In Apprehension

Good News!

An anti-immigrant provision was stripped from the stimulus bill; naturally, this has the Know Nothings in a tizzy.

More From Big Picture

I just adore this shot from the Globe's new photo essay on Belarus, showing a badly drawn border splitting a town between Belarus and Lithuania (make sure to click through for the caption).

(AP Photo / Sergei Grits)

And So It Goes

Mayor Daley reacts to DC Vs. Heller:

An angry Mayor Daley, speaking at Navy Pier, called the Supreme Court's overturning of the D.C. gun ban "a very frightening decision" and vowed to fight vigorously any challenges to Chicago's ban.

He said he was sure mayors nationwide, who carry the burden of keeping cities safe, will be outraged by the decision...

The city was expected to publicly respond to the court decision later Thursday. A spokeswoman for the city's Law Department said the decision would need to be reviewed to see how it affects Chicago, since the city was not directly involved in the suit.

Meanwhile, in Joliet, another sterling example of a gun in the home for self-defense:

A 3-year-old Joliet boy died Wednesday afternoon after a loaded handgun he was playing with went off in his home on the city's east side.

The child, Julius Rogers, apparently was alone in the living room playing with a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun around 12:40 p.m. when it fired a round that hit him in the head, said Joliet Police Chief Fred Hayes.

Good News, Everyone!

The gradual destruction of state-sponsored murder continues apace.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday outlawed executions of people convicted of raping a child.

In a 5-4 vote, the court said the Louisiana law allowing the death penalty to be imposed in such cases violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

"The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion.

Leno LOLs (or lack thereof)

Well, apparently some people aren't happy with Jay Leno and for once it's not due to his being the unfunniest show on TV (besides According To Jim, of course). No, it appears this time he's a casual homophobe:

Last week, it was an interview with Ryan Phillippe, during which he asked the actor to look into the camera, pretend it was his "gay lover…Billy Bob," who "has just ridden in shirtless from Wyoming (still milking the Brokeback jokes, I guess), and give it his "gayest look."

Phillippe responded, incredulously, "Wow. That is so something I don't want to do."

Lovely.  Some other people respond at the level this "joke" deserves.

The Ballot

The ballot.
Originally uploaded by slackmistress

So this, apparently, is what the WGA strike-ending ballot looks like (courtesy of WGA member Slackmistress).

Good News, Everyone!

Way back in my old high school district (which I never attended but I'm still a 214 boy at heart), we've had our first judicial weigh-in on Illinois' new mandated prayer law:

A federal judge today issued a preliminary injunction barring a suburban school district from implementing the state's new law mandating a moment of silence at the start of classes, calling the statute too vague and "likely unconstitutional."...

...Gettleman said the Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act isn't specific enough about what is a "moment" and when it should take place. It also may cross the line into unconstitutionality by giving students a choice to pray, the judge said.

So, we'll see what happens tomorrow when return to the Dirksen County Courthouse (coincidentally, right across the street form my office) to make their arguments.  My guess is that the Illinois lawyers will make some lame argument about how a choice to pray in a mandated moment of prayer isn't crossing the line, and the lawyers for Mr. Sherman (local church-state separation advocate) will argue that calling it a "moment of silence" was a clear attempt to slip a mandated prayer time into public schools.  Oh wait, they've already noted what every person knows:

Gregory Kulis, Sherman's attorney, argued the statute is clearly an attempt to inject and endorse religion in public schools.

(Incidentally, can anyone recommend a good web designer in the Chicago area for Rob Sherman?  He could really use one.  Even more so, he could use someone to persuade him not to use a picture of himself in a tan suit and purple cowboy hat.)

Gun Rights

Well, looks like I've found a reason to respect the Mayor of DC; he declared yesterday that DC will appeal to the Supreme Court after their quite reasonable ban on handguns was struck down by an appeals court back in March.

District of Columbia officials said Monday they plan to petition the Supreme Court as they seek to defend the city's 30-year-old ban on most handguns.

A federal appeals court panel struck down the law in March, rejecting the city's argument that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applied only to militias. The full appeals court refused to reconsider the decision in May. The law has remained in effect during the appeals process.

"We believe we are right on the law and we hope the Supreme Court will agree with us," D.C. Attorney General Linda Singer said.

