Moe Lane

On the decision not to subject New Yorkers to a terrorist show trial*:

“Obama and the Department of Justice need to get out there and push back very clearly with the public…Frankly, I thought New Yorkers were made of sterner stuff than this—traffic is going to be disrupted?” said Ken Gude of the liberal Center for American Progress.

Ken Gude lives in the Washington, DC area.

Moe Lane

PS: *I’m not the one who made this one of only two options, sorry.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) Actually, there are two reasons why the Left is going to be upset:

For weeks, the right has heckled Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for his plans to try the alleged 9/11 conspirators in New York City and his handling of the Christmas bombing plot suspect. Now the left is going to be upset: an upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations.

The first reason is, indeed, that their fever dream of seeing Yoo and Bybee in the dock – or even subject to disbarment – will die, choking.

The second reason is that ‘heckled’ is a poor choice of verb for what we did to Holder. ‘Overruled’ works so much better.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

(Via a number of people out there) I’m not upset because Education Secretary Arne Duncan said this about the effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans education policy:

Martin was quoted as saying: “What’s amazing is New Orleans was devastated because of Hurricane Katrina, but because everything was wiped out, in essence, you are building from ground zero to change the dynamics of education in that city.”

Duncan was quoted as replying: “It’s a fascinating one. I spent a lot of time in New Orleans, and this is a tough thing to say, but let me be really honest. I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that ‘we have to do better.’ And the progress that they’ve made in four years since the hurricane is unbelievable. They have a chance to create a phenomenal school district. Long way to go, but that — that city was not serious about its education. Those children were being desperately underserved prior, and the amount of progress and the amount of reform we’ve seen in a short amount of time has been absolutely amazing.”

…I’m angry because it’s true: it took a catastrophe to focus enough attention on New Orleans to make the local Democratic party’s tradition of malignant neglect too politically risky. The Republicans weren’t the ones who wrecked New Orleans’ schools in the first place; and if you expect us to be cheerful about the fact we’re doing well at cleaning up the mess that the Democrats made, well, don’t.

Moe Lane

PS: Yes, I to have noticed that a lot of people like to suddenly decide that partisanship in this sort of thing is unfair – once they realize that they’re on the wrong side of it.  Odd, no?

PPS: I see that my colleague Erick Erickson has raised a similar point.  But he’s slightly nicer about it.

IT IS ABOUT FREAKING TIME, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

Yes, yes, yes, I am being completely unreasonable: it’s a five buck expansion that’s all of three weeks late. But, dammit: I’m on my third run-through and it’s going to be a couple of months before the big expansion game. I’m weak.

WEAK!

Moe Lane

“Bohemian Rhapsody,” Hayseed Dixie

Blame this guy.

(H/T: @andylevy) Amazing what one Senatorial election can do. Like, say, make a Presidential administration pay attention to local political concerns for a change.

The Obama administration has abandoned its plan to put Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, on trial in Lower Manhattan, according to administration officials.

The reversal marks the latest setback for an administration that has been buffeted at every turn as it seeks to close the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And without the backdrop of Ground Zero for a trial, the administration will also lose some of the rich symbolism associated with its attempt to forge a new approach to handling high-value al-Qaeda detainees.

“New York is out,” said an administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the decision had not yet been officially announced. “We’re considering other options.”

Try Gitmo. The unilateralist, simplisme cowboy put them there in the first place for a reason, you know. In fact, he actually had a reason for pretty much everything he did…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

I know nothing about the race for New Orleans Coroner (except that yes, it is an elected position): I don’t know the participants, the issues, the truthfulness of this ad, or even whether I’m helping a Republican or a Democrat by reproducing it.

AND I DON’T CARE.

Via TPM, who couldn’t believe that that an ad where the coroner of New Orleans is being accused of selling organs actually got commercial airtime, either. But they got confirmation.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

…they’re going to point to this post as the first, tragic sign that the rubber band inside his head had begun to fray.

I hope Tai Shan’s crate falls out of the plane and lands in the Pacific Ocean and sinks and he dies and everybody cries. Is that mean?

P.S. Panda Express should serve actual panda. Kung Pao Panda. And then a lightning bolt should hit the Pandas Unlimited-organized picket line.

P.P.S. Pandas are fat idiots who don’t even know how to have sex. Tai Shan should choke on some bamboo. I don’t know why I’m overcome with such virulent hatred of pandas all of a sudden. You guys need to report me to the PADL (Panda Anti-Defamation League).

Ralph Nader could not be reached for comment. OK, that’s a lie: I didn’t bother to try.

Moe Lane

Breitbart has far too much fun with this medium, sometimes. “Retracto, the Correction Alpaca” is apparently going to be Big Journalism‘s go-to camelid for issues involving media oopsies.  Currently Retracto is calling for corrections in the O’Keefe affair…

I’m sorry.  “Retracto, the Correction Alpaca.”  If you don’t find that funny – not even a little – not only are you at the wrong site, but there might not actually be hope for you.

Via @tommyxtopher, who isn’t happy that he has to agree with this:

I don’t watch Beck, myself – I got nothing against him, particularly, but I don’t need him as an information source – but the above is an excellent point. It’s not particularly the GOP’s problem that the Democrats disliked actually having a super-majority, particularly since it meant that fourteen years’ worth of wild-eyed promises to the Left suddenly came due. It’s also not particularly our problem that the progressives are increasingly unable to pretend that their party top leadership cares for them for longer than it takes the check to clear. We will, however, be happy to solve their problems for them, in our own little way.

Because that’s just how we roll.

Moe Lane

Full disclosure: this is all going to be as-I-think-of-it-opinion, I have no interest in interrupting the narrative flow by looking for links, and so I freely admit that it would be fair to discount or dismiss the results accordingly.

The Democrats are in for a bad election cycle, to the point where people are actually talking about the Democrats losing the House – and starting to hint that maybe, just maybe, it’s not entirely bizarre to suggest that the Senate might be technically in a position where the Republicans could take control of it. Long since past time that this happened to this party, to be sure: but why?

I think that it’s for a pretty simple reason: the American people subscribe to a pretty simple political mathematics.  They divide our political class into Those Idiots Running Things and Those Idiots Out Of Power.  Then they modify it with (I Hate Those Guys).  Typically speaking, election cycles depend on which party gets the modifier.  For example:

• 2002 (post-9/11): Normally a time for Those Idiots Out Of Power to win seats, but being at actual war meant that (I Hate Those Guys) continued to apply to the Democrats.
• 2004: This is where (I Hate Those Guys) began to shift away from Those Idiots Out Of Power. As I recall, House gains were largely from redistricting; if Those Idiots Out Of Power had put up somebody better than Kerry, the race would have been a heck of a lot closer.
• 2006: At this point, Those Idiots Running Things had officially gotten the (I Hate Those Guys) designation. And we got shellacked in Congress.
• 2008: Interesting case, here: the holding of the Presidency by the GOP meant that we got to be still treated as Those Idiots Running Things (I Hate Those Guys), instead of Those Idiots Out Of Power (I Hate Those Guys). The more I think of it, the more I think that maybe that saved us seats.

(more…)

As people are noting, Jon Stewart seems to be having quite the career monopolizing Blue-on-Blue comedy these days. Said monopoly is probably going to abruptly change.

Crossposted to RedState.