinker, Christian Schneider, performing a risibly elitist battement tendu against the Milwaukee Public Library:

Are there homeless people without health care laying on the street, curled up in blankets, clutching a DVD copies [sic] of "Meet the Fockers?"

I don't know about Meet the Fockers or Rob Lowe's homemade porn (at least, not as much as Christian Schneider evidently does), but they may just as well be clutching Cries and Whispers, The Bicycle Thief, On The Waterfront, episode seven of Ken Burns's Baseball, or the complete string quartets of Dimitri Shostakovich.

Is there some fundamental distinction between public libraries archiving works of art that happen to be impressed on plastic discs as opposed to on paper? Of course not, which is why Schneider needs to employ absurdist intellectual/class warfare strategems by selecting the least edifying items from the MPL's collection that he can.

Two can easily play at that silly game. When's the last time you heard a liberal get all up in arms because the MPL contains the complete works of Ann Coulter (25 items) and the Limbaugh Bros., Rush and David (14 items)?* Never, that's when. Those homeless Coulterfan people are entitled to turn their brains to rot as well, you know.

I thought that's what conservatism was all about: letting them.

If Christian Schneider is so concerned about the quality of the MPL's collection, then it should stop purchasing all that utter garbage too. And I heard Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle is pretty comical. Thankfully I'm not an effete, classist snob like Christian Schneider, because one of these days I'm going to check that sucker out.

Along with Sir Kenneth Clarke's Civilisation on VHS.

* One of these is Rush Limbaugh's foreword to Mark R. Levin's Men In Black, unquestionably the most mind-numbingly and insultingly stupid book ever "written" about the U.S. Supreme Court, yet I certainly don't blame the Milwaukee Public Library for inflicting it on me.

The John McAdams Comedy Hour

I knew this was going to be entertaining as all hell.

Marquette University's in-house purveyor of double standards and false dichotomies John McAdams is on the warpath, incensed that American TV is sponsoring Bill Maher's July 24 appearance at the Riverside Theatre in Milwaukee (tickets go on sale today).

McAdams knee-jerkingly deploys his favorite word, "bigot," accuses Bill Maher of "hating Christians," and links to a number of professional offense-takers, including Wild Bill Donohue of something called the "Catholic League" and Donald Wildmon, a fruitcake fundamentalist preacher/censor of considerable vintage and idiocy.

Pretty much every statement Donald Wildmon and the other poor offended religious souls have lifted from Bill Maher's comic monologues can be summarized by this instructive line of Mahatma Gandhi's: "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians."

Does that make Gandhi a bigot who hated Christians too?

Now this morning McAdams is appalled and outraged that a "leftie blogger" found it "encouraging" that a number of university students were ejected for demonstrating at a speaking engagement by wingnut idol David Horowitz in town last week. But only two days ago, McAdams asserted that Bill Maher's First Amendment rights would not be abridged "if people demonstrate against him."

Also this morning, in reply to a comment inspired by his already ridiculously overheated condemnations of Bill Maher, McAdams compares the comedian to the Ku Klux Klan* (yes, they of burning, terrorizing, murdering, and lynching in the name of God fame) and wonders if the commenter "has a problem" with businesses that sponsor Maher's Milwaukee appearance being "either stupid or bigoted against Christians."

But not being, you know, businesses, and seeking a competitive advantage by associating themselves with a very popular entertainer.

John McAdams is a university professor. Thankfully, not of logic.

As an added John McAdams comedy bonus, consider the following typically McAdamian addlepated and confused syllogism, deposited in Rick Esenberg's blog the other day:

I'm always amused at the leftists who complain that conservatives are "anti-science" if we believe in Intelligent Design.

The obvious response could not be resisted:

"Believing" in "intelligent design" does not necessarily lead to being "anti-science."

One may hammer away at "believing" in ID on the internets with one's 4.8GHz notebook connected to the WiFi station in the doctor's office while waiting for a flu shot developed according to evolutionary principles.

In fact, many do.

McAdams probably didn't get it anyway.

