Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Judge Garland deserve a vote. He isn't necessarily going to be confirmed. There is opposition to him on both sides.

It would be a crime if Chief Judge Merritt B. Garland is not confirmed into the Supreme Court. He spoke of the fidelity to the US Constitution. He would be qualified to write opinion on the first day.

I appreciate President Obama's successful confirmation of women to the Supreme Court, but, if Judge Garland was his number 3, then it is right Judge Garland take his place.

President Obama has handed the ball to Judge Garland. He needs to make the rounds to speak to the US Senators. He needs to appeal to allies and ask for their vote. He can count and should seek a 60 vote confirmation or as close to it as he can make it.

I am confidence in Judge Garland. I am sure he'll make the connects he has to to move his nomination forward. The country is counting on him. The court needs him. He can do this, I know he can.

Like his potential colleagues Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Samuel Alito, Garland has prosecutorial experience.

In reading through some of his decisions, he is a conservative. He leans into Wall Street over labor unions.

He is already writing Supreme Court decisions:

For a long-tenured judge on a prominent court of appeals, Judge Garland has participated in few cases that resulted in Supreme Court review.  The Supreme Court has not granted cert. in any case in which he wrote the court of appeals' opinion.  Of the seven cases reviewed by the Supreme Court in which he has stated (or strongly implied) a position, the Justices agreed with him in four.

He agreed with George W. Bush about Gitmo. That is very much right of center.

Herman Schwartz, an American University law professor and the author of several books on the Supreme Court and conservative judicial activism, said he found Garland's early acceptance of Bush's Guantanamo Bay policy "very troubling."
"It meant that nothing that happened to those prisoners -- whether it was abusing them or holding them indefinitely -- would ever be subject to the rule of law," Schwartz said. "For the executive branch to have that kind of power over a person is unconscionable. And for a judge to accept the total irrelevance of the rule of law is a betrayal of that judge's obligation to uphold the Constitution and this nation's ideals."

That decision is considered a landmark regarding the detainees.

There is reason for Democrats to think twice about him and the decisions he has made. I think Mitch McConnell is about the most sad Republican today. He makes decisions about people like Chief Judge Garland before he knows who he is to assess for advice and confirmation. McConnell has a chance to put a right of center judge on the Supreme Court that made President Obama swallow a bitter pill in order to nominate him. It only goes to prove McConnell is not competent. He doesn't respect the US Constitution, he swears allegiance to "The Party" before the people. I can't believe McConnell is turning down Judge Garland. That is a Republican for you. I think McConnell can be impeached for the politics he plays on the taxpayer's dime. I mean let's face it, McConnell has sabotaged a perfectly qualified judge BEFORE he was even nominated. That is placing politics before the law and it is an impeachable offense. It is corruption.

HE DESERVES A VOTE!  
March 14, 2016
By Shreeya Nanda

Addition (click here) of lapatinib (Tyverb) to trastuzumab (Herciptin) improves responses in women with newly diagnosed, HER2-positive breast cancer who receive the combination prior to undergoing surgery, suggests research.
The findings of the EPHOS-B trial were presented at the 10th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC-10) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, by Judith Bliss, from The Institute of Cancer Research in London, UK....

These two drugs administered together have destroyed the cancer cells. The initial study was successful in 11 percent of the cases. Those are 11 percent of women able to live to be a wife, mother and contribute to our world in a career. 

From the MAYO Clinic 

By Timothy J. Moynihan
HER2-positive breast cancer (click here) is a breast cancer that tests positive for a protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), which promotes the growth of cancer cells.
In about 1 of every 5 breast cancers, the cancer cells have a gene mutation that makes an excess of the HER2 protein. HER2-positive breast cancers tend to be more aggressive than other types of breast cancer. They're less likely to be sensitive to hormone therapy, though many people with HER2-positive breast cancer can still benefit from hormone therapy.
Treatments that specifically target HER2 are very effective. These treatments are so effective that the prognosis for HER2-positive breast cancer is actually quite good.
Treatments include:

  • Trastuzumab (Herceptin)
  • Lapatinib (Tykerb)
  • Pertuzumab (Perjeta)
  • Ado-trastuzumab emtansine (Kadcyla)
In addition, there are several new medications being developed that also target HER2 and are being tested in clinical trials....

Chumlee needs to perform public service and bring drug abuse to an end.

Chumlee has many fans. He should be tapped to create a movement to end drug abuse. He is a popular guy and connects with people when others don't.

