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We have obtained a very high-resolution copy of Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann's upcoming Newsweek cover. As you can see, the resolution is so high we had to crop out a lot of the image. The issue, which hits newsstands this week, features a profile on Bachmann titled, "The Queen of Rage," with the subhead, "Michele Bachmann on God, the Tea Party, and the evils of government." Full, high-resolution image after the jump! 
Opposition is true Friendship.
--William Blake, A Memorable Fancy (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.
--William Blake, The Argument to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Chile is reportedly 80% Catholic and did not legalize divorce until 2004(!). However, Argentina is next door and legalized marriage equality for same-sex coupes in July 2010."All forms of marriage deserve respect, dignity and the support of the state," said President Sebastian Pinera, who signed the proposal and sent it to Congress."This puts opposite-sex and same-sex couples on the same footing, because in both cases it is possible to develop love, affection and respect."Pinera, who brought conservatives to power after 20 years of center-left rule in the country, grated on his own election campaign when he announced his intention to legalize civil unions for gay couples. He said two million people in Chile live together without marrying.But the president has repeatedly stressed his opposition to gay marriage."I deeply believe that marriage is by nature between a man and a woman, but that conviction does not prevent me from recognizing that other forms of affective relationships exist," he said.The law would permit gay couples who join into a civil union to have access to inheritance and other social benefits.
For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
--William Blake, The Divine Image, st. 3
To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit — General Knowledges are those Knowledges that Idiots possess.
--William Blake, Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses, pp. xvii–xcviii (c. 1798–1809)
If we're ever invaded by aliens, I don't know if they would take gold. But almost everyone else will. . . . (Harvard's Ken Rogoff)
Earlier in her political career, Bachmann recommended a biography of Robert E. Lee by J. Steven Wilkins on her State Senate campaign site under "Michele's Must Read List."
In it Wilkins describes the Civil War as a holy conflict between the godly South and heathen North and writes that "most southerners strove to treat their slaves with respect and provide them with a sufficiency of goods for a comfortable, though--by modern standards--spare existence" and that the institution bred "mutual esteem" between races as slaves adopted Christianity. Bachmann recently came under fire for signing onto a social conservative pledge that suggested African Americans families were better off under slavery (she and the group subsequently disavowed the language.)
Reason, or the ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more.
--William Blake, There Is No Natural Religion(1788)
Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did he ever create pain? ... Oh, He was really being charitable to us when He gave us pain! [to warn us of danger] Why couldn't He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person's forehead. Any jukebox manufacturer worth his salt could have done that. Why couldn't He? ... What a colossal, immortal blunderer! When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering. ...
When the end of the world comes I want to be living in retirement.
--Karl Kraus
How convenient that the alleged sexual molestation was never reported to anyone else outside the family so it will be different to corroborate. James Bing is Brandon McInerney's half-brother (same father different mother) and is the person speaking in the video given at the top of this post. If I were a juror I would take the testimony of a family member of the accused with more than a grain of salt.Brandon McInerney was molested by a relative as a boy, a family secret that his older half brother didn't learn until two weeks after McInerney shot a gay classmate to death in February 2008, the half brother told jurors in a Chatsworth courtroom Wednesday.James Bing testified that McInerney’s father cried hysterically as he revealed the molestation that occurred when Brandon was about 9 years old.The older McInerney was upset because the family had dealt with the problem internally, sending the relative away for years, instead of reporting it to police and getting Brandon help, Bing told the courtroom.McInerney’s father, who is now dead, believed the memory of the molestation was what caused his son to react so violently when Larry King began dressing like a girl and flirting with McInerney at their Oxnard junior high school, Bing said.[...]When McInerney’s father died in 2009, coroner's officials found alcohol and drugs in his system. Bing said his stepfather was frequently high on drugs and was sadistic.He once put soap into a sock and beat the boys with it for an offense that later turned out to have been committed by someone else, Bing testified.Billy McInerney poured Tabasco sauce down's the boys' throats when they were sleeping and would pull down their pants in front of their friends, disparaging the size of their genitals, Bing said."He was a mean, nasty person,'' Bing said.
