The decision was unanimous, but Justice Clarence Thomas declined to join the part of Justice Sotomayor's opinion discussing why the cost of allowing immediate appeals outweighs the possibility that candid communications between lawyers and their clients might be chilled.

In a concurrence, Justice Thomas took a swipe at his new colleague, saying she had "with a sweep of the court's pen" substituted "value judgments" and "what the court thinks is a good idea" for the text of a federal law.

Nice to see things are starting off friendly.

However, I must admit I cheered a bit when I saw what other thing Justice Sotomayor managed to do, besides piss off Justice Thomas:

Justice Sotomayor's opinion in the case, Mohawk Industries v. Carpenter, No. 08-678, marked the first use of the term "undocumented immigrant," according to a legal database. The term "illegal immigrant" has appeared in a dozen decisions.

And with good reason. The National Association of Hispanic Journalists launched a campaign back in March 2006 asking the media to "stop using dehumanizing terms when covering immigration," explaining:

NAHJ is concerned with the increasing use of pejorative terms to describe the estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the United States. NAHJ is particularly troubled with the growing trend of the news media to use the word "illegals" as a noun, shorthand for "illegal aliens". Using the word in this way is grammatically incorrect and crosses the line by criminalizing the person, not the action they are purported to have committed. NAHJ calls on the media to never use "illegals" in headlines.

Shortening the term in this way also stereotypes undocumented people who are in the United States as having committed a crime. Under current U.S. immigration law, being an undocumented immigrant is not a crime, it is a civil violation. Furthermore, an estimated 40 percent of all undocumented people living in the U.S. are visa overstayers, meaning they did not illegally cross the U.S. border.

In addition, the association has always denounced the use of the degrading terms "alien" and "illegal alien" to describe undocumented immigrants because it casts them as adverse, strange beings, inhuman outsiders who come to the U.S. with questionable motivations. "Aliens" is a bureaucratic term that should be avoided unless used in a quote

.

Language matters. The framing of issues matters. And it is amazing to see that Sonia Sotomayor is going to start reframing how we discuss and debate these types of issues, one pen stroke at a time.

Sotomayor Draws Retort From A Fellow Justice [NY Times]
NAHJ Urges News Media To Stop Using Dehumanizing Terms When Covering Immigration [NAHJ]

• Barack Obama, in the most significant reversal of U.S. policy on Cuba in decades, will let Cuban-Americans visit the country and send relatives money. But don't think that means any American can visit. [NY Times]

• Given how that step towards ending ineffective sanctions has been hailed as a sea change with serious potential consequences, you're probably wondering why no one is freaking out that Obama is considering starting multinational negotiations with Iran before they cease enriching uranium. Or else you're not because making sure no one plays reindeer games with Fidel Castro seems more important. [NY Times]
• Or maybe you're just too focused on the fact that Spain is really going forward with criminal charges against former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Federal Appeals Court Judge and former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, University of California law professor and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Defense Department general counsel and current Chevron lawyer William J. Haynes II, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff David Addington, and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith for creating the legal climate in which Americans were allowed to torture detainees — but they're only doing it because Obama's people won't promise that we will. [Daily Beast]
• We will, however, continue investigating Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. to figure out whether he new his top fundraiser was trying to bribe former Governor Rod Blagojevich to give Jackson Obama's old Senate seat. [Chicago Sun-Times]
• And let's not forget Todd Palin's half sister, who was just indicted on charges that she broke into some dude's house twice with her 4-year-old in tow. And, no, she didn't know the guy. [Anchorage Daily News]
• By the way, the first court to officially declare Al Franken the winner of the 2008 Minnesota race did so yesterday, so it's only a couple of years before the U.S. Supreme Court decides Norm Coleman really won and Minnesota gets its second Senator. [Politico]
• Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas thinks Americans have too many Constitutional rights. God damn that 19th Amendment anyway. [NY Times]
• Mexican ambassador to the US, Arturo Sarukhan, thinks the U.S. should legalize pot to stop the Mexican cartel violence. And if you think your ganja habit isn't supporting drug violence 'cause it's all coke, think again: half of the cartels' revenues come from pot. [Huffington Post]
• Oh, and that Crazytown marital-rape supportings, KKK-loving, abortion-hating dude Sarah Palin nominated for Attorney General thinks she's pretty hot.[Huffington Post]

JASON: Ugh. I am awake.

