Congress outlaws protest near Secret Service-protected

By Dan Brooks in Fascism 8 Comments

Rick Santorum and his imaginary friend, God

The difference between the US President and a king, as any red-blooded American knows, is that you can tell the king of America to fuck himself. He probably won’t do it, but it’s nice to be able to make the recommendation. Living in the United States got a little less nice last week, when the House of Representatives approved HR 347—a bill that The Hill specifically describes as “non-controversial.” The Hill is like the guy at the poker table who looks at his cards, shakes his head, sighs and then calls three hundred dollars. In addition to “clarify[ing] in US law that it is illegal to trespass on White House grounds,” the full text of the HR 347 contains the follwing:

(1) the term ‘restricted buildings or grounds’ means any posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted area—

(A) of the White House or its grounds, or the Vice President’s official residence or its grounds

(B) of a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting; or

(C) of a building or grounds so restricted in conjunction with an event designated as a special event of national significance;

It is now a felony to glitterbomb Rick Santorum.

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Further adventures in for-profit ticketing

By Dan Brooks in Fascism 4 Comments

Des Moines exactly as I remember it. Note: not Des Moines.

A few weeks ago, we talked about various cities’ attempts to address revenue problems by selling private companies the right to operate and enforce parking meters. Around the same time, a St. Louis circuit judge ruled against American Traffic Solutions in a class-action suit, finding that the city had overstepped its administrative boundaries by selling ATS the authority to issue over $30 million in traffic tickets. Since 2007, ATS has operated red-light and speeding cameras throughout St. Louis, photographing license plates and sending the tickets to car owners using an automated system. Plaintiffs argued that this system violated due process, a claim that the judge largely rejected, although he acknowledged the possibility that ATS failed to notify ticketed drivers of their right to hearings. Ultimately, his problem with ATS lay with the state of Missouri’s complex and inordinately boring license points system—the ATS computers were not accurately reporting violations to the state Department of Revenue—but I’m going to take a flyer here and say that the Combat! blog audience is more likely to get charged with a crime than to administer the city of St. Louis. So we’re going to talk about that due process thing.

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The big one has a weak heart and is feminine

By Dan Brooks in Fascism 2 Comments

Kim Jong Il poses a problem. On one hand, he is an aggressive dictator, incrementally starving his people so he can continue to destabilize the rest of south Asia. On the other hand, he is hilarious. Look at him up there with his terrifyingly normal family in 1981, teasing the camera with some sort of Warren Beatty facial expression. The only person in the picture possibly more awesome is the child sitting next to him, who, as soon as the shutter clicks, will lunge forward and strike the photographer in the groin. He is Kim Jong Chol, and thirty years after this picture was taken, he will not get to run North Korea. Thirty years after this picture was taken, his father’s escaped personal chef will tell Chosun Ilbo that Jong Il can often be heard to say, “The big one has a weak heart and is feminine, but the young one is manly.” Props to everyone’s favorite Meghan Gallagher for the link.

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Happy continued fundamental themes of Christmas

By Dan Brooks in Fascism 0 Comment

"Did you get that Nintendo you wanted, dick?"

The Combat! blog offices are still relocated in beautiful* Des Moines, where a general atmosphere of holiday cheer/blood toxicity pervades. While I stare fixedly at a cup of coffee without perceiving how much, if any, time is passing, check out this article about how Robert Mugabe is still trying to seize absolute control over Zimbabwe. Mugabe is 86 years old, so it’s either manipulate a fragile African democracy or read The Family Circus again. For the last several years, economists have argued over whether Zimbabwe is experiencing hyperinflation or the highest inflation in the history of money, and the entire country is a testament to what one man not formally educated in economics can achieve when he insists on making all decisions himself. But for my money, the filet of the article is this sentence:

Mr. Charamba, the president’s press secretary, rejected the assertions [that Mugabe’s party would intimidate voters], saying there would be ‘an all-out deployment to assure there is no violence’ by any party.

That’s some primo intimidatory doublespeak, right there. Don’t worry, though: ZANU-PF just found a massive diamond field. That should stabilize the region.

You don’t need totalitarian government when you’ve got MasterCard

By Dan Brooks in Fascism 9 Comments

The sentence “Julian Assange has not yet been charged with a crime,” became a problematic way to discuss Wikileaks a few months ago, when Swedish authorities accused him of rape. So Julian Assange has not been charged with espionage or—as one Fox News reporter suggested, in apparent ignorance of his Australian citizenship—treason. Instead, he is the object of extradition proceedings for failing to stop what began as consensual sex when his condom broke. Meanwhile, in the same treason interview, Joe Lieberman suggested that the New York Times be investigated for publishing Assange’s leak of diplomatic cables. An “investigative” phone call from the senator’s office already prompted Amazon to stop hosting his website, and MasterCard and Visa prohibited donations to WikiLeaks last week. While the US government decides whether what he did was spying or journalism, his website has been shut down, his income stream has been frozen, and Julian Assange has been put in jail. But he hasn’t been censored.

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