True, the local police concluded it was legal for him to have a gun at that location, and they were probably right for their jurisdiction. The Secret Service, on the other hand, may well decide that the gun, when combined with occassion and the sign (which essentially said, "it's time to spill the blood of a tyrant") consituted an deliberate and imminent threat on Obama's life, which is of course illegal.

Squeaky Fromme just spent 30 years of a life sentence in jail for pointing a gun at Gerald Ford, after removing the cartridge from the firing chamber. (OK, I know nothing about guns, but I assume this means that she could not have fired at him and therefore it was more of a threat than an attempt.)

I think a prosecutor could make the case against this guy with the existing evidence that he broke the law, but no doubt Kostric bragged to his friends online and via email about his plans, perhaps using even more bravado, and one hopes the secret service will uncover that.

Someone should have warned Mr. Kostric that besides "Live Free or Die" there is a third option: "spend a couple of decades in prison because you did something incredibly stupid."

Description of the conversation here:

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/boo_lala/2009/08/oh-my-call-from-gingrich-1.php

Description of the conversation here:

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/boo_lala/2009/08/oh-my-call-from-gingrich-1.php

(Glaivester--I'll ignore your comment about Morris Dees except to note that he, at least, has a real law degree.)

I assume, looking at their webpage they were either calling to oppose Sonya Sotomayor or to get people riled up about healthcare reform being pro-abortion. I just wonder if they were merely soliciting money or if, had I been simpathetic, they would have been agitating for me to go to Lloyd Doggett's town hall. I swear they called 20 times at least. Just wondered if anyone else actually took the call.

I think I conflated the two bills because of the anti-gay statements made at the signing.

The reason the rumors actually got some traction a few years ago--according to said Dem--is that that time it was Kay Baily H and Carole Keaton Foghorn-Strayhorn (both of whom wanted to be Governor) who were actively spreading the gossip on the Republican side. So it seemed like it was going to break out of the capitol bubble. According to the Austin Chronicle, reporters were flocking in from all over to see if there was anything reportable.

It got so bad Perry did a big interview with the Statesman saying that there were rumors he was having an affair with a woman--but he wasn't. His wife sat next to him in the interview but did not comment.

He then went on to sign legislation banning gay couples from adopting or fostering (including taking foster children out of same sex couple homes).

He signed the bill in a Fundie church.

I am going to know how to fight with the grammars. I will; fight with the punctuations.

Let us not go down to their level with something that can be turned against us again. Let us always seek to be careful not to fall into to those traps again...

..they wish to keep our nation going down this road into the darkness of Tyranny led only by the promise of the Plantation Owner....

Sigh. It's depressing but not surprising, I guess. Any others?

If not, I guess I can console myself with the fact that there was only one such elected idiot-Democrat compared to the seven idiot-Republican congressman who actually signed on to cosponsor the birther bill plus these two idiot repubs in the senate who've expressed support. That counts for something, right?

These aren't entirely rhetorical questions. It is really my perception that the Democratic party was better at distancing itself from its fringe, but I'm curious if that's just my subjective recollection.

It may not have occurred to him? Really? Do you really believe that? When you saw the picture, did you not immediately realize that there was a "racial aspect" to the image? That is the only aspect that is immediately apparent. If there is an aspect that relates to health care, it's a lot more subtle than the racial one. I don't know that the original even is an image of a "witchdoctor" or "shaman" or anything related to medicine and, if it is, I really doubt the doctor would know that from looking at it.

Your claim that he might not have noticed it was racist is like the congressman from Alabama who called Obama "uppity" in an interview and then added, "Yes, I said uppity," but when later confronted said it had never occurred to him that "uppity" had a racial connotation. You/he can claim that, but it's not at all credible.

He didn't just email this to his best friend; he emailled it to a public google listserv. The AMA has standards of ethical conduct and he failed to meet them. All of those positions he's resigning from are ones where he was representing a group or a position. Very few groups would want to be represented by someone who displayed open racism in a public forum. As he said himself, "someone in my position should have known better."

And the reason no one is bothering to debate his stupid ideas is because no one knew who he was until he did this collosally stupid thing.

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," Biden said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Now, of course, at the time I assumed that what he meant was the "first mainstream African-American presidential candidate," but, in any case, the fact that he found Obama so extraordinary because he was both African-American and articulate, bright, clean and nice-looking was sufficient to be offensive. The fact that he thought that any black candidate who was articulate, bright, clean and nice-looking would be such a novelty that they would be automatically be a contender is also pretty bad. But it was just a gaffe. And Obama forgave him.

Rescinding the memos 5 days before Bush leaves office, and including self-exonerating footnotes, does not sound like the behavior of people who know they behaved ethically all along.

As they say, it's not just the crime; it's the coverup. In this case, the coverup is solid evidence that it was a criminal conspiracy from the start (like those erased CIA tapes). Also, when Goldsmith/Levin rescinded the first torture memo, he specifically admonished that it was highly inappropriate for the OLC to advise the president on how to evade prosecution for acts that would normally be considered illegal.

If no one else in the Bush administration goes to jail, the lawyers in this conspiracy (Yoo, Gonzales, Addington, Bybee, Bradbury) must. I sure hope the Inspector General stuck to his guns.

Ahead of us at #42? Bosnia/Herzegovina. Seven countries ahead of us at #39? Jordan. Canada is #8 (how horrible to be like them!) Although the UK, whose national health system was severely defunded by Thatcher and Blair, is only #36. Of course in Britain, they achieve that mediocre rank without the guaranteed bankrupcy for anyone who faces a major illness without health insurance and likely bankrupcy for those with insurance.

Also, it would be so terrible to have actual studies that showed which treatments worked the best, rather than rely on studies, funded and designed by the pharmaceutical companies themselves, that need only show their treatment works better than a placebo.

I still think it's going to pass, though, even if, like TARP, it has to go through a few times. The panic about the "end of the honeymoon," etc., reminds me of the many times during the election when people fretted over Obama's political skills. This is the same party he defeated; and he's in a much better position now.

And a huge part of reviving our economy is psychological: we have to restore confidence in our institutions, including the government. If congress can work together and have something resembling a consensus, and if they produce a disciplined, balanced, thoughtful bill that does not provide such easy targets for the Rush Limbaughs of the world, it would do more towards that end than any one provision.

And I am one of those people who actually wants Obama to keep his main campaign promise: which was to elevate the political discourse and to look beyond party and ideology and seek, instead, proposals that are likely to succeed. I'm not an economist, so I'm not going to claim to know the best proportion of tax cuts to spending, but I'm pretty sure you have to stimulate the economy at many levels, simultaneously, which probably does include business tax cuts. There are many businesses on the verge of collapse (or massive downsizing) that will not benefit from infrastructure spending, and it is much cheaper and easier to try to keep people in their jobs than to create new ones.

Frankly, I expect the Republicans to be obstructionist and petty, but I also think Obama is going to use them to keep his own party in line. I know there is a lot to be accomplished but I don't want a runaway Democratic party, because I do believe absolute power corrupts. And while the Republicans did a terrible job of governing, and their proposals are often very wrongheaded, their criticisms of Democratic proposals have sometimes had merit although they are often delivered with such vitriol that the merit is obscured. If the GOP can return--rank hypocrisy though it is--to be the party seeking fiscal responsibility, and keep some pressure on the Democrats, maybe Obama won't suffer the fate of Bush: having to sign pork-laden bills from his own party which increase our deficit exponentially.