Presto Agitato

Mr. Conservative

Pete Wehner stumbles into the obvious about Mr. Gingrich:

The single most important idea, when it comes to fundamentally changing Washington, is the budget plan put forward by Representative Paul Ryan last April.  When most massive-scale-of-change conservatives were defending Ryan’s plan against scorching criticisms from the left, Gingrich described the plan as an example of “right-wing social engineering.”  It was Gingrich, not the rest of us, who was counseling caution, timidity, and an unwillingness to shape (rather than follow) public opinion. (The Medicare reform plan Gingrich eventually put out wasn’t nearly as bold and far-reaching as the one put out by Governor Romney.)

So much for Mr. Fundamental Change.

One does notice, as an aside, that American ‘conservatives’, this year as in 2010, are demanding fundamental change regarding several things, most importantly regarding federal spending and the size and role of government in private lives, which gives the lie to the standard terminology of American political debate.  In the standard political terminology, contrary to the argot of American political punditry, this year's Republicans (or, more specifically, ‘Tea Partiers’) are the liberals, i.e. the ones who are standing for liberty.

Chuck Woolery for President

These aren't just ‘baseline cuts’ but for-real, bona fide, honest-to-goodness cuts!  But Chuck, honey, $1.5 trillion isn't even a drop in the ten-year bucket (a few trillion here, a few trillion there…), so let's get back to the chopping-block, eh?

Oh, yes, one more thing: Those ‘squirrels’ are rabbits.

Take That, Yngwie!

In case you have any fantasies of musical talent, allow me to crush them now:

Correcting the Record

A couple days ago, I posted about the phony ethics case against Newt Gingrich.  Thanks to the excellent work of Byron York, I see that I need to make an important correction: The House did ‘reprimand’ and fine Gingrich based on the conclusions of a ‘special counsel’ hired by the House Ethics Committee; the special counsel concluded that Gingrich had ‘clearly violated tax laws’ because a course he taught in his home state, and for which he was paid, was ‘clearly political’ in nature.  (I'd also forgotten the role Bonior's buddy Cooter played in all this.) 

Hilariously, though (if you have a perverse sense of humor), the IRS investigated the matter and concluded that the course was clearly not political in nature and was also clearly not in violation of any tax laws.  Not only was the IRS report a complete vindication of former-Speaker Gingrich, but it was a very thorough indictment of the inexcusably shoddy work of the committee and their ‘special counsel’.  Newspapers buried the story of Gingrich's exoneration and broadcast TV news (e.g., Mr. Brokaw) spiked it completely.  No word of any apologies, nor of a refund of the fine Gingrich paid to the House.

No wonder Mr. Brokaw is ‘uncomfortable’; the facts of NBC's coverage of this case completely demolish Brokaw's pretense of journalistic integrity.

All of which raises the question again: What the hell is Romney thinking?  That Republican voters can't remember how utterly and irredeemably biased the press was on this case?  That voters won't notice that Gingrich was screwed (and not just by his prettier staff-babes), and hold Romney's naked dishonesty against him?  I would imagine that, if Romney doesn't pull that ad immediately and, by tomorrow (Sunday) morning announce that he's firing the campaign staff that came up with this shit, voters will hold it against him.  I certainly do.

God I hate these candidates!

Compromised

Mitt Romney is running an anti-Gingrich television ad in Florida, featuring a clip of Tom Brokaw from NBC's World News Tonight.  Brokaw is unhappy, but for all the wrong reasons:

NBC News and Tom Brokaw are loudly objecting to the Mitt Romney campaign's use of footage from the 1990s in an ad blasting Newt Gingrich over his House ethics charges.

Brokaw, whose statement noted he was speaking on his behalf, said, ‘I am extremely uncomfortable with the extended use of my personal image in this political ad.  I do not want my role as a journalist compromised for political gain by any campaign.’

He should be more concerned that the clip was (at best) taken out of context and is grossly misleading.  But, of course, that's the last thing on his mind.  What mystifies me, though, is how the Romney campaign could imagine that Republican voters will take seriously an anti-Newt news story from the late 1990s.  Hello?  Anyone home?

(I did laugh, though, over that bit about not wanting to be ‘compromised for political gain’.  Shit, we can't have that!)

