Quote of the Day

"It would be strange indeed and contrary to our notions of separation of powers if we were to recognize that legislators have standing to intervene in lawsuits just because they disagree with a court's interpretation of a statute,"
--Chief Justice Louis Lavorato wrote in his decision to let stand a divorice granted to a lesbian couple.

attribution

Joke of the Day

comes to us in the form of a letter. one written by, i'm only assuming here, by a forlorn'd girl who was given up by a gay guy. jennifer sure sounds like a perfect name for a hag.

The June 13 article about a parade in which persons in the gay and lesbian lifestyles celebrate their sexuality in downtown Des Moines quoted a homosexual participant as saying, "No matter what anyone says, God made me this way. And God does not make junk."

I completely agree that God does not make junk. According to the Bible, homosexuals are deeply loved by God. However, his statement that God made him this way (homosexual) is the part that the Bible does not agree with.

The Bible says that homosexuality is a behavior and that God can help those involved to see themselves and relate to others in ways that are biblically healthy.

God loves homosexuals no matter what, but he doesn't love the pain and hurt that comes with calling homosexuality inborn and believing you have no choice in your thoughts, feelings and actions.

-Jennifer Goodell,
Shenandoah.

attribution

looks like a genuine frivolous lawsuit to me?

how about you?

In their lawsuit, six state legislators, Congressman Steve King, a Le Mars church and its pastor argued the judge did not have authority to grant the divorce because Iowa law does not recognize same-sex marriage. They contended the judge's action undermines marriage between a man a woman and that, by granting a dissolution, the judge usurped the Legislature's power to define the law of marriage.

The Supreme Court took considerable pains to point out that it was not ruling on the legal merits of Neary's action. Rather, the court concluded that the plaintiffs had no standing to sue because they are not individually directly affected by the dissolution.

--souce

this was a case that got the reich all riled up, including that embarrassment to iowa politics, steve king. ever notice everything they go after, backfires in their faces? between their involvement in schiavo case, and now this.... makes ya wonder, just what have the republicans accomplished at all.

things i haven't said.... yet

if i can make qwest get on bended knee, mediacom i suspect would be half the effort.

note to cbs news:

i often chide bob schieffer, and in effect, cbs as a whole, in this space. but tonite, i can not chide, as much as express my appreciation.

appreciation in that you opened my eyes with the end of your report on cunningham. that house democrats didn't have anything to say about it.

THAT'S THE PROBLEM FOLX! get these timid jokers out of government until we clear the road for them to be sailing through on courtesy and generousity. republicons who have control OF EVERY BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT, haven't done what democrats are known to be capable of doing. please., pLEASE.... staNDUP and don't let these pigs run havoc with our country.

where's howard dean?

did he create his leadership by coming in with a bang (i.e. make yourself newsworthy), only to be gone with barely a whimper?

c'mon howard, you're not wrong for making headlines. you got our message out, even if it didnt share the same style, there's a roadmap you should have. it'll keep you on message, on topic, and on the winning side.

DSM-Watch

the conyers hearing is getting repeated:

This program is scheduled to re-air on Friday, June 17th at 8pm ET on C-SPAN2. Please check our TV Schedules at c-span.org for programming information (please remember the schedule is subject to change).

SET YOUR DVRs!!

john conyers, you should be shouting from the mountain tops

as a fan of letters to the newspaper editors, i feel obligated to promulgate the really good ones.
the letter courtesy of rawstory:

Mr. Michael Abramowitz, National Editor; Mr. Michael Getler, Ombudsman; Mr. Dana Milbank; The Washington Post, 1150 15th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20071

Dear Sirs:

I write to express my profound disappointment with Dana Milbank's June 17 report, "Democrats Play House to Rally Against the War," which purports to describe a Democratic hearing I chaired in the Capitol yesterday. In sum, the piece cherry-picks some facts, manufactures others out of whole cloth, and does a disservice to some 30 members of Congress who persevered under difficult circumstances, not of our own making, to examine a very serious subject: whether the American people were deliberately misled in the lead up to war. The fact that this was the Post's only coverage of this event makes the journalistic shortcomings in this piece even more egregious.

In an inaccurate piece of reporting that typifies the article, Milbank implies that one of the obstacles the Members in the meeting have is that "only one" member has mentioned the Downing Street Minutes on the floor of either the House or Senate. This is not only incorrect but misleading. In fact, just yesterday, the Senate Democratic Leader, Harry Reid, mentioned it on the Senate floor. Senator Boxer talked at some length about it at the recent confirmation hearing for the Ambassador to Iraq. The House Democratic Leader, Nancy Pelosi, recently signed on to my letter, along with 121 other Democrats asking for answers about the memo. This information is not difficult to find either. For example, the Reid speech was the subject of an AP wire service report posted on the Washington Post website with the headline "Democrats Cite Downing Street Memo in Bolton Fight". Other similar mistakes, mischaracterizations and cheap shots are littered throughout the article.

