New Democratic minority leader Harry Reid said on Sunday that he opposes making Clarence Thomas Chief Justice, since "he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court." Antonin Scalia, however, he could get behind, as long as some ethics issues are worked out, because Scalia is "one smart guy." Blogger Rick Hasen agrees about Scalia, but for different reasons. "Scalia would likely make a weak chief Justice," writes Hasen. "Scalia may be "one smart guy", but he is not a consensus builder. Far more than anyone else on the Court, his opinions (particularly his dissents) are caustic and nasty. He likely would not be effective in managing a cohesive conservative court." And he's old enough that his tenure will be relatively short.
Josh Marshall, meanwhile, notes (more with resignation than outrage) the fact that some conservatives, like Opinion Journal's James Taranto, are now calling Reid racist for his comments about Thomas. (As Instapundit points out, however, it's not just conservatives.)
Tapped's Jeffrey Dubner had thought FCC chairman Michael Powell's recent New York Times op-ed piece was "pretty reasonable," but that was before he discovered that "99.9 percent of indecency complaints--aside from those concerning the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl halftime show broadcast on CBS-- were brought by [activist group The Parents Television Council]." He suggests we "reread Powell's op-ed to see how little he's concerned about letting one organization determine what the FCC looks into," and poses a question: "...where do the vast majority of Americans, who object to giving Brent Bozell the biggest say in what gets shown on broadcast television, go to file their complaints?"
Jacob Sullum remembers the sentencing of Jorge Pabon-Cruz, an 18-year-old who got ten years in jail for emailing child pornography. The judge called it ""the worst case of my judicial career," because he'd had to impose such a harsh sentence on the youthful offender. Turns out he didn't actually have to, thanks to some opaque language in the law, but congress has fixed that: "Now first-time offenders convicted of advertising to receive or distribute child pornography will receive a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years."
Captain Ed, pointing to a Washington Post editorial, says neither the right nor the left is happy with the intelligence reform bill. "Rather than actually reorganize the structure of American intelligence services, currently split into several alphabet-soup bureaucracies with all of the attendant barriers bureaucracies bring," the Captain writes, "the 9/11 Commission and this bill simply slaps a new layer of bureaucracy on top of it."
And here's a heads-up for all you CJR Daily readers based in Croatia: As Oxblog is kind enough to inform us, you've finally got a Hooters of your own. Enjoy.
