The Fireside chat for July 11, 2009

Found it.

The Fireside chat for July 18, 2009

Not sure there was a posting last week. Certainly can't find it...

"No Excuses..." (VIDEO)

The President's speech before the NAACP...

...and it was a barnburner.

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Who saw this coming?? (VIDEO)

The GOP's Anxiety about a changing America...

It's been said many times, many ways over the last week, but I liked Slate.com's Dahlia Lithwick's own take on it:

This could have been different, I kept thinking all day. These hearings didn't have to go this way. The instant Sen. Jeff Sessions used his second round of questioning to go back to the well of the "Wise Latina" issue, probing yet again at Sonia Sotomayor's alleged bias and wise Latina prejudice, it was perfectly clear that Senate Republicans wanted this hearing to be all about race and that her single, mangled half-sentence was the linchpin of their strategy. There were lines of people waiting patiently to get into these hearings, even if just for a few moments, and what was striking about it is that so many of them were very young, so many were women, and so many were of different races and colors. America's future was waiting in line to get a glimpse of a hearing at which the woman who will become this country's first Hispanic justice was repeatedly called out as someone with a race problem.

I don't think this is all posturing. Listening to Jeff Sessions and Lindsey Graham and John Cornyn speak, it's clear that their anxieties about a changing America are real. Still, by making the whole case against her with a long, loopy line between her "wise Latina" speech and her panel decision in the Ricci case, they chose to turn this historic hearing into a crabbed and bitter conversation about the impact of race on America.

She also took on the Democrats, cracking on them for not making more of the Roberts Court's tendency for Judicial Activism.

The President and the Say Hey Kid (VIDEO)

Obama's form was awwwwkwaard (VIDEO)

I am the Obama homer to beat all Obama homers. This site is dedicated, in its own way...to Obama homerism.

But man, that was one an uugggggllllly pitch. His form was terrible. It almost looked like he was going to dislocate his own shoulder. I don't know if it was the White Sox jacket or what, but it was not pretty.



Then again, any pitch that makes it to home plate can't be a completely bad one.

<a href="http://msn.foxsports.com/video?vid=50a75722-7ea2-43ad-8976-f87c730e65dc&from=IV2_en-us_foxsports_HP&fg=gtlv2" target="_new" title="Addressing the baseball nation">Video: Addressing the baseball nation</a>

But you know what? Who cares? He got to fly to the game with Willie freakin' Mays. He got to shake hands with Stan Musial and I do believe that was Bob Gibson glad-handing him as he came off the mound.

He's got his own jet, and the greatest home office in the world. He gets us Health Care, I dare say I'll not mention this pitch ever again...

...but I better see a Public Option, otherwise...

Jeff Sessions needs to do his homework (VIDEO)

Thus quoth the Josh:

Remember that scene in Annie Hall where the Alvy and Annie are waiting in line at the movie and Alvy is going nuts listening to the pontificating blowhard going on about Marshall McLuhan and then Alvy pulls McLuhan himself out from behind the movie poster to tell the guy he's an idiot. Not quite identical and Sotomayor could have driven the point a bit harder but Judge Sotomayor managed to pull off something like that.

But, wait. It got worse (for Racist Jeff Sessions).

Cedarbaum went outside, and gave an interview to the Washington Wire, where she apparently said (quoted here from the Murdoch Street Journal):

I don’t believe for a minute that there are any differences in our approach to judging, and her personal predilections have no effect on her approach to judging. We’d both like to see more women on the courts.

Ooops.

Which led my least favorite Senator (from California) to say: