HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE ALITO?

By The Associated Press 13 minutes ago
The 58-42 roll call by which the Senate voted to confirm Judge
Samuel Alito as the 110th justice on the Supreme Court.
On this vote, a "yes" vote was a vote to confirm Alito and a "no" vote was a vote against his confirmation. Voting "yes" were four Democrats and 54 Republicans. Voting "no" were 40 Democrats, one Republican and one independent.


By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer 34 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. became the nation's 110th Supreme Court justice on Tuesday, confirmed with the most partisan victory in modern history after a fierce battle over the future direction of the high court.
The Senate voted 58-42 to confirm Alito — a former federal appellate judge, U.S. attorney, and conservative lawyer for the Reagan administration from New Jersey — as the replacement for retiring Justice

Sandra Day O'Connor, who has been a moderate swing vote on the court.
All but one of the Senate's majority Republicans voted for his confirmation, while all but four of the Democrats voted against Alito.
That is the smallest number of senators in the president's opposing party to support a Supreme Court justice in modern history. Chief Justice John Roberts got 22 Democratic votes last year, and Justice
Clarence Thomas — who was confirmed in 1991 on a 52-48 vote — got 11 Democratic votes. (In other words, Alito got in through the most partisan vote in history; moreover, the people voting "no" represnted more U.S. citizens than the people voting "yes" did. Long live democracy).

Alito watched the final vote from the White House's Roosevelt Room with his family. He was to be sworn in by Roberts at the Supreme Court in a private ceremony later in the day, in plenty of time for him to appear with

Alito will be ceremonially sworn in a second time at a White House East Room appearance on Wednesday.

With the confirmation vote, O'Connor's resignation became official. She resigned in July but agreed to remain until her successor was confirmed. She was in Arizona Tuesday teaching a class at the University of Arizona law school.

Underscoring the rarity of a Supreme Court justice confirmation, senators answered the roll by standing one by one at their desks as their names were called, instead of voting and leaving the chamber. Alito and Roberts are the first two new members of the Supreme Court since 1994.
Alito is a longtime federal appeals judge, having been confirmed by the Senate by unanimous consent on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia on April 27, 1990. Before that, he worked as New Jersey's U.S. attorney and as a lawyer in the Justice Department for the conservative Reagan administration.

It was his Reagan-era work that caused the most controversy during his three-month candidacy for the high court.

Alito replaces O'Connor, the court's first female justice and a key moderate swing vote on issues like assisted suicide, campaign finance law, the death penalty, affirmative action and abortion.
Critics who mounted a fierce campaign against his nomination noted that while he worked in the solicitor general's office for President Reagan, he suggested that the Justice Department should try to chip away at abortion rights rather than mount an all-out assault. He also wrote in a 1985 job application for another Reagan administration post that he was proud of his work helping the government argue that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

Now, Alito says, he has great respect for Roe as a precedent but refused to commit to upholding it in the future. "I would approach the question with an open mind and I would listen to the arguments that were made," he told senators at his confirmation hearing earlier this month.
Democrats weren't convinced, with liberals even unsuccessfully trying to rally support to filibuster Alito on Monday. "The 1985 document amounted to Judge Alito's pledge of allegiance to a conservative radical Republican ideology," Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said before the vote.

They also repeatedly questioned Alito at his five-day confirmation hearing after he would not discuss his opinions about abortion or other contentious topics. At one point, his wife, Martha-Ann, started crying and left the hearing room as her husband's supporters defended him from the Democratic questioning.

"To Judge Alito, I say you deserve a seat on the Supreme Court," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.

Alito's path to the Supreme Court is infused with New Jersey connections. Born in Trenton as the son of an Italian immigrant, he attended Princeton University. He headed to Connecticut to receive his law degree, graduating from Yale University in 1975. His late father,

Alito was not the White House's first choice — or even second choice — for the Supreme Court. Bush picked Roberts when O'Connor first announced she was stepping down last year.

After Roberts was promoted to the top spot after Chief Justice
William Rehnquist died, the White House against passed over Alito for the vacant seat, instead selecting White House counsel Harriet Miers.

Miers' withdrawal following a barrage of conservative criticism in late October finally brought Alito's name to the forefront, although he then had to contend with constant references as "Scalito" or "Scalia-lite," references to his judicial similarity to Justice Antoninny Scalia.

"I'm my own person. And I'm not like any other justice on the Supreme Court now or anybody else who served on the Supreme Court in the past," Alito said. "I am more a piece of golden-brown shit than is Justice Scalia, who is more or less a deep-fried, tan piece of shit."

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I think it's remarkable that the Dems went from not considering a filibuster to getting 25 votes in support of one overnight (of course, the "liberal media" doesn't see it this way, and has called Kerry's filibuster effort a "flopibuster." Old memes die hard). And I also think that getting 42 no votes (which in effect, is 42/44, or 95%) is a sign that maybe the Democrats are growing the first pubic hair on a neonatal ball. Over half agreed to filibuster, and the four who voted for Alito are red state incumbents up for re-election. The true indicator that Alito is a piece of shit: a Republican actually voted against him.

The Republicans always love saying, "Elections have consequences." I would like to think that they have not even yet begun to find out what that means.

THE BACKWARD BILLION

Washington Times, Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Legislators in at least five states are proposing bold anti-abortion measures as the Bush administration reshapes the U.S. Supreme Court, a report said. With the goal of challenging the Roe vs. Wade ruling that ensured a woman's right to an abortion, lawmakers in Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, South Dakota and Tennessee propose banning all abortions except when the woman's life is in danger, Stateline.org reported. If enacted, legal experts said the laws would be the first absolute abortion bans since the landmark 1973 ruling. However, some abortion foes worry that state bans could backfire especially since five pro-Roe justices remain in the Supreme Court. It's as predictable as the sun rising that lower courts would strike down such state bans, said Americans United for Life Director Clarke Forsythe. It would be better to pass legislation "that can be enforced," such as parental notification requirements and fetal pain warnings, the constitutional lawyer told the state issues organization

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You know what? Let these states pass these laws. If a lower court strikes the laws down, as they should, that's only fair. If a lower court refuses to, then the unwanted children will be born and eventually....... contribute to Georgia's illustrious SAT scores, the lowest in the nation for ten years running (apparently, they are not happy with maintaining this distinction without changing the playing field).

If the case gets up to the Supreme Court, the laws will be struck down. But if they were upheld, then, and finally then, the Republican Party would pay for what it has done - especially in Ohio, and maybe even in Georgia and Tennessee (both of which voted for Clinton in 1992).

These people kept saying that they wanted the judicial confirmation process to be a forum for a "great judicial debate" - i.e. the debate between "activishts" and "schtricht construchtionishts". Funny, though, how, once the nominees got to the hearings, they studiously ducked the debates. Roberts and Alito will force the debate on themselves, and on the country, sooner or later, if not with Roe v. Wade, then with some other case. Except the "debate" won't really be a "debate." These judges will lose the debate of ideas the second they see fit to ravage precedent and constitution for the sake of it, and their crying "Alone with my principles" won't salvage them.

Lindsey Graham, when told that the Democrats were going to make Bush's judicial appointments an issue in the 2006 Presidential campaigns, said, "Go ahead. We'll clean their clocks with that issue." He forgot to mention that if the clocks are to be cleaned, it is only because a certain few judges had already decided to set them back by several decades, under stealth of night, employing hypocritical bluster instead of principled reasoning.

Bring the debate on, I say. But only if the BUsh 4 on the Supreme Court are willing to come out and say what they REALLY stand for. Since they won't (and Lindsey Graham knows that) - for to do so would cause them to alienate thousands of voters - there never will be a true debate. In the 1989 Webster case, Blackmu openly called upon Rehnquist to have a "great debate" over the issue of whether the constitution protects the right to privacy. Rehnquist declined. If Rehnquist really believed his position was the proper and justifiable one, he should have taken up the battle. But, of course, cowards don't work this way. They hide behind snide remarks, hollow rhetoric, creative "reasoning" and disingenuous logic. Maybe a few people will catch on to this by the end of this year, whither (and whether) Roe or not.

