May 13, 2010

Lawrence Taylor: I'm Innocent Because All I Did With My Underage Hooker Was Punch the Clown
— Ace

Paragon of Virtue.

Actually, Lawrence Taylor isn't claiming this; a colleague of his young hooker friend is saying it. (And, I wonder, how much money changed hands from lawyer-to-fixer-to-pimp-to-hooker to have her say it.)

The 16-year-old hooker allegedly blurted it out after she left a Rockland County hotel room where Taylor paid her $300.

"She starts explaining that it was weird because she didn't even have sex," the pal told investigators, according to the source.

"When she got back in the car, she wasn't mad or anything like that. She was like, 'Wow' - she got paid $300 and didn't have to have sex with him."

The hooker, though, says they did have sex.

Since, I take it, the definition of the charge against him (3rd degree rape, I think) includes as an element actual sex, you know what we got right here?

We've got Clinton/Lewinsky redux, sorta.

I didn't have sex with her, Your Honor.

I had sex near her.

Wasn't in her.

Adjacent, yes.

Inside, no. That would be wrong.

There's an important legal distinction, Your Honor.

Thanks to rdbrewer.


Oh: A commenter says "I thought he rape-raped her," based on the first reports, and that's what I thought too. Or rather, I wasn't sure if it was a rape-rape or stat-rape charge.

Stat rape, it turns out.


Posted by: Ace at 04:16 PM | Comments (49)
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Eric Holder: I Haven't Yet Read That Arizona Immigration Law I've Already Decided Is Unconstitutional
Plus: Islamic Terrorism, What?

— Ace

I knew Eric Holder was brilliant and super-qualified. As you will see, he knows all sorts of stuff without even having to crack open a book.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who has been critical of Arizona's new immigration law, said Thursday he hasn't yet read the law and is going by what he's read in newspapers or seen on television.

Mr. Holder is conducting a review of the law, at President Obama's request, to see if the federal government should challenge it in court. He said he expects he will read the law by the time his staff briefs him on their conclusions.

"I've just expressed concerns on the basis of what I've heard about the law. But I'm not in a position to say at this point, not having read the law, not having had the chance to interact with people are doing the review, exactly what my position is," Mr. Holder told the House Judiciary Committee.

Update: Video of this exchange now up.

Blogging sure has changed the world. Our Attorney General, like me, can toss off reams of opinions based on glancing at headlines.

Holder is a fringe extremist, according to latest polling.

The public broadly supports a new Arizona law aimed at dealing with illegal immigration and the lawÂ’s provisions giving police increased powers to stop and detain people who are suspected of being in the country illegally.

Fully 73% say they approve of requiring people to produce documents verifying their legal status if police ask for them. Two-thirds (67%) approve of allowing police to detain anyone who cannot verify their legal status, while 62% approve of allowing police to question people they think may be in the country illegally.

Majorities of Democrats (from the Bitter, Clingy Wing) support it too.

The guy charged with protecting us against Islamic terrorism -- on the legal, law-enforcement side of things, which is the most important side, his allies claim -- can't even bring himself to say that, among a variety of other factors, Shahzad and the Panty Bomber may have been motivated partly by Islamic terrorism.

He can't even bring himself to admit that Islamic terrorism may be a contributing factor in Islamic terrorism.


Posted by: Ace at 03:26 PM | Comments (165)
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Facebook calls all hands privacy meeting
Competition gets launched/funded quickly

— Purple Avenger

Usually, company wide meetings aren't called unless shit is hitting the fan. Usually they're intended to calm a jittery rumor mongering workforce and buy time for management to get its collective shit together.

(Apparently credible) Competition has been launched, claiming privacy concerns will be paramount.

The fundamental problem Facebook, and any similar "free" service schemes have, has always been their business model. Server farms and massive bandwidth cost real dollars. Unless you can do something with all that data, like say...sell it to someone else for real money, or generate enough ad response kickbacks, you got nothing. When the idiot VC cash dries up, so does your bank account and you're trading the Ferrari for a clapped out Yugo.

The competition claims to not have used VC money and appears to be operating on a shoestring, that's the good news. They apparently plan on staying small as long as possible. Lavishness with OPM(other people's money) is a fundamental mistake of many startups.

Still, the competition will run into the same business model issues all "free" things do. Something, somewhere has to pay the power bill or the narrow minded Neanderthals at the power company will shut you off.

Facebook isn't a public company, all stock sales have been private placements so its hard to track insider trading and what the current market cap might be. I'm betting a lot of the proletariat are getting kinda nervous and jerky right now about that valuation;many came onboard with the promise of stock options; options that could become worthless overnight with a large enough user exodus.
more...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 01:59 PM | Comments (164)
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Hmmmm, Again: Oliver North Confirms, Mullah Omar In Custody
— Ace

People wonder why, if this were true, it's being kept so quiet.

I'd have to think it's to 1) find out what he knows so we can roll up other guys before they're alerted that they may be burned, and 2) because a great mass of Pakistanis supports this guy and we may be trying to avoid provoking a crisis.

The report says he's in the hands of the Taliban-supporting ISI, according to this report, and, if it's true, then there's a high risk the ISI will just set him free. Or elements of it will, or etc.

Posted by: Ace at 01:27 PM | Comments (58)
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Pec Implant FAIL
— Ace

Minor content warning on this, as, while I don't think this guy meant to present himself as a transsexual, that's what he's wound up doing.

I think the guy is a bodybuilder. And he wanted really big pecs. So he got some really big silicone pec implants, figuring they'd make him look strong.

He thought, I think, they'd look like muscles.

They don't. They look like knockers.

And nothing says Tough Guy like a swaying, undulating he-rack. Nothing says "I could crush you like a grape" like pendulous mosoms.

Biggest douche ever? Certainly he's made it to the Sweet Sixteen.

Thanks to Dr. Spank, who cautions it's a once-you've-seen-you-cannot-unsee thing.

More Silly: AT-AT bunk bed.

Via Starchambermaid.


Synthol? Commenters say this probably isn't an implant, but an injectable oil called synthol, which temporarily bulks up whatever part of the body it's shot into. Of course, it's not muscle, just liquid under your skin.

Never heard of it, myself. Learn something new every day (unless you're cautious about it, like I am).

Here's some synthol freaks.

Posted by: Ace at 01:17 PM | Comments (93)
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Russia: The United States Really Can't Impose Unilateral Sanctions On Iran
— DrewM

How's that 'reset' button working out gang?

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the United States and other Western nations on Thursday against imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, Interfax news agency reported.

The European Union has said it may impose unilateral sanctions if a U.N. Security Council resolution fails.

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration has been lobbying Western companies not to do business with Iran, but has not imposed sanctions against them.

Countries facing Security Council sanctions "cannot under any circumstances be the subject of one-sided sanctions imposed by one or other government bypassing the Security Council", Lavrov was quoted as saying by Interfax.

"The position of the United States today does not display understanding of this absolutely clear truth."

On the upside, he left out the 'or else'.

Not only is this a clear rejection of the Obama engagement, hold hands and everything will be okay foreign policy, it's a bitch slap.

Of course, this will be excused as part of the dance of diplomacy. For those who have a fetish for negotiating with people when there are no common interests, just competition for advantage, there's never any bad news. No, this clearly shows that we need to redouble our efforts! Besides, friends can disagree! And hey, at least the Russians are willing to talk about UN sanctions (that will never materialize).

Obama must really wish the Iranians would just hurry up and build the damn bomb so they can move on to...negotiating over containing Iran!

Posted by: DrewM at 12:50 PM | Comments (144)
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Kagan's Sexuality, the Prisoner's Dilemma, and the Politics of Personal Destruction
— Ace

It occurred to me that questions which seem invasive and nasty smears come about due to the Prisoner's Dilemma.

The basics of the Dilemma are these: Two suspects have jointly participated in a crime, and have both been arrested, and are both held in separate interrogation tanks, unable to communicate with each other. They are both offered the same deal:

If one testifies (defects from the other) for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent (cooperates with the other), the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?

The point is that it is strongly in both men's interest to refuse to betray, assuming a high-trust environment where they could expect the other to refuse to betray. But because neither man has full trust in the other (and can't work out a binding contract to this effect with the other), their "best move" turns out to be betraying the other, even though this results in a bad outcome for both men.

If they could communicate, establish trust, and forge a binding contract -- if they could cooperate -- they could both have the optimal result. But they can't, and that forces upon both of them a sub-optimal result.

It seems to me the dirtier aspects of politics are just like this. If both parties could really agree on what smears were out-of-bounds and forge a binding contract to avoid such smears, both parties could achieve what many long for, an optimal sort of politics, in which smears (and invasive questions) were not on the menu.

