Month: January 2012

Project Veritas stings New Hampshire Voter ID-less laws.

And I hope that they have good lawyers. REAL good lawyers.

Contrary to Matt Lewis, this is not unbelievable. This is why we insist on Voter ID laws.

To summarize the video, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas sent a couple of people to New Hampshire primary polling places claiming that they were individuals that had actually died in the last couple months. They were, of course, secretly filming the proceedings… and came away with footage of multiple occasions where the poll workers let them have the ballot. Note, by the way, that every video clip ends with the Veritas people giving back the ballot without actually voting: I don’t know whether that will actually protect the group from being accused of voter fraud, but then that’s why we have a court system. At any rate, the video ends with some poor sacrificial lamb of a ward coordinator confidently assuring the Project Veritas people that nobody could get away with what the Project Veritas people just did. Continue reading Project Veritas stings New Hampshire Voter ID-less laws.

Random Iranian dies in freak accident.

If you’re defining “random Iranian” as “director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran” and “freak accident” as “attack using magnetically-attached bombs.”  And who among us has not?

Yeah, sure, I’m the awful person.  Not the undemocratic regime that beats and rapes dissidents and who wants to murder every Jew in the Middle East.  Whatever…

Interesting gamer post here from Ace.

He’s analyzing some of the problems with D&D’s Fourth Edition, and how they’re going to have a devil of a time getting their loyal fan base back, given that a whole lot of ’em decided to take full advantage of the Open Game License thing to keep and maintain Third Edition content.  Personally, I take a kind of detached view on this, given that:

  1. I didn’t really do 3E.  My D&D was AD&D, and that was only because my wife could DM that system in her sleep*.
  2. Right now I’m not really gaming, period.  Long story, mostly involving kids and time and whatnot.
  3. When I do get back to gaming it’ll probably be either GURPS or one of the Cthulhu systems.

Still, interesting post.  Personally, I think that more people in the political blogosphere who are also gamers should just come out and admit it.  I mean, it’s the Internet.  We’re all geeks under the skin here, right?

Moe Lane

Continue reading Interesting gamer post here from Ace.

Court explains reasoning on VA absentee ballot court order.

OK, let me try to explain just what is going on in this court order involving the VA GOP primary ballot.  For those who came in late: back in December, Virginia’s primary registration system ended up producing a result where only two Republican candidates (Mitt Romney and Ron Paul) qualified for the ballot.  This resulted in some frankly unkind things said about virtually everyone involved in the process, from the candidates to the Republican party of Virginia – usually involving competence levels, although conspiracy theorizing certainly wasn’t underrepresented.  While that was going on, Gov. Rick Perry filed a lawsuit (one later joined by Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, and Rick Santorum*) challenging the constitutionality of the process.  Yesterday the judge hearing the case ordered the Commonwealth of Virginia not to issue absentee ballots; today’s order explains why.

Continue reading Court explains reasoning on VA absentee ballot court order.

I believe that the problem is that the two words are linked, Glenn.

Now, I understand that it’s a big world out there, and I generally feel that ‘consenting adults’ covers a multitude of situations, including the one that we’re about to talk about.  But as a personal matter I feel that the words ‘penis’ and ‘tattoos’ should never be, ah, linked: and like Glenn Reynolds I feel that this is a cautionary tale.

Penis Tattoo Leads to Permanent Erection

For a given value of cautionary:

“Because of the painless nature of erections, moderately good preservation of erectile function during intercourses, and disappointment with former surgery, the patient has declined to undergo further therapies, and lives with his condition.”

Yeah.  Thirty years ago they would have tried to replicate the procedure, probably.

#rsrh A more serious New Hampshire post.

First off, the RNC has the right idea here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2z-W6jk_XQ&feature=channel_video_title

Chairman Reince Priebus doesn’t want any part of this primary, and I think that we can all agree that this is a quite refreshing development, yes?  Continue reading #rsrh A more serious New Hampshire post.

An inevitable Tebow-themed post.

Allahpundit says something interesting here about Tim Tebow:

I like him because I like underdogs and because he plays with heart even though he’s far from being a top-tier QB — far enough, I think, that he probably won’t be a starter for long.

Now, I don’t follow football all that thoroughly, and even when I was more interested in it I was never as into it as my little sister was and is (to be fair, she knows the game).  But… taking a 1-4 team and leading them to a playoff slot may or may not make somebody top-tier, but surely it allows for a certain amount of job security, yes?

I am cheerfully certain that I will now have it explained to me why the answer is actually quite often ‘no.’ Fair enough.

Blast from the past: “Suicide at the Council of Elrond.”

A recent comment here has reminded me of a post that can be found here, which was easily the best roundtable discussion that I’ve ever participated in online.  Note the date: in retrospect it’s fairly clear that we were all dreading the election results, and needed a distraction that day.

Worked, too.  IIRC, we got a certain amount of indignation elsewhere for not only being more chipper than expected in the face of looming defeat; but for being truly more chipper than expected.  It’s amazing how many people out there will find the enjoyment of their victories blighted if they can’t also tack on the despair of their enemies.  Me, personally, I just want the win; the despair’s the garnish.  If I don’t get it, I still have the win.