This blog had its 10 millionth hit today.

I have now received, in the entire five-year history of this blog, as many page views as Hot Air gets in a month.

Sweet.

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Chris Satullo says we don’t deserve to celebrate the Fourth of July this year:

Put the fireworks in storage.

Cancel the parade.

Tuck the soaring speeches in a drawer for another time.

This year, America doesn’t deserve to celebrate its birthday.

What follows is some self-flagellating pap about how we’ve taken away everyone’s civil liberties.

Tell ya what, Chris Satullo. You sit at home and contemplate your navel this July 4th. Feel free to scourge yourself if you like. I have a spare cat o’ nine tails in the shed; make sure and clean off the blood before you return it.

Even better, keep it. You’ll need it again, I’m sure.

As for the rest of you, I’ll see you on the beach.

One Glenn Greenwald is livid about Obama’s latest flip-flop:

In the past, Obama has opposed the type of warrantless eavesdropping which those PAA orders authorize. He’s repeatedly said that the FISA court works and there’s no need to authorize eavesdropping without individual warrants. None of that can be reconciled with his current claim that he supports this FISA “compromise” because National Security requires that those PAA orders not expire and that there be massive changes to FISA. It’s just as simple as that.

It’s bad enough that Obama is supporting a new warrantless eavesdropping scheme. They should just candidly admit that he changed his position rather than feeding incoherent and insultingly false rationalizations to the public — whereby they throw around the terms “National Security” and “balance” enough times and hope that nobody notices or cares that what they’re saying makes no sense.

Heh. I’ve rarely so enjoyed reading Greenwald.

In unrelated news, the Orlando Sentinel complains that popcorn is too often stale nowadays.

So, quit whining and make a fresh batch.

They’re cutting 150 editorial staff positions by Labor Day. As usual, Kevin Roderick has the internal memos.

And as always, I see these changes as resulting primarily from the challenge posed by the Internet, and not from a loss of readership due to bias. I ask commenters not to gloat. Some good people will lose their livelihoods, and that’s not a reason to celebrate.

[posted by Justin Levine]

We won the title back last year. Do we have what it takes to keep it? July 4th will tell.

ESPN is set to carry the epic event live that day starting at 9AM Pacific / Noon Eastern. 

Good luck Joey!

[posted by Justin Levine]

In light of the extremely disingenuous rulings from Justice Anthony Kennedy recently, it might be good to once again remind readers to try and seek out Jeffrey Rosen’s article from the June 18th, 2007 edition of the New Republic entitled “Supreme Leader: The Arrogance of Justice Anthony Kennedy”.

To my mind, it remains THE key analysis of Justice Kennedy’s style, and one of the best articles ever written on a sitting Supreme Court Justice.

Regretfully, the entire article no longer seems accessible on the Internet. But trust me, it is well worth seeking out in traditional print form. The entire article is pure gold, but some snippets can be found here, here and here. Many writers and commentators have recognized its significance  (with some quoting other parts of the article).

One of Kennedy’s former law clerks takes exception to the tone of the article – probably because even he suspects that Rosen is on to something here. Dorf is right in one sense – the article IS a personal attack, and a well justified one at that. If Rosen’s tone takes on the character of a personal attack, it is only because the tone of Kennedy’s opinions are personally offensive – much more so than the opinions of the consistently liberal Justices on the court which manage to be merely wrong as a matter of legal theory.

Kennedy has proven that he does not have the temperament worthy of the power afforded to those sitting on the nation’s highest court. I say this even though the practical results of his decisions will more often comport with my own views when compared with some other Justices of the Court. But if I had the power to vote one (and only one) Justice off the island, Kennedy would easily be the first choice.

[posted by Justin Levine]

We’ve picked up some new readers in recent weeks. One of them is apparently James Sabatino, the prison inmate who conned Chuck Philips into writing a story based in part on forged documents.

Yup. My website — in particular a comment by reader cfbleachers — is cited in a Sabatino court document filed yesterday. Read the whole thing here. Here is one relevant excerpt:

I re-emphasize that I can’t take credit for the quoted passage, which was written by a commenter.

Welcome to all new readers, whether you are in prison or elsewhere!

Linda Greenhouse — yes, that Linda Greenhouse — reports:

When the Supreme Court ruled last week that the death penalty for raping a child was unconstitutional, the majority noted that a child rapist could face the ultimate penalty in only six states — not in any of the 30 other states that have the death penalty, and not under the jurisdiction of the federal government either.

This inventory of jurisdictions was a central part of the court’s analysis, the foundation for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s conclusion in his majority opinion that capital punishment for child rape was contrary to the “evolving standards of decency” by which the court judges how the death penalty is applied.

It turns out that Justice Kennedy’s confident assertion about the absence of federal law was wrong.

The lawyers missed it. The law clerks missed it. The justices missed it.

Who caught it?

A blogger.

A military law blog pointed out over the weekend that Congress, in fact, revised the sex crimes section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 2006 to add child rape to the military death penalty.

The post is here.

Don’t mistake this for a triumphal claim about bloggers as a class of persons. Bloggers are just people with blogging software and a particular field of expertise.

This is just a reminder that the collective knowledge of the people can exceed the knowledge of nine Supreme Court justices.

It’s a lesson in humility that has far-reaching implications beyond this one embarrassing example. It’s a lesson, moreover, that the justices would do well to remember.

Thanks to dana.