Happy Thanksgiving! Today you’ll stuff yourself with turkey and watch football while figuring out which sales to go to tomorrow. It’s the most American of holidays!
A Minnesota legislator with a loaded gun was found near a Planned Parenthood clinic. Don’t worry though, he was just looking for his girlfriend!
A Minnesota lawmaker is trying to explain why he showed up at a Planned Parenthood with a loaded gun. He says he just happened to pick that parking lot.
Surveillance cameras at the Planned Parenthood in St. Paul spotted Representative Tom Hackbarth of Cedar, Minn., parking his pickup and getting out with a .38 Smith and Wesson on his right hip.
At the link you can see the surveillance photo of Mr. Hackbarth getting out of his truck carrying the weapon. His explanation of what he was doing was bizarre. He wasn’t paying a visit to Planned Parenthood he just happened to park there. He was looking for his girlfriend.
Hackbarth was apparently on the hunt for his girlfriend whom he’d recently met online.
“She gave me some line of baloney, and I thought, ‘well, she’s fibbing to me.’ You could tell, and I thought, ‘well, I’m going to check it out.’ and I went there to see if she was around and her vehicle was not there. And I was just checking on her,” he said.
The police report says he may have been jealous about another man, which is something Hackbarth denies.
Police say Hackbarth exhibited the behavior of a stalker: angry, looking for a woman, with a fully loaded gun.
I guess some of his story checks out because police gave his weapon back (he has a carry permit). If he was really “looking” for his girlfriend I hope she has filed for a restraining order at least.
Alex Pareene, who writes at Salon‘s War Room has put together a list called the “Hack 30”. The Hack 30 is described this way:
The War Room Hack Thirty is a list of our least favorite political commentators, newspaper columnists and constant cable news presences, ranked roughly (but only roughly) in order of awfulness and then described rudely. Criteria for inclusion included writing the same column every week for 30 years, warmongering, joyless repetition of conventional wisdom, and making bad puns.
The list:
The Hack Thirty
1. Richard Cohen
2. Mark Halperin
3. Thomas Friedman
4. David Broder
5. Marty Peretz
6. Marc Thiessen
7. Jonah Goldberg
8. Maureen Dowd
9. Laura Ingraham
10. Peggy Noonan
11. George Will
12. John Fund
13. Roger Simon
14. David Ignatius
15. Mort Zuckerman
16. Michael Barone
17. Bill Kristol
18. Tina Brown
19. Joe Klein
20. Howard Fineman
21. S.E. Cupp
22. Tucker Carlson
23. Howard Kurtz
24. Dana Milbank
25. Mickey Kaus
26. Jeffrey Goldberg
27. Pat Caddell
28. Andrew Malcolm
29. Matt Bai
30. David Brooks
It’s hard to disagree with most of the list but William Kristol is only #17? No Charles Krauthammer? Bobo only #30? Controversy! Reading each entry is pretty fun, though. Each pundit has his own representative quote. Here’s #1 Richard Cohen:
Repeat offenses: Awful attempts at humor, clueless sexism, shameless use of lazy Op-Ed clichés, warmongering, generally being The Worst.
Representative quote:“First, let me state my credentials: I am a funny guy. This is well known in certain circles, which is why, even back in elementary school, I was sometimes asked by the teacher to “say something funny” — as if the deed could be done on demand. This, anyway, is my standing for stating that Stephen Colbert was not funny at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.”
Here’s the entry on David Broder (who would have been my pick for #1 Hack):
Repeat offenses: Radical centrism, repetition of conventional wisdom, pathological need to demonstrate that “both sides do it,” hatred of partisanship/democracy.
Representative quote:It may seem perverse to suggest that, at the very moment the House of Representatives is repudiating his policy in Iraq, President Bush is poised for a political comeback. But don’t be astonished if that is the case.
Happy Thanksgiving! Remember to wear stretchy pants and don’t overdose on pie.