History Leaves Gordon in the Lurch

Some progress seems to be underway in the marriage wars. Max Boot, a prominent conservative, has been exhorting his brethren to abandon ship. Same-sex marriage is coming, he says, and those who oppose it will only end up looking intolerant.

It's a great article; a great summary of why the arguments against gay marriage are so weak. One point I'd like to add: the only right-wing talking point that has traction on this issue is that same-sex marriage will lead to polygamy, incest, etc. Because if moral judgments are no basis for marriage exclusion, why not let everybody in? I think this argument fails, because certain unusual sexual practices (like pedophilia) have clear harms; other (like polygamy) sometimes do and sometimes don't -- and maybe we should rethink our laws on them too.

But the point I want to add is that this argument is in essence an admission of failure from the right. When you make this argument, you fall back from the front-line issue of whether same-sex marriage itself is damaging. You come close to implying that same-sex marriage is bad not in itself, but because it might lead to other things that seem bad. Why aren't we debating the merits of same-sex marriage on its own terms? Because there's very little to say.

Still enthusiastically Not Getting It is the Washington Times, which insists in putting the word "marriage" in quotes when talking about gay marriages. The problem is, they're now talking about marriages that are entirely legal. The morality of the marriages is still being debated, but no one seriously argues they're anything less than bona fide. That's okay: you can't gauge society's progress by the Washington Times, or you'll end up concluding we're somewhere between Lord of the Flies and the end of a Gallagher performance.

Then there's this weird article in the LA Times, in which Laura Bush declines to endorse the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

Asked whether she would invite a married, gay couple to a state dinner at the White House, she [Laura Bush] said, "Sure, of course."

Gordon Johndroe, her press secretary, said he could not imagine such a situation arising. He said the question was "trivializing an issue that people are seriously trying to debate in this country."

This is obviously damage control of some kind, but it's hard to figure out what Gordon was thinking. Why couldn't he imagine such a situation arising? I've been thinking about it, and I've whittled it down to four possibilities:

(a) Because the Bushes would never be friendly enough with a gay married couple to invite them to dinner;
(b) Because Gordon thinks no gay married couple would ever amount to anything, and therefore there would never be a gay couple worth inviting;
(c) Because the Bushes wouldn't mind inviting married gays to dinner, but the gays would have to cross the moat of rabid religious well-armed conservatives that surrounds the White House, and being sissies and all they'd probably never make it;
(d) Because Gordon's imagination is just generally pretty limited; he has a hard time imagining a turkey sandwich, much less two gays coming to dinner.

I try to use the word "turkey" whenever I can. For reasons I can't explain, I think it's pretty much always funny

Bob Novak Abandons His Credibility

Via Wonkette:



(Yes, that's really Bob Novak on the bottom. No word on the identity of the gentleman on top. Presumably he's the one who bought Novak's soul for a bag of chips back in 1983. "Whoopee!" He seems to be saying. "Let's abandon our credibility together!")

"Kind of a Pinging Noise"

Jon Stewart gives what is quite possibly the greatest commencement address ever:

Lets talk about the real world for a moment. We had been discussing it earlier, and I…I wanted to bring this up to you earlier about the real world, and this is I guess as good a time as any. I don’t really know to put this, so I’ll be blunt. We broke it.

Please don’t be mad. I know we were supposed to bequeath to the next generation a world better than the one we were handed. So, sorry.

I don’t know if you’ve been following the news lately, but it just kinda got away from us. Somewhere between the gold rush of easy internet profits and an arrogant sense of endless empire, we heard kind of a pinging noise, and uh, then the damn thing just died on us. So I apologize.

But here’s the good news. You fix this thing, you’re the next greatest generation, people. [...] And even if you don’t, you’re not gonna have much trouble surpassing my generation. If you end up getting your picture taken next to a naked guy pile of enemy prisoners and don’t give the thumbs up you’ve outdid us.

It gets better if you keep reading.

Bill, You Ignorant Slut

From Bill Safire's column defending the war in Iraq in today's Times:

In this rush to misjudgment, we can see an example of the "Four Noes" that have become the defeatists' platform.

