I Hate What You Just Said

From Fox News late-night host Greg Gutfeld:

Back in 2002, [John] Podesta formed a group called the Coalition for Freedom of Information, which demanded access to secret government records on UFOs.

So right after 9/11, the worst attack on American soil ever, thank God there was someone in D.C. who had their priorities in order. I mean, maybe Martians did bomb the World Trade Center.

Look, I don’t dispute that aliens exist, but there are more urgent matters to deal with, other than wrinkly creatures with a knack for anal probing.

But enough about Barney Frank.

From JimLarkinsGhost (quoting the APA):

Researchers at the University of Georgia conducted an experiment involving 35 homophobic men and 29 nonhomophobic men as measured by the Index of Homophobia scale. All the participants selected for the study described themselves as exclusively heterosexual both in terms of sexual arousal and experience.

Each participant was exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual and lesbian videotapes (but not necessarily in that order). Their degree of sexual arousal was measured by penile plethysmography, which precisely measures and records male tumescence.

Men in both groups were aroused by about the same degree by the video depicting heterosexual sexual behavior and by the video showing two women engaged in sexual behavior. The only significant difference in degree of arousal between the two groups occurred when they viewed the video depicting male homosexual sex: ‘The homophobic men showed a significant increase in penile circumference to the male homosexual video, but the control [nonhomophobic] men did not.’

Just sayin’.

This interview clip is heartening.  President-elect Obama has put himself on record - he will “close Guantanamo” and he will “make sure that we don’t torture.”

The contrast between Obama’s remarks and the moral decay of the Bush administration is striking, and it is just one of the many reasons that November 4 marked a new era of hope for America.

In January, we can all celebrate our new President’s inauguration. And then we must do our job - we must hold him to his words.

Paul Krugman with a statement on “The Monster Years.”

Glenn Greenwald’s newest post is a must read.

Me likey.

Just hours after getting hit-and-run by the McCain campaign, Bob Novak became the author of his own:

Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak was cited by police after he hit a pedestrian with his black Corvette in downtown Washington, D.C., Wednesday morning.

A Politico reporter saw Novak in the front of a police car with a citation in his hand; a WJLA-TV crew and reporter saw Novak as well. The pedestrian, a 66-year-old male, was hospitalized at George Washington University Hospital with minor injuries according to DC Fire and EMS. Novak was later released by police and drove away from the scene.

“I didn’t know I hit him. I feel terrible,” a shaken Novak told reporters from Politico and WJLA as he was returning to his car. “He’s not dead, that’s the main thing.”

But don’t feel too bad for the Novakula, there’s more to the story:

As he traveled east on K. Street, crossing 18th, [a cyclist named David Bono] said a “black Corvette convertible with top closed plowed into the guy. The guy is sort of splayed onto the windshield.”

Bono said the pedestrian, who was crossing the street on a “Walk” signal and was in the crosswalk, rolled off the windshield and then Novak made a right into the service lane of K Street. “The car is speeding away. What’s going through my mind is, you just can’t hit a pedestrian and drive away,” Bono said.

He chased Novak half a block down K St., finally caught up with him and then put his bike in front of the car to block him and called 911. Traffic immediately backed up, horns blared, and commuters finally went into reverse to allow Novak to pull over.

Bono said that throughout, Novak “keeps trying to get away. He keeps trying to go.” He said he vaguely recognized the longtime political reporter and columnist as a Washington celebrity but could not precisely place him.

Finally, Novak put his head out the window of his car and motioned him over. Bono said he told him that you can’t hit a pedestrian and just drive away. He said Novak responded:  “I didn’t see him there.”

A concierge at 1700 K Street said that she saw a bicyclist yelling and walked outside to see what the commotion was about.

“This guy hit somebody and he won’t stop so I’m going to stay here until the police come,” Aleta Petty quoted Bono as saying, as he stood in K Street, blocking traffic.

Bob, I call “bullshit.”

The New York Times and Washington Post present the following set of stomach-churning facts gleaned from investigative journalist, Jane Mayer:

“Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes.”

“A CIA analyst warned the Bush administration in 2002 that up to a third of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have been imprisoned by mistake, but White House officials ignored the finding and insisted that all were ‘enemy combatants’ subject to indefinite incarceration.”

“[A] top aide to Vice President Cheney shrugged off the report and squashed proposals for a quick review of the detainees’ cases . . .’There will be no review,’ the book quotes Cheney staff director David Addington as saying. ‘The president has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it.’”

“[T]he [CIA] analyst estimated that a full third of the camp’s detainees were there by mistake. When told of those findings, the top military commander at Guantanamo at the time, Major Gen. Michael Dunlavey, not only agreed with the assessment but suggested that an even higher percentage of detentions — up to half — were in error. Later, an academic study by Seton Hall University Law School concluded that 55 percent of detainees had never engaged in hostile acts against the United States, and only 8 percent had any association with al-Qaeda.”

[T]he International Committee of the Red Cross declared in the report, given to the C.I.A. last year, that the methods used on Abu Zubaydah, the first major Qaeda figure the United States captured, were ‘categorically’ torture, which is illegal under both American and international law”.

“[T]he Red Cross document ‘warned that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted.’”

Constitutional law professor, and former NSA lawyer, Jonathan Turley, throws in his two cents:

It seems like Hartford, CT has had its own Kitty Genovese moment:

A disturbing surveillance video showing an elderly man getting hit by a car and then being ignored by bystanders has shocked — and shamed — many in Hartford, Conn.

Angel Arce Torres, 78, was trying to cross the street when a Honda plowed into him, sending him flying and leaving him lying crumpled and bleeding in the middle of the street. The driver of the car did not stop; but, even more disturbingly, passing cars and people on the sidewalk nearby did nothing to help Torres.

As Torres lay in the street, nine cars passed him without stopping. More than 40 seconds went by before anyone even stepped off the sidewalk to get a closer look. But no one went over to Torres’ body to try to help or even divert traffic.

Slate has video.