Share the goodness with the finest in Polish sausage prog. This is one of my all-time favorite bands, but if they come in concert (still touring and making great music!), then it would be a bit of a sausage fest.
And, hey! What’s with that beautiful guitar with the metal neck! Heh heh…
Bart Blatsein is a developer who has pumped a ton of money into my neighborhood, God bless ‘im. Part of the latest residential development is called The Piazza. It features a large open space with a landscaping, seating and (wait for it) a gigantic outdoor TV!!
More than 600 apartments — which the outspoken, charismatic developer boasts are all leased — overlook the large veranda with the largest television screen this side of the Comcast Center.
This excerpt comes from that paragon of journalistic prowess, The Philadelphia Metro. I’ll have to post a picture of this monstrosity over the weekend. Because, you know, if I didn’t see it on some giant flat panel television – it didn’t really happen!!
Torture – Sorry about that nasty picture from yesterday, but torture is a nasty business. I don’t want these pictures released because of some perverse pleasure that results from seeing them. I want them released because they are horrible.
Trilok – His new record is called Massical and it’s coming out in the UK on 5/25/09. The original date was to have been early this month, but clearly that didn’t happen. When will I be able to get my copy? Who knows.
Em’s extraordinary writing continues to wow people over at Planet Cancer. Here’s an excerpt:
…wandering through the array of plants, designing my window boxes and picking out flowers for the back yard. I did it all myself. A year ago, standing in the heat would have been intolerable, and driving myself ten minutes to the nursery, unfathomable. But I did it. And I felt like Superwoman.
* * *
I realized, in amazement, that I could do it – make something beautiful, take care of something living, exert myself in the hot sun, and not collapse in a heap, crying with exhaustion. My plants are alive, and so am I.
You can read the whole post here.
Phillies – are killing me. Yesterday’s mid-week, day game was a great performance by ace Cole Hamels with not offense against the Dodgers’ ace Billingsly. Then we fell behind, then we came back and got the game to extra innings and then we lost. Em and I checked out a little early to miss the traffic, but not the empty feeling of disappointment. They’re starting a nice long road trip – hopefully they can figure things out away from home.
HAPPY FRIDAY EVERYBODY!!
After talking a big game about openness in government, Obama has changed his mind and is, apparently, going to oppose the release of more photos. These are photos of Americans torturing ‘detainees’ in several locations, not just at one ‘rouge’ facility. This is all coming out of the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act request, so it is moving through formal, legal channels. The United States Department of Defense has already lost its appeal to the Circuit Court, which means there is only one place left to go – you guessed it! Paging Justices Scalia, Alito, Roberts, Thomas, et al.!
So, if Obama is going to keep these pictures secret, here’s the procedural posture, as reported in DailyKos:
Which leads us to today. By my calculations, the government has about a month left to file a petition for a writ of certiorari before the Supreme Court. As to whether the Court will review the opinion below, the question is generally whether the circuit court’s interpretation of the relevant FOIA exemptions or the Geneva Conventions created a split in the governing law with its sister circuits, or has otherwise “so far departed from the accepted and usual course of judicial proceedings, or sanctioned such a departure by a lower court, as to call for an exercise of this Court’s supervisory power” or otherwise presents “an important question of federal law that has not been, but should be, settled by this Court.” Put in other terms, the government needs four justices to believe that there are five justices who’d overturn the opinion below … and given the way the Court operates, the nine justices involved will include Justice Souter’s successor, whomever she may be.
So, first they have to decide if this is something they even want to look at – the all important ‘Writ of Certiorari.’ If the answer at that stage is yes, then the parties will file briefs, everyone else will file amicus briefs (just to have their two cents on the record), and argument will, eventually, be scheduled. The wheels of justice turn slow.
The post quoted above really does a nice job of laying it all out. The government’s argument (this dates back to the Bush administration) is that the lives of certain people may be put at risk if the pictures are made public. The appeal court, which has already sided with the ACLU in favor of disclosure, based it’s ruling, in part, on the government’s failure to identify specific people that might be harmed. The current administration is stuck with that argument. they can not now go back an argue that national security will be jeopardized. That issue is not part of this case. This is a perfect example of how the Courts work – they decide cases, they don’t make law.
And also, remember that they can’t now go and name the people who might be endangered. Once the case is on appeal, evidence is closed.
Justice will be served. It will be rare. It will be bloody. But it will be served, and we will be privy to every gory detail. This is what it means to choose a new Supreme Court Justice in this day and age. Law and politics are not supposed to go together – that’s why this is painful. And with the lifetime appointment, the chosen Judge will wield an enduring kind of power. Just as with the run-up to the election in November of last year, there will be another (though different) crescendo that will be made all the louder by the echo chamber, but I’ll offer more on that another time.
