There are, obviously, a number of infuriating things about the news that Chicago cop Anthony Abbate has been sentenced to probation after being caught on video beating up a (much smaller) bartender who had refused to serve him. But this really twists the knife: Judge John Fleming said he decided against jail because he did […]

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The federal government’s first Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, used to be the District of Columbia’s top geek. He caught the Obama administration’s eye by, among other things, finding innovative ways to put public data online, and especially to make it more easily accessible through the use of third-party apps. A prime illustration of the […]

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Apparently Sonia Sotomayor’s membership in the Belizean Grove women’s club is turning into some kind of issue—with some wags purporting that it runs afoul of the canons of judicial ethics. Now, several other Supreme Court justices, male and female, have been members of men’s or women’s clubs, and it doesn’t seem to have been a […]

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Perhaps because more people have had time to actually read the speech by now, the effort to brand Sonia Sotomayor a racist on the basis of one decontexualized line from a talk seems to have simmered down.  The “softer” line is that she’s apparently “obsessed” with race and gender issues. By way of Steve Benen, […]

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I’ll cop to sharing some of Yglesias’ irritation at the treatment of Sonia Sotomayor, and if Republicans are managing to get a rise out of my pallid ass, I can only imagine the kind of damage they’re doing to their brand among, you know, real Latinos.  For one, it is basically impossible for me to […]

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You’d think after seven years in DC, I’d have developed an immunity to surprise at political mendacity, but every now and then, a truly heroic example of shamelessness can still astonish me.  My morning feeds bring a doozy in the form of a putative “news” item titled “Patriot Act Likely Helped Thwart NYC Terror Plot, […]

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AP reports: Hawaii’s state Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill Wednesday to celebrate “Islam Day” _ over the objections of a few lawmakers who said they didn’t want to honor a religion connected to Sept. 11, 2001. The Senate’s two Republicans argued that a minority of Islamic extremists have killed many innocents in terrorist attacks. This […]

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Ryan Sager picks an unfortunate example to make a valid point about the idea of “empathy” as a qualification for a seat on the Supreme Court: Now, I’m not necessarily arguing that it’s right [in the famous Trolley Problem] to push the fat man — or for the government to “push the fat man.” But […]

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Marc Ambinder notes that the federal government’s annual wiretap report—that’s Title III criminal wiretaps, not the foreign intel surveillance covered by FISA— is out, and the headline figure is that there was a 16 percent decline in wiretap orders over the previous year. Then he offers some speculation on why this might be that makes […]

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I could probably write a post running several thousand words just listing all the issues on which I disagree with legal/political theorist Cass Sunstein, but I was nevertheless pretty sanguine about news of his appointment to head the Office of Information an Regulatory Affairs. Via David Weinberger, I see that Sunstein is the latest victim […]

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