...for, at least, the first quarter of any non-Presidential election year:

RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman today announced that the RNC received $32.3 million in contributions during the first three months of 2005, a fundraising record for the first quarter of a non-presidential election year. This is a remarkable display of grassroots enthusiasm considering the RNC raised more money in the first quarter of this year than in the first quarter of 2002, the last year it was able to raise non-federal dollars. The RNC reported $26.2 million cash-on-hand at the end of March after raising $10.7 million last month.

...

The RNC has received 715,000 contributions this year, with an average gift of $45.14. More than 68,200 new donors have contributed to the RNC this year.

I'd like to think that blogs like this one have something to do with that grassroots enthusiasm, which is why I am now demanding my f'n' slice of the pie. Cough it up, Melman.

I just want to wet my beak, as they say.

Posted by: Ace at 08:43 AM | Comments (2)
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I dig this show, the most profane show on TV ever. And what makes it a little weird is that when they're not using the basest obsenities possible they're speaking in rather-hard-to-follow flowery Victorian cant. It's sort of like Charles Dickens meets GoodFellas.

NickS tips to a site that tabulates how many f-bombs per minute this show drops, per episode and per season, as well as calculating the f-bomb to c-word ratio.

Not for nothing do I call it "C***sucker Creek."

Posted by: Ace at 08:37 AM | Comments (17)
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Damn, I've been waiting for these since Westworld.

Posted by: Ace at 08:31 AM | Comments (9)
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Am I jealous? Oh, of course not. (See changing pictures in upper right corner of front page.)

How stupid is the opening of this story?

Conventional wisdom would seem to suggest that bloggers — people who post personal stories and fiction on their Internet Web logs — would turn up their noses at the brick-and-mortar world of book publishing.

Riiiiiight. Because we're all so filled with "blogging integrity" that we would never, you know, stoop to actually making money off a book nor enjoying the prestige that comes from having written something that actually gets typeset onto real paper.

So much for conventional wisdom. From Washington tell-alls to people on the front lines of Iraq, bloggers are jumping on the publishing bandwagon in a trend that industry insiders say benefits both writers and publishers.

What a shock. I think this was "conventional wisdom" in the same sense that my hanging out with a friend all day yesterday was a "man-date."

But the story just keeps getting more and more interesting:

"Anything that helps someone who is writing come to the attention of the public is going to help them on their road to being published," says Robert Miller...

Mr. Miller also claimed that, counterintuitively enough, being superhot, superfamous, or superhot AND superfamous could "really help launch a title." He then dropped some further Zen wisdom on this reporter, noting, for example, that "glass is nice and shiny, but I wouldn't want to eat it."

The article signs-off with a big "Eff You" by listing bloggers with book deals... the name "Ace of Spades" does not appear to be on the list.

Uccchhhhh. Take my life, please.

Posted by: Ace at 07:49 AM | Comments (16)
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Ted Nugent, or as I call him, "The Nuge," says all sorts of nutty and yet halfway-sensible things at an NRA rally:

HOUSTON (AP) - With an assault weapon in each hand, rocker and gun rights advocate Ted Nugent urged National Rifle Association members to be "hardcore, radical extremists demanding the right to self defense."

...

"Remember the Alamo! Shoot 'em!" he screamed to applause. "To show you how radical I am, I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want 'em dead. Get a gun and when they attack you, shoot 'em."

This falls under the category of "Stuff We All Sort of Believe But Aren't Allowed to Say, Unless We're the Motor City Madman."

Apparently a great-grandmother (!) is a fan of "The Nuge" and took his advice to heart:

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — A man accused of bursting into a convenience store demanding money was in the hospital Friday — shot, authorities said, by the great-great-grandmother working behind the counter.

Janet Grammer was filling in for the regular clerk Thursday afternoon when a man entered the store waving a gun and fired two shot at the back wall.

“I think he thought I was an old woman and would just give him the money,” Grammer, 64, said Friday. “My life was at stake. I thought he was going to kill me.”

So she pulled a pistol out from under the cash register and fired once, hitting the man in the chest. He fell to the ground, dropped his gun and then fled, leaving a trail of blood. Grammer fired two more shots as he was running away.

...

Grammer, who has 10 children, 32 grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren, said she worried she had killed the man. “All I could think about was his poor parents,” Grammer said.

She didn't kill him, though. So maybe she needs to listen to State of Shock a couple of more times.

Thanks to NickS for the grandma tip. I can't find who sent the Nuge tip; probably NickS too.

Posted by: Ace at 07:33 AM | Comments (21)
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The Volokh Super-Conspiracy drolly notes that, having completely invented the concept of "man-dates" (previously known as "two straight guys hanging out and talking"), the New York Times has decided to try its hand at even greater fabulism and concocts a scary neo-Illuminatus conspiracy called "the Constitution in Exile" Movement.

