Last Call

And the Wall Street Journal goes there, accusing AG Eric Holder's crusade to combat voter suppression of minorities as being nothing more than "racial incitement".

The United States of America has a black President whose chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Eric Holder, is also black. They have a lot of political power. So how are they using it? Well, one way is to assert to black audiences that voter ID laws are really attempts to disenfranchise black Americans. And liberals think Donald Trump's birther fantasies are offensive?

"In my travels across this country, I've heard a consistent drumbeat of concern from citizens, who—often for the first time in their lives—now have reason to believe that we are failing to live up to one of our nation's most noble ideals," Mr. Holder said Wednesday in a speech to the Council of Black Churches. Voter ID laws and white discrimination, he added, mean that "some of the achievements that defined the civil rights movement now hang in the balance."

That's right. The two most powerful men in America are black, two of the last three Secretaries of State were black, numerous corporate CEOs and other executives are black, and minorities of many races now win state-wide elections in states that belonged to the Confederacy, but the AG implies that Jim Crow is on the cusp of a comeback.

Yeah.  You understand that correctly:  the WSJ is publicly saying that black people now are the most powerful people in America, and that the notion of GOP voter suppression of minorities is just as crazy, if not worse, than birther nonsense.

Oh, and black people are racist assholes, too:

The likeliest explanation is economic, as job losses and mortgage foreclosures lead to dislocation and migration to new areas. But it's also possible that many minorities are as disappointed as everyone else with the lackluster recovery. For all of Mr. Obama's attempts to portray Mitt Romney as out of touch, no one has suffered more in the Obama economy than minorities. 

Which explains Mr. Holder's racial incitement strategy. If Mr. Obama is going to win those swing states again, he needs another burst of minority turnout. If hope won't get them to vote for Mr. Obama again, then how about fear? 

And apparently there's no one more racist and bigoted towards Latinos and African-Americans than Barack Obama and Eric Holder.   Astounding.

You literally cannot find a better example of the concept of projection of the GOP's own hatreds, fears, and foibles onto their own victims than this piece here.  It's staggering to see this level of pure, unalloyed inchoate rancor directed at Eric Holder or Barack Obama than the Wall Street Journal putting out a piece comparing voting rights activists to birthers, and accusing the Attorney General of the United States of trying to start a race war.

The implication here, bordering on outright accusation, is that the President, his supporters, and anyone who voted for him in 2008 and plans to vote for him in 2012 are anti-white bigots who couldn't possibly have any valid reason to support the President other than a burning desire to see white America set on fire with Eric Holder leading the way, because we're too stupid and savage to see that the President is destroying dumb-ass black folk.

I expect this level of blind vitriol from Newsmax or World Net Daily or VDARE, but to see the Wall Street Journal publish this, well it's pretty clear what the next five months will bring, won't it?  They hate him so much that they're willing to say in a national editorial that Holder, his boss, and the voters who support them are all exactly the kind of vile bigots that they themselves truly are.

This is pretty much the most vile thing I've seen so far this campaign season, and we've got 20 weeks and change to go.

Awesome.

If You Can't Steal A Presidential Election...Or Not

It didn't take the Justice Department long to fight back against Florida's awful voter purge plan disenfranchising African-Americans, minorities, and the poor.

The Justice Department sent a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner on Thursday evening demanding the state cease purging its voting rolls because the process it is using has not been cleared under the Voting Rights Act.

DOJ also said that Florida’s voter roll purge violated National Voter Registration Act, which stipulates that voter roll maintenance should have ceased 90 days before an election, which given Florida’s August 14 primary, meant May 16.

Five of Florida’s counties are subject to the Voting Rights Act, but the state never sought permission from either the Justice Department or a federal court to implement its voter roll maintenance program. Florida officials said they were trying to remove non-citizens from the voting rolls, but a flawed process led to several U.S. citizens being asked to prove their citizenship status or be kicked off the rolls.

Six members of Congress wrote Scott earlier this week demanding that he stop purging the state’s voting rolls since the process improperly flagged numerous individuals who were eligible to vote.

“To enable us to meet our responsibility to enforce federal law, please inform us by June 6 of the action that the State of Florida plans to take concerning the matters discussed in this letter,” Christian Herren, chief of the voting section of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, wrote in the letter. “Specifically, please advise whether the State intends to cease the practice discussed above, so that the Department can determine what further action, if any, is necessary.”

