The obligatory Super Bowl post.

…sorry, I got nothing.  I had to give the kid a bath and I don’t have cable anyway.  Was it available online anywhere?

Actually, that’s an interesting question: how long before cable TV goes the way of the dodo?  I mean, I have a cable modem: why can’t I just stream the darn cable stations to my monitor – or can that happen already and I just don’t know about it?  I didn’t know about web access to Netflix until somebody told me, after all.

Common Cause and the oldest profession.

(Via Volokh, via Instapundit) Once upon a time there was a Democratic fake-grassroots front group organization called Common Cause.  In 2005, Common Cause absolutely, positively, without question was infuriated with any attempt to interfere with the holy practice of judicial filibusters:

Common Cause strongly opposes any effort by Senate leaders to outlaw filibusters of judicial nominees to silence a vigorous debate about the qualifications of these nominees, short-circuiting the Senate’s historic role in the nomination approval process.

“The filibuster shouldn’t be jettisoned simply because it’s inconvenient to the majority party’s goals,” said Common Cause President Chellie Pingree. “That’s abuse of power.”

But something happened in 2006-2008.  To wit: the Democrats took control of Congress; and Chellie Pingree, gadfly and scourge of Wall Street, became Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D, ME-01)… where she promptly acquired a Wall Street boyfriend and started using his private jet as a shuttle service.  On the people’s dime, too.  As for Common Cause, well: they now hate the very idea of judicial filibusters with the white-hot fury of a billion exploding suns.

Today’s filibuster-happy Senate minority is threatening to cripple our federal judiciary, abusing the Senate’s own rules to delay or block the confirmations of dozens of highly-qualified lawyers and state court judges nominated by President Obama to the federal bench.

“Because of the filibuster and other delaying tactics, fewer than half of the President’s nominees to date have been confirmed,” said Bob Edgar, Common Cause’s president.

Continue reading Common Cause and the oldest profession.

If it’s February, it’s time for the death of blogging!

Ah, the end of blogging (yes, RS McCain doesn’t think that it’s dead, either).  Here we go again, I guess: I’ve been doing this gig since 2002, 2003, and every so often somebody puts up an article about how the medium is doomed, or how the entire paradigm is going to change, or something.  Entertainingly, the examples of blogs that the authors use are invariably ones that I’ve never heard of, which should make you thoughtful about how good a handle on the entire medium said authors actually have.

Continue reading If it’s February, it’s time for the death of blogging!

#rsrh I’m on the blandwagon, myself.

I have the same problems with certain features of this Nate Silver graph that Little Miss Attila, Hot Air, and heck, Nate Silver does: but the relative positions of the various politicians running in 2012 seems reasonably intuitive.

Then again, I’m generally for Pawlenty*.  I’ve had enough excitement lately, thanks:  I just want somebody who can balance the blipping budget without too much drama.

Moe Lane

*I’m also generally for staying out of the primaries as much as is practical for a writer affiliated with one of the largest and most influential right-wing political blogs.  Which is to say, I’m not going to be too successful at staying out of it, but hopefully I won’t get sucked into anything resembling the 2008 GOP primary season.

#rsrh Waitasecond. The DNC convention starts on LABOR DAY?

The Democratic party picked Labor Day weekend for their nominating convention in Charlotte, North Right-to-work Carolina?

Apparently.

Wow.  That’s the funniest damned thing that I’ve seen all day.

(pause)

Oh, well, it’s not like Big Labor doesn’t deserve the contempt shown to it by the Democrats.  I can’t respect people who won’t respect themselves, sorry.

Moe Lane

African children vs. Greenpeace?

The good news? Researchers have worked out a method to genetically modify cassava plants that causes them to produce significantly larger amounts of protein.  In practical terms, this means that within a decade African farmers might have a staple crop that can counter protein-energy malnutrition in African children – and protein-energy malnutrition is nasty.  Not to mention deceptively treatable, if you can make sure that the kids get the protein.  Which is why the plan is to distribute the plants to the farmers themselves, thus distributing the extra protein from the bottom up.

The bad news?  The above means that said researchers will have to fight groups like Greenpeace every step of the way on this, as Greenpeace in particular is adamantly and explicitly against releasing genetically-modified crops “into the environment” – which, again, is the plan of the researchers.  That would be because Greenpeace gets almost no money from African children with preventable dietary deficiencies, and quite a bit of money from scientifically-illiterate, white Euro-American liberals whose interest in anything African is directly proportional to how… sanitized it is.

Hey.  Be grateful that I didn’t say ‘bleached.’

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Mind you, if moving forward Greenpeace wants to start explicitly repudiating its Luddite fanaticism, here would be an excellent place to start…