Who Knew?

Charles Krauthammer thinks it's dangerous when "concern for certain ethnicities override[s] justice."

Congratulations to the Nation's first diabetic-American Supreme Court nominee.

And she's not one of those "Type 2" losers, either.

John Yoo's Legal Reasoning

The Bush Administration's criminal attorney attempts to smear Judge Sotomayor, and reveals his own intellectual incompetence:

Obama had some truly outstanding legal intellectuals and judges to choose from — Cass Sunstein, Elena Kagan, and Diane Wood come immediately to mind. The White House chose a judge distinguished from the other members of that list only by her race....

Sotomayor's record on the bench, at first glance, appears undistinguished. She will not bring to the table the firepower that many liberal academics are asking for. There are no opinions that suggest she would change the direction of constitutional law as have Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, or Robert Bork and Richard Posner on the appeals courts. Liberals have missed their chance to put on the Court an intellectual leader who will bring about a progressive revolution in the law.

So Yoo thinks the only distinction between Judge Sotomayor and the other outstanding legal intellectuals and judges he names is her race, but he also thinks she's not an intellectual leader or a distinguished jurist. What a maroon!

Those enhanced interrogations in Karl Rove's private chambers must have done some permanent damage to poor Johnny's brain.

The Case Against Rosen

Several federal court clerks, all of whom are Democrats and all of whom want President Obama to appoint a judicial star of the highest intellectual caliber, have separately confirmed to me that New Republic legal affairs editor Jeffrey Rosen was seen this morning wandering around without pants, throwing feces at passersby and shouting into his cell phone headset, "tell the Chief Justice that it's Jeff Rosen calling... Rosen! R-O-S-E-N!"

None of the clerks would comment on whether Rosen's exposed anus was "especially clean and tight."

I haven't researched whether these reports are consistent with Rosen's character, or true, nor have I spoken with anyone who hasn't seen Rosen flinging excrement. However, I'm certain that the anonymous witnesses were not motivated by sour grapes or ideological disagreement, so the reports must be true.

So the Republicans' rebranding strategy was to hire Maureen Dowd to write their webads.

The assassination fantasy is the most disturbing and least commented-upon aspect, and undoubtedly the one that gets the wingnuts most excited.

People Unclear On The Concept

Bristol Palin bashes her child, and all parents, and apparently has not met her mom's mythical gay friends:

"If girls realized the consequences of sex, nobody would be having sex," says Bristol, sitting at her parents' lakeside patio table. "Trust me. Nobody."

Roger Presents: 1,500 Word Theater

Maureen Dowd: "no, we were going back and forth discussing the topic of the column and he made this point and i thought it was a good one and wanted to weave it in; i just didn't realize it was josh marshall's point, and we've now given him credit my friend didn't want to be quoted; but of course i would have been happy to give credit to another writer, as i often do."

Act I; Scene I:

Dowd: Boy, that Dick Cheney sure is something! I've got a lot to say about torture in my next column, but I just can't find the exact words.

Friend: The way I see it, Maureen, more and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Dowd: That's an interesting point. Hold on. Let me write that down. Could you repeat that?

Friend: Sure. More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Dowd: Got it. May I use that? With credit, of course.

Friend: Of course. But I don't want any credit.

Dowd: I'd be happy to...

Friend: Thanks, but I'd rather you didn't quote me.

Dowd: You're the best. I can't tell you how much this helps me.

There are many ways to play this scene. If I'm Friend, what's my motivation?

Exactly what kind of services do you perform for Drudge, Andrew?

Women of Mass Deception

Who believes MoDo's explanation that she lifted the following sentence from Josh Marshall innocently, via a friend who just happened to quote Josh verbatim, and who Ol' Dowdy then quoted verbatim with attributing the quote to the friend, and with one minor change?

More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

As Dowdy works for The New York Times, shouldn't the management there be gearing up for an investigation like the one involving Jayson Blair? A peek into Dowd's computers at her palatial D.C. estate is in order, to search for evidence as to whether Dowd did visit TPM when she was on deadline. The paper should also check Dowd's phone records for urgent calls to the sacrificial friend minutes after she learned she had been nailed. And exactly who is the schmuck who's willing to take a fall for the biggest embarassment to the times since Bill Kristol and Judy Miller fouled the roost?

MoDo has friends in high places at the paper and the Beltway incest crowd, so she'll likely get the same level of protection as Miller got before the stench became unbearable. But I'd love to see Judy back in the Times once more, blasting Dowd in the same way Dowd blasted Judy before it was revealed they're a geriatric version of Patty and Cathy Lane.

