Shooting in Arizona

I had been planning on posting one of my usual arrogant diatribes against the teabaggers (as personified by the new governor of the State of Maine, Paul LePage, a typical fat-assed, ugly-as-homemade-sin rethuglican twit with more chins than a Chinese phone book), but that got pre-empted by this morning's shooting in Tuscon, Arizona, of US Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat (well, former rethuglican, now blue-dog Democrat).

As things stand now (5:00 PM Eastern), it looks like 6 dead, including a Federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, and another 12 -- including Giffords -- wounded.

CNN is reporting a 22-year-old is in custody for the shooting.

According to CNN:

She won her third term in a closely contested race against a Tea Party-sponsored candidate and was one of three Democratic legislators who reported vandalism at
their offices following the March vote on health care reform.

The jackwad in custody will probably be some teabagger gun nut who’s pissed because some mere woman beat a good teabaggin male.

This fruit will probably rejoice at the judge's death, cause the teabag sovereign citizen crowd doesn't like judges, especially Federal judges, who say Hispanics and Muslims in this country have the same rights as the white, God-fearin', brown-person-hatin', KKK-robe-wearin', hooker-humpin', sister-marryin', rifle-rack-in-the-pickmup cracker redneck morons.

Guess what, you teabag MO-rons. This is one of YOUR people who did this. You own this. This is what you are promoting as acceptable discourse. This is what Beck and Malkin and Coulter and Limbaugh all stand for. This is what Boner and Lepage and Bachmann and all the rest of the teabaggers support. You demand action, violent action. You say "the tree of liberty must be watered with blood."

You can't turn around now and say "well, I was only kidding."

Teabaggers are murderers. They murder children.

THEY MURDER NINE-YEAR-OLD LITTLE GIRLS.

Bet you're proud of yourselves now, right, @ssholes?

Retired Justices to Continue to Sit?

There's a movement afoot to create legislation allowing a retired Supreme Court Justice to sit in a case where a current justice has recused himself or herself. The rationale behind the proposal by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is to lessen the likelihood of an evenly-divided court.

"I talked with Justice Stevens, and he raised the question, 'Could we not have a provision in the law for some mechanism that retired Supreme Court justices could be asked to sit on the Court when there is a recusal?' " Leahy said in an interview with The National Law Journal.

This might be a good idea, except for one small problem: the Justices most in favor of this proposal are Rethuglicans, like Scalia and the late William Rehnquist.

In 2000, Chief Justice William Rehnquist decided to hear an antitrust case involving Microsoft Corp., despite his son's work for the company in a separate case. In explaining his decision not to recuse, Rehnquist noted "the negative impact that the unnecessary disqualification of even one Justice" might have.

"Not only is the Court deprived of the participation of one of its nine Members, but the even number of those remaining creates a risk of affirmance of a lower court decision by an equally divided court," Rehnquist wrote.

God forbid anyone shuld ever rule against Microsoft, right?

Justice Antonin Scalia expressed a similar concern in 2004, when he declined to recuse from a case involving Vice President Dick Cheney. The two went on a hunting trip in Louisiana while the case -- related to records from Cheney's energy task force -- was pending.

Scalia simply said, "Darth Cheney must be obeyed. Secrecy must be maintained. Resistance is futile. All must be assimilated."

The unspoken concern, of course, was that the Supreme Court would be unable to support Big Business over the interests of the common man, if the neocons were not allowed to have a majority of the Court.

Face it, if Rehnquist and Scalia support something, you just have to know it's a bad idea. Plus, of course, you didn't hear any concerns about this when the Court was missing one of its liberal Justices.

Surprisingly, Orrin Hatch (R/Neanderthal - Utah) opposed the idea.

Stevens was appointed to the Court by Gerald Ford in 1975, and has generally been one of the more liberal Justices (especially when compared to the likes of Rehnquist, Scalia, and Roberts). So if this idea comes to pass, you can expect the Reich-wing Justices to support the idea, but demand some way to ensure only their guys get called back after retirement.

OOOH, Stop the Press!!!

From the Humongously Big Surprise Department...

US District Martin Feldman, who struck down the six-month ban on deep-water drilling, has investments in:

• Transocean Ltd, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded and sank;
• Ocean Energy
• Prospect Energy
• Peabody Energy
• Parker Drilling, and.... wait for it...
• yup, Halliburton!

This is according to a story listing some of the details in Feldman's financial disclosure statement.

Another big surprise: Feldman was named to the bench by Reagan.

Yet another surprise: he ruled in favor of the oil industry.

Oh, and he hangs with his BFF, Nino Scalia.