Our Liberal Media Strikes Again

Steve Benen notes today's Sunday show lineup.

I promise not to do this every Sunday morning — it only seems like I will — but take a look at today’s guest lists for the five major Sunday shows.

* NBC’s “Meet the Press”: Disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.)

* CBS’s “Face the Nation”: House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)

* ABC’s “This Week”: South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R)

* Fox News’ “Fox News Sunday”: Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.)

* CNN’s “State of the Union”: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), former Bush administration officials Dennis Blair and John Negroponte

For those keeping score at home, that’s two Republican presidential candidates, two House Republican leaders, two Senate Republican leaders, one Republican governor, two Bush administration officials, and one Democrat.

Liberal media, indeed.

And I'm honestly surprised it's not another John McCain appearance.   It's not like the Sunday shows are going out of their way to represent the minority party view in Washington, either...because when Republicans controlled both Congress and the White House, Democrats were equally as ignored week after week.  Even in 2009 and 2010, when Democrats controlled Congress and the White House, it was still Republicans all over the Sunday airwaves.  The same is clearly true now.

A 8-1 ratio for any party is just ridiculous, but it's become the norm now.  You wonder why Paul Ryan and Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich are considered "serious" politicos in 2011?  This is why.

Last Call

The Kroog makes the case for Obama resisting the Republican blackmail on the debt ceiling, but doesn't see a way out of not defaulting.

In that case, however, what should Obama do? My answer is that despite all that, he must not let himself be blackmailed.

Partly that’s because once he gives in the first time, the blackmail will never stop. Once the crazies know that they can get whatever they want by threatening to blow up the economy, they’ll just keep demanding more and more. Obama just can’t let that dynamic get started without setting up an even worse crash down the road.

Plus, the hard right may claim that it’s worried about deficits, but it’s actually deeply fiscally irresponsible. Realistically, the Ryan plan would sharply increase the deficit — because its spending cuts are in many cases impossible, and its supposed revenue neutrality is a sham. So giving in to the right would be just as much a signal of banana-republic-hood as a temporary default.

This is going to be very ugly. But I don’t think there’s any way to avoid taking it all the way to the edge, and possibly over it.

And he's right.  The Tea Party has made it clear that any Republican who votes for raising the debt ceiling for any reason will be the first up against the wall come primary season.  I was convinced that the Powers That Be would never allow the Republicans to wreck the treasury bond market.  But it looks like they're now more than happy to do so if it means finishing the transfer of the rest of the country's wealth to the top 1%.

And here's the problem:  we are a banana republic.  We have a higher instance of income inequality than two-thirds of the countries on earth, ranking us with Cameroon and Uganda.  America has worse income inequality than countries like Greece, Ireland, or Spain.  It's higher than India or Kenya.  Hell, it's higher than Tunisia, Ivory Coast, or Egypt.  Double hell, we have a far more unequal income distribution than Iran or China.


And now Republicans are convincing us that our economy is unsustainable.  The only reason it is is because we refuse to make the wealthy pay taxes on their wealth OR their income.  We lowered both on the wealthy almost ten years ago.  What happened to our economy as a result?  The Gini index for the US is higher now than it was during the Great Depression.

Think about that.  We live in the New Gilded Age.  The wealthiest Americans live lives we can't even dream of.  The other 300 million of us?  We exist to put money in their pockets.  And now the Republicans are convincing us that the only solution is that we have to make crushing cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security or else the country will collapse.

These are the same people who said cutting taxes would be a rising tide that lifted all boats.  Instead we got the worst financial crisis in generations.  So why would we believe the Republicans now?  Because FOX News tells us to?

Think about that.

Huckabee Or Not To Huckabee, That Is The Question, Part 2

Nope.  I was wrong.  He's not running.  The one guy that actually could have survived the primary and beaten Obama (granted, he had the best chance of the various snowballs in hell) is not going to run after all.

Yay.

Huckabee Or Not To Huckabee, That Is The Question

The Huckster will be announcing whether or not he makes another run at the brass ring tonight on his FOX News show.  Emails sent out suggest he's going to go for it.

Although Huckabee did not tip his hand as to his final decision, an email obtained by Time's Mark Halperin asked his friends: "Please be patient if I don't respond immediately to an email because I expect that once I pull the trigger Saturday night, things will get even crazier, as if that's possible."

