John Boehner lends government facility to group whose speaker, Austin Ruse (and wife) once smeared the Girl Scouts; group actively encourages Russian pogrom of LGBTs

AKSARBENT photo-illustration of Boehner, published on the
occasion of his audio/video cutoff of CSPAN's coverage of
an up/down vote on a payroll tax holiday extension.

After Senator Mark Kirk kicked the so-called World Congress of Families out of a U.S. Senate meeting room, booked for it because, according to a spokesman, “Sen. Kirk doesn’t affiliate with groups that discriminate,” John Boehner stepped in to provide a space in the government meeting

Not-so-fun couple: aptly surnamed
Austin and Cathy Ruse

     Several years ago, Austin Ruse, a far right homophobe who runs the Catholic organization C-FAM, presided over that group's false accusation that the Girl Scouts were distributing HIV+ sex guides to their members. Despite the fact that the lie (below) was thorough debunked (here and here), Ruse's wife, Cathy, a functionary at the Family Research Council, continued to spread the rumor there and has repeatedly attacked the Girl Scouts on other counts. The Ruses ruse is still posted at the Family Research Council:

The Girl Scouts have been "pro-choice" for years, but now they've been caught supporting promiscuous sex for girls. The Planned Parenthood sex guide offered at that "girls only" U.N. meeting offered this advice on Page 11: "Some people have sex when they have been drinking alcohol or using drugs. This is your choice. ... If you want to have sex and think you might get drunk or high, plan ahead by bringing condoms and lube or putting them close to where you usually have sex."

This has caused the Girl Scouts fundraising problems:




The Billerco Project says WCF member groups support legislation in Russia that:

• prohibits families from discussing sexual orientation
• prohibits public discussion of sexual orientation
• silences religious groups that oppose antigay discrimination
• bars adoption and child custody by gay parents
• subjects violators to long stays in prison

Economic stratification, unemployment fueling far right extremism in Poland against gays, Russian embassy

Poland is plenty homophobic anyway, but economic injustice is giving jobless thugs more time to act out their resentments of gay Poles and the Russians who occupied Poland for decades. You'd think 'phobes would be throwing bouquets at the Russian embassy, not rocks.


(Via JoeMyGod)

Patricia Cornwell flogs newest Kay Scarpetta book, Dust, and talks about being out

At 13:41 in the interview, Alyona Minkovski asked Cornwell:

Do you feel a responsibility to, as a role model to people, as an example, not only as a writer but as a woman; a lot of people might not know this about your background too, but that you're gay. Do you feel that's something you have a responsibility to own and to make public? 

     Cornwell, a bipolar former newspaper reporter, has sold in excess of 100 million books. She worked for the chief medical examiner's office in Virginia before the first novel in her Scarpetta series was published in the early 1990s.
      Although intensely private, Cornwell was involved in a messy scandal in the early 1990s, in which her then-paramour, Margo Bennett, a married FBI agent, was almost murdered by her FBI agent husband in a frame-up scheme which also involved the abduction of Bennet's pastor.
     Earlier this year, Cornwell, with the help of testimony from her spouse, Staci Gruber, sued Anchin, Block & Anchin, LLP a New York accounting and wealth management firm, and Evan Snapper, a former principal in the firm for negligence and breach of contract, claiming millions in investment losses and unaccounted for revenues during their 4½-year relationship.
     Cornwell also alleged that Snapper gave her shady real ­estate advice, advice that seemed to benefit his own associates, including the son of the actor Robert DeNiro, whom he referred to as Bobby DeNiro and caused her to lose additional millions in real estate.

Rex Reed in the New York Observer: Woe be the fool who misses Alexander Payne’s Nebraska

Nebraska still from Vantage Paramount via Slate

We suspect that Reed is cheerleading the film because he thinks Alexander Payne's motion picture is some kind of documentary which validates Reed's apparent notions about small town Americana. Most New Yorkers, especially those aware of record grain prices in recent years, are not this provincial:

Through Wyoming and South Dakota, Phedon Papamichael’s camera paints a moving portrait of the barren ugliness of the changing landscape of the American grain belt, with its empty fields, shingle houses and dying mom-and-pop businesses decimated by the economy. And Mr. Nelson’s observant, detailed script flawlessly captures the mood of what American ennui has done to both old and young men on their way to becoming losers, lending a look and feel that seems like the Great Depression.

