ALERT! SHARIA POSTPONED

Yes, I was looking forward to sharia law being imposed by our President. There would be no interest charged on credit cards and mortgages and car loans so the US could get out of this Great Repression rather rapidly. I admit my wife would have to wear a Burka for a while but in the name of getting out of debt I'm sure --not really--she'll agree.

Well, it seems that Missile Defense Agency really didn't change their logo. They just decided to print a three color logo for handouts and publications. 3 color was cheaper than 5 color. And no, the Obama Administration didn't do this. It was all ordered during the Bush Administration. So no, it really doesn't imitate the Obama campaign logo either. And if another military officer has to answer these crazy questions, yes, we will have no missile defense system. Can you imagine government officials having to answer this nonsense! They do all the time but still.

Horrendous News from Chile as a 8.8 earhquake rocks the country--that's said to be hundreds of times stronger than the one which hit Haiti. Early photos show places I remember well in Santiago destroyed. I'm beginning to take all these natural disasters personally. It's like my mental landscape is being destroyed bit by bit. The entire Pacific Rim is on Tsunami Alert and Hawaii is preparing to evacuate. Climate Change anyone?

South Dakota has passed a law requiring teachers to say that climate change is a scientific theory, not a fact and that there are many reasons for it--including astrological. So, it's the Year of the Tiger--hence alot of tsunamis and earthquakes. What about theological? Jesus is coming; these are the days of tribulation and rapture is around the corner.

Tony Perkins--not the actor, he's dead-- of Focus of the Family was booted from the president's prayer breakfast at Andrews Air Force base because he attacked President Obama after the state of the union address for wanting to get rid of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The Catholic representative at such prayer breakasts said that Tony's religious rights were being violated, a constant theme of the religious right. I don't think this crowd would make great Christian martyrs--they're big bunch of whiners.

Rev. Wallis of the Sojourners finally woke up after a long nap. He finally expressed the religious view that the Republicans were wrong about health care from a theological point of view and that their favoritism to the rich over the poor and the lower middle-class was against the Gospel. Given the energy the Religious Rights has poured into the debate, I have wondered why normal Christians hadn't been more forthright in supporting health care and suppport for the poor. Hopefully, this is the first shot across the bow.

Meanwhile, Utah passed a law that " miscarriage was an act of homicide". 50% of all pregnancies in Utah end up in a miscarriage. Under this law, women will be prosecuted for what most consider a tragedy. Are there any women legislators in the state?

Arizona's Trent Franks weighed in yesterday that blacks in America now have it worse than under slavery. He claims that 50% of black children are aborted. Actually it's about 30% and we don't know the number of viable fetuses but that has never stopped the so-called pro-life crowd in tallying numbers. Pat Buchanan previously this year said the best thing to happen to blacks was being forced to come to America. And, somewhere, Randy Newman is playing "Sail Away".

I received a fund-raising letter from the Hannah Giles Legal Defense Fund, which claims that Hannah, who was the female partner of Mr. Acorn pimp on Fox News, is being hounded by Barack Obama's ACORN thugs. It's like Ollie North's great fund-raiser," Mu'ammar Qaddafhi wants me Dead! Send money." Hannah and her partner apparently are being sued for manipulating the videotape they showed and taping illegally. But what price do you put on Freedom!

With the tea party's about to celebrate their first anniversary, some smartass decided to create the Coffee Party. Count me in!

If we have lived through enough right-wing madness recently, the Tenthers are holding a national summit in Atlanta under the auspices of the Tenth Amendment Center, featuring great Patriots like Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice and gubernatorial candidate Roy Moore and Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano. This is the third of the conservative conferences which are called Obama Resistance conferences. Nearby the NAACP held a rally, which was greeted by members of the KKK. History never dies, like Faulkner said,"it isn't even past."

Some of the things the tenthers are against--federal highway system, health care reform, the New Deal, desegregation and the federal income tax. Tenthers assert the rights of states to secede from the union. Even Fat Tony Scalia, reactionary extraordinaire, wrote this month that the civil war ended these issues once and for all.

Thomas DiLorenzo will lecture on Abraham Lincoln as an enemy of the constitution, now saying that the first Republican President was the original progressive despot and that Jefferson Davis was a beacon of freedom, defending liberty. Thomas Woods, the author of the Politically Incorrect Guide to History, a popular book among conservatives, will talk about conservatives' traditional sympathy for the American south and its people and heritage. Dr. Woods was at the founding of the neo-Confederate Organization, League of the South,which advocates "independence of the Southern people" from the "American empire."

The Tenth Amendment movement has sponsored so-called "state sovereignty resolutions", which ,depending on the state, call for states to secede if the federal government intrudes any further on (you fill in the blank). Georgia's state sovereignty resolution called for secession that further infringements on the right to keep and bear arms, including prohibitions of type and quantity of arms or ammunition' would trigger secession. The resolution also reserved for Georgia the right to judge "how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom". Similar resolutions have passed in Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Idaho, Louisiana and Alaska. Sarah Palin signed Alaska's bill right before she resigned office. And, of course, the Texas Governor Rick Perry is a Tenther.

