Is that a crucifix in your cassock or are you just happy to see me?

Here’s a weird story: A self-styled “Roman Catholic priestess” with White House press credentials got booted from the press area near Air Force One as she was awaiting President Obama’s arrival:

A reporter for a small newspaper was forcibly removed from a press area near Air Force One shortly before President Barack Obama arrived at Los Angeles International Airport to depart California early Thursday.

Airport security officers carried the woman away by the feet and arms as she protested her removal.

Lee said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that she wanted to hand Obama a letter urging him "to take a stand for traditional marriage."

She said she asked a Secret Service agent to give the president her letter, but he refused and referred her to a White House staffer. Lee said she refused to give the staffer the letter.

"I said, 'I'll take my chances if (the president) comes by here,'" said Lee, who identified herself as a Roman Catholic priestess who lives in Anaheim, Calif. "He became annoyed that I wouldn't give him the letter."

Lee, who was wearing what she described as a cassock, said she protested when she was asked to leave.

"I said, 'Why are you bothering me?' They escorted me outside the gate," she said.

She said security officers allowed her to return when she promised she would not yell or wave, but then other officers arrived and told her to leave.

"I said, 'I'm not leaving,'" she said. "They tried to drag me out."

Two officers then picked her up and carried her out. An Associated Press photographer photographed the incident.

"I was afraid you could see under my clothes," she said, her voice choking up.

Lee, who said this was the second presidential event she has covered, was later released.

Well, as a Roman Catholic, Ms. Lee apparently follows the church line on traditional marriage. But I wonder if she’s heard about its stance on female priests? Christ on a baggage cart, I know the standards for obtaining White House press credentials are pretty low, but come on...

[Cross-posted at Rumproast]

They got nothing...

White male victimhood mongers of all genders, colors and sizes are howling like a pack of crack-addled, hydroencephalic hyenas over this excerpt of a speech by Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Why that "spic chic" [sic] thinks her judicial acumen is superior to a white man's just because she grew up eating pig intestines over rice! But if you're capable of reading the entire speech (without moving your lips and squoonching up your face over the polysyllabic words while doing so), it quickly becomes apparent that Sotomayor was engaged in a thoughtful analysis of the role experience plays in the judicial rulings of every human being who is appointed to a judgeship. And it inconveniently becomes clear that Sotomayor subscribes to the ideal that judges should strive for impartial application of the law.

Others raise more genteel but equally bone-headed objections based on a deliberate misinterpretation of Sotomayor's words. Here's past and future GOP candidate Mitt Romney's take:

The nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is troubling. Her public statements make it clear she has an expansive view of the role of the judiciary. Historically, the Court is where judges interpret the Constitution and apply the law. It should never be the place "where policy is made," as Judge Sotomayor has said. Like any nominee, she deserves a fair and thorough hearing. What the American public deserves is a judge who will put the law above her own personal political philosophy.

But if you see the entire clip of the exchange from which the Sotomayor quote is extracted rather than the 25-second snippet that is no doubt looping endlessly on Fox News, it becomes clear that Sotomayor isn't advocating legislating from the bench but rather explaining the difference in how appellate courts operate and the experience to be gained by serving different courts.

Romney is a dishonest cretin to imply otherwise, and his statement is particularly hypocritical coming from a smarmy bastard who has spent his entire political career pirouetting from one absolutist stance to another in a self-serving attempt to dance to the prevailing political tune.

If the early attacks on Sotomayor are any indication, once again, the GOP has nothing.

[Cross-posted at Rumproast. H/T to Whiskey Fire.]

Asylum for the Cheneys

Is there a banana republic somewhere that can be offered a bribe sufficient to take the Cheneys off our hands? Not just Dick, but the whole lying, dissembling, weasel-faced, treasonous bunch -- Lynne, Liz and Mary too as a package deal? I’d gladly kick in additional tax dollars to bankroll a pseudo-ranch house, complete with Western figurines, plaster cattle skulls and boldly striped polyester serapes draped artfully over low-slung Naugahyde sofas.

We should make Dick an offer he can’t refuse – a Ponderosa-themed compound (location to be determined) or a one-way ticket to The Hague. Go quietly, or you are going down, Beelzebubba.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more disgraceful, scare-mongering, lie-studded performance by a political figure in my entire life. And I am old enough to remember being pissed off when the Watergate hearings pre-empted Scooby Doo.

Preventive Detention

If Bob Somerby were an actual progressive media watchdog instead of the web’s leading purveyor of sour grapes (outside the pumatic fringe, of course), he’d have to grudgingly admit that Rhodes scholar Rachel Maddow asked an important question last night: To wit, what the figgety fuck is up with this “prolonged detention” business?

