Looks like the Great State of Connecticut is mounting a challenge against the President’s No Child Left Behind Act. At the heart of their lawsuit is that the NCBL is an unfunded mandate placing undue burdens on the State to comply with federal standards.

Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who for months urged the state to settle its differences through negotiation, recently joined the chorus of state teachers, superintendents, lawmakers and parents voicing support for the lawsuit.

“We in Connecticut do a lot of testing already, far more than most other states. Our taxpayers are sagging under the crushing costs of local education. What we don’t need is a new laundry list of things to do ” with no new money to do them,” Rell said.

The federal government is providing Connecticut with $5.8 million this fiscal year to pay for the testing, Sternberg said. She estimates federal funds will fall $41.6 million short of paying for staffing, program development, standardized tests and other costs associated with implementing the law through 2008.

This isn’t anything new, States have long been complaining that the requirements they are faced with are under funded, let alone other objections on the law. It’s important though, as the article points out, that this is the State filing the law suit, not a union or interest group, but the actual government of Conneticut. We’ll be following this as more developments unfold.

I wanted to apologize to all our readers. I’ve been in Chicago for the last two days and am currently on a two days slow drive back to the NJ. I will resume serious blogging tomorrow. The short respite didn’t warrant Gary and I finding a guest blogger and Gary appears to be keeping up appearances.

Well, it looks like Bush has sunk to even lower lows in the latest ARG poll via ThinkProgress.

George W. Bush’s overall job approval ratings have dropped from a month ago even as Americans who approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president are turning more optimistic about their personal financial situations according to the latest survey from the American Research Group. Among all Americans, 36% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 58% disapprove. When it comes to Bush’s handling of the economy, 33% approve and 62% disapprove.

Among Americans registered to vote, 38% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 56% disapprove, and 36% approve of the way Bush is handling the economy and 60% disapprove.

As ThinkProgress points out at the height of the Watergate scandal Nixon was at 39%. I thought the basement was going to be 40% but the President’s ratings just keep going lower, but don’t worry the President doesn’t look at polls.

From the Onion: Evangeical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory

Last night, after dark, the remains of Hunter S. Thompson were blasted into the sky out of a gonzo logo shaped cannon.

There he goes. One of God’s own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.

Rest in peace, Doc.

From ThinkProgress you won’t want to miss Dead Wrong:

the CNN special into the intelligence meltdown prior to the Iraq war. In the program, a former top aide to Colin Powell says his involvement in the former secretary of state’s presentation to the United Nations on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was ˜the lowest point’ in his life.

The special airs at 8pm on Sunday night.

What is it about this guy, it seems that every day a new headline is released about documents that have come out we find more and more evidence of his lack of respect for women’s rights and equality. Yesterday, you’ll remember that he wrote a memo wondering if “encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good.” Today, memos show that he scoffed at the idea of making O’Connor Supreme Court Chief Justice.

As a lawyer in the Reagan White House, John Roberts scoffed at the notion of elevating Supreme Court Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor to chief justice as a way to close a political gender gap, calling it a “crass political consideration.”

Now, I don’t disagree that this would have been a cheap pander, but as a White House lawyer, wouldn’t you expect his objection to be more legally based? And when you see this along with his attitudes toward other women’s and civil rights issues, it makes you wonder what this guy really stands for.

On another topic, Roberts, who was nominated as a justice by
President Bush last month, advised the White House to strike language from a description of a housing bill that referred to the “fundamental right to be free from discrimination.” He said that “there of course is no such right.”

I suppose the Fourteenth Amendment wasn’t very popular in his office. In fact the memos give us more of his personal opinions on what he calls fundamental rights:

“Fundamental rights” is a legal concept that has been used to justify a broad array of civil rights under the Constitution, including a right to privacy.

Noting that the proposed administration bill would justify penalties by pointing to a “fundamental right to be free from discrimination,” Roberts advised that the language be deleted.

“There is of course no such right; at the very least ‘illegal’ should modify ‘discrimination,’” Roberts wrote. “More significantly, ‘fundamental right’ is a legal term of art triggering strict judicial scrutiny.”

This is really important, privacy will be the number one issue that the Court will have to face in the coming years and the better part of term Roberts would serve if confirmed. Yet, we’re planning to confirm someone who doesn’t give any credit to the idea that protections of privacy do exist in the Constitution, a presumption that has fueled many equal rights cases including Lawrence v. Texas being the most recent.

The reason privacy will be most important is for two fronts, the first is the continued struggle for equal rights, especially by Gay and Lesbian groups. Secondly, privacy will determine how the government uses the new technology being created every day and will determine the future of causes such as internet anonymity, government viewing of email, and other means of collecting information that a reasonable person would expect to be private, at least without a warrant.