I have added the Slate.com – Jurisprudence category to my links. Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick are extremely sharp legal minds who who have the greatest jobs any lawyer could ever hope for. (There are also other writers in that section of the Slate stable, but I don’t know anything about them, yet.)
But it’s all so left-wing. I really need to break out of the echo chamber so I can, at least, understand the substance, scanty though it may prove to be, of the myriad smears that will undoubtedly follow Obama’s selection of the nominee. There’s also the chance that I may not agree with every aspect of the candidate’s judicial philosophy. Something tells me that National Review Online and Town Hall are not going to satisfy the need for a more scholarly critique.
This is, or will be, good theater. The media (including ‘new’) relish the story, the controversy, the drama that just keeps on giving. That’s how everyone was with the election, and I expect much of the same this summer. Beware the pundits! Don’t get sucked into the fake journalists who are really just talking heads starring in their own version of reality TV. For those folks, the Court doesn’t matter. Obama doesn’t matter. All that matters is their brilliance and beauty as they, oh so humbly, bring you this pivotal moment in history. Where would we be without them?!?
But I eat it up also. It’s exciting and important. The hearings might get rough, but there’s an excellent chance that no one will die. All the latest technology will be employed by both those ‘for’ and those ‘against’, but in the end it will come down to the ancient process set forth in our Constitution.
And, at it’s best, the debate will be philosophical and complex. If it is a current member of the bench, we will look at opinions and briefs and law reviews. Hey! That’s basically what I do for a living. Cool! Even if it’s not a current or former judge, we will still learn everything about this person. Everything she did in her life up until this moment is fair game – everything she ever said. And we will not be looking for those ‘gotcha!‘ moments. Hopefully, the Obama people are smart enough not to select a child molester for the high bench.
No, instead, we will look at the niceties of language and thought. At our best, we will want to learn how this person thinks and predict what this person will do within the highest ivory tower this country has. Supreme Court Justices don’t make policy or write law. I don’t care how far right or left anyone thinks a certain Judge may happen to be. Whether you like them or not, their job is to decide cases. The cases make the law, but the Judges can only decide cases.
So, in those realms where the debate is elveated above the feeding frenzy, we will learn about cases. In other places, the only case anyone will discuss or remember will be Roe v. Wade, but that is to be expected from media that is more concerned with entertaining you than enlightening you. But I will hear the names of vaguely remembered cases from law school, and I will run to look them up and I will discover, all over again, the wonder of our common law. It is a living thing that changes and grows all the time. That is not a partisan utterance, but rather a documented fact that I live with every day as a modest trial lawyer. Customs become molded into law by case decisions over the years, and then the old rules change and new rules come along as human thought is not a static process.
Enjoy the show, but don’t forget to listen and watch carefully. Everyone knows how important this is, but let us share a greater understanding of how it works – not just the selection process, but the actual job that must be done afterwards.
Trader Joe’s, your friendly neighborhood grocery chain, has a comical catalog of products called the Fearless Flyer. As part of the of the gag, there is a list of the top ten reasons to shop at Trade Joes, and, sure enough, look at number 3!
3. No flat screens anywhere in sight
(whole list can be viewed here)
So, it’s not just me. Other people are noticing, and they don’t like it.
The design is adapted from a really user-friendly template developed by these folks. Those nice looking links at the upper left are a bit of a bother, because I kind of let those ‘pages’ get away from me. The real music content is, of course, over at Blogerantz. Also, this VodPod thing on the right is going to get on my nerves. It looks too much like an advertisement, and, unless I’m the guy getting paid, there’s no advertising on this page. And when I say paid, I mean getting paid real money.
UPDATE: VodPod thingy is gone. That didn’t last long. Maybe I’ll use it on the video pages, but not here on the front.
Can someone please explian what just happened? Actually, I think it looks nice. Still needs some tweaking, but it’s getting late. It was time for a change. Whatever is coming next has begun.
Our former center fielder has been out of the game for a while, but he”s a distiguished Penn grad and has scored a column at the Times. Here’s a link to his latest.
I like the column and the sentiment, especially the bit about Mom, but the Matrix anology is a disaster. Sorry, Doug. In the Matrix, Neo takes the hard way and suffers for the chance to save the rest of us. In his baseball career, Glanville took the hard way by no going on the junk. A fabulous world of supermodels and riches was kept away from him, but it’s not like he continued on as a drone attached to a malevolent machine that sought to manipulate and control him. Good article, bad analogy.