Cogitamus

Indispensable People

Yes, I know, the graveyards are filled with them etc., etc. 

But I am pretty convinced that the absence or incapacity of certain people at key moments can change history.

I worry that, with respect to health care reform, Ted Kennedy's illness could be one of those instances, which I find heartbreaking given his virtually lifelong devotion to the issue.   There is no doubt in my mind that a healthy Kennedy would be the driving force behind health care in the Senate.  And given his historical track record in other areas, I believe he would make this happen.  However, with him on the sidelines, our fate falls largely into the hands of the dubious Max Baucus, a man whose lack of political courage is legendary.  The Finance Committee, chaired by Baucus, has eclipsed the HELP Committee, which Kennedy chairs, in terms of shaping the legislative agenda.  It is like having a charge led by a capybara rather than a lion.    [Update - the HELP Committee today approved a health care reform bill by party line vote after approving 160 Republican sponsored amendments to the bill.  This is a classic example of being suckered -- why approve any of their amendments if you are not going to get any of their votes?  And this is the committee that I thought had more backbone.  Oy!  Not sure of the substance of the amendments, but I have a hard time believing that they enhanced the quality of the bill.] 

The Finance Committee has a 13-10 Democratic to Republican advantage -- and one of those Republicans is Olympia Snowe.  If Baucus had even a microscopic set of balls and brains (and a conscience of similar size) getting a decent plan home should be child's play.  Obama should lean on him 24/7 if necessary to get a bill through that is comparable to the House version.   If nothing else, the Dems owe this to Ted Kennedy.       

Leave Sarah Alooooooone!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Half Baked Alaska
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

In case you missed last night's Daily Show, here is the fabulous Samantha Bee explaining Sarah Palin's resignation to Jon Stewart. Priceless!

(Very well, I promise this is the last thing the Cogblog will post about Sarah Palin.*)

* Until and unless she sets forth any heretofore unexploited comedy gold, in which case it would irresponsible not to mockulate.

And Still More Self Indulgence

- Do yourself a favor and read the interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the New York Times Magazine.  I love that woman.  She manages to both make the case for the importance of women being on the Court, while rejecting an essentialist view of women.

- This may be the first and last time you'll see me do this -- but I think I understand and will defend Sarah Palin's use of the term "Department of Law" the other day.  That is, in fact, what they call the Attorney General's office in Alaska and it is apparently staffed by bears with JDs, a scary thought for me -- those discovery disputes must be a bitch.  "Objection your honor, counsel is tearing my arm off!"  (Actually the web site seems to feature a revolving cast of animals native to Alaska -- which seems slightly strange.)

- I saw "The Hurt Locker" last night and found its minimalist, cinema verite depiction of the Iraq War to be pretty incredible.  My wife, on the other hand, threatened me with divorce if I take her to one more depressing small movie.  My previous two offerings -- Wendy and Lucy, depicting the travails of a homeless young woman searching desperately for her lost dog, and Goodbye Solo, which features suicide as a main theme,  Again, all three exquisitely made movies.  In the interest of domestic harmony, I have pledged to only to see movies featuring either Hugh Grant, Ryan Reynolds, or Sandra Bullock for the rest of the year, and preferably in which all of them appear. 

- I would suggest that Obama spend a couple of hours immersing himself in the Lyndon Johnson tapes and then emulate LBJ for the next week or two and push, threaten, flatter, and cajole the Democratic caucus so we can get a meaningful health care bill through.  Everything else should be on the back burner for a while.  

- The Washington Post ombudsman actually has a good piece today regarding the Post's aborted efforts at selling itself to corporate bidders.  Not surprisingly, shameless, nihilistic whore and alleged health care reporter Ceci Connolly was to be featured at the "salon" that was to be sponsored by Kaiser Permanente.  No conflict there folks -- nothing to see, move along.

