Barbara Ehrenreich has an amusing column out about the lawsuit against mega-church wankstress Victoria Osteen, a lawsuit filed against her by a flight attendant she assaulted, who is suing for “loss of faith” and hemorrhoids from the encounter.  (Pam has the full story here.)  I’m in full agreement with everyone that the damages the sought by Sharon Brown are 100% bullshit.  But I can’t help but point out that I suspect Brown did not lose her faith, if she was in fact faithful to the prosperity gospel that the Osteens preach, because her opportunistic cash-grabbing is exactly the sort of power-of-positive-thinking-to-get-rich behavior that the prosperity gospel implicitly endorses. If she only visualizes 10% of Osteen’s fortune in her hands, and puts her faith in Jesus to take her faith and give her hemorrhoids, then it will be hers.  And frankly, I will congratulate her and laugh that she made off with some of the fortune of these swindlers. 

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Thanks, Norbizness, for reminding me that just because the Bushies are on their way out the door doesn’t mean that they aren’t still the worst motherfuckers to descend on our capitol.  Attorney General Michael Mukasey has declined the no doubt exciting opportunity to prosecute his criminally minded cronies. 

No criminal prosecutions are planned for former Justice Department officials accused of allowing politics to influence the hiring of prosecutors, immigration judges and other career government lawyers, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Tuesday.

Okay, so we expected that.  The Bush administration has made it clear that they believe that they’re above the law, and probably above the laws of nature as well.  But Mukasey decided it wasn’t enough to be a ass-licking, back-scratching, criminal-coddling agent of tyranny.  Oh no.  He had to be an asshole on top of that.

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My favorite Netroots Nation booth
There’s not a single item in this article that doesn’t make me stuff-throwing, puppy-kicking angry.

Federal agents raided a Culver City medical marijuana dispensary and spent more than four hours there, making no arrests but leaving the shop in disarray, it was reported Friday.

Nice place you have here. Shame if anything were to happen to it…on the taxpayer’s dime.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents arrived about noon Thursday at Organica Collective in the 13400 block of Washington Boulevard, DEA spokeswoman Sarah Pullen told the Los Angeles Times.

“Marijuana remains a controlled substance, and it is illegal under federal law to possess, dispense or cultivate marijuana in any form,” she said.

Someone should probably teach DEA spokesperson Sarah Pullen a little bit about the timing of public statements:

The federal operation came on the day an appellate court in San Diego ruled that federal law does not preempt the state’s law allowing the use of medical marijuana—a ruling touted by supporters of California’s medical marijuana law as a significant win.

Unless Congress passed that one law making DEA spokespeople pope-like in their infallibility, this is a real black eye for the feds. Or it would be, if I thought any of them cared.

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The Department of Health and Human Services, covered in glory and ketchup that it says symbolizes the spilled blood of aborted babies, is back with new conscience clause rules that would bar federal money from health care providers that didn’t allow their employees to deny healthcare they found morally offensive.

The Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing a draft regulation that would deny federal funding to any hospital, clinic, health plan or other entity that does not accommodate employees who want to opt out of participating in care that runs counter to their personal convictions, including providing birth-control pills, IUDs and the Plan B emergency contraceptive.

Conservative groups, abortion opponents and some members of Congress are welcoming the initiative as necessary to safeguard doctors, nurses and other health workers who, they say, are increasingly facing discrimination because of their beliefs or are being coerced into delivering services they find repugnant.

Oddly, there are no provisions protecting the consciences of people who think that the aforementioned people are dumbasses and the people making this policy are allowing people’s healthcare to be dictated by the luck of the draw when it comes to whether or not their doctor/nurse/pharmacist is a misinformed, judgmental asshole who thinks that Depo Provera is an abortion in a needle. 

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This is big news, particularly for people who think that you can’t be fired because your sexual orientation in this country. Even when you think you are protected, you may not be.

Monica Goodling and D. Kyle Sampson, key aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, violated federal law and departmental policy by considering political affiliation and other improper factors in Justice Department hiring decisions, according to another devastating report from DOJ’s Inspector General and the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, issued this morning.

