Moe Lane

The confirmation of judges to the United States Supreme Court is a process that is exclusively the responsibility of the United States Senate.  A candidate (like Ms. Sotomayor) is brought before the Senate Judiciary Committee for evaluation/grilling: once she makes it out of the committee (it’s generally considered a good idea to have at least one crossover vote), she is then voted on by the full Senate.  At no time is the House of Representatives involved.

Why am I mentioning this?  Because apparently the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee doesn’t know any of this.  Doubleplusundead reported that this was the title of a press release*:

Senator Cornyn Votes NO on Sotomayor – Where is Rep. Pete Sessions?

To which FamousDC responded:

In the House.
Not voting on a Supreme Court nominee.
They only do that in the Senate.

I’m sure that we all hope that the DCCC has taken this lesson in elementary civics to heart, and earnestly that the offending press release in question is at least not lonely, wherever it’s been memory-holed*.  Then again, it’s probably keeping company* with all those press releases on how well the DCCC is recruiting this cycle, so at least it has friends* in this, its time of sudden darkness.

Moe Lane

PS: Of course the NRCC would love to hear from you.

*Allegedly.

Crossposted to RedState.

(Via Protein Wisdom) Pound for pound, they’re some of the deadliest birds out there.  Particularly if they’ve been bred and beaten to the Death Ring as these birds have been.  It’s like Dobermans: they’re sweet, wonderful dogs, but you can brutalize them into being vicious killers.  It’s the same with canaries, except that they’re easier to warp.  You don’t hear about it, but large enough flocks have even been known to kill men; that’s why the traditional name for a group of canaries is a rabble. (more…)

They’ll be “bonding,” instead. No, really: that was the word used. Which leads me to the image of Clinton writing down five things that she likes about Geithner while Chu makes Napolitano a personalized clipboard.  And everybody’s had their shoes taken away at the beginning, and nobody’s allowed to watch TV, and the people who smoke will have to listen to the happy-shiny lecturing of the people who won’t, and then THE RAIN FITFULLY STARTS… sorry.  Got sucked into a bad place in my memories there for a second.

Cabinet Will ‘Retreat’ to Blair House to Hand Out Report Cards

Aides promise that there will be no trust circles or “sharing” exercises, but President Obama’s Cabinet will gather Friday and Saturday to mark the administration’s sixth month in office with a high-level retreat.

The gathering, to be held at Blair House and the White House Conference Center, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the executive mansion, will feature all 22 Cabinet-rank members for a series of policy presentations, several officials familiar with the planning said Tuesday.

They’ll also get graded on their performance – presumably, on a curve – which would suggest an interesting reality show of let-them-compete-in-weird-contests-to-keep-their-departments, but that idea’s been not only done to death; it’s been done to death, the corpse reanimated as a zombie, and the zombie then beaten to pieces with a stick.  So no, we might as well just go to the gladiatorial combat and be done with it.

40 quatloos on the Secretary of State! (more…)

People are trying to get the perfect title for this story:

Patrizia D’Addario: Silvio Berlusconi offered me a seat in European Parliament

The prostitute at the centre of the sex scandal involving Silvio Berlusconi says that the Italian Prime Minister offered her a seat in the European Parliament.

…but I don’t know. There’s a certain simplicity to that, right there.  Besides, I’m sure that if I actually read Italian I’d be rolling on the ground in response to these.

Moe Lane

PS: Chintzy so-and-so.

*Classical reference.

Crossposted to RedState.

(Via Drudge) I’d find this funny, except that somebody’s going to lose their job over it…

MTA Operator Let Kid Drive Train, Rider Claims

Driving a subway is so easy an 8-year-old could do it – and one straphanger claims that’s who he saw behind the controls of his train.

Jules Cattie, a 41-year-old lawyer who lives on the East Side, was shocked when he saw a young child at the helm, next to the driver, of his Lexington Avenue express train Sunday, according to the Daily News. And the MTA says it’s launched “a vigorous and thorough investigation” into the allegation.

…which is a shame (says the son of a railroad man). Letting your kid take a supervised shot at the greatest train set in the world is in fact a tradition; it’s kind of a working class thing – one that’s kind of linked to the old days, when child followed parent into a particular job – so it’s not really something that you can explain properly. I mean, I know perfectly well why this woman was showing her son how to operate the subway car; but expressing why to somebody who don’t get it seems to be frankly a bit of a chore, seeing that I’m not personally involved.

The hair isn’t quite right:

And maybe not the nose, although that one looks better than the previous one.

Via @mkhammer; this was presumably done by AMC to get some buzz going about Season 3 of Mad Men.

This Jim Geraghty post about the travails of Rep. Waxman, and this Leon Wolf one about the travails of Senators Dodd and Conrad, reminded me that I wanted to point two things out to our Democratic colleagues.

1. If you hadn’t ignored the fact that two of your Senators were involved in long-standing real estate shenanigans, you might not be facing a situation where one of them is currently destroying the narrative of health care rationing;
2. If you hadn’t encouraged the Speaker of the House to encourage putting in charge of the Energy committee somebody who hates seeing more of it produced, the equivocators on that committee might not be so frantic about having to vote for a health care rationing bill.

Karma.  It’s what’s for dinner.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

A recession is when you can’t lose your house.

A depression is when Tim Geithner can’t lose his house, either (via @jeffemanuel).

And a recovery is when President Obama loses his.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

If you operate your own website and are following the Crowley/Gates brouhaha, you’ve probably noticed an abrupt switch in your comments section; one side went from being pro-Gates (reasonable enough) to virulently anti-Crowley within the course of several hours. It’s kind of fascinating to watch that happen; presumably the tapes and testimony coming available is acting as an irritant.

Or possibly it was this video:

(more…)

A Boy Named Sue (Live), Johnny Cash

I always liked the ending to this.

Well.

On the one hand, the science is… wonky. Environmental damage severe enough to push the population down to barely-sustainable levels and apparently kill all visible plant matter, and yet beeswax is plentiful enough for candles. Or else tallow, which is of course another word for ‘fat,’ which is not exactly something that you literally burn away in poor-nutrition environments. And they’re all dressed incredibly badly for folks able to root through six billion people’s worth of abandoned wealth.

On the other hand, Denzell Washington and Gary Oldman.

On the gripping hand, it’s just a movie.

Moe Lane

I quibble at Megan McArdle’s adjective: ‘funny’ works ever so much better.  After all, the GOP is the one laughing at the way that Specter’s race is shaping up: we have gone from a situation where Specter, Toomey, and a liberal Democrat would conspire together to create a vicious primary fight and a weakened Specter to a situation where… Specter, Toomey, and a liberal Democrat would conspire together to create a vicious primary fight and a weakened Specter.  Only now the vicious primary fight is happening all the way over there, from our point of view; and I suspect that Megan may not be entirely checked out on Pennsylvania politics.  Pat Toomey may not have been a shoo-in; but a Republican who can hold a D+2 district that went for Kerry & Gore should be taken seriously in a general election, especially since Toomey’s going to have a more or less easy primary of it.

And the best part?  The Democrats were so looking forward to having somebody who was one of them in this race.  Alas, the comfort of the Democratic party’s leadership overrides the needs of their base.  Again.

You can donate to Pat Toomey here, by the way.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.