Bias.  C-Span was talking with a Harper's Magazine writer about bias in journalism.  As Brian Lamb said during the show, bias seems to come up everyday in one way or another on C-Span. This fellow smudged journalism once again by stating that bias is natural and reporters should not temper it.  He then turned around and criticized Fox News for being biased and not admitting to it.  I don't watch Fox News at all, and since I gave up almost all cable network channels, I don't see much television news except for local and network broadcasts.  However, I've always been thankful to Fox because it is an alternative to most other television news shows.  I don't know Rupert Murdoch's political bias, but before Fox News arrived on the scene, the right sided political news market was hugely underserved.  The so called liberal media does not criticize Fox because of its character... it criticizes Fox because it is the enemy.  Fox meanwhile, cares mostly about its business, and as a business that provides the only high-powered alternative voice to the television air, its business faces little competition.  So, my point about Fox News is that it's good business.  Half of Americans are liberal and half are conservative, but the choice for liberal cable news is half a dozen or more, while the choice for an alternative is just one.

C-Span's Brian Lamb often asks where it's written that reporters should not be biased.  Well, if it isn't written, that's because journalism and reporting isn't a profession.  I'm pretty sure that journalists and reporters do consider themselves professionals, and codify and subject themselves to standards and ideals that promote objectivity, credibility, balance etc.  I don't watch or read news because I want a reporter's opinion on a story, I watch or read because I want facts that I can use to form my opinion.  Contemporary journalists are overcome with the hunger for power in culture today.  The impulse to control citizens has perverted the goal of informing them.  The Harper's fellow and others criticize Fox because they don't admit bias, but I would criticize such people because they don't admit they are advocates rather than reporters.

The Harper's advocate also didn't understand Rupert Murdoch's comment about how most mainstream news is geared to please an elite audience rather than the population at-large.  I don't know much about the distribution of Harper's magazine, but I would guess they don't sell a whole lot of them in Peoria... so to speak.

Illegal immigrant boycott day or whatever has come and gone.  Only the few giant exploiter cities might be affected by that kind of thing.  I can go weeks without seeing an illegal where I live... which is a metropolitan area of about 500,000.  Sure there will be some business contraction if all the illegals go, but there won't be any more unemployment or any less consumer choice.  Overall health in the US... and wages for low level work would surely go up.  It's about time for U.S. business to compete for workers rather than have poor, uneducated ones loiter up to their door.  It's also about time for people to stop having babies they can't support or raise.  I don't think illegals should be felons, but they should forfeit for all time any right to vote here.  If they can never vote here, politicians will quickly lose interest in them.  We need to penalize the people who hire illegals.  Anyway, if we do nothing else on immigration reform, we need to amend whatever so that babies born here are not automatically citizens.  That's not an incentive we need anymore... and haven't for a long, long time.

Are you ready for some football???  So Reggie Bush knew nothing about his family's taking from the cookie jar?  Not likely!  I hope this hurts his image so much that his endorsement opportunities all disappear.  I won't buy anything endorsed by a cheat and a liar.  This is another sad episode in the life of athletes who are mercenaries rather than sportsmen.  Reggie Bush didn't make college football great, and he won't make the NFL great... they already were and are and always will be so.  Take away his records, his Heisman, his everything.  God was looking out for all of us when the Longhorns prevailed in January.

My favorite whipping boy Jeff Skilling is back in the news.  I wish I could see his soulful testimony . "I'm innocent."  He didn't jump ship before it sunk because he's crooked... it was just the ordinary course of business. He'd had enough of being a big shot and grown bored with lying to people, so he wanted to spend some time with his dogs... although he can't tell you their names.  All this while President Bush tries to sell his health savings account foolishness. Why do Bush policies tend to work in favor of money managers and investment bankers. Health savings accounts would pool more money for looting by people like Jeff Skilling.  That's the new American Dream, get your manicured hands as close as possible to large pools of money... spend it, fill your pockets with it, conceal it... and then hope no one finds out.

On another note.  All these immigrant protests are solid proof of the increasing security threat of illegal immigration.  Illegal aliens marching on our institutions and making demands sounds a lot like an invasion to me.