The former Arkansas governor frequently leads in national polls of Republican primary voters and, with Haley Barbour not running, would be the only candidate with a strong claim to the Southern voters that form the backbone of the party. Despite being significantly outspent in 2008, he won an upset victory in the Iowa caucuses and won large shares of the vote in a number of other states, including South Carolina.

Huckabee's top advisor, Ed Rollins, told ABC News that he does not believe he Huckabee will enter the race. But he added that "if he announced tomorrow night, on Monday I could push the button and the campaign would start to unfold."

In his e-mail, Huckabee said that he had only come to his final decision, whatever it may be, at the last minute.

LeBron Huckabee?  Really?   He's not fooling anyone of course he's going to run.  All he has to do is keep his mouth shut until the competition self-immolates, and he wins by default.  Of course that won't be hard with Newt Gingrich immediately blowing himself up by calling Obama "the most successful food stamp President ever" competing with Ron Paul for the title of "biggest racist asshole in the Republican Party".  Mitt will get zapped for MassCare, and that pretty much leaves Huckabee by default.

Scary thought, huh?

New tag, The Huckster.

I'm Sorry Citizen That Is Above Your Security Clearance

As I mentioned Friday, Google Blogger blew the hell up and tons of us lost everything between Wednesday afternoon and Friday morning.  Google restored nearly all of it, and the blog here is back to normal.

Ann Althouse wasn't so lucky.  As annoying as I find her, her blog is completely gone right now, and nobody deserves that kind of horrible luck.  As an IT professional for a Fortune 500 company, I understand the problems of rolling out upgrades in an enterprise environment and watching them completely foul things up, then having to roll things back.  Data gets damaged and has to be restored, and it takes a while...I know, it's my job to deal with things like that.  Google is working to restore her blog.  It happens and it sucks, but if anybody on Earth would have good data recovery/disaster recovery protocols, it's freaking Google.

That's not the point.  The point is Althouse believes this was deliberate.

You know, I'm beginning to suspect that there's some behind-the-scenes campaign to report my blog as abusive. People who hate/fear the Althouse blog could make a loud noise to Google.

Moe Lane at Redstate declares it's now the new Right Wing Poutrage Of The Weekend.

Well, isn’t this interesting: apparently Blogger/Google has decided to remove Ann Althouse’s blog.  They’re also being neither particularly helpful in either explaining why, nor sounding particularly sympathetic that it’s been taken down, either.

Wonder if this has anything to do with Ann’s objective (and thus, anti-administration) coverage of the Wisconsin protests?  I certainly hope that it has nothing to do with that…

See, now it was deliberate.  No mention of the massive crash that took down all blogs for 30 hours.  Instapotatohead goes from there:

THE FOLKS AT GOOGLE don’t quite seem to understand the Althouse blog. Hey, guys, it’s not a spam blog. It’s been in the New York Times and everything. You should put it back up.

UPDATE: A reader emails with a link to a Save Ann Althouse’s Blog Facebook page.

See, now it was deliberate because "Google thought it was a spam blog".   And now the Right Wing Noise Machine has gone fully automatic into "Google: Evil, Incompetent, Or Both?"...

...which was promptly foiled by Althouse's blog coming back in one piece later on Friday.   So now law professor Althouse and law professor Instapotatohead are getting together and wondering if she should sue the pants off Google and of course Instapotatohead says "Go for it!  Connect Four!"

And so, yet another RWNJ meme is born.  Only the interference of these brave legal eagles stopped Google from secretly killing Althouse's blog.  Conservatives have defeated Obama's techno-thug minions at Google with Real Ultimate Power or something.  I'm sure the campaign to go Galt and abandon Blogger and "put them out of business" is already underway...

Paranoia is awesome.  And the right?  Man, they are swimming in it.  Ann Althouse is the single most important voice in conservative blogging ever, so of course Google would mastermind a huge system outage to provide cover to remove her blog by "accident" because she's SO GODDAMN POWERFUL.  She's been mentioned in the NY Times.

