Pray that you will never have to bear all that you are able to endure.
Jewish saying
Common Cause's Assault Against the First Amendment: Thumbs DOWN!
This is not unlike Gore's attempt to steal the 2000 President election by trying to mine enough votes from legally disputed ballots in Democratic-controlled Florida counties to reverse Bush's machine-verified victory recount. (Clearly ballots not machine-scored in Democratic-controlled are more equal than the same in Republican-controlled counties...) The Gore strategy was two-pronged: (1) reverse Bush's victory outright by manipulating crony county vote counts; and/or (2) run out the clock on Florida's certification of electors (since Bush needed Florida's votes to win the vote of the electoral college). The US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 against the first point, rightly recognizing equal protection was violated in using arbitrary vote counting procedures and, more narrowly, ruled 5-4 that Florida could certify the election using existing vote counts in order to participate in the the electoral college by Constitution-prescribed dates. (Liberals claim Bush "stole" the election and they would "prove" that Gore won the election once ballots were made available via the Freedom of Information Act; this would incidentally taint the Supreme Court's second decision and cause great scandal in the government. Journalists did subsequently obtain and scored the disputed ballots--in Bush's favor.)
The reason I raise the issue is that the liberal organization Common Cause, still upset over the Citizens United v FEC decision, which ended the unconstitutional prohibition (and double standard) against for-profit, non-media business free speech, wants to argue the decision was improper and should be vacated, claiming that Justices Scalia and Thomas should have recused themselves from the majority opinion because of travel expenses paid by the Federalist Society to speak at a retreat hosted by the private company Koch Industries' CEO. (The libertarian billionaire Koch brothers are reported to be a sponsor of the Tea Party.) A further allegation has been made that Justice Thomas' wife's leadership position for a conservative cause organization also constituted a similar conflict of interest.
By any objective analysis, Attorney General Eric Holder should ignore this unconscionable, thinly-veiled attempt to intimidate Supreme Court justices and manipulate their decisions. First, the difference in the Citizens United decision was the two Bush nominees (Roberts and Alito); the remaining three in the majority (Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy) had already telegraphed their principled position in 2003, years before the Citizens United decision. Second, the travel expenses in question were not paid by the Koch brothers but the Federalist Society and were duly reported by the justices in a timely manner. Moreover, the Federalist Society is funded by membership dues and grants, and it has sponsored appearances by jurists or lawyers whom do not agree with its more conservative orientation (e.g., Justice Stephen Breyer).
Have the progressive voices called out President Obama, who publicly criticized the Supreme Court in last year's State of the Union address, despite the fact he broke a campaign promise, unlike John McCain, to limit himself during the general campaign to equal public funding (simply giving a self-serving excuse that HIS donations were "more equal")? The Weekly Standard also argues that the advocacy organizations conveniently pick and choose their targets; for example, groups appealing a federal judge's decision throwing out the 2008 California Proposition 8 ratification (restoring the traditional definition of marriage) argued that Appeals Judge Reinhardt should recuse himself due to his wife's ACLU local branch adversarial involvement in the case.
My First 2011 Candidate for Jackass of the Year
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) compared the GOP's principled opposition to the 2010 Democratic Party Health Care Law to the propaganda of key Nazi's, using the term "blood libel". We can see how Obama's recent post-Tuscon Massacre address has resonated with his own partisan base (so much for his "leadership" on the issue: how many times have I said about Obama: it's not what he says, but what he does?)
I discussed the objectionable use of the term 'blood libel' in an earlier post where I condemned Sarah Palin's widely reported use of the same term. Let me quote the definition from religioustolerance.org:
A false belief which has endured since the 1st century BCE. It states that members of a religious group kidnap, abuse, ritually murder and sometimes eat the body of a member of another religion. Groups creating this groundless fable include ancient Greek and Roman Pagans, Christians, Nazis, and Muslims. Innocent religious groups victimized by the fable include Jews, Christians, Wiccans, Druids and other Neopagans, and Roma (Gypsies).
[I mentioned the classic examples of Roman pagans' false claim that the Christian sacrament of Holy Communion (Matthew 26:26) is an exercise of cannibalism and the anti-Semitic lie that a key ingredient of matzos is Gentile blood.]
Political Humor
Obama and Hu had a private dinner the night before. When Obama tried to pick up the check, Hu said, “Your money is no good here.” Obama laughed, and Hu said, “No, really, your money is no good.” - Jay Leno
[The bill was for $900B. When Obama tried to pay with his Federal Reserve credit card, he was told that he was over his $14.3T credit limit: he would have to put up Fort Knox as collateral...]
A study shows that nearly half of our country’s undergraduates show almost no gains in learning after their first two years in college. And the other half are nerds. - Jimmy Kimmel
[On a separate note, President Obama hasn't learned a thing from his first 2 years in office.]
Some originals:
- House Speaker John Boehner has really cut the White House entertainment budget. Chinese President Hu Jintao was delighted to find a Chinese-made toy came with his Happy Meal. (He didn't get one when he visited the San Francisco area...) Obama read the message that was inside his fortune cookie: "You will run for President in the middle of the biggest recession in 6 decades against a 72-year-old career politician from a party whose outgoing President has the lowest approval rating in decades, whom chooses an inexperienced, second-year governor from a small state as his running mate, has far less campaign money, admits that he needs to be educated on the economy, and unilaterally suspends his campaign."
- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would not go the White House dinner because the Chinese President is a “dictator.” On a separate note, Reid vowed the recently passed House bill repealing last year's health care law will never get a floor vote.
- For crying out loud, Speaker Boehner also chose not to attend the White House dinner...
Club Nouveau, "Lean on Me"
