History Eraser Button: A few photos of stuff the same distance from the World Trade Center as the "Ground Zero Mosque. Hallowed Ground? How can I tell?

The Reality-Based Community: Prisons Without Walls

Whiskey Fire: I am aware of his work

slacktivist: There is no basis in law, principle, doctrine or morality for opposition to the free exercise of religion by Islamic Americans. And their proximity to the Temple of Mammon on Wall Street doesn't change that.

Rising Hegemon: Never Speak Ill of the Dead

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Youandmedoweagree's Blog, Great Big Lies, Reverend Manny and the Twilight Empire

The Inverse Square Blog: Happy Birthday, Woody Guthrie

alicublog: What's the deal with airline peanuts black people?

Norwegianity: Linkcetera

The Pump Handle: Chamber of Commerce front group unmasked

The Rude Pundit: Photos that make the Rude Pundit want to throw down a case of Millstream and freebase wheat

onegoodmove: Girl raised from birth by Wolf Blitzer taken into protective custody

There is a prison in Texas where 15.7% of the inmates were raped in the preceding year alone. Think about that for a second. One in six inmates were raped either by other inmates or those charged with guarding them -- which in that prison alone means there were 470 victims of sexual violence in a 12-month period. In any country that likes to think of itself as a beacon of freedom, this is outrageous and must be stopped.

While the percentage is not quite as significant at other prisons around the country, it is still disgracefully high, especially for those who are violated in the most dehumanizing way possible. This includes over 100,000 men, women and yes -- CHILDREN -- a fact that should be every bit as shocking, embarrassing and downright sickening as those photos from Abu Ghraib.

Well, now seems like the perfect time to do something about this. It is currently Sexual Assault Awareness month, and we are approaching the end of a deadline (June 2010) for the Attorney General to act on recommendations mandated by the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), passed in 2003. You want bipartisanship in Washington? I give you a bill that was unanimously passed, co-sponsored by Sens. Teddy Kennedy and Jeff Sessions, and signed into law by George W. Bush. Its standards were created by a bipartisan federal commission upon consultation with corrections officials, criminal justice experts, advocates and prison-rape survivors.

So what can you do to make sure the Obama Administration enacts these common-sense solutions, such as weeding out known predators, ensuring the especially vulnerable receive additional monitoring and increasing the overall transparency of our corrections system by providing independent audits of our prisons? You can quite literally make your voice heard.

How? By adding your public comment to the rising tide of those who realize that whether your issue is improving public health, creating a more just and moral society or saving taxpayer money (think litigation), ensuring Attorney General Holder codifies the federal regulations mandated by the PREA, forthwith, should be a top priority.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." In the era of interactive media, you needn't be part of the elite to make your voice heard. Every one of us has a weapon in our very own progressive arsenal, our ability to raise our voices quite publicly. So speak up, and become a part of a campaign to further ensure we live in the America we want and deserve.

**I am proud to be a media consultant for Just Detention International

From a gorgeous gallery of snowflake photos from SnowCrystals.com. Open Thread below...

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Glenn Beck hosted one of his hourlong sessions before a studio audience talking about the role of heroes in American life. The consensus, both by Beck and his panelists, was that Americans no longer look up to their historic heroes the way they should. Instead, as Beck suggested, we have "Mao Tse Tung hanging in our White House."

Say again? Oh yeah -- the Obama administration is riddled with radical Marxist revolutionaries. Right. Tell that to progressives right now. Moron.

Anyway, Beck apparently draws the line when it comes to the possibility, heaven forfend, Obama might be regarded as a hero:

Beck: I'm a big visual guy. And if you look at the way Barack Obama was imaged -- he was, as a savior. He was, as a -- you look at it now, anybody notice -- you watch the newspaper, and you watch the photos of him coming out of the White House, almost always, they'll have a shot of him with the seal of the President -- you notice that? And it almost looks like a halo. They'll take a shot from the side, and he's standing there, and it looks like a Russian icon!

He's talking about the photos of the president that have been shot for some time now whenever there's a press appearance at the White House. And it didn't start with Obama:

Indeed, if we're suddenly all worried about presidents being made out to be heroes, you have to wonder where Beck was when W. strutted out to his "Mission Accomplished" photo-op:

Now that's what I call an action hero.

Fortunately, Obama has spared us any codpiece appearances.

