The Trial of Tony Blair: Well, I saw it, and I can't say I was overwhelmed. The actors, particularly the Blogmuse, were terrific (saying "Phoebe Nicholls was superb" is like saying "water is wet," or "the San Antonio Spurs are spirit-crushingly dull"), but the story itself left a lot to be desired. If you intend to make the case that Blair, Bush, Cheney et al., should be held accountable before a legal tribunal for the mendacity in which they took their countries to war, a case which I wholeheartedly endorse, it might make more sense not to make your "villain" the only person in the movie who acts out of a sense of principal and conviction, nor to invest everyone who advocates putting him on trial as motivated only by cynicism. I suppose the filmmakers might respond by saying that the only way a fairy tale notion that a Western leader could actually face what has traditionally been "victor's justice" is for his erstwhile allies to believe that political expediency leaves them with no other choice, but it doesn't do the cause of international law any good when its advocates are portrayed as a bunch of conniving a-holes, and the process itself as little more than a formality before a guilty verdict is imposed.

I also had the impression that a lot of the film had been cut out for its American debut, on BBC America. Like ESPN Classic, BBC America is a cable channel that is inexplicably bad; other than its news broadcasts in the early morning, and the occasional showings of "Little Britain," its programming leaves a lot to be desired. I have the impression that PBS gets dibs on all the really good programs from the U.K., while BBC America gets stuck with reruns of "Footballers' Wives," "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" or what it aired tonight, which ironically wasn't even shown on the BBC in Great Britain, but was instead on the cable off-shoot of Channel Four, a competing network. If BBC America is an attempt to convince Americans that the vast majority of British television is stale and schlocky fare, it is succeeding beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

The CW on the final episode has gone from WTF? to Brilliantly ambiguous !! to Tony got whacked, and now it seems to be settling back down to the second reaction. Since the most important message any work of art can express is not what the artist intends, but what the audience perceives (which is why "Born in the U.S.A." will always be an upbeat patriotic fight song, not an anti-war jeremiad), let me give my two cents on how the Sopranos ended last Sunday.

As in every TV show, there is an invisible character at the table munching onion rings with Carmela and A.J.: the viewer. Since the beginning, we have been living vicariously through this mob family (both Tony's crew and, of course, his blood family), and we have had even better luck than Tony Soprano, who never went to jail and survived a bullet to his gut. We may have been taken by surprise on occasion, and there are some missing pieces we've never been able to sort out, like the whereabouts of that Russian, or who raped Dr. Melfi, but we've always escaped unscathed.

In that final scene, our luck ran out. Bobby Bacala told Tony at the beginning of the season that you probably never hear the shot that kills you, a clue that others have taken to mean that the sudden ending Sunday was the final moment of Tony Soprano's life; after all, didn't he flashback to that scene at the end of the penultimate episode. I agree that this was a clue, but not the heavyhanded one the consensus has taken it to be.

It is our perception that suddenly goes black at the diner. The scene is not shot through the eyes of Tony, or any of his family, but from our eyes (we even see Meadow trying to parallel park across the street, a vantage that is denied Tony). When the screen went black, and Journey's chorus was stilled, it was the viewer that was confused, just as a person shot in the brain must feel in the bewildering milliseconds before death. David Chase has allowed us to indulge our dark fantasies about living within the underworld, only to show us in the final moments that no one gets out alive.

We got whacked last Sunday. Probably by the guy in the Members Only jacket.

Like a seven-year old on Xmas Eve, I impatiently await the return of Phoebe Nicholls to American TV, in a little over 24 hours. In the meantime, here's a bit of musical sherbet to cleanse the pallet:

On why likudniks and neocons are privately celebrating Hamas' victory in Gaza, here.

Spurs win one-in-a-row for fourth time in decade: Does anyone still follow the NBA?

In spite of writing a book decrying organized religion and scoffing at the faith of believers, Christopher Hitchens ends up proving the existence of God after all, here.

Tom Lantos, for many years the principal foe in the Democratic caucus to recognizing that the "unfortunate human tragedy" that befell the Armenian people ninety years ago amounted to genocide, has gone all lieberman on Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac. His beef: that those ungrateful little weasels didn't back our adventure in Iraq. No doubt Sarkozy and Merkel are just chomping at the bit to involve ourselves in Bush's next big crusade in Iran.

Two-thirds support citizenship avenue for illegal immigrants, according to the latest poll. Since racists and xenophobes have historically been more passionate about their cause than the more-inclusive majority (hell, it took a century to pass a civil rights bill worthy of its name), the backers of the current bill before the Senate still have their work cut out for them, but it is reassuring to know the scare tactics about "terrorists sneaking across the border" and the Mezkins plotting La Reconquista aren't working, even among Republicans. Too many people outside the South know immigrants whove worked their asses off in this country, or known of those who've volunteered to fight and die in the Persian Gulf, and thereby proved themselves to be more worthy of being an "American" than the a-holes who whine about "illegals."

From a another era, a long, long time ago:

You don't have to be a Richard Dawkins or a Christopher Hitchens to find this disturbing. Belief in creationist superstition is a bipartisan problem, too: while Republicans overwhelmingly reject the theory of evolution, Democrats only back the cause of science and reason in the field of paleontology by a slim majority. Yahooism didn't make the U.S. a great power or a beacon of freedom in the world, and it won't defeat terrorism, prevent pandemics, end poverty, or make sure the levees don't get topped in New Orleans the next time a hurricane hits.

UPDATE [6/12/2007]: Steve Benen disagrees, noting that independents back reason over mythology by an even greater margin than Democrats. I would note that considering how divided Dems are from GOPs on the war in Iraq, abortion, tax cutting, and even whether torture is an acceptable tactic in interrogation, the fact that 40% of the Democrats polled believe in the literal truth of Genesis shows how relatively unified the parties are on this issue. If a Republican can get 40% of the Democratic vote (or an "independent," like Joe Lieberman, they win.

Not surprisingly, Abu Gonz still has a friend in the Senate Democratic caucus. If Lieberman were the Democratic nominee for President, and Ahnold was the Republican, how would you vote?

Is nothing sacred?

The Final Episode: WTF?

