Yes, Richard Cohen. The WaPo's usually tired, predictably hack liberal columnist. Writing about the Democrats' mau-mauing of William Bennet (is it racist to say "mau-mau"? I certainly don't want to offend anyone), Cohen blasts:

Actually, it is Reid and the others who should apologize to Bennett. They were condemning and attempting to silence a public intellectual for a reference to a theory. It was not a proposal and not a recommendation -- nothing more than a possible explanation. But the Democrats preferred to pander to an audience that either had heard Bennett's remarks out of context, or merely thought that anytime that conservatives talk about race, they are being racist. The Democrats' obligation as politicians, as public officials, to see that we all hear the widest and richest diversity of views was suspended in favor of partisan cheap shots. (The spineless White House also refused to defend Bennett.)

Because I came of age in the McCarthy era, I have always thought of the Democratic Party as more protective of free speech and unpopular thought than the Republican Party. The GOP was the party of Joe McCarthy, William Jenner and other witch-hunters. Now, though, it is the Democrats who use the pieties of race, ethnicity and gender to stifle debate and smother thought, pretty much what anti-intellectual intellectuals did to Larry Summers, the president of Harvard, when he had the effrontery to ask some unorthodox questions about gender and mathematical aptitude. He was quickly instructed on how to think.

He also takes the Democrats to task for claiming Tom DeLay is guilty until presumed innocent and for having no original ideas.

Thanks to Megan.

Posted by: Ace at 07:39 AM | Comments (18)
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Terrific.

How exactly did the liberals on the Supreme Court wind up allying themselves with Judge Smails?

Posted by: Ace at 07:20 AM | Comments (39)
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Now THIS is a next-generation console package!

I just hope the explosive loyalty collar is a stand-alone accessory. I may need spares.

Posted by: Harry Callahan at 07:57 PM | Comments (12)
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Saw a garden, overrun with weeds.
I said, not me.
Through Spring I smothered and plucked them.
In Summer my garden was blooming brilliant.
But in the slumberous warmth the weeds got ahead of me.
Have I got the will, in this heat?
Oh, let them go to seed
And sleep with me under the snow
Chancing some Spring awakening!

I wrote this hideous thing, when I was drunk off my ass one night and feeling a bit...faggish.
You know, that "I love yaaa maaan!" kind of drunky-wunky. It was meant to be a devastating commentary on how nations lose their way. Yeah.

Well, I posted it on Jack M's late Blogtower blog which is no more.
The next day I told him it was a drunken pu**y-fart and to please delete it.

He obligingly made it his top post and kept it there, so the other posters could rabbit-punch me for three weeks.

This is a cautionary tale chirrin.
Don't be like me.

Post sober.

UPDATE: How drunk is too drunk to post?...you may well ask. Well, a couple Valu-Rite vodkas and three klonopin may be fine if you're a 200-lb musclebound hulk like Ace, but here are some dandy guidelines just in case you're not:

*Are you incredibly proud of the profundititity of your deep thoughoughts? Hit the reded X and go to bededed instededed/.

*Can you actually see the keyboard? If you are squinting through one eye and randomly punching keys and backspacing, you should probably just hit that red X in the upper red hand red corner and red go to red bed.

*What?

Posted by: LauraW. at 07:03 PM | Comments (72)
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The 'poet laureate of television' has left us.

Actually, I've never heard him called that, but I'm sure whoever wrote that thing didn't just make it up (though it'd be cool with me if they did, maybe realcool).

I'll always remember Nipsey for his infectious laugh, the smile he brought to contestants' faces on many a game show I couldn't find anything better than to watch on sick days, home from school (I still associate him with having a fever).

Nipsey, you magnificent, angry lion, you will be missed.

Posted by: Dr. Reo Symes at 04:49 PM | Comments (16)
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Seems like a real stretch to me. But there you go.

Posted by: Ace at 03:30 PM | Comments (17)
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Kinda cool. Fortunately, he didn't take my preferred name for my first born child-- "the SpaceMonkey Gleep."

Posted by: Ace at 01:53 PM | Comments (32)
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Let's hope it's just a case of that when she was young and irresponsible she was young and irresponsible:

An earlier Texas court] reasoned that the common law should rule unless changed by the legislature and that the question of the 'new tort' was embedded in serious policy considerations which should be determined only by the legislature. However, courts have both changed common law where it became obsolete and have ruled in decisions involving vital policy questions with great success.

In fairness, it should be noted the new tort she supported creating involved intentional infliction of emotional distress caused by refusing to serve a black customer. In that area, the Court has been pretty proactive, and I'm not sure anyone would want to argue with that stance.

But... she did seem to be a pretty big enthusiast for the Court resolving "vital policy questions." I'm so glad the framers of the Constitution had the good sense to take the power of resolving "vital policy questions" from the people themselves and reposing it in a body of unelected elite philsopher-kings.

Thanks to "someone."

Caveat: Sometimes law students don't write what they really think in notes and articles. There's a go along to get along thing at work.

Double-Secret Caveat: An anonymous poster points out, quite relevantly, that that was written in 1968, the Summer of Love and high-water mark for liberalism.

So she was young, it was a different era, and undoubtedly her brain was clogged with several years of ossified bong-resin when she wrote that.

And yes, people do "evolve," occasionally in the right direction. Half of the readers of this site, and half of the bloggers here, were liberals or at least moderate Democrats when they were younger.

Point well-taken.

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (42)
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You know where Bush screwed up? He screwed up by nominating Judge Roberts as Chief Justice.

