My God... These People are NUTS

The NYT has an article (via Kagro X at Kos) about the theo-conservative conference entitled "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" that took place in Washington yesterday. If you're hair isn't curled yet, it will be after you read what these people - including, by the way, House Majority Criminal Leader Tom DeLay - want to do to the balance of power in our country. Take a look, but watch out, this is creepy:

Mr. DeLay alluded to Congressional authority to "set the parameters" of courts' jurisdictions and its obligation "to make sure the judges administer their responsibilities."

The organizers of the conference and Congressional staff members who spoke there called for several specific steps: impeaching judges deemed to have ignored the will of Congress or to have followed foreign laws; passing bills to remove court jurisdiction from certain social issues or the place of God in public life; changing Senate rules that allow the Democratic minority to filibuster Mr. Bush's appeals court nominees; and using Congress's authority over court budgets to punish judges whom it considers to have overstepped their authority.

"I am in favor of impeachment," Michael Schwartz, chief of staff to Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, said in a panel discussion on abortion, suggesting "mass impeachment" might be needed.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, where have these people come from? And why aren't they called out as lunatics at every turn? We've got to fight these people for every friggin inch. They are essentially saying that they want to dismantle the Republic as we know it.

Checks and Balances? Gone.

Filibuster? Toast.

Religious freedom? See Ya.

Separation of Church and State? Toodles.

Judicial Review? HA!

This is serious business. And they are sure that what they are doing is God's Will, which makes it even scarier.

Hammer falling

Start taking bets as to when Delay finally drowns under the tidal wave of mounting evidence that he's a greedy, lying jackass.

He pays his family a pretty hefty allowance.

According to press reports, DeLay's wife, Christine, and daughter, Dani DeLay Ferro, accepted over a half of a million dollars from Americans for a Republican Majority (ARM), a political action committee (PAC) directly controlled by DeLay for "long-term strategic guidance" and "personnel decisions."

The cash was paid out since 2001, meaning that DeLay's family added an average of $100,000 dollars to its combined income from funds raised specifically for getting Republicans elected to office.

Campaign finance reformers have criticized the payment of this large sum of money as beyond the normal standards for members of Congress who employ family members.

But padding family income with campaign contributions is only a scratch on the surface.

Separately, DeLay's daughter received an additional $30,000 from Texans for a Republican Majority (TRM), a DeLay controlled PAC modeled after ARM. DeLay Ferro's records related to payments from TRM were subpoenaed by a grand jury in Austin that indicted three officials of that organization on 32 counts in 2004.

Two of those indicted also worked closely with DeLay at ARM.

But, wait! There's more!

Evidence for this role at TRM indicates that DeLay lied about his work in that organization and that his involvement with illegal activities deserves further investigation.

DeLay's position as House Majority Leader and his reputation as an iron-fisted party loyalist who has openly threatened GOP House members who didn't toe the party line on various issues make the political action committees he controls very influential.

But, wait! There's more! Delay has also aided foreign countries!

DeLay is also being scrutinized for accepting privately funded trips to Russia, Britain, and South Korea in 1997, 2000 and 2001 respectively. The trips were paid for by corporations in those countries through Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist connected to DeLay through Ed Buckham, founder of Alexander Strategy Group. Buckham's firm has numerous large international and national corporate clients.

There's lots and lots more. In a CNN interview, the porky money grubber blamed these accusations of ethics violations on "seedy" attempts by the "liberal media" to embarrass him. Oh, Tom. Poor, poor Tom. Liberals don't need to attempt to embarrass you - you're doing a fine job of that yourself.

Evidence Over Theory, Every Time

Here's a great diary over at Kos about actual, real evidence that the human species diverged from chimpanzees approximately 5-8 million years ago, flying in the face of the creationist "theory" that man was created in God's lab (called "Eden") only 6,000 years ago.

Pertinent graf, emphasis mine:

'Show me the proof' huh? Well, there it is. ERVs aren't just evidence folks, they're more than a smoking gun; ERVs are a high quality video surveillance tape of common descent pulling the trigger. The creationist response? Not much. Usually some vague assertion about 'common design', or that some ERV or other has been found to do something other than just lay there uselessly in the genome. Let's be clear about this; the critical fact here isn't that ERV's have no function, although as best we can tell the vast majority don't have any function at all. The critical fact is how they got to be in the same place on both the chimp and human genome in hundreds of places. Since the point of insertion is controlled by chance and local chemistry, the odds of seven distinct ERVs each inserting in the same exact respective places in both genomes, each genome being several billion base pairs long, and each of the seven inserting hundreds of times, is significantly greater than the chance of winning the lottery 25 consecutive times in a row ...

It's well worth the read.

I Love San Francisco

Though I was born and bred in Boston, I lived in SF for a couple of years after college. While there, I witnessed some incredible protests against the War in Iraq. Seeing those thousands upon thousands of people marching, clogging intersections, and acting out in (mostly) peaceful civil protest showed me why the peace movements of the 60s were sparked in Berkeley. Northern Californians have a grand tradition for that sort of activity, and it was exciting to see it unfold in person.

Yesterday, they were at it again. This time, it was over the Governator holding a $1,000-$100,000 per plate dinner to raise funds for his re-election campaign. The labor groups hoped to rally 5,000 or so protestors at the hotel where the event was to take place. They got just a few more than that. California, Stockton, Grant and Pine Streets were all closed down by the crowd, and there were reportedly more off-duty cops, firemen, and nurses protesting than there were police trying to maintain order.

In the words of Bob Brigham, the professionalism of the protest was "pure West Coast".

Check out the extended account of the event here.

Let's Go Red Sox

Clap clap clap-clap-clap.

Baseball's back, baby.

Update, 4/6/05: Mariano Rivera, Property of the Boston Red Sox.