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Bits and Pieces, 4/19/2006

April 19th, 2006

Right-to-Lifers just got a green light from a judge to go to a Florida clinic where abortions are performed and scream “murderer!” or whatever else they want right into the faces of women arriving for medical treatment. The judge in the case ruled it an issue of “free speech,” but I have doubts about this judge. In his ruling, he cited a “typical” police report that protesters were “peacefully limited to prayer and song,” but also noted that the clinic used its loudspeakers to broadcast “blasts [of] music to drown out protesters,” which would seem excessive if people were just praying and singing quietly on the clinic’s front lawn and not harassing the women walking in.

But the giveaway comes from a web search which reveals that the judge’s “typical” report does not consider this article mentioning pro-life protester Susan Pine who “normally” greets the women entering the clinic (which provides services other than abortion) “with a bullhorn, yelling that they should not kill their babies and handing out pamphlets with graphic photos of aborted fetuses.”

Methinks the judge in this case may be a wee bit biased on the pro-life side. Ya think?


Scott McClellan “resigned” his position, a few weeks after reports that he would be fired made the rounds. No exact reason was given, but Amy Poehler quipped on SNL previously that “McClellan says he’d like to spend more time lying for his family.”

President Bush said McClellan had “a challenging assignment.” I will tactfully refrain from making jokes about this comment on the grounds that it would be ludicrously easy to do so, not to mention that you have undoubtedly come up with seven or eight yourself since you started reading this sentence.


Republicans in Congress are working to allow religious schools to reject or expel students for being gay. Love thy neighbor and thy fellow man, unless he’s a God-forsaken homo.

I’m sorry, that’s unfair. Actually, the law would allow religious schools to discriminate on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age and disability as well.


A driver in Colorado used a $100 gadget to give himself green lights all the way to work, and then some. The device is similar to those used by firefighters to switch traffic signals to green to get them to emergencies more quickly. The man used his version to switch lights for two full years, all over the state of Colorado, before he was caught by alert traffic engineers, who apparently go for years without noticing that traffic lights are being screwed around with. Actually, the heads-up came from other drivers who complained about traffic backups caused by the offender, who apparently used it every day at the exact same intersections.

The guy caught with the device said he used it because he was always late for work. He was fined $50.


The Supreme Court gave the thumbs-down to Jerry Falwell. Falwell had sued gay rights activists over their use of the domain name fallwell.com on the grounds that some people might think that he wrote it. The gay rights activists’ site’s domain name adds an extra “L” to the name, and Falwell is pissed that people who can’t spell (presumably a large percentage of his ministry) might find out about his homophobia.


Activists named Students Against War (SAW) protested military recruitment at UC Santa Cruz, and to teach them a lesson, right-wing nutjob Michelle Malkin posted their home phone numbers on the web. Granted, the amateur protesters had listed those numbers on the press release they handed out, but Malkin knew full well that printing them publicly was begging for these people to be harassed to no end; phone numbers on press releases are not intended for public release in the media but instead are a means for reporters to contact the people involved.

Well, the protesters got nonstop calls from Malkin’s minions, including numerous death threats. When politely asked to take down the contact information, Malkin spitefully reprinted the numbers–and then to make it look like she was the victim, she printed vicious email sent to her, as if (a) getting email is the same as your phone ringing off the hook, and (b) somehow that makes it OK for her to give the nod-and-a-wink to her fans to send off more death threats. Now, if she printed her own home phone number and invited people to make death threats to her, then maybe she could use the “I’m getting it just as bad” excuse, not that it would make her any less of a jerk.

My brother pointed out to me that Andrew Sullivan regularly assigns a “Michelle Malkin Award” for “shrill, hyperbolic, divisive and intemperate right-wing rhetoric,” but that Ann Coulter is ineligible, for the rather evident reason that if she were not, she would be the only one receiving the honor.

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