A little late...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:41 AM | Comments (1)
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The committee is wrapping up its second round of questions.

Republicans have been trying to tease out her views on making law v. interpreting it. She sounds like Roberts in her promises of fidelity to the Constitution and a personal aversion to making law. The problem is, she can't seem to find an example of where any court has made law. If you don't think Roe for example, with it's trimester based scheme, is an act of legislation you simply aren't intellectually honest enough to admit that judicial law making exists.

Sotomayor continues to deny the plain meaning of her words over the years when it comes to her speeches and remarks.

That said, she's going to be confirmed.

CSPAN is streaming the hearings. Right now (11:30am eastern) they are in break. Tom Coburn is up next. That will be fun.

Wow, Coburn tried to get her to talk about the Roe regime prior to Casey and she whiffed. She didn't know what it was. I'm going to guess that Roberts, Alito, Thomas and many commenters here could have handled that question.

Keep in mind though... She's the Most. Qualified. Nominee. Ever.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:08 AM | Add Comment
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More information is coming out about the CIA program that never made it passed the discussion phase during the Bush administration. The CIA was finally ready to do something but it seems Obama's "No Meddling" policy now applies to terrorists.

CIA officials were proposing to activate a plan to train anti-terrorist assassination teams overseas when agency managers brought the secret program to the attention of CIA Director Leon Panetta last month, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The plan to kill top al-Qaeda leaders, which had been on the agency's back burner for much of the past eight years, was suddenly thrust into the spotlight because of proposals to initiate what one intelligence official called a "somewhat more operational phase." Shortly after learning of the plan, Panetta terminated the program and then went to Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers, who had been kept in the dark since 2001.

...The CIA declined to reveal specifics of the terminated program. But agency spokesman George Little said it was "never fully operational and never took a single terrorist off the battlefield." Since his appointment, Panetta has been "aggressively using the vast tools and tactics at our disposal -- those that actually work -- to take terrorists off the streets," Little said.

It took the CIA almost 8 years to develop a plan to target terrorists for assassination but only a day or so for Obama's CIA Director to kill it.

Boy, we really dodged a bullet with this one. Of course, by 'we' I mean al Qaeda.

Dear liberals...this kind of crap is why conservatives think you guys aren't very serious about dealing with America's enemies. Why wouldn't we want this type of capacity? We might never use it but isn't it prudent to have trained teams ready in case they are needed?

It seems when this idea first came up it was over taken by the rise of Predators and other UAVs. The problem is, terrorists may be in countries we can't just lob Hellfires around in. Even in places we were able to launch air strikes in, like Iraq and Afghanistan, concerns about civilian casualties are limiting our ability to continue those kinds of attacks.

Thanks to Obama and his national security team, we've now preemptively and unilaterally taken another option off the table.

BTW- Nancy Pelosi still hasn't provided any evidence for her charge that the CIA regularly lies to Congress. I know we aren't supposed to remind people of that but....

Posted by: DrewM at 07:23 PM | Comments (4)
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Item #1: This story is either really creepy or really touching but most likely equal parts of both.

”OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Dwayne Courtney walked to a tattoo shop to immortalize his beloved friend. Cancer claimed David Comstock four months ago. "One of the biggest things he feared in all the cancer - he didn't fear passing, he didn't fear the cancer itself - he feared being forgotten," said Courtney.”

”Comstock was cremated, and Courtney got some of the ashes. "In this tattoo, there's the ashes of David Comstock," said Courtney. With the permission of Comstock's children, tattoo artist Buddy Green mixed just a little of the ashes into the black. He said he's honored to be doing this for two old friends.

Item #2: This one needs no introduction, explanation or snark. Oddee.com merely provides us with a photo essay of things you might see in the subway. Given that all of these people in the photos are regular overnighters, your job is to match up said photos with the names of your fellow nocturnal commenters. IÂ’ll go first to get things rolling: The guy in the 2nd pic down (with the very short shorts) is obviously Maetenloch. Now itÂ’s your turn.

Item #3: Because IÂ’m just that lazy today, hereÂ’s a list from Gizmodo of 10 gadgets for an instant game room.

TonightÂ’s Overnight Thread is sponsored by the tilde: ~

Mainly because IÂ’m re-reading The Jesus Incident for the umpteenth time and thatÂ’s what I always imagine what the Nerve Runners look like.
more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 05:20 PM | Add Comment
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I remember seeing photos. Here's the video.

Jackson seems kind of mellow about the incident. At least more mellow than I'd've been.

Us Magazine is pushing this purely exploitative vid claiming it's the reason he got hooked on painkillers or something, which is exploitative in the first place so I don't see how making that silly claim helps.

It's a dead celebrity's hair catching on fire. And that's the only reason it's interesting. more...

Posted by: Ace at 04:21 PM | Add Comment
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Okay, did anyone watch it?

Link here.

I didn't love it. A bit too... um, Roger Corman-esque I guess. (I'm pretty sure it is a Roger Corman production.) All shootin' and yellin' "I'm John Dillinger, I'm immortal!"

One thing Public Enemies has all over this one (in addition to obvious stuff like the much bigger budget and much more authentic sets and locations) is that that film didn't seem nearly as episodic. It seemed to tell a story, more or less. Dillinger feels more like isolated scenes which aren't strongly connected to each other by a single story. Only the narration of Melvin Purvis even suggests a single story, and that's kind of a cheat.

The gunbattles weren't particularly well-done or bloody. I still have a half-hour to watch, so maybe they pick up. Still, I'm thinking about the slow-motion shoot-'em-ups of The Long Riders and thinking I'm not seeing anything here remotely like that.