This is outstanding and I'm glad to see the DOJ's Civil Rights Division move so quickly to stop this nonsense.   You move, Governor Luthor.

Release The Big Dog

Big Dog comin', yo.  Big Dog!  Greg Sargent:

Former President Bill Clinton has decided to go to Wisconsin to campaign against Scott Walker in the final days of the battle over whether to recall the Wisconsin Governor, a move that could give a boost to the anti-Walker forces in a campaign that will depend heavily on who turns out to vote, a source familiar with Clinton’s plans confirms to me.

As late as yesterday afternoon, it was still not certain whether Clinton would go to Wisconsin. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, in a meeting with Democrats, seemed to suggest that he was trying to determine whether he would go. But neither the DNC nor Clinton’s camp would confirm whether it was going to happen, and Democrats cautioned that Clinton had not made up his mind.

But now he will go to Wisconsin, the source confirms.

Democrats badly want Clinton to campaign in Wisconsin for Tom Barrett, and had lobbied him heavily for weeks. But Clinton remained undecided until today.

That's...awful nice of you, Mr. The Dog.  Magnanimous, even.

Between DWS stepping it in over the weekend and Bill here finally deigning to drag himself up to the Fox River Valley for some A&W mini corndogs and a Culver's butterburger or two, I'm convinced that the maximum amount of voter-turning-out firepower may not have have been most judiciously applied in the case of beating the Kochsuckers on Tuesday.

Still, the ramparts are finally being manned.  I just hope it's enough.

On Wisconsin.

Tech Roundup: Noob Edition

I suppose you don't have to be a beginner to take advantage of this, but newbies will surely appreciate seeing changes appear live.  Mozilla Thimble allows a split screen, one side for HTML code, the other a preview that runs the code.

I hate HTML.  I hate it with the power of a thousand flaming suns shining through a thousand magnifying glasses.  There aren't enough words to describe my disgust, so this is perfect for someone like me, the occasional user.  Super advanced users won't need it, but they have their own awesome tools.  This is just for the normal folks, the dabblers.

Even current users are noobs to Google Drive, it hasn't been around that long.  However, a major improvement is on the way with online syncing.  Google Docs is so close to perfect that its few drawbacks are glaring issues.  This is the last major one (besides their stubborn refusal to allow us to control appearance) to keep them from being The Most Awesome Thing Ever Ever Ever.  Details aren't widely available, but it seems if you leave connection, you can continue to work, and as soon as connection is available your changes are uploaded.  This would make two people in bad connection a bit like dueling doc editing, but for 99% of users this is a great thing.

All around, I'm happy enough to give Thimble a shot for my projects, and I hope my love affair with Google Docs is eternal.  I'd love to hear back from any readers who want to speak up.  Everyone's needs are different, if you have found a flaw or glowing positive, let us know in the comments!

Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?

Clint Eastwood's daughter is getting death threats after taking a chainsaw to a $100,000 purse and lighting it on fire.  The art project actually produced neat results, but the outrage is ridiculous.

• Yes, it's disgusting to live in a world with starving people and $100,000 purses coexisting, often in the same zip code.
• Regardless of how you feel, a person's money is their to spend however they wish.  As long as it's not harming anyone (and to a degree, unfortunately, even if it is) it is none of our business.
• If she had used a knock off it wouldn't have been the same for her purposes.

And if I forgot to mention it, she's Clint Eastwood's daughter.  Who's going to have the marbles to pick a fight with her?  I think we can all agree it's a silly and wasteful thing to do, but she owes no explanation or apology.  If she wants to burn a million dollars in cash, it's her prerogative.  

Beyond Thunder DOMA

And the inevitable Supreme Court case on the federal Defense Of Marriage Act got one step closer today as a three-judge panel on the First Circuit just declared the law unconstitutional.

A three judge panel of The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit just handed down a decision declaring the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. Notably, the panel included Judges Juan Torruella and Michael Boudin, both of whom are Republican appointees. Judge Boudin, who authored the opinion, is one of the most highly regarded judges in the country; he frequently sends his former law clerks to clerk for Supreme Court justices.

Here's the money quote from the ruling linked above (PDF, emphasis mine):

For 150 years, this desire to maintain tradition would alone have been justification enough for almost any statute. This judicial deference has a distinguished lineage, including suchfigures as Justice Holmes, the second Justice Harlan, and Judges Learned Hand and Henry Friendly. But Supreme Court decisions in the last fifty years call for closer scrutiny of government action touching upon minority group interests and of federal action in areas of traditional state concern.

