america’s toe-tapping menace

I don't feel sorry for Senator Craig. In my opinion, if you make others' sex lives your business, then your sex life is also open to examination. But I still think it's a waste of taxpayer resources to entrap men or women who look for sex in public places.

Op-Ed Contributor: America’s Toe-Tapping Menace
By LAURA M. Mac DONALD
Published: September 2, 2007

WHAT is shocking about Senator Larry Craig’s bathroom arrest is not what he may have been doing tapping his shoe in that stall, but that Minnesotans are still paying policemen to tap back. For almost 40 years most police departments have been aware of something that still escapes the general public: men who troll for sex in public places, gay or “not gay,” are, for the most part, upstanding citizens. Arresting them costs a lot and accomplishes little.

In 1970, Laud Humphreys published the groundbreaking dissertation he wrote as a doctoral candidate at Washington University called “Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places.” Because of his unorthodox methods — he did not get his subjects’ consent, he tracked down names and addresses through license plate numbers, he interviewed the men in their homes in disguise and under false pretenses — “Tearoom Trade” is now taught as a primary example of unethical social research.

That said, what results! In minute, choreographic detail, Mr. Humphreys (who died in 1988) illustrated that various signals — the foot tapping, the hand waving and the body positioning — are all parts of a delicate ritual of call and answer, an elaborate series of codes that require the proper response for the initiator to continue. Put simply, a straight man would be left alone after that first tap or cough or look went unanswered.

Why? The initiator does not want to be beaten up or arrested or chased by teenagers, so he engages in safeguards to ensure that any physical advance will be reciprocated. As Mr. Humphreys put it, “because of cautions built into the strategies of these encounters, no man need fear being molested in such facilities.”

Mr. Humphreys’s aim was not just academic: he was trying to illustrate to the public and the police that straight men would not be harassed in these bathrooms. His findings would seem to suggest the implausibility not only of Senator Craig’s denial — that it was all a misunderstanding — but also of the policeman’s assertion that he was a passive participant. If the code was being followed, it is likely that both men would have to have been acting consciously for the signals to continue.

Mr. Humphreys broke down these transactions into phases, which are remarkably similar to the description of Senator Craig’s behavior given by the police. First is the approach: Mr. Craig allegedly peeks into the stall. Then comes positioning: he takes the stall next to the policeman. Signaling: Senator Craig allegedly taps his foot and touches it to the officer’s shoe, which was positioned close to the divider, then slides his hand along the bottom of the stall. There are more phases in Mr. Humphreys’s full lexicon — maneuvering, contracting, foreplay and payoff — but Mr. Craig was arrested after the officer presumed he had “signaled.”

Clearly, whatever Mr. Craig’s intentions, the police entrapped him. If the police officer hadn’t met his stare, answered that tap or done something overt, there would be no news story. On this point, Mr. Humphreys was adamant and explicit: “On the basis of extensive and systematic observation, I doubt the veracity of any person (detective or otherwise) who claims to have been ‘molested’ in such a setting without first having ‘given his consent.’ ”

As for those who feel that a family man and a conservative senator would be unlikely to engage in such acts, Mr. Humphreys’s research says otherwise. As a former Episcopal priest and closeted gay man himself, he was surprised when he interviewed his subjects to learn that most of them were married; their houses were just a little bit nicer than most, their yards better kept. They were well educated, worked longer hours, tended to be active in the church and the community but, unexpectedly, were usually politically and socially conservative, and quite vocal about it.

In other words, not only did these men have nice families, they had nice families who seemed to believe what the fathers loudly preached about the sanctity of marriage. Mr. Humphreys called this paradox “the breastplate of righteousness.” The more a man had to lose by having a secret life, the more he acquired the trappings of respectability: “His armor has a particularly shiny quality, a refulgence, which tends to blind the audience to certain of his practices. To others in his everyday world, he is not only normal but righteous — an exemplar of good behavior and right thinking.”

Mr. Humphreys even anticipated the vehement denials of men who are outed: “The secret offender may well believe he is more righteous than the next man, hence his shock and outrage, his disbelieving indignation, when he is discovered and discredited.”

This last sentence brings to mind the hollow refutations of figures at the center of many recent public sex scandals, heterosexual and homosexual, notably Representative Mark Foley, the Rev. Ted Haggard, Senator David Vitter and now Senator Craig. The difference is that Larry Craig was arrested.

