Right wing commentators from Rush Limbaugh to Newt Gingrich to Tom Tancredo have gone out to their way to label Judge Sonia Sotomayor a Hispanic racist, basing their assessment on one sentence taken out of context from a larger speech.

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Conservatives like Limbaugh and Gingrich have used this one sentence to claim that Sotomayor is a Hispanic supremacist who thinks that a Latina can interpret the U.S. Constitution better than a white male. Once seen in the broader context of Sotomayor’s remarks, however, it is clear that she is, in fact, making this claim only for cases involving discrimination against women and Hispanics (a far less controversial stance).

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For Thursday, May 28 I would like to nominate, as douchebag of the day, Wendy Long, legal counsel to and spokesperson for the reactionary Judicial Confirmation Nutworks. This outfit has placed itself at the forefront of the virulently unhinged, dangerously unbalanced right-wing smear campaign that is being waged against Sonia Sotomayor, Barack Obama’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, and Ms. Long has stepped up eagerly and enthusiastically to carry its misguided banner.

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Did’ya hear? Dick Cheney gave a speech today. And all the big networks covered it and broadcast it live because… hey… when the guy who ran the country so expertly for eight years gives a speech, the American people want to hear what he has to say… if only for the sake of nostalgia.

The speech itself was long and boring and all about what an awful person that Barack Obama fellow is because he doesn’t want to waterboard prisoners any more to figure out once and for all where Saddam hid those darned, elusive WMDs.

And while the speech is too long and boring to reprint in its entirety (or even to quote from at length) it does have one redeeming virtue, and that’s that you can summarize Cheney’s entire argument (indeed, his philosophy of government) by quoting just one sentence from it. Read more »

In the late 18th century, at the height of the European intellectual, scientific, cultural and political, transformation that historians refer to as the Enlightenment, a group of radical French philosophers led by Denis Diderot sought to create a vast catalog that would represent a compendium of all human knowledge.  “All things,” they explained,  “must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone’s feelings.” Thus was born the Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métier.

It was a noble goal, to be sure, but one that critics then and now have insisted could never possibly be fulfilled. The vastness of human knowledge is so great that no work could possibly encompass and present it all.

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Nancy Pelosi’s accusation that the CIA misled her in 2002 when she was briefed on the possible use of harsh interrogation techniques in connection with the war in Afghanistan has raised eyebrows among right-wing commentators and politicians:

The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee is calling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s accusation that the CIA misled her and others about waterboarding a massive attack on the nation’s intelligence community.

Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri on Friday contradicted Pelosi’s claim and called her criticism a tragedy. Bond said in a “Today” show interview that he reviewed the CIA’s material and it was clear that she had been informed about the enhanced interrogation method.

However, Bond said he was not with Pelosi when the spy agency briefed her.

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Have you heard about the new flu that threatens to turn our brains to a mass of jiggling Jello and fill the streets of our major cities with flesh eating Zombies? I’m talking about the Mexican flu. Haven’t heard of that one yet? Maybe you were preoccupied by the recent swine flu epidemic and didn’t hear about the Mexican flu. I’ll bet if that’s the case, then you probably haven’t heard of the Obama flu either. If so, don’t worry. I’ll let you in on a little secret: they’re all the same disease. It’s just that different people like to call it by different names. Let me toss another name out for you: the H1N1 virus. That’s what scientists like to call the new flu strain, because they’re all into funny names that make no sense at all and like to make the rest of us feel stupid. H1N1… wasn’t that one of the robots from Star Wars?

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If you’re holding something valuable and fragile in your hand, right now, I suggest you put it down before reading what follows. That’s because if you’re holding, say, that coffee cup your kid decorated for you at day care, or a cell phone, or, more likely, that precious Fabergé egg your grandmother willed you before she passed away, you’re going to be overcome with an uncontrollable urge to smash is against the wall when you read of the latest twist in the saga of General Motors’ struggle for survival.

The twist appears in a New York Times article, published today, entitled “G.M.’s Latest Plan Envisions a Much Smaller Automaker.” The article expands on some of the drastic cuts that the General is finding itself forced to make in order to soldier on as a viable automaker in this terrible economy and a changed industrial landscape far less suited to the current model of the American Automotive manufacturer:

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