NOTE: While the above toon's suggestion, that the Constitution is protected each night from Dick Cheney, may be a joke, the part about powerful hydraulics lowering it into the ground each night is actually true. The company who made the high-tech security system, custom built to protect our nation's most important document: Diebold, Inc.

Yes, that Diebold, Inc.

(Hat-tip for the toon to BRAD BLOG's comic sherpa, Pokey Anderson)

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

From Larisa Alexandrovna of RAW STORY:

UN report a 'moral indictment' of US

Anybody surprised? I didn't think so.

I can't quote the whole article but I can encourage you to read it!

From Charlie Savage in today's Boston Globe...

I began to try and pick and choose a few grafs to highlight from this extensive article. Upon reading it in full, however, I was generally so sickened I had no idea where to start.

Suffice to say, that --- unless someone can offer some alternative view to the situation about which Savage adeptly reports --- those so-called "Bush Haters" who've been saying for years that we are on a clear trajectory, hurling towards full-blown tyranny and/or fascism and/or dictatorship, were far more correct than I'd ever given them credit for.

Without some mitigating information in reply to Savage's work, the article suggests we are in a gravely serious Constitutional Crisis in this country. Far above and beyond what I believe has generally been understood. At least by me.

Please read the full article...

(A non-registration-required version here.)

Guest blogged by David Edwards

The New York Times reports that in 2004 Deputy Attorney General James Comey refused to sign off on renewal of Bush's warrantless NSA spying program. Instead of addressing Comey's concerns, Bush Administration officials took the desperate move of actually visiting Attorney General Ashcroft in the hospital to get his authorization for renewal of the program. Ashcroft was, at the time, in intensive care recovering from pancreatitis.

Comey refused to approve renewal of the program based on concerns over "whether the president had the legal and constitutional authority to conduct such an operation."

In light of these new revelations, Senator Charles Schumer, appearing on Fox News Sunday, demanded that Bush Administration officials testify before congress.

Mitch McConnel, who appeared along with Schumer, chastised The Times for continuing to report on details of the wiretap program. While Schumer said that any investigation should consider a possible whistle-blower status for anyone who leaked this information, Senator McConnel was more interested in punishing the whistleblower.

Because the NSA shared the wiretap information with many federal agencies, it will be very difficult to assign blame to a specific leaker.

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Guest blogged by David Edwards

A year after the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts, Ed Helms investigates to find out if the critics' worst fears have come true. Has gay marriage ruined Massachusetts?

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Wow...that Alan Keyes interview where he called lesbian Veep daughter Mary Cheney a "selfish hedonist" for her lifestyle, along, presumably with any other heterosexual couple who can't, or chose not to mate, is even more astounding than just the quotes I gave you earlier.

He had more to say about loving couples that God has made incapable of having children together: "They cannot mate. They are not made to do so. Therefore the idea of marriage for two such individuals is an absurdity."

He then objected "to the notion" that we refer to two partners who cannot mate as having "sexual relations because it is nothing of the kind". Rather, he said, "It is the mutual pursuit of pleasure through the stimulation of the organs intended for procreation, but it has nothing to do with sexuality."

Here's the full transcript, and a copy of the audio, courtesy of AMERICABlog.

Wow. Finally, someone who's willing to stand up and publicly support the GOP Platform!

With that, I might have finally voted Republican, except for my fear that they might "mutually pursue pleasure through the stimulation of the organs intended for procreation" me!

Arnold Schwarzenegger is asking for input on the issue of "Same-Sex Marriage".

Call the Governator's Hotline at (916) 445-2841, then hit -5- for "Hot Issues", -1- to choose "Same-Sex Marriage", and then --- hopefully --- -1- to express SUPPORT for equal civil rights in America!

I don't have much to add here, but with everything else going on, somehow this AP story seems to have gotten overlooked today. And yet it's quite notable, so here it is...

At least something is still going right in this country and even the Supremes didn't screw this one up! Yet.

"The fact of the matter is, we live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for everybody...And I think that means that people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It's really no one else's business in terms of trying to regulate or prohibit behavior in that regard...The next step, then...is the question you ask of whether or not there ought to be some kind of official sanction, if you will, of the relationship. That matter is regulated by the states. I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions, and that's appropriate. I don't think there should necessarily be a federal policy." - Dick Cheney on 'Gay Marriage' during the 2000 Vice-Presidential Debate

That was then. This is 2004. And now Vice President Cheney whistles a different tune. He now supports a ban on gay marriage.

Well, you could knock me over with a feather! A Republican as cynical hypocrite?! What were the odds?! Usually such occurences are happily overlooked by the Marching Band of Right Wing Footsoldiers in flyover country. But in this case, it makes the new GOP line against Kerry ("He's on both sides of every issue" - which he is, by the way!) a particularly hard sell. Even the Ditto Heads ought to be able to notice the transparency of that particular game as it relates to Election '04's number one social issue.

That said, by the time November rolls around, I don't believe it'll all make much of a difference either way what anybody has to say about it. The wall seems to be finally coming down, and the GOP and DNC are as powerless to stop it as East German Chancellor Erich Honecker was to stop the Berlin Wall from toppling in '89.

All eyes now on Chicago where Mayor Richard Daley has said that he'd have "no problem" with city commissioners offering marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

And so it goes. Another barrier falls. The greatest singular moment in History for the Gay Community since Stonewall. And it's about frickin' time.

UPDATE 2:21pm: And here goes New Mexico!

Irony Drippin' Quote of the Day:
"I have ultimate confidence in the American People's ability to separate B.S. from the truth." - Rush Limbaugh during the first broacast hour, 2/20/04