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• Whoa, whoa... I'm starting to get a funny feeling in my pants... I haven't felt this way since 2003... what could it be? Oh God! OOOOHHH GOD, YES!!! WE MIGHT HAVE ANOTHER WAR!!!! YESYESYES!!!! OOOOOOOHHHHH GOD!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

  *pant, pant*

  So, Iran, was that as good for you as it was for me?

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(h/t E)

File this under our nominee for dumbass criminal of the year:

Topeka Police Department officers responded to the KWIK Shop at 4500 S. Topeka Blvd reference an armed robbery. An individual making a delivery to the business called 911 and reported the robbery. A description of the suspect and a vehicle involved was provided to the 911 operator.

The vehicle involved in the robbery was described as white stretch Hummer Limousine last seen east bound on SE 45th Street. An officer traveling west bound on SE 45th prior to the robbery being dispatched past the vehicle at SE 45th and Adams. The vehicle was located in the area of SE 37th and California where the suspect was taken into custody without incident.

Open thread below...

More and more information is coming out about Scott Brown. Greg Sargent finds this very troubling vote he took after the 9/11 attacks. This shows the character of the man.

One month after the September 11th attacks, Scott Brown was one of only three Massachusetts State Representatives to vote against a bill to provide financial assistance to Red Cross workers who had volunteered with 9/11 recovery efforts, we’ve learned.

The Brown campaign acknowledged the vote to us, claiming the measure would have taxed already-strained state finances.

The 9/11 attacks flared as an issue in the Massachusetts race today. The NRSC sharply criticized Democrat Martha Coaxley over a DSCC ad, first reported by Politico, that flashed an image of the Twin Towers. Rudy Giuliani, who stumped for Brown today, also slammed Coakley over the ad, saying it was “unthinkable” and “offensive.”

On October 17th, 2001, Brown voted against a bill that would authorize “leaves of absence for certain Red Cross employees participating in Red Cross emergencies.” The bill gave 15 days of paid leave each year to state workers called up by the Red Cross to respond to disasters. At the time, state workers called for such emergencies were required to use sick and vacation days.

The bill was initially filed before 9/11, and after the attacks, it was made retroactive to 9/11, covering the time spent by state workers who’d assisted with 9/11 recovery work for the Red Cross. Brown’s vote against the measure came a little more than a month after the attack.

You can read the bill and the roll call right here.

Brown spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom justified the vote by pointing to the state’s fiscal straits. “At the time, the state was in a fiscal crisis and facing a deficit, and there was no money to spend on additional pay and benefits for state employees,” Fehrnstrom emailed.

Right---sure--OK.

Americablog writes:

Um, I don't seem to remember any other politician crying poverty in the weeks after 9/11. And, the vote was 148 - 3. Brown was one of those three. Classy guy. He'd fit right in with Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint and David Vitter. He can't win on Tuesday.

The Political Carnival writes:

How's that Noun, Verb, 9/11 thing going for you now, Rudy? Bringing Giuliani in to slam Coakley on terrorism should be enough to disqualify Brown from holding office. Bringing him on anything should prove Scotty's mental incompetence.

Jed Lewison adds:

So in the aftermath of worst terror attack in American history, Scott Brown put his right-wing vision of fiscal austerity ahead of helping the nation's recovery efforts. That's pretty much the definition of radical conservativism -- and it reflects the exact opposite of the values that Ted Kennedy fought for his entire life.

There you go. That Scott Brown is some kinda guy.

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Anyone who is aware of all Internet traditions has by now seen the footage of Barney Frank taking down the Larouchie who asked him if he would support a "Nazi policy" by asking her, "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" But Rep. Frank was in rare form that night, standing up to the uninformed shrieking of the right and offering a real lesson in how to argue with conservatives. Rep. Frank's office provided C&L with the tapes of that town hall meeting in Dartmouth from last week, and I put together a sort of greatest hits reel.