Public sex is certainly a public nuisance, but criminalizing consensual acts does not help. “The only harmful effects of these encounters, either direct or indirect, result from police activity,” Mr. Humphreys wrote. “Blackmail, payoffs, the destruction of reputations and families, all result from police intervention in the tearoom scene.” What community can afford to lose good citizens?

And for our part, let’s stop being so surprised when we discover that our public figures have their own complex sex lives, and start being more suspicious when they self-righteously denounce the sex lives of others.

Laura M. Mac Donald is the author of “The Curse of the Narrows: The Story of the 1917 Halifax Explosion.

celebrating world human rights day

finochet
Originally uploaded by loucovinagre.

Today is World Human Rights Day and I really can't think of a better day to learn that Augusto Pinochet is dead.

On Sept. 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected government of Dr. Salvador Allende. Before the coup, Chile was one of the most stable democracies in Latin America, with a long tradition of democratic civilian rule. Pinochet's regime used state-sponsored murder to quash the opposition. For 17 years, his thugs ran roughshod over the country, disappearing and torturing prominent intellectuals, dissidents, and anyone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The [Rettig] commission’s report cited victims by name and described the ghastly circumstances of their deaths by firing squads, beatings, mutilations, drownings and electrocutions. In all, the report attributed at least 3,200 killings and disappearances to the Pinochet security forces.

Another 30,000 were tortured, but not killed. Thousands of Chileans were expelled from and fled the country to escape the regime. With the help of the United States, Pinochet and other like-minded generals in South America founded Operation Condor, to destroy Marxist opposition in Latin America. Although Pinochet was arrested in Britain, he never stood trial for the atrocities he and his goons perpetuated in Chile. That he lived in Chile with impunity is an outrage.

Something tells me that he died with the same defiant attitude. He will not be mourned by those who love human rights. Here's one take on his death:

augusto pinochet died on world human rights day. i'll call it poetic. i won't call it justice.
justice would have been if they had flayed him alive while raping him repeatedly with a red sickle-shaped dildo.

In thinking more about his death, I have to say that I don't think there can be justice for what Pinochet and other perpetrators of state-sponsored terrorism did. I like this account, written by the loved ones of someone who was disappeared in Argentina's dirty war.

Alfredo Gonzalez Detenido - Desaparecido el 4 de marzo de 1978 Gota a gota, la gota de agua perfora la piedra. Así pasará en la conciencia de los asesinos de mi hijo. - En tu cumpleaños, tu mamá y tu gran familia.

Alfredo Gonzalez Detained - Disappeared March 4, 1978 Drop by drop, the drop of water perforates the stone. That's what will happen to the conscience of my son's assassins. - On your birthday, your mother and family.

I love this tribute. It seems so zen, and is lovely in that sense. At the same time, what really does it for me is the undercurrent (forgive me) that makes it really beautiful poetry about water torture. I am many things, and I don't see myself as a violent person. I can't say that I'd intervene if someone else was seeking justified retribution. I hope it never comes to that. But my sense is that I'd just walk away and let nature (yes, violent human nature) take its course.

In the end, it's times like these when I want to believe in an afterlife, where those who committed the unspeakable are forced to account for the atrocities they visited upon humanity.

Augusto Pinochet, 91, Ex-Dictator of Chile, Dies
By JONATHAN KANDELL
December 10, 2006

Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, the brutal dictator who repressed and reshaped Chile for nearly two decades and became a notorious symbol of human rights abuse and corruption, died today at the Military Hospital of Santiago. He was 91.

Dr. Juan Ignacio Vergara, head of the medical team that had been treating him, said his condition degenerated sharply a week after he underwent an angioplasty after an acute heart attack.

General Pinochet seized power on Sept. 11, 1973, in a bloody military coup that toppled the Marxist government of President Salvador Allende. He then led the country into an era of robust economic growth. But during his rule, more than 3,200 people were executed or disappeared, and scores of thousands more were detained and tortured or exiled.

General Pinochet gave up the presidency in 1990 after promulgating a Constitution that empowered a right-wing minority in the Senate well into the new century. He held on to his post of commander in chief of the army until 1998. With that power base, he exerted considerable influence over the democratically elected governments that replaced his iron-fisted rule.

