And I Say It Began In The Garden Of Eden...Our New Issue from Hullabaloo

This could be the one, folks, where we prove our bona fides to the red states:

A suburban American school board found itself in court Monday after it tried to placate Christian fundamentalist parents by placing a sticker on its science textbooks saying evolution was "a theory, not a fact."

Atlanta's Cobb County School Board, the second largest board in Georgia, added the sticker two years ago after a 2,300-strong petition attacked the presentation of "Darwinism unchallenged." Some parents wanted creationism -- the theory that God created humans as related in the Bible -- to be taught alongside evolution. The board says the stickers were motivated by a desire to establish a greater understanding of different viewpoints. "They improve the curriculum, while also promoting an attitude of tolerance for those with different religious beliefs," said Linwood Gunn, a lawyer for Cobb County schools.

The controversy began when the school board's textbook selection committee ordered $8 million worth of the science books in March 2002. Marjorie Rogers, a parent who does not believe in evolution, protested and petitioned the board to add a sticker and an insert setting out other explanations for the origins of life. "It is unconstitutional to teach only evolution," she said. "The school board must allow the teaching of both theories of origin."

Liberals bi-coastal elites once again show that they don't have proper respect for middle America by insisting that science and religion are two different subjects. Until we learn to stop condescending and quit showing this kind of contempt for heartland beliefs we will lose.

Again, I say this should be OUR issue. Let's run on a national pro-creationism ticket in 2006. Then maybe they will let us back into America. So what else is new? We are dealing with an absolutist culture that demands total capitulation or nothing. Compromise will not work and it certainly will not work on these "values" issues. (Indeed, I think it's part of what makes us look weak to some other factions who might be willing to vote for us.) This is the same old shit over and over and over again. We backed off on the death penalty, gun control, welfare, affirmative action and here we are with a new slate of issues about gays. Tomorrow it will be creationism. Until we realize that their condition is that we FULLY EMBRACE their cultural dominance in both word and deed, they will not be satisfied.

It is not enough that they be left alone to do what they choose. We must join them and do it thoroughly and with fervor. No amount of tweaking will work. Their real beef is psychological and tribal. Issues are fungible.

The U.S. Attorney Purge scandal may be over, but the Bush administration hasn’t changed its habit of ridding itself of those guilty of independent thinking.

The battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region [of Michigan] had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up.

On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade’s interactions with Dow, the administration forced her to quit as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Midwest office, based in Chicago.

We’ve learned quite a bit in recent days about the White House interfering with EPA regulations on dioxin contamination, but it’s especially bold, even for the Bush gang, to fire the one career official who was looking out for the public’s interests.

For the past year, Gade has been locked in a heated dispute with Dow about long-delayed plans to clean up dioxin-saturated soil and sediment that extends 50 miles beyond its Midland, Mich., plant into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. […]

Though regional EPA administrators typically have wide latitude to enforce environmental laws, Gade drew fire from officials in Washington last month after she sent contractors to test soil in a Saginaw neighborhood where Dow had found high dioxin levels.

Michigan Environmental Council President Lana Pollack called Gade a “woman of unquestioned credentials and integrity who was doing her job enforcing our environmental laws.”

In this administration, that’s not a compliment.

Download | play Download | play (h/t BillW)

Houston Chronicle:

CNN said it shouldn't have used a former U.S. attorney who quit his job after allegedly biting a stripper as an analyst about New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's prostitution scandal.

No mention of Kendall Coffey's past was made when anchor Tony Harris interviewed him Tuesday on the legal questions surrounding Spitzer's case. Coffey quit his job in May 1996 after being accused of biting a topless dancer on the arm during a visit to an adult club after losing a big drug case.

Coffey talked on CNN about what kind of charges the New York governor could face. Spitzer is accused of having a high-priced call girl visit his hotel room during a visit to Washington last month.

While Coffey's past is known to CNN's booking department, it wasn't to the person who set up Harris' segment. CNN spokesman Nigel Pritchard blamed a "miscommunication."

"Coffey has been a guest on CNN in the past but was probably not the right one for this story," Pritchard said.

Oopsie! It's a little like having Bill "Phone sex with a loofah" O'Reilly lecture you about moral rectitude.

f-brilliant:

KKOB Radio afternoon drive time news anchor Laura MacCallum quit her job last Thursday after the station’s news director pulled her stories about alleged vote-buying efforts at the recent Bernalillo County Republican Party delegate nominating conventions.

MacCallum, a 32-year radio and TV news veteran who has worked in Chicago, Denver and Los Angeles, said the station caved to complaints from Congresswoman Heather Wilson’s Senate campaign about the stories. Wilson campaign spokeswoman Whitney Cheshire called the station to argue the unfairness of stories alleging that many delegates to the ward conventions were paid by Wilson’s and other campaigns to show up and cast their votes for certain delegates.

