I've said it before, I'll say it again: Jake Tapper, former reporter for the obnoxiously leftist Salon, is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, but unlike most of his liberal colleagues, he actually attempts to do his job and ask difficult questions of Democrats rather than acting as an on-the-payroll campaign consultant for them.

TAPPER: With all due respect, Senator, you didn't answer my question.

REID: OK. This is not a debate.

TAPPER: Will the Iraqis be safer?

REID: We're answering questions. (calling on someone else) Yes, young man? Anyone else have a question?

Follow-up questions for Democrats when they evade blunt questions about the deficiencies in their "plans" and the dubious assumptions contained within, rather than just letting a Democrat give his focus-grouped answer without challenge or further questioning! What a concept!!!

He's guilty of liberal bias from time to time. But only occasionally. He's a liberal and so his natural inclination is towards that direction. But unlike so many of his colleagues, he seems to actively fight this inclination in order to serve journalism first and the Democratic Party a distant second, if at all.

Journalists have really got to stop associating their supposed mission of reporting the truth with reporting "The Truth," as defined as advancing the interests of the liberal movement generally and the Democratic Party in particular. Those who cannot break from so closely associating those two -- mistaking the latter for the former -- really should get a job better suited to their skills and interests, such as working directly for the DNC, rather than working for the DNC while drawing a paycheck from a news organization.

Fishwrap Blog... at the Washington Times has further ideas on this, taking issue with conservatives who accuse them of carrying the Democrats' water by attacking Republicans: Facts Are Facts, News Is News.

Posted by: Ace at 01:18 PM | Comments (27)
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Deficit plunging, wages rising, economy growing, jobless rate at the historically very-low level of 4.5%, inflation mostly tame, the Dow now flirting with 14,000.

Isn't it funny how the MSM only wants to talk about the economy when there's bad news?

Posted by: Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (19)
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Eh. Tone, McCain. Tone.

I'm not saying you have to get crazy-arm-flailing hysterical like Lindsay Graham, but come on, can you at least get as understatedly mordant and mean as Bob Dole? Is this not a critical issue? Is this not worthy of a little bit more than polite jabs?

A little passion and anger goes a long way. Fred's hit on Michael Moore was popular because it was substantive, and also biting. Your substance is fine. You need the bite.

It's not unpresidential to get a little pissed off when the NYT is championing American defeat and retreat, and pooh-poohing genocide and Iranian nukes.

If you want to revive your candidacy, now would be a good time to demonstrate to the conservatives you've alienated you're capable of rising to anger -- controlled anger, or at least biting contempt -- with liberals, and not just with conservatives themselves.

Look, call up Bob Dole. Ask him to start writing you some barbs. He's good at sneaking in the dagger while appearing, superficially, pleasant and avuncular.

You know it, I know it, the American people know it.

Via Hot Air, with more.

Posted by: Ace at 01:09 PM | Comments (4)
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And yet no word from this fair-and-balanced down-the-middle not-liberal-at-all blogger on the fact that one number has been traced to beloved late liberal Pat Moynihan's office.

Didn't he write a rather important essay on "Defining Deviancy Down"? Would it not also be hypocrisy if this maverick thinker (and I mean that seriously), who challenged his liberal colleagues on forever redefining "deviant" behavior as normal and acceptable, turned out to be soliciting the services of whores?

To be honest, I really don't think it's a big deal -- but the left keeps claiming that only Republicans are worthy targets of opprobrium for missteps in their private sexual lives, due to their "hypocrisy" on speaking on moral and sexual issues.

Well -- Moynihan spoke on such issues. (And God bless 'im for it.)

Ergo, by the "hypocrisy" and "speaking out in favor of traditional values and sexual restraint" standards -- the MSM should be working hard on the Moynihan story, right?

Riiiiiiiight.

Posted by: Ace at 12:41 PM | Comments (10)
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There's a good chance he'll be freed by the courts, but a guy got a ten year sentence for getting oral sex from an underage 15-year-old girl.

Sounds bad. Except the guy was himself seventeen when this pedophiliac sodomy occurred. The law criminalizing sex between a fifteen year old and a seventeen year old has since been repealed, and yet the guy is still in jail, because he violated the law as it stood at the time.

My fifteen-year-old self would be all in favor of this prosecution. Nothing, nothing angered me more that all the cute chicks I had crushes on as a freshman or sophomore were dating juniors or seniors (and then first-year college freshman).

But that kind of points out the absurdity of all of this: It happens all the time. 15-year-old boys don't like 17-year-olds poaching from their cohort of potential girlfriends, but it's been like this forever. It's not criminal -- it's just dickish.

Related: Idiot lawyer with nothing better to do sues NY nightclubs for "Ladies' Night" promotions, citing discrimination under the 14th Amendment.

I'd like to sue nightclubs myself on other grounds: Cranking up the (usually awful) music to ear-splitting, conversation-killing levels, even when the bar is almost completely empty, in a pathetic attempt to mislead the clientel into thinking "Gee, this place is really happening! I mean, blimey, the music is so loud, it's like a I just walked into the greatest party ever! I wonder when all the cool people will show up!"

The weird thing is that this is most common in pick-up joints. How are you supposed to lay rap when you've got to scream like a banshee in a girl's ear just so she can manage to hear every third word of what you're saying?

But the weirder thing is that this is now common, too, with dive-y neighborhood bars. A place can stink of urine and hobos (but I repeat myself) but the owners think if they just crank Fergilicious up to 11 they've created a hip, tony nightclub where the three gutter-rummies passed out on their barstools are transmogrified into the Beautiful People despite only having a dozen teeth between them.

Posted by: Ace at 12:20 PM | Comments (37)
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Video or audio at the link.

Rumor-Peddling: I have several tips that Dianne Sawyer has from time to time enjoyed a "colorful and far-ranging sex life" with her husband.

Posted by: Ace at 11:56 AM | Comments (16)
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What a dick. He was pretty pissed off at me for daring to make a service appointment and take him away from his busy day of, I guess, not making service calls.

After arguing with me for fifteen minutes the problem was probably not the modem at all, I finally convinced him, at which point he asked, "Did it ever occur to you to just go to the local cable office and swap out the modem yourself?"

Dude -- you just argued with me up and down the modem probably wasn't the culprit. Why should I have more faith that it's the modem than you do?

I'm pissed at myself for giving him polite answers instead of telling him to just do his frigging job and stop browbeating me for taking away from his valuable sitting-around-listening-to-sports-talk-radio time.

At any rate, it's fixed. Supposedly.

The whole place has that new modem smell.

Posted by: Ace at 11:54 AM | Comments (30)
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Get me to the church on time! I need at least a full year to primp and scout out the waiters with the best hors d'oveurs.

Posted by: Ace at 11:49 AM | Comments (3)
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And yeah, he's in the Florida House of Representatives, and yeah, he's a Republican.

Whoops! Slublog already posted this. Sorry, dude. Didn't see the bit at the end.

Posted by: Ace at 10:23 AM | Comments (35)
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A colorful and far-ranging training regime, as I'm sure we'll soon find out:

Hammett explains: "I went to my neighbor's. The guy took down his pants and started having sex with the dog! I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. When he got up, I just took the dog and left. She was still wagging her tail."

It seems the dog wasn't his when this happened -- he took it from the neighbor and it became his dog. If it was his dog, and let the guy finish... well, he's gonna have a hard time convincing everyone he's metal.

Strangely unsettling detail: "She was still wagging her tail."

Posted by: Ace at 09:35 AM | Comments (50)
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