Friday Roundup

Couple of good pieces over at Slate this morning.

Dahlia Lithwick, who I as a layman find to be gifted with the ability to explain complex legal issues and especially the workings of the Supreme Court in terms that the rest of us can understand, has an excellent piece on the Alabama 10 Commandments story and the issue of separation of church and state. This graf sums up Futurballa's feelings on the subject.

...we live in a zero-sum constitutional world. In order to be "neutral" toward all religions, including atheism, the courts have had to erect equal barriers to all. In order to privilege no religion (or even non-religion) the courts have elected to privilege none. This includes the vague "Judeo-Christian" theism that most Americans would probably like to see more of in the public square.

Read the rest here.

Tim Noah has this piece on whether the Republicans subvert democracy more than Democrats. Final score...

The chair therefore rules Republicans more or less guilty as charged of conducting "an ongoing national effort to steal elections Republicans cannot win."

At the NYT Krugman takes on Ahnold.

Via Buzzflash we find this story from Philly.com which informs us "Tucker Carlson is no match for Janeane Garofalo". We suspected as much.

Over at the Smoking Gun we get to see Al Franken's apology to John Ashcroft for making some "imprudent satire" on Harvard letterhead. Futurballa is of the opinion that Al really has the right to the Fair and Balanced title. When did you last see O'Reilly apologize for anything.

Mahalo