Reason Morning Links: Bad Night for the D.C. Establishment, Crackdown in Thailand, Promise in the U.K.

• As noted below, primary night brings bad news for incumbents and establishment candidates.
• Eliot Spitzer rumored to be getting a show on CNN.
• UN Security Council votes for new round of sanctions on Iran.
• Thai government initiates bloody crackdown on protesters.
• Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg lays out his policy plan for British government, and it's surprisingly good news for civil libertarians.
• GOP congressional hopeful and regular Reason villain Mary Beth Buchanan loses handily in the Pennsylvania primary.

Comments

[Jordan Elliot]

Early Morning Metal...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOVj6l4C0PM

[Jordan Elliot]

Another off the same album. Digging the hell out of this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0uMe03I518

[Fluffy]

Did Buchanan throw herself off a bridge in despair after her defeat?

No?

Oh well, you can't have everything I guess.

If Rand Paul makes it to the Senate that will add one more name to the list of national GOP figures that John and I both [apparently] like. That happened a lot faster than I thought it would.

[John]

What do you want to bet Buchanan goes to work at a big name criminal defense firm defending the worst slugs imaginable. The sleaziest prosecutors often become the sleaziest defense attorneys. It would not shock me at all if the next time you see Buchanan she is crusading for justice for some mob boss who looted a pension fund.

[Troy]

I wouldn't take that bet John.

[alan]

Buchanan she is crusading for justice for some mob boss who looted a pension fund.

That happened to my dad back in the 80s (pension fund of the union, Steamfitters in his case). Twenty years paying dues to a union, he crashes in an accident, disabled, forced to retire, and then denied his pension. As a result, I paid my own way through college. To be honest, I still have a lot of anger in me over it.

[John]

Those people are scum.

[Tommy Chong]

Like I said before:

"I'm honored to be Mary Beth's only regret. Now does she regret going after me? Or does she regret that I never got enough time? I tend to think she wishes she'd never heard my name. I have become her legacy. Mary Beth Loose Cannon is now looking for a job. She blew her last job busting me. Karma is so sweet! She's looking for work while Cheech and I start our second multi-million dollar tour thanks to the publicity she created for us! Thank you Mary Beth - may you find peace and happiness in your search for your soul."

[Enough About Palin]

If that's really you, sir, thanks. Thanks for everything. I wish you long life and great success.

[Zeb]

I doubt it is him, but it is really a quote from something Chong wrote.

[JW]

Fluffy--Don't be a buzz kill. She got her ass handed to her in a big, fucking hat. Be happy with that. I am.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Any civil libertarians should have moved out of Britain long ago.

[The Ghost of Thomas Paine]

I thought I had.

[Fluffy]

That Clegg article reads like I am still asleep. There's no way that's real.

[John Thacker]

Almost all those civil liberties reforms were in the Conservative manifesto as well. Of course, it's hard to say how many would have be reconsidered by a majority Government (and they might still be), but the Tories and LibDems' biggest area of agreement was on civil liberties, actually.

[John]

"scrapping the identity card scheme and second generation biometric passports;

* removing limits on the rights to peaceful protest;

* a bonfire of unnecessary laws;

* a block on pointless new criminal offences;

* internet and email records not to be held without reason;

* closed-circuit television to be properly regulated;

* new controls over the DNA database, such as on the storage of innocent people's DNA;

* axeing the ContactPoint children's database;

* schools will not take children's fingerprints without asking for parental consent;

* reviewing the libel laws to protect freedom of speech."

I know he is a socialist little shit. But damn. Wouldn't it be nice if that were Obama so that maybe we got some civil liberties with our taxes and bankruptcy?

[Rich]

This *sounds* nice, and would undoubtedly be an improvement. But all the weasel-wording ("unnecessary", "pointless", "without reason", "properly") gives me some pause. Sorry -- devil in details.

[John]

Good point. But we can at least hope.

