Quote of the Day

post from The Newshoggers on 28 June 2007 04:28:00 PM. © The Newshoggers

by shamanic

Helen Thomas, interviewed by Glenn Greenwald, on asking the hard questions:

It doesn't mean we're antagonistic. It means we care about this country, and care about truth.

Read The Full Article:
http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/2007/06/quote-of-day.html

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Sharply Divided Supreme Court Strikes Down
Voluntary School Integration Program

post from BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash on 28 June 2007 04:21:19 PM. © BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

Sharply Divided Supreme Court Strikes Down Voluntary School Integration Program

In a 5-4 ruling, with Chief Justice Roberts writing the majority decision and Justice Kennedy joining in the judgment, the Supreme Court declared that desegregation programs voluntarily undertaken by two public school districts (Louisville and Seattle) are unconstitutional. People For the American Way Foundation filed an amicus curiae brief in support of the school districts in the case.

Technorati Tags: Alerts Supreme Court Voluntary School Integration Program 5-4 Louisville Seattle

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

post from Eschaton on 28 June 2007 04:18:00 PM. © Eschaton

Broder's boy bounces all the way to 31 in new Fox poll.

Read The Full Article:
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_06_24_archive.html#6087781531902893506

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Press Release by C&L concerning Brent Bozells
attack on Elizabeth Edwards

post from Crooks and Liars on 28 June 2007 04:17:58 PM. © Crooks and Liars

MRC issued a press release and I’d like to respond.Brent Bozell should look close to home when he defends the vile Ann Coulter, who as we all know, speaks for Republicans. When it comes to ugliness and hatefulness, there is nothing that matches Coulter and he knows this all too well. The conservative magazine—the NRO [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/06/28/press-release-by-cl-concerning-brent-boz
ells-attack-on-elizabeth-edwards/

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Feds Seek Vid of Feeney Statement

post from TPMmuckraker on 28 June 2007 04:17:17 PM. © TPMmuckraker

Federal investigators are continuing on Rep. Tom Feeney's (R-FL) trail. The latest pin to drop -- the FBI has asked Florida Today for a video of an interview with Feeney. During the interview, from...

Read The Full Article:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003559.php

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The Kennedy-Roberts Court

post from Daily Kos on 28 June 2007 04:10:03 PM. © Daily Kos

The super-awesome folks at SCOTUSblog have completed their annual end-of-term statistical review of the Supreme Court. The conservatives are in charge, but it's really about Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose swings control everything. Here's some highlights:

Justice Kennedy voted with the majority in all 24 of the Court’s 5-4 decisions. Among the Court’s other members (in such cases), Justice Alito voted with the majority 17 times (71%), the Chief Justice 16 times (67%), and Justices Scalia and Thomas 14 times (58%). Justice Breyer voted with the majority 11 times (46%), Justice Souter nine times (38%), Justice Ginsburg eight times (33%) and Justices Stevens seven times (29%).
Nineteen of the twenty-four 5-4 cases broke down along strictly ideological lines and, as in most every recent Term, the Court’s five more conservative members won a greater share of 5-4 victories than the four more liberal justices. The Roberts-Scalia-Kennedy-Thomas-Alito combination prevailed in 13 of 24 (or 54%) 5-4 decisions, while the Stevens-Souter-Ginsburg-Breyer grouping prevailed in only six of 24 (25%) decisions. Unlike previous terms, members the Court’s left-leaning block were unable to pick off anyone beside Justice Kennedy to prevail in any of the 5-4 cases.
During this term, the Chief Justice and Justice Alito found themselves in agreement more than any other pair of Justices. The two Bush appointees agreed in full in 88% of the cases they both heard, essentially equal to their 89% rate the previous Term. Among the other conservative members of the Court, Justices Scalia and Thomas agreed in full in 80% of the cases they heard, versus 88% in OT05.
Overall, Justice Stevens enjoyed the lowest rates of full agreement with other members of the Court. He agreed in full with Justice Thomas in only 32% of the cases they both heard, the lowest rate of any pair of Justices.
The Justices decided 68 cases after argument this Term, the lowest number in recent history.

For more Justice Kennedy, the ponderous bloviator who controls this Court, and who's not nearly as much of a centrist as he's made out to be, this Jeffrey Rosen TNR essay is essential:

Many accounts of Kennedy cast him as an indecisive justice -- "Flipper," as the law clerks unkindly put it in a Supreme Court skit -- who swings left or right in an anxious effort to court the approval of Washington elites: the Hamlet of the Supreme Court. But these accounts misunderstand Kennedy and his worldview. According to a recent study by Lee Epstein of Northwestern University and other political scientists, far from being unpredictable, Kennedy is one of the most consistent justices in recent history -- displaying far less leftward ideological drift since the early '90s than O'Connor or even former Chief Justice William Rehnquist. From the beginning, Kennedy's performance on the Court has been defined not by indecision but by self-dramatizing utopianism. He believes it is the role of the Court in general and himself in particular to align the messy reality of American life with an inspiring and highly abstracted set of ideals. He thinks that great judges, like great literary figures, have both the power and the duty to "impose order on a disordered reality," as he told the Kennedy Center audience. By forcing legislators to respect a series of moralistic abstractions about liberty, equality, and dignity, judges, he believes, can create a national consensus about American values that will usher in what he calls "the golden age of peace." This lofty vision has made Kennedy the Court's most activist justice -- that is, the justice who votes to strike down more state and federal laws combined than any of his colleagues. ...