To conclude, many Americans believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, and most Americans live in states where that is the law today. One virtue of federalism is that it permits this diversity of governance based on local choice, but this applies as well to the states that have chosen to legalize same-sex marriage. Under current Supreme Court authority, Congress' denial of federal benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts has not been adequately supported by any permissible federal interest.

Both the "closer scrutiny" Fifth Amendment and the "permissible federal interest" Tenth Amendment arguments are key to taking down DOMA.  The basic argument is that the federal government has a duty to protect minority groups under the Equal Protection clause, and that same-sex couples meet the standard of a minority group that needs equal protection, and as such the denial of federal marriage benefits specifically to same-sex couples violates that equal protection when the state, in this case Massachusetts, makes those benefits at the state level legal.  It's the scope of how far that applies (if it's just to states where same-sex marriage is legal or all 50 states) that seems to be the question the panel is leaving up to SCOTUS to chew over, but they definitely accept the argument as valid.

The ruling also spells out pretty plainly that in the end, only SCOTUS can decide this one.  But seeing the lower court ruling affirmed here is a definite point for the good guys.

Eat, Drink, And Be Outlawed

Mayor Bloomberg wants to ban NYC restaurants and eateries from serving soda and other sugary drinks in larger sizes than 16 ounces.  Good luck with that, Bloomy.

If New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has his way, you won't be gulping down any 44-ounce Cokes at any of the Big Apple's eateries after March 2013.

Citing what he says is the contribution sugary beverages make to obesity in the U.S., Bloomberg says the buck, and the big Dr. Pepper, stops with him.

“Obesity is a nationwide problem, and all over the United States, public health officials are wringing their hands saying, ‘Oh, this is terrible.’ New York City is not about wringing your hands; it’s about doing something. I think that’s what the public wants the mayor to do,” Bloomberg told The New York Times.

His proposal would ban any the sale of any sugary beverage over 16 ounces in any of the city's restaurants, delis, movie theaters or even street carts, according to reports from New York.

Here's an idea.  If you're worried about soda causing obesity, ban high fructose corn syrup instead, that would be effective (and of course would bring down the wrath of the food giants and Big Agra like a tornado upon the city too).  This is just piddling, ineffective, and goofy.

People can still get giant sodas at the store.  They can still get refills at restaurants (and they will.)  This isn't going to make a dent, period.  Not sure what he's thinking, but this is like trying to put a wildfire with, well, 16 ounce cups of water.

Nice to see Bloomy's inner dictator shine through.

StupidiNews!

• 14-year-old Snigdha Mandipati of San Diego is this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee champion, acing the word guetapens in the 13th round.
• A Maryland man has been denied bail after admitting he murdered his roommate and ate his brain and heart.
• The jury in the John Edwards case has acquitted him on one count and deadlocked on the other five, prompting a mistrial ruling that will almost certainly not be retried.
• Eurozone unemployment in the 17 countries that make up the EU has now reached 11%, weighed down by Spain's nearly 25% jobless number.
• A new book confirms that the US and Israel indeed created the Stuxnet worm to attack Iran, but that they then lost control of the virus into the wild.

Last Call

Over at Balloon Juice, mistermix notes that WaPo fact checker Glenn Kessler and PolitiFact disagree on last week's statement on President Obama's spending.  PolitiFact called it Mostly True, while Kessler, citing context, gave it three Pinocchios.  They can fight all they want to, but the point is, as mistermix points out, that our fact checkers are pretty much broken anyway when it comes to the most ridiculous liars out there:  Trump and the Birthers.

Some of you disagreed with my view that saying that birtherism was “long discredited” or “long debunked” isn’t good enough, but I think that’s a real symptom of one of the major issues in journalism that fact checking has done nothing to change. Being “discredited” or “debunked” are different ways of saying that a statement isn’t believed by the community, but it’s not a categorical statement that something is false. The statement “the sun rose in the west this morning” doesn’t need to be “debunked” or “discredited’—it’s plainly, verifiably false. If the fact checking movement in journalism were having any real impact, wouldn’t journalists just say that birtherism is, similarly, “false”? It’s a simple, discrete and verifiable fact that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. Yet four years after the fact checkers called out the birthers, journalists just can’t say that Donald Trump made a false accusation about Obama’s place of birth. It’s a “long-discredited accusation” in the Times and a “long-debunked contention” in the Post. I don’t know where to look to find better examples of the total failure of the fact checking project.

