I am having difficulty comprehending how the meager facts here point to such a conclusion, but hell, I'll play.

It does look exceptionally likely that Justice Scalia is writing the principal opinion for the Court in Heller – the D.C. guns case. That is the only opinion remaining from the sitting and he is the only member of the Court not to have written a majority opinion from the sitting.

So? If he's in the minority, he doesn't get to write a majority opinion, even if his considerable talents have been underutilized by the liberal Kennedy Court (let's call it what it is) thusfar.

Allah asks:

Why would Roberts, whoÂ’s presumably in the majority here, assign an opinion this momentous to Scalia instead of to himself? Is it just an act of deference on his part to a justice who may care more about this issue than he does? Is he trying to leverage ScaliaÂ’s rhetorical skills, knowing that this is going to be pored over like few other opinions in the last 10 years?

It's routine for the chief justice to assign opinions to other judges. It doesn't mean anything, necessarily, thought it might mean a little. That alte kacher Stevens was in the majority for the Boumediene decision, and, as senior justice in the majority, had the prerogative of assigning the opinion to anyone in the majority, including himself. He chose Kennedy, which doesn't really mean much. Tactically, I guess, he assigned it to the closest thing to a conservative so that liberals could (as they like to) say, "Even conservative Justice Kennedy agrees, and he wrote the opinion!" Which is like saying "Even conservative Andrew Sullivan wants to have Barack Obama's babies."

Roberts is supposed to spread the work around, and also assign cases to the justice he thinks would do the best job at the opinion. I don't think there's much question that Scalia is among the most talented, trenchant, and logical of opinion-writers. If there's a particular reason for assigning it to Scalia, it's because you know the sort of opinion Scalia's going to write: Punchy, direct, and forceful. Scalia is also a past-master at his own theory of jurisprudence -- which involves deciphering, based on history, not just what the words of the Constitution may mean but what they did commonly mean back in 1789-ish, which is the whole shebang of this particular decision.

When you want an opinion explaining how "contemporaneous norms" of jursiprudence, shaped by the authority of European courts and our "evolving" conceptions of the fairness and equality, actually explain what Americans meant when drafting their Constitution back in the eighteenth century, you assign an opinion to Anthony Kennedy. When you want an opinion to explore what people actually intended and believed they were writing in the eighteenth century, you assign an opinion to Scalia.

An unrelated anecdote: Chief Justice Warren Burger frequently found himself in the minority in the liberal-dominated Brennan/Marshall court. So he often changed his vote to vote with the liberal majority, and then, having now grabbed the prerogative of assigning the opinion writing to any judge, assigned the opinion to himself. And then, while technically holding as the majority wished, both in terms of opinion and actual result, he attempted through his writing to minimize the decision to the extent possible so that it was more limited than the liberal majority desired. He also stuck in word choices designed to undermine the whole opinion.

That tactic didn't always work, because the liberals would group together to form a majority concurrence of five or more justices which would basically say, "We go far beyond what is announced in the supposedly-controlling main opinion, and since we have five votes for this expansive liberal opinion, this shit right here is the real majority opinion; ignore that other one."

Still, he tried.

Idiot liberal law clerks were fond of asking "Is Burger stupid or evil?" Which is a great compliment coming from such soft-headed dweebs.

Correction: I started this post off by saying I didn't think Roberts' assignment of the opinion to Scalia meant much at all (assuming he's so assigned it). In the process of writing I figured out, Hey, it actually does mean something, probably.

Posted by: Ace at 12:23 PM | Comments (33)
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Same problem as Hillary, though three times as severe: The guy has no actual accomplishments, except, I guess, for having managed to have been born mixed-race and good-looking.

And so he follows Hillary down that sniper-infested Kosovo hill:

Barack Obama released his first general election ad on Friday...

