Month: February 2010

A reader writes:

I think you're reading too much into the Palin/Brown thing. I was at the Victory Party for Brown (I'm a Republican), and I'm 98% certain he or one of his staffers mentioned that Sarah Palin had just called him (maybe someone has a transcript?). Please remember that in the hour between Coakley's concession and his speech, he was surrounded by Mitt Romney, Charlie Baker, and thousands of supporters. He got calls from (or called) Barack Obama, Ted Kennedy's wife, and who knows how many other politicians. He probably hadn't slept much in days, and in the past 2-3 weeks he's probably talked on the phone to literally ever major politician in the country. I would guess that the hectic nature of the past few weeks — combined with the fact that Palin called so early and probably spoke with him for 1 or 2 minutes, really did cause it to slip his mind.

Wouldn't hurt to prove it, would it? And I'd happily post any such proof as soon as I get it.

Palin answered the question of the day by chastising Limbaugh over "retard," but she later backpedaled. (What will she say about his sexism and Beck's boorishness?) Krikorian cautioned Republicans on political correctness. The Dish went there. More Palin antics here and here.

We captured some dramatic DADT moments here and here. Uganda update here. The White House seemed to kill question time. Andrew delivered a mea culpa on John Edwards and reexamined the Gitmo deaths at length. Douthat, Lehrer, and Savage talked teen sex, Suderman criticized the HCR bill, and Robert Wright blamed blogs for imperiling it.

Hathos here. Amazing ad here. Beard-blogging here.

— C.B.

The latest from that old fraud John McCain.

There is a God:

Sarah Palin, the former Governor of Alaska, Republican mega-star and Fox News contributor, was quick to fire back at Washington Post blog, The Plum Line, for a report that Palin is at war with conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

Sarah Palin spokesperson Meg Stapleton told Fox, "The Washington Post is trying hard to take the pressure off the White House by creating a side controversy, but it is missing the point: as the Governor has said, it doesn't matter who says the "r" word: it should no longer be part of our lexicon."

Limbaugh used the "r" word repeatedly during his daily radio show yesterday. When the Palin camp was asked for comment by the Washington Post, they replied via e-mail that,“Governor Palin believes crude and demeaning name calling at the expense of others is disrespectful.”

Palin officials say that is the same comment they have given reporters for a host of other instances where someone had used the "r" word and they are not singling out Limbaugh.

Of course she's not "singling out" Limbaugh. But she was responding to a question directly about him. She has already attacked one of Rick Perry's top aides – and Perry is one of the last remaining Republicans to want her to campaign for him. Is Glenn Beck next? Check this out:

This is so awesome. And the whole thing is given such extra je ne sais quoi by the fact that, according to Levi, Palin uses the retard word privately at home to describe Trig, her immaculate conception.

Greg Sargent: I love you. Meg Stapleton: keep 'em coming.

NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker appears before the Senate Antitrust Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee for a hearing on the proposed merger between Comcast and NBC Universal on Capitol Hill February 4, 2010 in Washington, DC. The roughly $30 billion dollar deal, if allowed by regulators to be completed, would concentrate a great deal of power and greatly impact the future of television programming. By Chris Kleponis/Getty Images.

I haven't been posting on this potentially game-changing story because the details are complex and the information overload enormous and I want to make sure I get every iota right. Stay tuned for more in the coming days. But Scott Horton's latest piece zeroes in on a very specific detail: the weird autopsies. Horton claimed that the families of the dead prisoners requested the missing necks and heart and kidneys of the deceased for a second autopsy. Rowan Scarborough at Human Events, contacted the military to debunk the story. He wrote:

I am told authoritatively that the families have not requested the neck organs.

Horton has the actual letter requesting the organs (see after the jump). So either it got lost in the mail or this is another demonstrable untruth from the government. Now Horton has asked one of the most respected autopsy pathologists inn the country to review the procedures of the autopsies as performed at Gitmo. Read the whole disturbing thing. It seems extremely clear that they violated standards and procedures that are routine for both civilian and military autopsies. For example, organs removed from bodies are always returned to the next of kin for secondary autopsies if requested. That didn't happen. From the pathologist, Dr Michael Baden:

It is not appropriate to be unresponsive to the pathologists conducting the second autopsy. If the body parts that were removed have been properly preserved, they can still be examined years later to assist in independently establishing how the death occurred.

Then this jumped out at me when I first read it. In the original autopsy, it was found that the hyoid bone of one of the deceased had been broken. The military claims this occurred accidentally during the removal of the neck for examination. It had nothing to do with what they claim were hangings. Here's what the pathologist said of that finding:

A fracture of the hyoid bone occurs more commonly in homicidal manual strangulation than in suicidal hanging. A pathologist performing the second autopsy should be able to examine the hyoid bone and larynx to independently determine if the fracture happened while the decedent was alive or inadvertently after death during autopsy removal of the larynx.

My italics. But the second autopsy was denied this option by the US military. Then the weird detail that also struck me before: why on earth did the deceased stuff rags down their throats if they wanted to commit suicide by hanging? The military's explanation was that a rag was placed over the mouth to muffle any sound or cry they might utter when hanging and that they were then "inhaled as a natural reaction to death by asphyxiation.” No, I'm not making that up. But I'm not an expert so the pathologist's analysis should be deferred to:

I am not aware of any other case in which suicide was accomplished in this way, at least not with a gag in his mouth covered by a surgical mask.

I have a feeling this story is not over.

The letter asking for the organs of the deceased is below:

 

It’s time for a bout of total political incorrectness, don’t you think?

Jonathan Bernstein doesn't think it helps much:

Would you rather be the target of an attack ad claiming that you voted for death panels, and your district is just lucky that it never passed — or the target of an attack ad claiming that little Bobby died because of the brand new shortage of surgeons brought on by that horrible new law (or even a tamer one blaming increased premiums on the new law)?  Will activists who are angry now really keep their checkbooks in their pockets when confronted with easily demonizeable GOP candidates?  Will anyone care about ending rescissions, since most people won't know that anything has changed?  Simple polling just isn't going to help.  Pols will need to use their political judgment.  And if they don't have much of that, they may find very soon that they're in the wrong line of work.

It gets hipper and hipper. I'm having a bit of a mid-life crisis with mine. I'm growing it some more, but at 46, there's a big white patch right down the front and some white side-burns at the side. Aaron thinks it's hot; and all the twinks seem to love it. But I'm just not ready for the Santa look quite yet. So I've been dabbing some Just For Men on the white bits – not totally, just dabs, to take the edge off – and, after consulting various online beardologists, I'm using a color much lighter than my natural hue.

Only my cattier acquaintances have noticed. And you know who you are.

My excuse is that I'm bald already so I get a pass on the greybeard thing in my 40s. Anderson has been white for almost as long as I've known him (ah, the Washington YMCA in the 1980s!), but he's so cute he can get away with anything. Brad Pitt's gray streak in what has to be admitted is a quite nasty little straggler is also offset by preternatural beauty.

So I guess this is a kind of pre-emptive confession to make myself feel better about it.