- And for the last time, (and I think I speak for 99% of liberals here), I do not give a shit how many children Sarah Palin decided to have and I don't care in the least that she opted to give birth to a child with down's syndrome, -- her choices are her own and I can't imagine being "infuriated" by them or really giving them much thought at all. No, my objection to Palin is that she would deny others the right to make their own choices in these realms -- indeed, would, if she could, compel by force of law, that women not have the right to make such decisions .                   

Serial Litigators And Their Buddies In The Supreme Court

I bet Frank Ricci has granite countertops in his kitchen, too.

This comment on this issue and the GOP as a whole deserves as wide an audience as possible (supposedly it's from a conservative):

It's not the people, it's what they represent. For all of the talk from the Right about how Obama has built a cult of personality around himself, the GOP rump has become obsessed with their celebrities. They stop being people and instead become archetypes: The Maverick, the Hockey Mom, the Beauty Queen, the Governator, the Plumber. It doesn't matter who these people actually are, it only matters that they say the right things.

It doesn't matter that Joe the Plumber isn't named Joe, isn't a Plumber, doesn't own his own business and would have received a tax cut under Obama's plan. It only matters that he play the role of the down-trodden every man who spoke "truth" to the face of power.

It doesn't matter than Sarah Palin is a vindictive, incurious buffoon who is utterly unqualified to be President. It only matters that she wink and mention tax cuts as the solution to every problem.

And it doesn't matter that that the New Haven Fire Department felt they were stuck between a rock and a hard place, that Sotomayor made her ruling based on established precedent and that a stronger argument could be made that the SCOTUS engaged in judicial activism. It only matters that Fireman Frank is the Poor White Man bullied by affirmative action.

It's obsessive. It's ignorant. It's unhealthy and it's destroying the GOP. The Party needs leaders, not action heroes. This country needs leaders who will offer 21st century solutions to 21st century problems, not ideological Paris Hilton's who are just in it for the fame.

And so we mock them as the facades they are. Maybe it's the wrong way to go about it, but then again, maybe some of you nitwits will rediscover your sense of shame.

My only quibble with it is that Paris Hilton is smarter and has a more developed sense of ethics than Sarah Palin, John McCain, Joe the Plumber or any of the other sideshow freaks the GOP keeps trotting out on the national stage.

As for Frank Ricci, if any Democrat can manage to scrounge up a spine and a desire to score some points on against the GOP's silly storylines for once, hammering Ricci on his constant litigating would be a great opportunity.  But I won't hold my breath or anything.

Saturday Musings (or enough with the housework)

I'm at that point on a Saturday where it's either coffee time or beer time.  I can't quite pull the trigger yet, although I fear that beer time may then slide into nap time, which I do not want.  Going to see "The Hurt Locker" at 7:15 and I don't want to be sleepy.

[Alright you all knew what would win out -- that Nostradamus Belgian Brown Ale, which seemed to be yelling drink me, drink me as I walked into the kitchen -- much like Larry Craig hears faint cries of suck me, suck me whenever he walks into a men's room.  But I digress.]

What a week, eh?  Or is it month.  It feels like the moon has been in crazy for weeks and that there has been a ludicrous surplus of events both cosmic and trivial.  And some that were just plain hilarious -- thank you Mark Sanford and John Ensign.   Every time I think of something to write about, something else comes along and displaces it.

- Ah, John Ensign.  I am curious at what point (and if) the MSM will run with the significant part of this story, which is the creepy religious cult to which these many powerful Republicans belong -- the so-called "C Street Christian Fellowhsip" better known as "The Family.". When I first heard about the book "The Family" I thought it might be slightly hyperbolic and paranoid.  Now I wonder if it was paranoid enough. The idea of Ensign being driven to Federal Express (of course these fuckers couldn't use the U.S. Postal Service) under Family supervision to drop off his break up letter to his mistress is at once chilling and comic. Keith Olbermann's puppet theatre of the event is priceless, although my favorite comic treatment of it was this comment at TPM:

 At least he's morally one step above me. When my sect forces me to fedex break up letter to my mistresses (it has happened a few times), I don't call. I just send it for early delivery, and guess who's there picking it up in the morning, yours truly. It may not always work out well, but as anyone cheating, make sure you know the partner's schedule.
That's my tip of the day. More to come soon.

