Taking a cue from Walt Disney and Six Flags:

Obama World

Bill Jacobson renders a very good analysis of "The Goldstein Report" on Sotomayor. He pretty much torpedoes it, and explains why. Jacobson's reasoning is difficult to fault.

You can read Jacobson's analysis here:

Sotomayor's damned statistics

It's interesting. In their rush to 'sell' Sotomayor to the American public, whom they obviously consider to be brainless boobs, the mainstream media has been focusing on her 'compelling story'. Gushing emotionally over her poor Latina roots, they have really worked that 'empathy' thing.

But as Jacobson points out, there could well be more to Sotomayor's judicial thought processes than any of those condescending twit talking heads has so far considered. In their touchie-feelie presentations, the talking heads and other Pollyanna Pundits may well be doing Sotomayor a great disservice.

Sidepoint: Back when I used to teach search and seizure and other Constitutional things as they relate to cop work, I would tell the class, "When you read the opinions on all these landmark search and seizure cases, pay attention to the dissenting opinions. They are often far more revealing than the majority opinions."

It's interesting to see that both Jacobson and Cass Sunstein seem to share that view.

Obama has set a grand new precedent for nominating Federal judges, including, of course, justices of the United States Supreme Court.

Presumably, the Democratically-controlled Congress is going to go along with that.

Chris Muir has a comment about that over on Day by Day:

Setting the judicial standards

As the leftie blogs and the MSM continues to pooh-pooh DealerGate, here is another good one from Doug Ross:

Dealergate: Were four Democrat-friendly dealer groups rewarded by the Obama administration?

Charges against three Black Panthers charged with voter intimidation have been dropped by the Obama Department of Justice. What's worse, the Obama Department of Justice has already won the case, but are throwing it away nonetheless. Their reasoning? The defendants were no-shows:

"These same Defendants have made no appearance and have filed no pleadings with the Court. Nor have they otherwise raised any other defenses to this action. Therefore, the United States has the right ... to dismiss voluntarily this action against the Defendants."

That is absolutely nuts.

By that reasoning, anyone charged into municipal court who "makes no appearance" should have charges dumped. Judge Manley should dismiss the case.

Instead, Judge Manley will issue a bench warrant for the defendant's arrest. It's called a "Failure to Appear." "FTA". Perhaps the Obama Justice Department is not familiar with the term. Perhaps Judge Manley might provide instruction on this to Eric Holder, who is apparently baffled by judicial proceedings.

In this case, we have a civil rights violation. Yes, it is. It's a blatant attempt to intimidate voters. It's Obama's poll watchers slinging racial insults at voters. It's one of Obama's poll watchers brandishing a police-type baton - a so-called 'nightstick' - at voters.

It was enough to win the case by default judgment. The judge hearing the case directed Obama's Civil Rights Division to file a motion for default judgment against the Black Panther Party and the individual defendants.

Instead, Obama's Justice Department is throwing it away.

CongressCritter Lamar Smith, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, is calling 'em out on that. He has written a letter to Obama's Justice Department demanding all non-privileged documents pertaining to the case and the decision to throw it away.

Perhaps you may not remember the incident that led to the charges. Here is a video:



Here is a FoxNews article (as of this writing, FoxNews is all over the story, but CNN and MSNBC, the Obamanian PR firms, have absolutely nothing on it):

Charges against Black Panthers dropped

A poll watcher who provided an affidavit to prosecutors in the case noted that Bartle Bull, who worked as a civil rights lawyer in the south in the 1960's and is a former campaign manager for Robert Kennedy, said it was the most blatant form of voter intimidation he had ever seen.

In his affidavit, obtained by FOX News, Bull wrote "I watched the two uniformed men confront voters and attempt to intimidate voters. They were positioned in a location that forced every voter to pass in close proximity to them. The weapon was openly displayed and brandished in plain sight of voters."

He also said they tried to "interfere with the work of other poll observers ... whom the uniformed men apparently believed did not share their preferences politically," noting that one of the panthers turned toward the white poll observers and said "you are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker."

A spokesman for the Department of Justice told FOX News, "The Justice Department was successful in obtaining an injunction that prohibits the defendant who brandished a weapon outside a Philadelphia polling place from doing so again. Claims were dismissed against the other defendants based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law. The department is committed to the vigorous prosecution of those who intimidate, threaten or coerce anyone exercising his or her sacred right to vote."

Here's another good look at the Chrysler/political influence dustup, this very good one by Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner:

Furor grows over partisan car dealer closings

Predictably, Robert "Giggles" Gibbs pooh-poohs the whole thing. Car dealers, you see, are businessmen.

Businessmen, you see, are almost all Republicans. Unlike Democrats, apparently, who, apparently, spend their time figuring out how to separate businessmen (Republicans) from their cash so as to dole it out to other Democrats.

