It's been over a year since Americans elected Barack Obama, but we're still living in George Bush's world – two wars, a recession, a deficit, and so much more.

President Obama has his hands full cleaning up these messes and establishing a legacy on healthcare and climate change. I get that. But there's one blind spot that he can't afford to ignore any longer.

We're living under the rule of George Bush's judges. He picked over 40% of all current federal judges. We're talking about lifetime appointees, and so few cases ever make it to the Supreme Court that they usually get the last word.

Bush's judicial legacy didn't happen by accident, or overnight. He made it a priority. The numbers are telling: as Obama approaches the end of his first year, he’s picked roughly 30 nominees, 11 of whom have been confirmed. By the end of his first year, Bush had nominated 65, and nearly 30 had been confirmed.

To be sure, Republicans have been obstructing Obama's nominees at every turn – that's why so few have been confirmed. But Obama has played into their hands by not nominating more people, which would throw their obstruction into sharp relief and amp up pressure on the GOP.

I know it might not seem this way – in the midst of the healthcare fight – but Obama's legacy, the future of progressive legislation, and the well-being of our nation depend on the character, and quantity, of the judges he nominates. This issue deserves equal billing with the others at the very top of the administration's agenda.

The good news is that, unlike with many problems we face, Obama can ramp up nominations without sacrificing progress on his other priorities. There is no shortage of highly qualified – and progressive – nominees, and Senate Democrats can crush judicial filibusters when they set their mind to it.

The bottom line is that Obama may never have another opportunity like the present, with 60 Democrats in the Senate, to push through his nominees and return some balance to the judicial branch. And he has only four or so months before the 2010 election season causes the Senate to grind to a halt.

President Obama, your legacy clock is ticking. We need you to act now.

Wapo:

A federal judge ruled today that Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) will face trial in Washington next month, denying Stevens's request to transfer the case to a court in his home state.

...Stevens, 84, was indicted July 29 by a federal grand jury on charges he failed to report on Senate financial disclosure forms that he accepted more than $250,000 in gifts and home renovations from executives of Veco, a now-defunct Alaska oil services company.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled that moving the trial to a federal court in Alaska would cause "delay and additional expense."

Aw gee, Judge Sullivan, I'm sure there are some former Veco executives who would be happy to help with the cost (snark).

The Evangelical Panderfest: The Political Carnival, Corrente, Romenesko

TBogg: Easily the top Christianist pander. This is film script material a la those old Victor Mature, Chuck Heston sandal and shield flicks.

Prometheus 6: Krugman joins the chorus

gin and tacos: We're Number One!

Scott Horton: Military judge finds political manipulation in Gitmo - again

OK, see if you can wrap your head around the concept of this blog! In the linked post, he's still upset with those cheese-eating surrender monkeys. As J.C. Watts' father famously remarked, "a black person voting Republican is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders."

State of the Day: The script doctor's 'narrative.'

Politicker: Oklahoma politician's offensive comic book - with the phrase "anal sodomy" in it - doesn't win him re-election. Meanwhile, a Texas State Representative gets caught using campaign contributions to buy $1500 cowboy boots, a Texas Republican Congressman is getting some heat for holding a fundraiser in a Vegas burlesque joint, a Kansan sticks it to the election system, and in Iowa, a judge says "it's about time"

Emptywheel: Scott McClellan dismantles Cheney's Plame firewall

Newshoggers: Republican hypocrites will even run against the GOP brand to get elected. Not surprising coming from a pack of liars who can unblushingly blame Democrats for energy woes and call for more drilling access despite the fact that their Big Oil constituency is shipping record amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel to other countries, enjoying enormous, record profits, while ducking responsibility for massive pollution.

10 Zen Monkeys: This roundup of YouTube clips is meant to give a small sense of what it's like for the people who are killing and getting killed in Iraq - a view that, limited as it is, one can't possibly get from the mainstream newsmedia.

War and Piece: G-Dub to close Gitmo?

William K. Wolfrum: Christopher Hitchens lets Vanity Fair blow off his legs, kill his entire family, destroy his home; he writes about it

MediaBloodhound: PBS and NBC's symbiotic sins of omission, and Fox's thirteeen-year-olds.

TalkLeft: Is the government tracking you? At least one Federal Judge still believes warrantless spying is illegal.

David E's Fablog: The newspaper of record's fawning profile of professional liar Limbaugh made me sick. Imagine how David E. felt when he noticed his name in the article!