Stop asking Jim Caviezel religious questions. He just played Jesus in a movie. It's like asking a cast member of Scrubs to lance a boil. Why, if everyone on TV was really like the character he plays, no one at church would talk to me, my wife, or my eight kids. — Bill Maher, New Rules, p. 157.

* At the Klan's website, a letter "From the desk of the Imperial Kludd" begins, "Greetings to all in the Holy Name of Yahshua, Jesus Christ," and implores "white Christians to open their eyes and allow their hearing to be operational once again." But Bill Maher is the bigot.

eta 1: GMTA.

eta 2: folkbum.

eta 3: Dénouement.

For the Conservatives

The still highly amusing after all these curmudgeonly years Robert Fulford speaks ill of Canada's former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin and union boss Buzz Hargrove:

"When you hear the phrase 'Canadian values,' you know something ugly and mendacious is beginning — a speech by Paul Martin, for instance.

"But it was Martin's friend and admirer, Basil Eldon ('Buzz') Hargrove, the head of the Canadian Auto Workers, who used those words this week, in an exceptionally foolish article he contributed to the Toronto Star.

"Hargrove believes in tactical voting, and imagines himself a master of this devious art, though his record so far, in provincial and federal politics, has not reflected the canniness the work requires.

"Hargrove grew so intoxicated by his anything-to-stop-the-Tories rhetoric that he went a big step farther and recommended voting for the [separatist] Bloc Quebecois if that would help do the job. He thus aligned himself with a party that has so far kept secret whatever enthusiasm it may feel for 'Canadian values,' or even Canada.

"Hargrove has rarely sounded sillier than he did this week ..."

This is why we hate unions — Robert Fulford

What Would Javex Do?

Fla. Teens Believe Drinking Bleach Will Prevent HIV

And that Mountain Dew will prevent pregnancies.

State lawmakers said the myths are spreading because of Florida's abstinence-only sex education.

Et quelle surprise! Abstinence-only sex ed doesn't stop kids from having sex, it just turns them into even dumber kids having sex.

And, doubtless, it would be "anti-Christian bigotry" simply to point out that this idiotic — dangerously idiotic — denial of human sexuality is one of many political initiative/fantasies of the so-called Religious Right and its faux-sanctimonious, bought-and-paid-for legislators.

John McAdams achieves conniption Nirvana

Bill Maher is coming to town.

Maher is best known to national teevee audiences for performing
the singularly arduous and theretofore unprecedented feat of grievously offending the Catholic League's William A. Donohue.

"I'm pretty good about picking out who queers are and I didn't see any in the movie. I'm usually pretty good at that." — Wild Bill Donohue

DEVELOPING ...

The J-S's farcical featury tour

Of the Quesosphere (thanks to whomever I stole that from).

While it somehow managed a score with its citation to Mike Mathias's excellent, well-focused piece here, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's weekend Crossroads feature "Best of the Wisconsin Blogs" continues in its ill-considered proclivity.

Semi-coherent local radio shouting meathead Charlie Sykes "wins" Best of the Blogs with a five-sentence contribution (that's Sykes's entire blog entry — and the first of the five sentences is a cliché so grotesque even pro wrestling's abandoned it: "It's on.") containing the most uninformative, unenlightening, and downright pedestrian observation of the Barack Obama-Jeremiah Wright "controversy" that couldn't be imagined.

Meanwhile, to grab just one example, Mike Plaisted throws down this feisty and typically well-written number, inspiring a lengthy comment thread featuring some of the higher quality back-and-forth to be found 'round these parts yet Charlie Sykes, whose own blog consists of 99% other people's work (except reproduced in all-italics — it's even typographically annoying), gets the accolade: "Best of."

And not Jim Bouman's digital slide show/reportage tour of Pabst Farms (the photo captions alone are "Best of" material).

At least if the J-S selection committee had an intentional sense of humor, it would have honored Charlie Sykes for this April 28 howler:

Went to see Ben Stein's new movie "Expelled," yesterday. Powerful, provocative, and definitely worth a view.

Oh definitely, if you're into bullshit and lies and the embarrassing spectacle of Ben Stein blaming Charles Darwin for the Nazi Holocaust.

