As expected, Bush went to the extreme right wing in his nomination of Samuel Alito. Set up by conservative disapproval of the Miers nomination, Alito is about as conservative as he could have gone. It'll be interesting how they treat his hearings; in regards to Roberts, conservatives wanted no questions asked about controversial issues, whereas that's all they would have wanted in the questioning of Miers. Clearly they'll try to avoid this as he is shown he would overturn Roe vs. Wade. As Jesse puts it "He's pro-discrimination, anti-civil rights, and likely to side with big corporations over workers every time."

On another note, it's nice that Harry Reid took a stand against the White House and asked for justice and an explanation as to the situation with the CIA leak. Reid voiced the opinion of many people; "I think not only should the president appear before the American public and explain what is going on and take a few questions from the press, but certainly the vice president should do that." He also called out the president on his claim that anyone involved with the leak of Valerie Plame's name would be fired; "Everyone knows Karl Rove is involved," Reid said. "If the president is a man of his word, Rove should be history." It's nice for a Democrat to finally say something publicly about how the administration is full of crap with regards to the leak of Plame's name.

It's official today, the 29th of October...winter in Boston has begun:

NFL PICKS:

Cincinnati d. Green Bay
Dallas d. Arizona
Chicago d. Detroit
Tennessee d. Oakland
Jacksonville d. St Louis
NY Giants d. Washington
Carolina d. Minnesota
Cleveland d. Houston
Miami d. New Orleans
San Diego d. Kansas City
Denver d. Philadelphia
Tampa Bay d. San Francisco
New England d. Buffalo
Pittsburgh d. Baltimore

Season Record: 21-7

What's Really Been Grinding My Gears:

Tim McCarver: Does Fox really think he's a good analyst. He is completely useless to the broadcast; even Scooter is more valuable than McCarver.

Pumpkin Pie: It's just gross. I can't understand how people eat that crap; it was scraped from the inside from a big disgusting orange fruit. Just looking at it makes me sick.

Political Science lectures that are completely useless: After two poly-sci exams it's become clear that the questions come completely from our textbook chapters and not at all from lectures. Literally nothing he has ever said during a lecture has been useful on his exams. This does have a positive as our professor has the most annoying Boston accent ever and his voice becomes very high and squeaky when he says certain words (e.g. "constitutions"). It's not too hard to tone him out and do the crossword puzzle instead.

BU not getting any good concerts: We're in the middle of the city and have a brand new arena, yet BU hasn't gotten anyone to come for a show. I don't even need a huge headliner but at least get someone good to come to BU. It's pathetic a school of our size and location can't get acts to come.

Pre-made Halloween costumes: Sure when you buy a costume already made for you it might look a little better but it deserves a lot more respect when you make your own costume. You don't have to sew or slave over it, but at least make the effort to come up with your own costume.

Miers withdraws Supreme Court nomination

Although she probably would not have won the seat anyway, I'm disappointed Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination for the Supreme Court. From a liberal perspective, she's probably the most left wing candidate we could have hoped for. Bush will probably go with a well more conservative candidate for his next nomination. Even though she lacked any kind of qualification, Miers was central enough, politically, that Democrats may have voted her in based on the fact that if she didn't get the seat, the next nominee would certainly be far more right wing.

When the President states that "Harriet Miers' decision demonstrates her deep respect for this essential aspect of the constitutional separation of powers;" why didn't he understand this from the beginning, it was his decision to put her in that position...idiot. Ed Gillespie, later in the article, says "She, I think, rightly and in a principled manner came to the conclusion that there was about to be a conflict between her role as nominee and the principal she's espoused as White House counsel and counsel to the president." Is it just me or aren't these things that should have crossed the President's mind before he nominated her; these seem like pretty basic reasons for not nominating her. In conclusion, our President is an incompetent moron.

Cold, rainy weather is arguably the most miserable situation a person can be put through. It's been raining all day today with winds over 30 mph, which make it feel like 25 degrees outside. I would much rather be hit by a snow storm at this point instead of this nor’easter. The hot water is out in our building and one of the local walkways is closed off because tiles from out neighboring building flew off and could have easily killed someone. Looking out my window, a saw a girl literally get blown over by the wind. She was walking in a very hunched over way and was hit by a huge gust of wind and she actually fell over. There were also multiple umbrellas floating around after being ripped from peoples' hands. There are soaked clothes all over our place. This weather is just miserable...I hate it.

