GroupThinkTank
Revolutionizing the world, one "I agree" at a time
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
X-Pub, 4:45 PM:
The New Supreme Court Justice
Bush names his nomination tonight. I am thinking Garza. But I (as always) am arbitarilly interested in what the betting community has to say for clarification the odds evaluation is on the right. +500 means if I bet 100 I can win 500 (on top of the original 100). -350 means I have to bet 350 to win 100 (on top of the original 350). They are totally screwing over the betting public if you work out the math.
114 Alex Kozinski +1500
115 Jon Kyl +1200
112 Orrin G. Hatch +1200
113 Frank Easterbrook +1000
110 Larry Thompson +900
103 Miguel Estrada +900
106 Edith Jones +750
108 Theodore B. Olson +600
104 Emilio Miller Garza +600
102 Janice Rogers Brown +600
109 John Roberts +350
101 Samuel A. Alito Jr. +100
111 James Harvie Wilkinson III -280
107 J. Michael Luttig -350
This line is a bit old and cnn is saying Joy Clement is likely (very conservative). But I was curious how they would due (one of the cites did put Ratzinger as the overwhelming favorite for pope).
Mark Dixon, 4:16 PM:
You are being escorted to a School.
Locked boot camps, training schools and other coercive "programs" are becoming popular with right-wing parents whose kids won't toe the line. You may have heard about the furor over a gay Tennessee teen (Zach Stark) whose parents sent him to a "gay conversion camp" to correct his sexual orientation. The gay-to-straight camps are just the tip of the iceberg. Name any common point of friction between parents and the average teen, and chances are there's a conservative Christian camp offering to fix the kid. Gothic dress, punk music, failing grades, sullen demeanor, you name it, they'll fix it.
Now parents have access to their own version of Air America to forcibly extract the kid from the house and transport him or her in locked custody to the camp or "program" of choice. US Transport Service, whose logo is disturbingly close to a US Marshals badge, charges $1,500 and up per "case" to remove the offending kid from your loving Christian home and transport it with "no outside contact" to the family-values boot camp of your choice.
www.ustransportservice.com
From their web site: "Parents will then take the Agents back to the child's room, wake their child and introduce the Agents. Parents will explain to the child that they are in the custody of the agents, and that they are being escorted to a School."
Love, American style.
Monday, July 18, 2005
stephen, 1:38 AM:
A spot in some list, that's all I ask...
I kinda feel like ACLU and Greenpeace should get a bonus donation for this. Always fun to see this kinda news. It has such fond associations.
Monday, July 11, 2005
Mike Russo, 12:11 AM:
I'll have what he's having
This is on the order of "Aging Pope Blessing Everything in Sight":
Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, suggested on Sunday that President Bush could name Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who is retiring from the Supreme Court, to the position of chief justice if it opens up.
Link
I mean, seriously, fuck. Why don't we just dig up Warren Burger and have his corpse sit in the big seat. Or, you know who else would make a great Chief Justice? Voltron.
Also, does anyone know why our template has spazzed? It's rather annoying.
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Mike Russo, 12:05 PM:
Frog-marching inches closer...
Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip."
Link
Not a slam-dunk in anything but the Tenet sense, but this convo happened three days before Novak's column came out. Note that it lines up will with Rove's squirrely statements that he didn't disclose a name...
I'm not sure what the legal status of this disclosure would be; from the text, it seems that Cooper didn't know that Plame was undercover, and again, the name wasn't mentioned. On the other hand, it's possible that Rove *did* know, and I'd think that disclosing information more than sufficient to get at a name should be more than enough (the statute at issue prohibits the disclosue or "any information identifying such covert agent").
So, not quite the smoking gun, but it's certainly a clear indication that Rove was involved in the bad action. I suspect this is going to be heating up quite a bit in the coming weeks. Praying for handcuffs...
(I know I've had some debates with some of y'all on whether Judy Miller should be going to jail and such, so right after this goes up I'm going to write up some more formal thoughts on how I think the law on source protection should be amended on my blog).
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Mike Russo, 7:58 PM:
For your edification
There is no censorship on newspapers, printing, publishing, advertising, or media except by law
Yeah, that would pretty much be true, wouldn't it? (To be fair, as the draft correctly notes, this document is written much more in the parliamentary tradition, where that protection makes more sense, but it's still kind of amusing).