Eye on Newt

Former congressman Joe Scarborough, writing in ‘Politico’ (yeah, yeah...) on the wishy-washy, unreliable Newt he remembers:

In 1997, ten of my fellow classmates had led a coup attempt against Gingrich, shutting down the House over the speaker’s efforts to violate the Contract with America by swelling the number of committee staff members.

Conservative stalwarts like Steve Largent, Tom Coburn and Matt Salmon joined me and seven others to demand a cut in spending and a promise to hold firm on tax cuts.

Newt did not take the rebellion lying down.  He immediately summoned the sergeant of arms to drag the 11 rebels down to a Republican caucus meeting in the bowels of the Capitol basement….  Gingrich then began screaming and demanded that the 11 of us account for our behavior. ...

Steve spoke softly about how he signed a contract with the Seattle Seahawks and remembered shaking the hand of the team’s owner after the deal was done.  A few years later, the NFL Players Association went on strike.  But Largent told the mob, who were now transfixed, that he crossed those picket lines because he signed a contract and gave his word.  Largent told the group that a few years later, the NFL players went on strike a second time and he was once again one of the few NFL players to keep reporting for work.  For Steve, it was a matter of principle. …

Turning to the Speaker ... Largent said, ‘Newt, you were the one who drafted the contract and then told us to sign it.  Now, you’re the one pressuring us to break it.  But Newt, if I wasn’t intimidated by the thought of 250 pound linebackers who wanted to kill me every time I crossed the field, why would I be intimidated by you?’

And with that, the speakership of Newt Gingrich was over.  A year later, he would be driven from power and sent into a political wilderness from which he emerged 14 years later on a Saturday night in South Carolina.

Wait a minute: Gingrich thought Joe Scarborough was too conservative?  Jesus, I've seen his show on MSNBC, and Joe ain't no conservative  Has he changed?

But read the whole thing.  And yeah, Scarborough does seem a bit in love with Largent.  It's no worse than Joe Buck's batting eyelashes for Troy Aikman (give it up, Joe), but eww!

Tortuous Searches

Be warned: Roller queens know how to throw a punch:

A Manhattan lawyer filed suit yesterday against two ex-girlfriends — one a former ‘RollerJam’ star — over nasty comments they allegedly posted about him on the Web.

Matthew Couloute Jr. says the women’s ‘malicious statements’ at liarscheatersrus.com are killing his career by portraying him as a love-’em-and-leave-’em Lothario.

‘Our relationship didn’t last long, as I figured him out pretty quickly, but for others, BE FOREWARNED, HE’S SCUM.  RUN FAR AWAY’, one of the anonymous posts reads.

Couloute’s Manhattan federalcourt filing demands unspecified money damages from ‘ex-lovers’ Stacey Blitsch and Amanda Ryncarz on grounds of ‘tortuous interference with prospective business relations’.

Well, I certainly hope he said ‘tortious interference’, otherwise he's a scumbag and a lousy lawyer.

Smooth Groove

Why didn't I think of this?

We just heard about the Smooth Groove, an invention out of Britain that looks like a snazzy, black-and-white athletic cup.  Smooth Groove's website claims, without attribution, ‘A staggering 55 percent of women, irrespective of age size or weight experience camel-toe at some point.’  Um, really?  Who is conducting those surveys?!

Ah, this problem just begs for some proper research!  Field teams are forming now!

(You can get away with anything if you wear a lab coat and carry a clipboard.)

Denial Canada

It looks like the folks at CRU will need to smear another set of scientists:

The climate system may be less sensitive to greenhouse-gas warming than many models have predicted.

Nathan Gillett and his co-workers at Environment Canada in Victoria, British Columbia, analysed how well the latest Canadian Earth System Model tracked temperature changes attributable to volcanoes, man-made aerosols and rising greenhouse-gas emissions.  They adjusted the model using temperature records from 1851 to 2010 — 60 years of data more than most previous analyses.  The model predicted a short-term increase of 1.3–1.8 °C for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, which is low in the range of estimates from previous forecasts.

That's the problem with the climate models: They only work for the time period they were tweaked to match.  Run them against a different time period — longer, shorter, or just a different frame — and the numbers come out upside-down.  In other words, the results are fudged.  This is why your they made you show your work in  school.

