January 2006 Archives

Editorializes the San Jose Mercury News on Alito's confirmation:

To no one's surprise, the Senate has confirmed Samuel Alito Jr. to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court. He was sworn in shortly after the partisan 58-42 vote.

A last-ditch attempt by the liberal wing of the Democratic Party to filibuster Alito's nomination in the Senate failed miserably, as it should have. There was no overriding reason to use a filibuster against Alito.

Thanks to a group of seven Republican and seven Democratic senators, the Senate was persuaded not to use the filibuster against court nominees except in extreme cases. The agreement paved the way for a full Senate vote on several Appeals Court nominees and avoided a fight over the use of the filibuster itself.

Too often Democrats used the filibuster against lower court nominees. As a result, many Republican senators threatened to change the Senate rules to eliminate any filibusters on court nominees.

The agreement to use the filibuster sparingly was a sensible one. Unfortunately, 24 Democratic senators and one independent did not agree and voted to filibuster Alito. That was a misuse of the filibuster and a breech of the agreement to use the vote-delaying tactic only in extreme situations.

There is no doubt that Alito has been a conservative judge. But in his 15 years on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Philadelphia, he demonstrated a firm knowledge of constitutional law and was hardly an extremist.

From The Voice of America:

The U.S. Senate has confirmed Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court in a largely party-line vote. He is poised to become the 110th justice on the high court, succeeding Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Senator Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, announced the vote as he presided over the Senate.

STEVENS: "On this vote, the ayes are 58, the nays are 42. The president's nomination of Samuel A. Alito, Jr. of New Jersey to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is confirmed."

The vote fell generally along party lines, with all but one of the Senate's majority Republicans voting in favor of Judge Samuel Alito. All but four of the Democrats voted against the nomination.

The lone Republican who opposed Alito was Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, who is facing a tough reelection battle this year in the Democrat-leaning state.

The confirmation vote culminated weeks of often bitter, partisan debate over the nomination at the start of the mid-term election year.

From The Olympian in Olympia, Washington:

In a Hollywood museum specializing in erotica, there lies a grainy tape of a woman having sex with a man on a couch. The museum says it’s widely believed, though denied by her estate, that the woman is Marilyn Monroe, circa 1948.

Fast-forward some 60 years, past Rob Lowe and Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton. The latest celebrity sex tape contains 14 minutes of seriously hard-core action between actor Colin Farrell and a former Playboy Playmate, punctuated by dialogue such as: “Where’s the zoom on this?”

But like his predecessors in the genre, Farrell’s career is not likely to be harmed at all. In fact, it could even get bigger. It seems what we expect from our celebrities is radically different from what we expect from, say, our politicians. Or ourselves.

“The public is very forgiving,” says Kate White, editor-in-chief of Cosmpolitan. “And very intrigued. It’s not like, ’Oh no Colin, not you!’ ”

Well this ought to give the homophobes in the White House and Congress heartburn this morning.

Brokebrack Mountain, director Ang Lee's story about two gay cowboys, leads the Oscar nominations.

This will, no doubt, result in the American Family Association and other gay-bashing conservative organizations calling for a boycott of the Oscar telecast.

Coretta Scott King, window of Dr. Martin Luther King, is dead at 78.

And while we're on the subject of Enron and cashing in, let's offer a salute to Shari Daughterty.

Shari who? She's the sweet young thing (OK, maybe not that sweet) with the boobs and butt standing naked by a sports car in front of the Enron Building.

So what does this T&A have to do with the with the downfall of a greedy giant corporation?

A lot, actually. Shari, you see, worked for Enron during its go-go days and was left looking for a way to pay the rent after the bubble burst and the company went under. So she submitted some photos to Playboy for their "Women of Enron" issue and got the gig.

That let her parade around in her altogether to the amusement of all and get paid for it to boot. The Women of Enron feature started a whole string of "Women of" companies photo spreads for the skin mag, including the women of Starbucks, McDonalds, Home Depot and even Wal-Mart.

Shari got a chance to cash in her company's greed. Don't you just love America?

(Photo courtesy of and Copyright Playboy Magazine)

This week, two of the institigators of Enron's billion-bilking ways will face the music in court as foemer CEO Key Lay and his chief honcho go on trial for cooking the books and bringing the Energy giant down.

For many, Lay and cronies exemplify corporate greed at its worst.

As Business Week puts it:

The only remaining question of great consequence about Enron is whether its prime movers, Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling, will go to prison for their part in its transformation from icon of New Age corporate cool to synonym for Bubble Era greed and deceit. As the pair go on trial on Jan. 30 in Houston, it will be important to keep in mind that the jury's decision will serve only to fix criminal culpability. Even if Lay and Skilling are acquitted, the trial holds zero hope of redemption for Enron's Big Two. History's verdict is already in, and it is harsh: As two of the most inept executives in business history, Lay and Skilling are heavily to blame for the demise of a company that once employed 31,000 people and had a stock market value of $35 billion but which survives today in shriveled form under the protection of the bankruptcy code.

We should also remember that Ken Lay is a good friend of the President, a failed oil executive named George W. Bush.

Exxon capped a record year with a quarterly profit of $10 billion (yes, that billion with a "b").

Let's see. Mr. and Mrs. America need a second mortgage to pay for a tank of gas and big oil keeps raking in more and more big bucks. An oil man is in the White House.

You don't need a doctorate in economics to see the truth here.

From Reuters:

Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company, on Monday reported a quarterly profit of more than $10 billion, capping a record year dominated by a surge oil and gas prices.

The results pushed up Exxon's profit for the year to a staggering $36.13 billion -- bigger than the economies of 125 of the 184 countries ranked by the World Bank. Profit was up 42 percent from the record results of 2004.

The record earnings are expected to spur calls from politicians and consumer groups for special taxes on Big Oil, as U.S. drivers fume over high gasoline prices.

The Rachel Huggins case could send the message that Iowans can take pictures of naked children in provocative poses and get away with it, but tightening the law in a fair way might be impossible because only a fine line separates a harmless snapshot, art and sexual exploitation, advocates say.

Iowa's exploitation law allows for nude photography, even if a child is younger than 18 and not a relative -- as long as it doesn't depict explicit images or one of several specific sexual acts.

For instance, prosecutors in Jasper County this week said it wasn't automatically a crime for a middle-aged man to snap photographs of a fully or partially unclothed teenage girl.

According to court documents, Rachel Huggins told investigators in 2004 that when she was 14 or 15, Peter Sciarrotta, now 47, took numerous photographs of her wearing a see-through slip in his basement studio, where he shot senior photos and cut hair.

Teen queen Lindsay Lohan

Recall, that Lindsay Lohan's inspiration for her nude shot, topless and covered of course, was Paris Hilton.

A source told In Touch in September, "It was Paris Hilton's recent Vanity Fair cover, where she's topless and covering her breasts with her arms, that inspired Lindsay to push the envelope even further."

Drugs, Bulimia and Pregnancy Rumors: