As Falls Bennett, So Falls Mollohan
— Dave in Texas

W. Va. Democrat Alan Mollohan ousted in primary.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Democrat Alan Mollohan became the first member of the U.S. House to be ousted this spring primary season after his opponent mounted a campaign that questioned the 14-term congressman's ethics and support for federal health care reform.

Mollohan conceded after unofficial returns showed that with 82 percent of precincts reporting, state Sen. Mike Oliverio was ahead 56 percent to 44 percent. It ends his 28 years in the House.

Mollohan was dogged by ethical questions, and the more conservative Oliverio ran an aggressive campaign portraying him as corrupt and out of touch. Conservative media rallied around Oliverio, along with anti-abortion groups angry over Mollohan's support of health care reform.

For some reason the word "conservative" creeps into the reportage, including this bizarre claim by Mollohan that he was being unfairly attacked for preventing Republicans from undermining House ethics rules in an attempt to defend Tom Delay.

*facepalm* Interesting strategy Alan. Dated. Interesting.

Not really the same set of circumstances at the Utah Senate primary, just a different set of rumblings that still point to "pissed off constituents in a different part of the country".

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:07 PM | Comments (35)
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Overnight Open Thread - Boring Tuesday Version
— Maetenloch

Good evening all M&Ms.

Scientists: Everybody's a Little Neanderthal

So after sequencing most of the Neanderthal DNA, scientists now say that most people of European or Asian descent have 1 to 4% of Neanderthal genes in their DNA. Interestingly Sub-Saharan Africans don't since the Neanderthals only lived outside Africa. So apparently in between killing and driving off Neanderthal tribes, early humans were also getting jiggy with them. Which seems about par for human nature.

Of course having 1-4% of their genes is just an average, some people have more, a lot more. Such as your humble ONT narrator. With my natural hirsuteness, gorilla-like physique, y-5 molars, prehensile feet, indifference to cold, and deep love of fire, meat, pointy sticks, and rocks, I'm just a hop, skip and a few codons away from being a Neanderthal missing link. And I'm okay with that, having long since come to terms with my innate cave-manhood.

Luckily thanks to modern shaving technology and orthodontics I'm able to pass among humans with nary a strange look. At worst, thanks to Geico, people just assume I'm part of some kind of insurance event. And yes your modern world and magic talking boxes sometimes do scare and confuse me, but I do know one thing and that's that we cavemen are people too (mostly) and we also need love. So human ladies don't be shy - grab your spirit water beverages and let me show you around my newly refurbished love cave. It has authentic stone floors and gets HBO, Lifetime, and the Home Shopping Network.
more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:05 PM | Comments (744)
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Tone deaf or just plain stupid? You decide.
Church installs registered sex offender to oversee youth and children
— Purple Avenger

The decision apparently has not been met with universal approval by the flock.

Frank Douglas, Jr. bishop of the Church of God in ChristÂ’s Western Missouri jurisdiction has appointed and installed a registered sex offender as president of AIM (Auxillaries in Ministry) which, among other things, has oversight of youth and children...

...Jones former deputy at Wyandotte County (MO) jail was sentenced to 41 months in prison plus three yearsÂ’ probation after pleading no contest to two-year-old charges of attempted aggravated criminal sodomy and aggravated sexual battery...

...The appointment came almost immediately after JonesÂ’ roughly seven year prison and probation period finished.

I'm betting the take at the collection plate has a bit on the light side lately. People tend to get a bit touchy about this kinda thing.

H/T Duane

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 05:26 PM | Comments (152)
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Confirmed, Sayeth Jawa: Mullah Omar Was In Fact Captured
— Ace

That's pretty much all they have now.

Hm. If this is true -- and maybe it is -- this would be the most important story ever broken, and then confirmed, on a blog.

(Well, I guess RatherGate may be sort of more important, in some ways, but that wasn't actually broken on a blog (it was FreeRepublic) and there was never true "confirmation" because to this day the MFM pretends there is some doubt over whether the Killian memos were faked.)