Angry Bear: Republicans warn that Democrats will cause a difference

I'm a little behind this story, but yes, the AP acted like goons when they threatened the Drudge Retort with a lawsuit over fair use. I would imagine it was some of their lawyers hunting around the Internets to see if any websites were copying their material. Unfortunately, they got a little trigger happy and attacked a blogger for nothing.

The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words.
On Saturday, The A.P. retreated. Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P., said in an interview that the news organization had decided that its letter to the Drudge Retort was "heavy-handed" and that The A.P. was going to rethink its policies toward bloggers. The quick about-face came, he said, because a number of well-known bloggers started criticizing its policy, claiming it would undercut the active discussion of the news that rages on sites, big and small, across the Internet

Jamie emailed this story over when it first hit on Slashdot, but I didn't have a chance to post this yet. I've always been treated fairly by the AP so it was surprising to see them act like this, but give someone a new internet tool to play with and you wind up with idiotic threats. As KOS said earlier they now are backtracking a little bit:

The AP is going to lecture bloggers about what the "spirit of the internet" is all about? Laughable. And the AP certainly doesn't have free reign to rewrite copyright law on its own. Fair use provisions.

Hahahaha, OK, sure. Good luck with that, AP, I think it's really about trying to save face on their part at this time, but they walked right into a buzz saw. Look what they got themselves into.

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In a June 4 article headlined "Judge tosses school official's lawsuit against Fox News," the Associated Press reported on the dismissal of a school superintendent's lawsuit against the Fox News Channel and Fox & Friends co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade for repeating as fact an online parody news report of a school prank that included fabricated quotes attributed to the superintendent. The judge called Doocy and Kilmeade "gullible," as the AP noted, and while he dismissed the lawsuit, the Fox & Friends segment in question marked at least the third time since 2004 that Fox News has issued a retraction and apology for airing a fake news report that repeated false information. In fact, the segment aired after Fox News' Vice President for News John Moody reportedly warned staff in January 2007 that "seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC." In dismissing the suit, U.S. District Court Judge D. Brock Hornby wrote:

The facts in this case -- a morning cable news show derisively reporting events and statements obtained unwittingly from an online parody -- should provide grist for journalism classes teaching research and professionalism standards in the Internet age. But First Amendment principles developed long before the Internet still provide protection to the gullible news program hosts against this public official's claims for defamation and false light invasion of privacy. Poetic justice would subject the defendants to the same ridicule that they accorded the plaintiff. But in real life, the aggrieved school superintendent must be satisfied with their later retraction and a professional reputation sullied less than theirs. Read on...

Somehow, this comes to mind.

KGBT4:

BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS (AP) -- A Los Fresnos family is going to court to prevent a Cameron County justice of the peace from ordering spankings in his courtroom.

A lawsuit filed today alleges Justice of the Peace Gustavo "Gus" Garza told a 14-year-old girl's stepfather to strike her repeatedly on the buttocks in open court.

If he didn't, the judge said the girl would be found guilty and fined $500 for truancy.

The lawsuit by Mary Vasquez and her husband, Daniel Zurita, described the paddle provided by Garza as large and heavy and fashioned from a thick piece of lumber.

In an affidavit, Zurita says that when he was through, the judge told him he had not struck the girl hard enough. Read on...

The debate on spanking has been ongoing for years, but I think this takes things to a whole new level. Does a judge have the right to order a parent to repeatedly paddle their child -- at home or right in the courtroom? I personally don't believe physical violence is necessary in raising a child, and think this judge has either lost his capacity to be rational or gets off on watching children being spanked...or both.

Could it be any clearer that this?

The Defense Department was mum Friday on the reasons for the abrupt removal of a Guantánamo war court judge who had threatened to suspend the trial of Canadian captive Omar Khadr in a showdown with the controversial prison camp.

---

Military prosecutors had been pressing Brownback to set a trial date, but he has repeatedly directed them first to satisfy defense requests for access to potential evidence. At a hearing earlier this month, he threatened to suspend the proceedings altogether unless the detention center provided records of Khadr's confinement....read on

Another embarrassment for the war of terror.

A federal judge has declared another mistrial against six men accused of plotting to spark an anti-government war by toppling Chicago's Sears Tower and bombing FBI offices.
U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard ordered a mistrial Wednesday when jurors reported they were hopelessly deadlocked after 13 days of deliberation in the case of the so-called "Liberty City Seven." The first trial ended in a mistrial in December because of a hung jury for the same six defendants and the acquittal of a seventh.

The six defendants could have faced up to 70 years in prison if convicted of four conspiracy charges.

Logan posted on the first trial here. Jeralyn's take on the original case too.