"After an investigation, a termination letter arrived that said Mr. Gonzalez held 'personal views that were contrary to core characteristics of Border Patrol Agents, which are patriotism, dedication and esprit de corps.'"

So it IS acceptable to fire people because of their personal views? Someone, please tell the Talibangelicals. And Faux News.

You forgot to mention that 20 Occupy Seattle idiots were arrested for trespassing

http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2011/1…

Read the comments from small business owners.

I wonder where the hoots of laughter in the background were coming from when he says "Congratulations, you're four for four in trying to find the negative approach." I'd like to think it was her own camera and sound guys appreciating the verbal bitch slap their boss just got.

Isn't it illegal to use the word "patriotism" and "esprit de corps" in the same sentence in the US? At the very least, whoever issued that statement should also be fired.

Regionally, Kitsap County' rate was similar to King and Thurston counties, but lower than Pierce, where the rate was 29 percent.

Weird, I always thought Pierce County had a more affordable real estate market.

One of my friends have underwater mortgages in King County, but he bought in the fourth quarter of 2006, and put no money down. Another bought in south Snohomish County, put 10% down, and five years later is at -12%.

@3: The comments from the business owners are sad. Can't get the police down to check out their concerns, but a few people take over an abandoned building and suddenly it's time to call in the SWAT. What a huge waste of taxpayer money.

Didn't the little Dutch boy get fired for expressing doubts about his finger holding back the rising deluge. Of course, in fairy tales- everyone lives happily ever after.

Barney Frank is/was a terrible and corrupt politician. He only held his seat because it was in a ridiculously gerrymandered district.

Also, he got a pass because of he was one of the first openly gay politicians -- the first one I ever heard about anyway.

Good riddance.

^ butthurt troll is butthurt

MacC @5: Not at all. In fact, as a quasi-military organization, it's expected. You'd get a dishonorable discharge from the Army for it, too.

The article on the fired border guards is probably the most explicitly damning evidence I have seen in years that the war on drugs is, at its core, nothing more than a war on the nonconformist. How many great minds have refused to join the military, border patrol, or law enfocement for no reason other than the many wasted efforts of these entities?

I think the story is that religious-oriented parties are dominating in Egypt. "Muslims" is all the nuance GWB needed, but doesn't tell anyone what's going on.

"Tell me, on new element names, hast thou declared a moratorium?"
Quoth the chemist, "Livermorium!"

Oh, please. Couldn't scientists troll pop-culture and name at least one of the new elements Unobtanium or Phlebotinum

@13 - Not really. You only get dishonorables for things like murder. They'd probably get an Other Than Honorable at the most.

Two Block Radius Alert: The Capitol Hill Blog scoop on last night's police raid to clear Occupiers out of that abandoned building at 10th and Union is quite something, as is the lengthy comment thread. Many disrespectul anti-Occupiers take a tone, and are countered by many pro-Occupy comments, mostly by our dear prolific Baconcat using his other handles (among other factual tidbits he suggests Slog and Publicola owners have confirmed to him that anti Occupy commenters' IP addresses show those people are City Council and Seattle Times minions - he is the Carrier IQ of Occupy Seattle commenters).

The Battle of the Tussling Contrarians is here. Well done, jseattle of Capitol Hill Blog.
http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2011/1…

barney frank is my hero, too. swoon!

Bawney Fwank is retiring? Oh the tragic loss to the American body politic! I mean, the Elmer Fudd style of speaking alone is a goldmine for those needing a good laugh, before you even get to his aburd worldview and general corruption.

Now if only that ass Sanders would exit stage left, preferably pursued by bears.

I think if SB @22 rated it, which he never would, Barney Frank would be my fantasy choice to deliver the definitive smackdown of his proudly hurtful brand of stupidity. And when Berney was done, he would be done. Frank's rhetorical approach has alway exemplified how one can cudgel a troll like that while never, ever feeding him. We ordinary kvetching Slog commentariat should take a page from Barney's book if we can.

Shit, my spelling today, augh.

It isn't any funnier than your self proclamation of being a devout Christian who can't act like one for a single thread, Seattleblues.

Well you make me smile, anyway. I imagine you smiling as well, such an amusing anonymous Internet character who enjoys stirring people up and lining the pockets of his supposed nemesis with page hits. And now I've helped you pad The Stranger's pockets, such fun!

Cheers!

Fair enough. Poor Bawney can't help the way he speaks, and descending to personal attacks on that basis is so....liberal. Kind of makes me ashamed to take a page from the progressive political discourse playbook.