[BakedPenguin]

If he does half of what's on that list, it would be a great improvement. And BTW, may Jacqui Smith rot in hell.

[dbcooper]

And Harriet Harman. Unfortunately she's now the temporary leader of the Labour Party though ...

[Jordan Elliot]

I knew Great Britain had gotten bad with stupid laws and proposed stupid laws but wow. Some of that stuff is still rather shocking. The child fingerprinting is especially disturbing.

Also, 3&4 on this list are bullshit from the get go. Politicians thrive on unnecessary laws, pointless criminal offences, and the addition of more of both.

[Bingo]

It's a start. A lot of these are like saying "You are no longer allowed to beat your wife with a 2x4. You are still allowed to use a baseball bat, but it must be regulation size."

Civil liberties are still being abused, just not as badly as before.

[CoyoteBlue]

China goes after the Swingers.

The defendent asks the question that is relevent to all consensual "crimes": "How can I disturb social order? What happens in my house is a private matter."

[The Libertarian Guy]

Coming soon to America?

[Zeb]

Nah. This seems to be one of the few areas that our government is doing pretty well at getting out of the business of regulating.

[wylie]

Multiple Sex Partners will increase the cost of healthcare for a person. Clearly something has to be done about that...

[Rich]

Eliot Spitzer rumored to be getting a show on CNN.

Oh, let me be the first: "Yet another reason not to watch CNN."

[EscapedWestOfTheBigMuddy]

I don't know. Maybe it'll be called Lifestyles of Hypocritical, Politically-Connected, Criminal Scumbags:

<voiceover>
This twenty room mansion, with its luxurious rear entrance for overpriced call girls, is where our guest entertains senators who can do him a favour...
</voiceover>

[Rich]

"And today's 'head-butting debate' is with a very special guest."

[The Libertarian Guy]

She's still wearing too much. Needs to take off the glasses.

[Tonio]

I didn't know CNN ran comedy programming.

[Jordan Elliot]

Spitzer n' Blitzer.

[JW]

Nice.

[SugarFree]

Skeletor and Beast Man rise again to savage the land.

[Mer Man]

I always was an unrecognized talent.

[Fisto]

You, Sir, are no Ram Man.

[?]

Wouldn't it be nice if that were Obama so that maybe we got some civil liberties with our taxes and bankruptcy?

That is Obama. He said the American versions of those things, to the delight of many a libertarian sucker. And here we are.

[cynical]

But that was before he won.

[Fluffy]

Wait - CNN is still on the air?

[CoyoteBlue]

In airports.

[SugarFree]

Nice one-two punch, you guys.

[Brett L]

If CNN is broadcast to the ether and nobody tunes in, does it still suck?

[Zeb]

It's on cable. And there is no such thing as ether (at least not that kind).

[Some dude]

GOP congressional hopeful and regular Reason reason villain Mary Beth Buchanan loses handily in the Pennsylvania primary.

"Reason" isn't capitalized, is it?

[Troy]

If I fuck a hooker, can I get a show on CNN?

RE: Buchanan... Ha ha ha haaaaaaaa ha, you evil fucking bitch.

[SugarFree]

No. You're little people. When little people go to a hooker, they get their car impounded and then they get pounded.

[Troy]

Buchanan promoted her eight years as Western Pennsylvania's top federal prosecutor even though opponents ridiculed her for a failed corruption case against former Allegheny County Coroner Dr. Cyril H. Wecht and her conviction of famed marijuana advocate Tommy Chong for selling bongs online.

I'd really love to see any ad that mocked going after Mr. Chong.

[Censorship = Theft]

"If this be censorship, then kicking drunken party guests out of your living room at 6AM is ethnic cleansing. And the murder of Theo van Gogh simply another bad film review."

EOM

[SugarFree]

Hopefully someone will read this before it is disappeared...

While the H&R editors can delete what they please, and I would certainly never call it censorship, it is still a deeply disappointing move on their part.

[JW]

I concur.

