Balloon Juice: We are all strapping young bucks now

Bay Area Houston: Giving the bird back to the Harris County, Texas GOP

his vorpal sword: CNN, A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing: Governor Moonbeam?

The Reaction: How long have Republicans been back in power?

Pruning Shears: Recalibrating convenience, privacy and security

Happy Valley News Hour: Tea Party 'Howl'

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Lou Dobbs claimed on his radio show this week that the evil people who have targeted him for removal from his CNN anchor's seat are now taking shots at him and his wife in their home:

"But I want to tell you, when you talk about what they've done - they've created an atmosphere and they've been unrelenting in their propaganda," Dobbs said. "Three weeks ago this morning, a shot was fired at my house where I live. My wife was standing out and that followed weeks and weeks of threatening phone calls."

Dobbs detailed the event, the notification of law enforcement and threatening phone calls he had received after the fact.

"And, as I told the state patrol, and by the way, the New Jersey State Patrol is absolutely terrific - they responded instantly. But this shot was fired with my wife not, I don't know, 15 feet away and we had threatening phone calls that I decided not to report because I get threatening phone calls," Dobbs continued. "I now - it's become a way of life - the anger, the hate, the vitriol, but it's taken a different tone where they've threatened my wife. They've now fired a shot at my house while my wife was standing next to the car. It's become something else."

The CNN host later took a shot at the "national liberal media," which he claims has taken a side on the immigration issue and has created this sort of reckless environment.

Naturally, not only did Newsbusters sucker for this story, but so did Bill O'Reilly on his Fox News show last night, tut-tutting the incident as "a very serious matter."

The only problem: It was almost certainly a stray shot from a hunter's rifle, as Andrea Nill at ThinkProgress reported yesterday, well before O'Reilly's broadcast:

While Dobbs and his anti-immigrant supporters were quick to jump to conclusions about the motive of the shooting, Sgt. Stephen Jones confirmed to ThinkProgress this morning that the New Jersey State Police are stilling “looking at all the possibilities” and that a hunting-related accident has not been ruled out.

Sgt. Jones, a spokesperson for the New Jersey State Police, confirmed that a bullet was found which struck the siding of Dobbs’ house. However, he pointed out that Dobbs’ residence is located in a “very rural” area. “With hunting season starting up,” such incidents are “not at all uncommon,” Jones told us.

CNN had even more details:

"State Police Sgt. Steve Jones said Thursday that his department received a call from Dobbs' wife, who heard a shot and said a bullet hit her house. Jones said she had been outside her house with "an employee who worked with Dobbs" at 10:25 a.m. October 5.

Jones said a bullet struck the section of the house where the attic is but didn't penetrate the dwelling. He said the bullet fell to the ground and was recovered. Dobbs' wife saw damage to the siding, Jones said.

"The bullet was taken by our detectives and turned over to our ballistics unit for further analysis," Jones said. "At this point, all I can say is that it appears to be a long gun, not a handgun or shotgun."

..... Police aren't saying for now that the shot was fired at the house but only, as Jones said, that it struck the house. A stray shot from a long gun would not be a "totally uncommon occurrence because of the hunters and target shooters" in the region, Jones said.

Jones couldn't give his opinion on what kind of shooting this might be, and he said the incident is being investigated "further past a stray hunter's bullet" because of Dobbs' "public persona." Police have conducted interviews and patrolled the area, Jones said."

A shot fired deliberately to terrorize the Dobbses would have been fired from a distance close enough to penetrate the house siding. The fact that it fell off the siding tells you this shot was fired from very, very far away.

We take violence seriously, and any actual incident of anyone taking a shot at Dobbs, his wife, or even his home would be a terrible thing.

But crying wolf -- and especially trying to blame his critics for such an incident -- that's a whole 'nother ball game. One that invites nothing but contempt.

[Poster by Favianna Rodriguez for Presente.]

The Right is throwing every little bit of ugliness they can at Sonia Sotomayor in hopes of derailing her nomination to the Supreme Court.

They've called her a racist. They've compared the National Council of La Raza to the Ku Klux Klan. They've called her a "lightweight" and "anti-white." They've suggested she lacks the right temperament, since she's just another stereotypical hot-blooded Latina. They've even suggested she's unfit to be a judge because she menstruates.

OK, we get it, fellas. The kid gloves are off.

Presente has organized a grassroots campaign to let ordinary citizens send the following message to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee:

We are outraged by the smear campaign against Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Instead of discussing her record, right-wing activists have sought to question Sotomayor’s intelligence and temperament, and suggested that her racial identity will prevent her from ruling fairly. This thinly veiled racism and sexism is not only insulting to Sotomayor, it's an affront to anyone who believes that a nominee should be judged on her record, not her heritage or skin tone.

The reality is that Sotomayor is an accomplished judge who would start with more federal judicial experience than any Supreme Court justice in 100 years. In her more than 3,000 panel decisions and almost 400 opinions, she has consistently protected the rights of working Americans and become one of the nation’s most respected legal minds. Sotomayor is not only a superbly qualified nominee; she is a powerful example of the American dream and knows how the law affects the daily lives of Americans.

