... Could Yoo continue to teach law? Tenure isn't THAT rock-solid. I can't imagine students wanting to take classes with a disbarred and disgraced professor.

The church custom of shunning can be quite effective in even secular academia. In the early 70s, there was a professor in my department who permitted no discussion, or even recognition, of those issues extremely relevant to his college at the time. Although there was no organized boycott of his classes, students just stopped signing up for his courses. It got to where he had no students to "teach", and his undergrad and doctoral students were shiftineg to other advisors. He took an early retirement.

Living in Berlin in the fifties, where excellent beer was cheap and when I drank a hell of a lot more than I dare to today, I soon learned that coasters were used to record a tab on the customers. I learned that when making an ass of myself with a table of other ugly Americans who were frisbeeing our coasters out a window onto the street below.

Has that changed? I assumed coasters were still not like those dim sum dishes that pile up until we call it quits and ask for the bill reckoning.

P.S. I have no coasters from those Berlin years, but the memories are priceless.

The original Declaration of Independence included Life, Liberty and Property, but the word property was removed at the last minute. The president is nationalizing banks and eventually many other businesses, could your property be next?

The phrase "life, liberty and property" was never in Jefferson's DoI. The phrase - actually a paraphrase of the original - comes from John Locke, an English philosopher, in the seventeenth century.

because, they failed to exploit the best arrow in their formidable arsenal. There, in the opening shot, sits Obama signing stuff with his LEFT HAND. He's not only signing stuff that's clearly taking away our freedoms, he's signalling with his left hand to the terrorists who hate our freedoms, that he does too. Why hasn't the GOP leadership failed to point this our to us?

Be afraid. Very afraid. We have a president who thinks with the wrong side of his brain!

Before drawing conclusions,I would want to read exactly what the Dali Lama said rather than what jay Whats-his-name said the Dali Lama said.

Justice Thomas did write an opinion on the "Bongs for Jesus" case and it was a doozy.

Roberts wrote the majority opinion, but Thomas put in his two cents, arguing that the First Amendment free speech right did not extend to students in school. (There are, of course, benchmark decisions to the contrary.) He backs this assertion of intent with a "history" of discipline in early 19th century public schools.

You were definitely right that Thomas wasn't qualified. Check out Thomas's opinion here:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/06-278.ZC.html

who once criticized Hilary Clinton as "insufficiently iambic", Mike's doggerel is insufficiently pentametered.

Call them what they really are: usurious loan sharks. They use all means possible to dissuade users from paying off 100% of their bills each month. In fact they have a pejorative name for those of us who always pay the full amount due: free loaders.

Yes! you beat me to it and said it more succinctly. That's exactly what Specter did. Time and time again I watched Arlen on CSPAN2 effectively articulate the flaws of a GOP bill during debate, only to vote for passage.

I grant Cheney may - in this rare, nay, first instance - be sincere, when he speaks about his daughter and the right she should have. BUT, he castles that move on the board with the states right maneuver. The man who virtually ran the administration of a party that was gung ho for Constitutional Amendment XXVII asserts this is a states' right matter, knowing damned well most gays and lesbians in America, without benefit of federal law, will not likely live to see gay marriage recognized in their resident states.

Cheney is infinitely more despicable than any other political figure of my entire franchised lifetime; to exploit one's own daughter in this cynically calibrated way is beyond the pale.

The Obama administration doesn't defend the policy in the sense of believing it to be an acceptable one. In today's NYT it was explained that the administration did not want SCOTUS to hear the case because it would have put the administration in the position of defending its Defense Department's DADT policy, with which Obama definitely does not agree.

"Nazi" is the fifth word into the first paragraph of the first post. Isn't that some kind of a record?

There are some GOP major players - Bill Kristol for one - who think Sarah would make a seriously competitive candidate now she can use these next two years to become knowledgeable of the issues. I doubt she has the capacity to fully integrate the complexity, ambiguity, and amorphous qualities of national and international issues, given her inability to articulate coherently even the fairly concrete reason she decided to resign.

Ah, but then I, and much of the media, sneered at Bush and his embarrassing performance in the Bush-Gore debates. I was so sure noone could possibly vote for this uncurious, inarticulate, parochial person...

Most Americans get their "news" from cable rather than print. Consequently, public figures now seek their requisit exposure through TV rather then print.

How could cable networks miss such a delicious gotcha moment, luring media-hungry Sessions on for a purportedly interview on his "concerns" about Sotomayor's "prejudices" to then confront him with his empirically recorded racist record? It would have been far more dramatic on TV that in print.

Journalism's great muckrakers must be rolling in their graves.