Wednesday Stuff

(And I also posted here.)

In not even two minutes, K.O. connects the dots on how a guttural life form like Allen West can be taken seriously even by teabaggers and other particularly delusional wingnuts vis-a-vis what transpired under Bushco to the present day...

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...and West is "a Homo sapien too" as the song goes, but I wouldn't give him enough credit to count for anything more than that (and I suppose I'm overdue for an '80s video also).

"Greenie" Goes For The Gold (In Avoiding Blame, That Is)

(Note: I guess it’s a shame that the Olympics ended about a month ago, or else that post title would have been more timely.)

The New York Times tells us the following (here)…

WASHINGTON — The committee examining the causes of the financial crisis heard a strong defense of the Federal Reserve from its former chairman on Wednesday as the panel began three days of hearings 0n the failure to rein in Citigroup, Fannie Mae and the subprime mortgage market.

In his testimony, an unflinching Alan Greenspan fended off a barrage of questions about the Fed’s failure to crack down on subprime mortgages and other abusive lending practices during his lengthy tenure.

He pointed out that the Fed had warned about subprime lending and low-down-payment mortgages in 1999, and again in 2001. And he argued that if the Fed had tried to slow the housing market amid a “fairly broad consensus” about encouraging homeownership, “the Congress would have clamped down on us.”

He added: “There is a lot of amnesia that’s emerging, apparently.”

If that isn’t a “pot, meet kettle” quote, I don’t know what is.

Oh, and did you know that, according to this live blogging post at HuffPo by Shahien Nasiripoour and Ryan McCarthy, Greenspan, while chastising everyone for the subprime collapse except himself (of course), also cited the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 as another reason, saying that, as a result “central planning, in one form or another, was discredited and widely displaced by competitive markets.”

I wish I were joking.

And Greenspan also said that the financial markets are “too complex for regulators,” banks have been “undercapitalized for the last 40 or 50 years,” and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, under current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, failed to conduct the kind of regulation of Citigroup that was "ideal" (probably true, I’ll admit).

Once a “Randian,” always a Randian (no blame, no accountability), huh Greenie?

Now, for the reality point of view, Paul Krugman reminds us here in 2004 that “the wizard” told us we needn’t worry about a national housing bubble, and Greenspan followed that up by saying in 2005 that “complex financial instruments” have created a “resilient” financial system.

Well, I guess that could be true, inasmuch as a house of cards is “resilient” until a stiff wind comes along.

And on Sunday, the Times published an Op-Ed by Michael J. Burry, who ran the hedge fund Scion Capital from 2000 until 2008; Burry also takes issue with Greenspan’s “no one saw this coming” defense (including the following)…

As a nation, we cannot afford to live with Mr. Greenspan’s way of thinking. The truth is, he should have seen what was coming and offered a sober, apolitical warning. Everyone would have listened; when he talked about the economy, the world hung on every single word.

Unfortunately, he did not give good advice. In February 2004, a few months before the Fed formally ended a remarkable streak of interest-rate cuts, Mr. Greenspan told Americans that they would be missing out if they failed to take advantage of cost-saving adjustable-rate mortgages. And he suggested to the banks that “American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage.”

Within a year lenders made interest-only adjustable-rate mortgages readily available to subprime borrowers. And within 18 months lenders offered subprime borrowers so-called pay-option adjustable-rate mortgages, which allowed borrowers to make partial monthly payments and have the remainder added to the loan balance (much like payments on a credit card).

…

It did not have to be this way. And at this point there is no reason to reflexively dismiss the analysis of those who foresaw the crisis. Mr. Greenspan should use his substantial intellect and unsurpassed knowledge of government to ascertain and explain exactly how he and other officials missed the boat. If the mistakes were properly outlined, that might both inform Congress’s efforts to improve financial regulation and help keep future Fed chairmen from making the same errors again.

Of course, that would have meant that Greenspan would have had to act on his belief that the markets are “too complex for regulators” and not merely accept it as some kind of a free-market truism that very nearly wrecked our economy, creating a mess from which we will be trying to extricate ourselves for years to come.

Tuesday Stuff

(And I also posted here.)

