"Situation in Iraq Is Civil War" by Rep. John Murtha at The Huffington Post.

Still More on Sammy "I've Got Your Back, Georgie" Alito

"Perhaps it's believable that Alito was, as he said, an inactive member of the group not well acquainted with its activities when he joined. But thirty years later, when he mentioned his 'proud membership' in the group on his job application to the Reagan Justice Department, there is no way he could have missed the news that other prominent alumni, including Bill Frist, had denounced CAP's retrograde positions. 'You are a very careful and cautious person,' Leahy said. Alito must surely have taken great care with that job application, and knew the implications of everything he put on it. Lindsey Graham had the best line on that and other instances of Alito's faulty memory: 'I hope you'll understand if some of us come before a court and we can't remember Abramoff, you'll tend to believe us.'"

"We Need to Hear More From Alito on Executive Power" by Ruth Conniff at The Progressive's website.

Actually I don't think we need to hear from Alito on this--we already know exactly where he stands re "executive power." It's obvious that he's pledged his allegiance to Thief-in-Chief George W. Bush . . . and the Republican Party, Big Money--the whole rotten alliance of greedyguts corporate assholes and gun-slinging, psychopathic wingnut fanatics.

"What really hangs in the balance in the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito are the fundamental rights to privacy, dignity, and autonomy -- rights that transcend partisan politics, shape the course of our daily lives, and lie at the heart of who we are as Americans."

"Alito's fantasy world" by Kate Michelman at The Boston Globe's website.

Big Brother Is Watching You Episode #685

Also watching your cat, your goldfish, your headlice . . . and anyone else who might conceivably (in jaded wingnut minds) be in contact with Uncle Osama and His Band of Merry Brigands . . . . But in reality--

"Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story -- which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year -- because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had 'legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.' But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing 'all necessary force' in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism."

"The NYT's Unconscionable Decision to Sit on the NSA Story" by Lawrence R. Velvel at CounterPunch.

"'The Administration has hammered the final nail in the coffin of compassionate conservatism with this vote,' said Jim Wallis of Sojourners. 'And now our political leaders will race out of town, join their families, celebrate good fortune and hope, and proclaim goodwill toward all. Merry Christmas!'"

"Ruling Class Warriors" by Eyal Press at The Nation.

"Alito will lie to the committee, intentionally and repeatedly."

"Figuring Out Alito" by John Nichols at AlterNet.

". . . the political atmosphere is changing. Senator Russ Feingold, who was the lone opponent of the Patriot Act in the Senate, managed to bring along enough colleagues on both sides of the aisle to stymie reenactment of the law at the end of December. Republicans have begun to criticize the Iraq War and to part ways with the Administration on other issues, including torturing detainees and stomping on Americans’ civil liberties."

"Ruth Conniff on the Impeachment Buzz" at The Progressive's website.

"Panel slams faked Korea cloning" at AlJazeera.

"From the Drawing Board to Immersive Media with Douglas Trumbull" by Sean Axmaker at GreenCine.

Trumbull was one of the four guys and not the guy, as he himself is quick to emphasize, who did the special effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey.

"In another sense, though, Jones' ruling is revolutionary. We live in a time when the findings of science themselves increasingly seem to be politically determined--when Democrat 'science' is pitted against Republican 'science' on issues ranging from evolution to global warming. By contrast, Jones' opinion strikes a blow for the proposition that when it comes to matters of science, there aren't necessarily two sides to every story."

"Welcome to Science Court" by Chris Mooney at CSICOP.

Would-be dictators of various small, unstable countries, who want to avoid unseemly bloodshed in the voting lines, should study carefully our electoral system in the U.S. today, and take notes. I mean, as computer technology becomes cheaper and cheaper, computerized voting is obviously the way to go. Perhaps they could purchase some used machines from Diebold?

"20 Amazing Facts About Voting In The United States" by Bob Rowe at Marin County's Coastal Post Online.

"Bush Advisor Says President Has Legal Power to Torture Children" by Philip Watts at Information Clearing House.

"Hillary Clinton told me that the 'wheels of government grind slowly.' This is a tired cliché and it is unacceptable blather while the war machine is grinding the bones of our children."

From "The Opposite of Good is Apathy" by Cindy Sheehan at BuzzFlash.

