Olby wasnÂ’t there but he did phone in a comment to welcome the man he once noted kind of looks like Henrich Himmler to the fight.

After trotting out the John Adams analogy, which I noted yesterday I don’t find very convincing, Starr went on to play the “To Kill A Mockingbird” card*.

We need to encourage young lawyers and law students to do that which all of us who have been in the profession for as i have several decades to know, this is very important. Don't just take on the popular causes. It's the people who really do need representation, who may be excluded from the community.

The great example that a lot of law students have read this, the before law school is the story in "to kill a mockingbird" Atticus Finch defending an African-American defendant. Did that make him popular in that small southern town? Absolutely not. He became a pariah in his own community. But he explained to his children, he explained to his kids I've got to do this as matter of conscience. It wasn't just his conscience. It was the conscience of a profession, a great profession, that John Adams embodied, Thurgood Marshall embodied, and many lawyers day in and day out embody by being willing to stand up to the crowd and saying, no. We stand for the justice system and that everyone has his or her right to representation.

These lawyers went far beyond ensuring the detainees had representation (the military had already provided that). What the lawyers for the detainees did was try (and to a great degree they succeeded) to overturn decades old precedents and expand on the rights detainees had traditionally been accorded.

The real nub of this whole issue is the bolded bit. Non-America terrorists detained and held outside the borders of the United States are by definition ‘excluded from the community’. What the lawyers who volunteered to assist the detainees wanted to do was include them in the American community and accord themthe rights and privileges that go with that status.

These terrorists have placed themselves outside the legal strictures of the international community (the Geneva Conventions) by their own actions. To reward their behavior by enabling them to cloak themselves in the even greater protections of the US civilian court system is a perversion of justice, not a furtherance of it.

Marc Thiessen , the current bête noire of the left (warning Gawker link), gets to the heart of it…

The habeas lawyers were not doing their constitutional duty to defend unpopular criminal defendants. They were using the federal courts as a tool to undermine our military's ability to keep dangerous enemy combatants off the battlefield in a time of war.

I know that many lawyers see their work as not simply a profession but almost a priestly calling. Starr wants he and his fellow high priests to set the standards of their conduct and not have to defend their actions in the rough and tumble world of politics. I hate to break it to Judge Starr (actually, I donÂ’t)Â…the legal profession is just that, a profession. You and your fellows are not the keepers of The One and Only Truth and you are not beyond question and reproach.

Starr is entitled to his opinion on the status of these lawyers and the propriety of their actions but, so too are Liz Cheney, Bill Kristol and the rest of the folks at Keep America Safe. This is a contest of ideas conservatives should welcome. I have no doubt that a majority of Americans will side with those of us take issue with the hiring of these lawyers to work in the Department of Justice.

What I do hold against Starr is the choice of venue. Aside from the personal attack by Olbermann on him and the general contempt in with which conservatives in general are treated on that show, Olbermann pretty much says worse about John Yoo, David Addington and (just one video of Olby) other Bush era lawyers on a nightly basis than Keep America Safe has said about these 7 lawyers. Where was judge Starr's outrage about that? Why reward a program that regularly engages in the behavior you claim to be so bothered by?

Last nightÂ’s guest host was Crazy Larry OÂ’Donnell. Maybe the two of them go way back, I donÂ’t know but the fact that Starr went on that show is unforgivable. How long have conservatives and Republicans spent defending StarrÂ’s integrity and reputation only to have him go running to his attackers the first chance he get?

Judge Starr, they only let you on because you were willing to be their pet Republican attacking other Republicans. TheyÂ’ll turn on you the next time you fail to toe the line. DonÂ’t expect anyone from this side of the debate to come to your defense.

*The Countdown website doesn't have a transcript of last night's show up yet so I used the one at the link. It's a real time transcription so there may be some errors and I cleaned up the capitalization and removed the time code.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:09 AM | Comments (149)
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Remember when Marco Rubio was considered something of a joke candidate for the GOP Senate nomination in Florida? You know, there was no way he could seriously challenge a popular governor like Chrarlie Crist, so what was the point in him even running?

Yeah, about that.

Support for Charlie Crist from conservative voters has pretty much evaporated, and that's allowed Marco Rubio to build a 32 point lead in the Republican primary for Senate.

Rubio now leads Crist 60-28, including a staggering 71-17 lead with conservatives. Crist has a 49-36 advantage with party moderates, but they account for just 31% of likely primary voters compared to 65% who describe themselves as conservative.

