Cindy’s tee-shirt had the number of soldiers killed in Iraq on it [like the counter in the sidebar here]. She was arrested and removed from hearing the State of the Union Message. What a blessing! Update: The tee-shirt said, "2,245 Dead — How Many More??"
There were jokes around about "How long will it take Bush to mention September 11 in the SOTUS?" I didn’t time it, but it was soon: On September the 11th, 2001, we found that problems originating in a failed and oppressive state 7,000 miles away could bring murder and destruction to our country. How do […]
In 1968, I guess a lot of us wondered if times could ever get better. They couldn’t have gotten much worse – a terrible war, a crisis of human rights, a slain leader. But it did get better. And Coretta helped with that with everything she had for as many years as she could give […]
Like everyone else, I’ve been thinking about the votes yesterday and today on Alito’s Supreme Court confirmation. Here’s the data as well as I can present it: Today, the Senate confirmed Alito 58 to 42. Yesterday, the Senate voted for cloture 72 to 25 with 3 no votes. What got to a lot of […]
I woke up thinking about yesterday’s cloture vote. What’s stuck with me is listening to one Republican after another talk in the Senate about the potential filibuster being ‘partisan’ politics, pandering to ‘extremist groups.’ How does that complaint work exactly? The Republicans voted as a block. Isn’t that ‘partisan’ politics? The Alito Nomination is clearly […]
The Alito road show has interrupted attention on other things, but they’re not forgotten. Of course there’s the Plame leak, and there’s the N.S.A. unwarranted domestic surveillance issue, but the darkest cloud is the distortion of the prewar intelligence proper – the topic of the long postponed Phase II of the Senate investigation. Raw Story […]
These are two graphs of the cloture vote. The problem with the Democrats just isn’t that hard to see. Here are the Democrats who voted for cloture: I don’t get it quite yet. It’ll be interesting to see how these people vote on confirmation. Looking at these results, the problem isn’t just the Republican […]
72 yeas, 25 nays. Cloture passes. Alito will be confirmed. I’m sorry, for the country. And I’m sorry for the young people who worked so hard. Your power was felt, and has become a force to be reckoned with, but it’s as yet unharnessed and unorganized. If it’s any consolation, it gave this 64 year […]
Nothing like watching John Cornyn [Senator Republican Texas] talk about Alito to bring the mood right on down. He talked about "far left interest groups" a lot. I wondered if I was "far left" and what I was interested in. He talked about Alito’s believing in the Legislature and respecting them, instead of legislating from […]
From Reddhead at Firedoglake: … What I want us to think about this morning is this question: if the Democratic party and its surrogate groups are not thinking in these long-term ways, what do I need to do to step up to the plate and get the job done? And if they are thinking in […]