A rare early clip of the Ken Layne-Matt Welch musical juggernaut:

Taking a closer look at a closer look at those breasts: Prof. Althouse returns to Bloggingheads, attempts to explain what happened last month when she went all David O. Russell on the show.

95% of Children Abused by Their Parents: A shocking study, if true....

The Lebowski Anthem:



I don't know what any of it means, but apparently bluescreen effects have been around for ages.

Disrespecting the Bing: At long last, an interesting story (ie., one not involving arcana about obscure Hollywood attorneys) about the Pellicano Affair: Marlborough girl (Class of '81) sets her gunsights on Harvard boy (Class of '82). Hilarity ensues.*

*Ms. Weiner and Mr. Bing were both in my (Harvard, Class of '81) social circle back in the day. Oh, the parties we attended, the laughs we all shared, the crank phone calls we exchanged....

Media Matters steps away from its normal programming of counting the number of liberals are on Sunday talk shows to do something worthwhile: a damning indictment of other popular radio shock jocks and call-in hosts whose past behavior makes Imus seem like an altar boy.

Racist Quote of the Day:

Oh oh....looks like a pouty Brown Sugar is going to ask Daddy to buy her another pair of Ferragamos. Or invade another country.

--TBogg (referencing a photo of the Secretary of State).

There's an amusing debate going on in the blogosphere over whether Imus is a liberal or a conservative, as if that makes any difference. If "nappy-headed ho" comes out of your mouth when you describe a female college basketball player, you're a racist. If making a lewd reference to a black prostitute is what comes to mind when you need to dis Condaleeza Rice, you're a racist. And it doesn't matter if the nazis over at LGF are pretending to take offense.

The first national poll since the 2008 campaign began to gel shows Clinton leading Obama by 10, Giuliani over a fading John McCain by a 2-1 margin, but Obama the only candidate to lead all comers from the other party. There is a national preference that a Democrat win, but no one has much of a lead in head-to-head matchups. Still, it's hard not to be optimistic if you're a Democrat.

UPDATE [4/12]: More results from that poll (via Yglesias). Edwards also trails Hillary, but does better head-to-head against Republicans. For some reason, Mitt Romney is included in this poll, even though he trails badly within his party, and he's getting walloped by each of the Democrats. Mitt may be the Phil Gramm or Howard Dean of this election, a candidate who raises a lot of money, has intense grass roots support, and is treated seriously by the national media, but proves a disaster before the electorate. Fred Thompson is not matched against Democrats in this poll, and he's the only potential Republican candidate that scares me.

I would be a lot more willing to stomp on the throats of Fineman, Carville, Oliphant, Begala, et al., for standing by their friend Don Imus, if I hadn't seen lefty bloggers do the exact same thing during l'Affaire Marcotte last month (interestingly, Marcotte's former boss, John Edwards, was one of the few Democrats who said he felt Imus was entitled to a second chance). Hell, I'd have done the same thing, if one of my friends was in the same position. There is a time for saying difficult truths to a person you care about, and there is a time to stand shoulder-to-shoulder against the onslaught.

It's human nature, and it doesn't matter if your friend or loved one is a racist, an anti-Semite, an anti-immigrant, or an anti-Catholic bigot (and yes, I have had friends and relatives who fit in each of those categories; I don't force potential friends to take political tests, I just want them to take that s*** somewhere else). If a person is truly your friend, your first instinct will be to deny that bigotry is what defines them, then attack their more outspoken opponents (as Imus' buddies are now doing with Sharpton, and Marcotte's allies did with Bill Donahue), even make farcical arguments that what they said is "satirical" or a "joke."

But Imus is not my friend. Calling the Rutgers players, "nappy-headed hos" wastn't an isolated incident, and each of his Beltway Friends knew that. If they wanted to be a true friend to him, to give their loyalty to him some meaning, they had plenty of opportunities in the past to sit him down and tell him that his shtick isn't acceptable, and that it will get him into a lot of trouble one day. But apparently, Carville, Oliphant and the others didn't.

