From Gabriel Malor at Ace of Spades:

In March, 2002, Bishop walked into an International House of Pancakes in Peabody with her family, asked for a booster seat for one of her children, and learned the last seat had gone to another mother.

Bishop, according to a police report, strode over to the other woman, demanded the seat and launched into a profanity-laced rant.

When the woman would not give the seat up, Bishop punched her in the head, all the while yelling “I AM DR. AMY BISHOP.”

[Original story link at Boston.com]

I’m guessing — just a hunch — that the lovely Professor Bishop also thought that December 12, 2000 was the end of the world.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I’m leaving for DC tomorrow with Flip Video, iPhone, laptop & camera in hand.  The blogger meet-ups sound like they will be worth the trip alone.

If you own an iPhone and are interested in CPAC — There’s An App For That!

Just a reminder (for those attending, or tapping into CPAC coverage on the Web), I’m a panelist on the “Bank of Kev Blogger Free-For-All” on Thursday at 4:00PM in room 8212 of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel (the official CPAC hotel).  Fellow bloggers Tania Gail, Doug Welch, Joy McCann, Andrew Ian Dodge and Larry O’Connor are also on the panel.

In a related update, I’ll be a stop-by guest on Larry’s BlogTalkRadio show, “Stage Right” tomorrow night (Wednesday) after 10:00PM.  So tune in on the net if you are able.  I’m sure it will be a snarky-good time.

Also, the GOProud Happy Hour is tomorrow night from 6pm to 8pm at the bar in the Dupont Hotel.  And the GOProud booth at CPAC is #609.

*whew*

Since I’ve taken time off the “real job” to attend CPAC — I should be blogging up a storm from Wednesday night on.  Again, the highlight of my trip looks to be soon-to-be-Senator Marco Rubio speaking Thursday morning.   Oh yeah, and that panel I’m on!

– Bruce (GayPatriot)

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is scheduled to headline the Claremont Institute’s 30th Anniversary Dinner next month here in Los Angeles.  We at GayPatriot expect to be organizing a table, but we fear, given what we’ve read about the hatred of right-wingers harbor for homosexuals that this conservative think tank might cancel his appearance.

You see, now that in addition to opposing the Federal Marriage Amendment (back in 2004), welcoming his lesbian daughter’s same-sex partner into his family (and at public events), he now favors repeal of the ban on gays serving openly in the military.  Surely, conservatives, if left-wing stereotypes be accurate, will throw him under the bus.

They will no longer sing his praises when he criticizes the Administration on the Sunday morning talk shows.  They will no longer consider him a hero.  All past praise of this good man will be pushed down the memory hole.

They’ve been waiting for this moment for six years, these right-wing haters.

But, we, at GayPatriot, will continue to stand by this principled conservative, even if our ideological confrères on the right abandon him for his “homosexualist” agenda.

I have praised John Aravosis before for leading the boycott of the Democratic National Committee in order to spur the White House to act on gay issues.  Now, he’s doing something else I support, asking people to “contact the Human Rights Campaign on behalf of the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell‘”:

Publicly demand that President Obama take the lead in getting DADT repealed this year.

1) That means the President needs to state publicly that he wants Congress to repeal DADT this year; and

2) The President needs to take the lead in working with Congress to make sure the repeal happens.

If you’re a member or donor to HRC, tell them, and ask to speak to Members Services:

HRC Front Desk: (202) 628-4160
TTY: (202) 216-1572
Toll-Free: (800) 777-4723

HRC Web site comment page.

Given HRC’s resources, this appears to be a smart move, having the well-funded Washington group deploy on behalf of DADT repeal.  That said, I wonder at the competence of their officials.  The folks at Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) have shown a much better understanding of the way Washington works.

That said, if HRC could direct their efforts toward DADT repeal, it could make a difference.

While quoting Camille Paglia in my dissertation, I chanced up on another comment I had flagged in her landmark, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson:

Marriage is the social regulation and placement of sexual energies, which for [English poet Edmund] Spenser otherwise fall back into the anarchy of nature, rule by the will-to-power and survival of the fittest.  Marriage is the sanctified link between nature and society.  Sex in Spenser must always have a social goal.

