Sotomayor

Uh oh:

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's opinions show support for the rights of criminal defendants and suspects, skepticism of corporations, and sympathy for plaintiffs alleging discrimination, an analysis of her record by The Washington Post found. And she has delivered those rulings with a level of detail considered unusual for an appellate judge.

Holy shit, Batman. Support for the rights of criminal defendants and suspects! Skepticism of corporations! Sympathy (empathy!) for plaintiffs alleging discrimination?! That some damn crazy shit. Say it ain't so. See, that's why we can only have old white men on the Supremes.

And apparently, Ms. Mayor delivers opinions with a "level of detail considered unusual...". Really?! Seems like just yesterday when Sotomayor was being cast as an ignorant, Latina dope, unworthy of the majesty required of a Supreme Court Justice.

Out of the pool?

I keep waiting for this story to be declared a hoax. (h/t Atrios)

GOP now against "the troops"

TPM:

The House GOP will vote en masse against the new war funding bill. What about the troops? For the House GOP, they take a back seat to sticking a finger in the eye of the IMF.

I heard this earlier on Democracy Now when Amy Goodman described how the WH was attempting to "persuade" some more liberal House members NOT to vote with the GOP against the supplemental war funding measure.

I guess the GOP was for the troops before they were against them.

Our sucky political-media establishment

Chris Bodenner, guesting at Andrew Sullivan's pad, sums it up:

The civilians of Iraq and Afghanistan have endured eight years of collateral damage yet our political establishment says we can't handle the collateral fear of a few dozen men in shackles.

Pope in Holy Land: orthodoxy bad

Abroad in the Holy Land, from which Christians, a minority there for centuries, continue to flee, the Pope has a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus conversion on the virtues of diversity and the vices of "extremism" and "orthodoxy":

He said: “While understandable reasons lead many, especially the young, to emigrate, this decision brings in its wake a great cultural and spiritual impoverishment to the city. Today I wish to repeat what I have said on other occasions: in the Holy Land there is room for everyone!”

On Sunday in Jordan the pope argued that Christians had a role here in reconciliation, that their very presence eased the strife, and that the decline of that presence could help to increase extremism. When the mix of beliefs and lifestyles goes down, orthodoxy rises, he implied, as does uniformity of the cultural landscape in a region where tolerance is not an outstanding virtue.

So, "tolerance" is now a virtue, while "orthodoxy", "extremism", and "uniformity of the cultural landscape" are now bad? Pretty shocking stuff from the former Head of the Office of the Inquisition, responsible for forcing Roman Catholic orthodoxy. I imagine this new-found appreciation for tolerance and diversity will last as long as it takes for the pope to board his private jet back to Rome, but at least it provides a basis for Christians of alternative views and cultural environments to throw the pope's words back at him when his holiness reverts to the demands of religious conformity.

If it's Thursday, if must be Anti-Chavez Day at the Washington Post

Consider, if you will, this statement of breathtaking ignorance:

The administration's strategy -- to open up a constructive dialogue with Venezuela and avoid being cast as Mr. Chávez's Yanqui foil -- is reasonable; it is also the same strategy as was tried, unsuccessfully, by the previous two administrations.

That's true, I guess, if you think that trying to overthrow their democratically elected government (in 2002) and replace it with a military dictatorship amounts to "constructive dialogue".

Then there's this, the logic of which I can't even begin to fathom:

["constructive dialogue"] makes it more rather than less likely that Venezuela, with the help of Iran and Russia, will become a threat to the United States.

What is this, Red Dawn? That's the kind of paranoid, fear-mongering lunacy only the commenters at Red State (and I guess Fred Hiatt at the Wash Post) would believe.

Conservative evangelicals discover moral relativism and the dreaded situational ethics

Newt and W speech writer, Gerson.