So it's another Monday, which means another intellectually stimulating column from the Campus Conservative. The column can be found here.

When she refers to Senator Schumer's quote that "[Democrats have] gotten much better at blocking some of the bad things the Republicans would do, but we know you can't be a party of long-term majorities unless you put forward the things you would do," she takes is as Schumer setting the plan to use whining behavior to win Congressional seats. First of all, complaining that the current administration has not done an appropriate job is hardly whining. I'll agree that the Democratic Party is hardly unified at the moment but attacking the conservative leaders of our country seems like a completely reasonable campaign tool. If I was a leader in the Democratic party, the first thing I would look to at the moment for ammunition would be the unsatisfactory job the Republican majority has done in improving our country in economics, defense, as well as in other departments.

When she tries to use polls as evidence for the struggle of Democrats in Congress, she pulls numbers off of multiple polls, which cannot be compared to one another. It's ridiculous for her to compare 52% approval of the party from a Gallup poll to 32% approval of the representatives from a Pew poll. Also, the 52% approval of the Democratic Party is the more important number as one representative's time in Congress is transient compared to the long lasting approval of the Democratic Party.

Her account of the Democrats and their lack of a strong platform are completely correct and this seems to be the biggest problem with the Democratic Party right now; there doesn't seem to be a united party behind one set of goals for the country. However, her point that "[she doesn't] think the American public is going to find it convincing when Democrats run on that platform [of getting rid of Bush] in 2006," is not correct. A lot of Americans believe that the first and nearest step in improving the status of the US is to take back the majority is the House and Senate. This is the first move in getting a Democrat back in office in 2008. Up until 2 months ago this "platform" would not have made much noise for the Democrats but with the past two months of negligence piled on years of inadequacy, many Americans are riled enough to go blue based solely on the anti-conservative view.

The most amusing point in the column comes in the last paragraph when she makes the claim that Democrats shouldn't see success "just because a small majority of voters are unhappy with Republicans at the moment." First of all, there's no such thing as a small majority, it's a complete oxymoron; a majority is a majority, it means more than half of the population, is "unhappy" with the Republican party. Also, "unhappy" isn't exactly the right word to get the point across; a better choice may have been "outraged," "infuriated," or "irate." The majority of people aren't slightly upset with the current administration, for the most part we think it is pathetic and whatever has to be done to take Congress and the White House back is doable.

Can the Ravens just forfeit the rest of their games and pick Matt Leinart in the draft. I can't put up with this shitty play anymore, it's just pathetic.

WEEKEND FOOTBALL PICKS
College Big Games:
Texas(2) d. Texas Tech(10)
Alabama(5) d. Tennessee(17)
Auburn(16) d. LSU(7)

NFL:
Baltimore d. Chicago
Kansas City d. Miami
Pittsburgh d. Cincinnati
Detroit d. Cleveland
St. Louis d. New Orleans
Green Bay d. Minnesota
Philadelphia d. San Diego
Washington d. San Francisco
Indianapolis d. Houston
Seattle d. Dallas
Oakland d. Buffalo
Denver d. NY Giants
Tennessee d. Arizona
Atlanta d. NY Jets

Leo Mazzone would be a huge pickup for the Orioles' coaching and pitching staffs. Mazzone has helped the Braves develop some of the best pitchers of this generation, which has been the key for them to win 14 straight division titles. As much as I like Ray Miller, Mazzone has been developing young talent for a winning organization for over a decade. Mazzone will hopefully be able to come in and get a quick grasp of the O's pitchers and be working with them throughout the off-season to make strides by the time the season rolls around. Specifically, I'm excited to see what he can do working with Erik Bedard and Daniel Cabrera.

It makes me even happier to know that the O's moved in on this deal only after the Yankees failed to bring him in. After Mel Stottlemyre's contract expired after the season, the Yanks immediately looked to get the best man in to replace him. They couldn't reach a deal, however, and that's when the O's began negotiating. Mazzone and Perlozzo grew up together in Maryland and have continued a strong friendship through today. Not that the O's are poised to make any kind of division title run, but it's a strong move to bring in one of the greatest assistants of all time.


Extra note: Maryland has finally started to play some good football this year but they're going to need an amazing effort tonight if they want to upset Virginia Tech. The Hokies have one of the top defenses in the nation so putting up points will be tough for the Terps. It would be nice for the Terps to make a strong showing on a nationally televised game tonight.