Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
An Ohio agency director resigned Wednesday in the wake of a finding that she improperly used state computers to access personal information on the man who became known as “Joe the Plumber” during the presidential campaign.
Two other officials who were suspended from their positions for their role in the computer search will not be returning to their jobs, an agency spokeswoman said.
Department of Job and Family Services Director Helen Jones-Kelley said in a statement accompanying her resignation that she won’t allow her reputation to be disparaged and that she is concerned for her family’s safety.
Take a drink when a left-winger in trouble claims to have received death threats, that cannot be proven or disproven. It’s like roosters crowing before the sun comes up. Or more like snakes slithering when it’s high overhead.
Truth be told, I’m having trouble thinking of the last left-winger who got in trouble, who didn’t claim to be threatened. As an everyday phenomenon, they’re starting to achieve the status of celebrities going into rehab.
“This decision comes after a time of pause, in which I realize that I continue to be used as a political postscript, providing a distraction from urgent state priorities,” she said in her statement.
She could not be reached for additional comment Wednesday night.
Gov. Ted Strickland suspended Jones-Kelley for a month without pay after the Ohio Inspector General’s office found in November that she improperly used state computers to find personal information on Samuel Wurzelbacher. The investigation also found that she conducted improper political fundraising activity for now President-elect Barack Obama.
Whatever.
We have different rules for conservatives and liberals when it comes to scandals. If she was a bible-thumper trying to find dirt on some pro-choice lefty private-citizen type, this would be the beginning of the scandal instead of the end of it. The sharks would smell blood and come out hungry, circling. That’s the way it works. As it is, we will now be directed to “move on.”
You realize what this woman did?
A politician from the Chicago oily machine snakepit sought the most powerful office in the entire world — which He eventually got — and a private citizen simply asked Him a question about His intended tax policies…and, because the oily machine snakepit politician didn’t have a good answer all ready to go, the private citizen got investigated, while the wagons circled around the oily machine snakepit politician.
That’s almost worse than espionage. As far as the intended meaning of the U.S. Constitution, actually, it is. Now, people who are not seeking office, cannot ask questions of people who are. Not without sleeping with one eye open from then on, wondering about what kind of bullshit will get stirred up about that incident when they drove around the college campus with their bare butt cheeks hanging out the window, or whatever other little dustbunnies they have in their skeleton-closets.
Everyone who wants to sound the alarm bells over wiretapping, Carnivore, Echelon, the Clipper Chip, “detainees” being waterboarded, etc. ought to be chilled by this right down to the marrow of their bones. Politicians can have secrets, private citizens cannot. Worse than that — politicians can have secrets about what they want to do to the private citizens. The private life of the private citizen, on the other hand, is an open book; nothing private about it, not if you ask questions inconvenient to the establishment. You get to screw your wife and attend to your bodily functions in a one-hundred-percent glass house now.
If Joe The Plumber was some kind of rabble-rouser activist type, just living to stir up trouble, that would be partial consolation. In that situation, his rights — in letter or spirit, one of those two — would still have been transgressed, unforgivably. But at least we’d know he was out lookin’ for trouble. It would be somewhat like the woman getting raped after prancing around in a miniskirt: Yes, the crime is no less deplorable, but for those who are determined to do whatever it takes to stay out of trouble, you can retreat somewhere. This is more like your grandmother getting raped in her own house. Yeah Joe’s no saint. But he was doing exactly what we would be proud to see our own children do, what we hope they do. He had a sincere concern about this candidate’s intentions, and he expressed it clearly, plainly, as politely as he possibly could. And then he listened, patiently, equally politely. It is precisely how citizens are supposed to function in an open democratic republic. For this — and only this — he got reamed.
There’s no punishment hefty enough. No punishment that would address the point. We’ve lost something we’re never getting back again. And the worst part? Obama Himself, once again, is a passive player in all this. He has no culpability in this at all.
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Oh, sir, what you could have said. The “death threats” are a great opportunity for the Left to show us how their foreign policy works, but they retire from the field. What’s up with that?
- Robert Mitchell Jr. | 12/19/2008 @ 11:48Hey, the last time the right tried something like this there was a 40 year ongoing bleeding wound called Watergate.
- Tom The Impaler | 12/19/2008 @ 12:28