“I note that in his response to today’s Supreme Court ruling, President Obama called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. I also note that the bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill I helped draft in 2007 was killed — in part — by then-Senator Obama,†Sen. Jon Kyl (AZ), a Republican leadership member, said in a statement.
I just declared myself to be President of a new organization, provisionally called “Dump Anontin Scalia.” Anyone want to join? Also I’d like to call it something else that has a snarky acronym, but I can’t think of what that might be right now. Seriously, there needs to be a Captain Queeg clause for anyone appointed to life for anything.
Scalia delivered an anti-Obama screed from the bench today that was utterly inappropriate and an embarrassment to the court. Or it would have been, if the Roberts court were capable of being embarrassed. Paul Campos suggests Scalia is unhinged.
The impact of class divisions on politics and just about everything else in America is something like the elephant in the living room that everyone ignores. Well, except when Republicans accuse Democrats of fomenting class warfare. Can’t have those unwashed peasants getting too riled up, can we?
Here are a couple of article that are interesting to read together — Richard Florida, “Class Decides Everything“; and Thomas Edsall, “White Working Chaos.” It appears our class distinctions are both growing sharper and also are driving not just politics but our quality of life in the U.S.
The Supremes are almost certainly going to hand down their “Obamacare” decision next week. Dems are debating what to do if the individual mandate is struck down but the rest of the law is upheld. The choices are, we are told, either to hustle and come up with some other incentive for people to buy insurance, or do nothing and wait until everything goes haywire in 2014, and then figure somebody will fix it then.
Part of me wishes the White House would announce that since large parts of the bill won’t work properly without the mandate, the whole thing will have to be scrapped, and all the goodies enjoyed so far (20-somethings on their parents’ insurance, extended Medicare prescription drug coverage, etc.) will be canceled on the spot. And be sure everyone knows this is the Republican’s fault.
Why Vincent Chin Matters 30 years ago, Vincent Chin was beaten to death in Chicago for being Asian. His killers got off with probation and a $3000 fine.
We finally have a diagnosis from Lily’s biopsy, which is feline lymphosarcoma. Its a very nasty disease, although the Vet said very often it responds well to chemotherapy. I’m supposed to take her back in a week to see if she’s a good candidate for that, but of course that’s going to run up a bigger bill.
With all the medicines I’m giving her now she is actually perking up and eating a little. She’s also climbing on my lap to be petted. She’s not her old self, but she’s improved considerably from Tuesday, when I thought the only option was euthanasia. She may have some life in her yet.
So, I’m still taking donations, although what I’ve received so far has been enormously generous and a huge help.
I don’t know what her chances for any meaningful recovery, but at least there’s a little hope.
Today the five justices of SCOTGO — Supreme Court of the Galatian Overlords — made it a lot easier for the Right to take down public employee unions.
On First Amendment Thursday, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court delivered an unsubtle warning to public employee unions: You are living on borrowed time.
In Knox v. Service Employees International Union, the five—Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel A. Alito—reached out to decide a question that was not argued or briefed; their opinion all but begs right-wing advocacy groups and public employers to use its emerging First-Amendment jurisprudence to take down public-employee unions and in essence find a Southern-style “right to work†law in the Constitution.
The article linked explains the decision better than I can. Two justices, Sotomayor and Ginsburg, concurred in the result but objected that the written decision addressed “unnecessarily significant constitutional issues well outside the scope of the questions presented and briefing,” Sotomayor wrote. Breyer and Kagan dissented.
Rachel compares the Fast and Furious flap to an experience of being on a long bus ride and realizing the person sitting nearby and having a loud phone conversation is talking into a wad of aluminum foil shaped like a cell phone.
By all accounts the sting operation was a mess, both badly planned and badly executed. This was the ATF’s baby, and it’s not clear to me if Holder was even aware of it before the Right started kicking up a fuss. Holder pulled the plug on the operation last year and ordered his inspector general to conduct an internal investigation, which of course doesn’t satisfy the Right, because they assume Holder is guilty of something more than not keeping the ATF on a tighter leash. The head of the ATF, Kenneth Melson, resigned last year, probably not voluntarily.
Holder has turned over something like 7,000 documents to Congress, but says the rest of the subpoenaed documents contain information that would compromise ongoing criminal investigations if revealed. Naturally, in the fevered imagination of righties, those documents contain information of a vast conspiracy to gut the Second Amendment.
The Right wants to be allowed to go on a no-holds-barred fishing expedition in the ATF and Justice Department, and if in doing so they set criminal investigations back several years, or get more agents or civilians killed, I doubt they care.
