If we could just get a Democratic majority Congress and a Democrat in the White House again, I'd love to kick McDermott out for a Green. Of course, a Green would caucus with the Dems, so it's not like I really need to wait to vote my heart on that one...

L&T had Christmas decorations for sale and where they were, they were playing Christmas songs. WRONG.

San Francisco is pretty sane about keeping its holidays on track. There's some xmas leakage into the Thanksgiving zone, but that's about it. You can't really start anything ahead of Halloween here because Halloween is such a big deal in The City.

L&T had Christmas decorations for sale and where they were, they were playing Christmas songs. WRONG.

Macy's has had the christmas stuff up for at least a month.

If you think I get cranky about the hoopla in the workplace around a holiday I generally find mildly amusing, just you wait until Christmas, where I get to throw in family obligations and in-laws on top of the overexposure and damned invasive people.

bon, what do you think of Slate's characterization of Alito? He looks extreme right pro-business, pro-law enforcement, pro-guns, anti-civil rights act, anti-abortion in this rundown to me.

I would suspect such a hysterical commentary by Emily Bazelon (who's a hack), and I'm a little bit surprised that it's from Lithwick. My read of Alito is that he's not an ideologue, and that rundown pretty much confuses the man with his decisions. Moreover, I find it funny that she thinks any decision of his rejected by the Court is automatically a bad one-- it's not like she agrees with most of the Court, anyway.

Take this for example:

and his ruling that broadened police search powers to include the right to strip-search a drug dealer's wife and 10-year-old daughter—although they were not mentioned in the search warrant.

Except, well, this was in dissent, so it didn't broaden much; and his ruling was based on the plain language of the warrant, which was a warrant to search the premises and all occupants therein. The fact that he didn't carve out a judicial exception for 10-year-olds doesn't make him a foaming law-and-order reactionary.

I had more to say but I need to get back to work. Anyway, she's taken a lot of license here in painting him as a total crazy person. All I see is a pretty restrained jurist.

Thanks, bon. That's a helpful perspective.

We need to set you up with a Non Politically Motivated Judicial Scorecard website.

bon, thanks for sharing your insight. You make me feel a lot better.

bon bon is the rawkingest.

The Canadian Halloween off thing was jusst was I was told by my Canadian roommate. It may even just have been a (her) school thing.