My neighborhood lost power at 11:30 pm last night. There was a big bang and then blackness. Apparently, a transformer blew. This morning, the lights are on but there's no electricity. No coffee, no tv, no computer power, no clocks. At least it's Friday and I didn't have anyplace special to be.

Supposedly full power will be restored in a few hours. It's kind of eerie. I'm turning the computer off now to save the battery.

Just a reminder to always keep fresh batteries around for your flashlight.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Last night on Hardball:

[CHRIS] MATTHEWS: Howard, is it possible that the actions of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party here will end up being counterproductive, that knocking [Blanche Lincoln] down, bringing her down below 50, making her fight for that runoff just weakens her for the general; she loses the general; they never come back in that state for years to come?

FINEMAN: I think it‘s quite possible, Chris. And I think they want to make a lesson. They want to teach somebody a lesson. I‘m not sure this is the right person or the right place to do it, because [Lincoln] was probably their best chance, the Democrats‘ best chance, of holding on to that seat there.

[. . . CHRIS] MATTHEWS: Great reporting there. Thank you, Howard Fineman.

Heh. Great reporting, my foot. An actual reporter would have taken the time to look at Lincoln's actual polling numbers and would have discovered that Lincoln has been a dead duck for many months now and that in fact Bill Halter has consistently polled better in the General Election than Lincoln. The Pollster.com summary tells the story. (See also this, this, this, and this.) But that's the great Beltway "reporting" you can expect.

Via DougJ, from Republican and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson:

[I]t would be absurd to deny that the Republican ideological coalition includes elements that are anti-immigrant -- those who believe that Hispanics, particularly Mexicans, are a threat to American culture and identity. When Arizona Republican Senate candidate J.D. Hayworth calls for a moratorium on legal immigration from Mexico, when then-Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) refers to Miami as a "Third World country," when state Rep. Russell Pearce (R), one of the authors of the Arizona immigration law, says Mexicans' and Central Americans' "way of doing business" is different, Latinos can reasonably assume that they are unwelcome in certain Republican circles.

[. . .] Republicans have now sent three clear signals to Hispanic voters: [1] California's Proposition 187, [. . . 2] the immigration debate of 2006, dominated by strident Republican opponents of reform; and now [3] the Arizona immigration law. [. . .] In a matter of months, Hispanic voters in Arizona have gone from being among the most pro-GOP in the nation to being among the most hostile.

[. . .] Whatever temporary gains Republicans might make feeding resentment of this demographic shift, the party identified with that resentment will eventually be voted into singularity. In a matter of decades, the Republican Party could cease to be a national party.

Yep.

The Kagan Standard:

[Elena Kagan] called on the Senate [. . .] to embrace “the essential rightness — the legitimacy and the desirability — of exploring a Supreme Court nominee’s set of constitutional views and commitments.

Then Senator Barack Obama stated that the Kagan Standard is even more imperative for a nominee with no judicial record:

Harriet Miers has had a distinguished career as a lawyer, but since her experience does not include serving as a judge, we have yet to know her views on many of the critical constitutional issues facing our country today. In the coming weeks, we'll need as much information and forthright testimony from Ms. Miers as possible so that the U.S. Senate can make an educated and informed decision on her nomination to the Supreme Court.

As regular readers know, this is a view I embraced many years ago, and discussed often during the 2005 John Roberts confirmation process, and later the Alito and Sotomayor confirmation processes. In a Bloggingheads session with Glenn Greenwald, Larry Lessig makes the utterly vapid argument that Professor Kagan is different from nominee Kagan and Dems should not take the same position they did with Republican nominees. Not only is this baldly unprincipled and hypocritical, it is also stupid. I'll explain why I think so on the flip.

John Amato:

BIG h/t to Cypress Hill for stepping up to the plate[:]

Rap veterans Cypress Hill have cancelled an upcoming concert in Arizona in protest of a new state immigration law. [. . .] Explaining the move in a statement, the California-based Latin group says, "This decision was made in an effort to show support and solidarity with those, undocumented and otherwise, being directly affected by this unconstitutional law. Cypress Hill recognizes those living in the struggle for their basic civil rights."

Please support Cypress Hill, dog.

