Whole lotta news

Way, way, way too much information out there today. Here are some catch-up links:

The big news was a Bush-appointed judge telling the administration that their claims of executive privilege were bullshit. Glenn Greenwald does his usual detailed examination of the ruling, David Kurtz has some quotes from the judge’s ruling, and Steve Benen looks at the impact. This court ruling also leaves Karl Rove somewhat exposed, typically, he lashed back from the secure confines of a Fox News studio.

In another court ruling, radio excrescence Michael Savage’s absurd lawsuit against CAIR was dismissed, but not before the unhinged right had launched yet another jihad against the Islamic organization.

In other court news, journalists have been evicted from the courtroom at Gitmo for “a secret session of the war crimes tribunal.” Secret sessions, admitting evidence gathered through torture — is there any possible way to make this trial more of a joke?

Sadly, the presence of journalists at Hamdan’s trial hardly ensures the truth will out. Another black eye day for journalism today as Karl Rove’s “media birds Chirp about Obama’s ‘arrogance’,” Bob Somerby calls Dana Milbank the worst journalist in the world, Adam Reilly reams pundits for reciting McCain talking points on Obama, Mahablog looks at the meme peddling, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune puts the WaPost Chandra Levy series to shame by serializing a more typical urban crime.

That’s not all the media bashing. Digby outlines how Fox News tag teams with GOoPers to play the voters, and John Cole has more.

In still other media news, the Raleigh News & Observer says to hell with it and publishes the National Enquirer’s allegations that John Edwards is involved in a long-standing affair. The Enquirer’s “scoop” still is uncorroborated, but it’s thrown Wikipedia into a tizzy as the wingnut “editors” flip out at not being allowed to edit Edwards’ page to include the latest gossip. Wikipedia needs some new rules to make it MUCH harder to edit bio pages on politicians, but that doesn’t change the fact that Edwards has to hold a press conference and he has to answer all questions put to him. That or retire from public life. This is too damaging and now Obama can’t pick the former Senator as his veep or A.G. pick. 

Some shocking new studies. One shows that thanks to computers, today’s kids are better writers than previous generations. Next time someone tells you that we’re going to hell because we don’t read books anymore — tell them to stick a sock in it. Thanks to computers kids read more than they ever did. Ever see a webpage with zero text on it?

Ed Kohler found a study that businesses are shying away from the Yellow Pages. No shit? I guess businesses aren’t as stupid as you’d think from reading executive salary lists. I’ve cut my client’s YP ads to the absolute minimum, but only after threatening to kill the ads altogether if the DEX folks didn’t stop abusing my client’s account.

But the really hot study is the one that examined the voting records of all but our two newest Supreme Court justices. The biggest judicial activist on the Court? No surprise — it’s Scalia, with Thomas right behind him and the late Chief Justice Rehnquist in third. The least activist judges were Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg, pretty much putting the lie to the hoary conservative myth that liberals are rewriting our laws from the bench. Most partisan? Not even close: the ever hackworthy Clarence Thomas.

The study also found that partisan voting is rampant in the lower federal courts with Democratic and Republican judges alike all ruling along party lines. Then again, a cynic might look at the SCOTUS data and then conclude that in the lower courts you have Democrats ruling per the Constitution, with Republican judges speed dialing their ward heelers for advice.

Worst of all, they discovered that Republican judges were nearly unanimous in overturning new rulings from regulatory agencies, a pattern that suggests Republican judges are political enforcers first and fair-minded judges last.

The economy sucks. That isn’t news. But Mick looks at yet another new study that finds that the recession is being made worse by corporate America’s ruthless strategy of making full-time workers “part-time” to cheat them out of benefits and pay.

David Zucker, the spoof king, puts his rep at risk with a new movie that savages Michael Moore. My prediction? An American Carol will make back its money on wingnut ticket sales, but will go on to be one of the least rented videos of all time. Conservatives can be funny, but as we all know, modern Republicans are anything but conservative. 

As of today heavily tinted car windows are illegal in MN unless you have a doctor’s prescription. Glad to hear it. Tinted windows may be macho, but they are an extremely unreasonable hazard to traffic cops. I just hope they enforce this uniformly instead of just using this new law to harass black motorists.

