Newsy: Texas bill aims for guns on college campuses.

Young Turks: Nutcase Republican proposes to outlaw miscarriages. Punishable by death penalty:

Liberal Viewer: FAUX News hates trains?

Cenk: Town hall death threat against Obama.

Revolution in the Mideast:

• Mark Fiore: The Power-cling Communications course.
• Spelling Gaddafi
• Young Turks: Full scale revolution.
• Obama on the situation in Libya.
• Newsy: Gaddafi vows death before resignation.

Rahm wins.

Glenn Beck’s insane rant: Wisconsin Unions, Muslim Brotherhood, Google, all part of New World Order (via TalkingPointsMemo).

Maddow: The Kansas terrorists known as Operation Rescue.

Newsy: Justice Thomas goes silent for five years.

Greenman: What the ice cores tell us, and how deniers distort it:

Anderson Cooper advises Christine O’Donnell on Dancing With The Stars.

Young Turks: Defending the crusades, Santorum style.

The Big Week in Gay Issues:

• Huckabee’s extremist views on gay marriage.
• Lawrence O’Donnell calls out Glenn Beck and Newt Gingrich ignorance of Obama Administration’s DOMA position.
• Young Turks: Obama administration abandons DOMA.
• Rachael Maddow on DOMA.
• The big week in Gay issues.

Ann Telnaes: House GOP cuts 61 billion from discretionary spending.

Pap: Democrats should abandon the South.

O’Donnell: Glenn Beck apologizes to Jews.

ONN: Obama denies accusations he does not love his dog.

Revoltion in the Midwest:

• Thom: Are overpaid unions destroying America?
• Democracy Now: Wisconsin firefighters and police officers join protests.
• Newsy: Teacher crisis bigger than midwest politics?
• Firefighters stand up for Wisconsin state employees.
• GritTV: Crushing workers in WI has national effects.
• Politico Slideshow: Faceoff in Wisconsin
• Wisconsin Rep. Brett Hulsey (D) takes the podium after Gov. Walker’s presser.
• Gov. Perry pleads the fifth on Scott Walker’s union-busting plan (via DailyKos).
• Ed takes down Rush for calling Wisconsin firemen, police, nurses & teachers “freeloaders” & “bottom feeders.
• Thom: Gov. Walker punked! Interview with the fake billionaire.
• Ed calls out FAUX’s Shep Smith for telling the truth about WI.
• Wingding advocates use of deadly force against WI protesters.
• Washington State workers stand in solidarity with workers in Wisconsin.
• Democracy Now: Protests spread to Ohio.
• After “irregular” voting procedure, Wisconsin Republicans take the Walk of Shame (via TalkingPointsMemo).
• Cenk: Indiana Governor calls Unions the “privileged elite”.
• The Partisans: Are you a Super Crime Stopper?
• Newsy: Gov. Walker on the hot seat from prank call.
• Young Turks: Breaking down the prank call.
• Tina Dupey: Fake Koch brother pranks Gov. Walker.
• Cenk: Walker’s baseball bat.
• Ed and Pap: The Koch brothers fuel fascism.
• Thom: Koch brother’s fingerprints are all over Scott Walker.
• Young Turks: Walker full of BS on FAUX News.

ONN Radio News: KKK member struggles to blame blacks for his hangover.

Young Turks: Newt gets called out by student over his hypocrisy.

The White House: West Wing Week.

Sam Seder: Stupid states do stupid things.

Rep. Pelosi goes after Republicans over health care repeal for special interests. (via TalkingPointsMemo).

Cenk: Gov. Mitch Daniels’ (R-IN) double standards.
Anderson Cooper advises Christine O’Donnell on Dancing With The Stars.

ONN: al Qaeda attacks internet with photo of adorable piglet:

Maddow: Wall Street says G.O.P. budget is disastrous.

Thom with The Good, The Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Remember the Taliban before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan?

They were embattled politicians made up of religious fundamentists using extreme interpretations of ancient religious texts to justify their oppression of women and the murder of people with whom they disagreed.

So…how is this any different?

Last week, South Dakota’s legislature shelved a bill, introduced by Republican state Rep. Phil Jensen, which would have allowed the use of the “justifiable homicide” defense for killings intended to prevent harm to a fetus. Now a nearly identical bill is being considered in neighboring Nebraska, where on Wednesday the state legislature held a hearing on the measure.

The legislation, LB 232, was introduced by state Sen. Mark Christensen, a devout Christian and die-hard abortion foe who is opposed to the prodedure even in the case of rape. Unlike its South Dakota counterpart, which would have allowed only a pregnant woman, her husband, her parents, or her children to commit “justifiable homicide” in defense of her fetus, the Nebraska bill would apply to any third party.

