Not happening!

(guardian.co.uk) In the wake of President Barack Obama’s election win last month – which flew dramatically in the face of Rove and Morris’s confident on-air predictions – the News Corp-owned station is being forced to adjust to a new reality. (EM mine)

Its broadcasting landscape is now one in which four more years of Obama’s presidency stretch out in front of it. That second term was also won in an election many saw as a rejection of a Tea Party-infused Republicanism that saw extreme figures like pizza magnate Herman Cain, social conservatives Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann and even business mogul Donald Trump briefly leading the Republican field.

As a result, some experts see Fox News as having emerged from the defeat of eventual candidate Mitt Romney in the same shape as the Republican party itself – with a somewhat tarnished image. “It was a damaging election for Fox, not so much down to the result, but in the way that it was handled in the weeks leading up to it and in Rove’s famous on-air meltdown,” said professor Jack Lule, a media expert at Lehigh University.

The incident Lule is referring to happened on election night itself when Fox regular Rove questioned the channel’s own polling unit in deciding to call the crucial state of Ohio for Obama. In a remarkable piece of live television – ordered by Fox News’ co-founder Roger Ailes himself – anchor Megyn Kelly and a camera crew then took Rove’s opinion to the Fox decision desk who stood by their call and debunked Rove’s doubts.

Let me just state categorically: Fox News is not adjusting. It is chastising its pundits and news staff for getting things wrong. It is not any type of adjustment towards the center. After the inauguration they will return to attacking President Obama, Democrats, and liberals in the exact same manner they did during the past 4 years. Right now they are just acting subdued and waiting for this embarrassment to pass by.

Even if their ratings drop, they will not change their stance. In fact, the run up to the elections shows they will double down on their approach. Like Republican candidates that failed to win; they just were not conservative enough! Fox News will simple believe they were not supportive enough of the conservative cause. More of the same, only with more effort!

via Michael J.W. Stickings on a post over at The Reaction on a post by Mustang Bobby.

My initial sense is that Chief Justice Roberts (who, I think, thinks about his and his court’s place in history and how he and it will be perceived) will vote with the liberals and that marriage equality will win.

I have to admit, I agree with Michael on this point. When Roberts joined the liberals on ACE he signaled he was more interested in the long view than in maintaining an ideology.

It is important to note that he approached the ACA decision from two different choices, both apparently thought out.

(The Daily Beast) He certainly didn’t trust the dissenters, as he clearly instructed his law clerks to begin working on an alternative majority opinion (the final product was too polished and too long to have been written at the last minute). And he waited to see what was written.

(The Volokh Conspiracy) Notice also that his [Scalia’s] response to Roberts is tacked on at the end, rather than worked into the body of whatever he was writing (see page 64 of his dissent). For example, one would have expected Scalia to directly take on Roberts’ application of the Anti-Injunction Act, but his brief section on that act only mentions what “the Government” argues (see pages 26-28).

Do not for a minute think I believe Roberts is turning liberal. Instead, I believe he is going to make his best effort (we can argue over just how best his effort really is another day) at an unbiased approach towards interpreting the law. All law derives power from the people. At least as far as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is concerned. If Roberts wants to be seen as a defender of the Constitution, I believe he than needs to pay attention to the majority will of the people.

As an aside, has there ever been a United States Supreme Court Judge impeached and removed from the bench? And yes, I am going to do a Google search right after publishing this post.

Update: Well, I found my answer! Samuel Chase was impeached by the House of Representatives but acquitted by the Senate. So he was not removed.

Number of wars to which William Kristol volunteered. 0

Number of wars to which John Kerry volunteered. 1

William Kristol needs to STFU.

(MinnPost) The Dayton administration on Friday sent an early signal to the federal government that Minnesota will pursue a state-run health insurance exchange and apply for an additional $39 million in grant funding to develop the tool, a crucial component of the federal health care reform law.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services postponed two key Friday deadlines till mid-December, but Minnesota pushed ahead anyway, emphasizing Gov. Mark Dayton’s commitment to implementing the exchange. Federal funding for the project will top $100 million if the grant is approved.

With DFL majorities in the Legislature, what once looked like a lonely project for the executive branch has become one of the most important issues for lawmakers this session.

One of the more obvious outcomes of the 2012 election will be the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) in Minnesota. Specifically the health exchange portion of the act. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that Governor Dayton has a mandate, what with both the Minnesota House and Senate returned to Democratic control. The question now is whether the Democrats in control will be hesitant due to the nature of Minnesota Nice, or if they will go ahead and take this mandate out for a test ride.

