“If anything, Stevens’s influence has grown in recent years. He has a knack for building coalitions across ideological lines, and he makes shrewd use of his prerogatives as the senior associate justice. It is largely because of him that a court with seven Republican-appointed members, and nominally headed by a conservative, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, produced a string of relatively liberal results in recent cases.” The Post‘s Charles Lane profiles the Court’s Supreme lefty and history’s third-oldest justice, John-Paul Stevens.
Full-Court Press.
The WP surveys the recent White House campaign to prevent Senate oversight into the NSA wiretaps. “Hagel and Snowe declined interview requests after the meeting, but sources close to them say they bridle at suggestions that they buckled under administration heat.” Well, then, Senators, what do you want to call it?
President’s Day 2006.
“It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism…The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them…let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.” — George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796.
“Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.” — Abraham Lincoln, “Speech to One Hundred Fortieth Indiana Regiment” (March 17, 1865)
“Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.” — George Washington
“It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’ How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!” — Abraham Lincoln, “Address Before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin” (September 30, 1859)
Six Feet Over.
Little Man Nate? Not hardly. All of 5’9″ going on 5’7″, Nate Robinson of the New York Knicks won the Slam Dunk competition last night, with an impressive repertoire that included dunking over 1986 champion Spud Webb. (Yes, Sports Fans, I just managed to use the words “Knicks” and “won” in the same sentence.) Update: “Both Dolan and Bush are sons of powerful men, more products of name than actual qualifications. Both were pretty much appointed to their present jobs in the first place, Dolan by Dad, President Bush by Justice Scalia. Dolan has the Madison Square Garden network, Bush has Fox News.” Veteran sports columnist Mike Lupica compares the Dubya and (Knicks owner) Dolan regimes.
Congress on the Fritz, Fritz on the Congress.
“There is a cancer on the body politic: money.” Former Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC) argues for a campaign finance constitutional amendment — Worth reading in its entirety. “[I]n 1998 I had to raise $8.5 million to be elected senator. This meant I had to collect $30,000 a week, each and every week, for six years. I could have raised $3 million in South Carolina. But to get $8.5 million I had to travel to New York, Boston, Chicago, Florida, California, Texas and elsewhere. During every break Congress took, I had to be out hustling money. And when I was in Washington, or back home, my mind was still on money.” …
“What the court did in 1976 was to give the rich, who don’t have to raise money, a big advantage — in effect, a greater degree of freedom of speech than others have. No one can imagine that in drafting the First Amendment to the Constitution, James Madison thought freedom of speech would be measured by wealth. The Supreme Court, which has found constitutional other limits on speech, has rendered Madison’s freedom unequal. Congress must make it equal again.”
Boehner bides his time.
Surprise, surprise: When it comes to cleaning the money out of Congress, the GOP are playing to form. “The rush to revise ethics laws in the wake of the Jack Abramoff political corruption scandal has turned into more of a saunter…The primary holdup is in the House…[where] progress was slowed by the election two weeks ago of a new majority leader, Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who has a different notion of what ‘reform’ should entail.”
Delay for Jack = Jack outs DeLay?
The Justice Department, along with Casino Jack’s lawyers, ask for a delay of sentencing for Abramoff in the Suncruz case, so that he can continue working with the Feds on the bigger picture of GOP corruption. “‘Mr. Abramoff has been working very hard in terms of his cooperation,’ said Neal Sonnett, Abramoff’s attorney in Miami.” Let’s hope so.
Rage Against the Machine.
“If the Democratic Party continues with these suicidal decisions, we will continue to defeat ourselves…The only strategy the Republicans need to stay in power is patience. They just need to wait while our party self-implodes through idiotic decisions such as the one to pressure an articulate Iraqi war veteran to pull out of the race.” Mother Jones‘ David Goodman delves into the alleged Swift Boat-ish whispering campaign by Democratic insiders to foist Paul Hackett from the Ohio Senate primary. After the last couple of campaigns, sadly, this sounds all too plausible.
Will to Power.
“[T]errorism is not the only new danger of this era. Another is the administration’s argument that because the president is commander in chief, he is the ‘sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs.'” From the Right, George Will makes the conservative case against Dubya’s “monarchical” pretensions regarding the NSA wiretaps. (Via Cliopatria.)
Scanner Horizon.
Almost a year after the teaser, AICN points the way to the new trailer for Richard Linklater’s version of Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, with Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey, Jr., and Woody Harrelson.