So why aren't Birther statements by Trump and others given "Pants on Fire" and "Four Pinocchios" ratings?  They're relevant political statements being made by campaign surrogates and/or Republican political officials about the President.  They are absolutely the bailiwick of the Kessler/PolitiFact crew.  It would take all of five minutes to write the article, and yet they never get written.

It's not just the fact checkers either.  Journalists simply aren't going to antagonize someone as rich as Trump, period.  It's fine to call the President a liar in "context" but when someone says "Earth's atmosphere is full of deadly methane" or "the speed of light is 4 miles an hour" or "President Obama was born in Kenya" you call them on it.

Period.

Dropping The Pretense

FOX News simply declares itself the adjunct of the Romney campaign by airing a 4 minute anti-Obama infomercial on FOX and Friends Wednesday morning.  Even our old friend and current Malkinvania Minister of Defense Cap'n Ed Morrissey is disturbed by the blatant political slant of it, unsolicited.

Should a news organization produce and publish attack ads like this? I know the initial response will be that other news organizations offer biased perspectives and hagiographies of Obama that go well beyond a single video … and that response is entirely valid.  However, we usually criticize that kind of behavior with other news organizations, too. If anyone wanted to look for evidence that the overall Fox News organization intends to campaign against Obama rather than cover the campaign, this video would be difficult to refute as evidence for that claim.

See, all it does is lower FOX to the level of the LAMESTREAM MEDIA, so it's okay.  Bonus "It wasn't our slickly produced campaign ad!" copout:

The package that aired on FOX & Friends was created by an associate producer and was not authorized at the senior executive level of the network. This has been addressed with the show’s producers.

And by "addressed" we mean "gave these outstanding go-getting sunzabitches a raise!" right?

Meanwhile, Romney now has a new campaign video to show all over the country, free of charge.  Remember, FOX is a "news organization" so if the FCC, the FEC, or the DOJ say word "boo" it's OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DECLARES WAR ON FOX, TENS OF MILLIONS OF AMERICAN PATRIOTS.

They're just daring someone to do something about them and they don't give a flying crap.

Syria-ous Opposition

Any hope that China and Russia would move to allow the UN a more robust role in preventing another Houla Massacre was quickly dashed this week as both countries vowed to continue to support keeping the al-Assad regime in power.

China and Russia on Wednesday reiterated their stance against military intervention in Syria despite soaring international condemnation in the wake of a massacre that killed more than 100, including children.

"One cannot take decisions on military operations in Syria by being guided by only emotions," Russian first deputy foreign minister, Andrei Denisov, was quoted as saying by the nation's state-run Itar-Tass news agency.

Denisov was responding to a statement by French President Francois Hollande, who accused Beijing and Moscow of blocking efforts to impose tough measures against the Syrian regime.

China urged the warring sides in Syria to resume diplomatic dialogue and support a peace plan by international envoy Kofi Annan.

"China opposes military intervention and does not support forced regime change," said Liu Weimin, a foreign ministry spokesman. "The fundamental route to resolving the Syrian issue is still for all sides to fully support Annan's mediation efforts and push all the relevant parties to carry out diplomatic dialogue."

China and Russia have vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning President Bashar al-Assad's regime for attacks on protesters.

"We believe that considering any new measures to affect the situation would be premature for the Security Council," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told Russia's Interfax news agency.

One has to wonder at this point what al-Assad would have to do in order for new measures to become necessary, but there is room enough for caution here.  Syria would not be Libya and the dynamics of intervention would be significantly different in a number of key ways, most notably with Syria's proximity to Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey...and oh yeah, Israel along the Golan Heights.  

Any action in Syria would put Western allies in a serious bind, not to mention Syria is a majority Sunni Muslim nation (75% or so) with pretty much zero Shi'ites, and that's not going to go over well with Iraq or Saudi Arabia (unless both nations decide to look the other way if we go after al-Asaad's Alawite sect to put the Sunnis in power, which would piss off all the Shi'ites.)

The thing is Syria actually has an Army and Air Force, even a Navy (and it's not old Soviet era surplus, either.)  There's a reason why China and Russia are so quick to block intervention, al-Assad has been a good customer.  It wouldn't be a cakewalk, and who knows what would happen with the long borders with Iraq and Turkey.

