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[Public] Dennis Prager update
Dec. 13th, 2006 09:44 amRemember this spluttering freakout from a couple of weeks back? Dennis Prager says that the Bible is the book upon which American society is founded and all that, and if Keith Ellison is allowed to swear his oath of office on the Q’ran, it’s going to be the end of civilization as we know it?
(Never mind that representatives don’t actually take their oath on any book - in fact they do it en masse and the other stuff is just for publicity photos, and never mind that Prager’s suggestion that (assuming that they do take their oath on something) that book HAS to be the Bible would violate the No Religious Test clause.)
No, what I’m really posting to tell you is that Dennis Prager is Jewish. You heard me right. He’s a Brooklyn-living, yeshiva-attending Jewish boy.
And for that, I have been instructed to tell you all, my husband and I are very, very sorry. If it’s any consolation, the President has been asked to remove him from the board of the Holocaust Museum and smack has been laid from various other fronts as well.
(Never mind that representatives don’t actually take their oath on any book - in fact they do it en masse and the other stuff is just for publicity photos, and never mind that Prager’s suggestion that (assuming that they do take their oath on something) that book HAS to be the Bible would violate the No Religious Test clause.)
No, what I’m really posting to tell you is that Dennis Prager is Jewish. You heard me right. He’s a Brooklyn-living, yeshiva-attending Jewish boy.
And for that, I have been instructed to tell you all, my husband and I are very, very sorry. If it’s any consolation, the President has been asked to remove him from the board of the Holocaust Museum and smack has been laid from various other fronts as well.
Bwahahahahahahaha!
Nov. 21st, 2006 08:36 amOK, sometimes these things are offensive to me, but this time... well... Nazi Gingerbread Men.
Local Politics
Oct. 11th, 2006 09:13 pmSo Tom Reynolds, Republican Congressman from our area (the NY 26th - not our district, but only by about two blocks) and chair of the Republican Re-election Committee (or whatever it's called), has gone on the defensive. This is actually the shorter & less detailed of two spots taht are running right now - but the basic content is the same. He blames the Republican leadership (which apparently doesn't include him) and makes lots of strategic use of the passive voice. The thing that bugs the hell out of me is the awfully smug tone of the whole thing.
Jack Davis, his opponent (who used to be a Republican but switched parties relatively recently - I don't remember exactly why), has of course gone on the offensive. My only quibble (not necessarily with that spot, but with other Democratic ones) is with the terminology. Can we really say that Foley molested the boys? Like I said the other day, he clearly was acting inappropriately and sexually harrassing them. But molesting?
As they said on WWDTM this weekend, "How do you separate the men from the boys? The midterm election!"
Jack Davis, his opponent (who used to be a Republican but switched parties relatively recently - I don't remember exactly why), has of course gone on the offensive. My only quibble (not necessarily with that spot, but with other Democratic ones) is with the terminology. Can we really say that Foley molested the boys? Like I said the other day, he clearly was acting inappropriately and sexually harrassing them. But molesting?
As they said on WWDTM this weekend, "How do you separate the men from the boys? The midterm election!"
OK, there are a couple of things of which I'm certain. First, assuming that Mark Foley really did send the alleged messages to the alleged Congressional pages, he was Just Plain Stupid, and the messages were certainly inappropriate. Second, any Republican coverup of the scandal warrants some SERIOUS smackdown. On all levels. (And hey, it got one of our local congressional races on NPR this morning!)
HOWEVER. This case has exposed an inconsistency in our sex laws. There's all this discussion about whether or not the messages Foley sent were simply inappropriate, or if they were illegal. And yet. The age of consent in Washington, D.C. is 16, and there's no law regarding age of consent for male-male sex (which my non-legally-educated brain interprets as meaning that it's the same age of consent as for straight sex) (http://www.avert.org/aofconsent.htm). But from what I'm learning from NPR (in this story), there are laws against soliciting a minor. This makes NO FREAKING SENSE to me. it wasn't legal for Foley to send explicit/suggestive messages to these kids, but it would have been legal for them to have sex? Give me a freaking break, people. Our country's attitudes about
Mark Foley is guilty of being Just Plain Stupid, but I refuse to call him a pedophile. And now there's the allegation that he was molested by a clergy member as a kid. Oyvey.
In other news, the guy who killed the girls in PA apparently never got over the loss of his premature daughter. I think I want to go cry now.
HOWEVER. This case has exposed an inconsistency in our sex laws. There's all this discussion about whether or not the messages Foley sent were simply inappropriate, or if they were illegal. And yet. The age of consent in Washington, D.C. is 16, and there's no law regarding age of consent for male-male sex (which my non-legally-educated brain interprets as meaning that it's the same age of consent as for straight sex) (http://www.avert.org/aofconsent.htm). But from what I'm learning from NPR (in this story), there are laws against soliciting a minor. This makes NO FREAKING SENSE to me. it wasn't legal for Foley to send explicit/suggestive messages to these kids, but it would have been legal for them to have sex? Give me a freaking break, people. Our country's attitudes about
Mark Foley is guilty of being Just Plain Stupid, but I refuse to call him a pedophile. And now there's the allegation that he was molested by a clergy member as a kid. Oyvey.
In other news, the guy who killed the girls in PA apparently never got over the loss of his premature daughter. I think I want to go cry now.
The news hits close to home
Jan. 31st, 2006 09:35 amLast night I was watching the news, and this story came on.
In short, an apartment complex that's on my way just about everywhere (including between our house and TRex's daycare) was the scene to a rather grisly murder. Not only that, our local pizzeria/sandwich shop plays into the story... the victim, a 57-year-old cancer patient who had worked at the pizzeria until he quit to undergo treatment, was found dead in his apartment on Saturday night. He'd apparently been dead for 2-3 weeks. His son has apparently confessed to beating him to death because he couldn't care for him anymore. According to the restaurant manager, "He was getting up there in his years so he said he probably wasn't going to come back. He did stop in, he was stopping in almost every night. Especially every Saturday night, he'd come in and I'd make him a pie." The web story truncates the rest of that quote, though. Three weeks ago, the victim didn't come in on Saturday night. So the manager called the apartment and the son told him that the victim wasn't feeling well. So the manager had a pizza delivered with a note inside.
The victim, however, was already dead.
In short, an apartment complex that's on my way just about everywhere (including between our house and TRex's daycare) was the scene to a rather grisly murder. Not only that, our local pizzeria/sandwich shop plays into the story... the victim, a 57-year-old cancer patient who had worked at the pizzeria until he quit to undergo treatment, was found dead in his apartment on Saturday night. He'd apparently been dead for 2-3 weeks. His son has apparently confessed to beating him to death because he couldn't care for him anymore. According to the restaurant manager, "He was getting up there in his years so he said he probably wasn't going to come back. He did stop in, he was stopping in almost every night. Especially every Saturday night, he'd come in and I'd make him a pie." The web story truncates the rest of that quote, though. Three weeks ago, the victim didn't come in on Saturday night. So the manager called the apartment and the son told him that the victim wasn't feeling well. So the manager had a pizza delivered with a note inside.
The victim, however, was already dead.
