Fireworks were a lot more fun back then, and I was still in a celebratory mood on July 4th. Indulge me in a little nostalgia, and tell me what you miss from the USA before the Bush regimes’ despoliation.

Now that she’s back to being a Senator, some New Yorkers are proud of having Hillary Clinton as their champion on the Hill.

Phil Wagner, a cherry and apple grower — and a Republican — who sent the message to Mrs. Clinton said that the moment was bittersweet.

“I told her, ‘I’m sorry you lost your presidential campaign, but I missed my senator,’ ” Mr. Wagner said. “It’s saddening, because I was looking forward to our first female president. Us guys have mucked it up for a pretty long time. But I’m glad we have her back.”  Read more 

Dan Fischer’s dedicating time, money, and love to the “Lost Boys” kicked out of the FLDS for such sins as kissing girls.

Here is a man who walks as did Christ: “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” — Luke 6:31. For that, his church has made him an outlaw. Shunned by his family and reviled by his sibling, the man has turned the fortunes earned through his own inventiveness to rescuing those cast out in the service of pedophilic “spiritual sealing” that binds many women — often underage women — to powerful men in the FLDS.

May he live long and prosper.
May his work continue.  Read more 

Columbia Journalism Review gets the point, and tells the story like it is: the Main$tream Media manufactured the flap about General Wes Clark’s remark regarding John McCain. Time we all start asking one question: “Is riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down a qualification to be President?”
Riding in a fighter plane and getting grounded for incompetence, as we have all spent the last seven years learning the hard way, sure as hell is not.

This is the exchange that started the flap:

When moderator Bob Schieffer interjected that “Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences, either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down”, Clark responded: “Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”

What did Wes Clark say that wasn’t true?  Read more 

Hat tip to shawnod at the Great Orange Satan. Webb kept his promise. Legislation he introduced on his first day in the Senate was signed into law today:

The following is a statement from Senator Webb: “This is a great day for our veterans. This bill properly provides a modern and fair educational benefit to address the needs of those who answered the call of duty to our country—those who moved toward the sound of the guns—often at great sacrifice.  Read more 

John Cornyn’s self-aggrandizing commercial, set to a bowdlerized version of a Jimmy Dean classic ballad from the 1960s, has become the comedy hit of the season. Rick Noriega, who’s running against Cornyn this fall, has created a reply:

 Read more 

“because her client doesn’t like her.”
A grand jury in Schleicher County is hearing evidence regarding adult members — and possible further sexual misconduct charges against Warren Jeffs — of the YFZ “Ranch.” Cult mouthpiece “Thug Willie” Jessop told reporters today the lawyer for a 16-year-old girl “spiritually sealed” to an older man in the FLDS, a Dallas attorney working pro bono, was mislaying the blame for her client’s intransigence. The lawyer sought a restraining order to keep Jessop away from the minor, alleging he intimidated her. The girl has avoided service of a subpoena to appear before the Schleicher County grand jury.  Read more 

Barack Obama has crossed Focus on the Family’s radar. Perhaps it’s their increasing irrelevance, but the Religious Reich is after the Dem presumptive nominee. Dobson says Obama’s trying to misdirect believers away from “traditional” interpretations of the Bible. How does that saw about one kitchen implement calling the other go again?

A 16-year-old girl has asked to have her pro-bono lawyer removed from her case after she was the only minor child not returned to the FLDS last month. The lawyer says FLDS Spokesman and “enforcer” Willie Jessop has intimidated her client. The nastiness in the name of God goes on forever.

Were I in a bigger city I’d be at benefit: public transportation, where I live, is a hideously bad joke. It’s done by bus, the routes were cut by half last year and the number of buses on each route halved again.
Anybody got any GOOD news about bus, light rail, trolley, etc.?

Former Governor Mark White spoke about the loss. Texas authorities are looking for the perpetrator, and offering a $50K reward. (I know this is a FoxNews video; their Austin station just happened to do the best story on this, or at least so far.)  Read more 

The Swamp carried McCain’s “Never Surrender In Iraq” remark. A Fort Worth Star Telegram letter writer pointed out the futility of McCain’s position. In addition, McCain has publicly stated that it does not matter when the US GIs come home from Iraq; a decade, a century, 1000 years, it’s all the same to him. It’s not all the same to families like this Army 1st Sergeant’s or to units like the one he led.  Read more 

Colleagues are lauding the NBC News veteran’s work.

I won’t go into the whole “bury Caesar” speech from Shakespeare here. I’ll note that Russert died with his boots on, though, recording voice-overs for this Sunday’s program at the time of his collapse.

Brokaw’s pretty broken up over it.
The rest of the media, I don’t know; but by this time tomorrow, the sharks will be circling to replace him.

Is it wrong of me to hope the VRWC can’t find somebody more sympathetic to their agenda?

The Dallas Morning News says

When Mr. Perry learned the fire was arson, he said, his emotions “went from heartache to pretty damn mad.” This was his family’s home, he said, and a place where children have “slid down banisters and chased pets in the yard” for more than a century.
Mr. Perry didn’t say whether he was disappointed with the Department of Public Safety, whose troopers are responsible for safeguarding the mansion.

