Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) signed a bill that made it okay for public school teachers to say “Merry Christmas” and other religious holiday greetings. In doing so he said,
I’m proud we are standing up for religious freedom in our state. Freedom of religion doesn’t mean freedom from religion.
Yes, it does, you dipshit.
Dick Cheney, of all people, is criticizing the Obama administration for not being prepared for the attack in Benghazi.
‘They should have been ready before anything ever happened,’ Cheney told MailOnline exclusively during a party in Georgetown celebrating the launch of a new book by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld…’When we were there, on our watch, we were always ready on 9/11, on the anniversary,’ he recalled.
The anniversary of what? Oh, that’s right: the attack that you were totally warned about with such subtle hints as “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S.”
The man is pond scum.
Ernest Hemingway in his 1954 Nobel Prize speech:
Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.
You got that right, Papa.
Via Andrew Sullivan.
President Obama last night after the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston bombing suspect:
All in all, this has been a tough week.
You said it.
The president also thanked the authorities for their dedication and teamwork, paid tribute to Officer Sean Collier, 26, who was killed in the line of duty, and said that help is on the way for the people of West, Texas, in recovering from the explosion at the fertilizer plant that killed over 15 people.
Video here.
Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.
Remember that as you’re downloading the latest update to Turbo Tax at 11:55 tonight.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) tells the Huffington Post that the parents of the children killed at Newtown are just pawns.
See, I think it’s so unfair of the administration to hurt these families, to make them think this has something to do with them when, in fact, it doesn’t.
You could say that Sen. Inhofe is desperately searching for a way to justify his filibuster of the gun control bill. Or you could just say that he’s evil, wicked, and cruel.
Melissa McEwan on the whining of the conservative Christians who are afraid that they will become “second class citizens” because of their support for “traditional marriage.”
Losing the capacity to oppress is not oppression.
Yea, verily.
Maureen Dowd on the cowardice of some of the members of the Supreme Court who sounded as if they were afraid to impose marriage equality:
This court is plenty bold imposing bad decisions on the country, like anointing W. president or allowing unlimited money to flow covertly into campaigns. But given a chance to make a bold decision putting them on the right, and popular, side of history, they squirm.
Because teh gay is icky!
Bill Clinton on the Defense of Marriage Act, which he signed into law:
When I signed the bill, I included a statement with the admonition that “enactment of this legislation should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination.” Reading those words today, I know now that, even worse than providing an excuse for discrimination, the law is itself discriminatory. It should be overturned.
BTYFO*, Mr. President. Nevertheless, welcome to the fight.
*’Bout Time You Found Out.
Lech Walesa, Nobel Peace prize winner for fighting for democracy in Poland in the 1980′s, sounding a lot like the Soviet oppressors he helped defeat when it comes to gay rights:
They have to know that they are a minority and must adjust to smaller things. And not rise to the greatest heights, the greatest hours, the greatest provocations, spoiling things for the others and taking (what they want) from the majority. I don’t agree to this and I will never agree to it. A minority should not impose itself on the majority.
So much for Polish solidarnosc.
Alex Parene at Salon on the Sunday morning political chat shows:
I don’t watch the Sunday shows. Basically ever. I watch clips if something particularly stupid happened, but for the most part, you can get everything you need to know about what happens on these shows by reading the brilliant liveblog by the Huffington Post’s Jason Linkins, America’s foremost Sunday show interpreter. While no one should pay attention to these shows, as long as millions of Americans watch them under the mistaken impression that they’re seeing serious discussions of our most pressing issues with our wisest media observers and most influential political leaders, they should probably be monitored.
I confess that I used to watch them. But when they kept booking John McCain long after his usefulness as anything other than a garden gnome expired and George F. Will lost the epigram standoff with Edward Albee, I happily gave them up. I will watch “Up” with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, but most of the time I’m doing the crossword puzzle and getting ready to go to meeting. Life is too short to bother with idiots.
Newt Gingrich on Karl Rove’s new PAC to find better GOP candidates.
I am unalterably opposed to a bunch of billionaires financing a boss to pick candidates in 50 states.
Mr. Gingrich’s 2012 presidential campaign was basically financed by billionaire Sheldon Adelson.
(Yeah, but he had only one billionaire. Not a bunch. It’s an entirely different thing.)
Jonathan Chait on Joe Scarborough:
What makes Joe Scarborough such an enjoyable figure is his combination of affability, good intentions, high self-regard, low self-awareness, and total lack of analytical reasoning skills. He is not remotely dislikable. He is Ron Burgundy come to life.
Bonk.
Nicole Wallace, former Bush White House aide and handler of Sarah Palin, on Marco Rubio:
He’s everything we need and more. He’s modern. He knows who Tupac is. He is on social media.
He knows how to Twitter and he knows the name of a rapper who died about twenty years ago. Yeah, he’s groovy.
Charles P. Pierce on the judge who came up with the ruling that President Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional:
The next time I hear some lefty mooing about the president’s having let down the side on something or another, it better be about something of substance, like the Keystone XL pipeline, or I’m going to boot said lefty’s hindquarters in the general direction of the federal appeals court of the District Of Columbia, which today laid down the most singular piece of partisan hackery to come out of a court since Antonin Scalia picked the previous president. For precise legal analysis, I’ll leave it to Scott at LG&M to explain. This, children, is what you get when you operate politically under the theory that They’re All The Same. You get 20 or 30 years of primarily Republican judges acting primarily as Republicans, drawn from the legal chop-shops in the conservative movement bubble, and doing their partisan duty like performing seals.
David Sentelle would the the one in the center ring with the ball on his nose. As the Center For American Progress points out, this is career Tenther who believes the Constitution as written on a napkin at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon. Small wonder he went batty on people appointed to the NLRB. This is a guy who thinks the NLRB itself is constitutionally illegitimate. It is not an accident that Sentelle’s decision is directed at appointees to the regulatory agencies. He doesn’t think the agencies should exist.
Judge Sentelle was also one of the judges that gave us Kenneth Starr.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on marriage equality:
[S]lavery was outlawed by a Constitutional amendment. If you want to propose a Constitutional amendment legalizing same-sex marriage and it passes, that’s the law of the land.
As NTodd notes, we already have one that covers it.
GOP campaign consultant Scott Tranter:
A lot of us are campaign officials — or campaign professionals — and we want to do everything we can to help our side. Sometimes we think that’s voter ID, sometimes we think that’s longer lines — whatever it may be.
Well, at least they’re not being coy about it any more.
Michael Grunwald in Time:
It’s really amazing to see political reporters dutifully passing along Republican complaints that President Obama’s opening offer in the fiscal cliff talks is just a recycled version of his old plan, when those same reporters spent the last year dutifully passing along Republican complaints that Obama had no plan. It’s even more amazing to see them pass along Republican outrage that Obama isn’t cutting Medicare enough, in the same matter-of-fact tone they used during the campaign to pass along Republican outrage that Obama was cutting Medicare.
This isn’t just cognitive dissonance. It’s irresponsible reporting. Mainstream media outlets don’t want to look partisan, so they ignore the BS hidden in plain sight, the hypocrisy and dishonesty that defines the modern Republican Party. I’m old enough to remember when Republicans insisted that anyone who said they wanted to cut Medicare was a demagogue, because I’m more than three weeks old.
The New York Times editorial on Mitt Romney’s ad campaign about the auto industry bailout:
It’s bad enough to be wrong on the policy. It takes an especially dishonest candidate to simply turn up the volume on a lie and keep repeating it.
