Wacko Republican Senator Cornyn calls Alito "Scalito" twice today!

Video here. Read the rest of this post...

We have a bit of a technical mystery at AMERICAblog, I'd like your help determining if someone is playing games

In the past 48 hours or so, some people have had problems accessing the blog. It seems to be dependent on where you're located, and it seems to be associated with the .org address of our site, AMERICAblog.org If you've been having any problems, please post where you are, city and state and country at least, in the thread, and maybe we can get our collective geekhood together to figure out if someone (gee, someone in the telecom industry perhaps?) is messing with access to this blog.

Having said that, this could simply be another blogger problem (what a surprise that would be).

One thing I keep hearing is that folks aren't getting updates to the blog, they're seeing posts from a few days ago as the top posts, or they're getting a blank page with the word "ok" on it.

Thoughts? Read the rest of this post...

Alito's wife cried today

Yes. Her husband joins a racist, sexist group in college, he doesn't think women should be able to control their own uterus, and his wife cries when her husband faces some pretty wimpy questioning from Democratic Senators? Then Senator Graham (R-SC) chastizes Democrats for being so vicious in their questioning. So vicious?

Oh how I wish the Democrats were vicious. The most vicious thing the Democrats did throughout the days of hearings so far was to make us listen to Joe Biden blather on in a self-absorbed coma for 20 minutes while the rest of us yelled at the TV screen for him to ask one question, any question, rather than just treat a pivotal Supreme Court nomination as just another opportunity to show off for the camera. Does anyone in this party have any balls? And they wonder why the American people don't vote for Democrats. They have yet to be given a reason to.

Yes, Mrs. Alito cried today.

And I've been crying for five years. Read the rest of this post...

Bush would have sent the Framers to Gitmo

Let's face it. George Bush would have sent the lot of them to Cuba, no questions asked. How dare they talk about freedom from tyranny and the right of a people to govern itself? In George Bush's America, our heroes are the Soviets, the communist Chinese, and Castro's Cuba - not Paul Revere, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson.

Freedom is for sissies.

It takes a Republican to so mistrust the strength of our democracy that they throw it all out the window in order to "save it."

Today Bush again reiterated his Komrad Bush speech:

"It's one thing to have a philosophical difference — and I can understand people being abhorrent about war. War is terrible," Bush said. "But one way people can help as we're coming down the pike in the 2006 elections is remember the effect that rhetoric can have on our troops in harm's way, and the effect that rhetoric can have in emboldening or weakening an enemy."

Yes, when we exercise our freedoms, the ones our soldiers are supposedly dying for over in Iraq, we actually jeopardize those freedoms and aid the enemy. In Bush-world, the only way to fight the enemy is to jettison our freedoms and destroy our society, which ironically, is what the enemy was after in the first place.

Then again, this is the man who thinks defeat is a sign that we're winning. So I'm sure he has no problem with destroying democracy in order to save it. Read the rest of this post...

Just had to share the latest on my orchid

Last Friday I shared with you the slowly forming flower bud on my paphiopedilum orchid. Well, it's starting to open up and should be fully open by Friday, knock on wood. So I just had to share another photo of it slowly opening. It's pretty cool, I think.

Just so you know what you're seeing. The top part is going to be the upper back of the flower. The two internal petals will be two big fans sticking out the right and left sides, and the bottom will be the bottom petal. Click on the link above and you'll see examples of the parents of this plant.

This was yesterday....



And this is today....

Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

We really, really need to talk. Read the rest of this post...

CNN's Blitzer again accused Democrats -- but not Republicans -- of reaching "early verdict" on Alito nomination

Media Matters is right.

During CNN's live January 11 coverage of Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Situation Room host Wolf Blitzer again accused Democrats -- but not Republicans -- of prejudging Alito's nomination. "Some Democrats are delivering an early verdict on Alito's performance," Blitzer declared, as the onscreen text read "Democrats" and "Early Judgements [sic]." Later, Blitzer suggested that Democrats were using the hearings to mount a case against Alito, rather than to assess his fitness for elevation to the Supreme Court. Blitzer asked: "Are [Democrats] looking for answers? Or for the Supreme Court nominee to stumble?" But Blitzer made no similar comments about Republicans, several of whom have showered Alito with praise and asked him fawning questions.

There isn't a single Republican on that panel who didn't walk in the door already supporting Alito simply because he's the president's nominee. The farce of having Christine Todd Whitman, the party's "moderate" face, actually introducing Alito, when Alito has already said he wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, was just the icing on the cake as to what a Potemkin hearing this really is. Read the rest of this post...

