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[personal profile] solarbird
I saw this before, but didn't know whether to believe it, but now there's a second source that isn't townhall.com: Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has decided to use the prestige of the Supreme Court to fuel paranoid conspiracy freak insanity about Barack Obama by taking to conference one of the various nutbar lawsuits against President-Designate Obama's citizenship. This is truly wretched. It's not just that the case has no merit; it's that Justice Thomas has decided to use the Supreme Court as a baiting toy to fuel the insane.

Glenn Greenwald has disturbing reports of possible backtracking - and the backtracking on the backtracking - on torture by Democratic leadership in the Senate. The Weekly Standard has, of course, been urging Chief Executive Bush to award the Medal of Freedom to torturers. Meanwhile, the New York Times still refuses to call torture "torture," and continues to label torture opponents as crazy leftists. More here, if you can stomach it.

Meanwhile, Pope Benedict has thrown Vatican efforts against a UN resolution calling for an end to the practice of criminalizing and punishing people for their sexual orientation. Yes: the Vatican, under Pope Benedict, is now actively working to keep queers illegal in many countries. The Catholic Church hierarchy is now effectively supporting the death penalty for homosexuality in Saudi Arabia.

Over in the Air Force, Capt. Christian Biscotti led a mandatory-attendence presentation at RAF Lakenheath declaring evolutionary theory a pro-suicide Marxist-Communist evil, and promoting Creationism as the antidote. Regular readers familiar with fundamentalist Creationist rhetoric will recognise many of the attack points made in the slides. The religious-indoctrination presentation was officially a "suicide prevention" exercise. Many more slides and a link to the entire presentation here.

Much of the above is borrowing/stealing from the highly sectarian The Purpose-Driven Life, by Pastor Rick Warren, who on the 3rd endorsed the assassination of foreign leaders he sees as "evil," supporting Fox News's Sean Hannity and his declaration that such actions are "righteous."

Closer to home, the University of Washington student newspaper The Daily has spurred protests after running an op-ed against same-sex marriage rights, bringing in the usual hate arguments that homosexuality is an emotional problem and that marriage rights for queers will lead to incest, bestiality, and pedophilia. (Original article here.) The article is accompanied by an abstract graphic of a generic man marrying a sheep. There's a student protest at 12:30, 5 December 2008, and a Facebook group here.

In creepy, creepy, creepy news, the number of troops the Pentagon is talking about deploying domestically has swelled to 20,000. The idea of any deployment was first floated a couple of months ago, and the number has grown five times since then. They are, of course, citing terrorism.

Finally, in somewhat more rational news, Vice-President Designate Biden came out in support of more and better support for passenger rail, particularly for in-city transportation.

eta: I've already had to use the banhammer once today on a newly-created account by an OBAMA IS A SEKRIT MUSLIM/birth-certificate crazy. I will continue to apply as necessary, so don't bother.

Date: 2008-12-05 05:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kathrynt.livejournal.com
I keep asking the citizenship whackos this: Given that Barack Obama is clearly a citizen now -- he holds a passport and clearances -- there are only two avenues to that citizenship. Either he was a citizen from the instant of his birth (a "natural born" citizen), or he became a citizen through the process of naturalization.

So if he's not a "natural born" citizen, where the fuck is his naturalization paperwork?! If he's participated in some sort of scheme to hornswaggle the American people, it must have been completed by the time he was seven years old, because that's the first time he left the country on a US passport.

Date: 2008-12-05 08:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] firni.livejournal.com
I see that the plaintiff also sought to disqualify McCain from running, because McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone.

Date: 2008-12-07 07:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mojave-wolf.livejournal.com
I'm still not expecting great things from Obama and never liked him, but my thought ever time I saw this brought up at any point was not even that it was crazy, but 'who the fuck cares?'

It's a law that might have made sense at one time in the early stages of this coutry but is now stupid. Aside from the obvious problems w/this particular case (i.e he is a natural born citizen), either he's gonna do a good job or he isn't. I don't care if his mother was KGB and he was born in Manchuria to some dude named Damian Nyarlathotep. It's irrelevant. (yeah, there's a law, but I take it as seriously as I do the one about not running red lights at 3 in the morning with no cars for miles)

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