Probably the scariest story yet about the extremes of the family values, anti-abortion right: North Dakota's House of Representatives just rejected a bill that would allow pregnant teenagers to see doctors without having to get their parents' permission.

Holeey crap. Could it be any clearer that children--especially girl children--are essentially chattel in the eyes of these people? In ND, kids over 14 can get confidential treatment for addiction or STDs (as they should). But pregnancy, which specifically affects only girls? Nope.

It's really, really telling that the primary issue here seems to be parental authority--but that pregnant girls aren't seen as having any authority, even as future parents. And that the sole regret lawmakers seem willing to address is the effect that a lack of medical care might have on the fetus, rather than the pregnant girl herself:

For paying the bills?!?! Wow. Is this enough evidence that the "who's gonna pay for it?" philosophy of politics has gone too far? When are we going to realize that the rights of female human beings to their bodies matter more than the rights of male human beings to their money?

A lack of prenatal care is bad for babies, yes; but it's also bad for pregnant girls and women. Ectopic pregnancies, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia (pregnancy-induced high blood pressure), and dangerous miscarriages are all killers, and none of them are uncommon. And what if a pregnant girl shows up in the e.r. after being hit by a car, or beaten by her boyfriend or parents? Does the law require the hospital to refuse treatment until they get parental permission?

But I guess if girls don't respect the authoritah of the patriarchy, then they deserve to risk death.

Scary.

Bitch_PhD wonders how long it'll be before we allow honor killings of girls who have disgraced their families by daring to act as if they had rights.

If you're in college, you may have noticed that the cost of your birth control's gone way up.

This is annoying, of course; but it also contributes to systemic discrimination. College students are often kinda broke--having to pay for birth control is an expense women have, and men don't. So women are a little bit broker having to buy birth control; and now they're a little bit broker still, since it costs two or three times more than it did last year.

Same with health insurance not covering birth control: there's an out-of-pocket expense that women have, and men don't.

It seems petty, but it adds up. If you have to scrimp at the beginning of the semester by, say, postponing buying a book or two, then you might be a little behind; if you have to work an extra hour or two a week in order to afford birth control, you have a little less time to study. And if you run out of pills and are too broke to afford to replace 'em for a week or two, and you take a gamble, well then, you're up shit creek.

Does this kind of thing constitute systematic sexism? You tell me.

Bitch PhD remembers having to budget for things like tooth brushes and birth control pills, and is glad those days are behind her now.

George Bush is king. It happened yesterday, while we were all going about our business. Tony Snow broke the news to us on almost every news show and even during a White House press conference.

Um. Okay. Now I’m not sure what to do. When someone tells you everything you learned as a child about your government is wrong – and that person is IN CHARGE, what do you do? This is quite simply freaky and disturbing.

The president has declared himself above the laws of our country and has said he will not be a part of our system of government. I don’t give a shit if you are conservative or liberal or moderate, you should understand we are walking into some very strange territory and anyone who supports this bullshit should be cast into the sea. (Do we do that?)

Oversight is real. The Supreme Court has ruled on it, on more than one occasion.

Don’t sit back and think, wow, this is so out of character. We have been heading toward this for quite some time. Bush lied to get us into a disastrous war, he has been illegally tapping our phones, illegally looking at our internet exchanges, he broke campaign funding laws, he is writing his own little additions on laws passed by Congress, he has violated the anti-torture statute, as well as international torture laws, he has suspended habeas corpus and outed a CIA agent. Representative John Conyers believes Bush has broken 26 laws.

Put aside the fact that this makes the White House seem like it really has something to hide, that they are so guilty and have committed such crimes that they have to defy the Constitution.

Ask yourself this: What does happen when a sitting president decides he’s not going to play by the rules set forth by our Constitution? What happens when a President just says, “I’m not going to do that?” Not follow laws, just going to do what he wants to do. Welcome to scary territory.

Holy shit! France has opened its UFO files to the world. Mulder must be so excited. The national space agency has created a website with documents that cover 1,600 sightings over 50 years. France is the first country to open up their files. New cases will continue to be updated on the site when they occur.

First of all, page 64 is a cookbook. That’s not good. The pages cover cases that cannot be explained and other cases that are ridiculous. One report is from a woman who saw something that looked like a “flying toilet paper roll.” Other documents are more compelling and include evidence of burn marks and “radar trackings showing flight patterns that defy the laws of physics.”

The agency decided to create the website to make it easier for scientists and UFO freaks to access the information for research. Fortunately there is no evidence of alien life, just weird flying machines. The lack of alien reports will give UFO conspiracy nuts something to still complain about.

Not to be outdone, a US politician jumped into the UFO “I seen ‘em” club. Former Arizona Governor Fife Symington has revealed he saw a UFO on March 12, 1997. Thousands of people saw a huge V-shaped object moving silently across the Phoenix sky. Symington did not mention he had seen anything in 1997 because, being governor, he wanted to calm people down. But now he is coming clean.

The US government has never acknowledged that something was in the sky that night. In 2000, the Department of Defense said no information was found about the V-shaped object. In the early 1990’s the Belgian Air Force and the British Ministry of Defense documented V-shaped flying objects, which they called “genuine unknowns.”

I’m not sure if it is sheer stupidity or pure arrogance, or maybe a horrifying combination of both, but the office of the Attorney General is fucking amazing. The shit storm surrounding the Department of Justice is unprecedented. Let me break it down.

Nine US attorneys were fired earlier this year in what is looking more and more like a partisan attack. Questions surround many of the firings. In San Diego, Carol Lam was fired while investigating Duke Cunningham – the most corrupt Congressman in the history of the House. Lam was zeroing in on CIA executive director Dusty Foggo, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis and possibly the Vice President.

In New Mexico, David Iglesias received what he considered to be threatening phone calls from Representative Heather Wilson and Senator Domenici. Both let him know of their disappointment that he would not be seeking indictments against Democrats during the lead up to the November elections.

A former federal prosecutor in Maryland has claimed he was forced out in 2005 because he was investigating the state’s Republican governor for possible corruption charges. A former Department of Justice lawyer claims that a lawsuit against tobacco companies was weakened due to government interference. New Hampshire Democrats believe an investigation into a phone jamming case was stalled and mishandled at the local level when it appeared that prominent Republicans and White House officials were involved.

The White House lied about Karl Rove’s involvement in the purge. They claimed he had nothing to do with the firings, but emails were found that show Rove was very involved, if not totally in control. The Attorney General’s Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson resigned his position. And to top it all off, Gonzalez appears to have committed perjury during a January congressional hearing.

Earlier this week, the nonpartisan congressional watchdog Democracy 21 questioned whether or not Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty had allowed political interference to affect the investigation and prosecution of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The scandal was expected to be huge but it seems to have just petered out.

