What Atrios said. The firing squad in Connecticut stopped being “circular” the day Lieberman lost the primary and left the Democratic party. Lieberman’s loyalty to the Democratic party is slightly better than Zell Miller’s at this point, so why shouldn’t bloggers and activists committed to helping Democrats take over the Senate be concentrating on this race? Joe Lieberman isn’t a Democrat anymore. He’s just another spoiler candidate like Ralph Nader. Joe’s got more money, better name recognition, the not-so-secret support of the entire Republican noise machine, and the bully-pulpit of incumbency. As long as Joe Lieberman is campaigning against the Democratic candidate in the race, he’s a threat to to the Democratic party’s chances of taking the House or Senate in November.

Last year, Mary appeared to the faithful as a giant stain that looks like a vagina. This year, she’s back as a turd :

Okay, technically it’s a piece of chocolate, but we all know what it really looks like. To be fair, praying to a retarded candy bar is only slightly less embarassing than worshiping crap, but that’s not saying much.

On the same subject, next time you’re in Vegas, don’t fall asleep within 500 feet of any poop. It’s against the law now.

In case you hadn’t heard, a company is claiming they have discovered “a technology that produces free, clean and constant energy“. The only thing that’s standing in their way is the laws of physics. Once that little hurdle has been overcome, we’ll end our dependency on oil, the world will be at peace, and all that crap. Hey, at least they’ve got a good marketing department.

When it comes to free energy, I prefer Rube Goldberg’s method (apologizes for the low-quality image) :

Driver opens trapdoor (A) - Monkey (B) reaches for banana (C), upsetting basket of cotton (D) - Ducks (E), mistaking cotton for snow, think winter has arrived and fly south, pulling car forward.

P.S. These are vitamin-fed superducks.

We could use a few more superducks these days.

Okay commenters, here’s a challenge for you. In any artistic medium, name an underrated work by an overrated performer or vice versa. For example, John Lennon is criminally overrated (don’t argue with me on this, it’s true), but Gimme Some Truth doesn’t get nearly as much attention as it deserves. Or to switch things around, The Zombies are easily one of the greatest bands of the 60’s, but Time of the Season isn’t that great a song.

So, tell me what’s over/under for you.

Here’s a bizarre letter that appears in the latest issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly under the heading “Misplaced Priorities” :

On July 4th, North Korea shot five missiles toward Tokyo as a test launch. Thankfully, the test failed and the missiles landed harmlessly in the ocean. But what if the missiles had hit Tokyo? Games like The Legend of Zelda : Twilight Princess, Super Mario Galaxy, and Metal Gear Solid 4 would not see stateside release. Unfortunately, it is a fact that most of the gaming world originates in Tokyo, and a large-scale attack on that city could certainly spell problems from obsessed U.S. fans. North Korea is likely to attack again in the near future. If successful, do you think that it could spell the end of gaming (at least as we know it)? - Chris Day

In the event of a nuclear attack on Tokyo, we’re pretty sure you’ll have other things to worry about, like being drafted.

It’s amazing that this guy was able to put down his controller long enough to see the news.

A federal judge has ordered an immediate halt to the President’s NSA spying program. TPM Muckraker has some excerpts from the judge’s decision :

“The Government appears to argue here that, pursuant to the penumbra of Constitutional language in Article II, and particularly because the President is designated Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, he has been granted the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, itself.

We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no power not created by the Constitution. So all “inherent power” must derive from that Constitution.”

Upon hearing this decision, President Bush, whose great-grandfather was a close adviser to President Hoover, grandfather was a Senator, and father was President, said “I’m sorry, were you trying to tell me something?”

