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Actually, what I think it is the guy showing he's a pretty good politician, democratic opinion that he's the stupidest thing this side of Jessica Simpson aside. If Miers gets confirmed, then he has someone HE knows extremely well and feels comfortable with on the Supreme Court. I have to assume that he feels very comfortable with how he expects her to rule on issues that he considers important. If she gets shot down, due most likely to her never having been a judge, then he gets to nominate someone else - quite possibly Rogers Brown who by all accounts I have read (and no I have not seen details of her decisions) is very STAUNCHLY conservative who the Democrats will now have an even harder time defeating IMHO. I think the Democrats would be extremely reluctant to filibuster or vote down 2 nominees within one year of an election for fear of being viewed as strictly obstructionist. So do the Democrats give him a pass on a nominee that they have very little paper trail to follow, hoping she turns into another Souter; or do they fight tooth and nail with the very strong possibility that someone who is known to be more conservative is waiting in the wings? Either way, I think Bush "wins" this "fight". Dave.

Watching JP for the last 4 games, I've been getting just as frustrated as a lot of other posters and I'm sure the coaches as well. The thing is, it seems to me that most of JP's misses seem to be overthrows on passes to the middle of the field and too throwing too wide on sideline patterns (I know there are a few underthrows, but they seem to be in the minority.) Most of the drops and catches as well seem to be up near the target's head, not down on the numbers. The announcers have mentioned on several occasions that JP seems to have too much adrenalin or is getting too pumped up for the games. If he is in fact overthrowing the ball predominantly, what can the coaches do to try to get him to lower the throws a little, without taking the velocity off the ball? Could the coaches get him loaded up on caffeine in the practices so he's as wired in them as he is in the games? Could they have the receivers line up on practice plays a yard or 2 short of the line of scrimmage and have them run the route as if they had lined up at the line of scrimmage, so that when they run the route in the game it ends up where JP is throwing the ball? These suggestions are more in jest than serious, but the question is serious: what can they do to change JP's preparation to reduce the overthrows, if anything? Or do they just have to let the season progress and as he gets more comfortable in there, he'll stop overthrowing? Thanks, Dave.

The Bills have given up 47.1% on 3rd down. That is 28th in the league and barely out of last place (worst is 50%). The Bills offense has major problems at this point in time and all the 3 and outs in the Tampa heat & humidity and other games definitely did not help the D, but the D isn't helping itself. They have to get off the field when they put themselves in a position to do it. Currently they are not. Especially if the other team is playing it close to the vest, I'd expect their 3rd down percentages to be much better if they were a very good defense. They still have 12 more games and the next two are very winnable. Unfortunately, until the D steps it up on 3rd down and the O finds its bearings, the Bills will have great difficulty winning any games. Dave.

Looks like Bush will announce tonight at 8:00 Eastern that current White House counsel Harriet Miers as nominee to fill the O'Conner vacancy. Link It'll be interesting to see how this one plays out. You know the cry of cronyism will be heard loud and strong. Also, I expect cries about how she isn't even a judge, even though it appears a few Senators of both parties recommended to Bush to choose someone outside the current judiciary. Dave.

I was pretty ticked as well when he decided to punt. The thing is, that was MM showing that he had no faith in either QB to move the ball. Even if Holcomb had made the 1st down (pretty unlikely considering what had been going on the previous couple of series), I don't think MM thought that he could get the ball moved down field in any reasonably efficient manner. Remember, Holcomb still needed to lead 2 scoring drives. While it was an extremely long shot that the D would hold NO 3 and out, he did have 2 prayers left after Moorman made an excellent punt. The 1st was Aaron Brooks has had a tendency to play, shall we say, erratically in pressure situations in the past. If Brooks fumbles or has a mental meltdown and goes into the endzone on a sack, then the O only needs a score to either win or tie (depending upon how many points Brooks gives the Bills). The other prayer was that, assuming the Bills held NO, Clements or Smith could run the punt back. Then, if the Bills get an onsides kick, again they only need 1 score to win. While the likelihood of either occuring, especially with the way the D has played in the 4th quarter of the last 2 games, were extremely slim, it looks to me like MM thought they gave him a better chance than a reasonably long 4th down attempt. That MM had no faith in the O at this point of the game is roughly as troubling to me as the horrid play of the D on 3rd down and in the 4th Q. Dave.