“In short, this bill authorizes and protects vigilantes, and that’s something that’s unprecedented in our society,” Melissa Grant of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland told the Nebraska legislature’s judiciary committee on Wednesday.

Behold, the resurgence of the American Taliban.

Update: Matt Yglesias points out the more pernicious effect of the legislation from South Dakota and Nebraska:

…there’s actually no need whatsoever for such a bill to pass. You just need several state legislators to introduce the bill, hold hearings, popularize the idea, generate press coverage and discussion, etc. Soon enough we’ll have another assassination of an obstetrician and the perpetrator will use the justifiable homicide defense. Say 20 percent of Nebraskans decide that, yeah, abortion is murder to killing abortion providers is justifiable homicide. How’re you going to get a unanimous verdict from a jury?

Rick Santorum has identified the true problem with America. He is launching his own crusade to stop the spread of Medieval smears (via Politico):

Rick Santorum launched into a scathing attack on the left, charging during an appearance in South Carolina that the history of the Crusades has been corrupted by “the American left who hates Christendom.”

Really…it’s about time somebody had the cohoes to not just attack, but to launch into a scathing attack on the evil leftist, Crusade-hating, eleventh through thirteenth century history revisionist element in our society.

“The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical,” Santorum said in Spartanburg on Tuesday. “And that is what the perception is by the American left who hates Christendom.”

I know!!! I can’t tell you how often I’ve had to correct Christendom-hating leftists on their shallow understanding of the crusades. Their ignorance of the benevolent nature of the Crusades is leaving its stain on America.

I mean, it’s no wonder Congress has been unable to pass a budget. And that so many Obama appointees are stuck in the Senate confirmation process. Crusade confusion has caused banks to fail. And some say it played a big role in the Enron scandal.

He added, “They hate Western civilization at the core.”

An no greater an expression of hate is there than the spread of misinformation about the Crusades. Thank you Mr. Santorum for cleaning up that stain.

That’s the problem.

That, and The Scientists’ pernicious work on human-animal hybrids….

This guy is sooooooo, sooooooo totally ready for the Oval Office!

Via The Ave:

Seattle PI’s Joe Connelly nails it:

How did teachers, nurses and child-care workers find themselves in a bullseye? It’s about power — an underlying campaign by corporate wealth to assume unchallenged command of American democracy.

Government workers did not cause the Great Recession. Nurses did not strip value from 401(k) plans. Schoolteachers did not torpedo Wisconsin school districts’ investments. Care workers did not render WaMu stock worthless, or employees in Washington jobless.

Public employees have not asked for bailouts and then demanded big bonuses as an entitlement. While hidebound at times, their unions have agreed to forgo benefits.

As numerous observers have demonstrated with actual numbers, the actions by Wisconsin Republicans are not about austerity, “saving” the state, or fiscal responsibility. They are a pure Republican attack on public employee unions. The public employees have largely agreed to the fiscal measures in the legislation. They have not agreed to the non-fiscal demands of the legislation–measures that would seriously undermine their rights to collectively bargain.

The public employees offered these concessions even as the Legislature and Governor have engaged in blatant corporate welfare:

Gov. Scott Walker has just signed into law $117 million in corporate tax breaks; the Badger State’s immediate shortfall totals $137 million.

Is it a coincidence that anti-public employee legislation has been introduced nearly simultaneously in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio? I doubt it. Rather I suspect Republicans have taken more from the 2010 elections than the electorate was offering.

Republicans “felt the love” in the 2010 election and proceeded to turn that into a mistaken cocky arrogance. The fact is, in 2010 the electorate was consumed by restlessness and unease over a prolonged nation-wide recession that hit the country under the Bush administration. But political unease almost always swings against the party in power–such is the natural antiphon of politics.

By reading their gains as an endorsement for their war on the middle class, Republicans badly miscalculated. They have overreached. I strongly suspect it will not go unnoticed by the people.

Protest is in the air…as is the stench of anti-labor, union busting, troglodytes. This calls for violent revolution drawing upon the blood of patriots to strike mortal blows to the breasts of the oppressors conversations with beer. So please join us tonight for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.. We start at 8:00 pm, but feel free to show up even earlier for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 211 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

Wherever tyrants suppress free speech, free association, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the people will revolt. It’s happened again today.

