"What bothers me is that they seem to be saying, 'Some people we have good enough evidence against, so we'll give them a fair trial. Some people the evidence is not so good, so we'll give them a less fair trial. We'll give them just enough due process to ensure a conviction because we know they're guilty. That's not a fair trial, that's a show trial," Mr. Nadler said.

Wal-Mart comes out for government mandated employer health insurance. Why? Because it will benefit them. Costly mandate = (another legislated) advantage for bigger, more established and more connected corporations.

Well said: Batshit-insane American Quitter Sarah Palin ended her own special “Independence Day” by posting a series of desperate grammar-challenged nonsense and vicious threats on her Facebook and Twitter pages.

True freedom is always free; no killing required.

This is an unusually warm October day in Daytona Beach, the sun baked white sand beaches and the sea came from the ups and downs. David Braymer, who lean muscular body, men younger than his four or five years, is suffering the strong glare of the sun. This is the day today, he hoped that teaching children can be less restrictive dress code. However, this is a price that he is willing to pay what he loved, science and education are relatively new, until recently considered the pseudo-science, astrology. In some cases, long-term he would work to return to his day more exciting for a secret government departments involved in the study of additional land, but as long as these days behind him. In his five years of teaching, he has fully adapted to and become a significant emphasis on living a suburban secondary school teachers more concerned about little more than lesson plans and school dance partner. And even a new love interest in his life. State-owned local water Cheral Baskel side restaurant town, the famous views It is a very good space shuttle launch - which Cheral are smart enough to become very profitable from happening. David is a regular sponsor Cherals, he stopped in for breakfast every morning on the way to work, it is not only to her (not often, but he will not be mentioned) hash browns. It was exciting Cherals occurred this morning, as the next space shuttle launch just three days, it is on Halloween. She tried to decorate two events at the same time, leading to more confusion. David was puzzled to see that the astronauts will be a function of zombies. There is a clear sense of foreboding in the small town community in recent days, with the launch of the last two being singular technical difficulties, has not yet been explained. In fact, some of the more Seoul citizens have begun to spread the bad luck of signs on a sign, they claimed not bode well for the introduction of the night of Halloween ...

--translated from Moon People.

And to follow-up on Sanford with a quote from Dowd: The Republican Party will never revive itself until its sanctimonious pantheon — Sanford, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Palin, Ensign, Vitter and hypocrites yet to be exposed — stop being two-faced.

Quoting a commenter in the linked article: Another home run by the 'Family Values' party.

Gaia's evil twin: Is life its own worst enemy?

A number of recent discoveries have cast serious doubt on the Gaia hypotheses. Two lines of research are especially damning: one comes from deep time - the study of ancient rocks - and the other from models of the future. Both overturn key Gaian predictions and suggest that life on Earth has repeatedly endured "Medean" events - drastic drops in biodiversity and abundance driven by life itself - and will do so again in the future.

Radley Balko had my exact thoughts when I learned about the new tourism promotion plan.

What would Jesus do? A Kentucky pastor is inviting his flock to bring guns to church to celebrate the Fourth of July.

History shows the prospects for Government Motors are poor.
History also shows that the prospects for Detroit need not be as bad.

NY Times:

It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism. But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.

Wait, they call it capitalism but more accurately it would be called corporatism.

With the publication of today's ridiculous headline, "GM Collapses Into Government's Arms," the Wall Street Journal has self-downgraded its journalistic integrity.

Most overused cliché of the recession: "The next shoe to drop..."

Here's a little round up of the Obama administration's performance on various transparency in government initiatives. The bad includes lots of failing to meet the “Sunlight Before Signing” promise. The good includes the data sharing sites data.gov and recovery.gov.

Also, competing with recovery.gov, and so far out pacing it in providing user accessible details, is recovery.org, a free independently run site, that isn't underfunded.

I heartily welcome the growth of independently built apps that will grow in number and utility as the gov (hopefully) continues to make raw data about it/us more available to the public.

Contrary to popular belief, freedom IS free.

"Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid. 50 words." Einstein used only about half his allotted number of words. It became the most famous version of an answer he gave often: "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."

Overleveraging - too much borrowing - was a core cause of the recent financial crisis, or crises. It's one of the few "common sense" economic ideas that has weight: borrowing should not get out of line.
Megan McArdle looks at the plans for borrowing coming out of Washington, and raises some concern.
What's a trillion dollars again? Oh, it's a dollar a second for 310 centuries.