Hey wait, I've been mentioned in the NY Times.  Holy hell, I'm part of this conspiracy!  AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Playing With Fire, Getting Co-Burned

The role of Oklahoma GOP Sen. Tom Coburn in the John Ensign scandal may be the most interesting part of the story.  As I explained yesterday, Ensign ran for the hills and resigned barely ahead of the release of the ethics report that recommended his expulsion from the US Senate.  But, as Rachel Maddow explains, Coburn is still in the Senate even after doing crazy nonsense like this:



Sen. Coburn denied vehemently on a number of occasions that he played any role in this when the scandal broke.  Then he turned state's evidence against Ensign and cooperated with the FBI and the ethics investigation.  He swore that as an ordained minister and doctor (he's a OB/GYN) that he would never talk about "privileged" information.  Then he spilled his guts to the Feds.

And he admitted to the Feds that he was the negotiator between Ensign and the Hamptons, negotiating how much money it would take to make the Hamptons go away.

So my question is this:  Why is Sen. Tom Coburn still senator?  If you're an Oklahoman, is this the guy you want representing your state?

Keep an eye on Coburn.  That's the real battle.

And Now We'll Hear From The Landed Gentry

Well it took a while, but I've finally found someone who I hate more than my senator, Rand Paul.

His goddamn father.

Ron, like his son, said that his statement about the Civil Rights Act has nothing to do with the law's intentions -- i.e. ending institutionalized discrimination in a wide swath of American life, including in the public accommodations where African Americans were denied service at the height of the Jim Crow era. Paul said he would vote against the law because it imposed unfair rules on what private business owners can and can't do on their own property. Essentially, they should be free to discriminate if they wish, Paul says, however distasteful that may be.

Paul:

I believe that property rights should be protected. Your right to be on TV is protected by property rights because somebody owns that station. I can't walk into your station. So right of freedom of speech is protected by property. The right of your church is protected by property. So people should honor and protect it. This gimmick, Chris, it's off the wall when you say I'm for property rights and states rights therefore I'm a racist. That's just outlandish.

Paul added that any talk of the segregated South that the Civil Rights Act aimed to reform is too old to be relevant anyway, saying the specter of Whites Only signs is "ancient history."

Besides, Paul says that the Jim Crow laws would have ended without the Civil Rights Act anyway, a view held by many libertarians who believe the free markets solve social problems.

Such an eerily clinical dismissal of the struggle of minorities in this country.   The problem is not that Ron Paul is for property rights.  It's that he's for property rights trumping civil rights, free speech rights, and pretty much the entire Bill of Rights as well.

But as awful as that is, it's Ron Paul presuming to tell me that the trials and tribulations throughout history of black folk like myself make him too damn uncomfortable and that he wants me to just get over it already that really seals the deal for me.  Oh, and that I should be enlightened enough to accept that the right to be a racist supersedes my right not to put up with racist assholes, should I be on the piece of property the racist asshole in question owns.

Well, this blog is my intellectual property, so Ron Paul shouldn't have too much of a problem with me calling him a racist asshole on my own blog.  Except you know, he's too busy going on the teevee and saying he's not a racist for promoting the idea that it's okay to be racist.

But the best part is if the entire rest of the known universe says "Ron Paul, you're a racist asshole" then we are enslaving Ron Paul because we're impinging on his right to be a racist asshole (who is magically not a racist because SHUT UP THAT'S WHY.  Oy.)

I've said before that Ron Paul is 30% makes sense and 70% crazy asshole.  Forget the 30%.  He's just a crazy asshole.  Start the clown car.

Me?  I'm carrying around a square yard of turf from now on so I can unroll it, stand on it, declare it my property, and then tell any Paultards in earshot that I win all arguments because my property rights defeat anything else they have.

New tag:  Ron Paul Has A Blimp.

A Nation Of Octogenarian Welfare Queens

That's what former Reagan OMB John Cogan believes Social Security and Medicare have created in America:  a country of senior-citizen millionaire welfare queens driving Cadillacs at 20 MPH and really, really old bucks gumming T-bone steaks. His solution to this horrible socialism?  The Ryan Unicorn Plan, of course.  But Cogan's screed reveals the deeper pathology of the conservative mind...

