July 2010 archive

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

On this day in 1858, the Harris Treaty was signed between the United States and Japan was signed at the Ryosen-ji in Shimoda.  Also known as the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, it opened the ports of  Edo and four other Japanese cities to American trade and granted extraterritoriality to foreigners, among other stipulations.

The treaty followed the 1854 Convention of Kanagawa, which granted coaling rights for U.S. ships and allowed for a U.S. Consul in Shimoda. Although Commodore Matthew Perry secured fuel for U.S. ships and protection, he left the important matter of trading rights to Townsend Harris, another U.S. envoy who negotiated with the Tokugawa Shogunate; the treaty is therefore often referred to as the Harris Treaty. It took two years to break down Japanese resistance, but with the threat of looming British demands for similar privileges, the Tokugawa government eventually capitulated.

Treaties of Amity and Commerce between Japan and Holland, England, France, Russia and the United States, 1858.

The most important points were:

   * exchange of diplomatic agents

   * Edo, Kobe, Nagasaki, Niigata, and Yokohama‘s opening to foreign trade as ports

   * ability of United States citizens to live and trade in those ports

   * a system of phttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritoriality extraterritoriality] that provided for the subjugation of foreign residents to the laws of their own consular courts instead of the Japanese law system

   * fixed low import-export duties, subject to international control

The agreement served as a model for similar treaties signed by Japan with other foreign countries in the ensuing weeks. These Unequal Treaties curtailed Japanese sovereignty for the first time in its history; more importantly, it revealed Japan’s growing weakness, and was seen by the West as a pretext for possible colonisation of Japan. The recovery of national status and strength became an overarching priority for the Japanese, with the treaty’s domestic consequences being the end of Bakufu (Shogun) control and the establishment of a new imperial government.

No Keith, Rachel.  The Boys are back in town.

8 – 2 last night, much more entertaining than a no-hitter.  Jon, I’m going to give you some personal advice, once that beard starts itching in a week or two you won’t be able to get rid of it fast enough.

Men of Honor is good, but not so good I’d watch it twice in a row.  Charlie is the Johnny Depp version.  New Mythbusters @ 9- Bottle Bash.

• AMC– The Mummy
• ESPN– Cards @ Mets
• ABC Family– Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• FX– Men of Honor x 2
• History– American Pickers, Pawn Stars (I’m tired of hyping Chasing Mummies, it’s just not that good)
• Turner Classic– Yesterday’s Enemy, Fail Safe
• Discovery– Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs
• TLC– Toddlers & Tiaras

Later-

• AMC– Troy (Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?)
• SciFi– Haven
• Turner Classics– Network
• USA– Burn Notice (this week’s)

Dave has Michael Keaton and The Flaming Lips.  Jon has Robert L. O’Connell, Stephen Elon Musk.  Alton does Molasses.

Ice Station Impossible is the introduction of Professor (voice of Stephen Colbert) and Sally Impossible, and Pete White and Billy Quizboy.  It includes the death of Race Bannon (Yeah, they never show that part on TV.)

Does Random House have some kind of deal where it’s authors can’t be listed in Wikipedia?

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 100 days in, Gulf spill leaves ugly questions unanswered

by Andrew Gully, AFP

2 hrs 9 mins ago

You know, sometimes you run across a 6 foot tall white pooka of a sentence-

You can read about his gibberish at that last Media Matters link, but here is what fascinates me strangely, precisely because of its ubiquity to the point of banality for anyone who has been paying even glancing attention at right wing thought or what passes for same as it pertains to race lately, an observatory group that includes myself, a fact that is in no small part what has kept me from posting much in recent days, because it is all so inexpressibly wearying, dreadful, insipid, hateful, and fucked up, is this especial snippet of squalor squirted by Mr. Lord, a specimen whose credentials include a gig as a former assistant political fluffer for Zombie Ronald Reagan and assorted dusty, unattractive Pennsylvanian electoral fossils, and who is currently non-gainfully employed as a right-wing-crazy welfare recipient, and whose contemporary written work reveals him as an all-around unpleasant opinion-pustule so virulent that he roundly deserves to be sent to Hell with the task of diagramming this sentence and explaining precisely why it is grammatically correct to a gang of glue-huffing eighth-grade Republican byblows whose parents never loved them and who are also stupid and ugly, or else just Tucker Carlson.

