Judy Viger, from Saratoga County in upstate New York, who hired two strippers for her son's 16th birthday party, according to CNN:

Judy Viger, 33, of Gansevoort is charged with five counts of endangering the welfare of a child, District Attorney James Murphy said in a statement. The parents of five teens who attended the party reported the presence of strippers to police.

The mother hosted the teens (and the strippers) at a bowling alley, the article says. The parents who reported the incident to police saw photos of the strippers on their teens' Facebook pages. There was even a photo of Viger getting a lap dance.

The teens probably appreciated Viger's party planning but the parents were obviously angry and rightfully so. So maybe the boys are at that age where they sneak onto YouTube (among other sites) and search videos that are R rated, but that doesn't make it okay for a mother to openly expose the kids to strippers.

I can't decide which would be more disturbing, seeing photos of your son getting a lap dance, seeing your mother get a lap dance or getting a lap dance in front of your mother knowing she paid for it. It's just altogether a messed up situation.

During a debate regarding the possibility to allow Colorado campuses to allow concealed carry, Colo. state Rep. Joe Salazar said something mighty damn stupid regarding the potential for women to properly identify threats:

It's why we have call boxes, it's why we have safe zones, it's why we have the whistles. Because you just don’t know who you’re gonna be shooting at. And you don’t know if you feel like you’re gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone’s been following you around or if you feel like you’re in trouble when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop … pop a round at somebody.

Honestly, in a debate that centers around the very idea that people may need to protect themselves on and around college campuses ("It just gives you the right to walk to campus, protect yourself on campus, and walk home safely," said Coty McKenzie of Arizona Students for Concealed Carry, "Off Target," March 15,) claiming that women wouldn't be able to make decisions under threat is ridiculous.

Salazar, to his credit, backpedaled from the backlash fairly rapidly, though he (like so many foolish folk before him) dropped the "I'm sorry if I offended anyone" line, which should be a pet peeve to anyone who prefers their politicians possess even a modicum of sincerity:

“I’m sorry if I offended anyone. That was absolutely not my intention,” he said. “We were having a public policy debate on whether or not guns makes people safer on campus. I don’t believe they do. That was the point I was trying to make. If anyone thinks I’m not sensitive to the dangers women face, they’re wrong.”

“I am a husband and father of two beautiful girls, and I’ve spent the last decade defending women’s rights as a civil rights attorney,” Salazar said. “Again, I’m deeply sorry if I offended anyone with my comments.”

Conservatives are taking Salazar to task (as they damn well should), calling this similar to the idiocy spouted by Ohio's Todd Akin last election season. I wouldn't go quite that far, as Akin ignores biological, scientific fact, but it's close; after all, Salazar discounted a woman's ability to defend herself, singling out women and implying that they might be too emotional to properly identify who might be attacking them, which is just plain dumb.

John McCain, Arizona's resident Crusty Old Senator, apparently knows how Twitter works personally, and doesn't have an aide do it for him. How do we know this?

So Ahmadinejad wants to be first Iranian in space - wasn't he just there last week? "Iran launches monkey into space" news.yahoo.com/iran-launches-…

— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) February 4, 2013

Honestly, he's got it out for Iran. Remember this gem?

Taking a second to pause here, is there anyone who believes he wouldn't have made a move against Iran had he won the presidency in 2008? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Anyway, feeling a push back against his tweet, McCain didn't stop there.

Re: Iran space tweet - lighten up folks, can't everyone take a joke?

— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) February 4, 2013

Here's the thing, Senator: People are more responsive to jokes when they're funny—as explained by Republican Arab-American Congressman Justin Amash.

Maybe you should wisen up & not make racist jokes. “@senjohnmccain: Re: Iran space tweet - lighten up folks, can't everyone take a joke?”

— Justin Amash (@repjustinamash) February 4, 2013

Well done, Congressman. Way to stand up against a fool...but, uh. Good luck with the rest of the Republican leadership, who may not be too happy with you stepping up against one of the Grand Old Party's grand old hands.

Eric Bolling, co-host of Fox News's The Five, a panel-discussion show that discusses news and issues of the day, pointed something out yesterday that apparently shook him to his core: liberal propaganda within an elementary school math textbook.

Detailing the distributive property.

No, really.