But the two parties can't cooperate, for a variety of reasons (including the fact that the parties can't actually control any of their millions of members, so any single person can decide to void the contract and go dirty, thus making any such contract between the parties meaningless).

So both are forced into a suboptimal solution in which each "betrays" the other with smears and arguably dirty tactics.

The trouble with sentimentalism about Elena Kagan's sexuality is Pete Williams' sexuality -- the former Pentagon spokesman was ruthlessly outed by committed leftist gays who claimed they served a higher purpose by exposing his (kind of open) secret to the world.

And as for keeping quiet about hot button issues: Miguel Estrada tried that, too, and the Democrats had none of that:

George W. Bush nominated Estrada to a position on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on May 9, 2001. He received a unanimous "well-qualified" rating from the American Bar Association. Democratic Senators opposed the nomination, noting Estrada's lack of any prior judicial experience at the local, state, or federal level. Democratic Senators also objected to the refusal by the Office of the Solicitor General to release samples of Estrada's writings while employed there.

A bipartisan group of former Solicitors General wrote a letter objecting to the Democrats' demand for memos that Estrada had written while he was with the office. While not addressing past instances where such memos had previously been released,[2] the letter argued release of prior memos by government employees to the public would endanger the Solicitor General Office's ability to provide confidential legal advice to the Executive Branch.

Leaked internal memos to Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin mention liberal interest groups' desire to keep Estrada off the court partially because "he is Latino," and because of his potential to be a future Supreme Court nominee.[3] Democratic spokesman for Durbin said that "no one intended racist remarks against Estrada" and that the memo only meant to highlight that Estrada was "politically dangerous" because Democrats knew he would be an "attractive candidate" that would be difficult to contest since he didn't have any record.[3]

Of course, when the Democrats aren't openly filibustering a highly qualified and "attractive" nominee specifically because he's a Latino, they're fabricating ridiculous charges of "racism" against men who aren't Latino.

In other words, maybe I could agree that if both sides agreed not to play this vicious game, it would be better for all; but I can't trust the other side not to play this game, so....

There's a frequent argument on our side about how to address this. Some urge being "better" than the other side, and abiding by certain rules, even while the other side flouts them. We ought to do this, it is said, because the right thing is always the right thing to do, and besides, the public will eventually recognize us for our forbearance and reward us for it.

I don't think 2 would ever happen, because you can never tell people "I knew X was gay but I didn't say anything out of a sense of fairness" without revealing the thing -- "X is gay" -- that you're supposedly so principled about not making an issue of.

And I don't know that the "right thing" to do to play strictly by the rules when they other team is throwing elbows and whipping legs and getting away with it. If the actual rules are that you can leg-whip and elbow and get away with it -- aren't those the real rules we should be playing by, too?

Another branch of game theory says that tit for tat is an effective strategy.

I think most people are like me -- whether you argue the "Get Almost As Dirty As They Are" side, or the "Be Better Than They Are" side, depends. It depends on the issue, and, frankly, it depends on your mood on a particular day. Most of us have tendencies towards one or the other, but in a bad mood, particularly angered at the loathsomeness of the other party's profit through egregious lies, pretty much anyone can flip over to the Dirty side.

I think most of the time I personally fall on the Dirty/Tit for Tat side. I endorse the exact same level of fairness and kind dealings towards my political opponents that they would extend to me -- that is to say, virtually none whatsoever, and I think I'll continue having this tendency until the left begins to start showing some trepidations about destroying inconvenient persons.

Jonathan Chait, the hyperpartisan best known for being a close friend and defender of serial fabulist Steven Glass and also penning the Mission Statement of the Left during the 2000's, The Case for Bush Hatred, actually has a conclusion I agree with on this topic. After whining like a bitch about the GOPs new outrageously outrageous slander of Dear Leader (that he's a "bully" -- feel the hatred), he concludes:

Why the incessant demands for civility and cries of foul play? Americans hate political conflict. In a 2002 book, political scientists John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse note that Americans fail to understand ideological disagreements between the parties. Voters think everybody should agree and interpret the lack of consensus as a sign of misgovernance.

The partiesÂ’ constant efforts to claim the rhetorical high ground and to blame the other side for all the nastiness is a pander to the publicÂ’s childlike belief in unanimity and concord. If they really wanted to raise the level of discourse, they would level with the public about the necessity of argument.

Well ignore that last sentence, because that's the silly thing you have to say to button a column. No one's leveling with the public, because the public doesn't want to be leveled with.

