When Sects Collide

One of Sullivan’s readers makes a good point:
The Unitarians have been marrying same-sex couples for some thirty years, and likewise some congregations of the United Church of Christ, the Metropolitan Community Church, and I’m sure a number of other religious groups I don’t even know. Why do the fundamentalists get to discriminate with the force [...]

Pardon Pool

The folks at ProPublica speculate on who Bush will pardon on the way out. Michael Milken and Scooter Libby top the handicapping. They do not touch on the possibility of a blanket pardon.

Getting Medieval

Well, the Somalis are at it again, seizing yet another large vessel. Meanwhile, our JCS chairman is slack-jawed at the audacity of it all, pronouncing himself “stunned” that the pirates could range so far and wide for prey. One would think that our Navy hasn’t fought any ship-to-ship battles late … oh, right.
Meanwhile, I’m wondering [...]

Newsweek: Bush Might Be Reluctant To Pardon

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball play the on-one-hand, on-the-other hand game regarding speculation about pardons:
Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, whose prison sentence for lying in the CIA leak case was commuted by Bush last year, has not submitted a pardon request to Justice. But speculation is rampant that Libby’s allies will press [...]

Turley on Blanket Pardons

Law prof Jonathan Turley, I see from my referrer log, agrees with me that a blanket pardon for Bush administration officials involved in torture is a Constitutionally dubious idea:
A “blanket pardon” would raise serious constitutional and criminal questions, though there is some precedent in the Kennedy and Carter administrations. A traditional pardon is a public [...]

Never Trust Air You Can’t See

The city motto of Los Angeles seems to be China’s national ethos as well, as the smog problem in Asia gets worse:
The brownish haze, sometimes in a layer more than a mile thick and clearly visible from airplanes, stretches from the Arabian Peninsula to the Yellow Sea. In the spring, it sweeps past North and South [...]

Blanket Pardon?

Mark Benjamin at Salon thinks Bush is planning a wide-ranging pardon of all in his administration who might’ve been involved in torture. That’s certainly been a possibility all along, and the president’s pardon power is wide-ranging. But I should think it’s at least arguable that it has to be exercised on behalf of specific, named [...]

Sonar, Subs & Whales

Galrahn dives into the Supreme Court’s USN sonar decision. I haven’t read the opinion yet but respect G’s technical expertise. Start your research here. I will say I consider the opinion a good thing. You don’t want to go into ASW not knowing how to use active.

Michigan Cracks Down on RIAA Snoopers

Amid all the complaining about the RIAA’s unlicensed snooping into file-sharing, Michigan’s legislature has passed a law that, yes, says firms engaging in “computer forensics” must obtain a private-investigations license.

What Palin Says About McCain

Joe Klein and Andrew Sullivan both see the pick as rash and impulsive:
The Palin pick reflects the most dangerous tendencies in McCain’s foriegn policy–the tendency to react, to overreact, to crises, without thinking it through. It also reflects a defiant, adolescent “screw you” attitude toward governance.
I’m not so sure about that. You can’t govern if you can’t [...]