It's not all that hard to understand.

So.

It seems that Pueblo County is shoving most of the Nepesta Road fiasco off on C-DOT, and C-DOT is blaming someone, anyone, but C-DOT. It looks like there is little, if any, effective communication between C-DOT and Pueblo County.

In the meanwhile, the 'applicant' continued to operate freely, and apparently continues to operate freely.

Fifteen trucks or three trucks, whoever comes over that crest or around that curve and finds one of those trucks stopped in traffic is in for a sphincter-loosening moment, don't you think?

Bureaucratic wonderland, hey wot?

Well, we can always put up one of those memorial crosses by the side of the road, presuming it doesn't interfere with the auxilary lanes whenever they get around to building them.

Pueblo County Commissioner John Cordova, Sr provided a quick response to our queries about Pueblo County's role in the Nepesta Road/US Highway 50 dustup:

Mike,
The following paragraph is what was provided to me by our Public Works Director.

Here's the short version. The special use permit was originally approved by the planning commission with one of many conditions being that the applicant apply for and obtain an access permit from CDOT before commencing the mining operation.

At some point after that approval, the County and CDOT received complaints that there was some level of activity going on in the pit prior to even an application for the access permit. The County informed the applicant that they were in violation of the permit conditions and scheduled a show cause hearing before the planning commission. Between the time of the notice of the show cause hearing and the actual hearing the applicant made application to CDOT for the access permit.

CDOT approved the permit with many conditions, including construction of auxiliary lanes. The applicant and CDOT arrived at an understanding that the pit operator could remove three truck loads of material per hour from the pit BEFORE construction of the auxiliary lanes. The pit operator had requested that he be allowed to remove enough material to process at his existing crushing and asphalt plant site to produce all the materials he needs to construct the new lanes.

It is my understanding that CDOT agreed to the three trucks per hour use prior to the auxiliary lanes because that level of traffic entering and exiting at that location on the highway does not meet warrants for the auxiliary lanes, more than three per hour does meet warrants. It was essentially a compromise between the applicant/pit operator and CDOT.

Mr Tim Harris CDOT Region 2 Director is out of town this week. We will follow up with him next week sometime to see where they (CDOT) are at in the construction of the auxiliary lanes.

Cordially,
John B. Cordova Sr.

Speaking of campaign contributions ...

When the government gets its fingers into private business, all kinds of interesting things can happen. Doug Ross and Joey Smith have been digging into the Daley-esque back-scratching going on over the Chrysler dealership closings.

When Obama and the Democratically-controlled Congress gain control of auto manufacturers and their dealer network:

Chrysler Dealership Campaign Fund Contributions

Did campaign contributions drive Chrysler shutdowns?

Dealergate

others are picking it up:

Democratic donors get to keep their dealerships open, while their local competitors are eliminated

American Thinker: The plot thickens ... This one is a particular good posting on the subject.

According to various campaign funding 'sunshine' sources, the owners of our Chrysler dealership were RNC contributors. Here is one such source:

Chrysler Report

Not enough to ping your paranoia? How about this:

Hope and change: Car czar behind Chrysler closings married to former Dem party leader. In that one, we find that Steve Rattner, who heads up Obama's "Auto Task Force" (manned by people who have never had anything to do with the auto business, but that's another story) is married to Maureen White, the former National Finance Chair of Democratic Party. Rattner and his band of merry amateurs decided which dealerships would close (see the American Thinker article above.

I guess this is what Obama means when he says "I won!". At least we don't have Rahm "The Fish" Emanuel showing up at the Rotary Club lunches to gouge and stab at the table, all the while screaming "He's dead! Dead! Dead!" in reference to Larry Miles.

I'm still trying to figure out what Obama means when he promises "Hope and Change!"

The MainStream Media is pretty much ignoring all this. It would require them to actually up out of their chairs and actually ask questions rather than just sit there and swallow Robert "Giggles" Gibbs horsecrap.

That's the title of a pretty good post by Bill Jacobson over on Legal Insurrection:

Release the Sotomayor memos


Barack Obama campaigned on the theme of a new era of transparency. Obama used that theme as a justification for the release of four highly classified internal Justice Department memos detailing strategies for interrogation of al-Qaeda detainees, over the objections of Obama's own Director of the CIA.

It's time to bring that same level of transparency to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The New York Times is reporting that each of the candidates on Obama's short-list was the subject of an 60-70-page memo detailing the investigation into her background, including judicial writings and other information gleaned by the vetters. Obama should release the memos on Sotomayor, as well as any other documents used in the decision-making process.

Jacobson goes on to examine some of Sotomayor's comments, such as the famous blurb on activist judges making policy; her apparent 'image management' contradicting her 'I never dreamed ...' statement about a Supreme Court nomination; her rather vacuous judicial decision record; what problems with her nomination may have been identified in the 60-70 vetters' memo; and the political gamesmanship being played over Sotomayor's nomination ... a quid pro quo, more or less, for the Hispanic vote?