Color me impressed.

Look, to be as close to the bone as may be sliced, “conservatives” have detected in their typical brutally nonsensical thud-thud-hack-chomp-burp fashion that there is a certain power, a certain magic, a certain force to the capacity to call someone a “racist” and make it stick, and as they can dully discern that the “call you racist” Ring is a One Ring to Rule them All, rhetorically related to the “Support this Stupid War Or You Hate America Ring,” which they already collected from the slack-jowled Dwarf-Lord twerps in their fucking Halls of Stone or Connecticut, namely a beardless and quite smackable Joe Lieberman, they covets it, this racism-detecting precious, they covets it, yesss; and while nobody likes Gollum, he’s more presentable than Dan Riehl, but what’s the essential difference, I axe you?

Well, I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years Doctor and I’m happy to state I finally won out over it.

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton has placed an injunction some of the most controversial parts of the Arizona Immigration Law stating that they are likely to be held unconstitutional. The judge has blocked sections that

– Require a police officer to make a reasonable attempt to check the immigration status of those they have stopped;

– Making it a violation of Arizona law for anyone not a citizen to fail to carry documentation;

– Creating a new state crime for trying to secure work while not a legal resident;

– Allowing police to make warrantless arrests if there is a belief the person has committed an offense that allows them to be removed from the United States.

“There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens under the new (law),” Bolton ruled. “By enforcing this statute, Arizona would impose a ‘distinct, unusual and extraordinary’ burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose.”

Judge Bolton ruled only on the lawsuit brought by the Justice Department. There are seven other lawsuits.

Here is the link via Scribd to the ruling.

h/t to TPM and AMERICA blog

Up Date: Judge Bolton’s decision is based on the the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

The Supremacy Clause is a clause in the United States Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2. This clause asserts and establishes the Constitution, the federal laws made in pursuance of the Constitution, and treaties made by the United States with foreign nations as “the Supreme Law of the Land” (using modern capitalization). The text of Article VI, Clause 2, establishes these as the highest form of law in the American legal system, both in the Federal courts  and in all of the State courts, mandating that all state judges shall uphold them, even if there are state laws or state constitutions that conflict with the powers of the Federal government. (Note that the word “shall” is used here and in the language of the law, which makes it a necessity, a compulsion.)

The text of the Supremacy Clause

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

“Punting the Pundits“ is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Maureen finally realizes this war is futile.

Maureen Dowd: Lost in a Maze

The waterfall of leaks on Afghanistan underlines the awful truth: We’re not in control.

Not since Theseus fought the Minotaur in his maze has a fight been so confounding.

The more we try to do for our foreign protectorates, the more angry they get about what we try to do. As Congress passed $59 billion in additional war funding Tuesday, not only are our wards not grateful; they’re disdainful.

Washington gave the Wall Street banks billions and in return, they stabbed us in the back, handing out a fortune in bonuses to the grifters who almost wrecked our economy.

Washington gave the Pakistanis billions and in return, they stabbed us in the back, pledging to fight the militants even as they secretly help the militants.

We keep getting played by people who are playing both sides.

snip

During the debate over war funding on Tuesday, Representative James McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, warned that we are in a monstrous maze without the ball of string to find our way out.

“All of the puzzle has been put together and it is not a pretty picture,” he told the Times Carl Hulse. “Things are really ugly over there.”

Here’s a pair of interesting factoids from Think Progress–

The first is that 96% of the $9.1 BILLION in the special Iraq reconstruction fund set up with the proceeds from Iraqi oil sales can’t be accounted for.

96%.

The second is that Fox News viewers are 1.38% African-American.

Umm… in the polling biz we call that statistically insignificant because it’s within the margin of error.  It’s just as likely that there’s not a SINGLE African-American who watches Fox.

‘But ek’, you say.  ‘What about Michael Steele?’

If you were getting the kind of coverage Michael Steele is getting, would you be watching Fox?

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Following its ratification by the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states, the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing to African Americans citizenship and all its privileges, is officially adopted into the U.S. Constitution.

