First Door on the Left

It’s already Friday night again. Unbelievable how fast the time is going, eh? Perhaps we’ll make it until January 20, 2009 after all.

Here’s this week’s collection of what I have deemed to be the best of the week’s political and editorial cartoons. We post them here on Friday night so you don’t have to wait until Saturday morning. You know what to do (as in, click ‘em to make ‘em bigger)…

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

My thanks to Paul, a gay (and inexplicably right wing) blogger for bringing this op-ed to my attention. He can’t stop laughing about it. I think it’s a wonderful idea…

WHEN a majority of Supreme Court justices adopt a manifestly ideological agenda, it plunges the court into the vortex of American politics. If the Roberts court has entered voluntarily what Justice Felix Frankfurter once called the “political thicket,” it may require a political solution to set it straight.

The framers of the Constitution did not envisage the Supreme Court as arbiter of all national issues. As Chief Justice John Marshall made clear in Marbury v. Madison, the court’s authority extends only to legal issues.

When the court overreaches, the Constitution provides checks and balances. In 1805, after persistent political activity by Justice Samuel Chase, Congress responded with its power of impeachment. Chase was acquitted, but never again did he step across the line to mingle law and politics. After the Civil War, when a Republican Congress feared the court might tamper with Reconstruction in the South, it removed those questions from the court’s appellate jurisdiction.

But the method most frequently employed to bring the court to heel has been increasing or decreasing its membership. The size of the Supreme Court is not fixed by the Constitution. It is determined by Congress.

I encourage you to go read the rest of the article (the link is in the headline). The author cites several examples of times in our history when the size of the Court has been changed.

The only way this would work, of course, would be for the Democrats to win both houses of Congress and the presidency in 2008. Of that there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever.

For people who say they have nothing to hide, the Bushies sure are going to great lengths to keep something hidden…

WASHINGTON, July 25 — The House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines on Wednesday to hold President Bush’s chief of staff and the former White House counsel in contempt of Congress.

The issue now goes before the full House, where the Democrats who control the chamber suggested it would not be taken up until after the August recess.

In the debate before the 22-to-17 vote to pass the contempt resolution, Democrats on the committee firmly rejected the White House argument that the invocation of executive privilege blocked Congress from obtaining information from Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, or Joshua B. Bolten, the chief of staff.

The Judiciary Committee had issued subpoenas seeking testimony from Ms. Miers and documents from Mr. Bolten as part of an investigation into whether there was any improper political influence in the dismissal of several federal prosecutors.

I finished reading “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows” last evening. I’ll have to admit that a few hours’ escape was refreshing.

Almost as soon as he had reached this conclusion, Harry became conscious that he was naked.

That’s all you’re getting from me.

I still don’t understand how people who believe a guy existed over two thousand years ago who could walk on water and raise the dead have trouble believing that Harry Potter can do magic. This intrigues me.

Video.

Tammy Faye Messner, the former televangelist and Christian singer who battled drug addiction and later inoperable cancer, died Friday morning, CNN’s Larry King said Saturday night. He said the family had asked him to make the delayed announcement.

She was 65.

Messner was a guest on “Larry King Live” on Thursday. She told him she couldn’t swallow food, and weighed only 65 pounds.

King said the family postponed the death announcement for a day so family members could gather. Messner was cremated and interred in a remote part of Kansas at the Kansas-Oklahoma state line, King said.

“The family appreciates all of the well wishes of so many people,” the talk show host said on CNN.

“She wanted a party,” King added. “They’re going to schedule a party in two to three weeks in Palm Springs, California. Her friends will be invited. And she wanted it to be a celebration…

Tammy Faye Messner has also been known as one of the few evangelical Christians who had the support of the gay community. She was one of the first televangelists to reach out to those with AIDS when it was a little-known and much-feared disease. In return, she told King in July, “When I went — when we lost everything, it was the gay people that came to my rescue, and I will always love them for that.”

Video: Tammy Faye on Larry King Live.

TMZ obtained photos of [Republican] presidential candidate Mitt Romney trying to win over grammatically challenged South Carolinians Thursday by holding a sign that said, “No to Obama, Osama and Chelsea’s Moma.”

How low will they go? And… will they ever learn to spell?

“There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.” — Brendan Behan, Irish author and dramatist (1923-1964)

Congratulations to Daily Kos! You really cannot buy publicity like this.

Bill O’Reilly is such an incredible idiot.

Does anybody remember when Cynthia McKinney had her little run-in with the Capitol Police last year? It was all over the right wing blogosphere. Yet, for some reason, and search as I might, I cannot seem to find any of them writing about this:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Republican Rep. Christopher Shays apologized Friday for a loud and angry altercation he had a day earlier with a Capitol Police officer, saying he behaved “in a way I know was not appropriate.”

Shays spokesman John Cardarelli said the incident took place at the West Front entrance to the Capitol during a rainstorm when the congressman was trying to locate a group of his Connecticut constituents who were coming for a Capitol tour.

An intern had gotten lost with the group and had difficulty describing where they were to Shays, who asked to speak to the police officer. The officer refused, saying it was against policy to accept phone calls while on duty.

Shays eventually found the group and went to them, but the police officer refused to allow them to enter the building through the West Front entrance, which is off-limits to tourists. Shays, Cardarelli said, grabbed the officer’s lapel “to look at his name badge” and shouted at him.

“I know Chris swore, and he probably did use the f-bomb,” Cardarelli told CNN.

What’s the difference?

   

Update: Wingnut and Coulter-wannabe Michelle Malkin has chimed in (and, of course, makes it all out to be the Democrats’ fault), so we can expect her minions and copy-catters to soon follow suit. She calls Shays “A Capitol diva” and “A legislative Lindsay Lohan in a suit and tie.” Ouch.

We had a midweek session, so here are a few more just to top off the week. You know the routine… click ‘em.