Posts from — November 2005

What the Republicans are doing is cutting $35 billion from Medicare and food stamps funding, which would cut the deficit, except they are also including $70 billion in tax cuts. The net effect is to increase the deficit by $35 billion. Calling a bill that increases the deficit a “deficit reduction bill” is a lie.

Enron/Tyco accounting is not going to get the United States out of this Republican fiscal disaster. “Borrow and Spend” is the new Republican mantra for government.

John Paul Stevens is the definite outsider: a Midwesterner with an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago, and a law degree from Northwestern. He is the only garden variety “Protestant” on the Court.

Justice Ginsburg received her undergraduate degree from Cornell, and while she attended Harvard Law, she got her law degree from Columbia. She was on the DC Court of Appeals when appointed.

Justices Breyer and Souter started at Stanford and Harvard respectively, but they both then went to Magdalen College of Oxford University for second degrees before Harvard for their law degrees and were living in New England when appointed.

Undergraduate Degrees:
1 University of Chicago [Stevens]
1 Georgetown [Scalia]
1 Holy Cross [Thomas]
1 Cornell¹ [Ginsburg]
1 Princeton¹ [Alito]
2 Magdalen College of Oxford [Breyer & Souter]
2 Stanford [Breyer & Kennedy]
2 Harvard¹ [Souter & Roberts]

Law Degrees:
1 Northwestern [Stevens]
1 Columbia¹ [Ginsburg]
2 Yale¹ [Thomas & Alito]
5 Havard¹

Home on Appointment:
1 Midwest [7^th Circuit – Stevens]
1 Far West [9^th Circuit – Kennedy]
1 Middle Atlantic [3^rd Circuit – Alito]
2 New England [1^st Circuit – Breyer & Souter]
4 District of Columbia [DC Circuit]

The Supreme Court is becoming more inbred and closed. Is there no judge on the other Circuits worthy of elevation? Are there no worthy law schools outside of the Ivy League?

The loss of Justice O’Connor is the loss of a female view, the view of a Stanford law school graduate, the loss of a non-coastal Westerner, the loss of an experienced state court judge.

On the religion front the Court would have two Jews, an Episcopalian, a Protestant, and five Catholics. The religious beliefs of a Justice should have no impact on their decisions. It would be sad indeed, if that proves not to be true.

1. Ivy League.

[I Think]

A group of English Catholic conspirators including an explosives expert, Guy Fawkes, stashed 36 barrels of gunpowder in the basement of the Parliament building with the intent of blowing up the members of Parliament and King James I during the official opening of Parliament on November 5^th, 1605.

Bonfire Night is celebrated with bonfires and fireworks. Effigies of Guy Fawkes, and occasionally the Pope, are traditionally thrown on the fires. Effigies of modern politicians have made their appearances at the celebration.

Of course the BBC has a current article on the event.

As Robert Cecil was involved, I doubt anyone will ever know the truth about the plot.

…It was decided after an Islamic group requested an official student holiday for Eid-Al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. The panel also decided last week to drop student holidays for Yom Kippur and Good Friday, and designating what had been the Christmas/New Year’s break as the “Winter Holiday”.

The thing about the Florida constitution is that it mandates a policy of “all or none”, either every group gets the same privileges, or no one gets them. Given all the time lost to hurricanes, school boards can’t continue to schedule school holidays and still meet requirements, even though school starts in August in most Florida districts. The demands of the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test, No Child Left Behind, and the probability of severe hurricane seasons are making schools expand the school year. The “Summer Holiday” may become a memory from childhood in the not too distant future.

The school board is allowing excused absences for religious purposes, but with an increasingly diverse population, school boards are being forced to become more religiously neutral.

Not that they will care, but those countries in which religion and the state are closely tied might want to look back at history. I would challenge them to find a single example where the religion ultimately benefited from the association. Being amoral, politics always taints religion. It is rare indeed to find people who can deal effectively with the here and now while focused on the hereafter.

[Edit: Mind like a sieve. John at archy already caught Bill’s first screed. It starts earlier every year.]

™ ^{[Kevin Drum]}

Who’s Been Sleeping in My Chair?

Poppa Kitty

Momma Kitty

Baby Kitty

Everyone.

[Edit: Relative sizes of the crew as they take turns in the old office chair.]

Friday Ark

While probably reminded of John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration she is surely aware of the Investiture Controversy between Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. The problem being that Gregory excommunicated Henry and released Henry’s subjects from their oaths of fealty. The abrogation of oaths by Papal pronouncement was the basis of Locke’s objection to Catholicism. Such events are not erased by the passage of centuries, as they are a convenient justification for bias.

[Note – edited for clarity: I am not saying that Ms. Carol is displaying any bias, she is displaying a keen understanding of reality. These people lie.]

I particularly enjoyed: “Indict them all and let a jury sort it out”. It has everything: history, religion, snark.

There’s nothing better than an allusion to the words of one of the earliest believers in “You must destroy the village to save it”, the Abbé Arnaud-Amaury of Citeaux. During the Albigensian Crusade, at Béziers he declared “Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius” [or “Tuez-les tous, Dieu reconnaîtra les siens.”, depending on the language he used] which can be translated as “Kill them all! God will sort them out”.

Many have likened Karl to Niccolo Machiavelli. I would hope that he follows that gentleman’s path: expulsion from office and house arrest at the end of his life.

People overlook that Machiavelli wrote The Prince while in exile in an attempt to rebuild his failed career. It didn’t work.

The management at the Department of Defense is really upset about the Congress trying to add “scum” like the Reserves and National Guard to the DoD health insurance program. The costs are just out of control.

A hint for DoD: if you send people to war, they are apt to get hurt, and raise the cost of health care. If you really want to reduce the cost of health care, stop being so anxious to go to war.

Via CNN we discover a guy suing Home Depot over being stuck to a toilet seat in one of the stores.

This will probably replace that Aruba thing for Nancy Grace.

I can’t say that any of my cats reacted to it, but “your mileage may vary”.

I’ve done this myself in the military and law enforcement. Oh, you’ll occasionally have a supervisor or manager charge you, but you demonstrate in the hearing that you were following the rules, and you win. It is a mean, petty, perverse thing to do, and a hell of a lot of fun if you’re bored.

In the clear light of day, that’s what Harry Reid did yesterday: he willingly, knowingly, with malice aforethought followed the rules of the United States Senate. He wanted to talk about intelligence matters and that requires the Senate to meet in closed session. Those are the rules.

Like many “leaders”, Bill Frist was caught in open ignorance of the rules, and didn’t know how to respond. Since it only requires a simple majority to re-open the Senate, you have to wonder why Frist didn’t call the question. You have to wonder if he wasn’t sure if he could muster 51 votes from his 55 members.

If nothing else Harry Reid has given Bill Frist a homework assignment: learn the Senate rules, because I guarantee that Harry knows them, all of them.

This could lead to having to re-format your hard drive, with all of the time and aggravation involved, if you play a CD from Sony on your computer.

In comments Norbizness points to a problem for Senator Frist when he provides Andante’s funniest quote of the day.

Both Oliver Willis and TBogg note that Kate O’Beirne at the The Corner might want to re-word her statement: “The Senate showdown gives us some idea of what it would look like if the Boy Scouts tried to take on the mafia.”

Come on Kate, just because the Shrubbery nominates an Italian-American to the Supreme Court it is in extremely poor taste to compare the Republican Party to organized crime and I don’t think that everyone who is a Democrat would pass muster for the Boy Scouts, Hillary Clinton being a rather obvious example. I feel certain that, unlike the military, a significant number of Republican officials may have actually served in Scouting.