CRS - Judge Sonia Sotomayor: Analysis of Selected Opinions, June 19, 2009: "In May 2009, Supreme Court Justice David Souter announced his intention to retire from the Supreme Court. Several weeks later, President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, to fill his seat. To fulfill its constitutional advice and consent function, the Senate will consider Judge Sotomayors extensive record compiled from years as a lawyer, prosecutor, district court judge, and appellate court judge to better understand her legal approaches and judicial philosophy. This report provides an analysis of selected opinions authored by Judge Sotomayor during her tenure as a judge on the Second Circuit. Discussions of the selected opinions are grouped according to various topics of legal significance. As a group, the opinions belie easy categorization along any ideological spectrum. However, it is possible to draw some conclusions regarding Judge Sotomayors judicial approach, both within some specific issue areas and in general. Perhaps the most consistent characteristic of Judge Sotomayors approach as an appellate judge has been an adherence to the doctrine of stare decisis, i.e., the upholding of past judicial precedents. Other characteristics appear to include what many would describe as a careful application of particular facts at issue in a case and a dislike for situations in which the court might be seen as oversteping its judicial role. It is difficult to determine the extent to which Judge Sotomayors style as a judge on the Second Circuit would predict her style should she become a Supreme Court justice. However, as has been the case historically with other nominees, some of her approaches may be enduring characteristics." See also:
American Bar Assocation Rating Released: Sonia Sotomayor, nominated to be Associate Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court
Comment Of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee, On The ABA’s Rating Of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, July 7, 2009
Sotomayor Confirmation Hearing To Begin July 13, 2009
Confirmation Hearings: A Timeline That Is Fair To Senators, And Fair To The Nominee

Belgian pommes frites are popularly referred to as "French fries" in the U.S.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_fries_and_toast_French_again

YESTER adjective
Last; last past; next before; of or pertaining to yesterday.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
"YESTER" was first used in popular English literature sometime before 1350. (references) http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/Ye/Yester.html
Yesternight and yestermorning are archaic words used as nouns or adverbs.

The First Starchitect by Arnold Berke | From Preservation | July/August 2009
Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) launched himself into history by designing for the landed gentry of the Veneto region near Venice. He reworked the architectural grammar of ancient Rome to suit their needs, and via his Four Books of Architecture showed the world how to do it. Palladio had already reworked his own name. He was born in Padua as Andrea di Pietro dalla Gondola, a miller's son, and apprenticed as a stone mason. Count Giangiorgio Trissino, his patron in nearby Vicenza, minted the new name, showed him the writings of Roman architect Vitruvius, then took him to Rome, where the budding designer studied the classical landmarks. Palladio lived mainly in Vicenza, in or near which stand most of his nearly 70 country villas, urban palaces and civic structures, and churches.
http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2009/july-august/first-starchitect-sidebar.html

Great houses: Drayton Hall
Some of Andrea Palladio's dictates were ignored when Drayton Hall was built. Rather than have the ceiling heights diminish with each succeeding floor level, as Palladio recommended, Drayton Hall's spaces grow progressively taller from the raised basement to the first floor and on to the second floor. Where Palladio was concerned with structural strength, John Drayton may have been more concerned with comfort in a hot, humid climate and with the theatricality of a grand hall on the upper floor. Despite these variations, Drayton Hall is, nonetheless, a building that was heavily influenced by Palladio's body of work. In fact, Drayton Hall is likely one of the earliest Palladian buildings in America.
http://www.draytonhall.org/research/architecture/palladio.html
http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2009/july-august/searching-for-palladio.html

Walter Ernest Christopher James, 4th Baron Northbourne (1896- 1982), was a British peer, agriculturalist, Olympic medalist, and author. He studied agricultural science at Oxford University and later applied the theories of Rudolf Steiner to the family estate at Kent. James coined the term "organic farming"[1] from the concept of "the farm as organism" and has the best claim to being the "father" of organic agriculture[2]. He published the book Look to the Land in 1940, which raises many of the issues current to discussions of organic agriculture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_James,_4th_Baron_Northbourne

Many historical documents missing from National Archives
July 5th, 2009 From the Article:
National Archives visitors know they’ll find the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the main building’s magnificent rotunda in Washington. But they won’t find the patent file for the Wright Brothers’ Flying Machine or the maps for the first atomic bomb missions anywhere in the Archives inventory.
Many historical items the Archives once possessed are missing, including:
+ Civil War telegrams from Abraham Lincoln.
+ Original signatures of Andrew Jackson.
+ Presidential portraits of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
+ NASA photographs from space and on the moon.
+ Presidential pardons. Source: AP

Q. How can I convert Celsius to Fahrenheit?
A. Visit http://www.onlineconversion.com/ and go down to temperature.

To your health: Welsh rabbit (rarebit) on English muffins
Two recipes for easy-to-make English comfort food
http://cookingfortwo.about.com/od/pastabeansandgrains/r/rarebit.htm
http://jas.familyfun.go.com/recipefinder/display?id=50422

July 10 is the birthday of Marcel Proust, (books by this author) born in Auteuil, France (1871). His entire reputation is built on one novel that is more than 3,000 pages long:
The Remembrance of Things Past, which is sometimes titled In Search of Lost Time, a more accurate translation of the French. In one of the most famous scenes in the novel, the narrator, Marcel, tastes some cake with tea: I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me . . . The Writer’s Almanac