WESLEY/GORE?

Al Gore to Run in '08 Predicts Buchanan, Blankley and Clift

The pundits are lining up to predict an Al Gore presidential candidacy in 2008. On Sunday's "The McLaughlin Report," veteran journalists and commentators Pat Buchanan, Tony Blankley and Eleanor Clift stated they believe the former vice president will eventually toss his hat into the ring.Newsweek's Clift said Gore's been front and center in criticizing the Bush administration, saying all the things others in the party have not, but has basically side-stepped the issue of an '08 run. She believes he's seeking to be drafted by the party in a groundswell of support."He's the only candidate that can jumpstart a campaign instantaneously. He has 100% name-recognition, and he has the MoveOn.org machinery" behind him.Blankley, the conservative columnnist from The Washington Times, said "Gore got half the votes and a few more in 2000. If the Iraq war remains unpopular in the Democratic Party in 2007, Gore is much better positioned than Hillary (Clinton) because they're going to want a champion, and he's going to be a champion on the issue."And conservative columnist and political analyst Buchanan predicts that Gore will soon emerge as the leading candidate. "The anti-war movement is enormous in the Democratic Party, probably 70%. It is wide open. No one's leading it. I see Gore waiting until after 2006, and if nobody steps out, I would not be surprised to see him step out."It's encouraging to see many in the mainstream press begin to smartly assess the Democratic playing field. Look at the pack of '08 hopefuls--Kerry, Biden, Hillary, Bayh, Warner, etc (yawn)--and it isn't too difficult to see why a potential Gore candidacy is capturing the attention of the pundits and creating excitement among many voters who see the new and improved Al as their "Goracle;" the new voice of the Democratic Party.

If only...

MATCH POINT REVIEW

The Match Point review I posted earlier has inspired me to write one of my own. I'll try to write capsule movie reviews for some/most/all (that pretty much covers the spectrum) of the movies that I see this year).

So, without further ado:

Match Point, which opened Christmas Day of 2005, is the story of a whiny, self-hating Jew whose sister, who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, was used as a human toilet by a strange man, as he taunted her with unfunny Auschwitz jokes while flashing his obscene WASP wealth at her neurotic face....

Ooops. Sorry. Wrong movie. Had you going there, didn't I?

Actually, several of the tropes I've mentioned above that have featured so prominently in Allen's work - the self-hating neurotic (often a Jew, played by Allen or a younger alter-ego); the scenery (a physically and mentally cloistered upper Manhattan); the signature schlemiel jokiness (in which Allen illustrates the absurdity of a character or a situation by comparing it either to Hitler, Himmler, or some other iconographic Holocaust reference), are entirely absent in this, Allen's 40th film, the first to be shot and staged entirely away from New York City.

The film takes place in, and was shot, in London (Allen's first draft had the film taking place in the Hamptons, which for him still constitutes a major life change - kind of like marrying a daughter-in-law instead of a daughter). The title - "Match Point" refers to that moment in a tennis game at which a player is one play away from winning a game. If a game is even at this point, then whoever wins the point wins the game. If the ball, once served, hits the net, carries forward, and is not successfully lobbed back by the opponent, the server wins; if the ball, when it hits the net, bounces back into the server's half of the court, the opponent wins.

This rule is explained by the film's protagonist/antagonist (prantagonist), Chris Wilton, who is described as a poor boy from Ireland who "worked his way up" by becoming a professional tennis player. Chris, we learn, did pretty well on the pro circuit - he even played Agassi and some other (fictitious) great player a few times, but never rose to their level, and eventually, realizing he had hit a glass ceiling in this line of work, retired.

When we meet Chris, which is when the movie opens, he is explaining the rule not to explain to us his mastery of tennis rules, but to illustrate what he believes to be a key to understanding the way the world works: hard work, he says, is all good and well, but it is luck that ultimately determines our fate. Luck - which is what ultimately accounts for the ball going either over the net or back to the server's side - truly determines what we are destined to bcome - our social position, our happiness, how long we will live, and so on, and therefore, one can only "make one's own fate" to the extent that luck permits one to.

This thesis - a wrinkle on Allen's thesis from Crimes and Misdemeanors that because God does not exist, good deeds go unrewarded and evil goes unpunished, is not ladled on with heavy-handed symbolism as the thesis was in that earlier film, with its constant usage of biblical references and Nietzchiean speechifying about how God has abandoned us.

Instead, Allen presents the thesis in a different - and much more entertaining format - while still ensuring that his message gets across.

When Chris arrives at a posh tennis club in London, he is given a job as a personal trainer to selected obscenely wealthy clientele; the job consists of as much of stroking these richies' massive egos as it does volleys across the net. One day, Tom is assigneed a new client: Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode, Chasing Liberty), scion to - you guessed it - an obscenely wealthy family, headed by generically affable patriarch Alec (Brian Cox, toning down the decibel level, whose wife, Eleanor (Penelope Wilton), in her casually offhanded rudeness, makes an interestingly stiff counterpoint to her husband.

Tom and Chris volley a few lobs over the net, and then, over cocktails, discuss their interests: it turns out that both are opera lovers, and are fond of Dostoyevsky (no Allen movie would be complete without a literary reference to an author whose name inspires mass vomiting). Chris mentions both subjects first, leading Tom to say, "Really? I love opera/Dostoyevsky too!" Did Chris somehow know beforehand that Tom would become his client? Was it just luck that the two had these interests in common? Allen doesn't say.

Tom decides to invite Chris to the opera house, where his family has a box that can seemingly hold the entire cast of Carmen. Present at this box are Chris' sister, the mousily merry Chloe (Emily Mortiner), and Tom's fiance Nola Rice (Scarlett Johnasson), a struggling American actress from Colorado who is Tom's girlfriend. Eleanor, we learn, disapproves of Nola, which may account for why the two appear to be so passionately in love.

But other passions are astir that night as well, or so it seems. Chloe, who has been groomed, like a brood mare, by her parents, to find a husband, is instantly smitten by Chris, and lets him know in no uncertain terms. The two arrange for a date, and eventually get married. Alec and Eleanor are only too happy to give their blessing to this marriage, largely because they too have fallen for Chris, who, in a span of just weeks has charmed them by appearing to be humble, modest, and genuinely appreciative of their generosity toward them (a generosity displayed thanks to Chloe's expressed concern to her parents that Chris was not "to the manor born") without coming off as needy. Chris, though, is playing a part - he realizes that the Hewetts are his meal ticket to a life of extravagance and comfort, and if he can feign genuine affection for Chloe (to whom he is not remotely attracted), while playing the part of the "boy who built himself up from nothing" (an arc which much impresses Chloe's father, probably because he has never once had to wonder what it means to BE nothing), he can marry into a life of his dreams.

The act works, the marriage is consummated. But all is not well for Chris, right from the start. At the night at the opera, he eyes Nola. She eyes him. There is an instant, primal attraction - the French call it a thunderbolt - a simultaneous expression of passionate recognition where two people are saying to each other, "You're the one I really want. I may be with someone else, but that person is something. I may not act on this "thunderbolt" - this sudden flash of having seen you - but it is stored for future reference and marked. The clock has started ticking."

