Air Force Looking for Contractor to Supply Outdoor Furniture for Andersen Air ... Guam Buildup News GUAM – The Pacific Air Offices is looking for a small business contractor to supply outdoor metal tables for Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, according to a request for quotations. The four heavy duty outdoor tables must be made of metal and measure ... and more »

Air Expo 2011 delights crowd with history, high-tech and aerial acrobatics - Post And Courier | Air Expo 2011 at the Charleston Air Force Base proved the adage that there always will be a need for speed. America's aviation arsenal was on display under glaringly sunny skies Saturday in a celebration of the best in flight, featuring planes from more than 60 years old up to the most modern in the U.S. command...

Bluebonnet Air Show flies into Burnet (With Video) - KXAN | BURNET, Texas - Quenching your need for speed was easy at this year's BlueBonnet Air Show in Burnet. Almost every plane imaginable from A-10 warthogs to the Bluebonnet Belle took to the sky. "Oh, it is amazing," said Lane Henphill, 14, who wants to become a pilot.  "I love planes."...


Indy Air Race: The Race Route - Indy Air Race | The Indy Air Race is scheduled for August 13, 2011, at 10:00 a.m. It will be held at KTYQ, Indy Executive Airport - You MUST attend the pilot's brief to participate in the race. No brief, - no race. This is an open course timed speed race open to all propeller driven aircraft. Aircraft launch in speed order, fastest first...

Another Lindbergh making his mark - Seattle Times | Of all the things Erik Lindbergh remembers about his famous grandfather, one that sticks with him best is their debate over how to pronounce the word "helicopter." Charles Lindbergh, who had made the first solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, brought a toy helicopter to his grandson on Bainbridge Island in the early 1970s, and Erik thanked him for the "HELL-i-cop-ter," the pronunciation used today...

A Yank in the RAF: Pilot saw WWII from a unique perch - Star-Telegram | A few weeks ago, on a warm late-winter weekend afternoon, two boys walked onto a tarmac at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum, a cavernous building filled with the silver shape of a massive B-29 Superfortress. An old man in a motorized scooter noticed the boys' excitement and asked whether they'd like a tour of the aircraft, nicknamed "Fifi."...

WWII vet gets to fly in B-17 bomber over Flagstaff - Chicago Tribune | FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Joe Leben remembers flying over the Atlantic in a B-17 bomber during World War II on his 22nd birthday. Now at age 89, he found himself inside another "Flying Fortress" -- this one flying over Flagstaff...

A ride in history - Mohave Daily News | BULLHEAD CITY — History was in the air Saturday at Laughlin-Bullhead International Airport. It was also on the ground, and visitors to the second Legends over the Colorado fly-in got to feel it — if they dared...

Celebrating a Brand New Sport Pilot – and learning a thing or two in the process - Flight Monkeys | It was two weeks ago today at Aaron Menough made the transition from student-pilot, to pilot. In fact, it was precisely two weeks ago today that Aaron Menough submitted to a practical test with an FAA designated pilot examiner, and successfully completed the tasks listed in the Practical Test Standards for a Sport Pilot...

St. Louis aviation honored - STL Today | HAZELWOOD -- Seventy years ago this summer, James S. McDonnell opened his new company, McDonnell Aircraft Corp., at Lambert Field. McDonnell wasn't from here but his choice came down to St. Louis and Memphis, Tenn. McDonnell chose St. Louis and moved his family here from Baltimore. And the rest, one might say, is aviation history...

Mickey Rooney to appear at museum - GAN | Mickey Rooney, famous actor known for National Velvet (1944) with Elizabeth Taylor, The Bridges at Toko-Ri (as a Navy fighter pilot) (1954), Black Stallion (1979) and most recently Night at the Museum (2006), is appearing at the San Diego Air & Space Museum’s “Hollywood Studs & Starlets” fundraising event on May 7...

Longmont senior takes to air for birthday - Times Call | Once upon a time, Vera Andersen helped build aircraft. Now, for her 101st birthday, it was her turn to go up, up and away. “That was quite a trip,” said Andersen, who celebrated the milestone with a helicopter ride...

Multilingual Messages of Goodwill to be Transmitted from ISS to Honor Gagarin - Spaceports | An amateur radio satellite specifically designed to interest students in scientific and technological careers will be activated and begin transmissions from the ISS in in about Monday to celebrate Yuri Gagarin's first human space flight. Transmissions are scheduled to begin Monday around 14:30 UTC April 11 and ending Wednesday around 10:30 UTC on April 13, 2011...

Airmen from the 36th Wing at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, and the 36th Airlift Squadron at Yokota Air Base, Japan, come together each year during Operation Christmas Drop to drop thousands of pounds of donated supplies over various Micronesian Islands Dec. 14.

View the slideshow.
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Airmen from across the Pacific Air Forces are teaming up with their Japan Air Self-Defense Force counterparts in support of a Japan-wide, week- long exercise Dec. 3 through 10 here.

Airmen from Misawa and Yokota Air Bases, Japan, and Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, arrived here, where they will participate in exercise Keen Sword 2011.

During exercise Keen Sword 2011, servicemembers will practice responding to a wide range of situations, to include defense of the region and reacting to a simulated contingency situation affecting Japan, within a realistic training environment.
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More than 25 members of the 644th Combat Communication Squadron from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, are working to provide communication capabilities to Airmen here.

The Andersen AFB Airmen are teaming up with Airmen from Osan Air Base, Korea; Misawa AB, Japan; and Langley AFB, Virginia. Together, they work side-by-side with their Japanese counterparts in support of the Japan-wide. bilateral field-training exercise, Keen Sword 2011.

Scheduled for Dec. 3 through 10, the exercise marks the tenth joint, bilateral field training exercise involving the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the U.S. military and will cap the 50th anniversary of the Japan-U.S. alliance.
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Preparations for the deployment of Air Force Global Strike Command's 69th Bomb Squadron here are underway as they head to Guam, a first since the Vietnam War.

The deployment is in support of U.S. Pacific Command's continuous bomber presence. An advanced team of approximately 30 Airmen departed Nov. 13 for Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. Approximately 200 more Airmen are scheduled to depart for the island Nov. 18 to 20.

A total of six B-52 Stratofortresses will be in place at Andersen AFB after two aircraft depart from Minot later in the week.
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Department of Defense Education Activity Pacific high schools is hosting the Pacific Far East Jazz Festival at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, next week.

On Oct. 7, 1949, Andersen Air Force Base, Guam was named in honor of Brig. Gen. James Roy Andersen, who died on Feb. 26, 1945.  Andersen was presumed lost at sea in the crash of his B-24 Liberator in an aircraft accident near Kwajalein Island on his way to Hawaii.

General Andersen was born in Racine, Wis., in 1904. He was commissioned in the infantry at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1926. He served at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, the Aberdeen (Md.) Proving Ground Command and the Picatinny Arsenal, N.J.  By 1936, he was promoted to captain and began cadet aviation training, getting his wings at Kelly Field, Texas.
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JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii: Air Force B-52 Stratofortresses flew from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, to the land Down Under to demonstrate the capability and flexibility of the Stratofortress to Australian military partners, as part of Exercise Hamel, Oct. 8 through 18. Participation in Hamel, and similar exercises, provides an opportunity for Airmen to engage [...]

US, Australians military participate in Exercise Hamel is a post from: DefenceTalk | Defense & Military News - Forums - Pictures - Weapons

Air Force B-52 Stratofortresses flew from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, to the land Down Under to demonstrate the capability and flexibility of the Stratofortress to Australian military partners, as part of Exercise Hamel, Oct. 8 through 18.

Participation in Hamel, and similar exercises, provides an opportunity for Airmen to engage with allies and regional partners, and ultimately contribute toward interoperability, regional stability and security.

"It's a great opportunity to interact with our coalition partners and sister services throughout the Pacific area of responsibility to train together, learn from each other, and remain proficient at our mission and show U.S. resolve within the region to protect and defend our allies from any potential adversary," said Maj. James Greenfield, a bomber liaison officer with the 613th Air Operations Center at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
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An RQ-4 Global Hawk is ready for its first flight Oct. 7, 2010, at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. This would be its first takeoff since its arrival Sept. 20, 2010. The RQ-4 is the only permanently stationed aircraft on Andersen AFB. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Nichelle
Anderson)

An RQ-4 Global Hawk takes off Oct. 7, 2010, from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. This was its first take-off since its arrival Sept. 20, 2010 and it's the only permanently stationed aircraft on Andersen AFB. (U.S.
Air Force photo/Senior Airman Nichelle Anderson)

Crew completes RQ-4 inaugural flight

Posted 10/13/2010
by Airman 1st Class Anthony Jennings
36th Wing Public Affairs

10/13/2010 - ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam (AFNS) -- Airmen here made their mark on...

> There are only two Marianas Crows left in the wild of Guam's jungles. If they can't survive in the relatively protected area of Andersen Air Force Base they won't make it anywhere on Guam.~ PNC

> 10 aspects of evangelicalism that are harmful. ~ link

> Amazing evangelical growth in Cuba ~ Global Post

> Peter Cha on the problem of hospitality. "Guests" never become a part of the decision making process. ~ link

> The online HCSB Study Bible site has launched -- nice lay-out and great study notes. ~ link

> "Arizona ranks 30th in the country for the number of people with a college degree." Yeah, but I bet we're near the top for handgun holsters. ~ link

> The guy who tasered the armored car guard was taken away by ambulance. Apparently, the courier responded by shooting the robber. All this happened yesterday morning at the Walgreens a half-mile up the street from us. This is such a nice quiet neighborhood. ~ link

> "Mexico's drug traffickers are likely to lose customers in America's largest pot consuming state if California legalizes marijuana, but they won't lose much money overall because California's residents already prefer to grow their own, according to a study released Tuesday." ~ link

> Paradox -- US non-white Hispanics outlive white non-Hispanics by 2+ yrs, in spite of more poverty. Es la burritos. ~ link

On Sept. 20, 2010 the RQ-4 Global Hawk was unveiled at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. I had the honor and privilege of joining a group of civic leaders as guests of Gen. Gary North, Pacific Air Forces, at the ceremony for the arrival of the Global Hawk. This unmanned aerial vehicle is designed [...]