The article begins with an especially mean and nasty tone, claiming that House Democrats "pretended" a small conference was the Judiciary Committee hearing room and deriding the decor of the room. Milbank fails to share with his readers one essential fact: the reason the hearing was held in that room, an important piece of context. Despite the fact that a number of other suitable rooms were available in the Capitol and House office buildings, Republicans declined my request for each and every one of them. Milbank could have written about the perseverance of many of my colleagues in the face of such adverse circumstances, but declined to do so. Milbank also ignores the critical fact picked up by the AP, CNN and other newsletters that at the very moment the hearing was scheduled to begin, the Republican Leadership scheduled an almost unprecedented number of 11 consecutive floor votes, making it next to impossible for most Members to participate in the first hour and one half of the hearing.

In what can only be described as a deliberate effort to discredit the entire hearing, Milbank quotes one of the witnesses as making an anti-semitic assertion and further describes anti-semitic literature that was being handed out in the overflow room for the event. First, let me be clear: I consider myself to be friend and supporter of Israel and there were a number of other staunchly pro-Israel members who were in attendance at the hearing. I do not agree with, support, or condone any comments asserting Israeli control over U.S. policy, and I find any allegation that Israel is trying to dominate the world or had anything to do with the September 11 tragedy disgusting and offensive.

That said, to give such emphasis to 100 seconds of a 3 hour and five minute hearing that included the powerful and sad testimony (hardly mentioned by Milbank) of a woman who lost her son in the Iraq war and now feels lied to as a result of the Downing Street Minutes, is incredibly misleading. Many, many different pamphlets were being passed out at the overflow room, including pamphlets about getting out of the Iraq war and anti-Central American Free Trade Agreement, and it is puzzling why Milbank saw fit to only mention the one he did.

In a typically derisive and uninformed passage, Milbank makes much of other lawmakers calling me "Mr. Chairman" and says I liked it so much that I used "chairmanly phrases." Milbank may not know that I was the Chairman of the House Government Operations Committee from 1988 to 1994. By protocol and tradition in the House, once you have been a Chairman you are always referred to as such. Thus, there was nothing unusual about my being referred to as Mr. Chairman.

To administer his coup-de-grace, Milbank literally makes up another cheap shot that I "was having so much fun that [I] ignored aides' entreaties to end the session." This did not occur. None of my aides offered entreaties to end the session and I have no idea where Milbank gets that information. The hearing certainly ran longer than expected, but that was because so many Members of Congress persevered under very difficult circumstances to attend, and I thought - given that - the least I could do was allow them to say their piece. That is called courtesy, not "fun."

By the way, the "Downing Street Memo" is actually the minutes of a British cabinet meeting. In the meeting, British officials - having just met with their American counterparts - describe their discussions with such counterparts. I mention this because that basic piece of context, a simple description of the memo, is found nowhere in Milbank's article.

The fact that I and my fellow Democrats had to stuff a hearing into a room the size of a large closet to hold a hearing on an important issue shouldn't make us the object of ridicule. In my opinion, the ridicule should be placed in two places: first, at the feet of Republicans who are so afraid to discuss ideas and facts that they try to sabotage our efforts to do so; and second, on Dana Milbank and the Washington Post, who do not feel the need to give serious coverage on a serious hearing about a serious matter-whether more than 1700 Americans have died because of a deliberate lie. Milbank may disagree, but the Post certainly owed its readers some coverage of that viewpoint.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.

everybody now, stand up, go to your windows, stick your heads out and yell as loud as you can:

we are MAD AS HELL,
and we're NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE

The GOOD NEWS post of the WeeQ

Forty-two percent of those polled said they approved of the way Mr. Bush is handling his job, a marked decline from his 51 percent rating in the aftermath of the November election, when he embarked on an ambitious second-term agenda led by the overhaul of Social Security. Sixteen months before the midterm elections, Congress fared even worse in the survey, with the approval of just 33 percent of Americans, and nearly three-fourths saying Congress did not share their priorities.

--nytimes

when will America learn. VOTE DEMOCRAT and we won't have these problems.

Letter Of The WeeQ

How many real schools are operating in Iraq? What percentage of Iraqi school-age children are attending these schools? What percent of prewar electricity do the Iraqis currently have available?

Eighteen months ago, President Bush asked for and received tens of billions of dollars to provide this humanitarian assistance. Does the press provide no attempt at accountability?
-Mike Montross,
Winterset.

