Why Is This Man Laughing?

Why? Because it's Samuel Alito, and it's HIS Supreme Court, bitch!

When Alito replaced Sandra Day O'Connor on the Court in 2006, he shifted the Supremes decisively to the right. Analysis by Adam Liptak shows that the Alito court has issued more pro-big business, more pro-Big Brother decisions at a rate unmatched since 1953.

Who remembers now that Alito was George W. Bush's second choice, after Harriet Miers crashed and burned, or rather after she got chucked on the funeral pyre by Bush's conservative puppet-masters?

Liptak points to a couple of key Alito-in-the-majority decisions that specifically trashed earlier precedents set by Sandra Day O'Connor: Citizens United v. FEC, which sold our elections system to the highest bidder; and Hudson v. Michigan, which ruled that armed agents of the government can storm your house, seize whatever evidence they find of anything, and use that evidence in court against you. The Hudson v. Michigan ruling strikes directly at the Fourth Amendment, which used to protect citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Feeling his oats, Samuel Alito is. He's the dude who mouthed the words "not true" when President Obama dared criticize the Citizens United decision in his State of the Union address.

George Bush's lasting, poisonous legacy.

Oh Shut Up

Democratic Senators are shocked -- shocked! -- that they were misled by Justices Roberts and Alito in their Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Which tells you everything you need to know for understanding why the Democratic Senate is such a sump of ineptitude.

Governor Tone-Deaf Takes the Stage

Bobby Jindal, the Great Non-White Hope of the Republican Party, decided to remind us all of the ineptness of the Bush administration during the Katrina aftermath by way of making a few points:

1. The Republican Party has lost the trust of the American people, deservedly so

2. Therefore, you should trust us

Governor Jindal had previously pasted an inadequate fig-leaf over his own hypocrisy: he said he would not accept part of the Obama stimulus money for Louisiana -- about 1 percent of it -- while taking the rest of those "irresponsible, wasteful, ridiculous" billions. We want Bobby Jindal to have the courage of his convictions. We want him to reject ALL of that irresponsible, wasteful, and ridiculous stimulus money. Otherwise, we'll conclude that he's actually the Captain Renault of the Republican Party (shocked that there's gambling going on at Rick's) rather than the voice of a reborn political party imbued with virtue and truth.

Because, see, some $175 billion of federal money has been spent in Louisiana since Katrina, which somehow, by some right-wing voodoo, is supposed to prove that the federal government is just evil.

Someone on cable TV referred to Jindal as "Governor Buzz-Kill." Someone on the blogs last night hung this title on his rebuttal of President Obama: "You're On Your Own, America."

Maybe they should have picked Sarah Palin.

FOOTNOTE
Did you see Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito greet the president in the well of the House prior to the speech? Whoa! If body language were toxic, Alito killed every furry animal on Capitol Hill last night.