The first step in the application process for permanent residency. Make sure you dot the i's or Ashcroft will take you away!

PLA has a must-read post about thimerosal, autism, and some other stuff he's too nice about.

From Whitehouse.org

Good afternoon. Please be seated. As you know, this morning Senator Trent Lott pretended to voluntarily relinquish the position of Senate Majority Leader. And while I was saddened to semi-violently force his hand in the matter, I was left with no other choice, what with the news media having suddenly awakened from a decades-long journalistic coma and started digging around in broad daylight for dirt on GOP racism. As such, much as I applaud Senator Lott's voting record on keeping the coloreds in their place and trying to nix that dumb Martin Lawrence King Day thing, unfortunately, the black cat's out of the body bag, and so Trent must go.

You know, in taking issue with Cass Ballenger's comments about McKinney, TAPPED doesn't exactly hit the, uh, right note when they admonish him for using the word "bitch" by telling him that this isn't a "rap video." WTF? I'm sure TAPPED could have said something like 'This is congress, not the locker room at Burning Tree' and made their point a bit better. No wonder Uppity Negro is starting to hate everyone...

Jesse's taking nominations for the year's 20 most annoying conservatives.

Only 20?...

Well, anyone who has followed the good Dr. Laura knows that in addition to her colorful past not matching her present moralizing, her present didn't either. Despite her insistence on the importance of family, and of honoring your father and mother in particular, it appears that she didn't communicate with her mother too often.

Bye bye Trent.


(phew...I told Mrs. Atrios he'd be gone be the weekend and she was starting to doubt my powers of prediction...)

Political Pulpit sends us this one.

Responding to Sen. Trent Lott's recent comments, Rep. Cass Ballenger told a newspaper he has had "segregationist feelings" himself after conflicts with a black colleague.

Ballenger, a North Carolina Republican, said former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., so provoked him that "I must I admit I had segregationist feelings."

"If I had to listen to her, I probably would have developed a little bit of a segregationist feeling," Ballenger told The Charlotte Observer in Friday's editions. "But I think everybody can look at my life and what I've done and say that's not true. I mean, she was such a bitch."

Clueless on so many levels...

Due to losing my power supply until those bastards at Dell send me another one, the lemonade stand here might operate at less than peak efficiency, including answering emails (which I'm pretty bad about anyway..)

Charles Kuffner lets you vote on my secret identity.

Next week: guess the location of the bat-cave!

Charles Dodgson notes the joys of old-fashioned cheap drugs. Beg your doctor for them, they might save your life. Besides, they're cheaper.

Eric Alterman pokes some holes in the Augusta conspiracy:

The anger, moreover, is curious because Times coverage has hardly been out of whack with the rest of the nation's newspapers. As of December 3 it had published four fewer stories than the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's thirty-seven, where Augusta is a local story, and just slightly more than the Los Angeles Times (twenty-seven pieces), USA Today (twenty-four) and the Washington Post (twenty-two).

(insert obligatory Mickey Kaus joke here)

Talk Left has some more about the INS roundups.

"One attorney, who said he saw a 16-year- old boy pulled from the arms of his crying mother, called it madness to believe the registration requirements would catch terrorists. "

"His mother is 6 1/2 months pregnant. They told the mother he is never going to come home -- she is losing her mind," said attorney Soheila Jonoubi, who spent Wednesday amid the chaos of the downtown INS office attempting to determine the status of her clients. Jonoubi said the mother has permanent residence status and that her husband, the boy's stepfather, is a U.S. citizen. The teenager came to the country in July on a student visa and was on track to gain permanent residence, the lawyer said."

A 16 year old who entered this country lawfully is permanently separated from his parents who are legal residents? That makes us sick to even think about. What country is this? We don't recognize it as America. But we can tell you whose country it is: Bush and Ashcroft's.

I couldn't believe the last time I got in an airplane. I had to wait 15 extra minutes while I was searched, and the jackbooted thugs in airline security took my keychain ornament. Sure, it was in the shape of a miniature gun, but IS THIS AMERICA?!?!!

"Cat-Killer" Frist is a major shareholder in HCA.


Yeah, it's in blind trust yadda yadda yadda, but it's all HCA stock practically.

Oh, and they perform ABORTIONS there. Freepers are pissed. I mean, how can you be against legal abortion when the family business does them....

All links broken, so if you're linking here just link to the main site and tell people what to look for, and if I've linked to anyone and it isn't working just go to their main page..

eRiposte has some must-read comments about the INS roundups.

Look folks - imagine you're dealing with your DMV. Imagine Flunky #1 messes up your driver's license application and tells you to come down to the office. Then, when you do go down to the office as requested Flunky #2 notices you drove there AND you don't have your driver's license (because, well, they screwed up your application). Flunky #2's boss recently decided they now had a no-tolerance policy on such things and he has you arrested and thrown in jail.

Then, of course it doesn't stop there. The special DMV judge operates his own special DMV court which has its own rules. Speedy trial? Nah. You could be there awhile. Who will support your family? Who knows. Chances for appeal? Not really.

The DMV judge deports you back to a country you haven't lived in for 10-15 years. Your American children wave goodbye, as does your wife.


But, enough of that, I've got to go work on my next Tech Central Station column about the inconveniences of airline security for business travelers and my Fox News column about startling new evidence that Michael Bellesiles is a pedophile.

Mark Kleiman responds to the Volokh conspiracy over the Sheetheads.

Rittenhouse Review takes Norah to task.

Argh. Laptop power supply suicide.

Ward Connerly - lunatic?

I think Herbert's column makes that point pretty clear:


"Supporting segregation need not be racist," said Mr. Connerly. "One can believe in segregation and believe in equality of the races."

oh boy.

Now we know where David Frum is coming from when he says:

There isn’t a more inspiring political figure in America than Ward Connerly.

Look, Connerly's statement just doesn't fly in the face the view of any non-mouthbreathing people that "separate but equal" is Not Okay - it also completely goes against his own "colorblind California" initiative. It's unclear how the collection of statistics by race is "racism" while explicity support of segregation is not. Where do they get these people?


Jesse has more.


And, while we're on this, the number of African-Americans who have been given bonus points and been admitted to this list of elite schools can't possibly come close to the number of legacy admissions.

Princeton: 12.4%; 11.6% (different years)
Yale: 13.4%
U. of Penn.: 10%
Brown: 7%; "about 10%" (different years)
Columbia: 6%
Cornell: 13%
U. of Chicago: "just over 5 percent"
Bucknell: 5.6%
Boston College: 12.1%
Holy Cross: 10.7%
Wake Forest: "about 8%"
Johns Hopkins: 12.4%
Notre Dame: 23%; 22% (different years)
Ithaca College: 1.8%
U. of Virginia: 12.6%
U. of Rochester: 5.4%
Amherst: 10%
Middlebury: 5%
Colby: 4%
Villanova: 7%

These legacy admissions are, at least at the moment, strongly racist in *effect* if not intent, as past admissions and discrimination practices by these schools ensure that a disproportionate number of white applicants are "legacies." The racist policies of the past still have their legacy (ha ha!) today.