So what is the Attorney General to do in this precarious moment? When many are questioning his integrity, whether or not he has broken the law and if he used his office as an extension of the White House, leaving a stain on the Justice Department forever? How about this:

Fucking, what? Talk about hubris. The White House and Department of Justice not only want toss out the rule of law but they also want to tell America to “fuck off” while they are at it. The timing of this move will not be lost on Democratic and Republican Congressmen who are already angered by the Attoney General's actions.

The federal prosecutor claims Abramoff has provided "substantial assistance" in another corruption scandal investigation and is still working with investigators. Abramoff was sentenced to six years for his part in a fake $20 million wire transfer during their 2000 purchase of the SunCruz Casinos. He has also pleaded guilty to three charges in the corruption case and has yet to be sentenced.

The US government received a brutal porn beat down today when a judge ruled against a controversial Internet child protection law. The Child Online Protection Act made it a crime for anyone to provide minors access to "harmful material" over the Internet. The court ruled that the law violates frees speech rights. Supporters expect the ruling to be appealed.

But the law never got a chance to be a law because the ACLU immediately challenged it after former President Bill Clinton signed it in 1998. The law was not well written and did not address e-mail, streaming video or social networking sites.

Government lawyers argued that the law was necessary because Internet filters were ineffective tools since most parents could not figure out how to use them. Basically their case came down to, "parents are idiots." Of course, the government did not mention that they had defended the use of filters in public schools and libraries.

The US District Court Judge wrote in his ruling that he sympathized with the attempt to restrict kids from seeing porn but other “less restrictive” means were available, you know, like software filters.

He then lifted up his robe to reveal 8-inches of rock hard man. The court reporter’s eyes grew wide with lust, she dropped to her knees and attacked his cock the way a bear goes after salmon. He let loose a torrent of judge sauce as he screamed, “Guilty, guilty!”

File this one under "unlikely to become law--riiight?" Texas state Senator Dan Patrick (R, as if you needed to ask) plans to introduce a bill to, get this, pay women $500 for their babies. No, I am not shitting you.

The bill proposes to create an "Adoption Incentive Program" which would give

Once you get over the "did they just say pay women for putting their children up for adoption?" shocker, the practical--and, sadly, probable--reasons this won't pass start to come into focus. Obviously--obviously--the state of Texas doesn't want to just throw money around! And certainly not to birth mothers. So the money is only for women who place babies for adoption instead of abortion. But how would you ensure that? Obviously women who put babies up for adoption are unreliable sorts--they might just lie and say that they had chosen adoption instead of abortion in order to get the money. So the bill goes on to declare that

So you're pregnant, you decide you cannot keep this pregnancy, you make an appointment with an abortion provider and you show up and there's a parental consent law (if you're under 18) and a mandatory 24-hour waiting period just to make sure you've thought about this, missy, and now they're also going to try one last ditch oh, hey, but would you reconsider if we offered you $500?

Honey, $500 isn't even going to pay for the extra groceries you'll eat during a pregnancy. Let alone the prenatal care, if you're not insured or on Medicaid, or the cost of the birth.

Senator Patrick, would you agree to take care of a neighbor's dog for nine months for a measly $500? Where the fuck do you get the balls to offer women $500 to rent out their uteruses and sell their children?

Bitch_PhD is pleased to find that we've advanced beyond the era when Jonathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal; at least now a boy or a girl before twelve years old is a salable commodity.

Cross-posted at Bitch Ph.D.

The US attorneys purge scandal has been heating up for a while and now things are finally starting to get exciting. Today, the House Judiciary subcommittee on commercial and administrative law voted to subpoena Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and Attorney General Gonzales’ chief of staff, Kyle Sampson for their role in the firing of eight federal prosecutors. They will be asked to testify under oath about their actions.

The “under oath” part is what the White House is worried about. The administration is attempting to paint the scandal as a “partisan” attack, but their constant changing of reasons for the firings does little to help their argument. Yesterday, Bush offered a compromise: His aides would come to meet with Congress, behind closed doors and not under oath. That’s a really super compromise when you are being accused of criminal activity. He only pissed off Democratic and some Republican members of Congress. Next the Senate will vote for subpoenas.

The White House has strongly indicated they will claim executive privilege and not allow aides to testify.

Uh huh. Well, I’m not going to argue that, instead, I’ll let White House Spokesman Tony Snow argue it for me. From the Chicago Tribune ten years ago, when Snow was upset that Clinton might not let his aides testify:

You’re a good boy, Tony, thanks. The subpoena question will most likely go all the way to the Supreme Court, where the majority of justices are Republicans. But the Court has already been injured by their actions in the recount decision of 2000. The justices are supposed to be above partisan politics and the recount decision was along party lines. The Supreme Court lost credibility in the eyes of many Americans. Will it self-inflict more damage to save an unpopular president?

Before any ruling the subpoena fight will be in the media and Bush will lose. The incredibly unpopular administration is already known for lying and if it chooses to fight a battle over whether or not aides should swear under oath, which is just telling the truth, it will lose. Editorials are already popping up.

“I don’t want to have to tell the truth” is not a good defense, but it is what the White House is going with. We can feel good about one thing during all this madness, Bush feels really bad for the folks who were unjustly fired under his watch.

Oversight’s a bitch, huh? Welcome to America, Mr. President.

Sweet Virginia, you’re always there for me when I need a moronic story. This time gun loving Virginians are hopping mad at New York City Mayor and raging hippie, Michael Bloomberg. The mayor has filed a lawsuit against 27 out-of-state gun dealers for selling firearms illegally to undercover private investigators who were working for NYC. Bloomberg wants to force the 27 gun dealers from Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia to allow monitoring of sales. But Virginia is striking back, like a retard throwing a haymaker.

The Virginia Citizens Defense League came up with the idea of a “Bloomberg Gun Give Away.” It is fucking brilliant. Customers who spend $100 are eligible to win a handgun or a rifle in a raffle that will be held on April 19. The winner will receive a handgun or a rifle worth around $900. Two stores are partaking in this example of swift and brutal Virginia vengeance.

Well, consider him beaten. On one side, Bloomberg filed a lawsuit that caused two Virginia gun dealers to go out of business due to legal fees and two others to settle and agree to the court monitoring. And on the other side, the tough-as-nails Virginians started a raffle. Game, set, and match.

You have to feel for the Virginian gun dealers. All they were doing was illegally selling guns. According to private investigators running the sting, one person would fill out legal forms in order to buy a gun for another person – who was not legally allowed to own a firearm. But now they are being punished for selling guns to people who could have been felons. Typical big city bullshit.

