Via America’s source for news, The Onion:

Obama’s Declaration Of Swine Flu Emergency Prompts Pro-Swine-Flu Republican Response

WASHINGTON—Claiming that the president was preying on the public’s fear of contracting a fatal disease last week when he declared the H1N1 virus a national emergency, Republican leaders announced Wednesday that they were officially endorsing the swine flu. “Thousands of Americans—hardworking ordinary Americans like you and me—already have H1N1,” Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said during a press conference. “Now Obama wants to take that away from us. Ask yourself: Do you want the federal government making these kinds of health care decisions for you and your family?” Other prominent Republicans opposing Obama’s declaration of emergency include Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who urged residents of his state to continue not washing their hands, and radio host Rush Limbaugh, who made a point of dying of the virus during his show on Wednesday.

A member of the conservative think-tank the Hudson Institute came before the Senate arguing that health care reform will drive up medical bankruptcies.

And then, in the words of the Internet kids today, Sen. Al Franken pwned her.

David Sarasohn pens this piece on Obama’s poll numbers, showing that national-level poll numbers may be misleading.

Overall, the numbers from Research 2000, a group that polls for the liberal blog Daily Kos as well as various newspapers, are similar to everyone else’s. Research 2000 has Obama’s favorable/unfavorable percentages at 55-37, while ABC News/Washington Post has them at 57-40, Fox at 55-41, Gallup at 56-40.

All close enough to fit around one table in the Margin of Error Saloon.

But Research 2000 then breaks its telephone polling down by region and finds Obama wildly unpopular in the South — 27 percent approval, 68 percent disapproval — but up by 67-24 in the rest of the country.

That includes an Obama advantage of 59-32 in the West, 62-30 in the Midwest and a thunderous 82-7 edge in the Northeast. On the Pennsylvania Turnpike east, Republicans are heading past minority status toward extinction.

With a strong position throughout the country outside the Confederacy, Obama actually casts a longer shadow than Gallup measures.

The GOP’s appeal is also quite regional:

Right now, Republicans are rejoicing in the low polling numbers for the Democratic Congress — of course, nobody ever likes Congress — and reminding themselves of the GOP takeover of both houses in 1994. With the Democratic Party getting only a 41 percent favorable to 51 percent unfavorable rating, it seems like an opportunity.

But Republicans win a favorable/unfavorable rating only in the South, 48 percent to 37 percent. In the West, the party is upside down 12 percent to 75 percent; in the Midwest, 10 percent to 78 percent; and in the Northeast, only 6 percent view the GOP favorably, against 87 percent unfavorably.

An 86-year-old WWII veteran speaks at a public meeting on Maine’s marriage equality bill:

The woman at my polling place asked me do I believe in equality for gay and lesbian people. I was pretty surprised to be asked a question like that. It made no sense to me. Finally I asked her: what do you think our boys fought for in Omaha Beach?

Thanks, MoveOn. Now I want to bang the public option.

(All joking aside, this is a well-done ad with a well-crafted metaphor.)

In this week’s issue of Newsweek, columnist Jacob Weisberg pulls no punches in his article “The O’Garbage Factor”. The article’s subtitle, in fact, is “Fox News isn’t just bad. It’s un-American.”

What’s most distinctive about the American press is not its freedom but its century-old tradition of independence—that it serves the public interest rather than those of parties, persuasions, or pressure groups. Media independence is a 20th-century innovation that has never fully taken root in many other countries that do have a free press. The Australian-British-continental model of politicized media that Murdoch has applied at Fox is un-American, so much so that he has little choice but go on denying what he’s doing as he does it. For Murdoch, Ailes, and company, “fair and balanced” is a necessary lie. To admit that their coverage is slanted by design would violate the American understanding of the media’s role in democracy and our idea of what constitutes fair play. But it’s a demonstrable deceit that no longer deserves equal time.

He ends with a call to action:

By appearing on Fox, reporters validate its propaganda values and help to undermine the role of legitimate news organizations. Respectable journalists—I’m talking to you, Mara Liasson—should stop appearing on its programs. A boycott would make Ailes too happy, so let’s try just ignoring Fox, shall we? And no, I don’t want to come on The O’Reilly Factor to discuss it.

Attorney General Eric Holder has issued new guidelines for federal prosecutors:

As a general matter, pursuit of these priorities should not focus federal resources in your States on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana. For example, prosecution of individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses who use marijuana as part of a recommended treatment regimen consistent with applicable state law, or those caregivers in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state law who provide such individuals with marijuana, is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources.

A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday.

Read on, appalled.

The best analysis on this matter comes from the Tax Foundation, a highly regarded Washington, D.C., think-tank that’s been studying U.S. taxes and budgets since the 1930s. The foundation is non-partisan. Although, as an institution critical of taxes, it leans philosophically to the right.

Over the years it used to estimate how much the citizens of each state paid into the federal budget in taxes, and how much they received through federal spending. The net result showed which states were paying in more than they received, and vice versa…

Look at the numbers. New Jersey got back just 61 cents for every dollar it paid in federal taxes. Connecticut: 69 cents. Illinois: 75 cents. New York: 79 cents. Massachusetts: 82 cents. In other words, being a member of the union is costing these states billions in lost money.

Meanwhile Mississippi gets back $2 in federal spending for every dollar it pays in federal taxes. Alaska: $1.84. Louisiana: $1.78. North Dakota gets $1.68, Alabama $1.66, Tennessee $1.27, Idaho $1.21 and Arizona $1.19.

