“They’re like rats. But rats with big, big, big teeth.”

Brigid has a report on how a bad day turns into a worse one.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 17:42:01 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 24 words, total size 1 kb.

Busted: Lawyers for illegal aliens try controlling the language in Arizona courts

John Feere:

...Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor has advanced the demands of the Arizona Hispanic Bar Association by moving to ban the following language from all of the state’s courtrooms:

Aliens
Illegal aliens
Resident or non-resident aliens
Illegal immigrants
Illegal immigration
Illegals
Immigration epidemic
Immigration crisis
Immigrant invasion
Pro-illegal immigration activists
Open borders advocates
Anchor babies
Proponents for amnesty

Many of these terms have a precedent in the law that reaches back to the origins of this country.  The first five terms are used repeatedly throughout federal immigration statutes and case law.

Caught, they’re backpedalling.  AZ Supreme Court communications director Carie Gerchick:

“A letter was sent in from an organization, a local legal organization, asking a court to essentially ban the use of those words.  Under no circumstances did the Chief Justice McGregor ban any words.”

That’s after threatening to sue Judicial Watch for breaking the story.  And according to John Feere at the Center for Immigration Studies (source for the above quotes), the judge did “forward the request to all lower courts.”

So the question before the house:  Say you’re the judge of some state court. And you get a “Dear colleague” letter from the Chief Justice of your state’s Supreme Court.  Now it’s not really an order.  But what’s the likelihood that you’ll ignore it?


Elsewhere: 

Via:  “It’s Vintage, Duh” at doubleplusundead

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 00:45:58 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 246 words, total size 5 kb.

Sunday morning reading - November 9, 2008

Jeff Goldstein tees off on the importance of not using graciousness or high-mindedness as an excuse for avoiding truth:

...something classical liberals need to put at the top of their priority list: namely, a refusal to allow that tactics of progressives to pass unchallenged or even to be celebrated.

In an political environment wherein the left has managed to turn the introduction of inconvenient facts into “smears” or “racism,” this willingness, on the part of some conservatives, to believe themselves capable of seizing the moral high ground by essentially giving cover to the demonstrably bad by allowing that it is merely “misguided,” is yet another step toward the very kind of partisan pragmatism that has cost Republicans so dearly, and that, even more troubling, has served to devalue language and further institutionalize a dangerous idea of how interpretation works.

And Bill Quick mulls the consequence of words that might be offensive also being accurate:

A few days ago, nemo took exception to my use of the phrase “Black man on a white horse” to denote Barack Obama. nemo’s reasoning was straightforward - while the cheap play on words was attractive, it could too easily be taken as scurrilous racism by those who don’t know me.

I’ve been thinking about that ever since.

Dismal science:   First, go grab a beer.  Or pour a glass of wine.  Or something stronger.  I don’t care if it’s not noon yet!  Drink it!  Now, sit down.  Done?  Then read MaxedOutMama:

I am adjusting my forecast to 75% moderate US depression by 2010, lasting for perhaps two years.

In short, there are some dominos yet to fall.  The key domino-pusher will be Democratic stupidity about energy.  And as Dr. Sanity (who it seems is taking the rest of the year off) reminds us, the left will remain dysfunctional:

The beginning of the 21st century will surely be looked back on as a golden age of paranoia.  The headlines of today fairly ooze with the delusions and vast conspiracies dreamed of in the mind of the paranoid left.., as they attempt to keep the holes in their ideology plugged; thus preventing any reality from washing over them or flooding their cognitive processes.

Every time a leak in that ideological dike appears, the paranoid brand chewing gum is brought out to stop it up.  The TNG memos were a clever plot by Karl Rove.  The Bush Administration was behind 9/11.  Katrina was allowed to destroy New Orleans because Bush hates blacks.  George Bush is about to impose a theocracy on the unsuspecting U.S.  Pat Tillman was murdered because he wanted to meet with anti-war activist Norm Chomsky.  The list of the paranoid delusions goes on and on and on.
...
[Such] mental gymnastics allow the paranoid person to externalize blame and avoid responsibility for his situation in life, as well as his own feelings.  It is always someone else’s fault and not his.

Depressing, huh?

Oh well, there’s always Neccos:

A whole roll takes about 40 minutes to eat.

Beg pardon?  By whom?  Doing what?  I suppose if a person had the extreme forbearance to suck rather than chew every single wafer in the pack, it might take forty minutes.  But such iron control cannot possibly be a healthy sign.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 03:46:14 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 546 words, total size 5 kb.

“There’s still good in the world...”

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 21:09:24 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 12 words, total size 1 kb.

Roberta X covers the Rahm Emanuel appointment

LTFO. They're loadin' the loose cannons aboard first.

...and in the comments:  Recalling the Clinton administration’s appointees.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 18:13:24 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 23 words, total size 1 kb.

Trust Laurence to help restore perspective

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 16:59:14 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 13 words, total size 1 kb.

Shot across the bow

And just in case the new President is entertaining any thoughts of straying off the leftie reservation, Ralph Nader has a warning for him.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 20:57:28 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 28 words, total size 1 kb.

First thoughts...

Ed Morrissey:

In 2004, Bush beat John Kerry by winning 62.04 million votes. In 2008, Obama won 62.443 million, a gain of only 400,000. In 2004, Kerry garnered 59.028 million votes; John McCain only got 55.386 million. That means this election saw 3.24 million fewer votes than four years ago. Far from being more energized, the nation appeared to be more apathetic.
...
John McCain and the GOP... lost almost seven million voters from 2004, a rather stunning number. ...That’s more than 10% of the Bush vote that got lost in this election. Did they stay home, or did significant numbers of them defect to Obama? I’m guessing the former. The GOP demoralized their base by acting like Democrats for too many years, and the winds of “change” proved too dispiriting this time around.
...
If the GOP wants to win 60 million votes in future national elections, it has to stand for something other than being Democrat Lite. The Republican Party needs clarity, purpose, and most importantly, an end to the hypocrisy of talking smaller government while porking up their districts. When given only a choice between real Democrats and fake Democrats, Americans will choose the former, which we found out in 2006.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 20:01:53 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 205 words, total size 2 kb.

Get’cher brown shirts, right heah!

Daily Pundit’s new Roving Editor “martinra” begins his tenure with a bang:

Rest assured, no matter what Orwellian newspeak is used to cover it up, if we see large units of new “police” or “security” forces being formed and recruited, big, big trouble is in the works.  If Obama actually creates, staffs, and funds such a new force or forces, then it’s an attempt to make the USA into a Banana Republic in truth - one man, one vote, one last time.  If Obama both cuts the real military and spends vast sums to create a paramilitary “security force”, staffed with his partisans, then get ready for Civil War II.  Soon.

Read the whole thing, then sleep well.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 20:12:56 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 121 words, total size 1 kb.