If you read Souter’s dissent (.pdf from S. Ct.’s site),

here (not that long):

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/…..6-5754.pdf

you’ll understand why he dissented. He believed, correctly that this opinion does little to clarify anything–and that it’s end result will be that Judges will loose some of the freedom to individualize and use well reasoned departures from the Guidelines because they don’t want to be reversed on appeal. I think that this opinion just muddied waters. Perhaps Christy and others see it differently.

IMHO the guidelines have worked out terribly, and they haven’t spawned consistency. The guidelines can often be Draconian–and the people who think they aren’t are the first that would wet their pants if they were locked in their garage or a closet or a car. I doubt many attorneys have much of a scintilla of a concept of prison, including most of those in the federal defense bar because they don’t work with them on issues that come up in prison.

The great fear of Scooter’s predicamant on the Georgetown/Beltway cocktail circuit is based on the fantasies of Comstock and Matlin, and other self-important D.C. cowpokes, who don’t have a clue. They are some of the people you see making small talk on C-Span at a book signing–or the kind that show up at Sally Bradley’s parties or Fred Thompson’s wife the age of his daughter sharing a chuckle with Wolfie Wolfowitz after he ripped off the World Bank and helped kill thousands of Americans years after his own deferment. One common denominator that has united the Neo-Con hawks that led this administration into Iraq and the Committee Mary Matlin was on–the so called “White House Iraq http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W…..Iraq_Groupgroup”

is that they all experienced a the joys of deferment or multiple deferments like Dick the Cheney (5).

Christy and the FDL bloggers are excellent.

I didn’t intend to “sock puppet”, so please accept my apology. I was confused when possibly the length of the posts could have caused two threads to close at the exact time I was posting previously.

I have been frustrated with the incredible illegality and amorality of this administration, but I realize I’m hardly alone in this.

I knew when the litigation started after Gore won the popular vote that Bush could be bad, but I didn’t realize the infinite extent of the destruction and death he would cause.

I also realize there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it. I cannot get over how apathetic this country seems to Iraq, warantless wiretapping, foreclosed civil rights, FBI saying “whoops we misues thousands of target search letters”–or “whoops we did it again,” ATT and other large carriers wire tapping every phone call.

Note that Dana Perion’s robotic answer to everything “we follow the law” has been ironically handed to every Bush official to use as a stone wall.

Christy writes often about people who break the law having to pay a penalty as a consequence. That’s just not happening now at Christy’s former home–DOJ–nor is it happening within the West Wing and there are victims. The US Attorney and different DAs and ADAs and AUSAs like to talk about caring for the victims of crime–girls and boys we are huge victims of an administration that believes it adheres to no law whatsoever.

When one of them gets close to a rather small consequence–an actual 24 months calculated sentence for Libby to serve–look at how much hell breaks loose.

I believe that Lawrence Robbins, Libby’s appellate attorneys and the Libinistas (Matlin, Comstock, the former solicitor general and the rest) fully believe that they have safety in an en banc D.C. Circuit that portends to function as a Bushie robot and will laugh at Scooter’s convictions–and if they don’t that Bush who could care less about public opinion will step in.

Cheney and Addington’s stance described here is a good metaphor for what drives me crazy:

Agency Is Target in Cheney Fight on Secrecy Data (NYT)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06…..washington

Welcome to the Lake.

I changed the screen name because I thought for some reason my comments weren’t getting posted– a couple hit “posts are closed” after I worked on them earlier and you could be right about the length. I’ll try to post shorter comments and I wondered why two in a row ran into a closed thread the moment they were posted, and sometimes there may be a delay if several posts hit the server at once.

I understand.

Thanks

FWIW, overly long comments can trip the moderation filters and require a mod to manually release them.

Changing screen names does not help free them more quickly.

Thanks.

RBG – I think he has been saving them up for a long time and finally vented. good hint, though. may need to be more specific about the penalty for sock puppeting, too.

“Why Obama?” Selise@176 asked me

Because I believe that the other candidates are in reality to the right of center in their perception of the Supreme Court and I believe that Obama has a signficantly greater concept of constitutional law than Clinton or Gore, and one equal or greater to John Edwards. Edwards might make an excellent President. I personally think he is terribly bright, obviously a skillful litigator who made his fortune on predominantly significant malpractice litigation instead of much of the junk of maloutcome that attorneys fling at physicians, particularly OBGYNS and Neurosurgeons who pay enormous malpractice premiums right now.

But although it is early, and as has been pointed out people who led during past elections changed places with the ultimate winners, I just don’t think Edwards can beat Obama or Clinton, and of course I could be dead wrong about this. He’s a promising candidate to me.

Obviously Obama doesn’t have the well-honed political machine that Clinton has spent years putting in place.

The “no foreign policy experience” charge often bandied about makes me grin. As if Bush was getting foreign policy experience sitting in Austin, Texas who applied that particular experience to become a candidate for conducting the most damaging foreign policy in American history.

If Bush had tried to kill more people (the surge is a surge in dead bodies in coffins at Dover, and hundreds of Iraqis dead per week) he could not have succeeded better.

Bush has again vetoed embroynic stems, and no physician who knows the literature believes any of the other alternatives hold a candle to their potential for dealing with Diabetes, spinal paralysis, and many leukemias and lymphomas to name a few.

I sure don’t see conservative Republican shils lifting a finger to adopt and implant into their uteri any of the 400,000 embryos that are now banked and soon will have to be discaded. It is imbecilic to connect embryonic stem cell use with abortion increases, and the Bushies, expert at selling bad or no science, are of course pushing it.

It was painful to happen to catch Elizabeth Hasselbach shouting her ignorance of stem cell research on “The View” yesterday and claiming ethics.

As has been said many times, Republican Conervatives are very concerned about the fate of the embryo, and don’t give a damn what happens to the child once it’s born.

They certainly don’t seem to give a damn about the kids in Iraq (or the parents and grandparents for that matter) not to mention 2 million Iraqi refugees and the hundreds of Iraqi women forced into prostitution in Syria now in order to survive.

Changing screen names does not help free them more quickly.

Thanks.

thank you, i enjoyed reading your comment… just one question:

I wouldn’t expect any of those four, one of whom will be the candidate, to change appointments significantly besides Obama.

why obama?