The latest video from Dennis Gilman on the interesting relationship between state Senator Russell Pearce and neo-Nazi JT Ready:

Gawker reports that a Rush Limbaugh billboard featuring bullet holes as part of its design was pulled from a Tucson location shortly after last weekend’s shooting.

Limbaugh is, of course, denying he had any knowledge of the billboard, and blaming the liberal media for noticing it, rather than taking any responsibility for his hateful and incendiary ways. Cowards are like that.

I suppose, if one wanted to be kind, it would be easy to look at Justice Antonin Scalia's recent comments in California Lawyer on the U.S. Constitution and women, and compare his sentiment to how people of different religious groups interpret the Bible — word for word absolute Book of Revelations truth, vs. stories that teach lessons on laws and charity (yeah, yeah, there's other stuff, I know).

Still, I couldn't help but think of the Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale (which was made into a pretty good movie), about Offred, a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and theocratic state that's replaced the U.S. In this world, women have no protections. The Gilead regime cracked down on women’s rights; women could no longer have jobs, bank accounts or own property.

From the Scalia interview:

In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we've gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?

Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that. ... But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that's fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don't need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don't like the death penalty anymore, that's fine. You want a right to abortion? There's nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn't mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea and pass a law. That's what democracy is all about. It's not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.

Arizona Rep. Jack Harper is back with his idea of creating a citizen militia to protect the border, this time with a veto-proof House and Senate. Oh joy. Read more from the Huffington Post here.

Harper, a rabid cost-cutting conservative who once sparked outrage with a blunt letter warning Arizonans that he was planning to sever entitlement-program lifelines in order to address a mounting budget crisis, claims that the National Guard is too expensive and the Border Patrol is too weak.

"It'd be volunteers trained by volunteers, maybe with — with, definitely, oversight by the Arizona Army National Guard — that shouldn't take more than one full-time employee and maybe about $50,000, $60,000 a year of state funding," he said. "Border Patrol's under — you know, it's under Janet Napolitano, and that's not really an intimidating factor."

I'm not entirely sure when former Growing Pains star and current Christian evangelical icon Kirk Cameron become an ornithology expert, but if you are looking to see if something is a sign of the apocalypse, maybe a guy who starred in Left Behind: The Movie would have some insight.

What gives? The National Weather Service basically assured me that I’d be frolicking in a winter wonderland by now? Where are my winter flurries? Hello? Is anyone even listening?

Furthermore, I have been taunting nature all day, to no effect. I drank cold Coca Cola on a street corner just after sunrise. I walked around in a T-shirt while the rest of city bundled up against the low temperatures. I even went and bought two pints of gelato and ate it with my hands on what was supposed to be a severely cold day. And yet the sun came out, with no sign of snow on the horizon.

This is a major disappointment. If anyone needs me, I’ll be taking an ice bath until I either pass out or see some snowflakes.

Do you lack genital confidence? Welcome to the dark, dark world of the Tajazzle informercial.

I'm not in the mall often, but when I walk past Spencer Gifts these days, I'm usually just amazed by how much Twilight stuff they can jam into a window—but apparently there's a darker side to the store that I just wasn't aware of, if a location in Illinois is any indication:

About $22,000 in "sexually explicit" merchandise, including sex toys and love dolls, was seized from Spencer's Gifts at Orland Square Mall — and a teenage clerk was arrested — after a store manager told police his bosses wouldn't let him hide the wares from minors.

Following a mall shopper's complaint to police about seeing "various sexual aids and other sexually explicit merchandise" on display at Spencer's, an Orland Park police officer visited the store on Dec. 1. Inside, the officer saw the sex toys, inflatable love dolls, lubricants, gels, sado-masochistic products and sex-themed Christmas merchandise, according to police....

On Dec. 3, a 17-year-old and 15-year-old working under cover for the police went to the store and bought a sex toy and a "bondage fantasy" item which depicted a woman in ankle and wrist cuffs, police said. The minors were not asked for identification before the sale, according to the police....

The cashier who sold the items, a 19-year-old Bridgeview woman, was charged with distribution of harmful materials and taken into custody. The woman said she did not receive any training regarding the sale of sexually explicit material, Sgt. Scott Malmborg said.

I've said this for years: when you have the opportunity to hear the woman who played Laura Palmer on Twin Peaks and the guy who played Ray Pruitt on the original 90210 sing "Let it Be" as a digitally superimposed duet, you have to do it.

From the person who brought you the Fakebook Quotes site, there's now a website that helps you create fake iPhone chat conversations. While he'll have to karmically answer for the friendships and relationships that end based on interactions via text that never happened, that doesn't mean you shouldn't make a few fake dialogues of your own.