LSAT BLOG DELAYS

ARGH THE ANALYTICAL SECTION IS EATING MY SOUL

Very quick blog post here. I'm terribly busy studying for my big LSAT exam on Saturday at some ungodly hour in the morning, but I figured I'd put something out here just for habit's sake.

Edwards Out; I Mourn
First Dodd dropped out, one of the very few men in the Senate, or anywhere else, for that matter, willing to stand up for the rule of law against warrantless wiretapping. He based his campaign on noble Constitutional principles and got completely ignored, which is a pity.

Yet, when he was free of the campaign, what did he do? He went right back to fighting the warrantless wiretapping and telecom-amnesty bill in the Senate, and won. Twice, so far.

He would have made a fine President.

Now we have Edwards stepping aside, in no small part due to the abysmal performance he got in the Nevada caucus. It was the first time they ever conducted one, caucuses are designed to ensure that only two candidates get any real support because of their run-off nature, so he was doomed from the start, but he seems to have taken it personally, which is a real shame.

Edwards stood for the poor, the downtrodden, for everyone who's lost out in the marvelous Bush 'economy'. He's fought this same fight for decades, to mockery, to attacks, and to deafening silence. I expect he'll keep fighting it. Good for him.

Now we're left with whoever the Republicans dig out of the crypt, and the lesser of two mediocrities on the Democratic side. All the idealism and vibrancy has been systematically drained out of this primary season, leaving a group of candidates with all the appeal of cold gruel, or in Obama's case, all the substance of a marshmallow.

Sigh. I keep telling myself, at least it won't be Bush...

Source: Raw Story

For information on the Telco Immunity Bill, go to Firedoglake. They have a lot of material, and liveblog it whenever the bill comes up in the Senate.

New York City Wants to Secede
So here's the deal: NYC pays the state of New York 11 billion dollars more in taxes each year than it gets back in services. This has left the city somewhat unhappy, and proposing to secede from the state of New York.

Now, I know that word secession has nasty, Confederate connotations from the Civil War, but remember, there's legal precedent for seceding from a STATE but staying in the COUNTRY; we let West Virginia do it during the Civil War, after all.

(It's a sad sign of what a comic book nerd I am that I keep thinking of Marvel when I type 'Civil War')

At any rate, there's a plan going around to change that pay imbalance the hard way:

Emboldened by Mayor Bloomberg's testimony in Albany this week that the city's taxpayers pay the state $11 billion a year more than they get back, a City Council member is offering legislation that would begin the process of having New York City secede from New York State.

Peter Vallone Jr., a Democrat who represents Queens, is pushing the idea, and the Council plans to hold a hearing on the possibility of making New York City the 51st state.

"I think secession's time has definitely come again," Mr. Vallone, who spearheaded a similar push in 2003, told The New York Sun yesterday. "If not secession, somebody please tell me what other options we have if the state is going to continue to take billions from us and give us back pennies. Should we raise taxes some more? Should we cut services some more? Or should we consider seriously going out on our own?"

I'm all for it, on paper at least. In practice though, as the article points out, there would be some issues with this plan.

He added that Albany and the rest of New York north of the Bronx border does have some redeeming qualities. "The city needs upstate — it's where the city gets its water. It dumps its prisoners upstate," Mr. Stern said.

I left out Mr. Stern's quote immediately preceding that because he said you can't secede from a state, which I already mentioned is actually not true.

There's also the matter of the fact that the people who'd have to vote on this plan are, err, unlikely to support it.

Mr. Vallone's legislation would create a commission to study the issue and then recommend whether to put it to a referendum. Since secession would have to be approved by the Albany legislators, its passage would be unlikely. Another to council member, Simcha Felder, who chairs the Governmental Operations committee, said the bill will be considered this year.

This is how governmental inertia works, folks. Revolutions are hard to conduct. That's sort of the idea.

Source: The New York Sun

Oh, Now THIS is Going to Be a Headache
The Kosovar government is threatening to announce its independence from Serbian Yugoslavia as soon as the Serbs finish their election.

This absolutely cannot go well.

Kosovo will proclaim independence within days of Serbia's presidential election on Sunday regardless who wins, the breakaway province's prime minister said Wednesday.

"The developments in Serbia do not have any influence on Kosovo. Kosovo has its own path," said Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci.

Hardline nationalist Tomislav Nikolic will dispute the Serbian presidency with pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic in a runoff vote on Sunday. Opinion polls indicate the political battle is too close to call.

"The independence of Kosovo will happen in the next few days, regardless if Tadic or Nikolic wins," Thaci told journalists in the provincial capital Pristina.

Pressed to predict a possible date for a declaration, a senior Kosovo government official told AFP: "I would choose the second or third week of February.

Man, Putin's going to put his boot down if that happens, and then we'll be in the mess, and we're talking thick.

Sigh. Kind of wish we still had our international credibility and military presence, huh?

Source: Raw Story

Billy Boy Earns My Respect Again
Now he's on target, putting that temper of his where it belongs: aimed directly at the lunatic fringe.

The Clinton campaign may be stopping President Bill from taking on Senator Barack Obama in his public appearances on his wife's behalf. But that doesn't mean he can't go on the rampage against '9/11 hecklers.'

"9/11 was not an inside job, it was an Osama Bin Laden job," President Clinton proclaimed in the campaign stop.

"We look like idiots, folks, denying that the people who murdered our fellow citizens didn't when they are continuing to murder people all around the world," he added. "So we heard from you, you go away."

Bravo, Billy. It's beneath the Former President of the United States to talk whacko conspiracy theories with some crackpot glue-huffer, and you told him as much, though in much nicer language.

My hat, if I wore one, would be off to you today.

Source: Raw Story

Roommate's Assignment
This is what my roommate had to turn in as an assignment for a class, when asked for a small bit of flash animation: an Old One slaughtering some poor scientists at the Mountains of Madness.