This week's SNL Weekend Update was pretty funny. The part on the Alito hearings (especially the crying Mrs. A), as well as the Pat Robertson skit, are the best.
A great line: Quaero - the French version of Google. You type in the subject you are interested in and they refuses to look it up for you.
One Good Move posted the skit for those (like me) who can't stay awake that late. Enjoy!
* Tom Tomorrow - This Modern World
This cartoon does a much better job making the point I was trying to make in this post. 
In this excellent post by Firedoglake, This is how it's Done (scroll down), Jane Hamsher observes:
It is remarkably frustrating to blog the Alito hearings, feel the righteous indignation of people . . . that the supreme court is in danger of making a major lurch to the extreme right with the potential appointment of a bigoted, sexist, entitled, slavering chickenhawk like Alito, and see it reflected nowhere in the traditional media.
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How does the GOP keep them all in such abject subservience? An article from the Knight-Ridder news service shows the extremely organized pressure they bring to bear on anyone who deviates from their party message . . .
The article she references is a Commentary, Knight Ridder's Alito story: Factual and fair, which provides a glimpse of the unrelenting push by the Republican machine to recast "the Alito story" in a manner intended to obfuscate the facts of Alito's conservative views. It also shows the larger picture: No opinion, no news column in the media can escape the Republican spin filter, which consists of a rapid response setting forth the view/spin of the party, the accusation that the original piece was wrong, slanted, partisan, etc., followed by the personal attack on the messenger/reporter.
As the Knight Ridder piece explains, it originally ran a story (Review of cases shows Alito to be staunch conservative - which I read at the time in the Philadelphia Inquirer) in early December, that concluded that Alito was truly a conservative (what a surprise, what a shock). This conclusion was based upon an analysis of all (311) published cases in which Alito wrote either the majority or dissenting/concurring opinion during his 15 year tenure on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. In other words, he didn't get the name Scalito for nothing. As the Commentary noted:
They concluded that, "although Alito's opinions are rarely written with obvious ideology, he's seldom sided with a criminal defendant, a foreign national facing deportation, an employee alleging discrimination or consumers suing big business."
You might find this neither surprising nor controversial. Alito, after all, was nominated by a president who said that his ideal Supreme Court justices were Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the high court's most reliably conservative members.
You'd be wrong.
No, what followed was the dissemination of a Senate Republican Conference memo, letter to the editor to the Inquirer and publication of an op-ed piece by a former Alito clerk, all denouncing the original article as inaccurate and biased. Again, as the Commentary explained:
Knight Ridder's story analyzed only Alito's published opinions because what a judge writes from the bench is the best window into his or her legal reasoning. A judge's unexplained votes are often on procedural grounds that have nothing to do with legal philosophy. And the Knight Ridder story didn't say that Alito never sided with plaintiffs who alleged employment discrimination, criminal defendants or consumers suing businesses. It reported accurately that he seldom did, and that the pattern of his written opinions was unmistakable.
And this is a dangerous state of affairs for us all. There needs to be some entity that can speak the truth and be believed. I know that I don't trust the Republican party a whit; the rest, including the media, are question marks. How does a society function that way? It's one thing to have a dysfunctional family, it's a lot worse to have a disfunctional society, but I think that is where we've devolved.
Just one more thing to thank Bush for.
Dana Garrett of Delaware Watch, in a posting called Tom Capano Fatigue, bemoans the fact that the Delaware Supreme Court overturned the imposition of the death penalty for Tom Capano. Capano, as most Philadelphians and Delawareans know, was a former prosecutor who was convicted of murdering Anne Marie Fahey, after she tried to break off their relationship.
Garrett, like me, opposes the dealth penalty, and like me "groaned" when he heard the decision. For him, because he dreads the renewed media attention this reversal will no doubt cause. My "groan" and objection is of a more personal nature. This will only resurrect the extreme pain the death of Anne Marie has caused the Fahey family. My brother Paul and her brother Robert were friends. The Faheys were an extremely close family. I recall meeting her at various parties years ago, but can't say that I knew her. However, I know that this matter can only bring more grief and woe to the family (not that it can ever be completely forgotten).
UPDATE (2/24): For the latest update on the Capano case, see The Trials of Terrible Tom.
I like NBC News reporter, David Gregory, who is one of the few reporters who is willing to press Scott McClellan during the White House Daily News Briefings (along with my long time favorite, Helen Thomas). Plus, he's cute.
His report on the progress of the rebuilding efforts in New Orleans is very depressing. The segment starts with a rosy report from Bush on the state of affairs in New Orleans. In typical Bush fashion, he notes improvements in New Orleans since his last visit, but the area that he saw was a wealthier section that was hardly touched by Katrina. Not so good for other sections (read that: poor). The clip can be viewed at Crooks and Liars.
Sounds like Bush's plan for the city of New Orleans is like his plan for education called "No Child Left Behind." All talk, no money.
Daily Kos has an excerpted transcript of the Carl Bernstein interview on the Colbert Report. As he says, Stephen Colbert does O'Reilly better than O'Reilly:
Stephen Colbert: Compare this presidency to Nixon's presidency. What could Nixon learn from Bush?
Carl Bernstein: They both have the same problem...telling the truth.
Colbert: Wha...what is that, courage??
Bernstein: I think both would've been better served to have told the truth, especially in wartime.
Colbert: Well, the problem is that right now, we're dealing with a secret enemy. So we can't necessarily tell the truth, can we? If we tell the truth, and our enemies don't tell the truth...well, then they've got one up on us, right?
Bernstein: I think the same thing happened in both the Nixon administration and the Bush administration.
Colbert: No, Nixon got in trouble. I don't think Bush is.
Bernstein: Wait awhile!
