Every so often a story comes down the wire that I can’t really get an opinion on, and I get worried because I’m afraid I may side with the White House on it. So I ask you as my liberal moonbat brethren to help me figure out why exactly Nancy Pelosi is traveling to Syria.

Pelosi’s visit to Syria would come as the United States has severed high-level contacts with Assad’s government. The administration recalled the U.S. ambassador to Damascus after the February 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri in Lebanon. There has been very little high- or mid-level U.S. contact with Syria since then.

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White House spokesperson Dana Perino strongly criticized Pelosi’s planned visit, saying, “We think it is a really bad idea.”

Someone in bloggerland, explain this one to me. I understand that the Iraq Study Group said we should extend the olive branch to Iran and Syria, but what exactly is this trying to accomplish?

A resident of Pittsburgh, I simply could not pass this up. The Coultergeist will be at the University of Pittsburgh this Sunday. Yes that’s April 1st, but they’re assuring us all it’s not an April Fool’s Day prank. You can bet your ass I’ll be there with a video camera. Shenanigans? Maybe.

“This isn’t an April Fool’s Joke!” proclaims an announcement for the event on Facebook, a social-networking site popular among college students. Indeed, publicity for the event has been scanty, but Pitt administrators and the Young America’s Foundation — a Virginia-based organization that books Coulter’s campus appearances — confirm Coulter is slated to appear.

“The contract has not yet been signed, but that’s just a matter of dialogue between the agency and the students,” says Terry Milani, a student-life administrator at Pitt. “There’s no dialogue as to ’should we or shouldn’t we’” host the controversial speaker.

Several members of the College Republicans were contacted with requests for comment; none replied by press time.

I’ll have to prepare for the event, and I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do. I obviously won’t be content to just sit in attendance and grit my teeth while she spews her venom. If I manage to wing anything, oh it’ll be up here immediately.

Stay tuned, folks.

Oh but our president is a funny one, he is. I’m sure everyone remembers his “finding the WMDs” gag he did a while ago, much to the delight of everyone who forgot how monumentally disastrous and internationally damaging the inability to find WMDs was.

Apparently keen on continuing the tradition, our Mighty Leader decided to once again continue the tradition of making jokes about things that aren’t particularly funny.

“A year ago my approval rating was in the 30s, my nominee for the Supreme Court had just withdrawn, and my vice president had shot someone,” President Bush said Wednesday night during the annual gathering.

“Ah,” he said, “those were the good ol’ days.”

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Noting that Vice President Dick Cheney was not in attendance, Bush said: “He’s had a rough few weeks. To be honest, his feelings were kind of hurt. He said he was going on vacation to Afghanistan where people like him.”

Cheney’s recent trip to Afghanistan was marked by a bombing near where he was meeting with officials.

The first bit is fairly benign, though I enjoyed that more because he’s laughing about how disastrous his presidency has become. It’s no “look under the cushions for WMDs” doozie, but it’s certainly up there. No, I’m more worried about that second one (I ignored the cracks on Webb and his mother, those were fine).

See, it’s one thing to make a joke about a personal emergency or crisis most of the time. It shows that such things don’t rattle you. Think a comedian joking about their plane crashing or a fire in their building, or an abusive relationship. Laughing at your own misfortune is generally a good thing.

Problem: it doesn’t count when the bad situation is entirely your fault. The fact that Afghanistan is still such a warzone that our Vice can be nearly hit with a suicide bomber over five years after what was supposed to be a cakewalk war is simply tragic. Laughing at the fact that the war has been such a mess that the country isn’t even secure for our Veep just strikes me as sick on some level.

Posting’s been sporadic these past few days, I know. Life’s been hectic, hopefully it’ll calm down soon.

This may be the best video ever. Watch as these guys disregard any and all understanding of science and claim that because life has never grown out of a jar of peanut butter.

[youtube]FZFG5PKw504[/youtube]

Damn. And then the death blow from a while ago. After all, what else is the perfect complement to peanut butter but… bananas!!

[youtube]2z-OLG0KyR4[/youtube]

Two atheist’s nightmares, both one one delicious sandwich. I’m trying to think up an Elvis joke, but I’m failing miserably.

I almost feel redundant writing about this, so I won’t really. I’ll let the article speak for itself. In the face of an inevitable veto, the Senate backed the Iraq timetable, with a deadline of September of 2008 for all troops to be out. Yes, it’s going to be vetoed, but I’m glad that the message will be sent.

The vote marked the Senate’s most forceful challenge to date of the administration’s handling of a war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,200 U.S. troops. It came days after the House approved a binding withdrawal deadline of Sept. 1, 2008, and increased the likelihood of a veto confrontation this spring.

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Additionally, GOP Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gordon Smith of Oregon sided with the Democrats, assuring them of the majority they needed to turn back a challenge led by Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss. “The president’s strategy is taking America deeper and deeper into this quagmire with no exit strategy,” said Hagel, the most vocal Republican critic of the war in Congress.

I would hope that between March of 2003 and September of 2008 it would be possible to set up the Iraq military, particularly considering we toppled Saddam in roughly April of 2003. And if not, that’s a sign that we’re not going to set them up any time soon.

