Investigate Rasmussen's polling practices now. 
What is the likelihood of a pollster always making one and only one side happy (conservatives)?
 I can't remember the last time this pollster had anything worth cheering for on the liberal side.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/24458.html

Here it is., from June 29 to June 30th:

 The United States Senate has the constitutional authority to confirm all Supreme Court nominees. Based upon what you know at this time, should the United States confirm Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court Justice?

37% Yes

39% No

23% Not sure

Even though we still have no non-Rasmussen polls on Sotomayor's confirmation post-Ricci, it would not be difficult to assume that Gallup, Quinnipiac, and any other non-Rasmussen poll will find that by a huge margin, most adults still favor Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation to the Supreme Court.'
I've always been of the opinion that if there is an agency in charge of investigating fishy polling practices, said agency should delve into Rasmussen's weird, outlier polls that always seem to tell conservatives what they want to hear.
Yes, Rasmussen has been historically accurate in election polls; but in these election polls, other pollsters follow closely, in contrast to the gross difference seen in his non-election polls in comparison to others.
I repeat: Other polls will be released with Sotomayor's standing being the same or  perhaps  only slightly lower than usual.

Before I make up my mind about whether the coup d'etat today in Honduras was justified, can someone with more knowledge in Honduran affairs tell me if it is true that the President totally disregarded a Supreme Court decision that the referendum set to occur in a few days is unconstitutional?

BLOOMBERG (6-28-09): The president had planned to use results from a poll this weekend, which is being managed by the president's supporters and the National Statistics Institute, to press for a national referendum in November on whether to change the constitution. That vote was to be held in tandem with national elections, a process the Supreme Court has already ruled illegal.

If that is the case, should we protest against a coup against the executive while turning a deaf ear to a coup against the equally important judicial branch?
If one day our President disregarded a decision by our highest court, what would we think? Would not we view him as a threat to the United States of America?

Some might argue that perhaps Congress should have the last word on such decision, but turns out that the Honduran congress also called for the ousting of the President, as you may have read in news reports. In fact, Congress had also declared the referendum unconstitutional. 

NEW YORK TIMES: Last week, the Supreme Court and Congress both declared the referendum unconstitutional. But on Thursday, the president led a group of protesters to an air force installation and seized the ballots, which the prosecutor's office and the electoral tribunal had ordered confiscated.

Was the President's action itself a coup against the Constitution?

These questions should be pondered.

Crossposted in Democraticunderground.com

Glen Greenwald has the details (6-24-09):

For the last question at his press conference yesterday, Obama was asked by CNN's Suzanne Malveaux about his reaction to that video and to reports that Iranians are refraining from protesting due to fear of such violence. As Obama was answering -- attesting to how "heartbreaking" he found the video; how "anybody who sees it knows that there's something fundamentally unjust" about the violence; and paying homage to "certain international norms of freedom of speech, freedom of expression" -- Helen Thomas, who hadn't been called on, interrupted to ask Obama to reconcile those statements about the Iranian images with his efforts at home to suppress America's own torture photos ("Then why won't you allow the photos --").

The President quickly cut her off with these remarks:

THE PRESIDENT: Hold on a second, Helen. That's a different question. (Laughter.)

The White House Press corps loves to laugh condescendingly at Helen Thomas because, tenaciously insisting that our sermons to others be applied to our own Government, she acts like a real reporter...

Neda's death must not go unpunished; but let's be aware that candidate Mousavi of Iran is the main suspect of a 1988 bombing that killed the first US Navy woman to have died as a result of a terrorist attack:

Will we take steps to prosecute Mousavi, considering this allegation by "the father of the Navy Seal," retired Navy Admiral James "Ace" Lyons?:

"Lyons, sometimes called "the father" of the Navy SEALs' Red Cell counter-terror unit, also fingered Mousavi for the 1988 truck bombing of the U.S. Navy's Fleet Center in Naples, Italy, that killed five persons, including the first Navy woman to die in a terrorist attack."

In short, my suggestion is to bring justice to Neda and the victim of the 1988 attack.

To those who might argue that this happened 20 years ago and therefore we should get over it, go say that to her family.

We liberals demand that Luis Posada Carriles, main suspect of bombing a Cuban plane near Barbados killing dozens of people in the late 70's, be brought to justice. Let's keep it consistent.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/spytalk/2009/06/mousavi-celebrated-in-iranian.html

Much like the way all kidnap victims on CNN.com seem to be cute and sexy.

Are you going to tell me that ugly men have not been killed in the recent Iran protests? Or ugly women? Isn't the death count around 20? Why Neda?

She is a martyr, but so are the others.

crossposted from Democratic Underground:

 

NYT editorial (June 18):
"We are also puzzled and disturbed by the Obama administration's decision to side with Alaska in this case -- continuing the Bush administration's opposition to recognizing a right to access physical evidence for post-conviction DNA testing. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/opinion/19fri1.html?_...

Glen Greenwald (Today, June 20):
"There's one important fact missing from all of that analysis: namely, this was yet another case where the Obama DOJ sided with the Bush administration and advocated the position that the conservative justices adopted. The Obama DOJ aggressively argued before the Court that convicted criminals have no constitutional right to access evidence for DNA analysis. Indeed, its decision to embrace this extreme Bush position caused much controversy and anger back in February."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/20/dna/i...

