News Roundup for 6/25/09

Do not let your children near this man

-Headline of the day-
"Supreme Court Says Child's Rights Violated by Strip Search."

In 2003, officials at a Safford, AZ school searched Savana Redding's backpack for drugs. They didn't find any, so they went through her pockets. Still nothin'. They had her strip to her underwear. Nada. Finally, they check her undies for drugs and came up empty. Savana was 13 years old and the drugs they were looking for were Advil. Had it been Flintstone vitamins, you get the feeling that they would've waterboarded her. Her parents should be commended for not kidnapping these idiots, releasing them into the desert, and hunting them down. It just seems like the most obvious remedy.

Unbelievably, this case went all the way to the Supreme Court, with the Safford school insisting they had the right to feel up 13 year-olds for Advil.

Still, sanity prevailed when the SCOTUS found, in a 8-1 decision, that this was really a bad idea.

So who was the dissenting one? Clarence Thomas, who is clearly a pervert. Looks like Anita Hill was right. (New York Times)


-What a difference a day makes-
Mark McKinnon once made a very good call. Working for the McCain campaign, Mark said he'd quit the campaign if Obama turned out to be the nominee. "I will, however, still support and vote for John McCain," he told the Austin American-Statesman in 2007. "I just don’t want to work against an Obama candidacy. I think a McCain vs. Obama race would be a great choice for the country." Obama v. McCain would become too ugly and he didn't want to be any part of that. True to his word, he left the McCain campaign on May 21, 2008.

So what's McKinnon up to these days? He's got a gig blogging for the online magazine/blog The Daily Beast. And it's there that things get fun.

On June 23, McKinnon posted a piece arguing that the disappearance of S. Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford gave him a better chance of becoming the 2012 Republican presidential nominee. Keep in mind, this was while everyone thought he was walking around naked on the Appalachian Trail.

"Mark Sanford unplugged. Literally. He decided to take a hike. And he told his security detail to take a hike as well. Guy wanted some alone time in the woods to clear his head," Mark wrote. "Here we have a guy in politics who actually likes to get OUT of the spotlight. How exceedingly normal."

"But oh, no. Not normal at all," he went on. "A man in his position has to be 'troubled' or 'hiding something' for taking a walk." Yeah, that's just silly. Pffft! "Hiding something..."

"For this act alone, we’re going to move Sanford up at least a notch on our Top 10 GOP contenders for 2012," he said, putting Sanford up between John Thune and Mike Huckabee at third and fifth mostly likely respectively.

Then, the very next day, Sanford shows up and admits to having an affair with Evita Peron down in Argentina.

You know, looking back at it, I think maybe Sanford was hiding something. Thune and Huckabee, watch yourselves and don't go on any long walks. (Daily Beast, via Right Wing Watch)


-And about that trip to Argentina-
If you're from S. Carolina, you probably paid for it -- as well as a bunch of other trips Sanford made.

Hope he sent you a postcard. How's that for "stimulus funding?" (Raw Story)