I'm busy day-jobbing today.

What are you reading and thinking about today? (Please remember to put any urls in html format because long ones skew the site.)

This brings us to the second enquiry; which is . . . [i]f he has a right, and that right has been violated, do the laws of his country afford him a remedy?

The very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws, whenever he receives an injury. One of the first duties of government is to afford that protection. The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation, if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right.

-Marbury v. Madison

One of the great ironies of the seminal case Marbury v. Madison is that it provided no remedy to the party, Marbury, whose vested right was deemed by the Court to be violated. Chief Justice Marshall struck down a law passed by Congress which purported to give jursidiction to the Supreme Court over actions such as Marbury's, ruling that the law was unconstitutional.

Today, the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, dismissed the ACLU's case against the National Security Agency, which sought the enjoining of the NSA's warrantless surveillance program. The Sixth Circuit ruled that the ACLU lacked standing and thus dismissed the case. More.

The Sundance Channel is airing Gimme Shelter tonight. In the clip above, Jagger is dressed up as Uncle Sam.

In December of 1969, four months after Woodstock, the Rolling Stones and Jefferson Airplane gave a free concert in Northern California, east of Oakland at Altamont Speedway. About 300,000 people came, and the organizers put Hell's Angels in charge of security around the stage. Armed with pool cues and knifes, Angels spent the concert beating up spectators, killing at least one. The film intercuts performances, violence, Grace Slick and Mick Jagger's attempts to cool things down, close-ups of young listeners (dancing, drugged, or suffering Angel shock), and a look at the Stones later as they watch concert footage and reflect on what happened.

War, Children, is just a shot away.

Given our President's stunning disregard for the rule of law this week, and that it's the Fourth of July, I'm wondering what thoughts you all have on patriotism and liberty and on how this Administration has driven a stake in the heart of both.

For opposing the war, we're called unpatriotic. Our civil liberties have been disregarded by everything from the NSA warrantless monitoring program to no-fly lists, the Real I.D. Act and federal immigration raids on workplaces.

Scooter Libby, convicted of lying and obstructing justice at a trial conducted openly and with full due process, who was sentenced in accordance with, not outside the law, has been given a get-out-of jail-free card based on cronyism at best and fear that if he talked, he'd sell out others in the corrupt administration, at worst.

So, what are you celebrating today? And if you haven't read it in a while, here's the Declaration of Independence.

More...

Tell us about a post you read that you particularly liked today.

I really enjoyed this one from Matt Yglesias:

I guess I'm glad that after relentlessly propagandizing on Scooter Libby's behalf, Fred Hiatt has decided that commuting the entirely of Libby's sentence was the wrong thing to do, but I would have traded that small concession to reality for them not making reference to Libby's "long and distinguished record of public service." What record? What distinction? As best I can tell, Libby has done exactly two things in government service -- he's worked for Paul Wolfowitz and he's worked for Dick Cheney.

. . . Hilariously, of Libby's two patrons Wolfowitz is the less embarrassing one. . . .

There's a record of service here, but it's not distinguished. Indeed, at 11-12 years it's not even all that long. Joe Wilson had a long career of distinguished service. Valerie Plame had a long career of distinguished service. Libby had a medium length career that mostly lacked distinction and involved the occasional -- but extremely accute -- lapse into catastrophe, before he found himself resigning because he'd been caught breaking the law.

Heh. Tell us about the piece you enjoyed the most today.

Amidst all the Scooter Libby reactions flying around the blogosphere comes the very sad news that Jim Capozzola of The Rittenhouse Review has died.

Susie at Suburban Guerilla and Skippy have beautiful tributes to him. Avedon Carol at Sideshow has more. Check the comments at Susie's place where many other bloggers have chimed in with their surprise and their sadness.

I don't know how he died, but Susie says he was taken off life support last night.

Jim won a most-deserved early Koufax blogging award for best writing for his post, Al Gore and the Alpha Girls. Check it out if you didn't know Jim or even if you did, just to remember him.

More...

I'm spending the day writing briefs instead of blog posts, so if there's something you'd like to discuss, here's the place.

Let's also keep giving the holiday gift of traffic. Feel free to put links to your own blog posts in the comments -- so long as they are in html format (long urls skew the site and I can't edit comments on Scoop, I can only delete them.)

You might start with Mike's Blog Round-Up over at Crooks and Liars. Avedon Carol has Notes from the Blogosphere. Christy at Firedoglake has a great post on Habeas, Sentence First, Verdict Later. John Travolta defends Scientology against charges it is homophobic.

Your turn.

I've written about a species of analysis that I think is best described as "academic Broderism," a description coined by Jon Zasloff and endorsed by Scott Lemeiux. (See also Emily Bazelon.) The most notable practitioners that I have seen of this are Cass Sunstein and Jeffrey Rosen, both contributors to The New Republic and other "serious" publications. I want to provide a counterpoint example and it so happens that perhaps the finest Left law blog there is, Balkinization, gives us two of the best examples - Georgetown Law Professor Marty Lederman and Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin.

Lederman and Balkin consistently provide well reasoned analysis that understands the politics of the Supreme Court and the law, and also engages the real world consequences. On the discussion of the day, the utter predictability of how Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Alito would change the Court, Balkin and Lederman were clear eyed during the nomination process and urgent in their writings, and remain so now. The typical academic detachment was not deemed necessary by these two legal scholars. More.

Enjoy and stay for the credits.

For those not in a humorous mood, check out this collection from Harpers on Undoing Bush: how to repair eight years of sabotage, bungling, and neglect (Via Susie at Suburban Guerilla.)

Continuing from Friday's post on giving bloggers the the Gift of Traffic this holiday weekend, here's the latest.

• Avedon Carol of Sideshow has picked up the Traffic theme and found some great links to some of the better versions of some Traffic Songs.

"The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys" [Update: Live version, Pt.1 and Pt.2.]

Live Winwood: "Dear Mr. Fantasy".

... more here.

• Larry Johnson at No Quarter on Glasgow Burning, Run for Your Lives . The right-wing blogs and CNN are all London, all Glasgow all the time. It's like Dear Mr. Fanstasy, give us a terror attack so we can tell the world we're right to be in Iraq. Mahablog thinks so too.

More...

Here's a little song you can all join in on....

Everyone knows that blog traffic goes down substantially for political blogs on weekends. It declines more so on holiday weekends, like the one beginning today with the 4th of July just around the corner.

So, please, give the gift of traffic. It's free. All you have to do is visit your favorite blogs so they register your presence.

Just about every blog has a blogroll. Check out some of the blogs on them. If you're online and blogging, try to link more this weekend.

I'll start, and I'll be updating and occasionally bumping this post over the next few days.

• The Talking Dog has an interview with Gaillard Hunt, counsel for Pakistani National Saifullah Paracha, currently at Guantanamo Bay, where he may become our first non-suicide death if his heart problems continue to go untreated.

• Avedon Carol at Sideshow on the failure of the immigration bill.

• Law Prof Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy evaluates the Supreme Court's term from a sentencing perspective.

• For humor, visit TBogg and Wonkette and Jesus' General (who today rips Tom Tancredo on immigration.)

• The crew at Firedoglake has several great posts scheduled for the weekend. Start with For Life, For Jane.

More...

The day job beckons and it's time for an open thread. What's going on in your world today and which items in the news and on the blogs have caught your attention?

Are any of you buying Apple's hyped i-Phone which hits the stores Friday? If so, why? What makes it so special?