Bloomberg took aim at the out of state dealers because 90% of guns used in crimes in New York City come from out of state. But Virginia gun dealers see it from another point of view.

So, let me see if I can get this straight: We should all have guns to protect us because someone might break into our house to take our guns. Gotcha.

At Bob Moates Sport Shop there are pictures of Bloomberg, Sarah Brady of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle taped to a shotgun rack. Bloomberg’s face is circled in pink. "Here are our worst enemy" is written below. Which is confusing, because either “enemy” should be plural or “are” should be replaced with “is,” unless of course the store is just looking to maintain that “Virginia mountain feel.”

Either way, the raffle is a success. One “longtime customer” claimed he had earned “six or seven” tickets and will probably buy more just to get back at mayor Bloomberg. Sadly, he will not get back at mayor Bloomberg because he is already a legal gun owner, which would mean the gun transfer would be legal. That is exactly what Bloomberg wants. The only way he could really get even with Bloomberg would be to give the gun to a felon and hope the criminal would kill a child on the streets of Brooklyn. Then he could yell a big and victorious, “Gotcha.”

ERBIL, IRAQ – What a difference a year makes.

Fourteen months ago I flew to Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, from Beirut, Lebanon, on the dubiously named Flying Carpet Airlines. Flying Carpet’s entire fleet is one small noisy plane with propellers, cramped seats, and thin cabin pressure. Only nineteen passengers joined me on that once-a-week flight. Everyone but me was a Lebanese businessman. They were paranoid of me and of each other. What kind of crazy person books a flight to Iraq, even if it is to the safe and relatively prosperous Kurdistan region? I felt completely bereft of sense going to Iraq without a gun and without any bodyguards, and it took a week for my on-again off-again twitchiness to subside.

Last week I flew to Erbil from Vienna on Austrian Airlines to work for a few weeks as a private sector consultant with my colleague Patrick Lasswell. This time I didn’t feel anything like a fool. Almost half the passengers were women. Children played on their seats and in the aisle with toys handed out by the crew. We watched an in-flight movie and ate the usual airline lunch fare served by an attractive long legged stewardess. The cabin erupted with applause when the wheels touched down on the runway. The pilot announced the weather (sunny and 60) in three languages and cheerfully told us all to have a great day. Have a great day may seem an odd thing to say to people who just arrived in Iraq, but this is Kurdistan. I did, indeed, have a great day.

A man named Hamid picked up me and Patrick just beyond the passport control booth. He was kindly sent by a friend on the Council of Ministers. “Here is your car,” he said as he led us to his vehicle out in the parking lot.


New construction near Erbil’s international airport

As he drove us into the city I felt none of the fear and apprehension I experienced the first time I came here. Instead I saw considerable signs of progress. The first time I drove from the airport into Erbil I felt that I had arrived in a dodgy and ramshackle backwater. This time I felt – properly, I must say – that I had arrived in the capital of a serious and rising new power in the Middle East.

Nation-building is a hard and violent slog in the center and south of Iraq, and it might not ever work out. But in Kurdistan, in the north, it already is a reality.

Massive new construction projects are literally everywhere. Most of those that had started when I arrived for the first time are finished, and ambitious new projects are well underway.


New apartment towers next to the Dream City project.

The Dream City, which only existed on paper when I first got here, is now partly constructed. Fancy new homes in the new city – designed on the New Urbanist model – are everywhere under construction.


The Korek Tower will be the tallest building in Iraq

The Korek Tower will be the tallest building anywhere in Iraq when it is finished. It will more resemble a tower in Dubai or the United States than anything down south in Baghdad.


Old road signs are replaced with new ones

Dingy and banged up road signs were replaced in the last couple of months with crisp shiny new ones. It may not seem like much, but the new signs give the city a more serious and modern look and heft.

The so-called Naza Mall recently opened to much fanfare in Erbil, and it made me wonder if the Kurds even know what a mall is. Naza Mall is a store, and it isn’t a particularly large one. But a new Western-style mall under construction next to the old souk downtown will be home for 6,000 stores and offices when it is finished.


Erbil’s new mall takes shape next to the souk


Inside the new mall under construction


Some of the stores in the mall are already open

A whole new town called “American Village” is under construction next to the luxurious Khan Zad hotel on the road between Erbil and the resort town of Salahadin. Foreigners and locals alike are snapping up the properties well in advance.


A castle just down the road from the up and coming American Village

Iraqi Kurdistan is still a Third World country in many ways – there is no sewer system, for instance, and the electricity fails every day. Unemployment is high. But it’s a Third World country with hope, and it is rapidly moving upscale. New houses cost more in and around Erbil than they do in some parts of the United States. An average sized 200 square meter lot can cost as much as 150,000 dollars – and that’s before a house is built on it. There are literally thousands of brand new houses here in this city, and the population is still just a little bit shy of one million.

Arabs are moving up here from the center and south – when they can, and as long as they are cleared by internal security – and they’re hired to do menial jobs the Kurds no longer want. Sunni Arabs were once the oppressors of Kurds. Now they are reduced to the same low status as migrant Mexican workers in the United States.


The outer walls of ancient Erbil

The ancient old city walls next to downtown are an impressive sight, but inside the walls is a vast slum. Well, it was a vast slum until recently. A few months ago the residents were moved out so the city government can fix it up and restore it.

Erbil isn’t pretty, as Paris and Vienna are pretty. Some of it is aesthetically brutal, and much of it is still rough around the edges. But it’s stimulating and interesting all the same. The go-go-go and build-build-build attitude is infectious. Every time I come here it looks cleaner, and richer, and more like a normal place.


Most of Erbil is still a bit ramshackle and rough around the edges

I’m less prone to boredom here than I am in Europe’s splendid capitals even though there is little in the way of entertainment culture. Erbil is the most ramshackle of Iraqi Kurdistan’s cities, but there is real raw power rising in this city and land.


This is what nation building looks like

I have never seen so much construction going up so quickly anywhere. (There is more in Dubai, but I have never been there.)

The Hilton hotel chain is building a massive full-service tourist resort that will take five years to construct. It may seem dumb to build a tourist resort in Iraq of all places, but this is Erbil Province, not Anbar Province – there is no war, no insurgency, and no terrorism here whatsoever. The Middle East is a funny place. One part of a country may be consumed by blood, fire, and mayhem, but that rarely means the whole country is dangerous -- even when that country is Iraq.

*

I met two old friends for dinner and embraced them both. We knew we would see each other again, but it was nice to confirm it with another actual visit. This trip is my fourth to Iraqi Kurdistan in just fourteen months. A year and a half ago I could not have imagined that anywhere in Iraq would become a part of my life, let alone a pleasant part of my life. Iraq is strange, though, and more complex than it appears from far away. The civil war and the insurgency in Baghdad are real. But the civil war and the insurgency are not all there is.