UPDATE: Now that I've had a couple of hours to meditate, I've concluded that it was an ingenious ending, one that will have creators of Sopranos fan fiction going into overdrive. Was Tony whacked at that moment? Will he be indicted? Does he take over the Leotardo crew, or will there be further bloodshed? Sets up the long-rumored movie nicely....

UPDATE [6/11/07]: "Horror Davidowitz" spots a number of blatant lefty attacks subliminally hidden in last night's episode, concerning the nefarious Osamamobile.

What does this Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Vietnamese children running from a napalm attack...












...have in common with this picture, taken last week of a notorious celebutante headed back to prison?














Answer here.

And now, for your Sunday morning viewing pleasure:

Plotinus Strikes Again:

asymmetric – adjective

1. Immoral; unjust; unfair; illegal. 2. Cowardly.

USAGE: The detainee's suicide was an act of asymmetric warfare, the Gitmo commander said. (Source)

COMMENT: The word is typically applied to unjust acts, tactics and strategies in war. Examples include international treaties, judicial processes, and terrorism (see highlighted portion of U.S. National Security Strategy).

On the established principle that "might makes right," the weaker actor in war, faced by overwhelming force, cannot but act immorally – that is, unless that actor is principled and accepts his slaughter (or torture). Critics claim morality couldn't possibly sanction such an advantage to one side. S uch critics fall into confusion by assuming morality is symmetrical.

And he's got a lot more of those....

Something to think about when watching Wimbledon, or for that matter, any other professional sporting event:

The point of the exercise was to identify exactly when a seasoned player knew where the ball would head. (Damian) Farrow established five possible windows: First, he blackened the goggles just as the ball's flight path over the net was determined; second, as the server's racket made contact with the ball. Then he gave players less and less information — cutting off the image when the server's arm was cocked, as it was being drawn back, and, finally, at the very start of the toss.

Not surprisingly, receivers were better at guessing the ball's direction the later their vision cut out. But the results also revealed something more interesting. Graphs of the amateurs' reactions showed that they could anticipate where the ball would go only if they witnessed the racket making contact with it. Experts knew what would happen roughly a third of a second earlier, when the server's cocked arm was still unfolding.

What happened in that fraction of a second? A lot, Farrow reasoned. Up to a point, he theorized, the direction of a serve was fundamentally unpredictable: Whatever clues existed weren't ones that an opposing player could discern. By the time the ball had been hit, on the other hand, even a novice could make a plausible guess at its trajectory. What separated the pros from everyone else was the ability to pull directional information out of the early stages of a swing and therefore to predict a split second earlier where to head. This fraction of time is game- changing. A serve going 120 miles per hour takes approximately a third of a second to travel the 60 feet from baseline to service line. This means that an expert, who doesn't have to wait until contact, has twice as long to move, plant his feet, and swing.

This discovery fit with something Farrow and other tennis researchers had already suspected: Reflex speed is not the key factor in returning a serve. "People have tested casual players and experts, and their reaction times are essentially the same," Farrow says. The fact that Roger Federer can drill back a 140-mile-per-hour serve is partly a matter of muscle control. But it's also about processing subtle visual cues to predict where the ball will go and get to the right spot.

Dr. Farrow is an Australian sports scientist who is a pioneer in the study of "field sense," the ability, long thought to be innate, of an athlete to perceive his surroundings during a game. Read the whole thing.

Regnery Bulletin: Congrats to Matt Welch, who's putting ink to paper on a soon-t0-be-published blockbuster about a certain straight-talkin' Senator from the Southwest.

I have never understood the mentality of the sub-human thug that delights in the death of another. All I can say is that the wheels of justice grind slowly, and exceedingly fine.

Something I'd like to do more of: Attend "Eating Liberally" get-togethers. A good cross-section of the local lefty blogosphere, including Kevin Drum, David Ehrenstein, Mark Kleiman, and "Cactus" from Angry Bear, at Farmer's Market in Hollywood, where the food is excellent and the conversation sparkles.

Remember when Monica Goodling's lawyer was shedding crocodile tears over Congress' insistance that his client, who was then still an employee of the Justice Department, testify under oath about her actions in the firing of several U.S. Attorneys? Well apparently, when the issue is really important, like, say, whether baseball players have the right to remain silent before the Commissioner's Officer over their alleged use of anabolic steroids, he's much more flexible in his devotion to the Fifth Amendment:

The lawyer who headed baseball's investigation of Pete Rose wants commissioner Bud Selig to suspend players who don't co-operate with the steroids probe spearheaded by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell.

John Dowd said Selig should try to overturn the 1980 arbitration decision in a case involving Ferguson Jenkins, a native of Chatham, Ont. The ruling upheld a player's right to refuse to answer questions from baseball management if it jeopardized his legal position in a criminal case.

"I tell you what, it's time that stuff was challenged," Dowd said Tuesday in a telephone interview during which he criticized the players' union. "They already have too much power on this whole (steroids) issue anyway, in my opinion. And they've abused it. It's really disgraceful what the union's done here."

Dowd's a real piece of work. He was also the hired gun for Senator John McCain awhile back, defending him during his Keating Five problems, and when McCain's wife was under legal investigation for an addiction to pain killers, induced a prosecutor in Arizona to begin a baseless extortion inquiry into her chief accuser. And he was also co-counsel defending Vernon Jordan during the Clinton Impeachment inquiry. So the man does have an understanding of who the Bill of Rights is supposed to protect: powerful D.C. insiders and government officials.

Steve Gilliard, one of the most passionate voices in the blogosphere about sports and politics, has passed away at the ridiculuously young age of 41. Whether you agreed or disagreed with him, or more likely, agreed and disagreed with him at the same time, you always knew where he stood, as he was utterly fearless and unapologetic in expressing his views. His News Blog was a daily habit for me for the past few years; much like Pauline Kael, I would read him just to find out how he was going to piss me off on whatever the big story of the day was, even though our political views were similar. Anyone who has checked out his site recently knows about his health problems, and his prolonged, agonizing stay at the hospital was the stuff of nightmares. My condolences to his wife Jen, his mother, and the rest of his family. Blogging won't be as much fun without him.