At least I hope that was comic.

- I am now an enthusiastic Sarkozy supporter, seeing that he and I evidently share a hobby in common.  It's hard for me to believe that various right wing sites, in the wake of Sanford, Ensign, Craig, etc. were making a big deal about Obama allegedly checking out a young woman's ass.  So the fuck what if he did?  He's President -- not a saint or a dead man.  (Of course I am perhaps not the ultimate judge on these issues -- I nudged a friend of mine the other day about the attributes of a young woman walking in front of us and he advised me that she is in the class of his son -- a freshman in high school -- I presented myself later in the day for preventative detention at C Street.)

- I actually used to live on D Street on Capitol Hill in the mid-1980s, a few blocks from where these culties now reside.  I can't imagine that these cracker bastards were living there back then -- there was street crime galore, as Capitol Hill went from PCP epidemic to gentrification to crack epidemic.  Jesus, I'd take the crack heads over these guys any day of the week.

- Speaking of crack heads, our charming ex-mayor and still City Council member (and I use that term deliberately) continues to be a blight upon humanity.  Sweet Jesus, I despise Marion Barry.  He's the only person who could ever have made me vote for a Republican in my entire life.  (Many years ago I was appointed to a commission in DC that required confirmation by the City Council and Barry was the Chairman of the Committee.  He was the only Council member at the hearing and he and I got to go mano a mano for a while -- it's fair to say that he's a character.) (I saw our current mayor today at a Starbucks and he is impossibly young and impossibly thin -- the notion of him ingesting an illicit substance is preposterous -- he was very enthusiastic that me and my friends were all dressed in gym clothes and sweating -- I didn't have the heart to tell him that we fat white people just dress badly and sweat unprovoked.)

- As much as Marion Barry is an asshole, Tucker Carlson is a bigger one.  He argues that DC residents don't deserve congressional representation because we keep electing Barry.  If I had voted twice for George W. Bush, a man who presided over the collapse of the world financial system, shredded the Constitution, and destroyed America's reputation abroad, I would shut the fuck up.  Tucker and I both live in Northwest DC -- if I ever run into him, he's going to need a radical bowtieectomy when I get finished. Carlson's comments reek of racism, giving liberal MSNBC two racist commentators, Carlson and other DC Metro native(ist) Pat Buchanan.  Fuck both of these guys.       

I Got Your Fascism Right Here

It's not illegal to fly an American flag upside down.  It's not illegal to drop it in the dirt, trample on it, or even to burn it.  It's not illegal to slap it on your car or wear images of it, either.

But the police of Marinette County, WI - acting on the orders of a District Attorney, of all people - trespassed upon private property and stole a man's private possession because someone got their britches bunched up over having a flag flown upside down.

County Enforcer Sheriff "Jim Kanikula said it was not illegal to fly the flag upside down but people were upset and it was the Fourth of July.  'It is illegal to cause a disruption,' he said."  How do we know that a disruption was being caused?  Well, a bunch of sheriff's deputies went onto private property without a warrant and committed theft in broad daylight.  If you ask me, that's pretty damned disruptive.

Judge Karen Williams

Before resuming normal levels of snark, I was actually quite saddened by this story in the Washington Post today regarding the resignation of Chief Judge Karen Williams from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond due to early onset Alzheimer's disease.  Judge Williams is 54 and was the first woman to serve on this Court.  Now the the Fourth Circuit has long been noted as the most conservative of the federal circuit courts and Judge Williams, a Bush 41 appointee and Strom Thurmond protege was pretty conservative.  (The Fourth Circuit also has some of the old school southern gentility that I must confess tends to charm my northern heart -- after you argue your case, the three judges on the panel all come down and shake your hand and introduce themselves and thank you for your argument.) 

