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Minority Party Gone Wild

I know the Republican party has been slowly overcome by wackos in the past decade or so. (Why not be generous?) But, as I was browsing the Huff Post's coverage of Sotomayor Day 1, I saw this list of witnesses who will be testifying at the behest of the two parties...

Majority (Democratic) Witnesses

Michael Bloomberg, Mayor, City of New York

-got it

Chuck Canterbury, National President, Fraternal Order of Police

-check

David Cone, former Major League Baseball pitcher

-Sotomayor ruled on an important case for MLB

JoAnne A. Epps, Dean, Temple University Beasley School of Law, on behalf of the National Association of Women Lawyers

-got it

Louis Freeh, former Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation

-yep

Michael J. Garcia, former U.S. Attorney, Southern District of New York

-makes sense

Wade Henderson, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

-huh? oh, it's the oldest civil rights org in the US

Patricia Hynes, President, New York City Bar Association

-check

Dustin McDaniel, Attorney General, State of Arkansas

-sure, okay

Robert Morgenthau, former District Attorney, New York County, New York

-check

Ramona Romero, National President, Hispanic National Bar Association

-yup

Congressman Jose E. Serrano, New York 16th District

-got it

Theodore M. Shaw, Professor, Columbia Law School

-teaches "advanced constitutional law"

Kate Stith, Lafayette S. Foster Professor of Law, Yale Law School

-expert on federal sentencing guidelines and other legal procedure

Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

-sure

Minority (Republican) Witnesses

Linda Chavez, President, Center for Equal Opportunity

-as "the nation's only Conservative think tank exclusively devoted to issues of race and ethnicity," they are anti-affirmative action, anti-bilingual education, anti-anything-that's-not-in-English

Sandy Froman, Esq., Former President, National Rifle Association of America

-self-explanatory, but, I've included a link so you can see they're nice new flash splash page

Dr. Stephen Halbrook, Attorney

-basically, the NRA's fave lawyer

Tim Jeffries, Founder, P7 Enterprises

-he runs a management consulting company emphasising "planning, priorities, performance, passion, perseverance, perspective and pfun"

Peter Kirsanow, Commissioner, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

-yep

David Kopel, Esq., Independence Institute

-runs a think tank that addresses "a variety of public policy issues from a free-market, pro-freedom perspective." In other words: GUNS.

John McGinnis, Professor, Northwestern University School of Law

-right-wing foreign law esxpert

Neomi Rao, Professor, George Mason University School of Law

-right-wing foreign law expert

Frank Ricci, Director of Fire Services, ConnectiCOSH (Connecticut Council on Occupational Safety and Health)

-this is the guy who sued for reverse-discrimination (against white males), in firefighter promotion testing

David Rivkin, Esq., Partner, Baker Hostetler

-advocate of limitless Executive power

Nick Rosenkranz, Professor, Georgetown University School of Law

-right-wing foreign law expert

Ilya Somin, Professor, George Mason University School of Law

-radical libertarian law professor, BFF of John McGinnis, anti-eminent domain freedom-fighter

Lieutenant Ben Vargas, New Haven Fire Department

-I'm gonna guess he's familiar with Ricci v. Destefano

Dr. Charmaine Yoest, Americans United for Life

-anti-abortion activist group

The Democratic witnesses are pretty self explanatory and unexciting: Various law enforcement officials including US Attorneys and a former CIA director; academics from Yale, Columbia and Temple; the Mayor of NYC; big-wigs from the Hispanic groups of the Bar and Congress; and, okay fine, a MLB pitcher.

The Republican witnesses, on the other hand, are sometimes obtusely-named and very exciting:academics from that great bastion of thought, GMU; groups that are anti-anything-that-helps-minorities; people who learn international laws so they can proclaim their lameness; gunslingers and the lawyers who love them; and, of course, anti-abortion groups.

Anyway, I found it helpful to see it spelled out in this way. What a joke.

"Yo No Busco Hombres."

According to Google Translator, she's saying: "I was not looking for men. It's like if I wanted to try something because if you knew." But that still doesn't explain the Darth Vader. (Please click the image to view it full size.)

Did Everyone Enjoy Their Fourth of July?

Gay Marriages

"Gay marriages." That's what Bob Sheer (of Truthdig.com) said this week in a discussion on KCRW's Left, Right, & Center. It was a bit jarring. I've grown accustomed to hearing people say "gay marriage" in these sort of exchanges. But, his use of the plural revealed a pretty funtamental flaw in the rhetoric. "Gay marriage" is a term for the debate, not the marriages. So, I'm gonna use the plural from now on. Gay couples - Sung and me, my sister and Kriston, Ellen and Portia, Bert and Ernie - should be acknowledged as individual couples and not just an issue.

But Whatever They Offer You, Don't Feed the Plants!

There have been a handful of books (Winesburg Ohio, The Magic Christian, Switch Bitch), movies (Videodrome, Supervixens, War of the Roses), and plays (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Blasted, Adaptation) that have made a truly indelible impression on me. Stuff that's caught my imagination and compelled me to watch it over and over, to study it, to imitate it.

Recently, Sung reminded me that Little Shop of Horrors was one of those movies. I loved the cartoony ye-oldey look. I loved the music and had the soundtrack memorized. I especially loved the "fun" way the movie combined aspects of death (dark, violent, and slightly obscene conent) with comedy. I'd never seen anything that hit quite that note and still haven't. I mean, this was way before South Park, Beavis, et al.

Then Sung (who might just love this movie more than I do, god bless him) found this online... a reconstructed version of an original, unreleased ending. Unfortunately, the deleted sequences are in B&W with band-aided sound editing and effects. Still, though, it's amazing to see how ambitious and edgy the the project really was. Orson Welles, Tokyo sci-fi, Aldous Huxley, it all comes into play. And how fucking awesome that all those 1980's A-listers - Jim Belushi, Steve Martin, Rick Moranis, Christopher Guest, Bill Murray, John Candy - signed up for it? Not to even mention Alan Menken and Frank fucking Oz. Anyhoo...

(How gorgeous is Ellen Greene's performance? Truly inspired stuff.)

(Oh, and don't write to tell me it was a musical first. Duh.)

He Will Rape Them with His Mouth

This made me laugh so hard, I had to share it. I love how it begins at very ridiculous and goes downhill from there.