Posted by: Ace at 02:17 PM | Comments (305)
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Hmm: Obama Wants To Control Marketing of Children's Food & Toys
— Ace

I say "Hmm" because I'm a lot more conflicted on this than conservative/libertarian orthodoxy would urge.

I passed up on bashing the California law banning toys with Happy Meals, because, again, I'm not sure about this. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing.

I would point out that the rules are different for children, as a general matter, and that it's not necessarily a bad thing to have nanny-state rules for people who really do need nannies and it's not automatically awful to have patronizingly protective rules for those who do actually need a pater.

My thing is this: Most advertising is a direct pitch to the buyer. The Sham-Wow and Snuggie guys pitch their products to me. The state has little interest in regulating such advertising, except to patrol for fraudulent claims and so forth.

But products for children are not advertised to the person actually making the purchasing decision, by and large. Instead, the advertising is directed to the child, who in turn lobbies the parent who will actually make the purchase.

I don't have kids but friends do and they are very stringent about how often their kids can watch TV. And whenever they're allowed to watch kid's shows, they're invariably bombarded with commercials for cereals with very high sugar content. Which these friends pretty much forbid their kids from having.

Well -- sort of. Their rule used to be they wouldn't buy their kids high-sugar cereal. They have relaxed that rule -- and I doubt very much it's because they've suddenly decided that high-sugar diets are a good thing. It's because their kids made a big issue of high-sugar cereals, and they relented, to keep a little peace in the house.

This strikes me as dirty pool, or at least potentially dirty pool, given that the advertising here does not seek to persuade the buyer, but rather persuade an immature mind to make trouble and act up and whine and cry until the actual buyer gives in.

In a way it's a little like subliminal advertising. Generally we'd say it's dirty pool to influence a buyer with subliminal advertising. (Assuming it worked, which it might not, but assume for the point of this analogy that subliminal advertising did work -- would that be fair? Would it be objectionable to pass laws forbidding it?)

Kids' advertising doesn't even have that kind of subtlety; if you're kid starts screaming bloody murder that he wants Sugar-Fortified Choco-Bombs in the market, you're probably going to wish your kids' retransmission of the advertising meme was subliminal. The pleadings and demands for Sugar-Fortified Choco-Bombs are going to be painfully superliminal.

There is a libertarian answer to this: Just be a stronger, tough-lovier parent and ignore the kid. Or Just never allow him to watch kids' TV shows. Or a raft of other Just don'ts, as if those are easy to enforce, or as if it's fair to demand that everyone undertake affirmative actions to negate the sorta-dirty-pool actions of other people.

For me, that's a bit like the silly dodge of saying Just wear ear-muffs when the subject of local noise ordinances come up. Sure, if my upstairs neighbor wants to turn his 100 watt subwoofers up to 11 and play dance music every night, I could undertake a whole bunch of libertarian, non-authoritarian actions to check him, such as paying him my own money to not play loud music, or spending thousands of dollars to beef up the ceiling with noise-dampening material, or moving out of the apartment altogether, or wearing earmuffs whenever I'm home.

Sure, I could do all those things. Know what? I'd rather just have a law on the books and be able to drop dime on him when he gets out of control about things.

Point is: I often find the libertarian response to such difficult questions about the use of state-authorized or state-executed coercion to be glib and unconvincing when it comes to a lot of things like that. There are a whole pile of Just do this and Just do that responses, but all of them require that I forfeit some of my own personal liberty (to not Just do this and to not Just do that) in order to, fetishistically I think, protect this other guy's own absolute liberty.

There's no getting around it, in my Noisy Neighbor situation: Either one or the other party will be forced, whether by state action or private action, to give up some of his own liberty. Libertarians almost always favor keeping the state out of it -- a wise impulse, but again, let's not get fetishistic about it -- but that means in my hypothetical that I, the neighbor bothered by noise, must give up a fair amount of my own liberty in order to make sure Joe Subwoofer keeps each and every quantum of his.

