.
Linda Greenhouse, in the NYTimes, on “The Next Nine Years“:
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. begins his 10th Supreme Court term [today]. That’s a fact all but guaranteed to startle those of us who remember as if it were yesterday the weird and intense Supreme Court summer of 2005, bracketed by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s unexpected retirement announcement and, two months later, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s death at 80 from thyroid cancer. Those events propelled John Roberts, originally President George W. Bush’s choice for the O’Connor vacancy, to the center chair to which the president quickly switched the nomination. At 50, he was the youngest chief justice since John Marshall. Of today’s justices, only Elena Kagan, at 54, is his junior.
It has been an eventful nine terms for the court and its chief. Samuel A. Alito Jr., Justice O’Connor’s eventual replacement, is well to her right and has provided Chief Justice Roberts with a reliable if narrow majority for the court’s steady regression on race & its deregulatory hijacking of the First Amendment. Along with ever-expanding accommodation of religious interests, these are the areas in which the Roberts court has made its increasingly predictable mark.
Anniversaries are a typical time for this kind of stock-taking, but what’s most interesting about this anniversary is not the past, but the future: the next nine years. What kind of Supreme Court will John Roberts find himself presiding over, and how will he respond to what is highly likely to be a change, in one direction or the other, from the knife edge on which his current majority rests?…
Apart from vowing to work even harder on getting every last Democratic voter to the polls next month, what’s on the agenda as we start another week?
Mustang Bobby
Somebody’s thinking mighty highly of himself:
Ooh, there’s a bitchslap for you.
raven
Joe and Mika are doing there best to fan an ebola panic.
eta I expect more from Willie “after all the problems with the federal government over the past 15 years people no longer instinctively trust what they say.”
NobodySpecial
Should ask Morning Joe if he’s inoculated his interns yet. Wouldn’t want another one dead in his office…..
Mustang Bobby
@raven: …which is why we should trust the wisdom of white privileged legacy hires like him and Luke Russert, amirite?
TriassicSands
Vote? Why Democrats can’t be bothered with voting. After all, it’s football season and it takes nearly 100% of one’s attention and concentration to keep track of how the latest assemblage of wife beaters and child abusers is doing on the gridiron. And if there’s any time left over after football, one really must finally get to the Apple Store to latch onto the latest iPhone 6 Plus (even if it does bend a little). Plus, it’s time to start thinking about Xmas and planning the annual Super Bowl party. So, there really isn’t any time for voting. Besides, voting doesn’t make any difference. They’re all a bunch of crooks and bums.
BillinGlendaleCA
@TriassicSands: You forgot about the lines.
MomSense
@raven:
Meanwhile the enterovirus that causes paralysis is getting little attention. I’m much more concerned about this than I am about Ebola.
Baud
@raven:
I trust the government more than I trust the media right now. But that’s not saying much.
Tommy
@raven: Fear, fear, fear is good for ratings.
Mustang Bobby
@MomSense: Enterovirus has killed people, including children, here in America, whereas Ebola has not yet. But when you can go to full freak mode, blame Obama, and boost ratings, the call is easy to make for the natterers on cable.
OzarkHillbilly
We’re all gonna die.
Tommy
@Baud: I saw the head of the CDC on Democracy Now talking about Ebola and he made me feel safe. Clearly a smart guy. I am not worried about Ebola in the US but hearing him talk about controlling it in Africa was nice.
Botsplainer
So the leader of America’s bestestest friend ever and forever ally in the fight to keep Israel safe and dominant in the region reminds America that a core American value is to not object to the bestestest friend ever’s activities with regard to the policy of lebensraum it is pursuing.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/netanyahu-white-house-criticism-against-american-values
That government is going to be uninstalled in a really ugly way in my lifetime, at this rate. It is only a question when.
Tommy
@Botsplainer: What stuns me is all my Jewish friends are so much more liberal than the current government of Israel. I know you have to be careful of generalizations but when to a person they all think close to the same thing it is hard to ignore.
Baud
@Tommy:
I really want to like shows like Democracy Now, but every time I’ve seen them, half of it is pretty good and the other half is firebaggery garbage. That’s a divide that can’t be bridged.
mai naem
@raven: Willie’s been really bad about ebola. I thin because of their ratings being in the toiler, MSNBC during the morning is becoming like CNN. They’re going to keep on pimping the ebola story esp. because now they even have the cameraman.
