My Morning Wooten

This morning, Jim mostly talks the technical point of how a few moderate Republicans essentially guarantee a filibuster proof Senate. Nothing particularly untrue or fraught with crazy here, but it's fun to see how this fact scares the bejeebus out of the "so-called conservatives".

But fear not. In the midst of his teeth gnashing, Jim can't resist hooting out a particurlarly ridiculous laugher.

This will be the pattern too for keeping the liberal majority on the U.S. Supreme Court and on filling vacancies elsewhere.

Liberal majority? Let's suss this one out.

I'm pretty sure Jim and most people with two brained cells rubbing together consider Breyer, Bader Ginsburg, Stevens and Souter the liberals.

And I know from Jim's own writing that Roberts, Alito, Scalia and the glorious Thomas are not only the best thing since sliced bread but the conservatives.

So that leaves Anthony Kennedy. It's all up to him to complete this "liberal majority".

Too bad a recent study by a former circuit justice and a University of Chicago law professor ranks Kennedy the 10th most conservative justice in the past 70 years.

Too bad in Kennedy's first term he voted with Chief Justice Rehnquist 92% of the time.

This is fantasyland. Unfortunately, for some of the prominent voices on the right, fantasyland has been reality for years.

It's a reality which purports it can't be torture unless fingernails are being pulled from quicks. It's a reality where an ideological tie occasionally broken one way or the other by a moderate conservative is seen as a "liberal majority".

It is a reality so awash in red that if its residents see pink, they think it's blue.