The claim that Kennedy is open-minded is called into question, however, by Lee Epstein's study, which concluded that, in all doctrinal areas -- especially affirmative action -- Kennedy has not changed much since 1990. Of course, even if Kennedy isn't open-minded, he might still be praised if he were so ambivalent about judicial power that he deferred to the other branches, although he disagreed with their actions. But agonizing can be a sign of many things -- modesty, arrogance, or insecurity. Truly modest judges agonize because they are humble about their own limitations and genuinely ambivalent about second-guessing legislatures. Judged by his willingness to strike down federal and state laws, Kennedy is the least modest justice on the Court.

In one full term, this Court has severely curbed local efforts to promote racial diversity in schools, upheld a right-wing ban on a necessary medical procedure for women, curbed students' free speech rights, crippled Congress' ability to keep corporate money out of political advertising, prevented taxpayers from challenging the constitutionality of Bush's faith-based initiatives, made it almost impossible for women to prevail on claims of longterm sex discrimination . . . and they're just getting started.

Perhaps the only good news from today is that the term is over, and the conservative project to gut American jurisprudence will be on hiatus until the first Monday in October. It's a weak balm, but that's all I've got today.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/128745666/814

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Hersh: ‘Bush And Cheney’s Wet Dream
Is Hitting Iran’

post from Think Progress on 28 June 2007 04:01:00 PM. © Think Progress

In February, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh wrote a piece in The New Yorker revealing that the Bush administration was setting its sights heavily on Iran, planning for a “possible bombing attack“: Still, the Pentagon is continuing intensive planning for a possible bombing attack on Iran, a process that began last year, at the [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/28/hersh-bush-iran/

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Meet 40 Democratic gay-bashers

post from AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth on 28 June 2007 03:59:00 PM. © AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth

The gay-bashers won the vote on the Goode amendment by only 6 votes (find entire vote count here). There is no way the Democrats couldn't have picked up some of these votes, had they wanted to. Russ Carnahan voted with the gay-bashers? And Obey and Spratt? Those two are in leadership. Several new members who were helped by the progressive blogs also voted to gay-bash: Boyda; Space; Carney; Ellsworth; and Donnelly.

Here's the entire list of Democratic gay-bashers. Feel free to write and call their offices and let them have it (find their contact info here). This is not why we voted for a Democratic congress.

Barrow
Berry
Bordallo
Boren
Boucher
Boyda (KS)
Carnahan
Carney
Costello
Cramer
Cuellar
Davis (AL)
Davis, Lincoln
Donnelly
Ellsworth
Etheridge
Faleomavaega
Gordon
Herseth Sandlin
Lampson
Lipinski
Mahoney (FL)
Marshall
Matheson
McIntyre
Melancon
Norton
Obey
Peterson (MN)
Rahall
Ross
Ruppersberger
Salazar
Scott (GA)
Shuler
Skelton
Space
Spratt
Tanner
Taylor

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Americablog/~3/128815937/meet-40-democratic-gay-ba
shers.html

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THIS IS WHAT CONSERVATIVES WHAT TO RUN FOR
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES GET A GOOD LOOK

Apparently Fred Thompson is more than just a corrupt, Inside the Beltway lobbyist and TV actor. He's also a totally mixed up, shook up girl. What a mess! Pretty soon people are going to start wishing McCain hadn't self-destructed so fast-- or asking what exactly is so crazy about a flip-floppin', varmint huntin' Mormon.

video details and more

And women's right to choice isn't the only thing Freddy is confused about. He's running hither and thither all over America trying to convince Republicans he's the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan. They were both actors. And like Reagan, as Thompson started losing his mind he started mixing up plots in movies to plots presidents could play at. He was frightening easily frightened South Carolina Republicans yesterday with tales of Cuban illegal immigrants-- oh, that's going to go over well in Florida-- sneaking suitcase atomic weapons into Charleston. "We're living in the era of the suitcase bomb," he warned the autograph seekers and imbeciles who ate up every word. But, as the Center For American Progress showed today, it's not the era of suitcase bombs-- unless you mean the TV era. These things only exist in Hollywood studios and in the small minds of people like Freddy Dalton Thompson.

Read The Full Article:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2007/06/this-is-what-conservatives-what-to-ru
n.html

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THIS IS WHAT CONSERVATIVES WANT TO RUN FOR
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES GET A GOOD LOOK

Apparently Fred Thompson is more than just a corrupt, Inside the Beltway lobbyist and TV actor. He's also a totally mixed up, shook up girl. What a mess! Pretty soon people are going to start wishing McCain hadn't self-destructed so fast-- or asking what exactly is so crazy about a flip-floppin', varmint huntin' Mormon.

video details and more

And women's right to choice isn't the only thing Freddy is confused about. He's running hither and thither all over America trying to convince Republicans he's the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan. They were both actors. And like Reagan, as Thompson started losing his mind he started mixing up plots in movies to plots presidents could play at. He was frightening easily frightened South Carolina Republicans yesterday with tales of Cuban illegal immigrants-- oh, that's going to go over well in Florida-- sneaking suitcase atomic weapons into Charleston. "We're living in the era of the suitcase bomb," he warned the autograph seekers and imbeciles who ate up every word. But, as the Center For American Progress showed today, it's not the era of suitcase bombs-- unless you mean the TV era. These things only exist in Hollywood studios and in the small minds of people like Freddy Dalton Thompson.

Read The Full Article:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2007/06/this-is-what-conservatives-what-to-ru
n.html