A second opinion from Slate's Dana Stevens (who also was enthralled with June Squibb's performance — she played Jack Nicholson's wife in Payne's best film, About Schmidt):

There are viewers who will find the folksy humor of Nebraska’s comic scenes too broad, and others who will condemn Payne’s portrayal of Midwesterners as caricatured and condescending. I am not among those viewers: I’ve always admired this director’s commitment to both seriousness and laughter, to showing the beauty and significance of ordinary human life side by side with its petty, venal absurdity. Nebraska’s unsentimental but ultimately loving vision of small-town America seems closer than ever to Preston Sturges’—a director to whom Payne is often compared, and whose great satire Hail the Conquering Hero (about a hapless soldier who’s mistaken for a war hero without ever having fought a day in his life) seems like a clear influence here.

Video: Jon Stewart turns Chicago-NYC tallest building spat into trenchant soliloquy on Chicago-style deep dish 'pizza'

Jon Stewart to Chicago:

Deep-dish pizza is not only not better than New York pizza — it's NOT pizza. It's a casserole. I'm surprised you haven't thought to complete your deep-dish pizza by putting some canned onion rings on top of it. You know the expression "There's no such thing as bad sex or bad pizza"? Your pizza is like sex with a corpse made of sandpaper. Let me tell you something: this is not pizza — this is tomato soup in a breadbowl.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

Just to be clear, AKSARBENT has neither a dog in, nor any comment on, this cringeworthy fight

To read, click picture to enlarge.

Kansas City Star: Missouri Bar should investigate Judge Kevin Crane, who withheld evidence in murder trial of recently-freed Ryan Ferguson

Ryan Ferguson, convicted of a murder via prosecutorial railroading, witnesses who later recanted their testimony, and witholding of evidence, was freed yesterday, due to the efforts of the law firm of  attorney Kathleen Zellner, whose pro bono efforts cost her about $1,200,000 in both expenses and 3,500 unbilled hours. NBC just published a piece by her which enumerated the 10 turning points in her successful campaign to free her client.
     In a recent Kansas City Star editorial, From Texas, a warning for prosecutors who cheat defendants, Barbara Shelly has called for an investigation of former prosecutor and current circuit court judge Kevin Crane:

     Based on telephone calls and emails I’ve received over the past few days, it seems that a lot of people who have followed the Ferguson case are angry at the former Boone County prosecutor, Kevin Crane, who withheld evidence that could have played a significant role in Ferguson’s trial... Prosecutors produced no physical evidence.
     Crane, who is now a Boone County judge, said in a 2012 court hearing that he still believed Ferguson and his friend were guilty.
     I don’t think we know enough about what went on in Crane’s office as he put the Ferguson case together. But, based on this opinion by a Missouri appeals court panel, the Missouri Bar should take a look at what happened, much as the Texas Bar did. The Missouri Bar also should investigate recent overturned cases that were prosecuted by Kenny Hulshof, a former assistant state attorney general who went on to serve six terms in Congress.
     On the front end, as The New York Times noted in an editorial over the weekend, judges should issue a standard written order reminded prosecutors they are ethically bound to turn over all potentially exculpatory evidence, under penalty of contempt charges if they don’t. It’s past time for courts at all levels to start treating prosecutorial misconduct as a serious and all-too-frequent problem.

     Read more here.

