Hanging up his keyboard, he says.

It's not a hoax, I don't think (come on, I already did that), but I do think he'll be back. They always are.

This works out nicely for me, because it's one less young punk I have to worry about gunning for me, plus he won't waste his time blogging and will send me all his good tips.

Meanwhile, Snapshot has decided to eschew political and cultural commentary, thinking that market is saturated (true enough!), and promises a revamp and new focus that will be completely new.

Smart... but is there anything really new out there? We'll have to see.

Posted by: Ace at 09:31 AM | Comments (20)
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This game looks awesome, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how I'm supposed to play it.

Thanks to Dave from Garfield Ridge.

Posted by: Ace at 09:05 AM | Comments (33)
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It's got nothing to do with that split between the Hebrew and Latin translation of Caesar Nero, like so many of my moronic readers suggested.

It's just about the pre- and post-tax Number of the Beast.

The Devil always gets his due, I'm told, but he's a piker compared to the IRS.

Thanks to 21st Century Paladin. Geepers, a guy calling himself "Paladin" doesn't seem like the sort of person to link this blog.

Posted by: Ace at 08:06 AM | Comments (5)
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Updated: There's room for doubt here, and perhaps I was unwise to take Starr's claims at face-value as I did in the original post. See Kaus Isn't So Sure Update below.

This time they're not forging documents but rather soundbite quotes -- deliberately editing Ken Starr's remarks about the judiciary fight to make it sound as if he was attacking the idea of the so-called nuclear option, when in fact he was attacking the idea that the Democrats are now imposing, unconstitutionally, a 60-vote supermajority for the confirmation of judges.

It's from Rush, and yes, I know he's suspect in many quarters (including some quarters on the right), but it contains direct quotes from Ken Starr who insists he was speaking of the Democrats' unconstitutional supermajority requirement and not the nuclear option, as the CBS piece implied.

Ken Starr has demanded CBS News release the full transcript; they have refused.

What do you suppose that means? People generally don't refuse to release exonerating evidence, do they?

CBS "News" is no longer news at all.

Bloggers, I think, have to keep on this story, and not let it be swept down the memory hole. This is partisan lying of the most egregious and clumsy sort, and the vaunted "multiple layers of editorial fact-checking" once again did not prove up to the task of uncovering a blatant deception.

Rathergate weakened CBS News. This could kill it. Or at least compel them to do some major house-cleaning and restructuring.

CBS News flat-out lied to you, for the second time in less than a year.

Want to contradict us "unedited, shoot from the lip" bloggers? Then release the goddamned transcript.

I have a feeling CBS News will release that transcript somewhere around the time CNN releases the Eason Jordan Davos transcript.

PoliPundit Is on F'n Fire Update: Laurie's outraged about this, and links to others in the blogosphere pounding the story. I think we need the full-court blogswarm press on this.

Kaus Isn't So Sure Update: Mickey Kaus suggests the story may not be all that misleading, and suggests that Starr really was talking about the nuclear option -- or changing Senate rules generally -- despite his current claims.

Kaus makes a good case for doubt, but he doesn't prove his position (and he doesn't claim to). As he says: Release the tapes. Let's see who's lying-- CBS or Ken Starr.

I think it's likely that CBS News is lying-- or at least guilty of a negligent assumption about what Starr meant.

If Starr was against the filibuster, I just don't think he'd reverse himself and claim to have been misquoted just because he got pilloried by anti-filibuster conservatives. Why would he? Other conservatives are also against the nuclear option, and it's not as if Starr is running for anything, or has a job as a pundit which causes him to rely on keeping his conservative fans happy.

And, PS, he doesn't have that many conservative "fans." Yes yes, we all give him props for taking on Clinton in the face of a very nasty smear campaign against him, but, in the scheme of conservative heroes, Starr ranks somewhere low on the list, someplace between, say, Denny Hastert and that guy who played the drug kingpin villian in the James Bond movie License to Kill.

