Pin up girls for an asymmetrical war

Jesus General writes a letter to President Bush urging him to use the Bush Twins as pin-up girls to help ease our troops stress levels in fighting for our freedom.

Adama Bah - Outrage in New York

via All Spin Zone

...It began with two 16-year-old immigrant girls arrested at dawn, detained far from home, and, in a chilling government assertion, called would-be suicide bombers who posed “an imminent threat to the security of the United States.”

But now, after holding the girls for six weeks in a Pennsylvania detention center, the government has quietly released one of the girls and is allowing the other to leave the country with her family...

My daughter turns 18 on Monday. As a parent, I inherently know how it would have affected her (and me) for life to have something similar happen to her at 16. Six weeks in detention, five minutes each week speaking with her mother on the phone, the rest in the hands of the government that brought you Abu Ghraib.

Yes, this is outrageous beyond words - but it begs the question - how many more 16 year old girls are being currently held on U.S. soil under similar circumstances?

"You know, being stalked isn't really a big turn-on for girls." Yes! A feminist mashup of Buffy vs. Edward:

Racism stands tall!

They are calling them the baby faced robbers.

Police in Ohio are searching for two brazen girls, believed to be as young as 12 and 14, who robbed a bank in a Cincinnati suburb and escaped a police dragnet that included a helicopter and dogs.

The baby faced bank robbers, one believed to be 12 years old and the other 14 or 15, entered the 1st National Bank in Symmes Township, "walked up to the bank teller, and gave the teller a note demanding money," Steve Barnett, spokesman for the Hamilton County Sherriff's Office, said in a statement.

Neither of the girls carried a weapon, but "the teller gave the suspects an undetermined amount of U.S. currency," according to Barnett.

The bank was robbed at 3:19 p.m. There was one teller, but no customers in the bank at time. No one was injured. The girls were last seen fleeing in a easterly direction from the bank.

The girls weren't taller than five foot four. Talk about an easy robbery. Didn't they have to fill out a withdrawal slip at least to get the cash? Things just keep getting weirder and weirder.

MediaBloodhound: Mark Danner schools David Gergen on CIA torture

Overruled: Wingers Gone Wild!  Internecine warfare breaking out

Suicide Girls: Medieval Tea Party

Connecting.the.Dots: Unbundling Health Care Derivatives

Our Rants & Raves!: It's Time to be Serious About Climate Change (h/t Papamoka Straight Talk)

Street Prophets: Wankers of the Day

(h/t David Stephenson) In many communities in Africa, children can't attend school without a school uniform and are even chased away if they try to go to school without a uniform. Often girls don't get the opportunity to attend school that boys get, without support from outside organizations. Read more at The Girl Effect dot org.

Open thread below.

Robert Somma (pictured left) a Bush-appointed federal judge was in full drag when he was arrested for DUI after rear ending a pickup truck in New Hampshire on February 6th:

"He had a difficult time locating his license in his purse. He passed over it multiple times before removing it," officer Paul J. Thompson wrote in his report.

Local news reports mention that Judge Somma resigned after pleading guilty to drunken driving. Other than the gay press, no one mentioned the black evening gown and fishnet stockings. Read on...

Howie was all over another story that isn't so lighthearted. Robert McKee(pictured right), a Maryland Republican Delegate, anti-child porn crusader and former bigwig in Mitt Romney's MD campaign was arrested after police found kiddie porn at his Hagerstown home:

Law enforcement authorities, both the FBI and county sheriff's office, who are conducting a child pornography investigation, seized two computers, videotapes and printed materials when they searched the Republican's home in Hagerstown 2 weeks ago.

You think? McKee was sponsored Maryland's Child Protection From Predators Act and a proposal to collect DNA samples from sexual predators. He also sponsored several other sexual offender and child abduction bills in the past. None of the reports coming out of Maryland so far have indicated whether it was little girls or little boys-- or both-- who the Republican was interested in. He's been very active in the Little League and, predictably, was a chaplain for the First Christian Church, a position Republican child predators often use to seduce young children. Read on...

National Security Network:

A fact check from the National Security Network on President Bush's State of the Union comments regarding Afghanistan show the country is still in a state of disrepair. Bush claimed that:

A nation that was once a safe haven for al Qaida is now a young democracy where boys and girls are going to school, new roads and hospitals are being built, and people are looking to the future with new hope.

On each point, Bush is absolutely wrong...Read on...

What were you expecting? Reality and truth from George W. Bush?

The WaPo reported the other day that at least 14 states have “either notified the federal government that they will no longer be requesting [sex education] funds or are not expected to apply,” because the Bush administration mandates abstinence-only lessons in public schools receiving the funding.

“We’re concerned about this,” said Stan Koutstaal of the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the program. “My greatest concern about states dropping out is that these are valuable services and programs. It’s the youths in these states who are missing out.”

Actually, that’s backwards. The youths are better off with actual sex-ed.

Teenagers who have had formal sex education are far more likely to put off having sex, contradicting earlier studies on the effectiveness of such programs, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

They found teenage boys who had sex education in school were 71 percent less likely to have intercourse before age 15, and teen girls who had sex education were 59 percent less likely to have sex before age 15.

Sex education also increased the likelihood that teen boys would use contraceptives the first time they had sex, according to the study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Whaddaya know; giving young people reliable, accurate information about sexual health leads to safer, more responsible behavior. Maybe someone get pass word along to the Bush administration.