--attribution

Letter Of The Day

it was a bit hard, given the des moines register's publishing of a lot of letters about howard dean. but i picked this one. read more at the link below.

Republicans called Bill Clinton every name in the book but human for eight years, and for the last five years they have called Democrats unpatriotic, un-American and non-Christian.

Yet, when Howard Dean makes any comment about the Republicans, it makes front-page news. Why?

Republicans hold the presidency, the House and the Senate and for the last five years all we hear is that the Democrats are holding up their agenda. If Republicans can't get their agenda passed, they only have to look inside their party to find out why.
-Ann Lyness,
Boone.
--attribution

DSM-Watch

WASHINGTON - Some congressional Democrats are insisting that the White House provide more information about what led to the decision to go to war in Iraq, citing a British document known as the "Downing Street memo" as evidence intelligence was distorted.
--source

about time. that liberal bias in the media was choking me.

abu ghraib as art?

i'm not sure where i stand on this.

the fact that an artist can make money on the misery of others, just doesn't sit well with me.

however, his images are startling.

see for yourself HERE, and HERE

a taste:

they LIED

to our allies no less..... is there no limit to the scumming these people do?

American officials lied to British ministers over the use of "internationally reviled" napalm-type firebombs in Iraq.

Yesterday's disclosure led to calls by MPs for a full statement to the Commons and opened ministers to allegations that they held back the facts until after the general election.

Despite persistent rumours of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm, Adam Ingram, the Defence minister, assured Labour MPs in January that US forces had not used a new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.

But Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen in a private letter obtained by The Independent that he had inadvertently misled Parliament because he had been misinformed by the US. "The US confirmed to my officials that they had not used MK77s in Iraq at any time and this was the basis of my response to you," he told Mr Cohen. "I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position."

Mr Ingram said 30 MK77 firebombs were used by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in the invasion of Iraq between 31 March and 2 April 2003. They were used against military targets "away from civilian targets", he said. This avoids breaching the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which permits their use only against military targets.

Britain, which has no stockpiles of the weapons, ratified the convention, but the US did not.

The confirmation that US officials misled British ministers led to new questions last night about the value of the latest assurances by the US. Mr Cohen said there were rumours that the firebombs were used in the US assault on the insurgent stronghold in Fallujah last year, claims denied by the US. He is tabling more questions seeking assurances that the weapons were not used against civilians.

--source

my letter to the editor

this is what i wrote in for publishing by my hometown paper, the globe-gazette:

I'm wondering, would the Globe have endorsed George Bush Jr. had they known the following:

1. that Mr. Bush knew Saddam Hussein was no threat to our country months prior to invading;

2. that Mr. Bush decided to use force to overthrow him regardless; and

3. that Mr. Bush was 'fixing' the intelligence to sell the impending invasion to the American public.

Now that we know the truth with the release of the Downing Street Memos, and we continue to lose dozens of soldiers A WEEK in the same war Mr. Bush announced as being mission accomplished over two years ago, is there any doubt to the testament that Mr. Bush suckered half the American population, and obviously one small town newspaper?

--sent 6/16 11:40

senator bill frist, YOU ARE BUSTED!

how anybody could allow this man anywhere near them is beyond me. then GMA allowing this man to lie like the rug. and the poor bastards don't got the balls to stand up to this liar. how pathetic.
Frist, R-Tenn., said he never made his own diagnosis but did argue there wasn't enough information about Schiavo's condition to justify allowing her husband to remove her feeding tube against her parents' wishes.

"I raised the question, 'Is she in a persistent vegetative state or not?' I never made the diagnosis, never said that she was not. I did say that certain tests should be performed to determine that before starving her to death," Frist said in the interview.

--source
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050616/ap_on_go_co/schiavo_frist

geee, that's not what you said before. you're a liar bill frist. and we busted you.

Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a renowned heart surgeon before becoming Senate majority leader, went to the floor late Thursday night for the second time in 12 hours to argue that Florida doctors had erred in saying Terri Schiavo is in a "persistent vegetative state."

"I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office," he said in a lengthy speech in which he quoted medical texts and standards. "She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli."

--source
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48119-2005Mar18.html

we must remove liars from office. nothing is served in keeping them, except the liars.

Quote of the Day

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case," added the number two Senate Democrat. "This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."
--attribution

i'm watching cspan and dan burton

God what a whiney lil' man he is. he's going on and on and on about how bad the U.N. is, and that we NEED bolton in there to reform it.

well, reform into what??? nobody's saying.

whats really funny is that all his whining could very well apply to the bush administration.

God he makes my skin crawl.

