Drawbacks? While he projects like gangbusters with a Hollywood-style camera, his live appearances, without the dramatic cheats of a staged reading, have been underwhelming.

And he's been soft on illegal immigration in the past. Which I don't think will necessarily hurt him, so long as he sounds the right notes now. Most Republicans, including most of the candidates (except Tancredo), have been soft on illegal immigration in the past; only fairly recently has the preference cascade effect made a relatively harder view on illegal immigration politically acceptable.

We'll see. On one hand Teh Fred no longer is expected to sweep the nomination just by declaring; a lot of those early hopes for a unifying conservative champion have been dashed, or at least dampened. On the other hand those expectations seem to have been unrealistic, and Thompson might benefit from expectations lowered to a more reasonable level.

PS: That preference cascade article by Instapundit is a must-read. The idea seems simple, but it's a powerful explanation for swift moves in public opinion.

Basic theory? Swift moves in public opinion aren't really about the public changing their opinion, but about the public suddenly feeling comfortable expressing their long-held opinions, which had previously been falsified. I.e., the public was always anti-illegal-immigration, but only with the looming threat of a massive amnesty without any appreciable increase in border security did they feel prompted to stop offering the nice, polite, politically correct opinion -- their falsified opinion -- and offer their real one.

That article is about the sudden wash of patriotism after 9/11, but it seems to apply to many situations.

Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Comments (46)
Post contains 279 words, total size 2 kb.

At some point they had to make the pivot and begin openly attacking our troops. As the Vietnam template demonstrates, it's just too damn hard to attack a war without alleging that the men fighting it are moral monsters.

Posted by: Ace at 10:13 AM | Comments (22)
Post contains 81 words, total size 1 kb.

I'm sure we're all as stunned as Hillary!

Posted by: Ace at 09:25 AM | Comments (65)
Post contains 32 words, total size 1 kb.

The Washington Post had an article in TuesdayÂ’s paper celebrating Leftist Mike Rogers. Rogers has made a specialty of outing gay Republicans involved in politics, including former Virginia Congressman Ed Schrock and numerous GOP staffers.

What’s missing from the article? The writer avoids any mention of how much harm is done to outed individuals and their families. But he’s happy to pass on to readers that Rodgers feels “vindicated” because he’s been on several television programs. Rogers justifies his despicable attacks on gays by claiming that he is entitled to reveal “hypocrisy” on the part of gay Republicans. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:17 AM | Comments (67)
Post contains 603 words, total size 4 kb.

Brilliant sociopath gets away with grisly murder.

Fishermen dragged Janiszewski's corpse - stripped to a shirt and underwear - from the muddy banks of the Oder River in southwestern Poland on December 10, 2000. His body showed signs of starvation and torture. His hands were bound behind his back and tied to a noose around his neck.

Police quickly identified the victim as Janiszewski, who had disappeared four weeks earlier. But they struggled to dig up clues and dropped the case after six months.

Or would have gotten away, if he could have resisted the urge to gloat.

Author Krystian Bala subsequently wrote a thriller novel in which a murder very like Mr. Janiszewski's murder occurs. Including details which police claim only Mr. Janiszewski's actual killer would know about.

This intellectual Colossus anonymously sent a copy of his book to police.
And uh, anonymously bragged online about it being the perfect crime.

Some policemen are very smart, and some are not.
But pretty much any of them are subtle enough to understand when somebody is yanking their chain. It's a key skill-set for law enforcement.

As soon as they started to investigate Bala, some circumstantial evidence and other information fell into place. Like that Bala's wife was seeing the dead guy. I been googling around for more info. on the case, and it's pretty interesting, if you're into this sort of thing.
This guy could have skated, but being a self-satisfied prick took precedence over his freedom.

It is comforting when even the scary-smart criminals must succomb to some fatal flaw (pride, for example).

He was sentenced to 25 years.

Posted by: LauraW. at 08:33 AM | Comments (24)
Post contains 280 words, total size 2 kb.

Bill InDC is embedded in Iraq again, and while he's just gotten there, his first report is pretty positive.

Polished commentary will be a few days out. But a quick teaser: the positive change in Fallujah since my January visit is astounding.

...

Through a local interpreter, we talked about their changing opinion of Americans, Iraq's prospects, the misery of living under al Qaeda, the joys of kabob and favorite soccer teams. Their open and friendly nature is hard to reconcile with the negative history of American-Iraqi interaction in Fallujah, and most of them chalk it up to a "misunderstanding."

Towards the end of a long conversation with one group, I said, "Well, I wish you luck. And I want you to know, besides the marines and soldiers that you meet here in the city, there are many civilians back in America who hope for Fallujah's success."

The afternoon's joking died down as the interpreter translated and each of them earnestly told me "shukran" ("thank you"). And one young guy blurted out in halting English, "We like you!"

