Juan, of course, disagrees. Juan insists that the question depends on the public's embrace of the challenger, whereas Hume, correctly, says that every election is a referendum on the incumbent first and foremost, and the Republican candidate will only have a strong bearing on the contest if it's a "colorful, freakish" figure.

Juan Williams is like a broken clock whose hands move, but out-of-sync with the actual time, so that it isn't necessarily right twice a day. I think he was right about NPR a few times -- so, like 3 times in 50 years.

Posted by: Ace at 01:17 PM | Comments (227)
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The word "terrorism" comes not from me but from the professor -- she asks what the threshold level of public participation is required for "terrorism" to become "revolution" -- that is, using a "history is written by the victors" mindset, she is saying that the only difference between terrorism and revolution is the popularity of it, and she wants to know, ballpark, how many they need on board to have their terrorism categorized as "revolution."

Not that she's saying to hold off until that point, mind you; she just wants to know, for public relations purposes, how many she has to sign up for terrorism to get the more popular classification.

All the gentlemen scholars in attendance here are talking up "power coming from the barrel of a gun" and violent overthrow of democracy.

More of the Violent Instruction: Anecdotes demonstrate this isn't hypothetical or just talking about violence.

Guardian Writer Threats Violence In England: She claims that some members of her little monoculture will resort to special activities if "silenced" -- but no one's "silencing" her. What she means is that if she isn't obeyed, violence will ensue.

Posted by: Ace at 12:57 PM | Comments (100)
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That is, of the eight Democrats eligible for recall, the three whose petitions for recall are being filed are the most beatable.

I don't know if "most beatable of that eight" translates to "likely beatable," but it's something.

We need a strong push on this. They'll probably at least beat on of ours, if not two; we need to beat at least one of theirs.

Posted by: Ace at 12:06 PM | Comments (85)
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One potential candidate out.

Haley Barbour and Mitch Daniels are friends, and are said to have a gentleman's agreement that either one or the other will run, but not both. So this makes it more likely Daniels will run, if only because a potential disqualifying condition has been eliminated.

White House 2012 predicted that candidates would begin declaring or undeclaring very soon, and predicted that Barbour would decline to run, and also that Daniels would decide to run. So... well, he got one of them right, so maybe the other too.

Posted by: Ace at 11:29 AM | Comments (196)
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He says he's thinking about it.

A lawsuit is pressed against him by a liberal advocacy group, relying on a series of cases cooked up by liberals, which claim that the state constitution's guarantee of a "thorough and efficient" education means, of course, that more money must be spent on poor-district schools than affluent ones.

Christie has canceled $1.7 billion of useless extra funding for failing schools, and if the Supreme Court decides once again to overstep its bounds and act as a super-legislature, he just might ignore its ruling.

I think it was Andrew Jackson who said of a US Supreme Court decision (regarding Indians' claims on land seized by the government), "The court has made its ruling; now let it enforce it."

“That’s an option,” Christie replied [in response to a question suggesting the possibility of simply ignoring the court]. “I’m not going to sit here and speculate. … There are a whole bunch of options in the contingency plan.”

Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts last night would not say how seriously the governor is considering not complying.

Christie went on the attack against the state Supreme Court, a day after it heard oral arguments about whether he violated the state constitution by cutting public school funding last year.

Christie also took aim at Associate Justice Barry Albin, singling him out as an example of how “judges have lost their sense of place in our democracy.”

We always talk about our guys just doing this, just exercising their own judgment about the constitution and ignoring the courts.

If he does this, I tell you, he is The Man, without question.

I don't think he will. We never do this. But, it is possible: these court rulings are generally unpopular. If you're going to have a constitutional crisis challenging the pretend-authority of the court to act as super-legislator, this is as good as any issue to have it over.

Posted by: Ace at 11:00 AM | Comments (136)
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Jay Carney laughs at reporters for chasing the big stories, like whether Prince Valium bothered to issue a statement on the holiest day on the Christian calendar.

He didn't, but Carney reassures us that his outing to church was "high profile" (i.e., telegraphed to the media as a photo op), so that should cover it.

Of course, Obama is fairly devout about issuing statements on religious holidays -- he's managed to commemorate all major Muslim holidays, for example. So shut up, Wingnuts.

Besides, his 2010 "Easter" statement seemed to go out of its way to be a non-Easter statement...