March 15, 2016
By Tim Kenneally

“Pawn Stars” (click here) regular Austin “Chumlee” Russell had sizable amounts of marijuana and guns in his Nevada home when Las Vegas Metropolitan Police executed a search warrant on his residence last week, Russell’s arrest report says.
He also, according to the report, has a room in his home referred to a the “Chum Chum” Room, which is equipped with a dance pole.
The report obtained by ABC affiliate KTNV states that a search warrant was executed based on a sexual assault allegation made by a woman. Police arrived at Russell’s home looking for evidence including bedding, trace evidence and swabs from Austin....
Rommel Broom after the failed execution. The execution attempt lasted 2 and a half hours with 18 sticks to establish intravenous injection.

March 16, 2016
By Robert Higgs

Columbus, Ohio – The state can try again (click here) to execute convicted murderer Romell Broom, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. The second attempt by the state would not constitute cruel and unusual punishment or violate his constitutional protection against double jeopardy. 
In a 4-3 ruling, the court held that although technicians sought for two hours to access one of Broom's veins to administer a lethal dose of drugs, the constant sticks, while painful, were a preparatory step to carrying out Broom's sentence. 
"The state's intention in carrying out the execution is not to cause unnecessary physical pain or psychological harm, and the pain and emotional trauma Broom already experienced do not equate with the type of torture prohibited by the Eighth Amendment," Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger wrote in the majority opinion....


Mitch McConnell states the political season has begun. It never ended since 2008. Who is he trying to fool?

I am sure Chief Judge Garland feels as though the US Senate has already refused him. He is eminently qualified and there should be no challenge to his nomination and confirmation.

He is even a white man, McConnell. Who knows when you'll get this chance again!

Mitch McConnell celebrates a bigot in refusing to hold a Supreme Court confirmation hearing and vote!

The Late Strom Thurmond was a racist during all his years in the Senate representing South Carolina. He has no legitimacy in 2016. The Senate majority leader bringing up this rule during the time when America celebrates it's first African American president is especially egregious.

Strom Thurmond was a horrible man who denied his African American daughter to his death. A man like this should not be revered by Republicans in a rule that insults our democracy and makes the Supreme Court ineffective.



February 6, 2013
By Mary C. Curtis

Essie Mae Washington-Williams (click here)  lived for 87 years. But, in her own words, she was never “completely free” until she could stand before the world and say out loud that Strom Thurmond, the one-time segregationist South Carolina senator, was her father. That was in 2003, after she had spent more than 70 years being denied what we all deserve – her true name and birthright. “In a way, my life began at 78, at least my life as who I really was,” Washington-Williams wrote in her life story. She has died.
Thurmond’s oldest child — born when he was a 22-year-old man and her mother, Carrie Butler, a 16-year-old black maid in his father’s house – had kept the senator’s secret, an open one rumored about but never revealed when he was alive because, she had said, “He trusted me, and I respected him.” As in the case of Thomas Jefferson, another successful southern politician who was father to black children, stories shared among African Americans were long disbelieved until they turned out to be true....
Merrick B. Garland

President Obama has already nominated two minority women. Judge Garland is in the Court of Appeals, DC Circuit. He could step into the job and immediately render opinion. He is more then qualified.

Chief Judge Garland (click here) has published in the Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal, taught at Harvard Law School, and served as President of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University. He is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States.

He is amply qualified.


Judge Merrick (click here) took on the Chief Justice of the DC Circuit in 2013. 

The "Thurmond Rule" is an illegitimate reason to oppose the nominate of Chief Judge Garland.

Confirmations (click here) in the four most recent presidential election years, especially for district nominees, have been more robust than most formulations of the Thurmond rule would have predicted. Those experiences, though, may have little predictive value for 2012. The shifting landscape of judicial nominations and confirmations, as described in January, makes it risky to look to the past to predict how the increasingly contentious confirmation battles will play out in 2012. Being a “consensus nominee” may have been a ticket to confirmation in earlier years, but it’s difficult even to define the term in 2012, when nominees with little if any opposition still have a hard time getting floor votes. And Republican senators’ objections to the president’s January recess appointments to some executive branch positions may also affect the judicial confirmation process....

Heroine deaths are increasing.

There is less and less pure heroine on the street. It is being laced with other drugs, the latest fentanyl. Addicts should be encouraged to go to methadone clinics to save their own lives. The street drugs, for some reason, are becoming far too dangerous. Why does 'the buzz' always have to be better than the time before?

March 14, 2016
By Paul Walsh

An outbreak of drug overdoses (click here) in the Fargo-Moorhead area, with at least three confirmed deaths, has prompted law enforcement to sound the alarm Sunday about the spreading danger.
At a hastily called news conference, police in Fargo joined their colleagues in Moorhead and other nearby communities to say that they fear the overdoses are being fueled by heroin laced with even more potent narcotics.
The lacing with painkillers such as fentanyl and morphine is making the ingesting of heroin "even more dangerous than it already is," said Fargo Police Chief David Todd.
Moorhead Police Chief David Ebinger said there is a "strong chance there's something more deadly than what we've been contending with up to this point."...