Didn't all 3 Sabres goalies end up in a fight with the Flyers goalie that year? Or was Dom's the previous year? Shields actually won HIS fight. Dom didn't get creamed, but he never could get his blocker off. Dave.

Robby was definitely not a goon. I never once saw him go after someone from behind nor hit a guy while he was down. (Brad May on the other hand....) Also, Rob could actually play on a 3rd line on occasion. I remember several games in the Aud when Rob was "checking" Jagr and Jagr was afraid to even come near the puck, because whenever he did, Rob hammered him. Dave.

If you're looking for a more generic type menu, the Brew Pub is very good and has an excellent selection of beers (their own and others). If you are looking for more "Buffalo specific food", Schwabl's (789 Center Rd, just off Union several blocks south of the Airport) has excellent Beef on Weck. Expect to wait a fairly long time if you try to go in the evening. Duff's on Sheridan has excellent wings. Dave.

Justice Kennedy manufactured a "national concensus" opposing the execution of 16 & 17 year olds by adding (rather arbitrarily) the 12 states that have no death penalty to the minority (18 out of 38) of states that have the death penalty for adults rather than juveniles. The majority did not consider whether the states without a death penalty treat 16 & 17 year olds as adults in criminal matters which would have been more instructive to determining whether there is a national concensus on the issue. He and the other 4 justices are making stuff up as they go along on this one. You are correct in that Kennedy explicitly states that the majority views were based upon their own interpretation of the 8th amendment, but Kennedy does go out of his way to point out where international laws support this view. (I can't believe I actually wasted the time it took to read the decision and dissents.) Considering Kennedy invented the national concensus he is using to interpret the 8th amendments and also rambles about this country's "evolving standards of decency", I am not overly impressed with his statements that international law did not shape majority opinion but merely supports it. Neither, I might add, did 3 of the dissenters find much merit in his statements regarding international opinion. Even if I grant you that the international opinion did not factor into the decision, I still cannot see where Scalia in the minority was not following constitutional law and the majority was (which was the original assertation in the post I was responding to). Dave.

Let me know if you get anything back other than a form letter thanking you for your concern about the wonderful democratic process. I'd be shocked if you get any legitimate response. Dave.

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! I really don't want to go back to Time Warner. Thanks for the update. Dave.

Counter point (by point(?)) - I remember seeing a few years back that only about 10 of the teams in league have winning all-time records, so being 1/2 game under 500 each year on average isn't that horrible. - I could just as easily skip over the team's 1, 2, and 4 win seasons and show how the Bills actually have a great winning percentage and make the playoffs at a much better pace than once every 3 years. Removing data that doesn't support your case does not make the case stronger, it typically renders the argument kind of silly. - I can't dispute this, but I don't fully see the point of it. Do you expect to see the Maple Leafs or Black Hawks take down their championship banners because they only came in 6 team leagues? - Oh my gosh, he has a losing record against ALL the AFC east teams except the Jets? You mean all 2 of them? That truly is horrible, especially when you consider the Bills are a full 5 games under 500 against the Pats. - Has a losing playoff record? 12 teams make the playoffs each year. 1 team will go 3-0 or 4-0, the rest will lose somewhere along the way. At MOST 6 teams can have a winning record in the playoffs and typically only 4 will have a winning record. By simple arithmetic, most teams will have losing playoff records. - I will give you he has only chosen a handful of good GM's through the years, but since the mid-80's he has done better than in his 1st 20 years. - Yeah, he gave Donahoe an extension. He failed to give Polian and Butler extensions before their final seasons in Buffalo and the Bills paid for it both times. By giving Donahoe an extension, he is minimizing the incentive to Donahoe to do things that are not necessarily in the Bills best interest. - Not exactly true. Polian has done a great job at it (he hasn't won the Superbowl, but the Colts win games and manage their cap well), he just didn't get a chance to do it in Buffalo. Also, Donahoe is still 10-9 in the Mularky era, so given time his record may end up on the right side of 500. - I have little faith that he will bring in a stud to replace Donahoe, that is why I think people calling for Donahoe's head should think long and hard before requesting that. If the Bills miss the playoffs again, should the Bills think about firing Donahoe? yes. Should they do it? Only if they see a candidate that is available that they believe will do better than Donahoe has done. - If Ralph goes, I am very concerned that the Bills will too. Apologies if your post was written in sarcasm. From reading the thread following it, I got the impression that the original post was serious. Dave.