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam, Sept. 21 (UPI) -- Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle has been permanently based in the Pacific region by the U.S. Air Force.



Northrop Grumman - Global Hawk - Unmanned aerial vehicle - RQ-4 Global Hawk - Guam

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam: Airmen here celebrated the arrival of the RQ-4 Global Hawk to Guam during a ceremony Sept. 20. The Global Hawk brings significant capabilities to the Pacific theater, which will benefit the 36th Wing, Pacific Air Forces, U.S. Pacific Command, and regional partners, said Gen. Gary North, the PACAF commander. "Having an (intelligence, [...]

Global Hawk UAV arrives in Guam is a post from: DefenceTalk | Defense & Military News - Forums - Pictures - Weapons

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam: Airmen here celebrated the arrival of the RQ-4 Global Hawk to Guam during a ceremony Sept. 20.

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam: Air Force bombers, fighters, tankers and support aircraft from the Pacific theater are arriving and making preparations for Valiant Shield 2010. The U.S. Pacific Command exercise, which runs Sept. 12 through 21, and will be conducted near Guam. "Valiant Shield 2010 exercises the military's ability to rapidly bring together joint forces in [...]

Valiant Shield exercise begins at Joint Region Marianas is a post from: DefenceTalk | Defense & Military News - Forums - Pictures - Weapons

Beale AFB CA (SPX) Sep 07, 2010
In a stride forward for the RQ-4B Global Hawk remotely piloted aircraft program, the first aircraft landed at 9th Operations Group Det. 3 at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, Sept. 1 after an 18 hour flight from here. The aircraft was flown by pilots and sensor operators from the 12th Reconnaissance Squadron here. The flight to Andersen AFB marked the surpassing of the 45, 000 flight-hour mar

In a stride forward for the RQ-4B Global Hawk remotely piloted aircraft program, the first aircraft landed at 9th Operations Group Det. 3 at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, after an 18 hour flight from here Sept. 1.

The aircraft was flown by pilots and sensor operators from the 12th Reconnaissance Squadron based out of Beale Air Force Base, Calif. The flight to Andersen AFB marked the surpassing of the 45, 000 flight hour mark for the Global Hawk program.

The RQ-4 Global Hawk is preparing to go through the Department of Defense-directed Initial Operation Test and Evaluation process. Upon completion, Det. 3 will be operational. The current focus at Andersen AFB will be to bed down and conduct procedural testing with the aircraft.
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A suspect is in custody following a bomb threat at Guam's Andersen Air Force Base.



Guam - Andersen Air Force Base - Oceania - United States - Military

A suspect is in custody following a bomb threat at Guam's Andersen Air Force Base.



Guam - Andersen Air Force Base - Oceania - United States - Military

A suspect is in custody following a bomb threat at Guam's Andersen Air Force Base.

A suspect is in custody following a bomb threat at Guam's Andersen Air Force Base.

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam: Airmen performed the first accelerated packaged maintenance plan on an F-22 Raptor in a deployed environment here Aug. 4. Members of the 27th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Unit completed what has never been done with a fifth-generation aircraft before. A PMP is a scheduled, long-term, heavy maintenance on a fighter aircraft, performed [...]

Airmen perform first deployed PMP is a post from: DefenceTalk | Defense & Military News - Forums - Pictures - Weapons

Several B-52H Stratofortresses and nearly 350 Airmen here left June 1 for Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, on a six-month rotation deployment.

"The 5th Bomb Wing's role in (U.S. Pacific Command's) continuous bomber presence mission is vital to national security," said Col. Charles Patnaude, the 5th Operations Group commander. "Our mission is one of both deterrence and assurance."

The colonel said Minot AFB's Airmen will be there to deter and dissuade potential regional aggressors from taking any provoking actions and to assure our allies of our commitment to the Pacific region.
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The commander of Air Force Global Strike Command visited here to assess ongoing bomber operations and meet with deployed Airmen May 13 through 16.

Although bombers have rotated through Andersen Air Force Base continuously since March 2004, B-2 Spirits and B-52 Stratofortresses have only been aligned under Air Force Global Strike Command since Feb. 1.

"As the major command now responsible for the B-52 and B-2, it now falls to us to organize, train and equip those forces and send them forward under the command of Pacific Air Forces and Pacific Command to Andersen Air Force Base," said Lt. Gen. Frank G. Klotz.
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Capt. Katrina Martinez, an infection control officer from the 36th Medical Group at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, speaks at a U.S. and Vietnam hosted subject matter expert exchange at the Can Tho Medical College in Can Tho, Vietnam, on May 11, 2010.

Capt. Katrina Martinez, an infection control officer from the 36th Medical Group at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, speaks at a U.S. and Vietnam hosted subject matter expert exchange at the Can Tho Medical College in Can Tho, Vietnam, on May 11, 2010.

Eight additional locations will begin using USAJOBS.gov on May 24 to advertise vacancies to current Air Force employees.

Charleston Air Force Base, S.C.; McGuire AFB, N.J.; McChord AFB, Wash.; Langley AFB, Va.; Elmendorf AFB, Alaska; Andersen AFB, Guam; and the Air Force District of Washington's Bolling AFB and the Pentagon make up Phase II of the Air Force's civilian initiative to use USAJOBS to announce jobs vacancies to internal and external candidates.

Osan Air Base, South Korea; Goodfellow AFB, Texas; and all the bases under U.S. Air Forces in Europe launched the program Feb. 22, 2010.
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Sorry Airman Supershaggy, "Transformers 3" is not coming to Andersen Air Force Base. And by the way, you've been phished.

✽ They're shooting part of Transformers 3 at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam -- NOT. It was a part of a phishing scam. ~ link

✽ A child dies from malaria every 30 seconds. Children are rallying to save lives with high quality $10 nets, which are purchased as often as possible from local suppliers (stimulating the local economies). BTW, today is WORLD MALARIA DAY. ~ link

✽ BBC story on the new Arizona immigration law: "...All the same, most Arizonans support the new law..." They do? What is the basis of that statement? ~ link

✽ 2,000 people attended a peaceful rally in downtown Phoenix to protest the new state immigration law. ~ link

✽ Nearly 100,000 people have attended a rally in Japan's southern island of Okinawa demanding that a US military base be moved off the island. 100,000! ~ link

✽ New designer newspaper start-ups in London ~ link

✽ India's copyright laws contextually appropriate?

When the US entertainment industry looks at India, it sees one gigantic copyright problem. That's why it wants India to remain on the US government's "Priority Watch List" for intellectual property issues in 2010, and that's why it blasted the country's new copyright proposals for (among other things) having too many legal reasons to bypass DRM.

But what happens when you look at India from the perspective of culture and consumers? The country comes out number one... ~ link

✽ "...Surprisingly, these figures show that, since 1940, Republicans and Democrats are just about equally invested in big government. If anything, government gets slightly smaller under Democrats." ~ LaVonne Neff

✽ CalTech has come up with a relatively inexpensive and efficient solar technology. Go Beavers! ~ link

A B-2 Spirit prepares to land March 23, 2010, at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. The aircraft is depl

Three Airmen from Andersen Air Force Base saved the life of a local resident when he failed to surface while cave-diving March 27 in Guam.

Airmen 1st Class Mark Gregg, Caleb Rodriguez and Kylle Krzywiecki, all from the 36th Munitions Squadron, said they were relaxing on the beach after a day of snorkeling and cave swimming when Christensen Kimi offered to show them another cave.

During one of his dives, Mr. Kimi didn't resurface.

Airman Krzywiecki said he became concerned and swam under and followed the light from his underwater flashlight. He realized Mr. Kimi was unconscious, grabbed him by the arm and swam to the surface.
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Andersen Air Force Base - Guam “My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populat

It may seem harsh to compare the military's build-up on Guam to the nuclear annihilation of Bikini Atoll. After all, the U.S. only wants to risk contamination of Guam's water supply and not blow up the island. Let's recognize this as an improvement in Pacific island relations. But the nuclear testing program was arguably one of the lower points in the U.S. treatment of Pacific islanders and is a baseline for evaluating the military's plans for Guam.

From 1946 through 1958, the U.S. exploded 67 nuclear devices, including hydrogen bombs, on the Bikini Atoll. Radiation was spread far and wide, affecting thousands of people living in the Marshall Islands, leaving problems that persist today.

The build-up on Guam gives the island difficult choices about its future. The Bikini islanders faced a difficult choice as well in 1946, and that's our starting point for comparison.

Beware of government PR.

Imagine the task facing the U.S. government on Bikini. It did not want to be seen forcibly evicting the islanders. It had to appear that the Bikini islanders had accepted the relocation as the morally right thing to do. Arriving on the atoll in a seaplane in early 1946 is Navy Commodore Ben Wyatt with the task of convincing the people of Bikini to give up their island. It's a Sunday, shortly after services and Wyatt is there to see the island's leader, King Juda.

Official Navy records reported that Wyatt told the Bikinians “of the bomb that men in America had made and of the destruction it had wrought upon the enemy” and that the Americans “are trying to learn how to use it for the good of mankind and to end all world wars.” He then asked: “Would Juda and his people be willing to sacrifice their island[s] for the welfare of all men?” The Bikinians did not wish to leave their atoll. But, in view of the United States’ defeat of Japan and Commodore Wyatt’s description of the nuclear weapons, they believed themselves powerless to resist the United States decision. (Source: Reparations lawsuit filed by the people of Bikini in 2006).