The public -- and when I say "the public," I don't mean all of the public, I mean the 20-25% "moderates" who are largely apathetic and apolitical and tend to vote according to things like gut-level reaction to a candidate's charisma and presentation -- does not like ideological spats and in fact prefers to believe that ideological spats flow only from emotional pique and meanness of character, and that, if everyone just coolly and amicably sat down together and rolled up their sleeves, such spats would disappear altogether, because they'd find a Magic Compromise which achieves all goals simultaneously while imposing no costs.

They refuse to believe that choosing one theory of governance will come with associated costs. They like the Republicans' idea of cutting taxes; they don't like the Republicans' ideas about cutting spending (except in theory).

They like the Democrats' idea of voting ourselves all a big raise in the form of new social spending given to almost everybody (except the ultrarich). They don't like the Democrats' plans about upping taxes, or, as Democrats call it, "investing in our future."

Choosing is an act that requires both intellectual effort and a certain amount of moral effort, too. If you decide to take money out of someone's pocket, or cut the subsidies they've grown accustomed to, you need a certain level of moral surety that you're doing the right thing.

Most people don't wish to invest much effort in politics, and don't like the idea that by choosing X they are affirmatively giving up on Y, and so they keep their options open, continuing to hope for that Miracle Solution that delivers both (and usually rewarding the party which comes up, this cycle, with the most plausible line of politicobabble bullshit suggesting they can have X and Y at the same time).

Since this crucial group of disengaged voters is not going to actually vote for an ideology -- they are going to continue to exercise their right to not choose and not decide and not really think about such matters very hard at all -- politics tends to become, of necessity, a war over personal characteristics.

Candidate A is a bad candidate because she supports Y isn't going to move these voters, because they support Y, too. They also support Not-Y, and X, and Not-X, and out-of-left-field Z, and not-Z, to boot.

In fact, they support nearly everything, and if you point out that their support of everything is highly contradictory and illogical, because some things, by necessity, come at the cost of something else, they will argue passionately with you stop listening altogether and walk away in order to update their FaceBook accounts because they really don't care to explore their beliefs and their consequences beyond the most superficial level and we really only having this discussion with you in the first place because they wanted to pretend they were engaged and also because it seemed "nice" to let you talk at them over something you seemed to care so much about.

So, for such voters, the main factor in driving decisions (to the extent they make them) is personality, and that means that the most effective line of persuasion isn't Candidate A has bad ideas about governance but rather Candidate A is a Bad Person, and it's always going to be that way, because marginal voters don't really give a crap about political ideology -- too "thinky" -- but of course everyone knows that Bad People shouldn't be rewarded.

It's not the parties' fault that they dress up ideological battles in the trappings of dramatic fiction, with White Hatted Heroes and Black Hatted Villains. It's the fault of a certain segment of the American public, who will not respond to any sort of persuasion except these crude, hastily-written Morality Plays we stage for them every couple of years.

Yeah, I'd like to deal with them as if they were adults and just say "Hey, here's their ideology, here's theirs; they're probably not bad people, on the whole, but their ideas are bad, and you have to finally chose their ideas or mine," but, on a political level, they're not adults.

They are in fact children, and you don't explain to a small child the moral consequences of lying or the nuanced cases in which a lie might be justified or inconsequential.

You tell a small child that if he lies, his Mommy and Daddy will cry, and hope that that blunt emotional messaging does the trick.

I'm a big believer in the idea that people get the government -- and the politics -- they deserve, and I'm very suspicious of criticism that lays he blame for childishness and sanctimony in politics at the feet of politicians. Don't hate the playa, hate the game, they say, and I can't get too upset over people playing the game according to its established and accepted rules.

Here's what politicians can never say, but I'm not running for office, so I can: There are a lot of fucking Dummies in this country and they're lazy to boot and the only way you can hope to engage them in politics is through Punch-and-Judy puppet-shows with lots of slapsticking and crude drama.

And if for a lot of these Dummies, the only question they're asking about Elena Kagan is "Is she a lesbian?" -- because it's a fun question like they often see on Melrose Place, except with much hotter women -- that is one more question than they were ever interested in as regards Sonia Sotomayor.

And because that's the only question regarding Kagan the Dummies have even heard of, that limits the actual political content of the debate they're willing to even hear to "Does that mean she supports a guarantee to gay marriage?"

It's not my fault, it's not your fault, it's not our politicians' fault. Frankly, I gotta say, it's often not even the Democrats' fault.

It's the Dummies' fault. Our politics is fundamentally stupid because those marginal voters that are the key to every election are fundamentally stupid -- at least as regards politics.

And here's where I say "And if America is ever to change this, people -- all people -- must inform themselves and do the intellectual and moral work of actually making tough choices," to button up the article, but I'm not going to say that, because that never has happened and never will happen and so there's no sense of saying it. I might as well say And we must all focus our psychic chi in order to gain the power of unassisted human flight.

So we'll continuing drawing brightly-colored political cartoons to get the Dummies to devote three microvolts of brain activity to important political questions with tangible impacts on their own and their children's lives, and this will continue until the Dummies start actually taking an interest in their own lives or until politicians stop pandering to their distracted disengagement, which is to say, this will continue, full stop.

Oh: Just because I may conclude that something is permissible doesn't mean I think it's politic -- nasty stuff about her sexuality from the base and especially elected representatives would be counter-productive, because people do -- rightly -- have a sense of fair play, and the Dummies are also not going to reward a party they believe is acting in a shabby and mean way.

My point wasn't we should do this or that. It's more that the game permits this or that -- but just because you can do something has never meant you actually should.

But at that point it becomes a question of maximum utility, not of morality or principle. That is, it's a cold-hearted calculation of what works the best, shorn of any sentimentality.

Over at Volokh, a conversation the writer didn't want to have, but feels compelled to note, for intellectual reasons -- just because you've "dated men" doesn't mean you're not a lesbian, or lesbian-ish, or bisexual.

I certainly don't think that a lesbian shouldn't be on the Supreme Court -- or even that a lesbian should be compelled to out herself as a lesbian to get on the Supreme Court.

I don't think that, in itself, is relevant.

But with a candidate who is so secretive by personal careerist choice... well, since she won't tell me what she thinks, I need to guess, and to guess, I at least need some basic data to base my guesses on.

So far all I know about Elena Kagan is that she is mammal.

Posted by: Ace at 12:04 PM | Comments (180)
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Kagan's Friends: She's Totally Not Gay, Not That There's Not Anything Not Wrong With That
— Ace

Spin-ster:

Elena Kagan is not a lesbian, one of her best friends told POLITICO Tuesday night, responding to persistent rumors and innuendo about the Supreme Court nomineeÂ’s personal life.

“I’ve known her for most of her adult life and I know she’s straight,” said Sarah Walzer, Kagan’s roommate in law school and a close friend since then. “She dated men when we were in law school, we talked about men — who in our class was cute, who she would like to date, all of those things. She definitely dated when she was in D.C. after law school, when she was in Chicago – and she just didn’t find the right person.”

Walzer, half amused and half appalled to be discussing her friend’s sexual orientation, agreed to be interviewed after Kagan’s supporters decided they should tactfully put an end to the rumor, which White House officials had already tried to squelch in background interviews with reporters. She said she decided to talk to POLITICO because the discussion of Kagan’s personal life has become a “distraction.”

“It’s taking away from substantive discussion of the issues from a really substantive person who deserves to be given the opportunity to address the substantive issues,” she said.

Another friend, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, a member of Kagan’s social circle at Princeton University, wanted to make the same point as Walzer. “I did not go out with her, but other guys did,” he said in an email Tuesday night. “I don't think it is my place to say more.”

See Allah for why it ultimately doesn't matter and InstaPundit arguing it's a fair question. (Although he'd probably say it ultimately doesn't matter much, either.)

In terms of a purely logical transaction, it is true that if Obama is going to fetishize identity politics it's fair to inquire about the identity of his nominees, and if he's going to pander to tribal loyalties we can fairly ask what tribe a nominee is loyal to.

On the other hand, the point of asking is to smoke out her position on gay marriage, which can be asked straight (ahem) without the need to get at the question through proxy questions.

But, on the third Zaphod Beeblebrox hand, we can expect Kagan to lie about/evade this question if it is posed straight, since she already did that on the questionnaire put to her upon her nomination to Solicitor General.

On the fourth double-armed robot hand, however, we can do what we usually do in such situations, and assume she's hiding the answer because the answer would be politically problematic, and assume, since she won't say either way, that she supports discovering a federal right to gay marriage. (Her overly-stingy non-responsive evasion on that questionnaire buttresses this assumption.)