Presented, without passion, prejudice or editorial comment:

It's safe to say that bashing Andrew Sullivan has become a stale endeavor on lefty blogs, evidence in large part by this piece, a brief history of the term "enhanced interrogation techniques." He concludes with this devastating point:

Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

(h/t via Plotinus) Again, it seems a pity that a workable international tribunal doesn't exist to put the reigning junta on trial after 2009.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today: That we celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Beatles' fifth-best album.

If this is what we can expect from the Republican front-runnner, it will be hard not to be overconfident next year.

Blue-eyed soul meets the Osmonds:



There's a local oldies station, KRTH, that plays this song three or four times a day, seemingly, and I still haven't found who the core audience they're trying to appeal to here. But I guess that's why the IPod was invented.

A Farthing for Your Thoughts: Judging by her notoriety, as well as the fact that it's incredibly easy to win a libel suit in the U.K. (even Roman Polanski was able to win there), being awarded less than $6 thousand in damages seems almost insulting. I doubt Keira paid her attorneys less than that to prosecute the action in the first place.

Desperately trying to distract the attention of a rapt nation from today's volcano eruption, and/or the Stanley Cup Final starting on Monday (Go Ducks !!!) Mickey Kaus is now doing Immigration Reform 24-7, and asks:

Remember when the respectable, bipartisan policy types routinely tarred those who favored welfare reform as bigots who scapegoated blacks and the poor? That didn't really work for them in the end, did it?

Actually, for a long time, "welfare" really was a wedge issue, geared at scapegoating blacks and the poor, but mainly blacks; it was the focus of Reagan's 1976 challenge to Gerald Ford, and it was clear at the time that his intentions weren't to end a program that created stifling dependency and encouraged out-of-wedlock children, but to speak code to the party base. Since there wasn't any substance to his arguments, attempts to reform welfare went nowhere during Reagan's Presidency, in spite of his popularity. It wasn't until those who were sincere about the issue disassociated themselves from the bigots that welfare reform gained traction, and it wasn't until a sympathetic Democratic President got elected that any change in the system became possible.

I suspect that's why conservative opponents of illegal immigration are losing this argument. There may be a liberal argument for tightening the borders, based on protectionist sentiment or on opposition to using low-wage, low-skill immigrant workers to flatten wages, but it's the Tancredos and the Malkins of the world who get the attention. Having them on your side is not unlike having the Trotskyites at ANSWER be the ones organizing anti-war rallies. Sometimes you have to police your own ranks to purge the people who support your cause for the wrong reasons.

One of the pet gripes when I first started blogging five years ago was the lousy nature of ESPN Classic, so I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the station has actually gotten worse since then. It's gone from unimportant, unmemorable college games it aired because it happened to have them in the vault, to replays of bowling, poker, NASCAR and Arliss reruns. Jeez, the same people own ABC, so you'd think it wouldn't be a problem to show old Monday Night Footballs or Cosell-announced title fights, but apparently the folks there would rather own the distinction of broadcasting the world's worst cable channel.

USADA v. Landis: Reading between the lines, it's a fair bet to say that the prosecution has pretty much given up trying to justify the "science" behind the positive doping tests, or legitimate the procedures used by the various labs, and are instead trying to prove that because Floyd Landis' manager made a cruel phone call to a possibly unhinged witness, the 2006 Tour de France champion must have been on the juice. The LA Times headline, "Landis Asked About Wardrobe" (a reference about how a good deal of the cross-ex yesterday centered, swear to Kobe, on the color of tie Landis chose to wear last week), on a day when the prosecution had an opportunity to challenge his statements on direct about how he had never doped, but failed to do so, says about all we need to know about who has made the more persuasive case.

Joementum: Why does anyone take this story seriously? His departure won't switch control of the Senate (that was decided when the Senate voted to organize back in January, and it can't be undone unless the GOP can invoke cloture on a potential filibuster), and he rarely votes with the party when it counts anyways. He won office as an independent, so there's no moral claim that Democrats have on him to stay onboard. Reid should tell him to get lost, and not have the door hit his ass on the way out.

Some decent songs here, but frankly, Sugar Ray, Oasis, the Proclaimers and the Rembrandts were about as "alt-rock" as the Spice Girls. Sadly, Matthew Y.'s taste in music is as lily white as Augusta National.

More daily wisdom, from The Terrorist's Dictionary:

testify – verb

1. To fail to recall; forget.
2. To misremember.
3. To smile blandly.

A good, Kenneth Anger-esque primer on l'Affaire Pellicano, in of all places, the New York Times, here. Since his arrest on wiretapping charges a few years back, the raging juggernaut associated with the world's most infamous private detective was supposed to grind Hollywood's Power Elite into dirt, and it obviously hasn't turned out that way; the only people caught in the backdraft so far have been some peripheral figures, like a director and a couple of entertainment lawyers. No Bert Fields, no Michael Ovitz, no Tom Cruise; it's a bunch of nobodies, as far as the public can tell, which is far more interested in the trial of Phil Spector.

It's as if James McCord and John Dean had fallen on their swords in 1973, rather than bringing down the President. But the story is there, and this piece allows the outsider a chance to unlock the code, to see how the various pieces fit together, even if law enforcement can't figure out a way yet to build viable prosecutions against important Hollywood muckety-mucks. The recent revelation that Pellicano did a bit of work for producer Stephen Bing several years ago may revitalize the story, though, particularly as it may shift attention to work the detective allegedly did for certain friends of the Bing a few years before.

The article is co-written by Allison Hope Weiner, with whom I went to law school back in the day, and whose appearance on a panel before the LA Press Club on the "stalkerazzi" caused quite a buzz among the bloggers and freelancers in attendance (and it's already on YouTube; as far as her moot courts skills are concerned, she hasn't lost an inch off her fastball). It's a sign of how disinterested the local paper of record is in entertainment journalism that she's doing freelance work for the New York Times, rather than owning the same beat for the LA Times, but there you have it. She writes about The Business the way Bill James writes about baseball, with a take-no-prisoners approach and an unwillingness to be accept as gospel whatever cliche or cant is peddled. Back when she wrote for Entertainment Weekly, she was the sort of writer who would take a Hollywood "truism", like "all actresses are unemployable after they reach forty," or "bad reviews make no difference at the box office," and actually examine whether it's true. She'd make a kick-ass blogger, if she wanted to get her fingernails dirty and join the fray.