Don't sleep in the subway, darling. Oh, go ahead

Fun Wikipedia fact: even though the word "subway" has a different meaning in the UK than in the U.S., Tony Hatch apparently used the word in its American sense in his 1967 hit, according to cowriter Jackie Trent:

     The song was constructed from three different sections of music previously composed by Hatch and changes in musical style from pop to symphonic and then to a Beach Boys-like melody for the chorus. It uses a chord progression most familiar from the baroque piece Pachelbel's Canon.
      In the lyrics the narrator advises her sweetheart against storming out after an argument due to his "foolish pride". If he does, he will "sleep in the subway" or "stand in the pouring rain" merely to prove his point. Although in the UK the term "subway" refers to a pedestrian underpass rather than an underground transit system, Hatch employed the term in the latter American sense. According to the song's co-writer Jackie Trent the title lyric was suggested by the 1961-62 Broadway musical Subways Are For Sleeping.

Ben Sasse backed in Nebraska's Senate race by Wall Street fatcats who want to 'put farm subsidies on a path to elimination'

Why keep this story to yourself? Share it with friends via the Facebook,
Google+, Reddit, Twitter, or email buttons at the bottom of this post. 

Photo source

The usual suspects (teabaggers, Astroturf front groups) are lining up behind the most reactionary Nebraska senate candidate they can find, who this year happens to be Ben Sasse. Now the Washington Post is reporting that  the Club For Growth is backing him too.

This is what the Club for Growth said last June:

“Now that the House has defeated the Farm Bill, we should finally discuss real reform,” said Club for Growth President Chris Chocola. “The time for reform is now. We need to put farm subsidies on a path to elimination and we need to devolve food stamps to the state level where they belong.

From Wikipedia:

In 2008 and 2009, the Club for Growth opposed the $787 billion stimulus bill, Cash for Clunkers, cap and trade legislation, the Wall Street bailout, the auto bailout, the Affordable Care Act and the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
     In 2003, the original Club for Growth strongly opposed the Medicare prescription drug benefit proposal.

From Sasse's website:

I understand the bill [Affordable Care Act], I can explain the bill, and I know how to rip it apart...
     This week I was honored to be endorsed by the group Senator Jim DeMint started, Senate Conservatives Fund.

Here's a conservative saying 'good riddance' to Jim DeMint on the occasion of his retirement from congress. And here's Sasse's hero on NBC's Meet The Press, trashing gay families and getting some pushback from Rachel Maddow:

Hawaii Gov. Abercrombie makes it legal

Lily Allen's music video takedown of plastic surgery, anorexia, sexism, autotune and conspicuous consumption is now going viral

Quite a list but she covered all the singing points and got to have her cake and eat it too; the video became what it mocked.
     Here's an awe­some music video we posted earlier today (screencap at right) with none of that, although it does have a Cuban drag queen.


(Via JMG)

PATRIOT Act author rips NSA mass surveillance at EU meeting; says Gen. James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence should be fired and prosecuted; asserts Feinstein law would worsen NSA abuses

GOP Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner is now singing quite a different tune from his past, pre-Snowden refrains, which insisted that the NSA hadn't violated anyone's civil rights and critics needed to chill. A 2006 USA Today editorial by Sensenbreenner began:

Zero. That's the number of substantiated USA Patriot Act civil liberties violations. Extensive congressional oversight found no violations...

     Last summer, after Clapper's tricky dicky denial that the NSA collects "dossiers" en masse, Sen. Ron Wyden asked him point blank: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"
     Clapper's answer, here, wasn't just a flat-out lie; it was probably the biggest whopper ever told to Congress in the history of the nation.



From the Register:

     Sensenbrenner slammed legislation introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) on October 31 that would codify into law the NSA's mass collection of private data, albeit with some transparency additions. It would also allow the NSA free rein to investigate any foreign national for 72 hours after they arrive on US shores and introduce a 10-year prison sentence for security contractors who leak information.
     Feinstein, who chairs the Senate intelligence committee that is supposed to oversee and regulate the activities of the NSA, said the bill provides protections, but Sensenbrenner called it "scary," and said it changed nothing, and could make the situation worse.
     "It codifies what the NSA has been doing under bulk collection – until now what they have been doing is because a court says yes, but the Feinstein bill puts what the NSA has been doing into law and says everything is OK."