Save perhaps for Jonathan Rauch, gay marriage advocates have yet to defend marriage in such terms.  Perhaps, they might get a better response from the American people if they did.

About my choice in the California gubernatorial primary, I wrote last week, “I always thought I’d just wait until a few days before the primary and vote for whoever was polling better against Moonbeam Brown.”  If the latest polls are any indication, that’ll be Meg Whitman: “The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely California voters finds Republican hopeful Whitman and Brown tied with 43% each.”  Her chief rival for the GOP nomination runs a full 12 points behind the state’s former Democratic Governor.

Considering that career politician Brown is a “known quantity to California voters, having served as secretary of state, two terms as governor, state Democratic party chairman, mayor of Oakland, and state attorney general“, he would have to be counted as the incumbent in this race, which means undecided voters are likely to break against him.

Looking less and less likely like he’ll have another turn as the Golden State’s chief executive.

(H/t:  Jim Geraghty.)

An incredible outcome of the most recent CNN poll, released today. The headline will likely be that President Obama’s approval rating may have hit its floor, stuck at 49%. Also of some note, the generic Democrat/Republican leaning is still a bit to the right (within the margin of error), so not much news there, either. People don’t like Congress, but despise Republicans a little bit less than Democrats. Small consolation, and in any case, yadda yadda.

But check this out:

“Do you think Barack Obama deserves to be reelected, or not?”

“Yes”: 44%
“No”: 52%

Think this’ll lead on CNN this evening? I guess we’ll see.
(h/t, NRO)

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

UPDATE: As I’d have imagined, the online story over at CNN.com in paragraph 11 out of a 13 paragraph story, makes a passing reference to this shocking number. Dare I torture myself by watching The Situation Room to see if it makes it on the air?

UP-UPDATE: Never let it be said that I’m not fair: Wolf mentioned this result as the second one from the poll in his reading of the story just now at the top of the hour. David Gergen even went into deapth with it. Credit where it’s due, and I’m grateful I don’t have to watch the whole show now!

So now it seems President Obama, so helpful in delivering victories in New Jersey and Virginia last year, and coming off the landslide success he helped bring Democrats in Massachusetts last month is heading West to help ailing Senators in my neck of the woods.

If I could speak on behalf of the challengers to Senators Bennet in Colorado and Reid in Nevada: “Thank God!”

Also, since all my Leftist friends always seem so eager to tout the importance of intelligence in elected officials (who better, of course, to run every aspect of our lives than the elite brainiacs), might I say that, with the recent track-record of President Obama “helping” Democrats in their quest for office, anybody foolish enough to feel he’s the answer to a win likely doesn’t fall into the category of super-smart anyway, so perhaps it all does work out in the end.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

As the bizarre picture of Amy Bishop, the nutjob who (allegedly) shot up the University of Alabama last week, becomes more clear, we get this interesting tid-bit from her old home-town (she’s originally from Braintree) newspaper, The Boston Herald:

A family source said Bishop, a mother of four children – the youngest a third-grade boy – was a far-left political extremist who was “obsessed” with President Obama to the point of being off-putting.

The first, and most obvious question is, sound like anybody you know?

And naturally, the second question is, given that DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano wants us to be afraid of any conservative militia member returning from deployment as a national security threat (how many, by the way, have shot up places since she issued that warning?), I wonder if she’s interested in re-evaluating her criteria now. I’m not holding my breath.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

UPDATE from Bruce (GayPatriot): Nick beat me too it. So my only addition to his post is to officially declare Professor Bishop as an “UNHINGED LIBERAL“. There are far too many these days….

UPDATE (from Dan):  This from an Instapundit reader:  if Bishop “had been a conservative it’d lead every evening news cast for two months.”  Althouse elaborates:  ”If Amy Bishop had turned out to be right wing, the MSM would have made a big deal out of it.”

Just over a year ago, California’s junior Senator praised herself and her Democratic colleagues in the Senate for passing the “stimulus,” “In the face of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the Congress has acted today to save or create jobs in California and across the nation.” Her office noted that, “The White House predicts that the legislation will save or create approximately 400,000 jobs in California.”

Well, today, no one really believes her or the White House.  According to Jim Hoft:

Just 6% of Americans believe the $787 “stimulus” boondoggle created any jobs according to a recent New York Times/CBS poll.

Over at the Washington Examiner, they expose the Administration’s doctoring the data on job creation:

Thousands of jobs were claimed to have been saved or created in phantom congressional districts and ZIP codes. Thousands of raises given to public employees were counted as jobs saved or created. The Examiner‘s David Freddoso and Mark Hemingway examined media investigations and found nearly 100,000 phony positions. In other words, the claim that 2 million jobs were saved or created by the Obama economic stimulus program was exposed as being about as trustworthy as the used car salesman’s assurance that the clunker on his lot was owned by a little old lady who only drove it to church on Sunday.

No wonder Americans are so dubious about the success of the Administration’s signature “stimulus.”

Score a big one for our intelligence services:

The Taliban’s top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to American government officials.

The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Kudos particularly to Leon Panetta, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and President Obama.  Does seem that he has a sound policy on Afghanistan.  And here, while our intelligence forces carried out the operations, the Administration authorized it.  As with his choice of General Stanley McChrystal, it seems Obama has tapped good people to fight the Taliban in this theater of operations.  Gotta give him credit for that.

And when Obama gets things right, the New York Times (who appears to have broken the story) shows its true colors.  First, read this passage: (more…)

How fitting I should discover this tip in the RealAge Tips of the Week on the same day that I finish writing the section on Poseidon in my dissertation (and his rivalry with the goddess Athene):

It quenches your thirst, it’s practically free, and it gives you energy to boot. What’s this magical energy drink? It’s water.

I first discovered the energy-boosting properties of water when I worked in D.C.  Finding myself slowing down in the afternoon, I would grab a cup of coffee, but that wouldn’t work. Not sure when I discovered that drinking a glass of water served as the necessary pickup.

I stopped drinking coffee in the afternoon and reached instead for a glass of water.  A new study confirms what I observed, showing “that slight dehydration can send your energy into a nosedive.”

Even today, when I’m feeling lethargic, I find a few gulps of water often do the trick.  Indeed, whenever I’m driving long distances and find myself thinking of nodding off, I stop and get some water (which often creates other problems down the road, but it does increase my alertness).

Guess Poseidon really does represent our instinctual energies–as I wrote in my dissertation.

A friend alerted me to the latest Rasmussen poll of Golden State voters, a survey  referenced in a previous post.  And, Ma’am, they sure don’t look good for you:

The fact that [Barbara] Boxer’s support has been stuck in the mid-40s for several surveys no matter which Republican she is matched against continues to suggest that the race for now is about her rather than about those who are running against her.

Now, get this, while the state’s junior Senate polls no better than 47% against the three Republicans vying for the chance to replace her, leading my gal Carly and her more serious rival Tom Campbell by four points (46-42) and (45-41) respectively, she runs more than 10 points behind President Obama’s approval rate in the Golden State.  Here, despite a sour economy with an unemployment rate topping 12%, one of the highest in the nation, the President’s approval stands at 58%, one of the highest in the nation.

Should that fall, as is likely if the economy here doesn’t pick up steam, Mrs. Boxer will assuredly go down with him.  And remember this, two weeks before voters in Massachusetts elected Scott Brown to the United States Senate, Rasmussen had him down by nine.  He won by five.  That’s a fourteen-point shift.

With the Republican base enthused and Americans in an anti-incumbent mood, we could expect a similar turnaround out here.  The more Republicans can focus on Mrs. Boxer’s record, reminding Californians of her support for high taxes and job-killing and land-parching regulation, the more they’ll want new representation.  Indeed, they’re already unhappy with the incumbent.  Without any negative ads being run against her (and with a state media largely oblivious to her blunders and partisanship), voters don’t much cotton to the 28-year Washington veteran:   “Twenty-six percent (26%) of California voters share a very favorable opinion of Boxer, but 33% view the senator very unfavorably.” (more…)

While eating a late dinner, I heard Dick Morris say this about Evan Bayh’s decision to retire from the Senate:  ”When they start getting bad poll numbers, they start wanting to spend more time with their families.”