Look out for the guns. They'll getcha.

Actually, the Times itself is doing better than anticipated. Its other properties -- like the Boston Globe -- are faring rather badly.

The earnings came in above guidance the Times gave in December, which the company attributed to stronger-than-expected growth of 8 percent in advertising at its flagship newspaper for the quarter.

However, advertising revenues fell 3.8 percent at the Globe and other New England products in the quarter, which the company attributed to sluggish demand for auto, home furnishing and other ad categories as well as consolidation of key advertisers.

Craigslist really is destroying the newspaper industry.

Hallalujah, the birds are in flight.

Posted by: Ace at 09:55 AM | Comments (13)
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Not really safe for work. Also not safe if you have a weak stomach.

But it's illuminating (darkly) to understand just what sort of man was working on Sarin and nuclear technology.

Thanks to Andrew's Dad.

Posted by: Ace at 09:39 AM | Comments (18)
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At the Waterglass:

"Federal courts have consistently ruled that a president has authority under the Constitution to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance against our enemies. Predecessors of mine have used that same constitutional authority," Mr. Bush said.

Yes, but you're using it, Mr. Bush. That's the problem. As long as your political enemies consider you a more dangerous entity than they do a group of murdering fanatics bent on destroying western civilization, you're going to be under attack in this way. Partisan Democrats and civil liberties absolutists don't truly believe we're at war. I'm glad that the people who have the authority to make decisions do.

A week or two back a commeter challenged a liberal to say precisely what he would or would not do to protect this country's security. Apart from the obvious (don't invade Iraq, unless, I guess, the feared French Army was contributing 90% of the troops and airpower), he basically insisted that the Dems would do everything to protect this country as Bush has been doing.

Except they'd be... nicer and less polarizing about it, or something. Prompting the commenter to sum up the liberals' position as:

The Liberal Democratic Party

We'll do everything Bush is doing! But we won't be HITLER!

That's something I've noticed. The left likes to complain that Bush is acting as a dictator, etc., but when you suggest that they wouldn't do as much on security as Bush does, they claim "Oh dear, no, you misunderstand! We'd do everything Bush is doing! Plus maybe a little extra!"

I don't get it. How can you simultaneously be for and against something? The Democrats have had this problem for, ummmm, forever, but especially in the past five years.

You have to take a position at some point, people. You cannot simply perpetually whine about Bush's decisions and then claim "We'd have made the same decisions, only better and smarter." The very fact that you're making these nonsensical, self-contradictory criticisms sort of casts doubt on that "better and smarter" bit.

Thanks to The Blogometer.

Meanwhile... Andrew "Wild Horses" McCarthy makes the pretty compelling case that the "probable cause" requirement for surveillance and searches is pretty well met by the fact that we're, you know, at war and everything.

Congress retains the power of the purse. Nothing prevents it, tomorrow, from passing a law that denies all funding for any domestic surveillance undertaken by the NSA or any other executive branch agency.

The president could do nothing but veto such a bill. But if, as leading Democrats and civil-liberties extremists maintain, the NSA program is truly one of the most outrageous, execrable, impeachable acts ever committed in recorded history, that veto would easily be overridden.

So why doesn't Congress just do it. Why doesn't it, literally, put its money where many of its mouths are? Why don't the people's representatives bring to heel this renegade, above-the-law president and his blank check? Because they'd lose, decisively and embarrassingly, that's why.

Because they'd have to take an accountable position on life-and-death. Because such a vote, in the middle of a war in which millions of American lives are at stake, would say, unambiguously, that they actually believe the government should not monitor enemy communications unless a federal judge — someone no one voted for and voters cannot remove — decides in his infinite wisdom that there is probable cause. It's so much easier to carp for a scandal-happy media about "the privacy rights of ordinary Americans," as if that were really the issue.

But the sound and fury signify nothing to those ordinary Americans. Two wartime Novembers ago, with national security — that is, their own safety — the defining campaign issue, they went to the polls in record numbers. This may be news to some, but upon considering in whose hands to place the weighty responsibility of defeating al Qaeda, they didn't elect the judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Well played, Blaine. Very well played.

Posted by: Ace at 09:29 AM | Comments (28)
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Along party lines, 10-8.

Democrats are talking up a floor fight over the nomination, but Lindsey Graham, at least, seems in a feisty frame of mind:

Republicans on the committee accused Democrats of falsely portraying Alito as an extremist and of politicizing the nomination process in preparation for the next election. If this is what the Democrats want in the future, said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), "We'll clean their clock."

I give his statement a solid B+.

Related-- SCANDAL!!!! Justice Scalia dared to play tennis at a junket sponsored by the Federalist Society even as now-Chief Justice Roberts was being sworn in.

It's... it's... horrible! I'm not sure exactly how it's horrible, but I just know that it is!

IMPEACH BUSH!

Posted by: Ace at 08:58 AM | Comments (12)
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At least he's honest:

I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there — and who might one day want to send them somewhere else.

...

But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying.

...

I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country...

But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.

...

I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea. All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades.

Seriously, the traffic is insufferable.

