Devin Nunes - No, No, Dig UP, Stupid

What's today's Daily Outrage? Republican Representative Devin Nunes. Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, made an allegation that he had viewed dozens of intelligence reports obtained through government eavesdropping that inappropriately included details about the Trump transition team.

Reports over the weekend said that Nunes went off the grid that night to meet a source and view dozens of intelligence reports, including accounts of meetings involving President Donald Trump's advisers.

Read more ....

He keeps digging deeper and deeper, not into the investigation, but the hole that he's digging. Sure Eli Lake made a great explanation to why Representative Devin Nunes had to go to a secure location (in this case, the White House grounds) to view the documents and records that his intel source told him that he had. Information that led him to make his announcement the next day, and his visit to the President. The fact that members of the committee will also get the same access to view the same documents/records that Representative Devin Nunes had seen should temper the outcry over what has happened.

Should have.

The question remains, is Nunes supposed to be a bloodhound, or is he a lap dog... either way, he's not a good dog.

Parting thought: He's the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Road Runner Politics 2017

The Ringmaster Elect Gives a Press Conference

Photojournalism

It's a common code of photojournalism not to intervene in the events. They try to change the world with words and pictures - not actions. In some situations this can be deemed immoral and unethical. Relevantly, here's some info on a 1994 Pulitzer winning photo of a Sudanese starving child by Kevin Carter: Kevin killed himself by suicide not long afterward. No one knows what happened to the child.

All of it reminds me of this Banksy print:

Kevin Smith Gets Press

[Kevin Smith takes on protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church outside the screening for his church horror movie 'Red State' at Sundance yesterday. Image via AP]

Don't shoot the messenger

WIKILEAKS deserves protection, not threats and attacks.

Blasphemes presents a special Cut-n-Paste from Julian Assange. Why? Isn't he a traitor? I believe in free speech and fair trials. Mr. Assange has gotten neither. If we're going to try actual terrorists in New York for murder, give them Constitutional rights, and then let them go on nothing more than a 'conspiracy to commit murder' charge, the LEAST we can do is re-print Mr. Assange's editorial.

I mean, it's not like you're going to read it in an AMERICAN newspaper.

Take it away Mr. Assange....[source for cut'n'paste]

"IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoh, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win."

His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch's expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.

I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.

These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.

WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.

People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.

If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.

WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain's The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be "taken out" by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden", a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a "transnational threat" and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister's office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.

And Australians should observe with no pride the disgraceful pandering to these sentiments by Julia Gillard and her government. The powers of the Australian government appear to be fully at the disposal of the US as to whether to cancel my Australian passport, or to spy on or harass WikiLeaks supporters. The Australian Attorney-General is doing everything he can to help a US investigation clearly directed at framing Australian citizens and shipping them to the US.

Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.

We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn't want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings.

Has there been any response from the Australian government to the numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality. The Prime Minister and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not.

Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: "You'll risk lives! National security! You'll endanger troops!" Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can't be both. Which is it?

It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US, with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn't find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.

But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:

► The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.

► King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US to attack Iran.

► Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran's nuclear program stopped by any means available.

► Britain's Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect "US interests".

► Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament.

► The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.

In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government". The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.

Julian Assange is the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.

Brace Yourself

In what is rumored to be "the biggest leak of military intelligence that has ever occurred," the whistleblower site WikiLeaks is preparing to reveal hundreds of thousands of documents pertaining to the Iraq War. Iain Overton, the editor of a journalism nonprofit in London, told Newsweek he's working with WikiLeaks and other media organizations to process, digest, and publish the information. Here's what's buzzing about the upcoming intelligence leak around the Web:

• This Will Be the Biggest Dump Ever, writes Kim Zetter at Wired: "Pfc. Bradley Manning, who has been charged with improperly downloading and leaking classified information, disclosed to a former hacker in May that he had given WikiLeaks a database covering 500,000 events in the Iraq War between 2004 and 2009. Manning said the database included reports, dates, and latitude and longitude of events, as well as casualty figures. A leak of this sort would vastly dwarf the cache of about 75,000 documents that WikiLeaks published in July from the Afghanistan War. That cache involved field reports from analysts who compiled information from informants and others on incidents and intelligence."