“So much has changed since you were last here,” one of my friends said at dinner. “Kurdistan is a different place now.”

“What changed?” I said. Of course I had to ask, but this was a social dinner and not a formal interview. So I’ll leave their names out of this and paraphrase what they told me. Understand that they are in a position to know exactly what they are talking about.

Iraqi Kurdistan is de-facto independent already. The three northernmost provinces exist as a liberal-democratic state-within-a-state with their own parliament, their own laws, their own immigration policies, and their own military, border guards, and police. That much was already known. The region now, though, is even closer to formal sovereignty and actual independence than it recently was.



The United Nations doesn’t recognize the existence of Iraqi Kurdistan because the United Nations is hung up on state sovereignty. But the individual governments that make up the United Nations are coming around. More diplomats from all over the world are coming here now, and this is exciting to the people who live here. Foreign dignitaries who meet with local officials recognize there is a government in Iraq that isn’t in Baghdad. 99.8 percent of Iraqi Kurds voted to secede from Iraq in a non-binding referendum, and recognition of their de-facto independent country is as welcome as love letters.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States have sent people here recently. One of my Kurdish dinner companions, who never wants to be quoted by name but is in a position to know, says the Democratic officials who come here support Kurdish interests as staunchly and reliably as the Republicans.




High tech equipment is now as easy to find in Iraqi Kurdistan as it is in Israel and the United States.

I still hear complaints about the Kissinger Betrayal in the 1970s, when Secretary of State Henry Kissinger summarily abandoned the Kurds to Saddam Hussein after promising them support for their resistance and liberation. But I don’t get the sense that too many Kurds are bracing for another round of that kind of statecraft even if the U.S. does withdraw its forces from south and central Iraq.

Three major obstacles to independence remain. The first is Iraqi Kurdistan’s relationship with Turkey. That relastionship is bad but improving despite the Turkish military’s well-publicized threats to invade Northern Iraq to eject the (Turkish) Kurdistan Worker’s Party, the PKK, from using Iraqi soil to launch attacks against military and civilian targets in Turkey. Relations between the (Iraqi) Kurdistan Regional Government and the Turkish government have quietly improved at the same time. Iraq’s Kurds genuinely want a civil relationship with Turkey because they can’t safely declare independence without it.

The Turks fear nothing more than Turkish Kurdistan declaring itself independent and attaching itself to a free Iraqi Kurdistan. A bitter civil war is still simmering in Turkey between the PKK and the Turkish state. Ethnic Kurds make up almost 25 percent of Turkey’s population. If they leave and take their land with them, the Turks will lose a huge amount of the eastern part of their country. A truly independent Kurdish state in Iraq would likely embolden Kurdish militants in Turkey – or so the Turks fear.

Iraqi Kurdistan is land-locked and surrounded on all sides by hostile people and states. They cannot survive on their own without first building a physical infrastructure that will allow them to survive border blockades as well as military invasions.

Kurdistan, unfortunately, is still connected to Iraq’s main electrical grid. And that means, as often as not, there is no power. If you want 24-hour electricity, buy a generator. And keep it topped off with fuel. (Generators are everywhere, and the large ones are louder than lawnmowers.)


A new electrical grid is under construction

Erbil Province is building a brand-new electrical grid that should work 24 hours a day and can’t be shut down by sabateurs in the Sunni Triangle or by a hostile government in Baghdad. As soon as all of Iraqi Kurdistan is electrically severed from Baghdad, the Kurds’ only remaining physical need is an oil refinery of their own.

The Kurds have enough oil. Huge new fields near Zakho were just discovered. Gasoline is expensive here, though, because oil has to be exported and then reimported.


Even without reliable electricity, Erbil is fairly well lit up at night thanks to ubiquitous generators.

The Kurds of Iraq may not need to bother with a declaration of independence. It may fall from the sky, my source said, if the Sunni and Shia Arabs break Iraq in the course of their civil war. “What would we do, decide if we want to remain with the Sunni Arabs or the Shia?” he said. “We don’t want to remain with either of them.”


Businessmen without bodyguards or guns check email in the lobby of the luxurious Khan Zad resort hotel just outside Erbil.

The Kurds couldn’t stick with the Shia if they wanted to. The Shia and the Kurds are on the opposite side of the country, with the Sunni Arabs wedged in between from Baghdad north to the southern portions of Kirkuk and Mosul. The Sunni Arabs are the Kurds’ principal enemies, and there is no way the Kurds (who also are Sunni Muslims) will stick with the Sunni Arabs if the Shia Arabs decide to go their own way. If the Arabs break Iraq, as they seem hell-bent on doing, the Kurds will be freed by default. There will be no more “Iraq” for them to stay shackled to.


The gate to a Turkish-style mosque. Mosques never get blown up around here

In the meantime, the Kurds are doing their best to cultivate civil relations with the Sunni Arabs while digging a massive trench on the Green Line to keep the insurgents, the car-bombers, and the suicide-bombers out. The trench is more like a castle moat, really. It’s 5 meters wide, 5 meters deep, and it drops straight down. Anyone trying to cross it without building a bridge will find themselves in a free fall. It’s an inverted version of the wall that separates Israelis from Palestinians. Walls and trenches can be still be crossed, to be sure, but they can’t be crossed quickly, and they certainly cannot be crossed with any vehicles.

My dinner companions were shocked when I told them I’m going to Baghdad next month with the American military. (I’m going, that is, unless the Department of Defense delays my trip yet again.)

“Are you sure you want to go down there?” one of them said. “The Sunni militias cut throats and the Shia militias drill holes in people’s heads. That’s Baghdad.”

Recently some terrorists from one of the militias dumped three dead bodies on a street and broadcasted an announcement for the neighbors: Anyone who tries to bury one of the bodies will join them. For three weeks everyone walked past decomposing corpses as dogs tore at and ate the flesh. Innocent children who do not yet understand the cruel ways of their terrible city asked their parents why those people were sleeping so long in the street.


A residential neighborhood in peaceful Erbil

Kurdistan is safe even without its anti-terrorist trench, and that’s not because it is protected by American soldiers. Only 50 or so troops remain in this part of Iraq. There is no anti-American insurgency (because there is virtually no anti-Americanism) and there is no terrorism. If the Arab Iraqis were as peaceable as the Kurds, the American military could have folded its tents a long time ago.

