steve phillips is a moron.

thanks, joe posnanski, for pointing that out. i was watching a mets game over the weekend in which i heard steve phillips be distinctly critical of carlos beltran for not being 'a leader' and being 'inconsistent'. (Also the butt of Phillips' criticism? David Wright.)

Carlos Beltran OPS+ by season since joining the Mets (OPS+ is a crude measurement of a hitter's combined ability to get on base and hit for power. the "+" refers to the fact that a perfectly average hitter's OPS in a particular season is normalized to 100, so anything above 100 is above average, and anything below is below average. A 120 OPS+ is considered all-star caliber, and a 150 OPS+ is MVP caliber)

96, 150, 126, 129.

Keep in mind: he is a superb defensive center fielder, winning Gold Gloves in the last 3 years. Oh yeah, and his OPS+ this year: 167.

David Wright's OPS+ in every full season with the Mets: 139, 133, 150, 141, and 159 so far this year. But I'm sure Steve Phillips doesn't like Wright or Beltran because they're not vocal enough . AKA, they're not the chair-throwing, tobacco-chewing dirt dogs that all these baseball 'purists' love.

Shut up, Steve Phillips. The Mets fired you for a reason.

JESSE VENTURA

what can i say? he calmly vaporizes elizabeth hasslebeck and sean hannity. i think i might need to marry him.

sigh.

Decorated officer Lieutenant Colonel Victor J. Fehrenbach is being dismissed using the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" statute. Nary a peep from the Obama administration, except to uphold the existing statute, and 'no immediate plans' to change it. Lovely.

john roberts

Pretty good stuff from Jeffrey Toobin (author of The Nine) on how Roberts steers the now quite conservative Supreme Court. It's a good read but hardly surprising - would anyone have expected Roberts, a graduate of the Reagan administration who faithfully represented George W. Bush in Florida in 2000 to be anything but strictly conservative? I think its an interesting read if only to understand the motivating factors behind Roberts' decisions - a lot of it comes down to his hesitance to have the Court involved in constructing any sort of policy. He certainly feels that the role of the judiciary is strictly to uphold laws put into effect by legislators, a position that entrenches him firmly against any idea of activism. His stance against affirmative action, asserting equivalance between forced segregation and forced integration is quite telling (I happen to agree with Breyer). In this way, it makes Obama's statement following Souter's retirement more telling - that his view of the role of the judiciary is not in line with the Robers/Rehnquist view:

Obama is the first President in history to have voted against the confirmation of the Chief Justice who later administered his oath of office. In his Senate speech on that vote, Obama praised Roberts’s intellect and integrity and said that he would trust his judgment in about ninety-five per cent of the cases before the Supreme Court. “In those five per cent of hard cases, the constitutional text will not be directly on point. The language of the statute will not be perfectly clear. Legal process alone will not lead you to a rule of decision,” Obama said. “In those circumstances, your decisions about whether affirmative action is an appropriate response to the history of discrimination in this country or whether a general right of privacy encompasses a more specific right of women to control their reproductive decisions . . . the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge’s heart.” Obama did not trust Roberts’s heart. “It is my personal estimation that he has far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak,” the Senator said. The first bill that Obama signed as President was known as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; it specifically overturned the interpretation of employment law that Roberts had endorsed in the 2007 case.

Certainly, debates on the the new nominee (whoever it is) will be quite interesting, and I wonder if we'll hear any peeps from current sitting justices. Probably not.

douche.

let's recap our president's statements from this week. He:

1. won't release photos showing more torture of detainees at guantanamo and other locations, despite (or maybe because) such evidence would make it all the more likely that torture was not the "isolated work of a few" but rather a broadly organized policy with culprits at the highest levels of government (and that includes you, nancy pelosi).
2. is now planning 'military style tribunals' for prisoners held in such locations, most likely because the amount of torture that prisoners were subject to during their holding makes very little evidence obtained actually admissible and would make convictions almost impossible to achieve.
3. has no plans to move on 'don't ask, don't tell' despite the discharge of almost 1,000 service members every year.

So, as Jon Stewart so ably puts it, America is entrenched in a war with stakes so high that torture must be permitted if it gives us any chance at getting the slightest bit of extra information. you would think that in a fight where the stakes are this high...anyone who wants to serve would be welcomed into the fold. nope. sorry gay people...it's not your time.

So, congratulations, president Obama, on a real winner of a week. You're a dick.

rafa

I'm a huge Roger Federer fan, but its clear at this point that Rafael Nadal dethroned him from atop the tennis world. But until I read this superb article from Sports Illustrated, I did not appreciate the methodical, yet obsessive way in which Nadal improved his game specifically to combat Federer's strengths and expose his weaknesses. And what's even more enthralling, or confusing, is how Federer has just not responded to this new challenge by switching his game up:

This attitude perplexes even Federer's staunchest admirers. Former players, coaches, peers: They all accept that his talent is, as Wilander says, "crazy," but his passive response to Nadal goes against what they've been taught a superstar does when he's down. Muhammad Ali came up with rope-a-dope, an aging Michael Jordan perfected the fadeaway jumper: The great ones adjust, sending a signal not only to their rivals but also to all the newly emboldened. It's no shock that following Nadal's trail, No. 3 Andy Murray has won six of his last seven matches against Federer, and No. 4 Novak Djokovic has won three of their last five. "What makes me scratch my head," Courier says, "is how Roger doesn't shift."

