Federal judge throws out challenge from Joe Arpaio calling the President's immigration reforms unconstitutional.

Courtesy of Reuters: 

A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a lawsuit brought against Barack Obama by an Arizona police chief who called the U.S. president's sweeping immigration reforms unconstitutional, saying the plaintiff lacked legal standing in the case. 

Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denied the demand by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio for a preliminary injunction to halt the policies. 

Arpaio, who calls himself "America's Toughest Sheriff," filed the case last month, saying Obama had overstepped his powers by bypassing Congress and ordering the changes himself.

No the President did not overstep his powers, but you sure did you pink underwear pimping piece of shit.

John McCain responds to the Tea Party's idea of recruiting Sarah Palin to run against him for his Senate seat, with laughter.

Courtesy of AZ Central: 

McCain, R-Ariz., is expected to officially announce his re-election bid after the first of the year. The New York Times reported Nov. 25 that national "tea party" leaders consider Palin, a former Alaska governor, "their fantasy candidate" to run against McCain in Arizona's Republican Senate primary and hope to persuade her to do so. McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, is deemed too moderate or liberal by many far-right conservatives. 

"Oh, that's foolish," McCain told The Arizona Republic when asked about the talk of a rival Palin candidacy. "Sarah and I have maintained a very close and warm relationship. That's just not in the realm of possibility." 

"I know that they will do everything they can to recruit somebody, but I can promise you it's not Sarah Palin," McCain said.

Well it's nice that they have a "very close and warm relationship" (Whatever that means for Sarah Palin these days), but of course the main reason that McCain's job is because being a Senator is work, and Palin simply does not do work anymore.

In fact according to her staffers, Levi Johnston, she never really did.

McCain might actually lose his seat this next election cycle, but it will NOT be to the creature he helped create back in 2008.

College conservative group upset that ASU Biology professor compared Creationism to magic.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

A biology professor at Arizona State University is under attack for an image he showed in class that compared creationism to magic. 

The conservative group Campus Reform, which targets educators it perceives to have a liberal bias, reported last week that professor Christofer Bang showed the image during a PowerPoint presentation in his Biology 100 class. 

The PowerPoint slide, titled “Evolution vs. Creationism,” showed the March of Progress illustration of human evolution next to an image of Jesus Christ shooting lightning out of his fingers to create a human. The image shows Jesus saying, “MAGIC!” 

A student told Campus Reform that the picture was offensive: “Quite a few students in the lecture hall were bothered by the picture, and it didn’t contribute to the lecture besides adding spite.” 

Conservatives at Arizona State University also expressed their displeasure with the professor on Facebook. 

“Liberal scum certainly exists on this campus! While I personally support the drawing on the left, I think it’s wrong and unethical for professors to shame those who believe differently,” one person wrote on the Facebook page for College Republicans at ASU.

Another conservative student complained on Facebook that the Founding Fathers also believed in Creationism, which is a point that is hard to argue against since Charles Darwin did not publish Origin of Species until 1859.  (Yes folks, that's your college tuition money at work.)

You know I recognize that it must be hard for some of these students to come face to face with  undiluted facts for the very first time, and it hurts their little irrational feelings when somebody points out that they have been lied to their entire lives. But really what's the solution?

I mean do you take each of these Christian school educated children into a room with soft light and soothing flute music, have them lie down on a comfy sofa with a cool drink, and THEN tell them that everything they think they know is bullshit and that their parents and teachers were fucking morons?

I mean come on if you suggest that Evolution, which painstakingly lays out exactly how organism evolved into what we see around us today, and choose to replace it with the idea that God made it all happen like this....

....then yes, you believe in magic.

Unless of course one of these little geniuses wants to explain exactly HOW God simply thought things into existence. Because I am fairly certain that the professor would LOVE to hear that hypothesis.

Arizona school board member complains that Biology textbook violates her "religious rights." Decides to cut out offending pages. A little thing we call "censorship."

Courtesy of The New York Times:  

The textbook, the one with the wide-eyed lemur peering off the cover, has been handed out for years to students in honors biology classes at the high schools here, offering lessons on bread-and-butter subjects like mitosis and meiosis, photosynthesis and anatomy. 