Xavier Bettel says his boyfriend told him it was ok for him to become Luxembourg's next prime minister

Xavier Bettel (right) with boyfriend
Destenay Gauthier

It's always a good idea to run career promotions involving travel past the mister. From Buzzfeed:

My partner is a bit scared. I try to be at home most nights as we’re a team but the obligations [of being Prime Minister] mean I will have to go abroad a lot. I asked him the day after the election whether it was OK to form a government and he supported me. If he had said no I would have to think whether I could accept it or not - I didn’t want to break up a relationship! We’re a team for good times and bad.

Belgium's prime minister, Elio Di Rupo, also is gay.

Law firm, ABA president withdraw from event promoting investment in Russia in wake of country's enactment of new antigay laws

ABA president James Silkenat takes a principled stand
against Russian anti-gay legislation; he withdraws as
keynote speaker of Russian investment event

American Lawyer Daily reports:

      Goodwin Procter said Tuesday it will neither cosponsor nor host a forum aimed at promoting investment in Russia that was to be held in the firm's New York office on Nov. 18 after learning that American Bar Association president James Silkenat had withdrawn as keynote speaker.
      Gay rights activists had urged Silkenat and Goodwin to cut their ties to the Russia Forum New York event in light of anti-gay legislation recently enacted by Russia that has sparked protests there and abroad.

Read more at American Lawyer Daily
(Via @str8grandmother)

British retail giants John Lewis, Marks and Spencer, and Tesco release their 2013 Christmas ads

John Lewis' ad, part of a reputed seven-million-pound Christmas blitz by the venerable British department store chain, isn't so head-and-shoulders above its competition this year, but at least it backs away from directly flogging the merchandise, as did M&S.
     AKSARBENT liked Tesco's ad best, though the Marks and Spencer ad had the most memorable line: a sassy reinterpretation of Oz's wizard, confronted with an updated Dorothy.

Glitch girl speaks!

Adrianna (no last name please) is married and a mother. Although from Colombia, she is eligible to apply for Obamacare under her permanent residency status. The subject of relentless abuse by Teabaggers, she says she wasn't bullied as a child, but is now. She has not been paid for the stock photo of her used on the Obamacare website.


(Via JoeMyGod)

More problems involving shoddy construction of the pipeline that Rep. Lee Terry calls a 'no brainer'

(Via @janekleeb)

Zucchero: Guantanamera

Time Magazine regrets that Edward Snowden's revelations of NSA privacy abuse have retarded the "modernization" of laws governing online wiretapping by the government

Here's Time's epose of the "Deep Web" — the parts of the Internet Google won't take you to. Time says the Tor sections of the Internet are "completely anonymous." You can believe that if you wish.

Reubenfest! In the city where the sandwich was born!

Here's where your beloved Reuben sandwich came from: the roaring 20s at the former Blackstone
Hotel, at left. The World-Herald says the Crescent Moon, right, serves the best Reubens in town.

Nebraskans insist that the Reuben sandwich was invented first by grocer Reuben Kulakofsky between 1920 and 1925 to feed late night poker players at the Blackstone Hotel in Omaha and absolutely NOT by Arnold Reuben, the New York City restaurateur.
     Jim Rader, of Merriam-Webster, tentatively favors the Omaha claim.
     Wikipedia flatly gives the city bragging rights.
     Alas, no more Reubens are served at the Blackstone Hotel because it is gone — but not forgotten; the ediface, still bearing the same name, has been repurposed as an office building.
     No worries: the Crescent Moon, across Farnam Street, keeps up the tradition (which mandates Russian, not 1000-island, dressing) impeccably, as the Omaha World-Herald has dubbed its recreation the best in Omaha:

The Blackstone Reuben, as it's called on the Moon's menu, is a feat of engineering. It doesn't fall apart when you eat it and it doesn't leak dressing or kraut.