I get what Nick is after and I won't hammer him for trying to run an honest show, but I would have preferred to have left it at deleting comments or not at all. That's one of the best features of H&R: the very light hand of modding.

Besides, what will Tulpa do with all of its copious free time now? What else is there to rage against?

[robc]

Dang it. How come I never see these things before they go away?

[robc]

Okay, nevermind, thought it was something in this thread.

[Rage Against]

the machine?

[alan]

I missed that thread entirely :(.

[John]

What are you guys talking about?

[JW]

Nick pulled and closed the comments for the "Draw Mohammad Day" contest post.

[SugarFree]

The comments for the Draw Mohammad thread from yesterday afternoon were deleted.

[Jordan Elliot]

+1

(Filter is gay)

[Jordan Elliot]

How did this end up under your 10:07 post when I clicked to reply to the original 9:59 post.

There's a doin's a transpirin'.

[SugarFree]

The threaded comments go screwy when things are deleted out of them, replies to one comment get stuck under another. Maybe something got deleted.

[Jordan Elliot]

Actually, now that I think about it, it was probably the filter's fault.

It won't accept "+1" alone and it admonished me for trying so I had to enter more text. That's probably why.

[The Squirrels]

We r steeling ur threads and messing up your nests.

[Ragin Cajun]

Muslim squirrels?

[Jordan Elliot]

Imagine a group of squirrels in their high pitched "voices" doing the rebel yell that muslims do. It's funny.

And I wonder of the muslim squirrels enemy are the Mice Templars?

[Ragin Cajun]

Actually, when the squirrels ululate, they do it in the lowest voice that they can.

And everyone knows that the Mice Templars were brutally suppressed by Philip the Groundhog, after he was deeply in debt to them.

[John]

That showed no balls. I know it is Reason's board and they can do what they want. But isn't it a better policy to let people post what they want? Let me guess someone put up things that were un PC?

[SugarFree]

When I stopped reading around 5pm EST it wasn't too bad yet, IMO. There were even a few genuinely interesting subthreads going on.

[Baff]

It started with the deletion of my post about how I would like to learn more about M*******'s teachings, but it hard to hear him because he has a mouth full of dicks. Apparently, double entendre doesn't play well around here. So I'll explain it for the benefit of Nick.

We have a difficult time hearing what his teachings are because he has a mouth full of dicks. It is the dicks that cause the message to be garbled or even completely unintelligible. And who are those dicks that are garbling the teachings? Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden and Anwar al Awlaki, to name just three.

So we have learned that at Reason, you can be really cool ad defiant by making fun of radical Islam with pictures, but you'd better not do it with words.

[Jordan Elliot]

Couldn't you just read Mo's writings to learn? Thus keeping the dicks in his mouth.

[Baff]

That's not the point.

[AlmightyJB]

I actually think if they hadn't deleted your original comment. That probably would have been the end of it. It's interesting that there were other insults not of a sexual nature that were not deleted.

[Citizen Nothing]

Yeah. A major error. I'm very disappointed in H&R. Think I'll give myself a few days away. But I'm sure H&R will be just fine without my inanities, anyway.

[Ted S.]

I never paid attention to your inanities, anyway.

[AlmightyJB]

"the H&R editors can delete what they please, and I would certainly never call it censorship"

Agree with you on the first part but not the second. This site has had no problem calling what comedy central did censorship. This was the same thing. Even if they had an established policy about such things, filtering non-pc comments is censoring. I really don't know how you can get around that fact given the definition of the word. Nothing on that thread was nearly as offensive as any of Max's posts, they just happened to be about a religous icon no one is suppose to make fun of. The irony here considering the topic for discussion is pretty amazing. I respect Nick's right to censor his threads but not his attemp to redefine the word because he doesn't like it.

[SugarFree]

I was going for more the "it's only censorship if it's done by the government" angle. But I accept your argument as well.