In 2010, Obama was criticized for releasing an all-inclusive Easter greeting. He reached out to Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and people of no faith at all in a statement about a holiday that is uniquely Christian.

... so maybe it's just as well he didn't bother.

Thanks to Drudge. It's like he's almost trying to lose it at this point, or maybe it's that he's finding the charade tedious and figures he can dispense with the pretense.

Filet O Fish Determined To Be Empty Calories: Useful Useless Idiot Oliver Willis continues earning 10% of the money Media Matters is paying him.

Thanks to Slublog for that. Willis' tagline is "Like Kryptonite to Stupid." Well, that's half true. Cut out the middle two words and you've got something.

Posted by: Ace at 10:08 AM | Comments (161)
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The way they... surround a story, as an old New York Times advertising campaign used to brag.

- Gas prices have risen almost $1-a-gallon since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, yet President Obama's drilling moratorium and other anti-oil policies have barely been mentioned by the networks in that time span.

- Only 1 percent (3 out of 280) of oil price stories since the spill has made any connection between the administration's anti-oil actions and the jump in gasoline prices.

Choices are usually a matter of tradeoffs. We choose one thing at the expense of another. Most of us intuitively understand that you can't have it all, and choosing one is choosing against another.

Shills attempt to claim there are no tradeoffs, that choices are all upside and no downside. You get this when buying a car, buying a home... or watching Make Believe Media "news," which represents the policies of their beloved liberal Democrats as almost never having any tradeoff-downside associated with them. Ever.

Now, if a Republican proposes tax cuts... well, hot damn, but you will soon be hearing about an awful lot of bad consequences attendant to that choice.

But Obama's anti-oil permitorium? Any possible tightening of supply caused by that?

No. Why do you ask?

And in case your memory is psst-ing you "Didn't they always link high gas prices with Bush?," why yes. Yes they did.

The Second Term of Jimmy Carter: Lefties are starting to worry, as Eric Alterman does, that Obama is looking less messianic and more malaisiac. Among other problems, Obama faces $5 a gallon gas all summer (and probably longer than that), which is, despite the media's lack of intellectual curiosity about the state of things, at least partially chargeable to Obama.

On that last point, that's me talking, not Eric Alterman. I'm sure Alterman thinks that there is absolutely no connection between the US not drilling for oil and oil costing a lot in the US.

Why do you ask?

Posted by: Ace at 09:44 AM | Comments (88)
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"Prison break" in quotes, because who knows how much help they had from the inside, outside, and topside.

Hundreds of prisoners escaped from a jail in Afghanistan's south on Monday through a tunnel dug by Taliban insurgents, officials said, a "disaster" for the Afghan government and a setback for foreign forces planning to start a gradual withdrawal within months.

...

Tooryalai Wesa, governor of volatile southern Kandahar province, told Reuters 488 prisoners escaped due to the negligence of Afghan security forces at the province's main jail. He said the tunnel led to a nearby house.

Khandahar, "the South," which is Pashtun-controlled and ergo Taliban country.

I renew my call for a partition in the country, establishing the anti-Taliban north as its own sovereign nation -- and then we support that nation and make war on the Pashtun one (the bigger part).

I am so sick of trying to preserve old borders and the idea of pluralistic multicultural society in places that are primitive and savage.

The Pashtuns like the Taliban and support them; let them choke on that. We may not be able to save the whole country, but we can preserve the anti-Taliban parts of it, and bomb the shit out of the rest of it.

The corrupt Hamid Karzai is president because he's a Pashtun and Pashtuns will of course not permit a non-Pashtun to head their government. Fine. They can have their choice of government but then we must impose our choice of countries and borders.

Posted by: Ace at 09:17 AM | Comments (103)
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The old rule (much eroded of late) is that others aren't responsible for one's personal destructive choices.

But especially since stuff Sarah Palin didn't say didn't motivate Jared Loughner to not kill people for the Tea Party, it turns out that everything we say which could possibly, or merely hypothetically, put a bad thought in someone else's head puts us on the hook for the bad action.

At least, that is the rule the left has established for us. Somehow I think they'll fail once again to impose it universally.

Posted by: Ace at 08:48 AM | Comments (136)
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Crap.

via many Twitterers.

4th Circuit gets their shot at it first it seems.

*I'm not a lawyer so I'll put this out there, and let the smarter people who work here weigh in.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:35 AM | Comments (30)
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