He set limits, for example, on economic policy debates with frequent warnings that he would not tolerate a return to statist measures, and he blocked virtually all attempts to prosecute members of his security forces for human rights abuses. Through intimidation and legal obstacles, General Pinochet sought to ensure his own immunity from accountability and in fact was never brought to trial. But in an astonishing turn of events nearly a decade after he stepped down, he was detained in Britain and then, on his return to Chile, forced to spend his retirement years fighting a battery of legal charges relating to human rights violations and personal corruption.

During those last years he lived in near seclusion, mostly at his home in Bucalemu, about 80 miles southwest of Santiago, scorned even by many of his former military colleagues and right-wing civilian ideologues. Many were disillusioned by revelations that he held, at the least, $28 million in secret bank accounts abroad.

“The humiliation Pinochet has gone through is probably a better outcome than any trial could have achieved,” said José Zalaquett, Chile’s foremost human rights lawyer.

General Pinochet won grudging international praise for some of the free-market policies he instituted, transforming a bankrupt economy into the most prosperous in Latin America. They included removing trade barriers, encouraging export growth, privatizing state-owned industries, creating a central bank able to control interest and exchange rates without government interference, cutting wages sharply, and privatizing the social security system. Many elements of the so-called Chilean model were widely emulated in the region.

But by the time of his death, even some of those economic victories had been called into question. The privatizing of Chile’s social security system, in particular, has come under attack as being unjust and is undergoing revision. And across Latin America, many of the countries that had adopted similar changes are reversing some of them, responding to a growing wave of popular, leftist revolt over foreign competition and unequal distribution of wealth.

General Pinochet initially led a four-man junta in the 1973 military revolt that brought him to power. President Allende, a democratically elected Socialist, was found dead after shooting himself during an assault on the presidential palace in Santiago. The coup followed many months of political unrest and economic chaos. Hyperinflation, recession, labor strife and middle-class protests had all sapped the Allende government of popular support.

General Pinochet (pronounced PEE-noh-shay) soon made it clear that he had little use for political parties, banning all of them, and he also dissolved congress and scrapped the constitution. He blamed the democratic political system for allowing a coalition of Socialists and Communists to take control of the government. In a 1973 news conference, he asserted that Chile would require “an authoritarian government that has the capacity to act decisively” and would not return to the traditional political party system for a generation. It was a vow he kept.

In 1974, General Pinochet elevated himself to president, reducing the rest of the junta to a consultative role. He appointed military officers as mayors of towns and cities throughout Chile. Retired military personnel were named rectors of universities, and they carried out vast purges of faculty members suspected of left-wing or liberal sympathies.

The press was censored, and labor strikes and unions were banned. A fearsome security apparatus known as the National Intelligence Directorate, known as DINA, persecuted, tortured and killed Pinochet opponents within Chile and sometimes beyond its borders. A government-commissioned report issued in 2004 concluded that almost 28,000 people had been tortured during the general’s reign.

Military regimes were the rule rather than the exception in Latin America in the 1970s. Whether right wing, as in Argentina and Brazil, or left wing, as in Peru, military dictators came to power promising to impose economic discipline but departed, after some initial success, with the economy in disarray.

General Pinochet proved to be the exception. Though no economic expert, he had at his service a team of technocrats, who, months before the coup, put together a radical plan to overhaul the country’s battered economy. Some had studied with the Nobel Prize-winner Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago and embraced his notions of free-market forces and monetarism.

But economic transformation was slow and painful. Mistakes by the general’s economic team provoked a deep recession in the early 1980s that left more than a third of the work force without jobs. The poor survived with the help of soup lines and temporary employment in public works projects that paid less than the minimum wage.

Attempts at strikes or other forms of protest were ruthlessly put down by General Pinochet’s secret police. That repression gave the free-market policies time to take hold. Since the mid-1980s, Chile’s gross domestic product has grown an average of more than 6 percent a year, the most impressive performance in Latin America.

There were few hints in General Pinochet’s early life that he harbored either political ambitions or ideological convictions. The son of a customs inspector, he was born into lower middle-class circumstances on Nov. 25, 1915, in the Pacific port city of Valparaíso. He graduated from the military academy in Santiago in 1937 and rose steadily in the officer corps. He was already a general, and only 55, when he was given the important post of commander of the Santiago army garrison in 1971.

