I’m still in considerable pain and hoping the donor site heals soon.  I’m in a wheelchair and have taken a lap around the unit chasing nurses.  I’m still to slow to ketch one, dang it!!

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: On “ABC This Week,” Bernie was asked if he thought his agreements with Clinton outweighed his disagreements.

“Well, that’s — well, the answer is yes and no,” Sanders responded. “Yes, we do agree on a number of issues, and by the way, on her worst day, Hillary Clinton will be an infinitely better candidate and President than the Republican candidate on his best day.”

“But having said that, we have very significant differences and the key difference is I see a nation in which we have a grotesque level of income and wealth inequality,” 

Bernie is as right about this, as he is about virtually everything else. The very worst Democrats are infinitely better than the very best Republicans.

From NY Times: A Senate security officer stepped out of the December chill last year and delivered envelopes marked “Top Secret” to the Pentagon, the C.I.A., the State Department and the Justice Department. Inside each packet was a disc containing a 6,700-page classified report on the C.I.A.’s secret prison program and a letter from Senator Dianne Feinstein, urging officials to read the report to ensure that the lessons were not lost to time.

Today, those discs sit untouched in vaults across Washington, still in their original envelopes. The F.B.I. has not retrieved a copy held for it in the Justice Department’s safe. State Department officials, who locked up their copy and marked it “Congressional Record — Do Not Open, Do Not Access” as soon as it arrived, have not read it either.

Nearly a year after the Senate released a declassified 500-page summary of the report, the fate of the entire document remains in limbo, the subject of battles in the courts and in Congress. Until those disputes are resolved, the Justice Department has prohibited officials from the government agencies that possess it from even opening the report, effectively keeping the people in charge of America’s counterterrorism future from reading about its past. There is also the possibility that the documents could remain locked in a Senate vault for good.

In a letter to Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch last week, Ms. Feinstein, a California Democrat, said the Justice Department was preventing the government from “learning from the mistakes of the past to ensure that they are not repeated.”

The Elephant in this room is that, if DOJ goes after Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the other Republican war criminals for their atrocities, little else will get done in the resulting Republican gridlock. Nevertheless, we have no moral authority as a nation, as long as Republicans keep getting away with war crimes!

from The Washington Post: The Obama administration will ask the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court injunction that has held up a new program that potentially would shield up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation. The decision to take the case to the high court comes a day after a federal appeals panel ruled against the administration, keeping the new program on hold nearly a year after President Obama announced it.

“The Department of Justice remains committed to taking steps that will resolve the immigration litigation as quickly as possible,” said Patrick Rodenbush, a spokesman for the agency. “The Department disagrees with the Fifth Circuit’s adverse ruling and intends to seek further review from the Supreme Court of the United States. “

Administration officials said they hope the court will take the case in the spring and issue a ruling by June, which, if favorable, could allow the program to begin in the summer, with just months left in Obama’s term. Republican presidential candidates have said they would dismantle the program, adding urgency to the administration’s efforts to get it started.

Obama may well be making a mistake to put their fate in the hands ok SS Scalito, KKK Kennedy, Teabag Thomas, Republican Roberts, and worst of all, Schtupidenfuhrer Scalia, the five Injustices of SCROTUS, Republican Constitutional VD.

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I’m feeling pretty tired, because they  woke me up at  2 AM to check my vitals.  By the time I struggled to the edge of  the bed to pee, I was too fully awake to go back to sleep.  I finished the majority of the work needed to lo get the right software installed on my new computer.

Short Takes:

From Politicus USA: Appearing yesterday at Kevin “Kill the Gays” Swanson’s Iowa conference of haters, Bobby Jindal joined Mike Huckabee in pretending neither the United States Constitution nor the Supreme Court exist, by stating that “No earthly court can change the definition of marriage.”

He is about as wrong as a person can be, because United States Constitution. The Constitution is the law of the land of course, not the Bible. The Founding Fathers conveniently set it up that way because they liked the idea of freedom of religion. People like Jindal and Huckabee, to name just two, can’t seem to get that through their heads.

Jindal was introduced by Swanson, who told his fellow haters,

“Let’s acknowledge right now that Jesus Christ is king over the president of the United States, whether he recognizes it or not. Jesus Christ is king over the Supreme Court of the United States, whether they recognize it or not!”

Watch courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

BARF BAG ALERT!!

Booby J. and the Republican Reich demand that YOU undergo forced conversion to Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christianity and learn whom to hate.

From The New Yorker: New reports indicating that Ben Carson might not have actually stabbed anyone during his youth have sent the retired neurosurgeon plummeting in the latest Republican Presidential polls.

Carson supporters, reeling from the news that their candidate’s past might have been devoid of stabbing, have deserted his candidacy in droves, suggesting that Republican voters viewed Carson’s stabbing as a key part of his résumé.