Aside

Can people please stop saying that Rick Santorum was the ‘winner’ of the Iowa Caucuses (Republican side), much less the ‘official winner’ as I heard on CNN?  The Iowa Caucuses were officially a tie (between Romney and Santorum) because the uncertifiable votes exceeded the very slight (and, to the end, see-sawing) margin and thus officials threw in the towel.  Someone may need to be fired for incompetence or malice — who do they think they are, Florida? — but the result was a tie.

Either an Apostate or an Impostor

Mona Charen objects to being called a RINO:

Getting lots of mail accusing me of RINOism.  Why is it that people who support Newt believe they are backing the more conservative candidate?  Where is the evidence that Gingrich is more conservative than Romney?  Gingrich has supported embryonic stem cell research, Medicare Part D, global warming legislation, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, an industrial policy, amnesty for some illegal immigrants, and ethanol subsidies, among many other apostasies.

Yeah, so he's a lying, flip-flopping, say-anything scumbag.  He is a politician, so what part of this is news?

Remembering Newt

I've been wondering when people would start to remember Newt Gingrich's twitchy and unreliable political character, his dazzling debate fireworks notwithstanding.  At long last, conservatives are taking his candidacy seriously enough to speak up:

Tom DeLay, a top deputy to Gingrich during the Republican revolution of the mid-1990s, joined the chorus of other conservative members breaking their silence about Gingrich’s erratic leadership style.  In a radio interview with KTRH, DeLay said: ‘He’s not really a conservative.  I mean, he’ll tell you what you want to hear.  He has an uncanny ability, sort of like Clinton, to feel your pain and know his audience and speak to his audience and fire them up.  But when he was speaker, he was erratic, undisciplined.’

Well, shazam!  I've been saying that for years — that Gingrich is a politician and a fighter, but you never know on which side he'll be fighting — but people never seem to get it.  That fact that he was the aggressive and loud-mouthed Republican leader behind the ‘Contract with America’ confuses them.  In 1994, Gingrich saw a political opening and ran into it.  Principle had nothing to do with it.

Of Leaks and Misdirection

John Kiriakou, a press-whoring ex-CIA ‘agent’ (bureaucrat, actually) has been busted for leaking classified information to the press, exposing actual field agents, lying to the CIA, etc.

John Kiriakou, 47, was charged with four counts that ranged from disclosing classified details about counter-terrorism operations to the press, to lying to the CIA about the origin of sensitive information he published in a book about his career.

Kiriakou, whose CIA career spanned from 1990 to 2004, was depicted in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria as a significant source for articles including a detailed account in the New York Times of the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

What a slime ball.  But this was apparent to everyone except, apparently, the fawning reporters.

Joe Wilson was last seen hiding under his bed.

Quote of the Day: It Looks Tasty, but the Foreign Policy Is Fishy

Ron Paul is a candidate with strong but limited appeal, sort of like anchovies on pizza. — John Hinderaker

 

How to Park Like An Old Man

Quote of the Day: Piss on the Taliban

If they were real Taliban, if they were people who burn down girls’ schools, you know, and do honor rapes, threw acid in people’s faces, [then] I’m not that upset about [Marines] pissing on them, dead or alive. — Bill Maher

Exactly.

My Hero

Bibliobibulo (2011 Edition)

There are people who read too much: the bibliobibuli.  I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion.  They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing. — H.L. Mencken, Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks

I got through sixty-three books last year, not counting technical reading, video courses, and the like, most of them in the second half of the year.  Some books I'd read before, but all of those were ‘fresh’ enough that they deserved a re-reading.

Alphabetically by author:

• Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• Money: A Suicide Note — Martin Amis (Yuck)
• The Origins of Totalitarianism — Hannah Arendt
• Foundation — Isaac Asimov
• Foundation and Empire — Isaac Asimov
• Second Foundation — Isaac Asimov
• I, Robot — Isaac Asimov
• Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur — Richard Branson
• Dead or Alive — Tom Clancy
• Heart of Darkness — Joseph Conrad
• The Red Badge of Courage — Stephen Crane
• The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design — Richard Dawkins
• Kinds Of Minds: Toward An Understanding Of Consciousness — Daniel C. Dennett
• American Creation (Triumphs & Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic) — Joseph J. Ellis
• Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness — Epictetus (lousy translation)
• The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World — Niall Ferguson
• Diamonds Are Forever — Ian Fleming
• Doctor No — Ian Fleming
• From Russia with Love — Ian Fleming
• Goldfinger — Ian Fleming
• The Man With The Golden Gun — Ian Fleming
• On Her Majesty's Secret Service — Ian Fleming
• Thunderball — Ian Fleming
• You Only Live Twice — Ian Fleming
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin — Benjamin Franklin
• Money Mischief: Episodes in Monetary History — Milton Friedman
• SR-71 Revealed: The Inside Story — Col. Richard H. Graham
• Ulysses S. Grant : Personal Memoirs — Ulysses S. Grant
• Grimm's Fairy Tales — Brothers Grimm (Yuck)
• Assassins of the Turquoise Palace — Roya Hakakian
• A Brief History of Time — Stephen Hawking
• A Briefer History of Time — Stephen Hawking (Don't bother)
• Double Star — Robert A. Heinlein
• Friday — Robert A. Heinlein
• Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens — Christopher Hitchens
• God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales — Penn Jillette
• Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future — Stephen Kinzer (Yuck)
• The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Visions of Glory — William Manchester
• The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-1940 — William Manchester
• Lonesome Dove: A Novel — Larry McMurtry
• Moby-Dick — Herman Melville
• Mastermind: The Many Faces of the 9/11 Architect, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — Richard Miniter
• Modern China: A Very Short Introduction — Rana Mitter
• Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines — Richard A. Muller
• Ringworld — Larry Niven
• What Does Mr. Greenspan Really Think?: Alan Greenspan's Speech at the Catholic University Leuven, Leuven, Belgium January 14, 1997 — Lawrence M. Parks (The speech is worth reading, but Mr. Parks's interpretation is not.)
• Republic — Plato
• Birth of Fire — Jerry Pournelle
• Where the Red Fern Grows — Wilson Rawls
• The Supreme Court — William H. Rehnquist
• Deadly Feasts: The 'Prion' Controversy and the Public's Health — Richard Rhodes
• Known and Unknown: A Memoir — Donald Rumsfeld
• Midnight's Children: A Novel — Salman Rushdie
• Shame: A Novel — Salman Rushdie
• Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body — Neil Shubin
• Economic Facts and Fallacies: Second Edition — Thomas Sowell
• The Housing Boom and Bust — Thomas Sowell
• The Zimmermann Telegram — Barbara W. Tuchman
• The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet — Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Candide: or, The Optimist — Voltaire
• The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun — Lu Xun
• Bhagavad-Gita  
• Bible (Old Testament)

 

A Very Bad Day

From the CBS TV affiliate in Tampa:

A man fishing from his kayak a half-mile from Point of Rocks off Sarasota was shocked when a dog that was involved in a deadly DUI crash swam up to his boat terrified.

Once pulled to safety, Barney shrunk into a corner of the small craft, shaking and traumatized over the event.  He sustained minor injuries, including one to his paw and several cuts.

The man brought Barney to a local vet, who used a GPS tracking chip implanted in him to discover his owner was Donna L. Chen, who was struck by a Nissan Altima and died moments before.

Damn, that's rough.

(Can anyone tell me what kind of dog that is, with greyhound-like hindquarters?  I've never seen a whippet in that coloring, but maybe that's it.)

 

Free Markets and Competition — Unless We're Losing

It seems that the economic principles of several candidates for the Republican presidential nomination are subject to, um, modification when class warfare is more convenient:

How, one wonders, does a person make money by bankrupting a business?  Profit, without government intervention, is about adding value, either according to customers' wishes or in the view of investors — and it's hard to accomplish the second if you don't accomplish the first. 

It is certainly possible to reorganize a troubled business so that it is profitable, which may involve reducing expenses, selling off parts that don't fit well with the whole, and closing other parts that are beyond help, and bankruptcy can be a tool in reorganizing old debt, but any business that is a candidate for such treatment is — let me say this again — troubled, and jobs will be lost either way.  The only question is whether the business and at least some of its jobs will survive or the whole thing will go down the drain.

So the question for Gingrich, Huntsman, Perry, and Santorum is: You're running for the nomination of which party?

Don't Like Huntsman? You're Nuts!

I'm not sure Jon Huntsman really wants to run with this theme:

In an interview Friday, the Utah governor turned [ambassador to China] said bluntly that the GOP had lost its equilibrium in the Obama era but predicted it would eventually return to its bearings — and vindicate his own brand of pragmatism.

‘I believe in the ideas put forward by Theodore White, the cycles of history’, Huntsman told POLITICO.  ‘I believe we are in one such cycle.  I think that cycle ultimately takes us to a sane Republican Party based on real ideas.’

So smaller government, lower taxes, and balanced budgets don't count?  And he wonders why he polls so poorly?

Mr. Huntsman began his campaign by excoriating Republicans as antiscientific know-nothings for questioning the global-warming panic.  Yet only a week ago, Huntsman was declaring himself the true conservative in the race.  Makes you wonder what he means by ‘conservative’, doesn't it?  (Assuming that you give a damn, of course.)

Got Time to Bleed Now?

When Jesse Ventura ran for governor of Minnesota, I warned people that, given the evidence of his radio shows and his term as mayor of Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, he could be counted on to be a wildly unreliable, fact-averse, say-one-thing-do-another jackass.  I also suggested that his campaign slogan ought to be ‘I ain't got time to read.’

I had no idea.  After the election, he immediately reneged on his campaign promise to ‘return it all’ — that is, to return to the taxpayers all of an existing budget surplus which, as he suddently ‘discovered’ after the election, had already been spent (we got a much smaller rebate) — and then proceeded to build a billion-dollar boondoggle light-rail system, to make splashy libertarian-sounding statements but govern as a nanny-state ‘liberal’, to renege on his promise to push for a concealed-handgun bill (he got his permit and dropped the issue), and to become a petulant, whining, daily embarrassment.  ‘Give him time’, I was told, time and time again.

And then he went off the Truther deep end.  As noted above, Ventura's aversity to any fact contrary to his personal whim is epic; once he's settled on a notion, no matter how stupid and contrary to reality, there's no setting him straight.  The farther from reality he strays and the clearer the facts contra his opinion, the louder he gets. 

Ok, fine, he's a ‘personality’ who requires periodic press attention, and he's made a fairly lucrative career of shooting off his mouth (with or without engaging his brain), but he finally made the mistake of taking his big mouth into a SEAL bar while they were mourning the death of fellow SEAL and CMOH awardee Michael Mansoor:

Oops.

Gingrich's Problem

Regarding the unrelenting negative attack-ads against Mr. Gingrich, Charles Krauthammer notes:

[T]he reason that he could be the subject of literally hours of negative attacks is because he had hours of negative baggage in his history, unlike any other candidate: apostasies, wall-to-wall, that were easy to highlight and to cite.

With video, I might add.  Welcome to the Internet age, Mr. Gingrich.  What did you expect, that your opponents wouldn't notice? 

He's great on the lecture-and-rubber-chicken circuit, but as a candidate Gingrich is easily the least reliable of the bunch; there's simply no way to know from one day to the next which Newt you'll get.  To hand him actual power (as well as the future and reputation of the Republican party) is absolutely out of the question.

Where in the World...

‘In .5 miles, arriving at Jack Daniel's Distillery, on left’, she whispered sweetly into my ear.  ‘Yes, Dear’, I answered.  ‘I know.  We're downwind.’

Do you think they'd mind if I just pulled over right there and inhaled deeply?

Because She Can

Contra some commenters at YouTube, btw, the piano is not a ‘Kawai’.  It is a Shigeru Kawai which, as you can hear, is a very different animal! 

I found a video of a young Russian lady (Miss Federova is Ukranian) playing the same etude on a Yamaha at the same competition; it's all mud, which was to be expected.  But she won the competition, so I guess the judges were all wearing hearing aids.

The Short List

Are you listening, Santa?

Christmas with the Devil

Judith Owen and Harry Shearer:

From Abbotabad to Worse

From Christopher Hitchens, this past summer:

I find, however, that I can’t quite share in the sense of jubilation.  I never believed that bin Laden was living in some hideaway ‘in the tribal areas’.  But to learn that he was living in [the military training garrison city] Abbottabad, after Khalid Sheikh Muhammed was discovered in Rawalpindi, is really too much for me.  I don’t feel jubilation.  I feel a personal, ineradicable sense of betrayal.  For ten years, I’ve watched members of my own family taking to the streets, protesting the US military presence in northern Pakistan and the drone strikes etc.  They stood there and prattled on and on about ‘Pakistan’s sovereignty’, and the supposed invasion of it by US forces.