I stand with Judge Sotomayor, and urge the Senate Judiciary Committee to give her nomination a speedy hearing and a positive confirmation.

Go here to sign it.

War and Piece: Interesting trail connecting McCain and his campaign manager Richard Davis to a Russian aluminum oligarch banned from the US for alleged organized crime ties and the pro-Kremlin side of Ukraine's Orange Revolution, through a Connecticut investment firm called Pegasus.

Connecting.the.Dots: A Starbucks/moonshine cocktail might be just the pickmeup Democrats need this year.

A Tiny Revolution: Sistani forbids long-term US basing agreement

Words of Power: The Crow Nation understands. So do some others. Get ready to strap it on people.

Happy Valley News Hour: Are John Hagee's statements really that offensive?

The Vanity Press: A takedown of the Tory rhetoric that's recently been imported into the American right.

What a wild story. The guy looks like a pretty sick individual:

A mentally unstable man wearing what appeared to be a bomb strapped to his chest was arrested hours after he walked into a Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign office Friday, took hostages and demanded to speak to the candidate in a standoff that dragged into the night, authorities said.

Eisenberg made local headlines in March when he held a news conference on the steps of Rochester City Hall to complain about a police policy of placing fliers in unlocked cars warning motorists to lock their doors. "This is nothing more than a gimmick to get around the Constitution and go around in the middle of the night upon unsuspecting citizens in their own yard and search their vehicles," Eisenberg said.

I'll have more later...

And the culture of life continues...

Via The Telegraph UK:

A man convicted of shooting dead a store clerk during a robbery has become the 400th person to be executed by Texas since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

The southern state accounts for almost a third of the 1,091 American executions over the last three decades, and this year it will be responsible for almost two thirds - 21 out of 35 judicial killings so far.

About 14 protestors gathered outside the Huntsville Unit in Huntsville, Texas, as Johnny Conner - who has never confessed to his crime - was executed by lethal injection last night.

Conner, 32, was convicted in 1999 of killing Kathyanna Nguyen, 49, by shooting her in the face during an attempted robbery of the Houston petrol station and convenience store where she worked.

"What is happening to me now is unjust and the system is broken," Conner said as he lay strapped to the execution gurney. Read more...

George Bush has turned the killing of human beings into an art form, so it comes as no surprise that he and Alberto Gonzales are attempting to fast track executions nationwide by doing away with the appeals process for death row inmates. (h/t Dcup)

(h/t NonnyMouse)

ITV :

The first images of a daring rescue mission in which four Royal Marines strapped themselves to the wings of helicopter gunships in a bid to rescue a colleague have been published.

The four commandos flew into a fierce gunfight in southern Afghanistan on Monday clinging to the stabiliser wings of two Apache helicopters in a bid to recover the body of 30-year-old Lance Corporal Matthew Ford.

L/Cpl Ford, of 45 Commando Royal Marines, had been killed instantly by Taliban fire as he participated in a 200-soldier assault on a fort in Helmand province.

When the marines fell back to regroup they realised the section commander was missing and hatched the dramatic rescue bid.

Watch the footage here.

Matt Lauer went after Bush over his secret prisons and the use of torture on the captured terrorists via The Today Show this morning. He was uncommonly strong and didn't back down when Bush gave his pet answer. He hits the right note because if what we've been doing is legal then why was there the need for secret prisons? When Bush gets cornered--he starts saying he's not going to talk about it anymore...(Glenn Greenwald has a post up now about John Yoo--Bush's torture man.)

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Matt Lauer: And yet you admitted that there were these CIA secret facilities. OK?

President Bush: So what? Why is that not within the law?

Continue reading »

Clip O' Humor

by James Wolcott

The strangest thing in the broadcast happened when the show was over. The panelists stood, Sullivan's back to the camera, and as the credits rolled, he began squeezing, massaging his own buttocks with his hands. I thought he might be trying to dislodge a thong strap that had run up rather deep, but no, he seemed to be feeling up his own butt. I've never seen anything quite like it, unless I was hallucinating, and if I start hallucinating about Andrew Sullivan copping a feel of his own butt, it's time to check into the clinic for a little Elizabeth Wurtzel layoff.

Video

The Purpose Driven Life Takers-Part II

After I posted this story on 5/30, (I helped crash his server, sorry buddy) author Jonathan Huston wrote a sequel.

Strap on your seat belts and hold onto your dashboard Jesus, because the story of how this violent, theocratic video game is being network marketed through pastors and churches only gets deeper and stranger from here.

"A top aide to mega-church pastor Rick Warren is advising the makers of a children's video game in which characters kill New Yorkers while shouting "Praise the Lord." When children tire of converting or killing New Yorkers, they can switch sides and command the demonic armies of the AntiChrist, and kill the conservative Christians. The real-time strategy game, slated for release in October 2006, is based on the best selling series of Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. The web site of Left Behind Games states the involvement of Mark Carver on its Advisory Board. This web-based marketing tool also highlights his role as Executive Director of Mr. Warren's Purpose Driven Church. What appears to be going on here is an old-fashioned business practice called "endorsement by association."...read on"