January 30, 2012 at 12:47PM

RT @jdickerson: Late endorsing politicians of losing candidates should avoid deck chairs on the Titanic metaphors. http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/164072199819505664

January 30, 2012 at 12:33AM

http://t.co/M53sRJ4 http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163887584341266432

January 28, 2012 at 08:03AM

http://t.co/KlIPfxd http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163276120639279105

January 28, 2012 at 08:01AM

RT @NewYorker: Daily Comment: What government debt did for Romney at Bain: http://t.co/Y16thPzs http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163275462771097600

January 28, 2012 at 07:53AM

RT @TwistedSifter: Picture of the Day: Graffiti by the 1% http://t.co/d7dp8mVH http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163273602060398592

January 28, 2012 at 07:48AM

http://t.co/F2Z6EGR http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163272278400958464

January 28, 2012 at 12:48AM

http://t.co/DehT3KS http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163166482849742848

January 28, 2012 at 12:03AM

http://t.co/ZK8RMm1 http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163155210775171074

January 27, 2012 at 11:59PM

Romney’s ‘Blind Trust’ Was Not Very Blind http://t.co/CQIuATM http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163154270160560128

January 27, 2012 at 11:48PM

http://t.co/YW18wr9 http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163151412891623424

January 27, 2012 at 11:37PM

EBay Official: Company Won’t Move Jobs To Utah If It Doesn’t Pass LGBT Employment Protections http://t.co/2WqHeCw http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163148680172552192

January 27, 2012 at 11:33PM

http://t.co/0WYCcOl http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163147590060343296

Echoes

When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies - to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.
Robert F. Kennedy, Cleveland, Ohio, April 5, 1968.

I just finished watching a documentary on RFK's funeral train and I heard this quote. Sadly, Bobby's speech seems as true in 2012 as is was in 1968.

I know I have not written here in ages and the habit has died out. But the spirit and the need have not. Do not think that I have not missed writing my thoughts to you or hearing your comments and responses. Know only that the luxurious fleeting moments of time have been spent with family and friends. Still, I regret my neglect of my online friends and the community of minds that can connect over the Internet through an idea. Like wiretapping and torture are wrong and make us less safe, that our time, treasure, lives, and international regard were needlessly squandered in the sands of Iraq. And yet we as a people need to attempt to see the world through someone else's eyes, and not immediately separate and demonize those who disagree with us.

My hope now is that these thoughts will no longer have to echo through time so that the lessons will not have to be relearned generation by generation.

January 27, 2012 at 09:18PM

http://t.co/fuO02ef http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163113658740781057

January 27, 2012 at 09:12PM

S.L. Co. Councilman Randy Horiuchi suffers stroke http://t.co/pDatagN http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163112152276811776

Clearly Obama did not think the government would be operating today. The Lincoln Memorial visit was supposed to be a backdrop for a speech about the government shutdown. Instead, it was more Beltway mythology about bipartisanship. Democrats are still demoralized and need Obama to pick a fight, not pick up GOP talking points. The about cut matters to those programs and people effected by it, but have nothing to do with the budget deficit.

For some reason, I find it hard to get worked up over the looming shut down of the federal government. Congressional Dems can't negotiate their way out a paper bag, GOPers only care about hurting things Dems care about and tax cuts, but do not care about the Deficit. And Obama cares about reelection.

the undo something congress

Harry Truman famously labeled the 80th (1947-49) Congress the Do Nothing Congress, while the 110th (2009-2011) Congress has been called the Do Something Congress due to the Democratic Majority's penchant for passing lots of big legislation during their brief period of having 60% in both chambers.

So far, the 111th Congress is hoping to be what I call the Undo Something Congress. Their goal is not to pass anything substantive, but to repeal the reform legislation of the prior Congress, starting with Health Care Reform. Also in the cue is College Aid Reform, Wall Street Reform, and undoing Obama Administration regulations regarding the environment. I am pretty clear what Republicans are against, namely every big accomplishment of the Do Something Congress, but I really have no idea what they are for other than reducing government spending. The reductions they want, however, are not about making the government smaller, but about cutting programs Democrats favor, either because they believe in the merits of the program or because it helps their district/state/reelection.

Maybe it should be called the Undo Something That Democrats Like Congress instead. But that would not be as catchy. And Washington DC is all about appearances and soundbites, not substance and reality.

Did Mitch McConnell overplay his hand?

As much fun as it was to run circles around then Majority Leader Bill Frist, I knew his retirement was bad news for the Democrats whether they won or lost his seat in 2006. Because Sen. Mitch McConnell, who is a million times smarter about Senate rules and tactics than Frist, was poised to assume the role of GOP Senate leader. Sure enough, despite having 40-43 Senators to call from in 2009-10 (and 49 in 2007-09, McConnell was able to keep his troops in rank to impose filibusters at a record setting rate since he has been in charge.