But as for his idiotic worldview (to the extent that he wasn't just using it as a pathway to power in a decidedly liberal voting district), I stand by that.

And while Sanders would make an excellent Dutch or Greek representative of popular will he has no place in this great nation.

@20: From Wikipedia: "A dishonorable discharge (DD), like a BCD, is a punitive discharge rather than an administrative discharge. It can only be handed down to an enlisted member by a general court-martial. Dishonorable discharges are handed down for what the military considers the most reprehensible conduct. This type of discharge may be rendered only by conviction at a general court-martial for serious offenses (e.g., desertion, sexual assault, murder, etc.) that call for dishonorable discharge as part of the sentence."

@26: Teach us more of your ways of self-important condescension! Let us learn from you how to make assertions entirely unsupported by evidence!

This is not exactly breaking news, SB. Maybe you should pull your head out of your ass more often.

@28 Won't happen. SB's a bigot, and they rarely change.

On a different note, I waded through all three pages of that Sandusky interview. The man is living in fantasy land. He's so caught up in his own twisted world, he has no idea how he's being viewed. Everything he says is from the "how to identify a sexual predator" handbook.

Yup. Me and muh dogs jes sets around on the porch swiggin' rotgut (not the dogs, they drinks beer) and takin' potshots at gummint agents with the old scattergun. Occasional like we goes out and talks bad about them there gay boy types or them there librul politicians tryin' to take our guns and rotgut, though, jes for the hell of it.

The word bigot really, really isn't understood on this blog. Don't any of you understand the use of a dictionary, for goodness sake?

But hey, thanks for the evidence of my take on the liberal/progressive playbook on how to distract from the essential uselessness of your political ideas with personal abuse!

Should the day come that self-awareness makes it's way through the mass of worms that is your personality, and you decide suicide is the only way out, leave a message here. I'm sure everyone will be willing to take a collection to buy you the bullet.

Sure we do, Seattleblues. A good many have even copied and pasted the definition of bigot for you. Sadly we don't own your copy which provides you a personal exemption. All we have is your numerous comments where you portray yourself as intolerant of creeds, beliefs, and opinions that differ from your own. Our problem is not reading comprehension it is our inability to recognized your self determined idea that your opinions and morals are superior than ours. We don't think you are any smarter, or more moral then us. I would even hazard a guess that some find you amoral and ignorant and/or uneducated. But that does not matter, right? The game is to stir up page hits. And, I tip my hat as you do a fine job of it. A really fine job. You're a funny little pot who fails to realize he's just as black as the kettles he grumps at.

This was heaps of fun.

@31: Dude...we're calling you a bigot. We never said you were a redneck.

@33: You are an amazing person, so I got you this.

I love Barney Frank's sense of humor.

@32

Thanks for the real world example of the progressive playbook I was talking about.

For my part if the cognitive dissonance that lies at the heart of the progressive worldview ever leads you to contemplate suicide I hope you seek help. After sufficient counselling and self evalutation you might even mature into a conservative.

@33 and 34

I don't even know what a page hit is so I'd play your game poorly.

I don't hate gay men or lesbians for their choices, a key element in any definition of bigotry. I am rigorous and unbending in my belief about homosexuality, as any rational person not presented with compelling reasons to change his or her beliefs ought to be. The option would be to become a Barak Obama, devoid of principle or point. Nor do I feel morally superior to you or VL for instance or to most of the gay men or lesbians I know. The average tapeworm is morally superior to Dan Savage as the type of person who sponsers an amateur porn night and actively encourages sexual depravity in as many people as he can reach, so I'd hope I am as well. Being sexually deviant and incontinent he makes no attempt to fix his problems but seeks to evangelize them. I despise and loathe the disgusting thing he's chosen to become. But that thing is an individual I don't equate with gay men ipso facto.

I keep thinking about that SNL parody of Frank and his advice for Detroit.

@36 - So by one hand you bemoan the "liberal playbook" of personal attack, yet with the other hand you stoop to your enemy's ways. So much for rigorous and unbending rationality or morality!

From this point forward, your post shall be moved to /dev/null

("I don't even know what a page hit is" ... Ha! You kill me!)

