Around the blogroll and elsewhere

What you should be reading today:

Joan Walsh at Salon again has a video from Current portraying a demonstration of waterboarding. Go watch it, then contact these members of the Senate Judiciary committee and demand that they refuse to confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General until and unless he acknowledges that waterboarding is torture. Ask the Republicans to view this before they make a decision. And while you're at it, pass the link along to anyone you know who is considering voting for Rudy Giuliani, who seems to believe that if the president authorizes it, then it is not torture. Ask those people, if they were being waterboarded, what they would admit to in order to make it stop -- even if it weren't true. To pick up on the example that's always used, of someone who knows where the dirty bomb in New York City is, ask the Giuliani supporters what THEY would admit to if they were being waterboarded -- whether they did it or not.

Libby Spencer on how an ability to MAYBE squeak by with only a bare majority at best isn't enough to justify an inevitable Hillary candidacy.

Stephen at The Thinkery on how the Madness of Saint Rudy is nothing new -- he's been running this campaign for fifteen years.

Our favorite lapsed conservative, John Cole, has joined the Party of Godless Heathen Liberal Homosexual Feminazi Hip-Hop Sluts. So we're moving him to the main blogroll. Please join me in not just giving him a warm welcome, but throwing a party in his honor.

Any day they'll be selling trading cards with these guys on them. Another day, another sex scandal involving a closeted homophobic Republican. Pam has the whole sordid story. Please ask all children -- and your mother -- and your boss -- to leave the room, because this story is NOT work-safe. Dare we hope that this is an end to the moralizing by the scolds on the right? Naah. But in all seriousness, these guys are making about as good a case for coming out of the closet as it's possible to make. Gay men living as themselves instead of living a lie don't have to pay prostitutes. And by the way, if you're going to hire someone for sex and then refuse to pay up, what do you THINK is going to happen?

And while we're on the subject, is it time to pop a bag of the old Orville Redenbacher into the microwave? Cliff Schecter seems to think so. My guess? Check Judi Nathan's handbag to see if she has a chef's knife in there. Then see if Rudy is wearing a cup.

Riverbend is safe and reporting from Syria on the Iraqi diaspora there.

Jurassicpork has some excellent ranting about Tuesday night's Democratic debate over at his pad.

One of the things I liked about Mr. Brilliant when I met him was that his idea of a really hot woman was Linda Ellerbee. Well, Ms. Ellerbee hasn't lost a step, and now she's giving the wingnuts fits over a 20-minute news documentary on Nickelodeon about activist children. Kevin Hayden has the details.

Now that Halloween is over, and the orange-wrapped Kit-Kats are in the 50% off bin, we're now officially in the holiday season. Tata has been working on a project to send necessary items to deployed soldiers. Read how you can help here and here.

Tristero over at Digby's place has been all over Mike Huckabee's Willie Horton, Wayne Dumond. Short summary: Dumond is a prisoner who became a wingnut cause célèbre because a woman he raped turned out to be a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. As part of the Republican Clinton Derangement Syndrome, the wingnuts decided that he most have been railroaded and started lobbying for clemency, which Huckabee granted. Dumond went on to rape and kill one, and perhaps two, more women. The latest is here, but it's worth digging around Digby's site to find all of the coverage. This is a particularly nasty example of Republican "The Enemy of Bill Clinton is my Friend" policy, and Huckabee deserves to be hammered with it.