Habeas Corpus Is Dead

It was in critical condition until now, but the Supreme Court has just officially ruled it dead.

THE Most Tone-Deaf Presidential Candidate EVER

It really isn’t even news anymore that Mitt Romney is completely disconnected from most Americans’ daily reality. He hasn’t got a clue. He’s living in a bubble. He isn’t on the same planet the rest of us live on. His latest? Advising young people who don’t have the money to go to college or start out on their own to borrow money from their parents.

Libby Spencer has THE.BEST.TITLE: “You can rely on the old man’s money.”

I fucking LOVE it.

ABL at Balloon Juice:

Mitt Romney is the most tone-deaf motherfucker to ever run for president. HANDS DOWN.

 

Charles Pierce on Ross Douthat on “Bad Religion”

Ross Douthat has a new book out on what he calls “bad religion” (any form of religious expression that does not go through formal, orthodox, organized, hierarchical, authoritarian channels). Charles Pierce demolishes it:

Ready for Four More Years of George W. Bush?

That’s what you’ll get if Mitt Romney is elected. Who sez? The Republican National Committee, that’s who:

During an interview last week on The Fernando Espuelas Show, Alexandra Franceschi, Specialty Media Press Secretary of the Republican National Committee, said that the Republican party’s economic platform in 2012 is going to be the same as it was during the Bush years, “just updated.”

More at Think Progress.

Michele the Moron Strikes Again

Here’s what she told Sean Hannity after the Supreme Court’s last day of oral arguments on the Affordable Care Act (emphasis is in the original):

One argument that the government was trying to make is that somehow health care is uniquely different. That government can regulate it because everyone participates. Health insurance is not uniquely different. It’s still an opportunity that some people choose to engage in, but 40 million people do not. And the premise was made that people don’t buy insurance because they can’t afford it. That’s not true. There are people who just decide they want to roll the dice and take their chances that they won’t need insurance.

Think Progress has the video.

All the King’s Horses and All the King’s Men

Steve Hynd, of Newshoggers and The Agonist (where I now post, too) refers us to a lengthy but essential article at Foreign Affairs, titled “The Iraq We Left Behind.”

Business As Usual, Breitbart Style

The folks at Breitbart.com released a video (details here) purporting to show that Barack Obama was/is closely associated with a well-known former Harvard University law professor (Derrick Bell, now deceased) who espoused and taught a theory of race relations called Critical Race Theory. CRT is usually preceded by the word “controversial,” although it shouldn’t be, because all it says, very basically, is that racism is so ingrained in American institutions that law, or at least law alone, is not sufficient to address racial inequities. There is, of course, a lot more to it — here is a scholarly essay from the UCLA School of Public Affairs, and a more popularly written one at Wisegeek.com — but at its core this is close to being just common sense for any reasonably informed and educated adult person who grew up in the United States. It’s certainly not pleasant, and certainly it can be debated and challenged, but it’s hardly a shockingly outrageous idea.

Anyway, it turns out that the video was creatively edited, and doesn’t even show, when viewed without the cuts, what the Breitbart people claim it shows. That, too, is nothing new.