Candy Crowley weighs in on McCain

CNN’s Candy Crowley: fluffer for McCain or just another SCLM gasbag? You make the call:

In search of traction for his flagging campaign, McCain has delivered a series of speeches this month intended to showcase his serious credentials — a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who made himself a military and defense expert over 25 years in Congress.

[…]

In some ways, McCain can’t win for trying. He is viewed suspiciously by conservatives who think his willingness to break the party line makes him too much of a maverick to be trusted. At the same time moderates look at McCain’s mainstream Republican campaign as repudiation of his maverick status.

Launching the Straight Talk Express last month McCain responded, “My positions haven’t changed. I’m too old to change. I’m the same. People will understand that as the campaign goes on.”

McCain will deliver his announcement speech in New Hampshire where six years ago he handed George Bush a surprise double digit defeat which catapulted McCain’s insurgent campaign into serious contention, at least for a while.

It was, McCain would later say, like catching lightning in a bottle. It remains to be seen if he can catch it again.

Anyone who saw McCain’s ridiculous performance on The Daily Show last night (you can watch the whole thing here) knows he hasn’t a prayer of winning the nomination, much less the White House. I don’t know what campaign Candy is watching, but McCain hasn’t been “willing[ ] to break the party line” since around 2000.

No, Candy, it doesn’t “remain[ ] to be seen” if McCain can pull off a surprise in New Hampshire again. He can’t. And no amount of fluffery from you will change that immutable fact.

Housing discrimination rampant in New Orleans

I’m saddened, but not surprised.

Blacks already feeling the pinch from a housing shortage in the New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina are facing racial discrimination in their search for rental property, a survey by housing advocates found.

The survey sent black and white “testers” — paired by matching incomes, careers, family types and rental histories — to inquire about openings at 40 rental properties in metropolitan New Orleans.

The findings, released Tuesday by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, found blacks encountered “less favorable treatment” than their white counterparts in 57.5 percent of those tests.

It’s bad enough that New Orleanians, especially in African-American communities, have been abandoned by the Bush crime syndicate. But to face this kind of abuse of the system from their own neighbors is salt in the wounds.

I know racism is a fact in many cities, particularly in the South. But I suppose it was just wishful thinking to believe that the unifying aspects of Katrina, the shared misery, might overcome something as heinously entrenched as racism.

Immunity for Goodling

Well, our old friend Monica Goodling is really up a creek now.

I’ll bet she never thought the House would grant her immunity. But this morning, they did exactly that.

So now she can’t plead the Fifth Amendment, since nothing she could say would subject her to prosecution for the original offenses. Therefore, she either snitches on her colleagues (and bosses), or she lies and gets prosecuted for perjury. Rock, meet hard place.

Too bad I already did the Daily Schadenfreude today. Monica deserves a goodly share of laughing and pointing now …

Justice Kennedy: Blowin’ in the wind

Apparently U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is either unpredictable or trying way too hard to straddle the fence. Perhaps legal scholars far greater than I (and there surely are many of those) can come up with a consistency here, but at first blush, I don’t see it.

Today, Justice Kennedy sided with the majority in striking down three death sentences for Texas inmates:

The Supreme Court threw out death sentences for three Texas killers Wednesday because of problems with instructions given jurors who were deciding between life in prison and death.

In the case of LaRoyce Lathair Smith, the court set aside the death penalty for the second time. It also reversed death sentences for Brent Ray Brewer and Jalil Abdul-Kabir.

The cases all stem from jury instructions that Texas hasn’t used since 1991. Under those rules, courts have found that jurors were not allowed to give sufficient weight to factors that might cause them to impose a life sentence instead of death.

The three 5-4 rulings had the same lineup of justices, with Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter and John Paul Stevens forming the majority.

This is the same Justice Kennedy who wrote the majority opinion last week that effectively banned certain abortion procedures.

So, who is the real Justice Kennedy? As Don Wright indicates in today’s Palm Beach Post, he may be branching out professionally …

Today’s Daily Schadenfreude: John McCain

St. John McCain: from Vietnam POW to senator to person unable to put together a coherent sentence. Watch him chase his own tail rhetorically on The Daily Show last night:

And this guy wants to be president.

Well, at least you’ve got to give him credit, not only for willingly appearing on TDSWJS to have his ass handed to him again, but for being the most frequent guest ever on the show. That’s at least as big an honor as being a member of the charter class of the Wanker of the Day Hall of Fame.

My laughing-and-pointing here isn’t really for McCain doing anything stupider than usual. His candidacy itself is the joke. So, congratulations, Sen. McCain — this Blast Off! Daily Schadenfreude is for you!