The great Muddle-Through continues, I guess.

Springfield Hospital Inflates Test Cost By Ten Times

A Springfield mother decided to investigate a charge that seemed ridiculously high.  As it turns out, she is right.  It seems there is a mandatory set of blood tests required on a newborn infant, and the local hospital was charging not over ten times the amount the state charged to process the blood.

She thought the bill from Mercy Hospital Springfield — $665 before insurance for drawing the blood and the tests — seemed high, so she started asking questions. What she found out is that the state lab that does the tests charges hospitals $65.

“I was flabbergasted at how much it was,” said Brown, an Ozark resident. “I think it’s ridiculous. The state charges $65, which even includes the postage.”

Sonya Kullmann, a spokeswoman for Mercy, said the hospital is reviewing the charge for the test to see if it should be changed. The standard fee at Mercy Hospital Springfield for the test is $629 — close to 10 times the charge by the state lab — which includes processing the blood, delivering it to the state lab, receiving the results and billing for the procedure.

Other hospitals ranged from $95 to close to what Mercy charges.

Gee, maybe this is part of the health care crisis.  When they're done screwing over people at their most vulnerable, it only makes sense to go after the people who are likely so busy and drowning in new responsibility that they won't have time to analyze their bill.  Thank goodness this woman is the exception and has brought this to light.

Hero Kicked Off Bus For Protecting Handicapped Girl

On the bus, Rich was shocked by how some of the younger middle school girls were treating a student with mental disabilities.

Rich complained about the bullying to the bus driver, then to school officials, but says the adults took no action.

Rich told Fox 35 about the mean middle school bullies: "They would be mean to her, tell her she couldn't sit on certain spots on the bus. They were giving her food that they put in her mouth. I actually had to tell her to spit it out because she didn't understand."

"When the school didn't do anything, I told the girls, if the school didn't do anything, I was going to do something."

However, that warning got Rich into trouble with school officials, who have now banned her from riding the bus.

Clearly, this kind and protective soul is the real threat.  The school has complained that only one side of the story is being told, but what a side to tell.  If these facts line up, it's hard to imagine what other side could explain how common assault is tolerated but threatening to stop it is punished by banishment.

She did just what we'd want, in a perfect world.  She stood up, she followed the channels, and when those channels failed to protect the innocent she made sure someone did.  She was punished for doing the right thing, at an age when she is learning how to step out and be independent.

Rich isn't in nearly as much trouble as the girl she was protecting.  If the bus driver isn't trying to control the situation, that poor child is at the mercy of the others, now without a buffer to help.

The Parable Of The Fishes And The Loathes

Who would Jesus have the government mass murder?  A Kansas Baptist pastor believes he has the answer...

The pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Seneca, Kansas says President Barack Obama has gone too far in supporting same sex marriage and it’s time for the U.S. government to begin killing gay men and lesbians.

“Terrorists are dangerous, the economy is a real and present danger,” Pastor Curtis Knapp told his congregation on Sunday. “But there is simply nothing other than the holocaust of the unborn which imperils the safety of our country or places our people in jeopardy as does the leader of the Western world publicly raising his fist at the heavens and declaring that the bedrock institution of society, ordained of God and meant to be protected by the state, is little more than a convention of convenience with the children of Sodom to transform the meaning of something, which is precious to Jesus Christ, and a living picture of his love for the church into a legally protected justification for perversion and a vehicle of hatred aimed directly at that love.”

Knapp went on to read from Leviticus 20: “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death.”

“They should be put to death,” Knapp declared. “‘Oh, so you’re saying we should go out and start killing them, no?’ — I’m saying the government should. They won’t, but they should.”

Kill them all, let God sort them out.  We should totally put these guys in charge of the government and vote in hardcore Republican nutjobs like this so that they can make stuff like this happen.  What's that, you say?  "Morally bankrupt and borderline psychotic"?

Well, sure, but he's a Real American from the heartland, you know.  A real crazy American, that is.

The Texas Standoff

The only moderately close race in Texas on Tuesday was the GOP Senate primary to replace the retiring Kay Bailey Hutchinson, as Gov. Rick Perry's right hand man Lt. Gov David Dewhurst didn't get 50% +1 of the vote in the seven candidate race, meaning there will be a runoff between Dewhurst and Tea Party goofball Ted Cruz on July 31.

