Dave's Verse

1 down, 161 to go. Baseball has thankfully started. The Braves opened at the Nationals in what looked like a miserable day weather wise. And that's fitting since most of spring here in Memphis has been pretty miserable. But they were able to overcome the weather with a really solid start from Derrek Lowe and great work from the bullpen. It was great to see Chipper Jones healthy and in the lineup (legged out a double). He got on base and was drove home by Brian McCann. Dan Uggla didn't have a good debut. But for the second year in a row Jason Heyward hit a homer run on opening day. I'm not quite sure what the new manager is doing batting Heyward 6th in the lineup behind Uggla and in front of Alex Gonzalez. Heyward has great plate discipline which was evidenced by his .400 on base % last year, which is incredible for a rookie. The only reason I can see is to give Uggla some protection since Gonzalez and Freddie Freeman aren't going to scare anyone. But I'd rathe...

That's the problem with the Tournament. One bad game and you're gone. One great game from your opponent and you gone. Duke encountered both of those things last night against Arizona. Arizona shot 56% from the field, 60% from three and 76% at the line. No matter how poorly Duke played defensively, which was pretty poorly, the other team still has to make the shot. And Arizona did so with a high level of frequency. Duke shot the ball fairly well. They were not good from three. But overall they were adequate offensively. Perhaps if Nolan Smith didn't have one of his worst games in the last two years the offense would have been able to keep pace with Arizona. But the guy who scored 20 points per game over the course of 30 games had one bad night and ended up with 8 points. It happens. The best teams in the NBA and MLB don't sweep every game in the playoffs. Those teams have bad games. The best players shoot the ball poorly, can't get a hit, or can't get a batte...

I couldn't resist the "Serenity" connection with Glenn Greenwald's post on Obama changing Miranda guidelines. The post is titled "Miranda is Obama's latest victim" Today, the Obama DOJ unveiled the latest -- and one of the most significant -- examples of its eagerness to assault the very legal values Obama vowed to protect. The Wall Street Journal reports that "new rules allow investigators to hold domestic-terror suspects longer than others without giving them a Miranda warning, significantly expanding exceptions to the instructions that have governed the handling of criminal suspects for more than four decades." The only previous exception to the 45-year-old Miranda requirement that someone in custody be apprised of their rights occurred in 1984, when the Rehnquist-led right-wing faction of the Supreme Court allowed delay "only in cases of an imminent safety threat," but these new rules promulgated by the Obama DOJ "give int...

Over at Nikki Stafford's blog she is discussing the last two episodes of Buffy season 2. Much of those episodes involves a lot of suffering on Buffy's part. While reading the discussion I thought about the things Buffy has to give up as a result of her duty as the slayer and specifically something she mentions after she tells her mother she is the slayer. Something that doesn't get discussed about Buffy is how gorgeous Sarah Michelle Gellar is. When she is telling her mom how she wants a normal life she mentions she would rather be gossiping about boys instead of being the slayer. She would no doubt have plenty of boys to gossip about. As the flashback points out, she was the Cordi of her former high school. While I'm sure that has its drawbacks, being a beautiful and popular girl in high school has a lot of benefits. We see the sacrifices she makes as the slayer when it comes to boys like Owen in the first season, the guy in the third season whose name I forget, ...

We capture potentially dangerous people who could hold important information regarding the security of our country. Many people in the intel community and the Bush administration think that time is always of the essence when dealing with these potentially dangerous people. And we have vast resources at our disposal that can be used to get that important information from the person as quickly as possible. Under these circumstances, what do we decide to do? We take what we saw in a tv show and apply it to prisoners at Gitmo : When asked if she was aware the Americans had been using enhanced interrogation techniques she said: "Not for a quite a long time after they started using them. They chose to conceal it from the allies and indeed from their own citizens." An FBI employee sent to observe interrogations at Guantanamo said a TV show had provided inspiration for some of the methods used. Jim Clemente, of the FBI's behavioural analysis unit, said one officer told hi...

In the rematch at Carolina it was the Tarheels who couldn't miss. In the rematch of the rematch it was Duke that couldn't miss. Singler finally hit a 3, but is still shooting horribly from 3. Nolan didn't shoot a high % but played really well. The rest of the team was absolutely on fire. They all shot, rebounded, and defended really well. And Carolina couldn't get out in transition or play efficiently in the half court. This outcome ensured Duke a #1 seed in the NCAA tourney. Carolina got a 2 seed. Both are dangerous teams that I wouldn't want to play. I think Duke's seniors give them an edge that Carolina and a lot of teams don't have. I think the lack of seniors and tourney experience will hurt teams like Ohio State and Kansas who are extremely talented. Hopefully Duke can bottle up their performance from Sunday and use it in the tourney. If they can they will be a tough beat.

Carolina couldn't miss tonight. Duke couldn't hit water if it fell off a boat in the middle of the ocean. For Carolina this time it was their guards and Barnes doing the scoring. Barnes is finally showing the athleticism and skill that made him a top recruit. And their offense is cranked up to 10 all the time, which really keeps teams on their toes. Duke looked like the same team they have in their 3 previous losses. They missed a ton of open threes. They allowed a lot of easy baskets in transition and on cuts in the half court. And we went through lazy spells on the boards. All of those things happened in the losses. And they are really bad things to be doing during the same game. Combine that with Carolina's hot shooting and home court and you have the moderate margin we saw tonight. One thing I'm really concerned about is Kyle Singler. He has been horrible from 3 during the second half of the season. In his three plus seasons at Duke I've never seen him go th...

Here are his thoughts on the whole 'birther' or Kenyan anti-colonialist thing that goes on with the right: The former governor responded: “I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough.” Mr. Huckabee, who is now a Fox News host, then talked repeatedly about his concerns that Mr. Obama was raised in Kenya. “If you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather,” Mr. Huckabee said. This raises the same question I had when D'Sousa's book about Obama being a Kenyan anti-colonialist came out. Who isn't an anti-colonialist? No serious politician or political thinker I know of thinks colonialism is a good thing or smart policy. So why would it be a problem if Obama's worldview was shaped during his childhood by a father w...