Wankers: It's not hard to see why so much of the punditocracy holds the blogosphere in such low esteem. From a Daily Kos post this morning, on what it described as a "love letter" by The Voice of the People to the Commander in Chief:

But Broder's admiration for these two men knows no bounds. They are "driven by the nightmare" of terrorist attacks that "armed both men with a conviction" to battle evil-doers. Blair spoke "brave words," while Bush "spoke from his heart." All this in the face of knowing the "awful price" that Blair has paid for standing with Bush, and even as Bush is "humiliated daily," by the press. The humanity.

And Bush is not only the victim of a vicious press corps:

...but also by the incompetence of his own appointees.

Why, the way Bush's adversaries act, you'd think that Bush was responsible for appointing the incompetent jackasses.

Broder finishes this love letter by saying:

History will record that both of them saw the threat to the West posed by terrorism and responded courageously.

Only if Broder writes the history books.

And here's how Broder actually concluded said "love letter":

While the American president cannot be forced out of office against his will, he can be humiliated daily -- not only by his political adversaries but also by the incompetence of his own appointees. While standing with Blair, Bush was asked about recent disclosures of the wayward actions of two of them, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and he responded lamely to both questions. The fragile structure of his administration makes Bush's bragging sound delusional. He told reporters that he and Blair have "filled a lot of space together," because "we have had a unique ability to speak in terms that help design common strategies and tactics to achieve big objectives."

History will record that both of them saw the threat to the West posed by terrorism and responded courageously. The wisdom of their policy and the conduct of their governments are not likely to be judged as highly. (Emphasis added)

It shouldn't be that hard to do a hatchet piece on David Broder without having to wilfully take his comments out of context. Most "love letters" I've read usually don't accuse the subject of being "delusional," or note that the subject "lamely" responded to tough questions. And they certainly never conclude with a judgment that history will not hold their actions in high regard.

Why can't the kids today perform in v-neck sweaters?

I had a brief conversation with another blogger about a month ago. He used to post frequently back in the day, but in recent years, his work imposed a greater and greater burden on him, to the point where he'd post perhaps once a month. He told me that he often would be inspired to write something, only to go to Kevin Drum's site and find that he'd already written the same thing. I know what that feeling's like.

Two opinions on the death yesterday of Jerry Falwell:

The Reverend Jerry Falwell and I were arch enemies for fifteen years. We became involved in a lawsuit concerning First Amendment rights and Hustler magazine. Without question, this was my most important battle – the l988 Hustler Magazine, Inc., v. Jerry Falwell case, where after millions of dollars and much deliberation, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in my favor.

My mother always told me that no matter how much you dislike a person, when you meet them face to face you will find characteristics about them that you like. Jerry Falwell was a perfect example of that. I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends. He would visit me in California and we would debate together on college campuses. I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling.

The most important result of our relationship was the landmark decision from the Supreme Court that made parody protected speech, and the fact that much of what we see on television and hear on the radio today is a direct result of my having won that now famous case which Falwell played such an important role in.

--Larry Flynt

The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing, that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called reverend.

Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September the 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God's punishment if they hadn't got some kind of clerical qualification?

People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup.

The whole consideration of this -- of this horrible little person is offensive to very, very many of us who have some regard for truth and for morality, and who think that ethics do not require that lies be told to children by evil old men, that we're -- we're not told that people who believe like Falwell will be snatched up into heaven, where I'm glad to see he skipped the rapture, was found on the floor of his office, while the rest of us go to hell.

--Christopher Hitchens (both links via Hit and Run)

John Ashcroft, the Voice of Reason, Defender of Civil Liberties, Face of Time, Picture of Life, etc., blah blah blah...whodathunkit?

President Bush intervened in March 2004 to avert a crisis over the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program after Attorney General John Ashcroft, Director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I. and other senior Justice Department aides all threatened to resign, a former deputy attorney general testified Tuesday.

Mr. Bush quelled the revolt over the program’s legality by allowing it to continue without Justice Department approval, also directing department officials to take the necessary steps to bring it into compliance with the law, according to Congressional testimony by the former deputy attorney general, James B. Comey.

(snip)

Mr. Comey, the former No. 2 official in the Justice Department, said the crisis began when he refused to sign a presidential order reauthorizing the program, which allowed monitoring of international telephone calls and e-mail of people inside the United States who were suspected of having terrorist ties. He said he made his decision after the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, based on an extensive review, concluded that the program did not comply with the law. At the time, Mr. Comey was acting attorney general because Mr. Ashcroft had been hospitalized for emergency gall bladder surgery.

(snip)

Mr. Comey said that on the evening of March 10, 2004, Mr. Gonzales and Andrew H. Card Jr., then Mr. Bush’s chief of staff, tried to bypass him by secretly visiting Mr. Ashcroft. Mr. Ashcroft was extremely ill and disoriented, Mr. Comey said, and his wife had forbidden any visitors.

Mr. Comey said that when a top aide to Mr. Ashcroft alerted him about the pending visit, he ordered his driver to rush him to George Washington University Hospital with emergency lights flashing and a siren blaring, to intercept the pair. They were seeking his signature because authority for the program was to expire the next day.

Mr. Comey said he phoned Mr. Mueller, who agreed to meet him at the hospital. Once there, Mr. Comey said he “literally ran up the stairs.” At his request, Mr. Mueller ordered the F.B.I. agents on Mr. Ashcroft’s security detail not to evict Mr. Comey from the room if Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card objected to his presence.

Mr. Comey said he arrived first in the darkened room, in time to brief Mr. Ashcroft, who he said seemed barely conscious. Before Mr. Ashcroft became ill, Mr. Comey said the two men had talked and agreed that the program should not be renewed.

When the White House officials appeared minutes later, Mr. Gonzales began to explain to Mr. Ashcroft why they were there. Mr. Comey said Mr. Ashcroft rose weakly from his hospital bed, but in strong and unequivocal terms, refused to approve the eavesdropping program.

“I was angry,” Mr. Comey told the committee. “I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me. I thought he had conducted himself in a way that demonstrated a strength I had never seen before, but still I thought it was improper.”

Let the Eagle soar....