The first "no" is no stockpiles of W.M.D., used to justify the war, were found. With the qualifier "so far" left out, the absence of evidence is taken to be evidence of absence. [...]

[Later reporting] may well reveal the successful concealment of W.M.D., as well as prewar shipments thereof to Syria and plans for production and missile delivery, by Saddam's Special Republican Guard and fedayeen, as part of his planned guerrilla war — the grandmother of all battles. The present story line of "Saddam was stupid, fooled by his generals" would then be replaced by "Saddam was shrewder than we thought."

This will be especially true for bacteriological weapons, which are small and easier to hide.

This is the case for the war in Iraq? To me, the idea that our invasion caused the shipment of WMD to Syria seems like a bad thing. Saddam was contained; Syria has some, er, nasty friends.

Defeatism's second "no" is no connection was made between Saddam and Al Qaeda or any of its terrorist affiliates. This is asserted as revealed truth with great fervor, despite an extensive listing of communications and meetings between Iraqi officials and terrorists submitted to Congress months ago.

Most damning is the rise to terror's top rank of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who escaped Afghanistan to receive medical treatment in Baghdad.

Right. But is there any evidence Saddam or the government authorized the medical treatment? That might constitute a connection. Otherwise every state that has ever had a terrorist pass through its borders would be a terrorist state. Primarily, Abu al-Zarqawi was based in Iraqi territory controlled by the Kurds, in other words, by...us. So under the Safire Rule, do we now need to bomb ourselves?

The third "no" is no human-rights high ground can be claimed by us regarding Saddam's torture chambers because we mistreated Iraqi prisoners.

Safire is winning what one commentator called the War on Straw. Nobody has ever said this, or anything like it, so I'll skip Safire's rebuttal.

The fourth "no" is no Arab nation is culturally ready for political freedom and our attempt to impose democracy in Iraq is arrogant Wilsonian idealism.

This is a nuclear weapon in the War on Straw. Bush says this all the time -- that some people think Arabs aren't ready for democracy -- but nobody's ever been able to quote a single commentator saying anything that even points in this direction.

Safire's four "noes," apparently, are: no fact-checking, no commitment to rational argument, no deviating from the party line, and no backing down in the face of overwhelming evidence you're wrong.

The Newspaper of Record

An alert reader emails:

Hey-

Thought you might like this. It's from today's New York Times, in the story covering Bush's and Kerry's speeches in Kansas yesterday.

"Across town, Mr. Bush called for a continuing battle to end racial equality, and pointed to his No Child Left Behind law as the way to accomplish that."

[Apparently the online version has now been fixed. Damn.]

Right-wingers worried about hurting Fidel's feelings

David Rivkin and Lee Casey, two prominent spokesman for the conservative side on the enemy combatant issue, have a ridiculous op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today. Normally, this blog is not going to comment on commentators -- there are too many of them, and it's too easy -- but these guys are prominent enough to make it worthwhile.

The Supreme Court must not allow courts to hear legal challenges to the Guantanamo detentions, Rivkin and Casey argue, because it would violate Cuban sovereignty.

I'm completely serious. And they're normally pretty smart people. Possibly they were forced to publish this article after losing some kind of bet:

Indeed, under both international and U.S. law, an extension of judicial authority in these circumstances would constitute an exercise of sovereignty, since that power (where foreign nationals are concerned) can be exercised only on U.S. sovereign territory. This, in turn, suggests a claim of right comparable to annexation, and would plainly violate Cuba's 1903 lease to the U.S., and a 1934 treaty which extended the original agreement. Further, it would also violate the U.N. Charter, which effectively guarantees the territorial integrity of its member states.

Right-wingers hate to violate the U.N. charter. What they somehow forget to mention is that the very existence of the detention center at Guantanamo is a violation of the lease:

[Article II:] The grant of the foregoing Article shall include the right to use and occupy the waters adjacent to said areas of land and water, and to improve and deepen the entrances thereto and the anchorages therein, and generally to do any and all things necessary to fit the premises for use as coaling or naval stations only, and for no other purpose.

Somehow I don't think Camp X-Ray qualifies as a naval station. So why this sudden concern that judges hearing cases about Gitmo detentions might violate the agreement and therefore Cuban sovereignty, when we've been violating the agreement for years?