I had a difficult case in which I was asking the Fourth Circuit to overturn a district court judge (a Clinton appointee) after a three day bench trial, and I drew Judges Williams, J. Harvey Wilkinson III (also a well known conservative) and Democratic appointee, Blane Michael.  Judge Williams was extremely well prepared, fair to both sides, asked good questions, and was very courteous to me and my opponent.  Following the argument, she and I made small talk in the hallway near chambers.  She was a tall, thin, elegant woman with a charming drawl.  She knew I was driving back to D.C. and although she is only a few years older than me, left me with the maternal admonition to drive carefully.  

I know that a lot of pitched battles are fought over the federal judiciary and that there are strong feelings involved in the cases they decide.  On most of these controversial issues, I suspect that Judge Williams and I would frequently disagree.  However, I sometimes wish that everyone had a chance to see a lot of these judges on a more routine basis and see the overall caliber of the federal bench.  There are a lot of impressive people there and Judge Williams was one of them.  (Okay, the fact that I won a unanimous reversal in my case may have bolstered my opinion of her.) 

But seriously, all that you can ask as a lawyer and a litigant is that the judge who hears your case be fair, smart, and well prepared.  A nice human touch is also a big bonus.  Judge Williams had these qualities in spades.  I wish her and her family the best in these difficult days.      

Cats

Poor, deluded Amanda.  She's created this elaborate fantasy world to justify - to herself, really - the completely irrational act of owning and caring for cats.

The true argument against cats is not their utility or lack thereof.  There are times and places where cats can be quite useful; it's only in wealthy urbanized areas where cats are routinely kept from hunting vermin instead of needing to in order to survive.

No, the real argument is that cats are stupid, vicious little monsters.  They're untrainable not because they're too "cool" or "disdainful" of humans, but because their primitive little brains haven't evolved to the point where anything approaching a thought can be said to take place.

Amanda quotes Nicholas Wade saying that cats

had the wits to notice that the first human settlements were full of uncleared garbage strewn about by their slovenly inhabitants and so were overrun with rats, mice and sparrows.

"Wits?"  I suppose, in the same way that the rats, mice and sparrows had the wits to notice that human settlements were easy places to get food.  Wits in the same way that mosquitos and ticks notice that humans are good sources of blood.  Using this logic, we could praise the intelligence of the bacteria and viruses that routinely prey on humans.

What really happened is that human beings noticed how letting cats hang around reduced the vermin population, so our ancestors decided to let them stay.  Cats didn't "master their own destiny" because they're too evil, stupid and inherently lazy to accomplish such a task.

Dogs are to be praised for their wits.  Dogs are the animals that had the intelligence, foresight and self-control to master their natural impulse to view human beings as possible prey so they could reap greater benefits in the long term.  Dogs can learn any number of things and, most importantly, dogs can love. 

Plus they hunt cats.

A Song for John Ensign

"Pulled Up" - Talking Heads

Mommy, Daddy, come and look at me now
I'm a big man in a great big town
Years ago who would believe it's true
Goes to show what a little faith can do

I was complaining, I was down in the dumps
I feel so strong now 'cause you pulled me up!
Pull me up up up up up up up up

Oh my!  The right wingers are getting fucking funnier by the day.  Having nearly exhausted all yucks available from the narcissist club of Sanford and Palin, Senator John Ensign reappears on the scene for more high-larity and high-jinx.  This time with an assist from Tom Coburn, who illustrates the godly path to paying hush money.   

Ensign got his parents to pay $96,000 in hush money to his former lover Cindy Hampton, and her husband, Doug Hampton.  Even better, Ensign's parents did it in the form of individual $12,000 checks from each of them to both Hamptons and their two children so as to fall within the gift limits under federal tax law.  

Evidently, Ensign pere made a fortune investing in the Mandalay Bay casino in Las Vegas.  (Whenever I hear that name I envision Moe the bartender on the Simpsons yelling out "I'm looking for a Mandalay.")   

