from HUSTLER Magazine May 2011

Say it ain’t so, Joe! Tell us you’re not the putrid scumsucker we think you are. Or just fess up and admit we’ve got you dead to rights.

Where do we start? How about the notion that you cost Al Gore the Presidential election in 2000? You remember that political contest, don’t you, Joe? You had the Vice President slot on the Democratic ticket. But during your debate with Dick Cheney, the Republican VP nominee, he cleaned your clock.

And what about your pathetic attempt to run for President in 2004? You withdrew from the race without winning a single primary. Even Al Gore refused to support you, and that lack of public support wasn’t just because of your hawkish stance on Iraq. A lot of it had to do with your sounding like a nebbish when you speak. You know that, don’t you? You’re kinda creepy, Joe. Then in 2006 there was your failure to be renominated as the Democratic Party’s candidate for the U.S. Senate, where you’d represented Connecticut since 1989. You were forced to run as an independent. Sure, you retained your Senate seat for another six years, but it was just barely and only because it was a threeway race.

Although you were no longer a Democrat, the Democratic Party decided to let you retain your chairmanship of the powerful Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. You repaid them by campaigning for Senator John McCain (RArizona) instead of Barack Obama during their 2008 Presidential runs.

Let’s consider that for a minute: Throughout most of the campaign, McCain seemed, well, confused and befuddled. Some thought he was suffering from senility. And there you were, Joe, whispering corrections in his ear. How do you think that made you look? Only a moron would support a senile candidate for the highest office in the land.

McCain lost, and still the Democrats refused to strip you of your chairmanship. We guess you could say that makes them assholes too, especially after you threatened to filibuster Obama’s healthcare package if it contained the highly popular public option. (Indeed, you failed to support the healthcare bill even after the public option was removed.) Coming from the state of Connecticut, where so many health insurance companies are headquartered (and bankroll your campaigns), your decision was a safe one even though you had previously supported similar healthcare reform. But that was back when it didn’t have a chance of passing. It’s easy to be for the right thing when you don’t actually have to put your ass on the line. (By the way, 60% of your constituents were for the public option, and—unlike the claim you made at the time—it would not have raised premiums and added to the country’s debt.)

Then there’s the rest of your dismal voting record: You voted against a bill that would have encouraged companies to bring their jobs back to the U.S.; against eliminating the tax loopholes of big oil and gas companies; against every effort to reduce U.S. troop presence overseas; against “too big to fail” legislation designed to impose limits on the size of financial companies; and you voted for a bill (McCain’s) that struck the “Buy American” provision from Obama’s stimulus package. There’s more, but we’ve made our point. You don’t give a rat’s ass about the American people. Look, Joe, we could go on, but let’s just cut to the chase: You are either an idiot or a douchebag. If it’s the latter, that means you’re willing to do and say anything just to advance your own interests regardless of the consequences for others. (FYI: That’s how most people see you, explaining why your approval rating hovers at 33%.)

This brings us to the real point of naming you Asshole of the Month: the 2012 election cycle. You had a decision to make, sir! Should you retire or should you run for the Senate as a Republican? Your ability to run as an independent under the Connecticut for Lieberman Party banner has been usurped by your detractors who took over that vehicle after the 2006 election.

Given your approval rating in Connecticut, Joe, you certainly weren’t going to secure the Democratic nomination. So that just left the Republican Party, and even with them your approval rating was only at 48%. So thank you for finally looking reality in the face. You’ve decided to give the rest of us a fucking break by not running for the Senate in 2012. Yes, you’ve done enough damage. It’s time for you and Hadassah to go off into the sunset together. Goodbye and good riddance.

(Editor’s Note: This is not the first time we have made Joe Lieberman our Asshole of the Month. He garnered that honor in the February ’09 and April ’10 issues as well. However, it’s worth mentioning that nothing here repeats all the other reasons he’s been considered worthy of that award. We’ve just added to his long list of “achievements” as a major league Asshole. Thanks to her decades of lobbying for pharmaceutical and healthcare firms, Joe’s wife— Hadassah Lieberman—was an April ’10 Fart in the Wind.)

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S NEW ANSWER TO HATE CRIMES STRIKES A HORRIFYING BLOW AT BASIC TENETS OF THE CONSTITUTION.

by Nat Hentoff
From HUSTLER MAGAZINE – April 2010

In October 2009, when President Obama enthusiastically signed into law the Hate Crimes Prevention Act— which had passed the House and Senate overwhelmingly—there were cheers from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Anti- Defamation League, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and People for the American Way.