First of all, a Chief Justice has not terribly much power on the court. His vote counts the same as any other justice. A Chief Justice is considered the senior Justice in any opinion he joins, and thus gets to choose which Justice will write the opinion (or the dissent, as the case may be) or if he himself will write it.

There's some power there, but not a lot. It's not like he gets two votes or can break a tie. The rest of his repsonsibilities are administrative in nature.

By nominating Roberts as Chief Justice, he made him a replacement for Rehnquist, rather than for Sandra Day O'Connor, as was originally planned. The thing is, Roberts could easily have been confirmed as O'Connor's replacement, and he was more conservative than her (if only by a bit) to boot. That would have allowed Bush a free hand to nominate a strong, unabashed conservative for Rehnquist's spot, as in that case he would have just been swapping one strong conservative for another.

Had he not nominated Roberts for CJ then, he would have replaces a very squishy semi-"conservative" with a more dependable conservative. And then he could have nominated a Scalia-type to replace Rehnquist. Net result: the court moves to the right.

But as it is, he has replaced Rehnquist with someone who is less of a conservative (or so it seems; who knows, really, given what little anyone knows about Roberts' actual judicial philosophy) and is replacing O'Connor with what seems to be an O'Connor clone.

Net result: the court moves slightly to the left.

Roberts was golden. Roberts could not be defeated, even as a swap for the liberalish O'Connor. Roberts was in like a tasseled-loafers Flynn.

Bush wasted that nomination, the replacement of O'Connor with someone who would (hopefully) be more consistently conservative than she was (especially late in her career, as she "evolved"), by offering him instead as a replacement for the definitely-conservative Rehnquist.

Stupid. He took a victory on Roberts and turned it into a loss.

And now he's forced to nominate a cipher whose chief qualifications for the job seem to be her "loyalty" to Bush and her gender.

I'd've preferred someone with loyalty to the Constitution. And I'm ambivalent about what sort of genetalia she sports.

The Anchoress says that Bush is "playing chess." I'm sorry, but I'm beginning to think the man couldn't successfully master Connect Four.

Not so Bad? Stop the ACLU notes that Pat Robertson's ACLJ (a conservative-tilting advocacy organization) supports Miers.

Conservative journalist Tim Carney notes:

In 1993, after the ABA had voted to adopt a pro-choice stance, the State Bar of Texas, under MiersÂ’ leadership, fought to have the issue put to a vote of the full ABA membership. She said:

“If we were going to take a position on this divisive issue, the members should have been able to vote.”

In favor of democracy on the issue of abortion? LetÂ’s hope she carries that through.

Thanks for the last to the Blogometer, who has, of course, links aplenty on reactions to the nomination.

Too Much Stuff: Katherine Ham of Wizbang! has more, including the now-famous donation to Al Gore in 1988.

Let me defend Miers on this point. In 1988, Al Gore seemed like one of the few truly-centrist Democrats running for office. In yet another embarassing revelation (worse than that bit about kissing George Clooney in a dream), I'll note that I myself supported Al "Primary Juggernaut" Gore in 1988. I was still a Democrat then, but looking for someone to rescue the party from its liberal/anti-military/anti-business posture. So, yeah-- in 1988, Ace of Spades was an enthusiastic Gore supporter, at least until he got squished by a bug midway through the primaries.

Hey, he was up against the charimsatic and bold Michael Dukakis. Poor guy never had a chance.

Correction! I originally wrote that the ACLJ was a Pat Robertson organization (it was the first hit when I googled it). There is an ACLJ run by Pat Robertson, but the American Center for Law & Justice, which has announced its support for Miers, is an entirely different "ACLJ" and not affiliated with Pat Robertson at all.

I apologize for the sloppy research. And I thank Stop the ACLU for correcting me.

Posted by: Ace at 11:01 AM | Comments (38)
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She did predict it, after all.

She also notes that Miers says pretty much exactly what judiciary-conservatives want to hear most:

I have always had a great respect and admiration for the genius that inspired our Constitution and our system of government...

The wisdom of those who drafted our constitution and conceived our nation as functioning with three strong and independent branches have proven truly remarkable. It is the responsibility of every generation to be true to the foundersÂ’ vision of the proper role of the courts in our society. If confirmed, I recognize that I will have a tremendous responsibility to keep our judicial system strong, and to help ensure that the courts meet their obligations to strictly apply the laws and the Constitution.

I don't know. Yes, it's fine rhetoric, but I could see a liberal like Souter saying the same sort of thing. It's easy to agree with a general proposition. As they say, God, or the Devil, is in the details.

One criticism I find a little weak is that she has no prior judicial experience. And, um, so what? She's a lawyer. A lawyer knows the law as well as a judge does. And in some cases, even better; after all, the judge mainly just reads the briefs of the litigants to get a handle on the laws he'll be interpreting. To the extend he does his own research, well, that's really mostly his clerks doing the research.

I would imagine that most good lawyers are better informed about the law in a particular case than the judge ruling on the various issues. Lawyers have a big financial interest in winning. Judges are just looking to not be overruled, so they can be promoted. That's an interest too, I guess, but the idea that judges are somehow "super-lawyers" is just silly. Judges are just lawyers who get to sit on a bench and make decisions rather than making arguments.

And I rather think that extensive time as a judge would bring one closer into the default judicial "mainstream," which is Warren-court liberalism.

Still, I'm not happy about this nomination.

Posted by: Ace at 10:44 AM | Comments (16)
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