TPM does the day in 100 seconds

Add comment June 30th, 2009

Say hello to Senator Al Franken

21 comments June 30th, 2009

 

 It says HERE that it’s all over but the shouting.

 At long last, we have somebody in Congress who can be funny on purpose rather than unwittingly.

 UPDATE: TPM has put together a COLLECTION of the Top Ten Moments in the Coleman-Franken battle.

Conservatives on high court are judicial activists who scoff at state sovereignty

9 comments June 30th, 2009

 

 Hey, I thought right-wingers were opposed to judicial activism and always supported state sovereignty.

 But that wasn’t the case in the ruling handed down Monday in Ricci v. DeStefano, as Nathan Newman explains HERE.

Congressional Repubs whine: Obama’s a big meanie and won’t play with us anymore

Add comment June 30th, 2009

THIS is pretty funny.

Most Americans support Obama’s handling of post-election crisis in Iran

11 comments June 30th, 2009

 

 While lots of wingnuts, especially the truly manly men among them, think President Obama is a limp-wristed weenie for not throwing a tantrum over the situation in Iran, most Americans disagree, according to THIS POLL from CNN.

Healthy Americans Against Reforming Medicine

1 comment June 30th, 2009

TPM does the (Madoff) day in 100 seconds

Add comment June 29th, 2009

High court overturns Sotomayor panel’s ruling in New Haven discrimination case

23 comments June 29th, 2009

 

 I doubt that THIS DECISION will negatively affect the chances for Senate confirmation of  Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to a seat on the Supreme Court.

 After all, the high court’s 5-4 split in this case does not support the notion that Sotomayor’s reading of the matter was outside the judicial mainstream.

 UPDATE: Lest anyone get the idea that this reversal of Sotomayor is a knock on her qualifications for the high court, it should be noted that Justice Samuel Alito, a favorite among conservatives, was reversed by the supremes at least four times when he was an appellate judge, as we see HERE.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald has a few INTERESTING POINTS to make about today’s court ruling, including his observation that “11 out of the 21 federal judges to rule on Ricci [as the case has moved through the courts] ruled as Sotomayor did.  It’s perfectly reasonable to argue that she ruled erroneously, but it’s definitively unreasonable to claim that her Ricci ruling places her on some sort of judicial fringe.”

Global-warming deniers envision vast conspiracy involving thousands of scientists

15 comments June 29th, 2009

 

 Paul Krugman accuses global-warming skeptics of “treason against the planet” at a time when the problem is becoming worse than previously anticipated:

To fully appreciate the irresponsibility and immorality of climate-change denial, you need to know about the grim turn taken by the latest climate research.

The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course.

 Read the whole thing HERE.

Bipartisanship is both elusive and overrated

9 comments June 28th, 2009

 

 ”An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.” — Thomas Jefferson

 I always cringe when I read or hear the familiar complaint among the booboisie that the people who run our governments — whether at the federal, state or local levels — are “playing politics” with one issue or another.

 Imagine that. Politicians playing politics. Well, duh! That’s what they’re supposed to do.

 It’s silly for the rest of us to argue that the politicians should set aside their differences and just do what’s right. The problem is that the politicians don’t agree on what’s right. That’s why they belong to different political parties and espouse different philosophies.

 Anybody who thinks the politicians can — or should even try to – stop playing politics doesn’t know how the system works and shouldn’t be voting.

 The current debate in Congress over health-care reform demonstates the ridiculousness of these notions of bipartisanship, as Steve Benen explains HERE.