Colbert: Oh really?
Bernstein: I think he's in trouble. I think he's in trouble because of the same reason as Nixon. He doesn't tell the truth. His vice president doesn't tell the truth. His party is starting to have trouble with it the same way Nixon had trouble with his party. And we're in a terrible situation in a war where we need a president who tells the truth.
(Emphasis added). Also, Comedy Central has a video clip of the interview.
Could it be? Bernstein certainly has more credibility than his former colleague Woodward. After all, Watergate didn't happen immediately after the break-in. It took a while for the Nixon Administration to crash and burn. The accumulation of events -- a war based upon bad intelligence that is spiraling out of control, the federal deficit out of control, Katrina, erupting scandals from leaks in the Administration, plus those from greedy Republican legislators, secrets and spying -- all may eventually cause the same problems for Bush that could cause a major fall.
I could at least dream, can't I?
Judge (wannabe Justice) Alito was a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton after he graduated. An Alum group with a spin. A racist, sexist spin, that is. You know, the Ivy version of the Council of Conservative Citizens, the white supremacist group that was a successor of sorts to the KKK. (See: Communing with the Council by the Southern Poverty Law Center).
Now that CAP's extremist, ultra-conservative views are in disfavor, Alito would obviously like to distance himself from his association with CAP. Rather than refer to his CAP membership as a "youthful indiscretion" (as the owner of Ikea did many years ago about his membership in the Hilter youth), Alito has recently stated that he couldn't recall joining the group. His memory was better when he listed the organization on an application for a position with the Reagan administration. Now, not so good.
Today, however, during confirmation hearings, Alito said that he most likely joined as a way of protesting student protests against the ROTC on campus. Daily News blogger Attytood explains why this is bunk in his post, He can't handle the truth: The real story of Sam Alito, ROTC, and Concerned Alumni of Princeton, citing Alito Joined Army Reserve During College from the San Francisco Gate.
As Bunch explains, Alito's great interest in ROTC blossomed when he received a number 32 in the draft lottery in 1970, right when college deferments were being eliminated. A #32 was a first class ticket to Vietnam. ROTC 'r us became the place to be, for Alito anyway. No Vietnam, as it happened.
Now, I have to acknowledge that I was a war protestor during the Vietnam War, so I certainly wouldn't criticize anyone who wanted to avoid the draft. In 1970, as I recall, many protested, few served (voluntarily, at least).
What I do mind is the hypocrisy and lying about how someone may have responded to the War during that time period. He didn't need to join CAP for ROTC-related reasons, since ROTC had been reinstated on campus at that point. And, as Attytood points out, he certainly had no great affinity for ROTC prior to the draft.
Just add this to the list of reasons why Alito should not be on the Court. I thought that I've never say this, but Harriet keeps looking better every day.
UPDATE: Mark Kleinman makes this same point in his blog, The Reality Based Community, in The CAP flap.
A NYT article, I.R.S. Move Said to Hurt the Poor, details the efforts of the IRS to reduce fraud by blocking questionable refunds. Of course, the refunds were all due to the poor. This makes perfect sense, since we all know that the rich don't cheat. The article notes:
Tax refunds sought by 1.6 million poor Americans over the last five years were frozen and their returns labeled fraudulent, although the vast majority appear to have done nothing wrong, the Internal Revenue Service's taxpayer advocate told Congress yesterday.
A computer program identified the refund requests as suspect and automatically flagged the taxpayers for extra scrutiny for years to come, the advocate said in her annual report to Congress. These taxpayers were not told that the I.R.S. criminal investigation division suspected fraud.
The advocate, Nina Olson, said the I.R.S. devoted vastly more resources to pursuing questionable refunds sought by the poor - which under the highest estimate is $9 billion - than to the $100 billion in taxes not paid each year by people who work for cash and either fail to file tax returns or understate their income.
As for the suspected fraud in refund requests, Ms. Olson said her staff sampled the suspect returns and found that 66 percent were entitled to the amount sought or more. Another 14 percent were due a partial refund. She expressed doubt that many among the remaining 20 percent had committed fraud.
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Ms. Olson said the criminal investigators' efforts, known within the I.R.S. as the Questionable Refund Program, were unfair and might be illegal.
"At a minimum, this procedure constitutes an extraordinary violation of fundamental taxpayer rights and fairness," Ms. Olson wrote, adding that it "may also constitute a violation of due process of law."
When the Republicans initially started to push enactment of the Patriot Act, the paranoid Liberals expressed outrage and voiced concern about the potential for abuse.
This of course was met with "Trust Us" by the Bush Administration, we just want to keep everyone safe and scared. We need this tool in our arsenal to help prevent the bad people from hurting us. We would never use it against our own. After all, we don't look like Nixon, we look like Alfred E. Neumann. We're harmless. With the recent series of revelations about secrets and spies, we all know the ending of that story (fairy tale).
Here's the latest installment of "Secrets and Spies":
The IRS not only wants to know if you owe them $$$, but how you vote. The Tacoma News Tribune reports that IRS tracked taxpayers' political affiliation.
No way!! Can't be true. What does the IRS have to say about this?
"The bottom line is that we have never used this information," said John Lipold, an IRS spokesman. "There are strict laws in place that forbid it."
Thank God, I was getting a little concerned. Yes, they've been tracking your party affiliation, but they aren't going to do anything with it.
Relax. As they say, "Don't worry, be happy."
If you're interested, "According to Murray’s office, the 20 states in which the IRS collected party affiliation information were Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin."
No Pennsylvania. I guess they figure if you're from Philly or Pittsburgh, your a Democrat and if you hale from the Big T, you're Red, so no need to track.
(Via AMERICAblog)
