More Lowlights From The Andrew Malcolm Comedy Show

The former press secretary for Laura Bush and LA Times opinionator is back to provide more blogging fodder, from here (on the matter of President Obama’s opposition to the nominations of both Hangin’ Judge JR and “Strip Search Sammy” Alito to the High Court, which Malcolm contrasts with Obama’s support for Sonia Sotomayor)…

Of additional significance is Obama's outrage over Alito's outright dismissal of some ordinary complainants' appeals without a court hearing (discovered in rulings prior to Alito’s confirmation). Which, of course, is precisely what Obama's nominee, Judge Sotomayor, did to the white firemen's appeals in the increasingly famous New Haven reverse discrimination case. Hmmm.

Uh, no.

This tells us that, in the case of Nathanson v. Medical College of Pennsylvania (1991), Alito “disagreed with the majority who concluded a woman could sue the state for allegedly failing to accommodate her disability from a car accident. His fellow judges said Alito used an overly strict legal standard in dismissing the woman's claims.”

Whereas, as noted here in the Ricci v. DeStefano case (currently being heard by the Supremes), New Haven, CT firefighter Frank Ricci claimed race discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, but he didn’t argue against the Act itself, which the city of New Haven was legally obligated to honor (again, though, I’m sure Hangin’ Judge JR and his pals will make every effort to dismantle it).

So…we have Alito dismissing a case by a woman who claimed the state would not support her disability from a car accident (owing to Alito using “an overly strict standard”) versus Sotomayor, who, by the way “joined a brief opinion rejecting Ricci's appeal and then voted to deny rehearing of his case” as opposed to dismissing it, as Malcolm claimed.

I report, you decide.

Also, here, Malcolm presents some unflattering approval numbers on other members of Obama’s cabinet and the Democratic congress based on a recent Harris poll. I’m not going to get into a pissing contest with him over his data, though I will point out that Malcolm con-vee-niently forgets to include any information on congressional Republicans (this Daily Kos poll provides that information here, with some truly unflattering figures also – if Malcolm has more favorable numbers to support his argument, let’s see them).

And by the way, Malcom, two can play the “showing pix of women in politics wearing head scarves when traveling to Muslim countries” game (see the above photo of Malcolm’s old boss).

Finally (and perhaps, worst of all), Malcolm tells us the following on the matter of Obama’s sports preferences (here)…

The new president has developed some sports creds in recent months, cheering openly for an NFL team from some nowhere Pennsylvania city in the Super Bowl and picking North Carolina to win the NCAA college basketball championship in March. He was correct in both cases.

…

Currently, the Detroit Red Wings are in the process of annihilating a team from that same NFL Pennsylvania city, despite Tuesday's outcome.

Malcolm actually dissed the city of Pittsburgh, people!

Now I’ll admit that I really couldn’t give a fig about the Stanley Cup Finals (and the Pittsburgh Penguins won last night, by the way), but it takes something between stupidity and an almost suicidal degree of chutzpah to call out the Steelers like that (definitely rooted for them over Arizona, partly because the Cardinals beat the Eagles to get to the “big show” – though, if the defense had managed to hold Larry Fitzgerald to under three touchdowns…ugh!).

And more of Malcolm’s wankery has been chronicled by Media Matters here (and for the record, I’m definitely going against the prez and rooting for Orlando; it would be truly sweet to see Jameer Nelson of St. Joe’s holding the trophy, injury or no).