...more recent posts
New Yorker: Hersh on the administrations plans for Iran.
Seymour Hersh interview in Spiegel Online.
The last Supreme Court term, which ended in June, was the stormiest in recent memory, with more 5-to-4 decisions split along ideological lines than at any time in the court’s history. In a series of controversial cases about abortion, racial integration in schools, faith-based programs and the death penalty, the court’s four more conservative justices prevailed, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy providing the crucial fifth vote. The four more liberal justices were often moved to dissent in unusually personal and vehement terms. “It is my firm conviction,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the case striking down race-based enrollment policies in public schools, “that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today’s decision.” According to the gossip among Supreme Court law clerks, the level of tension among the justices is higher than at any point since Bush v. Gore in 2000.
Not long after beginning his tenure as chief justice in 2005, John G. Roberts Jr. announced publicly that he would try to promote unanimity and collegiality on the court. During his first months on the job, the court managed to achieve his goal, issuing a series of 9-to-0 opinions. But this past term, the court’s first full one with Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the brief period of harmony abruptly ended: the percentage of 5-to-4 decisions in which the four liberals were together in dissent rose to 80 percent, up from 55 percent in the 2004 term. For the foreseeable future, the court seems likely to be polarized, with the conservative bloc ascendant and the liberal bloc embattled.
Here's another fun detail from Vicente Fox's upcoming autobiography: He says that despite President Bush's cowboy image, the man is actually scared of horses.
Fox tells the story of the two men meeting in Mexico in early 2001, in which he invited Bush to ride a large horse. Bush nervously backed away. "A horse lover can always tell when others don't share our passion," Fox wrote.
Fun fact: Bush's Crawford ranch, purchased in 1999 in order to help create a down-home image for his presidential campaign, does not have any horses.
With the moderating, centrist voice of Sandra Day O'Connor now gone from the Supreme Court, a conservative counterrevolution that had been stymied for 20 years has now begun.this is a heavy listen!
So says Jeffrey Toobin in his new book The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. His book is about how this counterrevolution developed. It's also a behind-the-scenes look at the court, its recent decisions and the personalities of the justices behind them.
The Nine is based on interviews with justices and their law clerks that were given on a not-for-attribution basis — meaning, in plain language, that Toobin heard stories, opinions and analyses directly from the horses' mouths, but isn't allowed to reveal who said what.
Toobin is senior legal analyst for CNN, staff writer at The New Yorker and a former Assistant U.S. Attorney.
McCain in South Carolina: I'm a B-word!
Notice: Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to Certain Terrorist Attacks
Consistent with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency I declared on September 14, 2001, in Proclamation 7463, with respect to the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, New York, New York, the Pentagon, and aboard United Airlines flight 93, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.
Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, last extended on September 5, 2006, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2007. Therefore, I am continuing in effect for an additional year the national emergency I declared on September 14, 2001, with respect to the terrorist threat.
This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.
GEORGE W. BUSH
via daai tou lam
Greenspan Book
Criticizes Bush
And Republicans
'They Deserved to Lose';
Former Fed Chief Defends
Pre-Bubble Rate Cuts
dark night of the cole.
Hagel to step down. I'm thinking this means a Romney/Hagel ticket. But who for Clinton? Less confidently I'm thinking Biden, although the idea of having to listen to that guy even more than I do now is kind of sickening.
Worst answer ever. Almost seems like he did it on purpose. Like he's a good soldier, and he'll do what he's told by his commander, including weeks of shameless political pandering, but he's not going to take all the blame - he's just the military genius in charge of Iraq.
In any case, that answer isn't going to fly. Or, worse for the Republicans, it really will fly but just not in the way they wanted. Chris Matthews has almost had three heart attacks today blasting Petraeus over it. "How can we send our sons and daughters off to war when their commanding officer doesn't even know if it is making us safer?" That's so obvious even a pundit can get it.
Still, yeah, I know it won't change anything. Except maybe to make it a little more uncomfortable for Bush while he's doing what he wants to anyway. But that's something at least.
How long before the wingnuts start to trot out the "I never liked Petraeus and his PHD Ivy League staff anyway - they're just a bunch of east coast elites who don't have the guts to do the job?"
markos is pretty useless as a pundit but chris matthews is a buffoon in the nicest sense of the word. i dont know where he pulled this reference from.
also watched part of olbermann. he has an interview with john dean who seems to crank out a new book every month but i had to close my eyes because the camera kept swooping around during the interview. note to msnbc: a news program is not a theme ride. i dont want to feel dizzy while contemplating the destruction of our system of checks and balances. and dont tell me its some kind of visual metaphor...
At least Judith Miller had the decency to wait a while before making it official, and going public with her relationship with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.
To me, this most recent chapter of the Miller story has the tawdry feel of one of those celebrity break-ups where everyone knows that the reason she left her mate (the NYT) was because she was having an affair (with the neo-cons).
But rather than be honest and admit that and move right in with her new lover, Miller waited for a few months to pass, enough time to convince the gullible that maybe this is a relationship that started after her departure from the Times.
petreaus testimony on cspan.
Six nukes "accidentally" flown across US by the Air Force. This story makes no sense. Or does it?
Karl Rove told George W. Bush before the 2000 election that it was a bad idea to name Richard B. Cheney as his running mate, and Rove later raised objections to the nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court, according to a new book on the Bush presidency.
In "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush," journalist Robert Draper writes that Rove told Bush he should not tap Cheney for the Republican ticket: "Selecting Daddy's top foreign-policy guru ran counter to message. It was worse than a safe pick -- it was needy." But Bush did not care -- he was comfortable with Cheney and "saw no harm in giving his VP unprecedented run of the place."
Harriet Miers with John G. Roberts Jr., right, and an unidentified person in July 2005. A new book, "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush," describes how Bush came to nominate Miers for the Supreme Court. (By Eric Draper -- White House Via
When Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, expressed concerns about the Miers selection, he was "shouted down" and subsequently muted his objections, Draper writes, while other advisers did not realize the outcry the nomination would cause within the president's conservative political base.
greenwald cribs my pullquote. although i also liked the bit about ashcrofts wife sticking her tongue out at fredo and card after their now infamous hospital arm twisting session with her husband.
bremer says fu to the-buck-stops-elsewhere bush.
A Brief History of Neoliberalism
and crown thy good in brotherhood...