TomatoPie wrote:
In fact, I can guarantee that the Inky and the NYT will endorse the Dem candidate, no matter who and no matter who the opponent.

phdave wrote:That was something.

Phan Paul wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:
Believe it or not, conservatives lament, just as does good Justice Bryer, that "that 1 in 6 African American students attends school that are 99-100% minority." But we'd rather see that remedied in a Consitutional fashion. Many of us believe, further, that when the government perpetuates the notion that blacks need help from the government to be on an equal footing, it drives a wedge into a rift that would heal on its own.

Lamentations don't mean squat.

You simply ignored the reply you claimed you found thougthful. How on earth can de facto desegregation be addressed without taking race into account? Brown v. Board did not make racial classification unconstitutional, it made segregation unconstitutional, holding separate can never be equal. We have separate, and hence unequal schools.

It's really quite simple--discrimination is wrong when is serves to segregate schoools. It is not wrong when it has the opposite intent--desegregation.

One may argue that imposing such quotas in the name of racial balance is morally acceptable or even obligatory. Even if one disagrees, as this column does, one must concede that such a practice is less invidious than old-fashioned Jim Crow segregation.

But there is no getting around the fact that it is illegal. From the Reconstruction era to the civil rights era to the present, legislators and voters have enacted laws banning discrimination across the board. When the Supreme Court makes exceptions to these laws--as it did in the 2003 college admissions case Grutter v. Bollinger, and as the four dissenters wanted to do last week in Parents Involved, it is acting in defiance of the law.

The law says you can't discriminate; it doesn't say you can discriminate if five men in robes agree that you are doing so for a worthy purpose. When judges elevate their own policy preferences above the law, they undermine the foundation of America as a nation of laws, not men.

That's why the most striking dissenting statement in Parents Involved was Justice John Paul Stevens's conclusion:

It is my firm conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today's decision.

There's a lovely irony in Stevens's appealing to the authority of dead white males while styling himself the champion of oppressed minorities. But by invoking the ghosts of justices past, Stevens reveals that his views of the subject are rooted in personal preference and not legal principle.

"Libby's conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq war," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush's decision showed the president "condones criminal conduct."

Unlike a pardon, which would have wiped away Libby's criminal record, Bush's commutation voided only the prison term.

The president left intact a $250,000 fine and two years probation for his conviction of lying and obstructing justice in a probe into the leak of a CIA operative's identity. The former operative, Valerie Plame, contends the White House was trying to discredit her husband, a critic of Bush's Iraq policy.

Bush said his action still "leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby."

Libby was convicted in March, the highest-ranking White House official ordered to prison since the Iran-Contra affair.

TomatoPie wrote:When Scooter's conviction is overturned, will you feel any better about the commutation, or will you wish he had served time for having a recall that differed from Tim Russert's?

TomatoPie wrote:When Scooter's conviction is overturned, will you feel any better about the commutation, or will you wish he had served time for having a recall that differed from Tim Russert's?

dajafi wrote:I didn't feel this way before today... but they should be impeached, and political consequences be damned. If the Democrats feel the Constitution is worth defending, they almost have to do it. But they won't.

dajafi wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:When Scooter's conviction is overturned, will you feel any better about the commutation, or will you wish he had served time for having a recall that differed from Tim Russert's?

And I'm sure you'd feel exactly the same way were this lying slimebag a Democrat. Right?

Sadly, the only way the jury could have ensured Don Bush wouldn't pardon his Made Man would have been to sentence him to death. The Texecutioner always "respected" that one.

Libby was found guilty by unanimous verdict. In every appeal, including one before Judge David Sentelle--one of the rabid partisans who set Ken Starr on the hunt back in the day--he was rejected. But King George Knows Best.

I didn't feel this way before today... but they should be impeached, and political consequences be damned. If the Democrats feel the Constitution is worth defending, they almost have to do it. But they won't.

