The throng of angry whites jeered, catcalled, and spat out borderline racial insults at the small group of mostly black protestors. This wasn’t a…

By CarlThe last ten years have not been easy on Americans, psychologically. We’ve had our innocence and hubris shattered, a moron President who tried to falsely raise our spirits and hopes by raping two other nations, another President who promised …

According to WWTD – Lindsay Lohan spends most of her time in Paris these days, because the attitude over there is more relaxed than in LA or New York and she can just be herself for a little while before getting back to acting.
While this very well might be true, that doesn’t change the fact [...]

After spending 6 years of her life in Los Angeles, Amanda Seyfried is happy to get out of the crazy city and says she has done all she needs to do. She moved to L.A. at 18 and is ready to leave at 24.
She admits to despising Hollywood after growing up in Pennsylvania all [...]

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon came to Haiti on Sunday to offer assurances of his commitment to a post-earthquake nation that is short of shelter and suffering growing violence in teeming camps for the homeles…

DENVER — Kristie McNealy blogs from her suburban Denver home about raising four children and health issues. Her husband, Rob, a floor installer, runs another Web site offering product reviews and advice on hardwood floors.

It’s not just…

NEW YORK — Jets coach Rex Ryan underwent a weight-loss procedure Saturday to help him fight obesity.

The husky Ryan had lap-band surgery at NYU Medical Center, and was relaxing at his home in New Jersey on Saturday night, team spokesman…

Jessica Simpson is tripping. OMG! We thought it’s only Tila Tequila now it’s Jessica’s turn? No silly Simpson nearly got tripped up by a dog on a leash earlier this week!

 more Jessica tripping after the jump…
Jessica and her entourage left the New York’s Ritz hotel as she continued her busy day of publicity. Jessica is currently promoting her [...]

Barely a month ago, the New York State Senate voted 53-8 to expel Hiram Monserrate after he was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend … a conviction that netted him “three years probation, 250 hours of community service, a $1000 fine, and one year of domestic abuse counseling.”

But in this Tuesday’s special election to replace him, Monserrate managed to get on the ballot and is attempting to regain his old seat. And he’s attempting to do so by using just the sort of ethical standards you’d expect from someone who would slash his girlfriend’s face with broken glass.

Toss in Monserrate’s homophobic attacks against his opponent, his anti-marriage equality vote, and his Jesus complex, and you have all the makings of a Republican … which he was for a about a week last year.

Help keep this anti-women, anti-gay, anti-Democratic criminal out of the New York State Senate.

The special election is this Tuesday, March 16th, so volunteer and help the folks in New York elect José Peralta in NY’s SD-13.

An interview with the musicians, the lovers, the forces to be reckoned with – some of the most positive, thoughtful, supportive, open people I have ever met and spent time with: Nico Vega.

Wednesday night at the Helen Hayes Theater, Sir Elton John and David Furnish’s production, “Next Fall,” debuted for a preview audience of family and friends. After the show — described as a “beautiful and funny portrait of modern romanc…

Ed. note: ATL has teamed up with the 10th Justice to predict how the Supreme Court may decide upcoming cases. CNN has called FantasySCOTUS the “hottest new fantasy-league game.”

In order to assess the accuracy of our league, we will revisit five recent opinions, and compare the predicted outcomes with the actual outcomes. We have selected cases that did not necessarily fall along ideological lines to test the capability of our league to detect nuance in judgments. In this week’s 10th Justice, we will take a look at Hemi Group, Briscoe, Powell, Hertz Corp, and Shatzer, all of which were decided at the end of January and February. We also consider how cheating impacted the results.

For each case, we have recorded our outcome statistics and SMRs (standard majority ratio). The SMR provides a method to test whether or not users perceive the Court as dominated by conservative ideology.

In Hemi Group v. City of New York, the Supreme Court reversed the 2nd Circuit’s decision that the non-payment of taxes was an injury flowing from a third party’s actions for the purpose of the RICO Act. Overall, only 39% of total predictions found that the Supreme Court would reverse, and the confidence interval was 10.25% (at the 95% level), indicating that the results were a decently accurate representation of predictions about the case (and their general incorrectness). As for the specific split, 18 users guessed that the outcome would have less than 9 Justices voting. These members were astute, as Sotomayor recusing herself from an opinion involving the Second Circuit should have been expected. But only half of those predictions, 10% of total predictions, were reverse predictions. No member correctly predicted the votes of each Justice. The SMRs indicate that most predictions were counting on liberal Justices joining the majority, since Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer all have SMRs above one at a statistically significant level. Of course, this could also be representative of a complex case or issue, as Kennedy was in the minority for this case. This fact would also explain how the majority of predictions got the general outcome wrong.

In Briscoe v. Virginia, the Supreme Court reversed the Virginia Supreme Court’s. The Court held that a Defendant does not waive his 6th Amendment rights to the confrontation of forensic analysts who prepared forensic evident used in court by failing to call them as witnesses. 63% of predictions correctly guessed that the Supreme Court would reverse. The results were statistically significant at a 99% confidence level, with a confidence interval of 11.86. For the specific split, only 3 users, 4.6% of total predictions, predicted a unanimous outcome. These members probably correctly assumed a per curiam reversal would be issued in light of Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts. The SMRs further support this conclusion since the “liberal minority” all had SMRs above 1 at a statistically significant level. Sotomayor’s SMR of 2.17 indicated that she was highly likely to join in a majority decisions, and Ginsburg’s SMR of 1.71 was also a solid indicator. Overall, it is interesting to note that while predictions produced a statistically sound correct outcome, a smaller proportion of users predicted the correct split than in Hemi.

In Florida v. Powell, the Court reversed a Florida Supreme Court decision that held that informing a defendant that they had a right to “talk to an attorney” was insufficient to inform them they had a right to have counsel present. Overall, 51% of members predicted that the Court would reverse, but with such a tight margin, the results were not statistically significant. Only three users, approximately 2% of total predictions, predicted the correct split, while only one user predicted the correct votes. In conjunction with the indeterminate nature of the general outcome predictions, the SMRs did not reveal any additional information since all Justices had SMRs that were not significantly different from 1. This indicates that predictions mainly sorted along ideological lines.

But how did the FantasySCOTUS cheaters affect the results? This installment of the 10th Justice continues at JoshBlackman.com, after the jump.

Supreme Court – United States – Government – Law – Judicial Branch

In a former life, as many of you know, I was a famous Wall Street analyst. A chart of my Wall Street career would look…

NEW YORK — The city of Los Angeles is putting banks it does business with on the spot.

The unanimous directive coming from the city council is that banks need to help Los Angeles slow the pace of foreclosures ravaging its neighborhoods …