South Carolina the last bastion of rugged pedantry is waiting for the signature of its governor Mark Sandford allowing drivers to profess their Christian faith through faith based license plates.

And, too often, that's all that a lot of folks hear.

If Sen Clinton wants to do some spectacularly unexpected work for her country, her concession speech would read somewhat as follows:

My Fellow Americans, today I bring to an honorable conclusion the campaign for the Presidency that I began with such a serene sense of entitlement so long ago. In delegates, popular vote, number of individual contributors and number of states won, Sen Obama's lead is indisputable. I am happy to see him as our nominee and will vigorously support him as he goes forth to defeat the Third Bush Term under the dubious and superannuated patronage of Sen John McCain.

When I began, I could not have known that the best campaign of the 20th century would not prove adequate to the 21st; that the consultant-driven swing-state-only calculus of the last two Democratic presidential defeats would be overthrown; or that the American people's disgust at a dishonest, tragic, savage, pointless and mismanaged war would require a stronger peace policy than I was initially prepared to follow.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter in his dissent on the Bowles v. Russell decision by the court.

I'm riffing off Anthony Lewis' review of Jeffrey Toobin's book, The Nine Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court in the December 20, 1007 issue of The New York Review of Books.
http://www.nybooks.com/...

As George Orwell might put it, all Supreme Court decisions are important, but some are more important than others.  And in the history of our country, there can be little doubt that one of the Court’s most important decisions was its unanimous ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, decided 54 years ago this May 17th.  Overturning the shameful "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson and striking down school segregation laws, the ruling in Brown gave substance to the Constitution’s promise of equality for all.  Without question, May 17, 1954 saw the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, at its very best.

Flash forward 53 years, to June 28, 2007.  On that date, a bitterly divided 5-4 Supreme Court, now headed by Bush-nominee John Roberts, invalidated the school-assignment plans adopted by two public school districts to promote racial diversity in their schools.  Joining Chief Justice Roberts in striking down those plans were Justices Samuel Alito (the Court’s other Bush-nominee), Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Anthony Kennedy.

McCain just can't make up his mind about judges

In addition to the onerous government ID requirement for voting in Indiana, Georgia is set to execute a man by lethal injection tonight.  I will explain how these two events are related, the reasons for them, and the ramifications after the jump.

It is done now.  Sonny Perdue succeeded in killing a man.  Kentucky is up soon, and Texas would have done it first but the courts put it off until the 21st of the month.  This is sad.

I am not defending what these people were convicted of doing (although sometimes convictions are incorrect), but do state for the record for my ideas that it is never correct to kill anyone unless there is immediate threat to life and limb of oneself or one's family, or even a stranger, if such stranger is being attacked.

That is a far cry from the government killing people after "due process".  As despicable as the majority of them are, recent history has shown us that not all with a death sentence were even remotely related to the crime for which they were accused.

As much as anything else, presidential campaigns are won and lost by the media narratives that rightly or wrongly come to define a candidate.  In the case of Repubican nominee John McCain, the seemingly unshakable narrative of the political "maverick" could not be further off the mark. At almost every turn, McCain in his eternal quest for the White House has reversed long-held positions, compromised core principles and swallowed his pride in order to curry favor with both the leading lights of the conservative movement and right-wing Republican primary voters.  The untold story of campaign 2008 is simply that of John McCain's transformation from maverick to prostitute.

In all the noise about the gun case (Heller v. District of Columbia), SCOTUS's opinion in Snyder v. Louisanaopinion in Snyder v. Louisana seems to have passed without comment here, though it was issued yesterday.  It's not a big or particularly closely watched case, but I think it's interesting in that it reveals that there are fissures within the more conservative block of the court on criminal justice issues in particular.  The case was 7-2, with Alito writing the majority.  Thomas dissented, joined by Scalia.  So what's the case about?  We'll start there after the break.

I am not familiar with the Roman Catholic version of the bible but it must be rife with references by Jesus about how one must always and constantly come to the aid and sustenance of the corporation.

The proof is in the unanimous rule by the Roman Catholic justices on the court that corporations need legal protection from those terrible, awful patients who might sue them if they are injured by a medical device:

No Recourse for the Injured

http://www.nytimes.com/...

I’m heading off to Pakistan with Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel this weekend to observe their long awaited elections and make it very clear that the United States and the world are watching what happens there – but before I leave, I wanted to report back to you a few thoughts on the other election the world is watching, right here at home.

No denying that this election has been personally exciting – in my travels for Barack I’ve seen general election sized crowds (and I know something about what those look like!) coming out because so many people – and so many new people – are looking for something different.

But momentum’s a funny thing; you have it until, well, until you don’t have it. So, you bet things are going well, you bet there’s a head of steam – but Barack Obama also needs a big push and he needs it now: the next 3 weeks can be decisive in this campaign if you make it so.  (Wisconsin is close, and as yesterday’s public polls underscore, he’s the underdog in Ohio and Texas.) So today, I'm asking for your help.

Provided of course democrats take the white house and expand their majorities in the House and Senate. Due to a corrupt Republican administration and cowardly caving Democrats we have two justices, Roberts and Alito, neither of whom should have even made it out of commitee let alone be appointed to the Supreme Court.

