From Keith Olbermann:

What will Bush do with his Mandate and his Political Capital? He got the highest vote total for a presidential candidate, you know. Did anybody notice who’s second on the list? A Mr. Kerry. Since when was the term "mandate" applied when 56 million people voted against a guy? And by the way, how about that Karl Rove and his Freudian slip on "Fox News Sunday"? Rove was asked if the electoral triumph would be as impactful on the balance of power between the parties as William McKinley’s in 1896 and he forgot his own talking points. The victories were "similarly narrow," Rove began, and then, seemingly aghast at his forthrightness, corrected himself. "Not narrow; similarly structured."

Bush supports exit polls (in Ukraine)

"A tarnished election will lead us to review our relations with Ukraine."
-- George Bush

George Bush has suddenly become a great believer in exit polling -- in Ukraine, that is. The surprise triumph of Russian favorite Viktor Yanukovych has transformed the skeptical Bush into a veritable John Zogby. Now, the chagrined President is threatening to take "concrete measures" unless election results aren't revisited. It's the opening volley in a confrontation that threatens to revive the cold war mentality of East against West.

Needless to say Bush's newfound passion for exit polls hasn't carried over to our own "homegrown" polls; most of them have been dismissed by the administration as "wildly inaccurate". Conservative friends in the American media have gone so far as to remove the original polling data from their web sites so that the "statistical anomalies" can't be examined by curious people who think the unthinkable; that Crawford George may have lost and is trying to bury the evidence. The media has acted with as much accountability as a Florida poll-watcher; shredding the evidence it can't use and dumping the results in the circular receptacle in the corner. The full story...

(Video of Obama's announcement and nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor)

The NRA will not be happy, but Judge Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed today to be the first Latina on the Supreme Court. That's a beautiful thing. Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan will be rolling in their racism over this vote.

PFAW:

By a vote of 68 to 31, the Senate today confirmed Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court. People For the American Way Executive Vice President Marge Baker issued the following statement:

“The confirmation of Sotomayor is a historic step for the nation and a triumph of the American way. The efforts by the NRA and the far right to sabotage her nomination failed badly, with a large majority of Senators uniting to confirm her today. Those Senators will not regret their votes.

Talk Left has the vote count:

The vote was 68-31. In addition to all Democrats and Independents (with the exception of Ted Kennedy, still absent due to his health), 9 Republicans also voted in favor - Voinovich, Bond, Martinez, Alexander, Graham, Collins, Snowe, Gregg and Lugar.

Back in our C&L Time Machine:

Look who's calling Sonia Sotomayor a 'racist': The Right's leading bigots

Pat Buchanan wonders if the nation will survive having 135 million Hispanics

Bob Shrum explodes over Pat Buchanan's racism as Limbaugh uses MLK against Sotomayor

Words of Power: Bush ignores Darfur, and so do we all.

Inarticulate Fumblings: A wonderful personal triumph.

Mombian: Wow, it turns out there is a difference between parenthood and lesbian Turkish oil wrestling.

Father Jake stops the world: How 'bout taking care of the earth for Lent?

The Opinion Mill: Sunday Bookchat

...BG filling in for Mike today only. Continue to send tips to finnsagain AT aol DOT com...

Good Old Strafford teaches us about impeachment and its valuable role in preserving our democracy against Cheney's push for executive privilege.

The Earl of Strafford’s case provides a perfect example. His conduct subverted the constitutional prerogatives of parliament in the name of the king. This was the paradigm case for impeachment. And it was recognized by the earliest American commentators, such as Justice Story, who said that impeachment “is not so much designed to punish as to secure the state against gross official misdemeanors.” It is prophylactic, designed to remove an unfit officer from office, rather than punitive. But most important, it is designed to protect the constitutional order from efforts to transform it...read on

Scott Horton does a wonderful job of dissecting BushCo's reign of power grabbing:

It can and should be used to draw a line in the sand about the arbitrary use of executive power, making clear that Bush’s abuses cannot be taken as precedent by future presidents. Indeed, failure to use impeachment has its consequences: it means acceptance of Bush’s transformation of the constitutional order. It means that the careful balance between legislature, executive and judiciary created by the Framers has been undone, and the executive has triumphed as the paramount power. Impeachment may be a painful process, of course, but Americans should consider whether their Constitution is worth saving.

DownWithTyranny! A crime of epic proportions

The Largest Minority: Occupied Gaza's only power plant has been shut down due to a fuel shortage on the third day of the Israeli blockade.

p m carpenter's commentary: Pondering last weekend's triumph of conservatism

The Existentialist Cowboy: Economic tsunami...

Corrente: Triangulation: The next generation

The Opinion Mill: Bookchat

Download | play Download | play (h/t Bill for videos)

CBS:

After six years, the liberation of Afghanistan has become a triumph without victory. The fighting is the greatest it has been since the beginning of the war and more civilians are dying. In fact, 60 Minutes was surprised to hear this: while the enemy has killed hundreds of civilians this year, a similar number of civilians have been killed by American forces. With relatively few troops there, the U.S. and NATO rely on air power. The number of civilians killed in air strikes has doubled.

60 Minutes wondered whether civilian deaths are undermining the effort to win the Afghan people.

You think? This is the part that stood out:

"There's this macabre kind of calculus that the military goes through on every air strike, where they try to figure out how many dead civilians is dead bad guy worth," says Marc Garlasco, who knows the calculus of civilian casualties as well as anyone.[..]

"Our number was 30. So, for example, Saddam Hussein. If you're gonna kill up to 29 people in a strike against Saddam Hussein, that's not a problem," Garlasco explains. "But once you hit that number 30, we actually had to go to either President Bush, or Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld."

Garlasco says, before the invasion of Iraq, he recommended 50 air strikes aimed at high-value targets -- Iraqi officials.

But he says none of the targets on the list were actually killed. Instead, he says, "a couple of hundred civilians at least" were killed.

The full video and transcripts are available on CBS's website.

Apparently, health warnings must be applied to watching this video.

Guardian UK: (h/t Gregory)

Yesterday they were mocking it. Today, the Sun and Mail triumphantly report that the juddering fluorescent London 2012 Olympics logo is not only bizarrely inadequate to the task of promoting the capital - it can trigger epileptic fits. "Within hours of it being launched we received 12 reports of people suffering seizures," a spokeswoman for Epilepsy Action tells the Sun.

The accompanying Talking Heads-meets-cover of-Smash Hits video has been hastily re-edited. Yesterday the multicoloured shapes were seen fizzling through swimmers' diving bodies, down motorways and up Tate Modern. Now we have footage of a cyclist being overtaken by a woman in an electronic wheelchair and elderly Britons practising their karate chops.

HeraldNet:

In a triumph for the pharmaceutical industry, the Senate on Monday killed a drive to allow consumers to buy prescription drugs from abroad at a significant savings over domestic prices.

On a 49-40 vote, the Senate required the Food and Drug Administration to certify the safety and effectiveness of imported drugs before they can be imported, a requirement that officials have said they cannot meet.

"Well, once again the big drug companies have proved that they are the most powerful and best financed lobby in Washington," said Sen. David Vitter, R-La.

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Arthur Silber: Triumph of the Monsters