David Stells comments

a) no strong majority...4 votes. Which is odd that Obama would then object to a 5-4 Supreme Court vote...since that's a stronger vote by %.

b) He's a professed legal realist. His view is "those in power get to make it." So, his disregard for the Constitution is nothing...bc its a "living document" to him, and the founders didn't have a clue as to what they were doing. This leads him to promote, endorse, and wholeheartedly embrace judicial activism, hence his appointment of Sotomayor and Kagan, two of the biggest activist judges in US history, when it is convenient for him, and oppose it when it isn't. You want an example of judicial activism? Kagan, when serving as solicitor general, she not only wrote the gov't defense brief for Obamacare, but she also sent an email expressing her opinion on it to Larry Tribe, who the NY Times calls a "liberal legal icon" saying "they have the votes Larry. Simply Amazing!!" Federal law (28 U.S.C. 455) clearly stipulates the grounds for judges to disqualify themselves in cases, including if the judge’s “impartiality might reasonably be questioned” or if the judge served in federal office as “counsel” or “adviser” or “expressed an opinion” on a matter. Kagan is in violation of US law, and therefore must recuse. But since she's not interested in the rule of law and the president that appointed her isn't, then it doesn't matter to them, bc they are only interested in their activism.

c) Both Al Gore and George W Bush had the Supreme Court rule against them, both said they would respect the SC's ruling and abide by it. Al Gore, as much as I dislike him, said he was willing to abide for the sake of unity. Obama is the most divisive president in the history of the nation and the most Constitutionally violative, outside of maybe FDR.

Just watched my 1st (and probably last) AKB48 video...

It isn't that I hate them, they just don't suit me. I'm a mid twenties male...so tween music isn't really my thing.

If you don't like their music, don't listen to it...that's what i'll be doing. If other people do...leave em alone. And if you wanna bash em...feel free to do so.

It is pretty sunny and happy though...that's nice. Still...no more AKB48 for me.

1) this shouldn't even be news. It means nothing. People try to construe this as the US being "less racist" or something. People are people, and they marry for different reasons. I have worked with, met, and known people (black, white, asian, indian, latino) who have said they would marry a person of another race for a specific feature (a certain type of butt, boobs, hair, eye shapes). Some of them actually DID. Is it shallow? Yes, but its also just as racist (a preference for one racist over another) of a motivation as someone who bashes other races. I also know people who married within their race for no specific reason except that was the person they loved, which is a totally non-racially motivated decision. So we can conclude that. a) Not everyone who marries someone of their race is automatically a racist; b) Not everyone who marries someone of a different race is automatically a non-racist. Therefore, this statistic is meaningless.

@JapanGal, if everyone was blind we would likely all be dead by now. Oh, and it would make building cities and skyscrapers impossible. So Tokyo, Osaka, etc would not exist. Advocating for universal blindness is sheer lunacy. How about instead of turning our heads and blindly acting like other races and people don't exist, we actually just accept that people of other races are as human as we are. Just respect their humanity and learn to appreciate cultural differences instead of pretending they don't exist. To act like differences don't exist is just as racist as hating them, bc you're failing to acknowledge a part of a person, in affect saying "I can't deal with that part of you, so I'll just pretend I'm blind to it". That's crap.

@Wurthington wow...how much kool-aid would you say you drink per day? Keep sipping.

A) kids have rarely ever hated a person just bc of their color unless their parents taught them to. That's where you get cases of KKK members having a "predisposition" to hate another race (still wrong).

B) Groups of kids on tv...the media (having worked in it) largely gets to choose the shots that make television and sometimes, those shots are basically staged.

C) same applies to music videos. And ps...have you ever heard of The Rat Pack? Blacks and whites have been playing and performing together since at least the 1920s, so 100 years later I dunno if this should impress us or be some kind of indicator or a racist or non- or less racist society. This is ridiculous.

D) Up until 1959 (when minimum wage was enacted), Blacks were employed at a higher rate than whites. The rate of that employment now is typically about 20% under what it was before 1959 and it HAS NEVER RECOVERED! So, while there may have been more overt racism then, the two races knew how to co-exist (if not in an ideal situation) and work together. The older generations "hardened thinking" led to higher employment for both races. I'm sure a man, white or black, would rather have a job that takes care of his family than to hear about how much another dude "likes and accepts him". Yes, we should accept people, but that puts the cart before the horse to a person that can't feed his family. So, hardened thinking may have had its flaws, but it definitely had its benefits for everyone. I'm not proposing we go to the racism part, but there are some lessons to be taken from this "hardened thinking".

@blackpassenger A correction...Latinos can be white, black, asian (Brazil has the highest Japanese population outside of Japan), or anything else.

@Gurukun Yes, that statement is paradoxical, because if her statement is true if must necessarily be false. But she may be alluding to something more implicit. Perhaps she feels that the NBA wouldn't ever promote a woman to a head coach position. It could be because men wouldn't respect her or whatever else, there's no real way to know why from her statement. This is just a possibility, but maybe she takes things one step at a time, and thinks being a woman coach in the NBA would be breaking a barrier and then could focus on the head coach thing later.

@Tel Porter, she isn't really proving that she can coach at the top level of pro basketball in Japan. 9 wins, 23 losses, and being 2nd to last in the league is hardly proving you are a competent coach. If a lawyer had that kind of record you would probably call him a bad lawyer, and if he told you he lost almost 3 times as many cases as he won, in one of the world's least competitive venues (Japan is not a competitive basketball league on the world level), you certainly wouldn't hire him. If an engineer built bridges (like she is metaphorically trying to do) and 23 of them collapsed, you wouldn't call him a good engineer, you would probably put him in prison. If a roofer built a roof that was 14 inches off (23-9=14), you wouldn't call him a good roofer. If anything, her record tends to lend itself to the idea that she isn't competent. There may be other circumstances that make wins hard to get, but in the sports world, coaches are typically judged on their record. I agree that your gender doesn't matter as long as you have the ability/drive/skill/determination/whatever, but her record tends to prove that she doesn't. But at least she doesn't seem unrealistic about her team, and that will help her know where they can improve, so maybe she will improve her players, improve as a coach and get that NBA spot!

@Foxie

We have all become way to addicted to Twitters, Facebooks and of course the internet. Just shut everything down and we can go back to our cave lifes.

If we went back to our cave lives you couldn't have posted your comment about going back to our "cave lifes".

That UNC professor is ridiculous. The Internet is largely exactly a virtual space, and the files on real hard drives it are...guess what..."virtual"! Just a bunch of electronic signals. You can make a file "real" by printing a hard copy, but i seriously doubt most people are printing "The Internet" or more to the point Twitter posts. Harvard Center for Internet and Society? What a joke...Let's study how people use the Internet and how it affects them and society in general...trying asking a 10 year old...just pick one. Plus, this assumes that the way Americans use the Internet is the way the whole world does. Get out of your ivory tower and get a real job. This is truly a case of "those who can't do, teach", which is definitely not the case with all educators, but when your job is to "study" the Internet & Society, you've just entered that realm.

This seems pretty normal, Americans have done this for years, we called it leftovers, or Chinese buffet. Why is it so strange that Japanese have picked this up?