When the time comes for the U.S. to build a relationship with a democratic Cuba, an action that was clearly inconsistent with Cuba's ultimate sovereignty over Guantanamo may return to haunt its efforts.

Oh. Yes, it would really make the rest of the world angry if we were to give the Gitmo prisoners some legal recourse. Sure, there's been an international outcry over the detentions themselves, but what would really get the world -- and Cubans -- angry is if judges were to start meddling in Guantanamo's affairs.

This is like arguing that the Vietnamese were really mad at the US for invading their country and killing lots of people and all that; but what really got them angry was the fact that we prosecuted Lt. Calley for the My Lai massacre.

[Note: I do not believe anything being done at Guantanamo is comparable to the My Lai massacre. It's just a way of pointing out how incredibly dumb Rivkin and Casey's argument is. Honest.]

What is the appropriate response to this kind of argument? Should we all start referring to the newspaper in question as the Wall Street Fungus? I'm open to suggestions.

Challah Back

Based on my study of other blogs and web-magazines, I've determined that an important part of success is having clever titles that play on trendy pop-culture phrases. Hence the title of this entry. It doesn't relate to anything I have to say, but as far as I can tell it's not that important to have something to say, as long as you have a title that sounds cute.

Of course, it couldn't hurt to have some content to go with the title, so if any of you can think of a story or a comment about something that might reasonably fit under the title "Challah Back," let me know, and I'll re-write this entry. Otherwise, sorry if you've read this far and are disappointed.

"You've got another thing coming"

Gene Simmons, cultural ambassador, discussing Islam on Australian radio:

Simmons also warned that the West was under threat, and that the Untited Nations didn’t work, adding the West must "speak softly and carry a big stick". [Emphasis added -- it just makes this next paragraph so delicious.]

"This is a vile culture and if you think for a second that it's going to just live in the sands of God's armpit you've got another thing coming," he said. "They want to come and live right where you live and they think that you're evil."

[Via The Corner]

Ha! Good thing Gene Simmons isn't a senior U.S. military commander, working on a sensitive operation in a Muslim area. Then we'd have had to fire him. Oh, wait...

Yeah. If you think that, you've got another thing coming.

I'd been wondering why women were fed up with the breast-feeding fascists

Would I still find this funny if I had come home completely sober? Hard to say. Headline currently listed under "Top Stories" on news.google.com:

Why women are fed up with the breast-feeding fascists

This, apparently, is a topic of major concern just this moment at scotsman.com.

"Top stories"?

You know what -- don't read the article. It won't make it any better.

Gay-bashers finally get it

The New York Times reports on the failure of the religious right to mobilize support for the amendment to ban same-sex marrage:

The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, said: "I don't see any traction. The calls aren't coming in and I am not sure why."

[...]

The amendment's backers contend that the reason people are not responding more vocally is that many grass-roots conservatives do not yet understand how same-sex marriages affect them personally.

Finally, the anti-gay movement has figured it out. Nobody understands how same-sex marriage affects them personally. This is why the marriage movement will eventually win: nobody has yet come up with an objection to it that has anything to do with empirical reality.

But for perennial optimist Gary Bauer, the glass is half full. The glass of crazy, that is:

"The thing that we keep focusing on is, there is no place that people have voted for same-sex marriage," said Gary Bauer, a social conservative who unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. Mr. Bauer, the founder of the organization American Values, noted that it was a court that ordered Massachusetts to recognize same-sex marriage.

Right. In which southern state did people vote for desegregation?

Anyway, the supporters of this amendment, who think their time is better spent on the Rosie O'Donnell threat than on the al-Qaeda threat, prepare to sally forth:

In an interview, Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who supports the amendment, put the chances that the Senate might try to bring it up for a vote at "better than 50-50."

I hope Cornyn is right; it would be a major embarassment for the President and his supporters. Either the President would actually do something to support this great walloping monstrosity of an amendment, effectively renouncing what's left of "compassionate conservatism" and alienating moderates everywhere, or he'd stay quiet and lose the support of his kooky base.

"I think people are in shock," Senator Cornyn said. "I think people are still having a hard time believing this is real."