• This Will Probably Contain Info on Detainee Treatment, writes Mark Hosenball at Newsweek: "The Iraq material portrays U.S. forces being involved in a 'bloodbath,' but some of the most disturbing material relates to the abusive treatment of detainees, not by Americans but by Iraqi security forces."

• They'll Try to Prevent Casualties, writes Gautham Nagesh at The Hill: "Overton said his organization is taking seriously U.S. complaints that the Afghanistan leaks have put lives in jeopardy, which is why they are reviewing all reports first for sensitive information rather than posting the raw material. He said WikiLeaks's media partners have agreed to make financial contributions to WikiLeaks to 'help meet productions costs.'"

• A Number of Media Sources Will Get Exclusives, writes Tim Edwards at The First Post:

Iain Overton, editor of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which is working with WikiLeaks to identify specific stories among the documents, told Newsweek that each of the organisations involved this time will come up with its own angle on the material, because "everyone wants their exclusive". He adds that the tranche of documents will be around three times the size of the Afghanistan leak.

• Bringing in the MSM Is a Smart Strategy, writes Michael Collins at The Agonist: "It guarantees maximum publicity. It takes a great deal of heat of Wikileaks as the prime malefactor in the eyes of the national security state. It also impresses on the leaks the imprimatur of the mass media, lending it immediate gravitas."

Sources

• Releasing Iraq War Docs Gautham Nagesh, The Hill
• The Collaborators Mark Hosenball, Newsweek
• Massive Cache Kim Zetter, Wired
• The Leaks Tim Edwards, The Week
• http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/The-Web-Braces-for-Biggest-Wikileaks-Dump-to-Date-4992/
  

Nerd Counterprotest

Best Counterprotest of Westboro, ever. Fairly sure.

San Diego Comic-Con patrons take on the Westboro Baptist Church, who are in town to harangue attendees for false idol worship. (More photos here and here.) [from comicsalliance.]

I told you Nerds Hate Church. And apparently, also Westboro Baptists looking to egg on a lawsuit from a nerd.

Hey Westboro, friendly advice: if you're going to try to win a lawsuit from someone taking a swing at you - go to just about any NFL game and tell all the tailgaters how they're going to hell. You ought to get a big pile of lawsuits going - you won't have any teeth left - but I think that's the goal we're all going for here, right?

Just don't bother in front of Wrigley. We already know they're damned. They're cursed too, last I checked.

George Carlin FTW: FFC Says Curseword Crackdown Unconstitutional

WNYW/Ch. 5 anchor Ernie Anastos is caught on live television saying
"Keep f---ing that chicken" to weatherman Nick Gregory.

An appeals court ruling Tuesday declared the Federal Communications Commission's indecency rule unconstitutional.

The ruling, with provocative implications for evening TV. There's a chance this might loosen the tongues of pent up curse words the likes not seen since Howard Stern went from terrestrial radio to Satellite.

"The court says that dropping the F-bomb on prime time TV in front of kids is okay," said Dan Isepp of the Parents Television Council. "The door has been kicked down."

The group sided with the FCC and against six television stations, including FOX, ABC and CBS.

"I am shocked by such an anti-family decision," said FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. "This decision gives them the unfettered ability to air whatever content they want."

Nothing would change for at least 45 days as the FCC decides whether to appeal and - if the Supreme Court takes it up - until the case is ultimately decided.

The ruling only applies to broadcast TV in prime time and not to cable television.

If it stands, the decision would end the policy of fining broadcasters for foul language put in place after Bono used the F-word on the January 2003 NBC broadcast of the Golden Globes Awards.

"The FCC's indecency policy is unconstitutional because it is impermissibly vague," the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 32-page decision.

The ruling touched on everything from George Carlin's famous "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" to foul words by Nicole Richie on a Billboard Music Awards show - one of several cases that led to the decision. The decision was filled with words routinely bleeped out on television, from bulls--- to d---head.

Holy Shit.

Want to Read more?

New Chicago Gun 'Restrictions'

Well that didn't last long. The Second Amendment was forced down upon Da Mayor Richie Daley and his handgun ban was ruled ridiculous. Sure, it took 30 years and thousands of lives to do it - but it finally happened. And of course, leading up to the decision, Da Mayor, like a toddler having to go to bed, was unwilling to concede. And he's still at it.

