Tuesday Open Thread [9.2.14]
The Washington Post published Five things to know about Delaware’s election, noting that there are no Bidens on the ballot and noting that Beau Biden has gotten large contributions from Peter Angelos and the Buccini Brothers. They also note that Brenda Mayrack seems to be cruising in this primary and that Kevin Wade might be tilting at windmills. Smink has a COD endorsement? Yikes.
What is it with conservatives rallying around their worst elements? The conservative culture tolerates a great deal of dysfunction, especially the kind of dysfunction that preys on children. If Biden’s office can make this case, they damn well better bring it.
Friends and supporters of Eric Bodenweiser are mounting a public campaign to dissuade prosecutors from re-trying his sex abuse case after the first trial ended in a hung jury.
The backers launched a website, freebodie.com, which reviews the trial’s testimony in a light favorable to Bodenweiser, 55, of Georgetown. The site allows visitors to sign a digital petition calling on Attorney General Beau Biden to halt work towards a second trial. Prosecutors announced on July 15 that they would re-try him.
This has got to count as one of the biggest overreactions ever:
Early last week the school board was alerted that one of its eighth grade language arts teachers at Mace’s Lane Middle School had several aliases. Police said that under those names, he wrote two fictional books about the largest school shooting in the country’s history set in the future. Now, Patrick McLaw is placed on leave.
Dr. K.S. Voltaer is better known by some in Dorchester County as Patrick McLaw, or even Patrick Beale. Not only was he a teacher at Mace’s Lane Middle School in Cambridge, but according to Dorchester Sheriff James Phillips, McLaw is also the author of two books: “The Insurrectionist” and its sequel, “Lillith’s Heir.”
Those books are what caught the attention of police and school board officials in Dorchester County. “The Insurrectionist” is about two school shootings set in the future, the largest in the country’s history.
Phillips said McLaw was taken in for an emergency medical evaluation. The sheriff would not disclose where McLaw is now, but he did say that he is not on the Eastern Shore. The same day that McLaw was taken in for an evaluation, police swept Mace’s Lane Middle School for bombs and guns, coming up empty.
The teacher here has not been arrested or charged with anything — yet according to this, law enforcement will be at this school for the near future. Still, there’s got to be a difference between writing about a school shooting because you are indulging in a fantasy you want to live out vs. writing fiction as Art. I mean, there are plenty of movies that take school violence as their subject and most of them are not 400 years in the future. How many of the creators of these are under surveillance from law enforcement? There may be more to this story, but I really hope this man has a Very Good Lawyer.
I’m just going to put this out here:
Born children deserve no protections from the GOP it seems. Just unborn kids that can be used to control women
So strange. The Republicans used to have sensible candidates who were liberal on social issues and the environment. Now these angry faux religious nuts are all that the party wants to put forth. I’m not dedicated to a political party and would like to be able to have a choice but no reasonable, educated sensible person is going to vote for these clowns
Might New York be the next state with a Wu-Tenant Governor?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/opinion/timothy-wu-for-lieutenant-governor.html
Mouse, Agreed. It was pretty infuriating to see “sensible” Republicans nurturing the lunatic fringe throughout the 1990’s. Giving them some crumbs here and an occasional fatherly pat on the head in recognition their capacity to do grunt work.
While the sober, level headed conservatives occupied themselves with lofty goals like eliminating the estate tax, the faux religious nuts were sharpening sticks into spears.
I wonder if the trailer park republican class that supports eliminating the estate tax understands that it exempts like the first 1.5 million, lol
Of course they clearly don’t understand the difference between income tax and capital gains tax
I am just sick my 12 yo has come home today to ask me if I knew about ISIS and the 2nd beheading. Covered today, responsibly in school–but yikes the world’s current events seem so much closer than when I was 12. And I don’t think we were told beheading……maybe napalm, but there seemed such a distance to the horror. CNN, real time, 24 hr. coverage, cell phones all have just let the air out of this big globe.