Mom! Not in front of the guys!

Mother’s Day is now well underway (in fact, it’s over already if you live in Asia), so it’s too late to send flowers. You’re just a terrible child.

But I found something that might make you feel a bit better today. It’s a touching message from the folks at Things I Did Last Night.

(cross posted at Liberal Avenger and This Old Brit)

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Every three years, the people of Banaue, Philippines gather for a 12-day festival of rituals, music, and competition. The competitions can be extreme, and they include boxing while blindfolded and racing down a steep mountain on homemade scooters.

More on the festival here.

More photos here.

And if you thought the wooden scooters were unusual, check out the ones that the French Army used to use.

(hat tip to Czaiye)

(via Neatorama)

Bush is now trying to ensure that the 2008 elections are conducted with absolutely no federal oversight whatsoever.

You get suspended from school.

Apparently, though, it’s illegal to compel students to recite the pledge. Perhaps the district superintendent should take a remedial civics class.

Of all the entries that have appeared about Obama on the biggest conservative blogs, less than 1/4 dealt with policy issues.

I wouldn’t illustrate this story with a film clip that compares Hillary Clinton to Hitler, but this one was too funny to resist

Now, it’s really over. Obama is well ahead in pledged delegates, and now leads in the superdelegate count as well. Sources inside the Obama camp say that he will claim victory on May 20, and Clinton’s campaign chairman indicated that she will concede in June. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if the race officially comes to a close within the next week.

Here’s what I think Obama has to do now: make it up to Clinton’s supporters by finding a qualified woman to serve as running mate. Here’s the one I like:

Anna Eshoo

Anna Eshoo of California has served more than 10 years in the House, and her experience on the Intelligence Committee would help make up for Obama’s perceived lack of experience (link). She’s been a staunch defender of civil liberties and she voted against the Iraq War resolution. A technology expert who serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee, so she should be able to help Obama craft a response to soaring energy prices. Finally, she co-chairs the House Medical Technology Caucus, so she’d be able to work with Obama to help address the health care issue, which is sure to be a big challenge for him when he takes office.

As of now, Eshoo is a real longshot, because she’s a relative unknown. But I think that when he selects a running mate, Obama should do so with an eye toward keeping the party together.

(cross posted at Liberal Avenger and This Old Brit)

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Dana’s got a little problem with ‘Pot and Kettle Syndrome’

On May 2 the news broke that Marc Dann, Ohio’s Democratic attorney general, admitted to an extramarital affair. On May 3, frequent appletree commenter Dana Pico accused Pandagon’s Amanda Marcotte and Pam Spaulding of having a double standard, since they’d failed to pick up on the story:

When it was revealed that Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) was busted for disorderly conduct for cruising a men’s public restroom for sex, our friends on the left were all over it. When Senator David Vitter (R-LA) was revealed to have been a customer of a prostitution ring in the District of Columbia, our friends on the left howled with outrage. Yet when Governor Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) was busted for patronizing high-end (pun intended) call girls, there was some defense of him from the left.

So, I wonder how much play this story will get on Pandagon and Think Progress?

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I’ll bet that they’d have been all over it if the Attorney General of Ohio was a Republican.

Or perhaps they wouldn’t have mentioned it. As US senators, Craig and Vitter are among the most powerful people in the United States, so it’s natural that their scandals would get play in a national political blog. But you wouldn’t expect every scandal involving state officials to be discussed on a site like Pandagon.

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Senator Russ Feingold shines some much-needed light on the way the Bush administration makes laws in secret:

The Bush administration recently announced it will allow select members of Congress to read Justice Department legal opinions about the CIA’s controversial detainee interrogation program that have been hidden from Congress until now. But as the administration allows a glimpse of this secret law — and it is law — we are left wondering what other laws it is still keeping under lock and key.

It’s a given in our democracy that laws should be a matter of public record. But the law in this country includes not just statutes and regulations, which the public can readily access. It also includes binding legal interpretations made by courts and the executive branch. These interpretations are increasingly being withheld from the public and Congress.

Perhaps the most notorious example is the recently released 2003 Justice Department memorandum on torture written by John Yoo. The memorandum was, for a nine-month period in 2003, the law that the administration followed when it came to matters of torture. And that law was essentially a declaration that the administration could ignore the laws passed by Congress.

Read the rest here.