Critics of the alleged vote-buying effort say it was an unfair scheme to lock out any challengers to Wilson’s senate and Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White’s congressional campaigns

KKOB News Director Pat Allen said the stories were pulled, not because of the campaign’s complaints, but because he felt they lacked corroboration and that a source in some of MacCallum’s stories, former New Mexico Governor Dave Cargo, was bitter because he wasn’t elected as a delegate to the upcoming state Republican Party nominating convention.

But here's the best part: one of the reasons cited by the station manager for not running the story is because it "would have been picked up by bloggers" and other news agencies if it was valid.

We know that Heather Wilson has been guilty of placing pressure on the US Attorney's office in the past, it's certainly within her character to try to squelch a story like this, which could cost her her seat.

CNN did a little piece on the history of Larry Flynt's outing of the lying liars in the Republican Congress who claim to be men of high morals and then cheat on their own...Several quit...Will Vitter be the next "family values" hypocrite to go?

Download | play Download | play (h/t Scarce)

Flynt: Payback is a bitch.

Hannity was crying last night about Larry as a way to shift the blame from the cheating Republicans to Flynt... Remember Bob Livingston during the Clinton days?

House Speaker-elect Bob Livingston, reeling from the admission of his own marital infidelities, stunned Washington Saturday by announcing he would not run for speaker when the 106th Congress convenes next month and will quit the House in mid-1999.

Given his actions since leaving Congress, is this a surprise to anyone?

ABC News:

A former Georgia congressman who helped spark President Clinton's impeachment has quit the Republican Party to become a Libertarian, saying he is disillusioned with the GOP on issues such as spending and privacy.

Bob Barr, who served eight years as a Republican congressman before losing his seat in 2002, announced Friday that he is now a "proud, card-carrying Libertarian." And he encouraged others to join him.

"It's something that's been bothering me for quite some time, the direction in which the party has been going more and more toward big government and disregard toward privacy and civil liberties," said Barr, 58, a lawyer and consultant living in Atlanta. "In terms of where the country needs to be going to get back to our constitutional roots ... I've come to the conclusion that the only way to do that is to work with a party that practices what it preaches, and that is the Libertarian Party." Read on...

I posted many times about the insane Vernon Robinson ads during the run-up to the November election. He got his ass handed to him by a wonderful progressive---Brad Miller:
Miller (D) 64 96,892
Robinson (R) 36 55,324

Kos tells us that he may quit the world of politics.

"I've been continuously on the campaign trail since 2001. It's getting old," Robinson told The Associated Press. "You never say never, but I don't have any future political plans." [...]

During a victory speech at state party headquarters Tuesday night, Miller mocked his opponent's political history, telling Robinson to take some advice from late comedian W.C. Fields.

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit," the congressman told a crowd of laughing supporters.

Helps if you hold session more than two days a week, fellas. Of course, then you'd have less of a mess to blame on Democrats, wouldn't you?

Yahoo News:

Republicans vacating the Capitol are dumping a big spring cleaning job on Democrats moving in. GOP leaders have opted to leave behind almost a half-trillion-dollar clutter of unfinished spending bills.

[..]The bulging workload that a Republican-led Congress was supposed to complete this year but is instead punting to 2007 promises to consume time and energy that Democrats had hoped to devote to their own agenda upon taking control of Congress in January for the first time in a dozen years.

Continue reading »

I wish my headline was just hyperbole, but it's not: it's the truth.

A minor blog outed one of the victims of Mark Foley's sexual predations. This violation of an abused kid's privacy was immediately linked and given heavy Internet traffic by leading right-wing bloggers Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit and Roger L. Simon of Pajamas Media.

Pajamas is so disgraced by this act that they should immediately close their doors. Since they won't, its few remaining liberal members should quit immediately.

As for the right-wing, what can I say? This act is vile beyond description.

It's stunning, isn't it? There is literally no act of evil that the Right isn't willing to perpetrate to keep itself in power. There's more on the GOP as the Party of the Devil here.
(via Atrios)

Say what you will about Charlie Rangel, but the guy's willing to put his career where his mouth is.

Rep. Charles Rangel, a powerful senior Democrat in Congress and the dean of New York's congressional delegation, said Wednesday that he'll quit Congress if the Democrats don't retake control of the House this year.

"I'm a poker player and I've had good hands all night long. This is all in," Rangel said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I would not put everything on the table if I thought for one minute we would lose." [...]

"Hell, if we don't take back the House, then the Democrats would go down in history, saying that there's no group in the world that can grab defeat from the jaws of victory," Rangel said. "It just seems like America is so frustrated and fed up like I am and if she's not then I may have to say maybe it's me."

It's quite a risk for a guy who's the ranking member on the powerful House Ways & Means Committee, but I love Rangel's attitude.

--Guest Post by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report