BTW why does Obama get blamed for Air Force one hitting a pigeon but nobody hassles Rick Perry about the ER problems at the Texas ebola case?
Kind of OT, we were having a conversation about ebola at work. I mentioned that I think the nurse at the ER and possibly the ER doc probably didn’t pay attention when the guy came in and said he’d been to Liberia/West Africa and because Americans are so notoriously bad at world geography and half don’t follow the news. To illustrate me point, one of the girls in the conversation said “well, this is the first I’ve heard about this(ebola).” She had absolutely no clue.
Baud
@mai naem:
In this one instance, that girl is better off not knowing.
Baud
Ugh. The mobile site is redirecting to a Chrysler ad.
Iowa Old Lady
@Baud: You and me both. Much of the media has been awful on Ebola. The fear mongering is so irresponsible.
Tommy
@Baud: I hear you on Democracy Now. I like to think we can agree to disagree. Not yell at each other. They don’t yell much on Democracy Now but I don’t often like when they seem to talk down to me if I don’t agree with their point of view. I am closer to 75% in agreement with the point of view, but that other 25%, well it frustrates me.
Karen in GA
I’m guessing no, but has anyone heard from Violet?
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer: The idiot can’t tell the difference between “American values” and “Republican sociopathic tendencies”. It’s almost enough that I’d kind of like to show him an American value or 2.
brantl
Anybody remember when Cole said that Bush should get his choice for Supreme Court nominees? I said that is wasn’t going to be Bush’s Supreme Court, it was going to be ours.
Baud
@Karen in GA:
I’ve been on the lookout for her nym in the thread, but haven’t seen it.
mai naem
. I feel like the Annette Benning character in “The Kids Are Alright” when I hear Amy Goodman. She probably eats organic full fat ice cream only made with fair trade chocolate, milk from free range cows and vanilla beans grown in a non ecoligically sensitive area in Madagascar. Sorry, I find Goodman really annoying.
raven
@mai naem: I liked her better in “The Grifters” getting her rent reduced!
MomSense
@Karen in GA:
No, and I’m worried.
FlipYrWhig
@Iowa Old Lady: I still don’t know WTF I’m supposed to be scared about. There are a lot of diseases out there. Why did this one achieve such notoriety? I frankly feel the same way about beheaded aid workers in Syria and Iraq. I’m not an aid worker. I’m not in Syria or Iraq. I’m not that concerned. I realize that I’m callous and lack imagination, but at this point I want to save my fears for things that might actually befall me, and neither of these fits the bill.
Hillary Rettig
(Hi – and fwiw Team Amy Goodman here. I donate to Democracy Now every month because they do the job PBS should be doing.)
On another note, this is just a reminder that today is the last day of Amazon’s special promotion of my book, The 7 Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer’s Block. Until midnight, you download it for FREE at this link:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Secrets-Prolific-Procrastination-Perfectionism-ebook/dp/B006J7BZ8E/
It’s great for all writers, including students, faculty, fiction, nonfiction, business writers – so please let your friends, family, and others know. Thanks!
Belafon
@brantl: The current president should get his nominees through. Too bad one side seems to think the rule is “Republicans should get their nominees no matter what.”
Belafon
@Hillary Rettig: Maybe tomorrow.
Botsplainer
@OzarkHillbilly:
Netanyahu’s faction is kind of like a psycho stalker possessive jealous paranoid girlfriend. She takes over your life, and every decision she makes is a “we” or “us” decision that cannot be departed from, ever. No criticism or concern will ever be brooked and changes in the power dynamic will be loudly shouted down. When you finally punch out of the deal, it is like you’ve lanced a nasty boil.
Hillary Rettig
@Belafon: :-)
Omnes Omnibus
@Belafon:
Nominees should get through only if they are qualified and sane. Senate confirmation shouldn’t be a rubber stamp; Harriet Miers failed the first test and Robert Bork failed the second.
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer: Hmmmmm, sounds kinda like my first wife….
OzarkHillbilly
@Omnes Omnibus: Thomas failed both.
