Rat writes:

This contradiction escaped me until it slapped me in the face:

1. Bush says we shouldn't worry about warrantless spying being illegal because the program was vetted by executive branch lawyers exercising independent judgment.

2. We shouldn't worry about Alito's arch-conservative positions as an executive branch lawyer because he was just doing his client's bidding.

And so at long last The Others were conquered and the land was taken. And great exurbs were built upon the land. But there was stirring in the land as The Others returned to till the exurbs and harvest her fruits. The Others were fruitful and multiplied. Thus unto us a mighty Wedge was born:

...at the end of the day these employer-sanction provisions [against employing illegal immigrants] are where all the meat is in the immigration debate. Quite specifically, that's where the business and cultural wings of the Republican Party part ways on the immigration topic. Boehner sides with the business wing, but doesn't seem prepared to admit that he's on their side. I imagine we'll see more intra-Republican clashes around this territory throughout 2006.

Hosannas to prophets of the Wedge -- Digby and Neiwert.

In case you haven't seen it yet, read it immediately here.

This, then, is the reality: progressive bloggers and online activists - positioned on the front lines of a cold civil war - face a thankless and daunting task: battle the Bush administration and its legions of online and offline apologists, battle the so-called "liberal"” media and its tireless weaving of pro-GOP narratives, battle the ineffectual Democratic leadership, and battle the demoralization and frustration that comes with a long, steep uphill struggle.

Which leads to an idea: do you think there'd be any use in having a periodical hardcopy compendium of the best (left) blog writing? Would this help advance the ideas or counter the winger bullshit in any way? By forcing book reviews and talk-show plugs for example, it could get the POV across in other trad media? Or maybe a weekly magazine roundup? Maybe it could work as sort of an open-source version of the GOP talking-points blast faxing?

Just spitballin'.

From Sidney Blumenthal's column in the Guardian:

"In his application to the Reagan justice department, Alito wrote that his interest in constitutional law was "motivated in large part by disagreement with Warren court decisions ... particularly in the area ... of reapportionment" - which established the principle of one person, one vote. Alito's law career has been a long effort to reverse the liberalism of the Warren supreme court.

In the Reagan justice department, he argued that the federal government had no responsibility for the "health, safety and welfare" of Americans (a view rejected by Reagan); that "the constitution does not protect the right to an abortion"; that the executive should be immune from liability for illegal domestic wiretapping; that illegal immigrants have no "fundamental rights"; that police had a right to kill an unarmed 15-year-old accused of stealing $10 (a view rejected by the supreme court and every police group that filed in the case); and that it should be legal to fire, and exclude from funded federal programmes, people with Aids, because of "fear of contagion ... reasonable or not".

Against the majority of his court and six other federal courts, he argued that federal regulation of machine guns was unconstitutional. He approved the strip search of a mother and her daughter although they were not named in a warrant, a decision denounced by fellow judge Michael Chertoff, now secretary of homeland security. And Alito backed a law requiring women to tell husbands if they want an abortion, which was overturned by the supreme court on the vote of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor."

---------

Also: did any of you see Biden's absurd schtick with the Princeton hat yesterday?

Do you think that if Biden were standing before a firing squad, he would be happy that everyone was paying attention to him? Would he babble and bloviate and soothe himself with the sound of his own voice, even as the rifles were being cocked? What will it take to make that asshole shut up? Who is worse, the maniacal demented bloodthirsty cold-blooded unscrupulous bureaucratic thug who is biding his time calmly before he gets the chance to deal out mass death from a chair on the Supreme Court, or the asshole who is happy about the vicious assassin's appointment because it allows him (the asshole) to talk for a few minutes on television as if his opinion matters?

On how many levels is this article disturbing?

I didn't even know the Israeli government was planning to lease free land to Pat Robertson so he could build a theme-park near the site where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount.

Several times today I heard the idiotic NPR commentators--apparently in an attempt to make sense of their bizarre analogy between the nominations of "moderate liberal" Ruth Bader Ginsberg and "moderate conservative" Samuel Alito (which by the way Ginsberg was suggested to Clinton by Orrin Hatch as someone Clinton could be sure to get confirmed)--make the unqualified claim that one had to acknowledge the general conservative drift of the country since the blowjob-ridden heydey of liberal decadence and excess when Ginsberg was considered an A-OK candidate (even by Orrin Hatch's standards!).

I assume when they make these claims they're referring to the "social issues" so important to the ever-swelling ranks of the values-voters and warriors-on-warriors-on-Christmas.