He immediately forced his aldermen to slap on new ordinances which pretends to respect the rights of gun owners, even as it tries to prevent anyone from figuring out how to get one. While some of these provisions are of good intention, they are still over reaching and will likely to be struck down by the courts. But, but they have good intentions!

Here are some of the provisions. Handgun owners have to get a city permit, costing $100 for three years, and register their weapons at $15 apiece. They would have to go through a training class. They could register no more than one new gun per month.

Guns would be allowed in homes, but not in garages, front porches or yards. Only one weapon at a time could be kept in ready-to-fire condition. Gun sales and firing ranges would be banned in the city.

The rational is that these requirements have some kind of merit without putting an 'undue burden' on gun owners. They claim that knowing there are guns at a residence would be helpful to police when they respond to a call. Gun owners will now be more likely to report to police when a weapon is lost or stolen, because they wouldn't have been violating the ridiculous law in the first place.

And yes, training is valuable to owners and everyone else by minimizing the chance of unintentional discharges — and makes owners respect their weapons.

However, let me put into context the ordinances in another way. Let's say the city required me or someone else a $100 fee to exercise my first amendment rights to criticize the government? How about if I or one of my fellow citizens were only allowed to exercise our 5th amendments right once a month? In this context, these city provisions would be laughed at and wouldn't even be considered because of their restrictions of an individual's rights - which were being taken away by the government. Isn't that one of the main rationals for the holiday we celebrated yesterday? Even the ACLU might step in and shake some lawsuits at city 'leaders.'

And to further examine these new restrictions, prohibiting a resident from confronting an armed intruder in his garage undermines his right to act in self-defense. The $100 fee is a shake-down as it is higher than needed to cover the costs of administering the regulations. The cost should be 50 cents, and with the 42 cent stamp should be less than a buck. The four-month wait allowed for the processing of application would stink to high hell, but we're talking about city workers hired by patronage, so we'll just kindly overlook that one.

Having learned nothing from his battle with SCOTUS, banning sales is unconstitutional. "Just as a city can't ban the commercial provision of abortions, so it can't ban the sale of guns," says UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh. And double stupid points, at least by selling guns in the city, you could mandate a database to monitor the gun dealers selling to its citizens. Banning this, you lose the other as well.

I'm not going to pretend that gun violence isn't a daily tragedy in Chicago. But we're not enforcing the good rules, and everyone knows that the bad guys are laughing at the idea of the man even being able to do anything - let alone make them follow the rules.

But we should look to the courts who allow ex-convicts who get caught with guns on the street plea down a gun crime into lesser offenses. What's the point of having these laws and regulations if you're not going to enforce them?

And then there's my idea, teach the bad guys to shoot straight so that they quit killing kids on playgrounds. And then, the survivors can go to the military and win medals for killing actual bad guys.

Or if you would like me to get super radical, let's have a discussion about our drug policy and useless Chicago Schools... oh, no, that's hard! Let's just ban the guns.

Internet Kill Switch

Meanwhile, while you were watching soccer...

A US Senate committee has approved a wide-ranging cybersecurity bill that some critics have suggested would give the US president the authority to shut down parts of the Internet during a cyberattack.

Senator Joe Lieberman and other bill sponsors have refuted the charges that the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act gives the president an Internet "kill switch." Instead, the bill puts limits on the powers the president already has to cause "the closing of any facility or stations for wire communication" in a time of war, as described in the Communications Act of 1934, they said in a breakdown of the bill published on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee website.

The committee unanimously approved an amended version of the legislation by voice vote Thursday, a committee spokeswoman said. The bill next moves to the Senate floor for a vote, which has not yet been scheduled.

Goodbye free speech. It was fun while it lasted.

Democrat Goon Squad

This took place at Madrigal Lofts in Washington, DC. The property can't be 'paid' for. You can put down a deposit to reserve "part" of the roof top. Never can 100% of the roof be reserved and it is open to all residents, even if a section is reserved. Obviously Mr. Giannoulias's goon squad needs some training on how to handle situations like this. They call that "Media Relations" and "Sensitivity Training."

Also, anyone who watches Michael Moore push his ambush movies, but when the cameras are turned on them they turn violent. Liberal tolerance at its finest.