The runoff will be held July 31 and is shaping up to be a referendum on which Republican candidate voters perceive as the more conservative: Dewhurst or Cruz. Dewhurst has long led in public opinion polls, but limited government groups are hoping Cruz can pull an upset similar to Richard Mourdock's ousting of 36-year Senate veteran Richard Lugar in Indiana.

Dewhurst says he helped make the Lone Star state one of the country's most conservative, having held the powerful lieutenant governorship since 2003. Cruz, a fiery attorney and populist, counters that the tea party wave that began in 2010 is still going strong.

"Tonight, is a clear message to Washington special interests: don't mess with Texas. Texans want to elect their own United States senator," Dewhurst said. "Today, Republican voters made a choice between a conservative Texas businessman and Washington special interests."

Addressing his own cheering group of supporters in Houston, Cruz said "this is a victory for accountability" and challenged Dewhurst to five debates before the second round of voting. He has vowed to win the runoff, claiming energized Republicans are most likely to turnout in droves for it.

In a subsequent phone interview Cruz said, "we faced what everyone considered to be an unstoppable opponent with unlimited financial resources."

And if you're wondering what Texas Democrats are doing, well, they're there, I suppose.

On the Democratic side, former state Rep. Paul Sadler advanced to a runoff against perennial candidate Grady Yarbrough of San Antonio, who does not even have a campaign website. Yarbrough said in a phone interview that he expected a runoff with four candidates in the race.

Texas hasn't elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988, so the winner of the Republican primary should easily prevail in November's general election.

That may not always be the case, however.  The Texas GOP knows it.  The next time Dewhurst or Cruz come up for re-election in 2018, it may be a far different story.   Sadly, there's a lot of damage either one of these clowns will be able to do starting in January 2013.  Hutchinson at least rarely sided with the Democrats, especially on women's issues.  These guys?  Forget it.

Cruz is running to the right of Rick Perry's Lieutenant Governor.  That's frightening.

StupidiNews!

• The man suspected of killing five people in yesterday's shooting rampage in Seattle has shot and killed himself after police closed in on him late Wednesday night.
• George W. Bush will return to the White House today as his official portrait is unveiled at a ceremony with President Obama.
• Speaking in front of African-American clergy in Washington on Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder warned that civil rights gains will be in jeopardy if Republican lawmakers have their way.
• Spain's financial crisis has claimed the country's green energy industry as its latest victim as those companies are leaving the country after subsidies have all but vanished.
• With the success of their Dragon cargo capsule launch last week, SpaceX has signed contracts for the Dragon's bigger brother, Falcon Heavy.

Last Call

The UN special tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands has sentenced Liberia's former leader, Charles Taylor, to 50 years in prison for his role in aiding rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone.

The first former head of state to be convicted of war crimes since World War II was sentenced to 50 years in prison Wednesday by an international court in The Hague, Netherlands.

The court convicted Charles Taylor last month of aiding rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone in a campaign of terror, involving murder, rape, sexual slavery and the conscription children younger than 15.

The prosecution had asked the Special Court for Sierra Leone for a sentence of 80 years for Taylor, the president of Liberia from 1997 to 2003, but the judges found the recommendation "excessive" citing the "limited scope" of the conviction in some points.

There is no death penalty in international criminal law, and Taylor, 64, would serve out his sentence in a British prison.

Taylor's record of crimes against humanity was purely awful.  He literally tried to take over Sierra Leone by funding rebels and sending in troops and weapons across the border from Liberia to allow multiple massacres of women and children in an orchestrated attempt to topple the government there through bloody terrorism.  It was moderately successful, so much so that outside funding of rebel forces was immediately apparent and pinned on Taylor ten years ago.  It's taken this long for him to pay the price, but pay it he will, spending the rest of his life in prison.

Child soldiers, roving rape gangs, prostitution slavery rings, assassinations of enemies, Taylor did it all.  Fifty years is a million years too short of a sentence for this monster.

Flamin' Hot Fries

Methinks the Mexican drug cartels might have bit off more than they can chew with their latest target.

Mexican drug cartels are not strictly drug cartels. One of their fastest growing markets is extortion of private citizens and businesses. Don’t pay, and you can be threatened — or worse. But largely, the cartels target small businesses and individuals, and stay away from the larger industries. Now several arson attacks over the weekend against a Mexican snack chip subsidiary might be the first time the cartels have targeted a multi-national corporation.