Indeed. Cornyn goes on:

"One of the most common responses I hear is, `This is just in Massachusetts, why does it concern us in other states?' ""When people understand that there are same-sex couples that will get married under Massachusetts law and then move to other states and demand that those marriages are recognized by the laws of other states, that is when people will understand this," he said.

Because those gay married couples will immediately start trying to undermine the foundation of marriage in the states they move to. Or something.

You see, Senator Cornyn holds in his hand a list of 207 ways that same-sex marriage will harm traditional families. He just can't name any of them right now.

Transumptions, Transmumptions

If you've ever read any of Harold Bloom's literary criticism, you know the problem with him: he's incredibly frustrating -- because he poses important questions about great works of literature and answers them with meaningless little quips like "The answer, of course, is Schopenhauer!" -- and arrogant (he's written about 18 books which purport to tell you which are the greatest works of literature in the world, and in what precise order they should be ranked) -- and, most irritatingly, he's almost always right about everything.

This is a sample of what Harold Bloom has to say about Wallace Stevens' The Auroras of Autumn:

"In the poem's final movement of ratios, canto VII works as a sublimating metaphor against the introjecting triad of trope-undoing tropes or transumptions of cantos VIII-X." [Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate, p. 257]

Not being one of the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, this doesn't help me much. I'm sure it's not gibberish; I'm just not sure there's anyone else on the planet who speaks this language.

I'm Not Getting the Message

I just saw one of those commercials for birth-control pills where the theme song is "There She Goes Again." "There she goes," the pleased-sounding singer trills, while a comforting male voice assures us that this contraceptive is more convenient than the kind we're used to, "there she goes again."

What are we supposed to think "she" is "going" and doing "again"?

I mean, fornicating, presumably. But it's hard to understand why they'd want that to be the message of the ad.

"Terrorists don't care about the Geneva Conventions"

In the course of his testimony explaining why the Geneva Conventions apply to Iraqi prisoners but not al-Qaida detainees, Stephen Cambone, DOD spokesman and Undersecretary for Intelligence and Saying Things That Are Scary, said some stuff that was, well, scary.

Note: I think the administration is right that al-Qaida detainees don't qualify as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. But the Geneva Conventions apply to anyone detained during an armed conflict. And the rationale Cambone gave is wrong and disturbing.

Long before the war in Iraq, the president made a determination that the Geneva Convention did not apply to Al Qaida detainees. That decision was made because the Geneva Conventions govern conflicts between states and Al Qaida is not a state, much less a signatory of the convention.

This is just wrong; it's not even complicated. Article 3, common to all the Geneva Conventions, states:

Article 3

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

And it goes on to explain that you can't torture people, take hostages, or commit "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment". Even if it's not an armed conflict between states.

Okay, that's just a minor thing, maybe. But if the administration now believes the Geneva Conventions only apply in wars between states, the parties in any of the planet's ugly civil wars can now use its rationale to excuse war crimes. It will be impossible for the US to criticize the Sudanese government of many of its war crimes in Darfur, for example, because we now apparently believe that conflict is not covered by the Geneva Convention.

Anyway, here's where it gets really disturbing. When we last left Cambone, he was explaining why it would be a bad idea to apply the Geneva Conventions to suspected al-Qaida prisoners:

Moreover the conventions forbid the targeting of civilians and require that military forces wear designated uniforms to distinguish them from noncombatants.

Terrorists don't care about the Geneva Convention, nor do they abide by its guidelines. They deliberately target civilians, for example, and have brutalized and murdered innocent Americans.

To grant terrorists the rights they so cruelly reject would make a mockery of the Geneva Conventions.

Is he absolutely insane? We DO grant the terrorists the rights they so cruelly reject. That's what makes us the good guys.

If we start playing tit-for-tat with the terrorists, as Cambone seems to think we should, the world is going to get a lot uglier a lot faster than any of us are ready for.

An Even Worse Talking Point

From the Washington Post, via the Progress Report, Here's Rep. Tom DeLay staking out the moral high ground on the prison abuse scandal:

DeLay dismissed the idea of a full-fledged congressional investigation, which he likened to "saying we need an investigation every time there's police brutality on the street."

Investigating police brutality! What will they think of next?