Presumably the J-S picks two blogs from the "left" and two from the "right" for its "Best of" edition and on reflection it isn't so surprising that its potential field of nominees in the latter category is slim.

But why on Earth Charlie Sykes would even qualify as a Wisconsin blogger at all is a mystery and, more importantly, with so many thoughtful and talented writers out here, that the J-S would favor a blatantly self-referential corporate plug rather than acknowledge the existence of dedicated, independent local writers is very telling.

Next thing you know, a member of the Journal-Sentinel's editorial board will be making regular appearances on Sunday INCITE!

The best blogs are far too piquant for JRN HQ anyway. It's in the business of journalism, where journalism never lists the ship.

States will Git-R-Done execution-wise

"They’re back from vacation and ready to go to work."

— Prof. Douglas Berman

Less than three weeks after a United States Supreme Court ruling ended a seven-month moratorium on lethal injections, at least 14 execution dates have been set in six states between May 6 and October.

Experts say the resumption of executions is likely to throw a strong new spotlight on the divisive national — and international — issue of capital punishment.

You don't say. Much like that juridically activist* old rascal Associate Justice John Paul Stevens said it would. Him smart.

No wonder Justice Scalia thought they should have just kept going, the better to protect the DP against more detailed public scrutiny.

Now that's activism. Due process, what due process?

* Stevens voted to reactivate the dormant IV drips.

What Do You Want?

Pat Metheny — What Do You Want?

Answer: Not Kenny G.

Angry God now free to move against Richardson

Authorities removed four minors from a New Mexico religious cult's compound following allegations of "inappropriate conduct" involving the cult's leader, a 66-year-old former sailor and self-proclaimed Messiah called "Michael," whose real name is Wayne Bent.

"My children are kidnapped because some demon wrote a letter to people in authority accusing me of some crimes," Michael/Bent told nobody in particular, on the internets.

One of the minors is the daughter of former cult member John Sayer, who left the compound in 2005 after Sayer noticed that Bent "got weirder" ... in 1999. "He was claiming to be God," said Sayer, who hung around another six years to make sure he wasn't. Or was.

The daughter since returned. Sayer can't say whether Bent had sex with either of his two teenage daughters, who Sayer claims only "lay naked" with Wayne Bent. But, shrugged Sayer, "Anything's possible."

Jeff Bent, son of Michael/Wayne Bent, wrote an insolent letter to NM Gov. Bill Richardson, threatening God's wrath on the erstwhile Democratic presidential hopeful. "Now that you have moved against us because of our faith, the cup of God's anger* is full to the brim, and now He is free to move against you," the letter reads.

Wayne Bent's other son, Get, was unavailable for reply.

While Jeff Bent also denies any inappropriate conduct, he told a UK film crew that “God came down on Michael and forced him to consummate with Christiana. It was a terrible, strange act of God.” Christiana is Jeff Bent's wife and Wayne Bent's daughter-in-law.

Confusing ... like Father's Day on Cape Breton Island.

The British documentary about the cult, incidentally, reruns on the National Geographic Channel May 7. Nat Geo's programming is generally limited to wild animal safaris and visits to the zoo, so why would it air ... hold on; never mind.

There is some speculation as to whether Wayne Bent's cult is of the suicide variety, because Bent had predicted the end of the world for October 31, 2007, which turned out to be only the end of the Toronto Maple Leafs' regular NHL season. After the world didn't end again, Bent's followers told the film crew they were "preparing for death."

Leafs fans, on the other hand, got on with their sad little lives. Messiahs, doomsday portents, and sexual initiations are all standard features of religions dating back several thousand years.

* WWJD? Try the decaf.

Earlier cult news.

Mighty weird editorializing

And, by either account, it is not clear what, if anything effective, happens when a 12-year-old, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, is on the loose in a neighborhood for a school day. — Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 5/2/08

Buh?

And isn't Noyes Park a golf course? I've been traumatized by being on a golf course for four hours, but I was in the midst of shooting 105.

Nooo! Haw haw!

