The General has a few snap shots of Paul Gorley, the new chairman of the College Republicans taking communion.

I cross-posted at Operation Yellow Elephant on 8/4

Thou Shall Not Suck

Subject: An investigation that was supposed to look into the expenses of first-grade-teacher/plumbing-company-owner turned biologist/zoologist/anthropologist/paleontologist Connie Morris, who averaged $600 a day for a trip to Miami.

Hypothesis: The KBoE has lost it’s collective fucking mind.

Evidence: This is outstanding (use to view).
 
Remarks: You’ve got to read this:

Despite criticism of one member over her expenses during a Florida convention, a State Board of Education subcommittee decided Monday against proposing changes in board travel policies.
 
Board member Connie Morris, of St. Francis, was criticized last month because her trip in April to Miami for a six-day conference on magnet schools cost Kansas taxpayers nearly $3,600.
[emphasis added]

So what’s the problem?

But the subcommittee—whose three members include Morris—decided against recommending revisions to the full board, which was scheduled to take up the issue Tuesday. bugmenot to view).

Remarks: You’ve got to read this:

Despite criticism of one member over her expenses during a Florida convention, a State Board of Education subcommittee decided Monday against proposing changes in board travel policies.

Board member Connie Morris, of St. Francis, was criticized last month because her trip in April to Miami for a six-day conference on magnet schools cost Kansas taxpayers nearly $3,600.
[emphasis added]

So what’s the problem?

But the subcommittee—whose three members include Morris—decided against recommending revisions to the full board, which was scheduled to take up the issue Tuesday.
[emphasis again added]

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. The three-member (insert penis joke here) panel that looked into the expenses included Morris?? That’s like having a trial where the defendant is also one of the jurors.

“There has to be some latitude for different expenses in different parts of the country," said subcommittee Chairman Ken Willard, of Hutchinson, a conservative.

“Not guilty, ya honor!”
 
She averaged $600 a day! How much latitude are you going to give a person? Hell, I’ve had three meals in a 4-star restaurant, drained an entire mini-bar in a 5-star hotel, and STILL not been able to ring up that kind of bill. And we know she wouldn’t do that—according to her bio, she’s a born-again Christian. Of course, that sure does explain a lot.

[…]
Morris' expenses included $339 a night for a room at the hotel where the convention was held. She said no cheaper rooms at the hotel were available when she registered for the conference. She also wanted to avoid walking from another hotel to conference events.
[emphasis again added]

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. The three-member (insert penis joke here) panel that looked into the expenses included Morris?? That’s like having a trial where the defendant is also one of the jurors.

“There has to be some latitude for different expenses in different parts of the country," said subcommittee Chairman Ken Willard, of Hutchinson, a conservative.

“Not guilty, ya honor!”

She averaged $600 a day! How much latitude are you going to give a person? Hell, I’ve had three meals in a 4-star restaurant, drained an entire mini-bar in a 5-star hotel, and STILL not been able to ring up that kind of bill. And we know she wouldn’t do that—according to her bio, she’s a born-again Christian. Of course, that sure does explain a lot.

[…]
Morris' expenses included $339 a night for a room at the hotel where the convention was held. She said no cheaper rooms at the hotel were available when she registered for the conference. She also wanted to avoid walking from another hotel to conference events.

So she fleeced Kansas taxpayers because she: a.) didn’t get off her ass and book her room in time; and b.) didn’t want to walk across the street? After looking at her picture, my guess is that she could probably use the exercise.

She said little during Monday's meeting …

Apparently she’s not totally retarded …

… but in the past has suggested criticism of her is political and part of the board's ongoing dispute over how evolution is taught.

Actually, I think it has more to do with the fact that she ripped off the people of Kansas. Granted, what she did was not technically against the rules, but it sure as hell is ethically questionable. Although, that’s never stopped her before ...

Morris upset moderate board members last month with a newsletter to constituents describing evolution as "an age-old fairy tale" and criticizing other board members by name.

In other words, it’s okay for her to attack other board members, but when the tables are turned, it’s wrong.

So she fleeced Kansas taxpayers because she: a.) didn’t get off her ass and book her room in time; and b.) didn’t want to walk across the street? After looking at her picture, my guess is that she could probably use the exercise.

She said little during Monday's meeting …

Apparently she’s not totally retarded …

… but in the past has suggested criticism of her is political and part of the board's ongoing dispute over how evolution is taught.

Actually, I think it has more to do with the fact that she ripped off the people of Kansas. Granted, what she did was not technically against the rules, but it sure as hell is ethically questionable. Although, that’s never stopped her before ...

Morris upset moderate board members last month with a newsletter to constituents describing evolution as "an age-old fairy tale" and criticizing other board members by name.

In other words, it’s okay for her to attack other board members, but when the tables are turned, it’s wrong.

The subcommittee also was directed to review policies saying that board members are supposed to treat each other with courtesy and not let debates lapse into personal attacks. The subcommittee decided those policies already are clear.

Fucking hypocrites.
 
Conclusion: You would think that the Department of Education would want to teach kids good ethics by example. Of course, you’d be wrong.
 
Solution: Send the entire school board a copy of this.

