Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford must appear in court two days after running for a vacant congressional seat to answer a complaint that he trespassed at his ex-wife’s home, according to court documents acquired by The Associated Press on Tuesday. > more ... (0 comments)
Currently viewing the tag: "Rebuttals"
This is from a lawyer’s response to a shady law firm that is filing hundreds of copyright troll cases on behalf of a shady porn company:
“Avarice has blinded counsel of the Plaintiff from the human aspect of litigation. Whether the numbers that light up their eyes are IP addresses or dollar amounts, the agents of the Plaintiff have consistently side stepped historical barriers of ethics…”
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I always thought Mitch McConnell was overplaying his hand in the 111th Congress. By abusing the power of the filibuster to turn the Senate from a majority institution to a 60-vote one, he was able to block a lot of progress (and quite a bit of uncontroversial stuff too) and do a fair amount of damage to the enthusiasm of liberal Democrats. Which is fair enough, rules are rules and it’s not like Democrats were going to find the 67 votes needed to change filibuster rules during a session of Congress. For one thing, not all Democrats wanted to reform the filibuster, notably Chris Dodd. And Democrats tend to be more fixated on process than Republicans, who aren’t above the occasional bribe to push through something they want. (See: Nick Smith). McConnell must have figured that his bluff would never have been called, even though it would only take a majority of senators at the beginning of Congress. It looks as though he was wrong, since all returning Senate Democrats support filibuster reform. All of them. Including your squishy moderates, Ben Nelson, Joe Manchin, Claire McCaskill, all of them. And due to the quirk of allowing the Senate to modify its rules on the first day with a simple majority, it’s looking likely that Senate Democrats are going to take away the bulk of Mitch McConnell’s power going forward.
Obviously, this isn’t going to have the biggest impact now. Republicans will hold the House next year. It could make confirming a bunch of judges much easier, which is a worthwhile endeavor, but in the short term that’s all I can think of. It is, however, worth doing on its own merits. Had McConnell been a bit more judicious about using his power and struck less of a partisan tone, perhaps Ben Nelson and his ilk would not be so interested in taking a partisan stand like this during an election year. But everything I’ve read suggests that Democrats are so goddamn angry at McConnell that they can hardly think straight. Wouldn’t you be? McConnell’s recent tanking of the omnibus bill–and the hundreds of hours spent on it–might well have been the last straw. And, as Jon Chait has pointed out, working toward a bipartisan compromise on health care would have given Republicans a big hand in shaping the bill (though he is wrong on why moderates continued to follow McConnell–after a certain point, they just didn’t want to get Castled/Bennetted/Murkowskied). Speaking of Murkowski, I wonder where she stands on filibuster reform? Bipartisan backing could definitely help, and she seems in the mood to spite the Republican leadership these days.
The Democrats can and should fix the Senate. All they need is the will to do so.
(Hat tip to Balloon Juice on the filibuster article.)
On Gherald’s recent education topic, here’s Sully:
There is much truth to his criticism of the left and its approach to education, although Obama’s break from orthodoxy on teacher accountability is ignored (even Rupert Murdoch gives Obama credit on that). But Goldberg begins the passage by insisting that problems in American education are completely the fault of the left… and concludes by noting that the GOP, when it last controlled the White House and the legislature, massively increased education spending without actually improving the system. And this is offered as a defense of the Republican record on education!One general tip that I think everyone can use to great effect: never believe anything that comes out of Jonah Goldberg’s mouth (or computer). He’s a shameless hack.As for ideologically conservative follies in education, Goldberg should read up on “intelligent design,” and ponder the education systems in locales like Alabama and Mississippi, perennially among the worst performers relative to other states. But that would force hi to acknowledge and criticize the religious fanatics in the GOP base, and that he cannot and will not do – for purely political and partisan reasons.
I am really starting to enjoy the bountiful cornucopia of blog posts detailing what an overly excitable, fact-challenged fraud Megan McArdle is constantly proving herself to be.
Here’s McMegan getting really worked up about an author’s comparison of humans to bonobos:
“For example, like a lot of evolutionary biology critiques, this one leans heavily on bonobos (at least so far). Here’s the thing: humans aren’t like bonobos. And do you know how I know that we are not like bonobos? Because we’re not like bonobos. There’s no way observed human societies grew out of a species organized along the lines of a bonobo tribe.” (emphasis in original)Here’s the author’s retort:
Got that? Humans aren’t like bonobos because we’re not like bonobos. No way! So there! Case closed.How anyone continues to take McMegan seriously is beyond me.In addition to this somewhat embarassing “reasoning,” it’s pretty clear Ms. McArdle hasn’t read even the first half of the book very closely. Pages 77 and 78 contain a table listing some of the major similarities between humans and bonobos, many of them unique to these two species. Hard to imagine how she managed to miss that. In the discussion of her article, she flatly states that chimps are genetically more closely related to humans than bonobos are, which is not only just plain wrong, it’s something we explain very early in the book (along with a graph, no less, on p. 62).
