Sen Burns (R-Mont) blocks DOD nominations

Obstructionist, I would presume? Where are the up-and-down vote supporters?

Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., is blocking all civilian Pentagon's nominations until the Defense Department makes it easier for members of the military serving overseas to vote.

Burns spokesman Derek Hunter said Burns decided to place the holds "in order to pressure the bureaucracy into doing the right thing for our military men and women."

Washington case out - another astonishing loss

I have to say I'm very sad about this. Unlike Hernandez v Robles, the plurality opinion says the rational basis review is such a low standard that we should not discuss the validity of that facial rationale. I actually expected this result as I learned the case would be out today. It's too close to Hernandez, definitely affected by it. Now all hope on Lewis v Harris, the NJ case. Although I still believe we have a good chance there, the lack of action toward Hernandez and Andersen may make the Court more reluctant to grant gay couples "the same rights" as straight couples. It looks like gay right advocates are so deferential, as deferential as the Washington rational basis review, that just quietly turn to legislature. When they made an absolutely absurb court decision in Hernandez, few people stood up to criticize the legal findings, or at least try to let everyone knows what it was. The idea of "decided by the legislature" sounds good, but first the law has to pass the constitutionality test. They said so because marriage is an incentive to promote a stable family for accidental kids in NY, and now they say so because government can deprive your right as long as there is a minimum rationale, even it's not really "just and humane," and not even logical. Once they believe even gay right advocates don't deeply believe in the constitutionality of gay marriage and can easily accept the results of going to legislature, sanctity of marriage can be the next rationale for the state to strip couples' fundamental right to marriage. Don't be surprised.

Specter prepping bill to sue Bush

I haven't seen the language yet but this idea itself sounds cool. Under the current law I believe Congress has no standing on the issue, which is President's bill signing statement, which is under attack by ABA seperately.

"We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional," Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said on the Senate floor.

Although White House's denial, I think Bush wrote in the statement to the anti-torture bill that he will reserve the right if it goes to national security.

BTW, why isn't there a single Democrat heard on this? They're afraid of losing support from Specter or so?

Iowa - Nevada - New Hampshire - South Colorina

So is recommended as the new Democratic primaries.

A Democratic rules panel on Saturday recommended that Nevada hold a caucus after Iowa's leadoff contest in mid-January 2008, but before New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary. South Carolina was awarded an early primary a week after New Hampshire.

Double standard on human life

I've been thinking about it for a while. I just don't understand how the Conservatives can be against embryonic stem cell research while for any war.

Invoking the sanctity of human life, George Bush wielded the presidential veto for the first time in his presidency to halt US embryonic stem cell research in its tracks. He even paraded one-year-old Jack Jones, born from one of the frozen embryos that can now never be used for federally funded research, and talked of preventing the "taking of innocent human life". How hollow that sounds to Iraqis.

More people are dying here - probably more than 150 a day - in the escalating sectarian civil war between Shia and Sunni Muslims and the continuing war with US troops than in the bombardment of Lebanon.

Lieberman losing ground in Senate race

I'm not sure it's totally a good thing, but so far I like it.

Businessman Ned Lamont had support from 51 percent and Lieberman from 47 percent of likely Democratic voters in the latest Quinnipiac University poll — a slight Lamont lead given the survey's sampling error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Lieberman had led in a Quinnipiac poll last month, 55 percent to 40 percent.

The biggest fear is a Republican Senator from Connecticut, but it doesn't look likely.

Lieberman filed papers last week that will allow him to petition his way onto the November ballot. The poll found that among all registered Connecticut voters surveyed, including non-Democrats, Lieberman had the support of 51 percent, followed by Lamont with 27 percent and Republican Alan Schlesinger with 9 percent.

Let's wait and see.

College students are terrorists because ......

Because they went to protest against the military recruiters? Give me a break.

A federal Department of Homeland Security agent passed along information about student protests against military recruiters at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, landing the demonstrations on a database tracking foreign terrorism, according to government documents released Tuesday.

The documents were released by the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request on behalf of student groups that protested against recruiters who visited their campuses in April 2005.

What do you think is more unthinkable, gay marriage or classifying college kids as terrorists for their peaceful protestion?

Behind Bush's shit

Yeah, I agree that shit itself is without importance at all, and what's really important is his intention on Syria.

The lawyer who tailored the US torture is nominated to 4th Circuit

Jeez. It's really unbelievable. Bush is nominating the lawyer who "found" the legal ground for all those Abu Graib and those torture to the Appellate bench? Isn't there any other person know some law in the 4th Circuit?

William Haynes II, the Pentagon’s general counsel, has been closely involved in shaping some of the Bush administration’s most legally and morally objectionable policies, notably on the use of torture. The last thing he is suited to be is a federal judge, but that is just what President Bush wants to make him. The Senate has been far too willing to rubber-stamp the president’s extreme judicial nominees. But there is reason to hope that strong opposition to Mr. Haynes, including from the military, may block this thoroughly inappropriate choice.