MEGAN: I feel you there. I was about to say how it gets worse the longer the week goes on, and then I realized it's only Tuesday. I might cry now.

JASON: Both of us are home sick today. It's a Christmas miracle.

MEGAN: Oh, damn, that sucks. I'm glad I didn't ask you guys if you wanted to get dinner last night.

JASON: We would have declined politely, but it's always nice to have someone thinking of you when you're sick.

MEGAN: I have a biohazard suit somewhere in my car, I think, let me know if you need a chicken soup delivery or something. Otherwise, we should probably discuss Caroline Kennedy's tattoo, which I think — despite being published in the New York Post — is another piece of annoying evidence of how conservative D.C. really is. Also, sexist: tell em Ben Nighthorse Campbell didn't have a tattoo or two.

JASON: Well, remember how worked up everyone got about Elizabeth Kucinich's piercing? Didn't she have a navel piercing or something? You note how I barely remember? That's because I lived in Richmond, WHERE EVERYONE HAD A TATTOO OR A PIERCING.

MEGAN: Tongue piercing. At least then the subtext was that Dennis was getting more blow jobs than the average male D.C. political reporter, present company exempted since I'm sure you and your wife have crazy hot sex all the time. Except when you're sick.

JASON: Not tongue studded sex, and I'm fine with that. My wife has a tattoo on her back (of Eve sitting naked bestride a giant apple) and a navel piercing. Both obtained in Richmond. (My friend Amy gets credit for the art of the tattoo. I was at work one day when our manager Dave came in on his day off, and he was all: "I have to SHOW you something!" And I said, "What, what?" And he lifted up the leg of his pants to reveal a tattoo of a flaming spork on his calf. And I said, "It's a flaming spork." And he looked at me and said, "It came to me in a dream!" Capitol Hill's culture is more conservative, yes. But it's also the culture of a unfrozen idiot caveman. Everything terrifies it. About the only thing it's okay to be out of the closet on is sci-fi fandom. And of course, it's not okay to be out of the closet on being gay.

MEGAN: Flaming spork, huh? Is "dream" some sort of Richmond code for "LSD-induced haze"? But, to the point, I know people in D.C. that speak of their love of sci-fi in D.C. in hushed terms more befitting an admission of a love of S&M at a White House Christmas party. Actually, that probably happens a lot.

JASON: At least on the GOP side.

MEGAN: But no one admits to being gay in D.C. — you can catch a Hill staffer with a dick in his mouth and he'll still try to tell you he tripped.

JASON: Generally speaking, yes, most significant Richmond dreams are chemically induced. Well, it's like that dude who paid a cop twenty dollars to have it off. What was his name again?

MEGAN: Bob Allen. God damn, why do I remember these things? Let's not forget Larry Craig, though.

JASON: You remember those things because you used to write for Wonkette. But, yeah, Bob Allen. This guy will take his whole insistence on not being gay all the way to the Supreme Court. He'll be gobbling Alito's dong, and testifying, "I hate this! I don't know why it's HAPPENEEEEENG!" But, look, I think we all got a little covered with spermatazoa yesterday... Can I just mention that we live in a world of HERO PUPPIES?

MEGAN: But what a great transition to the Supreme Court non-case over Barack Obama's citizenship. I'd bet more than a few not-gay Republicans would've gobbled Alito's dong to get that case heard. Yeah, I'd rather talk puppies, too.

