Cal Prop 10 is interesting because the No on 10 campaign managed to get the backing of the head of the California NAACP. On its face that seemed weird to me as the whole no campaign is built on the same line of “protecting property values” that kept minority populations segregated for so long. Turns out, the chapter…

The bigger point of the story, which was buried by headline writers everywhere, was that Miller’s anti-social behavior as a whole concerned the teacher enough that she wrote it up at the end of the year - but Miller’s parents made enough of a stink that the the principal blotted it out instead of asking them to get…

Police decline to investigate calls all the time. In fact, they are expected to use their training to assess legitimate from baseless calls on issues like “suspicious behavior”. However, in reality many departments have a liability shielding (in their minds, at least) policy statement of investigating all calls - and…

While the immediate political implications of this action are correctly stated, this article (and the Mother Jones article it references) mangle what is going on here. The ruling by the district judge has not been reversed. Instead, in a much more insidious (and typical) move, the appellate court has stayed the effect…

Well it worked for Nixon in 68 - admittedly against the Black Panthers and Nation of Islam rather than women being loud but nonviolent, but who cares about little details like that.

I’d like to see a lawyer mount a class action defamation case against him for this type of shit brought by the protesters.  He might claim his tweets are shielded by executive privilege from being actionable, but I’d like to see his lawyers wrestle with claiming that a) lying about political opponents on b) his…

Graham came out today with a flat denial of interest in any job in Trump’s cabinet - so expect him to be sworn in next month (although I sort of wonder if he can get 50 votes for confirmation after his epic meltdown over Kavanaugh/attacks on Ford - he can’t vote for himself).

If you look at 538's analysis, Kavanaugh didn’t change the dynamics in the House - before and after the hearing, Dems were in good (but by no means guaranteed) position to retake control. The news yesterday was that most analysts think 70 seats that were won by Trump in the 2016 election are in play for Dems, far more…

Obama didn’t end the embargo - the sanctions are based on an act of Congress. He did normalize relations with Cuba, but that doesn’t mean you can start importing cigars (and Trump rolled back what Obama had tried to do relaxing travel standards and encouraging the eventual elimination of the embargo). Here’s a State…

Oh they were very overt about it, especially in the 08 campaign when they kept calling him a “rock star” and “celebrity” to try and denigrate him - then went nuts over Sarah Palin because she was so sparkly. 

That assumes he actually coordinates his schedule with their priorities, instead of his people picking locations where they think he’ll get the biggest ego boost. Espy is the strongest candidate Dems have run in a long time in Mississippi, and I hope the right is panicking/spending to defend the seat, but I haven’t…

I’ve witnessed exactly 2 fights that were bar adjacent/related in 25 years of being in bars (and walked into the aftermath of maybe two more), and your experience sounds about right. Even when someone is being a provocative ass it is almost always defused short of actual violence.

That’s funny - I thought the “no reasonable prosecutor” standard was condemned to the ash heap by the GOP after Comey and Lynch used it in not pursuing charges against Hillary. I thought in such cases that just indicated the prosecutor was biased and further investigation was warranted.

To put it slightly differently, prosecutors don’t evaluate a case from the perspective of the letter of the law. They evaluate it from whether they think they can win at trial. They don’t bring what they see as weak but plausible cases because of their assessment of the the likelihood of either a judge or jury…

He’s pretty good at avoiding anything that transparent. It would be fascinating to find out what his confidential handle was on Kozinski’s infamous e-mail list and how he responded to the judge’s humor. Of course, he’s denied being aware of Kozinski’s habit of sharing raunchy e-mails and generally acting like a handsy…

But precisely how Judge Kavanaugh wrote he’d want the executive branch to function in one of the memos that got leaked from his years in the Bush administration.  Specifically he said that from his own view of unitary executive theory the WH Counsel/President should be able to dictate the position of the Solicitor…

The whole “I got into Yale on merit” is such a bullshit statement to begin with though that the fact his grandpa is a legacy hardly matters. Saying he had no connections when he was a Georgetown Prep student is just absurd - as if Georgetown Prep didn’t and doesn’t pride itself on “preparing” its students to go into…

As for the hearings, just look at the clips that are out there, particularly when he was responding to questions from Booker, Harris and Whitehouse. He was pretty much Kavanaugh without the borderline breakdown, but it got lost in his initial statement/softball questioning and the fact the skids were greased for his…

However, Gorsuch was a snide jerk in his hearing to Dems because he knew he was getting confirmed.  And to believe the scuttlebutt at the Court he was also a jerk to some of the other members when he first got there, especially the liberal women.

I don’t doubt he tried - he just has about as much ability to empathize with the realities of that situation as I have to empathize with the “agony” of choosing new blazer colors for a prep school.