One of the funniest books of the last ten years, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, is set to become a movie, with Simon Pegg (of Shaun of the Dead fame) slated to play former English expatriate Toby Young. On his blog, Young also announced that Kirsten Dunst will co-star (it's not yet on IMBD), although it's unclear whether she will play his ex-girlfriend, future wife, or Sophie Dahl, or, even better, a character that won't require her to use an English accent (and further checking confirms the latter).

"The Terrorist's Dictionary," a blog straight out of Brooklyn that figures to give Ambrose Bierce a run for his money, looks to be a keeper. Some examples:

stem cell - noun

1. a human being.
2. a person.

COMMENT: Many people falsely believe that an embryo is a person. In fact, a mere four-to-five-day-old blastocyst contains 50 to 150 stem cells (read: persons), rendering abortion murder with special circumstances.


habeas corpus - noun

Law - a writ requiring a suspect to be brought before a court, so that his torture may be legally sanctioned.

[Origin: Latin: lit., "have the body (so that it may be tortured)."]

COMMENT: As the Latin of the phrase suggests, this is an outmoded legal protocol that has fallen into disuse. The courts have ceded their authority over torture as a violation of the constitutional separation of powers and as a wartime inefficiency.

Killing Sparrows with Howlitzers: Easily the worst contribution the blogosphere has made to our culture has been its obsessive media bashing. Fact checking and exposing the latent biases of the Beltway Punditocracy is cool and all that, but do we really need essay-length jeremiads about how Thomas Edsall is completely, totally, massively stupid for stating that David Broder is the "Voice of the People.," as if that's what he literally meant. It's fine and dandy to "work the ref" in service of a higher ideological end, but even Bobby Knight does some real coaching on the side.

I always thought the "Oil-for-Food Scandal" was one that was hyped by the right wing to provide an ex post facto rationalization for their little adventure in Iraq, but little did I know that the real scandal was "Oil-for-Rice."

The oft-excellent Avedon Carol has a good post tying together Girls Gone Wild, predatory student loan practices, and Justice Kennedy's recent decision on late-term abortions, that's worth reading.

Like many other conservatives, Mickey Kaus has made a bugbear out of teachers' unions, without providing much in the way of support for why he feels breaking the union will bring about a paradise on earth for those concerned about education. Matthew Yglesias calls his bluff, and Kaus, rather than putting up, instead refers people to a blog called Eduwonk, which from my brief review seems to blame much of the woes of our educational system on the quality of teachers, but while critical of the unions, doesn't seem to provide much in the way of evidence that the union representing teachers is responsible for the quality shortfall or any other defects in our educational system.

I probably have more close friends who are public school teachers than I have lawyer pals, so what I write is clearly anecdotal, but from what I have seen, they work 24-7 at their jobs. There may have been a time when teachers everywhere earned poverty-level incomes, and the only people who could possible want the jobs were either affluent zealots who felt they had a calling or those who weren't bright enough to get into graduate school, but that isn't really true anymore, in large part thanks to the economic gains the unions have helped teachers make. Insofar as I've seen no evidence that the educational system is better in states where there are no collective bargaining entities negotiating teacher pay and working conditions, I fail to see how "busting" the unions will solve all of the problems.

Moreover, it would seem that the public is somewhat disinclined to blame the teachers for the perceived failings of the educational system. The favorite conservative policy, school vouchers, has been poorly received whenever it's appeared on the ballot, even though there's always some deep pocket ready to finance any initiative that would hurt teachers' unions. It's hard to see how vouchers constitute a "solution," in any event, since the public will inevitably demand that the tax dollars going to private schools be supervised, most likely by the same bureaucrats who run the public schools (it also raises the obvious question that if private or parochial schools are doing so well, why do they need vouchers in the first place?).

This seems to be an old argument, anyway. Was there ever such an Edenic Age when the public didn't think it had a problem with the educational system? You can boil down whatever gripes you might have with public schools, and toss up whatever solutions you might think are workable, and in the end, the only really important factor is whether a student is motivated to learn. That requires good teaching, to be sure, but infinitely more are the values that are stressed at home. A child who is raised to believe that a good education is important and is valued by his parent(s) will be more likely to succeed in school, no matter how rotten his teachers are and no matter how much power the unions have.

Who said Free Trade doesn't benefit everyone:

This article is a few years old, but I thought it worth sharing: it's the story of William Zantzinger, one of the subjects of this song:

The Joys of Netflix: Sinking a presidential campaign is now only a mouseclick away...but lets hope the MSM is more aggressive this time than they were in 2000, when they let this story slip through the cracks.

A good example of why you should never combine drinking with blogging, here. Apparently, the writer believes that the reason the Lakers didn't win the NBA Championship this season is that Kobe is a lazy n*****.

The Netroots, in a nutshell:

The most significant fact of American political life over the last three decades is that there is a conservative movement and there has not been a liberal movement. Liberalism, to be sure, has all the component parts that conservatism has: think tanks, lobbying groups, grassroots activists, and public intellectuals. But those individual components, unlike their counterparts on the conservative side, do not see one another as formal allies and don't consciously act in concert.If you asked a Heritage Foundation fellow or an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal how his work fits into the movement, he would immediately understand that you meant the conservative movement. If you asked the same question of a Brookings Institute fellow or a New York Times editorial writer, he would have no idea what you were talking about.

The netroots have begun to change all that. Its members are intensely aware of their connection to each other and their place in relation to the Democratic Party. The word "movement" itself--once rare among mainstream liberals--is a regular feature of their discourse. They call themselves "the people-powered movement," or "the progressive movement," or, often, simply "the movement."

--Jon Chait, TNR [May 1, 2007] Chait touches on all the reasons I feel uncomfortable with "the movement," even as I appreciate the gains it has helped progressive politics make in the last few years: the tendency towards group-think and the party line, the vapid sloganeering, the disinclination to discuss (or write about) public policy, and the vilification of those with whom you disagree (and TalkLeft has a good critique of some of Chait's specific points).

Perhaps the most telling observation Chait makes is that the netroots are the mirror image of the propoganda machine that brought the right wing to power (minus, of course, a liberal version of Fox News). We forget at our peril that it isn't simply Republican policies that have damaged America, both internally and in our world standing, but also its destructive philosophy of governing and campaigning. There is nothing to prevent the Democratic Party from becoming as corrupted and discredited as the Republicans unless they repudiate the destructive behavior that has become rewarded by the system in the last twenty years. Instead, the netroots seem more inclined to emulate that behavior.

