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U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has announced he will retire this summer, giving President Barack Obama his second appointment to our nation’s highest court.

A Republican, appointed by Republican President Gerald Ford, Stevens was originally considered a center-right vote, but with the extreme ideological shift of the court in recent years he has since become the leader of the bench’s “liberal bloc.” In that capacity, the 89-year-old Stevens gamely and nobly survived the Bush administration, saving the appointment of his replacement for a president not seeking to place our Constitution in the hands of a radically partisan, activist court.

In addition to being its liberal leader, Stevens is also the court’s lone W.A.S.P., the other eight justices being Roman Catholics and Jews of varying ethnicities. With that heritage in mind, and with an eye toward diversity, many court observers expect President Obama to appoint another white, Protestant to the “W.A.S.P. seat” on the bench, much like the first President Bush appointed Clarence Thomas to fill the “black seat” vacated by Justice Thurgood Marshall.

UPDATE:
The Republican Senator from Cloud Cuckoo Land chimes in:

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), a member of the committee, issued a statement calling for Obama to avoid “activist judges.”

You mean the kinda “activist judges” that ignore a century of legal precedent on campaign finance? Yeah, well, eat me.

Marijuana growers in Northern California are worried about the legalization initiative passing because it might lower the price of their artificially overpriced commodity.

Must be another one of us violent, extremist liberals, right?

An East Texas man who federal prosecutors allege left explosive devices including pipe bombs in multiple area mail boxes, was motivated in part by anger at the government, Brit Featherston, first assistant U. S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas tells TPMmuckraker in a phone interview.

Perhaps the Palin/Hannity/Teabagger crowd is betting the that the crazies they inspire are just too crazy and/or stupid to successfully carry out one of their domestic terrorist attacks? I sure as hell hope so.

I was reading through the felony complaint filed against Sen. Patty Murray’s would-be assassin, reading the transcript of his threatening phone calls, and the hateful, violent, offensive prose just sounds so familiar… well… I was wondering if anybody here had heard from HA troll “manoftruth” since Charles Alan Wilson’s arrest?

Just curious.

10,000 immigrants, refugees and their allies are expected to descend on Pioneer Square this Saturday, in what is surely to be one of the largest pro-immigration reform rallies in the nation. So I wonder… will our local media bother to muster the same kind of coverage they routinely lavish on a couple hundred angry teabaggers?

If history is any indication, I’m guessing not.

Nearly one in six Washingtonians are Latino or Asian and 12.3% are foreign born. Immigrants comprise 14.2% of the state workforce, and pay 13.2% of state and local taxes. And of course our state’s vital agricultural industry is as dependent on immigrant workers, documented or not, as it is on the vast network of dams and ditches that irrigate its fields.

But although “New Americans” — naturalized citizens or the U.S.-born children of immigrants — account for 7.5% of Washington’s registered voters, and despite the huge impact immigration reform would have on our state’s residents and economy, the immigration reform debate receives surprisingly little attention from our local politicians and journalists beyond the usual hyperbolic sound bites.

Well, you can help the establishment types take notice and join the Stand Up in Seattle for Immigration Reform Rally, Saturday, April 10, in Seattle’s Occidental Park. Gates will open at 11 a.m., and the program of entertainment and featured speakers is scheduled to start at noon, so please stop by and show your support for rational, humane immigration reform.

I know it’s not quite as compelling a story as a few dozen angry old white folks with scary, misspelled signs, but together, perhaps we can make up in numbers what we lack in a marketable trope.

Republican hearts surely danced last night, if only briefly, as news broke of an attempted shoe-bombing on a United flight from D.C. to Denver, an event that surely would have refocused the nation’s attention on the threat posed by Islamist terrorists and away from the recent wave of domestic terrorism provoked by the Republicans’ own extremist base. But unfortunately for the GOP, the alleged shoe-bomber turned out only to be a sarcastic Qatari diplomat sneaking a smoke in an airplane lavatory.

Ah well, back to covering the real and present threat to our domestic tranquility.

Glenn Greenwald writes about what could be the Obama Administration’s most profound failure to date.

This was posted to the Facebook forum for Sensible Washington today:

somewhere today in washington state a uniformed police officer went up to one of our fabulous volunteers, took two blank I-1068 petitions and went and put them up at his precinct for fellow officers to sign.

There are over a thousand volunteers collecting signatures around the state, but they still need more help to get it on the ballot (they’re at about 20% of their goal with 3 months to go).

Probably just a lone crazy, right?

Several federal officials say the man made dozens of calls to Pelosi’s homes in California and Washington, as well as to her husband’s business office, reciting her home address and saying if she wanted to see it again, she would not support the health care overhaul bill that was recently enacted.