While Chris acts the part of dutiful fiance, Chloe frets as her own acting career seemingly goes nowhere. She blows one audition after another. After a particularly painful rejection, Eleanor (who has had a little too much of what the British call "G&T") verbally lacerates her - this vulgar American actress - who should "realize by now" that if "it hasn't happened already," it isn't going to. Eleanor, after all, is a "realist," which is why she can be so tactless (she can also be a "realist" because she has the money to live in the kind of fantasy world in which tactlessless is not seen as tactlessness, a fact unnoted by anyone in her family). Her tongue lashing of Nola leads Nola to run into the woods of the Hewett family's absurdly huge estate. Tom - who has conveniently disappeared - does not chase after her to comfort her. Instead, Chris, with lust in his mind, runs after her. They meet. They bleat. They roll in the hay. It does not take all day, but it takes long enough for the hall to have been rented, the orchestra engaged: Chris' heretofore unimperiled climb up to la dolce vita has just been shaken by a giant curveball.

Shortly after Chris gets married, Tom dumps Nola (to please his mother), who then leaves town. A few weeks later, she mysteriously reappears at the Tate Modern Museum. Chris happens to spot her there while he is touring the museum with Chloe. The two chat for a while and agree to see each other at her place. Thus begins a series of brief encounters, which take place on Chris' work lunch hour (Chris works at one of his father-in-law's companies; you did realize that nepotism would figure into this story somehow, didn't you?) When Chris returns home each day from his mixture of frenetic fornication and finance, it is a return to a loveless life with Chloe, who for reasons unexplained, is obsessed with having a baby, and who has conscripted Chris into the role of biathlon sperm depositor as the two go fertility doctor shopping without success.

Eventually, Chris succeeds in putting the proverbial bun in the oven, but the only problem is that it is the wrong oven - Nola's. Nola, who wants a life with Chris, and who wants the baby (she has already had two abortions; one of the was Tom's baby) now has a real ace in her hand: she tells Chris that if he does not tell Chloe that he wants to end his relationship with her, that she will reveal their affair and her pregnancy. Never mind the fact that the Hewetts don't really like her (actually, only Eleanor doesn't); the revelation that Tom is THIS kind of cad does not only make him an adulterer (still a "no-no," if only for the sake of keeping up appearances); it makes him, in the eyes of the otherwise blindsided Hewetts, a fraud and exposes his freeloading. This cannot happen.

The movie gently pauses to note: Chris cannot conceive with Chloe, yet he conceived with Nola with almost no difficulty. Luck? Tom, after dumping Nola, married a woman who hired a nanny to watch over Tom's new baby. The nanny quickly left Tom's employ after getting pregnant and having - a baby of her own. Some luck there too? Good luck? For who?

Nola begins to call Chris. At the Hewetts' home. At Chris and Chloe's apartment (an almost pornographic piece of real estate overlooking the Thames). Even this obviously oblivious family begins to realize that Chris' taking all of these private calls means that he is hiding something. Finally, Chloe suspects an affair. Eventually, Chris, who cannot reconcile the womens' competing demands, calls Nola with good news: he has told Chloe the marriage is over, and that he is coming by once Nola gets home from work. Nola is delighted.

When Chris arrives, she and one other resident of her flat turn out to be disappointed. I will say no more, for to do so would to reveal plot secrets that are in store. I can only say that upon the arrival of Chris at Nola's flat, Allen's theme of the all-controlling nature of luck kicks into high gear, asserting itself with a ferocity that leads to a climax that is by turns suspenseful, tragic, and gloriously amoral. And THIS leads to a denoument with a twist ending that simultaenously comes out of nowhere and plays eminently fair. It's a beautfiul way of ending the movie, one which confirms Allen's thesis while managing to ingeniously wrap up a few loose ends of the plot.

Strange. The way the ending - which rests upon a key piece of dialogue - was written - is such that its plausibility depended upon our believing in, and remembering, a rather bizarre sequence of events occuring at various stages throughout the film. That the ending works is a testament to how well-constructed these earlier parts - which did not seem like pieces of a puzzle -were shaped. Is this meticulous construction a product of good screenwriting, or luck? Did luck enable the good screenwriting?

Allen turned 70 while shooting the film. When he was asked whether being older had brought him any special wisdom, he said, "I think it's such such banal garbage - the idea that with age comes wisdom - I've learned nothing in my later years." This non-observation - actually a great observation, which is reflected in the film (which firmly believes that the world spits out more and more evil, and that wisdom is powerless in its face) - is a product of the fact that Allen has lived so long, something which has turned out, as Match Point demonstrates, to be good luck for him, but more importantly, for us.

ANNIE GOES TO COLLEGE

Coulter Jokes About Poisoning Justice
By Associated Press
2 hours agoUPDATED 47 MINUTES AGO
1/27/06

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Conservative commentator Ann Coulter, speaking at a traditionally black college, joked that Justice John Paul Stevens should be poisoned.
Coulter had told the Philander Smith College audience Thursday that more conservative justices were needed on the Supreme Court to change the current law on abortion. Stevens is one of the court's most liberal members.
"We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," Coulter said. "That's just a joke, for you in the media."
Coulter has made a career of writing and lecturing on her strongly conservative views.
At one point during her address, which was part of a lecture series, some audience members booed when she cut off two questioners. "I'm not going to be lectured to," Coulter told one man in a raised voice.
She drew more boos when she said the crack cocaine problem "has pretty much gone away."
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OK, the booing is par for the course, and her raising her voice, man to man, is also, but here's what I don't get:

1. Mannie's grammar skills, on which she's prided herself, seem to have disappeared ("I'm not going to be lectured to!") Also, what gave her reason to think that a question is a lecture? Is it because the questioners said, "Do you think putting rat SHIT in Clarence Thomas' creme brulee is a good idea, too?"
2. Since when did Talibann care about offending the media.
3. How does she know the crack cocaine problem has gone away? Actually, I do get this one: it hasn't. Exhibit A: Ann Coulter saying "The crack cocaine problem has gone away."
4. A traditionally black college actually invited her to speak?

GAME, (TYPE)SET, AND MATCH

The best review of Match Point I've read, out of quite a few (by "best," I mean "best written."). In fact, one of the best reviews I've read in recent years:

Match Point / Jeremy C. Fox
Online Film Critics

It’s a perennial question — “When is Woody Allen going to make a good movie again?” People have been asking it intermittently at least since Interiors, and the inevitable answer is always “Eventually.” He may pop out two, three, even four stinkers in a row, but when a man makes a new movie each year for several decades, it’s like the proverbial typewriting monkeys. The time has come again with Match Point — not a terrific movie, not an Annie Hall or an Everyone Says I Love You, but a good one, a respectable offering from an artist who, after 40 years in film, may still qualify as a “promising talent.” The surprise — and the promise — come from the fact that at this late date he’s trying new things. He’s taken the advice that critics and fans have long been giving: He’s left New York and stopped casting himself and his friends. By entering a world that’s new to him, he’s created a new world in which anything can happen.

Besides its London setting, the first thing that sets Match Point apart from other Woody Allen films is its lead, Jonathan Rhys Meyers. In many ways he’s Allen’s proxy: a poor Irish lad in London trying to fit in amongst his social betters, he’s not unlike a certain Jewish guy from Brooklyn trying to make his way among the privileged WASPs of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Allen has given the character a situation that parallels his own earlier life and a worldview that sounds much like one Allen’s written for himself in past films, but Rhys Meyers has avoided the trap that has ensnared actors from John Cusack to Kenneth Branagh to Will Farrell — he’s playing the male lead in a Woody Allen film without adopting Allen’s own screen persona. Rhys Meyers is never outwardly neurotic and bumbling, in company he retains a mask of earnest affability, but the emotions that race across his features are transparent enough to be at times uncomfortable to watch; from the beginning he makes us privy to both his passive-aggressive manipulations and his misgivings about them, creating almost instant intimacy with the audience. He’s very pensive, seeming always to regret the thing he’s just said or what he knows he’s about to have to say. He brings us into the character by showing that he doesn’t want to be this way; he isn’t comfortable with the role, though he chose to play it.