DSM-Watch

the memos are out.

look over on the right.

good news democrats

from slate's today's papers:

The papers have a host of dark clouds for the White House. The Journal sees "Republican strains" emerging over Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. Meanwhile, the Post mentions some Republicans looking for an "exit strategy" ... from the president's Social Security offensive. And the NYT says the other "exit strategy" meme is also gaining steam.

what do you think when you hear the word SCANDAL?

you should think REPUBLICON.

WASHINGTON, June 15 - Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are examining $15,000 in payments to two Republican lobbyists last year that were not disclosed to the corporation's board, people involved in the inquiry said on Wednesday.

--nytimes

seems the the republicons once again amuse us with their shenanigans. they obviously think the teflon is built in when they sign their republicon oath pledges.

over and over and over and over we hear

that we are losing marines and other soliders, BECAUSE WE DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH TROOPS OVER THERE.

The NYT hangs out with the military in the usually insurgent-dominated northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar and describes it as stuck in a "cycle that has been repeated in rebellious cities throughout Iraq": GIs sweep in, drive away insurgents, and then leave, at which point the insurgents return. After the military's first offensive in the city, about 500 GIs stayed to patrol the border region, which is twice the size of Connecticut. The military is now back in force—though they still don't have enough soldiers to patrol outlying hamlets.

"We have a finite number of troops," the executive officer of the unit now overseeing Tal Afar told the NYT. "But if you pull out of an area and don't leave security forces in it, all you're going to do is leave the door open for them to come back. This is what our lack of combat power has done to us throughout the country."

--source

dr. frist, should have his license to practice revoked

although this is old news, new evidence of just how rich i could get if i was a patient of dr. frist, that senate majority leader who thinks he's going to be president next term, who literally makes my skin crawl. not to mention all the republicons must be wiping egg off their collective asses, i mean faces.

A piece inside the NYT does a retrospective on some of the statements made by Republican leaders back during the Schiavo saga. Said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist regarding Schiavo's persistent vegetative state, "I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office. She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli." According to the medical examiner who conducted autopsy, the "vision centers of her brain were dead."

my closing thought on nightline

i jus sat here and watched nightline (not something i do everynight and frankly, tonite was an aberration to the routine of things) with their program on child labor.

that we spend $40 billion a year on golf, and it would only take $4 billion a year to enroll every child into school, tells me that this is beyond bushite blame. this is human blame. harkin is a leader, and they interviewed him for the segment, which i thought was nice, and he was sincere in questioning our priorities.

then, i thought what would the rednecks say? "what do you want ME to do about it"... and rightly so. what can we do?

the obvious answer to that is donate money. i'm not up on which organization is best suited, but i'm sure it wouldn't take much on google to produce a good starting point.

but this is all lying in the new 'house' if you will, the vector of the planets must be having an effect on me. i've donated more in the last month or two, than i have in any other time of my life. i certainly don't have money to be 'throwing away' as some would put it, but i don't feel it is being thrown away.

take this kid i bought this candle from this afternoon. i'll bet i gave him that lift he probably deserved and made him stand up with confidence more, and hopefully garnered more sales. i wish there was a way of determining that. oh well, the best assistance is that from an anonymous source.

there is hope at last

just when you thought all the good-ness had left the hearts of the men (and women) in washington d.c., here we have a regular citizen, who happens to be republican, but not of the rabid type we've been seeing lately. listen to what he has to say:

I, for one, a moderate Republican who is disgusted with how the right-wing religious nuts have overruled the party, am thrilled with Senator McCain and his working to keep the filibuster and the rights of the minority party. The country is clearly on a downhill course right now with power hungry selfish brats running the White House and both chambers of Congress, using false morality and the ignorance of the religious masses to pass laws that clearly benefit themselves and their corporate sponsors, but have nothing to do with the people. Senator McCain is one of the few elected Republicans who is representing the people, all people, and doing what's right and not acting like a selfish brat. He should be praised for acting like a grown-up and not propagating the 2-word and 3-word expressions so commonly used by the Republicans to dupe the masses ("activist judges", "attack on marriage"). He is one of maybe a dozen Senators left with real character and values, who uses his power for the people and not to propagate his own career. He spends time working on solutions and not spreading lies and catch phrases. He is not a traitor, like some of the ignorant claim, he is truly an American hero.

--source

i'm no big john mccain fan, and i loathe at some of the things he has done in the past. but given that he still stands for what the republican party, like under reagan, used to stand for. i was a republican back then. everybody was, or stoned out. back then, the republican party stood for American values, the ones we cherish even today, and i say we by meaning most of the non-bushites. the followers of george bush jr. are the missing children of rev. moon. in fact, we even had some senators crown rev. moon IN THE SENATE building. don't believe me? listen for yourself. disgusting to say the least. that this would happen in America is of no surprise. that this would happen IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE BUILDING, is of surprise... oh wait, the bushites are in power, aren't they. *flip* so no, there's no surprise there.

is the secret out?

i don't remember seeing anything about the U.N. in the MASTER PLAN. or pnac as some would put it.