No…it isn’t another revolution in the Middle East. This time it’s that other tinderbox of a region known as the Midwest where the people’s fight against tyrannical despots has spread to another state (via Politico):

In a move straight out of the Wisconsin playbook, Indiana Democratic lawmakers fled the state today in a bid to kill a proposed right-to-work bill ahead of a vote.

Citing a source, the Indianapolis Star reported that Democrats “are headed to Illinois, though it was possible some also might go to Kentucky.”

Wisconsin’s Democratic senators have been in Illinois for days, depriving Republicans the quorum needed to vote on Gov. Scott Walker’s legislation to roll back collectively bargaining rights for state workers.

No word yet from Gov. Mitch Daniels about activating the National Guard….

Update: Has Gov. Walker (R-WI) killed the Internet for protesters? What will Mitch Daniels (R-IN) have to do to top that? Declare that he’ll die a martyr?

Update II: Another all-out assault on public employees! And the protests spread to another State in the unstable Midwest region of America. This time it’s Ohio.

Protests continue today.

Moderate Republicans are trying to put together a compromise. Even so, the Republicans may start passing non-fiscal legislation (that doesn’t require a quorum) as a threat bargaining tactic:

And one of those [bargaining] chips may be a bill to require voters to show ID at the polls – a change Republicans have long wanted and Democrats fear will disenfranchise voters.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) on Monday said Republicans who control the Legislature may bring that bill to the floor if Democrats continue to boycott Senate sessions for much longer. Democrats went to Illinois Thursday to prevent passage of the bill on union rights.

Of course…the Republicans can pass that legislation anyway, and they no doubt will, so it doesn’t seem like much of an incentive.

Wisconsin’s Republican Senators need to quit being whimps. They need to think BIG. Given Walker’s credentials as a good God-fearing Republican extremist (e.g. on reproductive rights), Republicans should use the absence of the Democrats to make a few adjustments in Wisconsin.

Here are some “bargaining chips” the Senate could work on, inspired by fellow Republicans around the country:

• Allow people to carry guns at State universities and colleges.
• And open up the airports to guns while they are at it.
• Require all adults to own a gun.
• Outlaw oral and anal sex between consenting adults in their own bedrooms.
• Pass an “unborn child” defense act, that would justify the murder of abortion doctors.
• Allow doctors to lie to women about the health of their fetus.
• Redefine rape as “forcible rape”.
• Criminalize same-sex marriage.
• Require doctors to show women an ultrasound of her fetus within two hours before receiving an abortion.
• Pass legislation that requires brown people to carry papers proving citizenship.
• Strip “anchor babies” of their citizenship.
• Pass a law to require presidential candidates to present a birth certificate.
• Declare State sovereignty.
• Create an official Wisconsin state currency.
• Make a state holiday around John Birch Society founder Robert Welch’s birthday.
• Opt out of Obamacare.
• Pass a resolution apologizing to BP.
• Require schools to teach a 6000-year-old earth “theory” in biology class.
• Declare global warming beneficial.
• Create an internet kill switch for the governor to use in the event of civil unrest.

And that’s the week one agenda.

Oh, one other thing…rename the state Wississippi.

Update: Oops…I forgot one other of piece of legislation for the Republican’s gonzo week agenda: Weaken child labor laws. This legislation might spark controversy among the Wisconsin Republicans. Some lawmakers would still support Wississippi; others would push for Wiscongladesh.

Ann Telnaes: Another Haley Barbour controversy .

Young Turks: G.O.P. Rep.’s ‘Olive Complexion’ controversy.

Roy Zimmerman: “To the Victims of This Tragedy We Send Our Thoughts and Prayers”:

Mark Fiore: Military math boot camp.

Young Turks: Poll shows FAUX News viewers are most frightened of Muslims.

Boehner’s Boner:

• Newsy: “So be it”.
• Young Turks: Boehner is okay with Americans losing jobs.
• Ann Telnaes: Read Boehner’s lips.
• Pelosi blasts G.O.P.’s “so be it” attitude (via DailyKos).

Newsy: Government shutdown looming.

The past or the future?

Jon: I like big cuts (via OneGoodMove).

Funny or Die: NPR pledge drives.

The Republican War on Workers:

• Thom: WI Governor declares war on workers.
• Newsy: Wisconsin workers protest.
• Democracy Now: On Wisconsin, Part I.
• Democracy Now: On Wisconsin, Part II.
• Young Turks: Does Obama watch network news?’>WI Governor holds jobs hostage.
• Rep. Ryan: It’s like Cairo has moved To Madison (via TalkingPointsMemo).
• GritTV: Protests for workers spreading.
• Maddow: Wisconsin & union rights.
• Ed: Gov. Walker (WI) is lying about budget crisis.
• Pap: What Wisconsin has learned from Cairo.
• Thom with The Nation‘s John Nichols: 35,000 strong and more to come.
• Wisconsin protesters on FAUX News: “FAUX Lies” (via TalkingPointsMemo).

ONN: Report finds troubling rise in teen uranium enrichment.

Newsy: Facebook accepts LGBT partnerships (thereby undermining the very fabric of the intertubes).

Obama in Portland: Out-educating the competition (8:45).

Jon: Pyramid scheme (via OneGoodMove).

Young Turks: How Dan Savage destroyed Rick S******m.

The Republican War on Women:

• Cenk: The G.O.P. hit job on Planned Parenthood.
• GritTV: Killing doctors by redefining personhood.
• O’Donnell Thank you Jackie Speir.
• Rep. Jim McDermott on anti-women Republicans:
• Newsy: The South Dakota “Kill an abortion provider” bill?
• Democracy Now: G.O.P. bill targets abortion and family planning, Part I
• Democracy Now: G.O.P. bill targets abortion and family planning, Part II
• Democracy Now: G.O.P. bill targets abortion and family planning, Part III
• O’Donnell: Palin attacks Michelle Obama over breastfeeding.
• Cenk: Michelle Bachmann on breast pumps (and other batshit crazy Republicans).
• O’Donnell: Bachmann goes after Michelle Obama on breast pumps.

Daily Show: The QOsby Show (via DailyKos).

Pap: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is spying on you.

Ann Telnaes: Obama takes on defense spending.

Young Turks: Nut case Glenn Beck gets his Google hate on.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

This photo was taken last month on the University of Washington Campus. I was on my way to a class which limited our conversation to about a minute.

The man was elusive about his purpose. He seemed sincere and said the sign wasn’t mean to be ironic. He wanted to know what the sign meant to me, but he denied this was research (like for a psychology class or something). And, no, this wasn’t some sort of performance art. He said nothing to suggest it was a religious thing.

He wanted to tell me all about the meaning of the sign, but said it would require a longer conversation (and, I presume, some thinking). I never saw him again.

Anyone have a clue?

I love Madison. I really do.

I began the third grade living with my (recently divorced) mother and two sisters in a one bedroom apartment in an inner-city Chicago neighborhood. In January 1970, over Christmas break, we moved to Madison. It was an distinct improvement; that part of third grade became transformational.

The University of Wisconsin campus spaces (where my mother was a new student) were filled with singing and anti-war protests. I became aware of the struggle over the Vietnam war and, at the same time, I learned about police brutality. The UW campus community filled the public schools on the first earth day–I became aware of the environment, resource limitations, and population problems. Life was kaleidescope of lessons in politics, populism, environmentalism, radicalism…and even violent extremism, when four young anti-war activists blew up the Army Math Research Center, unintentionally killing a physics researcher in another part of the building. And, damn, there was some good music.

I was too young to participate, or even identify with, the movement, but I soaked it up—I was an observer.

Madison was home for two more decades. I went to the University of Wisconsin–Madison and earned Bachelors and Masters degrees. I worked my way through college, for small companies, for the University, and by starting my own company. By the time I left in 1990, Madison, like much of the country, had become tame, domesticated, pacified. The radicals of the 1970s were now raising their own teenagers, if not becoming grandparents. They were living the Big Chill. Priorities change.

Most of my family still live in Madison, so I visit a couple time a year. The past decade had been hard on the region, economically and psychologically. A mild gloom and sense of struggle has taken hold. And then, in 2010, Wisconsin experienced some kind of collective depression; they voted a bunch of radical right wing whack-jobs into office.

On Wednesday morning I got a call from my niece. “Uncle Darryl…I’m not in school today. Know why?”

“I sure do, Elena.”

I was delighted that school had been cancelled in Madison as tens of thousands of public employees flocked to the Capitol building to protest the extremist legislation proposed by Gov. Walker.

The Governor proposes to strip away rights for public employees that have been in place for decades. Well fuck him.

My darling niece then proceeded to describe the injustice she felt was being done to teachers and other public employees and how she and her friends wouldn’t stand for it. I do believe I teared up very slightly.

Now I’m thinking that after some decades of slumber…these people have awakened. They feel again, and they don’t like what the extremists in office are shoving up their back side. Yeah…I fully expect that Walker will get his chance to shit all over the public employees. But his party is going to pay.

My prediction…2012 will be a bad year for Republicans in Wisconsin.

