The live blogings of today's SCOTUS follies are below the fold.

To cleanse the palate, here's something much more pleasant.
 

^{Cute 8 year old science prodigy being cute is "Professor" from Nichijou.}

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All stop:

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Da Tech Guy agrees with me on the Day of Silence.
Miss Atilla is calling it Blogger Freedom Day and is posting.
The Jawas are not being silent.
Mark Steyn is verbally dismembering the judge that jailed Aaron Walker.

Others have decided to protest via silence...more or less.

Stacy McCain was being silent with considerable verbosity. from his safe house...Until he broke around an hour ago.
Bearing Drift is typing in silence.
Michelle Malkin is quietly providing contact info for members of congress who have some sway over these matters...
^{(As I've said before congressional action in the free speech arena is worrying, but in her defense this is in response to an attempt to squelch speech.)}
Finally,  ACE, who suggested this whole thing, quietly stepped out of the quiet place at 3:41 EST.

I hope these people never work on submarines.
Of course, it's possible that I misunderstood and they really meant the OTHER silence.

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1 I love how the Doctor finally loosened their grip on Earth back in 1969!  Finally, an explanation of Armstrong's "flubbed" line that makes sense...

Posted by: Siergen at Thu Jun 14 20:02:27 2012 (PuIGa)

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Let's parse this. Shall we?

A group of left wing thugs is using threats, lawsuits, and frivolous SWAT raids (!?) in an attempt to silence bloggers who expose their antics. 

Fear not! Ace of Spades has a plan.

The plan is to respond to attempts to silence us by...being silent.
...
...
...

That'll learn'em!

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Professor Jacobson  is  was hosting a civil live-chat on the Wisconsin recall election here. UPDATE: It's over.

For those not interested in such matters, here is squid on toast.

In other, less contentious news, Media Blasters is indeed releasing Squid Girl 2.

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Kimberlin and company have now threatened  the family of Ali Akbar.
There is more here.

Previous Kimberlin posts here, here, here and here.

Note that I will not be participating in The National Day of Blogger Silence as I think it is a singularly dumb idea. (..and no one would notice if I had another of my many days without content.)

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Previous posts here, here and here.
R.S. McCain has blogged follow-up posts from the super secret blogger safehouse here, here, here, and here.

This sordid little story has gotten even nastier now that the fellow who was threatened has been jailed. Volokh has more on that...it's pretty disturbing.

Popehat has thoughts on a non-partisan approach to dealing with this atrocity.

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Erick Erickson has just been SWATed.

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Yesterday was BLOG ABOUT BRETT KIMBERLIN DAY! . However, my schedule has not permitted any blogging from here since the last Kimberlin post.
This is of little concern as...well, that is one impressive gaggle of bloggers there!

Nevertheless, I do think it is important to talk a bit about WHY this is a big deal.

First, I....

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I don't do politics much anymore and out of respect for my readers I usually put it below the fold when I do, but this has jumped the line from politics to something much more worrisome and needs to be out in the open.

I've been busy, but I've caught a little of this creepy story.  However, while I was distracted it's gotten really serious.

Short version. A blogger was getting harassed for telling the truth about a convicted left wing terrorist, who like so many left wing terrorist got off light and is now a darling of the professional Left. There's more on this here, here and here.

Blogger R.S. McCain posted an informative post on this here.

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Nearby Norfolk and our local paper are both in the news today because of a beating that took place two weeks ago.  However, no one was killed and the victims seem to have no permanent physical injuries and have returned to work, indeed, though badly hurt, they left the scene via their car. This ought not to be a national story.

However, it IS a national story and that is because the Virginian Pilot sat on the story for two weeks, despite the fact that the victims were two of their own reporters. The paper broke the story not as news, but rather in an OP-ED yesterday. It is here.

Read the whole thing. 

The fact that the paper did not report the story until the editorial staff could not abide the failure to report and broke it is causing understandable alarm. This is particularly true in the wake of all the examples of media malfeasance revolving around the terrible Zimmerman/ Martin  case.

It should be noted that this is quite different from that wickedness in that it seems that the Virginian Pilot staff aren't actually trying to gin up a race war. However, the size of the mob, and the police observation that such things are unremarkable in downtown Norfolk (which one would not know by reading the 'Pilot )are the sorts of things that a local paper ought to be reporting on. The public needs to know these things both to make informed choices about where to go at night as well as raising awareness of the problem so its on the radar at election time...
...oh wait Norfolk's elections were YESTERDAY.
This is something that ought to have been on the public's radar 2 weeks ago so that the candidates could have proposed solutions. Well, the paper did not wish to offend, so those elections did not deal with this issue.

