July 29, 2012

Scalia Suggests ‘Hand-Held Rocket Launchers’ Are Protected Under Second Amendment

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/07/29/602491/scalia-rocket-launcher/

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Justice Antonin Scalia reiterated just how extremely his Constitutional originalism can be applied. Referring to the recent shooting in Aurora, CO, host Chris Wallace asked the Supreme Court Justice about gun control, and whether the Second Amendment allows for any limitations to gun rights. Scalia admitted there could be, such as “frighting” (carrying a big ax just to scare people), but they would still have to be determined with an 18th-Century perspective in mind. According to his originalism, if a weapon can be hand-held, though, it probably still falls under the right o “bear arms”:

WALLACE: What about… a weapon that can fire a hundred shots in a minute?

SCALIA: We’ll see. Obviously the Amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried — it’s to keep and “bear,” so it doesn’t apply to cannons — but I suppose here are hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes, that will have to be decided.

WALLACE: How do you decide that if you’re a textualist?

SCALIA: Very carefully.

(end snip)

A SCOTUS judge/dog whistler on Faux Newz.

Gore won, Fat Tony. Get over it.

July 28, 2012

Bombshell: Koch-Funded Study Finds ‘Global Warming Is Real’, ‘On The High End’ And ‘Essentially All’

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/07/28/602151/bombshell-koch-funded-study-finds-global-warming-is-real-on-the-high-end-and-essentially-all-due-to-carbon-pollution/

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST) is poised to release its findings next week on the cause of recent global warming. A forthcoming NY Times op-ed by Richard Muller, BEST’s Founder and Scientific Director, has been excerpted on a conservative website with the headline, “New Global Temperature Data Reanalysis Confirms Warming, Blames CO2.”

I have spoken with scientists and journalists familiar with BEST’s findings, and the excerpt appears genuine. Here is the money graf:

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified scientific issues that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Now, after organizing an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I’ve concluded that global warming is real, that the prior estimates of the rate were correct, and that cause is human.

Yes, yes, I know, the finding itself is “dog bites man.” What makes this “man bites dog” is that Muller has been a skeptic of climate science, and the single biggest funder of this study is the “Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($150,000).” The Kochs are the leading funder of climate disinformation in the world!

(end snip)

July 25, 2012

Morning Briefing: Romney Bundler Involved In Valerie Plane Leak Scandal

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/07/25/580861/morning-briefing-romney-bundler-involved-in-valerie-plane-leak-scandal/?mobile=nc

– Lobbyist Richard Hohlt, a bundler for Mitt Romney’s campaign, was the “go-between” for Karl Rove and the late Bob Novak in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, Politico reports.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/07/romney-bundler-was-gobetween-in-valerie-plame-outing-130004.html

Swiss Mitt spent the entire day saying how he wouldn't leak security information for political gain. But his lobbyist surgar daddy can and has.

July 23, 2012

Nickolaus changed software before April election breakdown

Sometime after final testing of Waukesha County's election software - but before the April election - County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus mysteriously changed something in her office's computer programming, according to a consulting firm's report released Tuesday.

Only Nickolaus knows what she did. The consultants can't figure it out, and she's not talking.

But whatever she did, it caused a breakdown in reporting election results that will cost county taxpayers $256,300 to fix, the report says.

(snip)

http://www.jsonline.com/news/waukesha/nickolaus-changed-software-program-before-april-election-breakdown-vl62uqt-162003205.html?ipad=y

Stunning that no investigation will take place. She will not seek re-election, but as in the recall, I suspect she will be around to operate her 'special software'.

July 8, 2012

What Did Reagan Know About the Argentine Dictatorship's Baby Thefts?

http://www.alternet.org/world/156200/what_did_reagan_know_about_the_argentine_dictatorship%27s_baby_thefts/

An Argentine court has convicted two of the nation’s former right-wing dictators, Jorge Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, in a scheme to murder leftist mothers and give their infants to military personnel often complicit in the killings, a shocking process known to the Reagan administration even as it worked closely with the bloody regime.

Testimony at the trial included a videoconference from Washington with Elliott Abrams, then-Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, who said he urged Bignone to reveal the babies’ identities as Argentina began a transition to democracy in 1983.

Abrams said the Reagan administration “knew that it wasn’t just one or two children,” indicating that U.S. officials believed there was a high-level “plan because there were many people who were being murdered or jailed.” Estimates of the Argentines murdered in the so-called Dirty War range from 13,000 to about 30,000, with many victims “disappeared,” buried in mass graves or dumped from planes over the Atlantic.

A human rights group, Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, says as many as 500 babies were stolen by the military during the repression from 1976 to 1983. Some of the pregnant mothers were kept alive long enough to give birth and then were chained together with other prisoners and pushed out of the planes into the ocean to drown.

(snip)

emphasis mine

gawd almighty. And you just knew that Abrams knew about it, at the very least.