He's not exactly Jeff Gannon, in other words... so I just don't see it as likely he would reverse a thoughtful position just because he got razzed by radio show hosts and because he didn't want to alienate his "base," whoever that base might be.

Thanks to Ray Midge for keeping me honest.

I don't have those vaunted multiple layers of editorial fact-checking, after all. I'm just a simple Unfrozen Caveman Blogger. All this strange talk of "ethics" and "verification" frankly confuses me... I just want to paint pictures of Jeff Gannon killing a prehistoric auroch on the wall of my cave. That's my idea of "journalism."

Correction: The Bond film was "License to Kill," not "License Renewed" as I originally wrote. License Renewed was the title of a later non-Flemming Bond book (or was it Licence Revoked? forget), and License Renewed was the working title of the movie until the studio realized it was a really lame, boring title.

Posted by: Ace at 07:28 AM | Comments (36)
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A while ago James Lilkes noted the new ad campaign by the "Friends of the Minneapolis Library" (sworn opponents, he notes dryly, of the "Enemies of the Minneapolis Library") using Mao -- yes, Chairman Mao, the guy who killed, oh, tens of millions of his people or so (who's counting?) -- in a cute, attention-getting ad campaign.

Check out the ad here. And the ad copy: **A former librarian, who created the 3rd largest economy in the world (and least diverse collection of books).

Well, I guess that bit about the "least diverse collection of books" is a dig, but, as Lilkes notes, he had greater sins, such as creating a failry diverse collection of corpses.

But the Friends of the Minneapolis Library isn't quite done yet. Admitting their campaign is a bit controversial (at least among the troglodytes who presumably don't use books for anything but kindling anyways), they explain:

In the most politically charged ads, MPL, which is predicated on free speech, tolerance and the open exchange of ideas, is contrasted with Mao and [J. Edgar] Hoover, who both worked in libraries early in their lives but pursued policies antithetical to an open society (to put it mildly).

Lileks responds today:

Mao and {J. Edgar] Hoover. Peas in a pod. IÂ’m no Hoover fan, but theyÂ’re not exactly in the same league. Besides, HooverÂ’s big target was the Reds, whose vision was far more antithetical to an open society than anything J. Edgar dreamed up. There, IÂ’ve said it: Mao was worse than Hoover. And these distinctions are important. There are of course many right-thinking people who will agree, but they squirm in their seat as they do so, waiting for a chance to launch a BUT missile into the gap. The effect of communism on some countries was of course horrible, in a sense, BUT you had to admit that the McCarthy witch trials and blacklisting of screenwriters is a dark chapter in American history, no?

They may not like communists, but they really donÂ’t like anti-communists. Communists may be deluded, but they meant well in some abstract sense that surely has to count for something. Whereas God knows what the anti-communists really want.

Lileks suggests his own "controversial" ad campaign. Gotta admit-- it does get attention. And that's all that really matters, right?

Lileks notes that the FML isn't really endorsing Mao. But their subsequent defensive explanation also makes it clear they don't think Mao is any worse than J. Edgar Hoover.

It's a bit tiresome to keep making this point. But sometime in the future lefties have to give up the idea that Mao and Stalin and Lenin and Castro were basically just good folks who were a little seduced by power, but who basically had the "good of the masses" foremost in their mind and just broke a few too many eggs to make their utopian omlette.

Thanks to NickS.

Posted by: Ace at 07:11 AM | Comments (29)
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On the other hand, there are millions of Americans (in both parties, and in no party at all) who are fed up with this country's refusal to enforce its immigration laws, and they do vote.

Say Anything has commentary and links on that teeth-grinding story hyped by Drudge.

Posted by: Ace at 06:56 AM | Comments (3)
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Imagine if a Republican did this.

Harry Reid seems to have broken Senate rules by alluding to a confidential FBI file on Bush nominee on the Senate floor:

Minority Leader Harry Reid strayed from his prepared remarks on the Senate floor yesterday and promised to continue opposing one of President Bush's judicial nominees based on "a problem" he said is in the nominee's "confidential report from the FBI."