I think we’re being subdued into thinking Roberts poses no threat; he’s a nice guy and a very smart one at that. I’m sure when you meet him he comes off as a very likable person. However, his memos are speaking for himself at this point, and Democrats with only these documents ”never mind the thousands of pages from when he served as a lawyer for the Solicitor General which have been unreleased ”have plenty of questions to ask in September. We shouldn’t let ourselves be tricked into thinking this guy isn’t so bad, as a replacement for someone like O’Connor, we’re getting a conservative activist, a foot soldier in Reagan’s army, and someone who has a hard time accepting privacy, women’s, and equal rights. Is that a Supreme Court Justice we’re willing to live with?

On Friday night, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid suffered a transient ischemic attack, a brief lack of blood to part of the brain and usually the first signs of a stroke to come.

Reid, 65, a gold miner’s son who rose to become one of the nation’s most powerful elected Democrats, saw a doctor in Las Vegas after feeling lightheaded Tuesday evening, aides said Friday. He was told he had experienced a kind of mini-stroke called a transient ischemic attack.

“There are no complications or any restrictions on his activities,” said press secretary Tessa Hafen. “He has undergone evaluations this week, and his doctors have recommended that he take advantage of the summer congressional recess for some down time.”

Let’s keep him and his family in our thoughts.

More memos have been released, and they don’t really tell us anything different. What we’re gaining is the picture of a young conservative lawyer dedicated to conservative causes, even in one memo where he “referred favorably to efforts to ‘defund the left.”

I think this type of partisanship from someone who aspires to be a Supreme Court justice, one who will serve a very long term, raises concern for further questioning. The general theme I’m seeing in these memos is that his dedication lied first to the President and Party instead of law, but there’s a lot of time to see his true stripes.

In fact we’d be able to get a greater picture of the judge if memos were released from his time as Solicitor General to George H. W. Bush, since that position makes him the government’s lawyer before the Supreme Court; we’d gain a better understanding for how he views key issues.

One of the most repeated criticisms is his views on equal rights for women and the documents recently released do little to remove that concern, instead they increase it:

Disparaged state efforts to combat discrimination against women and wondered whether “encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good.”

Perhaps we should wonder if making someone with that view a Supreme Court justice contributes to the common good.

We need a strategy for John Roberts. As September approaches so to do the confirmation hearings. At this point no strong Democratic opposition or strategy appears to have taken hold on how to deal with Mr. Roberts, and that is a very, very big problem. Of course, detractors will immediately question this statement wondering why waste time and energy on a candidate that seems, well, in the mainstream of conservatism and temperate in his decision making. The answer, I truly believe this is an elaborate set up being played out by the GOP strategists. The likelihood of Bush getting a second Supreme Court appointment is very high, making him a President that can really put a dent on the future of the judiciary. So, as Democrats we need to be considered with the type of choice that is made, and the values we want to protect the most. Unless of course we’re willing to gamble on having sixty Senate seats come January 2007, then by all means don’t worry about this nomination.

However, we’re not going to gain a super-majority, and so we must focus on this nomination as a precursor to the more radical more influential choice to come. What I have written here is a strategy that I think would put us in a good position throughout the confirmation process to ensure our interests.

First, back to my point about Roberts being a precursor. If that is the case, and I and others think that is likely, then a lack of opposition and challenge this time allows Republicans to gain more ammo to combat serious charges of “delay tactics” or “partisan politics” as Bush nominates another Clarence Thomas. Failure to place any opposition on the first candidate makes opposition to the second seem partisan in nature.

So, we know we need to combat the nomination, not defeat it, unless something comes up during the hearings. Essentially we need to rough him up a bit at the least. In order to do that, and to look for any hints of tearing down years of precedent to write his own, Democrats should focus on key areas and tactics.

From this moment forward, every Democrat in the Senate should, when asked if they plan to vote to confirm the Justice respond with a very simple, and ultimately the most honest answer to give: “We haven’t had a single hearing with Judge Roberts and until we do, I think it’s premature to say how I will vote, America hasn’t even gotten to truly meet the man yet.” This answer is simple, factual, and puts in the back of the mind of moderates that we’re being open and sensible, which we are, to the nominee, but not blindly opposing or supporting.

Democrats should also be stating what we believe makes a good Supreme Court justice. What are our standards? Of course, we’re not getting one of our own in, but we should make clear that we hope to have a judge whose respect for the law transcends the tides of politics. Who is careful not to rewrite precedent at every turn, but to use it as a basis for finding solutions, and respect of the individual, their rights, and their protection against government interference, and most of all privacy. I don’t know just how much privacy can be stressed here. It is the most important question, the right to privacy, the presumption of privacy accounts for tenants of progressive law and rights that we enjoy. Without privacy Lawrence would have been decided much differently as would Griswold and Roe to only give a very short list.