Bill InDC, goodwill emissary to Fallujah. The mind boggles.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald just dashed off a brief 9,000 page critique arguing that Bill is not in Fallujah at all, but rather Muncie, Indiana, and is even lying about the conditions in Muncie, where Americans are despised and we are doomed to fail in our efforts to make Muncie a functioning democracy.

Posted by: Ace at 07:21 AM | Comments (25)
Post contains 247 words, total size 2 kb.

The Emmy-nominated miniseries, which unflatteringly portrayed President Clinton's role in the events prior to 9/11, is still not out for purchase. The mini's writer traces the delay to the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.

Nowrasteh, also one of the miniseries' many producers, said he was told by a top executive at ABC Studios that "if Hillary weren't running for president, this wouldn't be a problem."

...

Initially, Nowrasteh was told by executives at ABC Studios that the miniseries would have a DVD release in January. Then, April. Then, this summer. Currently, Nowrasteh has not been notified of a specific release date for the DVD.

Surprisingly, Oliver Stone is getting into it, talking about "artists' rights" and censorship. Rush Limbaugh has also apparently discussed the delayed DVD on his show.

I didn't watch Path to 9/11, but just the fact that it is likely being censored makes me want to.

h/t RightwingSparkle

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:32 AM | Comments (29)
Post contains 173 words, total size 1 kb.

The most massive would-be terrorist attack on German soil ever, so authorities say.

Three terror suspects held in Germany planned to carry out “imminent” and “massive” bombs attacks on a U.S. air base and Frankfurt’s international airport, according to officials.

“They were planning massive attacks,” Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms said.

“As possible targets … the suspects named discotheques and pubs and airports frequented by Americans with a view to detonating explosives loaded in cars and killing or injuring many people,” Harms told a news conference on Wednesday.

The suspects, two Germans aged 22 and 29 and a 29-year-old Turk, received terrorist training in Pakistan and had close ties to al Qaeda, according to Jorg Ziercke, president of GermanyÂ’s Federal Criminal Investigation Office.

The chemicals seized included 1500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide, used in a terrorist favorite explosive known as TATP. Confederate Yankee notes that's a fairly ambitious explosive to synthesize, and is skeptical the guys involved had the know-how to pull it off.

Once again terrorist attackers in the West are linked to Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and not, notably, Al Qaeda in Iraq. Our very tough, strong liberal war critics may argue this indicates that Al Qaeda in Iraq won't "follow us home" if we stop fighting in Iraq, but this seems a farcical claim. Of course the Arab branch of Al Qaeda would be plotting against us at home were they not engaged with us more directly on what they consider more friendly ground.

It also undermines, yet again, liberals' favorite claim: that fighting terrorists in Iraq "only makes more terrorists." If that's the case, then it seems that fighting terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan should also "make more terrorists;" indeed, for those keeping track, it certainly seems to be the "Asian" (as the Brits say) jihadis most animated to and capable of attacking the West directly. So should we stop fighting them there, in order to make fewer of them?

more...

Posted by: Ace at 06:22 AM | Comments (15)
Post contains 571 words, total size 4 kb.

The jokes about Thompson announcing his announcement to announce his candidacy can end now. He's got an ad out today which refers to him as "Fred Thompson, Republican for President." Turn on FoxNews and you'll probably see it or you can go here to watch the short commercial.

It encourages the viewer to go to Fred08.com (which clumsily re-directs to imwithfred.com) where, starting on Thursday, there will be a 15 minute video about Thompson:

The video, aides say, is part bio-pic, part conservative motivational film aimed at making the case that Thompson -- who was swept into office in 1994 as part of the conservative revolt that year -- has been fighting in the trenches for Republicans for decades.

Thompson will be on Jay Leno tonight after the debates in which he will not be participating.

I just realized I'm going to miss the debate and Leno to go see BB King. I'm sure Allahpundit will have the highlights.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:16 AM | Comments (16)
Post contains 167 words, total size 1 kb.

A "lad mag" from down under irritated some uptight feminists when it offered breast enlargement surgery as a prize in a mail-in photo contest. So they're launching a new contest aimed at feminists.

Says Zoo Weekly:

We did get our fair share of complaints when we launched the search to win your girlfriend a boob job, so we thought the best way to handle this was to redress the balance by launching the Search for Australia's sexiest feminist.

Their new contest ad says: "If you hate men, we want to see photos of you in sexy lingerie."

They've got to know know they are tweaking at least some types of feminism, but the author of the article gives the magazine a free pass when it says it's offering an "olive branch" to critics:

"We're calling for feminists all over Australia to show that women can be sexy even if they disapprove of sexy women."

I went to the magazine's website, but couldn't find a link to the contest. Some of you may appreciate the very NSFW content, though.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:58 PM | Comments (36)
Post contains 192 words, total size 1 kb.