It was a crucial moment in President Allende’s term. Elected the year before with only 36 percent of the vote, Dr. Allende, a physician, had pressed ahead with a socialist program to nationalize mines, banks and strategic industries, split up large rural estates into communal farms, and impose price controls. The measures soon resulted in steep declines in production, shortages of consumer goods and explosive inflation. A general strike paralyzed Santiago in late 1972, and General Pinochet, as garrison commander, was called on by Dr. Allende to impose a state of emergency in the capital.

This was the first time most Chileans became aware of the tall, broad-shouldered army officer with a brush mustache on his unsmiling face. General Pinochet imposed a curfew, ordered the arrest of several hundred demonstrators on both the left and the right and announced, “I will not tolerate agents of chaos no matter what their political ideology.”

His seemingly neutral stance convinced Dr. Allende that he was an officer who could be relied on to observe the Chilean military’s century-long tradition of loyalty to civilian government. In August 1973, he appointed General Pinochet commander in chief of the army.

Less than three weeks later, the armed forces overthrew the government. The presidential palace, known as La Moneda, was bombed and strafed by the air force. Dr. Allende shot himself rather than surrender, according to his personal physician.

Aside from battles at some factories in the Santiago suburbs, there was little resistance to the overwhelming firepower of the military units that fanned out across the country. Tens of thousands of Allende sympathizers were rounded up and brutally interrogated. A majority of the killings took place in the three months, long after resistance had ended.

In most cases, prisoners from a slum or agrarian community would be executed as a means of terrorizing their neighborhoods into accepting military rule. The killings were often cynically, and falsely, justified as cases in which prisoners were shot while trying to escape.

The images that most shaped the outside world’s low opinion of the military regime were scenes of Santiago’s main sports stadium filled with prisoners, and by the public appearances of General Pinochet, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses, his face set in a scowl, his arms folded defiantly across his chest. Although a majority of executions, jailings and cases of torture took place shortly after the 1973 coup, serious human rights abuses waxed and waned over the next 17 years.

By the late 1980s, the economic prosperity General Pinochet created had lulled him into assuming that in free elections he or his chosen candidate would receive the grateful support of a majority of Chileans. But by then most were either too young to remember the Allende years or too confident about the strength of the economy to believe that only an authoritarian government could insure growth and stability.

In 1980, a new constitution backed by the Pinochet government made the armed forces “guarantors of institutionality,” giving them a nebulous role as political arbiters. It included several other limitations to full-fledged democracy. But in a 1988 plebiscite, an ample majority of Chileans voted against an attempt by General Pinochet to stay on as president for eight more years.

In presidential elections a year later, the former dictator’s candidate was handily defeated by Patricio Aylwin, a centrist Christian Democrat supported by parties of the left. In 1993, another Christian Democrat, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, was elected president by an even greater margin.

To the delight of the Chilean business community, foreign investment, which had been stunted during the years the government was regarded with international opprobrium, poured back into the country, and Chilean products were welcomed everywhere abroad. Officials of the new Christian Democratic administration were not inclined to tinker with the roaring economic machine they inherited from the Pinochet administration.

“We may not like the government that came before us,” Alejandro Foxley, who was finance minister under Mr. Aylwin and is foreign minister today, said in a 1991 interview. “But they did many things right. We have inherited an economy that is an asset.”

With the transition to a democracy going so well, even admirers of General Pinochet hoped he would settle into a quieter period. Instead, he staged unannounced military maneuvers or placed his troops on sudden alert and gave notice that he would not tolerate attempts to prosecute his era’s human rights violators. “The day they touch one of my men, the rule of law ends,” he warned in 1991.

In a rare exception, he stood by as two subordinates were convicted of ordering the murder of Orlando Letelier, foreign minister in the Allende government. Mr. Letelier was killed by a car bomb in Washington in September 1976, along with an American colleague, Ronni Moffitt. The incident, considered the worst act of state-sponsored terrorism on American soil, strained relations between Chile and the United States for almost two decades.

The two subordinates went to prison in 1995. They were Gen. Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, the head of DINA, the notorious secret police, who was sentenced to seven years; and his second in command, Col. Pedro Espinoza, who was sentenced to six years.