Well, what fucking sovereignty?  What fucking sovereignty were these people ‘protecting’?  It’s bad enough that the Pakistani army lacks sovereignty over the tribal area and can’t control it when the country’s own life depends upon it.  But that bin Laden was living in the Pakistani equivalent of Annapolis, MD…

Ron the Nut, Part II

So let me get this straight:

1. The WikiLeaks releases showed actual governmental malfeasance
2. Nobody really got hurt
3. Bradley Manning is a patriotic hero
4. These brave ‘whistleblowers’ are willing to accept the consequences of their civil disobedience, but those consequences shouldn't include, you know, actual consequences.

I apologize to the dedicated followers of the Reverend Paul, but is this guy all there?  I'd suspect (slightly) premature senility if it weren't for the 1988 video I posted a couple days ago, but the guy simply has no regard for either fact or reason — this in addition to his not-quite-all-there nuttiness.

Space Balls

From Agence France-Presse:

A large metallic ball fell out of the sky on a remote grassland in Namibia, prompting baffled authorities to contact NASA and the European space agency.

The hollow ball with a circumference of 1.1 metres (43 inches) was found near a village in the north of the country some 750 kilometres (480 miles) from the capital Windhoek, according to police forensics director Paul Ludik.  Locals had heard several small explosions a few days beforehand, he said.

With a diameter of 35 centimetres (14 inches), the ball has a rough surface and appears to consist of ‘two halves welded together’.

Really, this isn't much of a mystery, even without the picture.

That's a fuel tank from a rocket, pretty standard stuff going back at least to the Mercury days.  And clearly, if the locals are calling NASA and the ESA about it, someone has already debaffled this mystery.

A Note from Alexander Hamilton

From Federalist 78:

Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.  The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community.  The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated.  The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever.  It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.

This, according to Hamilton, is why the judiciary must be separate from the executive and legislative authorities: So that it can be independent in its judgments but, with neither the power of sword nor purse, it cannot become tyrannical.

Newt the Jackass

George Will on Newt Gingrich's radical inconsistency:

Judicial deference to majorities can, however, be a dereliction of the judicial duty to oppose actions irreconcilable with constitutional limits on what majorities may do.  Gingrich’s campaign against courts repudiates contemporary conservatism’s core commitment to limited government.

Logically, Gingrich should regret the ‘dictatorial’ Supreme Court decisions that have stymied congressional majorities by overturning portions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation and other restrictions on political speech.

Logic, however, is a flimsy leash for a mind as protean as Gingrich’s, which applauds those decisions — and the Kelo decision.  In Kelo, the court eschewed dictatorship and deferred to the New London, Conn., City Council majority that imposed a stunning abuse of eminent domain.  Conservatives were appalled; Gingrich, inexplicably but conveniently, says he is, too.

Of the current candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, only Gingrich, Paul, and Santorum seem (to me) likely to lose a rough battle with Obama.  But I remember Gingrich's tenure as Speaker of the House, during which he made a regular jackass of himself until his caucus could no longer tolerate him.  I am amazed how easily people forget; he says he's aged and matured, but no evidence of this is apparent.

Ron the Nut

Here's a lovely video of Ron Paul accusing Vice President George H.W. Bush (et al.) of importing drugs into the United States.  Evidence?  Bah!

But hey, at least he didn't mention an SR-71 trip to Iran!

Quote of the Day: A Wee Small Voice

Our Ear Leader Dear Leader president thinks he's been more successful than all but four presidents.  Charles Krauthammer has a word of advice for him:

When a Roman conquering general returned and had a triumphal procession through Rome with the crowd cheering him and calling him all kinds of godly names, there was a courtier in the back of the chariot who whispered in his ear ‘Remember, thou art but a mortal.’

Obama ought to hire that guy.  He is old, but I think he is still around.

Heh.

 

Ho Ho Ho!

