Friday, February 06, 2009

BUSH JACKETLESS IN OVAL OFFICE: PHOTO FOUND AFTER BUSH CHIEF OF STAFF SLAMS OBAMA'S INFORMAL APPEARANCE.

One day after President Bush's former Chief of Staff Andrew Card blasted President Obama for breaking the Bush dress code, which reportedly required that a jacket be worn by anyone entering the Oval Office, we've unearthed a photo of, well, a jacketless President Bush in the Oval Office.
On Wednesday night, Card told "Inside Edition" that "there should be a dress code of respect....I wish that [Obama] would wear a suit coat and tie."...

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Student gets scolded by Justice Scalia.

February 04, 2009

Florida Student Asks Scalia a Question -- and Gets Scolded
Where others fear to tread, a 20-year-old college student from Tequesta, Fla.,boldly stepped forward Tuesday to ask Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia a question he did not like during a public appearance in West Palm Beach. "That's a nasty, impolite question," said Scalia, himself an expert on tough questioning, and he at first refused to answer it.
This morning we tracked down student Sarah Jeck, the Florida Atlantic University honors college junior who incurred Scalia's wrath, and she seemed a little stunned, but not cowed, by his reaction. "He can dish it out, but he can't take it, I guess," she says. "I'm generally a very polite person. I'm really surprised the way it turned out. It was not a preposterous question."
So what did Sarah Jeck ask that caused the volatile justice to erupt? According to her own notes and this account in today's Sun-Sentinel, Jeck asked whether the rationale for Scalia's well-known opposition to cameras in the Supreme Court was "vitiated" by the facts that the Court allows public visitors to view arguments and releases full argument transcripts to the public, and that justices go out on book tours.
It's that last part that probably grated, because Scalia could, at that precise moment, have been said to be on a book tour. He was speaking before the Palm Beach County Forum Club and Bar Association, while his book -- Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, co-authored by Bryan Garner -- was for sale at a table outside the hall.
Jeck, a political science major, is taking a judicial process class and is looking at the issue of cameras in the courts as her thesis topic. So when she learned Scalia was coming to town, it seemed like a reasonable question to her and her prof Martin Sweet. By tradition, the club invites local university students to forum events and lets them ask questions. "We knew it was a little jab, but his response was unanticipated," she says.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009


Chinese PM Dodges Shoe

World, meet your new favorite form of political protest: A friendly three-day visit to Britain has ended on an awkward note for Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who narrowly avoided being hit by a flying shoe during a lecture at Cambridge University. Wen was wrapping up a speech when a German-accented young man in the audience blew a whistle and shouted, “How can the university prostitute itself with this dictator?” While Bush in December was forced to dodge a pair of dress shoes thrown by an Iraqi journalist, Wen found himself the target of a gray sneaker. And no jokes from Wen on this occasion: He simply paused and said in Chinese: “This despicable behavior cannot stand in the way of friendship between China and the UK.”
Read it at The Times of London
Posted at 11:01 PM, Feb 2, 2009

Monday, February 02, 2009

BUSH WAR CRIMES: EUROPEAN ACTIVISTS CALL FOR BUSH TO BE TRIED FOR TORTURE:

BERLIN, Feb 2 (IPS) - Now that former U.S. president George W. Bush is an ordinary citizen again, many legal and human rights activists in Europe are demanding that he and high-ranking members of his government be brought before justice for crimes against humanity committed in the so-called war on terror.
"Judicial clarification of the crimes against international law the former U.S. government committed is one of the most delicate issues that the new U.S. president Barack Obama will have to deal with," Wolfgang Kaleck, general secretary of the European Centre for Human and Constitutional Rights told IPS.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Phelps Falls from Grace
Olympic golden boy Michael Phelps was photographed smoking a bong at a South Carolina house party and negotiated to have the story buried, the New York Post reports. Phelps' handlers reportedly offered to have the gold medalist contribute a regular column for the British tabloid News of the World and put pressure on sponsors to advertise with the paper in exchange for killing the story, but clearly no such deal was struck. As for the technical merits of Phelps' bong-form: "He looked just as natural with a bong in his hands as he does swimming in the pool," a party-goer recalls. "He was the gold medal winner of bong hits."
Read it at New York Post
Posted at 8:26 AM, Feb 1, 2009