Last Call

GOP Rep. Todd Akin, running for Senate in Missouri?  Just...I can't. 

Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri who is running against Sen. Claire McCaskill, justified his opposition to abortion rights even in case of rape with a claim that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy.

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Akin said that even in the worst-case scenario — when the supposed natural protections against unwanted pregnancy fail — abortion should still not be a legal option for the rape victim.

“Let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work, or something,” Akin said. “I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

So...women have....what down there, Todd?  Spike traps?  Nannites?  Really, really small ninjas?  They can vomit up their uteri inside out like sea cucumbers to eject rapey sperm?   I'd like to know how this works, man.

Akin is perhaps the boldest among a crop of conservative 2012 nominees who could hamper GOP efforts to take back the Senate in the fall. Akin has called for an end to the school-lunch program and a total ban on the morning-after pill.

His claim about “legitimate” types of rape is not completely foreign to the current Republican Congress, however. In 2011, the House GOP was forced to drop language from a bill that would have limited federal help to pay for an abortion to only victims of “forcible rape.” Akin was a co-sponsor on the bill.

Nor is this Akin’s first time suggesting some types of rape are more worthy of protections than others. As a state legislator, Akin voted in 1991 for an anti-marital-rape law, but only after questioning whether it might be misused “in a real messy divorce as a tool and a legal weapon to beat up on the husband,” according to a May 1 article that year in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The PollTracker Average shows Akin leading McCaskill by a margin of 49.7 percent to 41.3 percent. 

I'm betting those poll numbers change now, but will they change enough?  Still a very good chance this moron is going to be a Senator.

Where The Real Terrorists Are

If I told you there was a terrorist group killing cops in Louisiana last week, you'd either look at me funny or call me liar.  After all, odds are you didn't hear about it.  Indeed, a group of seven people have been arrested for making threats against law enforcement and ambushing Sheriff's deputies near New Orleans in two separate incidents, killing two of them and wounding two more.

The reason you didn't hear about this story is that the shooters are white, and the group is right-wing militia.  Nick Martin is covering the story at TPM:

A year ago, he was wanted by Nebraska authorities for allegedly making “terroristic threats” to law enforcement.

By Friday, investigators said Kyle Joekel, 28, was one of seven people involved in what was being described as a pair of ambushes on sheriff’s deputies outside of New Orleans. Two deputies were killed and two others wounded before it all came to an end early Thursday morning.

According to a report by the Shreveport Times, investigators in Louisiana had Joekel on their radar for months before the shooting and believed he was part of some sort of “anti-government group.”

A spokesperson for the Louisiana State Police, which is the lead agency in the ambush investigation, declined on Friday to say whether his agency’s investigators believe anti-government views were a motive for the killings. However, Sgt. Len Marie told TPM those questions could lead to something bigger.

Just days after a white supremacist killed six in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.  You still remember that story, right?  Our media sure doesn't.  So what group did Joekel belong to?

The details of the incident were not immediately clear on Friday afternoon, but the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that the sheriff of Gage County believed Joekel was part of a group known as Posse Comitatus. The group, which was largely active in the 1970s and 80s, was seen as the precursor to the sovereign citizens movement.

“It just didn’t look right,” Sheriff Millard “Gus” Gustafson told the newspaper. “These guys would be driving around at night, and they’d have weapons on the front seat. If you’re doing that, something’s wrong — you’re either hunting illegally or doing something else.”

Ahh yes, Posse Comitatus, the mother of the modern militia movement in the US.  Two dead cops, but this story got swept under the rug as fast as it happened.  Our liberal media spent more time on a security guard getting shot in the arm than this story where cops were ambushed and killed by a terrorist group.

I guarantee you however if Kyle here had been black, Latino, or of middle eastern descent, it would be front page news for the third day in a row.  We'd have FOX asking if this was proof of the coming race war and if President Obama was behind it, of this being the reconquista in effect or if Mexican cartel killers had invaded New Orleans, or if deadly Taliban or AQ killers had indeed infiltrated the United States and if more shootings were imminent.

But no.  White guy.  Far-right militia group domestic terrorists.  That's not news at all in America. 

Aww, (Honey) Nuts

This is why I love The Smoking Gun.  Really, you can't make this stuff up.

The gay marriage opponent whose recent fiery, videotaped protest outside General Mills gained national attention--and triggered a criminal investigation--died over the weekend, according to police.

Michael Leisner, 65, died Saturday while running an errand near his Andover, Minnesota home. His funeral service is scheduled for Friday morning at the Emmanuel Christian Center.

Dwight Denyes, the church’s senior pastor, told TSG that Leisner (pictured at right) apparently died of a heart attack Saturday while waiting in his car for two of his children to finish playing tennis.

So, when we're told that plagues are the result of our sins, are we not to believe that this irony carries an equal but opposite message?  Don't get me wrong, I don't think God cares about torching some Honey Nut Cheerios on a corporate lawn, but perhaps... just perhaps... it makes sense that there is something wrong with the heart of a man who goes to such crazy lengths to oppose how people live in a free world.

Perhaps.

AT&T: Out To Lunch

Workers for AT&T in Indiana claim in a lawsuit that they are forced to endure odd and punitive lunch break restrictions such as a ban on napping after eating a ham sandwich.

According to a class action suit filed by 11 employees against AT&T Midwest, the telecommunications company has forced technicians to endure “heavy restrictions” on their unpaid lunch break or risk discipline.

According to the suit, employees allege the telecom company allows them to eat packed lunches in vehicles during unpaid lunch hours but not spend the remainder of the lunch break reading newspapers,  napping, or using personal computers or music players in vehicles. Workers also are barred from idling vehicles for air conditioning or heat during lunch.  Manhole workers must stay and guard the area during lunch break; they cannot go more than one-half mile from one assigned job to another for lunch or face discipline.

Of course, AT&T denies this, but they have shown quirks in the past, and the tendency to go way out of line on how their employees behave outside of work.

On an unpaid break, workers should be to do what they wish, within reason.  I do understand the manhole issue, but I would think it would be up to the company to provide the alternative, not a burden to be placed on the worker.

To tell someone they can't run their air-conditioning or heat in their car is ridiculous.  Trying to enforce such policies would be an utter waste of resources.

Ma Bell, you're killing me here.

European Bank Shots

Apparently the United States and the Obama administration have failed to make it clear to our European allies that we were rather serious about the whole "economic sanctions against Iran" thing as the cost of doing business on Wall Street, as Germany's Deustche Bank and a few other folks are finding out.

The hard way.

Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) is among four European banks being investigated by U.S. authorities for alleged violations involving oil trading and Iran, according to an attorney with knowledge of the matter.

Regulators including the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Federal Reserve, the Justice Department and the Manhattan district attorney’s office are all involved in the probe of Deutsche Bank and three other European banks, said the attorney, who asked not to be identified because the investigations are confidential.

“Deutsche Bank had decided by 2007 to reject any new business with Iran, Syria, Sudan and North Korea and to end existing relationships to the extent it was legally possible,” Deutsche Bank spokeswoman Friederika Borgmann said, declining to comment on the U.S. investigation.

The regulators were in advanced stages of an investigation into banking violations at Standard Chartered Plc (STAN) when the superintendent of New York’s banks, Benjamin Lawsky, moved first in that matter with an Aug. 6 order accusing the London-based lender of multiple violations of state banking laws.

Once the federal authorities resolve their probe of Standard Chartered, they will proceed against the four European banks they have been investigating, including Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank, according to the attorney. 

It would be impossible to keep a money laundering investigation against Germany's largest bank under wraps, but the message is quite clear.  The US means business here, and Zee Germans now know it.