     And how does the restaurant accomplish that engineering? Aside from being picky about choosing and preparing the ingredients, it sends each sandwich through a pizza oven with a conveyer belt, because it didn't have a flat-top grill when the eatery opened. The restaurant does now, but Reubens still go through the pizza oven, because “The Reubens just come out perfect every time,” says Crescent Moon owner Bill Baburek.
     If concurrent thoughts of "Reuben" and "Pizza oven" make the more adventurous of AKSARBENT readers wonder what a Reuben pizza would be like, the answer is great. We know because Mama's Pizza has one on the menu; we've had it, and we totally approve, despite the fact that it's made with, ahem, Thousand Island dressing.
     Reubenfest will run from Nov. 18th-23rd and will feature deviant versions of the Reuben available on specific days only. Details here.

Nearly 40 members of Open Carry Texas, many with assault rifles, lie in wait in restaurant parking lot to confront four gun-control moms having lunch

The restaurant owner didn't call the police because of the fear of causing a riot.
     Later, the gun fetishists reportedly adjourned to Hooters.

Aerial views of Central Philippines city of Tacloban, about the size of Lincoln, NE, where Typhoon Haiyan killed at least 10,000

Via the New York Times blog, The Lede, by Robert Mackey. Footage was shot by Erel Cabatbat of TV 5 in the Philippines, and uploaded to YouTube by Storyful.

The incorruptible South American president who won't live in a palace, gives 90% of his salary to charity, drives a 1987 VW and has no bank account

The salary of the president of Uruguay,  José Mujica, is about $12,500 per month but he only keeps $1,250, giving the rest to charity. His farmhouse, on the outskirts of Montevideo, is in the name of his wife, Lucía Topolansky, a senator, who also donates a portion of her salary. They live there rather than in the expansive presidential palace with its staff of 42.
     Uruguay's economy is growing at a healthy clip: 3.6% per year, and according to Transparency International’s global corruption index, it ranks as the second least corrupt country in Latin America
     In the U.S., JFK and Herbert Hoover did not accept a presidential salary, and Jerry Brown, when first elected governor of California, refused to move into that state's new governor's mansion.
     During a recent speech to the UN General Assembly denouncing excess and frivolity, Mujica said:

• “Today, man does not govern the forces he has unleashed, but rather, it is these forces that govern man; and life. Because we do not come into this planet simply to develop, just like that, indiscriminately. We come into this planet to be happy. Because life is short and it slips away from us. And no material belonging is worth as much as life, and this is fundamental.“
• “But if life is going to slip through my fingers, working and over-working in order to be able to consume more, and the consumer society is the engine-because ultimately, if consumption is paralyzed, the economy stops, and if you stop economy, the ghost of stagnation appears for each one of us, but it is this hyper-consumption that is harming the planet.”
• “I’m not talking about returning to the days of the caveman, or erecting a “monument to backwardness.” But we cannot continue like this, indefinitely, being ruled by the market, on the contrary, we have to rule over the market.”
• “Development cannot go against happiness. It has to work in favor of human happiness, of love on Earth, human relationships, caring for children, having friends, having our basic needs covered. Precisely because this is the most precious treasure we have; happiness. When we fight for the environment, we must remember that the essential element of the environment is called human happiness.”

Amazon's 'Alpha House' loosely based on D.C. row house Sens. Schumer and Durbin share with Rep. George MIller

ABC's Jonathan Karl visited the digs (at the 2:32 mark) an occasion for which Sen. Schumer made his bed.

Karl: You still don't have your own bedroom...
Sen Schumer: That is true. One day it'll happen...
Karl: What would an actual reality show based in this house be like?
Sen. Schumer: We'd be sitting around here, usually in our shorts and T-shirts, BSing.

How to browse Obamacare plans quickly, easily and then enroll — without using government website

Ahmad Tuma in custody after faith-based, hate-crime crowbar attack on gay sister in Lincoln, Nebraska; accomplice Nathan Marks also charged; sister talks to KOLN/KGIN

Both Lincoln television stations are covering the attack. 10/11 exclusively spoke to the victim and her Muslim mother, who denied to the reporter that the incident ever happened. Officer Katie Flood told the Lincoln Journal-Star that Tuma felt his sister disgraced his family and that police think religion motivated him.
     Tuma attacked his sister for becoming engaged to a woman and struck a window and windshield of the vehicle they were in 8-10 times with a crowbar before they drove off, after which Tuma and Marks pursued the women in Marks' Dodge Ram and tried to push them into traffic on North 27th Street.
     The Journal-Star reports:

     No one was hurt, but the fiancée's 2003 Toyota Celica sustained $2,500 damage, Flood said.
     Officers pulled Tuma and Marks over at about 2:30 Friday morning in south Lincoln and arrested Tuma on suspicion of attempted second-degree assault, criminal mischief and two counts of terroristic threats, all of them with a hate crime enhancement, which allows for a stiffer sentence.
     They also cited Tuma on suspicion of using a deadly weapon to commit a felony.
     They arrested Marks on suspicion of aiding and abetting two crimes: making terroristic threats and using a weapon to commit a felony.

News, Weather and Sports for Lincoln, NE; KLKNTV.com

Daily Beast: The forgotten reign of England's lesbian queen

Michael Dahl portrait, 1705
From Wiki: Anne was plagued by ill
health throughout her life. From her
30s onwards, she grew increasingly
lame and corpulent. Despite seventeen
pregnancies by her husband, Prince
George of Denmark, she died without
any surviving children and was the
last monarch of the House of Stuart.

Most people, when prompted with the words "Queen Anne" would finish the phrase with either "chair" or "table." If her majesty was indeed gay, she certainly must have had a sense of duty: any British lesbian knocked up seventeen times must have thought of England a lot.

From Michael Korda's Daily Beast book review:

It is sometimes the fate of England to do what seems daring and difficult in politics long before the United States (which, did not of course yet exist in Queen Anne’s day) gets around to doing it. We have yet to elect a Jewish president on this side of the Atlantic, while Benjamin Disraeli was a hugely successful prime minister in the latter part of the 19th Century, and we only just tested whether a lesbian can be elected mayor of New York City, while England may very likely have had one on the throne in the 17th Century.

Maher on Christers abusing restaurant servers

"Someone needs to tell these people that not tipping a gay waiter will not make him want to put his penis in a woman. It'll make him want to put his penis in your Paste Primavera... There's always a good moral Christian reason to tell everyone you meet to fuck off and die." (Skip to the 2:54 mark)

How they voted: Hawaiian House on SB1, the marriage equality bill

Mileka Lincoln reports from the Hawaiian Capitol:

Toledo News via Hawaii News Now

YES on SB1:

- Rep. Della Au Belatti (D - Moiliili, Makiki, Tantalus)

- Rep. Tom Brower (D - Waikiki, Ala Moana, Kakaako)

- Rep. Denny Coffman (D - Naalehu, Captain Cook, Keahou)

- Rep. Cindy Evans (D - Kaupulehu, Waimea, Halaula)

- Rep. Faye Hanohano (D - Hawaiian Acres, Pahoa, Kalapana)

- Rep. Mark Hashem (D - Hahaione Valley, Aina Haina, Kahala)

- Rep. Linda Ichiyama (D - Salt Lake, Moanalua Valley)

- Rep. Kaniela Ing (D - South Maui)

- Rep. Derek Kawakami (D - Hanalei, Princeville, Kapaa)

- Rep. Bertrand Kobayashi (D - Diamond Head, Kaimuki, Kapahulu)

- Rep. Chris Lee (D - Kailua, Lanikai, Waimanalo)

- Rep. Nicole Lowen (D - Holualoa, Kailua-Kona, Honokohau)

- Rep. Sylvia Luke (D - Punchbowl, Pauoa, Nuuanu)

- Rep. Angus McKelvey (D - Lahaina, Kaanapali, Honokohau)

- Rep. John Mizuno (D - Kamehameha Heights, Kalihi Valley)

- Rep. Dee Morikawa (D - Niihau, Koloa, Kokee)

- Rep. Mark Nakashima (D - Kukuihaele, Lapahoehoe, North Hilo)

- Rep. Scott Nishimoto (D - McCully, Moiliili, Kapahulu)

- Rep. Takashi Ohno (Nuuanu, Liliha, Alewa Heights)

