US POLITICS: Congratulation to USA for their upcoming health

100% truth-bomb this trailer has opened my eyes

o.b.a.m. nude

better yet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEqVcZyqsC8&feature=player_embedded#!

I literally do not have enough face to palm.

― HI DERE, Friday, April 23, 2010 1:49 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

WHOA DID THEY DISS OCCIDENTAL IN THAT BITCH

yes they did they slay all the sacred cows that's why it is a truth-bomb

today's Dems are Rockefeller Republicans (at best)

what were yesterday's dems?

it's rockefeller republicans all the way down

what were yesterday's dems?

Dead.

and the day before yesterday?

ladies and gentlemen, KEN DEL VECCHIO!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0216016/bio

Trivia

Is a lawyer.

Is the Author of the New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice

Chairman of the Hoboken International Film Festival (formerly the New Jersey Interational Film & Screenplay Festival).

Has an IQ of genius level.

Selling more books than John Grisham did in his first novel release

http://image.xyface.com/image/t/movie-the-drum-beats-twice/the-drum-beats-twice-97921.jpg

Lots of anti-Kagan articles to link:

Jonathan Adler.

Four law professors attack Kagan's deanship tenure.

Paul Campos on the dangers of the blank slate.

Finally, everyone's favorite: Greenwald.

Yesterday on Twitter, Matt Yglesias supplied the rationale for this mentality: "Argument will be simple: Clinton & Obama like and trust [Kagan], and most liberals (myself included) like and trust Clinton & Obama."

Just think about what that means. If the choice is Kagan, you'll have huge numbers of Democrats and progressives running around saying, in essence: "I have no idea what Kagan thinks or believes about virtually anything, and it's quite possible she'll move the Court to the Right, but I support her nomination and think Obama made a great choice." In other words, according to Chemerinksy and Yglesias, progressives will view Obama's choice as a good one by virtue of the fact that it's Obama choice. Isn't that a pure embodiment of mindless tribalism and authoritarianism? Democrats love to mock the Right for their propensity to engage in party-line, close-minded adherence to their Leaders, but compare what conservatives did with Bush's selection of Harriet Miers to what progressives are almost certain to do with Obama's selection of someone who is, at best, an absolute blank slate.

One of the very first non-FISA posts I ever wrote that received substantial attention (uniformly favorable attention from progressives) was this post, from February, 2006, about the cult of personality that subsumed the Right during the Bush era. The central point was that conservatives supported anything and everything George Bush did, regardless of how much it comported with their alleged beliefs and convictions, because loyalty to him and their Party, along with a desire to keep Republicans in power, subordinated any actual beliefs. Even Bill Kristol -- in a 2006 New York Times article describing how Bruce Bartlett had been ex-communicated from the conservative movement for excessively criticizing George Bush -- admitted that personal allegiance to Bush outweighed conservative principles in the first term and that "Bush was the movement and the cause."

Awfully false equivalence by Greenwald there. Trusting Obama to pick a good Justice is quite different from conservatives supporting decisions by Bush that they would have opposed from a Democrat. A blank slate is not the same as flipping your position on an issue.

"huge numbers"

Trusting Obama to do anything is infantile.

I trust Obama to have good posture.

Trying really hard not to start a Ken Del Vecchio thread you guys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMJCX-Ddt8g

gg otm in re: iglesias (and that terrifying iatee post yesterday); just because kagan is probably the best choice for obama and the party doesn't mean she's the best choice for like, me

did you vote for kucinich in the primaries?

good point

Bennett Ousted at Utah G.O.P. Convention

Senator Robert F. Bennett, an 18-year veteran Republican who had been seeking a fourth term this fall, was stripped of his party’s nomination on Saturday at the state convention, becoming one of the first Congressional victims of the surging ferment of discontent from the Tea Party-infused Republican right.

It really hasn't been well established that Kagan is all that great of a pick politically anyway. Maybe she'll dominate in the hearings like Sotomayor, Ginsburg etc. did, but one of the others probably would too.

basically I want someone on the left about whom we can say "LOL Wood" like we can about Scalia.

Obama nominates zombie Brennan.

If only.

Kagan, they said, has weathered criticism from conservatives and liberals. The left has criticized her defense of some of the terrorism policies of the George W. Bush administration, although her defenders point out that she was only representing the policies of the Obama administration.

One Democrat close to the process said the questions about Kagan and her lack of a record on issues liberal groups are concerned about has not hurt her.

Because of her work in the Clinton administration, one activist said, "she has a lot of powerful liberal friends in this town. She has been very effective in using her progressive allies."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/07/AR2010050705029.html

I love how every time there's a Supreme Court pick we all sit around posturing like we actually pay attention to circuit courts and judges and what qualities and experience are relevant, like we can divine the meaning behind quantity or quality of legal writing etc.

Not to say all of this discussion is lol pointless but a whole lot of it is lol pointless

well maybe you should marry it if you love it so much

x-post--Eh, speak for yourself. If some of us have read folks that are more expert that's good enough for me. Plus I sometime have to read circuit court opinions for my dayjob. So there! Also, some of the journalists writing about these judges do follow caselaw trends and some have legal backgrounds.

Some of us are pretty good at "reading comprehension," Tracer; and we can read legal prose.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36967616/ns/politics-supreme_court/

kagan.

of course

http://i40.tinypic.com/oa6m8w.gif

!!

oh and holder wants to weaken miranda. what the fuck.

confirmed by cnn :/

fml

*drinks up*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FblQR8ZeUpQ

I love how every time there's a Supreme Court pick we all sit around posturing like we actually pay attention to circuit courts and judges and what qualities and experience are relevant, like we can divine the meaning behind quantity or quality of legal writing etc.

I personally am fonder of how opinions like this get trotted out to tell people "stfu & trust people who are doubtless nobler than thee"

I keep looking for something that would make me think Kagan is a terrible nominee and can't really find one. It'd be nice to have someone who is obviously a liberal (like uh, former ACLU SG Ginsburg), but I'm not persuaded to oppose the nomination outright because she didn't hire enough minority professors at Harvard.

ringing endorsement there

lol

that criticism is pretty weak imo

Well I understand opposing the nomination because she's a blank slate. But I kept reading these Greenwald posts, and seeing a million links in them, and when I took the time to actually read all of them it turns out that her biggest problems are that she didn't hire enough minorities at Harvard, and that she made some arguments in favor of dumb/evil Obama policies (i.e. she did her job).

alright so i understand the arguments as to why kagan might be better than greenwald is making her out to be -- in fact i generally agree with them. my question is this: has anyone made a case or given a reason why diane wood should not have been picked? or why kagan should've been picked over her, aside from the huffington post article which i actually thought was good, but didn't touch at all on why kagan would be better specifically than wood, if they were the final two. would obama have any firsthand knowledge about wood that would inform his decision to pick kagan over her, or is it purely ideological?

^^yes this is exactly it dude, no one is arguing that kagan is some kind of clarence monster, she'll probably be a reliable leftish justice for quite a long time - it's just, why the fuck support someone who we're unsure about and have reason to believe might be kinda conservative on executive powers when wood is so unequivocal in her views and her judicial record is so easy to parse. seriously that opinion of hers gg linked to a few weeks ago is so amazing and inspiring. and at the risk of regurgitating his talking points, it'd be different if she were replacing, like, scalia - then there would be less reason to oppose her. but why take a chance on her replacing just about the only reliable liberal on the court when there is someone else who is supremely qualified who literally poses no risk of shifting the balance to the right?

*clarence thomas-type monster......i am not on a first name basis with the dude

a pube-first basis