UPDATE: MSNBC axes Imus.

There's a rumor going around that there having problems with the parking at Dodger Stadium.

Don Imus, in his own words.

UPDATE: More Imus "jokes," here:



[link via My Two Sense, who also has a clip of the Beltway's Favorite ShockJock using the other "N-word" last month]

I think Atrios is missing the point here. Sen. Bradley is talking about how the political system has become dysfunctional, how it can't accomplish anything, because it encourages polarization. Bipartisanship and compromise, which have become dirty words in the lefty blogosphere and with its evil twin, the Bush Administration, aren't simply an expedient way to get what you want enacted into law; they are the only ways to create permanent, lasting solutions to whatever afflicts society without bloodshed.

As we are now seeing in Washington, the only lasting thing that an ideologically polarized government produces is massive discontent, a backlash that undoes whatever temporary partisan advantage that accrued (it also helps that the Bushies went about systematically remaking government in as incompetent a way as possible). If Atrios wants the Democrats to pursue the same rovian tactics after the 2008 election, then he will be fated to see his party become as discredited as the Republicans are today.

Heroin junkies, and the crackwhores who love them:



Easily the most insipid three minutes of singer-supermodel self-indulgent excrudence since the days of Serge and Jane. (h/t via Shannon Collette)

From Matthew Yglesias, comes the Best Blogpost Title of the Year.

The world is introduced to another future scourge of the GOP....

Blog turns five today. Happy Easter.

If Karl Rove were to come to a complete stop, would Fred Hiatt's tongue break off?

Pete Rose must really be kicking himself he didn't grab this hired gun back in the summer of '89:

In the present circumstances, members of your Committee have already reached conclusions about the matter under investigation and the Deputy Attorney General has pointed the finger of blame at our client. These are precisely the kinds of circumstances in which even innocent persons are well advised to assert their right not to respond to questions. After all, when counseling our client, we must consider how others…may perceive the facts to be, notwithstanding that such perceptions may not be accurate.

Yeah, right...he even pulls out the "McCarthy Card," a clever distraction always useful for striking at aggressive inquisitors. The rest of the letter focuses on the real purpose, though, which is to plead with Chairman Conyers not to call his client before the House Judiciary Committee and have her actually assert the privilege, in public, under oath. Considering the import of this investigation, and the fact that his client remains on the job at the Justice Department even after she has stated her refusal to answer questions on the grounds that said answers might incriminate her, Dowd's frothing over the issue doesn't win him any sympathy points.

Trivial Pursuits: New York Magazine lists Out Mag's Fifty Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America. The closet most of these people have to walk out of is the one entitled "Who the F*** Are They?" I mean, who knew that "Chi Chi Larue," "Ingrid Sischy," "Lorie L. Jean," or "Irshad Manji" wielded "power", much less that they were gay?

The LA Times spotlights Gov. Schwartzenegger's practice of filling top state positions with friends and allies with whom he's had a past business relationship (link via Kevin Drum):

On the state chiropractic panel, friends of the governor face complaints that they're protecting the profession at the public's expense.

Board Secretary Franco Columbu, a chiropractor, was best man at the governor's wedding. Chairman Richard H. Tyler, the governor's former chiropractor, is another longtime associate; he greeted Schwarzenegger at the airport when the bodybuilder arrived in the U.S. in 1968.

As chairman, Tyler plays a major role in setting the board's agenda. Allegations that the board has abused its power were the focus of a three-hour hearing Wednesday in the Legislature. Lawmakers examined whether board members voted to endorse a chiropractic treatment because they wanted to protect a chiropractor facing criminal charges in San Joaquin County.

Mr. Columbu should be a familiar name to readers of this blog; besides being the governor's Best Man at his wedding to Maria Shriver, he was also his "business partner" and co-conspirator behind one of Ahnold's early scams in this country.