They did it.

150 years for Bernie Madoff!

He ain't never getting out.

From MSNBC: fascinating story by a man arrested in the Stonewall riots 40 years ago. Boy, look at those pictures of him from the '60s. What a cutie he was!

From NYTimes: Charles Blow on the new euphemism sweeping the nation:

...At the end of the day, aside from the dereliction of duty and malfeasance, this, for me, would be a private matter. That is if it were not for the appalling hypocrisy of yet another social conservative saying one thing while doing another.

There are Democratic sex scandals to be sure, but Democrats didn’t build a franchise on holier-than-thou moral rectitude. The Republicans did. They used sexual morality as a weapon and now it’s shooting them in the foot....

From Newsweek: Fareed Zakaria on Iran:

The situation in Iran is more complex. Democracy clearly works against this repressive regime. The forces of religion, however, are not so easily aligned against it. Many, possibly most, Iranians appear to be fed up with theocracy. But that does not mean they are fed up with religion. It does appear that the more openly devout Iranians—the poor, the rural—voted for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Definitely deceased: Farrah Fawcett. Michael Jackson.

Not deceased: Jeff Goldblum, Harrison Ford.

What a weird day.

You know, I was actually concerned about the weird disappearance of Mark Sanford, governor of South Carolina. The guy apparently up and disappeared with no word to his staff. His lieutenant governor doesn't know where he is, and more importantly did not know whether he's empowered to act in case of an emergency. His family alleged not to know where he was. There were weird stories about "off hiking the Appalachian Trail."

I thought the guy might have actually been having some problems. Of the mental variety. At first there was some hinting around about a breakdown. So I tried to be nice. I made no "Where's Waldo" jokes. I smiled at Rachel's report last night on the "missing Kent Jones," but thought, "Oh, that's not nice."

And finally today we know. No illness. Just another Republican having an extramarital affair while extolling the virtues of (white Christian heterosexual) family values.

When does the hypocrisy end?

Update: Chris Cilizza at The Fix thinks the press conference showed Sanford is in the middle of some sort of breakdown.

Bill Moyers has a very informative history of "health care reform" going back to the Carter administration here. Please watch and learn!

So now the story is poor David Carradine might not have killed himself. It may have been a heart attack/mishap during autoerotic asphyxiation.

Why do I know this?

What happened to the good old days of covering stuff like this up? God damn, the man deserves a little basic dignity. Does his family want this all over the news? Is this the way his children want to think about him?

There is absolutely no news value in reporting this story, except for prurient tale-telling, and reducing a decent guy to a joke for morning radio DJ's.

RIP, Mr. Carradine. And my heart goes out to his family.

From World Entertainment News Network:

* CARRADINE FOUND DEAD AT HOTEL

Actor DAVID CARRADINE has been found dead at a hotel in Thailand.

The Kill Bill star, 72, was staying in Bangkok while shooting his new movie Stretch.

Local media in Thailand initially reported Carradine had committed suicide by hanging himself in his hotel suite, but the star's agent has told a U.S. TV channel he believes the actor died of natural causes.

Carradine was born John Arthur Carradine in Hollywood, but changed his name to David after launching his acting career following a course in drama at San Francisco State University.

He appeared in dozens of films and TV dramas but was best known for his roles as Kwai Chang Caine in the 1970s series Kung Fu and as the title character from Quentin Tarantino's martial arts movies Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2.

Carradine leaves behind a wife, Annie.

Hey, looks like I'm back! All I needed was something substantive to voice my opinion on.

And today it's Edmund Andrews of the NY Times again. ( Clipped for length )

From the WaPo:

The poorer you are, the more things cost. More in money, time, hassle, exhaustion, menace. This is a fact of life that reality television and magazines don't often explain.

So we'll explain it here. Consider this a primer on the economics of poverty.

"The poor pay more for a gallon of milk; they pay more on a capital basis for inferior housing," says Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.). "The poor and 100 million who are struggling for the middle class actually end up paying more for transportation, for housing, for health care, for mortgages. They get steered to subprime lending. . . . The poor pay more for things middle-class America takes for granted."