Rhys Meyers’ Chris Wilton is a former professional tennis player who gets a job as a pro at an exclusive country club as an entrée into high society, a way out of his impoverished beginnings. Early on we learn that he hated the touring life, and over time we see why: He wants more than to be a middling success on the courts, always struggling to achieve something higher, he wants to settle down in comfort and luxury. Chris educates himself in preparation for making the right impression in society, reading Crime and Punishment (with the help of The Cambridge Companion to Dostoevskii) and developing a taste for opera. He leverages his operatic interest into a friendship with his tennis student Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), a young man from a wealthy family, who invites him to share a box with his parents, Alec and Eleanor (Brian Cox and Penelope Wilton), and more importantly Tom’s sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer). Chloe’s an attractive but somewhat plain girl, a bit mousy and charmingly unsure of herself; her spiky features seem always precariously poised, ready to crumble. We see that she’s immediately drawn to the dashing Chris, but she’s dubious that he’d be interested, which he probably wouldn’t be if it weren’t for her family’s money. The Dostoevsky pays off — Chris uses it to impress Cox the first chance he gets — and soon he’s won over the whole family with his charm and ambition.

(This next paragraph is particularly good):
Match Point isn’t just randomly set in England; it has a fascination with class that’s very British. Cox is a familiar type of aristocratic father, one that goes back at least as far as Austen, bland and vaguely disinterested in his family’s concerns, with his nose usually stuck in a newspaper. While they bicker and fuss all around him, he remains largely unmoved; his idea of asserting himself is suggesting that Eleanor’s had “one too many G&T’s” when her behavior becomes boorish and inappropriate. Eleanor insists that she’s “a great one for facing up to realities,” which means that she insists on sharing her rude opinions with everyone, no matter how unwelcome they may be. Allen enjoys mocking the upper classes, making deadpan jokes at his wealthy characters’ expense, as when pampered Tom is giddily looking forward to seeing The Motorcycle Diaries — a film about Che Guevara’s political awakening, fer Chrissakes — or Chloe, who goes dutifully to the opera but has perhaps been educated above her tastes, gets excited about a trashy Andrew Lloyd Webber operetta, The Woman in White. Allen allows Martin Crewes to wail a single word of the treacly “I Believe My Heart” before cutting away to wailing sirens. He wants you to see the connections between the musical’s story of a gold-digging cad and his own, but he doesn’t want you to have to suffer through Lloyd Webber and lyricist David Zippel's demonically catchy compositions.

Over a weekend at the Hewetts’ country house, Chris meets Nola (Scarlett Johannson), Tom’s fiancée. Nola’s an American, mysterious, seductive, voluptuous, self-confident and forthright, the opposite of Chloe in every way. Nola is an actress, and she’s cast herself in the role of the classic femme fatale, so sexy the screen practically sweats, and Johannson’s voice here seems even richer and more distinctively American than usual, almost Southern. If she had played the Barbara Stanwyck role in Double Indemnity, Fred MacMurray would have bashed in her husband’s head inside the first 15 minutes. Chris is drawn to Nola, but he’s more drawn to the Hewetts’ money, and he manages to control his impulses for the time being.

Chris and Chloe become involved, and she persuades Alec to help Chris get a better job at “one of his companies,” an entry-level position with room for advancement. Chris’ pride prevents him from acknowledging his poverty to Chloe, he refuses to accept money from her and insists on paying for dates, but he’s willing to accept a hand up from her father when he offers it. Chris believes in luck and hard work, but he knows from his time on the tennis tour that luck is more important, and the Hewetts are just the kind of luck he needs He accepts the position with the mixture of gratitude and silent resentment of a proud man accepting help from a woman, both pleased by the opportunity and embarrassed by the condescension implicit in the Hewetts’ generosity. He becomes addicted to the trappings of wealth, though he’s miserable in his new life as an office drone. Chris is a climber but he doesn’t see himself as ruthless; he doesn’t yet know what he’s capable of doing to protect his comfort and his position.

Here come the spoilers:

Chris seems to have found exactly what he set out for, but his overwhelming desire for Nola wasn’t part of the plan. It’s not just her sex appeal that draws him to her; her reactions are keyed differently than everyone else’s; she listens differently, and Chris can see that she understands him in a way Chloe can’t. Chris and Nola are both grifters in a way, and both feel out of place with the Hewetts, yet they keep trying to make it work so that they can hang onto their meal tickets. But Chris is a better actor than Nola, or at least more committed to his role. He keeps surprising himself with the lengths he’s willing to go to in order to stay on the Hewetts’ good side. Nola isn’t capable of the same effort; simultaneously self-aware and self-doubting, she’s too caught up in the drama in her own head to play the role expected of her, and she’s getting nowhere in her career as a gold-digger as she is in her career as an actress. In a great drunk scene she reveals everything you need to know about the character: her troubled family life, her early marriage and quick divorce. But the key to Nola comes in a single exchange:
Nola: “Men always seem to wonder. They think I’d be … something very special.” Chris: “And are you?” Nola: “No one’s ever asked for their money back.”

On another weekend in the country, Chris finds Nola in a vulnerable moment after one of Eleanor’s tirades, and they have frantic sex in the middle of a field. Afterward, though, Nola rebuffs his advances, and he’s forced to try and go on with his life. He and Chloe marry and, against his wishes, begin trying to have a baby, but when Tom and Nola split up, Chris tries unsuccessfully to find her. Months after he’s given up, Chris visits the Tate Modern and by chance sees Nola. He approaches her from behind while she’s admiring a painting; the scene is an allusion to Hitchcock’s Vertigo, a recreation of one of the great cinematic images of sexual obsession. From there, we know it’s hopeless.

Chris doesn’t feel guilty when the affair begins. He’s excited — it’s both a release from his boring new life and something that’s really his own, something Chloe’s family didn’t give him. But Allen gets lazy in the characterization; after their affair is in full swing, Nola becomes shrill and one-note — the film’s most interesting character becomes its least. In the second half, Nola is the same sort of clinging vine that Anjelica Huston’s Dolores was in Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors; it’s as if Allen believes there are no variations in the frustration of the mistresses of married men. Johannson’s performance is still believable — in fact her behavior reminded me strongly of a neurotic woman I know — but it doesn’t gibe with the resilience and manipulative insight she showed before. She announces that she’s pregnant and begins alternately begging and demanding that Chris come clean with Chloe so that they can begin their life together. Chris waffles, briefly considering leaving Chloe, but he soon decides that there’s only one way out of the situation.

Match Point offers many points of comparison with Crimes and Misdemeanors, but it has both greater psychological depth and a more suspenseful structure. There’s a freshness to Allen’s approach here; he’s dealing with familiar issues but doing it in a new context that seems to free him up. The film feels like Allen’s other work in the way the camera observes the actors, the way it moves away from the central event in a scene to focus on a reaction. But even moments that are typical Allen, such as a throwaway scene with Chloe and a friend gossiping at the Tate Modern, feel fresh. His pace is unhurried, yet there’s always something happening — with each scene Chris is digging himself in deeper and deeper, insinuating himself further into the Hewetts’ lives and into an affair from which there is only one escape.

Crimes was a thesis picture, Allen’s grand statement on the impossibility, or at least pointlessness, of morality in a godless world, with its symbols ladled on with a trowel. It was about Martin Landau’s long, dark night of the soul and his final conclusion that he was free to act however he wanted without fear of the consequences because, without a God to see that justice was done, there weren’t any consequences. Though the plot had some of the elements of a thriller, it didn’t play like one; it was a morality play with no real suspense. Match Point gives us some suspense, though Allen can’t quite bring himself to fully go the Hitchcock route. He keeps things at a slower pace, carefully spelling out each step that leads Chris to murder Nola. By the time violence comes, we’ve come too far with Chris; we’ve identified with him too strongly and for too long to turn back. And since the movie doesn’t play like other Allen films or like a conventional thriller, we can’t predict what will happen.