This week Congress will vote on a bill to expand the power of the United Nations beyond the dreams of even the most ardent left-wing, one-world globalists. But this time the UN power grabbers aren’t European liberals; they are American neo-conservatives, who plan to use the UN to implement their own brand of world government.

The “United Nations Reform Act of 2005” masquerades as a bill that will cut US dues to the United Nations by 50% if that organization does not complete a list of 39 reforms. On the surface any measure that threatens to cut funding to the United Nations seems very attractive, but do not be fooled: in this case reform “success” will be worse than failure. The problem is in the supposed reforms themselves-- specifically in the policy changes this bill mandates.

The proposed legislation opens the door for the United Nations to routinely become involved in matters that have never been part of its charter. Specifically, the legislation redefines terrorism very broadly for the UN’s official purposes-- and charges it to take action on behalf of both governments and international organizations.

This new policy is given teeth by creating a “Peacebuilding Commission,” which will serve as the implementing force for the internationalization of what were formerly internal affairs of sovereign nations. This Commission will bring together UN Security Council members, major donors, major troop contributing countries, appropriate United Nations organizations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund among others. This new commission will create the beginning of a global UN army. It will claim the right to intervene in any conflict anywhere on the globe, bringing the World Bank and the IMF formally into the picture as well. It is a complete new world order, but undertaken with the enthusiastic support of many of those who consider themselves among the most strident UN critics.

http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2005/tst061305.htm

no wonder they want bolton in there.

i always wondered just what accomplishments the reich-wing have to offer

and i get an answer from brian kennedy, who is running in iowa for ... for something, i dunno. and frankly, after hearing this, i don't care. but it gives me an insight into just what the reich's talking points are at the present time:

Under their collective leadership, they have reduced taxes, reformed Medicare, and provided the men and women in America’s armed forces the resources necessary to wage the war on terror and to defend the homeland.

--source

new zoundry

reinstalled zoundry. i jus couldn't handle the wait after posting. it was dogging me even as harmless as it was. i just hate waiting for something to happen when there shouldn't be any wait. the idea of having to deal with something i 'shouldn't have to' deal with is the core of this unsettling feeling. more on the premise that i either deal with this, or forget about getting what i wanted. and for some reason, blogging is superior to most other tasks i'm currently enrolled in.

DSM-WATCH

ORLANDO, Fla. - Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that Saddam Hussein had “long-established ties” with al-Qaida, an assertion that has been repeatedly challenged by some policy experts and lawmakers.

“He was a patron of terrorism,” Cheney said of Hussein during a speech before The James Madison Institute, a conservative think-tank based in Florida. “He had long established ties with al-Qaida.”

--source

YOU ARE A LIAR SIR

Two senior British government officials today acknowledged as authentic a series of 2002 pre-Iraq war memos stating that Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program was "effectively frozen" and that there was "no recent evidence" of Iraqi ties to international terrorism—private conclusions that contradicted two key pillars of the Bush administration's public case for the invasion in March 2003.

--source

MR. VICE PRESIDENT, WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA SO?

what is up with this? election jitters?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday defied President Bush by approving a measure making it harder for federal agents to secretly gather information on people's library reading habits and bookstore purchases.

--souce

well, i'll be dammed.

bill frist is a white fake christian, just like his buddy delay

they use religion whenever it suits them, then turn around and act like they never heard of God. they make my skin crawl. they talk like they own God, but act like they're in bed with the devil.

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) refused repeated requests for a roll call vote that would have put senators on the record on a resolution apologizing for past failures to pass anti-lynching laws, officials involved in the negotiations said Tuesday.

And there was disagreement Tuesday over whether Saxby Chambliss, one of Georgia's two Republican senators, had supported the measure when it was approved Monday night.

Bob Stevenson, Frist's chief spokesman, said Tuesday evening the procedure the majority leader established was "requested by the sponsors."

