yeow.

this popped up on my LJ friends list, and it's horrifying. (We all read seize the fish, right? and his nom de blog is carpeicthus, which is _so_ cool)

He also apparently has an iron stomach, because he tracked this down, and it'll make you really really grateful that someone triggered Godwin's law before you got there.

I suppose we should be grateful, as TBogg says, that these people are in mom's basement doing this instead of dressing like Eichmann and offering rides to teenagers (rough paraphrase).

Hey, it's already in play, why not take advantage?

WELLSTONE'S NUREMBERG RALLY

I swear, about the only thing missing from Tuesday night’s "memorial" service for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota was a torchlight parade around the stadium, with the 30,000 participants arranging themselves in such manner as to form a giant, flaming swastika on center field and then dispersing to smash the windows of nearby conservative-owned businesses.

Other than that, it was virtually impossible to tell the Wellstone public eulogy in Minneapolis apart from the 1935 Nuremberg rally that whipped German citizens into a frenzy of Nazi rage against the Jews. There was even a fiery, Hitler-like orator by the name of Rick Kahn, who at times seemed to come perilously close to calling on Wellstone’s Republican opponent (along with the entire Republican party) to curl up and die.
...

What has become crystal clear to me in the wake of the Wellstone event is that conservatives in America today are on the very verge of becoming the unmistakable equivalent of the Jews in mid-1930s Germany. And I don’t mean rhetorically.

It’s not just the fanatical outcry against conservatives heard at the Wellstone memorial that causes me to think this. It’s also the result of new polling showing Wellstone’s fill-in, former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, handily beating Republican challenger Norm Coleman.
...
The Left’s parallels to the Nazis of yore don’t stop at their desire to see conservatives banished (or, better yet, turned into lampshades and other useful things that can be sold at trendy, upscale retail stores along Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood). If we’re the Jews, then Paul Wellstone is the Democrat party’s Horst Wessel.

I wonder if I should take some comfort in how obviously desperate these people are?

Dude. Nair. Rub it on the palms and get a hobby.

Preferably not one where they let you have contact with small animals.

Alas is back! Yaaaaaay!

OK, Alas, a Blog is back up. I feel better now.

Here's a link to MoveOn that actually explains stuff about volunteer opportunities between now and the election.

Alas unfair to cut and pasters. Geez.

wonderful lines I missed

responding to Ignatz' story about the appeal in the Alabama vibrator case, Public Nuisance says

That Had Best Be Dixie You're Whistling

wild applause. standing o, as it were.

outside of Alabama, anyway.

one word. me-zine.

guys. have pity on my sad gimpy dialup existence. Get on me-zine.

thank you.

TBogg channels Peggy Noonan

Peggy, who wrote the laughable The Case Against Hillary Clinton which contained a lengthy "dream sequence" with Hillary addressing the Hollywood moguls about 'responsibility', loves to leap into other people's lives and live them for them while having them speak in her voice of her concerns. I'm sure she gets a vicarious thrill out of being the Pope or Hillary Clinton or, now, Paul Wellstone, but it would lend a bit ( a very small bit) of verisimilitude if she actually knew some these people instead of indulging herself in that Blanche DuBois writing style of hers where she has "always depended on the lifestyles of strangers".

Next week... Peggy channels Jam Master Jay because she once saw him on Saturday Night Live. Peace out, yo.

amused.

via Kyriosity, by way of Dispatches from Outland, by way of Random Mode at Me-Zine

Subtle I am not.

to the tune of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious:

When I was just ein junger Mann I studied canon law;
While Erfurt was a challenge, it was just to please my Pa.
Then came the storm, the lightning struck, I called upon Saint Anne, I shaved my head, I took my vows, an Augustinian!

Refrain

Oh, papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation
Speak your mind against them and face excommunication!
Nail your theses to the door, let's start a Reformation!
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation!

When Tetzel came near Wittenberg, St. Peter's profits soared,
I wrote a little notice for the All Saints' Bull'tin board:
"You cannot purchase merits, for we're justified by grace!
Here's 95 more reasons, Brother Tetzel, in your face!"

(Repeat refrain.)

there's more, but I like this part.

oh, Mr. Friedman, how you do go on.

Do go on.

