Moe Lane

Like a large section of the right-blogosphere, I like Jake Tapper while being slightly resentful that I have to.  It’s nothing against the man; Jake’s a good guy who will do things like this.

TAPPER:  You’ve said we’re a nation of cowards because we don’t talk
freely and openly about race.  So in that spirit, let me give it a
shot.  Do you think the Arizona immigration law is racist?

HOLDER:  Well, I don’t think it’s necessarily a good idea…

[snip*]

TAPPER:  Do you think it’s racist?

HOLDER:  I don’t think it’s racist in its motivation…

What’s annoying is that he’s so bloody rare for doing this. (more…)

…that are, bluntly, unnerving from a Artificial Intelligence viewpoint.  My wife can expound on this a lot more profoundly than I can – she’s the roboticist in the family; I’m the drunken poet – but even I can notice the matter-of-fact way that the engines in that universe seem almost indifferent sometimes to their impending demises.  I grant that (to paraphrase Spider Robinson) if we want AIs to have a survival reflex we’re going to have to program one into them… but it’s still kind of disturbing, or possibly even creepy.  Then again, what if the engines started reacting to their incredibly dangerous environment appropriately? – and it is dangerous.  The British authorities should have swept in and seized the railroad system as being a constant risk to life and limb, given the number of derailings, crashes, and accidents that happen more or less routinely.

(pause)

What?  I have kids.

…mostly left.

When politicos play musical chairs in Illinois, what happens after the music stops and there’s no safe place to sit?

There have been four dead in recent years, unrelated cases of suicide, different except for the acts of the common pageant: The corruption investigators call. The music ends abruptly.

Two were done in by guns, one on a beach, the other under a bridge. A third was by pills in a construction trailer.

The fourth came Friday morning during rush hour, announced by that body under that white sheet on the Metra tracks in McHenry County.

The quote in the title is from Dan Collins of POWIP, who adds a fifth (a potential Burris perjury witness) to John Kass’ list of four Illinois political figures who suddenly became unavailable to prosecutors involved in corruption investigations.  While the latest one on Kass’ list is almost certainly not murder – he jumped in front of a train, carrying a “Metra manual on how to handle service disruptions in the event of a suicide” – there’s at least two on that list that are, well, iffy.  And five that are darned convenient for what Kass calls the Illinois Combine.

You know, it’s not that I think that this current administration is really, deeply, personally involved in any of this; it’s that I think that this administration effectively grew up breathing the poisonous air of the Windy City, got used to it – and that it now assumes that America is merely a larger Chicago.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

You had forgotten about this one, hadn’t you?

Weapon Of Choice [Explicit], Fatboy Slim

You’re welcome.

Kaine was in such a rush to get things going on that he forgot to check the press release:

“If there was any question before, there should now be no doubt that the Republican leadership has handed the reigns to the Tea Party.”

(Head’s-up from @AlexPappasDC.)

It was precisely this keen attention to detail and level of preparation on the DNC’s part that caused such dramatic results in NJ and VA last year, and promises to do the same in HI-01 and PA-12 later this month.

Moe Lane

*I had a number of more bad puns here originally, until I realized that I was indulging in ad homonym attacks…

Crossposted to RedState.

He was eliminated from the second round of voting.

Republican U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah has lost his bid to serve a fourth term after failing to advance past the GOP state convention.

Attorney Mike Lee and businessman Tim Bridgewater are the remaining Republican candidates after Saturday’s vote.

Bennett was a distant third in the voting among roughly 3,500 delegates. He garnered just under 27 percent of the vote. Bridgewater had 37 percent and Lee 35 percent.

A primary looks likely, unless either Lee or Bridgewater gets almost all of Bennett’s delegates. (more…)

Haven’t done one of these in a while, have I?

Glee

But I haven’t forgotten. Oh, no, I have not. So…

…(as per a private email thread) but it certainly raises the bar:

It took George C Scott only six and a half minutes to ensure that you will never, ever be able to remember what George Patton really looked like.

For the record: I’m officially uninterested in defending Elena Kagan as a possible USSC pick.  She’s not of my party, and neither is the President who would be nominating her: and as Ed Morrissey notes here I share the plurality position that what we need now is a more conservative court.  So if the President wants my help on this, give me somebody I’m interested in helping.  Alternatively, he can take Ann Althouse’s (deviously) poisoned advice, nominate an open, proud liberal, and settle this nonsense once and for all.  Either way, William Jacobson’s examination of the Left’s preliminary character assassination of Kagan (H/T Instapundit) is merely of academic* interest to me…

…except for this bit. (more…)

I hate the way that my Internet access can disappear for no reason, then reappear for no reason.  Stupid Internet.

(pause)

Did I not tell you that this was the most redundant post on the Internet?  Was it not clear that I obviously felt the need to tell you this anyway?  Should it not be obvious that I need to go eat some lunch?

Yes.

Imagine my surprise when British news magazine The Week announced that I was writing for the WaPo:

Who they are referring to is actually the Washington Post’s Charles Lane, who indeed is not particularly buying the ‘distraught over his foreclosure’ defense being made on Faisal Shahzad’s behalf.  But if it makes The Week feel any better, I was as skeptical about this particular defense as Charles was…

Moe Lane

(ahem)

Moe Lane.  Of RedState (and MoeLane.com).

Huh.

Somebody Told Me, The Killers

I was expecting more goth.