TRex nails the she-pundit at Firedoglake while Digby holds court with another edition of Digby Speaks, You Listen.

"Feminizing" male Democrats and "masculinizing" female Democrats is pretty much all she does.

This isn't brain surgery. Faggots, smelly fat women, it's right out of the adolescent lizard brain, and sadly it works on a certain type of voter --- probably more than we would be comfortable knowing about. Coulter is an extreme version of a conservative archetype whose entire worldview is shaped by primitive notions of male dominance.

If you'd rather watch the latest segment of the discombobulated she-pundit, she comes undone in full glory yesterday morning during Joe Scarborough's MSNBC radio show.

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The Supreme Court today set aside the death penalty of a delusional inmate.

In a rebuke to lower courts, the justices ruled 5 to 4 that the defendant, Scott Louis Panetti, had not been shown to have sufficient understanding of why he was to be put to death for gunning down his wife’s parents in 1992.

The court, acting on the last day of the 2006-7 term, declined to lay out a new standard for competency in capital cases. But it found that existing protections had not been afforded.

The decision is significant, particularly for Texas. In a press release today, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) wrote:

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Most political junkies are watching the Democratic debate. Me, I'm watching the NBA draft.

My early reviews as to who is having a good night? Portland got Oden. Traded Zack Randolph to the Knicks for Steve Francis and Channing Frye (other players involved). Since I think Oden will be the modern day Russell, Portland can do no wrong tonight.

As far as who did the most with what they had, I like the Hawks draft, Al Horford and Acie Law are very good value for 3 and 11 though I think Horford went too high and Law went too low. The headscratcher for me, from BOTH ENDS, is the Celtics-Sonics trade, 32 year old Ray Allen for the 5, and that pick is Jeff Green? Worst pick of the draft imo. Green was not a top 15 player in this draft. He disappeared at the end of games.

Most of you don't give a hoot about any of this, but don't worry, it is an Open Thread.

Via Atrios:

Joe Klein on 6/18/06:

In fact, the responsible path is the Democrats' only politically plausible choice: they will have to give yet another new Iraqi government one last shot to succeed. This time, U.S. military sources say, the measure of success is simple: Operation Forward Together, the massive joint military effort launched last week to finally try to secure Baghdad, has to work. If Baghdad isn't stabilized, the war is lost. "I know it's the cliche of the war," an Army counterinsurgency specialist told me last week. "But we'll know in the next six months—and this time, it'll be the last next six months we get."

Joe Klein, over two Friedmans later [today]:

It is, indeed, a moment of truth in Iraq. "This is a decisive phase," a member of Petraeus' staff told me and began to laugh. "That's one of our favorite jokes. It's always a decisive phase. But this time, I guess you'd have to say, it actually is." Operation Phantom Thunder, the nationwide offensive launched by U.S. and Iraqi troops in mid-June, may well be the last major U.S-led offensive of the war. "We couldn't really call it what it is, Operation Last Chance," says a senior military official. There is widespread awareness among the military and diplomatic players in Baghdad that, with patience dwindling in Washington, they have only until September — when Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are due to give Congress a progress report — to show significant gains in taming the jihadist insurgency and in arresting the country's descent into civil war.

One of the more interesting things to happen politically this year is the manner in which the Beltway Establishment has basically been utterly rejected by most of the country. While David Broder bleats for "sensible bipartisanship" without ever explaining what substantive policies should actually look like, the American People have basically rejected the performance of the Washington Establishment.

For Democrats in Washington, their performance on Iraq has pushed their approval ratings to extreme lows. For Republicans, it has been Bush's immigration bill.

One thing is clear about this year, the big loser has been the Washington Elite. NOBODY likes them. They have never been as out of step with the country as they are now. I wonder if they have any clue about this.

The 2005-2006 statistics are in. America increased its prison population by the greatest amount since 2000.

The United States, which has the most prisoners of any country in the world, last year recorded the largest increase in the number of people in prisons and jails since 2000, the Justice Department reported on Wednesday.

It said the nation's prison and jail populations increased by more than 62,000 inmates, or 2.8 percent, to about 2,245,000 inmates in the 12-month period that ended on June 30, 2006. It was the biggest jump in numbers and percentage change in six years.

Reasons for the increase:

Criminal justice experts have attributed the record U.S. prison population to tough sentencing laws, record numbers of drug offenders and high crimes rates.

The picture above is of Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN)in 1969 when he was a student at Hofstra University. From his Wikipedia entry:

"He ran for student senate and opined in the school newspaper that his fellow students should vote for him because he knew that 'these conservative kids don't f*ck or get high like we do...