Iraqi Kurdistan is technically occupied by a foreign power, but this occupation surely ranks among one of the most absurd in human history. Dr. Ali Sindi, advisor to Prime Minister Nechervan Barzani, told me that South Korea is the official occupier of “Northern Iraq.” Korean soldiers are stationed just outside Erbil in a base near the airport. He laughed when he told me the Kurdish military, the Peshmerga (“those who face death”), surround the South Koreans to make sure they’re safe.

Every couple of weeks another government somewhere in the world drops their travel advisory for Iraqi Kuridstan. The regional government sends me an email every time it happens. It is always seen as yet another milestone passed on the road to independence from Baghdad. Not only is Kurdistan recognized as separate from Iraq, it is also recognized as different from Iraq. Iraq is dangerous, but the north really isn’t.


New houses in Erbil

Kurdistan’s rise flips Iraq on its head. The Kurds are ahead, but they started from nothing. Under Saddam’s regime they had the worst of everything – the worst poverty, the worst underdevelopment, and worst of all they bore the brunt of the worst violence from Baghdad. 200,000 people were killed (out of less than four million) and 95 percent of the villages were completely destroyed.

The Kurds seem happy and well-adjusted. Scratch the surface, though, and any one of them can tell you tales that make you tremble and shudder. Everyone here was touched by the Baath and by the genocide. If living well is the best revenge, the Kurds got theirs.


A bookseller in the souk in Erbil

“You see this place now with its government, its democracy, and its system of laws,” my guide Hamid said. “It wasn’t like this even recently, believe me. Before, it was a jungle.”

Baghdad, the Sunni Triangle, and Shia South are still jungles. No one I know here thinks the Sunni and Shia Arabs will be able to reconcile and live with each other in peace – there is too much bad blood between them. I don’t know if that’s true or if it’s not. The Middle East is an unpredictable place, and I’ve made a fool of myself often enough by thinking I know what will happen.

What I do know for sure is that Baghdad is burning and Kurdish power is rising. The question up north isn’t whether Iraq will come apart, but only when, how, and into how many pieces.

Volume 4 of the FTR series in which he puts the word fuck in front of a presidential candidate’s name.

Someone, somewhere must have been happy when Joe Biden declared his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. There are not many who support Biden because he is a credit card company whore, a drug war fanatic and a man who has royally fucked over our soldiers. He is also a douchebag.

Most of those who are opposed to Joe Biden dislike him because of his love of credit card companies. In March, 2005, Joe Biden was one of the main supporters of the most destructive pieces of legislation ever passed: The Bankruptcy Bill.

The "Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection" in this bill was only for Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcies and completely left Chapter 11 alone. Why? Because Chapter 11 is mainly used by businesses and after Enron and WorldCom, Chapter 11 clearly does not need fixing. 7 and 13 are individual avenues of bankruptcy and the average Joe out there was getting away with murder. It had to be stopped. Here’s what I mean by murder:

Clearly those deadbeats needed to be dealt with. The bill rewrote bankruptcy laws to reduce protection for consumers, increased MBNA members predatory lending practices and made it easier for corporations to collect from families who, in the past, could declare bankruptcy.

Some Democrats wanted to place amendments in the bill to even things out a bit but every time they tried they ran into assholes like Biden. How about an amendment to not strip away existing protections for people who are “struggling to stay alive, housed, and fed while taking care of ill or disabled family members?” No way, said Biden! What about “consumer protection for individuals whose medical debts are the reason they're filing for bankruptcy?” Fuck no, said Joe! Okay, then lets “protect employees and retirees from corporate practices that deprive them of their earnings and retirement savings when a business files for bankruptcy.” Fuck off, bitch. What about “simply requiring credit card companies to give people more prominent warnings about what will happen if they only pay the minimum required payments on those cards.” Eat me - Senator Joe Biden. Um. Okay. At least let us write “a provision that would ensure that no elderly people in enough financial trouble to seek bankruptcy protection would lose their homes.” Suck it – Joe Biden.

Then there’s my personal favorite, the one that should have Joe Biden and his corporate loving friends strung up by their balls In Sadr City, so the locals can have their way with him:

Biden voted against this amendment. It was an amendment to protect soldiers fighting in Iraq from bankruptcies by predatory lenders charging usurious interest rates and to allow them the protections of their own state laws, which may have allowed them to keep their homes. While they were fucking fighting in Iraq. Cock of the century Joe Biden said “No.”

Not surprisingly, soldiers began to experience economic hardships. Then guess what? The Defense Department released a study that showed an inordinately high number of recruits were being disqualified from service because of debt problems. Holy shit, who could have seen that coming? Biden’s precious bankruptcy law protected predatory lenders who set up “paycheck loan” businesses outside of military bases, but not the men and women fighting. It doesn’t protect the soldier who comes back from Iraq with medical problems. He will lose his home. It won’t protect the reservist who couldn’t work at his small private business while fighting in the desert. He will lose his business. Joe Biden and others in Congress like him have, quite simply, done great damage to our military.

My favorite off all the corporate loving bullshit Biden was behind is the Universal Credit Act. It’s simple. If you are late or miss a payment on any of your bills, creditors can jack your interest rate on ALL of your bills (mortgage, car-payment, other credit cards.) And they can charge rates as high as they want because people like Biden voted against capping consumer interest rates at 30%. Sky’s the limit!

So, he’s a corporate whore. They all are, right? Well, how about a racist corporate whore? Surely everyone knows what he said about
Barack Obama the day after he declared for president:

Oops. He of course didn’t mean it like THAT. I mean, come on. I guess he also didn’t mean this:



Nor, I guess did he mean to brag about being from a “slave state.”



How, so very presidential. I’ve pretty much had enough of presidents who say retarded things. Vote for Biden and look forward to him traveling the world and infuriating foreign leaders.

Well, okay, he’s a racist, corporate whore. But they all are. Really? What about a racist, rave-hating, corporate whore? You read that right, he hates raves. And to prove it he created on of the stupidest pieces of legislation ever. First, you have to understand that Joe is a big leader in the war on drugs. He actually created the post of “Drug Czar,” which has been amazingly effective. When Joe heard about all the drugs being done at raves, he had to act.

Besides being just plain idiotic, the bill is too broad. It can be used against rock concert promoters and even professional sports franchises if fans are smoking pot in the stands.

Okay, so he’s a racist, rave-hating, drug freak, corporate whore. But they all are. Really? Well what about the fact that he wants to kill independent music?

In 2002 there was a bill heading to the Senate floor for a vote called the "Anti-counterfeiting Amendments of 2002." It was originally intended to make it illegal to traffic counterfeit movies, music, etc. But then Joe got his dirty little hands on it. He added an amendment that would have made it a felony to trick devices into playing your music or running your computer program. It would have made it illegal for you to record music of your own band and share it with friends, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $25,000 fine. There is no greater threat to the music industry than bands selling music on their own and Biden was trying to stop it before it started. Way to look out for the common man, Joe!

