The Enemy is A 15-Year-Old Girl

I'm in love with a 15-year-old girl.

Now, before any of you yahoos snatch up your cellphones and call the police, you should consider what I have to say.

My love's name is Ava Lowery. She lives in Alabama, calls herself a peace activist, and for the past year or so has been producing short Flash animations on her web site at peacetakescourage.com. She's made over seventy animations, and most of them oppose President Bush and his Iraq War.

“I was just so mad about it,” she explains. “And the media are not showing the real images of the war, so I did a lot research and started my own website.”

Lately Ava Lowery has been receiving ugly comments and even death threats from the knuckle-dragger wing of the Republican Party. You know the types. If we disagree with you, we'll just shout you down. And if we can't shout you down, we'll demean you and call you names. And if that doesn't work we'll threaten your life.

What got it all started was one of Ava's latest animations. She submitted one titled “WWJD” to the monthly “contagious” contest that huffingtonpost.com is running. It's an open contest which ranks the number of viewes for each submission.

“WWJD”(“What Would Jesus Do,” if you don't know) features a soundtrack of a child singing “Jesus loves me, this I know” while picture after picture of wounded, bloody, or screaming Iraqi children fills the screen.

Says Ava, “The object of the animation is to get this point across; Jesus loves Iraqi children, too.”

Ava ends the video with quotations from Beatitudes. These include “Blessed are they who mourn” and “Blessed are the meek” and “Blessed are the merciful” and “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Oddly enough, this didn't go over very well with the knuckle-draggers. Ava says she's received a lot of positive feedback in messages to her web site. But she was not prepared for the viciousness of the negative feedback that she received - especially the ugly sexual slurs.

If you can't stand foul language, this is your stopping point. Beyond this paragraph there be Republicans ...

Among some of the things that apparently adult Republicans / Conservatives have had to say to Ava ...

“It’s people like you who need to fucking die and get raped while your corpse rots in the sun.” You know, I'm sure that tactic is in the Bible somewhere. And I'm not entirely sure I'm joking.

“Fuck you, I would jack off on your parents if I could. If you don’t like the team, get out of the park. That means take ur small dick and get the fuck off of my homeland you faggot chocolate gulper.” Apparently this person missed the fact that Ava is a girl, so at least the small dick part is accurate. But generally, it seems that with Republicans if you disagree with them, you must have a small dick. I also liked the part about "my homeland." Who knew this one asshole had somehow taken possession of the entire United States? And what's a chocolate gulper? Wait, I don't want to know.

“You are a TRAITOR to your country and should be executed for treason,” another one said. “All you do is bitch about the US. If you hate it so much, why don’t you GET THE FUCK OUT.”

“Why don’t you go masterbate [sic] to a pic of Sheehan and fuck off,” said a third.

“Are you a muslem [sic] terrorist?” asked another.

Ava says there was a threat against her that was circulating “on the conservative underground.” She says she received one e-mail from someone who said, “Contact me ASAP. It concerns a danger to your life.”

When her mom called the number, the person who answered denied any knowledge of the threat, Lowery says.

She adds: “I was really weirded out by it.”

Geez. What can I really add to what has been posted above? Doesn't that pretty much sum it up?

My God. Are these my countrymen? Are these Christians? They're apparently Conservatives or they wouldn't take such intense offense at a 15-year-old girl disagreeing with their viewpoints. After all, with Republicans it's all about God and Country, and apparently masturbating upon the bombs before we drop them (the do talk about masturbation a lot, don't they?). I haven't been monitoring the Conservative misinformation dissemination centers lately, but I'm sure knuckle-draggers like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity have had a few snarky comments about Ava Lowery. It'd be about their speed to take on a young girl.