Fast forward to the present, and Sen. Coleman opposes the legalization of marijuana. In a recent form letter his office sent out he wrote:

"I oppose the legalization of marijuana because, as noted by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, marijuana can have serious adverse health affects on individuals. The health problems that may occur from this highly addictive drug include short-term memory loss, anxiety, respiratory illness and a risk of lung cancer that far exceeds that of tobacco products. It would also make our transportation, schools and workplaces, just as examples, more dangerous."

Lawyer Norm Kent went to college with Coleman and now serves on the NORML Board of Directors. He fired off this response to Coleman, which is just great reading. While I will highlight below, I encourage you to read the whole thing.

Ding, Dong, S. 1639 is dead.

The Senate drove a stake Thursday through President Bush's plan to legalize millions of unlawful immigrants, likely postponing major action on immigration until after the 2008 elections.

The bill's supporters fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to limit debate and clear the way for final passage of the legislation, which critics assailed as offering amnesty to illegal immigrants. The vote was 46 to 53 in favor of limiting the debate.

The roll call vote results are here. While the defeat is considered a "stinging setback" for President Bush, I'm glad it's dead for other reasons. The path to citizenship was too onerous and the bill failed to preserve the principles of family reunification and protect workers' rights. It was too heavy on border enforcement and too punitive.

We probably won't see another bill until 2009, when we have a new President, hopefully a Progressive Democrat and a new Congress.

Looking ahead, here's what I think a 2009 bill should include. In fact, I'm going to call it the TalkLeft Immigration Reform Act of 2009 (TIRA). This is a work in progress and I may propose Amendments as time goes on.

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In a another 5-4 decision (Justice Kennedy did not join the plurality opinion, only the judgment, more on that later), the new Roberts Supreme Court, throwing away claims of judicial minimalism and any claims to respect for federalism, today ruled unlawful two VOLUNTARY school integration plans. Justice Stevens, in dissent, wrote:

While I join JUSTICE BREYER.s eloquent and unanswerable dissent in its entirety, it is appropriate to add these words. There is a cruel irony in THE CHIEF JUSTICE.s reliance on our decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294 (1955). The first sentence in the concluding paragraph of his opinion states: Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin.. Ante, at 40. This sentence reminds me of Anatole France's observation: [T]he majestic equality of the la[w], forbid[s] rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread. THE CHIEF JUSTICE fails to note that it was only black schoolchildren who were so ordered; indeed, the history books do not tell stories of white children struggling to attend black schools.2 In this and other ways, THE CHIEF JUSTICE rewrites the history of one of this Court's most important decisions. Compare ante, at 39 (history will be heard.), with Brewer v. Quarterman, 550 U. S. ___,___ (2007) (slip op., at 11) (ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting) (It is a familiar adage that history is written by the victors.)

The White House announced today it won't turn over documents subpoenaed by the House and Senate Judiciary Committees concerning Harriet Miers or Sara Taylor in the U.S. Attorney firing probe. The text of White House Counsel Fred Fielding's letter is here.

The deadline for the document production was today.

In reaction, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy accused the administration of shifting "into Nixonian stonewalling" and revealing "disdain for our system of checks and balances."

This is the first time Bush has claimed executive privilege since 2001.

John Conyers is threatening legal action against the White House:

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"Blonde airhead Media buffoon" David Gregory said to Elizabeth Edwards, that we should strip away Ms. Coulter's "inflammmatory rhetoric" and get to her real point which is that:

Bill Clinton "was a very good rapist"

and that:

Timothy McVeigh should have parked his truck in front of the New York Times, joked that a Supreme Court justice should be poisoned, and said that America should invade Muslim countries and kill their leaders.

and that John Edwards is a "faggot," has a bumper sticker that says "ask me about my dead son" and that he should be killed by terrorists.

But other than that, let's engage Coulter's substance - like her argument that McCarthyism was good because liberals are traitors.

Stripping away my joking inflammatory rhetoric about Gregory, my point is has David Gregory gone insane?

The Trackstick records its own location, time, date, speed, heading and altitude at preset intervals. With over 1Mb of memory, it can store months of travel information. The Trackstick is the perfect tool for individuals looking for a way to track anything that moves. Use it for recording the exact routes you take when hiking, biking or vacationing. Record the location of everywhere you went, import pictures and other information into Google Earth to offer an entirely new perspective of your journey. Includes GPX photo stamping feature for adding your favorite photos to you own maps.

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