In Australia, the gauntlet is thrown down:
While the successful applicants will not be paid, each will receive a pack of Durex sex products, a chance to win 1,000 Australian dollars ($857 U.S.), plus professional prestige, the company said in a statement.
From the "You Think You’ve Got Problems" file: some poor wretch inherited Paris Hilton’s old cell-phone number.
"I don’t care," – Tommy Lee Jones.
The iPhone backlash continues on this satirical site called iDea. They’re just jealous. If you really can’t abide the AT&T mess, you can always get your mom to knit one:
The Christianists really can’t catch a break, can they? Ambers notes:
Which is more credible? Fred Thompson denying that he ever departed from the pro-life orthodoxy? Or literally a half dozen questionnaires, news accounts, and numerous eye-witnesses who insist he did?
Well, with a lot of democracies, actually:
The political knowledge of the average voter has been tested repeatedly, and the scores are impressively low. In polls taken since 1945, a majority of Americans have been unable to name a single branch of government, define the terms "liberal" and "conservative," and explain what the Bill of Rights is. More than two-thirds have reported that they do not know the substance of Roe v. Wade and what the Food and Drug Administration does. Nearly half do not know that states have two senators and three-quarters do not know the length of a Senate term. More than fifty per cent of Americans cannot name their congressman; forty per cent cannot name either of their senators. Voters’ notions of government spending are wildly distorted: the public believes that foreign aid consumes twenty-four per cent of the federal budget, for example, though it actually consumes about one per cent.
This isn’t too encouraging either.
Bainbridge has clearly had an ideological epiphany. Join the pack here.
A Bob Hope moment to piss off my liberal readers:
Other YouTube suggestions for best movie line ever eagerly solicited.
Deroy Murdock wants to expand Gitmo. How?
Gitmo should grow into a global destination where foreign countries may deposit terror convicts and suspects for safekeeping.
Notice the very broad criterion for imprisonment: mere terror suspects. That, of course, has been the criterion for a large number of Gitmo detainees as well. Who determines these suspects? Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Uzbekistan … and any other regime with a few dissidents to fear, torture or lock up. Murdock does not mention torture as such (Bush-backers don’t use the t-word), or rather he endorses it under the strict condition that the techniques be "non-fatal."
If you want to read a piece that endorses indefinite detention of anyone deemed suspicious of "Muslim fanaticism" anywhere on the planet, including the US, and subject to torture as long as it is "non-fatal", then welcome to National Review.
Here’s another cogent argument for why there is simply no principled or coherent defense of the commutation of Libbby’s sentence. Whatever your views about the case, the underlying crime and the prosecution, you cannot get past these facts about the commutation process:
The DOJ guidelines [for commutation] also contain a substantive component: They describe the factors ordinarily to be considered when assessing whether to commute a sentence – that is, they describe the very unusual circumstances under which the President can justifiably single out one person for special treatment, in a way that does not undermine public confidence in the bedrock concept that all persons should stand equal before the law. To begin with, the guidelines admonish that commutations ordinarily should not be given until the individual under consideration has served some period of time in jail, and has either exhausted or given up his or her appeals. Furthermore, the guidelines emphasize that commutations should be reserved for individuals who have accepted responsibility and expressed remorse for their criminal conduct.
The reason for these limitations is clear and inarguable.
Because a commutation does not call into question the underlying conviction, it is expected that commutations will be reserved for people who are genuinely remorseful – as opposed to those who continue to deny guilt, through the legal process or otherwise. In addition, because the individual has committed a felony, there is an expectation that he or she will serve at least some jail time before being given a break.
Scooter, of course, does not come within a country mile of qualifying for these preconditions set forth under the guidelines. Let’s suppose, following some Republicans’ arguments, that we were to exempt him from the jail-time requirement on the theory that any incarceration would be too much given that the offense is purportedly so minor. It is still clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that Libby has shown no acceptance of responsibility at all, much less any remorse, for his criminal conduct. Under the DOJ guidelines, this omission would be the end of the story.
Read the whole thing. What we have witnessed is a president’s contempt for the justice system and rank favoritism for a friend and acolyte. It fatally undermines the very concept of equal treatment under the law. It is the mark of a monarchy, not a republic.
