Kristol: Bush Rises To The Occasion.

Barnes: The Safe Pick.

Coulter: Souter in Roberts' Clothing.

Coulter is angry because Roberts is something of a "stealth candidate" -- a judge with little by way of a record on hot-button issues, which makes him both more easily confirmable but also gives little reassurances to those who want a demonstrably, provable conservative nominee.

Fair point.

She snarks that Democrats won't be happy with a Republican nominee unless he peforms a live abortion during his Senate heartings, "preferably of the partial birth variety."

But, on the other hand, there are those conservatives who seem hostile to Roberts unless there's photographic evidence of him picketing an abortion clinic.

It seems to me that Roberts is much more conservative than the daffy Sandra Day O'Connor, which pushes the Court a bit more to the right. A hard-charging, "out and proud" conservative jurist? Apparently not. But Democrats and the media -- and, quite frankly, the public -- haven't shown much enthusiasm for a big dramatic replacement of O'Connor with a Scalia-esque figure. They seem to want greater continuity.

Roberts nudges the Court to the right, which may be the best plausible outcome.

Crazy Speculation: John Podhoertz wonders if this isn't some brokered deal with Rehnquist.

Posted by: Ace at 09:20 AM | Comments (25)
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The Lord thought it was time to beam him up to a better place.

He was a veteran of D-Day, and, of course, he didn't like Bill Shatner:

The powerfully built Doohan, a veteran of D-Day in Normandy, spoke frankly in 1998 about his employer and his TV commander.

"I started out in the series at basic minimum_ plus 10 percent for my agent. That was added a little bit in the second year. When we finally got to our third year, Paramount told us we'd get second-year pay! That's how much they loved us."

He accused Shatner of hogging the camera, adding: "I like Captain Kirk, but I sure don't like Bill. He's so insecure that all he can think about is himself."

James Montgomery Doohan was born March 3, 1920, in Vancouver, British Columbia, youngest of four children of William Doohan, a pharmacist, veterinarian and dentist, and his wife Sarah. As he wrote in his autobiography, "Beam Me Up, Scotty," his father was a drunk who made life miserable for his wife and children.

At 19, James escaped the turmoil at home by joining the Canadian army, becoming a lieutenant in artillery. He was among the Canadian forces that landed on Juno Beach on D-Day. "The sea was rough," he recalled. "We were more afraid of drowning than the Germans."

The Canadians crossed a minefield laid for tanks; the soldiers weren't heavy enough to detonate the bombs. At 11:30 that night, he was machine-gunned, taking six hits: one that took off his middle right finger (he managed to hide the missing finger on screen), four in his leg and one in the chest. Fortunately the chest bullet was stopped by his silver cigarette case.

I never knew he lost a finger. Did anyone else? And six hits from a machine-gun... damnit, Fiddy Cent is looking like a real pussy now.

Thanks to cameo.

Posted by: Ace at 08:25 AM | Comments (19)
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Sex tape. Playboy Playmate. Lawsuit.

The sex tape is reportedly "fifteen minutes long."

Three, four minutes-- okay, that's cool. But fifteen?

Good Heavens, the guy is a sexual Superman. I can only hope that ten of the fifteen minutes is just foreplay-- you know, stuff like making character sheets for each other and rolling your saving throws against sexual dysfunction. Normal sort of sex-play like that.

Posted by: Ace at 08:22 AM | Comments (16)
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Gee, usually I find these lawsuits to be political grandstanding that just wastes the time of our court system, but for some strange reason I feel this particular lawsuit has some merit.

Thanks to LauraW.

Posted by: Ace at 08:02 AM | Comments (17)
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GOP and the City surveys the various ways the MSM can say "super double-secret conservative" in relation to Judge Roberts.

I guess it's a fair cop, though. Either the guy is conservative or he isn't. The conservative judicial faithful like myself are happy about the nomination because we assume, based on what we know, that he's conservative; I guess we can't rap the MSM too badly for agreeing with that assessment.

I like the way the Seattle Times describes him... as a "confimable conservative." The bestest sort of conservative of all.

Meanwhile... An unknown commenter looks at the Kosmonauts' reactions to the nomination, as first reported by Confederate Yankee, and finds them, as usual, nasty, brutish, and hopelessly ill-informed:

Did You Catch His Wife When Roberts thanked his family, he mentioned his son, Jack...Roberts' wife's face fell. It was like a poker tell. I think we should research Jack. by mayan on Tue Jul 19th, 2005 at 13:13:01 PDT

interesting observation wonder if anything will come of it... by storme on Tue Jul 19th, 2005 at 13:19:01 PDT

He's probably gay Of course, this is how ridiculous rumors get started, but extreme conservatives seem to have a lot of homosexual children...by Geotpf on Tue Jul 19th, 2005 at 13:19:08 PDT

The unknown commenter responds:

God, these people are clueless. I don't know if Roberts' wife's face fell. "It was like a poker tell." I doubt it. There might have been a slightly raised eyebrow when Jack, who is all of 5 years old, decided to do a little impromtu dance during the announcement.

