HorsesAss.Org

I was sitting in the auditorium at Mercer Island High School last night at a presentation for parents of incoming ninth graders, when the school’s WiFi network popped up as a connection option on my iPhone. So I thought, what the hell, why not try it out and see if HA would load.

I already knew that the middle school’s network blocked HA, but I didn’t think much of it considering my occasional foul language, and the age of the students. But high school, well, there isn’t much four letter vocabulary I could teach kids that age. Yet sure enough, HA was blocked there too.

Ah well, no worry, I’ll be starting at The Stranger tomorrow so I guess my daughter and her friends could always read me there… but alas, The Stranger is blocked too. The Seattle Times loads fine, as does the P-I, two sites the average high schooler is unlikely to want to read, but The Stranger—a publication whose content might be remotely relevant to teenagers—no, that would be inappropriate. What are we trying to keep our kids safe from… quality writing?

And, of course, that’s the problem with censorship at any level. You could make an argument that some of the language in some of my posts is inappropriate for in-school reading, or that some parents may be offended by the blunt discourse of Savage Love, but in the process you’re tossing out a lot of insightful reporting and beautiful writing about art, music, philosophy and whatnot. Personally, I’m offended by the lies of omission that populate the Seattle Times op/ed pages, so why shouldn’t the high school ban their site too? Cater to every perceived offense, and I guess the district shouldn’t provide internet access at all.

Just seems kinda silly for an institution tasked with helping our teenagers grow into adults, to treat their students like little children.

But unfortunately for HA, I perform my fisking over at Slog.

Ever go out on a hard drinking binge and wake up from a blackout with no memory of what you did over the previous 24 hours? Well that’s kinda what happened to HA over the weekend, when my hosting company accidentally deleted my account. HA’s back up online, but it has absolutely no idea what it did on Sunday.

Though, considering HA mostly just collected comments from trolls, it’s hard to consider it much of a loss.

Last week’s contest was a tough one. The winner was Cam, who barely edged out wes.in.wa. It was Diamondback, MS, where Brett Favre’s sister was busted for being involved in the production of meth.

Here’s this week’s, just a random location this time. Good luck!

It is both amazing and instructive to remember that the democratic revolution in Tunisia, that has now spread to Egypt, all started with one, disgruntled citizen lighting himself on fire.

Hey teabaggers… think about it.

From Obama’s speech in Cairo, June 2009:

We meet at a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world, tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation but also conflict and religious wars.

More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims and a Cold War in which Muslim majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.

UPDATE: What’s going on in Egypt today is incredible. You can watch the Al-Jazeera English live feed or follow the #jan25 hashtag on Twitter to stay up to date.

Once again, I spent the morning with my head buried in a spreadsheet, and once again, you can see the results over on Slog. (For example, did you know it costs $46,202 to educate one K-12 student in the tiny Benge school district, but only $11,839 here in Seattle.)

Last week, the attention was on an upgrade to the medical marijuana bill. This week, the focus is on legalizing marijuana for adult recreational use:

Marijuana activists are taking another shot at a ballot measure legalizing the drug for adults under state law — but they hope lawmakers beat them to it.

The organization Sensible Washington filed an initiative Wednesday that would remove all state criminal and civil penalties for the possession, use and sale of marijuana in any quantity. But one of the effort’s organizers, Philip Dawdy, said the group would likely be happy to drop it if the Legislature passes a bill introduced this week that would make pot available in state liquor stores.

The initiative filed by Sensible Washington this time includes some language directing the legislature to establish regulations for the newly legalized market. This was a liability that cost the I-1068 campaign support last year. Building on last year’s momentum, they’re more optimistic about getting the 241,000 signatures they need.

On Tuesday, state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle, filed a bill that would allow the sale of marijuana to people 21 and over through state liquor stores. The Liquor Control Board would issue licenses to commercial growers, and revenue from sales taxes and license fees — possibly hundreds of millions of dollars a year, according to supporters — could help pay for health care and substance-abuse treatment.