Okay, so he’s a racist, rave-hating, anti-drug freak, independent music murderer and a corporate whore. All politicians are. Um, okay, uh. What about the fact that he loved the war before he hated the war?

I'm surprised he didn't get on his knees and blow them. I can honestly say that few of my concerns were addressed about the war and since I am a guy who just sits around reading the internet, the fact that I knew more than a potential presidential candidate is frightening. But now, of course, Joe is ready to end the war. He wants to carve Iraq up into Sunni, Shiite and Kurd pieces, which will be really easy.

All you have to do is ask all the Shiites to move out of the Sunni area and the Sunnis to move out of the Shiite area, and hope they have an equal number of houses so the switch will go smoothly. And the Sunnis will have to move out of Kirkuk. And the Kurds can’t kill the Turkmen. Tell the Assyrians to go back to Assyria. Armenians? Why are they there? I don’t know what to do with the fucking Christians! Just kill them. What do you mean the Druze? Who the fuck are they? God damn it, this isn’t working!

Anyway, Joe Biden is a fucking joke. He’s a racist, rave-hating, anti-drug freak, independent music murdering, war waffling, corporate whore. Sure, he’s kind of funny when he’s on the Daily Show and his hair looks like pubes, but that’s not enough to elect a president.

South Carolina is considering a law requiring women undergoing abortions to view an ultrasound image of the fetus. It's obviously an attempt at emotional manipulation; the argument in favor of the law is that

The biggest problem here, though, isn't its manipulativeness or its condescension (gee, does any woman going in for an abortion really not realize that if she doesn't have one, she's going to give birth to a Real Live Baby?!?). The real problem is that an ultrasound is an unnecessary medical procedure. One that costs money.

So the state is considering a law that (1) forces pregnant women to undergo unnecessary medical procedures; and (2) forces pregnant women to pay for same. If (1) alone doesn't get you, on the basis of medical ethics and the right to the integrity of one's own body, (2) oughta outrage you on the grounds that have apparently become more important to Americans than physical integrity--our right to the integrity of our wallets.

And even if we give the pro-life bullies the benefit of the doubt and say okay, yes, an ultrasound gives a woman information she might not already have known--i.e., what a first-trimester fetus looks like--I wonder, really, if the folks passing the law themselves know.

The picture above is of a 10-week old fetus inside the amniotic sac. The fetuse's butt is up above the top frame and its head is at the bottom center of the image, just above the title.

Note that the head has a big fluid-filled sac in the center, indicated by the white arrow. Note also that according to the page at the University of Florida's ob/gyn website where I found the image, this is a normal finding at this stage.

In other words, towards the end of the first trimester of pregnancy--that is, when the vast majority of abortions take place unless paternalistic pro-life legislation masquerading as "informed consent" laws has forced women to delay abortion while they gather the money to travel to a far away clinic, pay for a hotel during a 24-hour waiting period, appeal to a judge to waive a parental consent requirement, etc.--it's perfectly normal for a fetus's head to be filled with amniotic fluid.

In a full-term baby, this is called hydrocephalus, and if the baby lives (as in the linked image), it may rupture the mother's uterus during delivery (which can be fatal), will certainly require medical intervention if it is to live, and is likely to be severely disabled, as you might well imagine. In fact, discovery of hydrocephaly is the usual reason for third-trimester abortions and the so-called "partial birth abortion," or intact dilation and extraction: you can see why in such a case the safest procedure would, indeed, require the doctor to puncture and drain the fetus's head before delivering it.

But in a ten-week old fetus, this is normal. Nonetheless, the State of South Carolina, in its wisdom, thinks women, in their foolishness, need to be made to think real hard about the morality of killing a fetus that, with a head still partially filled with amniotic fluid, can't think yet at all.

Bitch_PhD thinks that lawmakers who support this kind of legislation should be forced to pay to have their heads examined.

It sounds crazy but I think Haliburton is the only solution to current US Fish and Wildlife Service budgets problems. Because the Bush administration hates nature the way many people hate child molesters, the agency is completely under funded and is currently facing a $2.5 billion budget shortfall. The solution seems to be to cut hundreds of jobs, which will leave over 200 wildlife refuges without staff.

A hippie named Theodore Roosevelt started the first wildlife refuge in 1903. Today there are 547 national wildlife refuges, totaling more than 96 million acres. Staff at the refuges is already horrible depleted and more cuts will be devastating.

But agency spokesman and Bush lackey David Eisenhauer says that the job cuts will “increase efficiency” and “free up funding” for refuge management and operations. This is a really good point, as nature should be run like an office. That way, when an invasive species begins showing up in a refuge, not having any staff there to deal with the problem will increase the efficiency of the invasive species.

Bush has actually requested a $12 million increase in the budget this year, but the $2.5 billion deficit makes the gesture rather meaningless. There seems to be only one solution: Haliburton. Haliburton has their hands in everything, from oil production to food services. The current administration loves to throw cash at the company Cheney used to run, so why not put them in charge of our wildlife refuges? That way we could increase the yearly operating budget to, say, $10 billion. Haliburton could claim they spent $7.5 billion on fish pellets and throw the remaining $2.5 billion on actually restoring the refuges. It’s a win-win, with probably only 10 or 11 deaths.

This story makes me miss the good old days, when the White House used the color-coded terrorist alert system every time they wanted to deflect attention from one of their heinous acts or if a Democratic presidential candidate was getting a bump. Right now, the White House is under fire like never before. Valerie Plame testified in front of Congress today, the Justice Department is accused of firing US attorneys for political purposes; the administration is deeply implicated and has been caught in a lie. Gonzalez also lied to Congress about the subject during January hearings. The awful treatment of veterans returning from the war is coming to light, making Bush and company look worse than ever. So what to do?

How about a Friday news dump about terrorists trying to kill our children? The FBI and Homeland Security Department sent out a “routine” advisory to local law enforcement. According to the AP:

Oh God! What will we do? The terrorists want to kill our sweet, little children!

The bulletin failed to mention any specifics, such as how often the terrorists have tried to get licenses to drive school buses, or where they tried, or how we found out about it. The bureau did not answer these questions because it is a total fabrication. If a terrorist wanted to get a license to drive a school bus and kill children, there would be little to nothing that could be done until it was over.

The rest of the article, after the headline, totally undermines the headline.

The most blatant attempt by the administration to deflect attention from its many self-inflicted problems – ever.

Georgia State Senator Jeff Mullis has decided we should celebrate the greatness of the Confederacy by giving it an entire month. Mullis wrote a bill that would make April Confederate History and Heritage Month. The bill was passed with a unanimous vote in the Senate Rules Committee and will be sent to the full Senate for a vote.

