I talk with Jim Pinkerton about Weiner... and Wisconsin.

ADDED: Snippet #1: I express sympathy for Weiner and make Pinkerton laugh...




ADDED: Snippet #2: I doubt whether Weiner violated a law and make Pinkerton laugh again...



ADDED: Snippet #3: I bring up the gray underpants and make Pinkerton laugh again...



ADDED: Snippet #4: I bring up Chris Lee and make Pinkerton laugh again...



ADDED: Snippet #5: I bring up Arnold Schwarzenegger and make Pinkerton laugh again...



ADDED: Snippet #6:

Top ten bin Laden memes.

According to Jim Pinkerton....

Remaining silent is not an invocation of the right to remain silent.

Says the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, Berghuis v. Thompkins.

''Thompkins did not say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk to police,'' [wrote Justice Kennedy for the Court]. ''Had he made either of these simple, unambiguous statements, he would have invoked his 'right to cut off questioning.' Here he did neither, so he did not invoke his right to remain silent.''....

''Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent -- which counterintuitively, requires them to speak,'' [wrote Justice Sotomayor for the dissenters]. ''At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so. Those results, in my view, find no basis in Miranda or our subsequent cases and are inconsistent with the fair-trial principles on which those precedents are grounded.''

ADDED: Pinkerton predicted it:

I shush Jim Pinkerton.

He's trying to disclose my Supreme Court plot!

A new Bloggingheads — called "Dangerous Minds" — with me and Jim Pinkerton.

This was recorded just a few hours a go. They got it up quick, so it must be good:



Here's a list of the highlighted topics:

The Times Square bomber, immigration, and assimilation
Does fighting terrorism require policing minds?
Jim defends Arizona’s new immigration law
Has Obama bungled the gulf oil spill? On purpose?
Ann reveals her devious Supreme Court plot
Intellectual diversity and a Harvard student’s controversial email

Note that they've got me on the left side of the split screen for this one. With good reason!

"Is Obama under-performing because he’s black?"

That's an ambiguous way to put it!

Jim Pinkerton and Jane Hamsher: The Essence of a Relationship in 45 Seconds.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bissage said...

That’s uncanny!

A girlfriend and I had that exact same dynamic going on.

She too was a robot from outer space controlled by a device that looked like an orchid.

"I think the guy who's sitting pretty at the moment? John McCain."

Says David Corn in this Bloggingheads (with a response from Jim Pinkerton):



(Here's the whole episode.)

"Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton reminds me a lot of Dukakis."

Jim Pinkerton writes:

In '88, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis was leading the Democratic White House hopefuls. On April 12, he debated his remaining Democratic rivals in Manhattan. One of them, Sen. Al Gore, mentioned the Massachusetts prison furlough plan that Dukakis had defended. Under that particular program, criminals - even murderers sentenced to life in prison without parole - had been granted, Gore noted critically, "weekend passes." But Dukakis dismissed Gore: "Al, the difference between you and me is that I have run a criminal justice system. You haven't."...

[Dukakis] had been fatally wounded, politically, by Gore... he just didn't know it....

Pinkerton himself, as director of research for the George H.W. Bush campaign, worked on keeping the weekend passes issue alive, and it destroyed Dukakis.

...Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton reminds me a lot of Dukakis. As he was two decades ago, she's from a big state, has a lot of money, is ahead in the polls - and she's been grievously injured. This time, the issue isn't prison furloughs, but driver's licenses for illegal immigrants in her "home" state of New York. Clinton has broadly defended Gov. Eliot Spitzer's unpopular plan, even as most New Yorkers have reviled it....

This issue, like the weekend passes issue, resonates deeply with the voting public, "but not inside the 'nominating wing' of the Democratic Party":

So once again, Republicans are sniffing political blood.

Hey, I'm on BloggingHeads.tv!

Watch me with Newsday's Jim Pinkerton, talking on the split-screen. Topics (and times):

Jim McGreevey and the Church of Oprah (06:10)

Bill Clinton and the vast right-wing conspiracy (13:02)

Bill is to Hillary as Chavez is to Ahmadinejad? (05:11)

Leaking just enough intelligence about the effect of the war (12:15)

Did the Pope bumble into the clash of civilizations? (04:49)

Did Bush? (11:30)

Ann brings out the dead bodies (09:46)

ADDED: If you want just the audio, go here.