Belafon
@Omnes Omnibus: True, and I should have been a bit more detailed. I was just responding to brantl’s attempt at a trap. I definitely am not implying that we should be allowing just anyone in.
Baud
@Hillary Rettig:
Well, now I’m going to have to return your free book and demand my money back. ;-)
Omnes Omnibus
@OzarkHillbilly: Thomas was a former head of the EEOC and sitting federal appeals court judge when he was appointed. It is hard to say that he did not have the conventional credentials to be appointed. The ABA rated him as qualified at the time.
Kathleen
@mai naem: My brother who lives in Dallas said the hospital in question has a history of turning away people who don’t have insurance and he thinks that’s why the guy was sent home with antibiotics.
Betty Cracker
@Hillary Rettig: Team Amy here too. She’s an important voice.
satby
I need to stay off the cesspool that FB has become, between Ebola and the coming elections the crazee has ramped up to eleventy billion. My only comfort is that people the ages of my adult sons have all abandoned it, so it’s only olds on now. And most of them are hopeless anyway.
NCSteve
Thanks again, Ralph.
debbie
@Botsplainer:
That man is a bastard and is responsible for turning more people against Israel than anyone else.
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: It has achieved such notoriety because it’s an incurable disease that makes you gush blood from all your orifices and die horribly. There’s certainly a lot of inexcusable and irresponsible fear-mongering around it, and the risk to people in the US is vanishingly small, but it’s not hard to understand why ebola freaks people out — it’s a scary-ass disease.
OzarkHillbilly
@Omnes Omnibus: It.was.a.joke.
Belafon
@Betty Cracker: Scary and a small chance of contracting it in the US vs the flu, which is far more deadly here, yet some people even refuse to get a vaccine for it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: What is needed is to make ebola as common in the US as car accidents. That’ll settle every one down.
Matt McIrvin
@FlipYrWhig: The book The Hot Zone (and the movie Outbreak, which gave its virus a fictional name and made it airborne, but was Ebola-inspired) did a lot to convince people that Ebola was the scariest plague ever, way back in 1995. The initial inspiration was probably the 1989 Reston virus incident, which was the subject of the 1992 magazine article that was expanded into The Hot Zone.
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: That would do it! But seriously, it appears to be human nature to freak out over grisly, rare possibilities and ignore more common mishaps. I’d wager many parents spend more time worrying about stranger abductions and terrorism than about their kids running across a playmate’s parent’s gun collection.
rikyrah
@Karen in GA:
Been checking for her too
JPL
@rikyrah: Hopefully, Violet reached out to someone who could help get her through this difficult time.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Tommy: Speaking of being careful about generalizations, Jewish people are not a monolithic group in which all members can be expected to have the same views. Rather like, say, women, men, folks of Polish, Asian. French, and Hispanic descent. There are Jewish people in America who support the current Israeli government vigorously, and those who are appalled by it. Just like people in America who are not Jewish.
rikyrah
ILLINOIS FOLKS!
Cook County Clerk David Orr reminds suburban Cook County residents that the deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 4 Gubernatorial General Election is Tuesday, Oct. 7.
Any voter with a driver’s license or state ID can register to vote online. Residents may also register in person by visiting the Clerk’s downtown office (69 W. Washington St., Fifth floor, Chicago), a municipal or township office, or one of the Clerk’s five suburban courthouse locations:
• Southwest suburbs: 10220 S. 76th Ave., Room 238, Bridgeview
• South suburbs: 16501 S. Kedzie Ave., Room 238, Markham
• West suburbs: 1311 Maybrook Square, Room 104, Maywood
• Northwest suburbs: 2121 Euclid Ave., Room 238, Rolling Meadows
• North suburbs: 5600 W. Old Orchard Road, Room 149, Skokie
In order to register, applicants must have two pieces of identification, including one containing a current address.
Qualified applicants must be a United States citizen, at least 18 years old by the Nov. 4 election, and a resident of his or her precinct for at least 30 days prior to the election. Voters who have recently moved must re-register at their current address prior to the deadline
……………..
IF YOU LIVE IN CHICAGO
Chicago Board of Elections
69 W. Washington, SIXTH FLOOR
Chicago
……………………………………
REMINDER:
IF you have an Illinois Drivers License or Illinois State ID
AND
You intend to register to vote from the address on your License/State ID..