Maddow and assorted civil libertarians are saying that Obama’s vaguely outlined plan to detain al Qaeda suspects who cannot be tried for various reasons is as bad or worse than the Bush-Cheney gulag system. They’ve got a point.

On the other hand, what can you do with known baddies the Bush-Cheney Keystone Kops waterboarded past all hope of legal prosecution but who are nonetheless more dangerous than a pack of rabid porcupines with anthrax-atomizing projectile quills of death? I’m not going to pretend that’s an easy question. Here’s my answer: Fuck if I know.

But there's got to be an answer that respects civil liberties and public safety, one that doesn't immediately assume that values and ideals are expendable in dangerous times and that only Big Daddy Dick can keep us safe. I think Obama is trying to find that answer. But the details are important. Maybe that's why truly progressive congresscritters rejected the initial Gitmo closure funding proposal. It may have actually been the responsible thing to do.

Cox Gets Results!

Or at least, she makes Robert Gibbs squirm on the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell issue. Despite being derided as a Beavis and Butthead-like, pee-pee-double-entendre-name-having joke by media critics who don’t actually get results despite self-aggrandizing claims to the contrary, Ana Marie Cox brings up an important issue. And in the White House briefing room, not from beneath a Slanket in front of a Commodore 64.

I leave it to you fair people to judge whose work is more important.

[Cross-posted at Rumproast]

Jesus, General Patton and Miss California USA

So this Carrie keeps her title despite getting caught displaying her dirtypillows for all the world to see. Since I believe beauty pageants are as much about wholesomeness and talent as Playboy is about informative articles, I normally wouldn’t give a shit.

But pageant owner Donald Trump and Miss California USA Carrie Prejean are trying to spin this as a triumph of the odd tag-team of Jesus and General Patton over the sinister forces of The Gay PC Police. And that meme needs to have a sash wrapped around its neck and tiara shoved up its ass right now.

Prejean: ““I would just like to thank Mr. Trump for believing in me and allowing me to continue as Miss California USA,” she said. “Most importantly I would like to thank God for testing me with this large task and giving me the strength to stand by my beliefs. I answered my question honestly from my heart…

I am proud to that I’m an American. My grandfather served under General Patton during World War II and that’s something I appreciate greatly,” she said. “He taught me to never back down and to never let anyone take those freedoms away from you. This should not happen in America. It undermines the constitutional rights for which my grandfather fought for.”

God didn’t test you, you silly twit. Your “opposite marriage” advocacy didn’t land you in hot water -- lying on your pageant application about posing semi-nude in the past did. (Never mind the absurdity of a fucking beauty pageant barring contestants for past participation in slightly harder core wank photo ops.)

Ms. Prejean, no one is trying to take away your God-given American right to be a vacuous cretin. And Trump doesn’t “believe” in you -- he sees you as a commodity he can buy and sell like a high-interest junk bond.

Oh sure, he may look like a fool, appearing in public for years as he has with a glob of shower-drain trappings glued to his head. But Trump knows an opportunity when he sees one, and he hasn’t bounced a Czech since Ivana. He is at his oily best when increasing his assets:

Trump said the controversy over Prejean’s comments proved that the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants, both of which he owns, are relevant to today’s society and have eclipsed Miss America as the premier beauty pageant.

For all I know, Trump is right and those pageants have eclipsed Miss America as the “premier beauty pageant.” It’s a dubious distinction in any case -- on par with winning Miss Landfill.

But on what planet does that matter? One on which Donald Trump assumes the status of supreme arbiter of moral turpitude, I suppose. Meanwhile, on this planet, other grandchildren of WWII veterans -- like my gay sister -- actually do suffer discrimination. The end.

[Cross-posted at Rumproast]

Stay classy, Rudy

What a dick:

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani was a last-minute no-show at the wedding of his former roommates -- a gay couple -- yesterday.

It was a disappointment for Queens car dealer Howard Koeppel and his longtime lover, Mark Hsiao, who tied the knot in a double-ring ceremony before 10 guests in Westport, Conn.

The couple famously let the ex-mayor crash at their luxury $2.37 million three-bedroom Manhattan apartment while he was going through a nasty divorce with Donna Hanover in 2001. Later, Giuliani married the "other woman," Judith Nathan.

"Rudy and Judith were both invited with a beautiful written invitation by mail," said Koeppel. "His secretary called Thursday and said he was not able to come to the wedding and wished us all the best."

He didn’t even have the balls to call his friends personally to decline. No problem. I’m sure Giuliani’s new wingnut fundamentalist BFFs will put him up in grand style when the third Mrs. Giuliani throws his ass out. Not.

[H/T: Sullivan. Cross-posted at Rumproast.]