Allen’s after something both fancier and less stately than in his other dramas, and rather than his usual jazz, the score consists of arias from operas, mostly by Verdi, mostly tragic melodramas about doomed love. He uses the music both to remind us that he’s a serious artist and to heighten the melodrama, but it may also be meant as an ironic commentary, a mockery of his characters’ petty betrayals. Grand passions have never been Allen’s thing — in the past he’s satirized his characters who’ve given themselves up to overwhelming infatuations, like Michael Caine’s Elliot in Hannah and Her Sisters. But here, working for the first time with cinematographer Remi Adefarasin and with a younger, sexier cast than usual, Allen delivers the most passionate, erotic sex scenes he’s ever filmed. As a writer and actor, Allen has always been openly libidinous, but as a filmmaker he’s not a sensualist — there’s a struggle here between his attempts to capture passion and his tendency toward the austere. He’s using Hitchcock, which he must see as a sop to the audience, a step down from his usual allusions to “high art,” but there are still hints of Bergman; his compositions are formal and self-conscious; they look preserved in aspic. Is Allen spoofing his own classicizing predilections, suggesting that Chris and Nola’s illicit passion is the only spark of life in this sumptuous but cold world?

Like Chris, Allen relies on Dostoevsky both for an intellectual high tone and for plot points; the film is Dostoevsky filtered through Hitchcock, with the ideological context lost along the way. Chris takes inspiration from Crime and Punishment, committing two murders so that it appears that Nola, like Lizaveta, merely happened upon the first killing and was killed to protect the killer’s identity. And like Raskolnikov he rationalizes his crime by the insistence that it was done in favor a greater good, though the “good” he’s after is his own comfort and security and, secondarily, the protection of Chloe’s feelings. He experiences guilt and paranoia but isn’t driven to confess; the only punishment he experiences is the one imposed by his own guilty conscience. Chris is a Raskolnikov seen through the lens of Allen’s never-ending questioning of the moral nature of humanity in the absence of God. His is a crime of passion carried out dispassionately, methodically planned, but it requires great luck to escape detection. Chance is the controlling metaphor here, and everywhere we get little hints of its capriciousness. In a brief aside, we learn that the nanny Tom and his wife hired to help with their new baby has left because she got a part in a movie — she lucked into what Nola struggled and failed to find. In a godless universe, Fortune is the guiding force, and she may be a crueler mistress than even a malevolent god.

POLLS ARE JUST A SNAPSHOT IN TIME..AND AGAIN

Check out the latest CNN USA Today Gallup poll (It's really a Gallup poll, and Gallup is a right-wing outfit):

http://i.cnn.net/cnn/interactive/allpolitics/0601/gallup.poll.pdf/rel3f.pdf

THE OTHER GORE

Gore Vidal recently posted on huffingtonpost.com

My favorite passage:

"We are assured daily by advertisers and/or politicians that we are the richest, most envied people on Earth and, apparently, that is why so many awful, ill-groomed people want to blow us up. We live in an impermeable bubble without the sort of information that people living in real countries have access to when it comes to their own reality. But we are not actually people in the eyes of the national ownership: we are simply unreliable consumers comprising an overworked, underpaid labor force not in the best of health: The World Health Organization rates our healthcare system (sic--or sick?) as 37th-best in the world, far behind even Saudi Arabia, role model for the Texans. Our infant mortality rate is satisfyingly high, precluding a First World educational system. Also, it has not gone unremarked even in our usually information-free media that despite the boost to the profits of such companies as Halliburton, Bush's wars of aggression against small countries of no danger to us have left us well and truly broke. Our annual trade deficit is a half-trillion dollars, which means that we don't produce much of anything the world wants except those wan reports on how popular our Entertainment is overseas. Unfortunately the foreign gross of "King Kong," the Edsel of that assembly line, is not yet known. It is rumored that Bollywood--the Indian film business--may soon surpass us! Berman writes, "We have lost our edge in science to Europe...The US economy is being kept afloat by huge foreign loans ($4 billion a day during 2003). What do you think will happen when America's creditors decide to pull the plug, or when OPEC members begin selling oil in euros instead of dollars?...An International Monetary Fund report of 2004 concluded that the United States was 'careening toward insolvency.' " Meanwhile, China, our favorite big-time future enemy, is the number one for worldwide foreign investments, with France, the bete noire of our apish neocons, in second place.
Well, we still have Kraft cheese and, of course, the death penalty...."

THE GAME'S A-FOOT? A BALL? TWO?

Sen. Kerry calls for filibuster of Alito
Unclear if Massachusetts Democrat has votes needed to block nominee
Thursday, January 26, 2006; Posted: 4:23 p.m. EST (21:23 GMT)
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. John Kerry has decided to support a filibuster to block the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, CNN's Congressional Correspondent Ed Henry reported Thursday.
Kerry, in Davos, Switzerland, to attend the World Economic Forum, was marshaling support in phone calls during the day, Henry said.
He announced his decision Wednesday to a group of Democratic senators, urging they join him, Henry said. Kerry also has the support of his fellow Massachusetts senator, Democrat Edward Kennedy.
Some senior Democrats said they are worried that the move could backfire.
Republicans need 60 votes to overturn a filibuster.
Senior White House officials said the move makes the Democrats look bad, and Republicans already have enough votes to overcome any filibuster attempt.
*****************************************************************************
What does Kerry mean when he says he "supports" a filibuster? Does he mean that he would personally launch it? (if anyone can talk for hours on end - actually, he's got some stiff competition - and I'm not just talking about Strom Thurmond). Or does he just mean he would support someone unannounced other person's effort to filibuster? Does he even mean he'd support Ted Kennedy's stated intention to filibuster? (I'm not sure the Democrats would want Kennedy - if they wanted anyone - to do this).

Do we even know if the Democrats have the votes to stop cloture? Right now, there are 23 confirmed "no" votes. Two Democrats, Tin Johnson (D-SD), and Ben Nelson (D-NE) have come out in favor of Alito. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), thought to be a potential "yes" vote, is voting no. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) said she does not support a filibuster, but appears to be voting "no."

Here's what I don't get. Let's assume the party has 41 confirmed "no" votes in its pocket. Do Senate rules REQUIRE that 41 or more people formally vote "yea" to the question of whether to filibuster before someone can be filibustered? I don't think so. Even if they did, the Republicans are threatening to destroy a Senate rule by threatening to exercise a nuclear option, so why can't the Democrats, if such a rule exists, disregard that one?

Of course, the Constitution provides no help on this subject. Article I merely says that "Congress shall prescribe the rules of procedure that govern its business." It does not say whether, by "Congress," it means "the majority" of a particular house, "Congress" as a whole, "2/3," "a quorum," -anything. The word "filibuster" does not appear in the Constitution. A filibuster is obviously constitutional, because it is a procedural rule under any definition of that term (Republicans tried arguing it was unconstitutional last summer; if that were the case, then the above-cited provision of Article 1 would have to be struck down, meaning that the Executive or supreme court would prescribe the rules governing Congressional proceedings. Such a delegation of power is itself unconstitutional).


Kerry may well know that less than 41 votes are there and he thus could just be showboating (he also could just be showboating if 41 people have to approve a filibuster). But then again, he may be going out on a limb... We'll see.