- Rep. Richard Onishi (D - South Hilo, Keaau, Honuapo)

- Rep. Karl Rhoads (D - Chinatown, Iwilei, Kalihi)

- Rep. Scott Saiki (D - Downtown, Kakaako, McCully)

- Rep. Calvin Say (D - Palolo, St. Louis Heights, Kaimuki)

- Speaker Joseph Souki (D - Waihee, Waiehu, Wailuku)

- Rep. Mark Takai (D - Halawa, Aiea, Newtown)

- Rep. Gregg Takayama (D - Pearl City, Waimalu, Pacific Palisades)

- Rep. Roy Takumi (D - Pearl City, Waipio, Pearl Harbor)

- Rep. Cynthia Thielen (R - Kailua, Kaneohe)

- Rep. Jessica Wooley (D - Kahaluu, Ahuimanu, Kaneohe)

- Rep. Kyle Yamashita (D - Sprecklesville, Upcountry Maui)

NO on SB1: 

- Rep. Henry Aquino (D - Waipahu)

- Rep. Karen Awana (D - Kalaleloa, Ko Olina, Maili)

- Rep. Romy Cachola (D - Sand Island, Kalihi, Airport)

- Rep. Mele Carroll (D - Holualoa, Kailua-Kona, Honokohau)

- Rep. Lauren Cheape Matsumoto (R - Mililani, Schofield, Kunia)

- Rep. Ty Cullen (D - Waipahu, Royal Kunia, Makakilo)

- Rep. Richard Fale (R - Waialua, Kahuku, Waiahole)

- Rep. Beth Fukumoto (R - Mililani, Mililani Mauka, Waipio Acres)

- Rep. Sharon Har (D - Kapolei, Makakilo)

- Rep. Ken Ito (D - Kaneohe, Maunawili, Kailua)

- Rep. Aaron Johanson (R - Fort Shafter, Moanalua Gardens, Aliamanu)

- Rep. Jo Jordan (D - Waianae, Makaha, Makua)

- Rep. Bob McDermott (R - Ewa Beach, Iroquois Point)

- Rep. Marcus Oshiro (D - Wahiawa, Whitmore, Poamoho)

- Rep. James Tokioka (D - Wailua, Hanamaulu, Lihue)

- Rep. Clift Tsuji (D - Hilo, Waiakea, Keaukaha)

- Rep. Gene Ward (R - Kalama Valley, Queen's Gate, Hawaii Kai)

- Rep. Justin Woodson (D - Kahului, Wailuku, Puunene)

- Rep. Ryan Yamane (D - Mililani, Waipio, Waikele)

The following Representatives were EXCUSED:

- Rep. Rida Cabanilla (D - Ewa Beach, West Loch Estates)

- Rep. Isaac Choy (D - Manoa, Punahou, Moiliili)

The View: Jenny McCarthy outs The Rock, Tatum Channing and the Pittsburgh Steelers — all gay!

Sheri: On the season premiere of the Real Housewifes of Atlanta, Portia Stewart claims she was blindsided by divorce papers from her former NFL-star husband, Cordel Stewart, and she even suggested that because Cordel didn't want her, you know he didn't show much interest in her, that he might be gay.

Jenny: That's right.

Sheri: You know, and I know Cordel — he's denied the allegations, but I don't know — do you think Portia's being a little full of herself to think that just because  Cordel wasn't into her that he's gotta be gay?

Jenny: I don't know... Why not? I mean, I've always assume that every guy that's ever rejected me is gay.

Sheri: Really Jenny? Really?

Jenny: Yeah.

Sheri: You really think they might be gay?

Jenny: Every single one of them

Sheri: Ok, now, smell what I'm cooking:

Jenny: Gay. Gay.

Sheri: OK

Jenny: Totally gay.

Sheri: Magic Mike! No!

Jenny: Totally gay.

Sheri: C'mon. That's the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Jenny: All gay. Sorry.

Video is at the 24:45 mark here, following the "sex tape"
that Shari Shepherd claims she tried to sell to Vivid.