To fix Social Security, Congress should start by limiting the increase in benefits of future retirees to the rate of inflation. Congress should then gradually raise Social Security's normal retirement age. Congress should also allow younger workers to invest a portion of their payroll taxes—and create more incentives for them to invest their earnings—in safe, broadly-diversified, stock and bond funds. This would allow younger workers to become millionaires through their own hard work and thrift.

To fix Medicare, we must move away from the current system of fee-for-services and low copayments. First and foremost, copayments should be increased significantly. Medicare recipients need to have more skin in the game if they are to become cost-conscious medical consumers.

The higher copayments can be offset by reducing Medicare premiums and offering more Medicare health plan choices. Rep. Paul Ryan's proposal—to provide fixed annual grants to enable Medicare recipients to buy an affordable private insurance plan—is a fiscally sound way to achieve this outcome. Competition among providers, not government-administered prices and government boards of experts to determine coverage, is the best way to ensure high quality and reasonably priced health care. 

So that's the first half of the plan:  privatize Social Security, cut future benefits, and jack up the retirement age to 70, 72, 75 and then  privatize Medicare, cut benefits, and jack up co-payments.  No more guarantees, seniors.  You're on your own.  Death panels?  more like Death giant committees.  But that's standard, boilerplate Conservative stuff.  Pay attention to the reasons why Cogan says we need to cut off seniors:

Many of the million-dollar couples believe they rightfully deserve the benefits they have been promised. They have, after all, spent all of their working years paying into Social Security and Medicare. And true enough, the typical 66-year old couple and their employers, on their behalf, have contributed nearly $500,000 in payroll taxes (in today's dollars) toward these benefits during their working careers.

But regardless of how much they have contributed, the hard reality is that the federal government has already spent it. No matter how deserving they are, it is younger generations of workers who have to come up with the money.

So today's seniors need to consider how they want the script for "The Millionaire" sequel to be written: There's a knock at the door. We now know that on the other side there's a check for a million dollars. When the door opens, do we really want to see our children, under the commanding gaze of Uncle Sam, presenting us with that check?

The shame and guilt of being on welfare, that's the weapon of choice here.  Cogan wants you to feel awful that the benefits the government promised you when it took taxes out of your paycheck for 45 years might actually get paid back, because if you take them, you hate America's children.  Conservatives are rushing to attach as much stigma as possible to Social Security and Medicare as evil welfare that "Real Americans" would never take.

Seniors and especially baby boomers heading into retirement, like people my parents' age, are the new Welfare Queens.  And the Republicans have declared all out war on them, in an effort to split the country and have us at each other's throats while they loot the country with more tax breaks for the richest Americans.  They hope you're stupid enough not to notice.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Pakistan's Parliament has officially condemned the US raid that killed bin Laden, threatening to cut NATO access from the country to Afghanistan and demanding and end to all military drone strikes.
• President Obama's special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, is resigning his position leaving the state of stalled Israel-Palestinian peace talks in limbo.
• In his weekly address the President notes that America's oil production is the highest since 2003 and admits he would like to see it grow more.
• Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi taunted NATO leaders from a location where allied forces "can't get" him, according to a released video message.
• More patent shakedown shenanigans this time directed at iPhone app makers being sued for violating the patent of the "upgrade" button.

Last Call

Louisiana is facing some more delta blues.

Louisiana residents are being warned today: The Army Corps of Engineers will open the Morganza spillway along the Mississippi River by Sunday, flooding millions of acres of rural farmland and sparing big cities like Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

"This is a historic amount of water," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said.

"Some people may think, 'Well, the house is not underwater yet,'" Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said. "But they don't know the road is closed, may become closed. So if in doubt, people should get out. We want people to evacuated, not have to be rescued."

As much as 25 feet of water will spill out over 100 miles, displacing 2,500 people. In addition, 22,500 people and 11,000 structures in the backwater areas could be flooded.

If the gates remained closed and the levees along the Mississippi failed, Baton Rouge and New Orleans could both be flooded -- leaving a disaster worse than Katrina. 

The bigger problem (well, for the people who aren't in Louisiana anyway) is that there are a number of major oil refineries along the river from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.  If the Morganza spillway isn't enough to stop the flooding, then here in the Midwest, gas prices will quickly end up north of $5, if not $6 or more a gallon.  As it is, there are plenty of smaller refineries in the area south of Baton Rouge, as well as thousands of people and Morgan City, Louisiana.

