Orrin Says "Yo!"

Was I the only one who was a bit surprised to see Sen. Orrin Hatch coming to the rescue of songwriter Dallas Austin last week?

Austin was sentenced to four years in a Dubai jail for carrying a gram of cocaine, at which point the following individuals got together and started working on his behalf to get him out.

A conservative Republican senator/songwriter (Hatch), an '80s R&B singer who is inexplicably massive in the Middle East (Lionel Richie), a real-estate mogul, several ambassadors from around the globe and a Grammy-winning producer who is best known for moving musical mountains — not political ones (Quincy Jones).

Wow, that's some "posse."

And how con-VEE-nient was this, by the way?

In a lucky coincidence, one of Austin's lawyers, Joel Katz, also happens to represent Hatch, a singer/songwriter who has recorded a number of religious and patriotic albums with titles such as My God Is Love, Put Your Arms Around the World, America United and How His Glory Shines.

Well, it's nice to see that Hatch is trying to free drug users in other countries instead of trying to blow up people's computers for a change.

To be fair, though, I should mention that Hatch is absolutely right on the issue of stem cell research, and President Stupid Head is poised to exercise the first veto of his fraudulent presidency today - unbelievable - not on bloated budgets full of tax cuts for the rich, not in opposition to warrantless spying or torture, but to kill funding for this important scientific cause (and Jonathan Turley of USA Today absolutely nailed it in his great column on this yesterday).