JASON: Just leave that link there for the Jezebel Nation (who got a shout out in the Peanuts Christmas Special) to click on when they need to feel like secret, cuddly, heroic forces are at work in the world. The Obama citizenship case proves just how far you can come in life when you have the right motivation. The folks behind these suits are hopeless, paranoid, dumbasses, and Clarence Thomas was there for them in his hour of need. You know Souter, I think, originally denied the petition. Thomas was all: "You know? I'm going to allow this!" Antonin Scalia probably got misty-eyed: "Look at my idiot protege, he's gettin' to be all grown up!" Then he probably babbled a few sentences in Latin to the false gods of his Opus Dei crackpot religion. "Semper ubi sub ubi!" Then he was wracked with Saint Vitus Dance. AND IT WAS ANOTHER TYPICAL DAY AT YOUR SUPREME COURT!

MEGAN: You know what's hilarious? One of my friends was trying to argue to me that if they had just shown the crackpots his original birth certificate, none of this would have happened and I was like, they're crazy. Are you kidding me? They probably would have lit it on fire, run out of the room and begun screaming about how they now had evidence that it doesn't exist.

JASON: Or they would found something, anything to brand it counterfeit. You see, evidence does not shut these dimwits down. Adding exculpatory material to the pile just excites them anew. They need to be ignored, or sent out to sea on ice floes (which is currently illegal, I think, or they'd have solved social security by doing it with retirees).

MEGAN: Mike Madden took one for the team and went to their press conference yesterday. His reporting, I think, proves your point.

Two and a half hours later, as dentist-slash-lawyer Orly Taitz harangued reporters for not investigating whether Obama's mother was actually dead, that hope had been obliterated. It was crushed by a torrent of half-baked legal theories, vague platitudes about the Constitution and sinister "facts" assembled by a collection of true believers so extreme that even Michelle Malkin wants nothing to do with them.

JASON: I'm sure Malkin wavered for a second or two.

MEGAN: Dude, seriously, Latoya and I were talking about this last week! We're not sure whether the other commentators on the right are just so crazy now that her crazy seems reasonable, or if she's actually been becoming somewhat reasonable lately. It's a little scary. I'd ask you to hold me, but you're sick. I mean, when this is the competition:

At one point, [Taitz] asked why the government had fined broadcasters for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction," but didn't intervene to force the media to report on Obama's allegedly phony birth certificate. She claimed Obama holds passports from at least four countries, compared him to Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, equated the "controversy" about Obama to Watergate, and finished her tour-de-force presentation by saying that if Obama can claim he's a U.S. citizen and win an election, then so could just about anyone. "If a person can become a presidential candidate only based on his own statement," she said, "then somebody like Osama bin Laden, theoretically, can come and write a statement, 'I'm eligible,' and we should put him on the ballot, too?"

JASON: It's an airtight case! OF UNSHUNTED HYDROENCEPHALITIS, anyway!

MEGAN: You know the world's gone mad when the AP is reporting that Susan Rice is trying to set up her own fiefdom at State, which is just, like, either Susan Rice has gone completely insane or Ron Fournier is typing while giving Cheney a rim job again.

JASON: Wha? Susan Rice?

MEGAN:

As Secretary of State-pick Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.N. envoy-choice Susan Rice separately visited the diplomatic agency's headquarters in Washington's Foggy Bottom neighborhood, persons familiar with the transition said that Rice wants to install her own transition team inside the department.

Such a move by an incoming U.N. ambassador is rare, if not unprecedented, because the job is based at the United Nations in New York, where Rice already has a small transition staff, the sources familiar with the incoming administration.

The push by Rice, an early Obama supporter whose position the President-elect wants to elevate to a cabinet post, is also a signal that she intends to use her influence with the new president to play a more significant role than previous U.N. envoys, they said.

You'd think Rice might know things like that it doesn't work that way, having worked at State before.

JASON: Interesting. I'm afraid I haven't the knowledge on hand to grasp the full implications of that. The Obama administration has a different conception of U.N. Ambassador. The article casts this fundamentally at odds with Clinton. And it may! Of course, I suppose Clinton can do little else than accept the way Obama chooses to set his foreign policy team up. I take issue with "cracks" in that they've actually not yet appeared, figuratively.

MEGAN: Well, but if it's just two people having meetings, there's no story! There must be a fight! They have to still hate each other! What else will they talk about?