And all that water is heading right down their streets.  It's being done to spare Baton Rouge and NOLA.  But the reality is this is a 100-year plus flood, folks.  We're talking 25 feet of water into a pair of cities that are below sea level.  If the levees fail anywhere on the east bank of the main river, it's going to make Katrina's flooding look like a pool party in comparison.

Next week is going to be bad, folks.  If you thought the flooding so far was gruesome, just wait a few days.

I Do Believe He's Found A Petard That Needs A-Hoisting, Gentlemen

The unlimited deluge of electoral campaign cash unleashed by Citizens United upon the American political system had but one weakness:

Stephen Colbert.

Stephen Colbert doesn't "want to be the one chump" without any unlimited corporate money going to his political action committee. That's why he showed up the the Federal Election Commission building in D.C. to formally request an advisory opinion on behalf of "Colbert Super PAC," a proposed independent expenditure only committee able to accept unlimited corporate, individual, political committee and labor contributions.

Accepting unlimited funding is "a right as described by the Citizens United case," Colbert said in response to a question from Politico's Ken Vogel. "I believe the Citizens United decision was the right one, there should be unlimited corporate money, and I want some of it. I don't want to be the one chump who doesn't have any."

Colbert said he expected the FEC to take his request seriously.

"I'm making an actual request. I want to find out whether I actually have to list Viacom and the fact that I have a show as a gift in-kind," Colbert said. "And if I don't, I can't wait to use the resources of my show."

And yes, it took a comedian in order to expose the idiocy of the Citizens United ruling in the first place.  Because what the ruling did is give political action committees the ability to treat campaign donations and support by third party PACs like the one Colbert is intent on forming as free speech, and basically eliminating limits on it.

If the ruling applies to Karl Rove's Crossroads PAC and the people invoked with this PAC or getting donations from this PAC like Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee or Newt Gingrich can go on FOX News and their opinions and support of candidates and positions are treated as free speech (and not necessarily the opinion of FOX News itself) then certainly it applies to Stephen Colbert's PAC, does it not?

Because that's what the Supreme Court has said.  And that's how it has worked for FOX since the ruling came down in January 2010.  President Obama is drafting an executive order toning down some of this nonsense, but Republicans and corporations are howling that Obama is a "fascist" for denying this "free speech".

Bless Stephen Colbert's little heart.  I hope he takes this all the way to November 2012.  If it takes him making a complete mockery of our political campaign finance system for America to demand something different, then so be it.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

And we're back!

Blogger kinda had some sort of issue with a time machine and a sperm bank, and basically screwed over everything I posted on Thursday and half of Wednesday too.  I got that straightened out and the posts should be all back.

We appear to be back to our regular scheduled craziness.  So what happened over the last 48 hours or so that Blogger tried to erase from the time stream?

The Senate Ethics committee released its report on now former GOP Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, who officially resigned his seat last week hoping the whole Osama thing would give him news cycle cover.  Which it did, and it worked too.  Right up until Senate Dems waited until yesterday to release the report, that is.  And not only is Ensign a complete scumbag, but now that he's not in Congress, he's facing the Justice Department and his chief of staff, John Lopez, just cut an immunity deal.

The special counsel working with the Senate Ethics Committee applied for immunity for both Lopez and Doug Hampton, the former Ensign staffer with whose wife Ensign had the affair that ended his Senate career. The Justice Department didn't agree initially to either request but eventually dropped its opposition to granting immunity to Lopez. Federal prosecutors ultimately indicted Hampton for violating conflict of interest laws.
The report concludes that Lopez's contacts with Doug Hampton after he left the Senator's office and began lobbying on behalf of clients were improper. From the report (which mentions Lopez's name 232 times):

Senator Ensign agreed with Mr. Hampton and Mr. Lopez, to have Mr. Lopez be the point person for Mr. Hampton's contacts with the Senator's office in order to provide Mr. Hampton with the necessary assistance for his lobbying efforts during his post-employment period, and not for the purpose of making certain that Mr. Hampton complied with lobbying restrictions.

