• Critics of Cecil Bothwell cite N.C. bar to atheists

North Carolina’s constitution is clear: politicians who deny the existence of God are barred from holding office.

Opponents of Cecil Bothwell are seizing on that law to argue he should not be seated as a City Council member today, even though federal courts have ruled religious tests for public office are unlawful under the U.S. Constitution.

But wait! There’s more! His chief critic is “H.K. Edgerton, a former Asheville NAACP president.”  What else do we know about Edgerton? Try this:

“If they go ahead, then the city of Asheville and the board of elections could be liable for a lawsuit,” said Edgerton, who is known for promoting “Southern heritage” by standing on streets decked out in a Confederate soldier’s uniform and holding a Confederate flag.

Quicker than you can say “cognitive dissonance,” the wikipedia provides the answer to the question I know you’re asking.  But why don’t we let Edgerton speak for himself?

The President of “Southern Heritage 411″ is H.K. Edgerton, a black Confederate activist who works tirelessly to bring the real truth of our heritage to people of all races. H.K. Edgerton has walked thousands of miles carrying his large Confederate Battle Flag through cities and towns and down country roads. He speaks at venues all over the South exposing the many myths of Yankee history and setting the record straight regarding blacks role in the history of the South.

H.K. Edgerton and Southern Heritage 411 strive to illuminate the truth as it pertains to the relationships and experiences of blacks and whites in the South as they have struggled together to maintain the principles of a limited, democratic and representative government as espoused by America’s founding fathers.

So, um, yeah…. I’m too dumbfounded to even heap abuse on this guy. Might be worth heaping abuse on the Associated Press for describing his Heritage 411 organization as “an organization that promotes the interests of black southerners,” but really, it’s not like they give a fuck. I wonder if this guy is a teabagger, too- maybe we can include him in the teabagger of the year contest (coming soon!)

Of course, where I merely mock, the SPLC has gone to the trouble of providing a useful analysis. Good thing someone’s on the ball here.

• Blackwater founder Erik Prince feels he was thrown “under the bus” after serving country

“I put myself and my company at the CIA’s disposal for some very risky missions,” Prince told Vanity Fair for its January issue. “But when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus.”

Listen, jackass. That’s why we hire mercenaries. You’re deniable and you’re expendable, and you’re paid well for it. You’ve made a nice chunk of change doing the dirty work we all wanted to pretend wasn’t happening, while furthering the unaccountability of our supposedly democratic government. When you’re no longer useful, at least show some dignity instead of whining like a rich kid with a sense of entitlement.

Go count your blood money and shut up.

“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. “I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.”

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.

Yeah, he’s a justice of the peace in Louisiana, and he refuses to perform interracial weddings because he’s concerned about the children. Srsly.

• Interracial couple denied marriage license in La.

Whip It! is a movie about a young girl who finds her true self (which does not involve beauty pageants) with the confidence and strength she gains when she joins a roller-derby team.  I haven’t seen it yet, but I probably will at some point because I love roller-derby and I love movies with strong female characters, and it looks like Whip It! may be a pretty good combination of the two.  However, I am rather concerned that if I see it I might catch The Gay.  For you see, post-grad psych major/film critic Jeremy Clyman assures me that a female with an “inexplicable” love of roller-derby and strong women is a lesbian.  And really, love for roller-derby IS completely “inexplicable.”  There’s no reason why anyone would like roller-derby, especially since Clyman’s critique has informed me that roller-derby players wear rollerblades. (WTF?)  There is also the issue that the film was directed by a woman (Drew Barrymore), has a cast of predominately strong, independent, athletic females with males on the periphery, and is targeted toward a female audience.  So yeah, I mean, how dykey can you get?  Although, it’s only a logical conclusion to reach, since movies directed by a man, with a cast of predominately strong, independent, athletic males with females on the periphery, targeted toward male audiences are actually all about gay sex and straight men who watch those movies will totes catch The Gay.  You knew that, right?

Lesbian Fantasy, Disguised

Super Secret Lesbian Message as Deciphered by a Dudebro

Federal judge in Ga. sanctions ‘birther’ attorney

Mike Dunford’s got the choice excerpts:

“The Court must nevertheless remind counsel that she has been fired by her former client, who has made it clear that she no longer wishes to pursue the matter.”

“Her argument that she should have been given more time to respond before the Court issued its ruling, when she had requested the expedited consideration, is so shockingly devoid of reality that it is difficult to know how to respond.”

And don’t miss this little gem here:

“Although counsel’s present concern is the location of the President’s birth, it does not take much imagination to extend the theory to his birthday. Perhaps, he looks “too young” to be President, and he says he stopped counting birthdays when he reached age thirty. If he refused to admit publicly that he is older than the constitutional minimum age of thirty-five, should Ms. Taitz be allowed to file a lawsuit and have a court order him to produce his birth certificate? See U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 4. Or perhaps an eccentric citizen has become convinced that the President is an alien from Mars, and the courts should order DNA testing to enforce the Constitution.(7)

“(7) The Court does not make this observation simply as a rhetorical device for emphasis; the Court has actually received correspondence assailing its previous order in which the sender, who, incidentally, challenged the undersigned to a “round of fisticuffs on the Courthouse Square,” asserted that the President is not human.”

Read the pdf!

And in case you missed it, this is how impressed Taitz’s client was with her:

Orly Taitz’s Client Files A Complaint Against Her