Five For Friday

Good place to park the OT on Souter!
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I’m thinking Sotomayor. Best pick politically, plus, Bammer will have other chances later.

I think Mark Halperin is a complete idiot. He should go work for Sean, Hannity, Bill, Hew, or apply for his dream job with Rush and get over with already.

I want to know if Halperin will be sanctioned for openly courting a Drudge link with his headline in subversion of just about any journalistic value his post would have otherwise had.

Brooks at his best:
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Mozart was a good musician at an early age, but he would not stand out among today’s top child-performers.
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He’s heard the recordings, I guess.
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In fact, neither talent nor practice are sufficient for high achievement. You need both. The former is innate. Typical Brooksian inanity.

How about a bet on the number days it will take Mark to declare this a victory for the republican party.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor
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I’ll be shocked if it is anybody else. There’s only one woman in the current court, no Hispanics. Picking a woman gives Obama a shot at peeling Collins and Snowe off for a cloture vote.

I have to comment on the Bulls/Celtics series. What an absolute joy to watch.
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I love sports because it’s the only truly unpredictable entertainment. You can see how much these athletes want this and how hard they’re willing to play to get it.
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Ray Allen, what can you say about the guy…I think 51 points in 58 minutes and walked off the court with his head down because he didn’t do more.
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Brad Miller gets a chance at redemption and takes it, Salmons steps up to make a name for himself and Joakim Noah makes a huge play that brought me out of my recliner.
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Can’t wait for Game 7! And especially can’t wait for Sunday and my Mavericks!*
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*Not associated with the real “Maverick” John McCain.

Michael Scherer:
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One of the most important questions of our political time –the appointment of a lifetime tenured magistrate possessed with the power to determine the constitutionality of the legislature’s laws and the executive’s actions– is reduced to a football pool by the perpetually bored, indescribably shallow and fidgety narcissists the national political press corps.
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At some point, an administration won’t rely on the voluntary cooperation of the corporate press to suppress evidence contradicting their case for war, and the state will invoke some secrecy power of some sort given to them by the compliant, venal legislature, and perhaps torture a secretly detained journalist to find out with whom (perhaps foreign agents?) he has shared such information as he may or may not have.
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When the case of such detention comes before the Supreme Court, and the Justices rule by slim majority that First Amendment rights are subordinate to the executive’s Article I authority to protect the country by any means, I’ll be happy to mass email the pro-journalist community the link you’ve helpfully provided to Mark Halperin’s gleeful profanity, along with my sincere condolences.
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Is there nothing that people like Halperin can’t corrupt into a tedious, ritualized horse race for the sake of satisfying the Beltway press corps’ desperation for amusement?

Sorry…sigh…I left out a Roman “I”.

That’s “the executive’s Article II authority”, obviously…

What Mr Ackroyd said. Also makes it dicey for Mel Martinez (don’t want to hand the state Dems an issue, and he may not be much inclined to cater to the crazies anymore), John Kyl, even McCain and Kay Bailey H. to filibuster. I have no doubt that it will be ugly, but I don’t think they can filibuster Sotomayor.
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Oh, and would that this were the most important consideration: She seems to be a damned impressive candidate.

Mikey;
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You forgot to mention your colleage Mark Halperin proving that Matt Drudge no longer rules his world — now it’s Jesse Helms that rules his world!
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Lest we forget…

Here is the thing about any Supreme Ct justice Obama puts forth, they had better be well vetted on personal issues. I don’t care how impressive their judicial bonafides are my bet is that the GOP will go after them on a personal level. That means they better not have any tax issues or any personal failings like drug use or illicit sex. That is the state of the Republican party folks and when it comes down to it that will tell the tale of how the confirmation goes no matter who it is. They won’t focus on how the nominee has performed professionally in the past because its almost a given that Obama will nominate someone emminently qualified. But if they can find any chink in the armor in the nominees personal life we will hear about it early and often. Conservative groups are already out with statements about “leftist activist judges” without a name even being put forth yet so it will only get worse once there is a nominee.

Halperin’s probably still cranky about this
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“Mark Halperin’s 100 Days grade for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: B- Mark Halperin’s grade for thinking Pelosi’s job title is “House Majority Leader”: any ideas?…”

In other sports new:

Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas said Friday that efforts to tinker with the BCS are bound to fail. He told a House hearing that the BCS is like communism and can’t be fixed.

Barton has introduced legislation that would prevent the NCAA from labeling a game a national championship unless it’s the outcome of a playoff system.

Here’s a question:
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Is Mark Halperin’s “White Men Need Not Apply” piece the stupidest thing he’s ever written?
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I know there are a lot of strong contenders there, given the mass of mouth-breathing retardery he’s been responsible for, but this one just might take the cake.
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Yes, Mark. White men need not apply for the Supreme Court. Other than the seven white men who are currently on the nine-person court, they just can’t get a break.

