TPM mentioned a few days ago that Obama might be looking at some sort of "reforms" to social security. Has there been any further news on that? Somewhat related, isn't there supposed to be an appropriations bill sometime soon for SS?

For anyone interested, I gave a big Nihilistic Shout-Out praising Roland Burris for his fine work in helping liberals undermine the integrity of our electoral system; thus getting us one step closer to the postmodern caliphate dream we all desire for our country.

And remember, the American Nihilist is the place to go for all liberal nihilists who hate stuff and want America to lose.

Today was too serious. This is a little lighter.

I don't know if any of you have ever rolled your own sushi, but it's a hobby I picked up a couple months ago.

I'm just happy when my maki comes out round. So seeing something so intricate leaves me awestruck.

Steve Benen noted:

The North Dakota House voted yesterday to define "any organism with the genome of homo sapiens" as a person protected by rights granted by the North Dakota Constitution and state laws. The measure is intended to serve as a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.

The North Dakota measure is naked speciesism. There is no ethical reason to deny legal personhood, legal rights, or equal protection of the law to organisms with genomes other than that of homo sapiens.

Any organism with human DNA is a person? So, do you need a court order to get your appendix removed?

Sheesh. Those people are whacko.

"Today was too serious. This is a little lighter."

Wow! That is impressive. I can't even begin to imagine how you pull that off. Thanks!

I can't even begin to imagine how you pull that off. Thanks!

Ditto on the thanks. There was a link there for the tutorial. I'd be afraid if I tried to make it, I would have to explain that I wasn't trying to insult Obama.

In case anyone is curious as to whether Sean Delonas really is a vile racist, sexist, homobigoted wankstain or whether today's cartoon was just a blip on the space-time continuum, gawker presents Sean Delonas's other masterpieces.

http://gawker.com/5155855/ten-masterpieces-from-sean-delonas

My money is on the wankstain.

The worst of that cartoon isn't that it was created by a world-class asshole. We know they're out there. No, the really wearying thing is that now we're going to have to listen to the tenaciously culture-blind and deaf MatthewRMarler make 20 disingenuous posts "just wondering" why comparing a black man to an ape should be considered more insulting than calling Bush the Chimperor. God, this shit gets old.

* The North Dakota House voted yesterday to define "any organism with the genome of homo sapiens" as a person protected by rights granted by the North Dakota Constitution and state laws.

The North Dakota House, by way of this legislation, just (1) outlawed the death penalty, (2) declared a full reversal of all discriminatory actions against First Nations individuals, and (3) volunteered to take any and all prisoners from Gitmo.

Ain't it fun, watching these rotpublicans speak before thinking?

Steve W. wrote: "The North Dakota House, by way of this legislation, just (1) outlawed the death penalty ..."

Not at all -- they extended the "rights granted by the North Dakota Constitution and state laws" to "any organism with the genome of homo sapiens".

If the North Dakota Constitution and state laws already permit the death penalty, then how would this measure "outlaw" the death penalty by extending the Constitution and state law to all genetically human organisms?

If anything, this measure would make human embryos subject to the death penalty -- if, of course, a human embryo were to be convicted in court of a capital crime under North Dakota law.

God, this shit gets old.

Especially when trying to explain the wrongness of this garbage to people who are too chickenshit to examine their own privilege, and who would rather accept the "it's just a joke about monkeys and shakespeare!" line o'crap because it takes no effort.

God, I hate people.

So, do you need a court order to get your appendix removed?

What about a tumor? After all, a tumor is a living thing that shares your DNA. Will you have to get a court order for a mastectomy?

Given the new North Dakota law, it's time for some environmental groups to file some lawsuits. That's right environmental groups. The argument would be that pollution causes miscarriages. Essentially, we can use this new law to argue that pollution is actually a form of mass murder.

What exactly meets the definition of an "organism"? If I lose an arm would that arm be an organism or just a part of an organism, and if is just a part how many parts are needed to constitute a whole organism.

Assume you could separate my body and my head and keep both alive. Is my head an organism since it contains my consciousness and if it is what about my body? Is it a separate organism and is it entitled to civil rights independent of my head? Does my head have the right to let my body die?