"Worst Persons" (hey, I'm not even going to take a shot at the names of these people in the UK who tried to fly a dead guy out of the country and pretend he was alive to save $$ - "Weekend at Bernie's," heh heh; Just Plain Folks Sarah Palin Dontcha Know was due to give a speech to wine and spirits wholesalers for 75 large - the problem, of course, is that spirits are forbidden by that Pentecostal religion of hers - love it that the pot growers offered her more money to speak at their little soiree; but Repug Gov. Bobby ("Don't Call Me Piyush") Jindal of Louisiana gets it tonight for allegedly telling his AG Dem Buddy Caldwell that there wouldn't be budget cuts to his department if Caldwell decided to join that bogus lawsuit against HCR by 14 of Caldwell's peers, including our own Tom Corbett of PA...mmmm, that cajun blackmail sure has an interesting odor, doesn't it? And that shot at the 2012 Repug presidential nomination continues to drift slowly, slowly away)...

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...and in light of this supposed "story," I dedicate the following to Anne Kornblut of the WaPo (let's see, a supposed controversy about the basketball game with Clark Kellogg, noted earlier, and his opening pitch for the Nats against the Phils...gee, I'm just glad we have A LITERATE, INTELLIGENT ADULT occupying An Oval Office once more, and someone with MASTERY OF THE ISSUES AT HAND ALSO).

"Goin' To The Hoop" With Obama-Rama

(A brief but admittedly tedious setup follows…please bear with me.)

Usually I have no opportunity whatsoever to partake in TV sports for a variety of reasons, though I do have an opportunity to do so from time to time on holidays involving family gatherings. Such an opportunity presented itself on Saturday before Easter, and I had the pleasure of watching the Butler Bulldogs defeat Michigan State to qualify for the Men’s NCAA Basketball championship game; later, we watched much of Duke’s win over West Virginia (it was such a shame that the team’s star player Da’Sean Butler, suffered the ACL injury – we wish him all the best).

(Of course, we now know that Duke defeated Butler last night and ended the Bulldogs’ Cinderella run for the title – congrats to everyone anyway…I should probably dislike “Coach K” and his bunch, but I really don’t.)

Returning to Saturday, though, I should note the following (and yes, I am late with this post, in case you’re wondering). Between the two games, CBS featured a filmed segment with CBS basketball analyst Clark Kellogg playing a game of “H-O-R-S-E” with President Obama (it was renamed “P-O-T-U-S” for the occasion – the requisite conservative ridicule is here). For the benefit of the uninitiated, I should point out that you have to keep making the same type of shot as your competitor. If you miss, you get a letter, and the first player to spell out the five-letter word loses.

(And by the way, though Obama won, I have a very hard time believing that a former player of Kellogg’s ability wouldn’t have beaten him if he weren’t playing the president, but it’s all show-biz anyway of course.)

Now that this setup is out of the way, I should tell you that this got me to thinking of the five “bricks,” or metaphorical bad shots, that this administration has put up over its term (here is my good progressive/liberal disclaimer: I support Obama – every time I wonder too much about him, I just say “Vice President Palin” to myself – but that doesn’t mean I can’t criticize him from time to time when I think he deserves it).

And for the purposes of this post, I’ll revert back to the way the game was originally supposed to be played.

H – As the New York Times told us yesterday (here)…

For more than 20 years, it was settled law, born of bitter experience, that the government may not eavesdrop on people in the United States without a warrant.

Until, that is, after the 9/11 attacks, when President George W. Bush ordered the National Security Agency to ignore the law. When The Times disclosed the spying in late 2005, Mr. Bush argued that the attacks changed everything: Due process and privacy were luxuries the country could no longer afford. Far too many members of Congress bought this argument. Others, afraid of being painted as soft on terror, refused to push back. In 2008, at the White House’s insistence, they expanded the government’s ability to eavesdrop without warrants.

Even that was not enough for the Bush administration, which insisted that targets of the earlier, illegal spying could not sue the government because what happened was “too secret” even to be discussed in court. The Obama administration has embraced the secrecy argument and has used it to block several cases.

Fortunately, it has not completely succeeded.

The chief judge of the Federal District Court in San Francisco, Vaughn Walker, ruled last week that the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was the law of the land for Mr. Bush and that when the government failed to get a warrant to wiretap, it broke the law. He also said that the government could not evade accountability with absurdly broad claims of state secrets.