If nothing else, his candor is refreshing.

I have long contended that those who scream the loudest about how they just want to bring our troops home aren't animated much by that at all. They don't fear for the safety of our troops, whom they consider troglodytic Bush-voters who didn't even go to a private college (except the officers, of course, who should be shot). Rather, they're actually most concerned about the "victims" of our soldiers.

But that doesn't sell well. So they claim they worry about the safety of our troops.

They're anti-American military first and foremost, not pro-American military man.

Posted by: Ace at 08:38 AM | Comments (62)
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This is the most luxurious, most beautiful, most huuuuuuge defamation suit ever.

In the lawsuit, Trump alleges that O'Brien and Warner knowingly made egregiously false and malicious statements about Trump, his family, his personal life and his business dealings, including statements grossly misrepresenting Trump's net worth. Those defamatory statements included statements that O'Brien claimed were based on three purported anonymous sources with "direct knowledge" of Trump's finances, that Trump "was not remotely close to being a billionaire," and that his "net worth was somewhere between $150 million and $250 million."

The lawsuit alleges that in publishing these false statements, O'Brien and Warner deliberately chose to ignore, among other things, voluminous and comprehensive financial information that Trump made available to them prior to the publication of the book, which confirmed conclusively that Trump's net worth is in the billions of dollars. Indeed, Forbes Magazine rigorously analyzed the very same books and records and other financial data that O'Brien and Warner chose to ignore, and concluded that Trump's net worth conservatively is at least $2.7 billion.

You know he doesn't care about the family stuff or allegations of womanizing. It's only that knock on his net worth that bothers him.

Based on the Forbes analysis, seems like they've got this guy. I suppose there's room for different interpretations, but there's a a wide gulf between $200 million and $2.7 billion.

I like this:

Trump also added that the book was "terribly written."

Posted by: Ace at 07:57 AM | Comments (13)
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Man, I went to the wrong college:

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters) -- Nearly two-thirds of U.S. college students are affected by sexual harassment -- ranging from offensive jokes and gestures to touching and grabbing, according to a study released on Tuesday.

Men are more likely to harass than women, but women and men are equally likely to be harassed on U.S. campuses, according to a report by the American Association of University Women.

Researchers found that 62 percent of college students experienced sexual harassment, and 32 percent of college students said they were victims of physical harassment.

"The primary form of harassment that we're seeing is actually non-contact: it tends to be remarks, gestures and jokes," Elena Silva, the report's co-author, said in a telephone interview. "But the fact that one-third of college students are experiencing some form of physical harassment is certainly a concern."

Obviously, if there's something more serious going on here, there is "room for concern." But who here seriously believes that this study isn't lumping in all sorts of innocuous behavior in order to make the "problem" seem worse than it is?

Besides, merely *asking* a woman to salt her neck and place the shot glass between her lips isn't sexual harassment. Asking her 47 times, however, might cross that line. (Thank God she said yes after only 23 times, whew).

Common types of physical harassment include being touched, grabbed or pinched in a sexual way, or intentionally brushing up against someone in a sexual way, the study found.

I sure wish someone would harass ME right now.

Posted by: Dave From Garfield Ridge at 07:40 AM | Comments (59)
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They've tried everything else, why not this one?:

Concerns also have been raised about noise and light pollution [from a proposed and challenged new Wal-Mart Super Store], including a much-discussed claim by Washington State University Professor James Krueger on Jan. 13 that light pollution could cause Pullman men to become impotent. He based the claim on research involving deer.

Well, there's your problem with this study right there. The research involved deer. Of course this research showed male impotency. Who the hell wants to fuck a deer? I mean, yeah, okay, I'll admit it, I had a crush on Bambi's girlfriend Felina as a kid (almost as big as a crush as I had on the Zsa Zsa Gabor mouse from The Rescuers), but I'm older now, and I just don't find animals arousing anymore.

Well, not as arousing. Zira from Planet of the Apes is always kind of cute. It always leads to the question: Would you rather have sex with a charming, intelligent ape-woman who was also a medical doctor, or a mute retard like Nova?

Of course the answer is the latter. I didn't say it was an interesting question. Just a question.

Sometimes there's just no good joke you can make, and you should probably just give up, rather than throwing a lot of lame crap at the wall. I know this in my head, but not in my heart.

Thanks to RLW.

Posted by: Ace at 07:17 PM | Comments (48)
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Those terrorist-loving, John Murtha-hugging, communist-supporting twits at Code Pink have been protesting outside Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. for quite some time now. (They have also been doing the same thing outside the Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego, California).

Fortunately, the cadre running the operation at Walter Reed took too many hits of the wacky weed, and failed to renew the protest permits for "their corners."

The Good Guys were vigilant.

The Good Guys attacked.

To make the point to Code Pink and the general public, some of The Good Guys advertised that things had changed:

Watch and weep, treasonous weasels.

Posted by: Harry Callahan at 06:11 PM | Comments (54)
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CBC just made the call - Stephen Harper will lead a minority government in Canada and will be the next prime minister of Canada. more...

Posted by: Slublog at 06:09 PM | Comments (277)
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