Comments (22)

Michael wrote on November 14, 2007 9:58 AM:

Absolutely on the recess appointment nonsense. Congress should keep the lights on until January 2009 to prevent any further damage being caused by these criminals in the whitehouse.

Alguien wrote on November 14, 2007 10:18 AM:

Why on earth do we have the option of RECESS APPOINTMENT still in existence? Wasn't that supposed to be an archaic practice rarely excercised by any President (except for W)?
Can it be abolished? Don't tell me because it's in the Constitution. Many other things are there as well but have been carelessly ignored in the last 7 years.

Anonymous wrote on November 14, 2007 10:49 AM:

Morton's Fork is an expression that describes a choice between two equally unpleasant alternatives (in other words, a dilemma), or two lines of reasoning that lead to the same unpleasant conclusion.

"Either the nobles of this country appear wealthy, in which case they can be taxed for good; or they appear poor, in which case they are living frugally and must have immense savings, which can be taxed for good."

And then we have:

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement:

One can only wonder what motivated Judith Regan to make a Jewish issue out of her dispute with the News Corporation's HarperCollins. If Ms. Regan did make the charge that a Jewish cabal was conspiring against her, she clearly stepped over the line by employing the age-old anti-Semitic canard that Jews conspire against non-Jews. She also gives credence to the conspiracy theory that Jews control the media.

Whatever her dispute with HarperCollins, the Jewishness of her critics had absolutely no relevance to the matter at hand, which leads one to question why she resorted to raising "the Jewish issue."

Diverik wrote on November 14, 2007 11:03 AM:

Re: Recess Appointments

One of the commenters over at ThinkProgress said that they thought that the President could not legally install someone via recess appointment if they are currently under review by the Senate. Does anyone know if this is true? I researched a little but couldn’t find anything. I did find some information indicating that, under certain circumstances, Congress could refuse to pay a recess appointee.

Excerpt from: http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/RS21308.pdf.

“There are, however, two provisions of law that may prevent a recess appointee from being paid.
Under 5 U.S.C. 5503(a), if the position to which the President makes a recess appointment fell vacant while the Senate was in session, the recess appointee may not be paid from the Treasury until he or she is confirmed by the Senate. The salary prohibition does not apply: (1) if the vacancy arose within 30 days before the end of the session; (2) if a nomination for the office (other than the nomination of someone given a recess appointment during the preceding recess) was pending when the Senate recessed; or (3) if a nomination was rejected within 30 days before the end of the session and another individual was given the recess appointment. A recess appointment falling under anyone of these three exceptions must be followed by a nomination to the position not later than 40 days after the beginning of the next session of the Senate. For this reason, when a recess appointment is made, the President generally submits a new nomination to the position even when an old nomination is pending. In addition, although recess appointees whose nominations to a full term are subsequently rejected by the Senate may continue to serve until the end of their recess appointment, a provision routinely included in an appropriations act may prevent them from being paid after their rejection.”

I think Dr. Holsinger doesn’t meet any of the exceptions. If Bush uses a recess appointment to install him as Surgeon General, could Congress refuse to pay his salary?

TheraP wrote on November 14, 2007 11:51 AM:

Don't miss this Muck! Bridge Ladies, international champions, held up hand-written sign at awards banquet in Shanghai: "We did not vote for bush."

These ladies are now being branded as traitors for doing so! And some want them evicted from bridge!

Click my name for further info/cafe blog post.

Anonymous wrote on November 14, 2007 12:16 PM:

TheraP

Interesting post, yes I'm sure ACBL members are certain to enjoy being told how to think, while it might have been controversal and considered poor decorum by some, it is nonetheless not an act that should impose a sanction.

Whom is Jim Kirkham to "punish" anyone?

“I think an apology is kind of specious,” said Jim Kirkham, who has played in several bridge championships. “It’s not that I don’t forgive them, but I still think they should be punished.”

Mr. Kirkham sits on the board of the American Contract Bridge League, which accounts for a substantial portion of the federation’s financing, Ms. Martel said, and has submitted a proposal that would cut the league’s support for the federation, one of two such proposals pending.