Further proof of Dowd's guilty mind is that (with apologies to Josh) the sentence is not one of Josh's finest prose efforts. If Dowd was borrowing the idea from a friend, wouldn't she rewrite the sentence so it sounded better?

I hope someone steps up on this and doesn't let Dowd slide with her bullshit once again.

Update: One suggestion for the friend is Leon Weasel-tee-yay, friend of Scooter Libby. Maybe a stint in rehab will save Dowd.

Shorter Jeffrey Rosen

Did you know they don't have the internet in the United Kingdom?

Have You No Decency, At Long Last?

If you oppose marriage equality, someone -- and we're not sure exactly who -- will stop at nothing to ruin your life. Take it from someone whose well-concealed identity as a tedious scold was made public by radical homosexualists:

First, note what the movement of tolerance does when you simply exercise your rights to free speech, taking a position they disagree with. They go personal. They go for the jugular. They try to embarrass and humiliate you. They will stop at nothing not only to discredit but absolutely destroy you [sic].

In this case, they will find pictures of you modeling lingerie and tell people you had objects surgically inserted into your breasts. In fact, since they will stop at nothing, they presumably will do this even if you haven't posed in lingerie or gotten breast implants. They will make you write ungrammatical sentences. They are that evil.

Speaking as someone who supports marriage equality, I don't care if you've posed in your underwear or had breast implants. Speaking as someone who's sane, I wouldn't pose in my underwear or get breast implants if the revelation of those facts would embarrass me, humiliate me and/or destroy me. If you're going to do that kind of thing, don't claim you're a victim of character assassination when it is revealed that you've done that kind of thing.

K-Lo and her co-author seem to smell a big gay conspiracy behind Operation Destroy American Beauty, but they don't marshal any facts to place a smoking gun in the mitts of "the movement of tolerance." I don't know, nor do I care, who divulged the extremely uninteresting details of what-her-name's beautiful life, but such revelations happen to famous people -- and morons too -- regardless of their views on civil rights. Were John Edwards and that cable-teevee douchebag with the eight kids victims of the Gay Crusades as well? Only in the dankest recesses of K-Lo's barren bonce is Miss California a wall trophy for the gay mafia.

Goldcrapp

Of all the reasons John McCain had his ass handed to him last November, surely Michael Goldfarb's incompetence must be ranked somewhere in the low 700s. Still, Goldfarb's status as a first-rate cretin cannot be denied:

Yesterday THE WEEKLY STANDARD obtained a copy of Elena Kagan's senior thesis, written almost thirty years ago while an undergraduate at Princeton. The title of the thesis: "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933"

Goldie has blisters on his lips from reading through this tome in 24 hours, and has uncovered such subversive bon mots as these:

Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation’s established parties?

Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight one’s fellows than it is to battle an entrenched and powerful foe. Yet if the history of Local New York shows anything, it is that American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope.

Goldfarb hasn't yet reached the part where Kagan calls for show trials and the public execution of Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale for crimes against the workers, and the redistribution of mood rings from the oligarchy to the proletariat.

No One Is More Surprised Than Bob Dole

O.J. Simpson's choice for President in 1988 has died.

The locker room showers of this country are a little less integrated today. And presidental politics lost the finest double act this country had seen before McCain/Palin:

At a meeting of young Republicans in July, Mr. Dole remarked with barbed humor that "Kemp wants a business deduction for hair spray." Speaking to the same group, Mr. Kemp came back with the retort: "In a recent fire, Bob Dole's library burned down. Both books were lost. And he hadn't even finished coloring one of them."

Shorter Creamin' John Hawkins (See Post Below)

Huh? Whut Arkansas Project, Swift Boat Veterans, Jerome Corsi, Regenery Publishing, Fox Networks, Sinclair Broadcasting, Washington Times, NewsMax, WorldNetDaily, Rupert Murdoch, National Review, American Spectator, David Horowitz, Matt Drudge, Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, Floyd Brown, Roger Stone, David Bossie, Stanley Kurtz, Alan Keyes, conservative talk radio, Pajamas Media and conservative blogosphere? Did whut? (drools)

They Bring a Knife to a Fight, We Piss On Ourselves

Hold him back! Hold him back!