Wow…

Luke Esser, the former state Republican chairman who lost his position in an upset election last month, is back in Olympia as a lobbyist – and his new client may cause a few jaws to drop at the statehouse.

Esser will represent Service Employees International Union Local 775, the union local that represents some 40,000 home-care workers.

I was wondering what would become of my former Senator after his defeat as party Chairman. I wondered because I kinda liked Luke based on the one and only time we met—when he rang my doorbell during his 2006 Senate campaign. We had a friendly conversation, even though we each stuck to our beliefs.

I just never imagined he would go all progressive on our asses! But…hey, better late than never, brother Luke!

(H/T Publicola.)

Over at Slog, Goldy points out the millions in new special interest tax breaks happening in Olympia:

…a total adding up to over $97 million of lost revenues in Fiscal Year 2013, according to a tally released today by the Our Economic Future Coalition.

Health insurance subsidies for small children? No. Tax subsidies for small breweries? Yes. Nice to know our legislators have their priorities in place.

In other words, “Sorry, kid, there’s no money left to treat you. But, here, have a beer…. It’ll dull the pain.”

Roll Call provides a history of the savage Santorum smear concocted (so to speak) by Dan Savage. Former Pennsylvania Senator and likely 2012 GOP presidential primary candidate Rick Santorum has a rather persistent “Google problem.”

Santorum’s Google problem began in 2003, when gay sex-advice columnist Dan Savage sought to mock Santorum’s comments on homosexuality. Then the third-most-powerful Republican in the Senate, Santorum told the Associated Press that April that gay sex could “undermine the fabric of our society.” The interview touched on a Supreme Court case related to sexual privacy, and Santorum compared homosexual acts to allowing for “man on child, man on dog” relationships.
[…]

Savage soon created the website spreadingsantorum.com, tied to a contest in which he asked readers to submit definitions for the term “santorum.”

The winning entry…see santorum.

As a former constituent of Sen. Santorum, my initial reaction upon hearing the neologism was, “Brilliant!” Two reasons why.

First, it just feels…um, maybe I should say, it just sounds right. Dan Savage wouldn’t talk to Roll Call about it, but in 2003 he completely nailed the “sounds right” aspect:

What works so well about santorum is that a smart Savage Love reader linked Senator Santorum’s vaguely clinical-sounding name with something distinctly scatological, an anal-sex-induced bodily fluid that had previously lacked a really good name. ‘Santorum’ sounds like it could be what that frothy mix of lube and fecal matter has always been called, and that’s why it’s caught on.

Yeah…that’s it!

The second reason is…I don’t know why, but Rick Santorum always struck me as a deeply repressed gay man, full of self-loathing, and trapped in his life as an anal retentive conservative Republican. You know…like a younger, more uptight, Eastern version of Larry Craig minus the restless leg syndrome. It wouldn’t surprise me if Santorum is one day discovered in a cheap motel room, tied up to the bed posts (wait…posts on a motel bed?!?) naked and face down, with a leather-clad young man, whip in hand, lashing and scolding him for being a bad boy. No santorum involved. Just punishment.

Yes…a Santorum presidential bid will cause Dan Savage’s Google monster to come alive with good clean fun and salacious innuendo. (That’s right…we’re talkin’ santorum innuendo.)

Speaking of which, Goldy leaves HA with his own legacy of Google search results. Google Luke Esser and the second entry still points to Goldy’s Luke Esser Fucks Pigs complaint to the Legislative Ethics Board. Sen. Esser lost the election, so I guess the Ethics Board never got around to following up on the complaint….

Or Google Bradley Marshall and the number three entry is Goldy’s Bradley Marshall is a pussy post. (The number two entry is Dan Savage’s contribution based on Goldy’s post.)

Bradley Marshall, a Seattle lawyer, was upset by something Michael Hood posted at Blatherwatch—a post that was both tame and factual. Marshall had a suspended law license at the time, and was under investigation by the Washington State Bar Association. It couldn’t have helped that he mailed a cease and desist letter using his official letterhead (implying he was licensed to practice law). The Bar Association was made aware. A year later, perhaps for totally unrelated reasons, the Washington Supreme Court disbarred him. Almost everyone came out a winner on that one.

Google David Irons and the second entry, Raging Bullshitter: the sad twisted tale of the Irons family feud documents some of the weaknesses (and strengths!) of the candidate for King County Executive. Irons lost.

Or, from another perspective, his mother won.

Please join us tonight for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.. We start at 8:00 pm, and sometimes even earlier for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 211 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.