“How did the propaganda paper and the capitalist press arrive at the same relation to the truth? Because all systems are blood brothers. Changing one system for another is not what the Velvet Revolution was for. We have to begin again with the ordinary meaning of words. Giving new meanings to words is how systems lie to themselves, beginning with the word for themselves—socialism, democracy. ... An invasion becomes fraternal assistance, and a parasite can be someone who is punished by unemployment and punished again for being unemployed.”

Anonymous wrote on November 14, 2007 12:26 PM:

P.S. I have to kibbutz over the shoulder of your intellect and surmise that Josh might agree that the Morton Fork as a line of play or logic is not lost upon you.

But I'm so damn tired of the 'opening play' of logic from the neoconservatives, and really feel that they deserve derision if they engage in it (completely non-sequitar logic), to be grandslammed to use a phrase if you will, irresepective of any so called 'sensibilities.'

If anybody should be above: “ganging up, finding common enemies and telling the big lie.”

They at least should avoid using the same logic and arguments that they so vociferously object too.

You get gold points and are a lifemaster if you follow the above.

mo2 wrote on November 14, 2007 12:34 PM:

From The Bridge Ladies article-
"David L. Anderson, a bridge player who supports the team, said it was common to see players at international tournaments sporting buttons bearing the date “1-20-09,” when George W. Bush will hand off to a new president..."

Anonymous wrote on November 14, 2007 1:12 PM:

mo2 and TheraP

I do not Hate Bush as:

The Insanity of Bush Hatred
Our politics suffer when passions overcome reason and vitriol becomes virtue.

BY PETER BERKOWITZ
Wednesday, November 14, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

.................
Finally, another guest, a man I had long admired, an incisive thinker and a political moderate, cleared his throat, and asked if he could interject. I welcomed his intervention, confident that he would ease the tension by lending his authority in support of the sole claim that I was defending, namely, that Bush hatred subverted sound thinking. He cleared his throat for a second time. Then, with all eyes on him, and measuring every word, he proclaimed, "I . . . hate . . . the . . . way . . . Bush . . . talks."..............

I think that that objection is reasonable for anyone whom attended college and has listened to the rationalizations from a peculiar segment of the GOP which is collectively known as Neoconservatives. The statements would ellicit derision in any academic environment where one was held accountable for their statements and as a means to discourage the continued employ of such classically discredited approaches to logic which have as their root the genesis of hate.

As a classic example, the law of the excluded middle:

A simple example of a false dilemma is the following:

"You are either with us or against us. You have refused to join our cause, therefore you must be working against our cause."
This argument is a false dilemma, because it denies the possibility that there is someone who has no interest or is unaware of that cause.

Which was a cornerstone of the policy that Nazism used to persecute Jews and enforce a policy of providing safe harbor and protection under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935.

Section 1
Marriages between Jews and citizens of German or kindred blood are forbidden. Marriages concluded in defiance of this law are void, even if, for the purpose of evading this law, they were concluded abroad.
Proceedings for annulment may be initiated only by the Public Prosecutor.

Section 5
A person who acts contrary to the prohibition of Section 1 will be punished with hard labor.
A person who acts contrary to the prohibition of Section 2 will be punished with imprisonment or with hard labor.
A person who acts contrary to the provisions of Sections 3 or 4 will be punished with imprisonment up to a year and with a fine, or with one of these penalties.

Trust me when I say that it is the MEDIA that enforces the 5th provision of knowingly violating the 1st provisions of these types of acts.

Interestingly?

Friedländer sees Nazism as the negation of all life, and as a type of death cult. He has argued that the Holocaust is such a horrific event that its horror is almost impossible to put into normal language.

(Good point! It is a distortion of language)

Friedländer sees the anti-semitism of the Nazi Party as unique in history,

(All sick tyrants claim that history is at a crossroads as a premise for their hate speech,)

as he maintains that Nazi Anti-Semitism was distinctive for being “redemptive anti-semitism”, namely a form of anti-semitism that could explain all in the world and offer a form of “redemption” for the anti-Semitic.

(And as always this intolerance is wrapped in a burning cross or some distorted tie in to religion.)

These true believers always initiate their goals in language, and always have accomplaces in the media, and always use their extra judicial powers upon the people that they claim initially to protect. But they always start first with the language and the intellect is often too 'polite' to call them out concerning their ridiculous statements.

We are taught to be tolerant and polite to the intellectually deficient, the uneducated, but when they start spewing hate these people should be exposed irrespective of their religion, and actually.. the sacred cow makes the best hamburger when it comes to exposing these lurid and insidious arguments.

slb wrote on November 14, 2007 2:09 PM:

>>I think that that objection is reasonable for anyone whom attended college<<

OK, I'm sorry: when someone insists on using "whom" and then uses it incorrectly, I cannot take seriously anything more they have to say. That's my failing, I know, but my mind shuts off when I encounter that particular lapse, and I just have to skip to the end of the piece.

Yellow Dog wrote on November 14, 2007 3:07 PM:

Bible Belt Blogger is based in ARKANSAS, not Kentucky. We're inflicted with enough wingnut freakazoid bloggers already - don't dump that one on us.

TheraP wrote on November 14, 2007 4:42 PM:

How is it that one's membership in an "association" abrogates one's First Amendment Rights?

Plus, to quote HB, who responded to my post:

"It is not fair for bridge players to criticize GWB. He exemplifies something essential to playing every hand of bridge.

The dummy."

Mary wrote on November 14, 2007 5:45 PM:

heck, it wasn't even a "criticism" They didn't call him a toady or say they did not vote for "the man who put the "W" in war criminal"

Just a statement of fact - they didn't vote for him.

How stupid and petty can Martel go? And who are the bridge corporate sponsors bc if that is the supposed issue, maybe they need to get on board and fess up how they do or do not feel about freedom of speech. It would have been a nice element for the reporter to have contacted one or two corporate sponsors to see if the hypedsteria that the financial underpinnings of contract bridge in the US would fail bc of the unless all-Quieta is allowed to take control of the bridge tournies might stand some fleshing out.

bob wrote on November 14, 2007 6:51 PM:

This makes you real confident about the FBI and CIA:

She acknowledged that after overstaying her visa, she had illegally offered money to an unemployed American man to marry her in 1990, which allowed her to remain in the United States as his wife, although the couple never lived together.

She then submitted a series of false and forged documents to obtain American citizenship, which she was granted in 1994. She obtained a divorce the next year and worked in a series of jobs, including as a waitress and hostess in a chain of Middle Eastern restaurants in the Detroit area owned by her brother-in-law.

In 1997, she was hired as a special agent of the F.B.I., which has been under pressure for years to hire more agents and other employees who speak Arabic for terrorism investigations. She was assigned to the bureau’s Washington field office, given a security clearance and placed in “an extraterritorial squad investigating crimes against U.S. persons overseas,” the Justice Department said in a statement to reporters.

Ms. Prouty acknowledged two sets of illegal computer searches at the F.B.I. The first, in September 2002, involved case files that contained her name, her sister’s name or her brother-in-law’s name. The second, in June 2003, involved files from a national-security investigation of Hezbollah that was being conducted in Detroit, which has one of the nation’s largest Arabic-speaking communities.

The court papers say Ms. Prouty’s crimes first became known to the F.B.I. in December 2005 and have been under investigation for nearly two years. The documents suggest that she came under scrutiny as part of an investigation of her brother-in-law, Talal Khalil Chahine, in a scheme to funnel millions of dollars from his restaurant to people in Lebanon. Mr. Chahine is a fugitive from tax evasion charges filed in Michigan.

Anonymous wrote on November 14, 2007 7:38 PM:

to slb

We have a joke here in Boston about this: Harvard freshman: Where's the Library at? Harvard senior: Here at Hahvahd we don't end our sentences with a preposition. Harvard freshman: OK, then, where's the library at, asshole?

Who is that masked man? (subject)

The men, four of whom are ill, were indicted for fraud. (object)

You must have attended Hahvahd with George and share his peculiar grammatical and philosphical license.

The usage was correct as an object of being educated and gender nuetral.

