They filibustered Estrada for years and he never made it onto the bench. So, when you see Barack Obama--who voted to filibuster Sam Alito!--piously denouncing "the political posturing and ideological brinksmanship that has bogged down this process" in the past, remember Miguel Estrada. Somewhere on this earth, there is a worse hypocrite than Barack Obama. I just can't think who he is offhand....
The point is, there was evidence to suggest that the Obama administration may have been wielding its economic power -- gained at future taxpayers' expense -- to punish political enemies .Now that the federal government is pouring trillions into semi-secret bailouts, there are a myriad opportunities for such strong-arming.
Questions for Obama's Car Czar
Why did Quadrangle Group, run by Steven Rattner whom the president has chosen as the auto industry’s fix-it man, have a subsidiary buy the DVD rights to Chooch, a movie co-produced by a pension-fund official? It’s among the many things New York's attorney general needs to figure out.
Spy Fired Shot That Changed West Germany
It was called “the shot that changed the republic.”
This photograph of Benno Ohnesorg being cradled by a woman after he was shot during a demonstration in West Berlin in 1967 is among the most iconic images in Germany.
The killing in 1967 of an unarmed demonstrator by a police officer in West Berlin set off a left-wing protest movement and put conservative West Germany on course to evolve into the progressive country it has become today.
Now a discovery in the archives of the East German secret police, known as the Stasi, has upended Germany’s perception of its postwar history. The killer, Karl-Heinz Kurras, though working for the West Berlin police, was at the time also acting as a Stasi spy for East Germany.
It is as if the shooting deaths of four students at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard had been committed by an undercover K.G.B. officer, though the reverberations in Germany seemed to have run deeper.
“It makes a hell of a difference whether John F. Kennedy was killed by just a loose cannon running around or a Secret Service agent working for the East,” said Stefan Aust, the former editor in chief of the weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel. “I would never, never, ever have thought that this could be true.”
Because of Rodriguez's stature, Roberts has become a lightning rod for broadcast commentators and bloggers. Roberts, who left the Star Tribune in 1996 to work at the New York Times and now is a columnist for Sports Illustrated, chatted recently with her old friend, TV critic Neal Justin, from her spot in the eye of the storm.
Question: There has been some negative stuff out there about you and your credibility. How are you dealing with that?
A satisfying smackdown of Nancy Grace
Finally, someone has told off Nancy Grace, of CNN’s HLN network, while on the air.
We Need Smaller Banks Now
Good news: Responsible credit-card users to “subsidize” deadbeats now
For twenty years, credit card borrowers have paid for the free riders who pay off their full balances each month.
Diseconomies of scale
The journey also exposed me to the world of wrongful convictions. Something that I, even as a former lawyer, had never spent much time thinking about. This is not a problem peculiar to Oklahoma, far from it. Wrongful convictions occur every month in every state in this country, and the reasons are all varied and all the same-- bad police work, junk science, faulty eyewitness identifications, bad defense lawyers, lazy prosecutors, arrogant prosecutors.Nearly every day brings fresh examples to bolster Grisham's argument.
A Forensics Charlatan Gets Caught in the Act
Prosecutors and Wrongful Convictions: They Don't Care, Anymore
More Disturbing News about U.S. Prosecutors
State of Play
Now, the monolithic political culture of Hollywood has locked film-makers into an equally inescapable presumption that the bad guys are (a) never going to be anyone of a different race or religion from the white and Christian variety, and they are (b) always going to be racists, secretive corporations, smooth-talking politicians or military straight-arrows, preferably any or all of the above who are also Christian believers. Apply this knowledge to State of Play and you don't even have to bother watching it -- or the final "twist" which only twists the movie into incoherence.
the movie business has kept going by making special-effects-laden superhero movies that twelve year-olds, eager to get out of the house and too young for bars, will want to go to again and again.
A very good case can be made that California's developers, mortgage lenders and house-hungry but income- deficient residents, with state and local officials as enablers, created an unsustainable housing bubble. And when that bubble burst, leaving holders of mortgage bundles – many of them overseas banks – with little more than toilet paper, it created a banking crisis that spread to virtually every other segment of the global economy.
No, it was not confined to California. It happened in a few other high-growth states such as Florida, Arizona and Nevada. But nine of the 10 top issuers of subprime and no-documentation mortgages were headquartered in California, and the state has been ground zero for the collapse of those mortgages as adjustable interest rates "reset" upward, having recorded more than a half-million foreclosures and other symbols of distress.
Currently, another 400,000 home loans in the state are delinquent because the economic crisis that was spawned by the banking crisis means hundreds of thousands of California families have lost their incomes – folks who were reasonably good credit risks originally – and cannot make their mortgage payments.
