Your turn.

One really great aspect of Al Franken becoming the junior Senator from Minnesota is it unhinges the crazies at the WSJ Editorial Board beyond their usual lunacy:

Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election. If the GOP hopes to avoid repeats, it should learn from Minnesota that modern elections don't end when voters cast their ballots. They only end after the lawyers count them.

Allrighty then.

This is an Open Thread.

The Constitutional Accountability Center has an amusing catch of the National Review/Hoover Institution "scholar" Thomas Sowell betraying his ignorance in his zeal to argue for right wing judicial activism:

I think that the most interesting Justices, by far, were Justices Scalia and Thomas. Both remain the most principled members of the Court. . . . Justice Thomas, in particular, remained willing to front new theories on critical questions . . . No other member of the Court is so independent in his thinking. . . . I disagree profoundly with Justice Thomas’s views on many questions, but if you believe that Supreme Court decisionmaking should be a contest of ideas rather than power, so that the measure of a Justice’s greatness is his contribution of new and thoughtful perspectives that enlarge the debate, then Justice Thomas is now our greatest Justice.

(Emphasis supplied.) The SCOTUS as a "contest of ideas?" I would have thought that the traditional view was that contest was supposed to play out in the "political arenas." Is Goldstein conceding (and would conservatives concede) that the "appellate courts engage in policymaking?"

So much for the "umpire calling balls and strikes" ay?

Speaking for me only

In honor of Chuck Todd, I am announcing a new feature for the upcoming Sotomayor confirmation hearings - any acknowledgment in the Traditional Media that the Gang of 5 conservatives on the Roberts Court are judicial activists. Here is today's addition, from the New York Times Editorial page:

On another point, the ruling underscored the emptiness of the “judicial activist” label that Republicans like to use in debates over nominees to the federal courts, including Judge Sotomayor. In the firefighters’ case, she actually refused to second-guess the city’s decision — an act of judicial restraint. It was the court’s conservatives, including Chief Justice John Roberts, who voted to overturn the decision of an elected government.

(Emphasis supplied.) Half a demerit to Adam Liptak:

Is this a joke? Apparently not. A federal advisory panel is asking the FDA to ban Percocet and Vicodin because they contain acetaminophen.

A federal advisory panel voted narrowly on Tuesday to recommend a ban on Percocet and Vicodin, two of the most popular prescription painkillers in the world, because of their effects on the liver. "In 2005, American consumers bought 28 billion doses of products containing the ingredient." According to the panel,

The two drugs combine a narcotic with acetaminophen, the ingredient found in popular over-the-counter products like Tylenol and Excedrin. High doses of acetaminophen are a leading cause of liver damage, and the panel noted that patients who take Percocet and Vicodin for long periods often need higher and higher doses to achieve the same effect.

First, questions. Does this apply to Perocdan as well? Percodan has aspirin and Percocet has acetaminophen. Is aspirin ok? I thought doctors liked to give out Perocet vs. Percodan because they said Percoet, with acetaminophen, was easier on the stomach lining.

The latest over-the-top "solution" to the problem of drunk driving -- brought to you by the zealots at Mothers Against Drunk Driving -- would dramatically increase the value of companies that manufacture and sell ignition interlock devices.

A new highway bill pending before Congress would instruct all 50 states to require every motorist convicted of driving under the influence equip their car with interlock systems that shut down a vehicle when a measured amount of alcohol is detected. ... There are already about 150,000 interlock system now in cars in the U.S., placed there for drivers with multiple DUI convictions. But the proposed mandate would expand the use of interlock systems exponentially; MADD's statistics indicate that nearly 1.5 million Americans are arrested annually on DUI charges, making it the number one crime for which American are arrested.

Only one-third of the drivers arrested for a drunk driving offense are repeat offenders. While the majority of first offenders will never be involved in an alcohol-related accident or arrested for a similar offense, MADD wants to burden them with an expensive gadget that will typically keep them from driving even if they're under the legal limit. The MADD plan has been adopted in some states, but MADD will settle for nothing less than federal legislation.

[more ...]

I've been stuck for two days trying to fix my Fujitsu "scansnap" scanner. A few weeks ago, it began scanning documents in 8.5 × 14 instead of 8.5 × 11, and the court told me they couldn't accept my attached filings that way. For some reason, the scanner software wouldn't open and I couldn't get into the program to change the setting. How do you even know who to call when these things happen?

