Shrimp, crab, lobster, clams, mussels, all these are an abomination before the Lord, just as gays are an abomination. Why stop at protesting gay marriage? Bring all of God's law unto the heathens and the sodomites. We call upon all Christians to join the crusade against Long John Silver's and Red Lobster. Yea, even Popeye's shall be cleansed. The name of Bubba shall be anathema. We must stop the unbelievers from destroying the sanctity of our restaurants.

Leviticus 11:9-12 says:
⁹ These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat.
¹⁰ And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:
¹¹ They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination.
¹² Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.

Deuteronomy 14:9-11 says:
⁹ These ye shall eat of all that are in the waters: all that have fins and scales shall ye eat:
¹⁰ And whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye may not eat; it is unclean unto you.
¹¹ Of all clean birds ye shall eat.

Questions remain about President Bush's long-ago service in the Texas Air National Guard. But the basic outline of his Guard service is not in dispute: After a year in flight school, Bush spent five months learning how to fly an F-102 fighter-interceptor and then 22 months as a part-time pilot. He stopped flying in April 1972 -- 30 months before his formal commitment would normally have ended.

Nonetheless, the biography of Bush on the US State Department's website credits him with almost six years in the F-102's cockpit -- two years on active duty flying the plane and nearly four more years of part-time service as an F-102 pilot. The websites of at least five American embassies -- those in Germany, Italy, Pakistan, Vietnam, and South Korea -- use the identical language, even though Bush spent barely two years flying the airplane.

. . . .

The State Department site -- http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/presbush/bio -- says that before Bush graduated from Yale in 1968, "he went to the offices of the Texas Air National Guard at Ellington Air Force Base outside Houston to sign up for pilot training. One motivation, he said, was to learn to fly, as his father had done during World War II." It continues: "George W. was commissioned as a second lieutenant and spent two years on active duty, flying F-102 fighter interceptors. For almost four years after that, he was on a part-time status, flying occasional missions to help the Air National Guard keep two of its F-102s on round-the-clock alert."

Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, asked yesterday about that language, said: "It does not reflect the facts of his service. It will be corrected." (link via Sisyphus Shrugged)

The catchphrase du jour is Donald Trump's snappy, "You're fired." But no one has lost a job over the intelligence failures that led to 9/11 or the war that was trumped up and velcroed to 9/11. In fact, the only people the president and vice president are trying to put out of business are the members of the commission charged with figuring out how 9/11 happened and how to prevent another one.

The White House seems more worried about the public's finding out how much it knew and how little it did before 9/11 than it does about identifying and fixing security weaknesses.

After trying to kill the commission and then trying to put Dr. Strangelove-Kissinger in charge, President Bush and Dick Cheney have done their best to hamper the panel that's the best hope of the 9/11 widows, widowers and orphans to get justice.

"This is not no-fault government," said Lorie Van Auken, a 9/11 widow. "You don't just let people go on doing what they're doing wrong."

It is a triumph of chutzpah for Mr. Bush to thwart the investigation into 9/11 at the same time he seeks re-election by promoting his handling of 9/11 and scaring us with the specter of more terrorism. He's even using 9/11 memorials as the backdrop for his convention in New York.

Last week, the president played it sly, acting as though he was willing to extend the commission's deadline to finish the work that was taking longer because the administration was stonewalling. But the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, was clearly helping out the White House, answering the "who will rid me of this meddlesome panel?" call.

Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, who helped create the commission, played hardball, threatening highway funds and federal jobs if the commission didn't get two extra months. Mr. Hastert caved.

Mr. McCain said he's expecting the same administration "obfuscation and delay" when he sits on Mr. Bush's hand-picked intelligence review board. "That's why I made sure I got subpoena power," he said. "No bureaucracy will willingly give you information that may be embarrassing to them."

Especially not such a secretive, paranoid and high-handed administration. Bush officials act as though they own 9/11, even while refusing to own up to any 9/11 mistakes.

Because of 9/11, they think they can suspend the Constitution, blow off investigators, attack nations pre-emptively, and keep Americans afraid by waging a war against terrorism that can never be won.

As Bob Kerrey, a frustrated member of the 9/11 commission, told Chris Matthews, the U.S. should have declared war on Osama as soon as it became apparent that he had an army with a "tremendous, sophisticated capability" and an ideology that dictated killing Americans.

"To declare war on terrorism, it seems to me to have the target wrong," he said. "It would be like after the 7th of December, 1941, declaring war on Japanese planes. We declared war on Japan. We didn't declare war on their tactic. . . . Terrorism is a tactic."

UPDATE: Norbizness has a useful history of the 9/11 Commission and the Bush administration's efforts to obstruct it. Elsewhere, he links to this story explaining that Bush gave more access to secret government papers to reporter Bob Woodward, when Woodward was writing the book "Bush at War," than he did to the 9/11 Commission. Of course, Woodward was writing a fawning book portraying Bush as a brilliant wartime leader, while the 9/11 Commission was only a government commission investigating perhaps the worst intelligence failure in our history.

Look who's preaching to Israel: Last Wednesday, the U.S. State Department released its annual report on the state of human rights around the world. The chapter devoted to Israel makes the usual detailed and gloomy reading. Washington is critical of all the ills of the occupation, about which the human rights organizations and [ed. note: in?] Israel have long since raised a hue and cry.

 

. . . . 

 

The policeman of the world is naked, especially after Sept. 11, 2001, when security in the United States became - as it is in Israel - a supreme value above all others. In the United States, exactly as in Israel, human rights have become a nuisance, an obstacle to security. According to the organization Human Rights Watch, the United States arrested about 1,000 people after the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, crassly violating their legal rights.

A country that is holding 660 Afghan detainees at Guantanamo without trial and depriving them of basic rights is in no position to criticize administrative detentions carried out by other countries. A country that is holding members of the Iraqi political leadership in detention without trial, far from view, is in no position to complain about the conditions of detention in the prisons of other countries. And a country that is maintaining a tough military occupation regime in Iraq doesn't have the right to fulminate against a different occupation regime, however cruel it may be, in the Palestinian territories.

Before drawing up the report on the state of human rights around the world, those responsible for the document should have taken action to bring about the immediate dismantlement of the prison at Guantanamo and the release or bringing to trial of the detainees who have been held there for well over two years in disgraceful conditions. Where did the authors of the report find the brazenness to declare that conditions in the detention camps of the Israel Defense Forces don't meet international standards? Do they meet such standards at Guantanamo? The conditions in our detention camps are, indeed, disgraceful, but the United States is not the one to say so. If Israel were to publish a report on the state of human rights in the world, the document would generate bitter scorn. The only thing separating Israel's moral right to issue such a report from the right of the United States to do so is the power of the latter - it has no moral primacy. (link and title via Billmon)

the third-highest number of so-called mass layoffs since the government became tracking them a decade ago.

 

Only in December 2000 and December 2002 were the number of large layoffs higher.

 

. . . .

 

The total jobs lost in January was the most since November 2002, when 240,171 workers were let go in groups of 50 or more. Manufacturing workers, particularly in transportation, food processing and retail jobs, were hardest hit. The large layoffs also included 10,876 government workers, most at the state and local levels. (link via Daily Kos)

I heard Stern the morning of program that led to his removal. In the segment leading up to [the] one that got him in trouble he was on a brillant satirical riff on the Janet Jackson "crisis" that ended with him telling the audience that Bush had to go and that he was a one-termer just like his father. It was overtly anti-bush in tone and he built up to it with the JJ thing and telling the government to start worrying about real problems like Iraq. He was pulled the next day.

Stern also said he fears his "suspension" last Wednesday by radio behemoth Clear Channel has turned into a firing.

"I might be taken off all the stations very soon, and my last words to you are 'G.W.B.,' " Stern told listeners yesterday.

"Get him out of office. I'm tellin' you, man, he's in dangerous territory [with] a religious agenda and you gotta vote him out - anyone but Bush," Stern railed. (link via Oliver Willis)

Stern may be uncouth, but he's not stupid.

FURTHER UPDATE: What Would Dick Think? makes a strong argument that Clear Channel's firing of Stern was politically motivated (link via Fried Green al-Qaedas)

Like [Mel] Gibson [in his movie, "The Passion of the Christ"], Mr. Bush is whipping up intolerance but calling it a sacred cause.