A couple of years ago, the idea of impeaching George W. Bush worried me. My fear was that two impeached presidents in a row would weaken our constitution by making impeachment a de facto partisan tool. Needless to say, I don’t feel that way anymore. This interview with the guy who broke the Abu Ghraib abuse story is a good example of why :

The other thing was, there were other government agencies who would come into the prison and handle prisoners. I can’t say which agencies, but you can probably guess. Sometimes we didn’t know exactly who they were. We’d get a call at like three in the morning from the battalion commander, saying, “You have a bird coming in. You need to take prisoner such and such from cell whatever to the landing zone in fifteen minutes.” So I’d put my gear on, cuff the prisoner, bag him, go to the LZ, wait for the helicopter to land, and then hand the prisoner off to the guys inside. I didn’t know who they were. Didn’t ask. When they tell you not to ask any questions, you don’t ask questions. They might bring the prisoner back in a few hours, or the next morning, or two days later. You didn’t ask. Other times, they would bring a new prisoner into the compound. You didn’t know who they were, or who the prisoner was, or what he had done, or what they were going to do to him. You just handed over the cellblock. One night, this Black Hawk landed at about 4 a.m., and a couple guys came in with a prisoner and took him to tier 1, put sheets up so that nobody could see, and spent the rest of the night in there. They told us to stay away, so we did. Then a couple hours later, they came back out. They were like, “The prisoner is dead.” They asked for ice to pack him, and then they said, “You guys clean this up. We weren’t here. Have a good day.” Got back on the bird and took off, left the dead body right there. Those guys can come in and kill a guy, and there’s nothing you can do. There’s no record of them. They were never there. They don’t exist.

The way I see it now, we owe it to our nation to impeach a man who oversees criminality like this. It’s no longer just about removing a dangerous person from office, but sending a message to future presidents. If George W. Bush is allowed to finish his term without being punished for the crimes he’s involved with, I think it will set a precedent that will eventually destroy this country.

Decibel Magazine has a fantastic article about openly gay metalheads that goes far beyond the standard “Did you know Rob Halford was gay?” trivia that seems to be the beginning and ending of most discussions of heavy metal’s attitude towards homosexuality. (via MeFi)

With mohawked black frontman Doug Pinnick and music that combined metal, progressive rock and power-pop, King’s X was something of a tough sell for Metal Blade Records. Due to the perspective of Pinnick’s lyrics, the band soon found itself being aggressively marketed as a Christian band. Then Pinnick came out, throwing everyone into further confusion.

“I just felt like a hypocrite hiding it, especially in the Christian music scene,” Pinnick says. “We never professed to be a Christian band and never wanted to become associated with ignorance and intolerance. It was something that I just needed to do no matter what the consequences were. The only thing [Metal Blade] said was that they wished I’d have told them first before I did it. Ty and Jerry said that they were glad it happened, but we definitely lost a few sales there.” Indeed, Christian bookstores returned their King’s X titles en masse to the label. “I’ve said many controversial things in the media, especially about my dissatisfaction with Christian media and becoming agnostic. They never questioned this, but when I came out, they freaked.”

Sad to think that “Christian” bookstores have a higher tolerance for questioning the very existence of their god then they do for homosexuality, but there ya go.

The Show with Ze Frank is an acquired taste, but you should really watch this episode. Since the news is currently obsessed with a lady who flipped out on a flight, it would be nice to see a little insight into what terrorism is and why it works.

UPDATE : Tuesday’s episode is equally brilliant. What til you hear what happens when Joe Lieberman steps up to the plate.

It’s funny how most people weren’t willing to admit that Mel Gibson was a raving anti-semite until he actually shot his mouth off about Jews. Nevermind the fact that he embraced an anti-semitic tradition (the passion play), has used the same coded language as holocaust deniers (like his father), and that every bit of artistic license he took with The Passion was to the detriment of the Jewish characters. Until Mel came out and said how much he hates Jews, everyone was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Now the same pathetic charade is happening with Virginia Senator George Allen. It seems pretty clear to me that a man who hangs a confederate flag in his office, a noose from a tree, and tried to incite a race riot is a racist, but the willfully ignorant seem to buy the explanations that these were an expression of southern pride, part of a “Western memorabilia collection”, and some youthful hijinks. Now that Allen has used the word “macaca” to refer to someone with dark skin, will people finally recognize how racist this guy is? Despite the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any positive way to spin this incident, but I’d be willing to guess that the press will continue to look the other way, lest they be charged with bias.