But since you bring up Max, I will say that is the very source of my disappointment. With the invasion of griefers like Max and Dan T., whose posts live on forever, to delete things to protect the delicate sensibilities of Muslims is quite galling.

[John]

No kidding. What about some of the Holocaust denying that goes on? Or some of the flat out anti- Semetic rants that have been put up? None of that stuff ever gets deleted.

[Warty]

It's especially galling to censor a discussion for being offensive to Muslims, when the entire point of what we were discussing was to offend a certain type of Muslim. Not cool, Nick.

[Baff]

So if we all decide to post remarks offensive Muslims on every H&R thread, will Nick delete all of those threads too? If so, I don't think I have to tell you who's won...

[Joshua Corning]

We try to have nice things and all you libarbarians do is fuck it up.

[John]

If I ran CNN, I would give Spitzer a show and then without telling him make his first guest Heidi Fleiss. What a colossal dickhead.

[JW]

You know, it could be a show about male pattern baldness or "How to be the Supreme Douchebag in One Easy Step." Since Springer went off the air, there is a vast, untapped audience for this kind of wisdom.

[Brett L]

Jersey Shore doesn't own that market?

[Pro Libertate]

A Spitzer show? Oh, that is so awesome! Could it be, at last, Eliot Spitzer's Whore Search?

[P Brooks]

I knew that thread would be a huge sinkhole, so I refrained from looking. Is that censorship?

[P Brooks]

"People I actually came in contact with were very supportive and very responsive. Apparently there were a lot of other people out there who felt differently," Buchanan said at her campaign headquarters in Wexford.

Were those people with whom you "actually came in contact" cops, and other like-minded scumbags?

[Jordan Elliot]

Shit attracts flies.

[EscapedWestOfTheBigMuddy]

I assume that above a certain level it becomes increasingly difficult for a politician to not live in an echo chamber. The controlling metric is presumably a combination of their actual power and the degree of controversy they're been involved in.

Avoiding it would require both the brains to identify those lackeys who are and are not feeding you a realistic picture of the public opinion, and the strength of character to prefer the former.

Mary Beth evidently failed on at least one of those counts.

[P Brooks]

The threaded comments go screwy when things are deleted out of them, replies to one comment get stuck under another. Maybe something got deleted.

Smells like conspiracy.

[Jordan Elliot]

They are in control...

[Dee Woodmans]

Sounds to me like someone needs to get busy over there.

Lou
http://www.web-anonymity.cz.tc

[Bingo]

Thanks, Lou!

[sage]

They had MSNBC on at the gym this morning, and there was some talking head talking about the primaries. Here is what he said (best I can remember):

"It's important not to draw too broad of a conclusion from last night's results. A primary in an off election year is like watching a tsunami in a bathtub."

Oh, SNAP! So clever! Except, no. This time, it's like watching the first of the incumbents get drowned in the bathtub. Who's next?

[Poppin' Caps Lock]

+80

[Troy]

Wow, to the comments got deleted. I don't get it. They're gonna post a bunch of cartoons tommorrow. The very point of which is to tell a bunch of homocidal goons that we can say what we want.

We mock here for many reasons. We mock each other because it is funny. We also mock the mockworthy like that bitch Buchanan. There are more reasons I'm sure.

If the reason is safety, then how can I put my name in the hat to pool the risk? I wanna keep this board just the way it has been where I can say whatever the fuck I want and [gladly] risk the mocker of my fellow resonoids.

And it seems to me that is beyond dispute that modern day islam is every bit as mockworthy as progressiveness, Christianity, LoneWacko, network television, and the ice capades.

[Pip]

Shut the fuck up, Troy, you all-to-easily-mockable cunt.

[Troy]

smoochy smoochy

[Paul]

So Reason is afraid of Muslims too?

[Mohamhock]

Hell, I'm scared of them.

[Anon]

Yes, agnosticism tends to breed cowardice towards violence.

[mike]

do u suck dick if u do i got a bigcock u can suck