A correction is in order here. Last week we mistakenly wrote that William Webster lacked any relevant experience to serve as chairman of the new oversight board for the accounting profession. It turns out that Judge Webster has some very relevant experience, but of the kind that should have automatically disqualified him from being considered for the post, to which he was appointed last Friday.

From April 2000 until last July, Mr. Webster, a former C.I.A. and F.B.I. director, headed the audit committee of the board of U.S. Technologies, a company that is now nearly insolvent. The company and its former chief executive officer are being sued and investigated for possible fraud. Mr. Webster's committee fired the company's auditors in the summer of 2001 when they raised concerns about internal financial controls. Mr. Webster has not been accused of any wrongdoing, but even the most generous reading of his performance would disqualify him from heading a body whose mandate is to establish and police tough new auditing standards.

It gets worse, as do most things that Harvey Pitt, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, involves himself with these days...

the risks, the dangers

so I finally posted to the no war blog (which it looks as if they're calling Stand Down now, which I think is kind of neat) and I posted a version of what I said yesterday about the war (you know, the thing about how I think the burden is on the people who think it's a good idea to prove it?) and I got a comment which said, basically, Can't argue with that, now prove we don't need a war.

I know I'm a little bit oblique when I write, but I really do try to make sure that if you bravely unholster (what do they keep machetes in, anyway? scabbards?) your machete and hack through the impenetrable wall of words you can figure it out. Sort of the rhetorical version of a Shanghai game set to "Winnable"

I guess I'm not doing as well as I thought.

Joe Conason on Paul Wellstone

and there you go.

Much has been made of the fact that as a Senator, he often found himself at the short end of a 99-1 roll call. He took pride in that principled obstinacy. But whenever he talked about his own record, Wellstone put equal emphasis on the work he accomplished with more conventional Democrats and with Republicans as well. Greens and other leftish poseurs often denounced his pragmatism, as if the aim of a liberal in Congress should be to annoy colleagues and achieve nothing.

Wellstone could speak as the conscience of his party because he had earned the right to demand a hearing. What he had earnedÑand what he taught by exampleÑwas the difference between dreams and illusions.

Gee, I'd hate to have to deal with something like this at my new job

from the Washington Times:

"Democrats have taken gutter politics to a deplorable new low," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, Virginia Republican, who is head of the committee tasked with electing Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives. "We have not seen an attack this outrageous coming out of a national party in modern political history."

More senior committee members are trying to schedule some downtime for Rep. Davis to go through the teetering stacks of (clearly) unread newspapers dating back as far as 1992 he has stored in the committee offices before they topple and crush the cleaning staff.

EJ Dionne on Bush's judiciary plans

making sense

The basic facts are straightforward. In the final years of Bill Clinton's presidency, Republicans who controlled the Senate dragged their feet and left many judicial vacancies unfilled. Then a Republican came to the White House -- the road there, it might be noted, having been paved by a 5 to 4 U.S. Supreme Court decision. Suddenly, Republicans discovered a "crisis" and decided all those judgeships needed to be filled quickly -- with conservative nominees, of course.

But the Senate isn't obligated to rubber-stamp a president's campaign to fill the courts with his philosophical allies, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, has pursued a strategy of modulated resistance. He sped many of Bush's lower court nominees through, while putting the brakes on selected appellate court appointments.

All this means that the outcome of Tuesday's election is crucial to the future of the courts. If Republicans take over the Senate, you can be sure that Bush's nominees will be rushed into their chambers and the tilt of the judiciary will be affected for a generation.

If the Democrats hang on, the resistance to Bush's judges will continue. One can hope that this will finally force everyone to deal with the underlying problem, which is an authentic division of opinion over what federal judges should do and what philosophy should guide their decisions.

Oh joy! Oh rapture! Oh cool! Body and Soul is back!

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

edit and she links to this, which is definitely stranger than fiction

A high-level delegation of European and North American election observers — including members from Russia and Albania — arrived yesterday for a week-long mission to watch Florida's mid-term elections, which take place on Tuesday.

Their task: to see if the world's most powerful democracy has learned anything from the disastrous 36-day showdown between George Bush and Al Gore in 2000, in which the world saw every wart in Florida's deeply flawed electoral system without ever discovering for sure who had won.

Good lord, people. Why don't we just stamp United Fruit on babys' asses in the delivery room and get it over with.

