Get out of the way, apparently: “Gordon Brown has said he is stepping down as Labour Party leader — as his party opens formal talks with the Lib Dems about forming a government. Mr Brown, prime minister since 2007, said he hoped a successor as Labour leader would be in place by September.” [BBC]

In our latest episode of ConLaw Obama is to Civil Liberties what MBA Bush was to the Economy, we’ve been learning the past few days that Eric “Midnight Pardons” Holder is invoking a “public safety exception” to Miranda rights that allows agents to question suspected terrorists for a few hours before letting on that they don’t have to talk. (They’re talking afterwards anyway, but we’ll let Liz Cheney lie about that one.)

We’ll get to the details in a moment, but the exception is based on a 1984 Supreme Court ruling that Holder has been artfully interpreting. Under the ruling, if there’s an immediate danger to address, you can wait a moment before pulling out the Miranda card. Holder waited more than a few moments in the cases of the Underwear Bomber and the Times Square Nickname Pending, and now he wants to formalize his improvisation:

The public safety exception was really based on a robbery that occurred back in the ’80s and something to do with a supermarket. We’re now dealing with international terrorists, and I think that we have to think about perhaps modifying the rules that interrogators have and somehow coming up with something that is flexible and is more consistent with the threat that we now face.

Because, as they say, two failed bombings changed everything.

Of course, we understand what Holder’s getting at. Both Miranda and its exception were based on everyday cop-show crimes. Here we’re facing potential networks of violent crime, something we’ve never seen before. Unless you count the Mafia. Or gangs. Or the Weathermen.

But since we’re stuck with the issue this week, let’s ground ourselves before the abstractions start hitting the fan.

Read more »

Lena Horne, Singer and Actress, Dies at 92 [NYT]

ith apologies to Monty Python, I’d like for you to try a thought experiment. Imagine being a fly on the wall at a gathering of Tea Party intelligentsia. Now, imagine leaving that empty room and attaching yourself to a wall in an adjacent quarters that is playing host to a gathering of hysterical, conspiracy obsessed Tea Party organizers planning their next rabble rousing rally. Amid the fiery rhetoric and lunatic invective, the leader stands up and demands “What has Obama ever done for America?”

Then, unexpectedly, at the back of the room a solitary individual who didn’t get the memo about our president being the Antichrist, timidly responds by producing the following three charts. Read more »

The Fiat Ritmo was sold here in the US of A as the Fiat Strada. It was supposed to be the Italian Rabbit killer.  The only car that drew more derision from the automotive press was the Renault Le Car (the Renault 5 in France), and rightly so.

[via]

Last night’s shrimp mornay was good – not as good as I’d remembered, but good.

Not nearly as many ingredients as the beef bourguignon.

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Looks like the pick for the Supreme Court slot is coming in.  Tomorrow’s Headlines Today — Meet the Press head goon D. Gregory asked Atty. Gen. Holder about the pick, and he said, “soon, baby.”  And then Gregory asked Holder specifically about Elena Kagan — but nobody else, before moving on, quickly, to the shithead who tried to blow up his SUV in Times Square.

If you’re a degenerate gambler and near a bookie who takes bets on Supreme Court picks, if the odds are any better than even money, I’d put a fiver on her.  Just a guess.

ADD: Politico (via TPM) basically have the same thing, as of yesterdayish.  So this is one of two things — (1) Gregory parroting what Politico said, or (2) an actual, honest to God “thing.”  The way Holder responded tells me it’s quite possibly a real-thing.  He didn’t throw out the obligatory “if she’s the nominee” until after giving a spiel about who wonderful she is.  Also.