The Rake Magazine

Gerrymandering. Wasn't he the guy who played "The Beaver"?

Here is the first line from Tom Delay's statement on his indictment:

"This morning, in an act of blatant political partisanship, a rogue district attorney in Travis County, Texas, named Ronnie Earle charged me with one count of criminal conspiracy."

Imagine, someone with prosecutorial power using said power for partisan political purposes. Oh, my!

Let's see, does anyone remember Ken Starr? Does anyone remember who the House leader was who pushed for Clinton's impeachment?

You only get three guesses. And the first two don't count.

What's a guy gotta do to get arrested in this country?

The news today, if you are paying attention to anything other than Bush's attempt to convince us he cares about poor people on the Gulf Coast, is that Private Lynndie England is going to prison for three years for her part in the Abu Ghraib disgrace.

Farther down the news chain, so far that it's not even on the news chain any more, is Judith Miller, who has now been in jail for 84 days for refusing to testify about her source in the Plame leak case.

Cindy Sheehan went to jail on Monday (briefly) because she refused to move off the White House sidewalk.

Who's not in jail? Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States and architect of the Bush torture policy; Karl Rove, the guy who actually revealed the name of a CIA agent to the press; and, let's not forget the Commander in Chief, who knowingly lied to the American People to start a war in Iraq which killed Cindy Sheehan's son.

As dangerous as an allegory on the banks of the Nile

Yesterday this from the NY Times about the Biblical literalists' invasion of natural history museums and how they are accosting and interrupting guides while they are explaining the scientific view of how we got here.

The article explains how members of B.C. groups (B.C. stands for Biblically Correct, which has to be one of the greatest oxymorons of all times,) have started showing up at museums to challenge Darwin, Newton, or anyone else who ever had a coherent thought.

But, they have their backers. According to recent polls, 54 percent of Americans do not believe in evolution. I suggested earlier that those who don't believe in evolution shouldn't get to partake in the benefits science has provided us. If you don't believe in survival of the fittest, you shouldn't get the benefits our evolved brains' study of viral and bacterial evolution have provided us, e.g. vaccines.

Now some thought that was too harsh, so I'm going to suggest another tactic. Let's form groups called FART (Fundamentalists Are Really Thick) and start going to churches and challenging their ministers to debates on whether their beliefs aren't prima facie evidence that they are closely related to chimpanzees who can be trained to do tricks on command--such as pulling the Republican voting lever and getting a banana.

Brownback--isn't that a species of great ape?

Today, I take back everything I've said about David Brooks of the NY Times.

This is a howler. If you've spent any time at all listening to the confirmation hearings for John Roberts, you'll like this. The only thing funnier is listening to Kansas Senator Sam Brownback's performance in the original and imagining yourself as being represented by that moron.

Or is that tragic?

n.b. If you like reading the NY Times editorial columnists, as of Monday on it's gonna cost you. They are going to start charging for access on the web. I think it's a bad idea, but, what can you do? At least it's better to pay for the NY Times than get that sorriest of op-ed pages that the Strib offers up for free.

An anonymous interlocutor took me to task last week for crying about the FEMA and Army types who wouldn't let reporters ride along to document the search for the dead in New Orleans.

Well, the reporters have their own rides now, but it seems the Army didn't get the message about letting reporters do their jobs. Or perhaps they got a different message? I find it doubly ironic that the proud 82nd Airborne, heroes of WWII and a vanguard of our rapid deployment capability, was deployed so late to New Orleans and was given the task of protecting the President's reputation above protecting the people attacked by Katrina.

Do we need to see more pictures of bodies from New Orleans? Yes, just like we ought to see coffins from Iraq. It's part of the story. It makes us think of how and because of whom we got in this situation. It helps us remember how to vote next time we get the chance.