Well, maybe he's too young to express any sort of sexual interest, straight or gay, but there must be some dirt we can dig up on this five-year-old.

Rumors are flying in DC that when the kid sees a cookie, "he goes absolutely ape-shit." Seriously, he's worse than pre-diet Cookie Monster. I'm telling you, I wouldn't want to be between that kid and a Fig Newton; you'd be taking your life into your hands. He's like a pre-pubescent Teddy Kennedy-- someone's going to wind up dead because of this kid's killer-crazy Newton habit.

Update: Confederate Yankee says the kid in question is four, not five.

Which, if my experience is any guide, is generally the time one first "experiments" a bit with homosexuality. And Play-Doh.

Posted by: Ace at 07:38 AM | Comments (33)
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For those who are video-challenged, here's a full transcript of the President's remarks about Judge Roberts.

And there's this glowing personal testimonial from Hugh Hewitt, who worked with Roberts at the White House. Hewitt calls him one of the smartest lawyers he's ever met.

He also notes that Chuck Schumer has tipped his strategy-- he'll just ask a barrage of questions about potential cases which all nominees have historically refused to answer, and then urge a filibuster based on those quite-proper demurrals.

I'm sure you guys remember Hugh Hewitt. He was a guest on last week's Hoist the Black Flag. He was just signed to a three-picture deal with Warner Bros. said to be worth "in the high seven figures."

Mother.

Fucker.

Come on now... These are jokes, people. Whining about the misery of my life is part of my schtick.

Posted by: Ace at 06:35 PM | Comments (32)
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Yeahp... basically I started this moronblog as a backdoor into screenwriting.

Hasn't worked yet. For me.

But apparently someone you'd recognize working at a production company you most definitely have heard of contacted Bridget by email after the second break in the show about her pitch.

And yeah, that wasn't a coincidence. He was actually listening to the show.

So... all you guests out there who've been ducking us: Ace of Spades HQ (and Karol) gets results.

Oh, and, um, on the off-chance anyone in Hollywood is reading this stupid blog...

I'm sitting on a $300 million gross comedy. Send me an email for crying out loud. You're reading this moronblog, you can take the time to read a one-page pitch-sheet.

Grrrrrr...

But cool news for Ms. Johnson. I hope she sells one of the scripts she pitched today.

PS: Margaret Cho, if you queer this for me, I swear I will come at you with the full fury of a saber-toothed retard, a prehistoric killing machine of oversized canines and an affinity for brightly-colored mismatched sneakers.

Posted by: Ace at 05:24 PM | Comments (28)
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Okay, that's not really a newsflash. The newsflash is that a Democratic hack came perilously close to admitting that:

Geoff Garmin, a leading Democrat pollster, blithely admits that the Democrats manipulated the public's view of this issue because the concept of a filibuster was "beyond the pay grade of the American voter."

How revealing of the Democratic mindset regarding John Q. Public! They nakedly proclaim the view that the majority of Americans as being ignorant and beneath contempt. While advertisers happily pony up tens of thousands of dollars for a single page advert in the Sunday Times Magazine, Democrats seem to think nobody will notice their disregard of the intelligence of their constituents. The worldview is so deeply ingrained that they do not even see it as something remarkable to be discussing in the national forum.

H/t to NIF, who has a bonanza of links, lots of good bloggy, newsy goodness throughout.

Posted by: Ace at 05:06 PM | Comments (19)
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Just kidding. But wouldn't that be great?

No, really, it's DC Court of Appeals Judge John C. Roberts, Jr.

This Washington Post profile from a few days ago makes him sound a-ok.

According to The American Mind, Mark Levin says he's "excellent."

Powerline (hat-tip for that WashPost profile) says "the reality-based community" (Keith Olbermann, Dana Milbank, the usual idiots) are quite sure Bush made this early announcement as a "distraction" from, as some wag put it, the non-scandal of Karl Rove non-outing the non-secret CIA paper-pusher Victoria Plame.

And... forget where I got this, but Joe Lieberman (one of the Gang of Fourteen who promised not to filibuster except in cases of "extraodinary circumstances" )has previously named Roberts as a nominee who was "not out of the ballpark" as far as acceptability.

Video Update: As usual, the Political Teen has video of the announcement.

Posted by: Ace at 04:58 PM | Comments (12)
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I just couldn't be prouder.

By the way, sugar-- the problem isn't the dog, which I'm sure is a fine dog, loyal and brave. The problem is you. Apparently you believe that some terrorism -- killing people and destroying property -- is "chic" and even a little bit hot, if the killers/destroyers have a good sense of fashion and a dose of charisma.

I thought lefties were against violence? You ought to be; I'm a rightie and I certainly don't support any sort of unlawful violence. But I guess you take an "ends justify the means" view.

I personally don't. I'm as against abortion-clinic-bombers as I am against eco-wack-a-doos who blow up SUV's and spike trees in hopes of killing or injuring a logger.

I don't care about what politics animates this sort of violence; I call all of these miscreants lawbreakers and, yes, terrorists.

I wish that those on the left would at least agree with that rather incontrovertible principle.

Posted by: Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (39)
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