Those highly confidential reports are filed on all judicial nominees, and severe sanctions apply to anyone who discloses their contents. Less clear is whether a senator could face sanctions for characterizing the content of such files.

"Henry Saad would have been filibustered anyway," Mr. Reid said on the floor yesterday, about the Michigan Appeals Court judge who is nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.

"All you need to do is have a member go upstairs and look at his confidential report from the FBI, and I think we would all agree that there is a problem there," Mr. Reid continued.

...

"Can you think of a better way to trash someone's reputation?" Sean Rushton of the conservative Committee for Justice asked after seeing a transcript of the remarks. "Say that there is bad stuff from an FBI investigation in a file somewhere and leave that hanging. This is character assassination of the lowest order and completely improper."

...

Republican aides pointed to Standing Rule of the Senate 29, Section 5: "Any Senator, officer, or employee of the Senate who shall disclose the secret or confidential business or proceedings of the Senate, including the business and proceedings of the committees, subcommittees, and offices of the Senate, shall be liable, if a Senator, to suffer expulsion from the body; and if an officer or employee, to dismissal from the service of the Senate, and to punishment for contempt."

Furthermore, a "Memorandum of Understanding" covering the use of FBI background reports limits access to committee members and the nominee's home-state senators. Mr. Reid would fall into neither category.

And of course such smears work; now I'm wondering what's in that file, and wondering if Reid has good reason to oppose Saad. Despite the fact that there's nothing at all on the record to suggest he should not be confirmed.

Reid can't be held legally accountable for any of this, as the Constitution immunizes Congressmen from legal consequences from any statement made in Congress. But I'd sure like someone to bait Reid into repeating his remarks outside of Congress.

It's time to go nuclear. I know nothing about Saad, and of course I know even less about what dirt the FBI may have dug up on him, but it is clear that the Democrats have made the judiciary their last redoubt. It's well past time to drain that swamp.

PoliPundit's Smoking But Not Quite on Fire Yet Update: Lorie wants to know: what's in Ted Kennedy's FBI file, and why doesn't someone allude to that on the Senate floor?

Posted by: Ace at 06:48 AM | Comments (12)
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The jackass who refused to give a man back his severed finger, prefering to hide it and keep it "as evidence" (as if a photograph wouldn't be evidence enough), now offers to return it.

Unfortunately, a severed finger has to be reattached within six hours if at all.

Thanks a lot, asshole.

I realize this isn't quite relevant to this guy's case, but if the judge doesn't allow this in as evidence of this guy's Assholery in the First Degree, I'll be pissed off.

Find some way to get that in.

I hope the man missing his finger has some possibility of a suit against him. I'm still saying "False Imprisonment," though I realize that's a stretch.

Thanks to Chickpea.

Posted by: Ace at 01:20 PM | Comments (45)
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I don't like sactimony about the ethics and importance of journalists coming from conservative pundits any more than I like it from liberal ones.

Here, Cal Thomas makes an old-fogey jackass out of himself by screaming at the neighborhood kids to "Keep your damn blogs out of my yard!"

Does this guy have anything to say? Seriously. If he's said anything interesting the past 20 years, I'd like to know about it.

Posted by: Ace at 01:09 PM | Comments (16)
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Previously outlawed by Saddam Hussein as a slow-pitch salient of "US Imperialism," Iraqi women have joined six teams to compete at softball. And they're risking more that scraped knees:

The women must run a daily gauntlet of car bombings and shootings to turn up for training.

"Because of the heat, we must train early in the morning or late in the evening. For the girls, those are dangerous times. They can be kidnapped or killed," said their trainer Ismail Khalil, who also heads the national baseball federation.

To reassure the families, the federation has provided buses to ferry the players to and from their practice sessions.

But Zikra Jasim, 20, considered the best player and who wears a veil while playing, said: "Our parents are worried even if things have improved because of the buses.

Teammate Tariq added: "I'm afraid the girls will lose heart if something happens to one of them."

That article is from Aljazeera.net, by the way.

Thanks to GregS.

Posted by: Ace at 12:55 PM | Comments (8)
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