Thursday, March 15, 2007

Hillary, a Day Late

Yesterday, when asked whether she agreed with General Pace's remark that homosexuality was immoral, Hillary Clinton replied "Well I'm going to leave that to others to conclude,"

That didn't go over so well in some places.

Today she kinda, sorta, issued a clarification by saying she should have followed the example of a Republican Senator who immediately said he strongly disagreed with the General's statement.
"I have heard from many of my friends in the gay community that my response yesterday to a question about homosexuality being immoral sounded evasive. My intention was to focus the conversation on the failed don't ask, don’t tell policy. I should have echoed my colleague Senator John Warner's statement forcefully stating that homosexuality is not immoral because that is what I believe."

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

General Pace, Homophobe

General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thinks homosexuals are immoral and probably shouldn't be in the military. When asked, his staff said he was expressing his personal opinion and has no intention of apologizing.
"I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts," Pace was quoted as saying in the newspaper interview. "I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way."

"As an individual, I would not want (acceptance of gay behavior) to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else's wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior," he said.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

At USC, Free Speech Costs a Buck

The USC campus has restrictions on free speech. They only allow it within certain "Free Speech Zones". Outside of that zone, the University asserts students to not have the right to free speech. Members of the USC Free Culture Club don't like that and decided on a simple form of protest.
In a mild act of civil disobedience, USC Free Culture posted flyers outside of the "Free Speech Zone" that stated simply "This is Not a Free Speech Zone." Our focus was to explore free speech on campus within the given rules (found here) while simultaneously arguing that USC’s controlled definitions of free speech run counter to "the development of human beings and society as a whole through the cultivation and enrichment of the human mind and spirit."

So now the University is threatening to levy a "1$ fine for every flyer posted in violation of policy". Cory at BoingBoing says this is a small price to pay and suggests it might be time to sponsor some more flyers.
Seems like a bargain to me. Maybe we should start a "sponsor a THIS IS NOT A FREE SPEECH ZONE flier" fund -- for $1, someone will laser-print a flier with your sponsorship info on it and post it outside of the USC Free Speech Zone. The $1 will go to paying the fine...

My bet is the fund is set up before day's end.

via BoingBoing and LAist

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

LA Times Passed on Domestic Spying Story

ABC News is reporting that Mark Klein, the AT&T technician who blew the whistle on the company's apparent cooperation with the NSA's domestic spying program, first took the story to the Los Angeles Times, where it was rejected by then-editor Dean Baquet, who is now the Washington Bureau Chief for the New York Times and who claims "government pressure played no role in my decision not to run the story." However, Klein doesn't seem to think that's the case.
Eventually, Klein says he decided to take his documents to the Los Angeles Times, to blow the whistle on what he calls "an illegal and Orwellian project." But after working for two months with LA Times reporter Joe Menn, Klein says he was told the story had been killed at the request of then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and then-director of the NSA Gen. Michael Hayden.

via Romenesko

Friday, March 02, 2007

Ann Coulter, John Edwards, and Faggots

Ann Coulter can't talk about faggots, but she really, really wants to.

Oh, and apparently Mitt Romney approves.