“Journalists celebrate the death of another leak case.”

Actually, you’ll be hard pressed to find any journalist other than Jeffrey Goldberg who speaks badly about the “AIPAC” leak case. This is remarkable considering the conduct that was prosecuted is the same as done hundreds of times a day by journalists.

I would imagine the reticence is because journalists, especially Jewish journalists, don’t want to take sides with AIPAC.

Pretty funny, if you think about it. Journalists (happily) are happy to condemn the injustice of torture even though its recipients were alleged terrorists. But they won’t condemn a clearly overreaching justice department because its victim was AIPAC employees.

Ruling the world isn’t what it used to be . . .

If I was betting I’d bet on Kagan or Wood. And they’d be fine. But I’m hoping he looks at names beyond the usual ones – especially at Pam Karlan and Amy Klobouchar.

Et al,
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I think he can afford to go with Sotomayor, given he will have another shot or two later at appointing another justice.
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Points taken, Jayack, I wonder if there are any possible controversies floating around they could grab hold of?
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I think that should the GOP get too obstructive, the Dems can certainly put the GOP in the position they were in when Roberts was appointed. We are in a much better position to make it stick than they were then, too.
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On the “White Men…” thing that Halperin put up, he wouldn’t dare blog here, would he? He’d get ripped and I’m not talking physical fitness.
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He should at least have the guts to start his own blog so he can feel pain whenever he pulls a stupid like this.

On the “White Men…” thing that Halperin put up, he wouldn’t dare blog here, would he?
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No chance. As far as he’s concerned, the only opinion that matters is that of his One True Love, Matt Drudge.
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I will never, ever understand the allure that Drudge holds for beltway media types. Is it the D-grade website design? The moronic fedora he wears? Or that he, like most of them, has the IQ of a grapefruit?
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I think I just answered my question, actually.

Really mrein?
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How about Spencer Ackerman who is also Jewish?
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http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/05/01/help-me-shonda/
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Or maybe Ron Kampeas
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http://jta.org/news/article/2009/05/01/1004827/case-against-ex-aipac-staffers-dropped
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I guess we wouldn’t be as hard pressed as you think. And I bet you Mike Goldfarb will have a post up slamming the overreach soon at the weekly standard as well.

I too came here to comment on Halperin’s headline, perhaps the most despicably tendentious headline I’ve seen in a large media outlet in years.

Excluding Hispanics, white men represent approximately 33% of the current U.S. population.

Non-Hispanic white men represent 40% of the Obama cabinet, not counting Joe Biden. They represent 67% of the current U.S. Supreme Court. They represent 97% of all U.S. Presidents and 100% of all U.S. Vice Presidents. They represent 79% of the U.S. Senate.

Fat chance we’ll ever hear a gripe from Halperin about any of that. And, yeah, I’m a white guy. But tendentious garbage is tendentious garbage, regardless of race.

Halperin just hung that shingle out there, without any refernce whatsoever to it in any story he wrote.
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Wasn’t there a breakdown by ethnicity of Obama’s staff a couple weeks ago that pretty much disproved the notion that Obama wasn’t any more pro-Black than he is anit-White? As I remember, only 7% of his staff is Black, and I don’t remember the others.
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Of course, the nonwhite population of the US is something over 30%:
http://www.censusscope.org/us/map_nhwhite.html
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But, let’s not make Halperin pay any attention to facts should we? It’ll homogonize whatever grey matter he has left.

bcamarda was a step ahead of me…

re: dropping the AIPAC case –
correct me if I’m wrong, but when the bad guys are muslims, the government appeals rulings that go against them to higher courts — all the way up to the Supreme court. Were the bad decisions regarding evidence and testimony made by a (apparently) compromised judge appealed to the fullest extent possible? (i.e. if this was someone who was working for al Qaeda, rather than AIPAC, would the government have rolled over quite so easily?)

Mark Halperin’s headline is irresponsible, sensationalistic and just plain sleazy. This kind of thing belongs in a tabloid or on a white power website, not in a supposedly respectable news magazine. Has Matt Drudge completely warped your world view? Using a stock photo of a “white man” to illustrate an article about potential Supreme Court nominees? That’s a NY Post stunt, not a news analysis. I’m disgusted and appalled that this kind of fear-mongering and race-baiting would even be considered, let alone published. What are you thinking.

“correct me if I’m wrong, but when the bad guys are muslims, the government appeals rulings that go against them to higher courts”
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They also have people in jail they can not trial because of no evidence and they can not let go because they are too dangerous. Yet this is acceptable conduct.

Stuart: That’s what I can’t understand about the torture/FISA/state secrets/rendition/habeus corpus debates.
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A lot of media personalities are dumb-founded by the idea that the executive branch is subject to any legal limits. The scenario that you outline is — according to the previous administration — perfectly within the President’s powers.
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The fact that Obama has signed executive orders saying that he’ll follow the law is basically irrlevant. We don’t have an emperor; the law is not optional.