The greatest, most heart-felt pain that I've felt over this has been the absolute lack of support that Ava Lowery has received from Republican political leaders. Not one Republican, not one Christian leader, not one Conservative, has stepped forward and said publically that Ava Lowery has a right to express her beliefs, and that grown men and women should fall down upon their knees and beg God for forgiveness for the things that they have said to her and threatened to do to her and her family. That says to me that these people tacitly approve of these intimidation tactics. It underscores what I've known for sometime; that most Republicans are not fit for office. Hell, most Republicans are not fit for citizenship.

These knuckle-draggers are of the opinion that this is their homeland? I beg to differ. You fucking asshole. When you can threaten a 15-year-old girl and tell her that she should be raped and murdered and her body left in the sun to rot, you truly have no concept of what it means to be an American or what this country is all about. What gives you the unimaginable gall to dishonor the sweat, blood and sacrifice of my forefathers, who gave their lives to ensure that their children, grandchildren, and their grandchildren's grandchildren could live their lives in freedom ... what gives you the right to draw your foul breath and dare to call yourself an American?

Shine your jackboots, Adolf. Slide that armband on. Practice your high-stepping marches. But I will tell you this, you mindless thugs. When you dare come for my dear Ava, I and many others like me will be waiting for you. And then we will, perhaps, be able to determine, once and for all, just whose homeland this is. You will not find us such an easy target.

If you so despise freedom and the freedom of expression, then you are certainly in the wrong country. All I have to say to you is don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. Here, let me show you the way.

Ava Lowery is a patriot in the truest sense of the word. She clearly loves her country. And she is clearly not going to back down from the bullying of a bunch of mindless knuckle-dragging brutes. I'm not a 15-year-old girl. I warmly invite you maggots to come try your hand with me.

- Watch Alert archived post
- Peace Takes Courage

Panel slams Bush for law challenges

While roaming the Internet I came across a story by Michael Abramowitz, of the Washington Post. It was quite an interesting article, and I've quoted liberally from it below.

It seems King George is thumbing his nose at the American people and quaint little ideas such as the Constitution yet again. A bipartisan panel of legal scholars and lawyers, who were brought together by the American Bar Association, has strongly criticized President Bush for his use of “signing statements,” which he uses as a means of ignoring, or simply not enforcing, laws pass by Congress that he and his buddies find ... well, inconvenient.

In a report issued on July 24, 2006, the ABA task force stated that President Bush has lodged more challenges to provisions of laws than all previous presidents combined. The panel described the development as a serious threat to the Constitution's system of checks and balances, and urged Congress to pass legislation permitting court review of these “signing statements.”

According to ABA President Michael Greco, a Massachusetts attorney, “The president is indicating that he will not either enforce part or the entirety of congressional bills - we will be close to a constitutional crisis if this issue, the president's use of signing statements, is left unchecked.”

The report is probably going to anger a lot of King George's buddies, fueling the controversy over signing statements, which President Bush has used to challenge laws ranging from a congressional ban on torture and a request for data on the Patriot Act, to whistle-blower protections and the banning of U.S. troops in fighting rebels in Colombia.

Naturally, Adminstration officials describe these signing statements as a part of a routine presidential practice. Nothing to worry about. You Constitutional alarmist can go back to your tofu and lattes.

“Presidents have issued signing statements since the early days of our country,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said on Sunday; probably while stifling a yawn over yet another silly Constitutional non-issue. “... He is exercising a legitimate power in a legitimate way.”

Funny how they use the word “legitimate,” isn't it?

President Bush vetoed his first bill last week (and Mama Bush was so proud of him). It was a measure approved by Congress which would relax his limits on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research. Bush basically said, “Aw, hell no, you didn't.” But he has on many occasions signed bills, then issued statements reserving the right not to enforce or execute parts of the new laws, on the grounds that they infringe on presidential authority or violate other constitutional provisions.

Surprisingly (snark), the Justice Department has determined that the rarity of Bush's approach is a matter of some dispute. They said that President Bush has issued 110 signing statements, compared with President Bill Clinton's 80.

