Here’s a moderately interesting article about the cases on the Supreme Court’s agenda for this year. This article takes the view that nothing exciting will be considered, but I think a few of these mundane issues are very interesting — particularly those about medical marijuana and wine shipments. I read a different article a few months ago that claimed that if the Supreme Court overturns the state laws preventing shipment into the state, it will crumble the PA state liquor store thing and allow anyone to sell booze. Bring it on.
The second court thing is this, which actually happened a few days ago, but is an article about the overturning of a section of the Patriot Act. The piece overturned deals with whether or not the FBI can demand information from companies, like ISPs, without a court order, and then prohibit those companies from ever disclosing that they received such a demand — apparently even to a lawyer. Chiseling away; I like that.
And, finally, in case anyone out there is living completely in a hole and didn’t see the debates or hear any of the aftermath, I would just like to say that I was very impressed with Kerry’s performance. He was clear, straightforward, and made Bush look like a petulant little man. Although one could (and I’m sure Bush’s people will) take snippets of things that Kerry said during the evening and splice them together in such a way as to make him sound like a flip-flopper (Can we say ‘thong’ instead?), I was suprised at the coherence and reasonableness of Kerry’s position on the war in Iraq. I do hate it when he says things like, “I have a plan,” because a) I know he’s just saying that because he has to but, of course, he has planned nowhere the level of detail necessary to really call it “a plan”, and b) it sounds like Nixon. On the other hand, Bush’s “stay the course” and “how can you lead the troops if you don’t think they should be there” rhetoric sounds more like Nixon. But anyway, I hear being like Nixon is cool these days anyway, thanks to Ahhnold, so maybe both candidates are doing that deliberately.
My main point here — Kerry done good. If this continues through the next two debates, I think the Dems have a damn good chance.