Anonymous wrote on November 14, 2007 7:50 PM:

To TheraP

I find that attitude disturbing as well that by playing bridge one abrogates one's First Amendment Right. Would corn rows in their hair have mortified the Bridge community leadership?

On George W. Bush playing bridge, well that is strategery where one makes deductions based on a bidding sequence prior to a finite number of cards being played and then evaluating that line of play or endgame against all the team players of the identical table to see if the logical contract can be made.

I think that in the case of GWB a director would be called and he would legitimately be removed from a game. He would insist that there was a bid similar to WMD based on faith and not in the cards in his hand.

Paranoid yet? wrote on November 14, 2007 8:45 PM:

Get this: Rupert Murdoch plays bridge.

The guy is also the connecting link between Guiliani, Kerik, and Judith Regan.

How much of this is all interconnected?

Some things may just be chance. But which things?

Anonymous wrote on November 14, 2007 9:22 PM:

I still think the news event of the day was this thread. I bet Judith Regan has phone conversations taped.

Laughing...

I had some intellectual synergy with TheraP a while back, the fact that she either plays or follows bridge is not a surprise.

I would suggest a adhoc vote of new board members at the next national event.
Debbie Rosenberg to replace Jan Martel, president of the United States Bridge Federation.

Honestly the game is a gathering of elite intellectuals internationally when played at this level. I imagine many would prefer that they represented a flag that did not represent 'coercion.'

I use coercion in deference to Lindsey Graham whom I like.

signed GOP ACBL

Grammatica wrote on November 14, 2007 10:40 PM:

Anonymous,

"Whom is Jim Kirkham to "punish" anyone?"

Nope, it's "who." With the verb "to be," the subject (used to be called nominative) form of the pronoun is used. ("Who's calling?" "It is I, Grammar Pedant!")

"P.S. I have to kibbutz over the shoulder of your intellect . . ."

Yikes! "Kibbutz" is that commune over in Israel, while "to kibitz" is to offer unwanted commentary or advice.

"I think that that objection is reasonable for anyone whom attended college and has listened to the rationalizations from a peculiar segment of the GOP which is collectively known as Neoconservatives."

Nope, it's "who." Diagram the sentence: "for anyone" begins a prepositional phrase. The clauses that follow by meaning (who attended college and who has listened) are the same form that would be used for a simple question and response: "Who has attended college?" "I have!" "Who" is the subject, not the object. "College" is the object. The repetition of "who" is implied in the structure, and the words "who has listened" give you the subject and the verb, followed by the object, "to the rationalizations."

And using "which" in the sense you do is correct in England (where they do lots of funny things), but not here in Amurrica. You've gotta use "that." It's the accepted usage here. Unless, of course, you want your final clause to be almost a throwaway: ". . . a peculiar segment of the GOP, which is collectively known as Neoconservatives." Once you use that comma, setting off a "which" clause (or commas, depending upon the sentence structure), you're giving your reader the option of treating it parenthetically. (I like my parenthetical thoughts to be read, but that's the risk I take when I use that punctuation.) In US usage, the comma is mandatory when using "which" in any way other than referring to a choice.

Oh, and the extra "that" at the start of your sentence was superfluous. The first one, not the second one.

"The usage was correct as an object of being educated and gender nuetral."

Nope (see above), and I always set the brake when I park my car in gender neutral.

"The statements would ellicit derision in any academic environment where one was held accountable for their statements . . ."

Hmm, "ellicit." Draw out illegally? Elicit is the ticket.

Anyway, I think you owe slb a sheepish apology.

Anon wrote on November 14, 2007 11:18 PM:

"The Committee is yet to speak to Craig himself" should be changed to "the committee has yet to speak to Craig himself."

v. popvli wrote on November 15, 2007 3:50 PM:

thanks grammatica, and well said. saved me the trouble.

Ron wrote on November 17, 2007 11:35 AM:

The latest word is that Holsinger has resigned his current job in anticipation of Bush's recess appointment.

On another note, If a Democrat moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 2008, I hope they have the good sense to run a "BUG" scan of the entire building before they take up residence.