Fallout on the Spin Cycle

A thought on how the Abu Ghraib scandal might effect the campaign spin wars:

The Bush side has tried to smear Kerry with Kerry's Vietnam-era testimony on Vietnam, in which he talked about claims by US soldiers that they had been involved in or witnessed gruesome acts of torture and other abuses against Vietnamese civilians. The right thought Kerry would appear radical and hysterical, I suppose, if people heard him going on and on about abuses by U.S. soldiers.

Of course, this only works if you find it implausible that U.S. soldiers would commit abuses of that kind. I think in the light of Abu Ghraib, people are more likely to hear Kerry's testimony and ask, well, what were the facts? Were there really abuses? If there were -- and I think it's pretty well-established that there were, no? -- Kerry begins to look more like a Taguba than a Chomsky.

So I'll make a tentative prediction: we're not likely to hear much more from the right about Kerry's testimony. But who knows -- second-guessing the spin cycle is like trying to play roulette in zero gravity: tough to know where things will come out.

"Common Sense Oklahoma Values"

Worth reading, if you're into being horrified:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As others condemned the reported abuse of Iraqi prisoners, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe on Tuesday expressed outrage at the worldwide outrage over the treatment by American soldiers of those he called "terrorists" and "murderers." "I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment," the Oklahoma Republican said at a U.S. Senate hearing probing the scandal.

"These prisoners, you know they're not there for traffic violations," Inhofe said.

Nope. Reuters rightly couldn't resist pointing out that 70 to 90 percent of them are there for no reason but that someone made a mistake, according to coalition officials:

Coalition military intelligence officers estimated that about 70 percent to 90 percent of the thousands of prisoners detained in Iraq had been "arrested by mistake," according to a report by Red Cross given to the Bush administration last year and leaked this week.

Could Imhofe possibly say anything to more dramatically illustrate his dangerous disconnect from reality?

"I am also outraged that we have so many humanitarian do-gooders right now crawling all over these prisons looking for human rights violations, while our troops, our heroes are fighting and dying," he said.

Reuters apparently also couldn't resist adding a punchline here:

Inhofe...is described on his senatorial Web site as a leading conservative voice in the Senate, advocating "common sense Oklahoma values including less government, less regulation, lower taxes, fiscal responsibility and a strong national defense."

The President should personally denounce Imhofe's comments; they're an embarassment to our country and our military, and they will make moderate Muslims worldwide wonder if America is not after all a power to be resented and loathed. The President needs to step in when senators start writing talking points for the terrorists.

Quote of the Day

"All things human, given time, go badly."

--Andre Gide (quoted by Bill Moyers on CNN just now)

The Question Senators and Reporters Should Be Asking Rumsfeld

"Is there any facility anywhere in the world where American personnel could use sexual humiliation of any kind against detainees, for interrogation or any other reason, under currently existing policies and procedures?"

Failure to provide a clear, immediate "no" answer to this question should have grave consequences for everyone involved. "Not to my knowledge" or "it depends on what the meaning of 'sexual humiliation' is" would demonstrate that our leadership had failed to issue firm policies against this kind of thing -- of course, it'll take much more than just policies to prevent it, but unless we can answer "no" to this question, we're not even doing the bare minimum.

Worst Talking Point of the Week

"The goal has never been to win the Olympic high jump in democracy."

--Paul Wolfowitz, on how things aren't really spiraling out of control in Iraq

Why Rumsfeld Should Go

This blog is launching at a weird time: the middle of what may be The Worst Thing Ever to Happen to US Foreign Policy, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Are heads likely to roll? Golly, yes, as our embattled secretary is probably saying to somebody at this very moment. But so far, the only heads threatened are those of Beetle Bailey, and possibly Sarge.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Shameless Partisan Hack) argued on CNN that "you can't give a person who is managing a 2.5 million-member armed forces across the world the responsibility for what happens at 2:30 in the morning in a remote prison in Iraq."

Now this is almost certainly not an accurate characterization. The International Committee of the Red Cross says, "We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There was a pattern and a system."

But even if it were true, Hunter is wrong. Yes, you can give him responsibility for it: he's the Secretary of Defense of the United States of America, and our armed forces have acted in a way that will seriously threaten Iraq's chances for stability and undermine American moral credibility for a generation.

