In the real world, they would have cursed him out, thrown him out, and shipped him off to Gitmo. Sad but true =/

How I wish that was possible.

Man, I actually feel like studying for my law school exams again. Law school / reading SCALIA opinions were breaking my will to try. Guess I need to get back to the books if I wanna be like Alan Shore.

As Jaden said, in the real world it's not gonna happen, and in the real world no lawyer would have gotten as far Spader's Alan Shore.

But points were made worth making, and made well. If we can't have the real thing, catharsis will do for the time being.

of course, this could only happen on tv

My heart swelled with pride....These SCOTUS members need to be taken to task. They have not done their job sufficiently in quite a long time. I found the tv Scalia as disgusting as the real one. Not sure though if Ginsburg was flirting with Denny Crane! Keep up the good work Mr. Kelly, ABC and the cast of Boston Legal, which is moving to Wednesday nights this week....don't forget.

That was wonderful, but it kind of reminded me of that Woody Allen scene from Annie Hall, where he should turn into the camera and say "Boy, if only life were really like this."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpIYz8tfGjY

Lest we criticize the Court now, let's remember the last time there was a Court this conservative, a little case called Dred Scott vs. Sanford touched off Hell in a handbasket. Has the Court released anything on that firearms case, the possible (very unfortunately, so unfortunately it cannot be described for those of us who don't have guns and never will) Dred Scott of Bushite Muraka?

Hulk @ 7:

If only Hollywood were real. Our government is so f*cked up. Were we sleeping or part of the cancer?

Yeah. If only. And I'd take Martin Sheen as my president and the cast of West Wing (except Ron Silver) as my administration—in a heartbeat. But what we've got in Washington is more along the lines of Sci Fi or a bad, old movie channel.

I'd say 30% were sleeping, 30% were and still are the problem, and the other 30% of us have been joined by many of the formerly sleeping. Too little too late, but maybe more will pay attention in the future.

The casting director was for this episode should get a raise! Where did they find people who are dead ringers for Ginsburg, Roberts, Alito and Stevens? Nice work.

Damn that was good TV. As one with the acting bug, watching this clip gives me the urge to go down to the community theater again to scratch the acting itch. Would that we all have the opportunity to get to recite lines so full of passion as those spoken by James Spader.

Judge Thomas! Put down that porn magazine and listen for a change!

A horrible slander against Justice Thomas.

The idea he would be reading a magazine instead of listening to attorney's arguments is simply wrong.

If anything he'd be asleep.

Or watching a Long Dong Silver compilation on his iPhone.

This is not a Supreme Court any more. It is a political tool of the Republicans. And 5 of these people call them selves catholic! They have no shame.

We really need some lawyers like this. Maybe some day some one will have the guts to tell them off.

I knew if any of the blogs picked this up - it would be C&L. Thank you! This Supreme Court scene from Boston Legal needs to be spread all over the Internet(s) - like high quality manure. Then perhaps something good might grow from it. Like common sense.

Brian @ 1:

Hollywood is the best source of information on the Scotus. What would we ever do without their brilliant insightfulness?

SCOTUS IS Hollywood. Read the federalist papers. Hamilton assured they would have no actual power, and they don't.

Have you actually read Scalias opinions? Go check it out. You will find that:

1) You look down upon him intellectually
2) He is a partisan hack
3) He is an "originalist", UNLESS he needs to save some rich persons ass--which happens a lot.

3 bitter hussein katy Says: …

yes, thank you... ...ABC.
=======================
You meant to say, except for the news division, right?

The entire scene was brilliant and looked as though it had been done in a single take. Great script, great performance. And yeah, how exhilirating to see someone speak truth to power, even if it's just a fantasy.

[Deleted. Way off topic. Here's the commenting policy, in which is stated, "Bandwidth is expensive. The comment space is reserved for comments that relate to the topic of the post . You may not reprint lengthy text from your own works or those of others, including news articles. You may link to them." Thank you. Site Monitor]

Leave it to Hollywood to put their liberal agenda on tv acting righteous and just....

jesus christ , the very idea that this guy wouldnt have been tazered till his lifeless ass by the courts police at the direction of the tools who set on the bench is so unbelievable! not only would scilia have him fried by tazers he,d have jumped over his desk and kicked in the guys balls before he died and screamed the 08 elections so old so just get over it!!!!!slobbers gasp arggggh!

I never miss BL simply because I hope that just such a wonderful diatribe will be delivered.

i knew there was a reason i've loved james spader all these years

-_-

Lest we forget, we have a few good justices left. It's just that four and sometimes five are a disgrace.

