"Solsbury Hill" - Peter Gabriel
I strongly recommend the video for the sheer pleasure of the performance. Men having fun and not worrying about being cool.
- Impending Signs of the Apocalypse Dept. - Maureen Dowd wrote the perfect column yesterday in response to the Village fainting couch set who criticized President Obama for pushing back at the Supreme Court. As Dowd notes, the right wing of the Court continue to act like partisan hacks, with their intellectual leader and purported great legal mind sounding like a Fox anchor, invoking the "Cornhusker Kickback" in oral argument and complaining about the burden of having to read the law in its entirety. Really, Dowd said pretty much all that I have to say on the subject. Even if Obama were the biggest disappointment to liberalism who ever lived -- and he isn't -- he needs to be reelected solely to keep any more right wing ideologues from getting on the Court. This is matter of profound, generational concern.
- Speaking of outrageous judicial behavior, I was just stunned by Judge Jerry Smith on the United States Court of Appeals confronting a Justice Department lawyer during oral argument about President Obama's criticism of the Court, using the term "Obamacare," and assigning her homework to get a three page single spaced letter specifically addressing whether the Attorney General and the Department of Justice "recognize the authority of the federal courts, through unelected judges, to strike acts of Congress or portions thereof in appropriate cases." Now I've done quite a few oral arguments in my day, but I have to admit I would have been totally floored by such a question. I would like to think that I would have responded by asking the judge to recuse himself from the case given the obviously inappropriate nature of his conduct, but you know those robes are pretty daunting some times. If Judge Smith thinks he struck a mighty blow for the legitimacy of America's courts, he is sadly mistaken.
- The always excellent Linda Greenhouse, truly one of the finest reporters of this or any other generation, lends some more light than heat to the goings on in the Supreme Court with respect to both the ACA and the recent strip search decision. It's well worth reading. Greenhouse seems to be implying that when the dust settles that the ACA is more likely to be upheld than not. Let's hope so.
- Tim Noah, whose book on income inequality will be out in a couple of weeks, has a useful corrective to those who continue to suggest that low income people bear no tax burden.
- And then there are things that just make me want to drink. God fucking help us.
What's on your minds?