RIP MCA

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Rolling Stone:

Beastie Boys Co-Founder Adam Yauch Dead at 47

Adam Yauch, one-third of the pioneering hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, has died at the age of 47, Rolling Stone has learned. Yauch, also known as MCA, had been in treatment for cancer since 2009. The rapper was diagnosed in 2009 after discovering a tumor in his salivary gland.

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I really hate it when people younger than me die. It makes me feel old.

This is an open thread.

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Boo-fricken-hoo

Obamacare

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Ben Shapiro:

Obama Warns Supremes: Don’t Overturn Healthcare Reform

The Obama administration warned the Supreme Court this week via papers filed with the Court that if Obamacare is struck down, there will be an “extraordinary disruption” in Medicare. Medicare was not discussed during the Supreme Court arguments, since it was not a Constitutional issue. This is a practical argument, not a legal one; it’s the Obama administration applying pressure to the Supremes.

But that’s what the Obama administration does – they focus on the politics of the situation rather than on the legalities. If they can’t win on the law, they figure, they’ll push the Court to act via “empathy,” President Obama’s favorite legal standard. And if they lose, they’ll blame the Court for destroying Medicare.

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“Your honor, going to prison would greatly inconvenience my client!“

Wow. Just wow. I thought Obama was supposed to be a constitutional scholar.

The issue before the court is whether or not Obamacare is unconstitutional. It doesn’t matter whether or not the justices think it is a good idea. It doesn’t matter if striking it down will cause all kinds of chaos. That’s a problem for the other branches.

Sometimes this administration is so stupid it’s embarrassing.

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Stupid should hurt

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From the Orlando Sentinel:

The details revealed by the source provide new insight into what Zimmerman said happened in the earliest moments of his contact with Trayvon. And they may reveal the inconsistencies alluded to by prosecutors in the case.

One of those inconsistencies: Zimmerman told police Trayvon had his hand over Zimmerman’s mouth during their fight on the night he shot Trayvon.

The Sentinel’s source confirmed that Zimmerman’s statements include that allegation. But authorities do not believe that happened, the source told the Sentinel, because on one 911 call, someone can be heard screaming for help. If it were Zimmerman, as he claims, his cries were not muffled, the source said.

Zimmerman also told police, the source told the Sentinel, that while the two were on the ground, Trayvon reached for Zimmerman’s gun, and the two struggled over it.

Those portions of Zimmerman’s account are not corroborated by other evidence, the source said.

Zimmerman’s attorney, Mark O’Mara, said he hasn’t yet seen his client’s statements to police, and it would be inappropriate for him to address specific evidence in the case.

“It’s hard for me to even comment on it,” O’Mara said.

Sanford Spokesman Sgt. David Morgenstern said the police department “cannot make any comments on anything related to the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case.”

Reached in Birmingham, Ala., Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump said Thursday that Zimmerman’s claim that he was screaming in the 911 call and that his mouth was covered by the teen don’t add up.

“[Trayvon's father] Tracy Martin told me that that’s what [police] told him,” Crump said, of Zimmerman making those statements to police.

“It’s either one or the other, it can’t be both,” Crump said. “We have to put together this puzzle because, unfortunately, we don’t have Trayvon Martin’s version” of events.

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Benjamin Crump reminds me of why I decided to go to law school. Due to a litigious ex-wife I found myself unwillingly sitting in courtrooms quite a bit in the Eighties and Nineties. As I would wait for my case to get called I watched the court handle other cases. Listening to some of the attorneys talk I realized I was definitely smart enough to make it through law school.

I don’t know exactly how long the fight between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman lasted, but it was long enough for people to hear it and call the police before the fatal shot was fired. I’m gonna guess it had to be at least 30 seconds but not more than a minute.

A lot can happen in 30 seconds. Place your hand on a hot burner and hold it there for half a minute. Feels like forever, doesn’t it?

So the fight starts. Trayvon hits George who goes down. Trayvon jumps on George and begins to pummel him. Then he grabs George’s head and smacks it on the sidewalk. George begins screaming for help. Trayvon puts his hand over George’s mouth trying to muffle his cries. George struggles to free his mouth. Trayvon sees George’s gun and reaches for it. The two men struggle briefly over the gun and then it goes off.

Could all that take place in 30 seconds? Easily.