But I still have a half-hour of it to watch, so I'll finish watching it.

Posted by: Ace at 02:58 PM | Comments (1)
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So says the Corner.

Iain Murray also mentions that this and ObamaCare represent the last expenditures of Obama's political capital. A point I've kinda-sorta been making.

Allah has the full poll Diageo/Hotline poll that I quoted earlier.

I couldn't find Obama's net approval shift -- I knew he'd gone down 9 points in approval alone, but the press release (oddly) did not mention his net shift, that is, decrease in approval plus increase in disapproval.

The full number? Bear in mind this is from one month. Or, one month and a few days.

Net Change: Minus sixteen.

His approval dropped 9 points -- 65 to 56 -- and his disapproval rose 7 points -- 31 to 38.

Certain conservative principles can't really be proven by facts or circumstances -- the pro-life position, for example, is not capable of being proven or disproven by laboratory tests.

But economic theories can sorta be proven or disproven (at least if you ignore the fact we have no "control" for the "test").

Although a segment of the population is genuinely stupid -- "unteachable," as the liberals say -- most of the public is not stupid, but slow. They learn, but they learn more slowly than you do.

They were willing to experiment with Barack Obama's socialist economic impulses. Experiment. As in "Let's run a few tests and see what gives."

The tests are indicating failure. Americans are a pretty non-ideological people, for good and for ill. It's bad that they weren't more confident in the long proud tradition of capitalistic success and were willing to gamble on a little socialism.

On the other hand, they are not wedded to socialism either. They've been taking a wait and see attitude; they've waited and they're not seeing anything except further job losses and economic stagnation and a crushing pile of debt this country will take two or three generations to work off.

Socialism is not the future in any country with a fair and open franchise and a public which has the sense to realize that socialism isn't working.

I really do think the idea has caught hold with a lot of people that Obama is too clever to beat, the public is too stupid to catch on, the media too biased to get the truth out, our own party is too cowardly to fight back, and our own future too set to change.

It's wrong. Everything can change. Everything can change in a week.

Everyone remember when the Permanent Republican Majority came crashing down?

How about the Permanent Democratic Majority 12 years before that?

I'm linking this speech from Patton which I love. As with the Nazis, Obama's capabilities have to be respected, but not over-respected to the point that he is puffed up in the mind as some sort of indomitable Aryan Superman.

Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably more so. They are not supermen.

Some people have noticed a shift in our trolls. Whereas before they were baiting in a cocky, amused what-a-laugh manner, now they're angry and spitting venom. Why?

Because before they were confident this was all going to be a cakewalk following a coronation and now they see it all slipping away, coming apart, breaking up.

You hear that? That's the sound of dreams dyin', son. They wail like banshees when they die.

They're scared and their tone reflects that. They sound as worried and angry as I was in 2006 and 2008 and we know how that went.

A year ago we laughed at Obama, and now he's Captain Invincible? What, building on his triumphant record of gaffe after gaffe and failure after failure?

I don't think so. I think he's a smooth but gutless punk who's never had to handle adversity in his life and he's already cracking under the pressure of it.

Posted by: Ace at 02:20 PM | Comments (1)
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He passed away last month. Apparently we were all a little to busy with Michael Jackson or something to notice.

Lex has an email that's gone viral on the net from someone who says he met Staff Sergeant Powers at one point. It's worth the read.

From his local newspaper story on his life and death....

The world depended on them. They depended on each other.”

That was the tagline for “Band of Brothers” – an award-winning 2001 HBO mini-series drama on the World War II experiences of Easy Company, a U.S. Army unit that fought bravely and fiercely across Europe.

But for Bristol’s Margo Johnson – daughter of Darrell “Shifty” Powers, one of the soldiers depicted in “Band of Brothers” – two more lines could be added to describe her heroic father: “The world truly admired Darrell Powers. I absolutely adored him.”

“I loved everything about my daddy,” Johnson said. “He never bragged about what he did in the war. And for a lot of years, he never even talked much about what he did – unless someone asked him about it.

“But he truly was a hero to me,” Johnson said. “Just like he’d been to the people who know him as a soldier in a [mini-series].”

Powers, a Dickenson County native, died earlier this week at age 86 following a battle with cancer. His funeral service will be held today in Clintwood.

When I was a kid, WWI vets were a small number of frail old men who served in a long ago war. It's hard to believe that now that WWII vets, my grandfather's generation who were once everywhere, are looked at that way by kids. They may never fully understand what they and we owe to that generation but 60+ years after they came home, we are still reaping the fruits of their sacrifices and victory.

Hopefully those dwindling few survivors take comfort in knowing that while the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq are worlds away from places like Normandy and Iwo Jima, their descendant are carrying the torch for them.

More: Two interesting videos more...

Posted by: DrewM at 01:59 PM | Comments (1)
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I think I got that right.

Reports say that this has to do with a robbery attempt at Union Station gone bad. (As opposed to those robbery attempts that go swimmingly, I guess.)

All on Fox.

Suspect Dead. Event over.

Posted by: Ace at 12:57 PM | Add Comment
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Pictured: "Binky" and the cybernetic death-claw

Finally-- A monkey has been given a brain implant allowing him to mind-control a powerful robotic arm.

I was just asking my friend the other day -- "When are they going to give a monkey a brain-implant allowing him to mind-control a powerful robotic arm?"

And my friend said "Shyah. Keep dreamin'."

Well. Now who's the asshole, eh?

Posted by: Ace at 12:50 PM | Comments (1)
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