Klingon Brains!

My Batleh Says: Gimme All Your Money

( What happens in Denver... )

Execs shriek as Obama caps compensation on institutions receiving TARP funds

( Competency is not rewarded )

Cheney adds to the right's ammunition dump.

( An ugly, pre-emptive 'I told you so.' )

On the other hand, the crazies are right about one thing...

On Stephanie Miller this morning, the crew was defending Obama's right to keep the Oval Office as warm as a Hawaiian summer. I'm sorry, but it's a bad example when the president jacks the thermostat while I install a new programmable thermostat and lower the temperature in the house two degrees for waking and ten degrees during sleep because my monthly gas bill is now higher than electricity use. The man should put on a sweater or something. "He's the president, he can do what he wants" was the excuse they used during the Bush era.

"Conservative principles! I don't have conservative principles!"

Bill O'Reilly went off on a rant last night about about Nadya Suleman, the woman who just had octuplets after receiving fertility drugs, eight babies who add to her already overburdened brood of six children, all living in a three-room apartment. Suleman's relatives have said she's obsessed with having babies, has no visible means of support, and enjoys being "a professional student."

I think there's something wrong with Nadya Suleman. Oddly enough, though, I'm principled enough to think that Ms. Suleman, and her hive, should be allowed to muddle through existence without interference from the state.

But O'Reilly, in his Infinite Wisdom™, completely abandons every last conservative principle about women being allowed to have children, about people being allowed to make their own mistakes, and about the privacy that people should have to make their own decisions, as he goes into a tear about how The State should "do something," and "will do something" because public outcry is so loud. Bill O'Reilly wants The State to "do something" for these kids because he, in his Infinite Wisdom&trade, thinks that he knows better than Ms. Suleman what's right for her family and her children.

Does he and his pinhead (™ Bill O'Reilly) audience not understand that when you give the state the arbitrary power to make that decision without due process and without clear guidelines, when he allows the Wisdom of Repugnance (™ William Kass) to override the basic foundations of law and decency in this country? No, apparently not. O'Reilly apparently fails to understand the difference between public opprobrium and state interference. His repugnance is all that is necessary for him to engage the machinery of an armed institution.

Oh, and Ms. Suleman? It's not a clown car.

OneNewsNow distorts history and law over religion in schools

OneNewsNow, the official press release arm of James Dobson's "Focus on the Family" Donald Wildmon's National Federation for Decency empire, has a tragically bad article entitled 'Church and state separation' myth exposed, about a student-led prayer group that wanted to distribute flyers and advertise events on school bulletin boards. The school district forbade the students from doing so, citing "separation of church and state" issues, while permitting the Boy Scouts and the YMCA (hey, aren't those both religious institutions, too?) to use school time and grounds for their own outreach advertising.

OneNewsNow is positively breathless that the school board was "forced" by the court to allow the distribution of those flyers. There's only one problem with OneNewsNow's ecstasy: the school board was flat out wrong about the law.

In July of 1995, President Bill Clinton tried to put a stake through the heart of the entire "church and state and schools" issue by sending out a pamphlet entitled "Memorandum on Religion in Schools," which clearly laid out guidelines for what is permitted or forbidden under Constitutional guidelines for all schools receiving federal funds. The Education Department printed up copies of the pamphlet and sent them to every school principal in America.

The second guideline reads:

• Where student groups that meet for nonreligious activities are permitted to advertise or announce their meetings–for example, by advertising in a student newspaper, making announcements on a student activities bulleting board or public address system, or handing out leaflets–school authorities may not discriminate against groups who meet to pray.

That's just about as clear as it can possibly get. There's nothing at all momentous in the court's decision; the school board apparently knew the law as well as most school boards understand science.

It must really stick in the craw of every religious nutcase in the country that in the past 28 years, 20 of which were presided over by a Republican administration of one sort or another, the clearest, best, and most liberating policy on student religious expression, the one that most clearly highlighted that students were allowed their full right to religious expression, came out of the Clinton administration. While the right fights and fights for school prayer, religious liberty was most secured by a man they reviled for getting a blowjob in the Oval Office.

Bizarre combinations that really work!

Dessert: Jim Neal's Chariot Winery "Gypsy" Red 2006 ($5.99 at Trader Joes) and gingerbread is full of win. No, really.

This is one wine that'll help me keep my New Year's resolution to drink more wine than pop this year. That's, uh, a resolution to drink less pop, not more wine.