Indeed, a recent University of Minnesota poll showed that a full third of Carson supporters singled out “his stabbing experience” as a top reason for supporting him for the nation’s highest office.

In Iowa, where Carson was the front-runner before the non-stabbing bombshell hit, voters like Carol Foyler, of Des Moines, expressed dismay and disillusionment that the retired doctor might have fabricated his stabbing exploits to make himself more appealing to Republican voters.

Andy should tell Uncle Token not to worry about this. Republican voters will soon realize that, were Uncle Token not sufficiently criminal to quench their blood lust, he would not be allowed in the 2016 Clown Car Destruction Derby.

From Daily Kos: Harry Reid continued fully enjoying the fact that he’s retiring after this term and had a few words on the Senate floor on one of his favorite subjects: The Koch brothers. Riffing off of the really pathetic Morning Joe interview with the brothers, Reid went to town.

Putting on his media critic hat, the Nevada Democrat mocked Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski for what he sarcastically called a “really tough” interview with the billionaire brothers earlier this week on their popular MSNBC morning talk show. 

As he launched his anti-Koch broadside, Reid read excerpts of the brothers’ “Morning Joe” interview on the Senate floor—including Scarborough’s inquiry on whether the Kochs got their “graciousness” in philanthropy from their mother, or Brzezinski asking them who was the better brother. […]

“Wow. Those were some really tough questions asked by the host of ‘Morning Joe.’ That’s sufficient journalism,” Reid said Wednesday morning from the Senate floor. “Those questions are so easy, they may even qualify them to moderate the next Republican presidential debate.”

Note that this is the same Morning Joe that we recently discussed, because of his whining over (nonexistent) left wing media bias. What a hypocrite!!

Cartoon:

There is little personal news.  If my wounds keep healing as they should, I’ll go back to Vibra  on Friday afternoon.  The pain should be more manageable by then.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

I cannot do today’s puzzle (average 6:26).  To do it click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: In the long legal struggle against the death penalty, the future has in some ways never looked brighter.

In a passionate dissent in June, Justice Stephen G. Breyer invited a major challenge to the constitutionality of capital punishment. This fall, Justice Antonin Scalia all but predicted that the court’s more liberal justices would strike down the death penalty.

But lawyers and activists opposed to the death penalty, acutely conscious of what is at stake, are bitterly divided about how to proceed. Some say it is imperative to bring a major case to the court as soon as practicable. Others

“If you don’t go now, there’s a real possibility you have blood on your hands,” said Robert J. Smith, a fellow at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute of Harvard Law School. His scholarship was cited in Justice Breyer’s dissent from a decision upholding the use of an execution drug that three death row inmates argued risked causing excruciating pain.

worry that haste may result in a losing decision that could entrench capital punishment for years.

A dissent by Justice Stephen G. Breyer in June was seen as inviting a death penalty challenge. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times

But others are wary. “There are reasons to be cautious about pushing the court to a decision too early,” said Jordan M. Steiker, a law professor at the University of Texas.

The divide is partly generational. Many veteran litigators have suffered stinging setbacks in the Supreme Court, and they favor an incremental strategy. They would continue to chip away at the death penalty in the courts, seek state-by-state abolition and try to move public opinion.

Some younger lawyers and activists urge a bolder course: to ask the Supreme Court to end capital punishment nationwide right away.

As much as I believe hat the death penalty is state sponsored murder that must be outlawed, I do not trust the Fascist Five Injustices of SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD) to do it. We need an incremental approach as long as the Republican Reich controls the court.

From Daily Kos: This morning Scarborough appeared to have a severe cognitive collapse during a segment about the Republican Party’s debate-o-phobia (video below). Like most of his ideological allies, he is suffering from the delusion that the American media, owned by a handful of megalithic, multinational corporations, is dominated by liberals. Scarborough set off on a rant about the absence of conservatives on nightly news programs, Sunday shows, and in the executive suites. He badgered his guests to come up with examples of Republicans in those roles, and insisted that they could not do it.

Barf Bag Alert!!

Joe and the Republican Reich are not satisfied with normal pro-Republican media bias. They want a debate panel to include himself, O’Lielly, Hannity, and Glen Beck.

From Omaha.com: Trans­Canada wants a Keystone XL timeout.

The company on Monday asked the State Department to suspend consideration of its controversial pipeline while Nebraska officials review its route through the state.

Rachel Maddow covered this topic very well.

Keystone pipeline dead? Company requests suspension of permit

Elana Schor, energy reporter for Politico, talks with Rachel Maddow about the broader context and likely political calculations behind TransCanada’s request that their U.S. permit for the Keystone XL pipeline be suspended.

Like Rachel said, TransCanada is trying to keep the pipeline alive by suspending it in their hope that Republicans take power and approve it. That must not happen.

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