…

Senator Obama promised repeatedly in the 2008 campaign to reverse Mr. Bush’s many abuses of power. This was one of them. President Obama should read this court ruling with chagrin and eliminate warrantless spying. It is also far past time to stop hiding behind spurious, often ludicrous, claims of national security.

And for a reminder on how we’ve achieved this sorry state, click here.

O – As reported here concerning Afghanistan…

Afghan President Hamid Karzai twice threatened to quit politics and join the Taliban if the West continued to pressure him to enact reforms, legislators said Monday.

Karzai issued the threat during a private meeting with Afghan lawmakers on the weekend. People at the meeting said they thought Karzai's comments were aimed at hardline members of parliament.

The comment is the latest in a string of outbursts that have drawn criticism from foreign backers. Last week, Karzai accused the UN and the international community of carrying out a "vast fraud" as part of a plot to deny him re-election.

White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs called the latest Karzai remarks troubling.

"On behalf of the American people, we're frustrated with the remarks," he told reporters on Monday.

The comments came to light as Karzai paid a visit to the Kandahar City area south of Kabul. It was his first visit to the volatile south in almost 15 months.

If this isn’t a clear message for us to get the hell out of the Afghan narco state and let Karzai sink or swim on his own (to say nothing of saving the lives of our people in the bargain), then I don’t know what is.

R – As TPM tells us here…

A long-awaited internal Justice Department report will essentially clear the lawyers who crafted the legal justification for the Bush Administration's torture policies, reversing the tougher findings of a draft version of the report, according to Newsweek.

The draft version of the Office of Professional Responsibility report recommended that John Yoo and Jay Bybee -- who served in the Office of Legal Counsel and are now a law professor at Berkeley and a federal appeals court judge in Nevada, respectively -- be referred to state bar associations for potential discipline for their role in writing memos that concluded torture was justified.

I realize that this came from the Justice Department of Attorney General Eric Holder and senior DoJ attorney David Margolis, but it has the imprimatur of the Obama Administration, so the president must share some measure of responsibility also.

S – As The Daily Kos tells us here…

The health care reform legislation that President Obama signed recently isn't only about insurance coverage -- there's also a renewal of $50 million per year for five years for abstinence-focused education.

Programs that receive this funding must "teach that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other associated health problems," according to the Department of Health and Human Services. To qualify, they must also teach that sex before marriage is "likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects." These are part of the "A-H definition," requirements for programs to receive abstinence funding under Title V of the Social Security Act.

…

After years of warning the Bush administration and social conservatives that abstinence-only education does not stop teens from having sex, nor does it prevent teen pregnancy, a new study by the Guttmacher Institute confirms what many have feared: that deliberately misinforming teens about sex can have serious consequences and that comprehensive sex education, in addition to the availability of contraception, is the best way to reduce teen pregnancy rates.

And why the Obama Administration apparently doesn’t recognize this is utterly beyond me.

E – As noted here…

President Barack Obama has made comprehensive energy reform a key issue of his presidency, with massive investments in clean energy, initial efforts to confront climate change, and a commitment to “ending our addiction to foreign oil.” Today, Obama announced a sweeping new offshore drilling policy, opening “vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling” for the first time. This plan would also restore the ban on drilling in Alaska’s Bristol Bay and the West Coast. White House officials “pitched the changes as ways to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil and create jobs,” the Associated Press reports. For years, however, Obama has correctly explained that new offshore drilling would do nothing to “reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil”…

The New York Times, among others, seems to favor this as a compromise of sorts with the “Drill, Baby, Drill” knuckleheads, though this has won Obama absolutely no favor with, say, Repug Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska or “The Orange One” from Ohio (here). And as noted by Daily Kos diarist Cedwyn here, the NIMBY chorus in the affected states is already tuning up.

So please, Mr. President, no more “air balls” when it comes to the big-picture problem resolution we elected you for. Maybe health care reform was a “bank shot off the glass,” if you will, and dropping into the Repug Maryland conference with the camera was a “jam,” to so speak (here). But from now until November 2012 at least, the “inside game” in the paint, as they say, is what matters, and those are the hardest points to score of all.

Monday Stuff

"We Didn't Come Here To Listen To You," huh (here)? No wonder they call it "The Granite State," as in the substance between these peoples' ears (not that we're that much better in PA, again, some of us, as noted below - scenes from a Palin/McBush hatefest in '08)...