This was a good episode. I remember the one where the woman refused to pay her taxes to support the Iraq War. That one was a classic too.

General_Rennenkampf @ 19:

ckennedy @ 18:

Hulk @ 7:

If only Hollywood were real. Our government is so f*cked up. Were we sleeping or part of the cancer?

Yeah. If only. And I'd take Martin Sheen as my president and the cast of West Wing (except Ron Silver) as my administration—in a heartbeat. But what we've got in Washington is more along the lines of Sci Fi or a bad, old movie channel.

I'd say 30% were sleeping, 30% were and still are the problem, and the other 30% of us have been joined by many of the formerly sleeping. Too little too late, but maybe more will pay attention in the future.

This world started turning dystopian on August 29, 1949...

I disagree. I would submit that the first indication that humanity was heading toward the path of moral bankruptcy was four years earlier, when the U.S. obliterated the civilian populations of two major Japanese cities. The U.S. thought it was going to send a message to the Soviets that it alone was the world's major super power. Instead, the Soviet Union proceeded to demonstrate that they also could put together and explode a nuclear bomb, thus proving that the Russians were just as stupid and just as ultra militaristic as the United States.

As I come to the end of the clip my only problem with it is that it asks us to beleive that Thomas, Alito, Roberts and Scalia have hearts

WOW!!!

c&l's most virulent TV hater is awestruck with that bit of broadcast!!!

i had no idea the mediatainment complex would allow such a thing!!

I wonder if the SCOTUS were listening...

How far we've fallen.

I hope President Bartlet was watching this episode.

chris @ 38:

Leave it to Hollywood to put their liberal agenda on tv acting righteous and just....

What is it about executing retarded people that you find so appealing, as a conservative?

Great scene and I'm going to forward it to some of my conservative friends because of the information that Shore disperses about the state of the US Supreme Court today -- and they'd never hear it otherwise.

I've witnessed the Supreme Court in session, and it was nothing like this. The judges basically asked the defending lawyer questions about the case, and he answered their questions. There was no passion -- and I don't remember any background information provided by the lawyer as done so by Shore. I'm not sure this scene is realistic.

Have others here witnessed Supreme Court sessions where they have seen something different? My experience may have seemed unemotional because of the kind of case it was -- it definitely wasn't a life-or-death case. However, I'm told that by the time a case gets to the Supreme Court, the whole thing has been rehashed so many times that no new evidence is submitted and nothing new really comes out -- and it's pretty much a question and answer session by then.

Nice bit, I agree with it all, but...it's nothing but preaching to the converted. That's who watches the show. And it's a tad laughable, and laughably bad, to think the Supreme Court, especially the members being raked over the coals by Shore, to simply sit there and take it. Good stuff, but entirely made for those who already believe.

the best rant ever on that show and I caught it by accident. an absolutely astounding thing for fascist disney to allow. apparently the only way any criticism gets any airplay is as comedy or total fiction. 64dadler notwithstanding, it was surprising, refreshing and uplifting. worth being said, even as fiction. I commend them. I remember whoopi having a show cancelled after she commented on bush, so let's see how long before the fascists get out the longknives.

And what did they decide?

gttim @ 68:

And what did they decide?

by the end of the show, there was no decision, as I remember. I think there was the expectation that the black man with the 70 IQ would be executed by the state of Louisiana, which was the actual case being argued.

the most important thing about the fascist regime in Germany was that everything they did was legal. it was more legal than anything boosh could ever claim was legal.

This would never happen in real life, but Alan Shore's appearance before the SCOTUS was truly memorable. BL has to be given credit -- when they tackle current affairs, their scripts are the best.

It was a great show (as always). My only problem with it is that as a Supreme Count junkie (via C-Span), that's not how oral arguments work.

Ya, I know, a minor point; easily ignored with suspension of disbelief, etc.

I was just amazed that this was being put on broadcast television. Absolutely fascinating, and it reminds me of the true power of drama in telling deep, deep truths. I may have to add Boston Legal back to my watch list.

Wow. Just, wow.

True, an actual lawyer wouldn't get to harangue the Supreme Court (and I mean that with love, today's Supreme Court is worthy of nothing but scorn) like the fictional Mr. Shore. But the most damning realization, even more than of having the need to call out the Supremes, is that we are so shocked, shocked! that an American would speak truth to power, especially to its face. Ours is a country that began with the 18th century equivalent of "fuck you!" to the then-George in Charge but after decades of acquiescence the culture is now gobsmacked when anyone not instantly identifiable as a DHF criticizes his betters.

