Liz Cheney breaks Norah O’Donnell on ‘torture’ discussion.

“When they capture American soldiers, they cut off their heads.”

And, honestly? She didn’t even break a sweat.

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This is how you do it, by the way. You don’t let them define the agenda; you certainly don’t let them define the terms; you concede nothing (you can always agree, but you do not concede); you keep going back to a disputed point over and over again until they get tired of trying to sneak one past you; you never lose your cool; when you catch them trying a stupid tactic like read a headline and pretend that it’s established truth, you call them on it without a hint of self-consciousness; and in this case, you don’t accept the other side’s presumptuous bluff that they speak for the American people. Because they don’t.

And you don’t give a tinker’s dam if they like you afterward. To quote Truman: if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

Moe Lane

PS: Good job, Ms. Cheney. Just in case my reaction wasn’t already clear.

Crossposted to RedState.

That would be MISTER Mazetier, mind you.

Two guys try to hijack an 84-year-old guy’s car in Tacoma, Washington… yeah, you know where this is going, don’t you?

TACOMA, Wash. — Ted Mazetier may be a grandfather, but at 84 years old, he’s still got his chops.

And two men learned that the hard way.

Yeah, you know where this is going. See Boing Boing and Instapundit for more aesthetic appreciation of what was by all accounts a short, yet lovely beat-down of two very unlucky criminals.  Of particular poignancy is that the criminals have been captured, and will thus have to live with this particular humiliation for the rest of their lives…

Moe Lane

PS: Embarrassingly, I have yet to actually see Gran Torino.

Crossposted to RedState.

The Milky Way galaxy: raspberries and RUM.

(Via AoSHQ) THIS IS NOT A JOKE:

Astronomers searching for the building blocks of life in a giant dust cloud at the heart of the Milky Way have concluded that it tastes vaguely of raspberries.

This is SCIENCE. Science that is made of AWESOME. It is made of awesome because the chemical that they found – ethyl formate – is not only what gives raspberries their taste; it’s what gives rum its smell. This is important because if one chemical compound is out there, all sorts of chemical compounds must be out there. Including the one known to all of us as CH3CH2OH, or ethyl alcohol. Which we knew, yes… but we didn’t know before that recognizable flavorings also existed, due probably to non-organic processes. So, do you know what this means? This means that somewhere out there really is a planet which has a drinkable analogue of tequila for its oceans.

All we have to do is find it.

Moe Lane

PS: What? How do we do that?

Why are you asking me? Isn’t this what we have scientists and engineers for?

Balefires is coming back out in paperback.

At the end of June; Balefires is a collection of David Drake‘s fantasy short stories, and is noteworthy for having “Than Curse the Darkness,” which is probably in the top ten of most people’s short lists of Greatest Cthulhu Mythos Stories*. The collection is also available in hardback, so if you’re into instant gratification, knock yourself out.

Meanwhile, Lovecraft is Missing continues its surveys of… stuff.  Interesting stuff, but… stuff.

Moe Lane

*Including a couple written by HP Lovecraft himself, if you’ll pardon the rank heresy.

So, there’s another DC Tea Party tomorrow…

…being thrown by these folks. Decent weather being promised for tomorrow, too. I’ll be attending: it’ll be from 11 AM – 1 PM at Lafayette Square. I don’t expect the 1.5 – 3K from the last one, but… actually, I don’t know what I expect. They have a permit and speakers, so there’s obviously some planning going on there. That implies that there’ll be more than, say, 12 or so.

At any rate, I’ll be there for the thing; if people have any suggestions on what they’d like for me to cover, feel free to let me know. I figure that I’ll be doing the usual video interviews, and so forth.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

[UPDATED] It has been suggested that my advertising strategy is over-subtle.

[UPDATE]: I should have thought of this first, but Constant Reader Matt was too fast on the draw for me:

This would be impressive, if true: virtually nothing else about me is. But, just on the off-chance… Amazon is doing Video on Demand here.

…OK, actually, hold up for a second. This Kings show: is it any good?  I understand that its got an entire Old Testament David/Saul vibe going, which is an argument in its favor.

Anyway: there’s the Amazon thing up there; there’s the BlogAds thing that I’m signed up for over there; and of course there’s the Laptop Drive…

…which I am sure that all of you are well tired of hearing about.

There. Now I can go back to nattering on.