Thousand words and all that:




h/t Dear Leader

I just happened to be at the Westboro Baptist Church website--you know, www.godhatesfags.com--to confirm their picketing plans in Bethesda on April 24, and came across all kinds of comedy.  I suggest a visit.  And if you get tired of it, you can visit their sister site, www.godhatestheworld.com.I get the sense that the members of WBC really do not care for Britney Spears:

Okay, so this filthy freak didn't always have the curse of God Almighty abiding on her. God blessed her with some abilities, and gave her a dwelling place in this earth. This simple, hateful, baby-feasting slut was very unthankful. She took counsel from the likes of Madonna the whore, and the very second she put her nasty lips on that nasty adulterous blasphemous mouth of Madonna in blatant defiance of the clear standard of God (NO DYKES - DUMMIES!), the curses began. YAY! That is how our God rolls. Not one person ever heard of ugly, brute K-Fed before this stupid little tart took up with him. Now God by this method has completely wasted that simple slut! Beautiful! And God is nowhere NEAR done with her. We will be outside Sprint Center to tell her about it. God Hates You; You're Going To Hell; God Hates Divorce; God Hates Fag Enablers; Not Blessed, Just Cursed. You are the face of DOOMED america, simple slut Spears!

And anyone planning to attend the Nickelback concert at the Sprint Center in Kansas City on April 8, I suggest you watch out!

From a speakingcorpse post last week, re NM Gov. Bill Richardson banning the death penalty:

Richardson said he made the decision after going to the state penitentiary, where he saw the death chamber and visited the maximum security unit where those sentenced to life without parole could be housed. "My conclusion was those cells are something that may be worse than death," he said. "I believe this is a just punishment."...

And from this recent NYer article, "Hellhole," by Atul Gawande:

First, after months or years of complete isolation, many prisoners “begin to lose the ability to initiate behavior of any kind—to organize their own lives around activity and purpose,” he writes. “Chronic apathy, lethargy, depression, and despair often result. . . . In extreme cases, prisoners may literally stop behaving,” becoming essentially catatonic.

Second, almost ninety per cent of these prisoners had difficulties with “irrational anger,” compared with just three per cent of prisoners in the general population. Haney attributed this to the extreme restriction, the totality of control, and the extended absence of any opportunity for happiness or joy. Many prisoners in solitary become consumed with revenge fantasies.
...
It is unclear how many prisoners in solitary confinement become psychotic. Stuart Grassian, a Boston psychiatrist, has interviewed more than two hundred prisoners in solitary confinement. In one in-depth study, prepared for a legal challenge of prisoner-isolation practices, he concluded that about a third developed acute psychosis with hallucinations.
...
The simple truth is that public sentiment in America is the reason that solitary confinement has exploded in this country, even as other Western nations have taken steps to reduce it. This is the dark side of American exceptionalism. With little concern or demurral, we have consigned tens of thousands of our own citizens to conditions that horrified our highest court a century ago. Our willingness to discard these standards for American prisoners made it easy to discard the Geneva Conventions prohibiting similar treatment of foreign prisoners of war, to the detriment of America’s moral stature in the world. In much the same way that a previous generation of Americans countenanced legalized segregation, ours has countenanced legalized torture.