Kornheiser exits MNF team
Richard Florida must be stopped
The flirtation with Richard Florida has to stop. We are worried about our cities, I know. And, in the Obama-era, I know we appreciate empirical evidence. Richard Florida tugs on both of these heart strings. He’s an endorphin producer for nerdy urban planning lovers. But Richard Florida is like intellectual cotton candy. He looks so good, you want to keep going back for more. But in the end, its empty calories. And it will rot your teeth.
To recite the wonders of the daily paper -- the serendipitous mixture of serious and playful, plugged-in local columnists, a natural forum for in-depth articles -- is to risk sounding like a fuddy-duddy gentleman preaching the virtues of ascots and walking sticks.
But then there is the reporting. In 2003, the Globe won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests, a courageous journalistic feat that led to the resignation of Boston's archbishop and sparked inquiries around the world. Can the slimmed-down Globe of the future do such intensive reporting? Could any other media outlet in Boston even attempt such a project?
Newspaper folks may have an inflated view of their self-importance, but what they do has an impact beyond their readers and advertisers. Local TV isn't likely to expose a crooked mayor, as the Detroit Free Press did. Bloggers aren't going to reveal secret CIA prisons.
This is not only a failure of the D.C. city government, but also a failure of the media to ask the kinds of questions, and tell the kinds of stories, that King is asking and telling.
The shooting death of Kwanzaa Diggs merited a mere two sentences in a Washington Post crime round-up column. Meanwhile, the Washington Post devoted front-page treatment to the colonoscopy of a panda at the Washington Zoo.
Dear God, what has happened to journalism in America? Is it any wonder that people hate "the media" so much? Here you've got the case of a 17-year-old shot dead, two others wounded, a crime that indicates a systemic failure of local government, and the local paper is too busy covering pandas at the zoo?
Thou Shall Not Mock Obama's Mustard
Conservative Political Report
The Roberts National Mendacity Tour Continues
Lie down with Bushes, wake up with Democrats.Courtesy of The Other McCain
Far left icon Keith Olbermann hams it up with hate-filled gay columnist on Miss California
All we heard last year was how most of the major nets were “biased” against women because of the ways some of them talked about Hillary Clinton. Liberal feminists were boiling with rage for months over treatment of her they deemed to be all too representative of American “patriarchy.” Yet Miss California has had the kitchen sink thrown at her from the far left over her opposition to gay marriage, and even though that isn’t all that unusual considering how intolerant they really are of people who disagree with them, the sexist remarks that have come from certain corners - mostly from MSDNC types - you’d think would spur feminists from coast to coast to challenge and ridicule those making the sexist remarks. You don’t have to agree with what a woman says to be able to slam her critics for trashing her based solely on her sex.
Roberts’ book on A-Rod should be questioned
The national media anti-snitching campaign is twice as pervasive and effective as anything put together by the Bloods, Crips and LAPD. For the most part, we refuse to squeal on each other.
Roberts’ book is a long-winded blog. Why it’s being treated as an unimpeachable piece of journalism can only be explained by the cushy position she’s been handed by The New York Times, ESPN and Sports Illustrated and the unchallenged institutional bias found within the elite sports media institutions.
Like the Duke lacrosse players, the elite media have decided that Alex Rodriguez is fair game for abuse. Rules of fairness do not apply.
Here's another telling statistic, one you won't find in the media coverage of The New York Times. Everyone knows that Fox's evening line-up trounces the competition, but some of the network's daytime programs beat the prime time offerings of CNN and MSNBC. Keith Olberman's audience, for example, is about that of "Happening Now," FNC's midday news show that airs from 11 am to 1 pm, eastern time.
"Happening Now," is anchored by Jon Scott and Jane Skinner who are very talented broadcasters. But neither Mr. Scott nor Ms. Skinner have been hailed as cable news stars, or received the fawning coverage lavished on Olberman. In fact, the ratings "surge" of the MSNBC host has been largely the result of CNN's night-time implosion.
A new book by Elizabeth Edwards -- wife of disgraced putz John Edwards -- currently has 488 mentions in the media, according to Google News.
While a new book by Mark Levin, which has sold over a million copies in five weeks -- and has dominated the New York Times bestseller list with successive #1 rankings -- can't get the attention of a single major media outlet.
Obama's lackeys in the media know exactly what they're doing. Turning an ordinary virus into a Code Orange national-security threat is political gold for Obama.
Please, Ms. Parker, please stop. You're becoming like the drunk girl at the frat party with such a crush on the frat president that she's unaware there's still vomit in her hair.