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois was on Face the Nation Sunday. I think he's been drinking from the Chicago river. First, he admitted to supporting businesses that hire illegal employees... that's a senator's idea of upholding the constitution and laws of the United States. Why forget about the law, because it's cheap and convenient to do so. Second, the senator put forth a policy whereby we should overlook all the overcrowding, filth, lawlessness, ignorance, and deterioration that illegal immigration brings to the U.S. because the senator was able to find a single illegal immigrant who's in graduate school. I won't overlook a thousand bad examples of illegal immigration in the hopes of finding one diamond in the rough. Besides, that illegal immigrant graduate student is needed much more in his homeland than here.

I saw the Mexican ambassador to the U.S. on C-Span. He claims Mexico deported 250,000 illegal immigrants last year as they came across its southern border. Tooth Fairy politics. Mexico couldn't round up 250,000 kernels of corn for deportation. I've found that generally accepted accounting practices in Mexico are no standards at all... which means that numbers coming from Mexico, whether financial or political, aren't worth a discarded tamale wrapper, or a soiled disposable diaper, or...

On another note, I saw that Dick Cheney made a big donation to a Washington D.C. hospital. Gee, I thought he was from Wyoming. Isn't there a hospital or university in Wyoming that could use a big donation. Well, in fairness to Mr. Cheney... he made all his money from sweetheart business dealings and influence peddling inside the Beltway. I wonder if people in Wyoming even consider him a resident... particularly because of the way he handles a gun.

It's a funny thing about all the immigrant protesting in Los Angeles.  Why haven't all these outraged people done anything to turn their homeland into a place worth living in?  Illegal immigrants are not necessary to keep the U.S. economy alive.  They are needed for business owners who want to pay the lowest wage and want to negotiate employment from the position of greatest power.  If there's a labor shortage in some big city, business owners will have to do more to attract internal migration to that city... but that takes effort and money.

A couple of politicians have been on C-Span recently claiming that no non-immigrant wants some good paying hourly jobs in their cities.  Well, my experience with illegal immigrants is that they bring with them all the worst traits of international business... such as hostile work places, bullying, nepotism, cliques, corrupt tendencies.  Sure employers have trouble finding legal employees when all they've hired is illegals.  The illegals create an un-American, unbearable work place.

I've been absent for some days, watching too much college basketball... which leads me to some observations.

If Memphis had to lose and bust my brackets, I'm glad it was my old Bruins. UCLA played some incredible transition defense. The Bruins revealed Memphis' weakness, the Tigers have a lot of talents, but one is not smarts.

IBM is running a new commercial where everyone sings that they're not like everybody else, which shows they are like everybody else... they all tell themselves they're special.

C-Span hosted a show recently that included a Cato Institute gent with a novel idea on illegal immigration. The idea goes this way, since most U.S. citizens are descendents of people who immigrated to the U.S. when there were no laws against immigration, we are all descended from illegal immigrants... and since we are all descended from illegal immigrants, we should accept illegal immigration today. If this idea doesn't belong in a Hall of Shame, then no idea can belong there. One cannot do something illegal unless there is a law against it. If one's ancestor immigrated to the U.S. when the borders were open, then one's ancestor immigrated to the U.S. legally.

So the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the U.S. in the case regarding Yale law school and the U.S military.  I notice that the decision was 8-0 in favor of the U.S., which always leads me to wonder what the litigants and lower courts were thinking.  I'm continually disturbed by lawyers in this culture who think that any law that bothers them is by definition unconstitutional... or at least they can assert so and confound reality for a short time.  Sadly, that kind of thinking tends to be more on the liberal side of the aisle than not.  I liked one line in the SC opinion, about how the argument put forth by the law schools "trivializes" the constitutional protections they sought in their case.  This one word may sum up what people can hope from the Roberts court in the future.  Stop trivializing important principles and rules of law.  I don't know exactly where the somewhat modern trend of trivializing law has its roots, but they certainly find some nourishment in the wise-ass, sour grapes mindset that is pervasive these days.  When lawyers adopt the personalities we find in television sitcoms and farce dramas, the practice of law is sure to become trivialized.  Judges are supposed to help moderate trivialization, but it seems they are often not up to the task.  Not surprising I suppose, since judges are lawyers... and friends of lawyers... and impressed by themselves and their friends.

