“7.52pm Applause and Cheers: Gordon Brown arrives at Labour Party headquarters to applause and cheers from staff and political figures there. He produces an actual smile — not the rictus grin to which we’ve become accustomed.” [Times UK]

“Federal, state and local taxes — including income, property, sales and other taxes — consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century.” [USA Today]

• The Carpenters.
• At age 10, seriously considered running to Canada if we were drafted.
• Farted in gym.
• Thought Holy Grail was boring on first viewing.
• Beat up a kid in fifth grade because he was the only one we could.
• Preferred the Monkees to the Beatles.
• Thought we were smoking dope one night in high school, but it turned out to be oregano.
• Flares.
• Once, during a vacation, when we were fighting with our brother in the back seat, Dad really did turn the car around and drive home.
• Didn’t consider at 21 what some asshole might think of us at 50.

Young Kagan’s Thesis on Socialism [NRO]

So, Mr. Plumber, have you ever stolen anything? “When I was a very little boy, I don’t exactly remember it, I guess we were going through a department store and I stole a pair of silk female garments and put them beneath my butt because I apparently liked how it felt.” [AOL News, via Countdown]

Oil spills. Republican idiots screaming about derailing Kagan, preachers pestorking rentboys … we need kittens on a sliding board:

So I’m browsing through The Maine GOP Party Platform/Teabagger Manifesto, (PDF here)when I come across this gem:

b. Seal the border and protect US citizens along the border and everywhere, as is the prime directive of the Federal Government.

So wait… sealing the border is the “prime directive” of the Federal Government? Says who, exactly? And what’s this “prime directive” stuff anyway? As always, Wikipedia can help:

In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the Prime Directive, Starfleet’s General Order #1, is the most prominent guiding principle of the United Federation of Planets. The Prime Directive dictates that there can be no interference with the internal development of pre-warp civilizations, consistent with the historical real world concept of Westphalian sovereignty. It has special implications, however, for civilizations that have not yet developed the technology for interstellar spaceflight (“pre-warp”), since no primitive culture can be given or exposed to any information regarding advanced technology or the existence of extraplanetary civilizations, lest this exposure alter the natural development of the civilization. Although this was the only application stated by Captain Kirk in “The Return of the Archons”, by the 24th Century, it had been indicated to include purposeful efforts to improve or change in any way the natural course of such a society, even if that change is well-intentioned and kept completely secret.

Oh God, has it really come to this? The GOP has been overrun by theocrats, gun nuts, racists and pimply Science Fiction obsessed losers.

We won’t recap Glenn Greenwald’s argument against Elena Kagan here, but his most notable assertion is that nobody knows who she is. Sure, we know her resume, and she’s best buds with a lot of folks, but she’s something of a Chauncey Gardiner when it comes to divining her positions on legal issues. (We prefer that to the Harriet Miers comparison — Kagan’s actually competent at what she does, by all accounts.)

But if you don’t want to hear it from Greenwald, here’s Jeffrey Toobin making the same point from a much friendlier perspective:

I met Elena on our first day of law school at Harvard in the fall of 1983…

Elena danced at our wedding in 1986. When my wife, Amy, and I bought our first apartment, Elena’s father was our lawyer; he had a small real estate law firm in New York. (He died in 1994.) When Elena’s mother died last year, I sat shiva with the family in the apartment where she grew up on the West Side…

All of this may be interesting, but it’s largely beside the point for a Supreme Court Justice. The justices are not really managers of people, certainly not in comparison to the dean of a major law school. Judgment, values, and politics are what matters on the Court. And here I am somewhat at a loss. Clearly, she’s a Democrat. She was a highly regarded member of the White House staff during the Clinton years, but her own views were and are something of a mystery. She has written relatively little, and nothing of great consequence.

We won’t go as far as Greenwald and call Kagan’s supporters mindless camp followers. We’ll just wait for some basis to form a judgment. From what we’ve read so far, none is on offer.

Elena Kagan’s Nomination [New Yorker, via Political Wire]