Opening On The SCOTUS; Arianna Compiles Short List

Famous Greek blogger/beard, Arianna Huffington, has decided to do President Unicorn a favor by compiling a short list of replacements for Justice David Souter, who announced his retirement today.

Lets take a look at who her top prospects are:

Sonia Sotomayor: An Hispanic with 16 years of court experience who currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, Sotomayor is a graduate of Yale Law and considered a legal liberal. She also shares a biographical footnote with Souter: they both were appointed by George H. W. Bush -- Sotomayor to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1992.

Elena Kagan: The first woman to serve in the post of Solicitor General, she arrived at the Department of Justice from her post as Dean of the Harvard Law School. She served as Associate Counsel to President Bill Clinton and as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Should Obama choose her, it would mean his White House would have to fill another vacancy. But her academic and judicial pedigree seem almost better suited for the Court than as a lawyer arguing before it. Plus, she's already been through the confirmation process.

Seth Waxman: The 41st Solicitor General of the United States, Waxmnan is 58-years old and a graduate of Yale Law School. Perhaps his greatest claim to legal fame was arguing Boumediene v. Bush before the Supreme Court, which upheld habeas corpus rights for detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Diane Wood: Wood, a 58-year-old Chicagoan, has served for 14 years on the city's 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. She has made a reputation as a strong liberal voice on an otherwise conservative bench and her name was decidedly in the mix when speculation first arose that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would retire due to medical issues. The one downside: her position on abortion rights has already sparked the ire of conservatives and pro-life groups, portending a potentially contentious confirmation process.

Harold Koh: The Dean of Yale Law School, Koh is perhaps the highest-profile Asian-American legal mind in the country. He clerked for Associate Justice Harry Blackmun on the Supreme Court, and worked for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Reagan Justice Department. But if Obama wants a smooth confirmation battle, Koh might not be the pick. Nominated to be the State Department's legal adviser, he has attacked by conservatives who claimed that he values foreign law over the U.S. Constitution.

Dark horses: Some names offered by legal observers who have followed Supreme Court politics a bit more closely:

Teresa Wynn Roseborough: A legal scholar, in an email to the Huffington Post, described the Clinton-era Deputy Assistant Attorney General as such: "She's late 40s, super smart and kind, decent, moderate; and was Editor in Chief of UNC law review. She clerked on the 4th Circuit and for Justice Stevens; worked in Department of Justice, was a partner at a private Atlanta firm; and now at a private counsel for MetLife. And, she's African-American. A perfect choice. Unimpeachable and perfect."

Leah Ward Sears: Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court.

Kathleen Sullivan: Former Dean of Stanford Law and a protege of Harvard's famed professor, Laurence Tribe.

William Fletcher: A U.S. federal appeals court judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (the same circuit as one Jay Bybee, who will definitely not be an Obama Supreme Court nominee).


We couldn't help but be reminded of the above skit from Tracey Ullman's State of the Union.

Checkin' In With Chuck

Here's a doozy on Mexico, Mexicans, drugs, and whatnot:

More than 7,000 lives have been lost in Mexico's drug war in just the last 14 months, in which nine out of 10 guns recovered from crime scenes came from the U.S. Border towns are experiencing outrageous escalations in crime, including more than 300 drug-related kidnappings in Phoenix alone in 2008 (most involved Mexican immigrants with ties to drug cartels).

Isn't it finally time we built a wall that works? Isn't it time we quit restricting our border agents by granting illegals more rights than our citizens? Isn't it time we post military personnel at particularly hot illegal crossings?

...Now more than ever, we must protect our borders and sovereignty. So far, our government has failed to produce suitable solutions to securing our borders and stopping illegal immigration. Amnesty is not the answer. And immigration laws aren't effective if we continue to allow them to be dodged or ignored. Furthermore, globalization efforts have only confused security matters, further endangering our borders as well as our national identity – our sovereignty.

And the question that keeps coming back to my mind is: How is it that we can militarily overthrow a tyrant like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, yet we can't keep illegals from crossing our borders? As Mike Huckabee says, "If the government can't track illegals, then let's outsource the job to UPS or Fed Ex." It's true. If they can track a lost package anywhere in the world within minutes, they can certainly track down and keep track of illegals.

Checkin' In With Chuck

Famous Republican bouncer and homosexual mutilation fetishist Chuck Norris has written yet another masterpiece for the Mexican webpamphlet WorldNetDaily:

An old Spanish proverb says, "An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy." I believe that value will hold, in or out of a recession. And being that my 87-year-old mother lived through the Great Depression, I think her value (and those like her) will actually increase through these tough economic times, because their insider wisdom can help us all.

Like in the 1930s, many today are counting on government to be the savior, but thus far all that's resulting from bailouts is a ballooning repayment schedule – just like back then. Fox News recently highlighted that the total federal outlays in 1929 were $3.1 billion (less than 3 percent of GDP). By 1940, they tripled to $9.5 billion (10 percent of GDP). Worse still, the total federal debt mushroomed fom $17 billion in 1929 (16 percent of GDP) to $43 billion in 1940 (44 percent of GDP). And yet, unemployment remained at 15 percent.


Snoozer, right?

Wrong.

Read a little further and find out why we really are a nation of whiners. Have you ever wiped your ass with a magazine in an outhouse? Better yet, have you ever seen one of these outhouses? Didn't think so, liberal fags:

Like with most, Mother's family didn't have running water or electricity. And Granny Scarberry did her best to keep the outhouse clean, with Grandpa helping through his regular deposits of lye to control the odors. (You can imagine how the hot, humid Oklahoma summers turned that outside commode into one small-closet-sized smelly sauna.) A "scavenger wagon" would come by once a week and clean out the hole. It had a small chair-like contraption over it with the hole punched out of the center. (They once had a two-seater in there, which allowed for two people to enjoy one another's company and conversation – mom told me that she always felt a little upper class when she sat with someone else.) By the way, and I'm not trying to be crude, toilet tissue wasn't around, so they used a Montgomery Ward catalogue. (And you wondered why the catalog was so thick?) No joke – they preferred the non-glossy pages. I'll let you figure out why.

Got the picture?


Yes. Chuck Norris' mother hates Capitalism™.

The rest of the article includes healthy tips from Mother on how to make the best of being a hobo the end.

Just Go Here

One of the top 5 blogspot pages of all time.

unnecessaryquotes.com

Some More Stuff That People Say

Fallows:

1) From a horse-race perspective, John McCain came in behind and losing ground, in the middle of a financial/economic panic that works against him, and therefore needing a big win. This meant either damaging and flummoxing Obama, or so outshining him in audience rapport, mastery of policy, and empathetic connection through the camera, that the debate could be presented as a turning point. None of that happened. (McCain's best performance was at the end, rejecting a "Yes/No" question on whether Russia is an "evil empire.") At this stage in the race, a tie goes to leader, and this was not a tie.

2) "That one." Difficult to discuss. Unwise for Obama or his campaign ever to mention themselves. But creates an impression that may be impossible to erase.

3) The betting had been, including from me, that this Town Hall format would best suit McCain -- the informality, the opportunity for jokeyness, the track record of handling such questions easily. To my eye, that betting turned out wrong, partly through McCain's doing and partly through Obama's.


Wolcott:

You'd never know from this evening that 5000 Dow points have been lopped since the previous debate.


Goddard:

Tonight's debate wasn't even close. Sen. Barack Obama ran away with it -- particularly when speaking about the economy and health care. Talking about his mother's death from cancer was very powerful. On nearly every issue, Obama was more substantive, showed more compassion and was more presidential.

Ian Welsh:

Here's what I don't understand. Essentially McCain made the same sort of mistakes he made last time. Not friendly enough, not calm, awful body language and so on. Not a statesman. Not a reasuring elder who's seen it all and who can be trusted to deal with it now.

...Or is John "Maverick" McCain too angry to listen? Too frazzled, too tired, too unable to make a change from a game plan that clearly isn't working. Is it the campaign? Or is it him?

Either way, it's actually kind of sad. What I see in John McCain is an old tired man whose anger doesn't just come from being behind but from having worked beyond capacity for too long. He doesn't have Obama's stamina, nor does he have the sense Obama had in taking a week's holiday to recharge. The best thing that the McCain campaign could do now is to come up with some reason to give him the better part of 3 days off. Let Palin campaign for him, she pretty much does anyway. Let him recover.


And for fun, Michelle Malkin:

11:16pm Eastern. I’m forcing myself to watch some of the post-debate commentary.

Disaster: Mitt Romney apparently wasn’t made aware of McCain’s new $300 billion housing entitlement plan. And Fred Thompson could barely muster up enthusiasm for McCain.

Jason Mraz Has Stuff To Say About The Election

If you're still deciding on a candidate this November, the most helpful tool you could use is the WWJMD?™ method. (Bracelet patent pending)

When not singing or dressed as a well-endowed underwear-clad furrie, Jason Mraz has stuff to say:

Last year Bob Dylan compiled a song list for Starbucks' Artist Choice Series. In addition to offering up a keen selection of country, blues, and jazz, he also supplied notes and commentary as to why he held the songs in such regard. BUT, the best part was the forward.

He wrote, "When I was asked to put together this collection of songs, I wasn't sure what to do. So I just grabbed a bunch of things I was into recently. Some people have favorite songs, but I've got songs of the minute -- songs that I'm listening to right now. And if you ask me about one of those songs a year from now, I might not even remember who did it, but at the moment it's everything to me."


What the fuck do this have to do with anything?......you might say:

I bring this up as today's lesson: Nothing is final. One day you're high. The next day you're low. You might have a funky, expressive, or awful haircut today, but soon it will grow into something else, something new and random. Maybe you grew up liking pop music and boy bands, but now you like a specific mash up of Electronic & Classical. You might decide you don't want to smoke cigarettes anymore; that it's just not who you are. Maybe you were a staunch republican but now have curiosities about the well-spoken and well-organized Democratic Nominee. Perhaps you were madly in love last week, but woke up today feeling comfort in solitude, without a desire to be held.


Well-spoken is elitist for uppity negro, I believe.

Let's continue:

Everything is fine. Not finAL.

We tend to instantly identify with "things." And we believe in so much, when in fact, a belief isn't known to be true. It's a hope for the truth. We hold grudges because of what someone said when we were young. We store hurtful words and replay them in our minds until we think it to be true. And some of us believe a TV commercial and think we need a faster computer, a smarter phone, a stronger pill, a more relaxed-fit jean, etc. We think that certain things, thoughts, or actions make us who we are and sometimes we become addicted to those thoughts or behaviors and then become too afraid to let them go.


In summary: Shut the fuck up, Jason Mraz.

Lindsay Lohan Has Things To Say/Slur About Palin Baby Bonanza

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Read this shit:

When SamRo's away, LiLo will blog. Last night, Lindsay Lohan took to her blog for help locating Dixie cups of marble ice cream before Samantha Ronson returned home and then finished up the entry by dedicating a song to her girl with the lyric "I've been saved by a woman." Yeah, pretty typical stuff.

So that's why we were caught off guard when Linds offered up a particularly fair and balanced political entry this morning. The topic at hand: Republican V.P. candidate Sarah Palin and all that baby drama surrounding her 17-year-old daughter.

Lindsay writes: "I think the real problem comes from the fact that we are taking the focus off of getting to know Sarah Palin and her political views, and what she can do to make our country a less destructive place. Its distracting from the real issues, the real everyday problems that this country experiences."

Welcome to the Internets, Scott Peterson!

That guy who's sitting on death row for killing his wife and unborn child now joins millions of other agoraphobes in the spirit of blogging:

...an organization called Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty (CCADP), and they're allowing Peterson roundabout access to the Internet by maintaining a web site for him in which he can communicate his thoughts on his "wrongful conviction" and respond to the support he's received while appealing his sentence. The site also links to the page Peterson's family maintains on his appeal and is chock full of pictures of the former couple. The postings, though infrequent, include his thoughts about a scholarship fund set up in Laci's name and he even refers to Sharon Rocha as "my mother-in-law"—present tense.


As you would imgaine, the family of Laci is not cool with this at all. They were on Larry King last night.

via Radar

Picking Apart Logical Fallacies

From Wired:

Do you ever get into arguments on the internet? If not, get a refund from your ISP, because you're not getting your money's worth.

The latest Alt Text is a handy guide to logical fallacies that will aid you in any argument, ranging from election debates to important stuff like whether Optimus Prime could beat up the Terminator.

These rhetorical techniques won't actually help you win, mind you, but they will allow you to keep changing the subject until your opponent gives up. And on the web, that's just as good!

Bush Still President, Planning on Doing Things

While the US Student Body Presidential elections are going on, the current SBP has about 12 months to get something accomplished, besides this.

So, where's Waldo off to? The Middle East!

W is on a week long visit to the region, making his first stop Israel, which is the first time he's been as President.

I don't really blame him. I'm a procrastinator too.

Good news is that he's going to blog about his adventures in the Holy Land, presumably on this laptop.

via AP