Welcome to your weekend open thread. It’s the first weekend in a while where I don’t actually have much to do. I’m just hanging out a home. It’s heavenly.
LOL at the law of unintended consequences. I love that the Oklahoma anti-sharia law is going to bite Oklahomans in the rear.
Lawmakers in the Sooner State put a constitutional amendment banning the application of Islamic law by Oklahoma courts on the ballot for Tuesday’s election.
But the amendment, which also banned the use of international law in judicial decision-making, might force Oklahoma judges to ignore all laws that were conceived on foreign soil, including the 10 Commandments.
“I would like to see Oklahoma politicians explain if this means that the courts can no longer consider the Ten Commandments. Isn’t that a precept of another culture and another nation?” said a University of Oklahoma law professor. “The result of this is that judges aren’t going to know when and how they can look at sources of American law that were international law in origin. Many of us who understand the law are scratching our heads this morning, laughing so we don’t cry.”
I hate to say “I told you so.” Who am I kidding – I say it all the time.
Rachel Maddow on Keith Olbermann’s suspension from MSNBC for political donations and what it all means:
You can do it if you ask in advance and management tells you it’s OK. That’s what I understand happened with our morning-show host’s political donations in 2006, under previous management.
But if you don’t ask in advance for an exemption from the rule, you’re bound by the rule. (For the record: the rule applies to us here at MSNBC and to NBC News staff. CNBC isn’t under NBC News, so they’re not bound by the rule.)
I understand the rule. I understand what it means to break it. I believe everyone should face the same treatment under that rule. I also personally believe that the point has been made and we should have Keith back hosting Countdown.
Here’s the larger point, though, that’s going mysteriously missing from the right-wing cackling and old media cluck-cluck-clucking: I know everyone likes to say, “Oh, cable news, it’s all the same. Fox and MSNBC — mirror images of each other. But if you look at the long history of Fox hosts not just giving money to candidates, but actively endorsing campaigns and raising millions of dollars for politicians and political parties — whether it’s Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck or Mike Huckabee — and you’ll see that we can lay that old false equivalency to rest forever. There are multiple people being paid by Fox News to essentially run for office as Republican candidates. If you count not just their hosts but their contributors, you’re looking at a significant portion of the entire Republican lineup of potential contenders for 2012.
They can do that because there’s no rule against that at Fox. Their network is run as a political operation. Ours isn’t. Yeah, Keith’s a liberal, and so am I. But we’re not a political operation — Fox is. We’re a news operation. The rules around here are part of how you know that.
Exactly. MSNBC is not Fox News of the left. It has some partisans, true, but it still adheres to some standards. Shame on those tut-tutters who say “both sides do it.” It’s just not true (that means you, Jon Stewart).