My nephew, Charles Ruderman, attended his first Dodger game last night, and it seems he had a good time...







Pics compliments of his Uncle Jimmy...the mess on his face can be blamed on the Dodgers, who beat Arizona, 2-1.

Today is the fourth anniversary of the official end to the war in Iraq, the date that America "accomplished" its "mission." Where will you be commemorating Uno de Mayo?

Kevin Drum points out something that has been obvious to me for a few years: kids today are just smarter than I was at the same age. Or, they have earned a heckuva lot more credentials in the academic sphere than I had when I got accepted to Reed College twenty-six years ago(with Berkeley as my "safety school," available when I divorced myself from all Portland ties after my freshman term). I was a B-student at Harvard High, with good-but-not-spectacular SAT's, letters in track and cross country, and special distinction ranking in forensics. My community involvement was minimal, to say the least; other than volunteering on a couple of political campaigns, there wasn't anything worth mentioning.

Today, those credentials would barely get me into a state college, at best. Of course, I would be more motivated to improve my qualifications were I a teen today, but the spectre of incurring close to a half million dollars in student loan debt might have soured my ambitions in that regard. In any event, the closest I could get to Berkeley now is watching the Golden Bears at 14-Below.

Presented, without editorial comment:



Speaking of which, last week we heard the heartbreaking news that Natalie Nelson is engaged. And not to some rich fratboy a-hole, neither, but to SC's starting center last season, who was just picked up in the second round by Carolina. Congrats to the lucky couple, and CRAP !!!

Brendan Nyhan has a good post up about the history of Republican efforts to paint anti-war efforts by the Democrats as objectively pro-terrorist and "appeasement." Since public opinion on the war has steadily and consistently moved in favor of the Democrats since the war against Iraq began back in March, 2003, it's safe to say that the rhetoric has failed. There's nothing like a failed occupation to cast hawkishness with a jaundiced eye.

We have to be very careful not to draw the wrong lessons from Iraq. Obviously, what we've learned is that diplomacy, alliance-building and multilateralism are good things, and that a true ally is sometimes the country that says no; if we had listened to Chirac's warnings, many thousands of people would be alive today, and U.S. power and influence might not be at a low ebb. But the reason why "appeasement" had such a negative connotation for so long was that a perfectly reasonable policy of negotiating with an adversary was taken to a ridiculous extreme in 1938. Appeasement hasn't always been a dirty word: it was, after all, British policy toward the United States from 1815 to 1917, and it's been American policy towards China since the mid-70's, although we don't call it that. In the aftermath of World War I, when tens of millions perished fighting a war for objectives that simply weren't worth it, it may have seemed a smart idea to be a little more careful the next time a territorially-ambitious despot came to power in Europe.

The problem, of course, was that Hitler was a madman who acted irrationally, who wanted a war with the rest of the world, and no amount of negotiations was going to appease him. Had Britain and France reacted to Hitler the same way it reacted to the Kaiser, or in the alternative, if they had appeased the Kaiser in 1914, a lot of unnecessary bloodshed could have been avoided. And America cannot be afraid of defending itself and its allies by using force in the future, just because the Bushies were so incompetent and reckless in fighting Iraq.

Schilling for Your Thoughts: It was REAL BLOOD, he insists.

Paul Begala presents a marvelous defense of the Man from Searchlight:

Mr. Broder has moved with ease from the elite comfort of the University of Chicago to the smug confines of Arlington, Virginia. And so he looks down at a man who rose from among the hard-rock miners and hard-luck hookers of Searchlight, Nevada to be the most consequential senator of his time. While David Broder was thinking great thoughts at his elite university, Harry Reid was working his way through Utah State. While David Broder was pontificating, Harry Reid was working his way through law school as a cop on Capitol Hill.

(snip)

Perhaps Broder's bed-wetting tantrum against Reid was spurred by the certain knowledge that while Harry Reid has been telling hard truths, Mr. Broder has been falling hard for transparent lies.

Whereas Reid called for Donald Rumsfeld's dismissal long ago, Broder vouched for Rummy, writing, "Overall, Rumsfeld left me with the impression that he is aware of the risks of war with Iraq, but confident they can be handled."

While Reid has called for investigations into allegations Karl Rove broke the law, Broder vouches for Rove: "Let me disclose my own bias in this matter. I like Karl Rove.... I have eaten quail at his table and admired the splendid Hill Country landscape from the porch of [Rove's] historic cabin...." Mighty cozy in Karl's cabin, isn't it, Mr. Broder?

I doubt very seriously that Harry Reid is bothered by Broder's comments. Reid has faced down Vegas mobsters who planted a bomb in his family car. He's unlikely to be intimidated by George W. Bush's housebroken lap-dog.

The Broder column referenced above is here. Atrios would be doing us all a favor if he just retired the banal "Wanker of the Day" designation and replaced it with an "honor" based on the bootlicking sycophancy of David "He came in here and he trashed the place, and it's not his place" Broder.

Christine: Tucked away inconspicuously, on page 2 of the local sports section this morning, was perhaps the most interesting article published in the LA Times in some time, and certainly one of the most courageous ever published in a mainstream newspaper.

Is the "G" hard or soft? Best blogtitle of the day....

Rather than whine about how mean MoDo and the others are to our candidates, here's an effective counter to the "$400 Haircut" attack that Edwards should have used.

For some reason, I've always associated this performance with the Monterey Pop Festival in '67 (I believe they backed Otis Redding), even though I'm sure that it's more likely some German TV broadcast from that period. Awesome playing by all concerned:

Not knowing the context of the rant, I studiously avoided commenting on the Baldwin Controversy last week. But I think there's one aspect that seems to have been ignored, and that is the fact that Alec Baldwin didn't say any of the things on that recording to his eleven-year old daughter. He said it to an answering machine on a telephone that "belonged" to his daughter, but was really under the custody and control of his ex-wife.

It's a big difference. People often feel liberated when they reach an answering service or voicemail rather than the intended recipient of their phone call, more free to vent their frustrations, talk smack or yell things that they would never say to the other party during a phone call, much less say face-to-face. Among my friends, this is known as the Tessmer Effect, after a mutual friend with a tendency for leaving long, often barely coherent messages on our voicemails replete with rage and poetry. Our friend can often go up to ten minutes without seeming to catch his breath on one of these messages, and I've always wondered why he didn't direct that energy into stand-up. Or blogging, for that matter.