At first, the preacher-in-chief resisted conservative calls for a constitutional ban on gay marriage. He felt, as Jesus put it in the Gibson script (otherwise known as the Gospels), "If it is possible, let this chalice pass from me."

But under pressure from the Christian right, he grabbed the chalice with both hands and swigged — seeking to set a precedent in codifying discrimination in the Constitution, a document that in the past has been amended to correct discrimination by giving fuller citizenship rights to blacks, women and young people.

If the president is truly concerned about preserving the sanctity of marriage, as one of my readers suggested, why not make divorce illegal and stone adulterers?

Our soldiers are being killed in Iraq; Osama's still on the loose; jobs are being exported all over the world; the deficit has reached biblical proportions.

And our president is worrying about Mars and marriage?

When reporters tried to pin down White House spokesman Scott McClellan yesterday on why gay marriage is threatening, he spouted a bunch of gobbledygook about "the fabric of society" and civilization.

The pols keep arguing that institutions can't be changed when, in fact, they change all the time. Haven't they ever heard of the institution of slavery?

The government should not be trying to legislate what's sacred.

When Bushes get in trouble, they look around for a politically advantageous bogeyman. Lee Atwater tried to make Americans shudder over the prospect of Willie Horton arriving on their doorstep; and now Karl Rove wants Americans to shudder at the prospect of a lesbian — Dick Cheney's daughter Mary, say — setting up housekeeping next door with her "wife."

When it comes to the Bushes' willingness to stir up base instincts of the base, it is as it was.

As the Max von Sydow character said in Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters," while watching a TV evangelist appealing for money: "If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in his name, he'd never stop throwing up."

Cartoonist Mike Luckovich depicts the Bush version of the Constitution:

BUSH MISLEADING ON SOCIAL SECURITY BEGINS

Yesterday, President Bush implicitly acknowledged for the first time that his Administration could attempt to reduce Social Security benefits for workers - a reversal from one of his core campaign pledges in 2000.

Specifically, the president was asked his opinion on Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's assertion that, in order to balance the budget, Social Security benefits should be cut. Bush responded, "My position on Social Security benefits is this: those benefits should not be changed for people at or near retirement." However, the president specifically refused to say he opposed cutting future guaranteed benefits for younger and middle-aged workers.

The president's refusal to discuss younger workers was a departure from his very clear position in 2000 in which he said he did not support cuts in future Social Security benefits for anyone - young or old. Less than two months before the 2000 election, then-Governor Bush said in Florida that people were saying, "'You know, if George W. becomes the president, he's going to take away your Social Security check.'" To which Bush added, "Don't believe it. Here's my pledge to the people of Florida: A promise made by our government will be a promise kept when I become the president of the United States."

Certainly, President Bush has talked about his plan to privatize Social Security. However, he has obscured the fact that the plan could result in cuts to guaranteed benefits for younger workers. He has also declined to openly discuss the fact that, at a time of record deficits, his "own economic team estimates that a move to private accounts would add an additional $4.7 trillion to the debt". And, most importantly, Bush refused to fully disassociate himself with Greenspan's call to reduce benefits.

• Go Nader!! We love you.
  
• Run, Ralph, run!
  
• God Speed Ralph Nader!
  
• Since he's running as an independent, he may gain more of that vote. FREEPERS who live in Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Ohio, Tennessee, Arkansas, and West Virginia must get him on the ballot.
  
• Oh Yeah! GO RALPH GO!
  
• YAHOO!!!!!!!!!!!
  
• THERE IS A GOD!!!! WHOOOO HOOOOO!!!
  
• Is it possible that Nader is a closet Republican? LOL
  
• What a LOSER ! But, THANKS, Ralphie !! (via The Sideshow)

So here we are. And actually, it feels better in a weird way -- more honest. Gay Republicans have suddenly stopped spinning in their dervishes of denial, at least momentarily. Groups like the Log Cabin Republicans deluded themselves for more than three years, backing Bush even as he promoted abstinence-only programs at the expense of AIDS-education ones that work, supported Senator Rick Santorum after the Pennsylvania Republican's vile statements about gays, and pushed hard for discriminatory faith-based programs. They stood by him -- making an occasional tepid criticism, but still backing him -- as Bush nominated individuals like Alabama Attorney General William Pryor, who compared homosexuality to "necrophilia" and fought against repealing sodomy laws. (Last weekend, in another slap, Bush brazenly installed Pryor in a recess appointment after the guy had been filibustered by the Democrats because of his extremism.)

