From the home office in downtown Dallas, it’s a very foggy Friday Five. Have you seen or read Stephen King’s The Mist, people? Why aren’t you inside your house, screaming in fear as this fog descends upon us? I know I am.

1. Mark Davis is just the freaking worst.
I know he’s a radio troll, just saying the dumbest, most outrageous things he can to rile up those who know better. That’s why I don’t listen to his show. But when he types something, I sometimes accidentally run across it. Like this horrible thing he wrote championing the depiction of torture in Zero Dark Thirty.

Look, you can pull up your crazy pants and pretend you’re a torture-loving badass all you want, but it’s a fact that a) torture never led to any information that proved helpful in fighting Bin Laden, and b) the FBI, “constrained” by U.S. law during its decades of interrogations, has denounced the disgusting practice as both ineffective and immoral. The CIA, of course, continues its efforts to justify its actions through compliant mouthpieces like Davis.

There are hundreds of impeccably sourced stories that back this up. Just use your Google to talk to the Internet, ask it about torture and Bin Laden, and be sure to include reputable reporters like Glenn Greenwald in your queries.

The Internet will tell you that this excellent film took dramatic license; that doing so is controversial because the movie also tries to trumpet how realistic it is; and that those who assert torture had practical benefits are wrong. Not that such information will stop shameless idiots like Davis from saying otherwise.

2. Parkland is great at getting pissed off. At compliance, well …
Frontburner has a good summation of the latest salvo in the ongoing battle between Parkland and the Dallas Morning News. Basically, the paper reported that the hospital had hired a powerful D.C. lobbying firm (no big whup) and suggests the language in the contract suggests the firm will at least discuss the ongoing government monitoring of the hospital with national healthcare officials (doi).

For some reason, this infuriated the hospital, which sent out a release saying the reporter lied about what a source told the paper. Some free PR advice for Parkland: Unless you can prove the lobbying firm won’t in any way discuss the oversight situation with anyone who has any say about your regulatory concerns in any way ever, then take this ass-slap for what it is and move on.

I’m not saying the paper didn’t interpret your actions in the harshest possible way. Maybe it did. Papers sometime do that when you’ve effed up as completely and totally as you have in the past few years. Suck it up and move on.

3. Irving can serve more booze!
Irving restaurants can now have a 50-50 ratio of food-to-alcohol sales. (In other words, they can match the way I eat dinner.) Some in Irving (read: the olds) wanted to keep the old ratio (60 percent food), because they were worried that allowing businesses to sell more alcohol would harm the city.

The city council then realized, wait, Irving’s already a shithole, so it changed the ratio. At least that’s the way I’m reporting it.

4. Jane McGarry returns to TV.
Did everyone see the rebirth of the former Channel 5 anchor’s career yesterday on the TV over at Channel 8? Of course you didn’t! Who watches TV? You, like me, wait until someone sends you a link and you watch it on your computer or iPad or phone. So, here’s the link. Watch! It’s Jane McGarry!

5. This is how I can prove Mark Davis was trolling us in No. 1.
When he writes for silly right-wing websites, he makes insane arguments about torture. When he writes for real editors at the DMN, he writes a solid, sensible column about how conservatives should argue Obama’s policies with the same directness the president offers. Which to me makes No. 1 even worse.

He’s not dumb. He knows exactly who he’s trolling. And I’m dumb enough to be outraged by it.

Retweets

Why 24 months? But I wanna see them now.

The Internet will tell you that this excellent film took dramatic license in its depiction of torture.

Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures

The Internet will tell you that this excellent film took dramatic license in its depiction of torture.