Friday Malamute Blogging

Stole this one from Lenora's Puppy Love photo gallery.

If Looks Could Kill...

Not Newsworthy But....

This is so awesome.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has sentenced Paris Hilton to 45 days in LA County jail for violating her probation. Her sentence will start on June 5, and the judge made sure she wouldn't be allowed on work release, furloughs, use of an alteranitve jail, or electronic monitoring instead of jail.

I shouldn't care but I can't help it. Paris Hilton is a boil in the armpit of America. I hope she has a really smelly burly cellmate.

Friday Malamute Blogging

I'll just sneak this in...

Happy Birthday!

To the Professor and Ceds...still partners in crime.

Jon Stewart on Bill Moyers

JON STEWART:...the important thing is, that I guess I don't spend any time thinking about what I am or what we do means. I spend my time doing it...I focus on the task and try and do it as best we can. And we're constantly evolving it, because it's my way of trying to make sense of all these ambivalent feelings I have.

Watch here.

Sweet Jesus, please just make him stop!

Can't the Catholic Church do something about this? Maybe make it a mortal sin?

Catholic Church Disavows Limbo

Is nothing sacred?

Sorry...couldn't resist

Friday Malamute Blogging

Oh Pale Waltzing Lord

I haven't yet figured out yet if I have anything worth saying about the Virginia Tech shootings, but I sure as hell know what not to say.

-John Derbyshire calls the victims pussies for letting themselves get shot.

-Bryan Fisher says the shooting occurred because we don’t indoctinate our children into a Christian theocracy.

-Rod Dreher blames Grand Theft Auto and 50 Cent.

-Mark Steyn places blame for the shooting on either the kids who got shot or on Clinton’s penis. Admittedly, it’s difficult to tell.

-Dinesh D’Souza claims that atheists don’t care if people get murdered.

-Michelle Malkin also calls the victims pussies, and says that colleges are to blame for cutting off their balls.

When these people die, let's set up Port-o-Potties over their graves.

The GOP can kiss the Latino vote goodbye

Is this Newt Gingrich's idea of an April Fool's joke?

"The American people believe English should be the official language of the government. ... We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto," Gingrich said to cheers from the crowd of more than 100.

Sadly, it isn't.

In 1995, for example, he said bilingualism poses "long-term dangers to the fabric of our nation" and that "allowing bilingualism to continue to grow is very dangerous."

But even though what he said isn't a joke, he is. A crowd of 100 white biddies cheering your racist bullshit is dandy if you're running for your local KKK chapter, but that crap is not going to play in the any major city--even in the red states.

So pucker up, Newt.

Shaquanda Cotton Released

UPDATE: Great news!

The furor over Cotton's case caused the special conservator now in charge of the Texas Youth Commission, the state's juvenile prison system, to examine it more closely last week, at the urging of civil rights leaders.

The conservator, Jay Kimbrough, who is charged with completely overhauling the Texas Youth Commission because of a spreading sex scandal involving prison officials who allegedly coerced sex from inmates, decided Friday that Shaquanda merited immediate release.

Friday Malamute Blogging II

I have a dog: eternal nuisance. Forever to be fed, watered and walked.
Grow up, I say; go to school, college, learn the law. He won't.

Forever at my heels, he says, "You bought me. Be responsible."

No, I say, and open the door. Go, defy the cowboys on the road. He does, and I, opening all doors, try to sleep until I hear a paw upon the step.

Friday Malamute Blogging

Squirrel-watching.

Dear God

You cannot make this stuff up.

This is funny.

Bill Richardson on Daily Show Tonight!

woo-hoo!

Somebody needs to mess with Texas

This story makes me want to scream. Shaquanda Cotton, a 14-year-old high school freshman, shoved a hall monitor at Paris High School in Paris, Texas.

The youth had no prior arrest record, and the hall monitor--a 58-year-old teacher's aide--was not seriously injured. But Shaquanda was tried in March 2006 in the town's juvenile court, convicted of "assault on a public servant" and sentenced by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to 7 years, until she turns 21.

Just three months earlier, Superville sentenced a 14-year-old white girl, convicted of arson for burning down her family's house, to probation.

My son saw the story on Facebook and I saw a link to it at Skeptical Brotha, and read it in the Trib. There's even a blog, Free Shaquanda Cotton: Leave Shaquanda Notes of Love!

I don't have the words to describe the utter evil it would take to perpetrate this particular travesty of justice.

Crap

Bush Dodges a Constitutional Bullet in New Mexico

President Bush dodged a Constitutional bullet in New Mexico Thursday, when nine Democrats in the state senate joined all 17 Republicans to prevent a proposed joint resolution calling for the US House to begin impeachment hearings to come to a floor vote. Supporters of the measure said it appeared that the Democrats in question mostly came from Republican districts and were worried about electoral repercussions of a pro-impeachment vote.

There is reason to suspect, however, that there was some arm-twisting from national Democratic leaders, who appear dead set on avoiding impeachment hearings...

What the hell?!?

"History is what we choose to remember"

This morning NPR featured a bit of American history that's been conveniently forgotten or rewritten.

I collected census data for other southern states. Tennessee. Georgia. North Carolina. Kentucky. Texas. Each time I found some counties that were either all white or populated by so few blacks as to be virtually all white. This was not what I had expected.

It was pure coincidence that, on one of the days that I was going over the census data in my office at Cox Newspapers in Washington, a woman from the Atlanta bureau was visiting. As we chatted I told her about the odd distribution of blacks in some southern states. She launched into a story about her brother, who is a cook. He had been recently hired as a chef in a restaurant in Forsyth County just outside of Atlanta. On the day she visited him there, she said the Klan was holding a rally on the courthouse lawn. She explained how all the blacks had been run out of the county around the turn of the century and had been kept out ever since. I went back to my census tables and found Forsyth County. In 1990, there were twelve blacks living in a county of over 40,000 people.

...

"ALL NEGROES DRIVEN FROM INDIANA TOWN."

The seven-paragraph story was to the point.

"Negroes began leaving this mining town early this afternoon, following the warning issued by white residents to be out of town by 7 o'clock tonight."

I mounted another reel and found another story:

"MISSOURI MOB'S WORK, Kills Three Negroes, Burns Their Homes and Drives Every Negro Out of Pierce City."

"For nearly 15 hours, ending at noon today this town of 3,000 people has been in the hands of a mob of armed whites, determined to drive every negro from its precincts."

I had found America's racial cleansings.

Obviously, the U.S. has a history of crimes against humanity including a law on the books called the Indian Removal Act, but maybe Elliot Jaspin is differentiating between "racial cleansing" and "ethnic cleansing."

According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and Wikipedia: "Ethnic cleansing as a crime under international law."

There is no formal legal definition of ethnic cleansing.[8] However, ethnic cleansing in the broad sense - the forcible deportation of a population - is defined as a crime against humanity under the statutes of both International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).[9] The gross human-rights violations integral to stricter definitions of ethnic cleansing are treated as separate crimes falling under the definitions for genocide or crimes against humanity of the statutes.[10]

My point is we're never going to get those shiny rings, are we?