I have no idea why I’m so amused by the reports of now 4-time champion Joey Chestnut downing 54 Nathans hot dogs in ten minutes to win the annual hot dog eating contest at Coney Island yet again, other than it takes place in Brooklyn every year, and is an amusing slice of Americana. Of course, it was also amusing that the prior champion (Mr. Kobiyashi of Japan, a six time winner), managed to get himself arrested for trying to crash the proceedings (there seems to be some contractual limitation on his competing himself… for whatever reason, he won’t sign...

That of course, sums up the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings pertaining to the confirmation of Elena Kagan, currently Solicitor General of the United States, to the position of Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court. I have listened to portions of the question and answer session on the radio, and heard hints of the current Republican challenge-point, to wit, the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom Ms. Kagan served as a law clerk in the 1980’s, was “too Black activist.” Ms. Kagan’s observations in the 1990’s that these kinds of hearings featured inane questions and evasive, if any, “answers”...

Charlie Savage, who is one of the heroes of American journalism, tells us in the pages of the Grey Lady that, wait for it, closing Guantanamo is no longer one of the Obama Administration’s priorities. Savage, who, like a few others (Carol Rosenberg of McClatchy comes to mind,,, as do… well, my friend Andy Worthington and.,. me) has been on top of this story for years, and “the story” is not merely some backwater island prison somewhere, but an entire seachange in American attitude and acceptance of arbitrary totalitarian behavior by American governments (now of both parties), as long as...

In a move that I believe unprecedented in a Guantanamo habeas case, Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia recused himself from further proceedings in the case of Candace’s client, Razak Ali. Although it has been reported that the sole basis for recusal was Judge Lamberth’s public comments both in a bar association breakfast and in an interview with “Pro Publica” to the effect that federal judges hearing Guantanamo detainee habeas cases might have trepidations and be concerned that the people they might order the Government to release might just go on...

I guess the President regards his first primetime Oval Office address to the nation as his way of showing he means to “kick someone’s ass,” presumably the British Petroieum BP Corporation, whom he tells us will “soon” be containing around 90% of the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico (although, of course, there might be a bit more oil leaking out than heretofore thought,.. just a little), Oh, and BP will be placing large sums of money necessary to pay damage claims in a lockbox an independently administered escrow account, and the barndoor will be shut the Minerals Management...

Our friends at No More Mister Nice Blog have a nice discussion about the latest outrage to be proposed out of the Arizona legislature, to wit, the denial of birth certificates to children whose parents have Latino surnames cannot prove that they are White American citizens. What I like about the discussion in particular is what it’s about: denial of the franchise to swarthy people who won’t vote for the Republican Party, simple as that. The blatant violation of the express wording of the 14th Amendment means nothing: the Roberts Court may well rubber stamp this, assuming Justice Kennedy feels...

Long-time White House correspondent Helen Thomas deserves all the grief she’s getting and then some for her outrageous remarks that the Jews in Israel can “go home,” to which she specified as destinations Poland and Germany, as well as the United States. Thomas has later apologized for her remarks, which of course, isn’t good enough for some of the usual suspects, What I find most interesting about the Politico piece, however, is that none other than former Bush Administration mouthpiece Ari Fleischer has weighed in, insisting that Ms, Thomas be sacked from her current gig with Hearst papers… Fleischer will...

Well, that’s more or less the kind of consistent theme here at the talking dog that has pretty much devastated my traffic numbers, along with the “big box” blogs… but Chris Bowers, himself a pretty good demonstration of the phenomenon he describes, notes that money (i.e. bloggers working for it) has pretty much decimated the ranks of the free-standing amateur blogger, who he now suggests is an endangered species in the progressive blogosphere, anyway. Bowers specifically notes that Nate Silver’s “fivethirtyeight.com” is going to be hosted by the New York Times web site as the occasion for his discussion, but...

We can play a slight game of Rashomon between the generally reported version of events and the Israeli version of events, but the undisputed facts remain: Israeli naval forces attacked a group of five ships carrying aid to the blockaded Gaza strip in international waters, and at least ten (Israeli press reports fifteen) people, almost certainly civilians, are dead, and four Israeli military personnel were wounded. In the last few years we have seen one of the most distressing things imaginable for American Jews: Israel’s behavior, long some of the most careful and restrained in the world, has been as...

Well, I’m as disappointed as anyone that the “top kill” procedure of simply pumping in mud and concrete to try to gunk up the hole causing the oil mega-leak in the Gulf of Mexico… well, “top-kill apparently didn’t work.” But then… what is it we can do? We can consume things, to the point of having tens of millions of morbidly obese people and literally an entertainment program devoted to such people trying to lose weight! We don’t seem good at having, say, created private sector wages. And we can’t seem to rebuild New Orleans or the World Trade Center...