(Body and Soul is back ! Yayy!)

good for what ails you

Naked Writings' quotes about belief and nonbelief are actually pretty apt for a lot of the controversies going on these days, and not just the god/not battle.

During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for 800 years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been.

One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. ~ Mark Twain, Europe and Elsewhere

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality. ~ George Bernard Shaw (of course, you'd want to keep in mind that this is coming from a man who spent a goodly chunk of his life convinced against all possible proof that Mrs. Patrick Campbell was, if he could only work out how, Deep)

Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of awesome mysticalpower. We know this because they manage to be invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them. ~ Steve Eley

not naming any names

but on a personal note, since I seem to be rapidly devoluting into the twitching moon-eyed gimpy canary in the blog mine, I feel like I need to get something off out of my system related to the stuff I'm reading as I wander ever further afield in search of input.

It is not, in and of itself, a virtuous act to piss people off.

It is worthwhile to care enough about what you care about to be willing to take the risk of pissing people off.

All those people get up and walk to the other side of the meeting hall. I'm not talking to you.

You folks who don't want to offend anybody? Offhand, I have some issues with you, too, but I'm not really in a mood to get into what they are. Thanks for coming by.

OK. The rest of you.

I know I don't have to mince words here. I know that because I go to your sites and I see things like "making people eat their livers with fava beans and a fine chianti since 1992" or "before we go any further, let me just say that you suck" or "pissing on [group] and taking names" (edit: did I forget to mention that this is also true if you take it on the road to peoples' comments? woops. I erred. it is. /edit)

Hoist the first amendment and salute! You have a constitutional right to be offensive!

Alrighty. Now that we have that out of the way.

You people are fucking boring. Booooooooring. Tedious. Dull. Predictable. Did I mention boring?

I hate to upset you, but you're not speaking truth to power. You're being rude to strangers. You're acting out your powerlessness and hostility in a medium where you feel empowered by the fact that you don't have to stand behind anything you say. You know those snickering slack-jawed Slitherins who follow Draco Malfoy around? Ever catch them out of the corner of your eye when you're passing a mirror? No, probably not. It takes a fair amount of lack of insight into yourself to believe that you're running around playing games with invisible strangers because you're a brave and forthright person.

You know, whatever. Rock on. Have a fine time there in your burrow stroking your precious and crooning. It's better than your having an actual impact on anyone's life.

But, you know, for what it's worth (and I'm sure you have some suggestions), and regardless of race, gender, creed, political affiliation, orientation or preference in peanut butter (anti-smootharians, anyone?), you really are

insanely fucking boring

Thanks for your attention. I'll go back to consuming media now.

it's SFNote day again

== Christina Aguilera, Sex Mallet ==

>From overblown pop confection to overblown smut doll in one icky video: A cautionary tale
(By Mark Morford)

Let's pretend for a moment you're willing to admit you're actually paying attention to the whole Britney Spears/Christina Aguilera Mickey Mouse Club phantasmagoria, because you're just that kind of person.

The wry type who probably has money down on which Olsen Twin will be first to get knocked up by Vin Diesel and/or be found facedown in the Viper Room in a pool of tequila and prescription Xanax. Let's just say.

Let's pretend you care deeply about these vixens' smarmy prefab selves and maybe you've even seen the new, ultra-raunchy Christina video and ogled/cringed at her much-hyped transformation from cutesy Britney-like teen tease bomb to skanky well-oiled gyrating quasi-sexual grope machine in the span of about a year and 16 piercings and 20 gallons of L'Oreal Vamp.

Such is the bizarre saga of Christina Aguilera, not so long ago seen innocently cavorting on the beach in sweet colorful loose clothes with her gal pals and flirting with some boy toys and singing about her genie in a bottle and giggling and trying to appear relatively safe for human consumption.

Fast-forward a few years, and here she is announcing that she's innocent no more and has hereby remade herself and is emerging from an "introspective break" that apparently included numerous trips to Smut Barn and the J.Lo School of How to Pretend You're Black, and is coming out with a new look and a new totally unpleasant coquettish snarly little attitude and a new video for a song called "Dirrty" with two "r"s because, well, it's just that cloying.

...

Alas. This is the problem. This is the issue. Her newfound authenticity thuds like a hammer. Our delicious little pop tart Aguilera has broken away from one extreme of prepacked teen queendom and reemerged as the exact flip side.

