What is it with Boston Globe sportswriter Dan Shaughnessey and Florida cities? Trouble booking a tee time? Lines too long at his favorite Disney World ride? Bad OJ in his screwdriver, perhaps?

For the second time this year, Shaughnessey took the occasion of a TV appearance to gratuitously label a Florida city a 'yahoo town'. As I wrote about here, back in January, appearing on ESPN's 'Rome is Burning', he called Jacksonville a 'yahoo town,' comparing it unfavorably with Detroit, which he dubbed a 'real city' because "you can get the New York Times here."

Appearing again today on 'Rome is Burning', Shaughnessey was back on the yahoo beat.

In the world of the liberal media, there is no distinction between the judicial and legislative branches. If the MSM deems a particular outcome desirable, courts should so rule - the law and constitution in question be damned.

A good illustration of the mindset is on display in today's editorial in the Los Angeles Times, Setback for Marriage Justice , condemning recent state court decisions in New York and Georgia that declined to find a right to gay marriage.

Naturally the LAT expresses the fond hope that California's high court will adopt "a more enlightened view" when it takes up the issue in an upcoming case. The Times expresses its "revulsion" for what it deems "anti-gay marriage hysteria."

The White House press briefing used to be such a raucous affair, but former Fox News commentator Tony Snow has managed to lower the mudslinging to only a few handfuls a day.

Reports the New York Post:

President Bush and his team are looking more confident and relaxed since the former Fox News anchor stepped in to replace Scott McClellan as press secretary - the public face of the White House - two months ago.

"Tony has chilled the White House press corps - and that is some Snow job if you ask me," said Democrat Bill Clinton's star press secretary, Mike McCurry, one of the best White House spinmeisters in memory.

On Friday night’s edition of Inside Washington, a program which airs on the Washington DC area PBS station WETA, and re-airs on Sunday mornings on the DC ABC affiliate, WJLA, and consists of a round table of political pundits, one of the topics discussed was North Korea. As was widely discussed last week, North Korea test fired a long range missile that could potentially hit the United States called the Taepodong 2 missile. Panelist Mark Shields attempted to make a joke out of the name:

"Does anybody else think Taepodong sounds like a male enhancement device available on cable?"

However, the rest of his exchange with fellow panelist Charles Krauthammer was not so light hearted. Shields used the subject of North Korea to segue into an attack on the administration’s Iraq policy, suggesting that an attack on North Korea would have been a better strategic move than the war in Iraq. Charles Krauthammer disputed this, noting the differences between Iraq and North Korea.

Howard Kurtz, in a story so stunning in its implications that the Washington Post promoted it up all the way to page C7, that Dan Rather is set to make his reportorial comeback on Mark Cuban's dish-only HDNet:

"We are excited about it," Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, said yesterday. He described the show as "an opportunity to do news in what I like to call 'fearless mode,' what Dan calls 'with guts.' Go out there and find the stories we think will have impact."

Well, hurricane season is almost upon us again.

He added: "Traditional broadcast and cable news is all about numbers. Get a pretty face, pay for it in the upfront," the annual conference for advertisers. " 'How does MSNBC beat Fox?' The lead story is never the reporting or news itself."

Funny. I thought the reason for Rather's being exiled in the first place was that the reporting became the story.

CORRECTION: In accordance with one of the comments, HDNet is apparently available at least on Adelphia cable, in at least some markets. I haven't had time to check the others, but HDNet is, in fact, not dish-only. The WaPo only mentions the two dish networks, so I assumed that was the extent of HDNet's distribution.

As for the quote, "How does MSNBC beat Fox News?" debated in the comments, I believe that Cuban is putting himself in the position of an MSNBC exec, asking that rather hopeless question when the season's programming is being set up. It's rhetorical, not unlike discussing the NBA draft and having a mythical GM ask, "How does Dallas beat Miami?"

The dominant view today among legal scholars, law professors, practicing lawyers, and judges in this country is that the Constitution is a "living, breathing" document, and that judges on the highest federal benches are charged with "reinterpreting" its text so that it will better conform to "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society" such as ours.

That perspective is, in my opinion, completely asinine.

The fact is that if you believe in that sort of Constitution then you believe in no Constitution at all, because when any legal document's text can be redefined by judges anytime they feel like doing so, the ideas expressed therein cease to have any relevance. Supreme Court justices, as well as other federal jurists, who fail to be primarily concerned with what the drafters of our Constitution originally intended, must logically be more concerned with their own opinions of how the Constitution SHOULD have been written, and if that is the case, they have no business being judges. Simply put, if your agenda is to make changes to our Constitution, then present your amendment proposals to the American people like our founding fathers intended, and stop trying to circumvent the process by legislating from the bench!