Missing in all the hosannas from these organizations was the cold fact that this hate-crimes statute mandating extra prison time for acts of bodily harm against certain protected classes of Americans violates the Constitution in three fundamental sections: the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection of the laws” for each individual American; the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy clause, which prevents anyone from being tried twice for the very same crime; and the First Amendment’s rights of free speech and thought.

How could this triple contempt of the Constitution be greeted with applause? See for yourself in what follows: Forty-five states already have hate-crime laws that apply to specially protected classes of race, color, religion or national origin, but the new statute expands all previous federal laws by providing extra punishment for serious bodily crimes motivated by a “victim’s actual or perceived gender; sexual orientation; gender identity, including transgender; and disability.”

That means if sentencing guidelines for the commission of a violent crime ordinarily mandate eight to ten years in prison, the convicted perpetrator of a hate crime against a member of the protected classes can be locked up for five to seven additional years. College of Charleston mathematics professor Herb Silverman, founder of the Secular Coalition for America, puts it as plainly as can be: “A crime is a crime regardless of the victim’s race, color, religion, national origin or sexual orientation.”

Silverman adds what President Obama, a former professor of Constitutional law, totally ignored: “A murdered white, heterosexual male is not less dead than a Hispanic, gay Christian.”

But should the convicted murderer of a white heterosexual get a lesser sentence than if he had killed a Hispanic, gay Christian? The answer is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees for “All persons born or naturalized in the United States [that] no State (or the Federal government) shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person…the equal protection of the laws.”

This new Hate Crimes Prevention Act also discards the clear rule of American law cited in the Fifth Amendment: “nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.”

Most hate-crime prosecutions will still be initiated in the 45 respective states that already have applicable laws. But under the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, if a federal prosecutor decides that a state court prosecuting an individual for a hate crime has been incompetent, indifferent or not serious enough, the case can then be transferred for the same crime into a federal court. That’s double jeopardy!

In the October 24, 2009, edition of the Washington Examiner, attorney Hans Bader explained the real-life dangers of double jeopardy: “When the government reprosecutes someone, it gains an enormous tactical advantage over the defendant from using the prior prosecution as a test-run, even if the defendant is innocent—making a guilty verdict possible even if the defendant is in fact innocent.”

Having reported on a number of state hate-crime prosecutions over the years, I’ve seen a defendant’s First Amendment right of free speech also twisted against him in a trial. For example, the prosecutor calls a witness who has heard a defendant using prejudicial, racial or religious comments at a bar some years earlier.

Such raw offenses against the Constitution are chronicled in Hate Crimes: Law & Identity Politics (Oxford University Press) by New York University law professor James Jacobs and researcher Kimberly Potter. Their definitive book demonstrates how “a hatecrime trial may become a wide-ranging inquiry into the defendant’s character, values and beliefs.”

Nonetheless, when Obama triumphantly signed into law the new Hate Crimes Prevention Act, Michael Keegan—president of People for the American Way—actually declared, “This is a major step towards ensuring equality under the law for all people.” Not all.

As evidenced by a glowing editorial titled “Civil Rights Advance” (October 28, 2009), the Washington Post was also delighted. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson emphasized that legislation should extend to actions only, not opinion. And let’s not forget that James Madison, author of the First Amendment, expressed to Jefferson: “We have extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind.”

Not yet, Mr. Madison. Too many Americans have yet to read the Constitution with reasonable care. And I will never understand how the American Civil Liberties Union’s hierarchy can support hate-crime laws in the face of the 14th Amendment, the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy prohibition and the First Amendment, the rock on which the ACLU was founded.

Nat Hentoff is a historian of the Constitution, a jazz critic and a columnist for the Village Voice and Free Inquiry. His incisive books include The First Freedom: The Tumultuous History of Free Speech in America ; Living the Bill of Rights; and the forthcoming Is This America?

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APRIL 2010 – HUSTLER Magazine


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Asshole of the Month from HUSTLER MAGAZINE April 2010

What the heck was Al Gore thinking when he ran for President in 2000? Joe Lieberman for V.P.? The Democrat from Connecticut had won a Senate seat in 1988 with the support of conservative Republicans who wanted the more liberal Lowell Weicker out. Lieberman was also the first Dem to publicly criticize Bill Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky. And he’d sided with the GOP in 1995 to limit punitive damage awards in product-liability cases. In other words, let companies make any shitty, dangerous products they want, but prevent consumers from seeking fair reparations in court if a product causes injury or death.