More than one commenter on this thread joked that an actual lawyer using Shore's words and/or tactics would be tased. This was meant as dark humor but let's not forget all humor, especially the darkest, has at its core truth. We are being conditioned to accept everything and anything the right wing proposes and does. I'm sure any staunch Republican who saw this scene on TV (and who will see or hear a butchered version of it on FNC, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, et al.) would want to leap at Shore with taser at the ready if not a knife or pistol. Everyone brace for the inevitable media tempest! Every pundit right of center (and way too many so-called centrists) will be saying "how dare they!" and warming up yet-another ineffectual boycott of all things ABC/Disney. Well, except for ABC Radio. And ABC News. And ESPN didn't do anything wrong...okay, it will be a selective boycott, but you get the point.

I grew up at the tail end of the Cold War and I was told many times that anyone criticizing the government "over there"--there being chiefly the USSR but also including its puppet states--would simply vanish and the remaining population would learn the virtue of subservience. That was true enough (although the Cold Warriors never brought up our puppet states' habit of making people disappear). The Kremin was run by totalitarian assholes as is Beijing today. But was the lesson we were supposed to learn from the Warsaw Pact's subservient people was "shut up and fall in line"? We were supposed to be better than that; we could debate, we could demonstrate, we could petition the government with a redress of our grievances. You know, that Constitutional stuff.

Now, we are so timid that Boston Legal's refreshing blast of candor stands out as much for its rarity than as for its content.

Tomorrow faux reporters on faux news channels will chuff indignantly claiming Boston Legal is disrespectful bordering on obscene. Rush will rant, Beck will smarmily sneer (no one can smarm as well as Beck) and Hannity will call James Spader a traitor. Savage may finally have his on-air stroke (oh please, oh please, oh please). Malkin, Coulter, Ingrahm and Bay Buchanan will screech while simultaneously being overcome with the vapors (how do they manage that?). Blitzer will devote a segment on political incivility in Prime Time. Cafferty will be blunt (and may be sued again).

The solution to this problem of timidity in the face of right-wing bluster is, wait for it, balls. We need to confront those deserving of scorn; we cannot send only our fictional characters into the verbal battle. We shall fight them on the cable, we shall fight them on the op-ed page, we shall fight them on the call-in shows, and we shall fight them on the internet. We do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard (sorry, lapsed into a mashup of Churchill and Kennedy).

I was always told that the truth shall set us free and that sunshine made the best disinfectant. I hope that part was correct.

Hey Billy.

See that Marxist Talking Point is still being used. Maybe you should tell your Stalinist GOP'ers it's become tired and trite.

General_Rennenkampf @ 19 :

This world started turning dystopian on August 29, 1949…

No, it started long before that.
The US never had problems coming up with BS reasons to invade and 'liberate' countries.
See Hawaii and Mexican territories.

Erroll @ 50 :

I disagree. I would submit that the first indication that humanity was heading toward the path of moral bankruptcy was four years earlier, when the U.S. obliterated the civilian populations of two major Japanese cities. The U.S. thought it was going to send a message to the Soviets that it alone was the world’s major super power. Instead, the Soviet Union proceeded to demonstrate that they also could put together and explode a nuclear bomb, thus proving that the Russians were just as stupid and just as ultra militaristic as the United States.

Look at how honest the US government and it's military arm have been acting the last 50 years.

The US wanted to use their bombs so they asked the military to give them a justification.
Just like countless other times the military and intelligence gave them the results they wanted.

Think about the lies that were told to us by the government and then ask yourself if, throughout history, what they said could have just been another lie?
Funny how people (generally) can be so ignorant and trust people that have lied to them since the beginning.

Heck we killed thousands of people all over the world just to eliminate even the slightest possibility that something might not go our way.

We are war criminals.

Remember also that the Manhattan project was started through a 'Curveball' (Hungarian scientists think that the Germans could use their nuclear research to make a bomb, though they had no proof) and long before the US was ever directly involved in WW2.

So in the end the US used the weapons they build because Germany was supposedly building them and then used them against Japan who was not building them.

And after the war, the winners just painted over the swastikas on the V2s and recruited the Wehrmacht and SS Officers to work for them. It seems to be OK for them to continue their work as long as they are doing it for us.
The US and Russian space projects were built on Nazi tech and by Nazi engineers.

Erroll @ 50:

General_Rennenkampf @ 19:

ckennedy @ 18:

Hulk @ 7:

Yeah. If only. And I'd take Martin Sheen as my president and the cast of West Wing (except Ron Silver) as my administration—in a heartbeat. But what we've got in Washington is more along the lines of Sci Fi or a bad, old movie channel.

I'd say 30% were sleeping, 30% were and still are the problem, and the other 30% of us have been joined by many of the formerly sleeping. Too little too late, but maybe more will pay attention in the future.