The chief sponsors of the resolution, Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and George Allen (R-Va.), disputed that assertion.
--ajc (registration required)

DSM-WATCH

a new series, that i think is gonna take off real soon now.

a picture on yahoo revealed:

U.S. Representative Walter Jones (news, bio, voting record) (R-NC) is seen in his office on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. June 15, 2005. Jones will co-sponsor legislation about calling for the truth regarding the Downing Street Memo and reasons how the U.S. got involved in Iraq. Reuters/Mannie Garcia

i'm gonna have to look at this mr. jones a bit more seriously. either he's a plant, or he's a real thing. stay tuned for the answer.

note to bob schieffer:

why are you not presenting the DSM to the public? why are you protecting this administration from being exposed to the truth?

why do you hate America?

mr. schiavo vindicated by autopsy

another victory for the 'left'

TAMPA, Fla. - In a victory for Michael Schiavo, a coroner who performed an autopsy on Terri Schiavo reported Wednesday that she suffered from an irreversible brain injury and would not have recovered as her parents insisted was possible.

--source

and because this is GAY PRIDE and MY BIRTHDAY comin up

i present the gay post of the month:

Can gay people be turned straight?

If you ask the Christian group, Love In Action, the answer is yes.

If you ask most mental health associations, they'd say no and that reparative therapy can be emotionally scarring.

But the parents of a Bartlett teenager hope that LIA will straighten out their son. Last Monday, these parents forced their son into LIA's youth program, Refuge, at the group's headquarters in a former church building in Raleigh.

Ordinarily, this wouldn't be news; lots of well-intentioned parents have sought to change their child's God-given sexuality.

But this Bartlett 16-year-old, who came out to his parents just weeks ago and whom I won't name, keeps a Weblog. Thousands around the world have been following his saga online.

"They [his parents] tell me that there is something psychologically wrong with me," he wrote on his blog May 29. "I'm a big screw up to them, who isn't on the path God wants me to be on. So I'm sitting here in tears... and I can't help it.

"I wish I had never told them. I wish I just fought the urge two more years... I had done it for three before then, right? If I could take it all back.. I would..."

LIA's director, John Smid, who says he's been free from the homosexual lifestyle, although not same-sex attractions, for 20 years, says it's not LIA's goal "to make sure clients never act out in homosexual relationships."

The mission, he says, is to help the teens make informed, honest decisions about their sexual choices, and to seek God's best for their life.

For Peterson Toscano, who put himself in LIA's adult program nearly 10 years ago, the best life is one free from the shame that reparative therapy programs inflict and a life of self-acceptance.

Today, after years of trying to reconcile his sexuality with his Christianity, he's confident in his salvation and his sexual identity as a gay man.

Toscano spent $30,000 and time on three continents trying to be straight. He got married (and divorced). He joined fundamentalist, then evangelical, then Pentecostal, and finally, charismatic churches. "I started trying to ramp up my experience, (thinking) that maybe a little more Holy Ghost would do it."

He volunteered in Ecuador with Exodus International, an organization that believes gay people can become straight.

He subjected himself to three exorcisms, including one by a Jamaican woman in New York City. "She was trying to drive out the spirits of homosexuality, lust and gluttony," he remembers. "It got broken up by the police because it was getting too loud."

The exorcism for homosexuality didn't -- couldn't -- take. In July 1996, Toscano moved to Memphis to enroll in LIA's adult program.

At a cost of $950 a month, Toscano, now 40, stayed in LIA's residential program for more than two years.

The rules dictated he shave every day, and stay out of the forbidden zones: Midtown, Downtown and anywhere west of Highland. In group therapy, clients were instructed to share their sexual thoughts and homosexual experiences in clinical terms. (Smid says the group sharing of sexual experiences is no longer a part of the therapy.)

Toscano says he was in a "biblically induced coma, with a toxic mixture of fear and shame."

"We had a mock funeral for a 19-year-old" also in the program, he says. "We actually laid him out on the table, so we could talk about what a shame he didn't live his life right."

While he was at LIA, a fellow client tried to kill himself.

It took Toscano, now a Quaker, 17 years of submitting to the ex-gay movement to realize that "there's nothing that can be done ... and nothing need be done" about his sexual identity.

"The big shift came when I stopped looking outward for direction and started looking inward," said Toscano, who has made a career, literally, about the years he spent trying to be straight. His time at LIA became a one-man play, "Doing Time in the Ho Mo No Mo Halfway House," which he performed at a Memphis church in 2003. "Fish Can't Fly," a film that includes his LIA experience, debuted at a gay/lesbian film festival in New York City Sunday.

He calls his play a "truth-telling piece about what I experienced. I let people make their own decision" about whether reparative therapy works or not.

For him, it didn't, and that's a good thing.

"The amazing thing for me is how comfortable I feel in my skin," he says.

"People who know me, and have known me over a couple years [say] it's so refreshing to see you as you."

--source (you have to register)

the spoils of war

from haaretz, we get to see how israel is tangled up in this messOpotamia (get it? "mess" o(f) potamia - off the river potomac)

The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.

