Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Public Says a Plague on Both Your Houses   63% of Americans are concerned that the President will appoint a Supreme Court nominee that allows religion to excessively influence his judicial views.  But that's not going to help Democrats.  86% of Americans say that Democratic Senators are liable to oppose any nominee--that almost two thirds of them think will suck--for the wrong ("inappropriately political") reasons. That just cracks me up.  Sometimes I'm a little bit amazed at the depth of the contempt of the American people for their politicians.  I'm not saying they are wrong to feel that way, just that the strength of that feeling continues to be a source of surprise. 5:27:02 PM    comment []

The Latest in Iraq:  Attacks on Diplomats   Egypt's ambassador to Iraq was kidnapped; now the unofficial envoys of Pakistan and Bahrain have been attacked.  This is an essential part of the game plan of the terrorists and the Iraqi resistance.  If none of the other Islamic countries recognize Iraq, they go a long way towards discrediting the government.  In the same way, the resistance is focusing on killing Iraqi military and police units, because if they can keep those forces ineffective, so that the face of Iraq's government remains US and British military forces, sooner or later the Iraqi people will rise up as a body and rebel against foreign occupation. I have no idea if the plan will work; I'm just pointing out that they do have a strategy. 4:04:46 PM    comment []

Quote for the Day, 7/5/2005   "I never saw her in the daytime.  We seemed to live by night.  What was left of the day went away like a pack of cigarettes you smoked.  I didn't know where she lived.  I never followed her.  All I ever had to go on was a place and time to see her again.  I don't know what we were waiting for.  Maybe we thought the world would end."   -Robert Mitchum (Jeff Bailey), Out of the Past (1947) 12:28:07 PM    comment []

Trouble for Movement Conservatives   While conservative groups and conservative commentators press the President to nominate the loathsome Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig.  (Incidentally, have you ever noticed the frequency with which men who don't use their first name have a first initial J.?  A legacy, I think, of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock".)  His view of federal, and particularly Presidential, power is so sweeping as to negate most of the protections found in the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and all the later amendments.  You don't have to be a liberal for Luttig's name to send cold shivers up your spine.  If you're a libertarian, or a believer in state’s rights, or believe that the Constitution allows more than a token role for anyone other than the President (including the courts), then you should have problems with this guy.  He's the candidate the movement conservatives are championing, however, so obviously they’re good with all that.    Most conservative lobbying groups and talking heads have been attacking the President's attorney general with a savagery utterly inconsistent with their full-throated defense of him only months ago.  This intellectual inconsistency makes the mind boggle.  Who knew you could be a brilliant lawyer with an incisive mind and an inspirational life story to conservatives in January, and something to be scraped off of a shoe by those same folks in July?  But in any case, most reporters, and a good number of politicians, seem to believe the President will nominate Attorney General Alberto Gonzales...which is odd on another level, because in his confirmation hearings he assured the Senate that he wouldn't seek the Supreme Court nomination while he was AG. I have little regard for the man...having called him things like a poor man's Torquemada in the past.  But despite his odd belief in the legality of government torture, he may be the most rational Supreme Court candidate we can reasonably expect from this President.  And there must be something to like about anyone that upsets the hard right-wingers so much. 6:37:23 AM    comment []