Rubio is benefiting from a widely held sentiment among Florida GOP voters that Congressional Republicans are too liberal and that Crist would add to the problem. 41% of them think that the party leadership in Washington is too liberal, and with those folks Rubio holds an 83-10 lead. 50% think that Crist himself is too liberal and with those voters Rubio's advantage expands even wider to 90-5.

But don't worry, Crist has a new and exciting line of attack that will wash away the stink of his support for the so-called "stimulus"...Back hair.

CRIST: He's (Rubio) trying to pawn himself off as a fiscal conservative. And yet just in reason weeks, two weeks Hairy-back ago it has come out in news accounts he had a Republican Party of Florida credit card that he charged $130 haircut, or maybe it was a back wax -- we are not sure what all he got at that place.

VAN SUSTEREN: Wait a second, stop. A back wax? Wait a second.

CRIST: I don't know what it was, you know?

Ah, well never mind then. If you stand foursquare against back hair (and all right thinking Americans do), then Charlie Crist is your man!

Meanwhile, John Cornyn is trying to dig himself out of the hole he put himself in with his early endorsement of Crist.

“Selfishly, given the limited resources we have on the national scope of our responsibilities here, I didn’t want to have to spend any money in Florida, if we didn’t have to,” Cornyn said. “Charlie Crist seemed like the ideal candidate. This had nothing to do with Marco Rubio, who I subsequently met and have a lot of respect for.”

Cornyn said his committee planned to stand by its endorsement of Crist, but noted the NRSC would refrain from meddling in the governor's primary campaign against former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio.

“It doesn’t mean we’re going to be spending any money in the primary. It doesn’t mean we’re going to be saying anything bad about Marco Rubio,” he said.

I can't wait for David Frum to tell us why this is all just a horrible thing or urge Crist to withdraw from the GOP contest and save "conservatism" by running as an independent or Democrat.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:02 AM | Comments (97)
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I too got the Census letter informing me that I would be getting a Census letter next week. The waste and futility of participating, as well as the perversion of the constitutional purpose of the Census has me down, but Scott Johnson over at Power Line and Mark Krikorian over at The Corner have a bright idea:

Writes Scott:

In Letter III of his Letters From an America Farmer (1782), J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur famously asked: "What then is the American, this new man?" He answered: "He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He has become an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all races are melted into a new race of man, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims."

And Mark:

Fully one-quarter of the space on this year's form is taken up with questions of race and ethnicity, which are clearly illegitimate and none of the government's business (despite the New York Times' assurances to the contrary on today's editorial page). So until we succeed in building the needed wall of separation between race and state, I have a proposal. ...

[W]e should answer Question 9 by checking the last option — "Some other race" — and writing in "American." It's a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes. In fact, "American" was the plurality ancestry selection for respondents to the 2000 census in four states and several hundred counties.

I am an American. So -- "Some other race" -- "American." Pass it on.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:30 AM | Comments (278)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:15 AM | Comments (94)
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We can't let this camel get its nose in the tent, because apparently there's a full size camel hiding in back of that nose.

Everyone knows Democrats are planning to use the budget reconciliation process to get ObamaCare through the Senate. Less well known is that Democrats are plotting add-ons to that bill to get other liberal priorities enacted—programs that could never attract 60 votes.

One of these controversial measures rewrites the Higher Education Act to ban private companies from offering federally guaranteed student loans as of this July. Congress has already passed laws in recent years discouraging private lenders from making loans without a federal guarantee. But most college financial-aid departments still want private companies to originate and service the guaranteed loans. That's because the alternative—a public option run by the Department of Education—has been distinguished by its Soviet-style customer service.

The Democratic plan is to make this public option the only option mere days before colleges send out their financial aid packages to incoming students...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 06:06 PM | Comments (166)
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Monday all.

Video: Tree branch on a power line
It's always cool to watch raw electrical power destroy something. And as they point out tossing a hobo onto power lines is really a 2 or 3 person job. Always remember to lift with your legs - not your back.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:42 PM | Comments (730)
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Wonderful.

They're really going to do this, huh?

Rep. Bart Stupak said he expects to resume talks with House leaders this week in a quest for wording that would impose no new limits on abortion rights but also would not allow use of federal money for the procedure.

"I'm more optimistic than I was a week ago," Stupak said in an interview...

Posted by: Ace at 04:39 PM | Comments (213)
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15 votes shy?

