The Supreme Court may have just delivered an early Christmas gift to the nation's biggest retailers by its ruling Thursday allowing governments to take private land for business development.

Eminent domain: A big-box bonanza? - Jun. 24, 2005

A divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth often is at war with individual property rights.

Justices, 5-4, Back Seizure of Property for Development - New York Times

This is an interesting read. It tells me more about the RPC then the ICRC. Technically, its not in US interests to fund a policy group, particularly if that group opposes us on a lot of issues.

Frankly, the emphasis on the Nazi comment is whiney and transparently disengenuous. Mom, she called me a Nazi. No, Mom, I was being perfectly reasonable. She started it. Make her stop.

I'd much rather hear the RPC explain how they think non-state military actors ought to be considered in international law rather then complaining that people want them to have full Geneva status. How do YOU think it should be handled is an appropriate question that will not be answered.

Republicans vs the Red Cross

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the 22nd amendment to the Constitution.

Clinton apparently made some recent statement about running again... I think term limits are a good idea.

Democrats want to repeal the 22nd Amendment.

SCOTUSBlog Becomes RAICHBlog: Marty Lederman of SCOTUSblog has come up with the interesting idea of getting a bunch of bloggers together to blog about today's Raich decision.

Those of you interested in the "pot case" might find the current discussion on SCOTUSblog to be interesting. Linking indirectly...

SCOTUSBlog on Pot case

We show that network theory, combined with the analysis of roll-call votes using singular value decomposition, successfully uncovers political and organizational correlations between committees in the House.

A network analysis of committees in the US House of Representatives [PDF]

Mike the Usurper wrote:

In the court's main decision, Stevens raised concerns about abuse of marijuana laws. "Our cases have taught us that there are some unscrupulous physicians who overprescribe when it is sufficiently profitable to do so," he said.

While I certainly understand what Stevens is saying here, what I don't understand is how it applies. In this case they are talking about growing your own, not someone trying to make a profit.

This is a good question. In general the media consistently misreports Supreme Court decisions. Don't listen to them. The subtleties of this stuff are over the heads of the imaginary idiots the news media thinks its readers are. A good example is the Hamdi v. Rumsfeld decision, which was largely misreported as "a strong affirmation of the rights of the accused," which I think is hardly accurate.

This Yahoo article raises a question about the distinction between federal laws related to "gun free school zones" and federal pot laws, but doesn't answer it. The answer to that question, and yours, are quite clearly spelled out in the decision. [PDF]

RE: Court Rules Against Pot for Sick People - Yahoo! News

But, in fact, this world of binary outcomes is an illusion.

The Illusion of 'Either-Or' Politics

] The FBI ran a sting where they posed as a electronic
] recycling company eager to get state law changed to
] funnel business their way.

Awesome!

Tennessee Senators arrested by the FBI!

Rule #1 of politics: When the wingnuts are up in arms they are probably being manipulated.

The filibuster agreement ends with this odd observation:

We believe that, under Article II, Section 2, of the United States Constitution, the word 'advice' speaks to consultation between the Senate and the president with regard to the use of the president's power to make nominations. We encourage the executive branch of government to consult with members of the Senate, both Democratic and Republican, prior to submitting a judicial nomination to the Senate for consideration.

Such a return to the early practices of our government may well serve to reduce the rancor that unfortunately accompanies the advice and consent process in the Senate.

Why did they close on this? What did this mean?

It means the Republicans never had any intention of approving Myers and Saad. Myers is simply unqualified. (Boston Globe in March: The standing committee on the federal judiciary of the American Bar Association reviewed Myers, and not a single member rated him "well qualified.") Questions have been raised about Saad's FBI background check.

However, if a Republican controlled Senate turned down one of Bush's nominees in an "up or down vote" Bush would have looked very bad. His appointees were so questionable his own party couldn't approve them! Thats not a tolerable political outcome.

So how do you handle that? You make a big scene. You make it look like you had to give these guys up in a fight over other nominations with the Democrats. That way you can go down screaming that they are qualified and professional, and Bush is not tarnished. Maybe he looks a little more to the right of center then he wants to, but he doesn't look bad. Maybe Frist takes a hit, but you have to wonder why the Conservative Christians would really care about this. They want people like Owen and Brown, not Myers and Saad.

Whether the Dems got played or were playing along is something I can't speculate on. Owen and Brown were their real targets. Brown in particular is an idealog who thinks that it is impossible for morality to exist outside of the framework of her personal world view. (Which is a dogmatic and silly perspective to have, no matter how eloquently she delivers it.) The Dems really got nothing here.

The question for the Republicans is how much control they have over the wingnuts now that they've gotten them all riled up and then handed them a "loss." They don't control the message in the blogosphere as well as they control it in the media. If their internet propaganda machine turns on their own moderate party members they may take a bigger black eye on this then they would have gotten had they simply embarrassed Bush in the first place.

The American people clearly want the Senate to take an active roll in nominations. In order to do that they are going to have to bork someone every once in a while. Was this big political show really necessary? I think Bush could have taken a loss on a couple nominations, and it would have made the party seem less partisan and more responsible.