And the Irony Continues

Liberty Counsel wants you to know incarcerated Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis doesn't have a Twitter account and that a "letter" associated with that account is a fake.  OK, sure, I guess the use of fake social media accounts to comment on public issues could be news to the 5 or 6 people in America unfamiliar with social media. Asking for that account to be shut down seems a bit rich coming from a legal firm that touts its dedication to free speech and exercise of religion, but again, there's enough constitutional latitude to accommodate that degree of duplicity.

But when the Liberty Counsel guys put this out there in their press release, it's over the top. After all, Ms Davis is currently in jail because she judged the what she imagines to be sinful behavior taking place in the privacy of a couple's bedroom.

We ask that the media and the public respect the privacy of Kim’s family and church. 

Asking for special consideration for Ms Davis does seem to be the common thread running through this soap opera.  

We Need a New Noun - Twitterbation?

Watching Colorado state Senator Dave "If You're a Slut Your Baby Should Die of AIDS" Schultheis' Twitter stream is a revolting amusement; revolting because of his insanely limited intelligence but amusing because of the apparently  sincere followers he allows. (For the record, I have been officially blocked from this elected official's Twitter stream, a prior restraint activity that begs an ACLU intervention.)

Typically, Schultheis' stream consists of retweets, so much so that original contributions by the Senator are so rare as to provoke questions of his ability to compose a sentence. But on occasion a couple of his acolytes produce  bewildering repetitious tweets, like these:
Twitter - Search - Sen_Schultheis.png by deanbarnett on Aviary

So I wonder - should we coin a noun to describe the endless, self-satisfying  repetition of tweets between followers in a Twitter stream? I'm thinking "Twitterbation" might be appropriate (and I DO NOT want to expand this to describe Twitterbation between members of the same gender, as seen above).

Suggestions?

Batshit Crazy in 140 Characters

My favorite Colorado GOPosaurus, state Senator Dave Schultheis, (R) Focus on the Family, is wracked, WRACKED I tell you, with guilt over vacationing while the economic and moral structure of the country is ruined by evil Obamatrons. I know this because he took time away from his Minnesota junket to tweet his emotional conflict.

John Ensign, Mark Sanford, Mark Foley, Larry Craig, Scooter Libby, Mark Foley and Duke Cunningham nod in agreement.

Well, I Guess She'd Know

Maybe Sarah should quit Twitter instead of her job.

Vigilance & Vigilantes

Two men, each dealing with a foreign country. One is arrested but manages to send a text message, "arrested," the other, trying to enter the foreign country legally, is perhaps the victim of a problem in translation, resulting in detention.

The man sending the text message was out in 24 hours. The man lacking an interpreter is still held 10 days later.

The guy using his cell phone as a Get Out of Jail Free card is an American student arrested in Egypt. Using his cell phone enabled James Karl Buck to send text messages to his Twitter account. Twitter accepts text messages of up to 140 characters and can forward the messages to other cell phones while simultaneously making the message visible on the Twitter website. Buck's "arrested" was enough to alert his friends and start a series of interventions that seem to have produced his release 24 hours later.

On his way to the police station, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter.

The message only had one word. "Arrested."

Within seconds, colleagues in the United States and his blogger-friends in Egypt -- the same ones who had taught him the tool only a week earlier -- were alerted that he was being held.

The other poor sod is an Italian with "fractured English" trying to visit his American girlfriend. The ICE guys at Dulles International Airport thought Domenico Salerno had expressed fear of being killed if he returned to Italy and wanted political asylum. (Asylum? From Italy?) Despite being within shouting distance of his girlfriend at the airport and the efforts of Senator John Warner. Mr. Salerno remains in Federal custody, and is obviously handling this poorly, “He’s just really scared,” Ms. Cooper said in an interview last Thursday. “He asked me if Virginia has the death penalty.”

Neither of these detentions seem to be reasonable, in light of known facts. I do, though, find it embarrassing that Egypt, fercryin'outloud, is quicker to release people than the "land of the free and home of the brave."