Via FDL, and just to prove there is some intelligent and wry life in the Media:

Silver Spring, Md.: I think Copernicus, Galileo and the modern astronomy community are all wrong about the sun-centered solar system. I don’t have any data, or any particular expertise in the field. All I know is that it bothers me to have people saying we orbit the sun, when I can clearly see it moving across the sky. Plus it is scaring the children to hear people talk about it. Could you tell me how to get an [o]p-ed piece published at The Post? I hear they have no standards for this anymore. Thank you!

Eugene Robinson: I think there must be a Bush administration science panel that has a spot for you!

Heh.

So was titled a piece by Time's John Cloud a few months ago:

. . . Coulter wants to make people laugh more than anything; she is, as I have argued here, a right-wing ironist and comedienne as much as she is a political commentator. . . . We don't read her body language the way we normally do because the words she is uttering are so peremptory and shocking. If we did, we would put her in the same league as Bill Maher or Jackie Mason, not the dry policy analysts who are sometimes pitted against her on cable-news shows.

Of course Coulter was Time's cover girl 2 years ago. Boehlert skewered:

April 19, 2005 | When Time magazine named Ann Coulter among its 100 "most influential people" last week, alongside such heavyweights as Ariel Sharon, Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela, Kim Jong Il and the Dalai Lama, the choice produced guffaws online. Plugging the issue on Fox News last week, Time executive editor Priscilla Painton insisted it was Coulter's use of "humor" that made her so influential, stopping just short of suggesting that Coulter is the conservative Jon Stewart. . . . At least now we know where Time magazine was going with its choice. Turns out Coulter's inclusion was just a warm-up -- a justification -- for this week's fawning Time cover story, "Ms. Right." . . .

But Time's Joe Klein is concerned about the coarsening of the discourse by blogs:

Elizabeth Edwards called in to Hardball this afternoon to tell off the She-Pundit with Long Blond Hair.

Shorter version: Elizabeth rocked, the she-pundit did not.

Crooks and Liars (of course) and Think Progress have the video. From Think Progress:

During an hour-long interview with Coulter today on MSNBC, host Chris Matthews announced that Elizabeth Edwards was on the line. Edwards referenced the attacks above, saying, “I’m the mother of that boy who died. These young people behind you…you’re asking them to participate in a dialogue that is based on hatefulness and ugliness instead of on the issues, and I don’t think that’s serving them or this country very well.” The live audience cheered.

When her first two attempts to spin the situation faulted, Coulter then launched into another baseless, personal attack, accusing John Edwards of “bankrupting doctors by giving a shyster Las Vegas routine in front of juries…doing these psychic routines in front of illiterate juries to bankrupt doctors who now can’t deliver babies.”

Think Progress also has the transcript, reprinted here below the fold:

Bump and Update: The Supreme Court has denied the request for a stay. The execution has taken place. Bland was declared dead at 6:19 pm. I hope for his sake they started late -- 19 minutes is a long time.

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I can only imagine how the civilized world will view this story. Jimmy Dale Bland is set to be executed at 6pm tonight in Oklahoma.

Bland has advanced lung cancer which has spread to his hip and brain. He's terminally ill and will die soon on his own.

The Oklahoma state and federal courts have denied a stay, insisting the state has the right to kill him before he expires on his own.

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Charles Chapel of Tulsa said a stay should be granted to protect "the dignity of society itself from the barbarity of exacting mindless vengeance."

A last-minute decision from the Supreme Court is expected any time now.

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Former Interior Deputy Secretary J.Steven Griles was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison today for lying to the Senate about his contacts with Jack Abramoff.

The Government recommended a split sentence (5 months in prison, 5 on home detention) but the Judge got angry Griles was still in denial about his crimes so she gave him a straight ten months in jail. Since good time doesn't kick in on sentences of less than 12 months and a day, he'll have to do the whole thing.

The Justice Department's press release is here.

Italia Federici, who also pleaded guilty and is cooperating, will be sentenced in November. It was Federici, with whom Griles had an intimate relationship, who introduced Griles to Abramoff. (DOJ says he also lied about their relationship.)

The total Abramoff-related conviction count is now at 12.

It is tempting for those of us who wish for an end to the US's Iraq Debacle to make much of statements like this:

Ohio Senator George Voinovich says the US should begin pulling troops out of Iraq and make greater use of diplomacy. . . . His remarks come on the heels of similar comments yesterday from Indiana Senator Richard Lugar. The two say they're still not ready to insist on a timetable for withdrawal. But both are making it clear their patience is gone.

The temptation must be resisted. What this position stakes out is the view that it is acceptable to SAY you oppose President Bush's Iraq policy without actually doing anything about it. Forget for a moment the policy fact that saying you oppose the President's policy and then voting to fund it will effect no change in policy. Consider the crass politics of the situation. If the Lugar/Voinovich/Smith/Hagel position is treated as politically acceptable, even admirable, Democrats will be creating a political safe harbor for Republicans to avoid having to run on supporting Bush's Iraq Debacle. More.