Read the report for yourself here; and the summary (Goodling.doc). The relevant section:

In another matter, we found that Goodling violated Department policy and federal law, and committed misconduct, when she refused to extend the detail of a career AUSA, and later tried to block the AUSA from obtaining other details, at least in part because of rumors regarding the AUSA’s sexual orientation.

The discrimination charge in the document is notable because of the interpretation of the protection in Civil Service Reform Act; there is no specific clause on sexual orientation.  Read this passage from the report (below the fold) carefully…

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The central problem with the Republican Party doing outreach to the black community is that it involves them saying lots of incredibly stupid things.  Today’s case in point: Mona Charen, who’s decided that Bush loves minorities like Jack Donaghy loves cookie jars. 

And yet, as recent news about student test scores reminds us, a poignant aspect of this president’s two terms is his unrequited love for blacks and other minorities.

Many black readers will laugh at this assertion. No president in recent memory has been held in lower esteem by black voters than George W. Bush. Reagan and H.W. Bush were perceived (despite their best efforts) as uncaring at best. Bill Clinton was adored. But from the beginning, George W. Bush was painted as the devil by many black leaders. It’s remarkable that this was so, considering Mr. Bush’s steadfast and unwavering interest in the poor and minorities, but there it is. When no other opportunity for tarring President Bush presented itself, his detractors seized upon Hurricane Katrina as the catch basin for all the free-floating bile against the president.

There are many, many reasons black people don’t like George W. Bush.  There were the symbolic rejections of the NAACP, the fact that his economic policies had the direct effect of helping making black people poorer and less likely to move up the economic ladder, the war they didn’t support, the token minority appointments to positions of power that were matched with a lily-white base of elected officials underneath them, the complete acceptance of the Reagan-era take on the black community…but perhaps more important than any of that?  George W. Bush is about as universally disliked as a president can get without having been actively convicted of a felony.  Nobody likes him - why more thoroughly insult the black community by pretending that they, unlike 75% of America, should be bowing at his feet?

That sort of answers the question about why black people don’t vote for Republicans, doesn’t it?

Remember the way George W. Bush first campaigned? He was the “compassionate conservative.” He visited so many black churches he could have applied for membership in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

A politician visits black churches during an election year?  By God, I’m surprised he didn’t win a hundred and ten percent of the black vote pursuing such a novel strategy!

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Kudos to Hillary Clinton for putting her name to this article and distributing it on the internet.  As I’ve said a million times before, the hardest part about talking to people about the anti-choice agenda is convincing them that the Fetus People are also out to get contraception banned—-or at least severely limited—-as well.  Which is pretty stellar evidence that contrary to the mainstream media portrayal of the reproductive rights debate, this is not about whether or not the fetus is a person who deserves protection, but about sex and making sure that people, especially women, suffer for having a sexuality and making wingnuts uncomfortable.  Obviously, anti-choicers prefer to wax poetic about the fetus because that makes them seem, while nutty, at least a little sympathetic, whereas the reality of their nature makes them seem like sadists and killjoys.  It’s no wonder they’d like to define everything they don’t like as “abortion” to get more people to be wary of it.  I suspect, if she could get away with it, Leslee Unruh would define speaking the word “condom” out loud as a form of abortion.

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Dick Cheney, our fourth branch of government (it’s true - it’s in the Constitution right after Taco Bar Tuesday), does something which is in no way deserving of criticism or rebuke as a step towards fascism.

Members of Vice President Cheney’s staff censored congressional testimony by a top federal official about health threats posed by global warming, a former Environmental Protection Agency official said yesterday.

In a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), former EPA deputy associate administrator Jason K. Burnett said an official from Cheney’s office ordered last October that six pages be edited out of the testimony of Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Gerberding had planned to say that the “CDC considers climate change a serious public health concern.”

They had a really good reason, though:

Several media outlets, including The Washington Post, reported at the time of Gerberding’s testimony that the administration had revised her proposed remarks. White House officials justified the changes by citing doubts about the scientific basis of her testimony.

An administration is censoring Congressional testimony they don’t like because of political/religious opposition to a person’s trained analysis of a series of facts that came to a conclusion at odds with their dogma. 

Barack Obama is so popular, though!