Here's a detailed round-up of the persuadables and long-shots. And here is Jay Cost's take.

DrewM. just emailed me that Dennis Kucinich just reaffirmed his "No" vote so that's one less in the persuadable pool.

On the other hand -- at that first link -- Democrats now have 50 publicly on board for reconciliation in the Senate.

Posted by: Ace at 04:22 PM | Comments (50)
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Last year, the President was trying to convince Congress to spend millions of dollars on wind turbines by saying the program would create jobs. He was perturbed by a then-recent report out of Spain that its wind power programs had cost 2.2 jobs elsewhere in the economy per "green" job created and at a cost of $800,000 a piece!

So what happened? His lackeys at Department of Energy coordinated with "green" lobbyists from the American Wind Energy Association and the Global Wind Energy Council and the Soros-funded think tank the Center for American Progress to produce criticism of the Spanish report. The short attack piece they produced under the seal of the Department of Energy (PDF) was then used by the President to keep pretending that green jobs aren't the economic black hole that the Spanish report (and common sense) tells us they are.

According to emails (damn those ever-incriminating emails!) recovered by FOIA request, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a division of Department of Energy, got interested in producing the report because the lobbyists asked them to. For example, from an AWEA email to NREL with the subject "Spanish jobs report":

"It is critical we respond, this thing won't die and its doing a good job of undermining our green job message."

And from NREL emails:

"AWEA policy people are quite concerned about a recent report published in Spain (likely the one cited here) and I suspect they are not the only ones." ... "We need to come up with an appropriate response to these criticisms soon. I just spoke to a few people at AWEA about this." ... "The AWEA folks are wondering what we'll do, so if this is our plan, I'll let them know."

One of the scientists actually thought there might be a problem with this:

"Are there issues with the no-lobbying prohibition? I recognize that-this is not a lobbying piece per se, but contributing directly to an AWEA and UCS communique could raise eyebrows. This may be perfectly ok, but I don't really know and we should check."

His concerns were swept aside.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi, formerly (?) a lobbyist with Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection, then lied to Congress about the provenance of the attack memo, claiming that it was put together only because NREL "felt compelled to post the response... due to the high media interest in green jobs creation."

She failed to mention the entanglement between NREL "scientists" and wind energy lobbyists. That liaison would have been left undiscovered if Competitive Enterprise Institute hadn't smelled the stench coming out of Obama's Department of Energy.

Thanks to eddiebear over at DoublePlusUndead.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:53 PM | Comments (62)
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Obama had enjoyed pretty much only two political advantages: The idea that it's All Bush's Fault that we're in a deep recession, and the idea that somehow, just by being so awesome and cosmopolitan and urbane, he'd make America stronger aboard with "soft power" respect.

Well, we're down to one advantage.

These numbers, by the way, are from the Democratic polling firm Democracy Corps, co-founded by James Carville.

A majority of Americans say the United States is less respected in the world than it was two years ago and think President Obama and other Democrats fall short of Republicans on the issue of national security, a new poll finds.

The Democracy Corps-Third Way survey released Monday finds that by a 10-point margin -- 51 percent to 41 percent -- Americans think the standing of the U.S. dropped during the first 13 months of Mr. Obama's presidency.

"This is surprising, given the global acclaim and Nobel peace prize that flowed to the new president after he took office," said pollsters for the liberal-leaning organizations.

On the national security front, a massive gap has emerged, with 50 percent of likely voters saying Republicans would likely do a better job than Democrats, a 14-point swing since May. Thirty-three percent favored Democrats.

"The erosion since May is especially strong among women, and among independents, who now favor Republicans on this question by a 56 to 20 percent margin," the pollsters said in their findings.

...

The Democrats' gap on national security has widened on several other fronts:

• "Keeping America safe": Democrats now trail by 13 points (34 percent to 47 percent.) The gap was just 5 points in July 2008.

• "Ensuring a strong military": Democrats trail by 31 points (27 percent to 58 percent.)

• "Making America safer from nuclear threats": Democrats trail by 11 points (34 percent to 45 percent,) "despite the president's strong actions and speeches on steps to reduce nuclear dangers," the pollsters said.

Nothing but bad news for Democrats in the poll.

Oh well. I'm sure Democrats can reverse these trends by attending informal schools where they're taught how to sound tough on national security issues.

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

Posted by: Ace at 03:39 PM | Comments (71)
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