According to Doug Hampton, Tom Coburn urged Ensign to pay off the Hamptons, a charge Coburn denies "categorically" -- which, in DC speak, means oh fuck yeah I did that.  Coburn says he will refuse to testify in any ethics or court proceedings as he was acting as a "physician and an ordained deacon" (Coburn is a gynecologist), adding enigmatically, "y'all don't know about all the people I've counseled."  No, but we'd love to see the list. 

[The Heads performance is excellent by the way -- I saw them shortly thereafter, but inexplicably they did not play this song.] 

Defending The Union

If Steve King is so worried about Union soldiers and abolitionists not receiving their due, he could turn his attention to the myriad of statues, parks, highways, buildings, cemeteries and other monuments dedicated to honoring Confederate soldiers, slaveholders and others who profited from and defended that despicable practice.

For example, he could introduce legislation requiring that Robert E. Lee's house be burned to the ground, and that ground salted to remain forever barren, as a fitting memorial to a man whose peculiar, yet inexplicably celebrated, sense of honor required him to betray his stated oaths of service to the USA in favor of unstated and, until he had the opportunity to act according to them, unknown oaths of service to the state of Virginia once its people had declared war upon their fellow citizens.  Once this is accomplished, I have many more ideas on how we as a nation can make sure that Union soldiers and abolitionists are more highly honored than Confederate traitors.

Good News For Equality

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has filed a lawsuit against the federal government over the Feds' unconstitutional imposition of its will on matters the states themselves have reserved the right to regulate.  That is to say, Massachusetts wants to overturn the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which forces Massachusetts, among other things, to deny legally married spouses rights such as Medicaid benefits or the honor of being buried in a Massachusetts veterans' cemetary.

It's heartening to see Massachusetts - and its New England neighbors - take the lead on this issue.  This especially because of President Obama's cowardly abandonment of the LGBT community since taking office.  The fight is far from over, but America's hate-filled bigots - and every single person who opposes equal rights for same-sex couples is motivated by hatred, no matter how "nice" they seem or claim to be - know better than anyone that every instance where full equality is finally established and the world does not come to an immediate, fiery end, their arguments are exposed as the baseless hate-and-fearmongering that they are. 

Violence In Honduras And XinJiang

The Boston Globe's Big Picture has proven itself to be an utter delight in the past, with beautiful collections of photos not found anywhere else on the internet.  But Alan Taylor, the man behind the photo blog, has also done an excellent job establishing the Big Picture as an indispensable accompaniment to printed news stories.

Two recent collections are of the aftermath of the coup in Honduras and the recent violence in Xinjiang (shen-jahng) Uighur (wee-gur) Autonomous Region in western China.  In the first we can see how at best the country is now bitterly divided and extremely prone to unrest, and at worst is entering a phase in which the elites will essentially create a revolution against themselves.

As for Xinjiang, this article in the Times is the best explanation of what's been happening that I've seen.  It's hard to excerpt, but it essentially shows how clumsily vicious China's government has been to the Uighurs - trying to suppress their language, burning Uighur books, banning marriage and funeral customs.  I have heard it said by long-term foreign residents of Urumqi, whose work is not something I'm supposed to talk about (just remember that I have a theological education and long experience in churches), that Uighurs historically have not been that attached to their religion.  They're Muslim, but any sense of them identifying as such, instead of just as Uighurs, has actually been a result of the Chinese government's counterproductive religion policies. 

And with the latest riots, Bejing has been quick to characterize the Uighurs as "Muslims" because they know that many Westerners who would otherwise be critical of their actions will side with them because of their unfounded belief that Muslims are inherently unstable and violent.

Sarah Palin's personal magnetism: It is what it is

One of various inspirational refrigerator magnets
scattered around the litbrit desk

In her now-infamous resignation "speech" last Friday, Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, having exhausted the deciphering skills of supporters and reporters alike with a seemingly never-ending stream of nonsensical explanations for quitting her office mid-term, spun around and denounced the very need for explanations in the first place:

I think of the saying on my parents’ refrigerator that says “Don’t explain: your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe you anyway.”

Refrigerator magnet wisdom! Well, that explains everything. Not that you really need an explanation, mind you.

We are a nation of slogan-lapper-uppers, aren't we? Just Do It. It's the Real Thing. I'm Lovin' It.

So perhaps Governor Palin is just following a grand Madison Avenue tradition here, using the vague and universal pronoun "it" in such a way as to allow the audience themselves to fill in the begged question of "it", drawing on their own deeply-submerged wants and needs. After all, when Nike says Just Do It, the "it" is supposed to mean exercise, but the more profound message is that one should engage in whatever "it" is that strikes one's fancy, no second-guessing, no excuses. When Coca-Cola told us that "it" was the real thing, they were, at first blush, referring to the beverage in the curvy glass bottle in the print ad, but they could just as easily have been referencing the curvy model's main asset. I'm Lovin'...what exactly? The reliable sameness of the burger or the burger itself? Which is "it"?

And so "it" goes with Sarah Palin's ridiculous non-explanation explanation. The following examples of Palin invoking the usefully vague "it" are quoted directly from the governor's Website, where she's proudly posted the entire text, as it were, of her resignation speech as it appeared on the Teleprompter (and yes, you read that right: Sarah Palin actually wrote that speech ahead of time and read it to you).

But I won’t do it from the Governor’s desk.

It’s not what is best for Alaska.

it’s no more “politics as usual”

I cannot believe that there are people in this country--hell, people who supposedly went to journalism school, an endeavor that used to require basic competency in English--who seriously think that such a person is capable of being the president of the United States.

This is due, in large part, to the fact that we are a nation of superficial, looks-obsessed, slogan-lapper-uppers.

Is that not it? It is.

Also at litbrit.

Where is Palin country?

Sarah Palin's rather tortured explanations for why she just had to resign, for the good of her state and/or to protect her family, have thrown up a couple of good quiz questions. At TNR, The Plank's been pretty good at pinpointing them.

Example 1: Palin said that although "it's honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make."

Your question: from the top of your head, name just two or three of those "countless others" who resigned without finishing a term to pursue an unspecified higher calling, and were not criticized like Palin but instead deemed "honorable".

Take 2:  Palin explained that

[T]his decision comes after much consideration, and finally polling the most important people in my life - my children (where the count was unanimous ... well, in response to asking: "Want me to make a positive difference and fight for ALL our children's future from OUTSIDE the Governor's office?" It was four "yes's" and one "hell yeah!" I think much of it had to do with the kids seeing their baby brother Trig mocked by some pretty mean-spirited adults recently.)

Ignore, if you can, the obviously fair and untendentious way to query your children about their thoughts on what you should do. It's clear she gave her children a real choice to state their thoughts, no matter what those might have been. Instead, your quiz question is: who are these mean-spirited adults whom the family heard mocking Trig? How did they mock Trig, himself, exactly?

Now, Jason Zengerle offers a new "guessing game":

Assuming Palin does have future political ambitions [..], where in the Lower 48 will she make her home away from Wasilla?

Obviously, the elitist liberal coasts are out of the question; Texas is just too GWB and Phoenix too much McCain's domain; while nobody would come look her up in rural Idaho, where she was born. So where to go?

I've got two suggestions:

• Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
• Knoxville, Tennesee.

No, I'm serious. Think about it.

Britain's Anna Politkovskya?

Northern Irish human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson was murdered in 1998. "Everybody knew Nelson's life was at risk long before a bomb exploded under her car," the Guardian wrote this weekend:

"She had had many death threats, but had been refused police protection. She was murdered a week before the publication of a report into allegations that police officers had told her clients she'd soon be dead."

Now, a fourth public inquiry reveals that the intelligence services lied to the previous three. Those inquiries, which cost millions of pounds, had all been told that no intelligence files exist on Nelson. But the latest investigation found that special branch, MI5 and the security service had in fact spied on her for years. Security reports on Nelson's private and public life "accelerated" between 1994 and 1998.