Jacobson's article is a good read.

We were sitting in the Holy Land Quickee's, slurping down our convenience store cappies.

DinkyDau Billy was freshly returned from a cycling sight-seeing tour in the Nevada deserts. He was looking relaxed, even more relaxed than Obama and Clinton, who were so 'relaxed' the Norks thought they were asleep. Maybe they were. Are. Like, dude ... whatever.

"Hey! Hey! Didja hear about them illegal campaign contributions over in Pebbler County?" he asked.

"You mean the ones for which John Cordova, Pueblo County commissioner, was fined $3825?" asked Tookie.

"Yeah. Yeah. Them contributions."

"Hmmmm ... yes, I did, but the news reports didn't say what corporations gave him ... 'allegedly' gave him ... the bucks," Leece tossed in.

"Nope. Nope. They didn't. Were they 'alleged' contributions? The judge apparently didn't think so, cuz he fined Cordova, and then Cordova had to give back da munny," Billy went on.

"I wonder if that Pheasant Run Gravel Company has anything to do with any of that?" asked Toot Sweet.

"Time to start poking around, looking for names and connections, follering da munny, hey?" Billy said, slurping his cappie and even more noisily slurping his dunked Granma's 'chocklit' fudge cookies.

"Yeah ... yeah, I think you're right," Tookie replied, pensively, "let's start with the guys who are running that Centennial State Paving, and start following the crumbs from there."

"There's gotta be a reason those guys have been allowed to operate without complying with the safety requirements," Billy mused.

Yep. There must be.

Recently, the Tribune-Democrat published two articles that illustrated a traffic safety issue at the intersection of Nepesta Road and Highway 50.

It seems that Pheasant Run Gravel Company is in operation, and a number of large gravel-haulers are entering the highway and turning off or entering the highway at that intersection. CDOT maintains that since the trucks actually get to the highway by way of a county road, it's kinda sorta not really their problem. It's kinda sorta Pueblo County's problem.

An excerpt from the first Tribune-Democrat article:

According to Valerie Sword, Colorado Department of Transportation, owners of the gravel pit are required to construct an eastbound, left-turn deceleration lane and a westbound right-turn acceleration lane if they intend to run trucks in and out of the area. Sword says the company has applied for and received a permit. However, those lanes can not be constructed until CDOT receives and approves acceptable design plans. "This can be a lengthy process," Sword comments.

Meanwhile, CDOT has requested commercial traffic associated with the gravel pit comply with current safety regulations. Until deceleration and acceleration lanes are constructed, no more than three trucks per hour may make left turning movements from the highway onto Nepesta Road.

In the interim before those lanes are installed and traffic flow improved in the area, officials caution drivers to be particularly vigilant traveling that stretch of highway.

Here are questions that fair leap out from the page over the 'issue':

"This can be a lengthy process..."

Why? Why must it be a 'lengthy process' when the state, CDOT, and Pueblo County all know that a potentially lethal traffic safety issue exists?

Why did the state allow the company to begin operations before insuring traffic safety issues were resolved? In the second TD article, Valerie Sword says, “We cannot just close a county road. We have limited control. If I were [Keith Tucker] I would not be pounding on CDOT’s door, but on the one that allowed Pheasant Run to operate without a permit.” Tucker is with Big G gravel pit. Big G is throwing a hissy fit as to why Pheasant Run has been allowed to operate without complying with the safety requirements, while Big G has. Sword also points out that Big G is directly accessing the highway, so CDOT controls all that, while Pheasant Run is getting out through a county road. So ... we can reasonably presume that Pheasant Run's continuing disregard of safety requirements is done with the blessing of the Pueblo County commissioners and their underlings.

How does reducing the number of trucks to 'no more than three per hour' address safety? That's from the Pueblo Planning Commission. What happens when a car comes over the crest of the hill when one of those three trucks is stopped on the highway waiting to turn? Is it some consolation that there could have been ... oh ... fifteen trucks, but thanks to Pueblo County, there were only three? Some consolation to the victims, wouldn't you say?

How does 'officials caution drivers to be particularly vigilant' address the fact that much of the traffic on that road is interstate or intraregional, and drivers are completely unaware of the need for 'particular vigilance'?

Here's the corker, from the second TD article:

A call made to Centennial State Paving requesting information as to how long the company has been operating without the access permit was unreturned. However, the investigation made by the Department of Planning and Development, found an e-mail dated Aug. 19, 2008 from the Pueblo County Department of Public Works showing that the company knew about the required improvements a year ago: “They are completing the design for the road improvements to Nepesta Road and we anticipate that they will complete construction in the following month.”

From that, it would appear that Pheasant Run should have been in compliance last September. Now we have Sword talking about yet another year.

