Ok if anyone was on the fence for the Gonzales nomination just check out this love fest DailyKos put on for him

True, we could go ballistic if Gonzales is the nominee, especially given his love of torture, but he’s about as close a shot to another Souter that we’ll get under this administration. Precisely the reason the Far Right hates him is the reason I’d be willing to give him a pass.

He’s not perfect. He’s a Republican, after all. But given the alternatives, he may be the best of a bad lot. Let’s not forget that Gonzales was once one of Priscilla Owens’ biggest critics.

Game. Set. Match.

From the Hill:

One of these surveys, released June 20 by the legal website FindLaw, makes us wonder whether public opinion should play any role in replacing O’Connor. The national survey of 1,000 adults found that nearly two-thirds of Americans couldn’t name a single current U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Departing O’Connor was the best-known justice, named by 25 percent of Americans. Close behind her was Clarence Thomas, mentioned by 21 percent. No other justice was mentioned by more than 10 percent of the public.

God in heaven, how hard is it to be informed? Honestly, what the hell is wrong with people? I can name every member of the Supreme Court, and I can tell you how they are likely to rule on certain issues. Think about this, 66% of the country, more than voted for Bush or Kerry couldn’t even throw out a name of a single member of the Supreme Court. From this I would conclude that roughly 10% of the country is even aware of how the Supreme Court works, its historic role in the nation, and how this role has changed since Brown vs. The Board of Education. This country won’t survive if people remain this damned ignorant.

This very amusing article points out some new research being done about the religion of slaves coming over from Africa. It talks about the mystical religion of hoodoo, but what makes it so amusing is that it ends with this little blurb:

However, digs at the homes of blacks who joined the middle class in the 19th and 20th centuries turned up no evidence of hoodoo ritual objects or bundles.

That’s not to say that middle-class African Americans were giving up their African traditions, but they were finding different ways to express it, Leone told The Washington Post.

Lack of hoodoo evidence may show the difficult choices facing African Americans who strived for acceptance and advancement, but wanted to remain connected to their traditions, he said.

Now I know this is a “terrible” thing to say, but considering today most African Americans are Christians (mostly evangelical/protestant but strong Catholic groupings too) maybe they just (cover your eyes, a terrible word follows) converted because they thought Christianity was true. Wow I am a radical.

From a comment thread of a post that compared conservatives to the Taliban:

This I think really sums it up, they want us to be more like France, more godless.

Gods, Gays and Guns (none / 0)

I think it’s more complicated than “their far right is like our far right”. Compared to the other democracies, even mainstream political discourse in the U.S. really demonizes and vilifies progressive and liberal ideas. And I think that agressive hostility to all things “liberal” points to a tendency within our mainstream, not just at our margins, to resemble the “other” more than we would like to admit.

Fareed Zakaria hints at it here:

This is what really divides the U.S. from the other industrial democracies: Gods, Gays and Guns, if you will. If you were to take a sampling of public opinion in countries all [over] the world–and this has been done by the Pew foundation–you would find that the United States on most of these core cultural issues is much closer [to] Nigeria and Saudi Arabia than it is to Europe to Japan. Source

Mix together some of our national characteristics like belief in American exceptionalism, the prominence of religious belief in our lives (compared to the other democracies), isolationism/insularity, an abysmal mind-numbing mass media, the weakness of non-governmental centers of power like organized labor, the arrogance of overwhelming military power, etc., add to that the wounded nationalism of 9/11, and I think we are developing into a society where all kinds of intolerance and extremism are able to take root, so long as we wrap them in the flag.

Maybe I just feel vulnerable and pessimistic because I’m a liberal in a very red county, but I see a propensity to intolerance, militarism and fundamentalist thought as a characteristic of mainstream America right now, not just a feature of the far right that we can use to batter the talibaptists with.

by Diane on Tue Jul 5th, 2005 at 15:44:18 PDT

Congressman Charlie Dent presents some RINO award to another fellow RINO

So… let me get this straight, the seat that thrice elected Rep. Pat Toomey to congress now is putting CHARLIE DENT, an avowed RINO, into office. This is just a travesty. Will someone please primary this guy.

UPDATE: Alex’s guy ain’t that great either as in some collosal boneheaded move Rep. Kirk (RINO-IL) voted AGAINST the House bill restricting the Kelo decision.

Well Rick Santorum may be able to breathe a serious sigh of release. PoliticsPA is reporting that Rick will show nearly $5million cash on hand, while Bob Casey will be between $500,000 and $1.5million. Sources inside Pennsylvania that I’ve talked to seem to indicate he will be possibly under $1million cash on hand, which would be a crushing blow. Rick is no shoe in, but if he outraises Casey $5 to $1 then well its gonna be a tough race.

Switching gears for a moment, here is a great article from Untimely Thoughts on the future of Russia and its questionable ability to survive.

Neither states nor borders are permanent. We have recently witnessed the break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. The Spanish Empire, with a few exceptions, ended over a 100-year period. The colonial empires of Britain, France, the Netherlands and Portugal largely disappeared after World War II. Earlier in the 20th century, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires disappeared (and created a huge power vacuum).

Hat-tip: Coming Anarchy (I am sure I have said this before, but if you missed it the first time: This is a must-read blog)

No, he won’t be the nominee it looks like, but he will have a large say in who that nominee is. From the LA Times:

President Bush has named former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson to help shepherd his yet-to-be named Supreme Court nominee through the Senate, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Wednesday.

Thompson, a Republican and actor on the NBC television series “Law & Order,” agreed to accept the post in a telephone conversation with the president on Monday, McClellan said.

He said Thompson would serve as an informal adviser to shepherd the nomination through the Senate.

“Senator Thompson will guide the nominee through the confirmation process,” McClellan said.

There is precedent however for President Bush’s advisors to end the job search by declaring themselves as the best candidate. Dick Cheney was in charge of finding a suitable running mate for then Gov. Bush; he later decided he himself was the right man for the job. The article doesn’t specify Thompson’s role beyond assisting the yet to be named nominee navigate the partisan waters of a Senate confirmation hearing. But it is heartening to see that men like Fred Thompson will be close to the President during this process.

Via Drudge: Senator Schumer (D-NY) was over heard on Amtrak having a conversation with an unknown friend discussing how best to go to “war” over the coming SCOTUS nomination.

Schumer proudly declared: “We are contemplating how we are going to go to war over this.”

Schumer went on to say how hard it was to predict how a Supreme Court justice would turn out: “Even William Rehnquist is more moderate than they expected. The only ones that resulted how they predicted were [Antonin] Scalia and [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg. So most of the time they’ve gotten their picks wrong, and that’s what we want to do to them again.”

Schumer later went on to mock the “Gang of 14” judicial filibuster deal and said it wasn’t relevant in the Supreme Court debate.

“A Priscilla Owen or Janice Rogers Brown style appointment may not have been extraordinary to the appellate court but may be extraordinary to the Supreme Court.”

There is more as the story is still developing but it seems clear at this point that the Democrats have no intention of letting anyone to the right of O’Conner on the court. The individual nominee’s qualifications aren’t even important it seems, only that they fit into the strict litmus test of the Democratic Party. Chuck is right about one thing though; this is going to be war.