Via today's Juan Cole, a report cited to the LA Times, headlined

Thursday's session of parliament had to be cut short when a rancorous debate broke out.

The initial issue was Shiites displaced from Diyala province to the holy city of Karbala. Speaker Muhammad al-Mashhadani was accused of smiling at a time when grief was more appropriate. He was then upbraided by a fellow Sunni from a different party. He slapped the MP before pounding his gavel and closing the session.

Further research into specific names will be required in order to properly engrave the plaque on the forthcoming Preston Brooks Trophy for Read more…

Via The Man in the Grey Turtleneck, Our Betters are having a little get-together:

Incivility in American Politics: Is the U.S. at Risk for Disaster in Political Discourse? Are Voters Fed Up?

April 25, 2007

WASHINGTON - Elected officials and university scholars will examine incivility in politics and the increasing polarization of policy debate at the Penn Conference on Civility and American Politics April 30 on Capitol Hill. Conference participants will discuss whether, in a time of increasingly rancorous political discourse, the United States is reaching a tipping point that makes incivility a bad political strategy and a worse governance strategy and whether this has implications for the 2008 presidential election.

The Penn Conference on Civility and American Politics will bring U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman [I-Likud], an Independent Democrat from Connecticut, and U.S. Rep. John ["Not pronounced 'Boner'"] Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, together with scholars [sic] from Penn, Brookings and AEI and with the editor/publisher of Governing Magazine to explore how incivility affects the political system and the ability to tackle the problems of 21st-century life in the U.S.

Quite the line-up, there, eh? It's almost like no Democrat want to get in the same live-shot with Joe. I wonder why that would be?

Anyhow, for those of you with time on your hands, there will be a live feed: Read more…

Yeah, you heard that right. Now, can we please stop all that nonsense about Civility? And Our Nags said that to Howie the Whore!

At first, Ann Coulter's anti-gay crack at a Washington conference Friday drew almost no media coverage, although [sic] it was witnessed by hundreds of journalists and political operatives and captured by television cameras.

Oh, Howie. You don't mean "although." You mean because! We all remember how the Beltway Teabaggers rocked with laughter when Bush made that sick joke about looking under his desk for WMDs. Or how you didn't laugh when Stephen Colbert didn't exhibit sufficient deference to The Boy King.

But [sic] after some Democrats and liberal bloggers slammed the professional provocateur -- and were joined by a number of Republicans and conservatives -- it became a news story, albeit a modest one.

That's not "but," Howie. It's and--to show consequence.

Journalists could simply quote critics of the conservative author's latest rhetorical stink bomb, in which she referred to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards with a six-letter word offensive to gays.

Uh, Howie? Ann's word is "faggot." No! Put down those pearls! Read more…

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