The Prime Minister's Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a "bonus" the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram.
[[comment: "official telegram" is code for something else]]
The new pipeline would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel. The U.S. telegram included a request for a cost estimate for repairing the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use prior to 1948. During the War of Independence, the Iraqis stopped the flow of oil to Haifa and the pipeline fell into disrepair over the years.

israel's unequivocal support for the war is getting 40% of iraq's oil??

God tell me i read that wrong. it didn't say transport SOME, it said transport IT.

i'll have to search around and find out what the hell is going on here. but this certainly can't be a feather in our cap of winning hearts and minds of iraqis.

and given that israel blocked intel coming to the U.S. right before 9/11, one has to wonder, just how good a friend israel really is, and to whom its loyalties lie: bush or America. because they certainly can't be both.

you know what i think?

from the post, about bush meeting with dissidents:

"He likes to talk to people who have experienced these things firsthand," said Michael J. Gerson, Bush's strategic policy adviser, who sat in on the Kang meeting Monday. "But there clearly is a signal here and a symbol that human rights is central to our approach, that there is a kind of moral concern."

he wants a first person account of what it feels like, the grisly bastard, so that when he uses those techniques in gitmo and other secret prisons he's got stashed around the world, he'll know how much pain it really does inflict. he's a sick bastard. i know this from the bottom of my heart.

talk about corruption

from today's papers:

The NYT and WSJ mention that the Bush administration official who tinkered with a global-warming report—and resigned quietly last Friday night—has been hired by ExxonMobil, which has distinguished itself with its hard-line opposition to global-warming initiatives.

think what you want. i know what transpired here.
God these people make my skin crawl.

the perfect picture of how you can have a war when you WANT one

more british memos are surfacing, and it paints the best picture yet of how scheming and conniving these sons of bitches, who wanted war so bad they could already taste iraqi blood, acted.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fg-britmemos15jun15,0,4080933,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines

if ever there was a reason for us Americans to be shameful of our country, it was during the run-up to the invasion of iraq.

the best quote of the papers (and there are many good quotes to come from them) i found was this:

"The U.S. has lost confidence in containment," ... "Some in government want Saddam removed. The success of Operation Enduring Freedom [the military code name for the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan], distrust of U.N. sanctions and inspection regimes, and unfinished business from 1991 are all factors."

monkey see, monkey do

i can just see the criminals now: "well, Americans get to do it!"

KIRKUK, Iraq -- Police and security units, forces led by Kurdish political parties and backed by the U.S. military, have abducted hundreds of minority Arabs and Turkmens in this intensely volatile city and spirited them to prisons in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, government documents and families of the victims.

Seized off the streets of Kirkuk or in joint U.S.-Iraqi raids, the men have been transferred secretly and in violation of Iraqi law to prisons in the Kurdish cities of Irbil and Sulaymaniyah, sometimes with the knowledge of U.S. forces. The detainees, including merchants, members of tribal families and soldiers, have often remained missing for months; some have been tortured, according to released prisoners and the Kirkuk police chief.

The abductions have "greatly exacerbated tensions along purely ethnic lines" and endangered U.S. credibility, the nine-page cable, dated June 5, stated. "Turkmen in Kirkuk tell us they perceive a U.S. tolerance for the practice while Arabs in Kirkuk believe Coalition Forces are directly responsible."

--source

the busheviks forgot to tell these people: do as i say, not as i do. god they make me sick

more on that santorum donation for services rendered

rendered against the American people. i have just one question i'd like to ask most republicons: WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA?

WASHINGTON - Two days before Sen. Rick Santorum (news, bio, voting record) introduced a bill that critics say would restrict the National Weather Service, his political action committee received a $2,000 donation from the chief executive of AccuWeather Inc., a leading provider of weather data.
...
Combined, Joel Myers and his brother, Barry Myers, AccuWeather's executive vice president, have donated more than $11,000 to Santorum and the Republican Party since 2003, according to FEC filings compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine, a campaign finance tracking group.

Barry Myers said it was ridiculous to think there was a correlation between the "modest" donations and the filing of the bill.
...
Dan McLaughlin, press secretary for Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson (news, bio, voting record) of Florida, which is home to the weather service's National Hurricane Center, said the April 12 donation is suspect. Nelson has written to President Bush in opposition to the bill.

"It certainly raises questions about motivation as to why someone would push a policy that is so obviously crummy," McLaughlin said.

In his letter, Nelson said Santorum's bill would bar weather service forecasters from giving one-on-one interviews to media. He also said it could inhibit pilots' access to data the weather service provides to the Federal Aviation Administration online. When four hurricanes struck Florida last year, the weather service Web site received 9 billion hits, Nelson said.