She is now all excessive hollow superslut diva and all about screwing "playahs" and slathering on the excess makeup and acting all badass and sneery and completely, well, bitchy. In other words, she is exactly the same, but completely different.

She has, as the S.O. puts it, a "pinched meanness" in her face. Her cover spread in the recent Rolling Stone could frighten plants and is about as genuinely sexy as a spider monkey in heat. Her interviews on MTV are terse and strange and she comes off like the only thing she's really in charge of is what bar she lets her entourage escort her to. This is a mild tragedy.

...

In a PR-drunk nutshell, she is reclaiming her individuality by demanding she no longer be considered a prepackaged corporate-controlled innocent faux-virginal sex object with minimal integrity and instead be thought of as an artificially self-controlled ass-flaunting faux-nasty sex object, with even less integrity. It's actually sort of sad.

Because somehow you still want to believe. You want to care. No matter how many cringing soul blows you endure from the degrading sludge-o-matic of pop culture, when someone from the vacuous Dark Side who has a shred of real talent says she wants to break out and be taken seriously and has turned introspective and has examined her soul and chosen to reclaim her artistic freedom and record fresh sexy dirty fun unique music unlike anything you have ever heard from her before, you want to believe.

A small hopeful voice in your head says, please, oh please, maybe just this once, let it work, let one of our major media-sucking pop icons, one of those exalted few who influence all those young girls and who wield such wicked disproportionate cultural power, become suddenly transformational and empowering and funky and substantive and genuinely sexy and smart...

Word of the Day:

irenic \-'re-nik\ adjective [Gk eirenikos, fr. eirene peace] (ca. 1864) Favoring, conducive to, or operating toward peace, moderation, or conciliation irenically - adverb

Usage example: "I gotcher whithering hopes for a positive luminous soul-enervating irenic change in global military and environmental policy right here, suckers!" screeched Dick Cheney to a very large planet of deeply saddened but still hopeful people who were just sort of staring at him, and sighing, and shaking their heads, as the VP grabbed his crotchal area and grunted and made Lynney swoon and the very air recoil.

urgent cultural request

you know the geek version of the twelve days of christmas? the one that ends up with four cauliflowers three french fries two turtle hens and a paramecium in a petri dish? (can I just point out here that Google, which apparently thinks it's So Funny, said

Did you mean: four sunflowers three french fries two turtle hens and a paramecium in a petri dish

and I said Gee! How cool is that? A regional variant! I'm so excited! and I clicked on that link and I said Why yes! I'll bet that's what I did mean!

And Google said to me

Your search - four sunflowers three french fries two turtle hens and a paramecium in a petri dish - did not match any documents.

NOT FUNNY, GOOGLE. NOT FUNNY AT ALL. YOU SEARCH YOUR MOTHER WITH THAT ALGORITHM? (an algorithm, as you mathematically inclined folks know, is an equation in which 48% > 49%! badumpcha! Tip your server (then run, cause they hate that)).

anyway, we've reconstructed it as far back as

eight malted milkballs
seven swanson dinners
six (heh heh) laying
five golden ring! ding! wrappers!
four cauliflowers
three french fries
two turtle hens
and a paramecium in a petri. Dish.

but now we're stalled. Help our little girl grow up with the cultural heritage that should be hers (Why yes, I *am* a mommy! *And* a girl! and I know how to fold a flag and I went to 4H camp and my husband and I are both the children and grandchildren of veterans AND I'm on the executive committee of the PTA! _My iconography reigns supreme_! Rhetorical! Trump! Card! Rhetorical! Trump! Card! RHETORICAL! TRUMP! CARD! Once the discussion gets cheap, I CANNOT LOSE! ) but I digress...

Let us know what the last four are, please.

Thank you.

Let's all give money to Mondale, shall we?

Dear MoveOn members,

After Paul Wellstone's tragic death in a plane crash, his remaining
family turned to Walter Mondale. Paul's sons asked Mondale to
continue Paul's tradition in the Senate by running in his place.
Wednesday night, Mondale was officially named the Democratic
candidate in the Minnesota race.

Yesterday, the GOP went into full attack mode. The White House
announced that Vice President Dick Cheney, First Lady Laura Bush and
President Bush would make successive appearances in Minnesota,
beginning today, for Wellstone's opponent Norm Coleman.

