Out in the real world I sometimes am clued in to what someone like Zoltan might act like. Today I was at a four-way-stop sign. I waited my turn as the people on the left and right went through. Then I slowly began to take my turn. The person in a truck from the other side of the street was, I thought, also taking her turn at the same time. Since she had no turn blinker on I naturally assumed that she was going to come straight across, as was I, so in that case neither of us would have impeded the other. Turned out that she was making a left turn in front of me. That was fine. I stopped short and waited. But as she was turning the guy in the passenger seat of her truck made a big display of flipping me off. My initial reaction was a disbelief that the coward had revealed himself in the safe land of a moving vehicle. After it sunk in what he had done I'll have to admit that I honest to gawd wanted to beat the shit out of him just for general purposes.

I hadn’t seen that one. That picture along with the children’s pictures tears (both meanings) me up. Have you seen this one?

Killing Children is Never Legitimate (see sig)

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/07-0

Yeah, maybe the guy who flipped you off was an asshole, but you know, he probably knows it, and might even cheerfully admit it. I can handle that.

I'll bet you anything he couldn't match Zoltan's admixture of dirty old man, right-wing projection, impotent threats and drunken mumbling and the most revealing kind of pseudo-intellectual pretension.

On his blog, Zoltan lists one of his interests as "Holacaust prevention" Hey, I gotta hand it to him, I'm very interested in fire safety, too.

Once, the rising tide lifted Zoltan's boat, along with all the others. "Look what I did" he crowed! "I'm an investnor!"

Thank you for your hard work on this blog. I read here every day and dearly love it. But what's more, you have some of the best regular commenters anywhere. Every day I read through all of the comments and am amazed at how intelligent your regular readers are (not the trolls, of course) and learn new things all the time.

As I said in my very first comment, I am too intimidated to post anything more than compliments. But I'm here every day, cheering from the sidelines!

Red Cross Reports Grisly Find in Gaza

Israel Accused of Blocking Aid to Wounded

By Craig Whitlock

Washington Post Foreign Service

Thursday, January 8, 2009; Page A01

JERUSALEM, Jan. 8 -- The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday that it had found at least 15 bodies and several children -- emaciated but alive -- in a row of shattered houses in the Gaza Strip and accused the Israeli military of preventing ambulances from reaching the site for four days.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/07/AR2009010700791.html

Just reading your short explanation helped me understand things a lot better. Thanks, I needed that.

Wouldn’t judicial review have to include habeas corpus? [Please bear with me—total neophyte with this stuff.] They said [above]

“Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law.”

Also, can the word “and” be used with a “disjucntive meaning”? And, if so, what does that mean? Ms. Hughes never talked about that in 7th grade when we were diagramming sentences.

It’s late here, so I may not be able to respond until tomorrow.

Thanks for the article karr(sic). What RMP said. Derbig, it sounds like something you would write. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine

bebop-o: contact Jebbie. [Thanks Jebbie :-)]

G’night, all

I felt exactly the same way when I started commenting. You can ease your way in like I did. The valuable contributors here and Glenn care a lot more about the quality of the ideas than the ability to express them. Jump in, the water's fine.

(I could be way late with this on the forum, but don't have time to read all the posts)

According to the NYT, linked through my signature: "Mr. Obama also was poised to name Cass R. Sunstein, an American legal scholar, to an existing White House post as the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. A transition official said late Wednesday that Mr. Sunstein would oversee government regulations and devise new approaches for government efficiencies."

Would these efficiencies include more efficient ways of warrantless spying on Americans, more cost-efficient ways to violate the Constitution and take away civil liberties? Yeah, I know, I'm being cynical. But really, aren't there lots of efficiency experts who don't favor immunity for corporations (not to mention government officials) who commit federal felonies?

That picture is really going to haunt me. Looks like I'm not going to sleep for quite a while.

If Obama felt obligated to give Cass a job, that seems a safer place to put him than in the DOJ. Who knows, maybe he is an efficiency expert and that would account for his ease in solving the Bush criminal problem.

GG makes mention of this...I'm not a Bush supporter, but I always thought that criminality was determined by conviction, not accusation. Maybe some of the regulars can clear this up for me.

I think we are watching two different movies because, at this point, I am just confused.

Businesses are under different rules. Period. For instance, business records are open to subpoena, while your personal papers are not.

Are you saying that the police can't seize your personal papers even with a warrant?

Even traditional searches are a bit weird (at least according to customary 4thAm law). In the warrant is for a stolen refrigerator, they may still search your drawers. I don't agree but that's the law.

Do you not see a difference between a warrant to search a specific house for a stolen refrigerator and a warrant to search any house for a stolen refrigerator?

I also think you have the elephant in a drawer backwards. I am still trying to find a direct Supreme Court cite but this is from the 7th Circuit--

http://www.projectposner.org/case/1999/179F3d574

Even if there were no constitutional requirement of particular description, or if "seizure" were so narrowly defined as to be irrelevant to most searches, a valid warrant would have to specify the object of the search, and that specification would operate to particularize the scope of the search. For the object determines the reasonable scope of the search, and all searches, to pass muster under the Fourth Amendment, must be reasonable. If you are looking for an adult elephant, searching for it in a chest of drawers is not reasonable. The principle that this example illustrates is that a search for a given body of evidence or contraband implies a limitation of the parts of the premises that may be searched. United States v. Evans, 92 F.3d 540, 543 (7th Cir. 1996); United States v. Eschweiler, 745 F.2d 435, 439 (7th Cir. 1984); United States v. Jackson, 825 F.2d 853, 865 (5th Cir. 1987) (en banc).

This is from the SC oral argument in Horton v. California

http://www.oyez.org/cases/1980-1989/1989/1989_88_7164/argument/

QUESTION: The basic reason, I think, is to -- is to describe the scope of the search. If -- you know, if -- if -- if you're looking for an elephant, you can't look in drawers. So where's there an elephant on the search warrant, searching through drawers is beyond the proper scope of the search. Isn't that a good enough reason?