I’d be equally pleased if the Tribune created an RSS feed for Supreme Court stories (they seem to have every other topic) or a byline feed, but I can’t figure out who to contact there…

Erica Harbatkin

And while they are at it, they can serve justice, relieve the beleaguered U.S. 4th District

Court of Appeals and put an excellent choice for judge on the bench.

They readily admit Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein would be a good judge. In fact, they say the main reason they are blocking his nomination is he does such a great job here in Maryland. The other reasons they give are patently specious.

Politics, they say, has nothing to do with keeping off the most shorthanded appeals court in the nation this Republican who clerked for Reagan Supreme Court nominee Judge Douglas Ginsburg before being hired and promoted by the Clinton Justice Department. IQ is not the issue. He graduated summa cum laude from Wharton, cum laude from Harvard and was a Law Review editor.

Now that Virginia’s senators joined hands across party lines to expedite one appointment, four vacant seats remain, still more than twice as many as any other circuit court of appeals. The partisan bickering over filling this influential bench has denied citizens of five states our full share of justice through the terms of three presidents and surely will into a fourth.

That is an outrage. If Mikulski and Cardin are playing mere politics with Maryland’s unofficial seat, they betray the people of our state. If they are waiting out the presidential election in hopes of inflicting an ideologue on the court and replacing Rosenstein with one as U.S. attorney, they should turn Democrats’ eight years of allegations against the Bush administration upon themselves.

For one thing, the 2008 election is a long way from decided. For another, even if their party’s nominee wins, he has called for a new beginning. Barack Obama asks all Americans “to believe not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington. I’m asking you to believe in yours.”

Really? How can anybody believe in his or our ability to effect change if two of the smartest, most effective members of the Senate refuse to change?

Senators, we want change today, not seven months from now. The first thing we want you to change is putting party politics before the greater good of the people. Stop it.

Show the way. You still have time. The Senate filled the last seat only 65 days after President Bush’s nomination.

Use Rosenstein’s appointment to light a beacon on Capitol Hill that those who call for change can change themselves.

http://www.examiner.com/a-1439259~Senators__start_new_beginning_now.html

While Cook County prosecutors declined to prosecute him for the shooting, the village of Wilmette prosecuted him for violating the local handgun ban.

The Illinois General Assembly passed a bill As a result of this shooting, the State Legislature passed a law making it legal to use a handgun in self-defense in your own home; the House passed it by 86-25 and the Senate passed this by 38-20.

Barack Obama was one of the senators who voted against this law.

I fail to see how he intends to explain this to voters, especially voters in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio and West Virginia, aside from hoping that the McCain campaign is even more inept than the Kerry campaign was.

So . . . as a carrier of the steamy stuff, you get a pass if you tell the police officer, “My current intent is to hurl this glob of feces at the first delegate I see wearing a ‘Hillary!’ button”?