After three years of calling Bush's critics members of a traitorous "fifth column," you have to admit that it's rather delicious seeing Andrew Sullivan deciding that Bush has declared "war" on him, and admitting, "I guess I really was naive."

In this way, I feel bizarrely thankful to Bush for finally drawing the battle lines more clearly so that apologists like Sullivan can't deny any longer the sham of "compassionate conservatism."

Risking the loss of the apologists -- and perhaps many independents, moderate Republicans, and some Democrats -- couldn't have been an easy decision for the Bush camp. Karl Rove is hoping that the Christian right's devotion and turnout will now outweigh anything that counteracts it. But he shouldn't be so sure. For gays and lesbians, this amendment is equivalent to the Stonewall Rebellion, to Anita Bryant's crusade, and to the government's negligence at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, at least in terms of enraging people and moving them to action.

Already there have been rallies in the streets of Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco, and more are on the way. And the alliances that have been built among gays and the larger progressive movement today can't be underestimated. It was gays and young progressives of every stripe, after all, who catapulted Howard Dean and now need a place to funnel their energy. And for many progressives the marriage amendment is less about same-sex marriage than about government control and the reshaping of the laws of our country-- a further extension of the USA PATRIOT Act and projects like Total Information Awareness.

Bush's speech might one day be looked back upon as a turning point, much like Pat Buchanan's speech at the Republican convention or Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" -- the beginning of the end. The White House is either so arrogant that it doesn't see that or so desperate that it simply believes it doesn't have a choice. Either way, it could be a stellar moment for the Democrats -- if they take up the challenge rather than go on the run. (link via Atrios)

Go read the whole thing.

Paul exhorted the members of the church in Rome that "God had given them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves ... and God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly ..."Romans 1:24, 26, 27

The actions of these people were listed along with other practices that are still considered sin: fornication, wickedness, covetousness, murder, backbiters, haters of God, proud, despiteful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without natural affection, unmerciful...

"Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them." Romans 1:32.

That also seems crystal clear. Those who do such things, and those who think they are amusing - or innocent - are worthy of death.

Doesn't seem as if the Lord is accepting of the sin of homosexuality at all.

And Christians had better put on the breastplate of righteousness and the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

The battle for souls has begun. (link via Atrios)

So homosexuals, and those who consider them amusing or innocent, "are worthy of death." And so, apparently, are fornicators, backbiters, haters of God, proud people, those who disobey their parents, and yes, even those who are "without natural affection, unmerciful." I wonder if the author considers herself to fall into either of those categories?

What does it tell you when House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) isn't sure he wants to be as reckless, extreme and divisive on gay rights as President Bush? This from a late story on the Associated Press newswire ...

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said he appreciated Bush's "moral leadership" on the issue, but expressed caution about moving too quickly toward a constitutional solution, and never directly supported one. "This is so important we're not going to take a knee-jerk reaction to this," DeLay said. "We are going to look at our options and we are going to be deliberative about what solutions we may suggest."

Atrios and Josh (again) have some thoughts on why DeLay and other congressional Republicans are going to be a lot less excited about this than Bush is. Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan is shocked, shocked that his beloved Dubya would do such a thing.

Here's another perspective on the issue:

The fact of the matter is we live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for everybody. We shouldn't be able to choose and say you get to live free and you don't. That means people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It's no one's business in terms of regulating behavior in that regard. The next step then, of course, is the question you ask of whether or not there ought to be some kind of official sanction of the relationships or if they should be treated the same as a traditional marriage. That's a tougher problem. That's not a slam dunk. The fact of the matter is 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 in this area. I try to be open minded about it as much as I can and tolerant of those relationships. And like Joe, I'm also wrestling with the extent to which there ought to be legal sanction of those relationships. I think we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into.

Who said that -- Kerry? Edwards? Dean? No, that would be Dick Cheney at the vice presidential debate in 2000. But now he's jumped on the bandwagon. Meanwhile, gay activists have issued a missing-person bulletin.