Those are the values the Democratic Party should seek in justices, even conservative ones: a respect for the law and precedent and a respect for the rights of the individual, and we must gain the support of the American people. We need to remind Americans that these judicial values are tantamount to many of the freedoms we enjoy today. Getting the support of Americans that this is a type of judge they want Bush to appoint allows us to use that vision to ensure our aims are met.

Next, we need to look at every official memo and argument that comes out, and in the frame of our standards, question these decisions. What we’re doing here is very simple, laying out a middle-ground that we can accept and holding that frame around Roberts and seeing if he fits inside. When Roberts finishes the confirmation hearings, and is ultimately confirmed as I suspect is the case at this point, the American people will have seen a careful scrutiny of the justice without the usual list of dishonest charges from the GOP of stalling, delay tactics, and violating the Constitution. At the end of the month Bush will get his justice, but we’ll get our soap box for his next, more radical choice to come.

The legitimacy of this frame of course, comes from the American people and if they agree that a justice should be those things. Gaining that support allows us not to attack from many different angles, scattered about with no central theme, but to have a repeatable vision and a fair standard to hold Roberts in. Most importantly, as I’ve illustrated, this provides us the perfect ground from which to trap and squash a more radical nominee from the Bush White House, in fact, I think it’s the only ground that we could do that from.

Make no mistake, if we allow Roberts to sail through confirmation, we will have shot ourselves in the foot for years and years to come. The punishment won’t be in the form of electoral defeats, instead it will be in the form of a radical conservative, which gets railroaded over us and placed on the court. A justice that can undo years and years of accomplishments and progressivism in America. That is what is at stake in this confirmation, it has little to do with the man himself at this point, and instead much to do with how we conduct ourselves and how we posture ourselves from the coming fight.

Bob Taft, the governor of Ohio, has plead no contest to breaking state ethics laws. Even by democrats there appears to be few calls for him to resign or be impeached. It appears that he will serve out the remainder of his term despite these actions. I’m not sure how the people of Ohio think- but I’ll wager that in NJ there might be come call for our governor to resign if he was convicted of a crime while in office.

I am not sure thought that his is the motivation of the Dems in Ohio; I think it may be fear toward angering the swing voters, so the strategy is to allow the guilty verdict to speak for itself. However, I am not foreign to the benefits of him staying in office. If Taft resigned, a new governor with a (presumably) cleaner record would take over. However, now Democrats face a scandal that can be used to our advantage in the Ohio state elections, especially in what appears to be a larger GOP scandal that I do not really understand. I think that there should be a lot of talk from the Ohio Dems about this scandal; it should be constantly spoken about. This, without a call for resignation may allow for the Dems to be in the best position possible next year for state and house races. Overall, a careful strategy pointing out faults and scandal without upsetting swing voters will put Ohio more in play.

One could argue that we should have an impeachment trial that will bring up everything we want and allows for more potential. Considering our recent success in Ohio, how crucial that state was in 2004 and how its dynamic is changing, we should put our gamble on a more aggressive stance. I am just not sure it gains us anything. If Taft resigns or is removed from office we get a cleaner Republican who will turn around and run for governor. If we just continually bring up the corruption, we gain all that without the formality of a trial that will alienate some voters. I think what we need is a democrat primary race that is not very bloody ” that gets a unified democratic candidate quickly. Then we can turn around and fight a state GOP that is floundering in its own corruption headed by a convicted criminal.

Two days ago we posted about the incident in Crawford wherein a man in a pick-up truck, in the early hours of the morning, ran over white wooden crosses placed by anti-war protestors in memory of the troops who have died in Iraq. That’s all the crosses were, a memorial to men who gave the ultimate sacrifice to their country. Yet, that MSM liberal media we hear so much about hasn’t covered this. The uber-Patriotic Fox News isn’t covering this, I guess no one cares. Paul Begala, wrote a strong response to the villain who did this.

I don’t think they taught Larry Chad to desecrate crosses at the Columbus Avenue Baptist Church. And I doubt his Army buddies from Vietnam are proud to see him running over American flags and disrespecting a memorial for the war dead.

So what could drive a true-blue - or should I say Bush red? - American patriot to commit such a heinous act

Such is the hatred of the far right at the dawn of the 21st Century. And my how the optical worm has turned. Today it is the left invoking faith, flag and family, while the right destroys crosses. Today it is the left that honors the war dead, raises up a Gold Star Mother and publicly prays for our troops, while the right viciously attacks a woman who gave her country everything. Today it is the left that patiently and peacefully respects the Office of the Presidency, while the right diminishes the office by claiming it’s more important for the President to go bike-riding with a sports hero than comfort the mother of a war hero.

Read the rest.