Yeah, I’m sure the increasingly violent and eliminationist rhetoric washing through the Teabagger movement had absolutely nothing to do with this. Or this. Or this.

From The Spokesman-Review:

Federal authorities are investigating the discovery 10 days ago of an improvised explosive device found next to the Thomas S. Foley U.S. Courthouse in downtown Spokane but had not alerted the public until today based upon a direct inquiry by The Spokesman-Review.

The device was located in the late evening of Sunday, March 28, said Tom Rice, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Washington.

The Feds won’t say much more than that at this point, because the investigation is apparently ongoing. Not much point in speculating, but coming the day after the arrest of the would-be Murray assassin, I think we owe a “thank you” to the federal agents who devote their professional careers to defending the Constitution and our democracy.

MORE–In comments at the S-R, a reporter seems to confirm that the newspaper started asking about this “IED” because of an article in the current issue of Newsweek about the Hutaree militia.

Less well publicized has been a string of other incidents. In recent weeks an improvised explosive device was discovered outside the federal courthouse in Spokane, Wash.; a man wielding four knives was arrested at the Daley Center in Chicago; and members of a militant white-supremacist group called the White Wolves were arrested for allegedly assembling explosive devices in southern Connecticut. “We’re seeing a continued escalation in threats,” says Michael Prout, assistant director of the U.S. Marshals Service. The FBI is especially concerned about “lone offenders,” who are hard to catch because they do not join known groups but are nonetheless moved to commit violent acts by the incendiary messages on extremist Web sites. The bureau has quietly set up a program aimed at identifying such characters by keeping a watch on Internet chat rooms and purchases of weapons and explosive devices.

The Podcast opens with a discussion of the proposed Chihuly “museum,” titled Chihuly at the Needle. The panel discusses whether a for-profit gallery of glass art is a suitable use of an urban space that is currently dedicated to family-oriented activities. Goldy outlines his Really Kick Ass Playground alternative, and (perhaps more importantly) suggests a realistic funding mechanism. The panel considers alternative sites for a Chihuly “museum”.

[29:50] The conversation then turns to the political news of the day: the arrest of Charles Alan Wilson for making death threats against Sen. Patty Murray. Was Mr. Wilson a lone nutcase? Or was he inspired by some larger cultural phenomena…like, say, the violent wingnut teabagger movement and their surrogates in hate-talk media (with an assist from the Republican party)? The panel explores the logical outcome of that second possibility.

Goldy was joined by Peace Tree Farm’s N in Seattle, Effin’ Unsound’s & Horsesass’s Carl Ballard, and me.

The show is 47:25, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_apr_6_2010.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the Podcasting Liberally site.]

Charles Alan Wilson, the crazed, concealed-weapon-toting righty charged with threatening the life of U.S. Senator Patty Murray, apparently attended a Tea Party rally outside a Murray event in Yakima, only days before his arrest:

On April 1, the previous Thursday, over 100 tea party protesters rallied outside a Murray appearance at the Greater Yakima Chamber of Commerce, according to a report in the Yakima Herald-Republic.

In the April 4 message, Wilson allegedly said:

“Oh, you were in Yakima last week. How come you didn’t give a big speech to the people outside waiting to see you? Yeah, we were outside waiting for you, hopefully you would come out and explain to us how come this health-care bill that you rallied on so highly is going to create the biggest drain in American history.”

One can only imagine the tragedy had Murray addressed the small crowd of angry Teabaggers. “I do pack, and I will not blink when I’m confronted. … It’s not a threat, it’s a guarantee,” Wilson later told an undercover FBI agent.

The official Tea Party folks claim Wilson was never a member, and of course disavow his threats after the fact, but that’s not really the point. Condemning the actions of those inspired by one’s hate-filled, violent rhetoric, while continuing the rhetoric unchanged, is meaningless. Charles Alan Wilson is the logical product of the radio and TV hate-talkers, the Teabagger fervor and their sponsors in the Republican establishment. Wilson may be a malignant tumor on the Teabagger movement, but he’s their tumor.

I’ll save the bible study for Sunday morning, but my advice to Rob McKenna, Dino Rossi and other ambitious Republicans hoping the embrace of the Teabaggers might boost their electoral fortunes is to choose their friends wisely.

Scott Morgan, one of my favorite bloggers, also works to produce valuable videos that explain your rights whenever being pulled over by police. Here’s a preview they’ve put out for their latest video – 10 Rules for Dealing with Police.

How Will The End Of Print Journalism Affect Old Loons Who Hoard Newspapers?