This world started turning dystopian on August 29, 1949...

I disagree. I would submit that the first indication that humanity was heading toward the path of moral bankruptcy was four years earlier, when the U.S. obliterated the civilian populations of two major Japanese cities. The U.S. thought it was going to send a message to the Soviets that it alone was the world's major super power. Instead, the Soviet Union proceeded to demonstrate that they also could put together and explode a nuclear bomb, thus proving that the Russians were just as stupid and just as ultra militaristic as the United States.

You are right, of course. Of course, without both August Storm and Hiroshima I believe there would be no Japanese people here today. The plans of Tojo's regime to resist the USA and their effectiveness can be seen looking at the Battle of Okinawa. Okinawans are separate from mainstream Japanese culture, and a quarter of them died from suicide. Imagine what an invasion of Honshu would have produced....

But there was no even a glimpse of an excuse for bombing Nagasaki. By the bombing of Nagasaki, the Soviets had invaded Manchuria, and Japan realized the US had dangerous weapons capable of turning the entire homelands and their Japanese and Ainu populations into baked rubble, and their hoped-for-mediator, the USSR had just laid a curbstomp on the Kwangtung Army.

I hate apologizing for our use of atomic warfare, but the firebombings and mass bombings of 1943-1945 killed more people in Tokyo alone then died from the bombs both then, and until twenty years of radiation poisioning had taken their toll. We completely pulverized Japan by August 1945, and Tojo was still mad enough to send his starving people into the meatgrinder.

Yet, I must add that anyone who thinks the Bomb alone forced the surrender of Japan is a person with an axe to grind. The Bomb was not that impressive to the Imperial Japanese government. When Stalin moved an army into Manchuria the size of our combat forces at their peak size, no less and tore the heart out of the largest Imperial Japanese force still in operation, that had more to do with the surrender.

Remove either factor: no Japanese people.

frank @ 84:

General_Rennenkampf @ 19 :

This world started turning dystopian on August 29, 1949…

No, it started long before that.
The US never had problems coming up with BS reasons to invade and 'liberate' countries.
See Hawaii and Mexican territories.

Erroll @ 50 :

I disagree. I would submit that the first indication that humanity was heading toward the path of moral bankruptcy was four years earlier, when the U.S. obliterated the civilian populations of two major Japanese cities. The U.S. thought it was going to send a message to the Soviets that it alone was the world’s major super power. Instead, the Soviet Union proceeded to demonstrate that they also could put together and explode a nuclear bomb, thus proving that the Russians were just as stupid and just as ultra militaristic as the United States.

Look at how honest the US government and it's military arm have been acting the last 50 years.

The US wanted to use their bombs so they asked the military to give them a justification.
Just like countless other times the military and intelligence gave them the results they wanted.

Think about the lies that were told to us by the government and then ask yourself if, throughout history, what they said could have just been another lie?
Funny how people (generally) can be so ignorant and trust people that have lied to them since the beginning.

Heck we killed thousands of people all over the world just to eliminate even the slightest possibility that something might not go our way.

We are war criminals.

Remember also that the Manhattan project was started through a 'Curveball' (Hungarian scientists think that the Germans could use their nuclear research to make a bomb, though they had no proof) and long before the US was ever directly involved in WW2.

So in the end the US used the weapons they build because Germany was supposedly building them and then used them against Japan who was not building them.

And after the war, the winners just painted over the swastikas on the V2s and recruited the Wehrmacht and SS Officers to work for them. It seems to be OK for them to continue their work as long as they are doing it for us.
The US and Russian space projects were built on Nazi tech and by Nazi engineers.

The Manhattan Project was originally designed for use on Berlin, not Hiroshima. When Doenitz surrendered in May, one month before the Trinity test, that had to change. The US Army felt it was criminal to design a weapon like that and not use it. So, the only Axis power left got the horrors of the Bomb.

Ah, you're referring to Project Paperclip? Yes, I am aware of that. It was morally reprehensible to me to employ convinced Nazis like Werhner Von Braun in the space program. It should not have been done. I believe, however, that the USSR had an indigenous space program. And yes, we kept the Wehrmacht working for us. But the SS Officers were hanged (and rightly so) for warcrimes, though we should also have hung large numbers of Wehrmacht officers, as well for identical crimes.

Oh, and the Germans were building a bomb. They had a scientist named Wehrner Heisenberg in charge. Their whole idea was wrong, so the bomb could never be developed. Hitler's regime was bad enough as it was. Imagine a nuke used in the Ardennes Offensive, or against one of the Soviet Armies closing on Berlin....