I missed the State of the Union address. I have a hard time listening to President Bush speak about anything anymore.  I haven't heard a good idea from him since he ran for President in 2000.  Bush's words don't seem to even convince him... his delivery lacks conviction.  My state of the presidency message is DISAPPOINTMENT.  Disappointment with economic and tax policies founded on "what's good for the goose is good for the gaggle."  Disappointment with runaway spending and borrowing.  Disappointment with cabinet and advisor choices.  Disappointment with his ability to walk the line.  Bush has only been in office for one year of his second term and it feels like it's been a generation.  That's a bad feeling. Time flies when you're having a good time, but time creeps when you're mired in drudgery.  Sometimes Bush appears tired of the job himself... almost eager to have the next presidential election so he can be rid of the burden.  It takes unusual stamina to be President of the U.S., and the kind of stamina it takes to run for the office is usually a good indicator of what's needed when one wins the job.  However, it has become clear to me that another key trait for a president should be advanced intellect... because it seems to me that few past presidents have been common in that regard. Certainly all of the great presidents were of uncommon intellect.  Even President Reagan, who was often criticized for being simple, a criticism that I reject, was a fount of heady witticisms and has become recognized for speech writing.  I'm not prepared yet to conclude what we received when this President Bush assumed his office, but as a non-partisan who supported change in 2000, I'm disappointed.

So VP Cheney shot a friend while hunting.  I've discovered another difference between the GOP and Dems, the GOP shoots its friends in the face while the Dems shoot their friends in the back.  Hey, these are the jokes folks... (8^)

I'm so bored by the parade of Senators who continue to disparage Judge Alito because his rulings haven't always favored little guys in the world.  Judges shouldn't favor anyone, anytime, in any court.  Judges ought to bring reason and dispassion to a dispute, that's the thing litigants should depend on and demand.  It has been said that the Democrat party is dominated and owned by plaintiff lawyers, and it looks as though that has not changed.  These Senators seem to forget that lots of little guys comprise corporations... even large corporations.  One little guy isn't deserving just because he shows up in court with a money-grubbing trial lawyer who has too much free time and wants to appeal a lost case in the hopes of extorting some settlement dough from a corporation.  I guess Senator Kennedy's business enterprises never defend themselves in a lawsuit brought by a little guy.  I'll certainly bet that Senator Kennedy's business enterprises don't treat little guys any better than any other corporation does.  We've all heard recently about Nancy Pelosi's anti-union business practices.  The Democrat leadership seems to suggest that they'd prefer a rigged judicial system rather than a fair one.  Is it any wonder that Democrats couldn't have been expected to count votes fairly in 2000?

I don't pay a lot of attention to Bin Laden messages, but I don't believe Bin Laden would offer a truce about anything. However, there was a commentator on NPR who suggested the truce idea was consistent with Muslim scripture or tradition.  I was surprised to see that the latest Bin Laden tape caused people to focus on Los Angeles as a terrorist target. Keeping L.A. (and Hollywood) in business can only help deteriorate the U.S.  A crusader in L.A. is someone who promotes a belief in substance abuse, profanity, pandering, divorce, distortion, mob rule, illiteracy, and a passionate narcissism.  I've heard that L.A. has an illiteracy rate above 50%. Hollywood supports that because illiterate people are more easily led and exploited (i.e., they make an accepting audience).

Al Gore gave a nice televised speech on MLK Day.  Gore was in excellent form and his years in office and on the stump trails shows well.  I never hear his name mentioned in connection with 2008.  He certainly is more attractive than John Kerry, although both come from the Senate... and recent Presidents don't.  Good as Gore was on MLK Day, it was not long ago that he was misusing his office to obtain extraordinary campaign contributions from foreigners.  I also read a recent email about Iran Contra Hearings where Oliver North explained that he needed a $60,000 security system at his home because of a dangerous terrorist named Osama Bin Laden.  North's explanation was at the request of a young, sarcastic Senator Gore.

I worry some about the Bush administration's use of authority.  Bush & Co.'s record in this regard shows they earnestly cross legal/ethical lines in pursuit of goals.  Like most in their kind of position, they cross the lines because they don't expect to be caught or held liable... and certainly not because they would want others to cross the lines if the situation were reversed. Does anyone trust anything said by VP Cheney or Secretary Rumsfeld these days?  These are men who seem to go about their business under the belief that they can't be removed from office, and they may be right about that.  I've learned to live with the fact that the Bush years have been good for energy, international construction, and defense (not hard to have predicted in hindsight)... businesses that are dear to Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld.  But I'll never learn to live with the notion that Bush & Co. can do no wrong, or that a President necessarily knows best.

