Okay.

No word on what it is he's supposed to have been indicted for -- as if they need a good reason.

Texas is odd-- solidly, strongly conservative, but with these pockets of the most hyperpartisan liberals in the entire country. The. Entire. Country.

I'm guessing that 80% of the most obnoxiously nasty partisan Democrats hail from Texas. Paul Begala, for one.

(Who, interestingly enough, plays the Texas Card within three minutes of the start off any interview. "I'm not some kind of hippy-dippy moonbeam half-a-fag liberal! I'm from Texas!" he always says. Interesting that those who get so incensed about Sarah Palin's statement that some areas of the country may be more patriotic and "real America" than others are also among the most eager to play the Real America Card themselves.

And, also curiously, the media never asks him follow-up questions about this oft-repeated assertion -- like whether or not he's denigrating Charles Schumer, who is not from Texas, and therefore a possible city-slicker quee-eh.)

Thanks to DrewM.

Posted by: Ace at 01:31 PM | Comments (68)
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Bailiffs escorted her from court, armed with a...
Thermal Detonator!

I'm not sexist. I just don't like Hutts. They've completely taken over the Correllian Trade Routes and the Spice Mines of Kessel. They move into your rackets faster than Moe Green muscling into the Tropicana.

And the fromundah stank. Don't get me started.

The Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline issued an order today that permanently removes Judge Elizabeth Halverson from the bench.

Judge Halverson was suspended from the bench in July 2007. She lost a recent bid for re-election in the August primary election.

She faced a disciplinary hearing in August on charges of misconduct. After two weeks of hearings in August, the commission heard a dozen complaints, including that the judge was accused of sleeping on the bench and treating her staff like servants.

...

The commission said there was sufficient evidence to show Halverson slept during portions of two criminal and one civil trial.

“What makes this series of three occasions more serious is that Judge Halverson fell asleep in front of juries who were already empanelled for trial under her supervision and she did so within months of taking office, not years after having presided over hundreds of trials,” said the commission.

...

Halverson mistreated her staff, berated them with foul language and required her bailiff to massage her feet, neck and shoulders.

The bailiff filed a lawsuit seeking $100,000 in punitive damages as well as "the sweet oblivion of memory-cleansing death."

In further related news, her bailiff was actually Darth Vader, who issued this brief statement about the foot-massages.

Thanks to Johanna.

More News: According to Marina the Stacked Etymologist, the phrase "I'd hit that" has stopped being an internet compliment and has become, in her words, "nossing more dan a cruel joke in a world gone mad."

Posted by: Ace at 01:16 PM | Comments (119)
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Is the media ever going to correct the record about his lies?

That's rhetorical, by the way.

Posted by: Ace at 12:54 PM | Comments (36)
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My dick is vibrating like The Flash trying to pass through a steel wall.

She's a bona fide etymologist, so really, this is purely educational.

And to think -- for all these years I've relied on etymologists without diamond belly-button studs or abdomens firm enough to play Yahtzee on.

What an a-hole I've been.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:32 PM | Comments (58)
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Eric Holder, pardon-facilitator for deep-pocketed felons:

The only hesitancy about HolderÂ’s selection was that he himself had reservations about going through a confirmation process that was likely to revive questions about his role in signing off on the controversial pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich. Although there is no evidence that Holder actively pushed the pardon, he was criticized for not raising with the White House the strong objections that some Justice Department lawyers and federal prosecutors in New York had to pardoning somebody who had fled the country. But after reviewing the evidence in the case, and checking with staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Obama aides and Holder both decided the issue was highly unlikely to prove an obstacle to his confirmation, one of the sources said--especially given the DemocratsÂ’ more sizable post-election majority in the Senate.

Thank goodness we won't have any pesky questions over this "distraction."

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (28)
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Patterico's been on this case for a while -- LAT reporter Chuck Phillips got front-page play for his "expose" that a convicted arsonist/murderer named Wallace was actually innocent. (When he's not torching buildings and killing people, he's a little known rapper called "Sauve," with an accent over the "e," so it's Suav-EY, which is even suavier than suave, really, because it's sort of made-up gibberish French and therefore sophisticated and sexy.)

After all, Suave/Wallace claimed, without evidence, he was in a different state when it happened! Case closed!

Oh, and he knows who did commit the arson and murder. How does he know? Well, because when he was already in jail for those crimes, the real killer called him on the jailhouse phone and gave him a full confession -- and lots of details about other crimes he'd committed. Case closed!

Oh, but it gets worse. Because Patterico has a deposition from Wallace. In it, Wallace claims to be innocent... and also claims to have been a witness to the conspiracy that would end up assassinating Tupac Shakur, and Biggie Smalls.

I think this interesting information was also delivered in that jailhouse phone call confession.

Wow, huh? Case closed!

This is the rapper equivalent of claiming you're obviously innocent of killing your wife because at the time of the murder you were off assassinating the Kennedy Brothers and also doing the set-decoration for the Fake Moon Landing soundstage.

The thing is, even though Phillips knew these ridiculous claims -- the "real killer" calling the framed innocent in jail to confess, confessing to having been involved in the two biggest rap hits in history -- he did not reveal them to his readers.

He must have suspected that, somehow, they might undermine Wallace's claims of innocence. Just a little bit.

Patterico's post is hellalong -- hell-a-long -- but the first eight paragraphs give the gist, and the first twenty give the gist plus a bit more than the gist.

But the whole thing is pretty damning, and makes for some compulsive reading.

If that's too long -- Patterico has now provided a short post summarizing the longer post, which is really where you should begin. (I didn't link this earlier because, while interesting, I kept forgetting who was who... that seems to be fixed with the short summary.)

When will the LAT retract?

How about never? Fake but accurate.

PS: I have long contended on this blog-- and have gotten headaches, arguments, and anklebiting over my stance -- that the key to getting away with an arson/murder is to not call up the patsy serving time for your crime to make a full confession (over recorded phone lines, no less) and then also reveal your complicity in the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls.

Okay -- all of those who have argued you should call to confess to the guy serving the time for your crime, and then also confess to being involved in the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls -- are you ready to apologize? Or at least modify your former positions?

Pwned, baby. I told you. You frickin' numbnuts.

Link Fixed. I hope.

Link Really Fixed. Lot of problems on that one. Now it works.

Posted by: Ace at 11:55 AM | Comments (36)
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Nuance.

No one on the right is exactly crying that Obama has suddenly discovered missile defense might be worth keeping, or that terrorists shouldn't be let out of war prisoner camps during the midst of the war they were captured in, or etc., etc., etc.

No, the complaint is this: The left plays a game of national security blackmail with the country over such issues. If the right takes actions which they themselves admit are necessary (Clinton conducted extraordinary renditions, for example), they agitate constantly and stridently to end the practice.

If and only if someone of the left is elected president do such actions become legitimate again.

Thus the blackmail: Elect us into high office or we will resist, undermine, prevent, and block actions necessary to safeguard the US.

It's one thing to take such opposition-just-to-oppose with lesser matters. But with national security? Unacceptable.

What will be even more interesting is whether our judges are suddenly a bit more flexible about constitutional protections for terrorists they have claimed are "fundamental" now that their boy is in office.

A Nation of Men, Not Laws? Apparently so, since the propriety and "constitutionality" of actions and laws seems to turn on the partisan affiliation of the President undertaking them or proposing them, and not upon the laws or actions themselves.

Posted by: Ace at 11:19 AM | Comments (44)
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Frum claims Palin was embraced solely because she's "one of us." And it never mattered whether she could govern -- just that she was a Christian and didn't abort babies.

Goldberg disagrees, and questions if we're really talking about Palin:

I just don't see a lot of merit to the effort to depict Palin into some grand symbol of conservative decay. If you want to argue she wasn't prepared to be President McCain's understudy, fine. That's certainly a legitimate argument (and there are legitimate responses to it). But I can't shake the feeling that Frum, Brooks, Noonan and others are using Palin as an excuse to make an argument they were preparing to make for a very long time rather than a reason to make that argument in the first place.

For what it's worth: I don't think she was prepared to be Vice President when nominated. She was a governor who hadn't run for president, and so had not had the year to prepare that Obama (and Bush, and Clinton) did. Nor was she a senator who already dealt with these issues as part of her day job. Her day job was running Alaska.

But, believing her to be a pretty smart cookie,* I think she would have been prepared by Election Day... or shortly thereafter.

I'm not getting the absolute insistence that she was incapable of governing as she already had been governing, successfully, and accomplishing a fair bit more than Barack Obama, or Joe Biden, or dozens of governors and senators currently serving.

At some point the suspicion grows: Does Frum simply assume, absent contrary compelling evidence, that Christians = Dumb? The rejoinder would be "Obviously not, William F. Buckley was smart." Ah, but that's why I stuck that "absent contrary compelling evidence" part in there. Sure, someone could disprove a starting assumption. But does Frum begin with that assumption?

How can it be that former community organizer Barack Obama learned all he needed to know about the presidency itself in two years of being a do-nothing Senator and eighteen months of gauzy, gassy campaigning, but Sarah Palin would not be qualified to be Vice President by two years of actual governance plus three months of campaigning and another two months of transition?

* Incidentally, I do think she's smart. But someone here -- "JS," who may have been a moby, for all I know -- advanced the worst possible argument in favor of her. To paraphrase, he claimed she was a good candidate precisely because she wasn't particularly smart, because she was just like the average housewife standing in a line at Wal-Mart -- of average intelligence. Maybe a little lower.

And that, he contended, was a good thing. After all, how could she represent average-intelligence-or-lower voters if she weren't average-intelligence-or-lower herself?

For reasons that are obvious, I think this is pretty much the worst possible defense of Sarah Palin I've ever heard (so much so I wonder if this isn't being offered by a clever moby to reduce support for her).

Hey, if anyone really does think like this -- do Palin and the rest of us a favor and keep a lid on your She's a Good Candidate Because She's a Dummy Just Like Me theories.

The Quote... Notropis posts the quote I wanted to, but couldn't find.

JS's bs sounds like channeling the (in)famous line from Roman Hruska, defending the choice of SC nominee G. Harrold Carswell, back in 1970:

"There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers," said the Nebraska Republican. "They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they? We can't have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos."

Didn't work then, either.

Posted by: Ace at 10:57 AM | Comments (205)
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That's what Maxim says.

Now my affection for Ms. Kelly is well known around this parts, so you might expect that I would be outraged by this slight. You'd be wrong. Megyn has no one to blame for this but herself. If she wants to move up and claim her rightful spot atop all the other hot news women (see what I did there?) there is one simple thing she can do...WEAR THE DAMN GLASSES MORE!

Also softening the blow is fact the fact that winner, some woman named Amy Robach, is pretty cute. Of course you'd never know it from the photo Maxim used so below the fold is a better one. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 09:53 AM | Comments (68)
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The Politico comments on this event are hilarious. The nutroots are really pissed off they didn't get blood. Of course, Sanders and Leahy got their panties in a twist over it, and Harry Reid was non too happy.

Lieberman also retained chairmanship of the Armed Services committee. He was however severely flogged with a wet noodle and stripped of a seat on the Environment and Public Works committee, which I'm sure he's eating Xanax by the handful and agonizing over at this very moment. more...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 09:47 AM | Comments (29)
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