The U.S. had what it wanted from the Bikini islanders -- their consent, even if it was a fiction. But that was the story, told with the news media's help, to the mainland.

In July of 1946, just five months after Wyatt's arrival, a New York Times reporter was flown to the island to witness an unusual ceremony from the Bikini islander's new home, the neighboring island of Rongerik.

The headline and a few excerpts follow.

BIKINI'S KING GETS TRUMAN'S THANKS.

Receives Gifts as His People Are Hailed for Sacrifice -- Juda to See Next Test.

RONGERIK, Marshall Islands, July 16 -- King Juda of Bikini, head of a community of 167 souls who voluntarily gave up their native island to make way for the atomic bomb, today received the official thanks of the President of the United States in a colorful ceremony.

Representing Truman was Sen. Carl Hatch, (D-N.M.), who reportedly said this: "The President knows the sacrifice you have made and he is deeply grateful to you for that. You have made a true contribution to the progress of mankind all over the world, and the President of the United States extends to you, King Juda, his thanks for all that you have done."

As the message was translated to him, King Juda, dressed in a Navy fatigue uniform, nodded his acknowledgement. Then came a burst of applause from all the men, women and children seated behind him in a semi-circle.

King Juda was also presented with several gifts, "a pipe, a cigarette holder, matches, a carton of cigarettes and a complete set of photographs of the atomic cloud over Bikini."

Don't ask, don't listen

The U.S. didn't seek Guam's consent for the buildup. It did not ask whether it is "willing to sacrifice their island" for it (i.e. risk the water supply, the loss of 70 acres of coral, noise from live fire ranges, additional land losses, and other impacts) and assumed it would have enough political support.

But awareness and opposition to the build-up was already building by the time Vice President Dick Cheney visited Andersen Air Force Base in 2007, it just wasn't being heard in Washington. A petition circulated by the group Nasion Chamoru opposed the increased military presence. “We believe that increased militarization will put our families, friends and relatives who are living on Guam in harm’s way rather than provide safety and stability,” the group said in a statement prior to Cheney’s visit. (Navy Times)

This petition was as well in advance of the environmental build-up studies and the Congressional Research Service’s recent assessment that "Guam’s higher military profile could increase its potential as an American target for terrorists and adversaries during a possible conflict."

The subsequent growth of We Are Guahan and the outpouring of concern at the recent hearings demonstrate that this build-up opposition is broadening and deepening. It is also a movement looking beyond the environmental and infrastructure issues to question the very future of the island, its identity and the legacy it wants to leave for its children.

Sen. James Webb's focus is on mitigating environmental and quality of life impacts, and not the transcendent issues. He let President Obama's administration know, after his recent visit, that the military is asking too much of the island and giving it too little in return. Webb's goal is to help Guam get millions of dollars for infrastructure help and a slower pace of development, but he wants an outcome that ensures that the Guam build-up is realized, which he calls an "issue of national strategy."

The colonialist pay a visit

Shortly after Webb's report, which included his assertion that the build-up is a "win" for Guam, the White House unveiled "One Guam, Green Guam," in advance of President Obama's visit. Its goal for Guam is to bring the island "to an end state that’s politically, operationally, and environmentally sustainable," according to the White House briefing.

The White House needed a new approach for two big reasons. Opposition on Guam to the build-up is increasing, thanks in part to the Draft Environmental Impact State Statement (DEIS) which makes it clear that protecting the island's environment is not the government's top priority. [The U.S. Environmental Protection assessment helps support that conclusion.]

The White House sent Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the Council on Environmental Quality, to Guam to lay a new groundwork for selling the build-up. Sutley appears at a press conference with a number of other federal officials and then says "what you see here is a commitment from the federal family." (Marianas Variety, March 23, 2010).

The use of the phrase "federal family" is not something a U.S. official would typically use stateside. Ms. Sutley's use was probably an innocent attempt to show genuine concern. But it's a paternalistic phrase that reinforces a painful fact for Guam: it is a second-class citizen, unable to deal with the federal government either as a sovereign nation or state.

The U.S was similarly paternalistic with Bikini residents, who were led to believe that they could one day return to their island and that they would be cared for until such time. The Bikini islanders "agreed to leave their atoll on the understanding that the United States would provide for them while they were away from their homeland and would protect them against the loss of their lands." (Bikini reparations lawsuit).

The federal government is discovering that it needs Guam's consent to move ahead with this project, or at least something it can sell as "consent" to the mainland. But the government is pursuing two separate goals in the build-up. The first goal is the build-up and acheiving the strategic objective. The second, less important goal, is a sustainable build-up. This is one of the things the Bikini islanders learned in their experience. Once the nuclear testing began and the strategic objective was achieved, their lives took a turn for the worse.

Done Right, versus What's Right

Supporters of the build-up want U.S. assurances that it will be "done right," meaning that there is sufficient money and planning to offset its environmental and infrastructure impacts. Whether those impacts can be addressed is unsettled. But the deeper issue of "what's right" for Guam is not a question that will be considered by White House. And the reason for this is clear.

The U.S. government's primary objective for Guam isn't "One Guam, Green Guam," but the build-up. Everything else is secondary and misdirection.

Had the Bikini islanders understood that the only thing that mattered was the evacuation of the island and not their futures, who knows how they might have responded. All anyone can do today is wonder what King Juda thought when he was handed pictures of the atomic bomb exploding on Bikini, part of the thank you gift from his new federal family.

Ernst & Young's 'window-dressing' role at Lehman Brothers renews criticism of accountancy profession

Ernst & Young's attempts to brush aside criticism of its role in the collapse of Lehman Brothers has failed to deter critics of the profession. If anything, the accountancy firm has forged an alliance of disparate and usually antagonistic groups disturbed by the role it played alongside law firm Linklaters in providing "window dressing" for Lehman's risky financial structures.

Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne said yesterday he wants reform as much as Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman Vince Cable and Prem Sikka, the radical academic Prem Sikka, who has spent more than 20 years arguing that accountancy firms appear, like the Woody Allen character Zelig, in the foreground at every major corporate crash, only to fade from view when difficult questions are asked.

In their sights are the Big Four accountancy firms, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which stand accused of charging excessive fees for work that appears to make little difference when things go wrong.

In the case of Lehmans, Ernst & Young was paid $31m. KPMG charged a similar amount for auditing Wachovia, the fourth largest bank in the US until the government forced its sale to Wells Fargo to head off insolvency.

In the UK, Royal Bank of Scotland paid its auditor, Deloitte ,£58.8m in fees in 2008; while PwC was paid £12m by Lloyds TSB in 2007 before its disastrous merger with HBOS, which in turn paid KPMG £9m.

One barrier to reform is the widespread belief that western capitalism cannot afford to see the Big Four reduced to three or two by scandals that result in long-running and costly lawsuits. In short, they are like the banks and too big to fail.

The collapse of Enron, the US gas company turned financial speculator, brought Arthur Andersen to its knees, after the firm was found aiding and abetting the company's use of off balance sheet vehicles. Andersen helped the company hide losses and shredded vital papers when regulators came looking for evidence. A flurry of class action lawsuits buried the accounting firm.

Aware that a similar incident could kill off another audit firm, the profession has lobbied on both sides of the Atlantic to limit their liability when faced by angry investors.

Limited liability

In July 2000, the government passed legislation allowing accountancy and law firms to become limited liability partnerships (LLPs).

Under the old rules, partners in a firm had been jointly and severally liable for the misdeeds of each other. A lawsuit against one was in effect brought against all partners in the firm.

Indemnity insurance rocketed as corporations got bigger and damages suits likewise. For instance, Ernst & Young was sued for £2bn damages for losses after Equitable Life almost went bust.

LLP status allowed firms to ring-fence lawsuits. Only the partner and the firm concerned could be sued, leaving the assets of other partners intact.

More recently, the profession, led by a former PricewaterhouseCoopers partner, Peter Wyman, persuaded the goverment to allow limited liability audit agreements further circumscribing the ability of investors to sue auditors in the case of a corporate failure.

Wyman, who retains an advisory role at PwC, is featured in a lengthy webcast on FinancialDirector.co.uk explaining the benefits of the agreements and how his efforts to persuade the US government to follow suit had failed. Ernst & Young's exposure as a central character in the collapse of Lehman has probably taken the issue off the agenda for several years. And without US agreement, no major corporation can press ahead and agree a deal.

As Wyman points out, all the biggest companies are registered with the Securities & Exchange Commission, the US equivalent of the Financial Services Authority, and the SEC is not budging.

Cap on legal payouts to investors

The profession has also been seeking a monetary cap on legal payouts to investors. Representatives from the Big Four accountancy firms met officials at the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills last spring, to argue that auditors risked going bust if a wave of litigation resulted from investors and liquidators trying to recover losses from big company failures.

Not only banks but a host of corporate failures could be blamed on the failure of auditors to spot rule breaches, excessively risky decisions or criminal behaviour.

Currently, an auditor can be sued for all losses when a company collapses, even if they were judged to be only partly to blame. The Big Four put forward a compromise solution, to limit an auditor's liability to the proportion of their client's loss they are considered responsible for. Under this proposal, shareholders could over-rule the arrangement with the auditors with a vote at an annual general meeting.

Tory MP Michael Fallon, who is deputy chairman of the influential treasury select committee, said he expected a report by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), which is responsible for promoting confidence in corporate reporting and governance, to come up with reforms of the audit profession in the light of the banking crisis.

The FRC is due to publish its delayed report in the summer after spending more than two years consulting industry figures and the profession on changes to the role played by auditors.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW), the body that regulates the Big Four, among others, is also due to report on proposals to toughen the regime for auditors.