Fentanyl is an opioid just like heroine. (click here) Poor economic conditions escalate the drug use. What follows is theft and then court, jail and prison. Enough of this.

There is a word for it.

Just in case the Republican establishment doesn't get it; stealing the government away from the people for their own purposes is called corruption.

How stupid is the Republican elite who call themselves "The Establishment?"

The New York Times interactive (click here)

First they embrace the Tea Party after the collapse of the Republican Party in 2008 and now they are rejecting them because they are pouting about JEB! They are still in denial they have failed the American people in huge amounts. They have rejected the first African American President in USA history and turned Washington, DC into an extremist's paradise. But, now that their establishment choice has been rejected in huge amounts and an unlikely candidate has taken the lead and held on to it, the Republicans are panicked that their 'go to' guys are on their way off the stage permanently.

Last night the genius Judith Miller on FOX was stating House Speaker Ryan can change the rules of the party a week before the convention. Really? I would expect an Anti-Trump campaign in the Democratic or Independent ranks, but, their own ranks is a laugh better than Saturday Night Live. Gee whiz, their money doesn't buy love anymore.

Donald Trump is running a campaign for President of the United States of America without a single dime from wealthy donors. That is not only admirable, it is a real statement about those that are behind him. They have the high moral road and the Republican establishment are the fools that use the USA for power and not service to the people.

Donald Trump and the Tea Party never rejected the Republicans until NOW. What makes the Republicans think if they turn into militants at their own convention they will succeed? The Tea Party will reject the Republicans and look to their funding sources to back them and bring about the end of the Old Republican Party. If the Tea Party abandons the Republican Convention there won't be enough delegates in the convention hall to elect a nominee. The Tea Party has been progressing through the years since 2008 to take more and more seats from the Republican Establishment that handed the country an economic collapse unlike any before.

It will be really interesting to watch the Tea Party exit the convention hall and finally have the single most strongest Republican constituency to date. They have their nominee and they hold the power. The establishment continues to think they have CONTROL. There are a lot of political PACS in the name of the Tea Party; the Republicans should wake up to their reality rather than living their fantasy.

By David Graham

Tuesday night was a very good night for Donald Trump (click here) —but was it good enough?
The entertainer consolidated his lead in the Republican Party and drove Marco Rubio to drop out of the race. Trump scored a huge win in Florida, taking the state’s 99 delegates and humiliating Rubio, a son of the Sunshine State who couldn’t win at home. But Trump’s failure to beat John Kasich in Ohio will prolong the race—and increases the odds that Trump will not win the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the GOP nomination outright over Kasich and Senator Ted Cruz. Falling short would lead the party to a contested convention with unpredictable and volatile results.
Republicans are left to choose what sort of catastrophic conclusion they’d like for the primary campaign: a Donald Trump nomination? Or a fractious, chaotic contested convention? On Tuesday, GOP voters lurched uneasily toward the latter....            

How stupid is the Republican elite who call themselves "The Establishment?"

First they embrace the Tea Party after the collapse of the Republican Party in 2008 and now they are rejecting them because they are pouting about JEB! They are still in denial they have failed the American people in huge amounts. They have rejected the first African American President in USA history and turned Washington, DC into an extremist's paradise. But, now that their establishment choice has been rejected in huge amounts and an unlikely candidate has taken the lead and held on to it, the Republicans are panicked that their 'go to' guys are on their way off the stage permanently.

Last night the genius Judith Miller on FOX was stating House Speaker Ryan can change the rules of the party a week before the convention. Really? I would expect an Anti-Trump campaign in the Democratic or Independent ranks, but, their own ranks is a laugh better than Saturday Night Live. Gee whiz, their money doesn't buy love anymore.

Donald Trump is running a campaign for President of the United States of America without a single dime from wealthy donors. That is not only admirable, it is a real statement about those that are behind him. They have the high moral road and the Republican establishment are the fools that use the USA for power and not service to the people.
continued...

Tuesday night was a very good night for Donald Trump (click here) —but was it good enough?
The entertainer consolidated his lead in the Republican Party and drove Marco Rubio to drop out of the race. Trump scored a huge win in Florida, taking the state’s 99 delegates and humiliating Rubio, a son of the Sunshine State who couldn’t win at home. But Trump’s failure to beat John Kasich in Ohio will prolong the race—and increases the odds that Trump will not win the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the GOP nomination outright over Kasich and Senator Ted Cruz. Falling short would lead the party to a contested convention with unpredictable and volatile results.
Republicans are left to choose what sort of catastrophic conclusion they’d like for the primary campaign: a Donald Trump nomination? Or a fractious, chaotic contested convention? On Tuesday, GOP voters lurched uneasily toward the latter....