"Professional blogger" John Hawkins is hoppin' mad. He wants to defeat the treacherous leftists, but those pussified conservatives won't let him win. If only he had a cunning plan:

Instead of continuing to complain, here’s a better idea. Why don’t conservatives do opposition research on the journalists endlessly running stories about Bristol Palin and Joe the Plumber? Have they ever been arrested? Whom do they own property with? Have they ever been paid to do a speech for someone and then run a favorable news story about him? Certainly Keith Olbermann’s personal life is just as newsworthy as Joe the Plumber's, and the details of Maureen Dowd's life are just as noteworthy as those of Bristol Palin — are they not?

Maureen Dowd's personal life? That's your plan? Maybe John Tierney has some sepia-toned daguerreotypes he can sell you, and a stereopticon to view them on.

Here's another example. On college campuses, conservative speakers often need bodyguards to give a speech. Conservatives are shouted down and attacked — and nothing serious ever seems to happen to the fascists who engage in these thuggish tactics. So why shouldn't conservative groups do the exact same thing to every liberal speaker who comes to the college? Go on stage, lock arms, and shout him down — then sue the university if they're given so much as an hour's detention more than the protesting liberal students.

Detention? But what will you do if they take away your hall pass?

Are you sick of feeling like you need to familiarize yourself with porn terms just to understand what they’re saying about the tea parties on MSNBC or CNN? Then start filing obscenity complaints with the FCC.

Careful, Johnny. You never know who might get swept up in your Rosie Palmer Raids.

But there are some things that even John Hawkins won't do for love

Obviously, we don’t have to become liars — in fact, even setting aside the ethics of it, it's better for our credibility if we don't.

You can't kill a corpse, Johnny.

How much credit did John McCain get for refusing to talk about Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama’s lack of patriotism? How many times was George Bush — a moderate on domestic issues who bent over backwards to create a “new tone” — accused of being Hitler? How many times has Fox News, which makes more of an effort to be balanced than any of the other networks and all the biggest newspapers in America, been accused of being as biased as Rush Limbaugh?

How many fingers am I holding up, Johnny?

Now that John Hawkins has proposed all these ideas, he has an obligation to carry them out. John owes us a report on Keith Olbermann's sex life by next week and, above all, he must storm the stage when President Obama speaks at Notre Dame on the 17th. Otherwise, he's all talk and no action.

Sully Rewrites His Story

Sully Joe Sullivan is still backpedaling on his glowing endorsement of the bullshit 20/20 piece saying that Matthew Shepherd's murder wasn't motivated by anti-gay bigotry. In 2009, he writes:

I agree, but then I've never been on the gay left and have always opposed these laws. There is a real debate about the 20/20 story and, for the sake of balance, you can read the critiques of it here and here.

Of course, Sully didn't think there was a "real debate" of the 20/20 piece back in 2004, when he was pimping it -- and his tangential role in it:

Now ABC News has prepared an important, thorough and debunking review of what happened. I was tangentially involved in the documentary, but wasn't privy to its most closely held findings. I have a feeling it will reveal how dangerous it is to rest an entire political argument on one incident, whose details were always murky and subsequently turned into myth.

How does one have a real debate a "thorough" "debunking"? How does one debate a false story, a "myth."

Perhaps Sully should explain his acknowledged role in the piece, rather than pretending to be a neutral observer, as he now does. Why doesn't Sully acknowledge his involvement any more? If there's a real debate about the piece, Sully should explain what he knows -- both about the reporting and the murder itself -- so we can judge the piece on all the facts.

Sully's fallback position is that Shepherd murder isn't the issue, what he really cares about is the injustice of hate crimes laws. (Of course, he could have made that argument without endorsing shoddy reporting or attacking his political enemies -- if he wasn't Sully, that is.) But he still doesn't understand hate crimes legislation.

At least this go round he doesn't claim that such laws create protected classes or punish thought. But he still argues that there's no reason to treat variations of the same criminal act differently based on intent. Yes, the victim of of a revenge killing which started as a bar fight or a lovers' quarrel is just as dead as the victim of a fatal gay-bashing. And both killers deserve harsh punishment. But if we want to discourage things which should be stopped -- and can be stopped -- by imposition of harsher penalties, it makes sense to impose a greater punishment on those things. There are criminal laws which impose greater penalties for killing on-duty police officers, or federal workers, or children. There are criminal laws which impose greater punishment for defrauding or abusing the elderly or incompetent, because they are more vulnerable to abuse. These laws reflect not only value judgments, but also practical judgments as to most effective way to deter certain types of crimes. For Sullivan to pretend that hate crimes laws are some aberrant deviation from what exists in our present legal system is simply absurd.