Thursday, July 21, 2005

Quote for the Day, 7/21/2005   "Were't not for gold and women there would be no damnation, Hell would look like a lord's great kitchen without fire in't."   -Cyril Tourneur, The Revenger's Tragedy   Tourneur was a contemporary of Shakespeare, and a lawyer; despite being a bit sexist, he was probably more legally progressive than John Roberts, who was born nearly 400 years after him. 6:27:36 PM    comment []

Diversity on the Court   People are complaining that nominating someone to be the 105th white male on the Court (for what will be the 109th Justice in our history) is embarrassing, because it somehow shows a lack of diversity, but that's unfair.  From the dusky-skinned Antonin Scalia, to the ruddy complexion of Anthony Kennedy (which suggests skin cancer or alcoholism), to the pure lily-whiteness of John Roberts, there is a vast spectrum of whiteness on the Court.  What could possibly be more diverse than that? But there is another question about Judge Roberts.  John Roberts has said, "I always got a lump in my throat whenever I walked up those marble steps."  No word on whether he's seen a doctor about that.  Roberts argued thirty-nine cases before the Supreme Court.  The poor guy must have difficulty breathing with all those lumps in his throat.  I don't think he can survive hundreds of lumps in his throat.  I think the Senate might want to reject him, and save his life. 2:52:53 PM    comment []

Grand Theft Auto:  Laughing All the Way to the Bank   I kind of wonder if Rock Star Games put the programmer up to it who unlocked pornographic images in their Grand Theft Auto:  San Andreas (which can be unlocked with a game mod you can find here).  Or whether they contacted Hillary Clinton and others to tell them they had a hot new morality issue to talk about.  The game has been on the market so long that until the renewed publicity most sales are probably resales of used copies, but with the new adult rating, most stores will be forced to pull those copies, as well any new copies.  And the adult rating, and the renewed publicity, is likely to lead to a great new burst of sales online.  This new rating is likely to make the people at Rock Star Games tens of millions.  In other words, because of the publicity, millions of people will unlock the pornographic scenes that weren't even aware they existed, and hundreds of thousands will buy the game that previously had no interest.  Further, the next Grand Theft Auto game, already in the works, is likely to be even more of a cultural phenomenon.  I guess the forces of censorship "win" again. 1:57:47 PM    comment []

Karl Rove, the Guilty Traitor   If Karl Rove read a report it is extremely likely he read, that he did know that Plame's involvement in selecting Wilson for the Niger investigation was a state secret, and so any word about it can be punished by ten years in prison.  It is also clear that if reports are true that Rove did not tell FBI investigators asking if he was involved in the leak, that he spoke to Matthew Cooper about Plame, then he is guilty of another crime, and a cover-up of the first crime. To sum up his likely offenses:  Rove knowingly revealed state secrets, he's lied about where he got his information, he's lied to the FBI, he has either deceived other administration officials, or else simply got them to join in a vast criminal conspiracy to deceive the American people.  And all this is certain:  whether ignorant or not of her covert status, Rove had sworn to check in before ever outing any intelligence source when he got his clearance to see official secrets.  So, the man has no honor.  And in outing Plame, who worked for a dummy corporation created by the CIA as a cover for its foreign agents, Rove not only exposed Plame as a CIA agent, he also exposed the corporation and every other CIA agent who ever nominally worked for that company.  He also endangered the lives of every foreign covert source who had any contact with any of those agents or with that company.  In other words, Rove's actions may have blown apart intelligence networks in dozens of countries, and endangered hundreds if not thousands of lives; he endangered national security, and any intelligence failure which leads to a WMD used against this country may come as a direct result of his deliberate undermining of our security.  And what did former President George Herbert Walker Bush say about people who expose our intelligence assets?  Why, he said, "Those who would expose covert sources are the most insidious of traitors."   But maybe that's all all right, because Rove didn't like Valerie Plame's husband. 10:15:54 AM    comment []

A Bills Fan?   Senator Chuck Schumer suggested that John Roberts' support for the Buffalo Bills is a "great" thing.  I think not.  There are 29 other teams in the NFL, and I think supporters of all of those other teams can get behind the idea that whatever else we do as a nation, we shouldn't let a Bills fan on the Supreme Court.  I mean, think of the children. 2:22:07 AM    comment []

Belated Quote for the Day, 7/20/2005   "If only your son Had hiccups, and you had peppermint and sugar, Mr. Reedbeck, everything would seem different."   -Christopher Fry, Venus Observed 1:50:12 AM    comment []