But now, the school board in this suburb of Phoenix has voted to excise or redact two pages deep inside the book — 544 and 545 — because they discuss sexually transmitted diseases and contraception, including mifepristone, a drug that can be used to prevent or halt a pregnancy. 

A law passed two years ago in Arizona requires schools to teach “preference, encouragement and support to childbirth and adoption” over abortion, and the school board decided that those pages were in violation of this law — even though the Arizona Education Department, which examined the book for compliance, found that they were not. 

The controversy has turned into a referendum on the 2012 law, with supporters saying the textbook content cannot be removed fast enough and opponents crying foul for any number of reasons: technical, ethical, pedagogical. But the Gilbert school board is moving forward, trying to figure out how to remove the material in question — by way of black markers or scissors, if need be — despite resistance from parents, residents, the American Civil Liberties Union and even the district’s superintendent. 

“It comes down to, it’s the law, and we need to be in compliance with the law,” said Julie Smith, a member of the Gilbert Public Schools governing board and also a parent who raised concerns about the book. “If people don’t like the law, they need to take it up with their state legislator. I don’t write the law. It’s my job to uphold it.”

The offending pages.

By the way that Julie Smith woman is apparently the driving force behind this censorship.

And here are her reasons why:

Ms. Smith, the school board member and parent, said she had been driving her family home from church back in January when her son told her about what was in the textbook. “I almost drove off the road,” she said. 

“I’m Catholic; we do not contracept,” Ms. Smith said. “It is a grave sin.” By including those pages in the curriculum, she added, “you have violated my religious rights.”

"We do not contracept?"  Well considering this woman's heavy handed parenting style that's probably too bad.

As for violating her religions rights? Well nobody's religious rights should have any impact whatsoever on what is taught in a public school classroom.

And in my opinion if science classes are taught in a factual manner than they should violate somebody's religious beliefs almost daily.

By the way you know that removing these pages, or using a sharpie to black them out, is going to do NOTHING to stop students from accessing them. It's called the internet folks, and if the kids want to read them (And after this you they all will.), then by gosh they will do exactly that.

You will never guess who the Tea Party is hoping to recruit to run against John McCain in 2016. But then again, maybe you will.

Courtesy of The New York Times:  

And in their most audacious plans, Tea Party groups are preparing to recruit challengers to run against high-profile Republicans they accuse of betraying them — as they did when they toppled Eric Cantor, the former House majority leader. 

At the top of their list of potential targets are politicians like Senator John McCain of Arizona, a proponent of an immigration overhaul. Their fantasy candidate: Sarah Palin, Mr. McCain’s former running mate, who now spends much of the year at her home in Scottsdale, Ariz. Two prominent conservative activists, who spoke anonymously to reveal private discussions, said leading Tea Party figures planned to reach out to Ms. Palin to see if she was interested in running against Mr. McCain.

Hey that's what you get when you endorse your girlfriend to run for President and not your former running mate.

Personally I think it would be a kick in the ass to watch Palin go up against John McCain in Arizona. One can only imagine the oppo research he could use against her if she dared to challenge him.

However I think that John McCain, and the rest of Arizona, can relax. 

Once again being a Senator is a J-O-B and Sarah Palin hates those.

So she is not going to run. However it is nice of the New York Times to confirm how much time Palin is spending in Arizona. Not that we all here at IM did not already know that.

John McCain strongly suggests that he will run for reelection in 2016. Because, oh why the hell not?

"Whoa Nelly, I'm gonna win it this time."

Courtesy of AZ Central:  

Veteran U.S. Sen. John McCain reiterated Thursday that he is "seriously considering" and "leaning towards" a 2016 re-election bid. 

"We were talking to our longtime supporters -- many of whom have been with us for many years and we're grateful for their support -- about the options, and what we see as the future of the party in Washington and here in Arizona," McCain said. "We're getting a lot of their input as to whether I should run for re-election or not. They know that I am seriously considering it, and leaning towards it." 

McCain, R-Ariz., made the remarks to reporters after a breakfast meeting with political allies at the Ritz-Carlton, Phoenix, at 24th Street and Camelback Road.