Agree with our thesis or disagree with it, nobody who knows anything about primatology would argue that chimps are genetically closer to us than bonobos are (they’re equidistant) or that humans and bonobos don’t have a great deal in common—particularly in terms of our sexual behavior and anatomy. (The table appears below.)
I especially loved this bit. McMegan:
Until the Great Depression, the mortgage was a very, very different product. There was no amortization, and down-payments were often massive–half or more of a home’s value. They lasted perhaps 3 or 5 years, and were rolled over if borrowers could not meet the balloon payment. The default crisis of the 1930s resulted from the inability to roll those loans, and so the government stepped in, causing the fifteen year self-amortizing loan to proliferate. This process was especially accelerated by the VA loans that were offered to returning veterans. Eventually, the payment terms stretched out to allow more and more people to buy homes.The riposte:
This had some curious effects. As aforementioned, it was ultimately not good for banks that were restricted to the kind of boring business many commentators would like to see banks return to: loaning money to consumers and small businesses, and taking deposits.
Yes, that is exactly what banks are supposed to do. Is that boring? Are we supposed to have an exciting banking system? Did everyone enjoy the volatility in our economy over the last several years? It was certainly exciting. Financial innovation is a fallacy. Banks are supposed to be boring, stable institutions. What does she want?
What the fuck is up with McMegan recently?
For all the bitching that conservatives do about empathy and emotion, she is really just writing from her gut at this point.
Also, too: Megan McArdle’s Hack Post on Elizabeth Warren’s Scholarship
Sherrodgate appears to be tapping into the vestiges of sanity in a number of wingnuts today:
The new lie is that this film wasn’t about Sherrod, it was about the “racist NAACP audience reaction.” None other than Rich Lowry puts this to bed:I’m beginning to agree with DougJ on the potential effect of all this fooferaw:
Jonah, the problem with the audience defense made by your e-mailers is that Sherrod told her listeners this before launching into the white-farmer story:When I made that commitment [to stay in the South], I was making that commitment to black people, and to black people only. But you know God will show you things, and he’ll put things in your path so that you realize that the struggle is really about poor people.
So, the audience knew what the up-shot of the story was going to be. In a disservice to everyone, Andrew’s source clipped the video to exclude this key introduction, which would have only added about 20 seconds more in length, but an entire world in additional context.
But I’m starting to think that the overall effect of this episode may be positive. Even nuts like Jonah Golberg think Breitbart owes Sherrod an apology. I don’t think that means much as far as Goldberg himself goes—Doughy Pantload will certainly be cheering the next heavily edited tape that Breitbart produces. But when even wingers (and Goldberg’s reaction seems fairly typical) are saying things like this, it’s hard to imagine that Kaplan, the Times, etc. will continue to ask why they aren’t covering Breitbart more.Remember, the ACORN tapes were also heavily edited, but media that covered them—with the exception of the Daily Show—never offered any kind of retraction. And now, of course, ACORN is nearly defunct, partly as a result of coverage of these heavily edited tapes. I think the Sherrod kerfuffle will make it less likely that something like that happens again.
I believe that the the famed Dan Rather memos were forged by Republican operatives intent on squashing future coverage of how Bush got into the National Guard. It was an epic rat fuck and it worked brilliantly. Yesterday, the rats fucked themselves and, while the effect won’t be as great as with RATHERGATE, there will be an effect.
Breitbart obviously released the Sherrod tape as a response to the NAACP/Tea Party dust-up. It’s amazing how much heat the NAACP resolution caused.
I haven’t been following the Elena Kagan nomination or hearings much. I was, however, impressed to find out that Kagan had the balls to call out now-Chief Justice Roberts’ fantastically stupid construct, comparing justices to “umpires” and limiting their role to “call[ing] balls and strikes”, for the disingenuous twaddle that it was.
The metaphor might suggest to some people that law is a kind of robotic enterprise. That there’s a kind of automatic quality to it. That it’s easy. That we just sort of stand there, and we go “ball” and “strike” and everything is clear cut, and there’s no judgment in the process. And I do think that that’s not right, and that it’s especially not right at the Supreme Court level, where the hardest cases go.As anyone who spent a week or two in a law school ConLaw class could tell you, the last thing in the world the Supreme Court would ever do is simply call balls and strikes. The only damn reason the cases have risen to the Supreme Court is because the law or Constitution is unclear and, in most cases, different federal circuits have taken divergent positions on an issue! Right on, Ms. Kagan.
THE GRAPEVINE
