MoveOn.org doesn’t like him, calling him a “right wing corporate lawyer and ideologue for the nation’s highest court instead of a judge who would protect the rights of the American people.”

But the Right doesn’t like him that much either – Ann Coulter called him a “Rorschach blot” in a post filled with her typical angry rant.

Lee has a well-reasoned response to Coulter, “See, what Coulter and so many other members of the conservative movement is not a judge who will refrain from judicial activism, just one who will be activist for causes the conservatives happen to believe in. In other words, legislating from the bench is perfectly acceptable in their eyes, just as long as the legislation isn’t geared to the left.”

Andrew Sullivan has a couple of pro-liberal views on Roberts.

I haven’t made my mind up yet, this is all just giving my brain things to chew on.

A coworker who shall go unnamed made a comment today regarding the London bombings and the possibility that Islamic extremists were behind it: “Turn the middle east into glass, kill all the Mohammedian fuckers.”

I find it frightening that a Jew would advocate genocide on a geographical, racial, or religious basis, particularly considering that just over sixty-years ago Jews themselves were the targets of a racial and religious based genocide.

I’m fairly certain this coworker made those comments in the heat of the moment. But I’m also certain that there are a lot of people who feel that genocide is the answer, and they’re usually the same people who are the first to point out Hussein’s cruelities and mass-executions.

His comments made me sad. What makes me sadder are the people who actually think genocide is the answer.

(Actually, it occurs to me that their H2 is why they can’t afford to tip me at all).

In any case, I was listening to the Ron Smith show on WBAL. He had a left-leaning guest on the show — this guy has been on before, but I can’t remember his name. Anyway, what I found interesting was the arguements that the two were making about the Karl Rove leak.

Ron Smith was arguing for prosecution of Rove, and the liberal commenter’s concern was the protection of Rove’s identity. I mean, it really just surprised the hell out of me, y’know? A conservative — although he’s a libertarian/conservative not a whore-to-the-religious-right conservative — arguing for the indictment of Karl Rove, and a liberal arguing for his protection?

(I mean, yeah, the lib was arguing not so much for Rove as much as the reporter/confidential source privlige).

(My spelling is atrocious).

In any case, I was just like, “Wow.”

(Because, really, that takes some principle … because, really, what lib wouldn’t want to cheer when faced with the prospect of the President’s chief political advisor getting locked up on a charge of treason?)

Key members of Congress, maritime security experts and a former top Homeland Security Department official say that the fleet is failing and that plans to replace the Coast Guard’s 88 aging cutters and 186 aircraft over the next 20 years should be accelerated.

“This nation must understand the dire situation in which the Coast Guard now finds itself,” says Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, chairwoman of a Senate Coast Guard subcommittee. She favors replacing the Coast Guard’s “deepwater” fleet — the ships and aircraft capable of operating far offshore — over 10 to 15 years.

The Bush administration wants to increase the amount of time it will take to replace a fleet that’s among the oldest on the globe — older even than fleets owned by nations such as Algeria and Pakistan. The “deepwater” replacement program, conceived in 1998 as a $20 billion, 20-year plan to replace the fleet, could be increased to 25 years under a White House plan.

The strategy would save the government money in the short term. The White House budget office declined to comment.

Snowe calls the idea a “violation of common sense” amid mounting concern that terrorists will try to sneak weapons of mass destruction into the USA through a port.

Hey, why defend ports from terrorists when you can give tax breaks to your best campaign contributors, right?

Right Thinking’s Lee writes,

I’d love to see it happen, but I’m not going to count on it. Though I can’t think of anything more appropriate, except to have his land stolen so that a Wal-Mart Supercenter could be built in its place.

But as satisfying as it is to read about the proposed siezing of Souter’s land, the demolishment of his house, there is another aspect to consider. Remember when Tom Delay, following the Schiavo ruling, threatened judges? Although the judges followed the law, he threatened violent retaliation against them, and was soundly criticized for it … including by me. Boston’s Carpundit quotes Randy Barnett: “Retaliating against a judge for the good faith exercise of his duty is. . .a bad idea.” Carpundit also opinions,

…retaliating against a judge for construing a law is an especially odious kind of retaliation. Much worse than a mere retaliation for an official’s action, it is an attack on one of the key underpinnings of our society of laws: judicial review, the rule of law itself. Is it mugging Scalia? No. But it isn’t less wrong.

There is something the government could do, of course. They could pass a law saying something like, “Private land can only be seized for a neccessary public good.” I.E., a school or a highway. Of course, Congress would rather pass a law about how you shouldn’t wear boxers colored like the American flag.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Sunday he is bracing for even more violence in Iraq and acknowledged that the insurgency “could go on for any number of years.”

Defeating the insurgency may take as long as 12 years, he said, with Iraqi security forces, not U.S. and foreign troops, taking the lead and finishing the job.

How long would the insurgency have lasted if the Bush Administration hadn’t rushed to war, and had planned out a plan of action for after the invasion? Of course, no one knows. I do know an old saying that seems to hold some wisdom which shouldn’t have been needed, “When you fail to plan, you plan for failure.”

Or in this case, you plan for a lot of dead people.

UPDATE:

In a similar vein, while it’s apparently to much to ask our President and his assorted advisors to plan ahead for what to do after the invasion, they seem to be good about planning ahead to blow shit up.

THE American general who commanded allied air forces during the Iraq war appears to have admitted in a briefing to American and British officers that coalition aircraft waged a secret air war against Iraq from the middle of 2002, nine months before the invasion began.

If those raids exceeded the need to maintain security in the no-fly zones of southern and northern Iraq, they would leave President George W Bush and Tony Blair vulnerable to allegations that they had acted illegally.

HT: Rox Populi & Shakespeare’s Sister

In other news, this artwork – while certainly a representation of the crumbling moral values of early 21st century America — is pretty cool and should be printed out and proudly displayed in your home. If you’re willing to look at the little pictures and ignore the big one, it could even be used for alone time fun. However, that would be tremendously creepy.