Well, I just looked through the archives at pollingreport.com, and here are the numbers on four of the "hottest" social issues, a decade ago and now. See for yourself if you can discern the sea-change so obvious to the librul media:

Abortion

CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll.

"Do you think abortions should be legal under any circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances?"

11/11-13/05

26 Always Legal

56 Sometimes Legal

16 Always Illegal


9/96

24 Always Legal

52 Sometimes Legal

17 Always Illegal


Same-Sex Marriage

CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll.

"Do you think marriages between homosexuals should or should not be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages?"

4/29 - 5/1/05

39 Should Be Valid

56 Should Not Be


3/96

27 Should Be Valid

68 Should Not Be


Affirmative Action

CNN/Gallup/USA Today Poll.

"Do you generally favor or oppose affirmative action programs for women and minorities?"

1/00*

58 Favor

33 Oppose


3/95

55 Favor

34 Oppose

* Most recent date for this question. A more recent 2003 question which mentions only "racial minorities" but not women has, not surprisingly, lower numbers for "favor."


The So-Called Death Penalty

ABC News/Washington Post Poll.

"Do you favor or oppose the death penalty for persons convicted of murder?"

4/21-24/05

65 Favor

29 Oppose


8/96

77 Favor

19 Oppose


That said, enthusiasm for protecting the environment and restricting gun sales seems to have waned significantly since the early 1990s. The guns numbers are obviously attributable to money spent; also the gun-loving crowd doesn't always overlap with the theocrats. I don't know what accounts for the environment numbers.

Anyone who heard it knows what I'm talking about.

Details when they post the transcript.

Update: Sorry for the error before...Jon Kyl, John Cornyn, whatever. OK, so here's what Krazy Cornyn said:

CORNYN: Judge Alito, let me tell you how desperate your opponents are to defeat your nomination. Late last Wednesday or excuse me, last Thursday, a name of a witness was listed relative to this whole issue of Concerned Alumni at Princeton that included the name of a man named Steven Dujack. Does that name familiar to you?

ALITO: Not other than from seeing a witness list.

CORNYN: Well, by the end of the day on Friday, his name was gone from the witness list of those witnesses intended to be called by the other party.

As it turned out, it was revealed that in April of 2003 that he had authored an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times entitled "Animals Suffer A Perpetual Holocaust." And in that article he wrote this, he said, "like the victims of the Holocaust, animals are rounded up, trucked hundreds of miles to the kill floor and slaughtered.

"Comparisons to the Holocaust are not only appropriate, but inescapable because whether we wish to admit it or not, cows, chickens, pigs and turkeys are capable of feeling loneliness, fear, pain, joy, and affection as we are. To those who defend the modern day Holocaust on animals by saying animals are slaughtered for food to give us sustenance, I ask: If the victims of the Holocaust had been eaten would that justify the abuse and murder?

"Did the fact that lamp shades, soaps and other useful products were made from their bodies excuse the Holocaust? No. Pain is pain."

Judge Alito, I read that to point out to you the desperation of your opponents.

I'm reminded, listening to some of these Democrats on the committee, that it's really not their fault--i.e., that they're sitting on a kangaroo committee chaired by a pompous corpse*. I mean of course (insofar as they belong to the party of professional losers) it's partly their fault--but it's more the fault of the stupid-ass thanatophilic "American people" who went (or more likely didn't go) to the voting booth.

You know, I just can't wait till the "American people" realize, after Alito is confirmed, how they've voted away their rights, voted away their environment, voted away their civil society, voted away a large chunk of their humanity.

Except, oh yeah, I forgot...they won't realize any of that because they're too fucking stupid!! Or if they do notice that "things" seem to have gotten worse, they'll attribute it to forces akin to natural phenomena, or perhaps Hollywood, or the Democrats.

* It's really just sick. As Atrios just posted:

Specter tried to claim he hadn't seen Kennedy's letter, so Kennedy introduced Specter's response to that letter into the record.

Call Arlen Specter's office and ask if this is what the senator considers to be "distinguished" behavior for a U.S. senator.

Washington DC Office
711 Hart Building
Washington, DC 20510
Tel: 202-224-4254

I have nothing to say about this latest symptom of what I'm increasingly coming to understand as America's terminal sickness of fear, bloodlust, and the fanatical desire for annihilation, but if you all want to discuss the bespectacled shit-sculpture currently being "questioned" by the "Senate," have at it.

Just thought some of you might like to wake up to this charming picture of Jan LaRue, president of Concerned Women for America.

This was taken shortly before Ms. LaRue finished her morning pack of Benson & Hedges, slapped her secretary across the face, and reached for the oxycontin in her lower desk drawer.