Many gays have taken gay marriage as a 21st-century new civil rights freedom march crusade, and that position continues to be resisted by 55%-60% of the public, and the cool thing about being a judge is that you no longer have to give a fig what the public thinks at all. As impertinent and disrespectful as the question is, I guess I'm reluctantly talking myself into InstaPundit's agreement with the shrieking shrill Andrew Sullivan: If someone's campaigning for a position in which they will have a key role in shaping laws about sexuality for the next 30 years, we have a right to know, fully, her beliefs and inputs about this topic.

A clear statement of her actual beliefs on the issue itself would obviate the need for such digging -- i.e., if she says "I think the Constitution demands the right to gay marriage," I don't need to know about her sexuality at all, because I was just using that as proxy for her real, hidden beliefs, and since I now know her real belief, I have no further need of proxy information.

But I don't expect her to say that; I expect her to continue to be maddeningly and deceptively non-responsive to questions, a technique she herself decried at the youthful, callow age of 35, but has now re-thought and now considers dodging relevant questions to be a matter of basic prudence.

Do her friends' statements settle the issue? Of course not, and not just because as friends they can be expected to keep any secrets she might have. (That's what friends are for.)

The thing is, the media doesn't want to cover this, and by and large hasn't, and the rationale they'd give for that is that it is irrelevant or only barely relevant and thus outweighed by the invasion of privacy such inquiries constitute.

The thing is, though, that if Kagan herself said she was straight, and then others came forth to dispute that, you know what you'd have right there? You'd have a story which you could not contain and could not avoid covering. Like Gary Hart's famous "follow me around, I ain't a cheat" statement -- the statement itself gave the media license to do just that, because it was no longer just a question of sexuality (which they deem off-limits, at least with Democrats) but now a question of the truthfulness of public statements, and it's hard to ever argue a direct lie on a provable factual matter from a politician is wholly irrelevant.

A simple two word sentence ("I'm straight" or "I'm gay" or "I'm bisexual" or even "I'm nonsexual") from Kagan would settle the issue either way, and it seems pretty odd to me that she refuses to do so, instead relying on friends and surrogates to attempt to quell speculation.

Kagan is a stealth candidate. She has, for careerist reasons, refused to publicly state her positions on almost all issues. Even where it seems she did in fact have a strong position -- on the military's DADT policy -- her surrogates now rush forward to say even that is not her actual position, necessarily, but rather simply her executing Harvard's institutional policy.

So we know nothing about her, and she knows -- she actually wrote a paper criticizing this -- that it's unfair for a judicial nominee to sail through a confirmation process simply by refusing to give any critics (or any supporters, for that matter) any information whatsoever about what sort of a judge she'd actually be.

Asking about her sexuality -- or any biographical data -- might only be barely relevant to these questions, and sound like grasping at straws -- but she's a cipher. A ghost, and deliberately so. She has been a phantom by choice precisely so that no one would have have evidence of any reason to vote against her (or, again, for her, for that matter).

It's grasping at straws, but what has she left us with but straws?

People resort to reading tea-leaves when they wish to know the unknowable, like the future. We shouldn't have to resort to tea-leaves when we're discussing a possible 30 (or 40, or even 50 -- who knows?) year appointment. And yet we do, so here we are, playing with chicken-bones and goat-intestines.


Posted by: Ace at 10:09 AM | Comments (266)
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Additional Arrests Made In Times Square Bomb Plot
— DrewM

Probably just some home grown Mennonites.

Federal agents conducted Thursday morning raids in Massachusetts and New York in connection with the failed Times Square car bomb, and two people were arrested, federal authorities and witnesses said.

The searches were the product of evidence gathered in the investigation into Faisal Shahzad's alleged bombing attempt two weeks ago, but there was "no known immediate threat to the public or any active plot against the United States," FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz said.

Marcinkiewicz would not confirm any addresses, but police cordoned off a small house in Watertown, a suburb about 10 miles west of Boston, and a neighbor reported seeing an FBI raid there.

A Mobil gas station in Brookline, another Boston suburb, also was raided. The entrances and exits to the station were cordoned off by yellow tape, and FBI agents were going in and out of the building. Agents also searched a silver Honda in the parking lot, removing items from the vehicle and loading material into an SUV.

The two that have been arrested are being held on immigration violations, which is clearly racist.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:58 AM | Comments (306)
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Facebook backlash goes mainstream?
— Purple Avenger

Start typing "How do I" into a Google search...

...As of this post, the #6 suggestion is:

"How do I delete my Facebook account"


[UPDATE]
Facebook privacy policy exceeds length of US constitution!

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 06:04 AM | Comments (212)
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