Should be interesting - this is apparently only the first time in 70 years that the Supreme Court has taken up a case that looks at the extent of the Second Amendment, and one can only hope this time DC doesn't have to deal with judges who can't read:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Perhaps we'll get lucky and this time the NRA straw man of "personal defense" will finally start to be shown up for the sham that it is.  DC and Chicago have bad enough murder rates with the bans on gun ownership that we have, what with guns being smuggled from less reasonable areas that still allow the sales of murder weapons willy-nilly, without even more guns flooding our streets.

(Incidentally, the US Supreme Court at the last time they took up the issue, rejected that the 2nd Amendment allowed for ownership of handguns):

"The ACLU agrees with the Supreme Court's long-standing interpretation of the Second Amendment [as set forth in the 1939 case, U.S. v. Miller] that the individual's right to bear arms applies only to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia. Except for lawful police and military purposes, the possession of weapons by individuals is not constitutionally protected. Therefore, there is no constitutional impediment to the regulation of firearms." --Policy #47

(Edit: News story via DC Metblogs, which has a slightly different take on the news.)

Closing Tabs

• Unintended consequences of the racist border fence on the US-Mexico border. Antonio N. Zavaleta, a vice president and professor of anthropology at the University of Texas branch in Brownsville, saw a slight problem in the route of a border fence that federal officials displayed at a community meeting earlier this month. “Part of our university,” Dr. Zavaleta said, “would be on the Mexican side of the fence.” What about traffic between classes, he wondered. “Would the students need to show a passport?”
• Growing up on Nancy Drew, an interesting column on the effects Nancy Draw had on women over the past 70 years.  Me, I was more into the Hardy Boys just because they had a speedboat named Sleuth.
• Michael "Punchy" Barrett has been traded to the Padres.  The Cubs received some magic beans.  Micahel Downey has an interesting commentary in the Chicago Tribune.  (Interesting to find in a quick Wikipedia search that there was a Fenian named Michael Barrett who was hung in 1868 for his part in the Clerkenwell bombing of innocent civilians in London.)
• Stupid headline of the day: Will Fatherhood Affect Tiger's On-Course Performance?  Hell, I don't know; let's ask Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Phil Mickelson, Nancy Lopez, Tom Watson and a host of other great golfers who had kids during their careers whether their performances were affected. (The conversation is much less goofy; I'm just ripping on the headline itself.)
• Oooooh, new iPhone porn.  Sadly, still no picture of the Bluetooth headseat.
• We've been debating the revision of AFI's list of the top 100 movies over at A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago, and seeing which ones from the eligible list we'd add and which ones from the current list we'd drop.  For instance, my list of adds:

LA CONFIDENTIAL
BOOGIE NIGHTS
THREE KINGS
THE SIXTH SENSE (what kind of horror movie makes you cry at the end?)
THE INSIDER
BEING JOHN MALKOVICH
REQUIEM FOR A DREAM
MEMENTO
FINDING NEMO
LOST IN TRANSLATION
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
CRASH
HOTEL RWANDA

But where's "Adaptation?"

And since I didn't do the bump last time, you drop:

4. GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) (I'm boggled this is on the original list for anything besides technical reasons; it's an awful piece of sappy historical revisionism)
7. THE GRADUATE (1967) (Wow, did this movie date badly.)
33. HIGH NOON (1952) (Same thing.)
41. WEST SIDE STORY (1961) (Barely cracks the list of bets 50 musicals much less movies in general.)
62. TOOTSIE (1982) (I don't understand the appeal of this weirdly un-funny movie.)
71. FORREST GUMP (1994) (I like it, but let's get serious.)
75. DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990) (No. One of the worst Kevin Costner movies, which is really saying something.)
99. GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (1967) (Another movie that has sadly dated badly, since the acting is sublime.)

Any disagreements with my lists?

Thursday Link Dump

• The anti-immigrant bill failed a test vote in the Senate, good news for both sides in that (a) no immigrants will be fooled into thinking that if they go into voluntary exile, spend thousands of dollars and years of time begging that they just might be allowed back home, and (b) the anti-immigrant forces can claim that they won based on their claims that the bill proposed "amnesty."
• A Thundercats movie?  Count me out.
• Hey, habeas corpus might be coming back.
• I have no interest in Lollapalooza, but does anyone know where I can find a full version of the blackboard in that picture from The School of Rock?
• Follow the 2007 MLB draft here.