Orin Kerr has been on this for a while, but this piece is a good start, and links to other posts addressing the non-conspiracy are linked beneath it.

There is no doubt that conservatives have little use for activist liberal judges. That much of the Jeffrey Rosen confabulation is true enough.

The journalistic sin committed here is "sexing up" the evidence, to borrow a phrase from the BBC. "Conservatives oppose the anti-democratic and frankly unconstitutional practice of judges sitting as a superlegislature creating or voiding laws as they see fit, not according to actual dictates of the Constitution but according to their own political notions of what constitutes good public policy" is simply not sexy.

First of all, that proposition sounds sort of reasonable to most people, Juan Williams being a definite exception. (Anyone see him whining about the "assault on judges" and Bush's attempt to pack the court with "right wing extremists" on FoxNews Sunday yesterday? Brit Hume and William Kristol were in full-on eye-rolling sarcasm mode.) Even if someone disagrees with the idea, it hardly sounds dangerous or conspiratorial. It just sounds like, well, an idea.

And so, the invention of a name and a movement. Names have evocative power; and ideas themselves usually do not make compelling "bad guys" in a dramatic story. For drama to work, you need actual people to serve as "bad guys" embodying the hateful idea; ideas really can't be defeated, but flesh-and-blood villains advocating those ideas can.

The way they... surround a story, yes-yes?

I'm so glad that the MSM escews the "shooting from the hip" mentality we bloggers have. Must be all that "fact checking" and "multiple layers of verification."

Posted by: Ace at 06:57 AM | Comments (3)
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I fixed the bad links and old links in the roll (finally), and also added a couple of worthy blogs, including The Anchoress, DefenseTech, Least Loved Bedtime Stories/Victory Soap and My Vast Right Conspiracy.

I'm quite sure I screwed up something somewhere or missed someone. If I did, let me know.

Posted by: Ace at 06:38 AM | Comments (10)
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While your conscious may dictate that you must be e'er vigilant against possible racist fascism, it's still important to keep your priorities straight.

Besides, you wouldn't want to be too vigilant.

Posted by: Ace at 06:33 AM | Comments (11)
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Compelling and frightening... although somewhat reassuring, too:

Fifteen minutes after KLM Flight 685 took off from Amsterdam for Mexico City on April 8, Mexican authorities forwarded the names of all the passengers to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The reason: the flight was scheduled to pass through U.S. airspace after making a long swing over Canada. The information was then passed on to the U.S. National Targeting Center, based at a secret address in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. That's when the routine became extraordinary: by the time the Boeing 747 had finished its three-hour crossing of the Atlantic, Homeland Security screeners were on high alert. The names of two Saudi passengers aboard the KLM flight had begun producing "hits" on the screening center's lists of 70,000 suspect foreigners.



One of these hits—from an FBI database of terror suspects known as TIPOFF—smacked investigators right between the eyes. The two Saudis, the database reported, were brothers and pilots who had attended the same Arizona flight school as 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour. Soon the multiplicity of U.S. terror databases started pumping out similar hits. Fearing that Flight 685 might be a 9/11-style plot in the making, U.S. authorities refused the plane overflight rights, and Canada rejected a request to land. Much to the chagrin of its 278 passengers, the KLM jet made an exhausting odyssey back to Amsterdam.

...

At least one of the two Saudis had previously been deported from the United States, according to Homeland Security sources. ... During FBI questioning, a law-enforcement official told NEWSWEEK, the Saudi acknowledged knowing Hani Hanjour. Upon further questioning, he also conceded that he had known another of the 9/11 hijackers.

Even so, by the end of last week the reasons the Saudi brothers gave for their trip to Mexico appeared to be holding up, U.S. investigators conceded.

Uh-huh.

Posted by: Ace at 08:53 AM | Comments (12)
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Dave's on caution about telling me this is "old stuff." Check it out.

Light warning: This is the downside of a flaming shot. Use your imagination; it's a bit disturbing. Not gorey or tragic, but maybe not really the sort of thing you want to see sipping coffee on gorgeous Sunday morning-shading-into-afternoon.

At least it's gorgeous in New York. Where you are it might not be gorgeous. But of course-- who cares?

And... Next story down, the British Conservative Party makes the GOP look like ambulatory Steven Hawkings by hosting a fund-raiser at a strip-joint.

Doesn't bother me, of course, or most of you either, I'm guessing. But still-- doofussery of the highest order.

Ultimately I'm just going to have to get used to the idea that the liberal politicians are Tom Hagen and conservative politicians are, and will always be, Fredo Corleone.

Posted by: Ace at 08:08 AM | Comments (15)
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