Sure why not? I mean what does Arizona deserve more than to have Methuselah representing them in Washington D.C.?

In 2016 John McCain will be eighty years old.

Not to be an "ageist" but if the old bastard were a horse they would not even bother putting him out to pasture they would just shoot him in the head and be done with it.

Personally I don't know how the old fossil can bring himself to show his face in public anymore. If I were the one who had released the Wasilla Wendigo on this country I would have done the honorable thing long ago and committed seppuku.

It looks like Johyn McCain's goal is to die on the Senate floor.

Actually he should consider himself lucky. If he and Palin had been elected, he would have died in his sleep from "mysterious causes" way back in 2009 or 2010.

That is unless he had been willing to go for a plane ride in Alaska.

Sarah Palin's endorsees are a colorful bunch, with numerous skeletons in their closets. But Arizona's Doug Ducey may take the cake.

So as we all know Palin endorsed former Cold Stone CEO and current Arizona State Treasurer, Doug Ducey, for Governor and lo and behold he actually won.

Not only that but the polls show that Ducey has a substantial lead on his Democratic challenger.

And that is important because Palin's win/loss record has been rather underwhelming.

It really does look like smooth sailing for Ducey. I mean I cannot imagine what might trip him up at this point.

I'm sorry, did you say his family has ties to organized crime?

Courtesy of Phoenix New Times: 

According to newspaper accounts and public records from various court and congressional hearings, four of Ducey's relatives in an Italian-American family called Scott (anglicized from Scotti) were involved in illegal gambling in Ohio. 

Family members ran after-hours gambling clubs and participated in bookmaking, numbers-running, extortion, loan-sharking, and other lucrative illicit activities from the 1920s through the 1980s. 

The candidate's maternal grandfather, William Scott (a.k.a. Bill Scotti), was a convicted bookmaker who partnered with members of the Detroit mob. 

His son Billy Scott, Ducey's uncle, was a high-profile sports bookmaker in Toledo who did time in federal prison in Arizona before fleeing to the Caribbean island of Antigua, where he became an online gambling kingpin. 

Uncle Billy returned to the United States in 2012 to plead guilty in federal court to international money laundering and illegal Internet wagering. 

Ducey's great uncle Tony Paul Scott (a.k.a. Neufio Scott), his grandfather's brother, was among Toledo's "most legendary racketeers" and one of the "elders of the loosely knit Toledo crime family," according to the Toledo Blade, the city's daily newspaper. 

During his long life, Tony Paul was arrested numerous times, incarcerated for illegal gambling and highway robbery, and eventually stripped of his U.S. citizenship, though he was allowed to remain in this country until his death in 1993. 

These sins of the state treasurer's fascinating bloodline have remained unknown to the general public. Until now.

Okay, now that might leave a mark.

But then again which Republican politician is NOT in some way connected with organized crime?

P.S. The Ducey campaign has now addressed these allegations:  

Ducey's campaign forwarded this statement, from his spokeswoman who asked that I use her full Italian-American name, Melissa Mazzella DeLaney: 

"In the United States of America and in the State of Arizona, people know you and judge you based on your life, the way you have lived it and your accomplishments, not on the actions of relatives from previous generations. The New Times correctly reported that the information about past family members does not touch Doug Ducey's life or career. This has been a tough campaign where both candidates have had their careers vetted, which is entirely appropriate when seeking a very high office. Doug trusts the voters of Arizona to make decisions based on the life he has led and his vision to create greater opportunities as the next governor." 

I asked DeLaney whether Ducey got any of his start-up funds from any of the four relatives mentioned in the article or as a result of criminal activity. Her answer: "No, absolutely not."

So as you see Ducey did not deny that the connections exist, but simply stated that they have nothing to do with his life, or his success in business. 

In other words, "Fugeddabout it."

You know as I was reading thorough all of this I have to admit that I once again flashed on my past conversations with Shailey Tripp, who was the one who first mentioned Todd's connection to gambling and prostitution.

Two enterprises, by the way, that also often have ties to organized crime.

I'm just saying.