Rep. Hunter apparently thinks the SecDef can't be held responsible for his failure to prevent torture, as long as it happens in some remote corner of the globe late at night. Hopefully, later in life, Hunter will realize how disgusting this is, and devote his life to charity to repair the hole in his soul. In the meantime, the rest of us will press on without him.

Here's why Rumsfeld should go. First, because it's the only thing that will communicate our repugnance at these acts with sufficient power. Rumsfeld himself basically acknowledged this on the Hill on Friday, to his credit.

[Senator EVAN BAYH (Democrat, Indiana):] Even though you weren't personally involved in the underlying acts here, would it serve to demonstrate how seriously we take this situation and therefore help to undo some of the damage to our reputation if you were to step down?

RUMSFELD: That's possible.

BAYH: I appreciate your candor.

But the second reason -- the one Rumsfeld can't acknowledge, and won't -- is that he did actively contribute to the problem. As Secretary of Defense, he's responsible for the decision not to apply the Geneva Conventions to the prisoners at Guantanamo. He has consistently shown a mocking disregard for international law, for the laws of war that protect American soldiers too. This attitude set an example for all the soldiers down the chain of command.

Bland disclaimers about "treatment consistent with the standards of the Geneva Conventions" didn't help. Apparently the troops got the message: this is a new kind of war, where laws don't apply.

Incidentally, conservative commentators like David Limbaugh should also apologize, because they fueled the fire of lawlessness that led to this disaster. Limbaugh, when the Red Cross was given access to prisoners at Guantanamo, wrote:

Since when did this organization become part of the military chain of command? This is more than a minor matter. It is outrageous and, frankly, embarrassing that our government is letting the Red Cross, Amnesty International and America’s other habitual critics dictate our military policy in this instance.

No, David, it was one of the oldest and best ways of making sure warring parties don't mistreat each other's prisoners. And if it had continued, maybe the Iraqi people wouldn't now be seeing the shadow of Saddam when they looked at their American liberators.

Around the same time Limbaugh was blasting the ICRC, Rumsfeld said of the detainees, "I do not feel the slightest concern at their treatment. They are being treated vastly better than they treated anybody else."

Rumsfeld should have been forced to resign immediately, before this doctrine took root. Now that its effects have become clear, he needs to apologize -- not on behalf of the soldiers who committed these abuses, but on behalf of himself, for the policy of lawlessness he created.

And then he needs to go. "Taking responsibility" means more than just saying, "I take responsibility." It means doing whatever is necessary to correct your mistakes.

If you missed Mother's Day

this book from Fair Use Press might be the perfect gift.

"Sue Me, Asshole": The new book from Fair Use Press

This book's title is aimed at California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as well as his attorney, Martin D. Singer. Recently Singer threatened to sue Todd Bosley, the maker of a bobble-head caricature of the governor, for infringing on Schwarzenegger's "publicity" rights. Yes, you read that right: Singer and Schwarzenegger feel that the California governor is the first politician in history to be immune from caricature.

Additionally, Martin Singer even claims a copyright on the letter he sent to Bosley. In other words, not only is it forbidden to criticize the governor via caricature, but also one is not even allowed to expose the vicious tone of the threat letters Governor Schwarzenegger employs to enforce that moratorium.

In his letter, Singer claims that Bosley's creation of the bobble-head doll is "outrageous" and "malicious." Well, we here at Fair Use Press think that Singer needs to learn what outrageous really is. In accordance with our mission to "ridicule, shame and attack those who attempt to subvert the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution," we viciously offer our second book: Sue Me, Asshole. In addition to an appropriately shaming picture of Arnold on the cover, it contains all three pages of Singer's copyright-protected threat letter.

These people are doing the Lord's work. Support them.

My favorite thing about Blogger

is that the spell check function built into this website doesn't recognize the word "blog."

Welcome, Strangers

Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country: for I am the LORD your God.

        --Leviticus 24:22

"Some of them are coming here to kill you and to kill me and our families."

        -- Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-CO, on illegal immigrants (Copley News, according to the National Journal’s Wake Up Call!, March 15, 2004).

Marco!

Polo.