Drive-By Monday: June 11, 2007

> You've heard of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is there to protect us from unsafe toasters and toys. How about a Financial Product Safety Commission?


> GOP prez candidate Mike Huckabee thinks Gitmo is a nicer place to be a prisoner than the state pen. Assrape, torture, assrape, torture -- six of one, half a dozen of the other, right, Mike?


> Supreme Court nixes "enemy combatant" policy.


> GOP almost-candidate Fred Thompson challenged by the religious right; Fake Fred talks back.


> U.S. government's security contractor Blackwater Security Consulting countersues families of four American contractors who were burned, beaten, dragged through the streets of Fallujah, and their decapitated bodies hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River.

You Don't Need Our Take on the Debates...

...not if you can get Fred Thompson's.

Better yet, you can read Blogs4Brownback's hilarious exchanges in advance of the debate. Some favorite lines: "The Constitution is an obvious fraud to me because it guarantees that which the Bible prohibits, i.e. due process of law, the freedom to be secure in one’s possessions and papers, the freedom to avoid torture, the 'freedom' to express thoughts contrary to the strict word of Christ, equality among the races, the right of women to vote, and the 'freedom' to NOT be compelled toward the only true ideology - the word of Christ."

Unfortunately, Hillary's personal blog is all too silent.

Are there other political campaign satire blogs out there? (A search for a faux Ron Paul blog ended up with waaaaaaay too many hits to too many blogs that were too hard to distinguish between satire and seriousness.) All five of you who read this blog, if you know of any, please comment!

Speed Reading

> The Ron Paul Internet phenomenon is being dismissed as (1) just a lot of spam [AC], and (2) just a lot of non-Republicans [Ace of Spades].


> Wow. After you read about shady "auctions" of domain names that aren't for sale, go all the way down and read reason to speculate about domestic spying of the Web. [Uptime]

> The federal government's bizarre refusal to allow any cattle operation to test all its cattle for mad cow disease is more evidence "that this venal administration's declarations about their love of the 'free market' appears to be the utter bullshit we already knew they were." [Anything They Say]

> Bush wants to cut " the only large-scale measurement of the impact of Medicaid, food stamps, school lunches, unemployment and other safety-net programs for the poor" -- with a Bushie explaining, "Life is a trade-off." (Tell that to the people on Medicaid, food stamps, and unemployment.) [WaPo]


> Fred Thompson dips toe into presidential race, turns out to be mack daddy. [Fred Thompson's Private Journal]


> Dems debated last night. [WaPo] Our verdict: Gravel brought the crazy; Kucinich sounded like an episode of Oprah featuring Marianne Williamson; Obama was unexpectedly boring.