A part of me feels that this is simply too silly to even bother commenting on—after all, it's a show that features talking heads making mountains out of molehills. It's a show that, all things being equal, is about as culturally important as The View.

But what gets me, beyond this ridiculous assertion that Bolling hopefully pulled out of a pile of ridiculous items just to fill some time, were the responses of the panel members:

Co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle said that she goes through all of her six-year-old's homework papers, adding that she was now on "high alert after this inappropriateness!"

"So it starts in third grade [with] 'Distribute The Wealth,' and guess what happens? Through their whole educational experience they continually get indoctrinated through college," a concerned Bolling said, holding up the math sheet once again.

Co-host Dana Perino said that the assignment was probably written by an "Occupy Wall Street grad student."

Bolling made one last appeal to parents to check their children's textbooks, particularly their history books. He said he was once looking through his child's history textbook and read a section on the war in Iraq. "They were very, very liberally biased, saying George Bush went in there because he heard there were weapons of mass destruction and they were never found. It was a very liberal bias to the history books," Bolling said.

Considering that the CIA admitted that we entered Iraq under bad intelligence regarding WMDs, it might be safe to admit that history has a liberal bias in this case.

• Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
• Not the hamster in question

From TMZ and presented without context for hilarity's sake:

The moment that hamster was handed off to a screaming girl in a harsh, frenzied environment was likely the moment it gazed at the short path to its doom.

Gawker posted a couple of strange stories today within two hours of each other, both tangentially related to the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary last Friday.

The first was a shootout over a misunderstanding while two people talked about the killings in Newtown, Conn.:

According to the Associated Press, a patron at the All Cuts Barber Shop in Wentzville, Mo. remarked Tuesday that he wanted to kill the suspect, Adam Lanza — who is already dead. Somehow, inexplicably, 57-year-old Lester Davis was offended and took the comment as a threat, asking, "You want to murder me?"

Police say Davis then went to his car, got a pistol and fired three shots at the unnamed customer. Fortunately no one was injured.

That's dumb, sure. But it doesn't hold a candle to the next item:

[A] Virginia man walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Strasburg this morning armed with a 2 x 4 labeled "High Powered Rifle," though the Shenandoah County Sheriff's Office believes he was trying to make a point about school security — or, rather, lack thereof.

Whatever his intentions, 33-year-old Christopher Johnson was immediately approached by a school employee upon entering the school that shares its name with the one in Connecticut that was targeted by a mass murderer last Friday.

According to Sheriff's Office rep Major Scott Proctor, the school's resource officer was on the scene within seconds and Johnson was arrested for disorderly conduct.

So that settles it: What little sanity we had prior to the tragedy at Sandy Hook has been thrown out the damn window. If this is our future, bring on the apocalypse already.

Yesterday on We Got Cactus, Dan posted what he considered to be the worst Christmas/Holiday-related video.

Well, the WWE has that John Travolta-related abortion beat.

I'd apologize for what you're about to watch, but let's face it: if you click play, you've brought it upon yourself. May God (or whatever entity you choose to share your despair with) have mercy upon you.

Yes, "Just Say No to Latent Homosexual Crusades" is the actual title of the ebook that was waiting for me in my inbox this morning.

Written by David Huttner, the official written-by text reads "by David Huttner, pp George" — apparently, the author has written this book on behalf of a fellow (one can assume) by the name of George. Which is where things get interesting.

An English teacher in China and author of a number of ebooks on the social sciences, Huttner confesses that, despite "representing [himself] as the world's greatest social scientist," he's nothing more than a fraud. Apparently, the information he's written on was not researched and discovered by him, but given to him...by this George.

George, according to the first chapter of the ebook, is the name of a voice (apparently that of an extra-terrestrial) that appeared in Huttner's head one fall evening as a child, and has been with him ever since, helping him in basketball, on the multistate bar exam ("so that the secret police and the New York State bar examiners they controlled could not fail me by giving me zeroes on the essay part," Huttner writes,) and in life in general, as Huttner explains that he learned to "go where and write as [George's] spirit moved me."

So, to recap: In the first chapter of his treatise on the nature of government, human sexuality and political parties, he basically says that he's heard a voice in his head since he was a child that has told him to not tell anyone because they'd think him crazy.

It appears that George was on the money there.