On a personal note, I struggle with Minnesota Nice. I vacillate with its application. Some days I do not wish to make waves; other days I want to do nothing but push boundaries. It gets me in trouble at work. Oh, and with my relationships. But, what the hell. In the end I will end up dead. And I have come to the conclusion that getting someone’s heart rate running might actually improve their health.

Honest to God! What are they thinking? Any move to impeach President Obama on any of the points mentioned in the robocall that hit at least 4 states will only make the Republican brand that much more worthless.

People in four states — Colorado, New Jersey, Virginia and Washington — have reported strange political robocalls from a birther group called Conservative Majority Fund, saying that they “suspect” Obama may be “guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors,” adding “there may be grounds for impeachment as is laid out in the Constitution.

Continue reading →

I have a damn headache because the weather cannot make up its damn mind. It is warm; it is cold; it is warm; it is cold. It is getting old, is what it is doing.

Please; ignorant people supporting politicians who block any legislation on global warming, would you just do something stupid that gets you killed so we can elect people into congress that will do something to combat global warming.

Wow, that was mean.

Well, that is what happens when I get a headache. I get grumpy.

I had hoped to see more developments in the whole CIA/FBI/Generals investigation. But it is getting boring already. Turns out most of the players are actually really lame.

Still, something is not right about this whole situation. The sex is getting in the way of seeing clearly.

My problem is still the fact that the FBI continued digging into the emails after determining that no law was broken or national security compromised. Their relational just does not sound plausible.

The shocking revelation threatens to fell another of the U.S. military’s biggest names and suggests that the scandal involving Petraeus – a retired four-star general who had Allen’s job in Afghanistan before moving to the CIA last year – could expand much further than previously imagined.

via Top U.S. commander in Afghanistan investigated, Petraeus scandal widens | Reuters.

Seriously. This investigation seems to have uncovered a hornets nest. And my thoughts on Kelley being an innocent bystander are drawn into question.

The U.S. official said the FBI uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of communications – mostly emails and spanning from 2010 to 2012 – between Allen and Jill Kelley, who has been identified as a long-time friend of the Petraeus family and a Tampa, Florida, volunteer social liaison with military families at MacDill Air Force Base.

It was Kelley’s complaints about harassing emails from the woman with whom Petraeus had had an affair, Paula Broadwell, that prompted an FBI investigation, ultimately alerting authorities to Petraeus’ involvement with Broadwell. Petraeus resigned from his job on Friday.

And that is not the only thing that makes Kelley look less the innocent bystander.

U.S. officials had said in recent days that their investigation was largely complete and that prosecutors had determined it was unlikely they would bring charges in that case, which started when Kelley contacted an FBI agent in Tampa about harassing emails from an anonymous source.

That FBI agent, who has not been identified, has also come under scrutiny after it was discovered he had sent shirtless photographs of himself to Kelley, but “long before” this investigation, a law enforcement official told Reuters. The photographs were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The agent had never been on the Broadwell case, but had taken the information about the emails to the FBI cyber squad in Tampa, the law enforcement official said.

I do not know. This could all be way overblown. The raggedy edge of an old-fashioned culture exerting one last hurrah before finally being laid to rest like the rest of its old-fashioned values that never really existed.

Okay, so this article explains more about the start of the investigation. I can understand the rigor to which the FBI pursued the emails.

(Open Source) After Kelley alerted the FBI, agents began pursuing it as a possible case of cyber harassment or stalking. “The thought was she was being followed,” the source said.

The anonymous emails continued — sent from multiple alias accounts — and some later ones in the sequence contained references to Petraeus, though not by name, the source said.

What most alarmed Kelley and the FBI, the source said, were references to “the comings and goings” of high-level generals from the U.S. Central Command, which is based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, and the U.S. Southern Command, as well as Petraeus — including events that were not on any public schedule. This raised the question as to whether somebody had access to sensitive — and classified — information.

Moreover, the sender of the emails had “covered her tracks pretty well,” the source said.

However, once it was determined that no laws were broken, why did the investigation then continue? Because to see if Petraeus was behind the emails is lame beyond all belief. And makes absolutely no sense.

Other post about this subject: In case anyone is wondering; Rove Once Again Leaking CIA Info? What Happened?

Balloon Juice:

I expect the Republican Party and the Conservative movement to fracture. Like the malevolent evil that it is, I expect that neo-Confederate ideology will find a new home in some Conservative third party (perhaps ‘Libertarians’). Wherever it finds sanctuary, it is a force of racism and white supremacy that will plague America for a few more generations. And yet, as of last Tuesday, it will never again have the power it once had.