With John McCain's return to the front of the Republican pack, the conservative Weekly Standard is reexamining the Arizona's vices and virtues.  But while Dean Barnett bemoans McCain's "uncanny ability to drive virtually all conservatives nuts," Adam White and Kevin White praise McCain's record on the confirmation of right-wing judges.  Not because McCain's position on the so-called "nuclear option" was right in principle. No, the Standard lauded McCain's success with the "Gang of 14" because it preserved the ability of a Republican minority to block future Democratic judicial nominations.

(From the diaries ~ smintheus)

As the Washington Post detailed on Tuesday, the Supreme Court this term will decide a set of voter identification cases which could well determine the outcome of the 2008 election.  In a narrow legal sense, the cases will address the constitutionality of new voter ID laws in Indiana and other states.  But more important, the Roberts Court will decide whether to rubber stamp an essential tactic in the all-out Republican war to suppress the votes of minority - and likely Democratic - Americans.

The combined cases to be argued on January 9th, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board and Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita, have their genesis in the wave of draconian new voter identification laws passed by Republican majority statehouses around the nation.  As the Post noted, Indiana joined Georgia, Missouri and Arizona in enacting stringent new photo ID requirements for voters, despite a complete absence of polling place fraud in these or any other state:

The state's Republican-led legislature passed the law in 2005 requiring voters to have ID, even though the state had never prosecuted a case of voter impersonation...

...Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita (R) said voter fraud was something he was asked about "almost daily" by constituents. "At the Kiwanis Club, the chamber of commerce groups, people would say, 'Why aren't you asking who I am when I vote?' " Rokita said.

The state law he and the legislature came up with requires voters to show a government-issued photo ID that has an expiration date, such as a driver's license or a passport. Nondrivers can receive an identification card from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

To date, the courts have agreed with Rokita.  The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Indiana law by a 2-1 margin.  Unsurprisingly, the Court's two Republican appointees blessed the Indiana Republican tactic.  Reagan appointee Judge Richard Posner proclaimed, "It is exceedingly difficult to maneuver in today's America without a photo ID."  But Clinton appointee Terence Evans in his dissent stated the obvious motivation and desired outcome of the Hoosier State GOP gambit:

"Let's not beat around the bush: The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic."

Which is exactly right.  As I detailed just before the 2006 mid-terms, the Indiana, Georgia and other similar laws are an essential ingredient of the Republican strategy of "Divide, Suppress and Conquer" which aims to drive down the participation of potential Democratic and independent voters through unprecented redistricting, curbs on registration, onerous new ID requirements, and polling place eligibility challenges:

Not content to prevent the enfranchisement of new voters, the GOP is committed to blocking their exercise of the right to vote. At the both the state and federal level, the GOP in the name of battling fraud has put up a raft of new roadblocks and barriers to voting with burdensome voter identification requirements.

The fact that voter fraud in the United States is virtually non-existent doesn't derail Republicans in their quest to block access to the ballot box. Just this year, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission issued a report refuting the myth of fraud at polling places. "There is widespread but not unanimous agreement," the report concluded, "that there is little polling place fraud, or at least much less than is claimed, including voter impersonation, "dead" voters, noncitizen voting and felon voters."

The result is a host of new state laws advanced by Republicans with the transparent aim of suppressing the potential Democratic - and especially black - vote. As Perrspectives reported previously, Georgia's onerous new voter ID card program requiring voters to visit one of the state's limited number of offices, would have trimmed up to 150,000 people (primarily African-Americans and the elderly) from the rolls. (The bill's sponsor, Augusta Republican Sue Burmeister explained that when black voters in her black precincts "are not paid to vote, they don't go to the polls.") Versions of the Georgia law have been ruled unconstitutional twice by federal judge Harold Murphy. And while Indiana's new voter ID law and the milder version in Arizona have to date withstood judicial scrutiny, another measure in Missouri similar to that in Georgia has been blocked during the 2006 elections. In his rebuke to the state of Missouri, Judge Richard Callahan deemed the right to vote "a right and not a license."

Voter suppression has been a centerpiece of the Karl Rove Republican electoral strategy in both the states and within the Bush administration.  (While supporting the new voter ID laws, the Bush administration's only prosecution for violations of the 1965 Voting Rights Act was against the African-American head of the Democratic Party in Noxubee County, Mississippi for using coercion and intimidation to prevent the white voters from going to the polls.)  Voter suppression, after all, was the primary objective of Alberto Gonzales' purge of United States attorneys.  As I wrote in March:

Simply put, the Bush White House planned to systematically drive down the turnout of Democrats and independents at the ballot box through an unaccountable campaign against "voter fraud"...

...While former White House counsel Harriet Miers first raised the specter of replacing all of the prosecutors in early 2005, it was President Bush himself who emphasized the importance of supposed voter fraud to Attorney General Gonzales:

Last October, President Bush spoke with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to pass along concerns by Republicans that some prosecutors were not aggressively addressing voter fraud, the White House said Monday. Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, was among the politicians who complained directly to the president, according to an administration official.