The ABA task force, chaired by prominent Miami attorney Neil Sonnett, disagrees, and cites research that President Bush in his signing statements has collectively lodged more than 800 challenges to provisions of laws passed by Congress.

No doubt the debate and spin will continue. The report will be considered by the full ABA at its meeting next month.

- Watch Alert archived post
- Original Article

Rove, Novak: Have You No Decency?

Amen, Brother!

Nicholas F. Benton
Falls Church News-Press

At last the Prince of Darkness has spoken. Columnist Robert Novak has come forward with a tardy confession of his collusion with the highest levels of the White House — namely Karl Rove, himself — in an unprecedented bit of nastiness that perfectly conforms with everything else we know about both. Rove leaked. Novak wrote, and a covert CIA operation was blown. And for what? To exact revenge.

The Rove-Novak connection is like a perfect maelstrom of deceit in the arena of public policy. The despicably immoral operative in the White House teams with the equally contemptible partisan disguised as a journalist in a nefarious scheme to punish a political enemy. These two thought nothing of the consequences of their devil’s compact in terms of how it compromised vital U.S. national security interests, critical covert operations and potentially the lives of undercover CIA agents.

It tells you not only how far things have descended in the most hallowed corridors of power in the land, but in the world of the Fourth Estate, as well. The slimy Novak paid no price among his journalistic peers for being the media outlet that blew Valerie Plame’s cover, and for covering up his source for over two years, despite the spectacular deceit that was so clearly involved.

The fact that such dogs retain any modicum of respect among allegedly civil circles that pretend to lead our nation is a sorry commentary on this entire fool’s paradise. The government and the media may have an unwritten agreement in Washington to artificially prop up each other’s respectability, but beneath that veneer is something so putrid that it is hard to determine if it is the idea of the contemptible behavior, or the outright stink of it, that is nauseating.

There is nothing in the core DNA of a Robert Novak type that knows of the notion of virtue, as is also the case of a Karl Rove or a Tom DeLay. These are the kind of people that have no actual talent, except as thugs. Novak has perfected his role as a partisan water boy disguised as a journalist. Rove and DeLay epitomize the type of person who would be a homeless drunk if it weren’t for the fact that politics, like used car sales, offers a career for the brutish hack with no refined skills.

A moment to clarify the record: You read in this column for months prior to the invasion of Iraq that there were no weapons of mass destruction there. This column was spot-on right about that, based on solid evidence, and everyone who disagreed was wrong. Many people did not believe those weapons were there, and with good reasons. They were right. Everyone else was wrong.

You read in this column two years ago that Karl Rove was the source of the leak to Robert Novak on Valerie Plame. Now, this week comes the news that this column was right, and everyone who disagreed was wrong. This column’s assertion was not a guess. It was based on solid combined inductive and deductive thinking, the kind of skill that journalists cultivate to guide their search for information and truth behind public lies.

I’d say it is now a matter of open, public record that I’m two-for-two on two of the most important inflection points in the Bush administration’s treachery, as well as on a number of other things.

The tragedy that has been unleashed in Iraq today is the saddest testament of all to the world-historic fiasco that is everything this Bush administration represents. Civil war is in full force, with marauding death squads now roaming through the nation’s capital killing randomly.

Who do the Iraqi people, and a world now truly unsafe from the terrorist incubator created in Iraq by the U.S. invasion, have to blame for this descent into hell?

Who are they to blame? Bush, Rove, Novak, DeLay, or William Kristol of the neo-conversative Project for a New American Century’s Weekly Standard magazine who now stands back, washing its hands of culpibility, and lamenting what’s become of it all? Or should they blame all the rest who stood by silently and compliantly, obsessed with the Washington game of being included over anything remotely resembling honor, valor, an overriding commitment to truth, or that old Renaissance notion of virtue?