YOU CAN DO ONLINE PAPERLESS REGISTRATION
Here is the link:
https://ova.elections.il.gov/
HINT: whatever is on the DL/State ID is how you have to apply. Don’t deviate. The way they do paperless is that they use the Secretary of State’s Database to confirm your information. The information you use to fill out the application MUST match what is on the DL/State ID.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Or cousin George who just loves children.
OzarkHillbilly
Just found this pictorial of another “Stupid Human Trick”, this time from Spain, the castellers of Catalonia, who build human towers.
rikyrah
ILLINOIS FOLKS…..
MAIL BALLOT APPLICATIONS…
we have no-reason Mail Ballot Applications. You do not need to have a REASON to request a Mail Ballot.
You can apply ONLINE for a Mail Ballot
………………….
Mail Ballot Application for the November 04, 2014 Gubernatorial General Election
Any registered suburban Cook County voter may request a mail ballot using this online application. Once we verify your registration and process your application, we will send a paper ballot to the mailing address you designate in your application. The deadline to apply, including email verification, is five days before an election.
To complete an online mail ballot application, you will need:
•your driver’s license or state identification number;
•the last four digits of your Social Security Number;
•the address where you would like your ballot mailed; and
•an email address.
If you do not have one of these items, you may download, print and sign a mail ballot application and send it to the Cook County Clerk’s office.
If we do not have your driver’s license/state ID or your Social Security number on file, you will not be able to complete this application online unless you update your voter registration by calling 312.603.0946. Incomplete registrations are most common for voters who have been registered at the same address for 20 years or more.
http://mailvoting.cookcountyclerk.com/
OzarkHillbilly
Michael Brown flash mob at the STL Symphony.
rikyrah
Sandusky Police over stepping their bounds
http://youtu.be/PgLI5f_5TP8
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly:
Eventually, yes: that’s the most inarguably true statement in this thread. And I suspect that a lot of week-to-week panics are really some kind of sublimation of our realization of that fact.
Corner Stone
SCOTUS just mandated gay marriage for everybody!
TriassicSands
@BillinGlendaleCA:
You’re right, BillinGlendaleCA (may I call you Billetc.?), I did inadvertently omit the lines. A key point. And, no, it won’t do any good to change Election Day to a Sunday (NFL, duh!) or a holiday (waste a holiday voting, you’re not serious). In the unlikely event, the NFL agreed to not schedule any games on a Sunday Election Day, that wouldn’t change things. After all, it’s the Sabbath, and voting is work and I’m supposed to rest on the Sabbath. I’m afraid voting is just too big a burden for the average, NFL-lovin’, God-fearin’, American.
And don’t go suggesting mail-in voting. They’ve had that in Washington State for years and it just doesn’t work. Besides, I’d miss the voting booth, if I ever managed to get to a voting booth. And having a mail-in ballot lying around the house for weeks before the election just isn’t safe. I mean anyone could break in and steal the ballot or worse fill it out and send it in. Mail-in voting is just guaranteed voter fraud.
The more I think about it the more unfair it seems to expect people to vote. As long as the government stays out of my Medicare and Social Security, I’m happy.
skerry
Scary enterovirus D68 has hospitalized over 500 children in 44 states with one confirmed death and 4 suspected since mid-August.
Why isn’t it all over the news?
rikyrah
Supreme Court Denies Review Of Same-Sex Marriage Cases, Bringing Marriage Equality To Five States
The decision not to decide brings marriage equality to Indiana, Oklahoma, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Utah.posted on Oct. 6, 2014, at 8:51 a.m.
Chris Geidner BuzzFeed Staff
http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/supreme-court-denies-review-of-same-sex-marriage-cases-bring?utm_term=ybhdfy#39oicsj
Mike E
I won’t be doing more than my usual GOTV activities, which is to say I’ll be working on it 6 days a week (off Fridays) starting this Wed on through Election Day Eve.
Courage.
JPL
@rikyrah: Good. Scalia must be having a hissy fit right now, since our country was found on the bible and all.
Iowa Old Lady
@TriassicSands: Actually the folks getting Medicare and Social Security drag themselves out to vote, and not always how we’d like.
