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LAAAAAAME

This right here should win some sort of award for the most insignificant fart in American political history. The reason some people call this guy Scalito is because he is ideoligically in step with Justice Scalia, who just happens to be a lightning rod (for better or worse) of the court.

Perhaps if Ruth Bader Ginsberg had become a nationally known controversial jurist in her year on the court, Stephen Breyer would have been nicknamed Ginsbreyer upon his nomination to the court. Unfortunately we will never know.

Bonus Conspiracy Theory Angle: The National Italian American Federation sure was quick in letting the Drudge Report know of its outrage. Maybe that's because new found friend of the radical right wing media machine Louis Freeh is on the NIAF's Board of Directors...

Speeding Ticket

One time I got some sort of traffic violation, probably a speeding ticket, and decided to go to court to have a trial. I figured if the police officer didn't show up or was somehow incompetent I might be able to have the offense dismissed. Well, while I was waiting and the court was trying other traffic offenses, I was able to observe my officer testifying in other cases. He was very impressive and went up against a number of people who had attorneys (I did not) and won every time. When it was my time to plead, I knew I wouldn't be leaving the court without paying some sort of fine.

Watching CNN right now, I have a similar feeling about this special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Very impressive. If he were after me, I would not be feeling very confident right about now.

How Much Would You Pay?

Here's something I hear Democrats say a lot: I'd give anything to have Rove indicted. Well, how much is it worth to you? $100? If it is, open an account at InTrade, which is a futures betting market. And then what you want to do is short Karl Rove contracts, currently trading at 60%. (It is under the legal: indictments category).

Here's how it works ($100 example). You short $150 worth of Rove's contract to be indicted at 60%. When Rove is indicted, the contract becomes worth 100% and you have to buy it back for $250. So you sold $150 and bought back $250. Rove gets indicted and you lose $100. ($150 minus $250). If Rove doesn't get indicted, the repurchase price would be $0. So you'd actually make $150.

So either way, you win. You would either lose $100 but in return, Rove would get indicted. Or you would gain $150 but he wouldn't get indicted. The odds on Scooter Libby are even more in your favor! Bets away...

To summarize one more time:

Result	How You Feel	Your Money	Summary
Indicted	Happy	Lost $100	Good Times Aren't Free!
Not Indicted	Sad	Gain $150	Compensated for Your Pain

Big Backlash Brewing

From a WSJ article about health care worries:

Will the new Medicare prescription-drug coverage lower the cost of retiree health benefits?

Not for you. Some employers have decided to drop the prescription drug benefit they provided to retirees who qualify for Medicare. (See related coverage.)

Others will continue to provide the coverage, in exchange for billions of dollars in government subsidies. But your costs may still rise.

Here's why: Starting in 2006, the U.S. will reimburse employers for 28% of the cost of retiree prescription-drug spending over $250, up to $1,330 per retiree per year, tax-free.

The subsidy was supposed to encourage employers to continue offering retiree health coverage. But employers can collect the subsidy and continue to cut benefits. The rules, which were crafted with significant input from employer groups, allow employers to count retiree contributions towards the total that qualifies for the subsidy, and lets employers aggregate all their retiree groups.

As a result, an employer can completely eliminate the benefits for some groups, and still collect millions of dollars in government money, according to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Thanks to the subsidy, GM cut $4.1 billion in retiree liabilities from its books, which represents the amount it anticipates collecting from the government over time.

I can't say that I blame GM and others for using a poorly written tax code to their advantage. They are just trying to survive. But as big companies continue to shuffle more and more of their health care costs to the federal government, wouldn't a better approach be to craft federal health care legislation that actually insures people, instead of picking up the tab in creative new ways for business's bottom line that don't actually increase the pool of insured or their coverage? It's been pointed out elsewhere, but GM and every other big and small business could take care of all of their healthcare problems with reform of the insurance system in America (doesn't necessarily have to be completely socialized either).

Maybe they should try giving most of their political contributions to Democrats for just one election cycle and see if it's actually good for business or not. Because clearly the past decade of Republican control of Congress has been neither good for business or people when it comes to health care policy.

Floating a Trial Balloon

Thanks to alert reader BG

Sonny Perdue is out of the country, which is a convenient place to be if you don't want to comment on something. While he's out of town, an associate of his, Anthony Scott Hobbs is leading an anti-immigration rally at the state Capitol. Could this be a GOP trial balloon?

It's a good way to measure sentiment to what could be the issue that rescues a dwindling Republican party from their emerging national scandals (they even have a farm team here in Georgia). If the public responds well to the media coverage generated by the test rally, you can be sure Perdue will begin to focus his compassionate conservative beam on this issue when he gets back. If not, well he was out of town and the kids found the keys to the liquor cabinet.

Shrewd move on his part.

How Does He Sleep At Night

Reading the newest Jim Wooten column makes me think that either he knows he is lying (which makes me question how he can sleep) or he is some sort of Republican Party robot (also, how would he sleep?). The gist of Wooten's column is this: the left will oppose anything Bush does no matter what.

But that ignores a few things, notably that Democratic leader Harry Reid was the first person to say good things about her (after voting against the Roberts nomination). That's a pretty glaring omission of fact, if you ask me.

Then Wooten borrows a page from Ann Coulter. He's laid out his premise: that the left is making unfair accusations and opposition to Miers. His proof? That commenters have trashed her for going to SMU instead of a top tier law school. But, the first person to raise this charge was Ann Coulter (get it, borrowing a page). If you didn't know that, you'd read this column and think some elitist Democrat that went to Harvard Law was saying Ivy Leaguers only need apply. But it wasn't, and Jim Wooten knows it, and yet he misleads anyway.

Must be a nice world of delusion he lives in. Republicans can trash talk a choice their own President makes and somehow its the Democrats fault.

Extra: A much better conservative take on Miers.

I'm Dying To See That New Movie

After I saw Four Brothers I thought about what people often say after a movie -- that's two hours of my life I'll never get back. From now on though, I'll keep in mind that if the only damage I suffer from sitting through a less than good movie is a loss of my time, I'm one of the lucky ones.

AJAX

I know I promised new updates to the Georgia District Map page, and that is coming. I've been slammed with a lot of web stuff and haven't had a time to finalize it. In the meantime, I hope you'll find some functionality out of the site search box on the left.

Unlike traditional site searches on movable type which load a new page of results, this search box utilizes a technology called "AJAX" to display your results almost instantaneously without reloading the page. You can even scroll through the results and read an excerpt of the pages that match your query before you click to go to that page.

Sorry, but at this time the site search box searches for an exact match. "Mark Taylor" will probably turn up a result but "Taylor Perdue" would only turn up a result if I used the words Taylor Perdue back to back in an entry, and not if the words Taylor and Perdue just happened to appear in an entry together. At the present time, just stick to one word searches.

Presidential Perdue

Now that Bush has

• a) nominated his own counsel,
  
• b) someone with no judicial experience whatsoever and
  
• c) someone whose conservative bonafides are unknown

it makes Sonny Perdue, who did the same thing on the Georgia Supreme Court earlier this year, look that much more Presidential. I always knew that Sonny had the true grit required to be a not very popular President.

Diesel

Went by a few gas stations in Gwinnett County last night that only had diesel fuel. So much for Sonny's bogus after the fact revisionism.