What about dead bodies? A dead organism is still by definition an organism, so is a cadaver entitled to civil rights? Or does the lack of conscious thought disqualify it? If conscious thought is the threshold then when does consciousness develop in an embryo?

Doesn't really seem like they thought this through.

Somebody needs to sign up a tissue culture dish to vote or something in North Dakota.

* Banks with TARP money aren't lending the way they're supposed to.

but, but, but they're:

* spending billions for executive bonuses
* having multi-million dollar executive retreats and parties
* sponsoring sporting events and stadiums for millions

priorities baby, priorities.

In vitro in North Dakota becomes dicey. Are the lab techs who destroy extras now mass murderers?

BREAKING NEWS:Today in a compromise the North Dakota Supreme Court ruled that the twinkle in a fathers eye has 3/5 personhood.

Banks with TARP money aren't lending the way they're supposed to.

Which is why I advocated, at the time, that if the government wanted to spend the better part of a trillion dollars to guarantee that credit was available, it should just lend money directly to businesses and consumers rather than giving it to banks, who were already hoarding and would continue to do so if more cash were thrown at them.

Does North Dakota also extend their jurisdiction beyond state lines, if you are going "any organism with the genome of homo sapiens".

Or does this also mean if you pass through North Dakota while pregnant (well, not you Steve), then the fetus gains rights? Then when you leave, is there the equivalent of the Fugitive Slave Act going on? Oy.

For a party who professes to believe in property rights, it nver ceases to amaze me that the republicans constantly use musician's work without obtaining their prior consent. Do they ever ask first?!

They must think that because they hear it over the airwaves, it's all free.

The measure passed 61-31 I believe. My gf got on the phone to her state senator (for Fargo) who was horrified and they spent a little while trading stories of how bad this thing was as she vowed to fight it.

Personally I think the results for in vitro will make it so weird to enforce it'll be struck down.

The author of the bill, Rep. Dan Sullivan, R-Tulsa, said it is designed to stop couples from using the gender of a fetus as a reason to get an abortion. Sullivan said a doctor would be prohibited from performing an abortion if the mother specifically said the fetus' sex was the reason.

Gender-selection abortions happen just about as frequently as partial-birth ones: as in, never.

If you missed Frontline's "Inside the Meltdown", you can catch it all on their website.

And thanks for that, doubtful. That was precious!

Or does this also mean if you pass through North Dakota while pregnant (well, not you Steve), then the fetus gains rights? Then when you leave, is there the equivalent of the Fugitive Slave Act going on?

@MobiusKlein,

What do you think parental consent laws are now? And yes, this is a direct goal of this law. This will enable ND to pass a law forbidding ANYONE for assisting an adult woman to leave the state for a legal abortion, and may even allow for her apprehension and extradition back to ND to face prosecution for attempted murder.

It's funny to see people call on Burris to step down but not crooks like Murtha or Bush even back in the day. The chorus against Burris is as deafening as the silence on real crooks in DC is telling.

MissMudd - Wasn't that Frontline well done? You could feel the anger of Paulson as time after time he had to concede that pure free market principles actually have flaws. Or at least until he would have had to give into his old nemisis, Fuld, at Lehman. And that decision led directly to the meltdown.

I'll ask once again, though. At the time, the TV explanation for the meltdown was the short selling of bank stocks. Yet this documentary didn't even mention it. As I watched it, I felt like I was living in an alternate universe. Isn't anyone even going to address that "conventional wisdom"?

All this and we still don't know where "sir" Alex Stanford is.

My hunch is that he's at the Crawford ranch, playing mini-golf with bin Laden and Ken Lay.

[...] House Republicans had to pull their "Back in the Saddle" video yesterday after Aerosmith expressed its disapproval. -- Steve Benen

Although the comments on Political Animal are the only ones I read regularly (Benen seems to attract a "better class" of commenters, somehow) I dip into the TPM comments too, if only occasionally. Found this -- as yet not pulled even though it, too, uses an Aerosmith song as its bacground :) -- "Republicans Vote Zero" video in the comments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMJXLF4mFlY

Priceless and should go viral.

