Conservatives turning on the Red State Sweetheart?

However, Neumann surmised that Coulter’s incendiary book may have played an “indirect” role in the final decision. “I think it was the book that began to unwind support among her readers,” Neumann explained.

Liberals have never liked her, and we’ve always gotten complaints [from them]. But the complaints that mattered the most were from the conservative readers,” who felt that their views were being misrepresented.

It’s about time conservatives make a return to their values – small government, fiscal responsibility, and high-brow debate. None of which seem present in Coulter’s ilk.

On a side note, I especially love this quote from the E & P article:

Coulter's syndicate, Universal Press, cleared her of plagiarism charges earlier this week.

Um … Coulter’s syndicate has no authority with which to ‘clear’ her of anything. It is what it is and Coulter did steal several passages verbatim. There is no grey area in this, nor does a company with a self-interest in clearing her lend any credibility to a vindication.

On a side-side-note, enjoy this clip of Donny Deutsch obliterating her royal vacuousness on the BIG idea, telling her there are no liberal ‘boogeymen’ and that her snipes on the 9-11 widows are shameful.

Bush doesn’t know where Italy is??

According to Steven Bradbury, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the president is always right. Direct. Freakin’. Quote.

This just in from the Center for Really Obvious Things: Brit Hume supports the Racist Sheriff!

Enron folks dropping like flies?

A bit like Katherine Harris’ campaign staff!

Wonkette catches Bob Goodlatte waving his “freak flag high.”

Smirking Chimp has ’50 easy questions to ask Republicans.’

AP continues to call the 14-year old rape Iraqi rape victim a ‘woman’.

From Common Dreams (hat tip to Kos):

The American flag stands for the fact that cloth can be very important. It is against the law to let the flag touch the ground or to leave the flag flying when the weather is bad. The flag has to be treated with respect. You can tell just how important this cloth is because when you compare it to people, it gets much better treatment. Nobody cares if a homeless person touches the ground. A homeless person can lie all over the ground all night long without anyone picking him up, folding him neatly and sheltering him from the rain.

School children have to pledge loyalty to this piece of cloth every morning. No one has to pledge loyalty to justice and equality and human decency. No one has to promise that people will get a fair wage, or enough food to eat, or affordable medicine, or clean water, or air free of harmful chemicals. But we all have to promise to love a rectangle of red, white, and blue cloth.

Betsy Ross would be quite surprised to see how successful her creation has become. But Thomas Jefferson would be disappointed to see how little of the flag's real meaning remains.

This was written by 12-year old Charlotte Aldebron for an essay competition in her 6th grade class.

It’s about time:

At a church in Washington, hundreds of committed Christians met recently and tried to map out a strategy to get their values into the political debate.

But these are not the conservative Christian values which have been so influential lately. This is the religious left.

"Jesus called us to love our neighbor, love our enemy, care for the poor, care for the outcast, and that's really the moral core of where we think the nation ought to go"

Not that the religious left has been silent during this administration. Sojourners, for example, has developed a great deal of clout. But I have little confidence that this movement will go very far.

The Christian left may be far more in tune with the teachings of Jesus than the right. But that was never under dispute. The point of contention between the right and left, as I see it, is two-fold:

The first regards who is to be the recipient of these values of charity and works. Are they other Christians? Are they people of faith only? Or are they intended for all humans and perhaps even ecosystems? The left would lean towards the latter while the right appears to believe that non-believers, and more specifically non-Christians, are some sort of sub-species akin to animals that constitute a planetary scourge in the final end-times battle.

The second major difference, again as I see it, regards the emphasis on Jesus and the New Testament versus the bible as a whole. The right tends to be far more comfortable with the Old Testament principles, with its moral absolutes and iron-clad commandments. They are simple, spelled out in detail, and generally unambiguous. Whereas the left is more apt to find wisdom in the Beatitudes, one of the greatest declarations of morality in written history, yet far more abstract and demanding of critical interpretation.

While I applaud the left’s efforts to pursue an agenda of love and tolerance, the right is far more likely to resonate with the secular and fair-weathered religious who have been indoctrinated in a national culture based upon warfare and vengeance.

I hope beyond hope that I am tragically wrong about this.

Clip of George Bush drinking again? Funny stuff!

Series of Japanese potty training videos. Why am I posting this?

Universal says Coulter didn’t plagiarize. Why? ‘Cuz she makes ‘em big bucks and they can’t afford the scandal. What’s a little intellectual theft among the vacuous?

Law and politics has a disturbing rundown on Edwards’ poverty numbers.

King George the W ‘grants’ Geneva protections to Guantanamo detainees. Like he had a choice? Meanwhile, reports are coming in that a Canadian teen was brutalized in Gitmo and used as a human mop for his own urine.

Novak says Rove was a source in outing Valerie Plame:

Now that Karl Rove won't be indicted, now that the president won't fire him, now that it really doesn't matter anymore, more details of the Valerie Plame leak investigation trickle out.

In his latest syndicated column released Wednesday, columnist Robert Novak revealed his side of the story in the Plame affair, saying Rove was a confirming source for Novak's story outing the CIA officer, underscoring Rove's role in a leak President Bush once promised to punish.

So I expect Rove’s resignation will be forthcoming any day now?

HomeSec must have a brain aneurism. What else could explain the shocking lack of foresight involved cutting NYC’s funding while boosting bucks to cornfields and county fairs?

It reads like a tally of terrorist targets that a child might have written: Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified “Beach at End of a Street.”

But the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, in a report released Tuesday, found that the list was not child’s play: all these “unusual or out-of-place” sites “whose criticality is not readily apparent” are inexplicably included in the federal antiterrorism database.

The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation.

Article here.

Oops, looks like Bush’s handlers let the monkey run his mouth a little too freely. SFGate has the article on some of his comments (emphasis in original):

Perhaps most revealing in the remarks Bush offered the Stars & Stripes was his answer when he was asked why, to date, he has not attended the funeral of a single U.S. soldier who has been killed in his war. Bush, who famously dodged the regular-forces draft during the Vietnam War era, then went AWOL from his National Guard duty post in Texas, said: "Because which funeral do you go to? In my judgment, I think if I go to one I should go to all. How do you honor one person but not another?"

Bush has killed so many people that it would be impossible to attend all the funerals. Not the most shining endorsement of his foreign policy. But do we really need to answer a question on how to honor fallen soldiers? How about just attending one? How about acknowledging your role in their deaths? How about even just mentioning their names? Or maybe even a phone call to the families?

great, Great, GREAT damn ad from the Lamont campaign!