Update 4/6/10: I think this is called I-R-O-N-Y.

...and even though they came up short against Duke tonight, congratulations to the Butler Bulldogs for an unbelievable year in men's college basketball...this is for them.

Monday Mashup (4/5/10)

In addition to being a shameless liar on the matter of Bushco and torture (here), we now know that former Number 43 flak Marc Thiessen is equally clueless on the matter of health care reform (here)…

…popular anger over the federal funding for abortion in the president’s healthcare bill will be critical to the GOP’s success in 2010—and to the prospects for repealing the legislation.

It would be easy to dismiss this nonsense as typical wingnuttia if it weren’t for the fact that it is continually allowed to fester unanswered by our corporate stenographers (Media Matters assembled a sorry litany of this stuff here).

Further, the executive order of President Obama noted here after signage of the bill into law specifies that funds “cannot be spent on abortion or abortion-related services except in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the pregnant woman is at risk.”

It bears repeating, by the way, just how sorry the status quo is for women in this country even with health care reform now enacted into law (Obama’s order extends the so-called Hyde Amendment named after a serial philandering Republican politician, now dead, which primarily affects abortion funding under Medicaid and is discriminatory on its face; and contrary to what anyone says, Hyde is not “settled law”).

And just remember that Thiessen is featured prominently on Fred Hiatt’s scribble page at the WaPo, the place where, for the most part, reasoned and informed discourse goes home to die.

John Harwood of the New York Times tells us the following here (in addition to financial reform legislation, Congress is now looking at energy legislation as well)…

Relatively low gas prices have drained away urgency, and the recession has heightened fears of economic dislocation. Republican charges that President Obama favors what they call a “cap and tax” plan that would destroy jobs while limiting carbon emissions have further damaged prospects for comprehensive energy legislation in Congress — just seven months before midterm elections.

It would have been nice if Harwood had bothered to point out that the Senate bill sponsored by Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer would create millions of clean energy jobs, as noted here (more details on that will be welcome). Also, I don’t know where Harwood is getting his information on “relatively low gas prices,” but at the Lukkoil down the street from my humble abode, gas prices have started creeping up as they always do in the spring (about $3 a gallon for regular).

And to think, Harwood accused humble blogger types such as yours truly of “taking hallucinogenic drugs.” If he thinks we can maintain our oil dependency forever, then he must be loopy and thus has no right to imply that other people aren’t in their right minds.

Finally, David Carr of The New York Times is just full of big media love for Sarah Palin, you betcha (here)…

With its tales of uplift and pluck, “Real American Stories” trades in the kind of easy sentimentality that provokes eye rolls among those of us who work in media while quickening the pulse and patriotic ardor of almost everyone else. At the beginning of the show, Ms. Palin promised that it would “reaffirm our pioneering spirit and unmatched generosity, here and around the world.”

And so it did, with two million people tuning in. It featured a young man with cerebral palsy who was inspired to walk by the love of a dog, a millionaire who financed the college educations of legions of underprivileged youngsters, and a soldier who died to save his brothers in arms.

Far be it for me to cast aspersions on the sacrifices of others, so I won’t do so here. Instead, I’ll just link to this post from Jed Lewison at The Daily Kos for “the rest of the story,” as somebody used to say.

And in conclusion, Carr tells us this…

During the 2008 campaign, she was accused by the staff of Senator John McCain of running her own show and going off message. Then she took their disregard and made a book title out of it. “Going Rogue” is just one more example of how her inability or unwillingness to connect with the establishment leaders gives her credibility elsewhere. That’s a skill that works every bit as well on television as on the stump.

Last week, she returned to Senator McCain’s side to help in his re-election bid. As she bounded across the stage in Arizona and Cindy McCain struggled to maintain her frozen smile, even people who can’t stand her politics must have laughed.

Lord knows I am not a fan of John W. and Mrs. McBush (especially in light of this), and the former Cindy Lou Hensley could buy and sell over a lot of people I know many times over, including me, but it should be noted that she has advocated for people suffering from migraines, since she is afflicted with that herself; as noted here, she has attempted to secure more research funding and generally raised awareness about this condition (you could argue that she might not have done any of this unless the matter were personal to her, but that aside, I think she should receive credit simply for doing the right thing).