After five uninstalls and reinstalls, I almost threw it out the window. The scanner still scans but the computer refused to recognize the software. Then I decided to use my HP all-in-one printer that has a scanner function but it wouldn't recognize my computer even though it's on the network. Since I wasn't about to throw two machines out the window, I went back to trying to uninstall and reinstall the Fujitsu software. About 4:00 this afternoon, after wasting about 8 hours on this, the scanner mysteriously reset itself to regular size pages. I still can't access the software but at least I can get my stuff scanned so I can file scanned documents with the court. What a waste of time.

Hope your Monday and Tuesday went better. Here's an open thread as I catch up on the news and watch Weeds and Nurse Jackie, both of which I missed last night. All topics welcome.

Rachel's Law, named after a murdered police informant, goes into effect in Florida on Wednesday.

The new law will require police departments to train officers who recruit confidential informants, tell informants they can't promise a reduced sentences in exchange for their work and allow informants to consult with a lawyer if they ask.

....The bill "makes it more safe for people to be able to cooperate with law enforcement officials across our state," [Gov. Charlie] Crist said.

Will it make their testimony any more reliable? I doubt it.

U.S. District Court Judge David Hittner today reversed the magistrate court judge's order granting bail to indicted financier Allen Stanford. (Background here and here.)

Stanford's lawyers say they will appeal to the 5th Circuit.

Eric Boehlert writes:

Kristol writes:

Here’s a highlight of Purdum’s reporting: “More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders . . . Is there any real chance that "several" Alaskans independently told Purdum that they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders? I don’t believe it for a moment.

[MORE . . .]

So sez the Minnesota Supreme Court:

– A unanimous Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Democrat Al Franken should be certified the winner of the state's long-running Senate race, paving the way for the former Saturday Night Live comedian to be seated after an almost eight-month fight.

Coleman concedes. It's over.

So writes Time magazine this week:

Alas for countless pundits and inspirational speakers, it is apparently not the case that the Chinese word for crisis is spelled by joining the characters for danger and opportunity. But that common fallacy nevertheless captures an important metaphorical truth: whatever the perils it brings with it, a crisis can be a grand opportunity. Among those who have understood that truth was Franklin D. Roosevelt. . . . [T]he crisis of the 1930s also provided an object lesson in the relationship between economic danger and political opportunity — a lesson Barack Obama is now trying to follow. Obama, too, came to office in the midst of an economic crisis, and in the solutions he has offered, it appears he has often looked to the example of F.D.R., whose presidency — and the very idea of activist government that it represents — is very much back in the public mind this year. Roosevelt pushed through policies that aimed not just to deal with the immediate challenge of the Great Depression but also to benefit generations of Americans to come. Pulling off a similar feat will require Obama to persuade Americans to see opportunities in the present crisis as well.

Not bad. But it also provides me an excuse to link again to my first post at TalkLeft in the summer of 2006, What Obama Needs To Learn From . . . FDR. Probably my best post here. It's all been downhill since then.

I think I have written enough about Ricci to last a lifetime.

Let's talk about something else. What's on your mind?

This is an Open Thread.

What's funny about that clip? Joe Scarborough acts as if the phrase has never been said before. Of course he never heard it applied to judicially activist conservative jurists before. He was nonplussed. Pretty funny. Good job Chuck Todd!!

Speaking for me only

Doug Kendall writes today:

In an unbelievable post today, Wendy Long of the ironically-named Judicial Confirmation Network claims that the Supreme Court's bitterly divided 5-4 ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano was actually a 9-0 slap in the face to Judge Sotomayor . . .

But that is what one would expect from Wendy Long. And sadly, now that is what one expects from Stuart Taylor, Jr.. But this is the road Taylor has chosen to travel for a long time. For some reason he is treated as a serious legal journalist - with perches at the National Journal and Newsweek.

Rather than wondering what they are doing embracing blatant judicial activism by the Gang of 5, Taylor and his Limbaughian "Lunatic Fringe" cohorts are too busy disingenuously distorting Justice Ginsburg's dissent in Ricci (just weeks before this same lunatic fringe was complaining that Justice Ginsburg was "endorsing" Judge Sotomayor.) Even Fred Hiatt's crew decried the judicial activism of the Ricci majority, in an editorial that stated the Gang of 5 had "Flunked the Test":