Category: The Dish

Economists react to the unemployment news.

Le Monde covers Huckabee:

The guitar is a fundamental element of his strategy. It permits him to reassure those who would never imagine voting for a Baptist from the Bible Belt (southern states where evangelical Protestants are very present).

Fallows on Clinton’s entourage last night:

And Bill Clinton!!! Who managed a wan smile but for seconds on end stood motionless, as if traumatized or stuffed.

Drum speaks for many:

I’ve been sort of fitfully supporting Hillary Clinton for the past few months, but I have to say that I don’t feel any disappointment tonight over her loss. Just the opposite, in fact.

Just filed:

Defendant John Yoo, along with other senior officials, deliberately removed Mr. Padilla from due process protections traditionally available to U.S. citizens detained by their government and barred all access to the outside world, including access to counsel.  On information and belief, Defendant Yoo and other senior officials then personally formulated and/or approved and/or failed to act upon actual or constructive knowledge of, a systematic program of illegal detention and interrogation, which was specifically designed to inflict, and did inflict, severe physical and mental pain and suffering on Mr. Padilla for the purpose of extracting information from him and/or punishing him without due process of law, and which proximately caused the harms to Mr. Padilla alleged herein…   

Defendant Yoo personally provided numerous legal memoranda that purported to provide to senior government officials a legal basis to implement an extreme and unprecedented interrogation and detention program – even though such tactics are unprecedented in U.S. history and clearly contrary to the U.S. Constitution and the law of war.

# Mr. Padilla suffered and continues to suffer severe mental and physical harm as a result of the forty-four months of military detention and interrogation that he endured, detention and interrogation for which Defendant Yoo personally purported to provide a legal blank check.

# Ms. Lebron was also injured by the conduct of the Defendant, which caused her to be deprived of the virtually all contact with her son, Mr. Padilla, for the duration of his illegal detention and interrogation, in violation of her constitutional rights to familial association and communication.

# Plaintiffs Padilla and Lebron assert this complaint against Defendant John Yoo in his individual capacity.

Josh Patashnik:

Politics is not rocket science. You have one party led by a deeply unpopular, unapologetic right-wing ideologue whom its presidential candidates nevertheless decided to embrace. You have another party that has spent most of the past quarter-century undergoing the painful but necessary process of taming its own ideological excesses and tacking to the center. As a result, it now boasts appealing, mainstream candidates with pragmatic policy proposals for addressing real problems. What, exactly, did people think was going to happen?

The root-canal option:

For the first step, I would recommend arranging an hour or three on Rush Limbaugh, then do the same on Hannity, Medved, Beck, Hewitt, Ingraham, Bennett, Prager, Levin, O’Reilly, Savage, Michael Reagan, Brian and the Judge, Dr. Laura, etc.

He took on Huckabee … and lost.

According to She Who Is No Longer Inevitable in New Hampshire today:

"This is a new day, this is a new state, this is a primary election. You’re not disenfranchised if you work at night. You’re not disenfranchised if you’re not in the state."

She’s blaming her loss on the caucus system?

"None of this worries me – Sept. 11, there were times I was worried," – Rudy Giuliani, responding to being thrashed by, among others, Ron Paul.