Quote of the Day: Execute This

[The judiciary] may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments. — Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 78

President Andrew Jackson is apocryphally quoted* as saying, ‘[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!’, and thus far he was (constitutionally) correct; the president and congress are bound by the constitution, but so is the judiciary (a point which they regularly forget) and they have no power of enforcement aside from the executive power which is wholly ‘vested in a President of the United States of America.’  (Article II, US Constititution — this, by the way, is the ‘Unitary Executive’ so full-throatedly misunderstood and misrepresented by the Left)  In other words, no Supreme Court ruling is binding unless the president considers himself thus bound.  The president is ultimately checked by his own principles, the ballot box, congress's power to impeach and remove him, and the power of a majority of his cabinet to remove him for incapacity.

So Mr. Gingrich's comments on this point are both inflammatory and correct; executive refusal to follow an improper judicial ruling ought to be very — vanishingly — rare, but it is an important constitutional check on what Hamilton called the ‘least dangerous’ branch of our federal government.  ‘Least dangerous’ because its mistakes are easily set right by the political branches.

God Damn It

Christopher Hitchens is dead.  Alas, only his words were immortal:

Christopher Hitchens — the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant — died today at the age of 62.  Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the spring of 2010, just after the publication of his memoir, Hitch-22, and began chemotherapy soon after.  His matchless prose has appeared in Vanity Fair since 1992, when he was named contributing editor.

Sigh.

Update: More here from Joy McCann, with links to others.  But her first comment is best:

This one is very, very hard; I’m trying to remember the last time I cried at the death of a public figure.

I'm not there, yet, nor am I able to say much now.  The pit in my stomach holds the floor.

Notes on Language, or: Where's Sancho When I Need Him?

From the Presto Agitato Department of Lost Causes:  In my e-mail this morning was this note:

The 9am meeting this morning has been rescheduled to 10am per Tom.

Tom's the boss, and my helpful correspondent (whom I shall call Ignorante) is wrong: The meeting was rescheduled by order of Tom, per Ignorante.

Note, please, this prefatory note in Huckleberry Finn:

NOTICE
Persons attempting to find a motive in this
narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting
to find a moral in it will be banished;
persons attempting to find a plot in it will be
shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
Per G.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE

G.G., by the way, was George Griffin, a servant working for Mr. Twain.  He had apparently become very angry over a slight by some neighbor and asked to borrow Twain's revolver.  Twain declined and concluded that the old man only wanted to vent to his kind and wise boss, but regularly teased the old man about it thereafter.

Whither Newt

National Review is not impressed:

Gingrich’s colleagues were, however, right to bring his tenure to an end.  His character flaws — his impulsiveness, his grandiosity, his weakness for half-baked (and not especially conservative) ideas — made him a poor Speaker of the House.  Again and again he combined incendiary rhetoric with irresolute action, bringing Republicans all the political costs of a hardline position without actually taking one.  Again and again he put his own interests above those of the causes he championed in public.

...Each week we see the same traits that weakened Republicans from 1995 through 1998: I’d vote for Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform; Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform is radical right-wing social engineering; I apologize for saying that, and no one should quote what I said because I was wrong; actually, what I said was right all along but nobody understood me.  I helped defeat Communism; anyone who made money in the ’80s and ’90s owes me; I’m like Reagan and Thatcher.  Local community boards should decide what to do with illegal immigrants.  Freddie Mac paid me all that money to tell them how stupid they were.  Enough.

The list is far from exhaustive even of his blarney from the last couple months.  Enough, indeed!

What the Frack?

This week in ‘environmental science’, from The Fiscal Times:

Environmental Protection Agency Strikes Gas!  That should have been the headline last week that instead ran as ‘EPA says fracking may be polluting groundwater’.  Here’s the story: the EPA says tests it conducted in Pavillion, Wyoming ‘indicate that ground water in the aquifer contains compounds likely associated with gas production practices, including hydraulic fracturing.’  However, it turns out that the EPA drilled two monitoring wells to some 900 feet — much deeper than water wells which are usually at about 300 feet — and indeed found hydrocarbons.  In short, they drilled into the natural gas reservoir that has long attracted industry producers.  It may the single most productive moment in EPA history.

Sigh.

Ann Coulter's Dreams

According to Ann Coulter, ‘[O]f the available candidates, Romney is by far the most conservative, tied with Michele Bachmann.’