I think it's important to remember that the 14th Amendment defines a citizen thusly:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

Any "person" created by act of the North Dakota legislature is not a citizen (at least, not until birth), which will make the deportation proceedings rather lively, I think.

Re North Dakota vote:

I always knew that the day would come... Religious prohibitions (Onan in the Bible and RC church saying your pizzle would dry and fall off) weren't nearly effective enough; there ought to be a law. And now there is...

My question is this: if you're *already* in jail for self-gratification and then are caught in the bog "beating the horse" (don't know what the English vernacular is for it)... How much extra time do you get and are they gonna shackle your hands as well as your feet? And whose gonna wipe your ass, if so?

Because, while it may be debatable whether an appendix or an arm is "an organism", a spermatozoon certainly is (and a nimble one, at that). And, if anything carries homo sapiens DNA, the little bugger does.

Bleh. Who's, not whose...

And finally, House Republicans had to pull their "Back in the Saddle" video yesterday...

Download an MP3 get sued for millions, steal someone's song for an ad and you're just a Republican. Seems odd for a group that, with plenty of help from the Democrats, passed some of the most far-reaching and draconian Intellectual Property laws on anyone's books.

The reason I had to post as libra-ex instead of exlibra is that, when I tried to correct my typo in the original message, I got a snotty automated response to the tune of "too many responses from you, in too short a time". WTF? Are we Hunting the Swan? (those of you from the Carpetbagger might remember Swan). But, if the "too frequent" prohibition it's that easy to by-pass, what's the point?

any organism with the genome of homo sapiens

Now considering the wide variation between genomes of different people, who is going to decide what that genome actually is? The genome of a Down's syndrome child is almost as much different from the "standard model" as a chimpanzee's genome is. And other genetic problems related to extra chromosomes or chromosomal inversions fall into that same category. So are chimpanzees included or are Down's syndrome children excluded?

Danp, it was very well done and scary. I must have been in serious denial. Looks like a lot people were (are?). I'm not certain anyone really knows the full picture yet, even in this report. I may have to watch it over. Then again, I don't want to feel nauseous all over. Just call me "Scarlett".

WRT bank lending, I'm leaning more and more towards something similar to the Swedish solution - the key to resolving this crisis is cleaning up the banks' books. Maybe not doing it exactly as they did, but do some form of temporary bank takeover. Now is not the time to assign blame - now is the time for solutions, and the first step out of this crisis is to clean up the banks.

It is unbearable and disingenuous that banks had NO responsibility
for reporting how TARP money was spent.
TARP = This Additionally Ripped People (Off)

George Bush and Hank Paulson successfully pulled off one last rip off of America before leaving office. Legalized corruption. Has anyone seen them since

Well I know that as a bartender, I wouldn't serve a drink to a woman unless she had a certification from her doctor that she wasn't pregnant, since the fetus absorbs alcohol, that's serving to a minor, can't take that chance.

Will pregnant women have to sit in child seats? It's required for children under a certain age, you know...

I'm going to stick with my hunch that a fossil is not a people. And I'm not interested in much else coming out of ND thankyouverymuch.

As a followup to the George Will piece of a couple of days ago

As some of our readers have already noticed, there was a significant problem with the daily sea ice data images on February 16. The problem arose from a malfunction of the satellite sensor we use for our daily sea ice products. Upon further investigation, we discovered that starting around early January, an error known as sensor drift caused a slowly growing underestimation of Arctic sea ice extent. The underestimation reached approximately 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) by mid-February.

"any organism with the genome of homo sapiens"

Wouldn't this law in effect define a large range of individual human cells as distinct human beings?

Clearly the law intends to consider a zyote, a collection of human cells that cannot normally survive outside the parent organism, to be an "organism" it its own right.

With such a broad definition of "organism," I don't see what's to stop you from defining other sub-units of the larger organism as de facto human beings, as each cell does in fact contain the human genome.

They are trying to skip past the inherent difficulties in the abortion controversy, but they succeed only in pushing the debate down to the cellular level, opening the door to all sorts of logical absurdities in the process.