When I think of the Confederacy, I often ponder with a smile the diversity of the Southern Independence movement. There were so many “ethnic groups” who were owned by white people and it should be celebrated.

The bill comes on the heels of an announcement by black members of Congress that they would ask the state to apologize for slavery. But the Republican leaders of the House and Senate are strongly against apologizing for slavery. Mullis is adamant that his bill was not a response to the slavery apology announcement. It’s just a coincidence!

You go, girl!

Georgia lawmakers plan to introduce a plethora of “celebration months.” June will be Rape Celebration Month. July henceforth will honor the positive achievements of the Nazis. August will be Give Props to the Plague Month. September is Henry Lee Lucas Victory Month. October is just going to get straight to the point and will be called, Slavery Rocks Month! November will celebrate the positive aspects of Hurricane Katrina and December will be Florida Month.

It has finally happened. A 9/11 architect confessed to his evil deed and claimed responsibility for the attacks that killed thousands of Americans. Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the highest-ranking member of al-Qaeda being held at Guantánamo Bay, has come clean.

Mohammad also took responsibility for killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. In totally unrelated news, the US has been using a torture technique called The Attention Grab, in which the interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt of a prisoner and shakes him. But that doesn’t sound too bad.

Mohammad also confessed to being behind the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing. Have you ever heard of The Attention Slap? It’s pretty fun. You give your prisoner an open-handed slap in order to "cause pain and trigger fear." Sorry, let’s get back on track.

Mohammad apparently also confessed that he was the mastermind behind the “shoe bomber.” Wow, this guy was a planning genius. I’m sorry if I’m going off topic here, but the US loves to torture prisoners with something called a Belly Slap, in which a prisoner gets a hard open-handed slap to the stomach. That way you can cause great pain without internal injury. Smart.

Sorry, I’m meandering. Back to Mohammad. In 2002 a Marine was shot and killed in Kuwait. Guess who was behind that? You got it, Mohammad. What a fucker. Ever heard of the Cold Cell? It’s great. You make a prisoner stand naked in a 50 degree cell, then you douse him with cold water every once in a while. I don’t know why I wrote that; it has nothing to do with Khaled.

He is an awful man. That bastard confessed that he was the brain behind the Bali nightclub bombing that killed 180 people in 2002. Son-of-a bitch, I hope he burns. The same way US prisoners do when they are put into a Sweatbox. It’s a small, hot room that has no ventilation, which causes it to act like an oven. In Iraq they use the trunk of black Mercedes. They call it "bitch in a box". Funny stuff.

You know what’s not funny? Trying to kill a president. Mohammad confessed to trying to assassinate Clinton in the Philippines in 1994 or 1995. This guy is a fucking death machine. When I think of presidents, I think of George Bush, which makes me think of Donald Rumsfeld, which makes me think of his support for Water Boarding. That’s when a prisoner is bound to an inclined board, cellophane is wrapped over his face and then water is poured over him. The gag reflex kicks in and a fear of drowning causes the prisoner to beg for the process to stop.

That’s impressive. I wonder how long it took him to plan the bombing a hotel in Mombassa, Kenya? That reminds me of menstrual blood. What? Yeah, that’s right. The US likes to smear menstrual blood on prisoners’ faces.

Not so much, actually. But not as bad as I would have felt if Mohammad had been able to pull off his plans to destroy American military vessels and oil tankers, as well as bomb the Panama Canal. He confessed to all of that. He is worse than Dr. Evil. Man, I wish I had a sledgehammer to bang against a wall. That’s what US interrogators do to make an echo sound that scares the shit out of prisoners when they are sleeping in their cell. It sounds like an explosion. Hee hee.

I don’t know why I’m giggling. I’m writing a story about one of the greatest criminal minds in the history of the world. Did you know Mohammad confessed to being responsible for an assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in the Philippines? What a fucking douchebag. It’s like he was trying to do everything! Scary. But not as scary as when a US interrogator would load a

Khaled Sheikh Mohammed was up to a lot of shit. Here’s some other stuff he has "confessed" to his US interrogators.

Planning attacks against several prominent American skyscrapers. Planning to assassinate several former American presidents, including President Carter. Planning to bomb several New York landmarks, including the stock exchange and suspension bridges. Planning to destroy several London landmarks, including Heathrow Airport and Big Ben. Planning to destroy buildings in the Israeli city of Eilat, using planes leaving Saudi Arabia. Planning to destroy Israeli and American embassies around the world. Sending fighters into Israel to conduct surveillance on strategic targets. Launching a Russian surface-to-air missile at an El Al airliner leaving Mombassa. Conducting surveillance on nuclear power plants in the United States. Planning to hit NATO headquarters in Brussels. Planning to bomb 12 American aircraft full of passengers. Planning the assassination of President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. Attempting to destroy an American oil company in Sumatra owned by the Jewish former secretary of state, Henry Kissinger.

Here are some other confirmed US interrogation techniques: Using sexual jibes and degradation, along with being forced to strip naked. Being forced to crawl on a leash. Being forced to masturbate in front of a female soldier. Being forced to mimic oral sex with other male prisoners. Being forced to form piles of naked, hooded men. Forced homosexual acts on other prisoners. Covering a prisoner’s head with a rancid-smelling sack for weeks or months. Threatening prisoners with dogs. Beating, punching, kicking and hitting with the back of an axe head. Being forced to sit on the exhaust pipe of a humvee. Outsourcing to dictatorships for torture. Chaining hands and feet in a fetal position for up to 24 hours. Grabbing genitals. Bending thumbs backwards. Gagging and covering head with duck tape. Hand shackles so tight that prisoner loses feeling in hands for six months.

Anyway, I feel better now that Mohammad has confessed.

Today, the Pentagon trotted out a new report on the taxpayer's dime claiming that some components of the Iraq Quagmire fit the definition of Civil War. However, the report goes on to state that the designation "Civil War" does not completely fit the complexity and fluidity of the ongoing conflict.

Which sounds a lot like, "We have no idea what the fuck is going on over there but we're telling the grunts to stock up on M.R.E.'s"

The Pentagon's spin is an obvious attempt to disguise a bad situation getting worse by the very second. The last three months in Iraq have been the deadliest on record.

The Pentagon report further states that rising criminally-motivated violence makes the Civil War moniker a tough one to pin on their Mess in Mesopotamia. Explored in a current report in Foreign Affairs, Iraq is apparently starting to look a lot like Sicily in the opening scene of Godfather II or South Central in the climax of Menace II Society.

As if rising criminal violence makes the picture look any rosier...

