You obviously were in a coma between 2000 and 2008. I suggest you raise your standards.

can we be truthful here? Tiller did about 60,000 abortions at an estimated $2,000 each. That is $120,000,000! Tiller died a very rich man aborting babies that were capable of living on their outside the womb…that is sick.

“If Congressional Democrats are willing to vest the President with the unilateral, unreviewable power to override FOIA — which, as Chairwoman Slaughter says, is one of the crown legislative jewels for the Democratic Party, “as sacred as Social Security and Medicare” — what aren’t they willing to do for him?”
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http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/10/foia/index.html

I strongly disliked President Johnson but he deserves great credit for signing the FOIA into law. The Freedom of Information Act is the most important tool we citizens have to combat governmental secrecy and the potential tyranny that results from a non-transparent, closed government.

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“… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”

–Juvenal (Book IV, Satire X, 1 B.C.)

He was going over the brochuers that he got while there.

Now will the Homeland Security Office not backtrack on the assesment that they had of the radical right and what is possible from them?

Dr. Tiller,Now this.

“I think her judicial philosophy is to defer to govt. authority.”
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That is a good assessment and the trait that concerns me the most regarding Ms. Sotomayor. As a former civil servant I understand and appreciate judicial deference granted those in government, although I was never in the situation to have needed deference granted in anything with which I was involved because I performed as close to ‘by the book’ as possible.

However, since my retirement, I have learned—in abundance—that deference allows those in government to abuse the rule of law and all manner of rules and regulations knowing that deference is weighted heavily in the government’s favor; in other words, judicial deference has the public servants’ backs.

The real value of a judge or justice derives from looking closely at governmental actions to determine if public servants acted arbitrarily and capriciously in their decision-making and then ruling against the government if such actions occurred.

A justice must be unbiased enough to rule in favor of citizens if they are harmed by the arbitrariness and capriciousness of an overbearing, authoritarian bureaucracy and especially regarding Constitutional and Bill of Rights abuses by the government over its citizenry.

He writes, “Inverted totalitarianism has learned how to exploit what appers to be formidable policitcal and legal constraints, using them in ways that defeat their original purpose but without dismantling….them.”

Right now I think this is exactly how Congress and the President proceed. They were set up as separate branches so that “ambition could check ambition”. While we retain the form of three separate and equal branches of govt. we do not retain that reality. The truth is that most of Congress simply colludes with the executive branch. The courts have been the one check on this collusion and I believe that check will fall soon enough. We will retain all the forms of a democracy without being one.

One reason I think this is, Obama has stated his intention, to “get the law right”. Indefinite detention, the gutting of FOIA and FISA– he plans to do these things under the process of law. Sotomayor is likely to go along with these and other expansions of executive power and anti-Constitutional “laws”. I don’t think she is a bad person. I think her judicial philosophy is to defer to govt. authority. I believe she was chosen as the nominee because this is her underlying philosophy. She has said the court should not make policy and I agree. However, when the president and congress are making unconstitutional policy, the court needs to call it for what it is. That’s not making policy, that’s saying the policy is unconsitutional. In my reading of her opinions I do not believe she will be willing to call a policy unconstitutional as long as it has the veneer of “correct” process to it. Once the SC is no longer functioning to correct executive overreach and congressional cowardice, whose actions together will gut our Constitution, we will have inverted totalitarianism in this nation.

What constitution is she faithful to again?

While I think Ms. Sotomayor is still a good nominee, Biden’s comments and the ‘Jocks v. Tavernier’ case results are troubling, especially if we keep the Bush et al. era abuses in mind.

It is good to have a sometimes loose-talking “spy” like Biden as VP who can inadvertently ‘signal’ potential problems or pending ‘issues’ within the Obama Administration and its planning strategies.

Full Disclosure: I like VP Joe Biden