We Are In Agreement

A nation of people who are free. And by "people" we mean "people who could vote." So, you, know, not the blacks.

Victor Davis Hanson in the National Review discusses American Exceptionalism.

Perhaps it would be better, when speaking of an early rural [U.S.] society, to talk of an absence of peasantry: We had no concept of a large underclass of only quasi-free people attached to barons as serfs; instead, yeomen agrarians were the Jeffersonian ideal, a nation of independent farmers rather than peasants

Lol! Sorry slaves!

H/t to C. Friedersdorf

US Soldier Awarded Cheney "Excellence in Parenting" Award

U.S. soldier 'waterboarded his own daughter, 4, because she couldn't recite alphabet'

Troubling News for 6 Year Old Girls

"Tea Party" has been copyrighted

Representative Steve King is insane

Rep. Steve King: ACORN scandal bigger than Watergate

Related: Alan Grayson's recent deuce in the capital men's room more destructive than Kissinger's secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos.

John Birch Society to co-sponser 2010 CPAC

This is great,in 1964 W. F. Buckley wrote of JBS:

How can the John Birch Society be an effective political instrument while it is led by a man whose views on current affairs are, at so many critical points . . . so far removed from common sense? That dilemma weighs on conservatives across America. . . . The underlying problem is whether conservatives can continue to acquiesce quietly in a rendition of the causes of the decline of the Republic and the entire Western world which is false, and, besides that, crucially different in practical emphasis from their own.

And now they're co-sponsoring CPAC.

Sarah Palin has shifted the center of the Republican party so far to the right that Oliver North is suspect.

I must say it would be nice not to have an opposition party of fucking psychos.

Thanks Glenn

Burn poor people, burn

Fox News ridicules ACORN for giving smoke detectors to poor people.

Episode of the A-Team unfolding in Hardin, Montana

Yeah, so, this paramilitary force (American Police Force) took over prison in Montana and are acting as the town's de facto police.

The story is totally weird and shadowy, the whole things sounds like Knight Rider meets the A-Team meets Jericho.

Anyway, APF's website is awesome. The ad-copy appears to have been written by Bulgarian spy novelists using Google Translator.

APF offers a variety of military, security and private investiagtion services, here are some highlights:

From the Services section, under "Check Your Mate" (Cheating Spouse)

Infidelity, Adultery, Cheating, and being unfaithful might all have a different definition in your mind but at APF its a category all by its lonesome. Married husbands and wives will typically call untrustworthy loved ones adultery or infidelity. In the non-marital relationships its commonly known as cheating and we can help you figure out what's really going on.

Bolding mine, adorable poetic flourish with "all by its lonesome."

Specific services offered:

Surveillance
Polygraph Examination Lie Detection
Semen Testing
Bodily Fluid Testing
DNA for Hair and Skin
Covert Pregnancy Testing
Surface Drug Testing
Photos of Unknown Subjects
Communications Activity
Computer Usage
Internet Usage
Email Tracing
Identity Verification
Covert and Undercover Assignments

Not sure why they need separate entries for "semen testing" and "bodily fluid testing," but I can only speak from my own experience.

Also, "covert pregnancy testing?" Wtf?

APF also offers Ransom and Kidnapping, which I guess is more honest than "extraordinary rendition." The graphic accompanying this section is great, it looks like my dad escorting some LDS members to the door.

APF also offers Forensic Testing. An area that allows them to work with their favorite subject: cum.

APF offers forensic services criminal cases involving murder and rape. We also provide a service to catch cheating spouses including dna investigations with body fluid, semen testing, and hair follicles.

All in all, a comprehensive security outfit capable of solving all your paramilitary needs, especially if those needs happen to fall in an area of the world that has just been jerked-off on.

Finally, do not underestimate SPF, they thrive on adversity and competition, but don't take my work for it. From their Our Competitors section:

Our competitors are efficient diligent, & attentative. They make us search for ways to improve our services. Our competitors would take our business if they could. This keeps us alert to what we have. If we didn't have competitors we'd be incompetent & unattentative; we need the discipline they enforce on us. We salute "Our Competitors", they have been good to us, God Bless them all.

Chilling.

They're not saying "boo"

They're saying "coup."

In fairness, maybe EVERYONE is a gay child predator

Conservative blogger Dan Rhiel, who may or may not be a a gay child predator, says that Bill Sparkman, the slain census worker, may have been a gay child predator.

But he also may not have been.

Dan writes:

You'd think a moonshiner, or Meth head would have just buried the guy. Why hang him and invite the Feds into it by writing Fed on his chest? Why strip him naked and bind and gag him, which has serious sexual overtones?

Why Dan finds a bound-and-gagged man to be "seriously sexual" is between him and his therapist. As to why a meth-head would take the time to write "fed" on Sparkman's chest, I can't be certain.

For that matter, why would a meth-head disassemble and reassemble their toaster? Why would they clean their oil-filter with a q-tip? Why would the government plant microscopic GPS aphids in their cheeks?

The point is, once you start throwing "whys" at meth-related conduct, you fall down a slippery, paranoid, (if tidy) slope.

Rhiel continues

I have no idea what happened, but from the reporting I've seen, neither does anyone else. If he adopted a boy as a single man, or was married and split with the wife and kids, who knows. But I never assume I know a story or motive until I know it. Right now we don't. I'm simply speculating on one possible alternative, however impolite.

Bolding mine. Rhiel concedes he doesn't know a thing about the story, but neither does anyone else. That said, why not make the leap to gay sex? With children?

The condition of the body and his being naked also seems curious.

I bet it does.

Why strip someone down to their socks only to kill them?

What a waste.

The strangest quote I've seen in all the reporting around apparently murdered Census worker Bill Sparkman is this one from his Mother located in Florida.

“I have my own ideas, but I can't say them out loud. Not at this point,” she said. “Right now, what I'm doing, I'm just waiting on the FBI to come to some conclusion.”

She didn't say she had been advised not to speculate. Being in Florida she has nothing to fear from Kentucky locals, so why the secrecy? Add that to the somewhat mysterious way this case is being revealed by authorities and whatever is behind it, I wouldn't be surprised if there's another surprise in store here.

And for Dan Rhiel, the only conceivable surprise would be of the sex-with-children variety.

This last part is just...bizarre...

Finally Sparkman's bio and work history suggests at the least he was not just your average guy. No teaching degree, no full-time means of employment and no wife or kids so far as I am aware. But he certainly did gravitate towards children. I can't help but wonder if this wasn't a revenge killing disguised to look like something else. If he did have issues in this regard and messed with the wrong kid, it isn't as if something like that can be ruled out until we know more.

Until we know that Sparkman was not a child-predator, we have to assume that he may have been, because we don't know that he isn't.