Poverty 101: We'll start with the basics.

Like food: You don't have a car to get to a supermarket, much less to Costco or Trader Joe's, where the middle class goes to save money. You don't have three hours to take the bus. So you buy groceries at the corner store, where a gallon of milk costs an extra dollar.

A loaf of bread there costs you $2.99 for white. For wheat, it's $3.79. The clerk behind the counter tells you the gallon of leaking milk in the bottom of the back cooler is $4.99. She holds up four fingers to clarify. The milk is beneath the shelf that holds beef bologna for $3.79. A pound of butter sells for $4.49. In the back of the store are fruits and vegetables. The green peppers are shriveled, the bananas are more brown than yellow, the oranges are picked over.

(At a Safeway on Bradley Boulevard in Bethesda, the wheat bread costs $1.19, and white bread is on sale for $1. A gallon of milk costs $3.49 -- $2.99 if you buy two gallons. A pound of butter is $2.49. Beef bologna is on sale, two packages for $5.)

Prices in urban corner stores are almost always higher, economists say. And sometimes, prices in supermarkets in poorer neighborhoods are higher. Many of these stores charge more because the cost of doing business in some neighborhoods is higher. "First, they are probably paying more on goods because they don't get the low wholesale price that bigger stores get," says Bradley R. Schiller, a professor emeritus at American University and the author of "The Economics of Poverty and Discrimination."...

Hubby sent me this NY Times magazine article, which will appear in Sunday's paper. It's written by one of their economic reporters.

If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I. As an economics reporter for The New York Times, I have been the paper’s chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years. I watched Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, at close range. I wrote several early-warning articles in 2004 about the spike in go-go mortgages. Before that, I had a hand in covering the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Russia meltdown in 1998 and the dot-com collapse in 2000. I know a lot about the curveballs that the economy can throw at us.

But in 2004, I joined millions of otherwise-sane Americans in what we now know was a catastrophic binge on overpriced real estate and reckless mortgages. Nobody duped or hypnotized me. Like so many others — borrowers, lenders and the Wall Street dealmakers behind them — I just thought I could beat the odds. We all had our reasons. The brokers and dealmakers were scoring huge commissions. Ordinary homebuyers were stretching to get into first houses, or bigger houses, or better neighborhoods. Some were greedy, some were desperate and some were deceived.

As for me, I had two utterly compelling reasons for taking the plunge: the money was there, and I was in love. It was August 2004, just as the mortgage party was getting really good. I was 48 years old and eager to start a new chapter in my life with Patricia Barreiro, who was then my fiancée.

Or in other words, "I was stupid, and I was stupid."( The stupidity, it hurts my eyes )

This is not cool. Found on Balloon Juice:

Via Sullivan, this tidbit:

Wisconsin police can attach GPS to cars to secretly track anybody’s movements without obtaining search warrants, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

However, the District 4 Court of Appeals said it was “more than a little troubled” by that conclusion and asked Wisconsin lawmakers to regulate GPS use to protect against abuse by police and private individuals.

As the law currently stands, the court said police can mount GPS on cars to track people without violating their constitutional rights—even if the drivers aren’t suspects.

Officers do not need to get warrants beforehand because GPS tracking does not involve a search or a seizure, Judge Paul Lundsten wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel based in Madison.

Prediction: nothing will happen about this until a Wisconsin cop is caught tracking women for personal reasons (thinks his wife/gf is cheating, is stalking a certain woman, etc.), and then there will be enough outrage for the legislature to do something.

Any of you legal eagles care to comment?

Updated at 3:23 pm:: New York disagrees with Wisconsin.

From Washington Monthly:

Both chambers of the state legislature Maine passed a bill allowing gay marriage, but it was unclear whether the state's Democratic governor, John Baldacci, would sign the measure into law. Baldacci was on record opposing gay marriage, but did he feel strongly enough to veto a bill endorsed by the state's democratically elected lawmakers?

Fortunately, no. The bill became law this morning.