Art Pepper:
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The law is not optional only if co-equal elites in the government and private sector behave as if this is so.
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If the powerful follow and enforce the law for non-elites, but have agreed in practice not to do so for themselves, then the law is optional.

Jon so-called “Stewart” Leibowitz has declared Harry Truman a “war criminal”.

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CLIFF MAY: We did do Hiroshima. Do you think, do you think Truman is a war criminal for that?

LEIBOWITZ: Yeah.

MAY: You do?

LEIBOWITZ: Yeah.

MAY: Okay. This is a, this is a…

LEIBOWITZ: Here’s what I think of the atom bombs. I think if you dropped an atom bomb fifteen miles offshore and you said, “The next one’s coming and hitting you,” then I would think it’s okay. To drop it on a city, and kill a hundred thousand people. Yeah. I think that’s criminal.

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BTW, whose audience has the bigger collection of kooks, dupes, freaks, fools and idiots: Leibowitz’s, Bill Maher’s, Stephen Colbutt’s or David Letterman’s?

sgwhiteinfla-

Is that really the best you could find among media members arguing against the judicial overreach in the “AIPAC” case?

I’ll admit that Ron Kameas of JTA has been steadily critical of the judicial overreach. But I would be equally surprised if JTA was squeamish about not speaking ill of AIPAC. (It stands for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, for goodness sake.)

As for Ackerman, it’s nice to see that he now recognizes that it was judicial overreach, now that it’s over. But he himself admits in that link you provided that he wrongly accused the defendents of “spying” even though they were accused of something the media (including him) does every day.

You may want to keep digging.

FYI, Stewart did what your kind is incapable of…last night he said he WAS WRONG for saying that. He recognized it, apologized for it and moved on.
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You see how that works?
1. Make a mistake, like every other human in history is prone to do.
2. Acknowledge said mistake.
3. Apologize.
4. Learn from it.
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You guys need to work on 2-4.

I’m totally mystified!
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Christine Gregoire at the top of Obama’s picklist?
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What are they smoking over there at WSJ?
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Weed bought with bailout money?

For what it’s worth, General Curtis LeMay also thought that Truman — and he himself — could easily and justly be considered war criminals, for Hiroshima, for Tokyo, for Dresden, for any of a number of inhuman acts, if we had lost WWII.

The first massive incendiary raid was on March 9, 1945 when 334 B-29s bombed Tokyo. (Incendiary raids on a smaller scale had been carried out beginning in February.) Aided by a strong ground wind, the fire in the city burned for four days, sometimes reaching temperatures of 1800 degrees F (982 degrees Celsius). In the end, 83,793 people died and another 40,918 injured. A 16-square-mile (41-square-kilometer) section of Tokyo was burned to the ground, including 26,171 buildings. Fourteen B-29s were lost.
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The success of the raid made incendiary bombing a standard practice, with precision bombing added when weather permitted. The crews were flying 120 hours a month, a 400 percent increase from the 8th Air Force during its busiest period. Supplies were low and bombs were carried straight from the supply ships to the airplanes. By the summer of 1945, flying bomber missions over Japan was the safest air mission of the war.
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After the war, LeMay observed that “I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.” He felt, though, that the intense bombings were actually saving lives on both sides, especially if they encouraged surrender without an invasion. Even without the nuclear bomb, LeMay felt his bombers could win the war by October. His view was supported by Japan’s Prince Fumimaro Konoe, who said that “the determination to make peace was the prolonged bombing.”

BTW, whose audience has the bigger collection of kooks, dupes, freaks, fools and idiots: Leibowitz’s, Bill Maher’s, Stephen Colbutt’s or David Letterman’s?
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Hard to say. Which show do you watch?

SZ: Totally agree. In practice, some people are more equal than others.
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Tom: I’ve noticed the pro-torture faction has been reduced to finding examples of worse behavior. “We fire-bombed Dresden” is a lousy justification for waterboarding prisoners, on any number of points.

somepeoplelikeit Says:
Friday, May 1, 2009 at 2:45 pm
“FYI, Stewart did what your kind is incapable of…last night he said he WAS WRONG for saying that. He recognized it, apologized for it and moved on.”

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somepeoplelikeit:

Leibowitz’s faux “apology” demonstrates that he’s complete coward who doesn’t have the guts to defend his true beliefs, particularly when he receives the smallest bit of attention that demonstrates what a total fool he is.

mrein
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I am not your personal researcher, I just wanted to prove you were wrong in my last post. But hey if you want to continue under the banner of victimhood have at it hoss. Really makes me no never mind.

