Moe Lane

Let me put it this way: below (in no particular order) is my Top Ten List of Democratic Members of the 111th Congress Whose Presence There Personally Offends My Sense of Civics.

David Obey
Jack Murtha
Alan Mollohan
Eric Massa
Charlie Rangel
Russ Carnahan
Carol Shea-Porter
Alan Grayson
Jim Moran
Patrick Kennedy

It’s going great. Thanks for asking!

Moe Lane

Not that the White House cares.  Or do most of the people reading this, except in a theoretical, pass-the-popcorn sense, I suppose:

The White House today posted on its website a video allowing Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan to speak “in her own words” about her personal history and perspective.

In the interview, conducted by a White House staffer who produces videos for the administration, Kagan discusses her childhood, parents and professional career. At one point she jokes that people get confused between her job as solicitor general arguing cases before the Supreme Court and the attorney general, who puts “the labels on the cigarette packages.”

While the White House seems to believe the American people deserve to hear from Kagan, it has not made her available to reporters. That prompted some consternation at today’s White House briefing.

As most folks involved with the VRWC will happily tell you, this is a totally-expected and unsurprising gambit in the administration’s ongoing move to turn the media’s 2008 infatuation with the President into whole-scale neutering. The White House’s logic is compelling, in its way: they know what they want Kagan to say, they have no intention of letting her say anything to the media that is off-message, so why even bother with the formality of an outside interview? There are plenty of people in the Executive branch of government who know how to operate a video camera, so get one of those, do the interview, hand it to the media, and tell them to get it on the nightly news. That’s how it worked in the campaign, right? Doing it this nakedly is just more… efficient.

It will be fascinating to see whether this ends up being the Obama administration’s War of Jenkins’ Ear moment. Particularly if the White House ends up playing the part of the Spanish…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

This might… not suck.

The 3-D is problematical, though.

Odd, how nobody ever sings or hears the ‘Kiss Him’ part.

Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye, Steam

…that second link is to an account of one of the odder one-hit wonders in the world, by the way. Shoot, they’re probably still getting royalties for that one.

…It Did Not Suck.  Pretty good, in fact: not the Crystallized Awesome that was the first film, but the Stark/Pepper dynamic was still there – and (call me a heretic) I liked Cheadle better as Rhodie.  More heroic engineering, and more of the laws of theoretical physics being waved to as they are passed by at high speed.  I’m not exactly sure what the heck Black Widow was doing in this one (besides the obvious), and I’m not sure what they plan to do for an encore… but I didn’t mind shelling out regular price for this.

In other news: who the HELL decided that Grown Ups (starring Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Kevin James, Rob Schneider and David Spade) deserved to be on the big screen, yet we can’t have a sequel to Serenity? Doesn’t doing that much cocaine send your brains igniting out of your ears, anyway?

- At least, that was my immediate answer to this:

“Why do the conservatives always get the conservatives, but we don’t get to get the liberals?” Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, asked the Web site Politico recently, voicing the frustration of the left when Ms. Kagan was considered a front-runner but was not yet Mr. Obama’s selection. “What the hell is that all about?”

Legal Insurrection has a superficially different response.

It may take you a little bit to catch on, but ye gods is it comprehensive.  I am in awe. (more…)

This was pretty funny, right up to the moment where (Democratic) Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora threatened reporter Henry Gomez’s wife.

The background is as follows: Dimora is being investigated as part of a corruption probe* – yes, I know, corruption in Cuyahoga county; how shocking – and Dimora is a bit upset about the way Gomez (and his paper the Plain Dealer) is covering the investigation.  So Dimora ups and accuses Gomez and his paper of not reporting a particular detail of the investigation: to wit, that Ohio Auditor (and Republican candidate for Lt. Governor) Mary Taylor had not released two years’ worth of audits.  Only problem is, this had been reported – including a quote from, guess who?  that right, Jim Dimora – and when Gomez told Dimora about this, Dimora called Gomez a liar.

So far, so funny.  Now here’s the unfunny bit:

(more…)

Jay Cost, as part of his article on the DOOM that came to DC:

Arlen Specter was effectively booted from the Republican Party nearly a year before the primary election. The conventional wisdom at the time was that the Republican electorate in Pennsylvania had become too conservative. This tendentious interpretation has been exploded by the fact that he’s about to be ejected from the Democratic side, too.

(Via Geraghty) Jay used a Dylan song as his pop culture reference, but I much prefer this one:

Apparently, with a bit of pique involved:

The two proposed referendum drives challenging Arizona’s new sweeping law targeting illegal immigration are being abandoned, organizers said Monday. Andrew Chavez, a professional petition circulator involved in one of the efforts, said its backers pulled the plug after concluding they might not be able to time their petition filings in such a way as to put the law on hold pending a 2012 public vote.

Jon Garrido, the chief organizer of the other drive, attributed its end to a belief that the law would have been subject to legal protections under Arizona’s Constitution if approved by Arizona voters.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) Put more simply: the first one was abandoned when people realized that they couldn’t game the system sufficiently to shut the law down until it got re-ratified in 2012, and the second was abandoned because losing might interfere with the drive to get Arizona’s court system to declare that Arizona’s adoption of federal immigration law requirements was a violation of the Arizona constitution. No, you’re not the only one who finds that reasoning of theirs to be fairly incoherent.  Give them a break: they don’t want to say that the Arizona legislation polls well… actually, no.  Don’t give them – or the Democrats supporting them – a break on this; after all, they’re pretty explicitly calling the majority of the population dirty racists for wanting illegal immigration gotten under control.

It seems only fair that they deal with the consequences of their rhetoric.

Yes, Ezra Pound’s from Idaho it’s actually Walt Whitman, and I’m an idiot.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers.

It must be admitted that when I read this particular article:

In a move that seemed to surprise many members of Maine’s Republican Party, a group of tea party-style activists redefined the party platform at the convention Saturday.

After the vote, in which a vocal majority supported a wholesale replacement of language worked on by the party establishment since at least January, a string of delegates congratulated Horatio “Ted” Cowan III, a retired marine electrician from Rockland who wrote the adopted amendment.

…I mostly snickered at The Outrage over what happens to be a fairly straightforwardly party platform that should have a good deal of appeal to conservatives, libertarians, and populists. I personally would have argued the hard line on illegal immigration and same-sex marriage, but the former is an argument over tactics and 53% of the voting population of Maine disagrees with me on the latter anyway.   So, really, business as usual, nice to see that the Ron Paul people were actually participating in local party structures like we had been asking them to do throughout all of 2008…  and, yeah, Maine’s lost to conservatism, so let them have their fun.

Then I read a few more details of what actually happened. (more…)

Wipeout, The Surfaris

This is one of the weird one-hit wonders: they were apparently not bad. Just how it works out, apparently.