And bringing this around to advertising to children: Yes, I suppose that I, were I a parent, could Just Do This and Just Do That to shield myself from the fact that advertisers, keeping all of their libertarian freedom to advertise whatever products they choose in however manner they see fit, will target my kids in order to amp them up and began a quasi-terroristic campaign of whining and crying and general hissiness should I not buy this or that product for them.

On the other hand, I could stop prioritizing the liberty of a company marketing products to my kids, and instead prioritize my own liberty, and take some of their liberty to market x product in y fashion away.

I just don't find the knee-jerk bromides about a creeping nanny-state applicable here. We're not talking about limiting companies' ability to market to fully-formed, legally competent adults. We're talking about influencing immature children to in turn use all their childish wiles to influence their parents to make a purchasing decision. I don't think there is a terribly strong overriding principle that suggests we can't, or that we have to be so respectful of Corporation X's rights and liberties that we have to abandon our own.

There is the general idea that Give 'em an inch, they'll take a mile, and that almost all plans to restrict the liberty adults begins with a Think of the children plan to restrict only stuff involving kids, and I do buy that. But those are slippery slope arguments, and I never find them compelling. If we permit x, y becomes easier to achieve, those arguments go, to which I always respond 1) then you're saying x is relatively unobjectionable in itself and 2) wake me when someone proposes y -- I'll be on your side then, and I imagine a lot of other people will be, too. But I'm having trouble sweating x on its own.

And as for the politics of it: I think it's dangerous, politically, to champion corporate rights to market over parents' rights to raise their kids without a corporation causing them a lot of grief over their decisions. You can toss out a lot of philosophical reasons for making this decision, but where the rubber meets the road, it still seems like you're prioritizing a corporation over a parent. And I don't see that winning a lot of votes.

Posted by: Ace at 01:35 PM | Comments (850)
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Regaining My Religion: The Rise of the Cult of Obama
— Ace

A much more scholarly and detailed examination of the creation of the first new major religion of the twentieth century. Definitely a good read.

Early in the article, he discusses the Magic Negro movie (which he calls the "black angel" movie) as laying the necessary groundwork for Obama's messianic campaign.

The first signs of the spiritual zeal that would eventually play a significant part in Obama’s election came not from Washington or Chicago but from Hollywood. Our moviemakers are adept at measuring the zeitgeist of the nation—of its liberal half, anyway—and are a powerful force in shaping it. And for more than a decade, they’ve been churning out what critics call “black-angel” movies. These films feature a white protagonist guided to enlightenment by a black character, usually of divine or supernatural origin or, at the very least, in touch with spiritual experiences that the main character lacks. With the black angel’s help, the white hero finds salvation.

The genre includes, to name just a few, The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), in which Will Smith—playing a caddie who is really, the film hints, God—restores Matt Damon’s golf game and love life; Bruce Almighty (2003), in which Morgan Freeman, as God, bestows his powers on a manic Jim Carrey; and the awful What Dreams May Come (199 , in which Cuba Gooding, Jr. is a wise soul guiding Robin Williams through the afterlife. These movies have been numerous enough, David Sterritt points out in the Christian Science Monitor, to confuse TV’s buffoonish Homer Simpson: in one episode, “Homer mistook a black man in a white suit for an angelic visitor, all because (according to his embarrassed wife) he’d been seeing too many movies lately.”

Far and away the best of the black-angel films is Frank Darabont’s The Green Mile (1999), based on a novel by Stephen King, whose knack for setting his finger on the cultural pulse has made him a multimillionaire. The basso profundo Michael Clarke Duncan plays John Coffey (note the initials), a gigantic black man wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of two little girls in Depression-era Louisiana and sentenced to death; Tom Hanks plays Paul Edgecomb, a prison guard who discovers that Coffey is not only innocent but also a Christlike miracle worker. Coffey’s laying-on of hands restores a dead mouse to life, cures Edgecomb of a bladder infection, and heals the warden’s wife’s brain cancer. Shortly before he is executed—the jeering of the girls’ anguished parents and the weeping of the prison guards who know the truth recall the account of the Crucifixion in Luke—Coffey has this exchange with a tortured Edgecomb:

Edgecomb. Tell me what you want me to do. You want me to take you out of here? Just let you run away? See how far you could get?