Robert Hodgkinson, an executive director at the ICAEW, said he was concerned that auditors had largely followed the approach agreed with investors and regulators but still failed to signal problems at companies that collapsed. The institute has already published a governance code for audit firms.

Fallon said the select committee was concerned at the transparency of audits of UK banks after the collapse of Northern Rock and the near demise of RBS and Lloyds Banking Group.

Vince Cable said the committee's investigation of Northern Rock showed that auditors should be banned from accepting any consultancy work.

"It is crystal clear that bank auditors should not take fees for other work because it will inevitably create conflicts of interest. But that is just a starting point to cleaning up the whole profession," he said.

A failure of the auditory nerves

The centuries-old system of auditing has long been criticised as too cosy and is once again under scrutiny for failing to spot problems at Lehmans.

Auditors going into a big bank will be led by an experienced partner from one of the Big Four accountancy firms: KPMG, Ernst & Young, Deloitte or PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The team will be made up mostly of trainee and junior accountants who will check the financial statements made by the holding company and its subsidiaries. They will take samples of transactions to satisfy themselves that staff are following accounting and reporting rules. They are also supposed to liaise with internal auditors, who are in effect in-house whistleblowers. However, auditors in times past have accepted transactions chosen by the company, and ignored the warnings of internal auditors.

Auditors are employed by investors to oversee the company and check its results represent a "true and fair" view of its finances. But the audit report is presented to the directors and any rows over potential financial discrepancies or misgivings about corporate practices are kept behind closed doors. If disagreement spirals out of control, auditors may refuse to sign off the accounts. The principles-based auditing in the UK is supposed to get round the box-ticking treatment of accounts in the US, which is deemed rigid and merely establishing that figures meet legal/regulatory rules. Yet investors in Lehman found that stricter US accounting rules prevented the sale and buyback schemes that disguised $50bn of its liabilities, while UK rules allowed them.

Guam (click to view full) Up to $500 million to 6 small business qualifiers for military construction on Guam; contracts let for new facilities at Andersen Air Force Base. (March 10/10) DID has covered a number of base improvement efforts and other contracts related to the USA’s pacific territory of Guam, including construction of an RQ-4 Global Hawk [...]

In a recent TNR article about the Citizens United decision, “Roberts versus Roberts,” I argued that the chief justice has so far failed to achieve his goal of promoting narrow, unanimous decisions rather than ideologically polarizing ones. After the piece came out, Ed Whelan claimed that Roberts had never promised to try to lead the Court in such a fashion. In fact, in an interview in 2006, Roberts acknowledged to me that he had set himself a daunting task in seeking unanimity and consensus rather than polarizing 5-4 decisions, but he said it was one worth pursuing because it would be good for the court and the country.

Today, TNR contributor Doug Kendall and I are testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a hearing entitled "We the People? Corporate Spending in American Elections after Citizens United." I've included in my testimony, posted below, remarks he made at a commencement address at Georgetown University Law Center in May 2006, as well as more extensive selections from what Roberts told me in July of that year. (“It’s a high priority to keep any kind of partisan divide out of the judiciary,” he said.) As these statements clearly show, the chief justice presented his vision for more consensus on the Court forcefully and repeatedly, although he acknowledged that it would be difficult to achieve.

Hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary

We the People? Corporate Spending in American Elections after Citizens United

Wednesday, March 10, 2010



By Jeffrey Rosen

Professor of Law

George Washington University

Legal Affairs Editor

The New Republic

Dear Senator Leahy and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee,

Thank you very much for holding this hearing and inviting me to testify about the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. My name is Jeffrey Rosen; I teach constitutional law at George Washington University and am the legal affairs editor of The New Republic and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has been strongly opposed by Americans of both parties: last month, in a Washington Post-ABC News poll, 80 percent of respondents said they opposed the Court’s decision to allow unregulated corporate spending in general elections, with relatively little difference among Democrats (85 percent opposed to the ruling) and Republicans (76 percent opposed).  That’s not a surprise during a time of financial crisis when the influence of money in politics—Justice Louis Brandeis called it the “curse of bigness” and “our financial oligarchy”—is the most pressing political question of the day.

You asked me to testify about the constitutional implications of the decision—and what it suggests about the Roberts Court's attitude toward corporate interests and government regulation of the economy in the future. Unfortunately, the implications are not encouraging.

Citizens United is an activist decision by any definition of judicial activism. It is activist in its disregard of constitutional history, tradition, Supreme Court precedent, and the considered views of the president and Congress. It is precisely the kind of divisive and unnecessarily sweeping decision that Chief Justice John Roberts pledged to avoid in his confirmation hearings and after, when he said he would try to promote narrow, unanimous opinions, rather than deciding hotly contested questions by ideologically polarized 5-4 votes. The most significant area where the Roberts Court has succeeded in achieving near unanimity is in cases affecting business interests, which tend to be decided in a pro-business direction. The broad rhetoric in Citizens United about the rights of corporations, combined with the apparent willingness of the 5-4 conservative majority on the Roberts Court to invalidate federal regulations that have broad bipartisan support, could lead to future confrontations between the Supreme Court and Congress on matters of economic fairness that citizens care intensely about. 

Let me begin by describing how Citizens United is hard to reconcile with the vision of bipartisan unity that Chief Justice John Roberts originally embraced. In 2006, at the end of his first term on the Court, Chief Justice Roberts said in several speeches and interviews that that he was concerned that his colleagues, in issuing 5-4 opinions divided along predictable lines, were acting more like law professors than members of a collegial court. His goal, he said, was to persuade his fellow justices to converge around narrow, unanimous opinions, as his greatest predecessor, John Marshall, had done. Speaking to the Georgetown University Law Center commencement in May 2006, Chief Justice Roberts said:

[T]here are clear benefits to a greater degree of consensus on the Court. Unanimity or near unanimity promote clarity and guidance to lawyers and to the lower courts trying to figure out what the Supreme Court meant. Perhaps most importantly there are jurisprudential benefits: the broader the agreement among the justices, the more likely it is that the decision is on the narrowest possible grounds. It’s when the decision moves beyond what’s necessary to decide the case that justices tend to bail out. If it’s not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, in my view it is necessary not to decide more. In Felix Frankfurter’s words, a narrow decision helps ensure that we “do not embarrass the future too much.”

And in an interview with me for a book on the Supreme Court in July 2006, Chief Justice Roberts talked extensively about how he hoped to achieve his vision of narrow, unanimous opinions. He expressed frustration about the focus in the media on the number of 5-4 decisions on the Court, and lamented that his colleagues were acting more like law professors than members of a collegial Court. “If the Court in Marshall’s era had issued decisions in important cases the way this Court has over the past thirty years, we would not have a Supreme Court today of the sort that we have,” Roberts said. “That suggests that what the Court’s been doing over the past thirty years has been eroding, to some extent, the capital that Marshall built up.” Roberts added, “I think the Court is also ripe for a similar refocus on functioning as an institution, because if it doesn’t it’s going to lose its credibility and legitimacy as an institution.”

In particular, Chief Justice Roberts declared, he would make it his priority, as Marshall did, to discourage his colleagues from issuing separate opinions. “I think that every justice should be worried about the Court acting as a Court and functioning as a Court, and they should all be worried, when they’re writing separately, about the effect on the Court as an institution.”

Chief Justice Roberts praised justices who were willing to put the unanimity of the Court above their own ideological agendas. “A justice is not like a law professor who might say … I had a consistent theory of the First Amendment as applied to a particular area,’” he explained. He said he would try to emphasize the benefits of unanimity for individual justices, in order to effect what he called the “team dynamic”: “You do have to put people in a situation where they will appreciate, from their own point of view, having the Court acquire more legitimacy, credibility, that they will benefit from the shared commitment to unanimity in a way that they wouldn’t otherwise.” He said he intended to use his power to assign opinions when he is in the majority to achieve as broad a consensus as possible. And while acknowledging that he had set himself a daunting task in trying to resist the polarizing of the judiciary with 5-4 decisions, he said he also viewed it as a “special opportunity” in our polarized age. “Politics are closely divided,” he observed. “The same with Congress. There ought to be some sense of stability [in the Court] if the government is not going to polarize completely. It’s a high priority to keep any kind of partisan divide out of the judiciary as well.”

I was impressed by the chief justice’s concern about the bipartisan legitimacy of the Court and have no doubt that he meant what he said when he talked repeatedly about the importance of promoting narrow, unanimous opinions. I was also encouraged by the fact that in his first term, which his colleagues had treated as something of a honeymoon, the Court decided just 13 percent of cases by a 5-4 margin, one of the lowest rates in recent history. And so I watched with interest his efforts to promote unanimity over the past three terms, where his success was more mixed. In the term that ended in 2007, the percentage of 5-4 decisions soared to 33 percent, a ten-year high, as the justices divided bitterly along ideological lines in cases involving partial-birth abortion, affirmative action, and campaign finance. (The percentage of 5-4 decisions would fluctuate up and down a bit over the next two years, falling to 20 percent in the 2008 term and rising back to 29 percent in the 2008 term, which ended last June.)

There has been one category of cases in which Chief Justice Roberts has managed to steer the Court toward narrow, nearly unanimous opinions: those involving business interests. About 40 percent of the Court’s docket is now made up of business cases, up from 30 percent in recent years, and 79 percent of them are decided by margins of 7-2 or better. The best measure of the pro-business orientation of the Supreme Court is the success rate of the Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Litigation Center, which files briefs in cases that affect the “unified interests of American business.” In the 2006 term, Chief Justice Roberts’s first term on the Court, the Chamber’s litigation center filed briefs in 15 cases and won 13 of them, the highest percentage of victories in the center’s thirty-year history. If you leave out the environment, labor, and employment cases, which tend to be more politically polarized, and look at the remaining 46 business cases before the Roberts Court in which the Chamber participated as of 2009, most of them are decided in a pro-business direction, in areas ranging from punitive damages to preemption, false claims acts, securities suits, and antitrust cases.

So this was the record of the Roberts Court on the eve of the Citizens United decision: near unanimity in many pro-business cases, and—with the exception of one important 8-1 decision avoiding a constitutional confrontation over the Voting Rights Act—bitter 5-4 ideological divisions in cases involving affirmative action, abortion, campaign finance, and religion.

That’s what made Citizens United such an important test of Chief Justice Roberts’s vision for the Court. After all, narrow grounds for avoiding a constitutional conflict in Citizens United were certainly available. Just as Chief Justice Roberts had held in the voting-rights case that Congress intended to let election districts bail out of federal supervision, he could have held—even more plausibly—in Citizens United that Congress never intended to regulate video-on-demand or groups with minimal corporate funding. The free-speech interests of the producers of the film in question, Hillary the Movie, are significant, but First Amendment values could have been protected with a far narrower opinion that avoided broad, unnecessary, and historically unsupported claims about how corporations share the same First Amendment rights as real American citizens. By ruling narrowly, the Roberts Court could have protected free speech without calling into question decades of regulations of corporate speech in American elections. And this sensible compromise—protecting the free speech rights of small, mostly ideologically oriented corporations while regulating the speech of huge for-profit corporations (which still have the option of speaking through PACs), would have been consistent with the historical pattern of regulation of corporate speech in America dating back to the Progressive era.

But Chief Justice Roberts chose not to avoid a constitutional conflict. He assigned the majority opinion to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote an unnecessarily sweeping opinion declaring that corporations are persons with full First Amendment rights. The majority opinion is perfectly principled as an abstract discourse on the First Amendment, and indeed is supported by some civil libertarian liberals. It is a plausible, if highly abstract, reading of the text of the First Amendment, completely removed from its historical context—the kind of opinion that could have been written by Chief Justice Earl Warren. But it is a highly activist opinion, if you take any of the many definitions of constitutional activism that Chief Justice Roberts had pledged to avoid. In particular, as Justice John Paul Stevens pointed out in his powerful dissent, the opinion refuses to defer to the text of the First Amendment, which distinguishes between the freedom of speech and freedom of the press, the original understanding of the Constitution, the settled traditions of the American people, as expressed for more than a century by the president and Congress, and it overturns or mischaracterizes several important Supreme Court precedents.

My colleague Doug Kendall will discuss how both the majority and concurring opinions in Citizens United mischaracterize constitutional text and original understanding and the longstanding traditions of the American people in suggesting that the rights of corporations are identical to those of real people. But as Justice Stevens noted, the opinion seems baseless as a matter of original understanding—“unless one evaluates the First Amendment’s ‘principles’ or its ‘purpose’ at such a high level of generality that the historical understandings of the Amendment cease to be a meaningful constraint on the judicial task.” The text of the Constitution does not refer to corporations as persons; but it does distinguish between “the freedom of speech, or of the press,” suggesting that the Framers were perfectly capable of treating newspaper corporations differently than other for-profit corporations.

As the debate between Justice Scalia and Justice Stevens shows, the framers of the First Amendment did not think extensively about the rights of corporations when the Bill of Rights was ratified, because general incorporation statutes did not emerge until the 1800s. To the degree the Framers thought about corporations, they were concerned about the special privileges that might result from the grants of special charters. Moreover, the majority in Citizens United ignores the powerful suspicion throughout American history of monopoly privileges and “class legislation” that favored for-profit corporations. This tradition started in the Jacksonian era, was embraced by Abraham Lincoln and the Reconstruction Republicans, was extended by the trust-busting Theodore Roosevelt, and culminated in the work of Louis Brandeis during the Progressive era and Franklin Roosevelt during the New Deal. All of these economic populists, both Republican and Democratic, in the nineteenth and twentieth century, would have strenuously rejected the Supreme Court’s claim that Exxon should have the same free speech rights as a mom and pop proprietor.

The longstanding American suspicion of corporate monopoly power is embodied in a century of federal laws that the Citizens United decision could be read to call into question—ranging from the Tillman Act of 1907, when Congress banned all corporate contributions to candidates on the grounds, as the Senate Report observed, that “[t]he evils of the use of [corporate] money in connection with political elections are so generally recognized that the committee deems it unnecessary to make any argument in favor of the general purpose of this measure,” to the Taft-Harley Act of 1947, where Congress extended the prohibition on corporate support of candidates to include not only direct contributions but also independent expenditures.

In addition to refusing to defer to the original understanding and longstanding traditions of Americans, the Citizens United decision is also troubling in its treatment of Supreme Court precedents. On this score, it’s worth noting how unusual it is for the Court to overrule its own precedents. The Marshall Court didn’t overturn a single constitutional precedent; and the Taney Court only one. The Hughes Court, which challenged Franklin D. Roosevelt during the New Deal and then retreated, overturned 25 precedents. The Warren Court, although criticized for activism, overturned 32, which was less than the Burger Court, which overturned 76. And the Rehnquist Court overturned 39 precedents.

Some originalist judges, such as Justice Thomas and, to a lesser degree, Justice Scalia, see nothing wrong with overturning precedents that clash with the original understanding of the constitution: on the Rehnquist Court, Justice Thomas voted to overrule more precedents per year than any other justice, followed by Scalia and then Rehnquist and Kennedy. But Chief Justice Roberts in his confirmation hearings took a very different approach. He described himself as a “bottom-up” rather than a “top-down” judge, a perspective that he said included a respect for stare decisis. Extending the metaphor of judicial modesty, he compared judges to umpires.

In his first terms on the Court, Chief Justice Roberts was criticized by both his liberal and conservative colleagues for chipping away at precedents incrementally rather than overturning them openly, but nevertheless joining opinions that held the exact opposite of what the Court had held only a few years earlier. In Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, for example, a 5-4 majority struck down a provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) that limited expenditures by corporations, a provision that the Court had upheld only four years earlier in McConnell v. FEC. But Roberts refused to overrule McConnell openly, leading Justice Scalia to object:

[T]he principal opinion’s attempt at distinguishing McConnell is unpersuasive enough, and the change in the law it works is substantial enough, that seven Justices of this Court, having widely divergent views concerning the constitutionality of the restrictions at issue, agree that the opinion effectively overrules McConnell without saying so. See post, at 24–25 (Souter, J., dissenting). This faux judicial restraint is judicial obfuscation.

In Citizens United, Roberts seemed to vindicate Scalia’s charge. “Relying largely on individual dissenting opinions, the majority blazes through our precedents,” Justice Stevens declared, “overruling or disavowing a body of case law including FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., 551 U. S. 449 (2007) (WRTL), McConnell v. FEC, 540 U. S. 93 (2003), FEC v. Beaumont, 539 U. S. 146 (2003), FEC v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc., 479 U. S. 238 (1986) (MCFL), NRWC, 459 U. S. 197, and CalMedical Assn. v. FEC, 453 U. S. 182 (1981).”

Even more troubling, in the eyes of the dissenters, was the fact that the majority did not characterize these precedents candidly. For example, Justice Stevens said the majority had mischaracterized Buckley v. Valeo, the landmark campaign-finance decision, in suggesting that it was only concerned about quid pro quo corruption rather than less explicit forms of undue influence on the electoral system. (Congress had come to the opposite conclusion in extensive fact-finding that the majority ignored.) And the majority also mischaracterized earlier opinions in claiming that the Supreme Court has always protected corporate speech as vigorously as the speech of real people. “The only relevant thing that has changed,” Stevens wrote, “is the composition of this Court.”

Why would Chief Justice Roberts have said he wanted to promote narrow, unanimous opinions while insisting on broad protection for the rights of corporations even though narrower grounds were available? Perhaps he thought he could produce a unanimous court by convincing his liberal colleagues to come around to his side, rather than by meeting them halfway. In the most revealing passage in his concurrence in Citizens United, he wrote that “we cannot embrace a narrow ground of decision simply because it is narrow; it must also be right.” But the great practitioners of judicial restraint had a very different perspective. “A Constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory,” Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in his most famous dissent, in Lochner v. New York. “It is made for people of fundamentally differing views.” Holmes always deferred to the president and Congress in the face of uncertainty. He would never have presumed that he knew the “right” answer in a case where people of good faith could plausibly disagree.

Why should the public care that the Roberts Court now seems willing to impose ideologically divided, constitutionally polarizing opinions rather than narrow, unanimous ones? As Chief Justice Roberts himself recognized, this is a highly polarized age, and when the Court imposes bold decisions on a divided nation on the basis of slim majorities, it risks a political backlash. Is the Court, therefore, on the verge of repeating the error it made in the 1930s? Then, another 5-4 conservative majority precipitated a presidential backlash by striking down parts of FDR’s New Deal.

One lesson from the 1930s is that it takes only a handful of flamboyant acts of judicial activism for the Court to be tarred in the public imagination as partisan, even if the justices themselves think they are being moderate and judicious. Although vilified today for their conservative activism, both the Progressive and New Deal-era Courts had nuanced records, upholding more progressive laws than they struck down. As Barry Cushman of the University of Virginia notes, of the 20 cases involving maximum working hours that the Court decided during the Progressive era, there were only two in which the Court struck down the regulations. But those two are the ones that everyone remembers. And, during the New Deal era, Cushman adds, we remember the cases striking down the National Industrial Recovery Act and the first Agricultural Adjustment Act, forgetting that the Court upheld the centerpiece of FDR’s monetary policy and, by a vote of 8-1, the Tennessee Valley Authority.

