{"id":3777,"date":"2011-01-04T13:11:50","date_gmt":"2011-01-04T21:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3777"},"modified":"2011-01-04T13:11:50","modified_gmt":"2011-01-04T21:11:50","slug":"open-thread142011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/04\/open-thread142011\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;1\/4\/2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m running a little behind today, because I came down with a cold and overslept.&#160; I\u2019m feeling like something that should be buried in the deep end of my cat box, but could not pass up having some material to work with.&#160; I did, however, stay up to date on comments.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today it took me 3:58 (average 4:59).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2011-01-04-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&#160; How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2011\/01\/rove_protege_tim_griffin_now_on_judiciary_committee.php\" target=\"_blank\">TPM<\/a>: <\/font>A few years ago, Tim Griffin was a key figure in of the biggest scandals in the Bush administration. Democrats said &#8212; and the Justice Department Inspector General later concluded &#8212; that the Bush White House and Justice Department pushed out U.S. Attorney H.E. &quot;Bud&quot; Cummins III to give Griffin, a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove, a plum spot as interim U.S. attorney that would pad his resume.<\/p>\n<p>Now Griffin, who was elected to Congress from Arkansas in November, has been named by House Republicans to be a member of the House Judiciary Committee &#8212; the very same committee which took a close look at his own role in the scandal that ultimately lead to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">They clearly have no shame whatsoever.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2011\/01\/03\/scalia-women-discrimination-constitution_n_803813.html\" target=\"_blank\">Huffington Post<\/a>: <\/font>The equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not protect against discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation, according to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">We all know where LGBT folks stand in the hierarchy of the extreme fascist right.&#160; Congrats, Ladies!&#160; You have been assigned the same status in the pecking order.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From Me: Don\u2019t be upset if Senate rules reform doesn\u2019t come up for a vote tomorrow.&#160; As long as the appropriate motion is made and accepted on schedule, they can defer the voting to negotiate the actual changes without losing the ability to approve it with 51 votes.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><a title=\"Chip Bok\" href=\"http:\/\/comics.com\/chip_bok\/2011-01-03\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Chip Bok\" src=\"http:\/\/c0389161.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com\/dyn\/str_strip\/349934.full.gif\" \/><\/a> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">What\u2019s up in your world?<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m running a little behind today, because I came down with a cold and overslept.&#160; I\u2019m feeling like something that should be buried in the deep end of my cat box, but could not pass up having some material to work with.&#160; I did, however, stay up to date on comments. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/04\/open-thread142011\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-35-id","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}