Vox Day doesn’t like Ed Brayton. I think Ed’s about to experience new levels of popularity, the knuckle-dragging Day being about as popular as rohypnol with feminists. 

The Phoenix Country Club, the one with the men-only bar and dining room, kicked out the member who talked to the NY Times. I think the state of Arizona should pass legislation forbidding the state from doing business with any corporation whose officers belong to sexist clubs like the Phoenix Country Club. Old men acting like middle school brats. 

Tristero also picks up on Ed Brayton’s summary of PZ’s cracker scandal. 

New MinnPost contributor Blois Olson spells out what’s been going wrong for Al Franken, and I have to say I think his take is pretty solid. I read all the stories about who filed for this U.S. Senate seat last month, but both newspapers refused to print the entire list of those who filed (hard to call that journalism, imho). So it wasn’t until today that I learned that Robert Fitzgerald filed for the DFL nomination. Fitzgerald ran as the Independence Party candidate in 2006 against Klobuchar and Kennedy, and got his butt waxed. He is, however, a legit candidate and I’m glad to see that this gives Minnesota Democrats two legit protest candidates to vote for: Fitzgerald and Priscilla Lord Faris. 

Again, if Franken doesn’t do something fairly wonderful between now and the end of the State Fair, I’ll be promoting Lord Faris and Fitzgerald. As it stands, I think the DFL would do better in November with Lord Faris or Fitzgerald than they will with Franken. Al’s high negatives are going to be very hard to overcome, but Lord Faris comes with great name recognition courtesy of her dad Miles Lord, and Fitzgerald has to be the squeakiest clean candidate ever.

And, as Fitzgerald points out on his website, both Franken and Coleman are New Yorkers. Just what the fuck is up with Minnesotans and carpetbagger Senators?

And in more bad news for Norm, Jesse Ventura will be speaking at the Ron Paul rally at Target Center. While we can’t trust the local media to cover that one, the national press corps will be less shy about embarrassing McCain by covering Paul. I won’t argue that Jesse was a great governor, but his immaturity was matched only by the local media’s petulance at having to dig for stories instead of having them handed out pre-digested in press release format.

Yet another installment in the neverending saga of How Fucking Stupid Is Hasbro?

And in the culture wars, professional idiot and amateur racism enthusiast Glenn Beck has said that Congress’s apology for slavery “was a front [sic] to the principles of Christianity.” I guess that’s true if you think of white sheets with eye holes as principles, and unbridled dumbfuck racism as Christianity. Beck was talking to Ron Paul at the time. [The media really needs to step up and start reporting on Ron Paul's racist record.]

Bandwidth caps for cable users keep get lowered, some to as little as 5GB a month. [smirked the DSL user]

One last item. When I was young, Ann Landers, Ronnie Reagan and the other bullshitters all told us LSD would make us stare at the sun, making us go blind. To date there isn’t a single known case of such a thing ever happening. No surprise there — if you’ve ever tripped you already know that the sun is the last thing you’d be staring at. Hell, on acid the moon is one bright motherfucker.

But now it turns out some people are staring at the sun, over fifty of them to date. Why? The idiots were told (and believed) that if they stared at the sun long enough . . . [wait for it] . . . they’d see the Virgin Mary.

At least 50 people have lost their sight after staring at the sun hoping to see an image of the Virgin Mary, according to reports.

Alarmed health authorities in India’s Kottayam district have set up a sign dispelling rumours of a miraculous image in the sky and warning of the dangers of looking into direct sunlight.

Forty-eight cases of sight-loss, allegedly caused by photochemical burns on the retina, have been recorded at St Joseph’s ENT and Eye hospital in the region since Friday.

Despite warnings, and the potentially harmful effects of their actions, believers are allegedly still flocking to a hotelier’s house in Erumeli near where the divine image is said to have appeared. 

 

The hotelier, who has since moved, had claimed that statues of the Virgin Mary in his house have been crying honey and bleeding oils and perfumes. 

UK Telegraph

Seriously, how in the fuck has the Catholic Church managed to stay in business this long? You’d think they would have died out by now after 20 centuries of unrelenting stupidity.

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