Dickerson’s bill is great, but I’m not too optimistic that it could get through the legislature. And even if it did, I doubt Governor Gregoire would have the courage to sign it into law. Either way, the people of this state continue to demand that we look at marijuana law reform as a key component in how we fix our budget problems.

UPDATE: As expected, the top-voted question in Obama’s latest YouTube contest is about drug policy. He’s expected to address the leading questions from the White House this afternoon.

UPDATE 2: LEAP discusses Obama’s response.

YOU don’t need to be one of the science or math whizzes President Obama hopes to mint by the thousands to understand that his State of the Union Speech, themed “Winning the Future,” very likely carried a double meaning.

And apparently, you don’t need to be science or math whizzes to write editorials for the Seattle Times. Why anybody would take fiscal advice from the publisher of a struggling newspaper is beyond me.

I spent much of yesterday with my head buried in spreadsheets. Go see the results over on Slog.

I’ve been trying to follow the news out of Egypt over the past 36 hours, but apparently the President gave some speech last night, so the only news is coming from foreign news outlets and the internet. Here’s some chilling audio from a Guardian reporter who was arrested and beaten by security forces.

In what may be a sign of End Times, Democrats and Republicans will commingle at tonight’s State of the Union address by President Obama. So please join us tonight as we prepare for the Rapture with 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 normally begin at 8:00 pm, but show up at 6:00 this evening to catch the whole SOTU.

I heard that Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-ME) will sit with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). I’m hoping that Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA-01) will sit with Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC-02) to offer him assistance with any impulse control issues that might arise…. It is just a vicious rumor that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will be with Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA-04). But I know Graham isn’t that type. I mean, he’ll sit with another Senator.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY-09) will sit with Rep. Peter King (R-NY-03), apparently in pursuit of some sort of cold war-style mutual restraint:

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 209 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

More on Slog….

Anyone notice that Cynical hasn’t been hanging around in the comment threads lately, relentlessly flogging Rasmussen’s presidential approval poll numbers? Hmm… I wonder why?

Of course, most of the fluctuation in Obama’s approval rating has come at the hands of independents, which is in itself a sad commentary on the state of American politics. These independents are the ones politicians have to appeal to in order to win elections… you know, the exact same voters who can’t seem to make up their fucking minds. That explains a lot.

In reading the New York Times coverage of today’s tragic bombing at a Moscow airport, I found the summation by former Department of Homeland Security official Stephen A. Baker to be rather curious:

“They’d like to be bombing planes and they can’t, so they’re bombing airports,” he said, adding that the attack “validates the focus that the U.S. has had on security at airports.”

Um… really? And how exactly would our focus on airport security have stopped a determined suicide bomber like the one who struck in Moscow today? As I wrote back in December:

In fact, if I were a dedicated suicide bomber (and just to be clear to federal authorities, I’m not), I’d pack a rolling, carry-on suitcase with as much explosives as possible, pick the busiest time of the day, wheel it through the snaking security line until I was in the very middle of the crowd, and then… BOOM!

Depending on the sophistication of the device, such an attack would kill and injure dozens, possibly hundreds, and achieve the same catastrophic impact on the airline industry without having to devise a way to sneak a weapon through security. And since the target is created by the screening process itself, such attacks would be virtually unstoppable, as any attempt to expand the security perimeter would merely create more targets.

I wasn’t prescient at all. Just stating the obvious.

As a 13-year-old visiting London in 1976, during the height of the IRA’s bombing campaigns, I was somewhat amused by the repeated announcements at Heathrow Airport that unattended baggage would be “removed and destroyed.” Less amusing were the armed soldiers who patrolled the halls, a sight that seemed incredibly incongruent to a sheltered, American suburbanite. But suicide bombings were not the IRA’s schtick, and so heightened security and vigilance had obvious rewards.

But in the age of the suicide bomber, not quite so much. There’s simply no practical way to screen passengers and their suitcases prior to arriving at the airport, and as today’s Moscow bombing illustrates, no amount of TSA screening can protect the crowds amassed outside the security perimeter. So if anything, I’d say today’s tragedy invalidates our focus on patting down 13-year-old girls… unless, of course, TSA’s real mandate is to protect the airplanes, not necessarily the people flying on them.