Of course, that was just the beginning of Lieberman’s headlong attack on logic, ethics and his own political party. Ten years later, in 2005, he voted for the Class Action Fairness Act, which severely limited the ability of plaintiffs to file class-action suits against corporations in federal courts. (Score another one for Big Business.) And let’s not forget that Lieberman, who left the Democratic Party in 2006 to seek reelection as an independent, supported GOP Presidential candidate John McCain in 2008. It was McCain who propelled Sarah Palin into the national spotlight by picking her as his running mate. Sarah Palin! We still have to live with that nightmare!

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Lieberman even campaigned with McCain—who appeared to be in the throes of dementia—and challenged candidate Barack Obama’s willingness to put his country first. And when asked if he agreed with Bill Kristol’s statement that Obama might be a Marxist, Lieberman responded, “Well, you know, that’s a good question.”)

Despite that bit of ugliness, Obama—as President— blocked a Democratic move to kick Lieberman off the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which he chairs. How did Lieberman thank his benefactor? By openly campaigning against Obama’s healthcare bill. It’s certainly worth noting that more insurance companies are headquartered in Connecticut than any other state. Lieberman himself has received more than $900,000 since 2005 from insuranceindustry sources. No other lobby has contributed as much. Beyond that, his wife, Hadassah, worked for a lobbying firm specializing in health and pharmaceuticals. Can you say conflict of interest?

But wait. As the TV pitchmen say, there’s more. Much more! This senator from hell, this wretched assault on human evolution, has already stated he will support Republicans in 2010. Further, he has joined forces with Lynne Cheney in criticizing universities for being “anti-American,” i.e., too liberal. Lynne fuckin’ Cheney! Has he no shame?

Apparently not. In 2008, Lieberman accepted an award from fanatical preacher John Hagee, who bellows that God sent Hitler to kill the Jews so they would all move to Israel, where most of them will be dispatched to hell come the Apocalypse. You got that? Sarah Palin! Lynn Cheney! John Hagee! Three notorious psychopaths.

But let’s not leave out the fourth horseman of the psychopaths: Alberto Gonzales. Can you remember the smug yet somehow vacant expression on the then-Attorney General’s face when he repeatedly told Congress he couldn’t recall his role in formulating the policies of George W. Bush? Gonzales is the lackey who labeled as “quaint” the Geneva Conventions, which bar torture. Believe it or not, Lieberman actually champions this notion.

When Gonzales was forced to resign in the wake of the scandalous firing of U.S. attorneys who’d resisted Bush policies that violated the law, Lieberman said Gonzales “deserved our appreciation for his work for our nation.” That would only be true if Lieberman meant Gonzales’s efforts to turn America fascist.

The list of odious positions embraced by Lieberman is virtually endless: He supports the World Trade Organization, which is responsible for shipping Americans’ jobs overseas. He is a staunch chickenhawk who backed Bush’s wars in the Middle East. He does not support gay marriage, believes in tax cuts for the rich and increasingly seems to favor the interests of Israel over those of the United States.

Lieberman’s lurch to the right has become so extreme that in 2007 his Senate Homeland Security Committee held zero oversight hearings regarding Bush’s controversial policies, and he even backed away from preelection demands to investigate the Bush White House’s response to Hurricane Katrina. Just as disturbing, Lieberman told nutcase Glenn Beck, “You’re a good man,” and right-wing radio personality Hugh Hewitt, “I’m proud of you.” Ugh!

We hear from pundits that Lieberman’s antics are basically a cry for attention from a short fellow who has spent his life struggling with a raging inferiority complex. But, stature aside, we think someone who was determined to deny 45 million Americans adequate healthcare—thus consigning many of them to an early grave—is nothing less than a psychopath.

Pile shit high enough, put a yarmulke on it, and you’ve got pious, independent Senator Joe Lieberman. Independent of the American people, maybe, but hostage to Big Business—and Israel. Oh, by the way, Joe, Israel has universal healthcare.

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APRIL 2010 – HUSTLER Magazine


Buy this issue – $15.00.
Comes with full length DVD and free shipping!

Buy the digital issue for immediate download – $8.99.
Includes 4 movie clips in the issue!