Friday Open Thread
It’s Friday! It’s the day you’ve been waiting all week to arrive. Not only is it Friday but it’s also open thread time. It’s almost too much excitement!
All I can say about this is that David Vitter should be target #1 for national Democrats in the Senate. This is absolutely unbelievable:
Vitter graduated Tulane Law School in 1988. Loving v. Virginia, decided in 1967, was a unanimous Supreme Court decision that declared state anti-miscegenation (interracial marriage) laws unconstitutional. It is one of the bedrock civil rights cases, right up there with Brown. It is simply not credible for any lawyer to claim ignorance when asked about Loving.
Even us non-lawyers know about Loving v. Virginia. It’s an extremely famous Supreme Court case. I would expect any lawyer to be familiar with this case.
I’m sure you recall the case of the racist judge in Louisiana who refused to marry an interracial couple citing concern for their hypothetical children. Most Louisiana politicians were quick to condemn the judge, all except Vitter who (eventually) gave a very legalistic statement:
First, Sen. Vitter thinks that all judges should follow the law as written and not make it up as they go along. Second, it would be amazing for anyone to do a story based on this fringe, left-wing political hack’s blog — he’s been handcuffed and detained in the past over his guerrilla tactics.”
[ed. note – he’s referring to Mike Stark in the quote] Mike Stark caught Vitter on camera again and asked him about Loving v. Virginia:
So I decided to concentrate on the first half of the question. I emailed Vitter’s Press Secretary and asked if Vitter believed Loving had been decided correctly or if it was a case of unwarranted judicial activism. I let them know that if they sent me back a clarification, I wouldn’t have to ask the Senator on camera. Of course, if I did see the Senator before I received their statement, hopefully he would be prepared to answer the question.
Almost a month had passed when I ran into the Senator yesterday.
Here is the result:
He doesn’t know?!?
Tags: Open Thread
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/12/10-year-old-wont-pledge-a_n_355709.html sorry, i know i sent it as a tip, but it is one of the coolest stories ive seen in a long time.
let’s hear it for gaywads!
Hacked: Sensitive Documents Lifted from Hadley Climate Center
blogs.wsj.com ^ | 11/20/2009 | By Keith Johnson
Well, this should get interesting. The Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain was hacked yesterday, apparently by Russian black hats, and thousands of sensitive documents, including emails from climate scientists dating back a decade, were posted online. More here. Officials at Hadley, a leading global-warming research center, have apparently confirmed to an Australian publication that the documents are genuine. The whole affair has much of the blogosphere alight. Blogs skeptical of man-made global warming see blood in the water. Some of the old emails from scientists made public apparently make references to things like “hid[ing] the decline,” referring to global…
lizard that actually looked interesting but now i can’t find it. link please. ugh.
(edit) Here is the backstory that will support the below link as to why he’s an ass.
From sports, here is one guy who just does not get it. What an ass.
You just can’t ask Vitter a question with the word “loving” in it and expect an answer.
Actually, the Vitter video perfectly encapsulates the problem with his ilk. Vitter didn’t know what Loving v. Virginia was so he was unable to decide if it had been wrongly decided. On the other hand, he did know that he should call cap-and-trade by it’s talking points name cap-and-tax. He is darn near perfect on the wingnut scale.
I expect DA to show up and say that the jury is still out on whether or not the case was rightly decided, but that cap-and-tax is the right way to refer to cap-and-trade.
Scientists baffled by global warming’s time-out
salon.com ^ | Nov. 20, 2009 | Gerald Traufetter
Temperatures haven’t risen this decade, as climatologists expected. Is it sunspots? Ocean currents? Secret volcano?
At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.
Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth’s average temperatures have stopping climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.
Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.
(more bad news for the Gore cult)
They do manage to stay on message all the time. I wonder how much of each day is spent studying and memorizing the talking points. I wonder if that time might be better spent studying and learning about the actual issue. I must be losing my mind here — what a ridiculous thought.
How is it we all missed this? This is pretty damned big news for this area.
If this is it, that site is done forever, clean it the hell up, don’t let it be a decaying craphole…oh, sort of like what Metachem did.
Hmm…I done gone to moderation!