How about this:

The gravel pit does not have direct access to the state highway,” stated Carl Buford, assistant access manager for CDOT. The first access that the company has is to a county road so the permit for access to the highway must go through the county, Buford said.
Buford stated that they expected the company to make the improvements within the next six months. The recommendation stated that “improvements shall be completed as soon as reasonably possible and within this construction season.”
However, the process could take longer, according to Valerie Sword of CDOT. “The company has one year to provide design plans,” she said. The plans also include studies completed on the property, if needed.
“We were notified about this two months ago,” stated Sword. “CDOT is not a body that gives approval to business openings.”

What? We've gone from they should have had it all taken care of last September to now we have to wait more than a year?

Who gets sued when a family is killed rear-ending one of those trucks because Pueblo County and the State have allowed the company to operate without safety compliance problems being first resolved? Can we sue Bill Ritter? Or Valerie Sword? Or Pheasant Run Gravel Company? How about the Pueblo County commissioners?

So whose backs are being scratched here? Who knows whom? Do we smell a few political favors? Are the commissioners or their minions 'taking care' of a few friends?

What's the deal here?

Last Wednesday Obama signed into law the Helping Families Save their Homes Act of 2009.

That sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

Except that it gives banks and other mortgage servicing institutions immunity from lawsuits alleging that they broke contracts.

In other words, the United States government is destroying contractual obligations; it's telling those people that they can ignore their contractual obligations.

As William Frey puts it,"The U.S. government is now putting a bounty on renegotiating loans and providing [servicers] safe harbor protection from lawsuits -- basically, telling servicers to ignore their contracts."

Frey is the president of an outfit that is involved in mortgage-backed securities. When people default on their mortgages, that whacks those securities, hugely.

Frey was sending out letters to banks, telling them that he would sue them if they renegotiated the mortgages. Why? Such renegotiations, like defaulting, have a really negative effect on those securities.

Here is an interesting article on this, explaining Frey's position:

Some hedge funds argue against proposals to modify mortgages.

This was published last October in America's Fishwrapper, the New York Times.

When the Clowns of Congress, specifically the House Finance Committee, found out that Frey was a bit miffed over getting stiffed, they sent him this letter:

House Finance Committee strong-arms citizens

Says Frey: "The U.S. government is now putting a bounty on renegotiating loans and providing [servicers] safe harbor protection from lawsuits -- basically, telling servicers to ignore their contracts. If you can't tell me that's disturbing,welcome to Zimbabwe."

Meanwhile, Obama is about to - for all practical purposes - nationalize General Motors.

When do we do away with The Star Spangled Banner and adopt L'Internationale as our national anthem?

From Americans for Limited Government:

Back to the drawing board, Mr. Obama

Meanwhile, the New York Times has published an editorial that makes it very clear that politics plays an important part in Sotomayor's nomination:

The New Justice

From that editorial:

If Judge Sotomayor joins the court, it will be a special point of pride for Hispanic-Americans — as it was for Jews, blacks and women before them to see one of their own take a seat on the highest tribunal in the land. It will also bring the paltry number of female justices back to two. And as Democratic Party strategists have no doubt calculated, the selection could give Mr. Obama and his party a boost with a key voting group.

The Times has been going on about Sotomayor's 'compelling story'.

But how about Clarence Thomas' 'compelling story'? When Thomas was nominated, we had this:

"Only in America could this have been possible." Clarence Thomas thanked President Bush with feeling yesterday for nominating him to the Supreme Court. As a black child born in poverty, he said, "I could not dare to dream that I would ever see the Supreme Court, not to mention be nominated to it."


But Thomas is a conservative, not a far left liberal. So back on July 2, 1991 the Times pooh-poohed Thomas' 'compelling story' with this:

He might have added: Only after others had labored to realize America's promise of racial justice. And only by walking in the shoes of Thurgood Marshall, whose mighty strivings as a lawyer and a judge have done so much to clear the ladder for other disadvantaged Americans.

So it really didn't count, because he didn't do it all on his own ... neither did Sotomayor, but that's different, because she is not a conservative justice.

How about this:

Even his rise from poverty and racial isolation will be less interesting than how that experience has affected his regard for other Americans and whether he understands how their lives and rights are affected by law and official action.

I guess Clarence Thomas' life experiences were not 'rich' enough to be taken at face value.

And then:

President Lyndon Johnson beamed with pride when he introduced Thurgood Marshall in 1967 and said, "I believe it is the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place." Now Clarence Thomas must prove that President Bush is justified in calling him "the best person at the right time." It could also be a long time.

Clarence Thomas had to 'prove' himself. Yep. His life experiences weren't good enough, not as good as Sotomayor's, because we sure aren't hearing any calls from the Times for her to 'prove' the basis for Obama's gushing commentary.

The New York Times ... America's fishwrapper.