If confirmed for the U.S. Supreme Court, federal appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor would be the sixth Catholic to sit on a bench that, before the current crop of justices, had featured only six Catholics in its entire history.
I have been talking about this for years now. Only about 25% of Americans identify themselves as Catholic; but 5 Justices out of 9 is a 55% Catholic Supreme Court, and 6 out of 9 will be a 67% Catholic Supreme Court. (Moreover, 2 out of 9 Jewish Justices is 22% of the Supreme Court, whereas Americans are only 1.3% or so Jewish.)
I think Obama wanted to please his wife, put a second female back on the Court, reach out to the Hispanic vote, and reinvigorate the declining doctrine of unequal protection of the laws (otherwise euphemized as "affirmative action" that Michelle Obama has seemed to be so hot on in the past).
My only consolation so far is seeing the "born-again" Roe plaintiff getting kicked out of the confirmation hearing for protesting what must be Sotomayor's rulings upholding legal abortion.
The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.
What is strange about this is that the Vice-President has no executive authority under the Constitution or any federal legislation I know about. Just goes to show further what a puppet George W. Bush was. Anyone at the CIA who takes "orders" from any Vice-President ought to be fired and -- if the ordered action or inaction is illegal -- prosecuted. "I was just following orders" is no defense if the orders are illegal. Here's an interesting paper (.pdf) on that topic published in the Military Review by one of the U.S. Army's top lawyer-officers. Wikipedia also has an article on the Nuremberg Defense.
Blacks as Conservative as Republicans on Some Moral Issues: "Only 31% of black Democrats in America say homosexual relations are morally acceptable, roughly the same as the 30% of Republicans who agree, while very much different from the 61% of nonblack Democrats who say homosexual relations are morally acceptable."
Trying out the Blogger accelerator in IE8.
I keep trying to tell Memphis "progressive" (read: youngish white) Democrats this.
I was grandfathered in to accessing Hotmail via HTTP mail, but when I bought a new computer with Vista, I couldn't add my Hotmail account to Windows Mail.
Microsoft announced recently that it has opened Hotmail to POP3 access by email programs and posted instructions for adding Hotmail accounts to Outlook Express on this page.
However, I couldn't get it to work with Windows Mail. I came to realize that Microsoft had put a hook in Windows Mail to prevent users from trying to add any Hotmail account using any kind of access.
I devised this workaround: set up a new email account in Windows Mail and specify any standard domain name EXCEPT hotmail.com. Use the defaults for Hotmail POP3 access as given on the instruction page linked above, but do not ask Windows Mail to test the connection. After the account is set up, go in and edit the email address to hotmail.com. Voila, it works. Hotmail will still follow your settings for junk mail, so you may need to check your junk mail folder online at an appropriate interval for false positives.
Cleaning out some saved links, I found this funny Flash I think my mama sent me (until Newsday gets its server issues and Adobe Flash Player certificate problems fixed, I'm having to use an improvised link for the old one that went bad when Newsday changed servers):
I got curious about the new TV chef on Food Network and found that Claire Robinson is from Memphis and used to work at Maggie's Pharm, (website) (recent news story), which has been selling oils, herbs, teas, and such in Overton Square since the 80's. Here's a link to her Food Network bio and a link to the video introducing her to cooking show watchers. Good luck, Claire!
Here in Memphis we need a Feel Good Friday badly this week, so let me nudge my cohorts with this very unusual number.
I was in bed watching this goofy movie Android with Klaus Kinski and fell asleep in the middle of it. I figured that out after I was awakened by a very strange instrumental that was made even stranger by hearing in a half-sleep state. It turned out to be the closing theme over credits of that movie. I was relieved, because there is more than a hint of weirdness in this tune, named after a well-known Italian director of spaghetti westerns, "Sergio Leone", by a Los Angeles 80's new waveart rock group, The Fibonaccis(wiki).
Perhaps shoot-out surrealism matches the week we've had. Click here to hear "Sergio Leone" in a new window.
They did make one video, of their cover of "Purple Haze":
The call went out early this year for volunteers to judge the International Blues Challenge in Memphis in February. I hadn't done any judging since the Memphis Blues Society's preliminary competition a few years ago, so I signed up.