Here’s my entry for Best (Hopefully) Unintentionally Hilarious Anti-Gay Statement, from Utah state Senator Chris Buttars (R, like you had to ask): “I meet with the gays here and there. They were in my house two weeks ago. I don’t mind gays. But I don’t want ‘em stuffing it down my throat all the time. Certainly not in my kid’s face.”
Plus, I would be remiss if I did not point out that his name does, indeed include “butt”.
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/20/utah-senator-shove-throat/
yeah, Smitty, I have been heads down all day and just saw that.
I cogitated, I agonized, I contemplated, I dithered, and I ultimately prayed on whether RSmitty should be released from moderation.
The Lord sayeth, “Let him out, but no emoticons! Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a Monsignor Lavelle on the other line seeking my endorsement for reelection. Who the bleep is Monsignor Lavelle? Is he a real monsignor, or is he a Sears monsignor?”
hacked, lizard? really? that is as valid as “heard someone say it on the train”.
Tell ya what lizard. I will buy and ad in the news journal saying global warming is “a made up scam by the socialist nazi democrats in order to control our lives” i swear ot to you i will do that IF you move to Ridley Park pa. or Marcus Hook, or anywhere near the Honeywell spew-finery and dont have health problems within a year.
Bad news? Really? you think we WANT global warming? Unlike conservunists who NEED and CRAVE terrorist attacks to they can continue to legitimize their pathetic existence, the whole focus of the green movement is to stop the potential, and if it doesn’t happen, hooray! the side effect will be we have cleaner air which you CANT argue…. unless of course you want to take me up on my bed and live near the polluters you claim are harmless.
So interesting a movement that claims religion as it’s own…. a religion that teaches humanity and tells its followers to take care of each other. Even if you don’t know them… even if you don’t LIKE them… interesting how conservatives STILL side with faceless soulless businesses every time rather than actual humans……
El Som…
😈
That one’s for you.
Sarah Palin is winning friends and influencing people by not even staying to sign the books of people who waited in line all day. We know that Saint Sarah’s time is precious.
Gee, those folks in the video are acting like she’s the Messiah or something.
Scott, the senator’s statement may have been unintentional, but he does have a way with words:
Last year, when debating a school funding bill, he said:
“This baby is black, I’ll tell you. This is a dark, ugly thing.”
He later apologized on the Senate floor. It was white of him, no?
Rehoboth Beach Marathon and Half-marathon tomorrow. Excited as it’s my first half-marathon after 4 months of training.
Good luck MJ!
CERN atom-smasher restarts after 14-month hiatus: official
AFP on Yahoo ^ | 11/20/09 | AFP
GENEVA (AFP) – The world’s biggest atom-smasher, shut down after its inauguration in September 2008 amid technical faults, restarted on Friday, a spokesman for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research said.
“The first tests of injecting sub-atomic particles began around 1600 (1500 GMT),” CERN spokesman James Gillies told AFP.
He said the injections lasted a fraction of a second, enough for “a half or even a complete circuit” of the Large Hadron Collider built in a 27-kilometre (17-mile) long tunnel straddling the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva.
“If all goes well tonight we will try to circulate a beam of particles for several minutes around 0700 (0600 GMT),” on Saturday, Gillies said, adding that he would open a bottle of champagne if the accelerator kept on working.
The LHC promises to unlock scientific mysteries about the creation of the Universe and the fundamental nature of matter.
But the machine was shut down just nine days after its inauguration last September following a series of technical faults.
Since then, the LHC’s components have been tested to an energy equivalent of five teraelectronvolts at full power.
The maximum output of what is currently the largest functioning collider in the world, at the Fermilab near Chicago in the United States, is one teraelectronvolt.
E-mail leak turns up heat on global warming advocates
Boston Herald ^ | November 21, 2009 | Herald staff
In an embarrassing blow to the movement to combat global warming, hackers have posted hundreds of e-mails from a world-renowned British institute that show researchers colluding to exaggerate warming and undermine skeptics.
University of East Anglia officials confirmed the Climate Research Unit’s e-mails were hacked, but were unable to confirm the veracity of posted content…
“This is not a smoking gun, this is a mushroom cloud,” climatologist Patrick J. Michaels told the New York Times [NYT]
The Times contacted researchers who confirmed they had sent or received some of the most damning e-mails, including a discussion of how to use a “trick” to configure scientific data to “hide the decline.”