On trial for allegedly assaulting two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies, Erick Hoxey took the witness stand in his own defense and told jurors it was the other way around.I don't usually include such an extensive excerpt from a newspaper story but one really needs to see all the paragraphs that I have included in order to draw your own conclusions about what really happened*. Two Sheriff deputies see a Black guy sitting in a car and decide to rough him up for some bizarre reason only known to themselves. They start beating the crap out of him, then his girlfriend and a bystander come to the guy's defense. Then the deputies have the gall to claim that the person that they assaulted was "resisting arrest" AND they claim the existence of a gun which is not found AND attempt to plant drugs in the vehicle. It reads like something out of FX's The Shield!
He said he was waiting in his car outside a Compton apartment building where his girlfriend was making an appointment to braid a little girl's hair, when deputies pulled up. After asking him a few questions, Hoxey said they inexplicably yanked him out of the car, punched him and struck him with a flashlight before pepper-spraying his eyes and inside his mouth.
Then, he said, one grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head twice against the pavement.
The prosecutor, troubled by the young man's testimony, cut him off suddenly and asked the judge for a recess. When he returned an hour and a half later, the prosecutor announced that all charges were being dropped.
On Tuesday, two years after the criminal case fizzled, the county agreed to pay Hoxey, now 24, and his girlfriend $650,000.
The payout comes despite the Sheriff's Department defending the deputies' conduct in arresting Hoxey, his girlfriend, Shatwan Smith, and a bystander who came to their aid during the April 2008 altercation.
According to Deputies Samuel Orozco and Scott Giles, they were on patrol when they spotted Hoxey driving with his seatbelt off. The deputies said Hoxey was immediately aggressive, cursing at them, before reaching under his leg for what they believed was a handgun. The deputies unlocked the car door and pulled Hoxey out of the vehicle. The young man then spun around and took a swing at them, according to the deputies' account. Hoxey continued to fight back, the deputies said, while his girlfriend ran out from the apartment building and began hitting them too.
Although the deputies said they believed Hoxey was armed with a gun, no weapon was recovered. Deputy Orozco testified that a woman at the scene, who did not identify herself because she feared retribution, told him that she saw a man run and grab something from the car, presumably the weapon.
The couple, and the bystander who interceded and pleaded with the deputies to stop, denied the deputies were assaulted.
After hearing the conflicting testimony about the incident, the L.A. County district attorney's office abandoned its prosecution of Hoxey and Smith.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Eric Siddall said in a deposition that Hoxey's testimony "made me think that there was reasonable doubt in the case."
The couple's civil attorney, Glen Jonas, accused the deputies of framing Hoxey on charges of resisting arrest and drug possession and Smith of resisting arrest and assault. Giles said he found a cocaine rock in Hoxey's car, while he and other deputies were searching the vehicle.
"It ruined their lives," Jonas said of the ordeal. He said Smith, who was a student at UC San Diego at the time, "was so distraught over being falsely prosecuted that she couldn't concentrate in school…her grades fell and ultimately she wasn't able to stay in school."
During the trial, Orozco's past on-duty behavior was also scrutinized in testimony from residents in the area who said they had run-ins with him. One woman said he used the N-word against her. Another testified that she'd also been roughed up by Orozco, booked and was eventually acquitted.
Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore declined to comment on specific allegations but said the department maintains the couple was resisting arrest. "This settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing," he said. "Deputies don't make stuff up, the hope is, and we contend they did not fabricate anything."
Where to begin? I guess let's address them one at a time. The Federal Marriage Amendment didn't get out of the U.S. House of Representatives when the Republicans controlled the Presidency, the House and the Senate majority in July 2006 and popular support was below 50%. Why would anyone expect a measure to divorce the estimated 100,000 same-sex married couple in the country to be more successful in 2013? It takes a vote of 2/3rds of BOTH Houses of the Legislature and then ratification of 3/4 of the states to be enacted. In 220 years the document has been Amended 27 times, and 10 of those happened within the first 5 years. A federal marriage amendment is not going to happen!
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