We've been talking with the Mondale campaign, and they're emotionally
exhausted and besieged. Mondale has no staff, no media dollars, and
no web site. GOP attacks keep coming, and the money keeps rolling in
for Coleman -- the Republicans now see this as a winnable race.

Mondale and his volunteer staff are good people running under the
most difficult of personal and political conditions. We've just got
to help.

We've set up a way to give to the Mondale campaign through our web
site. They need to raise at least one million dollars TODAY to
counter the GOP onslaught. We're working to raise $100,000 of that
by 8pm Eastern Time, so we can get a check to the campaign overnight.
We'll deliver another check at 8 pm EST on Saturday.

Please give whatever you can to help at:

http://www.moveonpac.org/moveonpac/viewcandidates.phtml

We're including three other candidates on this donation page who are
in races that are rapidly tightening. Chellie Pingree and Bill
Bradbury have been outspoken opponents of the Iraq war resolution and
all three would make excellent U.S. Senators. We talk to the
campaigns each and every day and every dollar counts. Please help
us win this one for Paul.

Thank you,

--Wes, Joan, Peter, Carrie, Eli, and Doug
MoveOn.org PAC
November 1st, 2002

P.S. If you wish to send a check directly to the campaign,
make out a check payable to Mondale for Senate and send
by overnight mail to:

2341 University Avenue West
St. Paul, MN 55114-1626
Phone: 651-310-9831

PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG PAC
Contributions are not tax deductible

Oh, mercy mercy me.

Pandagon channels Peggy Noonan channeling Tupac reporting what Senator Wellstone had to say about the service

...I was peepin' this Wellstone service, and I was clapping like it was my job - that mother fucker had a crew that kept it straight up real - wasn't no fake shit about pretendin' that Wellstone wasn't no straight-up political gangsta, that he wouldn't hesitate to put all his political shit on lock and freeze out some punk-ass bitches with Rs after they names.

Now, it's some made-ass hos out there pretendin' the masses fucked with some Republican flow, but don't believe that shit - you did what needed to be done, and you did it without no stressin' whatsoever. They say you did somethin' wrong? Fuck 'em. They say you was disrespectful? I got Paul Wellstone right the fuck here, and you know what he says? Fuck 'em. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Thurgood Marshall was all chillin' right up in here, they LOVED the shit. Fuck 'em.

When that rally was over, we hit up John the Baptist's bar for a little drink, a little somethin' somethin', ya know? Everyone in there was like, "Some bangin' ass shit," ya know? I was sittin' down with Frederick Douglass, sippin' some Hennessey, just spittin' game, talkin' life like it is and like it should be. We be pissed sometimes, just because it's always this fuckin' shit where if you liberal, or if you black or some shit like that, you can't never bang and these bitches - you sit back and supposed to take the shit. I get pissed 'cause I ain't too happy with neither these parties, but my thing is when you in a fight, you take it to a nigga. They gonna sit here and call me a criminal, call me evil, tell me we destroyin' ourselves when they can't do shit to help 'cept tell me they "feel" for my ass. It ain't about no Democrat or Republican - it's about some mother fuckers standin' up for themselves, telling the world this is who we be, what we represent.

Some bitches gonna come up to you, gonna tell you that bein' what you be is wrong, that it ain't for you or for some "civilized" bitches. Any bitch comes up to you and tells you that shit, they ain't on your level, they don't even need to be addressed. Blow the mother fuckers off, let that shit ride - you got better shit to deal with.

Tupac

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal. Her most recent book, "How To Dry-Hump a Brown Loafer," is published by Viking Penguin. You can buy it from the OpinionJournal bookstore.

Can I get a witness?

You know, it's getting like a democracy revival meeting around here. Warms my heart. Lean Left testifies:

Appearing with Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend at a boisterous rally at Bowie State University, Gore asked people whether they recalled where they were when the U.S. Supreme Court decided to discontinue counting ballots from the disputed Florida vote two years ago. Dozens of hands shot up.

"Are you over it?" Gore asked, to which the crowd shouted that it was not. "Use that feeling as a source of energy and drive and commitment. And if anyone tells you that one vote doesn't make a difference, send them to me."

