Month: January 2009

Claims that the case against Sherry Johnston was slowed for political reasons have been withdrawn. Levi Johnston has quit his new job because it requires a high school diploma:

Levi figures it’s best to leave the job and pursue his education, Keith Johnston said. Levi’s not eligible for the apprenticeship program without the diploma, he said.

"You guys are watching him so tightly," Johnston said, referring to the media. "He’s being treated different than an average 18-year-old kid. He has to do everything by the book now."

       

A helpful and moving piece about the agonizing choices parents often have to make.

"Scientology is unalterably opposed, as a matter of religious belief, to the practice of psychiatry, and espouses as a religious belief that the study of the mind and the healing of mentally caused ills should not be alienated from religion or condoned in nonreligious fields.

I am in full agreement with this religious belief. I do not believe in or subscribe to psychiatric labels for individuals. It is my strongly held religious belief that all mental problems are spiritual in nature and that there is no such thing as a mentally incompetent person– only those suffering from spiritual upset of one kind or another dramatized by an individual. I reject all psychiatric labels and intend for this Contract to clearly memorialize my desire to be helped exclusively through religious, spiritual means and not through any form of psychiatric treatment, specifically including involuntary commitment based on so-called lack of competence.

Under no circumstances, at any time, do I wish to be denied my right to care from members of my religion to the exclusion of psychiatric care or psychiatric directed care, regardless of what any psychiatrist, medical person, designated member of the state or family member may assert supposedly on my behalf. If circumstances should ever arise in which government, medical or psychiatric officials or personnel or family members or friends attempt to compel or coerce or commit me for psychiatric evaluation, treatment or hospitalization, I fully desire and expect that the Church or Scientologists will intercede on my behalf to oppose such efforts and/or extricate me from that predicament so my spiritual needs may be addressed in accordance with the tenets of the Scientology religion," – legal release form from the Church of Scientology. More background here.

Elana Schor:

Feinstein seemed to acknowledge the Obama team’s desire to find a CIA director who would signal an end to the abusive interrogation tactics of the Bush years. "We all want a break with the past," she told the reporters milling around her in the Senate. "I was the one who went into the conference committee" between the House and the Senate last year with an amendment that would use the Army Field Manual as the universal standard for detainee interrogations, she added.

Meanwhile, Roberts is fine with it. Scott Horton thinks the Blair-Panetta combo is inspired. Me too.

This is for Trey Parker and Matt Stone:

Ruffini dreams:

Right now, I yearn for the legislative acumen — and in this case, the spine — of Bob Dole, who rallied even John Chafee — Lincoln’s father — to oppose the 1993 Clinton stimulus… The GOP’s number one priority politically is to set into motion a series of events that will make Obama look more ineffective, partisan, and unpopular than he is today. Playing hard-to-get on the stimulus is one way to do it. And we need to set the stage for a unified and effective Republican opposition that will actually fight from top to bottom.

Apple’s new "key-board-free" laptop.

"Suppose a dozen clowns die in a circus fire. Not funny. Now, if a dozen clowns burst into flames while attempting in unison to program their VCR: funnier. Now suppose a dozen clowns beat each other to death with whole, unfrozen bluefin tuna: goddamn hilarious. (Let it be said, for the record, that I am indifferent to clowns, except that I have it on good authority that circus clowns have no souls.) Watching the legal wranglers of torture, "preemptive" military action and Unitary Executive-ism pen an ode to the proper encumbrance of executive power? It is at least clown-and-tuna funny," – Hunter at Daily Kos.

Jeffrey Goldberg explains why he isn’t writing more about Gaza.

Not so redneck any more.