This is sad. 

Glen Greenwald points to a recent argument with conservative co-worker Charles Krauthammer over torture as at least one of the factors leading to the dismissal of Froomkin.

Greenwald (6-18-09): One of the rarest commodities in the establishment media is someone who was a vehement critic of George Bush who, applying their principles consistently, has become a regular critic of Barack Obama -- someone who criticizes Obama from what is perceived as "the Left" rather than for being a Terrorist-Loving Socialist Muslim. It just got a lot rarer, as The Washington Post -- at least according to Politico's Patrick Gavin-- just fired WashingtonPost.com columnist, long-time Bush critic and Obama watchdog (i.e., a real journalist) Dan Froomkin.

What makes this firing so bizarre and worthy of inquiry is that, as Calderone notes, Froomkin was easily one of the most linked-to and cited Post columnists. At a time when newspapers are relying more and more on online traffic, the Post just fired the person who, in 2007, wrote 2 out of the top 10 most-trafficked columns. In publishing that data, Media Bistro used this headline: "The Post's Most Popular Opinions (Read: Froomkin)." Isn't that an odd person to choose to get rid of?

Following the bottomless path of self-pity of the standard right-wing male -- as epitomized by Pete Hoekstra's comparison of House Republicans to Iranian protesters and yet another column by Pat Buchanan decrying the systematic victimization of the white male in America -- Charles Krauthammer last night said that Obama critics on Fox News are "a lot like Caracas where all the media, except one, are state run." But right-wing polemicists like Krauthammer are all over the media.

In addition to his Rupert Murdoch perch at Fox, Krauthammer remains as a regular columnist at the Post, alongside fellow right-wing Obama haters such as Bill Kristol, George Will, Jim Hoagland, and Robert Kagan -- as well as a whole bevy of typical, banal establishment spokespeople who are highly supportive of whoever is in power (David Ignatius, Fred Hiatt, Ruth Marcus, David Broder, Richard Cohen, Howie Kurtz, etc. etc.). And that's to say nothing of the regular Op-Ed appearances by typical Krauthammer-mimicking neoconservative voices such as John Bolton, Joe Lieberman, and Douglas Feith -- and the Post Editorial Page itself. "Caracus" indeed.

I am not visiting their website until Froomkin is re-hired.

Contact the ombudsman:

Update, from Politico:

UPDATE (3:50pm): Washington Post Media Communications Director Kris Coratti tells POLITICO:

I think the easiest way to put it is that our editors and research teams are constantly reviewing our columns, blogs and other content to make sure we're giving readers the most value when they are on our site while balancing the need to make the most of our resources. Unfortunately, this means that sometimes features must be eliminated, and this time it was the blog that Dan Froomkin freelanced for washingtonpost.com

Another update, via Greenwald (Froomkin speaks):

I'm terribly disappointed. I was told that it had been determined that my White House Watch blog wasn't "working" anymore. But from what I could tell, it was still working very well. I also thought White House Watch was a great fit with The Washington Post brand, and what its readers reasonably expect from the Post online.

As I've written elsewhere, I think that the future success of our business depends on journalists enthusiastically pursuing accountability and calling it like they see it. That's what I tried to do every day. Now I guess I'll have to try to do it someplace else.

"for him to pick up on such as thing..a distortion...that..again..it's based on a slow news day..not having anything else to talk about...that's pretty pathetic, good old David Letterman!"

Sarah Palin, Tuesday, June 9, 2009 (audio, beginning at 5:48 spot)

"Pretty pathetic, good old David Letterman, that old David Letterman, what a commentary there ... very sad to not recognize what this trip was all about," she said.

No. Sarah Palin did not say that, and you can confirm this by listening to the audio. Of course, this arrangement of words may lead you to believe that Palin called Letterman pathetic, but that's the HuffPo's goal, as I stated above: To shock the reader into believing their crap.

Politico posted an article today with regard to a new USA Today/Gallup poll in which Barack Obama receives a 61% job approval and a 35% job disapproval. This is an improvement of 3% in the approval department (it was 58% in the next most recent USA Today/Gallup poll) and a 1% improvement in the disapproval department (it was 35% back then, 34% now).

Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com said Thursday:

Since the Republicans, to say the least, do not seem particularly inclined to curry favor with Hispanic voters by playing nice on Sonia Sotomayor, it's worth engaging in the following thought experiment: Can the Republicans win back the White House in 2012 or 2016 while losing further ground among Latinos? And if so, what is their most plausible path to victory?

Curt Levey of the conservative Committee for Justice argued she was "picked because she's a woman and Hispanic, not because she was the best qualified."

A new story in the New York Times reveals that Sonia Sotomayor almost always votes in elections (including the 2008 Presidential elections). She only skipped two elections -- State-wide elections, that is. And guess what the headline is? 

If Turley likes a president, he wants him removed. If not, he wants him arrested.

--Bob Somerby, media critic (May 14, 2009)

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh051409.html

89% of Bronxites voted for Obama in the past elections. The most Democratic county in the nation deserved to have one of it's children in the Supreme Court.

 

Sotomayor will not disappoint.

Great choice, Obama!

As you know, GQ published an article today detailing how Donald Rumsfeld likened US invasions into Muslim countries as a "Crusade" and even quoted the Bible.