PEW asks possibly the dumbest poll question ever

What is it with these people? It's like a massive cause of stupidity has hit every reporter and every organization dealing with the issue of Bush wiretapping Americans without a warrant.

To wit, PEW's latest poll:

Reports about President Bush authorizing wiretaps of Americans suspected of having ties to terrorists has drawn far more attention than the Abramoff case. But there is not an outcry or even consensus opinion about the government's monitoring, without court permission, the phone and email communications of Americans suspected of having terrorist ties; 48% feel this is generally right while about the same number (47%) think it is generally wrong. Public attitudes on this issue are highly partisan, with 69% of Republicans saying the government actions are generally right and nearly as many Democrats (62%) saying they are generally wrong.

Ok, did you catch that? PEW's poll showed only 48% of Americans, less than half, believe that the government should, without search warrants, tap the phones of Americans suspected of having ties to terrorists.

Again, did you get that?

Americans suspected of having ties to terrorists. And we STILL only have less than 50% support tapping them without a warrant.

Now PEW actually did ask the REAL question in this debate, namely, should the government be allowed to tap Americans' phone calls, but they buried their result way down in the report. How do Americans feel about having their phones tapped? 73% oppose. Hello? Kind of an amazing result, and one that very clearly speaks to "outrage," dontchathink?

But for PEW to say that the results from just the first question - the one that includes terrorist ties - shows there isn't an outcry, well excuse me. But fewer than half of all Americans think it's okay to tap the phones, without a warrant, of people with suspected ties to terrorists? That's a heck of a big deal. I'd have thought most Americans would say "if you've got ties to terrorists, all bets are off."

I don't mean to knock PEW, but these kind of mistakes impact us all. It's nice that they asked the real question later on, but Jesus people, that's your headline, that's your outrage, 73% of the public is opposed to what these people are doing. Read the rest of this post...

Alito hearing blow up: Kennedy takes on Specter over Alito's membership in racist, sexist organization

Oh, this is good. Specter is doing his usual cover-up for Alito and the far right, and Kennedy is calling him on it.

Finally someone on the committee with some backbone.

ThinkProgress has the video and the back and forth, it's quite good. Read the rest of this post...

Christian book-seller arrested for raping his two sons

The Tennessean

The suspect is involved in the Christian book-publishing industry, according to police and numerous Web sites.

So when is Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, the American Family Association and the men at the Concerned Women for America going to apologize on behalf of their community? Will they be offering legislation to ban Christian book-sellers from having kids? Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

You may have noticed that I'm creating an AMERICAblog email update.

I'm not sure when it will officially launch, we're timing it to coincide with the launch of AMERICAblog 2.0 which is moving along nicely (probably launch that in the next few months, there's a lot of back-end stuff we're doing now to prepare). But in the meantime, if you'd like to join our email update list, I'd like to start populating it with your contact info now so that when the time comes we can use it.

You can join the list here.

You'll note that some of the info we ask for is mandatory, such as first name and city, state and country. Other info is optional. We want the info so we can target the emails as specifically as possible (perhaps do special updates to certain cities, countries, etc.)

Also, the more I know about my readers in the aggregate, the better we're able to sell ads and fund the blog. Having said that, we DO NOT sell YOUR PRIVATE INFO to anyone, nor will we lend it out. It's for us only and will be kept that way. I've run email lists since 1998 and have never sold or lent any of the info I've collected in that time, and I won't start now. I will only let advertisers know what percentage of men vs. women we have, what percentage of our readers live in the US, very general numbers like that.

Anyway, there you have it. Please do join the list if you can, I think we'll be able to find lots of fun uses for it as the year progresses and the blog continues to grow.

Thanks, JOHN Read the rest of this post...

The NSA Whistleblower Speaks Publicly: Millions potentially impacted

ABC News interviewed the NSA whistleblower, Russell Tice. Russell knows NSA -- and they sure don't want him talking. Because he knows that Bush broke the law to spy on Americans -- and not just a few:

President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite warrants.

But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used.

"That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum," Tice said.

Millions of Americans potentially affected. Oh, and I am sure that doesn't include members of the media. Right. Cause the Bush administration said that would be illegal. Read the rest of this post...