Um, no.  Considering only economic issues, Ron Paul is far more conservative than either Bachmann or Romney; Mrs. Bachmann is quite willing to spend our money on her (conservative) social agenda and we all know Romney's history as governor of Massachusetts, regarding which he refuses to admit error (!).  But in the big picture, Bachmann is clearly the most conservative; Romney is what passes for conservative in most of New England (oy); Newt is a self-absorbed, peevish,  unreliable (to put it mildly) weathervane with truly bizarre ideas (Mirrors in space to light highways?  Really?); Perry is a Bush-like ‘compassionate conservative’ — which is to say he can be relied on to spend, spend, spend — who can't stop shooting himself in the foot; and the rest are either raving, bat-shit nuts on foreign policy (Paul) or completely squishy on pretty much everything.

I wonder: What's John Bolton planning to do for the next four years, and what would he do about the economy in general and fiscal policy in specific?  Here's a hint: Cut spending, cut taxes, cut regulation.  You're welcome.

Quote of the Day: Mickey Mouse

If Franklin Roosevelt was like a bottle of champagne, according to Winston Churchill, Gingrich is like a snort of helium. — Rich Lowry

Kyoto, RIP

Canada is out:

For Canada, the cost of either meeting its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, or failing to do so, was too much to bear.

On Monday, the country became the first signatory of the landmark climate treaty to back out of the deal, citing the huge potential cost of legally binding commitments.

Confirming the move, environment minister Peter Kent said to meet its obligations under the accord Canada would have to take every single vehicle off its roads.

‘Every car, truck, ATV, tractor, ambulance, police car’, he elaborated in a media briefing, before giving another equally unpalatable option of closing down the country's entire farming and agricultural sector and cutting heat to every home, building and factory.

For some, such a retreat to pre-industrial oblivion is the point; we're hurting Gaia, and what right do we have?

Quote of the Day: As Plain as the Nose on His Face

We should all envy Newt Gingrich’s vitality that he has been capable of such youthful indiscretions in his mid to late 60s. — Rich Lowry

Seriously, is it really that easy to forget what a clown Newt is? 

A Lot Like Christmas

This'll bring a tear to your eyes:

CHICAGO (CBS) — If you’re a stingy, Scroogey type at Christmas, the Admiral Theatre has an incentive for you to change your ways.  Yes, that Admiral Theatre.  Beginning Monday and continuing through Saturday, the Admiral is offering a free lap dance to anyone who donates an unused, unwrapped toy.

In Minneapolis, a similar program is advertised as ‘Toys for Tatas’.

 

Welcome to La-La Land

Joe Manchin is introduced to budgeting, Washington-style:

I think we've found the problem....

Side-Effects

The pharmaceutical ad warns that one should seek medical attention in the case of ‘vivid and unusual dreams’.  Er, does this include the ones involving Gwyneth Paltrow, Lucy Liu, and a six-pack of Reddi-wip?

I'm just checking.

Hey, Dummy!

The phrase ‘one-year anniversary’ is redundant and ‘one-month anniversary’ is idiocy.  Anniversaries happen annually (see how that works?): The one-year memorial is the ‘first anniversary’, the ‘second anniversary’ happens a year after that, etc.

Thank you for your attention.

Cutting-Edge Israeli Technology

From The Dubious Times:

TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israelis are developing an airport security device that eliminates the privacy concerns that come with full-body scanners.  It's an armored booth you step into that will not X-ray you but will detonate any explosive device you may have on your person.

Israel sees this as a win-win situation for everyone, with none of this crap about racial profiling.  It will also eliminate the costs of long and expensive trials.

You're in the airport terminal and you hear a muffled explosion.  Shortly thereafter, an announcement:  ‘Attention to all standby passengers, El Al is proud to announce a seat available on flight 670 to London.  Shalom!’

Stupid Headline of the Day: Where am I?

From Drudge:

Voyager 1 about to leave solar system, enter Milky Way...

Ack!  Drudge is referring to this story, which is headlined:

Nasa's Voyager 1 in 'cosmic purgatory' on verge of entering Milky Way

Er, no, still wrong.  Maybe this will help:

That's us, spinning around a tiny yellow star in a remote arm of an inconsequential spiral galaxy called the Milky Way.  (Well, OK: It's not inconsequential to us!)  V-GER Voyager isn't leaving the Solar System and entering the Milky Way; it's leaving the Solar System (our solar system) to explore other parts of the Milky Way.