And that, “frozen smile” and all, automatically puts her a peg above Sarah Palin in my book, who has “raised awareness” about herself, her family, and absolutely no one or nothing else.

Happy Easter 2010

May you all have a happy and blessed Easter. If you don't observe anything, may you have a happy and blessed long weekend.

Friday Stuff

Good for Ed Rendell to encourage everyone to play nice - all any of us can do is try...

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..."Worst Persons" (Erick Erickson actually doesn't spew profanity and conjure up images of bestiality when he says that there's no authority that says he has to fill out the census - wrong, and more on Erickson shortly; Flush Limbore actually says that he isn't responsible for trying to link President Obama to a certain Austrian former postcard painter with a funny mustache - uh, no; but Jim "High And Tight" Bunning and Crazy Tom Coburn share the honors tonight for holding up relief for victims of flooding...stand up and take a bow, you red state numbskulls who voted for these two clowns)...

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...Rachel Maddow talks here with Thurbert Baker, a Georgia gubernatorial candidate and the state's attorney general, who has enough sense to avoid that ridiculous lawsuit over health care reform unlike 14 of his peers (and of course, Baker is meeting with the requisite Repug umbrage for it)...

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Update 4/14/10: God, Perdue is an idiot (here).

...and just in time for the opening of the 2010 Major League Baseball season, it looks like the Boston Red Sox have one hell of an exciting new promotion (don't tell Ron Paul, or he may think they're serious)...


Red Sox Announce Plans To Return Fenway To Original 1912 Conditions

...and it's time to check in with Jon Stewart (and once more, to quote Steve Benen, "This is CNN?" - We'll have to "leave it there.")...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
CNN Hires Erick Erickson
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

...and I know Good Friday is perhaps the darkest day on the Catholic liturgical calendar, just as Easter is a day of rejoicing, so, since I don't expect to be doing much posting this Sunday, I thought I'd offer this little number which, moodwise, is about halfway between the two (Jackson Browne covered this way back when also).

Thursday Stuff

(Posting is questionable for tomorrow, by the way.)

Thus does the murderer Scott Roeder, avowedly "pro life," now become a member of our penal system, granted the benefit of remaining days on earth that he denied to Dr. George Tiller - let us hope and pray that no one else ever follows in Roeder's footsteps, though, if past is prologue...



...and speaking of crazy, Sean Hannity calls the tea party numbskulls "Tim McVeigh wannabes," no doubt offering encouragement to the next nut case with a gun. And he's serious...



...you mean, "wannabes" responsible for stuff like this, Sean (hat tip to The Daily Kos - God, this is appalling even for Hannity)...

Update 4/2/10: Nope, no connection at all (here)...

..."Worst Persons" (More "Bolshevik," if you will, from Dick Morris, complaining that protesters are featured at appearances by Sarah Palin or Mann Coulter, or something - like that extra snarky dig at the end, by the way; Flush Limbore turns out to be merely "uninformed" - yeah, that's the ticket - as to whether or not children with pre-existing conditions will be covered under health care reform; but Blanche Lincoln gets the nod here for something that really tears it and is utterly despicable, running some cutesy little TV ad where she pretends to be some kind of Cokie and Steve Roberts-approved "sensible centrist" opposing health care reform, then running a radio ad that, ahem, sounds as if it's catering to a particular racial demographic in which she claims she "stood with" Obama on health care reform - to do what you can to begin her forced retirement from public life, click here)...

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...and I'm glad to see she's back with a hit - she was huge in the '80s, and it looks like she hasn't aged a day.

Thursday Mashup (4/1/10)

(And I also posted here.)

1) Bob oh boy, former Laura Bush employee Andrew Malcolm can barely contain himself over the following (here)…

Turns out the Democratic Congress' passage of the Democratic healthcare legislation signed last week by Democratic President Obama is so wildly popular that a new Gallup Poll finds for the first time this survey cycle registered American voters now prefer that a Republican represent their district.

The new survey of the generic congressional ballot, taken after the massive healthcare bill's partisan votes last month and just released overnight, finds 47% say they'd like a Republican representative and 44% prefer a Democrat.

Wow, looks like Repugs are favored by a whopping three percent here, boys and girls (basically, we’re within the statistical margin for error – and by the way, the main reason I’m even bothering to link to Malcolm at all on this is so everyone can see the utterly tasteless cartoon that accompanies his post).