Did anyone else notice that Alito supporters come from both sides of the political aisle, but Alito detractors are all Democrat?  I'm lukewarm about Alito, but mostly because of my desire for judges that show strength and candor.  More than I would like to have seen, Alito relied on his judicial temperament to the point of listener frustration.  That is, judges often opt to say too little about a subject rather than too much… and what they do say is often clouded by qualified statements.  Judges also lean toward the side of study and caution rather than speculation.  I also sensed from Alito an occasional desire to please important people... and to shed humility in moments of truth.  Nonetheless, all of the opposition to Alito took the same monotonous form of fear and alarmism.  Today some congresswoman suggested that the Terry Schiavo case tore the country apart and would disintegrate the nation if such a case were to occur again.  I lived in California during that time, half-way between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and can't remember any effect from that case.   People talked about the case, however the television news covered it not because of audience demand, but for some other reason.  After the matter concluded and Ms. Schiavo expired, life where I lived was as it had been before the Schiavo case, during the Schiavo case, and would be after the Schiavo case.

The idea of settled law came up a lot during the hearings.  Let me say first that I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that settled law would be law that the Supreme Court would not grant a hearing.  Since cases that rely on Roe v. Wade continue to be heard in Federal Circuit Courts and before the Supreme Court, it's not settled law.  I would draw a distinction between settled law and standing law.   Roe v. Wade is clearly standing law... and standing law overwhelmingly tends to continue to stand.

The Alito inquisition and pep rally at the Hart ("Monkey Business") Senate Office Building is going according to prognostication.  Alito needed a better response to the question about his "initial service" and conflicts regarding Vanguard.  Alito's original answer was that he accidentally failed to recuse himself from a case, but then voluntarily corrected that mistake.  Senator Hatch (R-UT) tried wrongly to diminish that accident by thinking Alito was not bound by his pledge to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1990.  Bad idea!  I hope the judge reverts to his first answer, and truly believes, that not recusing himself from the Vanguard case initially and then correcting that accident was his ongoing commitment.  The judge Alito who recognized his conflict late and went beyond the call of duty to solve it fairly and honorably is the judge I would want to hear a case.  A Supreme Court Justice should be extraordinary, and an extraordinary judge would do what Alito did in the Vanguard situation… and would not try to worm his way out of a commitment (as a Senator might).

I really enjoyed a C-Span Book TV segment with three Supreme Court scholars (Lee Epstein, Craig Bradley, and Christopher Tomlins).  As the nation heads into next week's Senate confirmation hearings regarding Sam Alito, it was pleasant to hear people discuss the Supreme Court selection process without interrupting or trying to silence one and other.  I've watched Court confirmation hearings since C-Span has been covering them, and the atmosphere of those hearings has changed over the years.  It has changed because the influence of media, communications, and public relations principles and industries have grown in Washington D.C. This new round of hearings will look much like the Roberts hearings.  Senator Biden will try to show his fans and others how clever and insistent he is (and that he's moved from button shirt sleeves to cuff links through the years), Senator Feinstein will show her fans and others how deeply concerned she is, Senator Shumer will show his fans and others how rational he is, and Senator Kennedy will show his fans and others that he's still alive.  Republican senators will counter soundbyte moments of Democrat senators, and the rest of the Republican questions will be chummier than an entertainment news interview.  All of those demonstrations will have nothing to do with the Senators' decisions on judge Alito.  I consider it a great lie that one has to ask a nominee their view on Roe v. Wade in order to understand that nominee's judicial philosophy.  The kind of thinking that went into Roe v. Wade can't be unique to Roe v. Wade. Facts are unique, principles are recurring.  If a senator claims he can't discern Judge Alito's judicial philosophy and methodology and manner in the hundreds of opinions he's written or joined in a fifteen year judicial career, then that senator is intellectually dishonest.  These senators don't seem to want to learn about nominees, they want to make speeches.  If a senator wants to know about judge Alito, ask his feelings about education, poverty, taxes, welfare, corruption, race relations, mob rule, decency, leisure activities, etc… feelings that reveal the human within the chunk of marble.  Lawyers often advise to not ask questions that one doesn't know the answer to, but Judiciary Committee senators often modify that advice and ask questions they can't get an answer to.  The problem with most senators is that they are lawyers… typically uncourageous and artless.