Gov. John Baldacci on Wednesday signed a gay marriage bill passed just hours before by the Maine Legislature.

Baldacci made his announcement within an hour of the Maine Senate giving its final approval to LD 1020. The Senate voted 21-13 in favor of the measure after a short debate.

"In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions," Governor Baldacci said in a written statement. "I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage."

The House of Representatives gave its approval on a 89-57 vote Tuesday.

Maine is now the fifth state to approve marriage equality. Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Iowa did so through the courts, and Maine joins Vermont as the two states to approve gay marriage through the legislative process.

Remember Maine!

Keith has gotta be thinking, "People may think I'm an asshole, but I've yet to be banned from any countries!" From The Beeb:

US 'hate list' DJ to sue Britain

A US radio talk show host says he will sue the British government for defamation after being placed on a list of people banned from entering the UK.

Conservative political commentator Michael Savage, real name Michael Alan Weiner, is one of 22 people barred for fostering extremism or hate.

He has described the Islamic holy book the Koran as "a book of hate" and questioned cases of autism.

Mr Weiner said he opposed violence and objected to being linked to murderers.

He told his radio audience that he was intending to sue British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who he described as the "lunatic ... Home Secretary of England".

"To link me up with skinheads who are killing people in Russia, to put me in league with Hamas murderers who kill people on buses is defamation," he said.

In an article posted on his website, he said he did not advocate violence but "traditional values".

He wrote: "What does that say about the government of England? It says more about them than it says about me."

Lawyers say it would be difficult for Mr Weiner to bring an action for defamation given that the list was issued with the authority of the British government.

They note that English law recognises that there are cases when there is a legitimate and public interest in information being made widely available, and that unless the government acted out of improper motives for placing him on the list, any libel claim is unlikely to get very far.

David Ogden Stiers -- Charles Emerson Winchester III from MASH -- has finally come out of the closet, at the tender age of 66.

Does anyone else remember that moving episode of Star Trek: Next Generation he did, where he and Lwaxana Troi fell in love, but he was from a culture where the people committed suicide at the age of 60, and his birthday was in two days? Sigh. That was so good.

Godspeed, Mr. Stiers!

Via Balloon Juice, Mark Halperin's "witty" comment on potential Supreme Court Justice nominees in an Obama Presidency:

White Men Need Not Apply

As the commenters say better than I could:

beltane: I have long despaired over the stunning lack of white men in positions of power. Out of nine Supreme Court justices, for example, only seven are white men. Alas and alack.

Ricky Bobby: Amazing to see this latent underlying racism start to bubble to the surface just after the first minority POTUS is elected. I am shocked I tell you, SHOCKED!

Hunter Gathers: I don’t know about the rest of you, but as as a member of the oppressed white male majority, I will pitch a fit if Obama doesn’t choose David Duke. Or the ghost of Lee Atwater.

Supreme Court Justice David Souter to retire at the end of this term.

Cue the screeching over the nominations, filibustering, out and out lying.

Ugh.

Here's hoping the guys who vetted Cabinet nominees aren't let anywhere near the list of Justice nominees.

Thanks to Mr. David Shuster for pointing out this Kevin Drum post on Mother Jones:

Like everyone else, I was amused when Texas Governor Rick Perry, a Republican, requested help from the CDC with swine flu medication just a week or so after he said that the "federal government has become oppressive" and that if Texans started considering seceding from the union, "who knows what might come out of that." Perry didn't seem to realize that throwing off the yoke of the federal government would mean no more help when the going got tough.

Today comes news that Perry has issued a disaster declaration for the state of Texas, the first step in getting assistance from federal agencies like FEMA, DHS, and HHS. I decided to take a look at how many times the federal government has bailed Texas out during Perry's tenure. The results are pretty incredible.

According to FEMA's website, Texas has been the site of 13 "major disaster declarations" since Perry took office following George W. Bush's departure in 2001. That includes five instances of severe storms and flooding, two tropical storms, one "extreme wildfire threat," and Hurricanes Claudette, Rita, Dolly, and Ike. (Texas received significant federal assistance following Hurricane Katrina, but it did not appear on FEMA's website in the "major disaster declaration" category.)