P.S. I've always been amused by this. Lynne Cheney, Dick's wife and Mary's mother, is an author:

"Sisters", her 1981 novel, is set, as the cover says, in the 19th century American West, 'when men were men, and women were property.' "Sisters" includes accounts of a marital rape, a tender love affair between two women, and arrogant male doctor...A love letter in the book from a woman to her female lover reads: "Let us go away together, away from the anger and imperatives of men. There will be only two of us, and we shall linger through long afternoons of sweet retirement. In the evenings I shall read to you while you work your cross-stitching by the firelight. And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl." New York Times, 2/6/01

Who is the author of "Sisters" this "masterpiece" of lesbian literature? Lynne Cheney, wife of Dick Cheney, our Republican Vice President. When asked by the New York Times why she wrote about a lesbian love affair she said she couldn't remember.

Lynne Cheney seems to have developed amnesia about this book, which is not mentioned in her official biography. When she was asked about the book in 2001, she claimed she couldn't even remember the plot. Timothy Noah of Slate awarded her the "Whopper of the Week" for that one.

A recession is when your neighbor loses his job.

A depression is when you lose your job.

A recovery is when Bush loses his job.

EASILY SPUN: How easily are New York Times writers spun? Here is Jim Rutenberg, hopelessly bull-roared in a Sunday “Week in Review” report:

RUTENBERG: It was a sharp video attack, jarring in a political season that has been unusually short on negative advertising. A woman, sitting at a keyboard, seeks information about Senator John Kerry on the Internet. She unearths all sorts of scandalizing tidbits.
“More special interest money than any other senator. How much?” she says.

The answer flashes on the screen: $640,000. “Ooh, for what?” she says, typing out “Paybacks?” and then reading aloud from the screen, she says, “Millions from executives at HMO’s, telecoms, drug companies.” She add, “Ka-Ching!”

She can only come to one damning conclusion: Mr. Kerry, she says, is “Unprincipled.”

The one-minute spot, introduced a week ago, did not appear on television, but on President Bush's campaign Web site. And so a new bare-knuckled political use of the World Wide Web showed its head: the Internet attack ad.

Rutenberg repeats the content of this ad, and brightly notes that it’s an “attack.” But he is too inept to let readers know that this ad’s attack is utterly false. Does Kerry take “more special interest money than any other senator?” No, and the (hapless) Washington Post piece which led to this ad never made such an assertion. According to Peter Beinart, Kerry ranks ninety-second among U.S. senators when it comes to special interest money. Meanwhile, at his Annenberg “FactCheck” site, Brooks Jackson shot down this ad’s bogus claim too. (He shot it down ten days ago!) Is Kerry first among senators in special interest dough, raising $640,000 in the last fifteen years? Please. “So far, for example, Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist reported $1,022,063 in PAC donations for his 2004 campaign alone,” Jackson notes. The Bush ad’s claim is utterly bogus. Rutenberg, typing hard, failed to say so.

But then, the New York Times deals in the factesque. The RNC send out a fake claim, so Rutenberg sat right down and typed it! Meanwhile, one last note, from the Annals of Clowning: When Rutenberg went on to discuss last week’s rumor from Drudge, he applauded the press for “not tak[ing] the bait.” But he’d been yanked from the water himself, ten grafs earlier! This year it matters, Gail Collins has said. But at the Times, hopeless habits die hard.

Rutenberg's article is amusingly titled, "In Politics, the Web Is a Parallel World With Its Own Rules." The New York Times has its own rules too - thou shalt not fact check the RNC.

President Bush last week caused a stir when he declined to endorse a projection, made by his own Council of Economic Advisers, that the economy would add 2.6 million jobs this year. But that forecast, derided as wildly optimistic, was one of the more modest predictions the administration has made about the economy over the past three years.

Two years ago, the administration forecast that there would be 3.4 million more jobs in 2003 than there were in 2000. And it predicted a budget deficit for fiscal 2004 of $14 billion. The economy ended up losing 1.7 million jobs over that period, and the budget deficit for this year is on course to be $521 billion.

These are not isolated cases. Over three years, the administration has repeatedly and significantly overstated the government's fiscal health and the number of jobs the economy would create, but economists and politicians disagree about why.

. . . .

Bush has since said that his optimism about budget deficits was based on the assumption that the economy would not hit a "trifecta" of trouble: recession, national emergency and war. But in February 2002 -- after the recession was declared, the t