@36: If you are not morally superior to us, why do you try to impose your morality on us?
But that's the minor problem with what you wrote. Bigotry is NOT hating someone for their choices; bigotry is hating someone for their identity. Identity may have an element of choice, as in the case of religion, or it may be entirely involuntary, as in the cases of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and many, many more.
Another issue is your stubborn insistence that homosexuality is immoral. You claim to hold strictly to your beliefs in the absence of any "compelling reasons to change [your] beliefs", and I can dig that. What I have a beef with is that you continue to hold to your beliefs EVEN AFTER we have bombarded you with heaps and heaps of evidence that contradict them. Sexual orientation is innate rather than chosen, homosexuals have proven to be more than adequate parents comparable to heterosexuals, homosexuals engage in long-standing committed relationships, and reckless/dangerous sexual behavior is not so much a hallmark of homosexuality as of masculinity (explaining the pattern of high rates of STDs among gay men and extremely low rates among lesbian women). Given these FACTS, what reason do you have to cling to your antiquated and offensive beliefs regarding same-sex marriage? Are you blocking out all evidence that does not fit with your worldview? Or do you understand the information but choose to disregard it anyway? Are you willfully ignorant, Seattleblues, or are you a bigot?

Can't believe the article on the Border Patrol. Thanks for calling attn to it.

Really, Seattleblues? You don't know what a page hit is? Well I'll let you ponder it out.

It has been fun. Cheers!

Thank you, venomlash.

Ps The admission/recruitment office at your institution of higher learning makes our eldest smile. She's enjoyed her regional meetings. What a lovely place for your clever mind to matriculate in. Although it may turn out too big of a place for her personality.

He knows what a page hit is...

$$$

why do you idiots even respond to seattleblues? just don't look...just don't look...

The 44% in Olympia who aren't using social services are high school kids who just don't want to go home to mom and dad, it's too boring there. They'd rather sit around downtown and yell at you for change.

For clarification-

The leftwing pundits and some of the sillier voices on the right seem to think 'Palin is stupid' or outrageous comparisons to Hitler and GWB suffice as debate with those whose viewpoints they dislike. I don't.

Teddy Kennedy was wrong on most of his political and economic ideas. He was a drunk and lecher. But he was a consistent voice over a decades long career for what he believed best for this country, and you could respect that whatever you thought of those opinions or his personal life. Bringing those things up would be irrelevant to his lifework and would constitute an ad hominem attack, the kind the left loves so dearly.

Dan Savage is likewise wrong on everything of importance politically, culturally and economically. He's made a career not from his political ideas. He has none of his own. He's borrowed a few. He reads the opinions of others and quotes them. But he brings no new political ideas to the table. So what's left? Well, his career. The career he's made of his own sexual perversity. In the same sense that Kennedys personal failings weren't germaine to his lifework, Savages failings are his lifework. Referencing that lifework isn't ad hominem. It's simply factual.

Let me be clearer. As a chosen lifestyle Savages homosexuality is not what I reference as his perversion or depravity. I refer to his demeaning sexuality to a mere itch that needs scratched, like any chimpanzee or aardvark might have. As human beings we're fortunate in our sentience. We can bring to sexuality an element that can succeed where the alchemists failed. We can turn the base metal of a physical urge into the gold of sexual intimacy with one we love. This is the process Savage daily and hourly attacks.

One of my favorite authors speaks of dignity as something one has or hasn't got. It can't be assumed like a coat or pair of shoes. The kind of sexual expression I'm thinking of isn't a matter of paging through the Kama Sutra or practicing with many partners to perfect technique. It isn't putting on an attitude of sexual expertise. It's the result of loving someone and wanting to bond with them as far as possible physically and emotionally. You can't practice that. You can't learn it. You simply have to be it or not be it.

What Savages motives are are thankfully obscure to me. I'm arrogant on occasion. I'm capable of malice sometimes. But the kind of black malice that would rob others of the sublime experience of sex as it can be with a couple in love expressing that love and intimacy physically? I can't even begin to grasp the evil of that kind of behavior.

@46: Wow, trying to impose your worldview on others much?
Sure, sex is best as an expression of intimacy. But it is also an itch that most people need to scratch. (You seem to be underestimating the power of sexual frustration as a relationship-destroyer.) We are sexual beings, end of story, and there is not so much that separates us from other animals. You may be interested to know that only animals that are relatively intelligent engage in sexual behavior for recreational purposes.
What Dan's work is all about is reconciling sexual needs with wholesome and fulfilling relationships, helping people find romance and get their bone on in non-conflicting ways. What's so evil about that?
And as far as Dan's original ideas go, here's a partial list: the It Gets Better Project, GGG, the Campsite Rule. What original ideas do you have?

@47 Even if they weren't original ideas at least Dan is trying to make the world a better place, and his opinions are informed by evidence and thoughtful debate. Seattleblues can't say that. All he can do is get attention by throwing the internet's equivalent of a temper tantrum, and repeatedly demonstrating that for all his talk about morals he doesn't really have any.

what a shitstorm on this thread.

barney frank = great human being.