The ebook continues on from there, with chpters on the lessons George taught Huttner, before going into suppositions that latent fraternal homosexuality is why government gets nothing done in this country, that the Western world will fall if they do not do more to compete with China (which makes sense) by ending all aggression (sure, I guess) and launching "equal opportunity and population control programs" (what?) over the next thirty years.

There's more, but I gave up after a while. Call me unenlightened or closed minded, but this book just seems kinda out there. Maybe it's something about the voice that hangs out in the author's head that throws me off. Can't say for sure though.

If you're interested in picking up the work of David Huttner (and George) you can find it here. Good luck.

Earlier today as part of a terrible PR move, Carnival Cruise Lines sent out a letter cracking down on customers who might choose to sail the seas fabulously in drag, claiming that they're aimed to preserve "a family friendly atmosphere". Sending out a letter threatening to kick anyone off a cruise for dressing in drag seemed strange enough in 2012, but when the cruise features entertainment from the show RuPaul’s Drag Race (including such stars as Pandora Boxx and Alaska Thunderfuck) then clearly, all logic had gone out the window:

In a letter sent to guests on the upcoming trip, the cruise line wrote; “Arrangements have been made for drag performances in the main theater featuring stars from LOGO TV. These functions will be private and only the performers are permitted to dress in drag while in the theater. Guests are not allowed to dress in drag for the performances or in public areas at any time during the cruise.”

To be very, very clear, LOGO TV had absolutely nothing to do with this decision or this letter or was even aware of its existence until alerted by someone attending the cruise.

Do they know who goes on these cruises? Because let us tell you, nothing makes some queens happier than seeing a performer they love while in drag. So that’s a bit rude and ridiculous and kind of a major problem.

Oh wait, it gets worse (before it got better).

“We’re sorry to say that any guest who violates our policies and/or whose behavior affects the comfort and enjoyment of other guests, will be disembarked at their own expense and no refund will be given.”

One would have thought that Carnival, which has had a connection to drag queens dating back to the 1980s when they used Kathie Lee Gifford as a spokesperson, would be a bit savvier these days—and it turns out that, shockingly, they are.

Just as quickly as the controversy arose, the company moved to squash it, claiming they originally believed any wearing of drag would be confined to the performers and the performance area, but they're going to deal, as long as guests are able "to present government-issued ID, and to be recognizably that person."

Order has returned to the universe, everyone. Go back to whatever you were doing.

Well, okay. Dean Chambers, of Unskewed Polls fame, doesn't 'expose' anything so much as he asks rhetorical questions, raises a conspiracy theory about the 1980 general election as a way to suggest that there could be funny business involving the 2012 election, and posts some ideas about Democratic voter suppression while using a chart from Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog:

For months the mainstream media clearly communicated a message with ONE voice, that Barack Obama was likely to win reelection, Mitt Romney was a weakened candidate that was damaged in the primary process and further weakened when Obama attacked him with tens of millions of negative ads on TV and Romney stood no chance of getting elected. That millions of potential Republican voters, that vote for McCain in 2008 while far less enthused about doing so, did not turn out to vote for Romney in 2012 clearly proves the voter suppression campaign waged by the mainstream media and to some extent by the Democrat Party, worked quite well.

While the overall strategy was voter suppression, it is clear from viewing these stats that boosting the turnout in key swing states (the ones in yellow above) was taking place as well. Without further or more detailed proof, there is objectively two ways to increase voter turnout on the side of those supporting Obama, as it clearly did happen in some key swing states: either get more real people out to vote who will vote for Obama, or stuff the ballot boxes and engage in a variety of vote fraud and vote scamming methods. Odds are quite likely, to maximize their odds of succeeding in getting President Obama elected, that they engaged in all of the above to make it happen. Other information presented on this web site is gradually building the case that the margin of voter fraud exceeds any real margin by which this race was won by Obama. It is beginning to appear that the likely Romney victory, even it was to be close, that many believed was going to happen was actually going to happen if it was reversed with vote fraud.

Sure, that makes, uh..."sense." Until someone considers the source, which is, of course, a man who finagled with polls until they all leaned in favor of Mitt Romney. Not that there's anything wrong with that though, right?

Check out the Barack O'Fraudo (which doesn't even make sense to birthers unless they've decided that Obama is suddenly an Irishman rather than a Kenyan, I guess) website here, if you dare.