Won’t That Make You Feel Your Kids Are Safer? Just One Question: Who’s Gonna Protect Them From The Teachers?

(AP) Wis. lawmaker urges arming teachers

(AFP) Wisconsin lawmaker wants to give teachers guns

Now, HOW many teachers have we heard about coercing their students into sexual relationships in the last few years? And this guy wants to arm them? Yunno, something’s got to be seriously WRONG with our system if anyone even THINKS this is a reasonable solution. Of course, given my inbred Eastern European paranoia, this COULD be just a ploy to get our children used to all authority figures packing heat…but considering that two of the three last school shooting incidents involved outsiders coming in, wouldn’t it be SANER to suggest posting a cop at the entrance to each school and having them sign strangers in and out and calling teachers/admin staff to announce their arrival? Yeah, glorified rent-a-cops but much better with actual officers who would actually be empowered to arrest anyone who creates a disturbance and who knows when and WHEN NOT to pull that lethal weapon…

In the meantime, the House Republicans who sat on the news of Foley’s Folly are now going through the motions of an investigation, not to get anywhere BEFORE Nov. 7. We’re also wondering when Foley will name the priest who allegedly molested him as a teenager…when, as Jon Stewart said, he finds a dead priest with no living relatives to sue him…

NEXT WEEK IS NATIONAL SQUIRREL WEEK! As well as the best birthday holiday in the US. We WILL be publishing on the Monday holiday, but taking the FRIDAY off next week so we can celebrate the on the 12th…

Drunk? Gay? Abused? Nobody Knew? Everybody Knew? What Will We Find Out Tomorrow?

Yahoo Congress coverage

(ABC News) The Lurid instant messages 🙂

Quite frankly, Mark Foley’s misdeeds are the least of the problems here. Yeah, grooming an underage page for sexual contact is pretty bad, but Foley might be telling the truth and had no intention of any sexual relationship until the kid was legal. It doesn’t matter that it was a boy instead of a girl. We find out that Foley is an alcoholic, gay, oooooo he’s Catholic, he must have been abused, but he’s no pedophile. The worst thing I see about this is the hypocrisy that’s swirling around the whole thing. Foley was the deputy whip and chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. Seems everybody and their brother–as long as they were Republican–knew about the emails and IMs LAST YEAR, but it was swept under the rug. The Washington Post reports today that the FBI knew about them in July but had not done anything about them. The Republicans claim a smear campaign by the Democrats, claim they didn’t bring it public so it wouldn’t be gay-bashing, or because the parents didn’t want it to be brought forwards or because neither Hastert nor Boehner could decide whose responsibility it was. Tony Snow tried to equate it to Clinton-Lewinsky, despite the fact that Lewinsky was, in the words of the old saying, “free, white and 21.”

I Could Swear That Garden Gnome Was Listening To Me…

(WashPost/Reuters) US could prosecute reporters for leaks: Gonzales

(WashPost/AP) House Leaders Question FBI Search

Once again, this administration makes a judgement call and it calls for secrecy. Even if the government is acting in an illegal fashion, it is even MORE unlawful to blow the whistle on it or even be the recipient of said whistle-blowing information, according to the man who helped justify our use of torture. In a further demonstration that the principle of the separation of powers is considered null and void, a congressman’s office was searched by order of our own little Heinrich Himmler. Now, I will admit it looks bad for Jefferson (and The Party will undoubtedly use this incident to make the Democrats look as bad as the Republicans), but there is a principle at stake here. Does the executive branch trump Congress? And if so, why weren’t searches done of Duke Cunningham’s offices (as Steny Hoyer pointed out)? If Hastert and Boehner are complaining about this, this IS an issue!