Then again, the historical reality is that all great civil wars have ushered in periods of rampant criminality.

In the Roman civil war that followed the death of Julius Caesar, more men were killed in gangland fights than in the great battles of Mutina and Actium combined.

During Vietnam, Nixon's military folly gave rise to the Khmer Rouge's heroin trade that reportedly claimed the lives of over 20,000 innocent civilians from 1970-1974. (Which was of course explored by Shane Black's brilliant screenplay Lethal Weapon).

While the silly-semantic-spin-doctor-bullshit of a Pentagon report may come as no surprise, it will be interesting to see if Republicans seize on this latest epistle from the Five Corners to change the topic of debate in Congress from getting out to getting inane and irrelevant definitions of an illegal and immoral conflict right once and for all.

And, yes, Sanjaya is still alive on American Idol...

On January 24th, 2007, John Lavelle, a state assemblyman from Richmond County (a.k.a. Staten Island), New York passed from this mortal coil.

Mr. Lavelle was a dedicated public servant for over 25 years who most recently fought for the rights of 9/11 victims and their families. He will be sorely missed.

Mr. Lavelle’s untimely death has initiated a special election to fill his seat on the New York State Assembly.

Today, the two candidates in the special election, liberal Matt Titone and conservative Rose Margarella were forced to address swirling rumors in the local press that they are, in fact, cousins.

Mr. Titone and Ms. Margella both denied that they are blood relatives. As a result, a burgeoning political brouhaha on Staten Island looks to be null and void.

Yet, the idea of a candidate having to battle his/her own cousin in order to secure political office creates some intriguing paradigms and possibilities for the 2008 Election for President of the United States…

-- George W. Bush versus John Kerry --

This scenario is predicated on the fact that Dick Cheney, sooner rather than later, will orchestrate – either legally or via the use of the 101st Airborne Division – a change in the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment allowing Dubya to run again for President.

Dubya and Kerry are 9th cousins, twice removed. In the 2008 rematch, I give the edge to Kerry. He would, yet again, run as a mealy-mouthed, flip-flopping, spineless numb-nut but this country is so high-wide-and-handsome fucked-up, the Dems could probably run Janis Joplin’s ossified corpse against Dubya and carry Ohio in the ‘08.

I mean, Dems vs. Dubya round three is a lock for the Donkey...Right? Well, as long as the Dems candidate isn't a known pornographer...

-- George W. Bush versus Hugh Hefner --

Mr. Hefner is Mr. Bush’s 9th cousin as well. In this scenario, Cheney does his thing with the Constitution, setting up what, I think, would be a tight race. Every Christian-right nitwit who thinks the Bible is real would come out of the woodwork for this one. Bush could run his fake-ass “I’m a real Christian” game plan to the hilt and slam Mr. Hefner for running a girly magazine.

Then again, Hefner could rock the Generation Y vote by offering every American citizen under the age of 30 a ticket to his legendary Lingerie Soiree at the Mansion.

I see Mr. Hefner winning in a squeaker. Hail to the chief, baby. Three different first ladies?!?! That sounds just like my Grandmama’s kool aid to me – pretty fucking sweet.

-- Rudy Giuliani versus Regina Peruggi --

Ms. Peruggi was Rudy’s first wife. They were married for 14 years before Rudy paid the Catholic Church beaucoup dollars to have the union annulled.

Ms. Peruggi is also Rudy’s second cousin.

Ms. Peruggi has no political experience to speak of and Rudy has that bullshit reputation of being America’s Mayor. Then again, Rudy allegedly has more skeletons in his closet than seats in Yankee Stadium. Viagara addiction, Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, two divorces, several affairs, as well as a documented record of slashing firefighter and police department budgets. Not to mention the fact that the Yanks haven't won a title since he suddenly became such a big fan.

I say Ms. Peruggi shocks the world to become the 44th President of the United States by running on a simple platform – “Rudy was shtupping his second cousin…and then he dumped her. What has happened to family values in this Nation?”

Let me start out by saying the federal government, particularly the Justice Department and the current administration, are a bunch of fucking assholes. The pot laws in this country are backwards and have been written by men who cram bottles of whiskey into their fat, white stomachs. Why am I so upset? Because a woman who is dying from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and “other ailments” has just been told by a federal appeals court that she is not immune from prosecution.

Meet Angel Raich, a 41-year-old mother of two from Oakland, California. She is in such bad shape that she needs to smoke pot every couple of hours to ease her pain and encourage her to eat. Her doctor prescribed the marijuana because conventional drugs did not work in “legal” attempts to increase her appetite. Without pot, her appetite was “nonexistent.” Her doctor claims that if she does not smoke pot, she will die.

Raich filed the case because she lives in a state where medical marijuana is legal and she believes that pot “should be allowed if it is the only viable option to keep a patient alive.” Also, her name is ANGEL. How much more fucking obvious does it need to get?

The government claimed it “could not guarantee” that dying people would not be prosecuted for smoking pot. Our government has declared that marijuana has no medical value, even though these guys called “doctors” say the opposite. Eleven states allow medical marijuana for patients with a doctor's recommendation. The attorney general launched a war against marijuana after Bush took office, conducting raids against suppliers who have state licenses and even locking up Tommy Chong.

When Raich heard the decision she began sobbing. She said she would not stop smoking pot.

This is a disappointment. Alleged Madame Deborah Jean Palfrey won’t be selling her telephone records to the highest bidder. Instead, in an apparent pique of civic-mindedness, she has turned the phone records of Pamela Martin and Associates, the D.C. based escort ring she operated from 1993 to 2006, over to an unnamed “news organization.”

When Palfrey announced she was seeking to sell the phone records (which could reportedly implicate some 15,000 clients), two questions arose: who was on the list and how much would Larry Flynt pay for it.

As it seems, we’re not going to get the phonebook-sized special edition of Hustler reprinting the entire list with re-enacted scenes from politician-look-alikes. According to a statement from her attorney, Palfrey “doesn't want to do the average customer any harm, unless that customer would be critical to her defense."

Instead, some news outlet Palfrey described as “one of the most reputable and respected investigative news organizations in the country” (which has requested to not be named. Wonkette speculated it’s the Washington Post) is going to investigate Palfrey's phone numbers, logs and invoices.

"We're trusting them to have discretion in which names would be made public," Palfrey’s lawyer, Blair Sibley said.

Discretion is the last thing you need with information like this. Still, it’s possible that awesome, political scandal-starting information could leak out. Of course, considering the elasticity of the term “news organization” (Talon News, anyone?), shenanigans could still be in play.

It also means there’s the slightest chance Flynt’s got his hands on it. Hustler is a news organization, right?