Developmental atheist PZ Myers reviews the new Chick tract.

"It's insulting even to believers." — Brian X

A sort of gay Hugh Hefner palace

Michael Horne is one of the best reporters in any city:

C'est Goodbye to C'est La Vie

Men's locker room blog round-up

Warning: Righteously pissed-off sisters ahead

Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

So the women who worked for about $40 an hour as sex workers to some of the most powerful men in the country are dragged into court and humiliated (at one point the prosecutor even asked one woman what she did about the whole sex thing while she was menstruating). But all the men who broke the law by visiting sex workers get a pass — and, like David Vitter, get to stay in office, and get to continue fighting for “family values” policies that do harm to the very women they paid to see. — Jill

Thanks Jill, that's exactly what I was talking about.

And this, a Dana Milbank WaPo number from April 11:

Wednesday, prosecutors forced a 63-year-old retired PhD — her name, like those of other witnesses, now a matter of public record — to testify about inducing orgasms in her client; the government's lawyers had similar questions for a mother of three who worked briefly for the escort service nearly 15 years ago.

Craziest testimony you ever heard in a "money laundering" case.

Well done, federal prosecutors. For this you get a gold Starr.

The summer of race, gender, and religion

At least, that's how the presidential election seems to be framing the "national conversation" this year. Aren't race, gender, and religion the three topics you're not supposed to raise in polite company? All the more reason to raise them, if you ask me. Polite company could probably stand having its preconceptions and assumptions shaken and challenged. That's what Algore invented the internets for.

21st century Franklin Pierce

Bush most unpopular president in modern history — CNN

I could've predicted that last century (and did).

[Frankin Pierce] proposed annexing Cuba, by arms if necessary, but his opponents, suspecting the addition of a new slave state, outed the plan and ultimately forced him to renounce it.

Franklin Pierce.

"When Franklin Pierce ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either."

— Sen. T. Rent Lott, 1857

Plus ça change.

Think tanked

What does my favorite "think tank," the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, care about the State Bar's professional dues? Deb Jordahl is not a lawyer, so she doesn't have to fork over 250 bucks a year ($447.00 if you're 69, $16.00 if you're over 70 — boy, I can't wait). I just got my money's worth finding out, thanks to the State Bar, whether Deb Jordahl's a lawyer (if she is, she can't practice here).

No, something more nefariously think tankery must be afoot, and sure enough, there is. Jordahl's festival of partisan non sequiturs has nothing to do with professional dues, but it has everything to do with the WJCIC, a special committee that was set up by the president of the State Bar late last year to monitor the conduct of the State Supreme Court election campaign.

Apparently Jordahl doesn't read her own links, even as she makes a notably revealing choice of web hosts for those links.

As evidence of "a contentious Board of Governors meeting during which Bar President Thomas Basting was roundly criticized for creating the WJCIC," Jordahl provides a Wisconsin Law Journal press release, courtesy of GablemanForSupremeCourt.com.

The press release informs us that the State Bar Board of Governors did vote to approve Tom Basting's committee, despite reservations voiced by some board members. Democracy, they call that.

Yet in the very next breath, Jordahl says, "Without the requisite advice and consent of the Board set forth in the Bar’s bylaws, Basting created the WJCIC and unilaterally made all appointments to the committee," and then, in an effort to claim that Basting's committee was unlawful (or at least unbylawful), links to that portion of the bylaws that completely contradicts the very document Mike Gableman's election campaign paid to provide her with.

And they call this a "think tank"? Can we at least then remove "Wisconsin" from the think tank's moniker? It's embarrassing.

Bar member [singular] Thomas Jones articulated this view in a letter to the Wisconsin Lawyer magazine writing, “My bar dues help finance this political gambit. This bad idea is a restriction of campaign free speech and an attempt to ensure that Justice Butler keeps his job and keeps on delivering goods to the leftist trial bar, the guys who now own our state bar and are buying the judges they like.”

And this is what somebody I used to know referred to as "anecdotal outrage." Jordahl is also horrified that Basting appointed non-lawyers to the committee. What business have they, monitoring an election campaign in hopes of its compliance with Supreme Court Rules.