JASON: I'm afraid that this probably goes back to what Media Matters calls the Clinton Rules For Journalism. Say, a house burns down in Clinton's neighborhood, but firefighters manage to save everyone inside. The headline the next day is supposed to read, "CLINTONS NO HELP AS FIRE CAUSES EXTENSIVE PROPERTY DAMAGE."

MEGAN: For real, though, what else aren't they going to talk about? Charlie Rangel's new ethics problems? Ha! He paid his son $80,000 for doing nothing? So what!? Not going to step down from his Chairmanship because, he says, "I don't think reporters should be in the position of removing Chairmen.”

JASON: Getting your son money for doing nothing is an ethics violation? For white people, it's called Late Night Shots.

MEGAN: Hey, Doolittle took heat for it. (His wife, not his son). And so did DeLay. From Rangel, even. When did the lions of the Democratic party start emulating the Republicans we all despised 4 years ago?

JASON: When they took power!

MEGAN: Damn Lord Acton for nailing that one.

He's just as vilified as those guys, without the weird sense of awe accorded those guys because, in being a black conservative, he's obviously just acting out some master-slave shit or whatever. So pardon me if I feel a twinge of empathy for the son of a bitch. In the past sixteen years we've had everyone from Bill O'Reilly to Kanye West to remind us in plain language the Republican party is fundamentally still one that tolerates — and panders to — the fear and resentment of black folks and other minorities, and that — over and above any substantial policy issue — is what has kept the country from uniting to truly preserve and perpetuate democracy in so many years of Republican leadership. So anyway, not sure where I'm going with all that, but I'd like to think that sixteen years later Clarence Thomas would not only be able to find chicks on Craigslist with whom to discuss his massive Coke can-sized wang or whatever, he might also be an independent thinker for that fact. And on a side note, no one would disbelieve Anita Hill. Who doesn't tolerate a little too much pubic hair talk on the job? And no one would get away with smearing her as incompetent: in passing the DC bar, after all, she accomplished something Hillary didn't.

• The Chinese government has banned all bra, figure-enhancement underwear, and sex toy ads from TV and radio in effort to rid the country of "social pollution". Additionally, mass audience voting for American Idol-esque shows via text message or the internet is also forbidden. Gotta stop democracy before it spreads! [Breitbart]
• Slate wonders why women in the media and the feminist movement have been relatively silent about the case of the Harvard student who was granted time during her nine-hour exam to pump her breast milk. [Slate]
• Nanny, nanny, boo, boo. The Supreme Court upheld a New York State law which forces religious-based social service organizations to subsidize women's health services, including contraception, mammograms, and cervical cancer exams. [Breitbart]
• Women can be sexy chess nerds too. [Christian Science Monitor]

• Lindsay Lohan signs up for a Promises outpatient program designed to enable her to "transition" back into her "community"...of cokehead pseudo-socialites. [People.com]
  
• France snubs Turkey in EU talks. We think this has to do with Istanbul beating out Paris in that Newsweek story on "fashion forward" cities. [BBC]
  
• The most interesting part of the whole "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case? That the word 'bong" was defined for the judges in the appeal. Oh c'mon, Scalia — don't pretend like you and Clarence Thomas don't toke up during recess. [CNN]
  
• In other legal news, it's now on the books that "customer satisfaction" and a missing pair of pants are not worth $54 million. [ABC News]
  
• At a campaign event last night, Hillary Clinton exited to KT Tunstall's "Suddenly I See." Could Hillary be replacing her Canadian soft-rock campaign song with an English one? [NBC News]
  
• Kelly Clarkson was bulimic and Jordin Sparks has learned to love her figure: If you have body image issues and one helluva voice get ready — American Idol auditions start July 30 in a city near you. [USA Today]
  
• It's official: Rosie O'Donnell will not be successding Bob Barker. And we are sad. Because we really wanted to see her try to fit some anti-warmongering into her oral description of "a neeww RV!" [E!]
  
• 15 U.S. casualties identified since Friday. [DoD]