Charging for photos? English Only? When does this book tour parade of classy end?

Open Thread below....

Whiskey Fire: The WaPo is running a contest to find America's next great pundit! Like Charles Krauthammer? More here and here (h/t Batocchio)

The New Republic: The never-ending lunacy of Betsy McCaughey

Oliver Willis: Wild West gun policy doesn't work

They gave us a republic: Nightowl Newswrap

The Rude Pundit: Photos and quotes that only confirm that atheism equals sanity

alicublog: Film threat

I've been in California this week, but my friend Goldy back in Seattle managed to make it out to last week's massive rally in support of health-care reform.

There were several thousand people there, with only a tiny smattering of teabaggers opposed to reform. Goldy has photos and reportage on just how large the support for a public option was.

And yet, guess what? The media completely ignored the rally. Even the local paper -- the ostensibly neutral but in fact Republican-run Seattle Times -- ran not one single word about it.

Of course, forget about the national media bothering to report this, too.

They've been too busy telling us that the public option is dead because of the supposedly massive opposition to it created by teabaggers.

As Goldy says:

None of this happened yesterday in downtown Seattle because no ex-marine angrily yelled down a congressman and nobody got the tip of their finger bitten off and nothing apparently is going to get the media to move from the well-entrenched meme that support for reform is steadily slipping as the public turns against Obama and the Democratic Congress… not even a show of force by the public itself.

Bubble photograph by Mila Zinkova, from a terrific collection of photos at Life in the Fast Lane.

Open thread below...

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Jesse Ventura's been making the rounds lately by taking on all comers on the issue of torture, which has left little quivering wingnuts like Joe Scarborough having to resort to attacking him out of his immediate presence.

Because as Brian Kilmeade of Fox and Friends found out this morning, doing so in person can be extremely unpleasant. Especially if you try pulling the lamestain right-wing crap we've gotten accustomed to, namely, accusing their interlocutors of not wanting to keep us safe, you're not patriotic enough, blah blah blah.

That's what Kilmeade tries pulling right off the bat, and it makes for possibly the best of the Ventura smackdowns yet:

Ventura: I have been waterboarded. It is torture. I can speak from experience. It was part of SERE training that I went through as a Navy SEAL.

Kilmeade: And are you OK now?

Ventura: I'm fine.

Kilmeade: So is Khalid Sheik Mohammed. He's about 60 pounds overweight, having a great time --

Ventura: It doesn't matter. If it was OK, then why don't we do it to criminals? Like, if we've got gang members in L.A., OK? We know that their gangs are gonna do bad things. When we arrest them, why don't we waterboard them so we can get information out of them? Because it's against the law.

Kilmeade: Do you want us not to be safe from attack?

Ventura: Don't come after me with that nonsense.

[Debate over its efficacy -- "ticking time bomb"]

Ventura: OK, why didn't we waterboard McVeigh and Nichols, then? There were more people that they thought involved at Oklahoma City. Why weren't they waterboarded to get more information? Because it's against the law.

Wait -- and if we're not going to be a country that goes by the rule of law when it's convenient or not convenient, then what do we stand for?

...

But what about the difference -- you bring up Timothy McVeigh and maybe gang members, and maybe those threats weren't as imminent as the threats --

Ventura: I don't think these threats are imminent.

You didn't think after 9/11, that America felt threats were imminent, that more could be coming?

Ventura: Maybe. But I think our behavior has caused us to be in more trouble. Now they won't release these photos. Why? Because they know the Muslim world will go irate. They're all after Nancy Pelosi -- when did she know? When dah dah dah -- Well, if we hadn't of tortured, it would be a dead issue, wouldn't it?

Let's go to the real issue: It's called torture.

Indeed: As we pointed out the other day, the fact that we find it necessary not to release these photos is proof that not only did torture not keep us safe, it made us manifestly less safe.

At this point, however, Kilmeade goes all-out Smug Right-Wing Punk on Ventura and finds himself confronting the reality that he's all for having someone else do his dirty work but Kilmeade himself -- of prime fighting age -- is too big of a spoiled, snotty rich kid to ever have to put himself on the line in a serious way. The resulting piledriver through the canvas is a sight to behold.

After all, it's easy to root for torture when you're not going to be one of the soldiers in the field who has to deal with the consequences. Right, Brian Kilmeade?