The Rove-Novak case calls forth the famous condemnation of Sen. Joseph McCarthy at the Army-McCarthy hearing in April 1954, when the Army’s attorney general Joseph Welsh, after discrediting groundless allegations by McCarthy against a soldier in front of a national television audience, exclaimed to McCarthy, “Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

- Watch Alert archived post
- Original Article

Fallen Soldier Gets a Bronze Star but No Pagan Star

By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 4, 2006

At the Veterans Memorial Cemetery in the small town of Fernley, Nev., there is a wall of brass plaques for local heroes. But one space is blank. There is no memorial for Sgt. Patrick D. Stewart.

That's because Stewart was a Wiccan, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has refused to allow a symbol of the Wicca religion -- a five-pointed star within a circle, called a pentacle -- to be inscribed on U.S. military memorials or grave markers.

The department has approved the symbols of 38 other faiths; about half of are versions of the Christian cross. It also allows the Jewish Star of David, the Muslim crescent, the Buddhist wheel, the Mormon angel, the nine-pointed star of Bahai and something that looks like an atomic symbol for atheists.

Stewart, 34, is believed to be the first Wiccan killed in combat. He was serving in the Nevada National Guard when the helicopter in which he was riding was shot down in Afghanistan last September. He previously had served in the Army in Korea and Operation Desert Storm. He was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.

His widow, Roberta Stewart, scattered his ashes in the hills above Reno and would like him to have a permanent memorial.

She said the veterans cemetery in Fernley offered to install a plaque with his name and no religious symbol. She refused.

“Once they do that, they'll forget me. They don't like having a hole in the wall,” she said. “I feel very strongly that my husband fought for the Constitution of the United States, he was proud of his spirituality and of being a Wiccan, and he was proud of being an American.”

Wicca is one of the fastest-growing faiths in the country. Its adherents have increased almost 17-fold from 8,000 in 1990 to 134,000 in 2001, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. The Pentagon says that more than 1,800 Wiccans are on active duty in the armed forces.

Wiccans still suffer, however, from the misconception that they are devil worshipers. Some Wiccans call themselves witches, pagans or neopagans. Most of their rituals revolve around the cycles of nature, such as equinoxes and phases of the moon. Wiccans often pick and choose among religious traditions, blending belief in reincarnation and feminine gods with ritual dancing, chanting and herbal medicine.

Federal courts have recognized Wicca as a religion since 1986. Prisons across the country treat it as a legitimate faith, as do the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. military, which allows Wiccan ceremonies on its bases.

“My husband's dog tags said ‘Wiccan’ on them,” Stewart noted.

But applications from Wiccan groups and individuals to VA for use of the pentacle on grave markers have been pending for nine years, during which time the symbols of 11 other faiths have been approved.

Department spokeswoman Josephine Schuda said VA turned down Wiccans in the past because religious groups used to be required to list a headquarters or central authority, which Wicca does not have. But that requirement was eliminated last year, she noted.

“I really have no idea why it has taken so long” for the Wiccan symbol to gain approval, Schuda said.

The department declined repeated requests from The Washington Post to speak to higher-ranking officials about the issue.

Retired Army Chaplain William Chrystal, a United Church of Christ minister who was chaplain of Stewart's National Guard unit, has strongly backed Roberta Stewart's request.

“It's such a clear First Amendment issue, I can't even conceive of why they are not granting it, except for political reasons,” he said. “I think the powers that be are afraid they'll alienate conservative Christians if they approve a symbol that connotes witches and warlocks casting spells and brewing potions.”

Nevada's congressional delegation, including Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D), also has supported Roberta Stewart.

But letters printed by Nevada newspapers indicate how much hostility Wiccans face. “I don't see how anything that supports witchcraft and satanism can legitimately be called a religion,” one reader wrote to the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Stewart said that she is trying to educate people about Wicca, as well as to fulfill her husband's wishes. “Until he is laid to rest,” she said, “I cannot rest.”

- Watch Alert archived post
- Original Article