This story is about a week old at this point, but it goes in the “things everyone should know” category.
One of the most common talking points from right-wing pundits, especially on Fox News, is that whatever happens to the people in Guantanamo Bay is okay because all those prisoners are really bad guys — “the […]

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Very cool — CNN’s Larry King records a PSA in honor of his murdered namesake, in support of the 12th annual Day of Silence organized by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

 
Previously on Ocelopotamus:
• Death by Flirting
 

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I’ll say this for Condoleeza Rice — she does an outstanding job of making the case against herself.
Watch her effectively prosecute herself on video:

 
Read this diary for context.
Visit CondiMustGo.com for more info and to sign the online petition.
 

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I’ve said this many times in the past, and I’m sure I’ll say it again in the future:
God bless Peter Tatchell.
Towleroad:
Gay activist Peter Tatchell was one of dozens detained in various protests over the weekend surrounding the transit of the Olympic flame through London, including one dramatic moment in which the torch was nearly snatched […]

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From Friday’s AP story on Lawrence King:
OXNARD, Calif. (AP) — Larry King was a gay eighth-grader who used to come to school in makeup, high heels and earrings. And when the other boys made fun of him, he would boldly tease them right back by flirting with them.
That may have been what got him killed.
No, […]

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See update #3 at the bottom of this post: after an emotional roller coaster of a day, Nataline Sarkisyan has passed away.
The fine, caring folks at CIGNA health insurance have made the warm-hearted decision to let a 17-year-old girl die because they don’t want to pay for a liver transplant. And they’re trying to justify […]

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In Florida a 7-year-old was covered in bruises after a man (seemingly his father, but the story isn’t clear on the relationship) beat him up and whipped him with a belt.
His crime? Giving himself a manicure. A pink manicure.
A man was arrested on child abuse charges after he beat a 7-year-old boy with a […]

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Just riffing off this most excellent post by Devilstower — as you probably know, Mike Huckabee has attempted to justify his opposition to gay marriage and civil unions by saying:
There’s never been a civilization that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survived.
For some reason, this is a very common “deep thought” among the […]

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Brilliant. Just brilliant. Watch Abu Gonzales get completely pwned by some students.

 
Today I’m thankful that, despite the best efforts of Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, and the rest of their horde, there are still young people in the world who are able to pierce the veil of truthiness and do stuff like this. […]

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Markos from Daily Kos has a new gig writing opinion pieces for Newsweek, and he’s been in rare form with his first couple of efforts. From this week’s column: “In his first Inaugural Address, Ronald Reagan remarked that ‘government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.’ While the quip has provided […]

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I can’t scrape together enough time at the moment to do OcPot’s usual painstakingly well-rounded roundup — I’m seeing The Waterboys at the Park West tonight, woo-hoo! — but I wanted to get some of these links up before they fossilized. So here’s a charmingly slapdash, quick-and-dirty roundup. In ripped fishnet and high heels.

The always-eloquent […]

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In order to keep these roundups fresh as a spring daisy, I usually discard any links I’ve been keeping around that are more than a week old. But since this is OcPot’s first roundup in more than six weeks, I’m extending the freshness window slightly to include a few things that were just too good […]

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I haven’t weighed in on the whole gay Dumbledore thing, partly because everyone is already talking about it, and I usually view OcPot as a place to post about things that deserve more attention than they seem to be getting.
But Minnesota Malcolm brought it up in the comments to this post last night, and […]

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Daily Kos has a review up of Naomi Klein’s new book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Harper’s ran an excerpt from The Shock Doctrine in the October issue which was, as the DKos review says, riveting, and immediately put the book on my must-read list. I’m planning to pick up a copy […]

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