Stories of corruption began swirling around members of General Pinochet’s family as well as military personnel, and he used his power as army chief to protect them. He quashed judicial and congressional investigations into the financial dealings of his elder son and of army officers who were accused of running an illegal investment banking operation. Until revelations emerged in late 2004 that he had accumulated secret accounts totaling as much as $8 million at Riggs Bank in Washington, the general himself was rarely accused of corruption and lived in Spartan style. Later, Chilean investigators found that he had as much as $28 million in secret bank accounts in a number of countries.

Through his strong-arm tactics against the democratic governments that succeeded him, General Pinochet was making the point to Chileans that if they wanted to enjoy the capitalist virtues of his former dictatorship, they had better overlook his human rights violations.

Those violations were well documented by the National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, a nonpartisan group appointed by Mr. Aylwin to investigate the killings and disappearances carried out under the general’s 17-year dictatorship. The commission’s report cited victims by name and described the ghastly circumstances of their deaths by firing squads, beatings, mutilations, drownings and electrocutions. In all, the report attributed at least 3,200 killings and disappearances to the Pinochet security forces.

Retired as dictator but still in command of the army, General Pinochet scoffed at his human rights critics. Asked about the discovery of a mass grave of his government’s victims, he was quoted in the Chilean press as joking that it was an “efficient” way of burial.

Protected by personal security squads, the general also continued an active social life. He was feted by wealthy admirers on his birthday and on the anniversary of his coup. He was often invited to speak at luncheons given by political supporters and leading businessmen. When he finally stepped down as army chief, he joined the Senate as an unelected, permanent member, apparently intending to grant himself further immunity from prosecution.

But the general did not count on the determination of some jurists abroad to bring him to justice. In October 1998, while recuperating in a London clinic from a back operation, he was arrested by the British police in response to an application from a Spanish judge, seeking the general’s extradition to Madrid to stand trial on charges of genocide, torture and kidnapping.

A 16-month legal battle ensued, ending with a decision to send him back to Chile in March 2000 because his physical and mental ailments made him unfit to stand trial. Days after his return, Ricardo Lagos, the first Socialist to be elected president since the 1973 overthrow of Mr. Allende, assumed office.

For the rest of his life, the general had to fight off lawsuits and accept the humiliation of constant news reports about widespread brutality under his rule. President Lagos allowed the hundreds of criminal complaints filed against General Pinochet to run their course in the courts. He was succeeded in March 2006 by another Socialist, Michelle Bachelet, a former political prisoner and exile. Her father, an air force general loyal to Dr. Allende, was jailed by his colleagues and died in prison after being tortured.

General Pinochet spent his final years in near seclusion, with his wife, the former María Lucía Hiriart Rodríguez, 84, with whom he had two sons, Augusto and Marco Antonio, and three daughters, Lucía, Verónica and Jacqueline. They all survive him.

In rare public remarks, he continued to insist that he enjoyed the gratitude and wide support of Chileans. But polls indicated that well over half of his compatriots believed he should have been prosecuted for his human rights crimes.

Larry Rohter and Pascale Bonnefoy contributed reporting.

the "one day" approach to reach your ideal weight--and stay there

Yes, folks. It's more advice from Ted Haggard.

Where, exactly, does meth fit into this plan?

The Jerusalem Diet: The "One Day" Approach to Reach Your Ideal Weight--and Stay There

a haggard wife made him do it

In case you missed the case of Ted Haggard (the evangelical pastor accused of buying meth from a gay escort), here's the follow-up.

Apparently, some members of the evangelical community are defending Pastor Ted, saying that responsibility for his sin rests on Mrs. Haggard, because "she let herself go." So much for "From This Day Forward."

The pastor's wife made him do it

Our friends at EvangelicalRight.com knew we'd be eager to hear about this response to Ted Haggard's scandal, from our old pal/nemesis Pastor Mark Driscoll. Driscoll leads Seattle's Mars Hill Church, and a good portion of the larger evangelical youth movement, teaching the doctrine of wifely submission to Christians nationwide. (To learn more about Driscoll, you can read Salon's excerpt from my book "Righteous: Dispatches From the Evangelical Youth Movement".)

Driscoll blames Haggard's affair with a male escort not on the former pastor's homosexuality -- which he abhors as much as that other spawn of Satan, feminism, -- but on his wife, Gayle Haggard. Why? 'Cause, he says, Gayle let herself go.

"At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this," he wrote on his blog. "It is not uncommon to meet pastors' wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband's sin, but she may not be helping him either."