The dominant view today among legal scholars, law professors, practicing lawyers, and judges in this country is that the Constitution is a "living, breathing" document, and that judges on the highest federal benches are charged with "reinterpreting" its text so that it will better conform to "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society" such as ours.

That perspective is, in my opinion, completely asinine.

The fact is that if you believe in that sort of Constitution then you believe in no Constitution at all, because when any legal document's text can be redefined by judges anytime they feel like doing so, the ideas expressed therein cease to have any relevance. Supreme Court justices, as well as other federal jurists, who fail to be primarily concerned with what the drafters of our Constitution originally intended, must logically be more concerned with their own opinions of how the Constitution SHOULD have been written, and if that is the case, they have no business being judges. Simply put, if your agenda is to make changes to our Constitution, then present your amendment proposals to the American people like our founding fathers intended, and stop trying to circumvent the process by legislating from the bench!

The Philadelphia Inquirer editorial page is alarmed by those who call New York Times executive editor Bill Keller a "traitor." The editorial page quoted Brent Bozell in his latest column: "Indeed, the track record proves the New York Times and Bill Keller are not 'neutral' but grossly biased against the U.S.-led war against terrorism."

To this the editorial wrote:

So fulminated conservative propagandist Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center last week. His statement was part of an anti-Times frenzy whipped up by Republican strategists, then echoed ad nauseam by Pavlovian talk shows and blogs.

For these folks, bashing the Times (and journalists generally) is a hobby.

The Sunday Times reports that many Western countries have been waging a "secret war" against North Korea. That word alone should perk up New York Times editors, who believe nothing can be kept "secret" without their approval.

Intelligence agencies, navies and air forces from at least 13 nations are quietly co-operating in a “secret war” against Pyongyang and Tehran.

It has so far involved interceptions of North Korean ships at sea, US agents prowling the waterfronts in Taiwan, multinational naval and air surveillance missions out of Singapore, investigators poring over the books of dubious banks in the former Portuguese colony of Macau and a fleet of planes and ships eavesdropping on the “hermit kingdom” in the waters north of Japan.

But this still isn't saying how these operations are carried out. We all need to know the specifics about how these maneuvers are executed. Cue the New York Times.

Give the Ragin' Cajun credit: the man works fast.  In a Today show appearance lasting only six minutes, and shared with former Bush administration official Dan Senor, Carville managed to work variations on the word 'failure' into his comments no fewer than six times.

At the same time, I defy anyone to read the transcript or watch a replay of Carville's comments on Pres. Bush''s foreign policy and find one solitary instance in which he proposes an alternative or even offers constructive criticism.  His rap was utterly bereft of any notion of what the Democrats would do, and do better, if they regained power.

Rod Nordland, the chief foreign correspondent for Newsweek magazine and their Baghdad bureau chief from 2003 to 2005, gave an interview to Foreign Policy magazine in which he declared that "It's a lot worse over here [in Iraq] than is reported. The administration does a great job of managing the news." He claimed individual reporters have been "blacklisted" because the military wasn't happy with their stories while they were embedded. He also suggested many in the military don't want to see how awful it is in Iraq because they're wishful thinkers, they don't want to see a "doomed enterprise," and are "victims of their own propaganda."

(If you guessed that the Left was thrilled by Nordland's remarks, you'd be right. I found it as the top headline at Buzzflash.com, a seriously Bush-hating left-wing site.)

On Sunday's This Week, during the roundtable discussion, host George Stephanopoulos embarrassed himself and had to backtrack after he raised Clinton Defense Secretary William Perry's recommendation -- that President Bush bomb the nuclear missiles on the launchpad in North Korea -- but then went a step further and combined Perry's proposal with blaming the Iraq war for preventing that type of action in 2003, only to be thoroughly refuted by George Will. “I don't even believe what I said,” Stephanopoulos sheepishly conceded, “So I take it back, you're right.”

Stephanopoulos had proposed: “What if in 2003, instead of invading Iraq, President Bush takes out the reprocessing facilities in North Korea, which according to Secretary Perry, President Clinton was willing to do back in 1993 before they started the negotiations? We would be in a far different place." How ground troops in Iraq precluded one of many Navy ships not committed to Iraq from firing off a few missiles at a target, Stephanopoulos did not explain. But Will pointed out how “the capital of South Korea is 30 miles away from the 38th parallel, North Korea, and we don't know what kind of spasm might result from this irrational regime. North Korea could destroy that capital without a soldier leaving the North Korea and using entirely conventional weapons." To which, Stephanopoulos offered his retraction and quickly segued to the Lieberman Senate race.

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