clarence thomas wants you to know that you should hide your drugs in your underwear, because there’s no way that the school will have the balls to look for them there!

(in an amazing twist of logic, thomas wrote,

“Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments,” he said. “Nor will she be the last after today’s decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school.”

which might make some sense if redding actually had concealed anything in her underwear… but she hadn’t. thomas thinks it’s okay to abuse children because of what they might do. nice.)

we care about the mental health of our returning soldiers… unless we don’t.

astonishing institutionalized disconnect in the army strikes again; psychiatrists finally tell prosecuting attorneys they’re full of shit. who knows if it will make a difference.

Military psychiatrists at Walter Reed who examined Whiteside after she recovered from her self-inflicted gunshot wound diagnosed her with a severe mental disorder, possibly triggered by the stresses of a war zone. But Whiteside’s superiors considered her mental illness “an excuse” for criminal conduct, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

At the hearing, Wolfe, who had already warned Whiteside’s lawyer of the risk of using a “psychobabble” defense, pressed a senior psychiatrist at Walter Reed to justify his diagnosis.

“I’m not here to play legal games,” Col. George Brandt responded angrily, according to a recording of the hearing. “I am here out of the genuine concern for a human being that’s breaking and that is broken. She has a severe and significant illness. Let’s treat her as a human being, for Christ’s sake!”

it gets better. general schoomaker, now the surgeon general of the army, was of the medical opinion that

“This officer has a demonstrably severe depression which manifested itself . . . as a psychotic, self-destructive episode…

and yet, military bureaucrats in the warrior transition brigade (mission: “to facilitate warriors’ transition and healing process“) maintained that

“Although the sanity board determined that at the time of the misconduct she had a severe mental disease or defect, she knowingly assaulted and threatened others and injured herself.”

and

her “defense that she suffers from a mental disease excusing her actions is just that . . . an excuse; an excuse to distract from choices and decisions made by 1LT Whiteside.”

read the whole article. it’s pretty sick.

i’m on several e-mail distribution lists, leftovers from my previous job. sometimes the stuff that gets sent out is interesting, other times, not so much. but it isn’t generally a great deal of e-mail, so i filter, read, delete or ignore as i deem appropriate.

today, though, one gentleman apparently had enough, and was too lazy to figure out how to unsubscribe (why, oh why do people not save the unsubscribe information they get when they sign up?) so he sent the following missive to the entire list:

I am asking to be removed from the unnecessary email from this [redacted]
site. Please take me out of this platform of “discussion” (chat room equivalent) asap and send me notification of your executing my request.

of course, there’s nothing anyone on the list can do to help him. the moron. but what’s worse, he’s triggered a cascade of copycat e-mails. there are apparently many people who have been suffering through unwanted e-mail, unable to figure out how to unsubscribe. so they’re all sending their unsubscribe requests to the entire list. my favorite one so far reads as follows:

Me as well please. I thought I’d removed myself from all lists, but it appears that this is not the case. Can you track down any other lists I might be on and delete me from them please.

People’s habit of “Replying to All” is extremely annoying.

isn’t it, though?

the latest crop of heineken ads – for the “draught keg” – royally piss me off. okay, i figure i’m not the target audience, but still. exactly how demeaning to women do beer commercials have to be to move product?

women as beer-dispensing robots. oh, yeah. makes me want to go out and buy heineken. not.

the queen decides to honor salman rushdie with a knighthood, and iran’s response – it’s a clear show of hostility toward islam!

ugh. i’m reading hitchens’ god is not great right now. a good read to begin with, and this latest religious whine is just cake. religion poisons everything.

update: hey, look at that. the vatican’s jumping on the stupid train as well (albeit a different wagon in the train). stop funding amnesty international, pope rat has decreed – how dare they support a woman’s right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term?

*sigh* and i’m trying to figure out how to work in the tidbit that Although the late twentieth century STD epidemic has been curtailed in all prosperous democracies, rates of adolescent gonorrhea infection remain six to three hundred times higher in the U.S. than in less theistic, pro-evolution secular developed democracies. yay religion.

bush, at a press conference on may 24:

“Why is he [Osama bin Laden] at large? ‘Cause we haven’t got him, yet, Jim. That’s why. And he’s hiding. And we’re looking. And we will continue to look until we bring him to justice. We’ve brought a lot of his buddies to justice, but not him. That’s why he’s still at large.”

dollars to donuts bush couldn’t define tautology, though.

so they’re scared of another veto? it would be on bush’s head, not theirs. morons. cowardly, spineless, political morons. and lots of other words i’d be likely to spell with asterisks.

the blood of our soldiers is on the democrats’ hands.

i’ll be watching the votes. moran, this means you. i’m still irritated your office hasn’t returned any of my phone calls.

p.s. the army is demoralized and the national guard is out of town. maybe it’s time to put the second amendment to use.

but alberto gonzales is such a smarmy SOB i just want to smack the smirk off his face. i don’t know how much of this hearing i’m going to be able to stomach.

more updates as events warrant, and so long as i can keep from vomiting my breakfast on my laptop.

update 10:30 a.m.: after trying to dodge the questions posed by specter, gonzales is visibly squirming in his chair during kennedy’s grilling. his eyebrows are running into each other. he’s getting shiny on the forehead. this pleases me. (more…)

it’s in all the news: kiley has been appointed acting head of walter reed (wramc), following weightman’s decapitation.

welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss. but both of them have been called to testify before congress on monday.

it appears obama and mccaskill, along with rep. harry mitchell have introduced the Dignity for Wounded Warriors Act in the house (h.r. 1268) and senate (bill number as yet unknown) to “fix” what’s wrong at wally world. the next few months should be interesting.

UPDATE: francis harvey, secretary of the army, has resigned.

so, the building next door proceeds apace. i went over to wish the owner a feliz año, and we chatted a bit. the conversation is going well enough, until it takes this turn:

“how long are you and your husband planning on living here?”
“what? well, we bought the house because we love it. we’re not planning on moving.”
“oh, i see… he’s in the army, isn’t he? what if he gets sent to germany or something? plans can change.”
“what are you getting at?”
“well, if you ever decide to sell, talk to me first. maybe we can make a deal without a realtor.”

at this point, befuddlement begins to turn into suspicion.

“ahuh. i’d have to discuss it with my husband. but like i said, we’re not planning on moving.”
“oh, i know. but if you do. i could buy your house. i could get rid of the driveway easement and put a nice circular driveway in front here.”

he’s waving his arm, describing a semicircle that encompasses pretty much our whole front yard. all the beautiful heirloom azaleas. the rhododendrons. the red maple trees. the dogwoods. hundreds of daffodils.

i boggled. his property is the servient tenement to our dominant; we have a thirty-foot-wide easement across the width of his parcel for our driveway. i’m starting to think he didn’t research the encumbrances on the lot before paying twice the assessed value for it. that, however, is his problem, not mine.

“excuse me? you clear cut a gorgeous property, covered with flowering trees, bushes, violated your own tree conservation plan… to build that… thing… and now you want me to sell you my house so you can rip out my front yard and not have to deal with the inconvenience of the easement?”
“oh, i say too much.”

no fucking shit.