As we all know, this argument is as illogical -- that a man would have sex with another man because he was turned off by his aging wife, and not because he's gay -- as it is demeaning. How she looks should have no bearing on this. But, I must rise to Mrs. Haggard's defense, if only to point out that Driscoll is obviously using her as an opportunity for frat-boy girl-bashing of the highest right, guys? high-five! order. Find a picture of Gayle Haggard. It's easy to do this week, with her husband's fall from grace splashed over the front pages. And look at her. Come on: She looks fabulous.

Her failing is not in too few hours on the treadmill, but in her beliefs. First, that she should submit to her husband, as she has preached to her women's ministry in Colorado Springs, and as she and Ted wrote in a book they published this year called "From This Day Forward: Making Your Vows Last a Lifetime." (It's still for sale today at the New Life Church bookstore, and available for your ironic viewing at Amazon.) And second, that he can be healed of his "sickness" -- that under the close watch of Focus on the Family's James Dobson, God can cast the gay out, and the girl-crazy boy she married will be hers once more.

With Jesus' help, her faith asserts, Haggard can be just as straight as the aggressively heterosexual pastor Mark Driscoll, who, on his blog, is quick to explain that his fidelity to his wife -- and, thus, the Lord -- has everything to do with his blonde bride's hotness, lest we think he would have married a woman who wouldn't keep herself up to his specifications. Otherwise how could he have resisted the women who ache to provide him with earthly pleasures?

He writes, "I started the church ten years ago when I was twenty-five years of age. Thankfully, I was married to a beautiful woman. I met my lovely wife Grace when we were seventeen, married her at twenty-one, and by God's grace have been faithful to her in every way since the day we met. I have, however, seen some very overt opportunities for sin. On one occasion I actually had a young woman put a note into my shirt pocket while I was serving communion with my wife, asking me to have dinner, a massage, and sex with her. On another occasion a young woman emailed me a photo of herself topless and wanted to know if I liked her body." Yeah, dude!

Via Sharon

better dead than red

Dead woman wins county race
S.D. candidate gets 100 votes; official says voters knew she was deceased
The Associated Press
Updated: 8:41 a.m. PT Nov 8, 2006

PIERRE, S.D. - A woman who died two months ago won a county commissioner's race in Jerauld County on Tuesday.

Democrat Marie Steichen, of Woonsocket, got 100 votes, defeating incumbent Republican Merlin Feistner, of Woonsocket, who had 64 votes.

Jerauld County Auditor Cindy Peterson said she believes the county board will have to meet to appoint a replacement for Steichen. Peterson said she'll check with the state's attorney to be sure that's the process.

Peterson said voters knew Steichen had died.

"They just had a chance to make a change, and we respect their opinion."

laura ingraham's phone jam 2006

If this is true, a recent New Hampshire situation sets a precedent for jail time.

News Hounds: GOP Hypocrite Laura Ingraham Has the Gall to Advise Candidates on "Principles"

Earlier today (November 7, 2006) right-wing talk show host Laura Ingraham did one of the nastiest, most undemocratic (as in democracy, folks) things ever done on an election day. She urged her listeners to call and jam a free hotline set up by the Democratic party for voters (including Republicans) to call if they encountered problems at the polls.

A few hours later Ingraham had the audacity to appear on Fox's Your World w/Neil Cavuto (no, Cavuto didn't mention what she'd done) to advise Republican candidates:

"I mean, if you run as a conservative and you get elected as a conservative, then you better stand up for those principles."

I presume Ingraham thinks everyone should stand up for their principles (candidate or not); in which case we now have a pretty good idea what her principles are and they're sure not about protecting the right to vote.

Via Leo

selected reactions to yesterday's election

nancy pelosi: "i have two years to fuck hillary up six ways from sunday."

harry reid: "let's show these unilateral bastards what bipartisanship really means."

chuck schumer: "and after i have tony snow thrown in a gitmo jail cell, i'm going to pass a law making red elephants obscene, and then i'm going to make it illegal for people to vote for parties that begin with the letter R, and then..."

rahm emanuel: "i really hope they pick clooney over tony shalhoub to play me in the movie."

hillary clinton: "i wonder how fast the white house decorators can put everything back the way it looked in 2000..."

bill clinton: "crap. i just know if hillary gets elected president she's going to put me on a low-fat, no-intern diet for four years..."