Wonder what they were trying to hide?

Bill Hicks Documentary

Bill Hicks died at the age of 32 in 1994. Next to Carlin, he's one of my all-time favorites. A truthsayer in the church of brick walls and two drink minimums.

Behind the film are British producers Paul Thomas and Matt Harlock who were lucky enough to easily get family members and friends of Hicks on camera to fill in stories and tales of his youth, even during the formative years.

What is nice for viewers is that instead of the straight head shot visuals that documentary viewers are used to, the film making duo used a cut and paste animation style that makes it a much cleaner viewing experience. Much like 'The Kid Stays In The Picture.'

His background is fairly simple, as the child of a strict Baptist couple that convinced him his purpose in life was to get far away from them and his town. It was in Houston that he found his first comedy club and started on his path towards becoming famous comic and an alcoholic which it took him 21 years to even try, making it a little less of a surprise that he fell into the habit so hard.

Vandalized Atheist Billboards

Nonbelievers, you are not alone.

That's the message the Center for Inquiry of Southern Arizona hopes to convey on a midtown billboard: "Are you good without God? Millions are."

The message was put up on Monday and will remain on the sign near East Speedway and North Van Buren Avenue - just east of Craycroft Road - for four weeks. A similar message was displayed in Phoenix last year.

"Many people think you can't behave ethically unless you believe in God, but thousands of nonbelieving Arizonans are living proof that this claim is untrue," said Jim Gressinger, a spokesman for the center.

He pointed out that up to 17 percent of Arizona's adult population are nonbelievers, according to the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey.

The center's Web site quotes Gressinger as defining group members as "skeptics, secular humanists, atheists, agnostics, freethinkers and other nonbelievers." He said members are becoming increasingly political because religious values are increasingly being imposed on others through political means.

"In general, we work to uphold the Jeffersonian principle of separation of church and state," Gressinger said. "We put up the billboard because we want people to know about (the Center for Inquiry), to discover what we have to offer, and to work with us to promote science, reason and secular values."

The center is an international, nonprofit group that presents public educational programs and lectures. It has given to local charities for several years. (source)

And Vandalized Atheist Billboard, you're not alone, either. Another atheist billboard near Sacramento promoting atheism was vandalized by someone depicting atheists as lost, one of the billboard's sponsor said.

The billboard -- one of several posted in the Sacramento area -- originally read: "Are you good without God? Millions are." Someone spray-painted the words "also lost?" beneath "millions are."

Rachael Harrington of the Sacramento Area Coalition of Reason -- which paid to have the billboards put up -- said the ads are intended to let atheists and agnostics know they are not alone, the TV station said.

"This shows loud and clear just how necessary our message is, because prejudice against people who don't believe in a god remains very real in America," Harrington said.

The organization has asked Clear Channel, the company that owns the billboard, to file a police report. The company offered to replace the sign free of charge. (source)

I don't know, if I were a godfearing Christian, I would just pray to the almighty the GPS location of the blasphemous sign and have the lord hit it with lightning or brimstone. It'd make a less hypocritical statement about love and understanding and would also make the point a lot louder and flashier than what these unoriginal idiots have done.

Abortion Deal Breaker

Some pundits are already saying that the ONLY reason the Health Care Bill squeaked through the House on Saturday was because there was language that prevented abortion in the piece of paper.

Well, that's not the only reason it passed. There were a lot of dollars, Nancy's Pride, and a toilet plunger working in unison to make it happen, but I'd rather not dredge in that crap any longer.

What I noticed this morning in the New York Times Editorial was this:

The Ban on Abortion Coverage
The House health care reform bill passed with a steep price. The Senate should work to preserve a woman’s right to abortion services.

See, now this is why the "Left" doesn't get it. The headline alone is misleading. The second sentence is a slippery slope argument. The reality of it is, I don't want to pay for your abortion. I don't want to pay for your angioplasty either, fatass, but that's Social medicine for you. But for some folks believe that terminating a baby in the womb is murder - if you do it with State or Federal dollars - that's State sanctioned murder. In other words, that person who believes it is murder objects to paying to kill a baby. For some reason they don't like that. (We'll discount the irony of these same people not fussing about funding of the Military and prisoner executions with their tax dollars for the sake of this discussion, because it's been my experience that these same people dismiss this discussion as well.)

