In some respects, I don’t care that Alito will

be the next Justice, nor that he’ll replace a more moderate Sandra Day O’Connor. I am a little creeped out by 8 Catholics

ruling like a College of Cardinals.

I’m absolutely certain that I will live long enough to hear more than one Radical Righter

bray against the treachery of Alito or Roberts. It is inevitable that they will be disappointed — they always have been.

I also

believe in the Law of Unintended Consequences and the subtle shifting of the balance of power in our three-pronged government. The Loony

Right believes they are at the gates of heaven: they control the Legislature and the Presidency and are one Justice away from a

generational lock on the Supreme Court — plus the corporate grip on media and the tax-free businesses of mega-churches. With a rubber-

stamp Congress and Court, and the support of the church, this or the next conservative President will be more powerful than any president

since Roosevelt — and it’s all about destroying the New Deal.

But the Radical Right is losing its hold. The deception and

corruption become more obvious every day. The intolerance does, too. Those with power believe their judgements and pronouncements are

absolute and final. People are starting to fear their government — ironically, that’s one of the tenets of the Radical Right: hatred of

the Beast. They have become the Beast. They are repulsing those who are not ideologically pure.

America is stronger than the

momentary passions of any group, no matter how powerful they think they are — as liberals who supported personal freedom in the Sixties

well know. This president will leave office — thank god — thinking he was the greatest president ever. Power will shift — as it must

— and the pendulum will swing. The overall trajectory of America is not in the direction of more power for the rich and for business. We

are not really AmeriCo. mjh

JURIST – Forum: Legal Technicalities: Weighing the Alito Nomination by David Kairys

Like

the rest of us, [Alito’s] for a clean environment and corporate responsibility, but he interprets environmental laws so it’s near

impossible to make out a case against a polluter, and anti-trust laws so it’s near impossible to make out a case of price fixing.

He tells us about the importance of privacy and of limits on the government’s power to intrude on individuals, which are the essence of

liberty. But he accepts farfetched rationales to justify most any intrusion – even the unauthorized strip search of a 10-year-old girl

and the unauthorized holding of a farmer at gunpoint and ransacking of his home.

He’s for balance among the three branches

government, but he’s taken every opportunity to strip Congress of the basic power to protect and serve the public. …

In many

such decisions, he was a lone dissenter, and majorities on his own court, including then-judge and now Secretary of Homeland Security

Michael Chertoff, often expressed unusual displeasure with his dubious manipulations of rules and evidence. …

He has a deep

allegiance to government, to corporations, and to the wealthy and elite – so deep that there is no way to know what, if any, limits he

might find acceptable.

Alito’s writings yearn for undiluted executive power and immunity of executive officials from all

legal claims – immunity from the rule of law. At the confirmation hearings, he wouldn’t accept any concrete limits on

presidential power, even in general terms. …

But he’s very willing – eager – to limit the powers of Congress when they are used

to protect the safety, health, jobs, environment or wellbeing of Americans throughout the country.

Executive and legislative power

matter. …

Alito believes in freedom, but it’s the freedom of the most powerful and wealthiest among us and of the government to

do as they please, with little or no concern for the effect on most Americans or the nation as a whole.

David Kairys is a

law professor at Temple University who has litigated leading civil rights cases.

When the new Chief Justice of the United States was sworn in — a once-in-a-lifetime event — where

was Scalia? Hanging out with real conservatives.

Now, his buds are outraged that this got reported. Are they mad that he

was caught snubbing his new boss? (Proof enough for me that Roberts isn’t a real conservative.) Or are they pissed at Scalia

being shown playing tennis? Hey, at least he wasn’t on a polo pony. Our Lords and Ladies need their diversions, don’t you know.

Note that Radical Righters call the following report a lie. Did Scalia skip the swearing-in or not? Did he play tennis or not? mjh

Conservative Legal Group Calls

for Investigation of ABC Report by Robert B. Bluey

ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross reported Monday for

ABC’s “Nightline” that Scalia was out of town at a Federalist Society legal seminar on the day of Chief Justice John Roberts’ swearing-in

ceremony. Ross’ report showed Scalia playing tennis at the hotel where he stayed—video that might have been obtained illegally, according

to the Federalist Society.

Republicans Mean Business

Click on that image for the larger version. Feel free to use either

image as a link; how about a link to www.edgewiseblog.com/mjh/category/nada/dump-duhbya/ ? mjh

PS-

Originally, there was no “Feel free to add an apostrophe or equal sign.” I thought that was funny enough, but assumed someone

would not get it without some help.

TIME.com: When George Met

Jack By ADAM ZAGORIN, MIKE ALLEN

“The President does not know [Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff], nor does the President

recall ever meeting him,” McClellan said.