jon stewart: "now what the fuck am i going to do with these five hard drives filled with republican-government-gone-wrong jokes?"

george w. bush: "lord, i know this is part of your plan, so i'm gonna do my best to listen to the american people and work with harry and nancy, because that's what the country needs right now. now if i could only remember where i put my mirror and rolled up dollar bill..."

dick cheney: "i should have taken rahm and chuck hunting when karl asked me to."

karl rove: "i knew i shouldn't have let mary matalin convince me not to leak that photoshopped picture of nancy pelosi blowing osama."

george allen: "holy macaca!"

laura ingraham: "i guess it's back to blowing truckers in back alleys for me..."

ann coulter: "you best keep clear of my alley, bitch! this my house!"

the 'liberal' media: "is there any doubt this victory will cause the democrats to turn on one another?"

fox news: "several republicans beat back democratic challenges in strong rebuke to defeatnik democrat agenda."

iraq: "does this mean we can stop getting bombed now?"

iran: "crap."

north korea: "crap."

the world: "what THE FUCK took you guys so long?"
Via Leo

speaker ... speaker ...

The funniest moment of last night's election coverage was right after it was clear that the Dems had taken the House. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi took the stage and then Harry spoke, with Charles Schumer in the background.

Watching Charles Schumer smirking and trying desperately to keep a straight face when Harry Reid spoke about "extending the same hand of bipartisan cooperation that the Republicans did" to the Democrats was hilarious. It was all that Schumer could do to keep from howling with laughter.

Leo and I didn't have the same restraint.

evangelical pastor admits he bought meth

I really can't put it any better than Leo did today:

somebody needs to grab kerry by the ears and make him read this story. THIS is what you do the week before pivotal elections. you find a major effin' hypocrite on the other side and splash his private life all over the papers. you DO NOT make faux-clever remarks that appear to slander the military.

of course, this will probably make people ignore the fact that, until this morning, the government was running a "how to build a nuclear bomb" website for aspiring terrorists. but i have to give them credit. it's sooooo much more efficient than the old economy, brick and mortar "let's build a school in panama and fly all the terrorists in" method they used to favor.

4 days left, kids. hope you all plan to get out and vote!!!

Accused pastor admits he bought meth
But Haggard claims he never used drug that he bought from gay escort

BREAKING NEWS
NBC News and news services
Updated: 11:20 a.m. PT Nov 3, 2006

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The Rev. Ted Haggard admitted Friday he bought methamphetamine and received a massage from a gay prostitute who claims he was paid for drug-fueled trysts by the former head of the National Association of Evangelicals.

"I bought it for myself but never used it," Haggard told reporters gathered outside his home. "I was tempted, but I never used it."

Haggard, 50, said he never had sex with Mike Jones, a 49-year-old Denver man who raised the allegations this week.

Haggard said he received a massage from Jones after being referred to him by a Denver hotel.

Haggard, who was leaving his home with his wife and three of his five children, said he bought the meth because he was curious.

Haggard stepped down as president of the 30 million-member association Thursday and also gave up leadership of his 14,000-member New Life Church pending the investigation into allegations he had sex with Jones over the past three years.

"It is important for you to know that he confessed to the overseers that some of the accusations against him are true,” Ross Parsley, the acting senior pastor at New Life Church stated in an e-mail to church members.

“He has willingly and humbly submitted to the authority of the board of overseers, and will remain on administrative leave during the course of the investigation,” the e-mail stated. A copy was obtained by KMGH-TV in Denver.

Haggard, a married father of five who has been called one of the most influential evangelical Christians in the nation, denied the allegations late Wednesday, telling NBC affiliate KUSA-TV of Denver: “I've never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I’m steady with my wife, I’m faithful to my wife. So I don't know if this is election year politics ... or what it is.”

Alleged voice mails
Jones provided to KUSA-TV what he said were voice mails from Haggard. The station had University of Colorado expert Richard Sanders compare them to its earlier interview of Haggard.

“It certainly sounds like the same person,” Sanders said, adding that he expected to have a final report later Friday.

KUSA-TV reported excerpts late Thursday.

“Hi Mike, this is Art,” one call began. “Hey, I was just calling to see if we could get any more. Either $100 or $200 supply.”

A second message, left a few hours later, began: “Hi Mike, this is Art, I am here in Denver and sorry that I missed you. But as I said, if you want to go ahead and get the stuff, then that would be great. And I’ll get it sometime next week or the week after or whenever.”

