What an ironic name. The only thing New about New Super Mario Brothers is that it’s getting back to what was good about the Mario games, unlike what happened with Mario 64 and such.
That’s what’s good about it. Apparently my occasional comments about it looking good affected my brother, because he just went out and bought a Nintendo DS yesterday. It plays as good as it looks.
Now I want one.
The Lakers have apparently traded the rights to Cheick Samb, their second round pick, to Detroit for Maurice Evans, a 6-5 guard who averaged 0.8 assists per game last year.
They then traded next year’s second rounder for Danilo Pinnock, a 6-5 guard who averaged 3.1 assists per game as a junior in college last year.
Add those two to Jordan Farmar, the 6-2 guard out of UCLA who averaged 5.1 assists that they got in the first round, and it looks like the Lakers really, really, really want to get rid of Smush.
In the past I have argued that the Congress needs to start stripping jurisdiction from the Supreme Court. Well, it has in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. Unfortunately, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the court decided that doesn’t really apply, over the objections of a great dissent by Justice Scalia. Justices Thomas and Alito also dissented (the Chief Justice had to recuse himself, having been on the Court of Appeals that the Supreme Court overturned), beautifully tag-teaming to dismantle the majority and plurality on this.
So, as Mark I points out at Red State, we may have a Constitutional crisis on our hands, all because Justices Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, and Kennedy want the terrorists at Guantanamo not to be tried by a military commission that was set up.
What a mess.
Well, the NBA Draft was today. The Lakers picked, to the surprise of many, a 6’2″ guard out of UCLA. The conventional wisdom is that “Phil Jackson likes big guards” because they’re more interchangeable in the triangle offense. Smush is surely out the door, thankfully after his regular season inconsistency and playoff collapse.
In the second round they went for a center out of Senegal. My guess is he’s a longshot gamble in a weak draft. We’ll see, I guess, who will be playing once the season starts with the new ball.
While many of us have been worked up about the ICC, the ICJ still exists, and the Chief Justice is on the case. Via Bench Memos I found this interesting writeup that shows John Roberts as not hesitating to lay down American law over foreign junk:
Bustillo asserts that since Breard, the ICJ’s LaGrand and Avena decisions have interpreted the Convention to preclude the application of procedural default rules to Article 36 claims. Although the ICJ’s interpretation deserves “respectful consideration,” Breard, supra, at 375, it does not compel the Court to reconsider Breard’s understanding of the Convention. “The judicial Power of the United States” is “vested in one supreme Court . . . and . . . inferior courts.” U. S. Const., Art. III, §1. That “power . . . extend[s] to . . . treaties,” Art. III, §2, and includes the duty “to say what the law is,” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177. If treaties are to be given effect as federal law, determining their meaning as a matter of federal law “is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department,” headed by the “one supreme Court.” Ibid. Nothing in the ICJ’s structure or purpose suggests that its interpretations were intended to be binding on U. S. courts. Justice Roberts goes on to find that the ICJ’s interpretation of the VCCR is simply wrong.
The dissent, written by Justice Breyer, also refused to endorse this view, and “assumed that the ICJ decisions are not binding.” Instead, the dissent argued that “respectful consideration” should have required the Court to give deference to the ICJ here and spends lots of ink pointing out that the ICJ has often been cited by U.S. Courts and the Supreme Court.
Just imagine if Breyer were in the majority. Even if Breyer says the ICJ’s word isn’t legally binding, if he claims the Supreme Court has to follow it, then the effect is the same as if the ICJ were a higher court.
If you want to see some amazing stuff, watch some top-notch Doom demos sometime. I particularly enjoy the ‘movies’ (full runs of the game on Ultraviolence or Nightmare!) and the Tyson runs (kill all monsters using only fists, berserk fists, chainsaw, and pistol).
Tyson almost matches the way I play. Not that I restrict myself so severely, but doing well at Tyson often means triggering lots of monster infighting, and I love to do that in order to save ammunition, and just because it’s fun.
Watching some of thse has also got me trying to play through the game without reloading a save or dying. So far I can get through to around level 10 of Doom 2 (I don’t have Ultimate Doom actually… back in the day I only had Doom 2, so that’s all I have now yet).
Of course, these demos would be more fun to watch in PrBoom if I’d get around to fixing the two crash bugs present in the game on PPC Mac OS X.
Jason Barnes asks a neat question at Red State: would the court uphold spending limits on abortion they way they do on speech?
Fascinating question, I think, and I’d love to see a test case come of this.
Of course, Rob points out that this blue and yellow interim color scheme is a lot like the EU flag. I was unsure about the yellow to begin with…
Now that I’m away from SA, I can talk about whatever I want. I can bash the EU, I can bash soccer (since obviously that has NOTHING to do with America), I can talk about Stellvia (guess where my new commentary log’s name came from…), I’m free.
So how about those Supreme Court cases coming up possibly today?