Nancy Grace, age 47, got married secretly in April and is expecting twins. She will make the announcement on her show today.

Grace married David Linch -an Atlanta investment banker she has known since they attended Mercer College together in the late 1970s.

"We've been in touch all these years and a lot of time we were separated by geography and time," she says. "It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to get married. I told my family only two days before [the wedding].

The photo shows her in her wedding dress and from the description of her vows, the music, the veil and her reading selection at the ceremony, it sure seems like it would have taken more than two days to put together. But, whatever.

Ever the good girl, Nancy says of her good fortune:

Just when you thought it was over, the Senate today voted to review the immigration bill. Debate is beginning now on dozens of amendments. You can watch it on C-Span here.

Prediction: The compromises will dilute the value of the bill to nothing. The path to citizenship is already is too onerous. Family reunification principles are already devalued. Concessions to Republicans are likely to make it worse.

The bill is S 1639, which you can view on THOMAS by typing the bill number in the search box.

There is one bi-partisan amendment that I favor and the Bush Administration opposes:

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Today is June Action Day (background here) on Capitol Hill. Thousands gathered in support of bills introduced to restore the right to habeas corpus, close Guantanamo and fix the broken military commissions system.

A hearing on the bills begins at 2:00 pm (ET).

From the ACLU (received by e-mail):

Over eighty organizations, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, came together to organize a rally and lobby visits to Congress. In addition to the rally, attendees at the Day of Action to Restore Law & Justice delivered over 250,000 petition signatures to Washington lawmakers, urging them to:

1. Restore habeas corpus and due process.
2. Pass the Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007.
3. End torture and abuse in secret prisons.
4. Stop extraordinary rendition: secretly kidnapping people and sending them to countries that torture.
5. Close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay and give those held currently access to justice.

Christy at Firedoglake provides the phone numbers for you to call. Today is the day to make yourself heard.

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Man, Richard Cohen really is clueless. He is predicting that Democrats will lose the 2008 Presidential election because they want to end the Iraq Debacle. I kid you not.

Antiwar Democrats in key primary and caucus states, particularly New Hampshire and Iowa, will not vote for a lukewarm antiwar candidate. This explains why Clinton recently reversed herself and voted to end funding for the war. The one Democratic presidential candidate from the Senate who did not was Joseph Biden. He said he opposed the war but saw no choice but to fund the troops. Precisely right, Joe. But more than right, prescient as well. As if to suggest what an issue this will become, Rudolph Giuliani called Clinton and Obama's vote a "significant flip-flop." Since then the Republicans have mostly trained their fire on each other. You can bet, though, that if either candidate gets the nomination, this vote will be hung around Clinton or Obama's neck, and the hoariest of cliches will be trotted out: weak on defense. It will have added resonance for Clinton because she is a woman.

Cohen thinks the GOP will win in 2008 like Nixon won in 1972, by attacking Dems for opposing a war. Cohen is a fool. More.

The government is obliged to treat the life-threatening medical conditions of its prisoners, including illegal immigrants who are held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Yet Homeland Security "has resisted efforts by the American Bar Association to turn [detention] standards into regulations, saying that rulemaking would reduce the agency's flexibility." This is the same agency that wanted the "flexibility" to fire, demote, and transfer its employees at will, without the civil service protections that safeguard against arbitrary employment decisions.

"Flexibility" is a code word for "freedom from oversight." In the detainee context, here's what the department's trumpeted flexibility brings:

The inspector general in the Department of Homeland Security recently announced a “special review” of two deaths, including that of a Korean woman at a privately run detention center in Albuquerque. Fellow detainees told a lawyer that the woman, Young Sook Kim, had pleaded for medical care for weeks, but received scant attention until her eyes yellowed and she stopped eating. Ms. Kim died of pancreatic cancer in federal custody on Sept. 11, 2005, a day after she was taken to a hospital.

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Paris Hilton looks none the worse for the wear of three weeks in jail. As TMZ notes, she looks....refreshed.

I don't think the news will be all Paris, all the time tonight. ABC and NBC decided not to do exclusive post-jail interviews after unconfirmed reports that the networks would pay big bucks for the rights to photos from the Hilton family. Instead, Larry King Live will get the "honors."

As for the length of her sentence, as the LA Times reports:

An examination by The Times of seven years worth of sentencing data showed that Hilton's 23-day jail stay was more than five times the average than served since 2002 by those serving time for similar charges.

Meanwhile, the allegations against the City Attorney who asked for her jail sentence and his wife (who drove with a suspended license and no insurance but avoided jail even after being in an accident) continue raise questions about "fairness and hypocrisy" in the LA criminal justice system:

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