I wonder how long the war supporters would let this go on before they too demand we pull out. Another five years? Ten? If we’re still in Iraq in 2037 would they finally admit that it’s a failed project?

Once again, sorry about the absence. I’m trying to get more on top of things. But regardless, things are getting pretty bad for our friend Alberto Gonzales. Now if you’ll recall, a while ago I wrote about the Attorney General’s crusade against child pornography. Although I mocked him for grandstanding over such an obvious target, at least it was a good target, as opposed to the peaceful anti-war activists the FBI spied on thanks to the PATRIOT Act.

Here’s where things go terribly awry, though. Apparently while all this was going on, ol’ Berty was actively not pursuing a Texas case involving sexual abuse of young boys. Now I never link to WorldNetDaily, so the fact that I am tells you this is serious.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, both already under siege for other matters, are now being accused of failing to prosecute officers of the Texas Youth Commission after a Texas Ranger investigation documented that guards and administrators were sexually abusing the institution’s teenage boy inmates.

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Burzynski presented his findings to the attorney general in Texas, to the U.S. Attorney Sutton, and to the Department of Justice civil rights division. From all three, Burzynski received no interest in prosecuting the alleged sexual offenses.

Ouch. So the Attorney General goes on and on about saving the children, but at the same time he’s not investigating a case of clear sexual abuse of children. I don’t think the significance of that can be easily overstated.

And moving along, we find that his top aide is going to use the fifth amendment and refusing to testify over the attorney firing scandal.

Monica Goodling, who serves as the Justice Department’s liaison to the White House and counselor to the attorney general, notified the committee Monday that she will not be testifying about the scandal.

Justice Department documents show that Goodling helped determine which prosecutors should be fired. The documents also showed that she worked closely with White House political operative Karl Rove to remove the United States attorney in Arkansas so that one of Rove’s aides could take the job.

This is absurd. Don’t get me wrong, I support the concept of the 5th amendment, but at the same time it does cast an undeniable shadow depending on when it’s used.

Will Gonzales keep his job? I can only wonder. I would hope he doesn’t, but then I suppose there isn’t much precedent for otherwise except in extreme cases like Heckuvajob Brownie.

Sorry about the little hiatus, life caught up with me once again. And fortunately I haven’t missed any bombshells, but I have missed the growing wave of senators who agree that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should step down. Three more GOP senators have joined in, and they’re some power players.

“We have to have an attorney general who is candid and truthful. And if we find out he’s not been candid and truthful, that’s a very compelling reason for him not to stay on,” said Sen. Arlen Specter, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Justice Department.

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To Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., Gonzales “does have a credibility problem. … We govern with one currency, and that’s trust. And that trust is all important. And when you lose or debase that currency, then you can’t govern. And I think he’s going to have some difficulties.”

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Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Gonzales has been “wounded” by the firings. `He has said some things that just don’t add up,” said Graham, who is on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Naturally this is ignoring the number of Democrats. My question to the world at large is: who in the White House hasn’t been wounded? Who doesn’t have a credibility problem? Among Bush, Rove, Rice, Cheney, Gonzales, who doesn’t have glaring credibility problems? The whole administration is rife with corruption.

As much as I enjoy seeing an arm of the starfish get cut off, as long as the center remains the limbs will regrow.

It sounds unbelievable I know, but here’s the article. The uh… the entire article.

The House has voted to require President Bush to pull U.S. combat troops out of Iraq by fall 2008, defying a White House veto threat.

Obviously more to be posted when it comes down the wire.

As I’ve mentioned a number of times already, I’m a huge fan of Richard Dawkins. I think The God Delusion is a book most people simply owe it to themselves to read. And one of the most interesting points is how religion is often used as a defense for some truly abhorrent behavior.

Case in point, we have a teenager in Chicago using religion to defend the fact that he wants to wear an anti-gay T-shirt to school.

Heidi Zamecnik, 17, is asking the court to order her school and Indian Prairie District 204 to allow her to express her anti-gay beliefs on April 19, the day after the 11th annual “Day of Silence” is scheduled to protest harassment of gays in schools.

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Heidi’s father, Carl Zamecnik, declined to comment Wednesday night on behalf of his family, and he referred calls to an attorney.

Because of her family’s “sincerely held religious beliefs” against homosexuality, “they wish to share their conviction that true happiness cannot be found through homosexual behavior,” the suit says.

Now, if she wanted to go back to her freedom of speech, it would never hold water. If she said she had the constitutional right to express this because of free speech it would be thrown out.

Now try and imagine if this were against any other minority. There’s defense in the Bible to speak out against Jews, people of another race, women, other religions, etc. If she tried to go to school with a shirt that said something to the effect of “NO JEWS” or “JEWS KILLED CHRIST” try and ponder the defense for that. And the story ends on a hilariously ironic note:

The suit says Heidi suffered unlawful discrimination, humiliation and punishment by school personnel merely because they didn’t agree with her viewpoint.

Wow, the poor girl got discriminated against merely for expressing her discrimination.