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Occupy – The Movie (UPDATED)

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I’m guessing they won’t be showing the rapes.

DCBlogger:

If you are running for office as a Green or some other emergent party candidate, you should be working the theaters running this movie. Stand in front of the theater and shake hands with viewers as they approach the theater. Wear a name tag with LARGE letters and have some brochures.

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If you want to get elected I wouldn’t recommend wearing a Guy Fawkes mask or waving the commie flag. Disrupting the movie to do a mic check might get you a few laughs though.

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UPDATE:

I’m no fan of Sean Hannity but what he does to this pinhead is brutal:

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Dreams From His Father

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There has been a lot of discussion this week about Barack Obama’s first memoir. Let’s take a look at how it came to be written in the first place. This is from “The Long Run, The Story of Obama, Written by Obama“:

Mr. Obama’s story first surfaced publicly in February 1990, when he was elected as the first black president of The Harvard Law Review. An initial wire service report described him simply as a 28-year-old, second-year student from Hawaii who had “not ruled out a future in politics”; but in the days that followed, newspaper reporters grew interested and produced long, detailed profiles of Mr. Obama.

The coverage prompted a call to him from Jane Dystel, a gravelly-voiced literary agent described by Peter Osnos, then the publisher of Times Books, as “a good journeyman with a hard edge.” The home page of her firm’s Web site currently features clients’ best sellers including “Lies at the Altar: The Truth About Great Marriages.” Ms. Dystel suggested Mr. Obama write a book proposal. Then she got him a contract with Poseidon Press, a now-defunct imprint of Simon & Schuster. When he missed his deadline, she got him another contract and a $40,000 advance from Times Books.

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A $40,000 advance? That’s a couple years salary for some people! Obama was still a law student. He had accomplished NOTHING. He hadn’t even published something in the Law Review. Most unpublished authors would be lucky to get offered a percentage of sales after the book was written.

But wait! There’s more:

Mr. Obama’s original plan was to write a book about race relations. But, sitting down to write, he found his mind “pulled toward rockier shores.” So the book became more personal — the record of an interior journey, as he put it in the introduction, “a boy’s search for his father, and through that a search for a workable meaning for his life as a black American.”

Mr. Obama was given an office to write in at the University of Chicago through a surprising connection. Douglas G. Baird, a professor who was head of the law school’s appointments committee, had learned of Mr. Obama from Michael W. McConnell, a conservative constitutional scholar then at Chicago whom President Bush would later make a federal judge.

Professor McConnell encountered Mr. Obama during the editing of an article he wrote for The Harvard Law Review, Professor Baird said recently. “He sent a note saying this person is really brilliant, we should have him on our radar screen,” Professor Baird said. Professor Baird called Mr. Obama at Harvard and asked if he was interested in teaching.

“I don’t remember his exact words, but it was something to the effect that, ‘Well, in fact, I want to write this book.’ What he really wanted was the Virginia Woolf equivalent of a clean, well lighted room.” So Professor Baird got him one, a small office near the law library, along with a law school fellowship that Professor Baird hoped might later lead to his full-time teaching.

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Okay, Obama graduated from Harvard Law School. That is arguably the best law school in the country. But they graduate over 500 students a year. Every year the Harvard Law Review has a president. How many of them got a $40,000 book deal and a sincure upon graduation?

Susan Estrich was the first woman president of the Harvard Law Review in 1976 and all she got was a clerkship for Judge James Skelly Wright at the DC Court of Appeals.

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The book came out in the summer of 1995, shortly before Mr. Obama announced that he was running for the Illinois State Senate. At 57th Street Books, in Mr. Obama’s neighborhood in Chicago, a few dozen people turned out for a reading. There were respectful reviews in newspapers including The New York Times and The Boston Globe. Times Books sold 8,000 to 9,000 copies.

Now check this out – Obama graduated from Harvard in 1991. He didn’t start working for Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland until 1993. He spent about six months heading up a voter registration drive in 1992. His book wasn’t published until 1995. But in order to get his book done he took Michelle on a vacation to Bali for several months.

What was he doing during all this time?

Remember, this was a memoir and he was in his early thirties and hadn’t accomplished anything. How long would it take you to write your own life story? I could grind mine out in two weeks and provide lots more detail than Obama did. He left out big chunks of his life.

Of course writing fiction is harder than telling the truth.

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