David Postman says that State Senator Eric Oemig is once again pushing for im­peach­ment in the Washington State Leg­is­la­ture. Washington for Im­peach­ment has the text of SJM 8016.

Here's the comment that I posted under Postman's article. It's based upon a speech that I gave at Toast­mas­ters last year.

I've had enough. I'm sick of the lies. I'm tired of the scandals. I'm angry at the loss of civil liberties.

Scandals like the US Attorneys' firings, the Walter Reed out­pa­tients, the Katrina debacle. Pardoning Scooter Libby, who outed an undercover CIA agent. Voter sup­pres­sion. The War on Science. Theocracy. Corruption. The War on the En­vi­ron­ment. Food safety. Toy safety. The Pat Tillman coverup. Terri Schiavo. 700+ signing statements.

The lies. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and …continue.

Today's odds and ends.

• George MacDonald Fraser died the other day. He was the author of the marvelous Flashman novels. I reviewed the last Flashman novel a year ago.

• Kiva seems like a really good idea, connecting people in the emerging world who need microloans with people who can afford to lend them $25.

  Last summer, we attended a house party for Marc Gold of the 100 Friends project. He's a sort of one-man Santa Claus, personally handing out money to needy people and or­ga­ni­za­tions.

• Zane, whose superpower is knowing a Web 2.0 ap­pli­ca­tion for every problem, reminded me on Friday of Mint. I just signed up. Mint keeps track of your money …continue.

Herewith several articles that I've read lately for which I'm not going to write individual posts.

• Bruce Schneier has railed for years against security theater, ostensible security measures that have little real effect, but are performed to be seen as doing something — airline security being the most wretched example. Patrick Smith wrote a good piece on airport security follies at the NYT airline blog. We should all be protesting loudly at this nonsense, but no-one does because of the fear of ending up on a no-fly list.

• Also in the NYT, Harold McGee wrote a par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ing article on the hidden ingredient in cooking, heat.

  That’s the basic challenge: We’re often aiming …continue.

Via Hullabaloo, a de­scrip­tion of wa­ter­board­ing from someone who tried it on himself:

It took me ten minutes to recover my senses once I tried this. I was shuddering in a corner, convinced I narrowly escaped killing myself.

Here's what happened:

The water fills the hole in the saran wrap so that there is either water or vacuum in your mouth. The water pours into your sinuses and throat. You struggle to expel water pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly by building enough pressure in your lungs. With the saran wrap though each time I expelled water, I was able to draw in less air. Finally the lungs can no longer expel water and you …continue.

I was just watching the Colbert Report and Sam Waterston was on, touting Unity08. Except that both he and Colbert kept pro­nounc­ing it as Unity-oh-Eight dot com, not Unity-zero-Eight dot com. I knew what they meant of course, but I decided to see what was at Unityo8. Naturally, they don't own the domain, despite having existed for more than a year. Such in­com­pe­tence.

As for their third-way platform, I expect that they would act as a spoiler, most likely splitting the Democratic vote, as Nader (cursed be his name) did in 2000. Their list of sponsors is quite suspect too. Irregular Times lists a number of problems with Unity08.

I'm traveling in Europe at present (Ireland last week, Italy this week and next), so I have little op­por­tu­ni­ty to keep up with U.S. news, but the Larry Craig case leapt out at me. Craig is the second U.S. Senator to be exposed in the last few months as a major sexual hypocrite who espouses 'family values' but can't keep his pecker in his pants. Schaden­freude is just the right term for the pleasure I take in seeing these dickwads hoist on their own petards.

David Vitter (brother of one of my professors at Brown, Jeff Vitter) repeatedly consorted with pros­ti­tutes. Larry Craig has pled guilty to soliciting sex in a men's restroom, joining …continue.

Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, died today. As an atheist, I don't believe in hell, but if it existed, a thor­ough­go­ing shit like Falwell would surely be headed there. Falwell was a liar, a hate-monger, a parasite, and a crook.

“The abor­tion­ists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the Pagans, and the abor­tion­ists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an al­ter­na­tive lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who …continue.

In response to the following letter:

Subject: Thurs 4/19: Im­peach­ment in Olympia

Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:04:29 -0400

From: Democrats.com <activist@democrats.com>

Reply-To: activist@democrats.com

HELP WASHINGTON STATE IMPEACH BUSH AND CHENEY

http://www.af­ter­down­ingstreet.org/wa

PLEASE JOIN US FOR AN HISTORIC DEBATE ABOUT IM­PEACH­MENT AND THE IRAQ WAR, ON THE FLOOR OF THE WASHINGTON STATE SENATE ON THURSDAY, APRIL 19TH, 11:00AM. RALLY 10:00 AM.

We have one more week to move SJM 8016 to a vote in the Washington State Senate. WE CANNOT LET DEMOCRACY QUIETLY SLIP AWAY. Democratic leadership can still move SJM 8016, Senator Oemig's bill to in­ves­ti­gate President Bush and Vice President Cheney, to …continue.

In Damn Right We're Angry, Paul Waldman lets loose with a long list of why pro­gres­sives are jus­ti­fi­ably angry with what's happened to the US over the last few years:

We’re angry because of what has happened to our country, because of how we’ve been treated, and because of the in­nu­mer­able crimes the con­ser­v­a­tives have committed. We’re angry at the president, we’re angry at the Congress, we’re angry at the news media. And we have every right to be.

Yes, we’re angry at George W. Bush. We’re not angry at him because of who he sleeps with, and we’re not angry at him because we think he represents some socio-cultural …continue.

I'm slightly more hopeful this week about not Attacking Iran after reading this piece, subtitled Thelma and Louise Im­pe­ri­al­ism.

You only have to pick up the morning paper to find the most mainstream of official types in an over-the-top mode that, bare months ago, would have been confined to the distant pe­riph­eries of political argument. There's Senator Joe Biden, the very definition of a mainstream man, grilling Secretary of State Con­doleez­za Rice about whether she believes the ad­min­is­tra­tion already has the authority to attack Iran and swearing, if she does, that it "will generate a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­fronta­tion in the Senate, I predict to you." (You can add the ex­cla­ma­tion point …continue.