Ross Douthat, in classic Claude Rains style, is "shocked, shocked" to discover the Supreme Court is an active part of the political process. Why it took Douthat this long to discover that the current conservative Court is just as political and activist as, well, all the others, is beyond me. But his "prescriptions" for the problem seem less than well thought out:

There are bipartisan ways that the Court could be reined in, and the legislative branch reinvigorated. Shugerman, Caminker and others have proposed a supermajority rule, for instance, requiring a 6-to-3 vote to overturn federal legislation. . . . Absent such constraints, the best reform would be term limits for the Justices, instead of lifetime tenure. Give them 12 years, rotated on a regular schedule, and then send them on their way.

So Douthat thinks a 6-3 decision would be less "activist" than a 5-4 decision? Why for heavens sake? (For Douthat's information, Roe was decided by a 7-2 vote. Most of the Warren Court decisions conservatives like Douthat hate had at least 7 votes.) And how term limits would help in Douthat's project is beyond me. Why would a term limited Justice be any less likely to be "activist" than a life tenured one? More . .

Via Atrios and Pufferfish, get ready for Rendition Gitmo, the video game.

A SCOTTISH firm is set to make millions from a computer game based on Guantanamo Bay. And they have brought in Moazzam Begg – one of nine British Muslims held in the jail before being released in 2005 – to help them get it right.

[More...]

While Glenn Greenwald revisits the scandalously bad work of Jeffrey Rosen regarding Judge Sotomayor, I was struck by this statement from Rosen in the NPR piece Greenwald references:

"I've always been interested in temperament because it strikes me as the most reliable predictor for judicial success," Rosen says. "It turns out that over the course of history, the most successful justices have been the more pragmatic, conciliatory people who have put the interests of the court above their ideological agendas."

(Emphasis supplied.) As his staunch defense of Chief Justice Roberts as a "moderate" (and as his severe criticism of Judge Diane Wood's appointment in 1995) attests, Jeffrey Rosen's track record with his temperament criteria has surely been proven wrong. Indeed, can he identify, defend and explain his "temperament" methodology? While Glenn's piece is valuable in debunking Rosen's nonsensical defense of himself in the Sotomayor matter, I think it is just as important to understand that when it comes to analyzing judicial nominees, Jeffrey Rosen has proven himself to be utterly incompetent. He is the legal journalism equivalent of Michael O'Hanlon. This episode will certainly hang over his every work from now on. And rightly so.

Speaking for me only

Update 2:33 pm: Live stream here and here. I've got more up at PopLeft. And the winner is: Diversity!

Top Three: Susan Boyle, Julian Smith and Diversity. Third place: Julian Smith. Second: Susan Boyle. She was totally gracious. She said, "The best won." She smiled, laughed and raised her skirt and showed some leg.

Will Susan Boyle win Britain's Got Talent? the competition is underway. You can watch live streaming here. [More...]

John Cole takes a moment to laugh at Jon Chait's absurd defense of Jeffery Rosen and The New Republic. John does a nice job of it but really, is there even a point to all this anymore? Who trusts TNR on anything anymore? Who trusts Jeffery Rosen on judicial nominees? Given his track record (consider his strident defense of John Roberts) pretty much makes him someone to use as evidence of the opposite of what he argues, do we really need to debunk Rosen now?

TNR went around the bend long ago. It will take years of actual good work before we can even consider TNR and Jeffery Rosen as having any credibility at this point.

Speaking for me only

Bob Somerby documents Chris "Tweety" Matthews' long history of sexism and misogyny. It is especially acute in what he tolerates from his guests. Somerby recounts Tweety's applauding of G. Gordon Liddy's sexist rants during the Gore campaign:

Jay Leno says goodbye to the Tonight Show after 17 years tonight. Here are some highlights from his monologue.

As you know, this is our last show after 17 years. I want to thank all the people that made it possible - Michael Jackson, Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton ...

[More...]

Eric Boehlert takes apart an outrageous AP piece on Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Read Eric for the gory details of the racism and unfairness, but I want to focus on AP's new definition of "wealthy." From the article:

There are two sides to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor: a Latina from a blue-collar family and a wealthy member of America's power elite. . . . She now earns more than $200,000 a year . . .

200,000 a year now is "wealthy" for the AP? Let's hope so. It was not always this way. Funny that when the AP discusses President Obama plan to return the tax rates for person earning over $250,000 a year to Clinton era levels, that is not considered raising taxes on the "wealthy," but on "middle class" Americans. An example:

Via Brian Beutler, in Politico, Mike Allen writes:

[T]he media's left-of-center bias is rarely more apparent than during court fights. The coverage running up to the pick was slanted heavily toward the notion of how "pragmatic" Obama's legal views are and how unlikely he was to pick a liberal.

(Emphasis supplied.) Only a right wing ideologue could write about the Media's left bias. As for court fights, the fawning over John Roberts, whose credentials on paper were incredibly inferior to Sotomayor's (Roberts had less than two years on the federal court compared to Sotomayor's 18), contrasts sharply with the Media's racist attacks on Sotomayor's "intellectual heft." Who are you kidding here Allen? At least Allen is now open in his right wing bias.

Speaking for me only

As we wrote here, the child stars of Slumdog Millionaire had their homes demolished by the Indian Government over the past month. The producers had established a trust for them, and announced today that both children will soon be in their own family homes which the Government will not be able to take away from them. The New York Times report is here. [More...]

(Former Congressman and state proseuctor Kenny Hulsof and Dale Helmig)

Don't miss America's Most Wanted on Fox this Saturday Night. Instead of trying to find a murderer, this time the show is trying to free a wrongly convicted one.

“America’s Most Wanted,” scheduled for broadcast at 8 p.m. Saturday on KQFX-TV (Fox 38), will devote an hour to the investigation and trial of Helmig, now 53, who in 1996 was convicted of murdering his mother. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The show is designed to capture bad people and put them away,” said producer Dave Bolton. “This case jumped to our attention because it looked like a huge miscarriage of justice because the bad guy who did the crime was still out there and the innocent guy was put in prison for a crime he did not commit.”

Helmig was convicted of killing his mother. The evidence against him, all circumstantial, was beyond thin. His conviction was overturned in a federal habeas petition (opinion here), but the state appealed. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated Dale's conviction and the Supreme Court denied cert. He remains in prison today, having served 12 years of a sentence to life without parole.[More...]

Digby writes:

Al Hunt just told Andrea Mitchell that Obama could have picked a "more formidable intellectual force" for the court but he threaded the political needle very well. When Andrea Mitchell went on to ask if the White House was holding a conference call later to reassure people about her intellectual abilities, Hunt said that she wasn't as bad as Alberto Gonzales.

. . . I'm sure villagers like Al Hunt, who are so willing to believe that snide backstabbing about Sotomayor's intellect despite the clear evidence to the contrary, don't believe that they are on the same page as Limbaugh, but they are.

Al Hunt is not a lawyer and is utterly unqualified to pass judgment on Sonia Sotomayor's legal and intellectual qualities. But he is not shy to provide his views on the matter. Which makes him an idiot. Or a racist. You make the call.

Speaking for me only