My goodness, what a gang of renegade fascists the WJCIC was/is.
Its jackbooted clampdown on protected political speech shocked the conscience, and Mike Gableman and his enablers and supporters could barely exercise their First Amendment rights to misrepresent, deceive, lie, and defame for four solid months.

Down with the State Bar.

You've come a long way, baby

Prostitution, as I understand it, involves mutually agreed to contractual terms. A square deal, between consenting adults, considerations rendered and reimbursed. Most often the transaction involves a man and a woman ("traditional" prostitution). Prostitution, however, is against the law, and the legal consequences tend to obscure and skew the otherwise level gender playing field.

Consider the case of Deborah Palfrey and David Vitter. Vitter, a United States Senator from Louisiana, entered into a so-described transaction with the offices of Ms. Palfrey. Vitter, for his part, weepily confessing his "sin" before television news cameras while Mrs. Vitter chastised the press, remains a United States Senator.

Ms. Palfrey, on the other hand, lies dead by her own hand in a Florida shed out back of her mother's house, apparently rather than facing 55 years in a federal prison. Something's very wrong about this picture.

More powerful prayer news

Meet Larry Langford, the Lord's Own Mayor of Birmingham, AL:

Langford traded in his Gus Mayer suits for a burlap sack, although he did still wear a Rolex watch and designer shoes.

"The only reason he is here is because God put him here," T. L. Lewis, pastor of Bethel Baptist Church, said of Mayor Langford at the end of a lengthy and raucous sermon.

Lewis told the crowd not to tolerate "journalistic terrorism" and said that no one could harm Langford because God was protecting him.

Langford sports sackcloth, ashes, Rolex (Watch the videos.)

Now, just a sweeping second hand minute:

[Larry Langford] was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly accepting more than $156,000 from a friend whose investment-banking firm collected fees on municipal-bond offerings and swap agreements while the mayor oversaw the finances of Jefferson County.

Langford journalistically terrorized by Wall Street Journal

National Day of Custom Mattresses

U.S. President George Bush, Wisconsin Governor James Doyle, and many other politicians formally and officially remind us that today is the National Day of Prayer, when "all Americans regardless of faith are asked to come together and pray in their own way."

I assume that means regardless of which theological narrative your faith is bound up in as opposed to whether you rely on faith or not.

I suspect that a person of no faith praying in their own way might be accused of simply going through the motions, much like people do in church and thousands of politicians will be doing for television news cameras today. Coming out of the closet, as it were.

Professional Christians James and Shirley Dobson's National Day of Prayer™ Official Website does have its priorities* down, however. Did you know that: "The Furniture Row #78 CUP program, sporting the NDP paint scheme was on the track again at Talladega Motor Speedway on April 27, 2008, for the NASCAR Aaron's 499 Cup"?

And: "Four U.S.-based manufacturing operations, including two of the busiest mattress plants in the world, also supply Furniture Row stores with quality custom mattresses and furnishings at factory-direct prices. Please visit FurnitureRow.com."

Again proving the impressive efficacy of intercession, driver Joe Nemechek prayed the NDP Chevy to 25th place in a field of 43, and a check for $88,200. Weird, because Tony Stewart's Toyota, which didn't even complete the 188 laps and ended up 38th, won $138,886.

Could be the Toyota was a Buddhist and transcending prize money.

If I was Joe Nemechek, I would have ceased with the prayers and let about 13 cars pass me on the final lap. Or maybe that would have been bad luck. Why isn't there a National Day of Triskadecaphobia?
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* Here's what you have to sign to work for Dobson's outfit:

I believe that the Holy Bible is the inerrant Word of The Living God. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only One by which I can obtain salvation and have an ongoing relationship with God. I believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, his virgin birth, his sinless life, his miracles, the atoning work of his shed blood, his resurrection and ascension, his intercession and his coming return to power and glory. I believe that those who follow Jesus are family and there should be unity among all who claim his name. I agree that these statements are true in my life.

Not exactly the ecumenical jamboree this thing is supposed to be.