Have you ever considered the question: Why won't God heal amputees?

Oprah teams up with Jenny McCarthy to potentially kill children.

Witness, with the discussions about prosecuting Bush II administration members who promoted torture, the Republicans abandon their love of the rule of law, something the GOP pursued with zeal back when it was president Clinton coming under allegations of unsanctioned presidential hanky-panky.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, witness the Democrats, some of whom attacked Bush II for his ever expanding interpretation of executive power and disrespect for the rule of law, ignore said principles now that their man practices his own disregard for legal constraint on his own power.

Let me return, however, to the main point, which is the characteristic complacency of the conservative toward the action of established authority and his prime concern that this authority be not weakened rather than that its power be kept within bounds. This is difficult to reconcile with the preservation of liberty. In general, it can probably be said that the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not to be too much restricted by rigid rules. Since he is essentially opportunist and lacks principles, his main hope must be that the wise and the good will rule - not merely by example, as we all must wish, but by authority given to them and enforced by them. Like the socialist, he is less concerned with the problem of how the powers of government should be limited than with that of who wields them; and, like the socialist, he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people.

From "Why I am not a Conservative", by F. A. Hayek, who’d be 110 years old today.

One of the scariest and most brazen abuses of power under Bush II were the administrations brazen rejection of any oversight or challenge to its policies. The very court cases petitioning the government were claimed to be dangerous national security risks. Over at salon.com, Glenn Greenwald has been looking for any change of substance in this area under the new administration. Results are not encouraging.

A lot of groups seeking change establish the lines of conflict by constantly naming and accusing their enemies, and insisting on their essential evilness. This isn't great politics, but it's not usually a problem -- unless it moves to the next stage, where the group starts expressing a clear intention to eradicate those perceived enemies. This can be a signal that they've accepted the need for violent action in their own minds, and may be actively planning something. It's a shift that should never be ignored.

When Sean Hannity runs a poll asking whether his viewers prefer a military coup, secession, or armed rebellion -- and armed rebellion wins -- that's evidence of this kind of shift. Right-wing talkers have built careers out of demonizing liberals; but when they start talking about what specific steps should be taken against them, that's not something we should ignore.

Link.

"...those upset about President Obama's plans for taxes and spending would be better off trying to defeat him and his Congressional supporters in the next election. They need a political party, not a tea party."

And please, Google the term "teabagging" before throwing it around any more.

The financial rescue package(s) and plans are now reaching $12.8 trillion.
The nation’s gross domestic product for 2008 was $14.2 trillion.

Has your head popped yet?

And what does a trillion dollars look like anyway?

"It is my hope that the steps I am announcing today will go a long way toward answering many of the questions people may have about the future of GM and Chrysler. But just in case there are still nagging doubts, let me say it as plainly as I can -- if you buy a car from Chrysler or General Motors, you will be able to get your car serviced and repaired, just like always. Your warranty will be safe. In fact, it will be safer than it's ever been. Because starting today, the United States government will stand behind your warranty."

OK, personally, I always thought it was John Edwards who was the car salesman, but I guess I was wrong.

From "A 'Breakthrough' in the Stem Cell Debate" by Michael Kinsley:

If you wish to believe that every fertilized egg is a human being with full human rights, that is your privilege. I disagree, which makes it a controversy. If I felt you were serious, we would have a quandary as well. But there’s no quandary because you’re not serious. Your actions are too different from your words. You are doing absolutely nothing about the millions of fertilized eggs that are destroyed naturally every year (in miscarriages so early that the potential mother is not even aware of them), or the thousands that are produced and unused by fertility clinics going about their normal work (which are either discarded or pointlessly frozen in the hope of some miraculous ethical breakthrough).

(Thanks, Jana)

Now that we’re in a global recession, perhaps at the end of it the citizens of the world (particularly the first-world variety) will come to a new balanced perspective of how economic growth should fit into the total framework of human existence.

In the United States, as capitalists in general, we tend to focus on economic growth for its own sake. We see it as the bellwether of the nation’s health. However, economic growth should simply be one of many positive by-products of humanity’s striving to better itself and improve the quality of life for all.

The creators of the Genuine Progress Indicator metric have embraced this way of thinking for over a decade now. If, after all the current chaos subsides, we see a groundswell of support for this “new-old” way of thinking, I for one will consider the revised world-view worth the price.

This is really quite sad: Former Bush White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. has stated publicly that he thinks Obama should wear a coat and tie in the Oval Office.