Of course, we're middle-aged adults rather than eleven-year olds; whatever psychological scars we may have received from abusive language was generated years before. But it does lead to the other aspect of this controversy that hasn't received play, which is that there's no persuasive evidence yet that the little girl ever heard any of this message until it was leaked by her mom to the tabloids. She's eleven. She doesn't "own" anything, much less a cellphone.

The attack on Baldwin (and it's a fair one) is that you normally don't say those things to a grown woman, much less a pre-teen, but the context of the phone call (him not being able to have contact with his daughter in the middle of a bitter divorce) makes it seem like he was directing his comments at his ex, and not necessarily his little girl. And considering that Kim Basinger's first response to the message was not to go to court to get a restraining order against this madman, but to leak the recording to TMZ, his rage at that target might be understandable.

UPDATE: Maybe he should have taken these words of wisdom to heart:

Because her Harajuku mascots have needs too !!!

Sad to say, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the Bush Administration can't even get something like remembering the genocide of the Armenian people right. Referring to Congressional passage of a resolution urging the President to use the "G-word" when observing the anniversary of the mass slaughter bewteen 1915 and 1923, Matt Welch notes:

President Bush won't say "genocide" on Tuesday. In the words of Condoleezza Rice, the administration's position is that Turks and Armenians both need to "get over their past" without American help.

But this issue won't go away. Watching Rice's linguistic contortions in response to harsh congressional interrogation by Schiff, who has become the Armenians' great House champion, is profoundly dispiriting; it makes one embarrassed to be American. Of all issues subject to realpolitik compromises, mass slaughter of a national minority surely should rank at the bottom of the list.

Hitler reportedly said, just before invading Poland, "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" It's a chilling reminder that forgetting is the first step in enabling future genocides. Yet Hitler was eventually proved wrong. No temporal power is strong enough to erase the eternal resonance of truth.

In fairness, it should be noted that Clinton was just as chickenhearted when it came to appeasing the Turkish government on this issue, but Bush and his allies were never reluctant to use the term "genocide" when attempting to goad the nation into war in Iraq, and certainly haven't urged Jews to "get over" past crimes against them.

From Kausfiles:

Alert emailer S.F. asks if NBC, when it broadcast baseball games, refused to show video of fans running onto the field. Most broadcasters don't, on the grounds that it would only encourage more attention-seeking disruptions. ... If that's NBC's practice, why is it OK in order to prevent the disruption of a baseball game but not to prevent mass murder? Just asking.

It's hard to say what NBC's policy is to fans disrupting sporting events, since the only team sports they cover now are ice hockey (where the fans are walled off from the rink) and Sunday night football, a sport that for obvious reasons (ie., Mike Curtis, 1971) doesn't have a lot of fans running onto the field during games. I think the policy of not covering renegade fans is one that Vin Scully and the Dodgers have tried to follow, but I don't watch enough baseball nowadays to know about the networks.

In any event, is that analogy apt? People who run on the field are drunks who are trying to get attention, so denying them attention is the whole point. Obviously, if a fan were to run out on the field and attack a player, that would be covered, as it was several years ago when two White Sox fans attacked a Kansas City Royal first base coach, or when fans ran out on the court in Auburn Hills two years ago to go after assorted Indiana Pacers. Cho was a crazy person trying to rationalize mass murder; it's not like he was trying to get on the evening news by walking across campus naked. Murdering thirty-two people was his attention-grabbing act; the tapes he sent to NBC merely capitalized on that notoriety. And I dare anyone to watch his "manifesto" and think that he's anything other than pathetic.

Besides which, I always thought Kaus was in the forefront of the critique of modern journalism as being too staid and bland. Isn't this exactly the sort of media coverage that attracts an audience, in that it treats the audience as adults, and is not worried about whether what it's doing is "responsible" or "Pulitzer-worthy." Does he want NBC News to start acting like the LA Times?

Grooooooovy, man:



But who is the middle-aged white guy behind him?

32 Martyrs:

The massacre at Virginia Tech is a logical consequence of that reality. Are we sorry that 32 people, most of them no older than 22, were killed? Of course. But we aren't so sorry that we intend to do anything to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. We value the lives of Mary Read, Ryan Clark, Leslie Sherman, and all the rest, but we value more their killer's untrammeled right to purchase not only a Glock 19 and a Walther P22, but also the ammunition clips that, according to the April 18 Washington Post, would have been impossible to obtain legally had Congress not allowed President Clinton's assault-weapon ban to expire three years ago. "If Democratic leaders cannot muster the votes to reinstate the full assault weapons ban," report Jonathan Weisman and Jeffrey Birnbaum in the April 18 Washington Post, "some suggested that at least the clip-capacity portion could be passed." That would do roughly as much good as banning all gun sales to guys named "Cho." Washington's lack of interest in gun control is so pronounced that the city scarcely took notice when a United States senator (coincidentally, from Virginia) hinted publicly that he does not obey the District's handgun ban when he drives in from Virginia.

There are people in this country today who, one day in the future, will be gunned down by psychopaths like Cho Seung Hui. Future presidents will be assassinated, if the past is any guide, and probably the odd pop star, too. We could spare these lives—some of them, at least—by making it difficult or impossible to acquire a handgun in the United States. But we choose not to. Tough luck, whoever you are.

--Timothy Noah, Slate (4/18/2007)

I'm not quite that pessimistic. Although I don't think an outright ban would survive judicial scrutiny under the Second Amendment, certainly reasonable restrictions on the sale and possession of weapons can, just as reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on speech survive muster under the First. And as long as we're fighting a War on Terrorism, a winning political rationale is available, if gun control advocates wish to use it. There isn't much difference between the delusional loner responsible for this atrocity and the type of person who straps on a bomb in a subway or flies an airplane into a skyscraper. You may not be able to completely stop them, but you can contain their damage, if you have the will to do so.

How a NaziPundit "joke" gets mainstreamed.