TomatoPie wrote:

dajafi wrote:I didn't feel this way before today... but they should be impeached, and political consequences be damned. If the Democrats feel the Constitution is worth defending, they almost have to do it. But they won't.

Do you deny that the President has the right to pardon and/or commute sentences? I don't think so. Then how can you call for impeachment based on this turn of events? Is it an impeachable offense to piss off partisan Democrats?

TomatoPie wrote:

dajafi wrote:I didn't feel this way before today... but they should be impeached, and political consequences be damned. If the Democrats feel the Constitution is worth defending, they almost have to do it. But they won't.

Do you deny that the President has the right to pardon and/or commute sentences? I don't think so. Then how can you call for impeachment based on this turn of events? Is it an impeachable offense to piss off partisan Democrats?

kimbatiste wrote:By the way, I've checked Foxnews four times in the last 45 minutes. Not once have they been talking about the Libby situation.

kimbatiste wrote:

dajafi wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:When Scooter's conviction is overturned, will you feel any better about the commutation, or will you wish he had served time for having a recall that differed from Tim Russert's?

And I'm sure you'd feel exactly the same way were this lying slimebag a Democrat. Right?

Sadly, the only way the jury could have ensured Don Bush wouldn't pardon his Made Man would have been to sentence him to death. The Texecutioner always "respected" that one.

Libby was found guilty by unanimous verdict. In every appeal, including one before Judge David Sentelle--one of the rabid partisans who set Ken Starr on the hunt back in the day--he was rejected. But King George Knows Best.

I didn't feel this way before today... but they should be impeached, and political consequences be damned. If the Democrats feel the Constitution is worth defending, they almost have to do it. But they won't.

TP, I don't understand why you have to be partisan about everything. You have no personal knowledge about Libby's guilt.

I'm actually glad that Bush did this. Libby is a scumbag but I don't really care if he goes to prison if it does anything to further alienate the Republicans from the country.

TomatoPie wrote:

kimbatiste wrote:

dajafi wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:When Scooter's conviction is overturned, will you feel any better about the commutation, or will you wish he had served time for having a recall that differed from Tim Russert's?

And I'm sure you'd feel exactly the same way were this lying slimebag a Democrat. Right?

Sadly, the only way the jury could have ensured Don Bush wouldn't pardon his Made Man would have been to sentence him to death. The Texecutioner always "respected" that one.

Libby was found guilty by unanimous verdict. In every appeal, including one before Judge David Sentelle--one of the rabid partisans who set Ken Starr on the hunt back in the day--he was rejected. But King George Knows Best.

I didn't feel this way before today... but they should be impeached, and political consequences be damned. If the Democrats feel the Constitution is worth defending, they almost have to do it. But they won't.

TP, I don't understand why you have to be partisan about everything. You have no personal knowledge about Libby's guilt.

I'm actually glad that Bush did this. Libby is a scumbag but I don't really care if he goes to prison if it does anything to further alienate the Republicans from the country.

What did I say that was more partisan than those with the opposite POV?

Libby was railroaded, period. The entire investigation was a farce, it was partisan, it was pure payback for the prosecution of Clinton. Plame was not covert, even the WaPo called Joe a liar, from the very beginning Fitzy knew that Armitage was the leaker, yet he pressed on. He's no better than Nifong. Armitage was charged with nothing, Libby was prosecuted because Tim Russert had a different version of a converstation than Libby did. Ridiculous.

An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert" when her name became public in July 2003.
...
The unclassified summary of Plame's employment with the CIA at the time that syndicated columnist Robert Novak published her name on July 14, 2003 says, "Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for who the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States."

Plame worked as an operations officer in the Directorate of Operations and was assigned to the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) in January 2002 at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The employment history indicates that while she was assigned to CPD, Plame, "engaged in temporary duty travel overseas on official business." The report says, "she traveled at least seven times to more than ten times." When overseas Plame traveled undercover, "sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias -- but always using cover -- whether official or non-official (NOC) -- with no ostensible relationship to the CIA."