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Comment of the Day
During WWII, the Maqui (French Freedom Fighters) would set charges under the tracks of the trains carrying war material. They'd set the charges and watch. The train would round a bend, the charges would ignite. The train, too late to stop, would hit that damage. Momentum would carry it forward, spilling cargo and people, the line of cars falling off the tracks would crash into the preceding car. Accordionlike the entire lie would eventually be a smoldering pile of debris.
Thompson was like that.
chris matthews got horsewhipped (sadly not literally) by jon stewart. sure to be making the rounds tomorrow.
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!