The case of Seattle prosecutor John McKay illustrates the Republicans' preoccupation with voter fraud. Washington State Republicans, including Congressman Doc Hastings, were furious at McKay over what they claimed was his inaction on vote fraud in the wake of Democrat Christine Gregoire's 129 vote margin of victory (out of almost 3,000,000 votes cast) in the twice recounted 2004 gubernatorial campaign. On July 5, 2005, Tom McCabe of the Building Industry Association of Washington wrote to Hastings, blunting demanding, "please ask the White House to replace Mr. McKay. If you decide not to do this, let me know why."

In 2008, the Supreme Court will decide whether or not the Republican Party will succeed in its fraudulent campaign against mythical vote fraud.  (It does not require a crystal ball to predict where John Roberts and Sam Alito will come down on the issue))  With the Republican Party in danger of losing the White House and yielding even larger Democratic majorities in Congress, the stakes for the GOP are high indeed.  The stakes for the American people and the future of American democracy, of course, are much higher.

** Crossposted at Perrspectives **

that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections.

You cannot question his decision.

I'm riffing off a book review by David Cole in the December 6 New York Review of Books, reviewing Jack Goldsmith's book, The Terror Presidencey: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration.
http://www.nybooks.com/...

Cole's review, The Man Behind the Torture, focuses on David Addington, counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney 2001-2005, now his acting chief of staff, replacing Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby who has taken some time off to await a presidential pardon from George Bush when Bush retires from the presidency.

(The California Democratic Party is indeed in desperate need for major reform. And it's coming, whether they want it or not. From the diaries -- kos)

Shane Goldmacher got someone at Dianne Lieberman Feinstein's office on the record about the anger in the grassroots over her continued efforts to undermine Democratic values in the Senate and vote with Bush Republicans.  The leadership of the CA Democratic Party chimed in, as well.  See if you can spot the difference between the two statements.

Here's Roger Salazar at the CDP:

“This party supports our Democratic senator and will continue to do so,” said party communications director Roger Salazar. “Period.”

Here's Scott Gerber for the Senator:

Scott Gerber, a Feinstein aide, defended the senator, saying she “has been an independent voice for California.”

So one side says she's a Democratic senator and the CDP supports Democrats (no matter the policy or the principle, they just support Democrats, so shut up, grassroots!), while the other says she's an "independent voice for California."

Somebody better talk to somebody.

Then there's this howler:

“What people may not know is she was a strong leader in the fight against (now Supreme Court Justice Samuel) Alito and (Chief Justice John) Roberts,” Gerber said, noting she opposed “more than a dozen” circuit court nominees from the Bush administration.

Hmm, I didn't know that!  I guess that's why Alito and Roberts were never confirmed to the Supreme Court, in the face of all that "leadership."  It must have been withering attacks like this that did the trick:

"Many of us are struggling with . . . what kind of a justice would you be, John Roberts," implored Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)

She voted against Roberts in committee, but made no loud effort to filibuster.  And on Alito, she had this expression of leadership when it counted:

A Democrat who plans to vote against Samuel Alito sided on Sunday with a Republican colleague on the Senate Judiciary Committee in cautioning against a filibuster of the Supreme Court nominee.

“I do not see a likelihood of a filibuster,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. “This might be a man I disagree with, but it doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be on the court.”

She said she will not vote to confirm the appeals court judge, based on his conservative record. But she acknowledged that nothing emerged during last week’s hearings to justify any organized action by Democrats to stall the nomination.

Fight, Dianne, Fight!

She actually ended up voting against cloture, but only after it was apparent that the filibuster wouldn't hold and after she undermined it with prior comments.

Unfortunately, Mr. Gerber, the Great Gazoogle is my friend, and your claim that she was a "strong leader" against Roberts and Alito rings hollow.

The larger point is this.  At the upper echelon, the California Democratic Party is an old boy's network of insider hacks and ambitious wannabes who want the resources that a Dianne Feinstein can give them, if need be.  The grassroots of the party, on the other hand, is extremely upset and angry, and wants Democrats to stand up for Democratic principles.  This tension is at the heart of every "silent revolution" within the state parties, I reckon.  Every time the CDP dismisses the dissension in their ranks, every time they invalidate this genuine frustration, they look even more out of touch, and they alienate their core supporters and activists.  State parties have to be responsive to their base, it's the bottom line.
 
If anything positive comes out of this, it's that DiFi recognizes that a whole lot of Californians are upset with her, and she can no longer run and hide from them.  It may not change a lot, but it's a first step.

UPDATE: Just let me add that you can sign here to endorse the censure of DiFi by the CDP at their executive board meeting this weekend.  As I have been saying, the chances for success are remote. But the more people on board, the more attention it gets, and it crystallizes the frustration from the rank and file.

There was a time when I thought some on Kos were unduly harsh in their assessments of my Senator, Diane Feinstein.

But the more I have watched her operate, the more I have come to accept that her positions too often line up with the wimpy core of our party.  Sadly, were she to run for reelection today, she would probably win handily.

Here's what I told her in a letter today.....

The ABCs of the Unitary Executive

Addington, Alito

Bradbury, Bybee

Cheney, Card