Coffey. Why would you do such a foolish thing?

Edgecomb. On the day of my judgment, when I stand before God, and He asks me why did I—did I kill one of His true miracles—what am I going to say? That it was my job? . . .

Coffey. You tell God the Father it was a kindness you done. . . . I want it to be over and done with. I do. . . . IÂ’m tired of people being ugly to each other. IÂ’m tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world every day.

The writer or director of a black-angel film recognizes the unspeakable injustices once perpetrated by his country on black people; he wants to be forgiven the sins of his fathers. If he is simply a comedian, he makes Bruce Almighty, casting a black man as God in a sort of lighthearted flattery. If his waters run deeper, he understands that no plum role can atone for the crimes that weigh on him. Instinctively, he realizes what thinkers from Aristotle to Marcel Mauss have known: that whenever a gift is given, the prestige of the giver increases and that of the recipient declines. So he tells a story in which a black man gives the greatest gift of all, suffering—like Jesus in Christian theology—for others’ sins, in fact demanding to suffer, and by demanding, forgiving. White America is pardoned its wrongs, while black America, by pardoning, is elevated to godhood.

Are these movies ultimately condescending to blacks? After all, the white protagonist, the person who will be saved or damned according to his decisions, is invariably more interesting than the serene black angel hovering nearby. Indeed, the condescension, if such it is, is a cinematic version of affirmative action—a denial to blacks of Everyman’s struggle for salvation; a magnanimous extension to them of paradise.

None of that was Obama's doing, of course, but he did tap into that sentiment with the ooga-booga mysticism he dressed up as politics.

The article discusses (obliquely) what I think is an important driver in all this, that great masses of Americans have rejected and repudiated, they think, the non-rational desire for religious meaning in their lives.

But what they've actually done is only reject and repudiate conventional religion's offerings in this area. Having rejected the usual method of finding transcendence in everyday life, and yet still possessing a strong desire to discover such transcendence, they simply begin attaching religious significance to traditionally non-religious ideas and actions, such as buying local organic produce and fluorescent bulbs.

They haven't purged themselves, as they believe, of that prehistoric longing to be closer to God; they've only forbidden themselves from going about this in the historically-normal way. So when a 21st-century Charismatic like Obama appears, they are ready to Believe, capital B intended.

A related article at City-Journal seems to discuss this (I say seemed because I've only begun skimming it): How Science Fiction Discovered Religion.

Posted by: Ace at 11:43 AM | Comments (307)
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Breaking: Gordon Brown Resigns
— DrewM

He goes to Buckingham Palace to tell the Queen and advise that she call David Cameron and ask him to form a government.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition will take over.

The questions will be what is the deal that was cut and who gets what Cabinet positions.

The British system is really amazing. Brown and his family left 10 Downing (where they've lived for years) and that's it, they don't go back. They don't have to go home but they can't go back there. Amazing how swiftly it happens.

There was talk that the Conservatives and Lib-Dem might have a fixed term, that is, they promise to vote for a certain number of years with the Conservatives but it seems unlikely that they will be able to make this last very long.

The Lib-Dems seem to be an unruly bunch., How long can Clegg hold them together? It seems the answer will come when we know when the reported referendum on electoral reform is held. It seems once the Lib-Dems get that, they'll want out and test how much they benefit from it (assuming it passes). If it doesn't pass, they'll probably want out then too.

Interesting note: The deal isn't formally done between the Conservatives and the Lib-Dems. The thought was Brown would wait and then resign to continue a continuity of government. Brown seems to have jumped the gun. Bit of pique on the way out the door?