About 46 seconds into the ad, we are told that Obama “passed laws” that “extended healthcare for wounded troops who’d been neglected,” and in the usual manner of these political commercials we are given a little citation at the bottom. The citation reads “Public Law 110-181 1/28/08”. That law is the only federal legislation cited in the ad — the other two items mentioned were from the Illinois legislature and referred to other issues raised in the ad.

Public Law 110-181 was the 2008 defense authorization bill. It passed the Senate by 91 to 3 in January, with six Senators not voting. Among those six absentees was Barack Obama. So he cites a bill he didnÂ’t even vote for. Did he contribute to it in some way that might be reasonably referred to as extending healthcare for wounded troops whoÂ’d been neglected? It certainly doesnÂ’t seem that way, as even Obama supporters at the Daily Kos discovered when they tried to answer some of the bloggers who pointed to ObamaÂ’s citation of the bill. They found that Obama had tried to insert an amendment that had to do with screenings for service members returning from deployments, and one that would ease the discharge of service members found to have personality disorders, but neither amendment passed. Another part of the bill, calling for inspector general reports about hospital facilities, had come from a different bill Obama had sponsored.

Next up: Obama points to his eight years as First Lady to Bill Clinton as having given him the experience to lead.

Posted by: Ace at 11:36 AM | Comments (41)
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Lame duck surprise? more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:27 AM | Comments (25)
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"No," the campaign says tersely when asked if they'll be using their mystifyingly stupid and presumptuous Obamadential Seal.

Yes we won't, I guess.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:54 AM | Comments (57)
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I'm 90% sure (but only 90%) that this is a spoof. The website has a lot of "links" that don't link to anything and it just seems too ridiculous to be real. If you're into this sort of thing, observe the Gay Hobo Porno Content Warning before proceeding.

Here's the sort of thing you're going to see: a link to what appears to be an associated site, "Hobofoot," which specializes in, um, not just gay hobo fetish pictures, but gay hobo foot fetish pictures. Basically naked old bearded hobos with their feet stuck right up in the camera's grill.

The ad-text reads:

Can't be real, right? The site doesn't even include a recipe list.

Thanks to kat/lou.

Posted by: Ace at 10:49 AM | Comments (18)
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Gallieo chuckled darkly.

James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech (pdf) to the US Congress - in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming - to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the "perfect storm" of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable.

Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.

In an interview with the Guardian he said: "When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that's a crime."

Climate Audit attempts to make sense of the adjustments Hansen is forever making to the raw data to get the numbers he releases to the public. Hansen apparently refuses to release his code and protocols so that other people can check out exactly why he's raising the observed temperature at this station or that (science!), so Climate Audit is apparently forced to attempt to reverse-engineer the code based on a comparison of the actual data to the reported data.

Content warning: Unless you're into computer code, those posts won't make a lot of sense, and Climate Audit isn't really able to draw many conclusions yet, except Hansen's code is an absolute mess and doesn't seem to really make sense. Hopefully Climate Audit will figure it out soon and make it understandable for the rest of us.

Thanks to Arthur and Chad.

Posted by: Ace at 10:40 AM | Comments (41)
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Amazing miniature city in Frenchman's back yard.

(c) by The Sun

Make sure you hit the slideshow. The nighttime shot of the Mini City of Lights is pretty cool.

Thanks to blacksheep.

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (27)
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Some call it a victory, others ignore it entirely because it doesnÂ’t fit The Narrative. Either way, it's a big deal.

"The handover of Anbar is expected to take place in the next 10 days," Lieutenant David Russell told AFP, declining to provide an exact date.

Anbar would be the tenth of Iraq's 18 provinces to be handed back to Iraqi forces by the US-led coalition amid a push to transfer security control of the entire country back to Baghdad.

Anbar province in western Iraq, the country's largest, was the epicentre of a brutal Sunni Arab-led fight against the US military after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003.
In the early years of the insurgency, US forces fought raging battles in the province, especially in the capital Ramadi and the nearby city of Fallujah.

Just 20 months ago, people were writing Anbar off as lost.

