Derp Roundup: Your Weekly Tour Of The Terrible

Happy Saturday, Wonquistadores! Every week, our web browsers overflow with a fetid slop of stories that were too stoopid to ignore altogether, but not quite worth full posts of their own. Then we mop up the mess and wring out the smelly excess into a big old bucket we call the Derp Roundup. Add grain alcohol, stir, and enjoy!

1. Our first story today is fairly straightforward: A federal judge threw out part of Utah's anti-polygamy law, preserving the part of the law that bans multiple marriage certificates, but overturning the prohibition on cohabitation, because, as you may have noticed, people living together without being married -- and even doing the sex-- has become pretty routine and not something what we prosecute anymore. The judge wrote that the existing law continues to prohibit

   "bigamy in the literal sense — the fraudulent or otherwise impermissible possession of two purportedly valid marriage licenses for the purpose of entering into more than one purportedly legal marriage.”

   So hey, pretty clear there: Go ahead and call yourself "sister wives" as much as you want to -- heck, make it a reality show -- but if you haven't tried to get more than one wedding license, the state won't butt in. Needless to say, some corners of teh intarwebs have jumped right onto the "told ya so" bus; like the nice folks at Legal Insurrection:  

   Yes, this all was predicted long ago, and led to charges of fear mongering and false slippery slopes.

   The legalization of polygamy followed logically from the legal arguments against one man-one woman, as was predicted

   That's some slope, that slippery one.

   All bets are off! Even if the main effect of the ruling is to bring Utah's polygamy law in line with most other states', which only ban state recognition of plural marriages. And credit where it's due: Would you believe that the usually wingnutty Weasel Zippers gets it right on this story?

   The law of most other states only pertains to having multiple licenses, Utah’s law prohibited cohabitation or presenting oneself as having more than one wife-that’s the part that got struck, the no multiple licenses stays in effect.

   Not that the commenters noticed; their consensus is that this is exactly what "The Left" was after, and that next we'll be legalizing incest, pedophilia, dogfucking, and spousal benefits for lifesized anime-girl pillows (Link of dubious work-safeness).

1. Hot on the heels of yesterday's story about the festive "turn Jews into smoke" Christmas song on Romanian TV, comes this news of a top Russian teevee actor, Ivan Okhlobystin, star of a kinda ripoff of "Scrubs" (and defrocked Russian Orthodox priest) who was cheered enthusiastically by fans when proposed this simple solution to the controversy over Russia's gays and lesbians:

   “I’d put them all alive in the oven,” Okhlobystin said during a meet-and-greet with his fans last Sunday. “It’s a living danger to my children.”

   Okhlobystin also demanded during the chat that “f*ggots” be stripped of their right to vote. Though burning gays like Jews would pretty much obviate their vote anyway.

   This of course, leads to the perfectly reasonable question of whether Eastern European water tables have somehow been contaminated by a previously untapped reserve of unfiltered Nazi. They were always pretty loose on environmental standards over there.

1. Closer to home, Megyn Kelly defended her weird commentsabout how two fictional characters are very definitely white guys, because come on, don't be RIDICULOSE:

   See! She was joking in a lighthearted way, and does not actually believe in Santa Claus, you racists! Stop being so mean to Fox News and Megyn Kelly, who is the real victim of your partisan race-baiting. Leave Megyn ALOOOOOOOONE.

   Congratulations, Megs! You are now an Official Victim. Welcome to full membership in the Fox Whinetheon.

1. Police in Nottinghamshire, Merrie Olde Englande, thought they were doing ladies a solid when they created an "anti-rape" public service poster that mashed up "The Night Before Christmas" with a story about a fictional rapist who gets caught and has to pay for his crime. It was both a very bad poemand a very weird message:

   

   When out on the town he decided she would be lucky to get such a gift

   He could do what he liked to her because she shared a lift

   Although she screamed no it happened in a flash

   As soon as she could free herself she made a desperate dash

   Then what to her startled eyes should appear

   A Police car patrolling which then drew near

   He spake not a word and went about his day

   Little did he know the police were already on their way

   "She wanted it, she's a slag" was his defence

   He was too arrogant to see he had committed an offence.

   Um. Ick. No, not really helping. But hey, it included the helpful warning to would-be rapists, "Don't think you can take what you want because you want it," so that makes it an anti-crime message, right? And yet women went and called it "offensive" "and trivializing" for some reason. Women, sheesh, just can't please 'em.

1. In yet another document from Edward Snowden, we learned that, as part of an effort to infiltrate terrorist groups that they suspected might be chatting in online roleplaying games, the CIA, NSA, and Britain's GCHQ had agents hanging out in game spaces like World of Warcraft and Second Life. Although there was some evidence that some terrorists do indeed play games online, the attempt to gather intelligence on them was pretty much a failure, possibly because MMORPGS are terrible environments for doing anything especially secret. And possibly because the agents kept yelling "Leeeeeroy Jenkins!" and charging into hordes of Orcs.

1. On the other hand, Chinese hackers were a lot more successful breaking into European foreign ministries' computers with a far more old-fashioned approach: phishing emails promising nekkid pictures of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the former French first lady person. Stoopid EuroGuys! Don't you know what Google image search is for?

1. And in a blatant breach of Senate rules against using electronic devices, a very bored Senator Cory Booker, stuck with the most-junior-senator's scutwork of presiding over the Senate's graveyard shift, spent much of 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. Friday tweeting about the new Beyoncé album. There was overtly disobedient silliness, and in the sort of shocking disregard for propriety that has become common in the Age of Obama, pretty much no fucks were given:

   

[ Fox13 / LegalInsurrection / WeaselZippers / AmericaBlog / Fox News / Salon / Gawker / TheWire / Buzzfeed ]