Liberal Serving

Newsflash: War On Terror Won, FBI Turns Attention to Consentual, Adult Porn Witchhunt

Well, pretty much:

Early last month, the bureau's Washington Field Office began recruiting for a new anti-obscenity squad. Attached to the job posting was a July 29 Electronic Communication from FBI headquarters to all 56 field offices, describing the initiative as "one of the top priorities" of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales...

Federal obscenity prosecutions, which have been out of style since Attorney General Edwin Meese III in the Reagan administration made pornography a signature issue in the 1980s, do "encounter many legal issues, including First Amendment claims," the FBI headquarters memo noted...

"Based on a review of past successful cases in a variety of jurisdictions," the memo said, the best odds of conviction come with pornography that "includes bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior." No word on the universe of other kinks that helps make porn a multibillion-dollar industry.

What's most fucked up about this?  The invasion of privacy?  Interferring with consenting adults getting off?  The gross misappropriation of government resources to fighting an imagined boogy man when there's real criminals out there to catch?  Like the Enron bastards that cost millions of people millions of dollars?  FYI to moral scolds: fighting the biological reality of sex is a losing battle.  Why don't you put some of the same motivation behind the fight against poverty?  What about activisting for more funding for disease research, wouldn't that be a better hobby?

Censoring Poltical Speech For Sensitive Football Fans

Said Holly Martins on wonkette:

The NFL announced that it will be instituting a 10-second tape delay for the network broadcast... Among the performers will be Green Day, which casitgates President Bush's "redneck agenda" on American Idiot; the Rolling Stones, which calls our leader "a crock of shit" on A Bigger Bang; and Kanye West, who questions the sincerity of Bush's compassionate conservatism for the other-than-white complexioned. The West and Rolling Stones performances will be taped, in any event, so what this appears to boil down to is that the leaders of America's most proudly macho sports pastime are afraid of what Billie Joe Armstrong might say. This leaves us wondering a couple of things. Aren't the Dixie Chicks and Janet Jackson now owed a big apology from some girly-man or other? And which is now more officially dead: Punk rock or pro football?

Digital Scarlet Letters, Searchable.

My gut says this google-powered sex offender map is wrong, sick & sad.  Repeatedly punishing people for the same crimes is usually my first response to all the sex offender bs... White-flight suburbanites pushing responsibility for their own safety to the government, punishing already punished people for their own paranoid media-fed delusion of danger.  But that one red mark is only about 3 blocks from my home, and I wonder how I would feel if I had kids, were a woman, or didn't have a redneck body.  There's a bit of am emotional kick in seeing 4 points in my general neighborhood - areas I walk through every day. 

Would this feel less wrong without the pop up mug shot?  An easy link to criminal records?  Can we as a city, as a culture forgive Nicholas for a crime he was convicted of in 1977?  What do we expect him to do with his life?  Where should he live if not my neighborhood?  More questions than answers from me.  I'm sick about the state of criminal persecution in our culture.  Our culture embraces vengeance and not the christian ideal of forgiveness (or even the utilitarian pragmatism of an efficient and objective approach to end crime without revenge).  Even if I don't have an answer, I think it's clear to see this is no solution.

Ignorance Is Strength (and we are one hellava strong country)

The Bulldog has a lucid post drawing 1984 from the high school English classroom to your own fucked up government.  Sick sad world this:

Defense Contractors
We've all heard about the armed "defense contractors" roaming Iraq. These are people who work for private defense companies (e.g. Halliburton, Bechtel, etc.), armed with state of the art weaponry, and immune from all liability for any acts they commit in Iraq. In essence, these are men who can "privately" (and secretly) kill whomever they wish in Iraq without any oversight or risk of penalty. In the old days, they used to call these people what they really are, as defined in the dictionary-- "mercenaries".

via feministe

How's This For Some Dark Humor?

via wonkette, who yadda ya's about Michelle Malkin and some other nuts who took the pic seriously and  called it "common sense."  Check the file name for wonkette's punchline.

Of Course GAYSROK

Utahian Elizabeth Soloman won a suit against the State of Utah for the right to register personalized license plates reading "GAYSROK" and "GAYRYTS" which translate into "Gays are Ok"/"Gays Rock" and "Gay Rights" respectively.  Judge Jane Phan told the AP:

"The narrow issue before us is whether a reasonable person would believe the terms 'gays are OK' and 'gay rights' are, themselves, offensive to good taste and decency. It is the conclusion of the commission that a reasonable person would not,"

Does that make Utah more liberal than Oregon?

Sikhs are Not Terrorists(!)

For crying out loud people, if you're going to hate arabs and profile them, at least look at a photo of one so you can figure out what they look like.  You see, there's all kinds of people in the world who aren't white, and you're seriously making our country - and our city - look like a bunch of intolerant thugs.  Once again, Sikhs have been on the receiving end of racial profiling - this time random humiliation on the street as they knelt handcuffed for crowds of gawkers because of the paranoia of a grey line bus driver.  From the Daily News:

The mayor urged New Yorkers to call authorities if they see something suspicious, but added they should use "common sense" and avoid profiling people like the group of South Asian-looking visitors, who were Sikhs from Britain.  "It turned out that these ... people did not present any threat whatsoever," Bloomberg said. "It's a shame, and I certainly apologize on behalf of the City of New York.

One of the men displayed more grace than I'd guess any American would in the same situation:

"These things happen, don't they?" said the man, who gave his name as Jas, 39. "We have no hard feelings. It certainly made our trip different, but didn't ruin it at all." The tourists were all members of the Sikh religion who grew up together in Birmingham, England. Jas said he planned to return to New York in December to celebrate his 40th birthday. "I'm definitely coming back," he said.

via gothamist

Benadict Rove

via the Liberal Avenger.

Random Subway Searches: Invasion of Privacy AND Pointless

Mayor Bloomberg says random bag searches on the subway are supposed to be making New Yorkers feel safe.  On TV (I know, bad for the brain, bad for the brain!) I saw cops rifling through briefcases and dainty purses.  Um, did anyone bother to explain to them how big bombs are?  The corporate news apparently couldn't find anyone who considered this erosion of civil liberties problematic, which isn't so much surprising as it is saddening, especially given the minuscule bump it will actually provide to our security

Unless you're the Green Goblin, you'd need a big backpack like the London bombers had to do the kind of real damage we should be afraid of, so searching random bags is more PR scare tactic than effective solution to the problem.  Incompetence is not reassuring.  If we'd ease of the middle-eastern imperialism a bit, we wouldn't need to waste our time anyhow.  Gothamist found this great privacy-lamenting t-shirt on cafepress, though Jen Chung, though she suggests the back should read "I'm going to the next station entrance, sucker." which points to another flaw in this BS security: random searches at popular entrances to the subway are just for show. 

Terrorists have demonstrated intelligence and ingenuity in the past, so it's a safe bet they could manage to figure out they can just get on a train in Queens.  This duh would be funnier if our actual safety weren't involved.

F Dubya Redux

Wonkette's Greg Beato has an update on the infamous "F Dubya" license plate shut down by the man in Washington State.  The seller tries to finesse the  system over at eBay:

For a week, I had the most popular and controversial license plate in the world. Its too bad eBay wouldn't let me sell it. While I can't sell the license plate, I can sell this beautiful photo of it and offer a "MYSTERY BONUS GIFT." I can't say what the actual bonus gift is, you can try to figure it out from the photo on the right. I've wrapped it in aluminum foil to conceal its identity.

Beats concludes: "See, liberals love capitalism too. And loopholes. Place your bids now, patriots." But the man - and eBay - win, as they gang up on our F Dubya hawker and shut him down again...