It may be hard to imagine a full-scale assault by the Roberts Court on Obama’s regulatory agenda because, with the exception of Justice Thomas, the conservatives on today’s Court tend to be pro-business conservatives, rather than libertarian conservatives, and are therefore unlikely to strike down government spending programs (like the Troubled Asset Relief Program) that help U.S. business. But it’s not hard to imagine the five conservative justices reversing other economically progressive regulations on the basis of contested constitutional arguments. Later this term, for example, the Court may follow Citizens United with another activist decision, striking down the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (nicknamed “Peek-a-Boo”), which was created to regulate accounting firm auditors in the wake of the Enron and Arthur Andersen scandals. If the Court strikes down Peek-a-Boo, even if the decision is narrow enough not to call into question the constitutionality of the Federal Reserve, it may turn rumbling against the Court’s activism into full-blown outrage.

It’s impossible, at the moment, to tell whether the reaction to Citizens United will be the beginning of a torrential backlash or will fade into the ether. But the Roberts Court is now entering politically hazardous territory. I continue to admire Chief Justice Roberts’s original bipartisan vision of unanimity and consensus and still hope that he has enough political savvy and historical perspective to recognize and avoid the shoals ahead. But the success or failure of his tenure will turn on his ability to align his promises of restraint with the reality of his performance. At this moment in our economic history, the American people are concerned about the influence of corporations in our political life, and this committee should be concerned, too, when bipartisan legislation is struck down by activist judges on the basis of questionable constitutional arguments imposed by ideologically polarized 5-4 majorities. We have seen narrow conservative majorities strike down progressive economic regulations in the name of corporate rights before—and it always ends badly for the Court.

Jeffrey Rosen is the Legal Affairs Editor of The New Republic.

For more TNR, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

 

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam: More than 240 Airmen from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., arrived here in late February to support the deployment of B-2 Spirits as part of the continuous bomber presence here. The Airmen and aircraft replaced the service-members and the B-52 Stratofortresses deployed here from Barksdale AFB, La. Andersen AFB has had bombers [...]

B-2 Bombers arrive at Andersen AFB is a post from: DefenceTalk | Defense & Military News - Forums - Pictures - Weapons

Basketball 2010 March Madness Pacific Regional Basketball Tournament At Coral Reef Fitness & Sports Center, Andersen Air Force Base, Guam Day 7 results ...

A B-2 Spirit from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., gets airborne while another B-2 waits for clearance

Interservice Basketball 2010 March Madness Pacific Regional Basketball Tournament At Coral Reef Fitness & Sports Center, Andersen Air Force Base, Guam Day 6 results ...

More than 240 Airmen from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., arrived here in late February to support the deployment of B-2 Spirits as part of the continuous bomber presence here.

The Airmen and aircraft replaced the servicemembers and the B-52 Stratofortresses deployed here from Barksdale AFB, La.

Andersen AFB has had bombers present on its runway since 2004, the year the continuous bomber presence mission began.

The B-2's stealth characteristics give it the unique ability to penetrate an enemy's most sophisticated defenses and threaten its most valued and heavily defended targets. The bomber's capability to penetrate air defenses and threaten effective retaliation provides a strong effective deterrent and combat force well into the 21st century.
more...

Interservice basketball March Madness Pacific Regional Tournament At Coral Reef Fitness & Sports Center, Andersen Air Force Base, Guam Day 4 results

Mike Woodson: The Dallas Mavericks came back from a 15-point fourth-quarter deficit to force overtime and pull out a 110-103 win over the Hawks in Atlanta. To pull it off, the Mavs needed a few breaks...and Woodson gave 'em one.


Regarding his veteran-ly move, J-Kidd said: "The coach is not supposed to be on the floor. You see that a lot in games. The NBA has so many rules, and there is a coaching box, and some of the coaches do stretch that box. For me, it's just a reaction. Make something happen. It was a big play for us."

Woodson got a little, eh, chippy after the play, but Kidd let him know what's what: "I said, 'You can't be on the floor. You don't have a uniform on. It was just a play. We move on. ... The officials got it right. I thought from there, mentally, we took control of the game. That play just presented itself. It's just a reaction and just understanding what the team needs. Rules are rules. The coach isn't supposed to be on the floor."

Too Woodson's credit, he didn't whine about the call after the game: "He made a heck of a play. Jason Kidd is an All-Star. He's a (potential) Hall of Fame guard. He's had a hell of a career. He did what he had to do. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out to favor the team. I've got to take the hit for that."

The Atlanta Hawks: They can talk all they want to about the tech that got called on Woodson, but it was only one point, and the Hawks led 86-71 with a little over eight minutes to go in the game. It's their own fault they couldn't do anything with Dirk Nowtizki (37 points, 15-for-26) and Kidd (19 points, 16 boards, 17 assists). And especially Kidd, who had 9 points, 4 rebounds, 3 assists and a steal in the final 4:53 of the fourth quarter.

The Dirty Birds missed their first eight shots in OT before Josh Smith finally knocked one down with under a minute left. Too little, too late.

Atlanta's supporting cast: Joe Johnson (27 points, 11-for-21, 10 assists) found out that one really is the loneliest number, as Jamal Crawford, Al Horford, Mike Bibby and Marvin Williams combined to go 17-for-54 from the field. Not exactly the best way to convince him to re-sign this summer, guys.

DeShawn Stevenson: Basketbawful reader Brian submittted this video of The Locksmith's ego-ectomy.


New York versus Washington: The Wizards Generals Bullets have devolved into one of the most depressing franchises in the NBA. The Bricks have been there for a while. And I must say, this game totally lived down to everything we don't expect from both teams. Neither team played any defense -- which explains why the game was knotted at 112-112 at the end of regulation -- but these two Squads of Suck combined to shank 13 of their 16 field goal attempts in overtime. But since one of these two Pooper Scoopers had to win, the Bricks pulled it out when David Lee hit a layup with 1.6 seconds left.

Said Lee: "What was strange about it is, both teams are having trouble getting stops on defense in regulation, and when it came time for overtime neither team could score." Imagine that.

Added Bricks coach Mike 'Antoni: "I'm still shocked right now. We're probably lucky to get away with it, but they would have been lucky to win."

The Bricks are now 2-9 in February. Both wins were against Washington.

The Portland Trail Blazers: Weeks from now, the Frail Blazers will probably still be waking in a cold sweat and wondering how they let the Bull shoot almost 58 percent from the field.

Halftime entertainment at the Pepsi Center: Vanilla Ice. 'Nuff said.

The Cleveland Cavaliers: So the Crabs shot over 51 percent from the field, had six players in double figures, scored 30 fastbreak points, and got another stat-padder from King Crab (36 points, 16 FTAs, 6 boards, 9 assists) and yet they barely beat the Chris Bosh-less Craptors in overtime?

We'll give 'em the "second night of back-to-backs" mulligan, but still.

Hedo Turkoglu: The Craptors actually had the ball and a chance to win the game with 13 seconds left in regulation. But Turkododo decided, "Why try to create a high-percentage shot to end things when I can almost air ball a three instead?"

Fail.

Said Hedo: "I was feeling good and I wanted to take it, but in that situation I could have taken a better shot instead."

How much did Toronto agree to pay this guy again?

The Minnesota Timberwolves: Another night, another blowout loss for the second-worst team in the Association. That'll happen when you let your opponent shoot better than 54 percent from the field.

Said Minny coach Kurt Rambis: "[Oklahoma City] isn't the type of team that you're going to come into this environment and outscore. You're going to have to find ways to get stops, and we weren't doing that."

Darko Milicic: Basketbawful's favorite human victory cigar had 6 points and 9 rebounds in 25 minutes of PT for the Timberpoops. It may have been one of the best games of his career.

Said Rambis: "Even by his own admission, he didn't keep himself in NBA basketball shape. So, right now, it's almost like he's come to training camp without doing any summer work." And that's how you fail in the NBA, kids.

The Memphis Grizzlies: The only wins the Griz have been able to pull off lately have been against the Bricks, Bullets, Nyets and the Chris Bosh-less Craptors. And what's worse, their loss to the Bobcats was their sixth in a row at home, and their first loss this season to a sub-.500 team. And Memphis basically gave this game away: Charlotte scored 28 points off 20 forced (and unforced) turnovers.

Said Grizzlies coach Lionel Hollins: "The turnovers were a big part of the game. It wasn't just the turnovers, but the 28 points they scored off of turnovers. The turnovers were huge."

R.C. Buford: On July 12, 2007, R.C. Buford traded Luis Scola (along with Jackie Butler) to the Houston Rockets for Vassilis Spanoulis and a 2009 2nd round draft pick (Nando DeColo). It was a money-saving move, plus, some people in San Antonio's front office didn't think Scola could fit in to their system.

That must have made Scola's 30-point, 13-rebound performance -- which included 14-for-14 foul shooting -- in Houston's 109-104 win over the Spurs a little extra gratifying, right? Add in the scoring outbursts of Kevin Martin (33 points) and Aaron Brooks (31 points), and it was the first time in Rockets team history that three players scored at least 30 points.

The Los Angeles Clippers: Well, we can go ahead and add "single-handedly destroyed by Robin Lopez" to The Other L.A. Team's resume of fail. Lopez exploded for a career-high 30 points on 13-for-16 shooting. Robin was 7-for-7 at the rim. In fact, the Suns were 22-for-25 at the rim as a team.

Good thing the Clips traded Marcus Camby away.

Chris Kaveman: While Lopez was going nova, Kaveman was taking half the night off. He scored 12 first-half points, but then he picked up two quick techs 20 seconds into the second half. And you know what that means: ejection.

Said Clippers coach Kim Hughes: "I told Chris I thought he let the team down and crossed the line with what he said to the referee. He wasn't getting calls and I agree with him, but it's not going to do him any good what he said to the official. He can't put the team in a position like that. He's too valuable to be thrown out. It was just a bad basketball play."