There is speculation that there was a seedier rationale for this debacle beyond knee-jerk political correctness or a fear of fanning racial flames, namely that the president and publisher of the Virginian Pilot is now Obama's deputy HUD secretary. I heard this bantied about on the local radio this morning as well. IMHO the timeline on this does not quite jive as he was already confirmed by the time of the beating. I suppose there could have been some residual butt covering for the old boss. In any event the incident was not covered.

  The beating was terrible in and of itself and the failure to cover it is worrisome but is also of national interest interest because there are some  indications that it was another "Justice for Trayvon" racial assault. Da Tech Guy has a long post on this aspect of the case but it is in one of his updates that he hits the nail on the head regards the local implications of this.

  One other thing to consider, thugs aren’t only thugs when a person of a different race drives by. If an assault on their own journalists went unreported for two weeks how much less likely is the paper to cover non fatal beatings, robberies or intimidation within the community done by the same people? The paper and the police do the black community no favor by ignoring this stuff.

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Over at Hot Air, they seem genuinely surprised that new polls seem to have Virginia sliding into Obamas camp. The only surprise to me is that it's not already solidly so.

^{Appalled girl is Shizune Hachimaki, from Katawa Shoujo..which is itself somewhat appalling.}

Seriously...
Not JUST politics, State and local politics, the most appalling politics of all.

So as a courtesy to our readers we've hidden it bellow the fold.

Click to be appalled...

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Professor Jacobson has the most succinct analysis I've seen of last nights primary results.

Endgame assessment:  Big night for Rick.  Bad night for Mitt.  The Honey Badger don’t care (nsfw).

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I haven't opined on politics in a while. With this being an election year, it seems like a good idea to put my cards on the table and weigh in on various current issues.

^{"Oh God NO!" " PLEASE don't. We were almost making friends and EVERYTHING!"}

OK! OK! !t's below the fold.

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It looks that way.

The head troll of the long suffering hermit kingdom reportedly has passed away.

One can certainly hope that some good comes out of this monsters passing, but at the moment its looking like even with his death rattle he is sowing fear.

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A week or two ago #OCCUPYSQUALOR announced that today would be their day of action. The eviction yesterday and multiple arrests seems to have neutered their plans a bit, but why did they chose today of all days. Why did it have to be today when they knew an eviction was coming?

Cdr Salamander knows.

Just be very glad September has passed.

Related item here.

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Regards Perry's explanation of which agencies he would cut, I....

Oh hell with it. I'll let this young lady comment.

"He was being coherent and everything!"

I guess all we can do now is blame Texans Avatar and Ubu for that  horrible moment and move on with our lives.

UPDATE: OK. Decent recovery on a later question but damn.

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There are elections tomorrow for the Senate and House of Delegates in Virginia. A quick overview of whose in what VA district can be found here. The State Board of Elections page is here. There is a good page  on Virginia at Ballotpedia as well.

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I'd been up for 2 and a half days dealing with butler issues when I finally got a relief in the form of my sister, who came by Saturday afternoon. So when I laid down, I stayed down and slept through the Gingrich/Cain debate on entitlement reform. Fortunately, being C-SPAN, it is available here.

As expected, Gingrich won. He excels at this format. Indeed at one point Cain dropped a bit on defined benefit vs defined contribution plans. However, he did recover and otherwise did alright. Cain really was no slouch and showed he had a lot of good ideas, but Newt really owned the stage.

  Gingrich deserves credit for setting this up and Cain deserves credit for agreeing to this. It is telling (and a sad commentary on the state of politics) that no one else in the Republican field agreed to talk specifics  about this third rail stuff. These two are at least serious about dealing with these problems. Gingrich's outstanding performance may well have given himself a considerable boost towards escaping third place. However, by virtue of participating, and speaking thoughtfully in intelligent English rather than bumperstickerese both guys are on my shortlist.

A lot of Cains's arguments, tended to be more philosophical, though it is obvious he has given considerable thought to the issues at hand. Gingrich on the other hand was a cornucopia of facts and figures replete with anecdotes related to the mind numbing stupidity he witnessed first hand in congress.

What was most refreshing about the debate was its intelligence and civility. I strongly urge you to take 90 minutes and watch it. Two really smart guys discussing entitlement reform is certainly no roller coaster of thrills, but it is damned refreshing and was a really informative talk.

There is going to be a similar exchange hosted by the Heritage Foundation (with the addition of Paul and Romney) on national security on November 22.

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