An unexpected conclusion is presented by Pennywit at his eponymous weblog:

That’s something you don’t hear very often: That Justice Scalia does not apply his incisive views of the Constitution when his personal ox is being gored. Actually, other justices, and indeed, other judges, are far more guilty of this offense; differing strands of the law become more, or less, acceptable, depending on the judge’s political proclivities.

Except for Justice Thomas, who, while conservative, has demonstrated an almost dogmatic adherence to his interpretation of the Constitution, regardless of where it might lead him. There’s something to be said for this sort of justice, just as there’s something to be said for Justice O’Connor’s brand of narrowly tailored pragmatism; different approaches are appropriate for different cases. But a justice who adheres first to his political preference, and second to the law, is truly a “judicial activist,” for good or for ill.

NOTE: link to definition added

I suggest you read his entire post for the sometimes abstruse legal issues involved

I’ve been struggling with being burnt out for years now, even before I moved to France.

Dealing with the issues associated with living in a culture that is similar but also significantly different from the one I am familiar, along with the language difficulties, was a mixed blessing, temporarily staving off the worst effects of burning out, but still requiring energy every day to cope with.

Couple that with the deterioration I see in my country, which I love, and it is difficult for me to avoid the feeling of ennui that accompanies burn out.

Argh! I hate this, but we all have to recognize we are just as much emotional beings as we are logical, reasoning beings.

Sigh…

We are all human. Even if we want to overcome our human failings.

All the sound and fury over the revelation that a high-level FBI official was “Deep Throat”, the informant on the inside who revealed so much to Woodward and Bernstein, has reached a level that resembles a French farce more than even your typical partisan rhetoric.

The hypocrisy of the right-wing is now at a point where it is beyond any rational belief, giving me pause to question whether our society actually deserves to survive if a significant fraction of the members of our society believe that this level of idiocy is acceptable.

I had once planned to link to the most excessive of the right-wing blathering about “Deep Throat”, but it has reached such a level that any linking is redundant.

Let’s list the hypocrisies, shall we?

1) Nixon, despite covering up a burglary of the Democratic Party Headquarters and attempting to use the FBI and other government agencies to act against his “enemies list” is a hero, but Clinton is a criminal because he lied about getting an intern to suck his cock in the Oval Office. In other words, the magnitude of the crime is irrelevant, it is the ideology of the actor that is of prime importance.

2) In accord with ideology being of prime importance rather than the magnitude of the error, Amnesty International calling the US prison at Guantanamo a “gulag” is an outrage and absurd, while calling anyone who opposes the basis of the Iraq War a “traitor” is perfectly OK.

3) Proclaiming the Democratic Party is against freedom, when it was Republicans who pushed the USA PATRIOT Act, with its secret search warrants, and the RealID Act, with its requirement that you are guilty of being a non-citizen until proven innocent by presenting a machine-readable government issued ID is also perfectly acceptable because the “right” folks are pushing these laws.

4) Crying that the Democrats are “playing politics” by using every measure available to keep certain judges from reaching the full Senate for a vote, when Republicans used even more egregious and undemocratic tactics to obstruct Clinton nominees, tactics that they made unavailable to the Democrats when the Republicans gained a majority by changing the rules is not hypocritical because the Democrats are evil.

5) Expressing outrage at the mistreatment of US prisoners in the hands of the Iraqis during the first Gulf War, but saying that anything we do to “those damn terrorists” in our custody is just fine. In other words, claiming that morality is not relative is of paramount importance, unless of course the immoral behavior is exhibited by someone acceptable to the right-wing, then that behavior is not immoral or criminal at all because it is committed in the name of a higher cause.

Hmmmm…

Do you see the farcical nature of those who doth protest too much yet?

Yes, the left-wing is just as hypocritical, but they aren’t in power now, are they?

So, who is doing the MOST damage?

I’ve known about this for several months, but I was constrained in writing about it because my information was from “inside”, and I do NOT want to muck with the FTC or the SEC, nor lose my job over my weblog:

Apple to switch to Intel’s PC chips
New chips will allow PC maker to lower prices
By Jonathan Burton, MarketWatch
Last Update: 1:44 PM ET June 6, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Apple Computer Inc. said Monday that it will begin using microprocessor chips made by Intel Corp. in its signature Macintosh computers beginning next year, ending a longstanding relationship with International Business Machines Corp.

Apple made the announcement as Chief Executive Steve Jobs delivered the keynote speech at the company’s annual conference for software developers in San Francisco.

“Our goal is to provide our customers with the best personal computers in the world, and looking ahead Intel has the strongest processor road map by far,” Jobs said in a statement released at the start of his talk.

The chip transition is a stunning about-face for Apple, which has fought a long, mostly uphill battle against competing computer products that run on Intel chips and rival software from Microsoft Corp.

I strongly disagree with the statement by Steve Jobs that “Intel has the strongest processor road map by far,” however I am sure I am biased.

I feel that the PowerPC road map is the strongest when evaluated by power, temperature, and operations per second criteria, relatively closely followed by AMD, with Intel running a poor third.

However, Intel can deliver large volumes of chips for a low cost, because of their advantages of scale.

So, in the end, it comes down to cost, not quality, as it always does.

Even if my company wasn’t directly affected by this change, I’m sorry to see Apple follow it, because I have always felt they stood for quality over price.

—

A footnote: I strongly suspect both Steve Jobs and Apple as a whole will end up regretting this decision, because although Apple was not a large customer to either IBM or Freescale Semiconductor for the PowerPC chips, they will be an even smaller customer for Intel, so Jobs’ infamous tirades regarding delivery schedules and prices will have even less effect then they had in the past.

Non Sequiter - by Wiley Miller