Added Baron Davis: "Chris has to keep his cool, especially being an All-Star center. He knows we need him. It was just an unfortunate situation."

Kaveman had no comment about his ejection. He had plenty to say when he thought Pau Gasol was going to keep him off the All-Star team...but nothing to say about his ejection.

The Orlando Magic: The fact that the Chris Paul-less Hornets came back from an 18-point whole was amazing enough on its own. But what makes it a little "just ate the neighbor's poodle" crazy is that the win hinged on Aaron Gray's defense on Dwight Howard.

Yes. Aaron Gray.

Howard finished with 26 points and 10 rebounds, but he scored only 5 points had only one of his eight dunks after New Orleans coach Jeff Bowewr sicced Gray on him during the third quarter. The Magic went on to shoot 4-for-18 in the fourth quarter as the Hornets outscored them 28-13.

Said Bower: "I'm really happy for Aaron that he was able to play a large role in a great win. We thought his size would be factor. He was very effective tonight. His intensity and effort were outstanding."

Added Gray: "I just tried to keep a body on him, be physical. I knew that in order for us to get back into this game, we had to slow him down a little bit. We did that and I think that got him a little frustrated, especially when they were missing shots. It's a huge win and God knows we needed it."

Another factor in the loss was the 18 points Orlando gave up off 18 turnovers.

Said Magic coach Stan Van Gundy Ron Jeremy: "We looked for opportunities to relax, lose focus and let down, and we deserved to lose. We've gotten to the point where Dwight can't merely be very good. He has to be absolutely dominant for us to win. It was awful basketball. Hopefully we learned something from it."

The Utah Jazz: I would say most people already know about the Paul Westphal/Spencer Hawes drama, but that would require people to follow the Kings and, well, yeah. So if you missed the blurbs in last week's posts, here's a dramatization:


Well, Westphal was all about workin' things out before the Kings faced the Jazz.


Said Westphal: "If you want to see that again you'll probably have to go back to YouTube. I doubt I'll pull that one out for a long time. It's been three days of reading about the coach and player hating each other and that was never really it. It [the routine with Hawes] was just kind of fun."

Added Hawes: "We're moving on, what happened is now water under the bridge."

Awww! I think those two crazy kids are gonna make it work!

All those feel-good vibes apparently stymied Utah. Well, that and a season-high 25 points from Beno Udrih. Oh, and the Jazz could barely find the bucket (40 percent) while Sacto was red-hot (54+ percent).

Friday lacktion report: Allow chris to celebrate a rare Kings win with a little lacktion...

Crabs-Raptors: Jawad Williams scratched out a +2 suck differential in 8:52 via brick and foul.

Knicks-Bullets: Shaun Livingston launched a brick and took a rejection to give Washington a +2 in 2:01.

Bobcats-Grizzlies: In the first game of the Post-Thabeet Era, replacement backup center Hamed Haddadi (a fan favorite in Memphis, mind you!) countered a pair of boards in 6:32 with four fouls for a 4:2 Voskuhl.

Frail Blazers-Bulls: Martell Webster (formerly the highest-drafted D-League demotee, before Hasheem Thabeet) defined himself as a lacktator tonight, fouling twice and tossing one brick from Wacker Drive for a +3 in 5:10.

Brad Miller scrappily negated one made free throw and two boards in 19:10 with three bricks, two fouls, and two giveaways for a 4:3 Voskuhl.

Mavs-Hawks: You just KNEW it would happen someday, and at the end of the 2nd quarter - with Mike Bibby needing a sip of Gatorade from the bench - Mike Woodson pressed the select button for THE Mario West, who stepped onto the floor for a mere half-second to earn himself his first SUPER MARIO GALAXY of the season and possibly his career!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spurs-Rockets: Michael Finley provided some suckiness as a starter - two bricks in 9:41 for a +2, next to Matt Bonner's 1:0 Voskuhl off the bench in 7:35 after negating an assist with a giveaway. For the Rockets, David Andersen bricked, fouled, and lost the rock once each for a +3 in 3:22 (that also earned a 2:0 Voskuhl), while Garrett Temple fouled once in 4:36 for a +1.

Temple's maiden pilgrimage to the lacktion ledger made him the 200TH NON-CONTRIBUTOR OF 2009-10! CONGLATURATION, A LACKTATOR IS YOU!

Clippers-Suns: Taylor Griffin - yes, the brother of injured #1 overall Blake (across the hardwood tonight in the Clipper infirmary!!!), went climbing up ladders in a mere 33 seconds for a Mario!

Sixers-Lakers: Josh Powell got some tips from Toad in a three second SUPER MARIO!!!!

The Boston Celtics: The New Jersey Nyets entered their game against the Celtics in Boston with a record of 5-52, including 2-27 on the road. But hey, we all know this story, right?


Sure, the Celtics have been on the ropes lately, but there's no way they could lose to the Nyets, right? And certainly not in Boston!

Oh dear sweet Spiderman's balls.

The Nyets scored 25 points off 18 Celtics turnovers, had a crazy-ass 41-11 advantage in free throw attempts -- again, in Boston!! -- and built an 18-point fourth-quarter lead before the C's mounted a failed comeback. The final score: Nyets 104, Celtics 96.


Look, this is way bigger than Paul Pierce being out. There's no way the Celtics should have lost this game. No way they should be 13-15 since Christmas day. But they are. The flaws have been exposed. KG is never going to be what he was. Ray Allen will have the occasional good games and that's it. Paul Pierce is far (read that: very far) from being the best player in the world. Rasheed Wallace still doesn't give a shit. And Doc Rivers was widely considered one of the worst coaches in the league before he got handed two great players at the tail end of their respective primes.

Their chemistry and swag? Long gone.

Zach Lowe of Celtics Hub did a good job compiling various quotes:

Kendrick Perkins (via ESPNBoston): "How many wake-up calls you going to get? We've got a lot of them, to be honest with you."

Kevin Garnett (via the Globe): "Doc gives us direction. Guys have to go out there and follow the plan and execute. That's all it is."

Rasheed Wallace (via the same Globe story): "We can't sit up here and say, 'Oh, it's Doc's fault that we lost.' Or 'Doc's not doing this' or 'Doc's not doing that.' Doc's not on the floor. It's the five guys that's out there. So we have to come up with ways to win."

KG again, via the Herald: "We're a team that takes a lot of pride in getting stops. We got to get back to that. Hearing it is starting to make my ears ring, but that's what it is. And we will. We have no choice."

No choice. No hope. Take your pick.

Also courtesy of Celtics Hub, here are some videos that epitomize Boston's fail.

The Miami Heat: After the way Celtics were shamed, watching the Dwyane Wade-less Heat shoot 35 percent, score only 71 points (including only 26 in the second half) and lose by 25 at home to the Bucks barely registered on my all-purpose Bawful-o-meter.

But, just for posterity, I should note that the Bucks are now 3-0 against the Heat this season, and they've won those games by a total of 50 points.

Said Rafer Alston: "Every time we play them, they pretty much hand it to us."

Added Heat coach Erik Spoelstra: "I don't think it was an indicator of a lack of effort or focus. They simply outplayed us and outclassed us, and to be honest they've done it for three games. ... Offensively they played with a higher motor and a higher pace than we're comfortable with, and you can see it."

This win means Milwaukee has won the season series for the first time in seven years.

New York Knicks: As Basketbawful reader Czernobog put it: Zach Randolph gave it to the Bricks prison style. I'm talking 31 points and a career-high 25 rebounds against the team that sent him to the Clippers. For that, the Bricks probably lucky Z-Bo didn't set MSG on fire on his way out.

Since New York has no idea how to guard anybody, it's not totally surprising they got squashed by Randolph and the rest of the Grizzlies' frontcourt. Marc "Underrated Bitches" Gasol added 25 points, 13 rebounds and 8 assists, and Rudy Gay added 27 points. Memphis also outrebouned the Bricks 52-32.

Said Mike 'Antoni: "I just thought we got wore down by their strength and their height and their weight, and we paid for it a little bit.

The Griz also tied a franchise record by notching their fourth straight road win. Which is kind of funny considering they've lost six straight at home.

The Minnesota Timberwolves: Another night, another blowout loss for the second-worst team in th...wait...it feels like we've been here before. And we have. Over, and over, and over.

On this night, the Timberpoops were owned by Portland's Nicolas Batum, who set new career highs in points (31) and three-pointers (5). He also dished out a season-high 7 assits. Regarding the point total: Batum had never scored more than 20 points in a game before. Also, he was born in France. Ouch.

The Blazers have won 12 straight over the Wolves, including four victories this season by a combined 93 points. Double ouch.

And now for the triple ouch...

Al Jefferson: Apparently, Minny's loss drove him to drink...and drive. Oy.

The Houston Rockets: I guess it's safe to say the Jazz were a little riles up over that loss to the Kings, because they spanked the Rockets something harsh. Deron Williams had 20 points and 6 assists...

...in the first quarter. Utah shot almost 70 percent for the game and won 133-110. Way to play defense, Houston. The Rockets are now 2-7 in their last nine games. So much for Moneyball.

The Detroit Pistons: Even a 14-point second-half lead against the woeful Warriors wasn't enough for the woeful-er Pistons, who went 11-for-26 from the foul line. What the fuuuuu....were they blindfolded or something? Was the ball set on fire before each foul shot. Note that much of that truly foul shooting was by...

Ben Wallace: Big Ben went 1-for-9 from the charity stripe. To make matters worse, Don Nelson went to the Hack-a-Ben strategy down the stretch and it totally worked, as Wallace went 1-for-6 after three intentional fouls in the last 3:52. Included in those misses were consecutive air balls in the final minute.

Saturday lacktion report: As we head into this lacktion report, it's worth asking: Now that Boston has lost to New Jersey, how much better are the Celtics, really, than the Kings?