By that time, the Guardian recounts, "Nelson was already a hate figure as a result of her involvement in three cases," one of which involved "a Catholic kicked to death by loyalists while RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary] officers watched".

Moreover, Nelson had by then lodged a number of formal complaints about police harassment. This made her unusual if not unique among the scores of lawyers in Northern Ireland who endured police harassment, opined Rory Phillips, counsel to the current inquiry. She took her case "to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), the UN and the US, and encourag[ed] her clients to do the same."

On 10 July 1998, the IPCC concluded that that the RUC's own inquiry into its officers' alleged death threats against Nelson was unsatisfactory. Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan, who - this new inquiry was told - had earlier described Nelson as an "immoral woman", was "incandescent" about the unprecedented rebuke.

In response, special branch had then Northern Ireland secretary Mo Mowlam sanction a warrant to install a bugging device in Nelson's property, a breach of lawyer-client confidentiality if nothing else. "In a bullish testimony, the assistant chief constable, Chris Albiston claimed that Nelson fabricated IRA alibis, worked to a paramilitary agenda, and used her position to gather evidence about RUC officers." But as Phillips notes, the RUC "provided no evidence to all this." Bottom line: special branch was spying on Nelson even as it was accused of threatening her.

In a 2003 report, Peter Cory, a retired Canadian supreme court judge, already concluded "that there was prima facie evidence of collusion." But Corey didn't even know about the warrant or the intelligence file. This new inquiry for a while seemed to challenge the existing consensus that Nelson's killers involved "veteran mid-Ulster loyalists, including people who had been British agents and a serving member of the British army". Suddenly a new theory appeared, promoted by a high-level police source: maybe it was one of Nelson's own clients, a former IRA prisoner, who did it! But the new evidence about the role of the secret services and their subsequent cover-up of it squarely puts the suspicion back on them.

Was Rosemary Nelson the British Anna Politkovskya? The security services, the new inquiry shows, treated Nelson "as an enemy of the state rather than a citizen entitled to its protection". Soon after, she was dead.

BREAKING: Exiled President Zelaya en route to Honduras

At or around 3:50 pm EST today, President Zelaya boarded a Venezuelan jet bound for Tegucigalpa. The Honduran capital appears to be in an extremely volatile state as an apparent showdown draws near; I worry that innocent, unarmed people are going to be hurt and killed, simply for protesting. I suppose it's naïve of me to hope that all this goes productively and without incident, but here's wishing for that, nonetheless:

Honduras' exiled president took off for home in a Venezuelan jet in a high-stakes attempt to return to power, even as the interim government told its military to turn away the plane.

Zelaya won wide international support after his ouster a week ago by the military, but the only prominent escort aboard his plane was the U.N. General Assembly president after Latin American leaders backed out, citing security concerns. Honduras' civil aviation director said Zelaya's plane was being redirected to El Salvador.

Several other planes carrying Latin American presidents, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States and journalists were leaving Washington separately, trailing Zelaya to see what happens in the skies over Honduras before deciding where to land.

Thousands of protesters descended on the airport in the Honduran capital in anticipation of the showdown. Police helicopters hovered overhead. Commercial flights were canceled, and outside the airport about 200 soldiers with riot shields formed a line in front of the protesters.

''The government of President (Roberto) Micheletti has ordered the armed forces and the police not to allow the entrance of any plane bringing the former leader,'' the foreign minister of the interim government, Enrique Ortez, told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Flying with Zelaya were close advisers and staff, two journalists from the Venezuela-based network Telesur, and U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, a leftist Nicaraguan priest and former foreign minister who personally condemned Zelaya's ouster as a coup d'etat.

Speaking live from the plane through Telesur, Zelaya called on the Honduran military to leave the airport free for him to land.

America Is The Greatest Nation In The History Of Awesome, And Here's Why

The Honduran Generals Have Confessed Their Guilt

This is more litbrit's area than mine, so if she is able to post on it she can feel free to delete this or something.