YOU can't be serious. The banning of capital punishment for people younger than 18 was based on INTERNATIONAL opinion, per Judge Kennedy; NOT on the merits of US Constitutional Law. Scalia was in the minority on that one. Also, my comment was referring to the words and actions of the Senators from the Democratic Party. They state that they are afraid of putting a justice on the court who is an idealogue, but yet when a QUALIFIED jurist is brought before them they vote against him simply because he is not a leftist. Roberts had 22 votes against him. That is more than twice the number of votes against Ginsberg and Breyer combined. You can't honestly tell me that Republicans were happy with either of those two. But the simple fact of the matter is that those two (although oftentimes misguided ) are qualified and were confirmed overwhelmingly. For all the bellowing from the left about how the Republicans are strictly partisan and idealogues all the while the left would simply never be partisan nor idealogues, the majority of Republicans did the right thing at the end of the day by voting yes on Ginsberg and Breyer whereas half of the democrats put partisanship first and said nay to Roberts. Dave.

The DirecTV customer service rep I spoke to is supposed to give me an update on the status on Monday. If I do hear from DirecTV, I will post what they say. Dave.

As I mentioned above, while MSG is currently shown on DirecTV there is currently no agreement between the 2 for MSG to provide a backfeed for people in Buffalo and Rochester. A lady with the Sabres said DirecTV and MSG are negotiating and she HOPED they would have something resolved before the season started. I spoke with a customer service rep from DirecTV last night for a LONG time. She had no information about Sabres games becoming available in WNY, but would try to find out more information for me. As I also mentioned in my post above, if you live in WNY and have DirecTV, CALL THEM AND LET THEM KNOW YOU WANT TO WATCH THE SABRES. If they get enough feedback I expect that they will get something done with MSG. I currently am very nervous that although I have Center Ice I will not be able to watch the Sabres because the NHL will consider where I live to be Sabres territory and black out the game in my zip code on CI but DirecTV considers where I live to be MSG/NY territory so my MSG won't show the game. Dave.

Do you REALLY want someone who has exhibited such POOR JUDGEMENT as to be a J-E-S-T, Jest, Jest, Jest fan on the Supreme Court???? I didn't think so. Dave.

Now, don't get me wrong, because I am not necessarily defending FEMA and Carnival, but isn't FEMA now getting criticized for doing what its critics asked it to do; i.e., do something NOW? It sounds like this contract was worked out in less than a day. Within that time, Carnival had to estimate how much money it would lose from cancelling / rebooking (I thought I read in the article) 100,000 vacations. When doing the back of the envelope calcs, if I'm Carnival, I am going to go conservatively high on how much lost future business this will cost me, as I am certain a lot of those passengers will no longer want to do business with Carnival. The cost to Carnival to do this contract is much higher than a normal cruise because of the potential lost business of repeat customers. Also, how exactly is FEMA supposed to get multiple bids on something like this IN LESS THAN ONE DAY? This isn't like deciding you need 3 air conditioners and check at Home Depot, Lowe's, and Sears for the prices. This is hiring out 3 full cruise ships for several months. Due to the logistics and the timing, there probably wouldn't have been a lot of Cruise line companies that even would be willing to bid on such a project much less that had the resources to pull it off. As an aside, I also would be interested in how the fares on Cruise ships are effected as you have now reduced the supply of available rooms by (I would imagine) a fairly significant amount. I've never taken a cruise, so I don't have any idea if there are 100 or 10,000 cruise ships in the particular region that these sailed, but 3 full cruise ships sounds like a significant number. Dave.

I have to agree, this is one of the most assinine ideas I have heard of in a long time. A major reason I give to charities is I feel they perform necessary services more efficiently than the government does. This makes about as much sense as government creating VOLUNTEERS of America and then PAYING the volunteers. Dave.

I spoke with the Sabres about this this morning. I was told that DirecTV does not currently have an agreement with MSG but they are in negotiations. The person I spoke to did not know when or if a deal would be reached but was hopeful for a deal. Call DirecTV and let them know you want to see the Sabres. If they think enough people will switch to DN or cable, they will get a deal done. Dave.