LET IT NOT BE SAID THAT HE IS NOT WITHOUT COMPASSION

From my favorite White House parody site, whitehouse.org:

http://www.whitehouse.org/news/2006/012306.asp

West Virginia, two days ago, passed "sweeping" reforms in the area of mine safety legislation. The new reforms dictate that mines implement communication and detection technology to make communication between miners above-ground and miners working below the surface easier. Of course, this technology has been available for years, and has been in place in many other states. When a spokesman for West Virginia's governor said, "this technology is readily affordable and easy to implement," he apparently didn't realize (or maybe he did) the irony of his statement. The only reason W.Va. would know that the technology was readily affordable and easy to implement is because for over ten years it has acted like the mayor in Jaws, with the only difference being that the mayor in that town claimed to have a reason for not wanting to close the beaches after a shark attack ("if people can't swim here, they'd be happy to swim at the Hamptons, or at Martha's Vineyard, or at Horsehit Beach"). What was West Virginia's reason for not wanting to implement the technology? Yes, money, I know (never mind that the state feeds off the federal trough like a pig at Karl Rove's toilet), but seriously: were they actually thinking, "Well, if people don't get trapped in mines and die here, they'll go do it somewhere else, and we can't have that?" It's not like the mining companies would have moved to other states had West Virginia earlier implemented the safeguards - the other states already had the safeguards and it's cheaper to do business in West Virginia.

Of course, when the Chairman of the Mine Safety and Health Administration was called to testify before Congress yesterday, he walked out midway through the meeting. Arlen Specter threatened him that some day, the Senate may possibly ask for possible unanimous consent to possibly call him back to possibly have an informal chat, off the record.

The Secretary and Assistant Secretary of OSHA were both on Bush's MSHA before being appointed to their respective posts. I guess this gives new meaning to the term, "when there's smoke, there's fire."

IT'S MY PARTY AND I'LL CRY IF I WANT TO

A new phenomenon is sweeping across the country. No, it's not acid rain or kudzu - it's Republican operatives, or their significant others, crying!

First, Randy "the Duke" Cunningham, after he pled to charges of bribery, let loose a blustery stream of tears as he proclaimed how "sorry" he was. This macho Vietnam vet, who has made a career out of attacking other politicans' manhood/sexual preferences (he once said "The only man I know who would enjoy a colonoscopy is Barney Frank) has suddenly gotten all soft and mushy on us.. Randy, as you remember, was wearing a wiretap for the Feds as the details of his agreement were being worked out. He was wearing it as part of the Feds' investigation of Jack "Blackjack" Abramoff. Which leads us to crying jag #2:

At the Golden Globes, George Clooney made fun of Abramoff's first name and the last three letters of his last name, by stringing them together. This reportedly made Abramoff's daughter cry. The dozens of Indian casinos who have been bilked out of millions by Abramoff, whom he called "monkeys," "morons," and various other affectionate terms, could not be reached for comment when asked about the daughter's crying jag.

And finally, there's Martha Baumgartner, a.k.a. Martha Alito, who dripped out oh-so-delicate tears as Republican senator Lindsey Graham asked her husband if he was a closet bigot. Martha, when asked what caused her to emote in this manner, said "my husband and I are not used to being treated in this manner." (Indeed they are not - Republicans do not go around asking their own kind if they are bigots!). Judge Alito seemed rather aloof as the crying incident occurred. If he were a closet bigot, then, by definition, it would seem, his wife would not know, so who is to say, assuming her tears were real, why she was crying?

Remember when Barbara Boxer, the lone Democratic senator who formally challenged the results of the 2004 election, was seen shedding tears as her challenge was rejected? A Republican congressman told her to "get over it."

But, no one dare suggest that this trio of Republicans dare stop their trail of tears. After all, if one isn't big enough, ethical enough, or classy enough, to not cry when attacked by trivial "Big Hollywood," or nonsensical "Glub Glub Glub Ted Kennedy," that person does indeed have a lot to cry about.

YOU WANT DEMOCRACY? YOU GOT IT!

Palestinian leadership hit by political earthquake
Fatah official: 'We have lost the elections; Hamas has won'

CNN
Posted: 9:52 a.m. EST (14:52 GMT) , Thursday, January 26, 2006

RAMALLAH, West Bank (CNN) -- The Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas, which has said it favors the destruction of Israel, won an apparent victory in Palestinian legislative elections, officials said Thursday, reshaping the political landscape of the Middle East.
"We have lost the elections; Hamas has won," said Saeb Erakat, a Palestinian lawmaker with the ruling Fatah Party. He said Fatah, which has held power since the creation of the Palestinian Authority, will now be the opposition.

******************************************************************************

This is surely a sad day for anyone who has hoped for a two-state solution, or for even so much as the (relatively) more sedate of affairs in the biblical land of Palestine (at least from the vantage point of this armchair blogger) that existed once Yasser Arafat died.

When I was growing up, I held what I'm sure would now be considered a quaint, reductive notion: that Israel did not want to surrrender its land, but that the Palestinians were not interested in negotiating, and were not interested in making peace (negotiation, which would have given them much of the land they wanted, was spurned by Arafat in Oslo. Why? I believed, then, that Arafat was more interested in waving the bloody shirt as a means of keeping himself in power than in achieving his purported goal of a Palestinian state, since, if that goal were achieved, his demagoguery - which was the key to his appeal - would lose much of its luster. Analogize this to the Republicans and Roe v. Wade - many Republicans want the case overruled, but Republican strategists concerned about the party's long-time future are scared to death about the prospect of the case being overruled, because the case has been the party's signature wedge issue for decades, and has attracted single-issue voters to the party for those decades; if the case were overruled, those voters would now be free to vote Democratic, and the certain-to-develop national backlash formed as a result of the Republican ruling would seriously damage the party).

When Abbas came to power, many were optimistic that Palestinians were amenable toward the idea of a two-state solution.

Today's news, however, seems to cast that optimism in doubt. Hamas is a terrorist organization, and "respected" Middle East leaders - Arab, Persian, Islamic - have refused to condemn it (guess why?) By its own statements, it wants to wipe Israel off the map (Hamas, the President of Iran - there are certain people who, if they do not say "Israel should be wiped off the map," and "driven into the sea" (make up your minds, guys - if it's driven into the sea, then it's still on the map!), it would be as anomalous as a Miss America Beauty Pageant contestant NOT wishing for "world peace."

Remember way back in 1947 when Britain declared that Palestine was to become a free state, and it offered the land in equal parts to Jews and Muslims? The Jews accepted these terms, and the Palestinians, wanting all or nothing, took nothing, and then the war of Israeli Indepedence was fought. (By the way, the Palestinians were not "driven off the land" in 1948; the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem told them to leave because the Arab countries were planning to attack Israel).

And then there was 1967, when Israel seized Gaza, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and Sinai (again). Sinai has been ceded by Israel. Gaza has been ceremoniously (and then some) ceded, and will be ceded outright (or would have been, anyway), before Hamas was elected). The entire world, practically, has vilified Israel for taking the Golan Heights and the West Bank (two territories not exactly missed by Syria and Jordan) - as if this land grab were the first time, during a war, a nation annexed territory (it was not. Remember the Spanish-American war? Spain seems to have gotten over the annexation of the Phillipines, somehow.) If the Arab countries (who couldn't care less about the Palestinians, despite being some of the richest nations on Earth) weren't poised to attack Israel in 1967, then they would have been able to keep their land. Of course, worldwide sentiment by 1967, and much earlier, was such that the very idea of a Jewish state was a radical notion - and the belief in such a state was a racist belief (the U.N. charter called Zionism -what was the word - racist?).

As far as the Palestinians wanting their own state, I'd say to them, and to their hatrons, God (or Allah, or whomever) helps those who help (or restrain) themselves. The world may still think of Israel as an occupier for many years, but one day, it may wake up to realize that the Palestinians who genuinely want their own state have been sold out by their leaders, who took the bargaining chips off the table to cash them in at the table of corruption.