But back to the editorial:

Under pressure from anti-abortion Democrats and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, lawmakers added language that would prevent millions of Americans from buying insurance that covers abortions — even if they use their own money.

The restrictions would fall on women eligible to buy coverage on new health insurance exchanges. They are a sharp departure from current practice, an infringement of a woman’s right to get a legal medical procedure and an unjustified intrusion by Congress into decisions best made by patients and doctors.

What? You sound kind of Libertarian right there... you're actually agreeing with me? Except, I think that of this entire discussion - not limited to just the abortion debate. Let's go on.

The anti-abortion Democrats behind this coup insisted that they were simply adhering to the so-called Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of federal dollars to pay for almost all abortions in a number of government programs. In fact, they reached far beyond Hyde and made it largely impossible to use a policyholder’s own dollars to pay for abortion coverage.

So, you can't buy insurance to pay for your abortion, but you could pay out of pocket for the entire procedure? Or, you could [in insurance speak], buy a rider to supplement your coverage. Yeah, now see - it's kind of funny how the paper FINALLY sees my argument for why we shouldn't have Federal Health (Insurance) Reform in the first place!

Is it not just a tad hypocritical that many of the same Representatives who voted for this amendment have objected to health care reform on the grounds that it "puts legislators between patients and their doctors!?"

Sigh

But I'm under the newer impression - that it's how we pay for medical services should be reformed. Single payers -- meaning you and I and everyone else is the consumer and we pay as if we were at the grocery store. Why would you expect your car insurance to pay for your tune up or oil change? You pay for those in addition to the insurance that pays for catastrophic damage.

As I understand the abortion clause in the bill that passed the house, isn't that all they're asking the women (and men) who decide, nay, Chose, to have an abortion procedure? No one is stopping you from having all the abortions you want. Go nuts. Just Not On My Dime - is all that has been said.

How Libertarian...

I told you no one would be happy. The Democrat base was thrown under the bus by Pelosi just to 'get 'er done' and the Republicans - well, all but one - are completely out of it.

President Lincoln at Gettysburg

This is the only confirmed photo of Abe Lincoln at Gettysburg, taken about three hours before he gave his address.

Here's the best part... not everyone loved the speech:

• Chicago Times: “The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.”
  
  
• Harrisburg Patriot and Union: “We pass over the silly remarks of the President; for the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall no more be repeated or thought of.”
  
  
• London Times: “Anything more dull and commonplace it would not be easy to produce.”

Lincoln delivered the 10-sentence, 3-minute speech only after a 2-hour, 13,607-word oration by former secretary of state Edward Everett. When Everett sent Lincoln his compliments the next day, the president replied, “I am pleased to know that, in your judgment, the little I did say was not entirely a failure.”

Bloggers Regulated

The government wants to make it a little harder for bloggers to shill products online for fun and profit. Wait? You mean I could be making money doing this?! Yes, I'd like to learn more... And fun? Fun?! What?

New guidelines released by the Federal Trade Commission say bloggers must disclose any money or freebies they receive in exchange for writing product reviews, a fast-growing and loosely regulated way for companies to market everything from diapers to movies. I could have been getting free diapers!? Free movies?!

The move is an effort to apply the same rules that already cover broadcast stations, newspapers and magazines to the Wild West marketplace of the World Wide Web. Really? Wild West World Wide Web? Who writes this crap?

Obviously someone who owns a media outlet complained that bloggers have different rules and were all butt hurt about it, so, at some cocktail party they complained to their Congressman (who probably had zero idea what he was talking about and went to wipe his tie off thinking he had a booger). Congressman A then mentioned it to his intern, who did understand - and then filed a report to the FCC to make new rules for bloggers. Thanks a lot, bootlicker! Just a guess on how that process worked itself out.

Because fighting two wars, a no-recovery recession, mounting unemployment. North Korean and Iranian nukes, and health care aren't keeping the government busy enough, the power of the Federal Government needs to make sure that someone didn't get a free movie ticket and then wrote about it.

Journalist's Guide to Firearms

Was just sent this from our new good friend Rob Ballen.

Be sure to check out his site.