Jones said Haggard, whose middle name is Art, was referring to methamphetamine. “There’s some stuff on there (the voice mails) that’s pretty damning,” he said.

Jones said he also has an envelope he said Haggard used to mail him cash.

Gay marriage on state ballot
The allegations come as voters in Colorado and seven other states get ready to decide Tuesday on amendments banning gay marriage. Besides the proposed ban on the Colorado ballot, a separate measure would establish the legality of domestic partnerships providing same-sex couples with many of the rights of married couples.

Jones told The Associated Press he decided to go public with his allegations because of the political fight. Jones, who said he is gay, said he was upset when he discovered Haggard and the New Life Church had publicly opposed same-sex marriage.

“It made me angry that here’s someone preaching about gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex,” said Jones, who added that he isn’t working for any political group.

Jones, whose allegations were first aired on KHOW-AM radio in Denver, claimed Haggard paid him to have sex nearly every month over three years. Jones also said Haggard snorted methamphetamine before their sexual encounters to heighten his experience.

Jones said he had advertised himself as an escort on the Internet and that a man who called himself Art contacted him. Jones said he later saw the man on television identified as Haggard.

He said that he last had sex with Haggard in August and that he did not warn him before making his allegations this week.

Haggard was appointed president of the evangelicals association in March 2003. He has participated in conservative Christian leaders’ conference calls with White House staffers and lobbied members of Congress last year on U.S. Supreme Court appointees after Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement.

After Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2004, Haggard and others began organizing state-by-state opposition. Last year, Haggard and officials from the nearby Christian ministry Focus on the Family announced plans to push Colorado’s gay marriage ban for the 2006 ballot.

At the time, Haggard said that he believed marriage is a union between a man and woman rooted in centuries of tradition, and that research shows it’s the best family unit for children.

“Homosexual activity, like adulterous relationships, is clearly condemned in the Scriptures,” the evangelicals association says on its Web site. The Bible says homosexuality is a sin that “brings grave consequences in this life and excludes one from the Kingdom of God.”

Haggard’s resignation from the NAE seems unlikely to do lasting damage to the organization, an umbrella group for a diverse and independent-minded membership. At his own church, Haggard’s decision to step aside — if it became permanent — would have a more profound effect.

“One would hope and pray that this matter would be resolved expeditiously and quickly and he can be restored back to being the pastor of the church and the leader of the NAE,” said Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative Washington think tank.

‘That’s not Ted’
New Life Church member Brooks DeMio, 44, said he thinks Jones is a liar and can’t believe Haggard would engage in sex with a man.

“He loves the Lord, homosexuality is a sin and that’s not Ted,” DeMio said. “His desire is to serve other people and uphold the word of God. ... I don’t know him well enough to give a complete character description, but I know him enough to know it’s not true.”

Carolyn Haggard, spokeswoman for the New Life Church and the pastor’s niece, said a four-member church panel will investigate the allegations. The board has the authority to discipline Haggard, including removing him from ministry work.

“This is really routine when any sort of situation like this arises, so we’re prepared,” Carolyn Haggard said. “The church is going to continue to serve and be welcoming to our community. That’s a priority.”

justicia for the desaparecidos?

30,000 people disappeared during Argentina's 1976-83 military rule in a crackdown on students, intellectuals, leftist dissidents, and innocent bystanders.

The country hasn't healed, because the perpetrators of the crimes have not been brought to justice and most of the victim’s families have never recovered the bodies of their loved ones.

But today, the Argentine court struck down amnesty laws, a bold first step toward justice:

Argentina's Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that laws granting amnesty for atrocities committed during the so-called Dirty War are unconstitutional, opening the possibility that hundreds of people could be brought back to court.

In a 7-1 vote, with one abstention, the Supreme Court struck down laws passed in 1986 forbidding charges involved in the disappearances, torture and other crimes, a court spokesman told The Associated Press.

Some 3,000 officers, about 300 of whom are still serving in the armed forces, could be called for questioning, according to human rights groups, which estimated that up to 400 of them could face new charges.

The ruling came in the case of Julio Simon, a former police officer accused in the disappearance of Jose Poblete and Gertrudis Hlaczik, and of his taking their daughter, Claudia Poblete, as his own.