He sounds more presidential than all the others combined. An amazing speech. Count me as a new supporter. (Sorry John Edwards.)
Time For Someone Else To Sit In The Religious Right’s Chump Seat
Atrios calls it “huckenfreude.”
Following an entertaining discussion in our comments, an artist’s conception of the rampaging Huckernaut:
Note to the GOP: better throw a temper tantrum and smash the Huckabee campaign to bits. There’s no way that won’t work.
***Update***
A moment of silence for Hugh Hewitt’s credibility, even if it already died more deaths than Jason Voorhees.
Time For Someone Else To Sit In The Religious Right’s Chump SeatPost + Comments (54)
Live Blogging the Caucuses
For those of you who don’t have access to a television, I’ll keep you up to date on results till about 11pm EST.
Update XV: (10:00pm): I said I would go till 11, but it seems to have been called – Huckabee and Obama. Just want to say that I hope Mitt Romney goes completely broke during the primary season, and I hope he loses miserably.
Oh, and Edwards is slightly ahead of Clinton. w00T!
Update XIV: (9:52pm): Quote of the day from Donna Brazile (paraphrase):
African Americans have always lifted up Democrats. Now it’s time for Democrats to lift up an African American.
Fine by me!
Update XIII: (9:343pm): A commenter:
Clinton’s going to get ugggggly against Obama now.
I think that’s probably true, and it would be Clinton’s downfall. She needs to reach out to Obama supporters. Anything else would seem like “I’m the candidate that’s supposed to win!” It would turn off a lot of people. Obama is now completely viable. Hillary can no longer consider him anything less than a solid challenger. In fact, she now has to look at him as someone with whom she has to catch up.
An Open Caucus Thread
Predictions? Expectations? Put them here.
BTW- One more reason why Dodd is teh awesome. He really is the best candidate the Dems are offering, and he doesn’t stand a chance. Kind of depressing.
Equal Access To A Nasty Divorce
For years, family court judges leaned toward a maternal preference when it came to custody disputes. But what to do when both parents are women, or neither is? Judges in Massachusetts have been grappling with that question since gay and lesbian couples began filing for divorce in 2004, seven months after the state Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage.
Why not award the kids to the biological parent? Amateur.
In the case of the doctor, she and her spouse each gave birth to a boy fathered by the same sperm donor. They then adopted one another’s sons. Biologically, their children are half-siblings; legally, they are full brothers.
Fun. The legal rights attendant with marriage (hospital visitation and medical decisions, inheritance, insurance, etc.) clearly make it a transformative experience in a good way for most gay and straight couples alike. Looking back on my own fairly short married life, as Edith Piaf liked to say, Non, je ne regrette rien. Now a moment of silence for those who just might.
Whistleblower Protections Strengthened
This seems significant:
A federal judge has ruled that Amnesty International and other human rights groups can assert the same privileges that journalists use, allowing them to better protect anonymous sources.
Unless I read it wrong, this makes it far easier to blow the whistle on, say, warrantless surveillance of American citizens by expanding the number of groups that can field a complaint without having to give up your identity. Anything that makes a government that spends so much of its time now looking over our shoulders watch its own back a little more strikes me as a good thing.
Game On
As expected California has filed suit to challenge the EPA’s strange (well, strange if you think the EPA still works for the environment) decision to deny the state’s effort to impose greenhouse limits that are stricter than the national standard. The whole story is a real chin-scratcher because a federal judge recently ruled that California can do exactly that. Unless the EPA has some magical new legal theory this case ought to shut practically before it opens.
Who knows, it could be that the Bushies hope to try out one of their shiny new judges, or the new SCOTUS majority. Any other explanation doesn’t make a lot of sense.