RaflW
@rikyrah: Oklahoma will have same-sex marriage. Ponder that for a moment.
Of course, that means Oklahoma pols will lurch even further into the right ditch of klown-kar politics. But it also means the SCOTUS couldn’t get four (4) conservative justices to agree to bring a case up.
Same sex marriage will, over time, be national. Letting those rulings stand only to plan to overturn them later just doesn’t seem possible unless the whole damn country veers into the right ditch (not a 0% probability of that, one should note).
Matt McIrvin
Interesting about the denial of cert. I’d assumed that SCOTUS really wanted to issue a ruling on this. Maybe they thought this wasn’t the case?
Matt McIrvin
…they denied cert on all seven of the petitions! Maybe they really don’t want to rule on this at all! That means a slower, more piecemeal progression, but a lot of states get same-sex marriage real soon now.
Or is this just lifting the stays pending some other appeal?
Matt McIrvin
…Will this bring the fraction of the US population living in states with legal same-sex marriage above 50%?
Hillary Rettig
@Baud: I agree, once in a while she gets a guest on who’s doctrinaire and not so convincing, but she does a lot of important stuff – including detailed segments on important topics. She really is a hero, and given the awfulness of a lot of the news she and her team cover, I can’t believe how they can do it day after day, year after year. I know sometimes I have to take a break just from listening.
Mike in NC
Ebola! ISIS! Gay Marriage! A trifecta of reasons to lose your shit, per the media. Maybe we’re about to see a panicked stampede of our senior citizens heading for the Mexican border. Hopefully they’ll at least stay away until after the midterm elections.
TriassicSands
@Iowa Old Lady:
Which is actually consistent with my cynicism about the American electorate.
To be drawing Medicare and Social Security (and supporting the two in the abstract — as opposed to wealthy people who hate government and want their taxes to be zero, but milk the federal teat for all they can) and voting for Republicans is as bad as being poor or a minority and voting for Republicans.
The thrust of my comments about the American electorate is really simple — it is lazy, fickle, ignorant, apathetic, and at this point so bad that we will be unable to sustain anything remotely resembling a free and open society unless changes that are exceedingly unlikely occur.
Yes, it is necessary — vital — that everyone who cares tries to get everyone they know to vote and vote the right way, but my own long experience with trying to convince ignorant voters to change their ways is not conducive to optimism about the future. In the last two election cycles, things looked bad on paper for the Democrats and what saved them was the inability of GOP morons to keep their mouths shut about what they really believed. “Legitimate rape” turned one election around, but after witnessing the cost of verbal diarrhea, this year’s candidates, no less extreme, are likely to be a lot more cautious in expressing their views.
My one elderly neighbor believes that labor unions have never been stronger and will vote straight Republican even though she favors universal health care, reproductive freedom for women, extended unemployment for those out of work, and food aid for the poor. She’s a lifelong Republican and hates Nancy Pelosi. And nothing is more important than her hatred for Pelosi. My other neighbor is elderly and despite having every day free, won’t find the time to mark her mail-in ballot. Two votes that should be guaranteed for Democrats — MIA.
I’ve spent years trying to get through to both of them and, sadly, it is hopeless. No amount of evidence will sway the first neighbor. And no amount of encouragement will motivate the second.
glocksman
The stray cat I fed a can of tuna to yesterday showed up at my door this morning.
This time I had a can of proper cat food I bought ready.
Pic 1
Pic 2
And on another subject, I noticed this little gem on the side of a new Dollar General store:
To God be the Glory
I have no problems with religion other than the charlatans who exploit it for personal gain.
Cervantes
@mai naem:
This is an excellent, well-thought-out response to her work, miles better than dismissing it — no, wait, half of it — as “firebaggery” (whatever that may be).
Anyway, I’ve never seen the movie so I can’t comment on the comparison; but you’re wrong about the full-fat ice cream.
rikyrah
@glocksman:
that is a cute cat
Steeplejack
@glocksman:
Congratulations, new cat owner! Let us know when you bring it inside and give it a name. Then it’s official.
Redwood Rhiadra
@skerry: Because a disease that’s lethal in 1% of cases (5 out of 500 according to your numbers) just isn’t that big a deal?