Aftermath: Patterico's right about this. Of course, 30 students would still be alive if the campus had been shut down, just as 9/11 would not have been so devastating if the FAA had immediately grounded air traffic as soon as the first flight disappeared from their radar. That's not the point, of course. The real issue is whether shutting down an entire campus (and a college campus is really akin to a mid-size city) is the necessary move when a murder has taken place.

Old standards never go out of style:

33 Dead at V.P.I.: This story just staggers the mind. If you want some deeper understanding of this tragedy, it's a good idea to stay away from the comments sections of blogs. All you'll get are paranoid fantasies ("it's a distraction from Gonzalez testifying," or "the media are covering up the fact that the shooter is an Arab") and political score-settling.

What he said:

Let me submit to you the problem we have today is not that we didn’t listen enough to people like the Washington Post. It’s that we listened too much. They endorsed going to war in the first place. They helped drive the drumbeat that drove almost 2/3 of the people in this chamber to vote for that misguided, ill-advised war. So I make no apology if the moral sensibilities of some people on this floor, or the editorial writers of The Washington Post are offended because they don’t like the specific language contained in our benchmarks or in our timelines. What matters in the end is not what the specific language is. What matters is whether or not we produce a product today that puts pressure on this Administration and sends a message to Iraq, to the Iraqi politicians that we’re going to end the permanent long-term dead end babysitting service.

--Rep. David Obey (D-WI), 3/16/2007, in response to this op-ed in this morning's Post.

Jimmy Durante...and Creed from "The Office," together again:

Warts and All:

I do not know Imus off the air and have no idea whether he is a good person, any more than I know whether Jerry Lewis, another entertainer who raises millions for sick children, is a good person. But as a listener and sometime guest, I didn’t judge Imus to be a bigot. Perhaps I felt this way in part because Imus vehemently inveighed against racism in real life, most recently in decrying the political ads in last year’s Senate campaign linking a black Tennessee congressman, Harold Ford, to white women. Perhaps I gave Imus a pass because the insults were almost always aimed at people in the public eye, whether politicians, celebrities or journalists — targets with the forums to defend themselves.

And perhaps I was kidding myself. What Imus said about the Rutgers team landed differently, not least because his slur was aimed at young women who had no standing in the world of celebrity, and who had done nothing in public except behave as exemplary student athletes. The spectacle of a media star verbally assaulting them, and with a creepy, dismissive laugh, as if the whole thing were merely a disposable joke, was ugly. You couldn’t watch it without feeling that some kind of crime had been committed. That was true even before the world met his victims. So while I still don’t know whether Imus is a bigot, there was an inhuman contempt in the moment that sounded like hate to me. You can see it and hear it in the video clip in a way that isn’t conveyed by his words alone.

Does that mean he should be silenced? The Rutgers team pointedly never asked for that, and I don’t think the punishment fits the crime. First, as a longtime Imus listener rather than someone who tuned in for the first time last week, I heard not only hate in his wisecrack but also honesty in his repeated vows to learn from it. Second, as a free-speech near-absolutist, I don’t believe that even Mel Gibson, to me an unambiguous anti-Semite, should be deprived of his right to say whatever the hell he wants to say. The answer to his free speech is more free speech — mine and yours. Let Bill O’Reilly talk about “wetbacks” or Rush Limbaugh accuse Michael J. Fox of exaggerating his Parkinson’s symptoms, and let the rest of us answer back.

Liberals are kidding themselves if they think the Imus firing won’t have a potentially chilling effect on comics who push the line. Let’s not forget that Bill Maher, an Imus defender last week, was dropped by FedEx, Sears, ABC affiliates and eventually ABC itself after he broke the P.C. code of 9/11. Conservatives are kidding themselves if they think the Imus execution won’t impede Ann Coulter’s nasty invective on the public airwaves. As Al Franken pointed out to Larry King on Wednesday night, CNN harbors Glenn Beck, who has insinuated that the first Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, is a terrorist (and who has also declared that “faggot” is nothing more than “a naughty name”). Will Time Warner and its advertisers be called to account? Already in the Imus aftermath, the born-again blogger Tom DeLay has called for the firing of Rosie O’Donnell because of her “hateful” views on Chinese-Americans, conservative Christians and President Bush.

--Frank Rich, 4/15/2007, N.Y. Times

Read the whole thing; it's an honest examination of why pundits like him found the Imus Show to be so appealing, as well as a critical look at the potential long-term ramifications of its cancellation. Atrios thought it worthy of his coveted "Wanker of the Day" award, which is ironic, since lefty bloggers have not exactly been averse to using (or ignoring the use of) racist and sexist invective to attack their targets, whether they be Condaleeza Rice, Michelle Malkin, "Wonkette," or Roman Catholics.

But Rich misses the important point about what happened last week. If it was only Al Sharpton who publicly expressed outrage, the story would have died a quick death, since no one takes Sharpton seriously. It was when Imus' advertisers began pulling out that his fate was sealed. These periodic bloodlettings all occur in a specific context, which makes the ritualistic purging of the bad influence inevitable. Al Campanis wasn't just fired because he made some stupid remarks about black quarterbacking skills and swimming ability; he was canned because over the preceding five years, he had made a series of boneheaded trades (getting almost nothing for Lopes, Cey and Baker, and swapping Sid Fernandez, Jeffrey Leonard, John Franco, Sid Bream and Candy Maldonado for nothing) that had put the team in the second division by the 1987 season. Jimmy the Greek was axed after a series of embarassing incidents, his racial comments only being the last straw.

And in Imus' case, it wasn't the bigotry, which is pretty much par for the course over much of talk radio, that got him in trouble. Imus has underachieved for years in his timeslot, and it was only his ability to attract well-to-do, high end listeners with his political guests that has kept his show on the air. Once it became clear that no viable Democrat could appear on his show, the attractiveness of his show to advertisers disappeared. Cancelling his show became a no-brainer, and it's why Rush Limbaugh doesn't have to worry about being exiled to satellite radio anytime soon.

Next on Imus: Ho dies.

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.

LA Times Liberated !!: So it would seem, as the Tribune Corp. announces plans to go private. I don't know much about Sam Zell, but I figure any person will be better than the corporate management that sabotaged a once-great newspaper. Hopefully, this will be the start of a national trend, where the gross inefficiencies of publicly-traded corporate ownership of newspapers will be replaced by private control. The sports section might even be worth reading again.