The mansion wasn’t just home to Perry, or W before him.  Read more 

I’ve been saying for 30 years that Ronald Reagan shoved the country over the edge of a slippery slope to destruction.
In 1985 the FBI looked into the FLDS, and among the “harmless” leaders of the sect they let go was Rulon Jeffs, father of jailed “prophet” Warren Jeffs.
Among the things let fester as a result:

But after stepping in at the request of Brent D. Ward, then the U.S. Attorney for Utah, the U.S. Department of Justice closed the case without filing charges.
A lawyer who represented evicted FLDS members in a related lawsuit considers the federal investigation a missed opportunity to curb the power of the sect’s leaders.
“Some of the systematic policies that adversely affected young men and young women might have been diminished or possibly stopped,” said St. George attorney Clay Huntsman. “Now it’s gotten out of hand.”
In the years since then, ex-members have alleged that boys and young men are banished for minor offenses and that Warren Jeffs has overseen a purge of fathers whose wives and children are reassigned.

Current Fibbie honcho Robert Mueller, asked about a four-state task force independently gathered recently in Las Vegas to coordinate efforts to detect, prosecute and punish crimes among the members of the international cult, said his agency would assist local law enforcement, but had “other priorities.” Kinda like Cheney, with his five deferments….

Meanwhile Salt Lake City TV reports FLDS enforcers are rumored to be stalking San Angelo’s State District Judge Barbara Walther. Texas authorities received detailed warnings about FLDS “enforcers” headed for retribution from Utah and Arizona.

Judge Walther, pictured above in an AP photo by Eric Gay, ordered the removal of more than 440 children, including some young mothers apparently under 17, from the cult’s Yearning For Zion Ranch outside Eldorado in Schleicher County on April 24. The removals came while investigators sought to find and assist the caller who phoned a San Angelo family crisis hotline claiming she and her child were undergoing mistreatment at the hands of her much-older “husband” and other “spiritual wives” in his household on the ranch.

A Texas appeals court and the Texas State Supreme Court subsequently ruled that the children should be returned to the ranch. Walther and attorneys worked out orders in one exceptional instance — the case of Jeffs’ sexually-abused 16-year-old daughter, who won’t be going back to YFZ.

Gov. Rick Perry, who indicated last month that he was proud of the actions taken by CPS, warned through a spokeswoman that Friday’s decision by the Texas Supreme Court ordering the sect children’s release could place youngsters in danger.

“The governor is concerned that the legal process by which the children were removed from their home is overshadowing the sexual abuse allegations at hand,” said Perry’s deputy press secretary, Allison Castle.

“He is very troubled that the children, especially those most at risk for abuse in this case – young girls – are being sent back to the very compound that is riddled with uncertainty, potential for harm and remains at the center of a very serious criminal investigation,” Ms. Castle said.

The sect has denied there is any greater prevalence of child abuse in its ranks than in mainstream society. It says Texas swept its more than 450 children into custody two months ago in an act of religious persecution.

Texas attorney general Greg Abbott has opened an investigation into charging Jeffs, currently jailed in Kingman, AZ, with rape  Read more 

Thanks for repeating, today, that you’re not running for VP.
I hope to see you in the AG seat in 2009, but I’ll understand if you’d rather be doing real work against poverty.

For one of the moving forces behind bringing help to the victims of AIDS — Sr. M. Christine Reyelt, MD, passed away last Saturday.

Sister Mary Christine Reyelt (Dr. M. Christine Reyelt) Sister of Charity of St. Elizabeth for 43 years and physician, who served in OCEAN GROVE, died Sunday, June 1, at St. Vincent Nursing Home, Cedar Grove, at the age of 62 from an acute episode of a chronic illness.

Born in Jersey City to Henry and Elizabeth V. McGlone Reylt Sr., Christine entered the Sisters of Charity on Sept. 6, 1964. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree from the College of St. Elizabeth, her Master’s Degree from Fordham University and her Medical Degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine. She was the first of the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth to graduate from medical school. A physician specializing in infectious diseases, Sister Christine joined the medical staff at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center more than two decades ago.

She distinguished herself and St. Joseph’s through her work with those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS since 1981. Dr. Reyelt was the medical director of the St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center Comprehensive Care Center for HIV/AIDS, a position she held from 1987 to 2006.

Her commitment to the treatment of those with HIV/AIDS carried her to the state and national levels. She served  Read more 

Dennis Kucinich is on the floor of the House introducing 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush.

In re: Valery Plame, the charge is ’misprision of a felony.’
Go Dennis Go!!!

Four hours — he’s laying out the evidence as he goes.

(Hat tip to the invaluable Echidne.)

A Lincoln, Nebraska judge handed down an order that the 21-year-old university student whose experience included being given drugs and having sex against her will could not call what happened to her rape, describe herself as a victim, refer to the man who drugged and had sex with her against her will as a rapist, or refer to the incident as a sexual assault.

This judge is not alone, and rulings like this are a trend in the nation’s courtrooms.

Still, not all judges or law professors agree with the order:  Read more 

And he lambastes Broder too! Go read, right now. Then come back and tell me what other flubberduckers you’d impeach.