Perfect illustration of the mind of a wingnut
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“Even if you know you are were previously wrong, just stay with whatever you said or did because to do otherwise shows weakness”
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Hell of a worldview if you ask me.

sgwhiteinfla-
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You’re not my personal researcher, it’s true. (Nor am I your “hoss,” but that’s another issue.)
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My original point was just that the media (including Scherer) failed to criticize, for whatever ridiculous or perhaps bigoted reasons, a misguided prosecutorial effort that would put their own freedom in jeopardy. You tried to prove I was wrong. I showed why you failed. And now you give up but, unsurprisingly, refuse to admit your failure.
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What would it take to make you no never mind?

Leibowitz’s faux “apology” demonstrates that he’s complete coward who doesn’t have the guts to defend his true beliefs, particularly when he receives the smallest bit of attention that demonstrates what a total fool he is.
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Said the person who hides behind an alias while commenting on a blog.

mreien
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It took me less than 5 minutes to find someone other than Jeffery Goldberg who weighed in on the AIPAC case today. Thats pretty far from being “hard pressed”. If you want to find more just go to memeorandum. There are plenty more articles there on the case. And there have been plenty of articles out prior to today after the Harman case came up. TalkingPointsMemo has a whole section on it. But I know that doesn’t fit into your narrative of (and you already made allusions to it so why not go all the way) anti semitism playing a role in some supposed underreporting on the issue. Basically only if you stick your head in the sand could you make such a claim.

Art: as Stewart pointed out the other night (odd that lame-ass textee would be fixated on comedians today — could he really be Clifford May?) there’s a difference between the guy you bomb on the battlefield and the guy you have under your control in a prison camp. While battlefield weapons and tactics may be questioned, the latter guy is “off the board” and you have to treat him humanely, or you forfeit your own right to be considered human.

Cliff & sgwhite,
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Do we have another one? Is this another species or just another member of trollus termiticus?
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Sounds the same – calling your honor into question and pounding you with labels if you disgree with their viewpoint.

Leibowitz’s faux “apology”
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So, textee, it was fake? On his own show? On national TV? A fake apology?
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Oh, I forgot, you’re a Republican. An apology only counts if it’s directed to Rush Limplog.

afguy
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Yes and no. This particular strain is just pushing one issue I think and that’t anti semitism. Probably not a pure troll because they only care about that issue. But I could be wrong.

somepeoplelikeit Says:
Friday, May 1, 2009 at 4:02 pm
“Leibowitz’s faux ‘apology’”.
“So, textee, it was fake? On his own show? On national TV? A fake apology?”

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somepeoplelikeit:

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

somepeoplelikeit:
Yes, yes, yes and yes.

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Testee, I’m going to need you to be a little more unequivocal in your answer.
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I do find it interesting though that you care about the musing of an admitted “snake oil salesman” so much.
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BTW, can’t wait for Bill Maher tonight. We’ll discuss your favorite parts tomorrow.

Probably not a pure troll because they only care about that issue. But I could be wrong.
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sgwhite,
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OK, I get the type. Not a pure troll – like you said, THEY just come to disrupt.

Lots to comment on here, but I have to say that the issue of most concern to me is that I can’t see the Bulls-Celts series at all here. NFL, MLB, no problem, but no NBA. I just read the Bill Simmons’ piece and it merely confirmed what I already felt–I’m missing history. Had the computer on auto-refresh for the entire 4th qtr/all 3 OTs yesterday. Why, oh why, don’t they put these games online, a la the NCAA tourney.
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And, oh yeah, summoning feeling for something else, let’s lynch Mark Halperin. Just joking, except, I’m not. Mikey, sucker punch that SOB, put it on youboob and we’ll all be your personal twitter b!tches.

afguy: textee’s been posting here for a while. He’s not exactly a troll because he usually doesn’t stick around to derail conversations. He just posts these insane rants and flees.

Christine Gregoire at the top of Obama’s picklist?
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WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT???

I wonder if Barney Frank is going to make any predicitions tonight on Bill Mahr? It’s always fun to watch him slap the republican’s asses and say “Who’s your daddy?”.

I too disagree that Truman should posthumously be considered a ‘war criminal’ for his actions, but let’s be serious here–if anyone nuked a city in today’s world, even in a total war, I would certainly hope that there would be war-crime trials when it’s all said and done.
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And aside from that, does anyone really disagree that Jon Stewart’s alternative would have been morally ‘better’? It’s true that the US had only two nukes available at the time, but was it really necessary to nuke a city first? Wouldn’t it have been swell if they just demonstrated the nuke in such a way as to minimise civilian casualties before going ahead and wiping an entire city off the map? Again, I know all the reasons and justifications for using the nuke on Hiroshima first, but that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t have been nicer to not nuke them if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

It’s no surprise Time hasn’t opened up Herperin’s page to the comments. But it would be nice.