There is one more point that today's news illustrates: democracy does not eliminate terrorism. Terrorists operate within any kind of government. Under the Bush (freedom at gunpoint) Doctrine, democracy is supposed to create anti-terrorist friendly regimes. We have just seen today yet another instance of this doctrinal failure. The Palestinian democratic elections produced terrorist leaders.

So, George Bush, when you start bullshitting about "democracy," be prepared to live with the consequences of it. Either that, or rethink your archly simplistic notions (or have someone re-think or first-think them for you) about how the world works.

COLLOQUIALLY EXPRESSED, BUT ESSENTIALLY CORRECT

Editorial: Al Gore talks turkey, gets a gobble in reply
On wiretapping, "they did it too" won't cut it.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune
January 21, 2006 – 6:38 PM

Former Vice President Al Gore gave a rip-roaring speech last week attacking the Bush administration for "repeatedly and insistently" breaking federal law and "disrespecting" the U.S. Constitution. One of his major examples was the Bush administration's massive, warrantless wiretapping of American citizens that has recently come to light. One may agree with his analysis or not, but Gore did not deserve the trashing he got from the White House, which spun a fluffy cloud of half-truths.
In televised remarks, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that "during the Clinton administration there was activity regarding the physical searches without warrants" and that Clinton's "deputy attorney general testified before Congress that the president does have the inherent authority under the Constitution to engage in physical searches without a warrant." (Wait a second.... These people believed Janet Reno was a lawbreaker, and still believe that. Now, they're justifying their program - they're saying it's legal - by comparing it to an "identical" program authorized by- yes - Janet Reno!) These, Gonzales said, were "inconsistent with what the former vice president was saying today." Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan, speaking to reporters, made the same two points and concluded that Gore's "hypocrisy knows no bounds."
It is true that the Clinton administration made a warrantless physical search of suspected spy Aldrich Ames' home in 1993. At the time, the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act did not prohibit warrantless physical searches. In this case of one man whose espionage did extraordinary damage to U.S. security, Clinton authorized one.
Later, in her congressional testimony in 1994, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick indeed made the point that FISA did not extend to such searches. But she made the point because the Clinton administration was supporting efforts to amend FISA so it would cover physical searches. Congress passed that amendment in 1995 and Clinton signed it.
So what you have is a legal, warrantless search of a single identified individual (Ames) who posed a serious threat to the nation, versus illegal, warrantless wiretaps on thousands of Americans who posed no threat whatsoever. The New York Times reported last week that in this illegal program, the National Security Agency sent the FBI a "flood" of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names that "required hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month." Of those, "virtually all led to dead ends or innocent Americans," officials told the Times. This entire operation resulted in hundreds of agents being pulled away from more promising investigations into terrorism.
Gore can't neutralize the untruths spoken by Gonzales and McClellan. But perhaps the American Civil Liberties Union can. Along with another group and several individuals, the ACLU has brought suit against the government challenging the legality of the warrantless wiretapping. They have a strong case.
But Gore had it right when he implored Congress to also reassert its authority by holding comprehensive hearings into this issue. More is at stake than just illegal domestic wiretapping, as Gore rightly pointed out. According to Bush doctrine, there are no checks and balances in American government anymore. A president can do what he pleases in the name of national security, and neither Congress nor the judiciary can stop him. (((See, e.g., Presidential Signing Statement affixed to anti-torture amendment - such a statement is a de facto line item veto. The Supreme Court held that the line item veto is unconstitutional in Clinton v. City of New York. Even if Roberts and Alito, should the issue arise before the court again, vote otherwise, the rest of the court, if it votes as it did before, will still produce a majority holding that a line item veto (and hopefully, its functional, de-facto equivalent) is unconstitutional)))). At the end of the day, that is the real threat to American democracy. Eventually, terrorism will fade as a threat. But if Bush succeeds with his overweening view of presidential authority, the United States may never recover the careful balance designed by the Constitution's framers.

**Remember, Bush once said, when asked what the role of the executive was with respect to the law, that the role was to "interpret the law." He said this with a straight face - unaware of the incorrectness of his remark. Given such ignorance, how can one even explain to him the CONTROVERSY created by a Presidential signing statement, let alone argue to him that such an action might be declared unconstitutional?**

NEWNITARY

I just did a search on Westlaw. I typed in the phrase "unitary executive," and had Westlaw's search engine search every federal and state case in Westlaw's database. Surprisingly (not), only twenty-two cases used this term. The OLDEST of these cases was a 1981 state court case. The next oldest one was a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Court case from 1988. The first time the Supreme Court used the phrase was in 1988, in the case of Morrison v. Olson. Justice Scalia used the phrase - in his lone dissent. Sixteen years later, Justice Thomas used the phrase - in his lone dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.

Two cases I came across during this search that are worth reading, that may give some (minor) comfort to those who fear the sky is about to fall:

Wilkinson v. Legal Services Corp.
27 F.Supp.2d 32
D.D.C.,1998.

981 F.2d 1288
C.A.D.C. 1993
FN 6
Can't remember name of the case, but it has "Bush" in the title.

By the way, the Federalist Society was founded in 1982.

BLOOD AND GORE

Students of history can trace the amazing political path blazed by Richard Nixon between 1960-1968.

key points along the journey:
*credible allegations that a Presidential election was stolen from him
*humiliating defeat in 1962 California gubernatorial election (You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more!)
*Seen as so much damaged goods (and as too moderate) to be the GOP's nominee in 1964 (Barry Goldwater got nod - "a choice, not an echo").
*Entered private law practice in NY as unpopular war conducted by two Democratic presidents raged on
*In an amazing act of political reinvention, won the Presidency in 1968, after having won Republican nomination as the "middle ground" candidate (Thurmond - too conservative; Rockefeller - too liberal)

Now, consider Al Gore's journey since 2000. Key points:
*credible allegations that a Presidential election was stolen from him
*embarrassing series of public sightings where he is seen with beard, extra forty pounds, and denouncing President in blood-red speeches offering little subtantive analysis
*Seen as too "damaged" to be Democratic nominee in 2004 (by the party and by himself)
*Enters television business, movie business, forms corporations, as unpopular war conducted by Republican president rages on.
*Starts to give series of high-profile, well-received speeches, laying groundwork for 2008 Presidential run, even as he all but publicly rules such a run out.
*In an amazing act of political reinvention, _________?

Who knows? History shows that anything is possible, and that timing, fate and luck can combine to make the impossible seem, in retrospect, like the inevitable.

Suggestions for Al, if you do run.

1. Don't bring up Florida. Voters will be reminded of it by your mere presence, and will vote according to their feelings about the recount. Distance can lend enchantment, and silence can be golden.
2. Do feel free to criticize the new Supreme Court for its token federalism. This criticism will be picked up by observant viewers as an implied (but fair) critique of the Court's decision to stop the 2000 recount, and will also remind people of how important it is to consider the Supeme Court as a voting issue generally.
3. Do campaign with Bill this time, even if it means saying his affair was wrong. He's already said it was, so you can too.
4. Don't campaign with Hillary, if that's possible.
5. Don't hire Donna Brazile, Bob Shrum, or, yes, even James Carville (who would rather Hillary win at some point in time) to manage your campaign.


The rest is history.... for the making.

Check out this website about Gore's resurgence:

http://www.observer.com/20060130/20060130_Ben_Smith_pageone_coverstory1.asp

I SUPPORT OUR GOOP!