I have been saying this for a while now, but I do not think the press or Republicans understand just how upset Election 2000 made most Democrats. From the purge of Florida voters to the "bourgeois riot", to the faxed absentee ballots, to the decision by the Supreme Court, to the fact that if all the legal ballots were counted, Gore won, Democrats feel the election was stolen from them.

It is not a feeling one lets go of, and it is not a feeling one gets over. Elections aren't a game, regardless of how the press covers them. They are the central feature of a democracy, they are how we decide our collective fates. To have one perverted, and perverted in such a blatant fashion, is not something easily forgotten.

There are a lot of angry Democrats out there, and they all plan on voting.

coup

Green[e] House Attempt found a spokesperson to energize african american women 35-54 to vote the planet in the upcoming election.

Link to mp3 here.

Boy, that wacky Thomas Sowell

Bet folks come up to him all the time in the men's room or at restaurants and tell him how much they enjoyed that little commentary he does every week at the end of 60 Minutes.

And hey, how much of a triumph is it for the civil rights movement that Thomas Sowell has his very own column in Town Hall where he tells people not to vote?

via Dr. Limerick, who has a stronger stomach than I do (but I'll bet mine's bigger, so there).

-----

Random thoughts on the passing scene:

People who cannot be bothered to learn both sides of the issues should not bother to vote.

Considering that we all enter the world the same way and leave in the same condition, we spend an awful lot of time in between trying to show that we are so different from other people.

It almost seems as if every time you see a teenage girl these days, you also see her navel.

"Anti-war" protesters seem not to understand that we are at war when others attack us. Our only choice then is whether to pretend that we are not at war, which would guarantee more and worse attacks.

Baseball fans who think that Pete Rose should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame, despite having violated the rules, forget that Shoeless Joe Jackson is not in the Hall of Fame -- and his lifetime batting average was more than 50 points higher than that of Pete Rose.

-----

Apparently "A country that ignores its history is doomed to repeat it" didn't make the final cut.

Space issues, no doubt.

From the desk of Barbara Bush

the Felber. We love him.

From the Desk of Barbara Bush

["Within hours of the crash on Friday, newspapers and broadcasts around Missouri had seized on the similarities to wonder about [Jean Carnahan's] gut reaction and that of voters, speculating about whether it would generate a sympathy vote for her in the final days of an exceptionally close race.

Republican strategists also said that the death on Sunday of Mr. Talent's father at 91 would serve to counter any sympathy directed toward Ms. Carnahan."
- from today's New York Times]

Dear Jeb,

Thanks so much for your letter, and both of your phone calls. Poppy and I are so proud of the way you're running the campaign over in Florida, and we're sure that it'll be another great day for Team Bush, despite your worries about the recent polls.

But in response to both your messages and your letter, I must say I'm a bit confused: Poppy and I are both fine, really. I don't have any idea why you'd think otherwise. No, I don't think your father "looks peaked," and he just had a checkup. And I must say that your suggestion that I spend some time alone "feeling around for lumps" was both unseemly and inappropriate...

Ohhhh, down in the land of the old boll weevil

A volunteer Republican "pollwatching" group is barred from "volunteering" more than 500 "pollwatchers" for election day in Florida, in addition to those Republican pollwatchers (one per precinct) provided by Governor Bush in accordance with state law.

The judge granted an injunction because the group was "ephemeral" and unlikely to be available for sanctions after the election if they disrupted the voting process.

-----

Kendall Coffey, a lawyer for the Democratic officials, said the poll watchers from the group were unnecessary and their interests would be covered by the hundreds of GOP poll watchers representing Gov. Jeb Bush, other Republican candidates and the state Republican party.

"What poll watchers do in aggressive politics is they slow down voting," Coffey said.

Mark Goodrich, the committee's political consultant, told the judge that the group cared about the integrity of the voting process and would not be disruptive.

Goodrich later stormed out of the courtroom after the judge said he could not speak on behalf of the committee's members because he is not a lawyer.

In asking for the emergency injunction, Democrats - led by former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek - had alleged that Republicans wanted to pack Miami-Dade County polling sites with GOP-selected poll watchers on Election Day.

-----

See, as a representative non-disruptive person of integrity you'd want to take your meds _before_ you go to court.

It's a strategery thing.

I'm sorry, I'm fogging on who had this first, but if you let me know I'll credit you.