The good news for all of us is that all the states who have signed so far received far more federal money than they put into the national treasury. So we could sue for past compensation and probably halve the budget deficit. We could prevent stimulus money from going to these states--none voted for president Obama--and we could start withdrawing major federal projects like NASA from Texas and created thousands of jobs in states with patriotic Americans. It's a win-win. As I told a Texan friend of mine, who was mouthing this nonsense, then Texas would become part of Mexico.

The Queen of the birthers, Orly Taitz, Moldovan, Israeli and American, has petitioned the United Nations Human Rights Council for protection against the American government. The crime was that a federal judge finally fined her $25,000 for her nonsense in filing all the nuisance suits on Barack Obama's birth certificate. The Free Republic drummed her out of the wingnut movement because she appealed to "world government", which is a step more evil than President Obama.

John McCain got off a smart ad attacking J.D. Hayworth as a birther. It would work anywhere but the very state he is running. Over half the Republican Legislators are birthers and they persuaded their party to vote a resolution that in 2012 Obama must produce his birth certificate in order to get on the ballot. Since this is a closed primary, John may become the first real victim of the birthers. But never fear John still on Meet The Press--once again--in an exclusive. I'm sure he will trash Obama because he needs to be more right-wing than Republicans in his state.

Charlie Crist claims he will not run as an independent in Florida as Marco Rubio amasses a large lead in the primary. Crist also hasn't backed down from accepting stimulus money. Neither did Arnold Schwartzeneggar. The CBO said the stimulus either saved or created 2.1 million jobs. The problem as I've said repeatedly and Paul Krugman and Bruce Bartlett,the father of supply side economics agreed, was that it was too small.

President Smartypants in his Saturday address said that if we all were as united as we are in routing for our American olympic athletes, we can pass health care. He said he would compromise if the Republicans would. (But the time is up on Wednesday--he didn't say that.) Nice touch--that's why I support the guy.

On the Human Rights front. The House has passed a resolution to assist Argentina through the release of documents about the " dirty war" to locate the dispappeared.

The deleted torture number 12 of the lawyers' memos from Yoo was "mock burial". Yoo also wrote that a President could order the massacre of villagers, crush the tesicles of a son of a detainee to make him talk, order troops into mainland America (hence the legal rationale for Dick Cheney's planned invasion of Buffalo, New York), and the fake burials of detainees. Rep. Nadler has sent these documents to the appropriate Bar Associations asking them to disbar both Yoo and Bybee.

Speaking of the massacre of villagers, human rights violations linger far beyond the time when they were committed. It has been twenty-four years since I was on the OAS' Human Rights Commission and one of the last situations I dealt with was the disappeared in Guatemala. Last year, some brave souls actually found lists and locations for the disppeared. While we were investigating these killings, we never could obtain any documents about who, where and why these people were killed. And this is extraordinarily rare--since repressive governments always document the killing of their enemies. Today, the Guatamala Forensic Foundation begins excavation of a cemetary where they believe over 200,000 bodies may be buried. These bodies are from that time over two decades ago. Yet their families never knew what happened to them.

Last week, neo-Nazis wanted to commemorate the firing bombing of Dresden, an awful event that provoked a series of sermons from my grandfather and a novel from Kurt Vonnegut, who was there. Even in Just Wars, criminal acts are done and human rights are violated. That's why one hopes to protect human rights. We don't want the people who would violate them in the future to embrace victims of the past as justification for their future deeds.

Now for some lighter news. Carly Simon has revealed that "You're so Vain" was written about David Geffen, who was infatuated by his new star Joni Mitchell. In my view, Joni's Geffen albums were the best musically she did--that was her jazz stage. Get well, Joni. She suffers from a truly horrible and grotesque skin disease that forced her to cancel touring and recording last year.

To impress your friends and family, I provide you with a bit of trivia I only discovered reading Patti Smith's Just Kids. For the hip among you, you'll remember the Holy Modal Rounders, who used to play with the Fugs. Their great song was "I've got a daughter, she's half-grown; jumps on a man, like a dog on a bone. Hey, Black-eyed Susie." Now their drummer was----the great playwright and movie actor San Shepard. I know you're thrilled.

I have not mentioned J.D. Salinger's death because frankly I never cared for him. OK, Catcher in the Rye was about adolescence everywhere. The interesting issue is how many books did he leave behind. Here we have a literary recluse whom we are told wrote everyday from dawn until noon and by letters in the mid-1960s we have been told he had at least two finished manuscripts. This could be a literary case where the author actually left behind more finished manuscripts than he ever published in his lifetime. It would mean his whole work would have to be re-evaluated. That's neat.

Finally, Wayne Newton. Yes, Wayne Newton, las Vegas entertainer and compulsive gambler, returned to Virginia this past week to push the state to recognize his Indian tribe, the Powhatans. While Disney can make a film about them, our government can de-legalize them as they have with many Indian nations. Strange as it seems, the Powhatans were legally obliterated and Wayne came to seek a correction to this injustice.