"Supreme Court nominees get, and usually deserve, much benefit of the doubt. But with Alito, the doubt is all of the nominee's making, and has only grown with revelations of his Reagan-era memos. As an ambitious Reagan Administration lawyer, he boasted in a now-famous 1985 job application of his conviction that Roe v. Wade should be overturned; opposed the historic one-person, one-vote decision of the Warren Court; and waved like a badge of honor his membership in a far-right Princeton alumni network notorious for its hostility to admitting women and African-Americans. Alito's defense of Nixon-era officials implicated in illegal wiretaps makes clear--in light of today's NSA wiretap scandal--that the Bush Administration's motives in Alito's nomination extend well beyond a token nod to social conservatives."

"The Case Against Alito" at The Nation.

This has been lying around as a "draft" post at Blogger for a few days, so it's a bit "old." (I haven't been able to find out how the story's developed since . . . .)

"Outspoken Chinese blogger censored by Microsoft" by Rebecca McKinnon at BoingBoing.

Historian Carolyn Eisenberg reiterates and clarifies the obvious comparison between the Vietnam war and the present war in Iraq . . . .

"Even though the delusions of Nixon and Kissinger were well recognized by members of the bureaucracy, who whispered in corridors and leaked juicy items to the press, nobody important quit, nobody important went public, nobody important directly challenged the president or Kissinger, nobody important said out loud, 'You are killing people for nothing.'"

"Was Anything Learned from Vietnam?" at HNN.

One thinks, for instance, of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who could have blown the whistle more than once--on the phoney evidence he presented, supposedly under pressure and against his own better judgement, to the UN, for instance--but who towed the line like a good little Boy Scout (I'm tempted, not unreasonably I think, to use the name of another quasi-military youth group of less wholesome repute for this simile . . . ).

A rightly skeptical Joshua Holland asks in "Spinning away a quagmire ..." at AlterNet: "'Bush's December statements have started to shift the political winds, stemming mounting opposition to the war'? On what planet?"

"If nowhere else, the dead live on in our brain cells, not just as memories but as programs--computerlike models compiled over the years capturing how the dearly departed behaved when they were alive. These simulations can be remarkably faithful. In even the craziest dreams the people we know may remain eerily in character, acting as we would expect them to in the real world. Even after the simulation outlasts the simulated, we continue to sense the strong presence of a living being. Sitting beside a gravestone, we might speak and think for a moment that we hear a reply."

"Getting a Rational Grip on Religion" is a review by George Johnson at Scientific American's website of Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

"'NIAC is looking for grand ideas and grand visions -- big ideas that might inspire new enabling technologies. We state explicitly that the concept or architectural system does not have to have the enabling technology available to make it work. And the science does not have to be totally understood,' Cassanova [Robert Cassanova, director of NASA's National Institute for Advanced Concepts, or NIAC for short] said."

"NASA changes science fiction into science fact" reported by Alok Jha at the Taipei Times' website (originally from The Gaurdian, London).

"He was amazingly prolific, a blogging phenomenon before the term was invented. A student of the American language, he might have liked the phrase, but would have urged bloggers to stress information over attitude. His style combined relentless facts, a disdain for cliches, and uncompromising integrity. In other words, he was a nightmare for media marketing experts. An editor like Mencken would confound most graphics and demographics consultants. When he took over Smart Set magazine in 1914, Mencken proclaimed as its slogan ''One Civilized Reader Is Worth a Thousand Boneheads.'"

"Free thinker" is a review by Martin F. Nolan of Marion Elizabeth Rodgers' bio of H. L. Mencken, Mencken: The American Iconoclast at boston.com.

"'Books are irreplaceable, because they're the only place in the universe where two strangers can meet on absolutely intimate terms. We need to tell stories as human beings. People are as hungry for that as they have ever been.'"

Thus novelist Paul Auster, in "Literature helps novelists nourish their own love," an article by Connie Ogle at the Miami Herald's website.

"The three ministers insisted they weren't taking sides in the Alito debate. 'This is not a pro-Alito prayer,' insisted the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition. With abortion, public prayer, gay marriage and right-to-life issues among those topping public debate, however, 'God…is interested in what goes on' in the nomination hearing, Rev. Schenck said."

"Ministers Say They Blessed Seats Ahead of Alito Hearing" by June Kronholz at The Wall Street Journal's website.

Not taking sides? Yeah right. But that's okay. I'll just get out my voodoo-doll . . . .