The President’s memory may soon be unhappily refreshed. TIME has seen five photographs

of Abramoff and the President that suggest a level of contact between them that Bush’s aides have downplayed. While TIME’s source

refused to provide the pictures for publication, they are likely to see the light of day eventually ….

As Profits Soar, Companies Pay

U.S. Less for Gas Rights – New York Times By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

At a time when energy prices and industry profits are soaring,

the federal government collected little more money last year than it did five years ago from the companies that extracted more than $60

billion in oil and gas from publicly owned lands and coastal waters.

If royalty payments in fiscal 2005 for natural gas

had risen in step with market prices, the government would have received about $700 million more than it actually did, a three-

month investigation by The New York Times has found.

But an often byzantine set of federal regulations, largely shaped and

fiercely defended by the energy industry itself, allowed companies producing natural gas to provide the Interior Department with much

lower sale prices – the crucial determinant for calculating government royalties – than they reported to their shareholders.

As a

result, the nation’s taxpayers, collectively, the biggest owner of American oil and gas reserves, have missed much of the recent energy

bonanza.

The disparities in gas prices parallel those uncovered just five years ago in a wave of scandals involving royalty

payments for oil. From 1998 to 2001, a dozen major companies, while admitting no wrongdoing, paid a total of $438 million to settle

charges that they had fraudulently understated their sale prices for oil.

Since then, the government has tightened its rules for

oil payments. But with natural gas, the Bush administration recently loosened the rules and eased its audits intended to uncover

cheating. …

Royalties for natural gas have climbed sharply in the last three years. But while prices nearly doubled

from 2001 to 2005, the $5.15 billion in gas royalties for 2005 was less than the $5.35 billion in 2001. When oil and gas are combined,

royalties were about $8 billion in 2005, almost the same as in 2001.

Because much of the information about specific transactions

is kept secret, it remains unclear to what extent, if at all, the weakness in royalty payments stems from deliberate cheating or from

issues with the rules themselves. …

The possible losses to taxpayers in gas could be even higher than the losses tied to the

scandals over oil royalties. For one thing, natural gas production on federal land is worth twice as much as oil. …

“These

companies had knowingly been cheating on oil for years, if not decades,” [Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government

Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group that exposed many of the oil royalty scandals,] continued. “To ignore the likelihood that the same

thing is happening on the gas side is absurd.” …

In the wake of the scandals, the outgoing Clinton administration pushed through

tough new rules for valuing crude oil, which relied on comparing company reports with an index of spot market prices.

But the Bush

administration did not close any loopholes for valuing natural gas. Indeed, in March 2005 it expanded the list of deductions and decided

against valuing sales at spot-market prices when companies were selling to their own affiliates.

The industry-friendly stance was

intentional.

Rove Offers Republicans A

Battle Plan For Elections By Dan Balz, Washington Post Staff Writer

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove offered a

biting preview of the 2006 midterm elections yesterday, drawing sharp distinctions with the Democrats over the campaign against

terrorism, tax cuts and judicial philosophy, and describing the opposition party as backward-looking and bereft of ideas.

“At the

core, we are dealing with two parties that have fundamentally different views on national security,” Rove said. “Republicans have a

post-9/11 worldview and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview. That doesn’t make them unpatriotic — not at all. But it does make

them wrong — deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong.” …

Rove used his platform to excoriate Democrats for “wild and

reckless and false charges” against Bush on the issue of domestic spying ….

“Karl Rove only has a White House job and a security

clearance because President Bush has refused to keep his promise to fire anyone involved in revealing the identity of an undercover CIA

operative,” Dean said in a statement. Dean added: “The truth is, Karl Rove breached our national security for partisan gain and that is

both unpatriotic and wrong.”

It was four years ago this week when Rove, appearing at another meeting of the RNC, said Republicans

would make terrorism a central issue of the 2002 midterm elections. Rove’s remarks infuriated Democrats, who protested that, until then,

Bush had stressed bipartisanship and national unity in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Republicans made historic

gains in 2002, and Bush successfully used the issue again to help secure his reelection in 2004, despite growing public

dissatisfaction with the administration’s handling of the war in Iraq. Yesterday’s speeches by Rove and Mehlman signaled that

the White House and the RNC intend to pursue much the same strategy in a midterm-election year that begins with

Republicans on the defensive.

Wanted: Democrats that can

show some spine By Molly Ivins

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy’s sake? The majority of the American people (55

percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-

payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum

wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush’s tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The

majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do ”whatever it takes” to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent)

thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. Who are you

afraid of?