I enjoyed being one of the three who judged one of the two nights at the Hard Rock Cafe venue on Beale Street, despite having to sit in a non-cushioned chair for hours. I had a different judging style than my two fellow, out-of-town judges, who treated their scorecards for each act like a top secret CIA dossier and who made almost no comments out loud. Hell, I wanted them to know what I thought about each act. They were probably just less confident in their blues judgment.
After the results for my venue became known to me, I started questioning the methodology used to select the winners. Each of several venues has something like eight bands that play two nights in succession in the same venue, and the acts are scored by a different set of three judges each of the two nights. Perhaps there is some thought to prevent the two sets of judges from interacting; but if that is the intent, why not have six judges one night, seated apart in the club instead of at the same table as we were? I'd rather interact with all the judges judging the bands at a venue. Sometimes I feel like influencing, be it in the positive or negative direction; and I listen to see if someone has seen or heard something I missed.
I put this in the post-competition survey of judges. I don't think I want to judge a venue the same way next time. I'd be happy to judge the finals, because the panels are not split and judging two different performances on two different nights. I discussed this with a local entertainment writer and musician who also said he didn't want to judge this thing anymore because of being blindsided by other judges' completely contradictory opinions of what a good blues band sounds, looks, and acts like.
Anyway, here are the snaps I took of what I had as the second best band of the venue, and they could have struck me as THE best on another night. They were more of a soul blues band than the others, which is certainly a concept that is popular in Memphis. In fact, the band in the pictures could play at Wild Bill's, and no one would gripe one bit. Researching these guys for this post, I see the drummer and guitar player are veterans of Buckwheat Zydeco's band, so see, I could hear the quality without knowing the bio. Dig it! The Inner City Blues Band! (MySpace site) (band site) (their CD)
Yes, that's a real zoot suit the horn player has on. Here it is closer up.
The guitar player was terrific. Again, I liked one other guitarist just a tiny bit better, but that was a close call. Check this guy out:
Here's my scorecard for this outfit, they were really fine. I had 'em second, but it was close, and maybe I should have reversed my top two.
Some of you are asking, "Who was the band you thought deserved to be first over this band?" Shawn Curle & the 44's. (band site) (Shawn's account on MySpace) I guess I was just a fool for who I thought had the best playing guitar player that night. A major touring act that needs an ace guitar player (like the guy in the other band, Nick Sonye, who goes out with Buckwheat) ought to hire Shawn and relieve him of having to field his own band and carry vocals and just make him use that electric guitar vocabulary and the great technique and tone on semi-hollowbody he showed me a piece of that night. There are a lot of videos of Shawn on YouTube, but what makes me a bit sad is that he has evidently not gotten the production, direction, and focus sufficient to show off his strength. Oh hell, this one is pretty representative sonically (yeah, only it has disappeared, so I had to substitute another one):
You wanna see and hear how the band that made it into the finals from the Hard Rock sounded and looked like the night I judged? Found a video of that too. See what I mean? You wanna see the finals performance of the band that won?
More pictures that stayed in my cell phone until I could transfer them without paying Verizon. I mean, I bought the phone, I'm not leasing it; but they disabled some features in the phone (Motorola E815) before they sold it to me (or had Motorola do it before shipping), like being able to transfer multimedia to/from my PC through USB, Motorola Phone Tools, and the cable that came with it. I had to buy a memory card as a workaround.
Anyway, I snapped these taking a walk on the Vollentine-Evergreen Greenline, a stretch of abandoned L&N Railroad right-of-way. I suspect MLG&W is drilling a new artesian well with this rig, because there are several other wells along the Greenline. I made an inquiry to the appropriate MLG&W official requesting details and received the following from several personnel responding:
This well was a replacement well in the Mallory wellfield. When MLGW purchases well lots, it is done with the intention of having enough real estate to drill two to three wells on that lot. Well 35B is the third well to be drill on this particular lot. Every year, Water Engineering & Operations assess the water well needs of every station. During the last assessment, it was decided that Mallory's wellfield needed more reliable wells. MLGW anticipates wells to last at least 35 years.
This well is about 80% complete, so costs are still accumulating. The estimated total cost of the well is $500,000.