It's disappointing to see Federer stubbornly stick to a skill set that no longer allows him to dominate his opponents, when he clearly has both the mental acuity and physical talents to rise to the challenge. Let's hope he stops thinking his fall from grace is a fluke, gets a real coach, re-invents himself, and then we can home for some real excitement this summer and fall.

arsenal's struggles

ESPN Soccernet has a nice blog post by one of their correspondents on Arsenal FC's struggles. There's no question when you watch them that Arsenal has a talented young batch of players (including Theo Walcott, above, who just re-upped), but their talents seem non-directed (as my roommate often says, they play 'as if they're trying to dribble the ball into the net'). The differences are probably not too much in talent between Arsenal and the 3 Premier League teams ahead of them, but the absence of veteran leadership was clear in their sound thumpings at the hands of Man U and Chelsea. David Young laments:

In his programme notes yesterday, Wenger is quoted as follows: “Look at our midfield from Tuesday - Song, Nasri, Walcott and Fabregas - all aged between 20 and 22. So we will naturally progress if we keep going”. Within this one sentence Arsene Wenger reveals both the strength and key flaw of his current approach. It is of course fantastic that the team has several young players that could go on to prove themselves to be genuinely world class, (though there are several who definitely won’t), and it is right that some of the world’s best young players should be attracted to, and developed by, a club such as Arsenal. But, generally speaking, the received wisdom is that a footballer hits his peak between the ages of 26 and 28. In the transient modern game, where money talks and agents fan the flames of discontent in order to move players on every summer, how many of the current Gunners squad will still be with the club in five years time?

How true. So what are the chances that Arsenal can pull an experienced, aggressive goal scorer from another team in the off-season - a move that would consolidate the talents of their young players and bump the club back into competition to win league titles?

health care potential

paul krugman weighs in with good news on health care policy. maybe everyone is getting on the same page? (other than john boehner).

obamtourage

name says it all.

also from ezra:

good god, americans don't know any freaking math. only 21% of people surveyed knew how many times larger 1 trillion is than 1 million. I wonder if this affects how normal Americans perceive the mind-boggling numbers being thrown around in budget proposals, bailouts, and federal debt, and so does Ezra:

My sense is that there's basically a break point beyond which all numbers blur into "a lot of goddamn money.' A Senator disbelievingly saying that they're spending "$100 million" on health care for poor people probably isn't eliciting only 10 percent of the outrage he'd get for decrying "$1 billion" on health care for poor people.

david souter retires

I don't claim to know too much about constitutional law, and I would further admit that 90% of what I know about the current Supreme Court justices comes from reading Jeffrey Toobin's The Nine (which I highly recommend). It's probably not very surprising that Souter was one of my favorites (I'm certainly more liberal when it comes to constitutional matters than when it comes to, say, fiscal matters). I'll leave it to Ezra Klein to bid him a fond farewell, and speculate on whether term limit for Supreme Court justices might be a good idea. Meanwhile, I'll quote from Souter's furious, passionate dissent in Bush v. Gore as tribute to his impressive career.

What must underlie petitioners' entire federal assault on the Florida election procedures is an unstated lack of confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state judges who would make the critical decisions if the vote count were to proceed. Otherwise, their position is wholly without merit. The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

EDIT: here's salon.com's top 10 possible supreme court replacements.

bulls-celtics

absolutely unbelievable. 6 games in: 4 OT games, 1 double-OT game, one triple (TRIPLE!!!) OT game, with transcendent performances by multiple guys on each team: Ray Allen, Rajon Rondo, Paul Pierce, Derrick Rose, John Salmons, Brad Miller, Ben Gordon. It's been an absolute joy to watch. You've got to love any basketball columns by the Sports Guy (despite the fact that this one involves one of his favorite teams) because, as he often says, he's one of 12 actual basketball fans left:

Derrick Rose took the superstar training wheels off. Rajon Rondo turned into Isiah, The Sequel: Just as talented, just as hated, just as nasty. Ben Gordon and Kendrick Perkins turned into Andrew Toney and Robert Parish. The great Ray Allen became a minus-130 favorite in the "Reggie Miller versus Ray Allen" argument and might have to change his name to "The Great Ray Allen." Paul Pierce added to his legacy and sullied it a little at the same time. Brad Miller made the Faces Hall of Fame and the Dorkiest White Guy Celebrations Hall of Fame. John Salmons and Glen Davis put themselves on the map as bona-fide NBA players. Kirk Hinrich redeemed his career. Stephon Marbury destroyed what was left of his career. Doc Rivers and Vinny Del Negro inspired their players and undermined them at the same time.

I'll leave you highlights from one of the best playoff games I've ever seen.