The big event tonight is the Celtics-Cavs Game 6 in Boston, with LeBron, fresh off possibly the worst performance of his career, trying to stave off elimination and maybe, just maybe, playing his last game as a Cav.

I hate the Celtics, but I don't really care for the Cavs either. In any event, either team will lose to the Magic in the next round.

The Suns-Lakers do not start their series until next Monday. Sheesh. That said, Viva Los Suns! BEAT LA!

This is an Open Thread.

The Media will tell you today that according to the latest NBC/WSJ poll, 64% of Americans support AZ SB 1070. What does this mean? I venture to say nothing. They May also tell you that 70% of Hispanics oppose the law. What does this mean. A whole hell of a lot. I discussed this earlier, but asking a question does not tell you what the political impact of the answer really is. Let's look at the poll (PDF):

Q. 11 [W]hich one of the following stories that have been covered by news organizations in the last few weeks is of most concern to you personally?

The Gulf Coast oil spill.............. 38
The attempted terrorist attack in Times Square, New York ... 31
New immigration legislation passed in Arizona ..... 19
The criminal investigation into Goldman Sachs ...................... 8
Florida Governor Charlie Crist changing parties ........................................ 1
None of these........................... 2

(Emphasis supplied.) Starting to get the picture? More . . .

Reuters:

[Sen. Arlen] Specter [D-PA] said, [Supreme Court nominee Elena ] Kagan reiterated her criticism that the Senate confirmation process yields little information about Supreme Court nominees and that one justice was less than forthcoming during his or her confirmation hearing. [. . .] Specter said Kagan reiterated her earlier criticism, made before her nomination this week, of the confirmation process as "not telling very much about the nominee."

[Specter] emerged from his meeting with her on Thursday saying, she "was very forthcoming during our discussion."

This is great news if Kagan holds to it. Best news on her so far in fact, from my perspective.

Speaking for me only

This Brad DeLong post is rightly getting a lot of attention:

The most astonishing and surprising thing I find about Washington DC today is the contrast in mood between DC today and what DC was thinking a generation ago, in 1983, the last time the unemployment rate was kissing 10%. Back then it was a genuine national emergency that unemployment was so high [. . .] Today…. nobody much in DC seems to care. A decade of widening wealth inequality that has created a chattering class of reporters, pundits, and lobbyists who have no connection with mainstream America? The collapse of the union movement and thus of the political voice of America’s sellers of labor power? I don’t know what the cause is. But it does astonish me.

I like to criticize the Beltway as much as anyone, but this phenomenon transcends DC and has infected the entire country. I used to write a lot about the concept of the Common Good and how it historically animated the Dem Party and how it should again. But it simply hasn't. Matt Yglesias writes:

Via mcjoan, Byron Dorgan rips the FinReg proposal as is:

I stopped writing on FinReg when I realized it was basically a charade (like the silly one time audit of the Fed for actions in the past and the pointless Franken Amendment.) As Dorgan puts it:

"If we don't fix" the bill, said Dorgan, "and we leave this chamber and this Congress and claim to have fixed it and have not done it, then shame on us. We have a responsibility here."

Speaking for me only

Suffice it to say that I will not be writing a word about the stupendously idiotic critiques of Kagan based on her being "elite."

My gawd, this is the Supreme Court; of course we want the best and the brightest. That is not to say they all come from elite law schools, but it is absurd to disqualify a nominee because they come from an elite law school.

This is an Open Thread.

It is my firm conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today’s decision - Justice John Paul Stevens in dissent in Parents Involved v. Seattle School Districts

Understanding and KNOWING Elena Kagan's views on race and diversity are critical to evaluating her as a nominee for the Supreme Court. The hiring practices of Harvard Law School while she was Dean are already a matter of concern. Yesterday, Politico's Josh Gerstein characterized some memos by Kagan as expressing disagreement with race conscious remedies:

Other memos suggest that Kagan and Reed thought that the race initiatve was pressing for too many race-conscious solutions when the central focus should be a "race-neutral opportunity agenda." They did, however, concede an ongoing role for civil rights enforcement and "narrowly-tailored affirmative action programs."

I'm trying to get copies of these "other memos" so I can judge for myself but I do want to highlight the importance of the issue. A review of the Court's decision in Parents Involved demonstrates the stakes. In Parents Involved, Chief Justice Roberts wrote for a 5-4 majority: