I just finished reading The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin, which is mostly about the Rehnquist Court. I could not put it down ( Read more... )

super tuesday and still undecided. argh!

( Hillary cons )

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution... But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some ( Read more... )

I'm disappointed in the NYT. Their glaring bias is all over the front page: "A smaller field of candidates arrived in New Hampshire facing an upended campaign after two one-time insurgents won the Iowa caucuses." So clueless, and desperate for a self-fulfilling prophecy ( Read more... )

Last month, Joe Klein sat in on a focus group session of undecided Republican voters watching the YouTube debate. Each participant had a dial to register instant approval or disapproval of what candidates said. What he observed:
"When John McCain started talking about torture--specifically, about waterboarding--the dials plummeted again. Lower ( Read more... )

... is largely the defence of the indefensible... Villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants drive out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification... Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them ( Read more... )

Some incredible quotes attributed to James Madison, the father of the Constitution:
“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy ( Read more... )

Andrew Sullivan makes the case for Obama in The Atlantic's December cover story. A bit too personality-driven, but incisive and persuasive -- and able to pin down some of the squishy reasons why people believe his candidacy is "transformational."

Money quotes:
What does he offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective ( Read more... )

I like him more than I did just a month ago, but I'm still skeptical. In my view, he hasn't gotten past essentially being Pro-Hope, Pro-Audacity, and Pro-Being-a-Good-Person. And his deliberate skipping out on the Kyl-Lierberman vote is a major WTF-moment. When he says, "The America people and the world will always know where I stand," he's ( Read more... )