I flagged this story yesterday. Joe Arpaio, the antic Sheriff from down in Maricopa County, Arizona, hired a PI to investigate the wife of a federal judge who was overseeing HIS trial. He admitted this yesterday under oath. That sounds like the kind of thing that can get you in big big trouble. Curious to hear from our lawyer readers, particularly with experience with the federal courts, just what the fallout from something like this could be.
We’ve gotten a veritable avalanche of emails in response to my post on the secret history of Canola Oil. Some are particularly vehement. Which brings me to one in particular from TPM Reader CB. He actually says in his email “Please don’t use my name anywhere” so I am simply referring as ‘Canola Oil Badass’ (i.e. ‘CB’) who accuses me of “playing up the ‘secret conspiracy’ angle [to] you denigrate a very healthy and affordable food oil by smearing it as the product of some sort of nefarious, secret scheme.”
From CB …
Josh’s Canola post had a slightly off smell to it for me: I’ll try to explain why.
1. Why revel in your ignorance? That Canola is from a plant developed from plants in the large family of rape vegetables is not a secret, and most cooks know what it is.
2. Which leads me to, “You don’t cook, do you?” Canola is better for pan or wok frying because its smoke point is up to 100 degrees higher than olive oil.
This is a fascinating story. But it might also be seen as another chapter in the efforts of white nationalist/neo-fascist hate groups to rebrand themselves as another aggrieved ‘minority’ group looking to stand up for its rights.
Ted Cruz has now responded to the brouhaha over his Manhattan fundraiser hosted by two prominent gay hoteliers. He argues that there’s no contradiction between his opposition to gay marriage and saying that he would love his daughter if one of his two daughters was gay. In truth, there really is not a necessary contradiction. That’s a totally valid point. But that hardly exhausts the issue or the balancing act (to use a generous formulation) that national Republicans are trying to pull off. They have to balance between a base that remains committed to opposing not only gay marriage but what we might call the normalization of gay life under the law, and a general public that has really moved on from this issue and is beginning to see legal inequality as on the par with de jure racial discrimination. As I said yesterday, we’re seeing the rise of a gay rights policy mullet – same old same old when talking to the base, but a very different way of talking about attitudes toward LGBT Americans when talking to the general public – and specifically, super-rich campaign donors.
Okay, we’ve already heard from ill-tempered TPM Reader CB on the Canola Oil/rapeseed oil policy debate. Now a more interesting a even-tempered follow-up from TPM Reader SR …
Okay, as enough of a foodie to still be DVRing “Good Eats” reruns, I now have to chime in with two exclamations phrased as questions, and an important piece of new info.
1. Rapeseed and canola plants are brassicas? Whoa! Who knew? And I’m not being facetious. Ever since I learned (yeah, from Alton Brown) that a ginormous number of the things we think are different vegetables are barely distinguishable from each other genetically, I’ve just been fascinated by the whole brassica thing.
Sex club transforms itself into Church to get approval to move in to building near Christian school.
Bounty Hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman goes rogue on Fox, goes for Hillary over Rubio. Foxoid Heads explode. Watch.
Jeb Bush pledges to resume deportations of 5 million undocumented immigrants allowed to remain in the country under President Obama’s executive action.
Activists threaten boycott of gay hoteliers who hosted Manhattan fundraiser for warmer cuddlier Ted Cruz.
Law-abiding New Hampshire town refuses to allow the return of ‘Pumpkin Fest’ that erupted in white riots last year.