Yeah, this place has been lame lately. I’ve had a lot of real life things happen over the past week and that stuff comes first, so…that’s the reason. Thanks for sticking around though, and for coming back often to see if I’ve posted anything. I know who you are, and I appreciate you all.
Here’s hoping that things get normal again…soon. 🙂
Have you regretted posing for a picture and then having that picture publicized in some way? Of course you have…everyone has. It can be an uncomfortable thing. Just ask Samuel Alito’s daughter. Her face says it all.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced today that he won’t seek out a third term, but…
…he vowed not to allow “destabilization” in Russia following the vote, leaving the door open for drastic action in the event of a crisis.
In an interview with Dutch media on the eve of a visit to the Netherlands, Putin reiterated that he opposes changing the constitution to prolong his time in power _ a possibility that has been widely discussed because his popularity and control over parliament.
But Putin said that the 2008 presidential election will be a “serious, difficult test for Russia” and stressed that full power and responsibility for the fate of the country will remain in his hands until the new president is sworn in.
“I will not allow any destabilization in Russia, in the interests of the … peoples of the Russian Federation,” Putin said in the interview with Dutch Broadcaster Network and financial newspaper NRC Handelsblad.
I don’t think Putin will go that easy, so it’s likely that this announcement is intended to quiet the grumbling among political opponents and others who remain leery of the president’s plans. It has only been 14 years since the fall of Communism in Russia, and many are worried that a modified version of it is taking shape at the hands of Putin. If any suspicions were eased by his initial statement, they were not completely eliminated, as Putin attached the following caveat:
Putin has repeatedly said he opposes changing the constitution to remain in power _ without strictly ruling it out _ and has also hinted vaguely of a continuing role for himself and said he will try to groom a successor.
“Of course, I am not indifferent about whose hands the country that I have dedicated my whole life to ends up in,” Putin said. “But if every new head of state who comes to power changes the constitution as he sees fit, soon there will be nothing left of this state.”
The world will be watching.
Bush wasted no time in announcing his new (Post-Harriet) choice to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. His nominee is Samuel A. Alito, a judge with “more prior judicial experience than any Supreme Court nominee in more than 70 years.”
Alito, 55, serves on the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where his record on abortion rights and church-state issues has been widely applauded by conservatives and criticized by liberals.
Alito, appointed to the appeals court in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, has been a regular for years on the White House’s short list for the high court. He was also among those proposed by conservative intellectuals as an alternative to Harriet Miers, the White House counsel who withdrew as the nominee last week.
And so, we start this ugly process all over again. More posturing, more pontificating, more alarm-raising, more false indignation, more ‘over my dead body’ threatening, more ‘I’ll chain myself to the fence’ announcing…more everything.
Bring it on.
Alito Profile
Beltway Reaction
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