Smith:  “I’ll tell you this much, Skins.¹ If that waitress isn’t here in 30 seconds with my fucking Pellegrino, I swear to Christ I’ll have her job…”* **** ¹Jane Skinner

From the Honolulu Advertiser: A lawsuit filed by five Hawaiians claims that the Office of Hawaiian Affairs is illegally spending dollars reserved for the benefit of those with 50 percent Hawaiian blood or more. All nine OHA trustees as well as two former trustees are named in the suit, which states that they “expended trust funds without regard to the blood quantum contained in the definition of native Hawaiians” as

Reacting to this Richard Bennett post, which argues that the Miers nomination is less about overturning Roe (which dubious decision the Right relies upon to maintain the indignation that fires up the base) than it is about appointing to the court a judicial activist whose opinions on certain key issues will steer the court to the right (he suggests the Schiavo case is the social right’s new litmus test), Cathy

To Rick, for the Amazon gift certificate, which I just used to pick up Batman Begins on DVD.  Didn’t see the flick in the theaters, so I’m really looking forward to it.

From the Telegraph UK: The Irish rock star, Bono, has been angered by Senator Hillary Clinton’s use of a U2 concert this week to raise funds for her political campaign coffers—even though he is a good friend of her husband, Bill. “U2 concerts are categorically not fund-raisers for any politician. They are rock concerts for U2 fans,” said his close associate, Jamie Drummond, who runs Data, the Third World advocacy

Oxblog’s David Adesnik expands on my post yesterday by comparing in more detail coverage on the Iraq vote by the New York Times and the Washington Post (here, here, here, and here) Quips Adesnik, “I guess the answer to my confusion is obvious: only read one newspaper, and then the world will seem like a much more orderly and rational place.”

Thomas McCann argues that, “whether the Iraqis choose to ratify their Constitution or not, the experience of their referendum will be a monumental success in the gestation of the Iraqi democracy.” He goes on to make the more forceful claim that a defeat could prove even more useful:  “No lesson could be more powerful than the voice of the people saying ‘No’ to governmental leaders and seeing what happens when

TalkLeft’s Jeralyn Merritt on Bush and Miers: I am at the 3 day annual meeting of the Lexis-Nexis – Martindale Hubbell Legal Advisory board. This is the board that Harriet Miers was on until 1999 or 2000, when she went to work full-time for Bush, who was then running for President. There are four ex-ABA presidents on the board (three of whom are here), and one former U.S. Attorney General.

Two Sides of the Sunni Vote: Deserted Polls and Long Lines (NYT): A heavy boom shook what was left of the windows in polling station No. 1, a provincial council building in the center of this embattled Sunni Arab city. Bursts of automatic gunfire immediately followed. The polls had been open for exactly three minutes, and insurgents here had already staked their claim on the vote. Iraqis vote in force