This past weekend, Comedy Central aired their Roast of William Shatner. For those unfamiliar with the “roast” format, the idea is to tell the most insulting, raunchy, and abusive jokes possible about not only the “honoree” but about anybody in the building.
You can view parts of the roast online at the Comedy Central website. But for those who just want to cut to the chase, or for folks who might be searching online for some of the choice insults from the event, I’ve transcribed some of my favorite lines. You can read the uncensored lines after the jump.
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An article at Findlaw.com discusses today’s news: a federal judge in Michigan has ruled that the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and violates numerous federal laws.
Today’s decision is a powerful and sweeping indictment of the Bush Administration’s practice of ignoring laws and the Constitution when it doesn’t suit their vision of what presidential power is. The decision of the judge focuses on the fact that there are laws governing how to get wiretaps, and the Bush Administration has brazenly and willfully ignored them.
The judge also rejected the administration’s claim that the case should be thrown out because it involves “state secrets.” In rejecting that claim, the judge pointed out that she didn’t need to see a single secret thing to review whether they’d followed applicable laws and constitutional processes.
Attorney General and torture memo guy, Alberto Gonzales, said in a press conference today that he had documents in his office safe that would show why the warrantless wiretapping is both necessary and legal. As my friend and old law school prof Jonathan Turley said tonight on Countdown: “Unless he’s got a federal authorizing statute in that safe, it’s irrelevant.”
Here are some juicy quotes from the decision, as reported by CNN.com :
The defendants “are permanently enjoined from directly or indirectly utilizing the Terrorist Surveillance Program in any way, including, but not limited to, conducting warrantless wiretaps of telephone and Internet communications, in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Title III,” she wrote.
She declared that the program “violates the separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III.”
Her ruling went on to say that “the president of the United States … has undisputedly violated the Fourth in failing to procure judicial orders.”
The decision can be read here.
Of course the Bush Administration is appealing the decision.
“Until those civilians start paying the price for propping up these kinds of regimes, it’s not going to end.”
- Rush Limbaugh, endorsing the killing
of Lebanese civilians, July 31, 2006
“[T]he American people are not exonerated from responsibility, because they chose this government … despite their knowledge of its crimes.”
- Osama bin Laden, endorsing the killing
of American civilians, March 1997
Here are tonight’s news items that I’ll be talking about on when I join my friend,