Really freaky part of the Brit system...there's no Prime Minister right now. He resigns, chats for awhile with Liz and then she calls Cameron to pop in. Until then, there's no government. In the US, the President elect becomes President at Noon, whether or not the oath has been taken. There's no second when we don't have a President.

Brown just left the Palace after a 15 minute audience.

Reports are Brown will 'resign' from the House of Commons. Freaky Brit government factoid...you can't resign from the House of Commons. What they do is appoint a member who wants out to one of two BS titles. Since you can't hold a seat in the Commons and a position under the Crown, out you go.

Cameron has 'kissed hands' with the Queen and is now Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Sounds like the Conservatives are giving up their tax policy of cutting inheritance taxes and marriage taxes. Instead they will go with the Lib Dems plan of removing taxes on anyone making under 10,000 Pounds.

Full coalition which means Lib Dem ministers.

Strange, strange stuff.

Cameron said in his speech in front of 10 Downing said he thinks the country's "best days are ahead". That's a stock phrase in the US and it's believable. For the UK? Not so much. Great Britain used to rule the world. That's not coming back. Ever.

Posted by: DrewM at 10:23 AM | Comments (241)
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Gruppenfuhrer Reich Pollster: 87% of Americans are racist teabagging reactionaries
— Purple Avenger

Why might such a large percentage of the American population be such vile counter-revolutionary traitors needing to be stamped out like cockroaches?

Glad you asked. Its because those treasonous mouth breathing vermin are so deluded and mentally ill, they believe that English should be the official language of the USSA.

...Eighty-three percent (83%) say a company doing business in this country should be allowed to require its employees to speak English...

...Only 10% of Americans say requiring people to speak English is a form of racism or bigotry... [you don't even have all the moonbats on that one! - PA]

...Twelve percent (12%) believe that declaring English the official language would limit free speech in this country, but 78% feel otherwise and see no limits being placed on free speech...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:42 AM | Comments (411)
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Kagan Will be Confirmed
— Gabriel Malor

There are only two people who will have an opportunity to stop Elena Kagan from becoming a Supreme Court justice: Barack Obama and Elena Kagan. Obama can withdraw her nomination if he, for some reason, starts to question his choice. Yeah, right; when has he ever admitted to making a bad decision? Kagan can kill it by falling to pieces at her confirmation hearing. No, I don't expect that to happen either.

The reason is simple: there's just nothing about her to hook a filibuster on. She has no judicial experience, but then neither did Rehnquist when he joined the Court. So that's not really opposition material. She's definitely a Leftist—she worked for Dukakis and then President Clinton and gave money to Kerry and Obama—but then so is everyone else on the President's list of possible nominees and so was Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Warren, and a dozen other justices. Again, not really a ready argument for brining out the big guns.

The major knock against her is that her record is thin, but that's why it's hard to point out things that would cause enough senators to oppose her to make it worth the effort. She made a bad call about letting military recruiters onto campus (and she was hardly a lone decisionmaker in that), but she's not anti-military.

She handled a plagiarism scandal involving two Harvard Law professors by giving them slaps on the wrists and ultimately protecting them from any further consequences for their lack of integrity. Is that her right as Dean? Yep. Could there be good reasons for doing it? Yep again. Hardly something to hang a filibuster on.

She was on the Goldman Sachs research advisory council from 2005 to 2008, for which she received a $10,000 stipend in 2008. The council was formed to advise the company on public policy issues. Should it cause her to recuse herself from any Goldman cases that make it to the Court? Probably. Is it enough to reject her as ineligible for the Court? Of course not.

And that's about it. Unless you believe—like anti-gay organization Americans for Truth—that the public has a right to know whether she's a lesbian and—like the American Family Association—that lesbians are not qualified to be Supreme Court justices. I have no idea whether she's gay or not, but there is no right to forced outtings of gay people. It has no bearing on her eligibility for the Court, so it's none of our business unless she chooses to share. To this point, she's remained remarkably mum about her private life. But isn't that exactly the type of non-flaming, non-flaunting, non-stuff-it-down-our-throats gays folks on the right want?