That corporation would PepsiCo. According to press reports, masked men attacked five warehouses and vehicle lots on Friday and Saturday nights belonging to the U.S. snack and soft drink giant. More specifically, PepsiCo’s Mexican subsidiary: Sabritas. Dozens of yellow delivery trucks — which transport Sabritas chips and Fritos, Cheetos and Ruffles (among other brands) for the Mexican market — were burned. The good news: no one was injured or killed. At least one member of the Knights Templar cartel was reportedly arrested. Video has also emerged of firefighters battling the blazing trucks and the European Pressphoto Agency released images of Sabritas’ smiley-face mascot illuminated by the flames.

“What we cannot allow is for this kind of isolated case to become generalized,” Gerardo Gutierrez, president of Mexico’s Business Coordinating Council, told the Associated Press. “The authorities have to take forceful action.”

Now the rumor is that the Mexican government is running surveillance operations on the cartels out of the ubiquitous Sabritas trucks (which everyone even remotely involved is categorically denying).  And the Knights Templar are a bunch of dangerous lunatics even for a Mexican drug cartel.  But I'm thinking screwing with a major multinational corporation is not going to end well strategically for these guys.

Alternately, here's 66% of the pitch for Expendables 3.  Just saying.

Just Stay Home

Glenn "Instadouche" Reynolds is back on the warpath again against college loans, arguing in the New York Post that higher education simply isn't worth the debt of student loans anymore.

For students, piece of advice No. 1 is: Don’t go into debt. When I went to law school, back in the ’80s, I turned down free rides at a couple of excellent schools to go to Yale Law School, even though it meant taking on a lot of student-loan debt. I’m not sure I’d advise anyone to do the same thing today, even to go to Yale Law, the undisputed king of the law-school rankings — and I’m positive I wouldn’t make a similar tradeoff for many other places, even Harvard Law.

Debt is what gets people into trouble in bubbles: They borrow heavily because they think the value of what they’re buying, whether it’s a house or a tulip, will go up. When it stops going up, they’re sunk.

Today, the value of an education isn’t going up, but the price is. That’s a bad combination. So don’t borrow heavily.

That’s good advice for schools, too. Those that borrow money based on the expectation that tuition revenue will continue to increase will have problems, and, in fact, some already are. Instead, schools should be looking to cut costs and increase value — the exact opposite of what many have been doing in recent years. 

And why are schools having to borrow money?  Because education budgets, particularly state university systems, are being shredded and conservative knuckleheads like Glenn here are demanding that universities cut costs the same way that public schools do:  fire instructors, drop classes and programs, and shrink admissions.  Not that schools are completely exonerated from being at fault.

But Reynolds wants state universities run like for-profit schools.  The problem is there's plenty of evidence that for-profit schools are more interested in creating profits than providing value or enhancing worth for students.  When students go into debt to pay for a education at a for profit school and don't get a job, Reynolds is saying it's the government's fault for making the student loan available in the first place.

We should be sending more kids to college, not less.  And yes, there's a lot colleges and universities can do in order to cut costs.  But eliminating student loans and grants isn't going to lower university price tags.  If anything it'll just redistribute the costs to taxpayers as there's fewer students.

It's crazy.

Russian Gay Activists Arrested

About 40 gay activists were detained by police in Moscow today while trying to demand their right to hold a gay pride parade, according to organizers of the march.

Russian authorities have repeatedly denied gays the right to hold protests.

The activists gathered outside the Moscow city council building, where they were accosted by Orthodox Christians before being detained by the police. The Christians attempted to break up the gathering, throwing water, attacking protesters, and grabbing the demonstrators’ rainbow flags.

Gay rights opponent Dmitry Tsarionov spoke to the crowd in front of a sign that read, “Moscow is not Sodom.”

“I will not allow perverts to bring the wrath of God onto our city,” he said, according to The Associated Press. “I want our children to live in a country where a sin that so awfully distorts human nature is not preached in schools.”

My first thought was, oh that poor man, how awful it is for him to lose the right to speak his mind.  Then I felt the usual eye rolling annoyance at the "wrath of God" comment, and that education is again immediately attacked.

But then I realized... we are doing the same thing here.  Don't say gay, don't ask don't tell, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, it's all the same thing except it's America.

I am incredibly sad right now.