Two years after the Civil War, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into five military districts, where new state governments, based on universal manhood suffrage, were to be established. Thus began the period known as Radical Reconstruction, which saw the 14th Amendment, which had been passed by Congress in 1866, ratified in July 1868. The amendment resolved pre-Civil War questions of African American citizenship by stating that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.” The amendment then reaffirmed the privileges and rights of all citizens, and granted all these citizens the “equal protection of the laws.”

The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868 as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.

Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held that blacks could not be citizens of the United States.

Its Due Process Clause prohibits state and local governments from depriving people (individual and corporate) of life, liberty, or property without certain steps being taken. This clause has been used to make most of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states, as well as to recognize substantive rights and procedural rights.

Its Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction. This clause later became the basis for Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court decision which precipitated the dismantling of racial segregation in the United States.

The amendment also includes a number of clauses dealing with the Confederacy and its officials.

Bill Egnor, aka Something the Dog Said, @ FDL, posted a series of discussion on the Constitution and the Amendments. Here is the link to his article Friday Constitutional 16 – Amendments 13 and 14, Slavery and Equal Protection

I sighed uneasy relief with everyone else when BP finally stopped Deepwater Horizon from emptying itself in the Gulf.  Yes, I knew it was temporary.  Yes, I knew it could blow up again any minute.  But there was, nevertheless, a relief.  For a short time anyway, BP would stop turning the Gulf of Mexico into a disgusting oil gumbo garnished with oil soaked pelicans and dead dolphins.

But then I read this article in the New York Times:

A wellhead in southeastern Louisiana was spewing a mist of oil and gas up to 100 feet into the air after being hit by a tug boat early Tuesday morning, officials said. It is at least the third unrelated oil leak in the area since the Deepwater Horizon spill began 99 days earlier.

The well is about 65 miles south of New Orleans in Barataria Bay, which is surrounded by wildlife-rich wetlands and was a fertile area for fishermen, shrimpers and oystermen before the BP spill. By Tuesday afternoon, a reddish brown sheen 50 yards by one mile long was spotted near the well, according to a spokeswoman for the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard said the well was owned by Cedyco, a company based in Houston.

The wellhead burst at 1 a.m. local time Tuesday after being hit by a tug boat, the Pere Ana C, that was pushing a dredge barge, Captain Buford Berry, though details were still being investigated.

So, not to put too fine a point on it, there is more oil and gas being deposited in the Gulf as you read this.  And they haven’t started stopping it yet, and are booming.  Booming.  Booming with 6000 feet of boom.  Pardon me, but didn’t we all decide in the past 3 months that that is worthless.  Oh, but excuse me again, this is a new day.  And a new leak.  And so we get to try stuff that didn’t work before all over again.  Because we’re crazy and think it’ll be different this time.

And then we have this gem:

No specific flow rate has been determined, officials said.

Mama mia.  Oy gevalt.

And this, dear reader, is why I find myself shrieking.  And uttering strings of profanity.  Join me.

simulposted at The Dream Antilles and docuDharma and dailyKos

If you took my advice and watched ESPN last night you saw the 5th No-Hitter of the year and the first ever for the Devil Rays.

Yawn.

Comedy starts off with Futurama but rapidly declines.  ESPN has World Series of Poker!

I’m tempted to live blog.

No Keith, Rachel.  The Boys are back.

• FX– Enemy of the State
• History– Repeat of the most recent Top Shot @ 10
• SciFi– Last week’s and new Warehouse 13
• Turner Classic– The West Point Story (What a wacky concept!)
• Discovery– Finale of Deadliest Catch @ 9
• Toon– I’ve perhaps been unappreciative of Unnatural History, last week’s and new

• VH1– Ochocinco: The Ultimate Catch.  I kid you not.

Later-

Dave has Luke Wilson and Dierks Bentley.  Jon interviews Fareed Zakaria, Stephen Kevin Kline.  The late Futurama is Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV, one on my favorite episodes.

Alton cooks Brussels Spouts.  I love them!  Ghosts of the Sargasso introduces the X-2 and the Pirate Captain who both eventually end up with Jonas Venture Jr.

• Turner Classic– The Winning Team

Ronald Wilson Reagan playing Grover Cleveland Alexander, what could be better than that?