According to CNN, the mingling of church and state in the U.S. military is going to court.

A soldier who lost his religion while serving in Iraq was not only passed over for promotions because of his lack of religion, his life was threatened -- by his compatriots, the very people who are supposed to be defending a Constitution that guarantees freedom of religion!

What would happen to the U.S. forces in Iraq, not to mention Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and all the other Muslim states where we have military bases, if they knew just how parochial and (pardon the pun) militaristic our armed forces' forced Christianity is?

Another reason to impeach Bush? Well, yes -- because unless this situation is stopped, reversed, and its progenitors imprisoned for violating the Constitutional rights of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, we are doomed.

So this nice, little old lady was standing outside the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, where John McCain was ... performing, and she was holding a sign that said "McCain=Bush." No big deal. She wasn't approaching anyone, or shouting anything, or getting in anybody's way. She was just standing there, holding a sign.

Except that she was arrested by the Denver Police on the demand of the Waffen SS -- excuse me, the Secret Service.

The YouTube video is here.

Recently, Mole333 expressed to me his concern that I’ve spent more time bashing fellow Democrats that I have criticizing Republicans. I disagree, but the perception is surely not to be dismissed lightly, even if much of the commentary on TDG is also dedicated to fellow-Democrat bashing, and even if Rock’s most over-the-top comments about the evils of our junior Senator went by without so much as a peep in this neighborhood.

Mole is clearly not without a point; we live in a mostly one-party town, and I comment mostly about local politics; it’s hard not to focus on wars within the family, although I’ve always reserved my harshest criticism for examples of party disloyalty, which means that when I criticize a Democrat, it is usually for committing the unnatural act of lending aid and comfort to Republicans.

As a peace offering to y’all, I am offering these links to three pieces in service to bashing Republicans and electing Obama. I will confess that one piece is mostly an extended bash of one particular Democrat, but I am bashing him for his conservatism.

Hooray! - Ed.

(Cross-posted at Open Left and The Albany Project)

Blogpac endorsed candidate Paul Newell, in his Campaign to unseat Speaker Sheldon Silver in the Democratic primary for New York's 64th Assembly District, is holding a fundraiser brunch at Little Giant in the Lower East Side. And we are inviting you all to come!

The brunch is Saturday, July 19 from 2pm to 4pm.

Ticket price is $75 and can be purchased through our Actblue page. Please purchase tickets before the July 11th filing deadline.

No one here likes the "three men in a room" system, and Paul is New Yorkers' best chance at breaking down that door. Help defeat Sheldon Silver, the man who takes money from taxpayers to give to b/millionaire developers to build $2 million per unit condos.

Here's a link to the event flyer.

You can't make this stuff up. John McCain to the San Francisco Chronicle on February 18th, 2000 (via Daily Kos):

Arizona Sen. John McCain refused to apologize yesterday for his use of a racial slur to condemn the North Vietnamese prison guards who tortured and held him captive during the war.

"I hate the gooks," McCain said yesterday in response to a question from reporters aboard his campaign bus. "I will hate them as long as I live."
"
McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent five years in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp, was questioned about the language because of a story last month in the Nation magazine reporting his continued use of the slur.

Because what this country really needs is an avowed, unrepentant racist as President.

Update: A phone statement from Councilman John C. Liu:

"This was highly offensive in 2000, and it's offensive today. For a would-be President, the statute of limitations for a slur like this is longer than eight years. I think everyone can understand how a POW comes to hate his captors. Hopefully, however, he's come to understand that "gooks" is one of the most offensive terms anyone can possibly use about Asian-Americans."

So I have Albany Project's Phil Anderson working from my place today; which always entails the happy patter of four little feet. Meet Molly, The Albany Project Blog Dog.

Oh wow: State Senate challenger Dan Squadron's campaign just released their petitioning numbers.

Standing in front of the Board of Elections, he announced that his campaign collected over 8,000 signatures on individual nominating petitions – more than eight times the number (1,000) required to be placed on the ballot for the September 9th primary.

"It's wonderful to see the incredible excitement for the type of energetic representation I hope to bring this district," Squadron said. "In every neighborhood, in Brooklyn and Manhattan, people are saying the same thing: it is time to demand more."

Squadron's opponent, Martin Connor, who works part-time as an election lawyer, has knocked countless candidates off the ballot, and has pursued legal challenges against every serious opponent he has faced since 1980—from a lengthy court battle that he ultimately lost against Luis Osorio in 1992 to a residency challenge against Ken Diamondstone that was decided in Diamondstone's favor by the State's highest court.

What's interesting here is that 8,000 signatures is just south of the number of actual votes (9,238 to 11,459) that challenger Ken Diamondstone received in 2006.

Heh.

So Joe Bruno resigns, causing a flurry of well-manicured despair among his upstate colleagues. Predictably, there was a minor flood of commentary about a power shift to downstate. Some of Bruno's elderly caucus-mates raised the subject in the perennial bash-that-part-of-the-state-you're-not-in efforts that they seem to need like a junkie needs crack.

Well, so much for that. Here's Skelos' first big push of the election season - against Craig Johnson, on Long Island.

So much for keeping the interests of upstate foremost on the electoral agenda.

Under the headline Poor real estate decisions, not bad coffee, hurt Starbucks, the IHT analyzes the recent decline in fortunes of the ubiquitous coffee retailer.

Though the flagging economy and soaring gas prices are responsible for at least some of Starbucks's woes, interviews with commercial real estate brokers nationwide who work with the chain suggest another aspect of the story. These people say that the company was so determined to meet its growth promises to Wall Street that it relaxed its standards for selecting new store locations.

In some cases, brokers say, Starbucks misjudged the risks of putting stores close to each other, leading to the decline in same-store sales that the company started reporting for the first time in its history this year.

Or maybe the world didn't really need eight Starbucks within one block of Grand Central Station, who knows?

Happy Independence Day, everyone. Today is the last Fourth that will be blighted by George Bush in the White House; and while the country may be crumbling all around us, the passage of another day that brings us closer to the end of this disastrous reign is itself worth celebrating.

But meanwhile, where are we in this imperfect union of ours? There's a war going on, obviously, one we were lied into by traitors who will probably go unpunished. Our constitutional rights, already a tenuous proposition if you happen to be black, or poor, or gay, or something other than Christian, are being further eroded by a criminal executive and its cowering occasional adversaries in the legislative branch.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

On the other hand, coming out of this nightmare, Democrats have done something many people never expected to see in their, our lifetimes: nominated a black man for the Presidency, a freshman Senator whose soaring rhetoric has propelled a new generation into politics. His chief rival? A woman. His likely opponent in November? A man who was tortured and who has a brown adopted child. There's even something new in America, a vibrant Progressive Movement that has written change on its banners, challenging the Tories of either party.