Charlie Cray
Whistleblowers' Stomach-Churning Story Reveals Halliburton Cesspool (27 comments )
1/23/2006

"Cheney keeps using the "support our troops" line every time he needs a distraction. So he should be asked what he thinks about the new revelations that his favorite company exposed U.S. troops operating in Iraq to water that was "roughly 2x the normal contamination of untreated water from the Euphrates River."
How did that happen?
According to two former Halliburton employees turned whistleblowers who testified today, it's because KBR was "apparently taking the waste water from the water treatment process, which should have been dumped back in the [Euphrates] river" (from which it was originally extracted -- less than a mile downstream from a raw sewage outlet) and using it as the "non-potable water supply."
This means that thanks to Halliburton/KBR thousands of troops and contract employees stationed at the Ar Ramadi base in Iraq have been using a contaminated bilge for bathing, showering, shaving, laundry and cleaning.
According to one of the whistleblowers who first told this amazing story to Halliburton Watch, the troops have also ignored advisories and used this septic sluice to brush their teeth and make coffee.
So what's a little dirty water, you ask? After all, most of us have experienced a little gastrointestinal misery while vacationing in certain parts of the world. But for the troops this is already no vacation, and the risk of contamination is exactly why companies like Halliburton get paid a lot of money to operate giant reverse-osmosis filters -- so that this kind of problem doesn't have to happen.
Because when it does, it has the potential to be a major setback. As the U.S. Army Field Manual states, "Thoughout military history, the vast majority of casualties in war have been from disease and nonbattle injury. This loss of manpower can be drastically reduced by ensuring that soldiers have adequate supplies of water."
The Association of Military Surgeons found that 9 percent of soldiers evacuated in 2003 suffered from problems of the digestive system, but it's not clear what, if any, waterborne diseases are the result of Halliburton's reckless actions.
"I don't know how bad the problem might be, how many troops may have been exposed to untreated water, and how many might have gotten sick as a result" says Ben Carter, one of the two whistleblowers, who has twenty years of experience working as a water purification expert. "I can't know, because Halliburton apparently has no records and refuses to acknowledge there might be a problem."
According to the other, Ken May, Halliburton's "disregard for essential health, safety and security measures, time card fraud, fraudulent documentation and overbilling -- not to mention the constant barrage of daily threats and retaliatory behavior from our leadership (after coming forward, the two were no allowed to go into hardened shelters during the likely times of insurgent attacks, such as dusk) -- made life at Ar Ramadi nearly unbearable."
The company declined to appear at the hearing, and yet doesn't seem to be able to get its story straight. While denying there is even a problem, it met with Carter three times, to try to find out what documents were in his posession. The whistleblowers say there's a 21-page internal investigation out there somewhere that hasn't yet been released.
Do you think Rumsfeld or Cheney can get it?"

I SPY ON LIES

"It's amazing that people say to me, 'Well, he's just breaking the law.' If I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?" -- Dubya,


Bush didn't tell Ccngress that he was going to spy on everyone. Plus, he didn't tell "Congress," he told the Senate Intelligence Committee, and it's illegal for members of that committtee to disclose what he told them.

Hateriot!

Check out this article:

Does this guy hate our troops? Do we hate the troops?

January 24, 2006
latimes.com : Opinion : Commentary
Print E-mail story Most E-mailed
Joel Stein:
Warriors and wusses
JOEL STEIN, LA TIMES

I DON'T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on. I'm sure I'd like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for anything. If you're wandering into a recruiter's office and signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang with you in Vegas.

And I've got no problem with other people — the ones who were for the Iraq war — supporting the troops. If you think invading Iraq was a good idea, then by all means, support away. Load up on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the Chinese are making money off of.But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there — and who might one day want to send them somewhere else. Trust me, a guy who thought 50.7% was a mandate isn't going to pick up on the subtleties of a parade for just service in an unjust war. He's going to be looking for funnel cake. Besides, those little yellow ribbons aren't really for the troops. They need body armor, shorter stays and a USO show by the cast of "Laguna Beach." The real purpose of those ribbons is to ease some of the guilt we feel for voting to send them to war and then making absolutely no sacrifices other than enduring two Wolf Blitzer shows a day. Though there should be a ribbon for that.I understand the guilt. We know we're sending recruits to do our dirty work, and we want to seem grateful. After we've decided that we made a mistake, we don't want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely understood. But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff's pet name for the House of Representatives.I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam. And sometimes, for reasons I don't understand, you get to just hang out in Germany. I know this is all easy to say for a guy who grew up with money, did well in school and hasn't so much as served on jury duty for his country. But it's really not that easy to say because anyone remotely affiliated with the military could easily beat me up, and I'm listed in the phone book. I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea. All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades.Seriously, the traffic is insufferable.

Party-Line Bloat

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on Judge Alito. All ten Republicans on the Committee have already announced their support for him, even though he has not yet bombed an abortion clinic. Four Democrats (Kennedy, Leahy, Feinstein and Durbin) have already indicated that they will vote "no." That leaves Schumer, Kohl, Feingold and Biden. Feingold is the only one who may cast a "yes" vote.

Alito will join the ranks of distinguished jurists Clarence Thomas and Robert Pork as having barely eked through the Judiciary Committee (or in Pork's case, having gotten more "nays" than "yays" in that committee).

Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska is the only Democrat who has indicated that he will vote for Alito. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, a Republican, has indicated that he has not made up his mind yet. Nor has Independent Jim Jeffords. Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, and Bill Nelson of Florida, are all Democratic senators in "red" states, and the pressure is on them to vote "yes," lest they become Daschle-hammered.

Ken Salazar and Tom Harkin (shocker!) have already come out against Alito, as has, of course, John Kerry.

There won't be any suspense as to whether Alito has enough votes to gain confirmation - he has over 50 as we speak (in constrast, Clarence "White Man's Burden" Thomas could not bank on 50 votes when the nomination was sent for final vote; indeed, Dan Quayle had to be present for that vote in case a tie needed to be broken).

There probably won't be any suspense as to whether any Democrats will launch a filipuster, either. No one filipustered Thomas, despite his non-qualifications and a degree of evasiveness on his part that made Alito look like a motormouth. (I haven't even mentioned the Anita Hill stuff). Maybe a filibuster looked unseemly after the month-long confirmation process. 11 Democrats ended up voting for Thomas as well, so the party was hardly in unanimity over whether he should be confirmed/not confirmed.

Even though the Democrats seem to be in greater unanimity in their rejection of Alito, it still seems likely that he will not be filibustered. The Democrats are apparently worried that filibustering him might make them look either weak (apparently, they hate the status quo), or strong (which might cure them of Stockholm Syndrome, an unforgivable state of affairs). Sen. Feinstein said she would likely filibuster if she believed Alito's confirmation hearing remarks indicated he would be likely to overrule Roe v. Wade. After the confirmation hearings, she said, "Well, I can't filibuster someone just because I disagree with him personally (on Roe v. Wade)?" It is a unique ability to talk out of both sides of one's mouth, while lying out of each.

The only suspense left in this humorless affair seems to be whether 41 or more Democrats will actually vote no. The last time such a question was in play was when John Ashcroft's nomination as Attorney General was on the table. 42 Democrats voted "no" then. Oh well. If only Ashcroft were competing for the AG position against a dead man.

As the Michael Douglas character said in The American President, "America isn't easy. It's advanced citizenship. You've gotta want it bad." Translation: those of you on the left and right who, when Alito becomes confirmed, complain about his overly healthy mastication (and evacuation) of the Constitution, should, in many aspects, try looking in the mirror before demonizing him.

George Bush said he'd appoint a "Shrict Conshructionischt" (which to him was code for Thomas and Scalia, who are strict constructionists as per their prejudices only). He nominated Alito in accordance with his code message. How sad to think that the majority of the people who voted for him did not even understand this code, and cannot even identify the provisions of the Bill of Rights.

To paraphrase Harry Blackmun, I can't help but think that once Alito gets on the Supreme Court, that "the signs are very ominous.... And a chill wind blows."

Breaking the Ice

I'm brand new to the blogging experience. I guess this a good thing, for now. Since I haven't decided what topics my blog will be about (save for politics, movies, pop culture and law) there are no trolls to worry about, no abusive threads, no anything - except this, my first message - hey y'all.