Lazy Evening Reads

And that is just what it is going to be…

Good Evening!

Big Gay Al fights for his right to be a Mountain Scouts troop leader.

More on Big Gay Al at the end of the post…first, some of you may have missed this bit of news that came out yesterday.

George Zimmerman’s Attorney To Address Gun Rights Activists At Second Amendment Foundation Conference

According to an e-mail sent by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), Mark O’Mara, the defense attorney for George Zimmerman, will speak at the SAF-sponsored Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC), which will begin September 28. The conference will be held, for the first time in its 27 year history, in Florida.

Uh, I don’t know, sounds a bit questionable to me. I mean maybe it is not an official ethics discretion, but it damn well looks strange to me. Oh, and I would not be surprised if that SAF-GRPC group has ties to some form of hate group…I googled the SAF-GRPC and see a bunch of crazy gun links, which I don’t have the energy to investigate. (I also don’t feel like linking to them because, well they are crazy gun fanatics.)  But there is one article in that list that mentions why the Jews like “bloomturd” hate guns…so go figure.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. Take a look at this link to remember what an important step this was in our history.  The Voting Rights Act: A 20th Century American Revolution

On its anniversary, a look at why the Voting Rights Act was one of the most revolutionary laws passed in American history.

Today is the 47th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965 by a bipartisan (if sectional) majority of Congress, and signed by President Lyndon Johnson. With the fight over who deserves to vote having been reignited by the partisan push for voter identification, and with conservatives mounting legal attacks on key provisions of the Act, it’s worth noting the degree to which the VRA was a milestone for democracy in this country.

Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it…right?  Voter ID Laws Solve No Existing Problem 

Rick Hasen points out how, even if voter fraud were a problem (it isn’t), voter ID laws would be no kind of solution. There are several types of voter fraud, according to the most fervent promoters of it. You have voter registration fraud, when someone sends in a bunch of fake names and registers them to vote. For that to matter, Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck would have to actually show up at the polls to vote. You have absentee ballot fraud. There’s insider voter fraud, where elections officials manage the votes to get a particular candidate elected. Finally, you have in-person voter fraud, where someone votes in an election more than once. That’s the only one that would be captured by the voter ID law. And that one really never happens.

Meanwhile, Larry Pittman is at it again.  Does Pittman Want to Publicly Hang Planned Parenthood?

North Carolina Republican Larry Pittman is back to doing what he does best–sending rabidly anti-choice emails. This time, he is accusing reproductive health care provider Planned Parenthood of “murder for hire.”

Via Think Progress:

State Rep. Larry Pittman (R) had a strong reaction to a recent email from Planned Parenthood that appealed state legislators not to cut funding to the organization. Pittman responded to the email, which was sent to each member of the NC House of Representatives Health and Human Services Appropriations committee at the end of May, with allegations that Planned Parenthood is a “murderous organization”:

PITTMAN: [Planned Parenthood] is a murderous organization…getting wealthy on murder for hire. It deals out nothing but deception, death, personal devastation, and moral degradation. Never will I agree to give that bloody, indecent, immoral organization one penny. I will not be satisfied until it is outlawed.

The latest diatribe was provoked by a plea from the provider to the state to not cut its budget, but last time Pittman went on a “murder” rampage, it didn’t take an event associated with reproductive health to set him off.

Asshole.

And finally,  Boy Scout files reveal repeat child abuse by sexual predators

Clockwise from top left are Alan Dunlap, Floyd Slusher, Mark Bumgarner and Stephen Field. They are among the men about whom the Boy Scouts of America had received molestation allegations who nevertheless continued or regained involvement with the organization and were later convicted on abuse charges. (Texas Department of Public Safety, Colorado Department of Corrections, Virginia State Police and California Department of Justice)

Okay, so “they” are completely against “gay” boyscout members and leaders, but yet the damn association is seething with pedophiles…it makes me think of the episode of South Park.

Cripple Fight (Season 5, Episode 3) – Full Episode Player – South Park Studios

Big Gay Al returns to South Park as the new scout leader. When he is fired for being gay, the boys rally to his defense with the help of the new “handi-capable” kid, Jimmy. But there’s only room for one crippled kid in South Park, so Timmy and Jimmy throw down in an all-out slugfest.

That description fails to mention the replacement for Big Gay Al.  (And like I said, it is a very lazy way of writing a post tonight…even the description below is from Wikipedia…how pathetic is that!)

Stan, Cartman, Kenny, and Timmy have joined Mountain Scouts troop number 69 and are on their way to their first meeting. When they arrive, they find that their scoutmaster is Big Gay Al. The boys enjoy themselves at the meeting and decide that they like Mountain Scouts, but some parents fear that Big Gay Al will be a poor influence on the boys and that he may be a pedophile.

After a lifetime of membership, Big Gay Al is thrown out of Mountain Scouts. A new, masculine, scoutmaster named Mr. Grazier is appointed and he promises the parents he will whip the boys into line and make them good scouts, but proceeds to force them to pose for naked pictures with a threat to beat them up if they let this slip.

[...]

Big Gay Al sues the Mountain Scouts, while Mr. Grazier is revealed to be a pedophile who goes by the name “Mr. Slippyfist” and is arrested. Although the Colorado State Supreme Court rules in Big Gay Al’s favor orders the Mountain Scouts to take him back, he refuses, saying that he loves scouts too much to impose his will on them, and while they should be talked into changing their mind and he begs people not to cut their funding or support for the scouts, adding that as the Scouts are a private organization, he believes it is their libertarian right to form their own policies on homosexuality. This causes Gloria Allred to brand Big Gay Al as a homophobe.

If you have about 20 minutes to spare check the video out. But for now, I leave you with this lame post…just think of it as a open thread.