Archive for 2009
July 15, 2009
PJTV: Bill Whittle, Scott Ott, Stephen Green: Does Obama Have A Different Copy of the Constitution Than The Rest of Us?
SOTOMAYOR’S STUMBLES: Does this mean she won’t be confirmed? Nope. “None of this will affect her tenure on the Supreme Court, but it will provide further evidence that Obama has a big problem in selecting people for his administration, and that there seems to be little effort at vetting nominees for important positions. In short, every prevarication and stumble Sotomayor makes deepens the impression that Obama is not a competent executive. That’s the real danger for Obama in these hearings, and the tough questioning of Jeff Sessions and Lindsey Graham has made it a reality.”
FEEDBACK: “I’m hearing that the popular reaction to the passage of the Waxman-Markey electricity tax bill in the House has blown House members away. The public outrage is really hurting those who voted for it, and that’s why the bill has been ‘parked’ (as the Blair government used to say) in the Senate.”
Keep the pressure up, on this, on healthcare, and on tax-and-spend generally.
HOW A CRUISE SHIP feeds 4,000 people. Why don’t I get assignments like this?
BAD PROOFREADING at Media Matters. I’m glad they’ve got the capacity for self-criticism, even if it is supposed to be kept inside the tent . . ..
JOE PAPPALARDO rides shotgun on an Afghan airlift mission.
RISIBLE POLITICAL LIE OF THE WEEK: Chris “Friend of Angelo” Dodd posing as the Scourge Of The Lobbyists.
PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE ON The Best Trend Ever.
THE WAR AGAINST SCIENCE? California Supreme Court Admits, Ignores Breathalyzer Flaws. “The California Supreme Court last Thursday entered a ruling allowing motorists accused of driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) to question the reliability of the breathalyzer machinery used to secure convictions. The decision, however, leaves room for the conviction of drivers even when the machine is proved unreliable.” The technology may not work, but that’s outweighed by the fact that it’s very convenient, and produces a number as a result. . . .
UPDATE: Reader Anthony Argyriou writes:
The article to which you link does not accurately reflect the actual holding in the case.
California DUI law has gotten complicated: there is a crime of DUI, where you are guilty if your judgement and driving skill are impaired by alcohol, and there is the crime of “per se DUI”, where you are guilty if your blood alcohol or breath alcohol levels exceed certain limits. In ordinary DUI, having a blood/breath alcohol level too high creates a rebuttable presumption of guilt. In per se DUI, the blood or breath test result is probative of guilt.
In the particular case, defendant brought up the potential flaws in breath tests. The officer testified to the defendant’s impairment in a variety of other ways, as well as his test results. The jury hung on the “per se DUI”, but convicted on the regular DUI. Defendant claims that the jury instruction regarding the rebuttable presumption was improper, and that a proper instruction may have lead to a hung jury or acquittal. Given all the other evidence presented, that was treated as laughable by the Court.
The court did make a technical change to the process of rebutting the breathalyzer evidence, which is actually in line with improved scientific
knowledge of the flaws of the breathalyzer.
Thanks.
RANKING THE HARRY POTTER MOVIES.
HAPPY HAPPY: The recession is over! Let the jobless recovery begin!
UPDATE: Or are we talking a “job-loss recovery”?
ANOTHER UPDATE: As Michigan goes . . . Michigan unemployment hits 15.2%!!! Number of unemployed highest since 1976! Obama says jobs NOT COMING BACK!
ENDING MEDICARE? “Obama’s health care proposal is, in effect, the repeal of the Medicare program as we know it. The elderly will go from being the group with the most access to free medical care to the one with the least access.” So why aren’t we hearing more about this? “The interest groups that usually speak up for the elderly, particularly AARP, are in Obama’s pocket, hoping to profit from his program by becoming one of its vendors. Just as they backed Bush’s prescription drug plan because they anticipating profiting from it, so they are now helping Obama gut the medical care of their constituents.”
JAKE TAPPER, ABC NEWS: “Thinly-Veiled Threats”? White House Suggests Arizona Republicans Put Up or Shut Up.
POLITICS IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Is Regina Benjamin too fat to be surgeon general? “From her photos, it appears that Dr. Benjamin will need a generous size 18 military uniform. The anti-fat brigade, who have argued about her BMI and whether or not the term obese applies, wonder if a country plagued by obesity should have an above average-weight woman speaking to public health. For me the answer is a resounding yes. This country is full of above-average weight women and children struggling for dignity as well as to lose weight.” She’ll be a role model for the oppressed! [Fine for the “above-average weight women and children,” but what about the fat men? — ed. They’ll always have Michael Moore.]
THOUGHTS ON the marginal cost of health care.
I BLAME GLOBAL WARMING: Probe hints Venus once had oceans and plate tectonics.
HEART-HEALTHY DIET cuts Alzheimer’s risk.
“COMINSKEY FIELD?” Even I know better than that, and I don’t care.
UPDATE: Chicago reader George Milonas says it’s an accent thing: “Look, I can’t stand Obama. This one he needs to be given a pass on. All us guys from the south side of chicago talk like dis. There’s not a true sox fan in the world that will acknowledge that the sox play at the ‘cell’ It will always be cominsky!”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Various readers say the “Cominskey” part isn’t the big gaffe. It’s calling it a “field” instead of a “park.” Well, you can’t explain that away as a matter of accent.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Fundraising Corruption at Human Rights Watch.
A WAY TO mass-produce human skin. “In addition to providing new skin to burn victims, these swatches can also take the place of animals in medical and cosmetic testing. Also, since the swatches can be made to contain blood vessels as well as skin cells, scientists can run circulatory as well as skin-related experiments on them.”
REASON: The disturbing intellectual record of Obama’s science czar. “Dr. John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy—better known as the “science czar”—has been a longtime prophet of environmental catastrophes. Never discouraged but never right. And thanks to resourceful bloggers, you can read excerpts from a hard-to-find book co-authored by Holdren in the late 1970s, called Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, online. In it, you will find the czar wading into some unpleasant talk about mass sterilizations and abortions.”
WHEN ACTIVIST GROUPS RUN OUT OF THINGS TO DO: MADD angry at Flying Fish brewery for naming beers after NJ freeway exits?