Mr. Haynes has been nominated for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, based in Richmond, Va., a court that has heard some of the most important cases about the constitutional limits on the war on terror. This is a subject on which Mr. Haynes has no business posing as an impartial jurist. He has for years been part of a small group of insiders who have mapped out the Bush administration’s policies on questioning detainees and declaring American citizens to be “enemy combatants.” The administration’s policies in this area have been indecent and lawless, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly had to step in to rein them in.

First saw it here.

Now it's a news: DOD said they will follow Geneva Convention

I mean, this is really a news, but I don't think it should be. Don't you think they should have followed it anyway?

The Pentagon memo, issued last Friday and released today, orders that all detainees be treated in compliance with what is known as Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, a passage that requires humane treatment and a minimum standard of judicial protections for prisoners.

More undisclosed intelligence program

How many more programs we need to fight the war on terror?

The Bush administration was running several intelligence programs, including one major activity, that it kept secret from Congress until whistle-blowers told the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, the committee's chairman said on Sunday.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said on Fox News Sunday he had written a four-page to President George W. Bush in May warning him that the failure to disclose the intelligence activities to Congress may be a violation of the law.

Now the Republicans are questioning the President. Maybe they would finally do something to secure their re-elections?

Republican priorities stalled in Congress

And this title misses a major fact -- it's a Republican-controlled Congress.

Could a Republican-controlled Congress pass a bill to protect the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance from court challenges? No problem, especially if proposed during the patriotic season leading up to the Fourth of July, Republican leaders thought. No way, it turned out.

The bill, the first item on the GOP's election-year "American Values Agenda," couldn't get past a House committee. Even worse for the Republicans: They couldn't blame the flameout on Democrats. One of the GOP's very own, Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina, voted no. Seven other Judiciary Committee Republicans skipped the panel's meeting entirely.

So it goes this year for House Republicans, their majority in jeopardy for the first time in more than a decade. An unpopular president, deep divisions in their ranks and Democrats determined to regain control add up to a Congress that's having trouble doing its most basic job: passing legislation.

Finally.

Hernandez v.s. Robles

If you want an example of legislating on the bench, here is one. Even the Legislature has allowed gay couples to adopt children, the Court said

The Legislature could rationally believe that it is better, other things being equal, for children to grow up with both a mother and a father. Intuition and experience suggest that a child benefits from having before his or her eyes, every day, living models of what both a man and a woman are like.

And the Court also suggest the State has a legitimate interests in those accidentally born children, which I have never heard of.

These couples can become parents by adoption, or by artificial insemination or other technological marvels, but they do not become parents as a result of accident or impulse. The Legislature could find that unstable relationships between people
of the opposite sex present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in unstable homes than is the case with same-sex couples, and thus that promoting stability in oppositesex relationships will help children more.

Even if that were true, this arguement still doesn't exclude gay couples with kids from marriage. The Court just simply ignored that in New York, gay couples CAN adopt children, which really makes those "rational basis" absurd. More of my opinion.

Redistrict Illinios?

I saw this article on AMERICAblog. I have to say I don't really like the idea to redistrict Illinois to gain two Democratic seats. I don't think it's right.

In Illinois, as in many other states, the current congressional map is the product of a bipartisan agreement to protect incumbents of both parties, election after election. Democrats, who hold 10 of the state's 19 House seats, control the legislature and hope to reelect Gov. Rod Blagojevich this fall. They possibly could gain another House seat or two in the 2008 elections by packing Republican voters into overwhelmingly GOP-leaning districts, the tactic that DeLay used against Texas Democrats.

But recent history suggests that they will demur. The current district lines have strong support in both parties, and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) got nowhere last year with a bid to redraw them in retaliation for what happened in Texas. "I couldn't get enough fellow Democrats to see the benefits of that," said Emanuel, who chairs his party's campaign to elect more House members.

If the data shows Dem has only 53% of popular votes in Illinois, I do think the current district lines are good. Although the Supreme Court didn't say gerrymandering unconstitutional, it didn't say it's good for the public, and I don't think it is, although I haven't finished reading anyone's opinion in that case, and I don't think I will in a short time. It's so lengthy.

International law vs domestic law

I don't quite understand this arguement. Although it's an international law, Geneva Convention was still approved by the Congress, am I right? So why should it has less effect than all others?

The Geneva Convention's Article 3 is "far beyond our domestic law when it comes to terrorism, and Congress can rein it in, and I think we should," said Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., assigned as a Reserve Judge to the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals. Graham spoke on "Fox News Sunday."

I mean, with the same process, approved by the Congress, shouldn't it just be as effective as all domestic laws?