I’ll tell you what – here is more on the poll Malcolm is referring to. The trend lines show a narrow crossover and only a slight variation of what has been in place already for the past few months (slight Dem edge here, slight Repug edge there…).

So what have we learned, exactly? That the fall elections will turn on whichever base is more energized? That independent voters may be trending back and forth between the two parties for a little while? That the teabaggers will return in force this summer (just like the mosquitoes) for more town hall nonsense? That, as David Corn of The Nation said weeks ago, nobody controls “the narrative”?

In other words, a bunch of stuff we already know.

Meanwhile, here is another Gallup Poll (with USA Today) showing that “By 49%-40% those surveyed say it was ‘a good thing’ rather than a bad one that Congress passed the (health care reform) bill.”

Good thing for Malcolm that, under the law, no one can be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition any more. If pundit wankery qualified and HCR never became law, Malcolm might never get coverage again.

2) Over at the Murdoch Street Journal, Mary Anastasia O’Grady opines as follows (here)…

Last year, the U.S. tried to force the reinstatement of deposed president Manuel Zelaya (in Honduras). When that failed and Team Obama was looking like the Keystone Cops, it sent a delegation to Tegucigalpa to negotiate a compromise.

Participants in those talks say Dan Restrepo, senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council, let slip that the U.S. interest had to do with American politics. The Republicans, he said, were using the administration's support for Mr. Zelaya, an ally of Venezuelan Hugo Chávez, against the Democrats. It's not going to work, Mr. Restrepo is said to have informed the other negotiators, because "we have the power" and would be keeping it for a long time.

It can't have been comforting for Hondurans to learn that while their country was living a monumental crisis, fueled by U.S. policy, Mr. Restrepo's concern was his party's power. For the record, an NSC spokesman says "Mr. Restrepo didn't say that." But my sources are more plausible considering what has transpired since.

O’Grady then goes on to cite any effort to allow Zelaya to return to Honduras as some of “bullying” by Number 44 in the region, or something, made manifest according to O’Grady by references to U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens as “the proconsul”- funny, but I don’t recall O’Grady or any other neocon being upset when this guy held that title in Iraq soon after the invasion.

I’m not an expert on Honduran affairs, but I have to wonder why Zelaya would do such a thing when, according to that country’s minister of security, he could be arrested. But when it comes to U.S. political influence in that region, the following should be noted (here)…

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., will defy President Obama by meeting with de facto Honduran president Roberto Micheletti.

"No U.S. Senator has yet been to Honduras to assess facts of crisis. @JohnKerry & Obama admin using bullying tactics to hide truth," DeMint wrote on his Twitter.

The meeting goes against the administration's policy of isolating Micheletti's government, which seized control from elected president Manuel Zelaya on June 28th.

No word from O’Grady on whether or not DeMint’s boneheaded (and possibly treasonous) decision to ignore a presidential directive is “good for U.S. national security interests.”

3) And finally, today is the 60^th birthday of Supreme Court Justice “Strip-Search Sammy” Alito. With that in mind, Wikipedia tells us here that it doesn’t consider Alito quite as conservative as Antonin Scalia based on some of his rulings and opinions since he was confirmed, which to me is like saying Bill O’Reilly isn’t quite as much of a frothing nut job as Glenn Beck.

Also, Glenn Greenwald contrasts Alito with Sonia Sotomayor over the “empathy” question, which of course was big during the Sotomayor hearings, and harks back to some of Alito’s lower court rulings that were overturned by The Supremes (here).

And how can we forget Alito’s mouthing of “not true” when Obama criticized The Supremes over the Citizens United ruling (here)? I have to admit that I really didn’t have that big of a problem with it; I mean, I definitely believe Alito and the conservative majority were in the wrong, but I can’t blame Alito for an instinctive reaction (at least he didn’t stand up and yell, “You Lie!”).

This post, though, provides a cautionary reminder of what Alito could yet do from his perch atop “the show.”  As a member of the conservative block of the High Court of Hangin’ Judge JR, we can rest assured that no civil liberty will be beyond the reach of this bunch for the next 20 years or so while they endeavor to create case law at every opportunity that comports with their forever-twisted worldview.