Nyets-Celtics: The Nyets were able to prevail at the TDBanknorthConvalescentGarden and two bawful big men performances from Boston are evidence as to why. Kendrick Perkins, as starting big man, made one of three shots and garnered two boards in 19:29, only to foul and lose the rock three times each for a 6:4 Voskuhl. Brian Scalabrine sprayed two rebounds onto his statline in 16:58, but bricked twice (once from Filene's Basement) and added two fouls and two turnovers each for a 4:2 Voskuhl.

Bucks-Heat: Milwaukee's Primoz Brezec bricked once in 3:33 for a +1 suck differential.

Bulls-Pacers: Mike Dunleavy lived up to his family name by bricking twice from the Chase Tower for a +2 in 4:28.

Frail Blazers-Wolves: Darko Milicic did manage two field goals and four boards in 22:49, but also fouled out and lost the rock thricely for a 9:8, his second straight Voskuhl.

Rockets-Jazz: Kyrylo Fesenko is back to his usual failtacular standards in a 3:23 stint as Jerry Sloan's human victory cigar, shanking four attempts from the charity stripe and fouling twice for a +6 AND a 2:0 Voskuhl!

Pistons-Warriors: Chris Hunter took four fouls and bricked twice in 7:19 for a +6 that doubled as a 2:0 Voskuhl.

Jason Richardson: There is a long and storied history of bizarre incidents preceding a Suns loss to the Spurs. Like the time Joe Johnson busted his face. Or the time Steve Nash busted his face. Or the time Robert Horry body-slammed Nash and thereby caused a dual suspension that swung a playoff series. Then, of course, there was Tim Duncan's three-pointer.

Now we have a new entry into the Suns-Spurs lore, as Jason Richardson -- a two-time NBA Slam Dunk Champion, by the way -- blew a game-tying dunk with about 42 seconds left in the fourth quarter. And not just any dunk. It was an uncontested breakaway dunk. Two-time slam dunk champ!!


Not surprisingly, Phoenix went on to lose despite the fact that the video game version of Amar''''''e Stoudemire showed up to play (41 points, 15-for-28, 12 rebounds).

Said Richardson: "I don't like to miss dunks, especially in crunch time like that, but it's one of those things that happens. You can't do anything about it." You mean other than actually connect on the highest percentage shot in professional basketball?! Yeah, other than that, you can't do anything about it.

Somewhat fittingly, Nash hit a nutso three that brought the Suns to within a point with 4.6 seconds left and then -- after to Manu Ginobili free throws -- had a chance to attempt another three-pointer to tie it at the buzzer but mysteriously passed it to Channing Frye...who wasn't even in three-point range. As an anonymous commenter said: "I'm sure the fact that the Gold Medal hockey game had started had nothing to do with Nash's decision to pass instead of taking a shot that would send his game into overtime. I'm just sayin'."

Richard Jefferson: Believe it or not, Richardson played a key role in San Antonio's win, but he was victimized, posterized, facialized and any other -ized you can think of by this Stoudemire jackhammer:


Thanks to Basketbawful reader manic -- who may very well have the best profile photo in the history of Western Civilization -- for the link.

The Denver Nuggets: The Nuggmeisters have owned the Lakers all season and they controlled most of Sunday's game in L.A. But they never really capitalized on their double-digit lead, committing some foolish turnovers and missing several first-half free throws. Sure enough, the Lakers came back down the stretch made their statement: The Nuggets won't be beating us in the playoffs.

Kobe Bryant: Many people were predicting that Kobe would drop 30 or 40 points on Denver. Not just because he wanted to drop the hammer on the Lakers' only real Western Conference rival, but also because J.R. Smith made the following bold statement on Twitter last week: "Dont get me wrong kobe is great but not when he play me."

But instead of laying the royal smack, Mamba -- who did have 14 points and 12 crucial assists -- went 3-for-17 from the field...which was his second-worst shooting performance ever. Interestingly enough, three of Kobe's seven worst shooting games have come this season. The Lakers have won all three.

The New Jersey Nyets: As if to prove that their big win over the Celtics was basically meaningless, the Nyets coughed up a 14-point lead and lost at home to the Washington Wizards Generals Bullets.

Let's face it: they are who we thought they were. Although there was someone especially goat-y on this team of goats...

Yi Jianlian: Actually, the Chairman had a huge game: 20 points and a career-high 19 rebounds. BUT...he missed two critical free throws in the final 1:19. One of those misses would have tied the game, the other would have given New Jersey a one-point lead.

But wait, there's more! With the game tied at 83, Randy hit a baseline jumper to give Washington a two-point lead with 44.6 seconds to play. Roy then drilled another J from almost the same spot with 13.5 seconds left to extend the Bullets' lead to four points...which effectively ended the game.

His defender? Yi Jianlian.

Said Yi: "What happened is what happened. I missed the free throws and on the last two defenses the guy hit the shot. That's the game. Learn from it."

Devin Harris: In all fairness to The Chairman, Harris was partially to blame for this latest Nyets fail. He had 18 points and 14 assists but shot 1-for-8 in the fourth quarter. Clutch!

Said Harris: "I had a bunch of wide open layups and jump shots, but in the fourth quarter we couldn't buy a basket." Notice his clever pronoun shift from "I" to "we"?

Seems like a fitting time for this update: New Jersey is now 29-93 since Devin said "We knew we were going to be a playoff team" in December of 2008.

The Milwaukee Bucks: Leaving Chicago has really agreed with John Salmons, who scored a season-high 32 points in Milwaukee's near-win over the Hawks in Atlanta. Now let's focus on that "near-win" part. The Bucks took a quick 5-point lead in OT (97-92) and then, well, they choked. Luke Ridnour threw a bad pass that eventually became a layup going the other way. Andy Bogut had a layup stuffed by Al Horford after which Joe Johnson drilled a three. After a bad miss by Ridnour, Johnson knocked down another shot to give the Hawks a 2-point lead. Then Salmons threw the ball to Atlanta's Marvin Williams, which led to another field goal for Johnson that proved to be the knockout blow.

Said Milwaukee coach Scott Skiles: "We were up five points [in OT], and that's where we've got to be smarter than that. ... We made two, three or four mistakes that were really costly right there. We played good enough to win. We had the chances to win. We just didn't get the win."

The Miami Heat: Dwyane Wade is back! The Heat are still losing by double digits! This despite the fact that Dwight Howard scored only 7 points (1-for-7) and logged only 25 minutes due to foul trouble. I'd point at this or that key factor, but, you know, Miami just isn't that good.

The Toronto Raptors: The Craptors' 119-99 loss to the Thunder in Oklahoma City once again underscored the importance of Chris Bosh, without whom Toronto may never win again.

After scoring just 7 points on 3-for-8 shooting, Hedo "Five-year, $53 million contract" Turkododo said: "Without Chris, we just needed to step up. When he comes back, we're going to be much stronger. His presence will be great throughout the game on both ends of the court. We hope that he comes back soon and puts this team in a better situation."

Of course, we -- and by "we" I mean "I" -- hope Bosh leaves the frozen North for the frozen-for-five-months-of-the-year Midwest this summer. Just throwin' that out there.

The Los Angeles Clippers: After three straight wins against the Kings, Bobcats and Pistons, people were actually referring to the Clippers as "surging," which is yet another sign of how silly and reactionary the media can be. The Other L.A. Team is in a permanent surge...and it's the same kind of surge my bowels do after an all-night alcohol-and-burrito bender.

Fact: The Clippers are and will always be who we thought they were. I don't care how many current and former All-Stars they have, how many lottery picks or how much cap space they have. This team will suck forever. I would like to propose legislation to prevent any and all writers from ever getting excited enough to use the word "surging" when the Clips win a few consecutive home games over sub-.500 teams. Especially when they follow up that "surge" with a blowout loss in Phoenix and then another loss to the Kings (20-39).

Said The Other L.A. Team's interim coach Kim Hughes: "I think we took the first half off. I don't believe we're a good enough team to play the first half like that with poor energy. I thought we competed in the second half. I was disappointed in our bigs and I thought we turned the ball over way too many times [15]. I think we gave up 25 points on turnovers and we got six."

Sunday lacktion report: And now the final lacktion of the weekend:

Suns-Spurs: Matt Bonner and Malik Hairston battled over one Game Boy, with Bonner only getting 7 seconds of Goomba stomping in a Super Mario, while Hairston found himself tossing Koopa shells for a full 38 second Mario!

Bullets-Nyets: Fabricio Oberto countered four boards in 23:16 with a giveaway and five fouls for a 6:4 Voskuhl, while Nick Young bricked twice and lost the rock once for a +3 suck differential in 6:02. Mike Harris got a rebound, but also had to contend with a Piranha Plant in a 28 second Mario.

Bucks-Hawks: Charlie Bell rang up the end-of-level flagpole in a 5 second Super Mario!!!

Clippers-Kings: Bobby Brown belted out a ballad in just 9 seconds for a Super Mario!

Hornets-Mavs: DeShawn Stevenson tossed a brick and fouled once for a +2 in 6:20.

The daughter of an Andersen Air Force Base senior NCO won the Year of the Air Force Family short story under 18 category contest sponsored by MyAirForceLife.com Feb. 22 here.

Ashley Nelson, daughter of Master Sgt. Dennis Nelson of the 36th Civil Engineer Squadron, won a laptop computer and gift certificate for a total prize package worth $2,000.

Ashley, a homeschooled high school senior, submitted her short story, "From Sea to Shining Sea!" when her mother read an article about it and encouraged her to enter. She was not notified of her accomplishment until after she arrived at the Andersen AFB teen center and found Col. Tod Fingal, the 36th Wing vice commander, waiting there with a certificate.
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