This victory didnÂ’t come cheap or easy. A lot of good men and women worked very hard to make it happen and many did not live to see this day.

For a great rundown on how weÂ’ve come to this point, check out John Matel's blog. Matel is the head of the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Anbar and he's seen the changes there first hand.

The U.S., CF and Iraqi accomplishment is astonishing, especially when you consider the near-death experiences of 2006. The Middle East is more secure w/o the murderous Saddam Hussein in power and it is immensely better off than it would have been had we failed in 2006. I believe this will be seen by future historians as a paradigm shifting event. For awhile many people feared that the initiative had passed to the bad guys or at least to the forces of chaos. The apparent disintegration of our position in 2005/6 seemed to confirm that impression. It was never as bad as it seemed or as bad as it was portrayed in the media, but the trend was unmistakable.

Today we have come out of the darkness into a new morning. It is still a little too dark to see clearly all the features and it is still full of challenge and fraught with dangers but also full of opportunities. For the last generation and arguably since the end of World War I or the Sykes-Picot accord, this region has been unstable and dangerous. Maybe we can help make the future better than the past.

You might remember Matel from last yearÂ’s dust up when the Department of State was having a tough time getting volunteers to serve in Iraq. While some were saying going to Iraq was akin to a death sentence, Matel was telling his colleagues to suck it up and get to work. Read his whole post (and blog archives) for a first hand perspective on how victory was achieved.

(h/t The Campaign Spot for the original AFP story)

Posted by: DrewM at 10:09 AM | Comments (12)
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Just another leftie hoax.

'Lost' Amazon tribe a publicity stunt

The man behind photos of warriors from an "undiscovered" Amazon tribe that were beamed around the world has admitted it was a publicity stunt aimed at raising awareness of logging. Indigenous tribes expert, José Carlos Meirelles, said the tribe had been known of since 1910, and had been photographed to prove that they still existed in an area endangered by logging, The Guardian reported.

Posted by: Open Blog at 09:43 AM | Comments (36)
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McCain is giving another energy speech today and his big idea of the day is a government sponsored prize for the development of new electric car technology.

Among other ideas, he'll propose inspiring "the ingenuity and resolve of the American people by offering a $300 million prize for the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars."

Â…With that, McCain will propose leveling "the playing field for all alcohol fuels that break the monopoly of gasoline" and issue a "Clean Car Challenge" -- a $5,000 tax credit for each and every customer who buys a zero-emission vehicle.

Wow, government sponsored prizes and tax credits. Thanks Mav!

One of the most consistent complaints we hear against drilling is it will take years to impact the price (of course, that always ignores the incontinent truth that if we had started drilling years ago, it would be impacting the price of gas right now.) yet thereÂ’s this fetish for mythical new technologies that proponents seems to think will spring forward any second now. Yep, any second now. All thatÂ’s needed is some government money and a few mandates. WasnÂ’t that the argument we heard for ethanol 30 years ago? Look how well thatÂ’s worked out.

Despite the hopes and dreams of many people, oil and gasoline as we know it isnÂ’t going anywhere for a good long time, so letÂ’s go find more. Hell, itÂ’s even politically popular.

UPDATE: Here are some longer excerpts. Sadly (or predictably), they only make things worse.

McCain talks a lot about the central role of government in forcing a change in the kinds of cars we drive.

He talks about how auto makers ignore fuel standards because “the penalties are too small to encourage innovation”. Hey Mav, have you ever considered automakers are simply making the kinds of cars people want to buy? Why exactly should the government be penalizing them for that?

And the hubris of thinking that "the ingenuity and resolve of the American people” will be inspired by some government sponsored contest. Where the hell does he think the that $300 million is going to come from? Here’s a hint…that money he wants to pass out comes from the government taxing people who show ingenuity and resolve every damn day keeping the American economy working and strong.

ItÂ’s really too bad the Republicans took a pass on nominating a candidate for President this year.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:04 AM | Comments (124)
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