Other Vices, Other Grooms

• Via The Sideshow, Chris Hedges:

  Last week, round one in the battle to strike down the onerous provision [§1021(b)(2) of the NDAA], one that saw me joined by six other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg, ended in an unqualified victory for the public. U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest, who accepted every one of our challenges to the law, made her temporary injunction of the section permanent. In short, she declared the law unconstitutional.

• Also via The Sideshow, Mark Karlin interviews Greg Palast on the upcoming election heist in which the Democrats are apparently accomplices before the fact.
• Speaking of election heists, Minnesota Republicans are preparing to panic:

  It apparently doesn’t faze Minnesota Republicans one bit when it’s pointed out that the ALEC-inspired "Voter ID" amendment legislation — legislation which by the way won’t stop the sort of voter fraud Republicans say it was meant to stop — will make it harder for many nonwhite Minnesotans to vote. For the leaders of the Grand Old Party, which has used the Southern Strategy as its operational platform for so long its members have forgot they were once the Party of Lincoln, Jim Crow racism isn’t a bug but a feature — they figure that the more their fan base hears this, the better.
  
  But when the fact that it stands to ruin the budgets of dozens of Minnesota counties gets publicly aired by a growing number of local media outlets, that’s when the Republicans get worried.

  Phoenix Woman at -- yes -- Daily Kos, via Mercury Rising.  (Bluestem Prairie has done a lot to expose the financial aspect of Republican Satanic panic voter ID.)
• Oh, by the way...the IRS has apparently been ignoring violations of its own rules.  (As always, double underlines=ads.  It's naked capitalism, yo.)
• Jesse Curtis doesn't like arrogance.
• Enough bake sales were conducted to film Atlas Shrugged II:  The Indifference.  It opens Columbus Day.  Also opening that day:  Something called Seven Psychopaths.  With Christopher Walken.  No contest.  
• What, isn't that enough?
• ETA:  Mr. Romney is not showing his competent side, is he?  Also, I know Hollywood had a hard time giving up the Russian villain character, but this is ridiculous.