The last thing is her answer on the constitutional right to gay marriage. She gave the "right" answer (No.), but that's been taken as evidence that, well, she lied. Okay. I don't know whether she lied or attempted evasion or not. I expect that she did evade, but then so have every justice since Ginsburg and most Senate-confirmable nominees. The point is to say as little as possible. Does that suck? Of course, as Kagan wrote in 1995 that makes confirmation hearings vapid and pointless. But she's hardly alone in playing that game and since it didn't give a reason to end Roberts' or Alito's bids for the court (yes, they did it too) it doesn't give a reason to end Kagan's.

As a matter of interest, by the way, finessing Kagan's answer does not rely on an absurd Clintonian examination of the meaning of "is." I could tell you honestly that I do not believe there is or should be a federal constitutional right to gay marriage. As a matter of substantive due process, there is no such right. I suspect that's what Kagan meant when she wrote there was no right to gay marriage.

Be cautious, however, because there is a constitutionally-protected right to equal protection. That is a right against unwarranted discrimination, which means that although there is no substantive right to government-licensed marriage, there is a right not to be discriminated against in government licensing. In other words, the Constitution does not require that the government provide civil marriages—no substantive due process right—, which means states could constitutional refuse to grant marriage licenses if they wanted to. However, it does require (the argument can be made) that if the government chooses to provide civil marriages, it must do so without discriminating on the basis of sex—an equal protection right.

Just so you know. If the courts overturn Prop 8 and other state bans on gay marriage, it will be under the equal protection rubric, not substantive due process. Similarly, if the courts overturn section 2 of DOMA, it will be because of equal protection.

Anyway, Kagan's the best we're likely to get out of Obama's short list. She's not going to be filibustered (wanna bet on it?) and she'll be confirmed without much circus unless she trips all over herself at her hearing.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:50 AM | Comments (295)
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To the Victors go the Spoils?
— Slublog

Ed at Hot Air picks up on a story from the Daily Caller, which asks a very good question: how do political aides rate military chauffeurs?

President Obama has expanded the very small group of top aides who are given the privilege of taxpayer-funded personal drivers — who take them from their house to work and back home again each day — to include two top political advisers.

The Bush White House did not give the same privileges to any of its political advisers, according to former Bush administration officials. There is a record of the Clinton White House doing so once for two months, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller.

Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, both senior advisers to the president, have been given the luxurious and prestigious perk of being picked up at their homes and driven to work or around town throughout the day in government vehicles chauffeured by military drivers, according to a list of those given the benefit provided to The Daily Caller by the White House.

Jarrett also receives Secret Service protection, something Bush's political advisers did not, except for a few weeks after 9/11.

If you haven't yet, read ace's post on the media's use of the "neutral story line" and imagine how this would have been reported if the names of the advisers were Karl Rove and Karen Hughes. The story is especially troubling in light of the president's profligacy with the public's money when it comes to his own personal comfort, his choice of party food and where he chooses to go out on dates. The media reaction to each of those stories was basically a collective shrug. It's not as though they didn't report these stories, but they didn't frame them against current events.

When Bush went on vacation, the media would do stories like this about his travels. Note the last quote in this story, about him giving up golf. It's a gratuitous shot, not a piece of serious analysis. Including it at the end ensures that it's the last thought readers will have about the story. It's framing.

So yes, the media does report those stories about Obama's free-spending ways, but they do not frame them by mentioning the recession, the jobless rate or the national debt. There's nary a "some have questioned the...," or "critics wonder..." to be found in their stories. When certain administrations are in office, framing is discarded in favor of straight news reporting.

When a reporter does take the time to contrast the president's speeches against his own rhetoric, the pushback is fierce, as displayed by the links in this post.

The last time the Daily Caller had an exclusive about questionable political spending, it was picked up eagerly by the political media.

Let's see if this story, which involves taxpayer dollars, is given similar treatment.

Posted by: Slublog at 05:15 AM | Comments (43)
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