Frank explains what deficit hawks should concern themselves with:

"I am struck by those who say, well, you don't care about the deficit. No, I do. I do care about the deficit. That's one of the reasons, not the only one, why I voted against the single most wasteful expenditure in the history of America. The Iraq war. If we hadn't gone to the war in Iraq, which I thought was a terrible mistake and voted against, we would have had more than enough money to pay for health care."

He argues with a "tenther" who thinks that Congress isn't authorized to provide health care for their citizens:

Frank: Do you think Medicare is unconstitutional, sir?

Teabagger: I think that Medicare needs to be reformed.

Frank: Do you think it's unconstitutional? You said that the Constitution doesn't give us the authority to do it, but Medicare was done. And, do you think Medicare is unconstitutional?

Teabagger: I think that Medicare needs to be reformed.

Frank: But you won't tell me whether you think it's unconstitutional, which you said--

Teabagger: I am not a Constitutional scholar-

Frank: Then why did you start off arguing about the Constitution?

That's really a fantastic exchange, where Frank digs an inch below the surface and finds nothing. He insists on having this questioner back up the rhetoric he cribbed off of Free Republic or wherever he got it, and the guy just couldn't do it.

And this is my favorite part:

Teabagger: Can you pledge to all of us here tonight, that if a new government single-payer system is instituted, that you will opt out of your Cadillac insurance?

Frank: Yes I am in favor of single payer, and that's why I like Medicare. (yelling) You act as if you people have discovered it is August. I have been a co-sponsor of the single payer bill, I think it would be better...

Teabagger #2: But we watch tapes of Obama and everyone else secretly say they're in favor of an eventual single pay system.

Frank: I haven't... sir, it's been 21 years since I've had a secret. (Laughter) And I don't have one now! You have discovered that I'm for single payer! I've been a sponsor of single payer for years!

What you see here is several things: 1) Rep. Frank is always in control; 2) he concedes nothing; 3) he allows his opponents to hang themselves with the outlandish logic of their own claims; 4) he knows when to throw in a well-timed bon mot. At one point, Frank says, "When you say things that people can't refute, they try to drown you out. That's understandable." That's someone who is confident in their beliefs. Democrats could learn something from that.

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We already pointed out this audio recording of the 911 call placed by the lone survivor of that botched home-invasion robbery carried out by Shawna Forde and her gang of Minutemen. But further listening reveals a number of details about the crime.

It begins simply:

"Somebody just came in and shot my daughter and my husband."

The dispatcher begins asking questions and obviously dispatches deputies to respond. As she's asking about the killers, the victim cries out:

"They're coming back in! They're coming back in!"

An exchange of gunfire ensues. When the woman comes back on the line, she explains:

"They told us that somebody had, um, escaped jail or something and they wanted to come in and look at my house or something. And they just shot my husband. And they shot my daughter and they shot me."

"... Oh my God, I can't believe they killed my family."

She explains that the killers walked up cold-bloodedly to her daughter, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores, as she cowered and cried, and shot her two or three times anyway.

Later in the call she tells the dispatcher that the shooting began when her husband became suspicious of the invaders and asked them about their guns.

We also learn that the shooters were two men -- both tall, one white with a painted face, the other Latino -- and a "shorter fat woman."

That very much describes the gang that was arrested this week.

Scott North and Jackson Holz have more details on the tape.

Vivir Latino points out that there's been a disturbing theme in some of the coverage -- suggesting that perhaps the family somehow had it coming:

Something that tends to happen when the media covers these types of horrors, is double victimization. In an effort to answer the question why, subtleties, like how immigration has been racialized and how Latinos, painted as immigrants, are criminalized and dehumanized, get swept under the rug.

It certainly does raise the question: Why are the media paying so little attention to this story? Are they still wedded to their favorite narrative, that the Minutemen are just some big "neighborhood watch"?

As we said, that's some neighborhood watch.

I guess they're too busy covering that all-important David Letterman protest.

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Lawyers, Guns and Money: I'm really sick and tired of the Villagers and their pro-torture buffoonery.  Just a few years ago, they were leading the mob in this political witchhunt.  But today, they, and the old "Rule of Law" crowd, are entirely ready to ignore this, even though torture has probably killed more Americans than 9/11.

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