Not only that, but apparently Texas has received more FEMA aid than any other state.

So maybe it is a good idea if Texas secedes. Maybe we'll save some money, and have more to spread around when the next hurricane hits or earthquake explodes.

From Balloon Juice today:

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.’s appearance at a Michigan county Republican Party event was scrapped this week after the county chairwoman said that hosting the moderate Utah governor would mean abandoning the party’s conservative principles.

Kent County Republican Party Chairwoman Joanne Voorhees abruptly canceled the party fundraiser scheduled for Saturday.

“The voters want and expect us to stand on principle and return to our roots. Unfortunately, by holding an event with Governor Huntsman, we would be doing the exact opposite,” Voorhees wrote in an e-mail quoted in The Grand Rapids Press.

Voorhees did not specify which issues she felt were contrary to the party’s principles and did not return messages left at the party headquarters and on her cell phone.

The group Campaign for Michigan Families praised the cancellation, attributing it to Huntsman’s support of civil unions, and urged the Oakland and Kalamazoo county parties, where Huntsman is also scheduled to speak this weekend, to do the same.

Jon Huntsman, you all will recall, is the Governor of Utah, and he has an 82% 84% approval rating as Governor and is a very viable way forward for the current GOP. Say it again. He supports civil unions and has an 80+% approval rating. In Utah. He is conservative on almost every issue, but because he supports civil unions, he isn’t pure enough for the current GOP. A telegenic, authentic outsider who isn’t batshit insane. You would think the Republicans would be running to him.

This is the big problem for Republicans. Almost the entire party apparatus at the state level has been taken over by a bunch of lunatics, and few people outside of Georgia and Texas can win a state primary and then go on to win a statewide election. The reason Specter switched yesterday was because the dwindling band of sociopaths who still call themselves Republican in Pennsylvania are so detached from reality, so far removed from the mainstream, and so convinced of the utter infallibility of their own bizarre brand of “conservatism,” that someone like Jon Huntsman or Arlen Specter, who deviated slightly on a few issues here and there, just isn’t pure enough for them....

...The only people left in the Republican party are crazier than an outhouse rat and have teabags hanging from their hunting cap. They are the people who feverishly emailed each other stories about Obama’s birth certificate, and who are convinced that joking about Obama’s teleprompter and making impassioned speeches about earmark reform are the only route to electoral recovery. They think Michelle Bachman is on to something and the Colbert Report is truth.

This is only going to get worse.

And this from the comments:

I read earlier today that Arlen Specter voted with his party “only” 65% of the time.

Apparently, siding with the Democrats one-third of the time makes you a RINO.

It is truly stunning to watch. A five-term Senator states publicly that he cannot get reelected as a Republican in his state because he isn't ideologically pure enough, and James Inhofe thinks this is proof of a Republican comeback. These people have absolutely no grasp of reality anymore.

OK, so back in February, Governor Jindal of Louisiana ridiculed stimulus spending, and specific items such as "$140 million for something called 'volcano monitoring.'"

A month later? Mount Redoubt -- a volcano, in Alaska -- exploded.

Then, as The Nation points out:

When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year's emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.

Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse -- with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing. Indeed, they suggested, pandemic preparation was essential to any responsible plan for renewing the U.S. economy.

But former White House political czar Karl Rove and key congressional Republicans -- led by Maine Senator Susan Collins -- aggressively attacked the notion that there was a connection between pandemic preparation and economic recovery.

Now, as the World Health Organization says a deadly swine flu outbreak that apparently began in Mexico but has spread to the United States has the potential to develop into a pandemic, Obey's attempt to secure the money seems eerily prescient.

And partisan attacks on his efforts seem not just creepy, but dangerously short-sighted....

Is there anything else the Republicans have been hammering on spending-wise? So we can be prepared? Down with funding for locusts, tsunami research, earthquake preparedness...?