And while this obstructionism has had some victories--several judicial nominees will never get voted on, the federal budget failed, the DREAM Act, etc.--the larger measures still went through the Senate. Heath Care Reform, the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, the Food Safety Bill, the Financial Reform Bill, the Child Nutrition Bill, the START II treaty, along with several nominees passed.

Why did this happen, especially in the lame duck session? Two reasons. First, Harry Reid was also pretty good at keeping his troops together for the most part and he had 60-51 of them during the same period. Second, the "FU caucus" formed in the Lame Duck this year. People like Bob Bennett and Lisa Murkowski, who are very conservative, but were primaried from the right and did not receive much help from McConnell, were pissed at him. Moreover, these retiring (or in the case of Murkowski, re-elected) GOP senators did not trust the new GOP senators coming into Congress in January and actually liked some of the Democrats policies to a certain degree.

The more important result from this relentless obstruction from McConnell, and his taunting of Democrats, was the fact that every Democrat who will be Senotors in the 112th Congress in January wrote a letter to Sen. Reid demanding that the filibuster rules be reformed. We won't know what the change will be until it passes in January, but we do know that Democrats are united in their dislike of McConnell and his antics. I believe McConnell's sinking of the Federal Budget bill was the last straw for some of the more senior Democratic Senators who still believe that the Senate is the "World's Greatest Dillibrative Body." If the reform is particularly pro-majority, we could see more legislation, nominees and treaties pass the Senate in the 112th Congress with 53 Members in the Democratic Caucus than in the 111th with 60 Members in the Democratic Caucus. January just got a whole lot more interesting.

Was one more innocent Texan put to death?

"Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." 4 William Blackstone, Commentaries at 358

William Blackstone should be as revered as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke as one of the key intellectual inspirations behind the American Revolution and the Constitution that followed it. While Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England" were only his views of what English law was (or should be), they were so influential with the Founders that they became the basis for American law. Yet it appears in the two hundred and thirty four years since the Spirit of '76 moved the founders to sign the Declaration of Independence, we have strayed.

A DNA test on a strand of hair has cast doubt on the guilt of a Texas man who was executed 10 years ago during George W. Bush’s final months as governor for a liquor-store robbery and murder.

The single hair had been the only piece of physical evidence linking Claude Jones to the crime scene. But the DNA analysis found it did not belong to Jones and instead may have come from the murder victim.

Sadly, this isn't the only man Texas has put to death that might have been innocent.

In December, 2004, questions about the scientific evidence in the Willingham case began to surface. Maurice Possley and Steve Mills, of the Chicago Tribune, had published an investigative series on flaws in forensic science; upon learning of Hurst’s report, Possley and Mills asked three fire experts, including John Lentini, to examine the original investigation. The experts concurred with Hurst’s report. Nearly two years later, the Innocence Project commissioned Lentini and three other top fire investigators to conduct an independent review of the arson evidence in the Willingham case. The panel concluded that “each and every one” of the indicators of arson had been “scientifically proven to be invalid.”

In 2005, Texas established a government commission to investigate allegations of error and misconduct by forensic scientists. The first cases that are being reviewed by the commission are those of Willingham and Willis. In mid-August, the noted fire scientist Craig Beyler, who was hired by the commission, completed his investigation. In a scathing report, he concluded that investigators in the Willingham case had no scientific basis for claiming that the fire was arson, ignored evidence that contradicted their theory, had no comprehension of flashover and fire dynamics, relied on discredited folklore, and failed to eliminate potential accidental or alternative causes of the fire. He said that Vasquez’s approach seemed to deny “rational reasoning” and was more “characteristic of mystics or psychics.” What’s more, Beyler determined that the investigation violated, as he put it to me, “not only the standards of today but even of the time period.” The commission is reviewing his findings, and plans to release its own report next year. Some legal scholars believe that the commission may narrowly assess the reliability of the scientific evidence. There is a chance, however, that Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the “execution of a legally and factually innocent person.”

Just before Willingham received the lethal injection, he was asked if he had any last words. He said, “The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for twelve years for something I did not do. From God’s dust I came and to dust I will return, so the Earth shall become my throne.”

Barry Scheck a founder of the Innocence Project, an anti-death penalty group based in New York City, makes a good point:

“Reasonable people can disagree about the moral appropriateness of the death penalty. The issue that has arisen is the risk of executing the wrong person,” he said.

And that risk is too high--10:1.