The Senate Ethics Committee also discovered contemporaneous emails which showed Ensign "agreed to and encouraged the improper contacts between Mr. Hampton and Mr. Lopez." Lopez told investigators that Ensign wanted him to assist Hampton because the Senator "wanted it out of sight, out of mind," so that Lopez could take heat on the Senator's behalf.

For those of you a little rusty on d'affair l'Ensign, it goes something like this:  Ensign was basically shtupping Cynthia Hampton, a long-time family friend he had known for decades, when the Ensigns invited the Hamptons to movie in with them after the Hamptons were robbed in 2007.  Hampton's husband Doug found out about the affair and then kept his job with the Senator's office.

The real problem was that Ensign got sloppy and kept the affair up.  He got caught by people other than the Hamptions.  Doug Hampton drew the attention of the Feds.  It gets worse from there:  Doug Hampton is now facing seven counts of violating federal lobbyist conflict-of-interest laws, and as I mentioned before, Ensign's chief of staff, John Lopez, has just cut an immunity deal to spill the beans on Ensign and Hampton.

Ensign's parents gave the Hamptons a "gift" of $96,000 to make all this go away, on top of everything else.  That absolutely red flagged the Feds as the gift was posed as severance for Doug Hampton leaving his "job" as a senior Ensign aide.

Oh, but it gets even worse.  Turns out more than a few other people on Capitol Hill knew what kind of games Ensign was playing, most notably Oklahoma GOP Sen. Tom Coburn.

And now this whole mess is really, really going to get good.

Win Win Win (Epic Win Cubed)

I just love this stuff.  It's common sense being used to help everyone involved. A program shared between a few prisons has allowed prisoners an opportunity to perform good deeds.  Rescued animals are calming for the prisoners, and beneficial for animals in need of a home.  In some cases, it even helps little girls:

Butterfield trained Mickey through a 2-year-old program at Luther Luckett called Camp Canine that has resulted in adoptions for around 140 dogs. Celia's family adopted Mickey in June after a doctor suggested sleeping with a dog could calm her at night.

For many prisoners, this will fill a void and is far more logical than some of the other "perks" given prisoners for population control.  The companionship of an animal is a healthy and healing thing.  Allowing them to love and care for others is the core of rehabilitation.  Most importantly, everyone involved gets a second chance.

Now How Can That Possibly Go Wrong?

Blogger is back up, folks!  I was affected by a rare bug, and then the whole thing went down.  Barring any other technical issues, posts will now hit on schedule.

Yesterday, Visa, the world's largest payments processor, announced a series of advances to its system. (Check out the vague, glossy promo video here.) They include some handy tools to make paying for goods online a whole lot easier. But they also indicate that Visa is hurtling toward turning your smartphone into your credit card.

This technology is already being used around the world.  I'm actually for it, because I think it's safer than throwing around the numbers themselves.  The plastic is just something you have to carry, after all.  The password protected system is safer if people can truly make a special password and hold up to some security standards.  No sharing with that guy you've dated for a month, or using the same password that you have on your email account, or writing it on paper.  People who previously refused to participate in technology and online accounts will be brought in kicking and screaming.


The move is inevitable.  The full article explains some of the background fighting to shape the technology to shut out competition.  Right now there are no clear leaders, but Google's Android domination would make the most impact, and Visa is trying to insert themselves as a middleman so they can continue to profit from the transactions.  If they do not succeed, it will be a devastating loss for them.

Epic Animal (State) House Fail

Florida Republicans fail at pretty much every goddamn thing ever.  Gawker:

The state of Florida, somewhat famously, finally got around to banning bestiality last week. But, as the blog Southern Fried Science points out, there might be something wrong with the language used in the bill—specifically that it bans sex with "an animal." Did you know that humans are "animals," too?
Finally, we've found an excuse to fine or jail a large chunk of Florida. Here's the act's summary:

An act relating to sexual activities involving animals; creating s. 828.126, F.S.; providing definitions; prohibiting knowing sexual conduct or sexual contact with an animal; prohibiting specified related activities; providing penalties; providing that the act does not apply to certain husbandry, conformation judging, and veterinary practices; providing an effective date.

Seems clear to us: No sex for involving homo sapiens, ever.

In that case, I have some remedial material for Florida Republicans in the state legislature that's terrifically appropriate:



EPIC FAIL.