But I would like to invite our Honduran friends back to the CogBlog to share their thoughts on this:

The military officers who rushed deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya out of the country Sunday committed a crime but will be exonerated for saving the country from mob violence, the army's top lawyer said.

In an interview with The Miami Herald and El Salvador's elfaro.net, army attorney Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza acknowledged that top military brass made the call to forcibly remove Zelaya -- and they circumvented laws when they did it.

Zelaya broke no laws - no one has actually suggested that he did.  The accusations against him are that he was going to break a law, maybe, or try to change the laws, and anyway he was friends with Hugo Chavez, so shut up, that's why!

As digby points out, though, laws are primarily for the little people to follow, and anyway it's ok for important people to break them as long as it's for a really good reason.  The Honduran generals who removed their democratically elected president are just following in the grand tradition established by Nixon, Reagan and both Presidents Bush, after all.

And, it must be said, when it comes to preventive detention or whatever they call it now, even in the footsteps of President Obama

Free & Priceless

“This proves once again that the lesson of history is that we don’t learn the lessons of history.”

Terence Doherty
on China's grim economic future

“My friend the editor of the local paper here suggested that someone must have found her in bed with either a live moose or a dead Democrat.”

RAMA
on Sarah Palin's resignation

“The supreme irony of China today is that the Chinese Communist Party have conspired with the Chinese people, and together, this "Communist" country has somehow managed to create the very conditions that inspired Karl Marx to write the "Communist Manifesto" in the first place.”

Walkingshadow
on China's grim economic future

“[I]s it possible to disgrace the gop? they are not disgraced by the worst president in history, nor his treasonous vice president, they are not disgraced by always wrong krystol, they are not disgraced by gay bashers who are gay, family firsters who are adulterers, abstinance only-ers who have out of wedlock teenage daughters, draft dogers claiming military knowledge and the list goes on. what on earth could possibly disgrace them?”

perris
on Sarah Palin's resignation

When I'm Paying You, Keep Your Views To Yourself

It's amazing how insulated one can be from personal experience of crazy wingnut views, even in Kansas.  Not that all my friends, relatives and acquaintances are progressives; far from it.  But I was surprised and more than a little dismayed when the hygienist at my dentist's office decided, while cleaning my teeth, to engage in a nonstop litany of crazy wingnut talking points.

- She asked me if I knew very much about the Roman empire, mentioning how she had read a book about Cicero which quoted him predicting the demise of the Roman Empire because the government had started "handing out freebies to everyone, just like with America now becoming socialist." 

- She lamented what has become of California, and professed great sympathy for "poor Arnold,' who probably wishes he had never run for governor. 

- She talked about Texas - and Montana, apparently? - passing resolutions asserting their sovereignty as states and how the federal government shouldn't be able to do anything not expressly spelled out in the Constitution.

- She discussed the people moving to New Hampshire to try and establish a place outside of federal control.

- She even talked about people moving to Costa Rica "to have more freedom."

All this while cleaning my teeth, people.  My wife was proud of me for not calling my dentist into the room to demand someone not brain-damaged by exposure to the toxic effects of right-wing "thought."

The Crazy Hygienist Lady obviously expected it to be a conversation, but rather than attempting to engage her directly, I just tried to chip away at the edges.  Things like pointing out that the Roman empire actually lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 1453, so Cicero was off by around 1,500 years in his prediction of the empire's demise, that Texas was using federal money to repair its own governor's mansion, so they can hardly be considered to be all that concerned about federal interference, etc.

It's one thing to read conservative blogs or hear pundit/entertainers like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck spouting off nonsense.  It's quite another to run into someone who actually buys into all their bullshit.  No wonder it's so hard to make any progress in this country.  What should by rights be the realm of wild-eyed ranters on street corners has been mainstreamed and believed by large swaths of the population.

Cute or Mad?

You decide.

I know there are documented cases of cheetahs being successfully domesticated, but this story still strikes me as slightly nuts.

h/t naked capitalism