Blowhard, Esq. writes:
- While Miami has the largest number of surviving Art Deco buildings of any place in the world, the number 2 city on the list might surprise you. Back here, I toured some Art Deco buildings in downtown L.A.
- Gizmodo wonders if Frank Gehry is the world’s worst living architect. (Answer: it’s a tie between him and Thom Mayne.)
- You know things have gotten bad for the president when he’s lost the comrades of the People’s Republic of Santa Monica. (H/T Glynn Marshes)
- Does Clarence Thomas’s continued silence during oral argument demean the Supreme Court? FWIW, and not to put too fine a point on it, but I think Toobin’s article is a lot of cynical bullshit. As Thomas has said and as Toobin points out, pretty much everything you need to know about a party’s arguments are contained in their briefs, which the parties, who are among the finest legal minds in the country, spend hundreds of hours preparing. Then the Justices’ clerks – hand-picked from the top law schools in the country – prepare bench memos for the Justices analyzing the issues and probing the arguments. Each side is given its day in court as a courtesy, but practically speaking, it’s symbolic and hardly necessary. After oral argument, the Justices then confer amongst themselves. (As the book Supreme Conflict points out, Thomas has been a significant figure in some of those conferences, discussions which the public never sees.) Finally, the Justices, with varying degrees of assistance from their clerks, write their opinions. Toobin, a long-time legal reporter and Court analyst, knows all this but he laughably says that Thomas “isn’t doing is job.” Oral argument is a very, very small part of that job. It’s exactly this sort of intellectual dishonesty to score political points that prompted me to stop reading Toobin’s columns.
- James Ellroy hates hipsters, liberals, rock ‘n rollers, the counter-culture, and movie people.
- Are Bronies, and the world-at-large for that matter, ready for the first My Little Pony porn?
- In general, I’ve grown weary of how CGI is used in movies, but I wholly support its use here.
- A treasure trove of trashy 70s-ness to explore. (H/T Paleo Retiree)
- A supercut of movie dream sequences.
Is there a man in America who has put up with more bullshit than Clarence Thomas?
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Whenever I see pieces like that, I hope that Thomas is just trolling his critics at this point. Every extra silence is a big F U to them.
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“Symbolic and hardly necessary” encompasses are large portion of ordinary life. “Message: I care” is what the justices are saying by engaging in public debate. Thomas’ message is “screw you.”
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So you think it’s important for Thomas to ask questions during oral argument?
I can’t say I’m bothered much by him saying “screw you” to the likes of Toobin. As for the attorneys who actually appear before him, I wonder if they care given they already have plenty to field from Scalia, Ginsberg, etc.
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