Red staters always like to accuse blue states of high taxes. But if they are right, one of the principal reasons blue staters are paying higher taxes is to subsidize…red staters.

Read on.

When the Teabaggers marched on Washington, the DC authorities estimated the crowd size at around 80,000. Needless to say, Fox “News”[sic] gave that march extensive endorsementcoverage.

Naturally, when another political march gathered that same number of protesters, one would expect a respectable news organization to give it an equal amount of coverage.

…they didn’t even send a reporter or camera crew.

See Jon Stewart’s take on it.

There’s a metaphor lurking in here somewhere. The same day GOP Chairman Michael Steele unveiled a new online home for the Republican Party, the website apparently crashed, leaving users unable to log on to GOP.com.

The site was meant to rival the digital operation run by the Democrats and President Barack Obama, who used social networking to great effect in the 2008 elections. GOP.com has a YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr presence, and an array of blogs, including the “What Up” blog, which will be penned by Steele himself…

But early this afternoon, bloggers had found a mass of bugs and glitches, including repeated php problems. By 3:30 p.m. EDT, GOP.com slowed to a crawl, eventually shutting out users.

Read on at the CS Monitor.

Update: going to the page for “Future Republican Leaders” led to a blank page, later to a page reading “404 – Page Cannot Be Found”. You cannot make this stuff up.

When a lawyer files complaints and motions without a reasonable basis for believing that they are supported by existing law or a modification or extension of existing law, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer uses the courts as a platform for a political agenda disconnected from any legitimate legal cause of action, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer personally attacks opposing parties and disrespects the integrity of the judiciary, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer recklessly accuses a judge of violating the Judicial Code of Conduct with no supporting evidence beyond her dissatisfaction with the judge’s rulings, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law, that lawyer ceases to advance her cause or the ends of justice.

…Her response to the Court’s show cause order is breathtaking in its arrogance and borders on delusional. She expresses no contrition or regret regarding her misconduct …. Counsel’s bad faith warrants a substantial sanction.

In a harsh and yet at the same time hilarious 43-page smackdown, U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land (a Bush appointee, I note) fined Orly Taitz $20,000 for her repeated frivolous actions and motions.

Like what? Well, if you didn’t know, Taitz is the leader of the “Birther” movement. The ones demanding that Obama provide evidence he wasn’t born in Kenya. She’s also a dentist and a real estate agent, which really says a lot about the woman’s level of focus.

Read on at the War Room, which has a link to a PDF of the order.

Remember, folks, Glenn Beck says we have the best health care system in the world, and that it doesn’t need “fixing”.

Alex Lange is a chubby, dimpled, healthy and happy 4-month-old.

But in the cold, calculating numbered charts of insurance companies, he is fat. That’s why he is being turned down for health insurance. And that’s why he is a weighty symbol of a problem in the health care reform debate.

Insurance companies can turn down people with pre-existing conditions who aren’t covered in a group health care plan.

Alex’s pre-existing condition — “obesity” — makes him a financial risk. Health insurance reform measures are trying to do away with such denials that come from a process called “underwriting.”

“If health care reform occurs, underwriting will go away. We do it because everybody else in the industry does it,” said Dr. Doug Speedie, medical director at Rocky Mountain Health Plans, the company that turned down Alex.

By the numbers, Alex is in the 99th percentile for height and weight for babies his age. Insurers don’t take babies above the 95th percentile, no matter how healthy they are otherwise.

Read on.

The Obama White House has taken off the gloves:

Calling FOX News “a wing of the Republican Party,” the Obama administration on Sunday escalated its war of words against the channel…

“What I think is fair to say about FOX — and certainly it’s the way we view it — is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party,” said Anita Dunn, White House communications director, on CNN. “They take their talking points, put them on the air; take their opposition research, put them on the air. And that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is.”

Read on, but remember, this is a Fox “News”[sic] article, so it’s full of quotes about how this is a bad, bad idea for the administration.

This is an odd award. You'd expect it to come later in Obama's presidency and tied to some particular event or accomplishment. But the unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world, the 'hyper-power' as the French have it, became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it's a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was 'normal history' rather than dark aberration.

via Talking Points Memo.

In 2005, a Halliburton/KBR employee in Baghdad was gang-raped by her co-workers — and to try and cover it up, the company locked her in a shipping containing for 24 hours without food, water or a bed and threatened her with being fired if she left Iraq for medical treatment.

So Sen. Al Franken proposed an amendment to a Defense Appropriations bill that would punish contractors like Halliburton/KBR if they “restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.”

Who could argue with that?

Thirty Republican Senators, that’s who!

This website started as a snarky attempt to take Glenn Beck’s “I insist you refute this completely untrue rumor” rhetorical style. Well, turns out Mr. Beck’s skin runs a little thin.

As this MetaFilter post explains, Beck’s lawyers know that the site is protected under the First Amendment, so they are instead attempting to seize the domain by arguing that Beck has the rights to the domain name.

The defendant’s lawyer’s brief is really worth a read, it being the only legal brief I know of to reference “All your base belong to us” and “Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten”.

John Boehner, House Minority Leader, said he couldn’t find a single American outside of Congress or the Obama administration who supported a public option.

So this guy went to Boehner’s district to see if he could find one.

Stay tuned to the end, past the credits, for the capstone.

(Thanks to Michael Ian Black for the link)