In know that C-Span's chief mission is covering Congress, but having watched senator Chuck Shumer today (D-NY), I'm beginning to think that there's nothing to learn from these people anymore.  Shumer spoke briefly about his developing view on the Alito nomination, using notes he must have pulled from old files in his office.  I have nothing against a senator who might oppose a nominee, the Court has too many northeast-north lawyers by my calculation, so one less might be an improvement.  However, for Shumer to say he has no litmus test, or has not made up his mind about Alito is THE disingenuous, Pinochio-nose statement so far this year.  I submit that if Chuck Shumer were nominated for the Supreme Court, and Chuck Shumer could be expected to threaten Roe v. Wade, then Chuck Shumer wouldn't even vote for Chuck Shumer.  In the words of Howard Cosell, "tell it like it is Dandy, tell it like it is."

C-Span covered a press conference where some women organizations were objecting to Judge Alito for the Supreme Court.  Without taking a position on Judge Alito, (although it's hard to believe in this era that any Justice would want to discriminate against women, and it's easy to believe that a NOW type judge would like to replace parents with social workers), I disagree with the NOW leader's characterization of how Supreme Court Justices are appointed.  The Senate role is not "equal" because the process is linear.  Because Senate endorsement of a Justice comes after an Executive nomination, showing no deference to the Executive choice would make that choice meaningless.  Advice and consent is a routine check to block cronies and incompetents… say, appointing Michael Brown or Jack Abramoff for the Supreme Court. This is clear in the history of the process and it's clear in the light of common-sense.  I saw Jimmy Carter on C-Span a while back talking about his ability to have shaped the Federal Judiciary during his term by appointing many judges to newly created bench seats.  Carter didn't mention the Senate in connection with his accomplishment.

I also found it disturbing to hear a speaker addressing the audience in a foreign language.  What business does Mexico or Latin America have with shaping the U.S. Supreme Court?  I'm sure the people of Spain couldn’t care less about the so-called balance of the U.S. Supreme Court.  It's people like that Spanish speaker who activistly seek to erode U.S. civility, values, and laws rather than advance them.  I worked with a true Mexican-American many years ago, a man who immigrated and became a U.S. citizen without losing his identity or heritage.  What he told me then, in English with an accent, is that Mexico wants U.S. territory… and that crossing borders illegally to inhabit another country is an act of war.

Enron was a C-Span topic last week, so it's a good time to renew my criticism of Wall Street and publicly traded companies.  It's a shame that executive officers of public stock companies overvalue the ability to manage financial statements… holding back a gain this quarter because it will help more next quarter, discontinuing an operation this year because it will be easier to cut our loss now rather than later.  However, when did the new wave of executive liars convince themselves that misrepresentation and pump-and-dump type strategies were normal and smart executive thinking, and when did Wall Street begin to think so little of itself that it designed ignorance into its institutions?  What kind of fool would pay a microsecond of attention to a Wall Street stock analyst these days?  I remember watching Jeff Skilling testify before Congress early in the Enron scandal… and going on and on about what he didn't know about Enron and how he relied on people outside Enron to make his decisions.  One of the questioners finally asked Mr. Skilling what he did to earn his pay and privileges, and Mr. Skilling had little to say… only something about strategic blah blah blah.  I took that to mean what it means in a lot of corporations: attending boondoggle planning sessions; traveling first class around the world to enjoy fine hotels and dining; reading the Wall Street Journal to understand what messages are currently vogue and attracting money; and following the value of one's stock options.  I'm reminded of an old TV commercial where some consultants tell a company president what his company needs to do to grow.  The president looks at them and says "great, go do it."  The two consultants look at each other and the president and tell him that they don't actually do anything.  It was no surprise to learn that Skilling was a consultant before joining Enron.

Executives who are convicted or plead guilty to lying, cheating, and stealing for personal gain ought to pay a huge penalty in terms of freedom and loss of wealth, but folks should not forget or discount the role of Wall Street in these calamities.  Wall Street motivates the fraud, enables the fraud, profits from the fraud.  The continuing preoccupation with stock fortunes and wealth is disquieting.  PBS and others criticize Wal-Mart because some of its practices are not good for America.  What does Wal-Mart do that Wall Street doesn't tell most U.S. companies to do.  Ship work overseas, cut expenses, cut benefits, close locations, worship financial statements, measure success by stock price.  If anything, Wal-Mart (where I don't shop although I could) doesn't go as far as Wall Street would like to see.  So, the question is not whether Wal-Mart is good for America… the question is whether Wall Street is good for America.