Janis & Big Brother:

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You know, it’s really depressing that we were so very right about this mess:
The Senate Armed Services Committee heard testimony Tuesday that increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps may not resolve severe and growing personnel problems. There was even talk of returning to the draft to fill the ranks.
“It is better to [...]

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You know, this is why I was so pissed off at Harry Reid for not fighting the John Roberts and Sam Alito confirmations. We knew this would happen.
Yeah, the Senate Dems are showing some spine now - but what the hell took them so long? How did they ignore the plight of people like this? [...]

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Bubble Boy gets a dose of reality and has trouble swallowing.

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Big Orange has pissed off a lot of people with his casual “whatever” attitude toward online misogyny and the assorted threats that accompany it. I’m hoping he’s less flippant in light of this week’s campus killings (and the fact that he now has a daughter) but I’m not holding my breath.
Sometimes people mistake success for [...]

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From Big Tent Democrat:
Of special interest in today’s SCOTUS decision upholding a late term abortion ban is that the mantra “leave abortion to the States” has been utterly abandoned by the Republican Party and anti-choice forces. This is a federal ban. This line from Justice Thomas’ concurrence is ironic:
I also note that whether the Act [...]

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Rick Perlstein. Amen! (h/t Lutton.)

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This time, from Dan Froomkin:
Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting yesterday, “for his revelations that President Bush often used ‘signing statements’ to assert his controversial right to bypass provisions of new laws.”
The stories that won Savage his prize are certainly familiar to White House Watch readers — and [...]

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Hard to believe they have the balls to claim executive privilege on this, but yes, they do:
The White House and Democrats in Congress are both pushing for emails kept by the Republican National Committee, and the RNC is caught in the middle.
The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), wants to get its [...]

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Oh, look. California foreclosures are up by 800%.

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Josh Marshall:
Not just the US Attorneys, Gonzales and Co. have been purging the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division too.
Go read Paul Kiel’s report above. But I could not help excerpting this one passage. A good bit of the story turns on a Georgia voter ID bill (passed on the evidence contained in a book by John [...]

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It is on days like this (home sick, eyes too bleary to read much) that I’m happy I have cable. That means, instead of staring mindlessly at the hypnotic parsing and re-parsing of the latest tragedy, I get to watch old movies - or even new ones.
I hate cable news channels and rarely watch. (Except [...]

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“I told you: You have to drink more water,” the doctor chides me after peering into my nasal passages. “Six to eight glasses a day.”
This is why I have so many problems with my sinuses, he says. I remind him a big part of the problem is mechanical (a badly deviated septum). “All the more [...]

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Woody Guthrie’s Guitar on the VA Tech shootings.

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To the Boston Globe on a much-deserved Pulitzer for their work on bringing Bush’s “signing statements” to light. “Straining to Keep A Promise,” on the lack of funding and staffing at the VA for returning vets, is up to that same high standard:
Until then the system faces troubles of the sort Dr. Frances Murphy, the [...]

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Thanks, BushCo!
(CBS/AP) A new report issued by some of the nation’s top retired military leaders, including the former Army chief of staff and President George W. Bush’s former chief Middle East peace negotiator, warns that global warming poses a “serious threat to America’s national security” with terrorism worsening, and that the U.S. will likely be [...]

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“I have a cold on one side of my face, and I feel awful,” I told my friend over the phone. “It’s the weirdest thing. My right eye and my right nostril are both running, and the whole right side of my face hurts. I feel awful.”
“One side of your face? That sounds like a [...]

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Now the conservative Republicans are pushing for Gonzales to resign. Looking over the list of signers, I can’t help but wonder if at least a few of them aren’t more upset about him getting caught than about what he actually did:
In what could prove an embarrassing new setback for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales [...]

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We need the originals, in electronic form. Here’s why.

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Amanda.

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By their works, ye shall know them.

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The humanitarian crisis in Iraq. Thanks, BushCo!

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We got hit by a northeaster Saturday night and it’s still going. Yesterday was heavy rain and last night the howling winds moved in. Now it’s snowing.
Snowing. Did I mention it’s April 16th and no, I don’t live in Colorado?
UPDATE: Turns out the downtown area hardly got any. People in my office building were looking [...]

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I’m such a dork when it comes to baseball. I’ve been putting off watching the remake of “The Bad News Bears” because I loved the first one so much, but I finally saw it yesterday (and of course I cried). It was just as good.
Today, I read this, and I cried again. I love baseball, [...]

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A former DoJ staffer discusses the no-longer-in-existence independence of the Justice Department. Good piece.

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From Sam Phillips’ “A Boot and a Shoe”. She says more with less than anyone I know:
We can’t fix what’s broken so let’s leave it here and walk on
I’ll be right behind you
Love changes everything
I’m not sorry we loved, but I hope I didn’t keep you too long
We’re not experts
We are believers, ministers of silence
Let [...]

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From the wonderful Freeway Blogger (click to see full-size image):

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I’m still catching up. A few days late (me, not her), here’s Sally Hemings weighs in on the Imus controversy:
When I was a child, my father arranged for me and my brothers to attend a sports camp at Cheyney University. It was at these camp sessions we were lucky to meet Coach Stringer. She left [...]

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This week’s Friday news dump was one worth waiting for:
WASHINGTON, April 13 — A Justice Department e-mail message released on Friday shows that the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales proposed replacement candidates for United States attorneys nearly a year before they were dismissed in December 2006. The department has repeatedly [...]

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