How about Joe Dorenbos to get Moorman out of his funk? According to ESPN's website, nobody picked him up. Several teams have carried 2 place kickers (one for FG's and one for kickoffs), if they can tie up 4 roster spots with special teamers what's the difference. Moorman's play seems to have severely deteriorated since Dorenbos left, so why not? With Dorenbos, Moorman was the best punter in the league in my opinion, absolute minimum he was top 5. I expect that Moorman will get used to the new guy fairly soon and will return to top form when that happens, but how long will that take? Bring Dorenbos back. Yes, I am serious. Dave.

Depends on how many are getting in. Dave.

Mickey, what you consider a moderate and I consider a moderate probably are not the same beast. You are also right that Bush followed the Clinton script, Bush met with most of the democrats before nominating Roberts and Roberts met individually with most if not all of the Senators. The White House gave Congress thousands of pages of requested documents, the few they held back were withheld with the blessings of the living past Attorney Generals (dem and rep) due to executive priviledge reasons. Heck, even Pat Leahy voted to send Roberts' nomination to the full Senate. That being stated, I see no valid reason for Schumer to have voted no on sending the nomination to the full Senate. Dave.

That reminds me of the time I went to a Clean Air Act conference back in the early 90's. Two things during that conference struck me as horrible examples of what was wrong with the media back then, and I imagine it has only gotten worse since. The 1st was at lunch on the 2nd day, at my table was a mid to high level guy from EPA and a lady reporter who had recently switched to covering a DC beat from Cleveland. She was whining to the EPA guy about how much harder it is to report in DC vs Cleveland; because when she was in Cleveland, if something happened she could call the mayor and he would give her the story. Now that she was in DC, people wouldn't answer all her questions, heck, they'd sometimes even mislead her. I was just sitting there listening to her dumbfounded. It just didn't seem fair that she might have to do some investigating to be an investigative reporter. Oh, well. The other event was a news conference with the head of EPA and his Mexican counterpart. There was a nice little 1 page press release that went with the press conference and about a 5-10 minute speech. There were about 25 reporters in the room, and when they were allowed to ask questions, 8 people asked the EXACT SAME QUESTION just worded a little differently and it had nothing to do with what the news conference was supposed to be about. The EPA administrator avoided the question all 8 times, and then the "reporters" packed up their stuff and left. I guess that experience was the root of my "anti-media bias". Dave.

The last Roe decision was 6-3. Roberts is replacing one of the 3. Even if O'Conner gets replaced by someone that does not support RvW, the RvW side still wins 5-4. Notice prior to Ginsberg getting on the Court it was 5-4. As I mentioned, I don't like Ginsberg or Breyer; but they should be on the SC. They are the nominees that Clinton wanted. He won the election. Most of the Senate (90+) voted for them, even though I know that a lot of the "yea" votes knew that they would not agree with the justices on many issues. Many on the left claim that they are worried about Roberts becoming or being an idealogue. However, the only idealogues on the SC issue I see are coming from the left. When left leaning judges were nominated to the SC and came before the Senate, they were confirmed overwhelmingly. Just saying "I don't like your views" does not make that nominee unqualified, much as I might have liked it to back in the mid-90's. Dave.

Clearly, they couldn't know whether the 10,000 dead was correct or not. However, darn near every major news channel had a TV crew right outside the Superdome. Do you think it may have been possible for ONE of the talking heads to poke his head inside and see that a full scale war with hundreds of rapes and murders was NOT taking place AND then report that "This reporter braved the depraved conditions personally, and while I will admit there is quite a stench, I could not find HUNDREDS OF DEAD BODIES LYING AROUND nor did I hear a constant barrage of gunfire. Nor could I personally witness young children being raped." The reporters were right there at the source. They could have looked for themselves. That however would have either been too difficult for them or it would not have fit in with their preconceived notion of how this was absolutely a horror show (most likely caused by the uncaring Bush administration) and that they were in line for major kudos and awards for their bravery if they could just convey the utter depravitiy of the whole situation. Neither scenario portrays the media in a particularily good light. They could have been reporters, but instead decided to be gossip columnists. Dave.