--source
it's google's cache. for some reason yahoo took it off.

Letter Of The Day II

couldn't let this one slide without recognition.

The National Weather Service and the NOAA are government agencies fully funded by taxpayers' dollars. U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, the Senate's third-ranking Republican, has backed a bill that would restrict access to the weather information produced by these agencies to a few companies whose intent is to sell it at a profit. In other words, taxpayers will get to pay twice for the same weather report.

At least the guy that mugged me to steal my wallet had the decency to do it on a dark street and attempted to hide his identity with a ski mask. Republicans do it in broad daylight.
-Larry Wohlgemuth,
West Des Moines.

attribution

Letter Of The Day

If John Bolton is acceptable, who is unacceptable? Bolton is not about reforming the United Nations, but about drastically changing it from its original purposes - an instrument to get rid of war.

U.S. treatment of the United Nations is dangerously flawed. Both Democrats and Republicans have damaged the United Nations by sins of omission and commission. No nation has shaped the United Nations as decisively as the United States.

The administration's approach with the Bolton nomination is another effort to damage the United Nations so we can continue our self-fulfilling prophecy of the United Nations not working.
-Robert D. Williams,
Clarinda.

attribution

FINALLY. someone who gets it.

the networks are getting what they wanted

access to the whitehouse for filming.

as long as they went along with karl rove's agenda, they're cleared to film on location.

we'll have to wait and see how republicon they get with the red.

and of course, they're going to take credit

WASHINGTON -- Key Senate Republicans are considering gradually raising the Social Security retirement age as high as 69 over several years as they struggle to jump-start legislation that President Bush has placed atop his second-term agenda, officials said Tuesday.

--the post

didn't the dems first offer that as a starter for 'fixing' the social security 'problem'? what bastards.

another note to bob schieffer

why did you do such a bang up job on the dead soldiers' wives story, to followup with something about someone NObody knows?

ACTION ALERT!

whenever i use ACTION ALERT! in the subject, it will always concern something happening on the hill that requires contacting your representatives that you are unhappy with how our elected officials are acting. that link will provide you with the opportunity to contact your representatives. actions like what we're witnessing now in an effort to silence the truth, must be confronted and defeated. we can not let history repeat itself.

If the Financial Services Committee is the best in the House when it comes to bipartisan comity, then the Judiciary Committee may well be the worst.

In December, ranking Democrat John Conyers (Mich.) began holding “forums” — gatherings with all the trappings of official hearings — after Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) refused to hold hearings on topics Conyers requested. The forums have been held in smaller committee rooms, often with C-SPAN coverage and formal witness lists.

In a sign of how far relationships on the committee have soured, majority staff recently announced a new policy to deny any request from a committee Democrat for the use of a committee hearing room.

Majority spokesman Jeff Lungren said the Republicans have given Democrats three opportunities to make clear that the forums are not official committee business. Nevertheless, Lungren said, in at least one case, members were addressing Conyers as “Mr. Chairman.”

“They were unwilling or unable to make those changes,” Lungren said. “At this point, if they want to hold these forums, they’ll have to find some other place to do it.”
--the hill

hm, two senators living together ....

caught this just now while reading about (mostly democratic) senators being so rich.

Another possible Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Sam Brownback (news, bio, voting record) of Kansas, has a blind trust worth $1 million-$5 million as well as bank accounts, stock and a 335-acre grain farm in Linn County in the eastern part of Kansas. The farm generated $7,530 in income last year.

As a fallback, Brownback owns a Washington, D.C., condominium and he rents a room to fellow Republican Sen. Jim Talent (news, bio, voting record) of Missouri, at a cost of $2,500-$5,000 annually.

even at $5,000 annually, that's only $416.66 a month.

WHERE in D.C. can you get a room for THAT?

i'll bet you can find one if you can pick out which one is the top?

brownback - talent

DSM: the memo

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html

you mean were were LIED TO??

seems the notion that madrassas breed terrorism, is as wrong as the notion that we went to war legitimately.

We examined the educational backgrounds of 75 terrorists behind some of the most significant recent terrorist attacks against Westerners. We found that a majority of them are college-educated. Of the 75, only nine had attended madrassas, and all of those played a role in one attack—the Bali bombing. Even in this instance, however, five college-educated "masterminds"—including two university lecturers—helped to shape the Bali plot.

Like the view that poverty drives terrorism—a notion that countless studies have debunked—the idea that madrassas are incubating the next generation of terrorists offers the soothing illusion that desperate, ignorant automatons are attacking us rather than college graduates, as is often the case. While madrassas are an important issue in education and development in the Muslim world, they are not and should not be considered a threat to the United States.

source