Godspeed, New Orleans
Day: August 28, 2005
Liberal GOP Congressman To Co-Sponsor Resolution Demanding Answers on Downing Street Memos
Iowa Congressman Jim Leach will become the first Republican to sign on as a co-sponsor of a resolution demanding the White House turn over documents related to revelations in the Downing Street Memos, according to the Des Moines Register.
Leach represents a Democratic-leaning district around Iowa City and has often broken ranks his party in the past. (He earned our permanent disfavor by voting for the bogus impeachment of President Clinton, however.) So this may well be a principled stand by the congressman, or he could just be reading the tea leaves for next year. Going after President Bush for lying about the reasons for war may serve him in good stead with his liberal constituents next November.
House Resolution 375, authored by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), currently has 39 Democratic co-sponsors. It requests that President Bush and the secretary of state send to the House all information in their possession relating to communications with the United Kingdom between Jan. 1, 2002, and Oct. 16, 2002, in connection with Iraq.
Professional Homophobes Crash Military Funerals – Are They Creating Sympathy for Gays & Lesbians?
The Rev. Fred Phelps, founder of Westboro Baptist in Kansas, contends that American soldiers are being killed in Iraq as vengeance from God for protecting a country that harbors gays.
Is it possible that Fred Phelps could turn out to be the best thing to happen in the gay equality movement since “Queer Eye?”
As strange as it sounds, his latest shennanigans could have the unintended consequence of actually creating sympathy (or something close to it) for gays and lesbians in places where they are least accepted: Deep in the heart of the Red states.
Like the reverends Don Wildmon, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and many others, Rev. Fred Phelps makes his living off of homosexuality. He is a professional homophobe. (Pam Spaulding refers to him as the The Rotting CryptkeeperTM.)
Now Fred and his evil spawn have taken to crashing funerals for U.S. service members who were killed in Iraq. They hit some funerals in the Midwest earlier this year but last week, they descended on a small town in Tennessee, and the locals didn’t like it at all:
Pro-Bush Groups Assault Each Other at Protest Site
Proof (as if any were needed) that you have to be mentally challenged to support President Bush and his war:
In one heated moment, members of the pro-Bush crowd turned on what they mistakenly thought were a group of anti-war protesters, cursing them, threatening them and tearing down their signs. A police officer rushed the group to safety.
If you’re guessing that the two groups were the Paste-Eaters and Mouth-Breathers, you are close. One group was Move America Forward; the other called itself Protest Warriors.
Keith Olbermann uncovered something interesting about Move America Forward last week:
White House Internal Polling Shows Numbers Worse than Record Lows in Public Surveys
This has been a tough summer for the Bush Administration. While the President tries to relax on his five week Texas vacation, he’s had to contend with deteriorating military and political conditions in Iraq, a Woodstock-like peace protest at the edge of his Crawford compound led by Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan, declining public opinion polls (that are echoed by “even worse” internal polling, says one Bush adviser), high oil prices and a recognition that things are not likely to turn around anytime soon. A senior Bush official attributes the president’s collapsing poll numbers to “high gas prices and a lot of anxiety about the war” and acknowledges “that’s not likely to change anytime soon.” A cruel summer is likely to fade into an autumn of discontent as congressmen like [Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), who has renounced his support for Bush’s war] come back to Washington having heard complaints from constituents.