Bush administration sends Cuban refugees back to Cuba

Apparently the Cubans fleeing a communist dictatorship didnt technically land on "dry land" when they arrived in the US, so the Bush administration sent them back to the communist dictatorship where they'll probably be jailed and may not even survive, and Lord knows what will happen to their families.

Nice.

Still recognize our country? Read the rest of this post...

Bush's War on "Facts"

Even the linguists think Bush has launched a War on Facts. From USA Today:

A panel of linguists has decided the word that best reflects 2005 is "truthiness," defined as the quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts.
...
"The national argument right now is, one, who's got the truth and, two, who's got the facts," he said. "Until we can manage to get the two of them back together again, we're not going make much progress."

Maybe someone should tell the traditional media that it's historically been their job to put the two back together, huh? I'll hold my breath on that one... Read the rest of this post...

Biden got himself some press

Anyone watching Joe Biden yesterday had to be wondering what his strategy was. Maybe, it was just to get himself some press...and if so he succeeded. His buffoonery made the front page of the New York Times:

The highest ratio of words per panelist to words per nominee was that of Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, who managed to ask five questions in his 30-minute time allotment.

"I understand, Judge, I am the only one standing between you and lunch, so I'll try to make this painless," he began, with some promise.

Mr. Biden then dived into a soliloquy on Judge Alito's failure to recuse himself from cases involving the Vanguard mutual fund company, which managed the judge's investments. After 2 minutes 50 seconds - short for the senator - Mr. Biden did appear to veer toward a question, but abandoned it to cite Judge Alito's membership in a conservative Princeton alumni group. Mr. Biden discoursed on that for a moment, then interrupted himself with an aside about his son who "ended up going to that other university, the University of Pennsylvania."

The GOP Senators seem to have a clear strategy to keep Alito out of trouble and rehabilitate him if he gets in trouble. Joe Biden doesn't have a strategy. There are only 8 Democrats on the Judiciary Committee...unfortunately, Biden can't seem to think about anything but himself. Read the rest of this post...

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

The new GOP mantra, to paraphrase Barry Goldwater, lying in pursuit of the Bush extremist agenda is no vice. Read the rest of this post...

Potential GOP House Majority Leader also tied to Abramoff

I was wondering what was taking so long about this story coming up again. Blunt may not be quite as involved with Abramoff as DeLay but the connections were pretty deep and hard to miss. The GOP is so corrupt, they're going to struggle to find someone who hasn't been tarnished by scandal.

Blunt, R-Mo., wrote at least three letters helpful to Abramoff clients while collecting money from them. He swapped donations between his and DeLay's political groups, ultimately enriching the Missouri political campaign of his son Matt.

And Blunt's wife and another son, Andrew, lobby for many of the same companies that donate to the lawmaker's political efforts.

Blunt's main competitor for the House majority leader's post is Rep. John Boehner R-Ohio, chairman of the House committee that oversees education and labor.

Boehner in 1996 admitted he distributed a tobacco political action committee's campaign checks on the House floor, but said at the time he would never do it again.

Read the rest of this post...

Guilty until proven innocent - unless you are a Republican official

The IRS now assumes that people are guilty until they prove themselves innocent and are not even telling taxpayers about possible refunds just because the IRS has a hunch. Hmm. Despite their hunches, a study shows that the IRS is overwhelmingly more often wrong about the presumed guilt. Welcome to the new Soviet Union.

"It is a central tenet of American law that the government must notify an accused person of the offense it suspects he committed and must give the accused person an opportunity to present exculpatory evidence to show his innocence," Olson said in her report.

That study showed no evidence of fraud in 66 percent of the cases, and taxpayers were given a full refund. In another 14 percent of the cases, taxpayers were given a partial refund. Taxpayers got some or all of their claimed refund in 80 percent of the cases.

Nearly 75 percent of the total pool studied were low-income families claiming the earned income tax credit, designed to reduce poverty among the working poor.

"At a minimum, this procedure constitutes an extraordinary violation of fundamental taxpayer rights and fairness," she said. "In our view, it may also constitute a violation of due process of law."

Read the rest of this post...

Marion Barry tests positive for coke again

What a city I live in.

D.C. Council member Marion Barry tested positive for cocaine use in the fall in a drug test ordered by a court after he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor tax charges, according to two sources familiar with Barry's case....

Because he violated the terms of his release, Barry, 69, faces an increased risk of serving the maximum 18 months behind bars -- rather than probation -- for his failure to file tax returns for six years. He is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 8, but a federal judge could jail him or sanction him at any time.

Read the rest of this post...