Showing posts with label jonathan turley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jonathan turley. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Real Life Guts and Common Sense

Good Morning Bloggers! Jonathan Turley on MSNBC this morning said that President Barack Obama's new choice for the Supreme Court, New York jurist Sonia Sotomayor, is considered an "intellectual lightweight" by most "intellectual court observers." I don't know what to say about that point, but I will say that I was struck by the speeches this morning.

Her story is the quintessential American story, and it begs the question whether having a little more humanity on the court is more important right now than one more brilliant jurist. President Obama obviously thinks so, and he's an excellent legal scholar. I think I'll go with his expertise and ignore the talking-heads for now. It seems like a good choice to me.

The idea of our first Hispanic justice is also very exciting. Her "common touch and a sense of compassion" seem like excellent qualities for a person who is meant to judge our laws and our lives. Republicans may not understand the emotion, but I agree with the president - empathy is a very good quality when it comes to judging others. So far, I'm a big fan of the 54-year-old Sotomayor. I guess we'll all have to wait and see how it unfolds over the summer. For now, I'm very happy! I'll write more about it later.

Tuesday's Political Rave - Michael

Monday, October 20, 2008

Political Rant: Vote Early to Make it Harder for Them to Steal the Election

Good Morning Bloggers - It's getting down to the wire and I'm getting more and more nervous about Republican efforts to steal votes. The signs are not good. John McCain calling ACORN a "threat to democracy," a report in West Virginia about voters actually seeing machines switch their early votes from Obama to McCain right before their eyes, and the Obama campaign's allegations of "potential voter fraud" are making me very nervous.

"I think it is fair to say that some of these challenges do look like suppression efforts," said George Washington University Professor Jonathan Turley on MSNBC this weekend. He continued saying, "there is really grounds to be concerned here."

The Obama campaign took the less-than-impressive step of contacting our infamous do-nothing Attorney General Mukasey. You know him, he's the guy who won't enforce Congressional subpoenas and who pretty much said that George Bush is above the law during his confirmation hearings. Oh yea, our thanks to Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for allowing another corrupt AG into office.

They wrote him a letter expressing their concern about the election. "The allegations of voter fraud made by the McCain campaign about ACORN and Sen. Obama's alleged connections to it sound similar to another scandal during President Bush's administration," wrote Robert Bauer on behalf of the Obama campaign. "This is an astonishing repeat of the kind of toxic intrusion of politics into the lawful administration of justice that we saw during the U.S. attorney scandal," Bauer said. "We're seeing a repeat of that."

One of my favorites's, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, suggested the McCain campaign's allegations are an attempt to reduce the turnout of newly registered voters, most of whom are Democrats. "To keep turnout low, prevent votes from being counted and scare voters into thinking there are massive voting shenanigans and that their vote won't count anyway," Maddow said.

I think it's worse. I think they've had a plan to switch votes both electronically and otherwise for a long time. "The scenario for winning for us is a narrow-victory scenario," said Steve Schmidt, McCain’s chief strategist.

Unless we can persuade voters to turn-out early and en masse they might be able to switch enough votes to get those narrow victories in the electoral college swing states they need. Chuck Todd of MSNBC is reporting they are only focusing on the electoral college now. That's very good news for us, since they're being forced to narrow their focus, making it easier to catch them.

Remember, they got away with it before and there's no reason to believe they might not be able to pull it off again. I admit, I'm very worried, so please VOTE EARLY to make it harder for them to steal our election.

Monday's Political Rant #1 - Michael