Debunking Rove Spin         That Colored Fellas weblog

The subcommittee also was directed to review policies saying that board members are supposed to treat each other with courtesy and not let debates lapse into personal attacks. The subcommittee decided those policies already are clear.

Fucking hypocrites.

Conclusion: You would think that the Department of Education would want to teach kids good ethics by example. Of course, you’d be wrong.

Solution: Send the entire school board a copy of this.

The moistened lips of victory

Jesus General's newest letter to the Nathan Taylor, Chairman of Young Republicans National Committee is priceless.

Dear Mr. Taylor, I was shocked by the news that dangerous leftists are planning to infiltrate your convention and attack your veterans exhibit. Kudos to you for discovering their despicable plot...read on"

---------------------------

You have to read Taylor's response to the leftists attacks. "The e-mails label the Convention attendees as “repuglicans” and “Wingnuts” and call upon fellow leftists to focus their protests on “a panel discussion with recently returned Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.”

Notice how Taylor lies and tries to say that the lefties are attacking the panel because our troops are there. Again this is priceless. The Special Ops are working.

Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6; John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee; and Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of defence staff. Dearlove, who had just returned from Washington, said “military action was now seen as inevitable . . . the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action”. Straw agreed with Dearlove. He said Bush had “made up his mind to take military action. But the case was thin”.

The Flawed Report on Dan Rather

By James C. Goodale

(Adjunct Professor at Fordham Law School, is the former Vice Chairman and General Counsel of The New York Times and represented the newspaper in the Pentagon Papers case. He is Host/Producer of the TV program The Digital Age. An earlier version of the article in this issue appeared in the New York Law Journal. (April 2005)
Report of the Independent Review Panel on the September 8, 2004 60 Minutes Wednesday Segment "For the Record" Concerning President Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service...read on

The Culture Wars End Today

from ASZ: DOCTOR Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader, makes a bullshit eighth-hand medical diagnosis for the media, and the TASS-US stenos dutifully lap it up. DOCTOR Howard Dean, newly elected chairman of the DNC, says nothing publicly.

The hypocrisy is stunning. Liz at Blondesense comments this morning:

Bush is changing his plans this weekend to rush to sign emergency legislation that might save Terry Schiavo's life if he can get federal judges to rule on this case. This from a man who had no problem signing a law to allow hospitals to pull life support from patients whose bennies had run out, were probably less sick than Schiavo and of course were of the brown skinned persuasion. This from the culture of life man who signed more execution orders than any other governor. This from the man who started a goddamned war in Iraq dragging young men and women from America to fight for his whimsy, get killed or mutilated and then shaft them...

The most absurd thing is that this is no longer about Terri Schiavo. You know it and I know it. It's about unbridled abuse of power. It's one of the final shots in the culture war for the collective soul of America.

And we lost.

Don't just take my word for it, either. Here's a learned legal opinion:

...Look, there is no other way to put it: this is the most blatant and egregious power-grab by one branch over another in my lifetime. Congress is intruding so far into the power of the judiciary, on behalf of a single family, that it is breathtaking.

USA Next accused of stealing photo of gay couple for anti-AARP ad campaign

via AmericaBlog

WASHINGTON, DC - Conservative front organization USA Next was accused today of illegally using a gay couple’s wedding photo in an anti-gay ad campaign supporting President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security.

The couple in the photo, Richard M. Raymen and Steven P. Hansen of Portland, Oregon, have come forward through an attorney to demand that USA Next stop using their image, and that the organization publicly apologize for using their image in a homophobic and libelous way. The demand, contained in a letter sent today to USA Next Chairman and CEO Charles Jarvis, references the couples’ right to seek damages for the misappropriation of their image.

Swifties Slime Again

Dowd

Instead of trying to destroy AARP, Republicans should be signing up the seniors' lobby to find Osama.

AARP's super-relentless intelligence network is certainly better than that doddering C.I.A's. Osama has to have turned 50, and AARP somehow knows where everyone who has turned 50 lives.

It began with an almost comically hyperbolic Internet ad that briefly ran on The American Spectator's Web site, painting AARP as pro-gay sex - even though it's tough to think of AARP and steamy lust in the same hot breath - and anti-soldier. It showed a soldier with a red X across him, and two gay men kissing at their nuptuals, with the headline "The REAL AARP Agenda."

(Mr. Jarvis, who used to be executive vice president of James Dobson's Focus on the Family, also urged his Web site readers to "support Mel Gibson's 'The Passion.' " The group's national chairman is Art Linkletter; it seems that aging right-wing trash-talkers say the darndest things.) read on

NBC Sports Chief Survives Plane Crash

By P. SOLOMON BANDA, Associated Press Writer

DENVER - A charter plane carrying NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol crashed and burst into flames during takeoff from a southwest Colorado airport Sunday, killing at least two people and seriously injuring Ebersol and one of his sons. Rescue crews were searching for another son.

Dick Ebersol, 57, and son Charles Ebersol survived the crash at the Montrose Regional Airport outside this southwest Colorado town, NBC said in a statement through its Denver affiliate KUSA-TV.

Eyewitness Chuck Distel told The Associated Press by phone that Charles, a college senior, helped his father out through the front of the plane, whose cockpit had been ripped off by the force of the crash. read