Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.
George Burns
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Scalia's speech
Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia delivered a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on March 14, 2005. A blog named ThreeBadFingers has transcribed the whole thing by hand. Please if you read just one thing today, make it this one. A teaser:
The very next case we announced is a case called BMW verses Bush. Not the Bush you think; this is another Bush. Mr. Bush had bought a BMW, which is a car supposedly, advertised at least as having a superb finish, baked seven times in ovens deep in the Alps, by dwarfs. And his BMW apparently had gotten scratched on the way over. They did not send it back to the Alps, they took a can of spray-paint and fixed it. And he found out about this and was furious, and he brought a lawsuit. He got his compensatory damages, a couple of hundred dollars, the difference between a car with a better paint job and a worse paint job. Plus, two million dollars against BMW for punitive damages for being a bad actor, which is absurd of course, so it must be unconstitutional. BMW appealed to my court, and my court said, “Yes, it’s unconstitutional.” In violation of, I assume, the Excessive Damages Clause of the Bill of Rights. And if excessive punitive damages are unconstitutional, why aren’t excessive compensatory damages unconstitutional? So you have a federal question when ever you get a judgment in a civil case. Well, that one the conservatives liked, because conservatives don’t like punitive damages, and the liberals gnashed their teeth.
I'm fully in favor of liberals gnashing teeth!
The NYT says there was WMD?!?
Ever since the war in Iraq began, the New York Times has been insisting there was not, and never had been, any WMD to find in Iraq. According to them, the whole WMD story was a big lie calculated to deceive Americans into supporting the effort to topple Hussein. But recently they published an article detailing the looting of a WMD site just after war started. Is this a position change?
In Slate, Christopher Hitchens does a wonderful job of tearing the grey lady a new one. Read the whole thing! Here's a sample:
My first question is this: How can it be that, on every page of every other edition for months now, the New York Times has been stating categorically that Iraq harbored no weapons of mass destruction? And there can hardly be a comedy-club third-rater or MoveOn.org activist in the entire country who hasn't stated with sarcastic certainty that the whole WMD fuss was a way of lying the American people into war. So now what? Maybe we should have taken Saddam's propaganda seriously, when his newspaper proudly described Iraq's physicists as "our nuclear mujahideen."
Coup in Syria?
Some comments on Little Green Footballs indicate that this short article is nonsense. Delicious nonsense, though...
Terri Schiavo
This article is well worth reading in its entirety. It makes a compelling case for intervention by some higher authority than Judge Greer (the sitting judge in the Terri Schiavo actions).
So how can Judge Greer ignore the opinions of so many qualified neurologists, some of whom are leaders in the field? The answer is that Michael Schiavo, his attorney George Felos, and Judge Greer already have the diagnosis they want.
Terri’s diagnosis was arrived at without the benefit of testing that most neurologists would consider standard for diagnosing PVS. One such test is MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). MRI is widely used today, even for ailments as simple as knee injuries — but Terri has never had one. Michael has repeatedly refused to consent to one. The neurologists I have spoken to have reacted with shock upon learning this fact. One such neurologist is Dr. Peter Morin. He is a researcher specializing in degenerative brain diseases, and has both an M.D. and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Boston University.
In the course of my conversation with Dr. Morin, he made reference to the standard use of MRI and PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scans to diagnose the extent of brain injuries. He seemed to assume that these had been done for Terri. I stopped him and told him that these tests have never been done for her; that Michael had refused them.
There was a moment of dead silence.
“That’s criminal,” he said, and then asked, in a tone of utter incredulity: “How can he continue as guardian? People are deliberating over this woman’s life and death and there’s been no MRI or PET?” He drew a reasonable conclusion: “These people [Michael Schiavo, George Felos, and Judge Greer] don’t want the information.”
Am-Bushed
Hat tip: Powerline.
Q Mr. President, you say you're making progress in the Social Security debate. Yet private accounts, as the centerpiece of that plan, something you first campaigned on five years ago and laid before the American people, remains, according to every measure we have, poll after poll, unpopular with a majority of Americans. So the question is, do you feel that this is a point in the debate where it's incumbent upon you, and nobody else, to lay out a plan to the American people for how you actually keep Social Security solvent for the long-term?
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Q Paul Wolfowitz, who was the -- a chief architect of one of the most unpopular wars in our history --
THE PRESIDENT: (Laughter.) That's an interesting start. (Laughter.)
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Q -- is your choice to be the President of the World Bank. What kind of signal does that send to the rest of the world?
Q Mr. President, your judicial nominees continue to run into problems on Capitol Hill. Republicans are discussing the possibility of ending the current Democratic filibuster practice against it. And Democrats yesterday, led by Minority Leader Harry Reid, went to the steps of the Capitol to say that if that goes forward, they will halt your agenda straight out. What does that say about your judicial nominees, the tone on Capitol Hill? And which is more important, judges or your agenda?
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Q Mr. President, back to Social Security, if I may. You said right at the top today that you urged members of Congress to go out and talk about the problem with their constituents.
THE PRESIDENT: About solutions to the problem.
Q But also to talk about solutions. It's that part of it I want to ask about. Aren't you asking them to do something that you really haven't been willing to do yet?
And our mainstream media wants us to believe they're neutral? Sheesh!