Attorney General Michael Mukasey will be meeting with the Senate Judiciary Committee today where he will most certainly be asked about waterboarding again. Yesterday, he sent a letter to the committee chairman declaring that he would not publicly comment on the legality of waterboarding. That won't stop the hard-working senators from grandstanding tomorrow.

The letter came as a response to senators' demands for Mukasey to clarify whether the interrogation tactic known as waterboarding should be banned by the United States.

[...]

Mukasey "seems constitutionally incapable of rendering judgment on a simple and straightforward legal question," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who sits on the committee, said in a statement late Tuesday. "During his confirmation hearings, Mr. Mukasey promised repeatedly to end the stonewalling. ... Let's hope he is more forthcoming in his testimony than he was in his letter."

I've highlighted the word "should" above because it was my impression that Congress is free to explicitly outlaw waterboarding if it wants to. I didn't realize that it had delegated policy-making authority to the Department of Justice so as to avoid responsibility on the issue, but I understand it. Many congressional Democrats would face sharp opposition from constituents concerned about their soft-on-terrorism policies.

Keep in mind that waterboarding has not been used by the CIA since 2003 and has been prohibited by the CIA and the military since at least 2006. The CIA has only waterboarded three people. Congressional Democrats want the Attorney General to declare that waterboarding is currently illegal and also illegal back when it was used so that they and their friends at the ACLU can move on to the next step: taking apart our intelligence apparatus piece by piece.

[Speaking of waterboarding (and this really is in poor taste, so I apologize), have you ever been put in a neck brace and then strapped to a backboard in the rain? It's not as much fun as you would think with a CHP officer grilling you. As I was describing my experience to family today, out popped a joking "You were waterboarded!" from my sweet, little ol' mother. If my ma is ready to kid about interrogation techniques, congressional Democrats really should just give up on the topic.]

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:44 AM | Comments (15)
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Good news for L.A.'s medical marijuana users. You can get your favorite weed from a vending machine.

The specialized machine installed Monday at Herbal Nutrition Center - a medical-marijuana dispensary on La Cienega Boulevard - requires fingerprint identification as well as a special prepaid card.

"I wanted to take steps to benefit the industry," said Mehdizadeh, who owns two dispensaries. "We have legitimate patients that need us."

Mehdizadeh's machine is far from the standard potato-chip model. The black, armored box is bolted to the floor at the entrance to the dispensary.

It has a card swiper, a video camera that also takes a snapshot of any user and adds it to a database, and is protected by armed security guards.

Beginning today, Mehdizadeh said, he will start fingerprinting patients who want to use the machine, which will dispense five types of marijuana: Platinum Kush, Fire O.G., Bubba Kush, Purple Kush and Wild Cherry.

Keep in mind that medical marijuana is legal under state law, even as it remains a controlled substance banned by federal law. I'm a bit of a square, so maybe someone can explain to me the differences between the types. I didn't even know it came in different types. Flavors?

[Ribs aching; can't sleep. Thanks for the emails and comments. I tried to send an email back to everyone who emailed me. If I missed you, it's because I secretly hate your guts, want to tear out your heart, drink the blood out of the still-beating organ, and mail it to your parents...or I just missed you; you decide.]

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 01:25 AM | Comments (18)
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Check out this headline from earlier today:

Florida Primary Could Boost GOP Winner

Take that prediction to the bank, boys. Good as gold.

Posted by: Ace at 08:16 PM | Comments (31)
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He's right. For all the talk of the big delegate-rich liberal states voting on Mega Tuesday, there's also a few conservative states voting, too.

Can Romney win those? Sure... maybe. It's tough to beat someone with McCain's name recognition after a big (but narrow) loss, but it's doable.

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 07:15 PM | Comments (139)
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This poll is for Giuliani supporters only. It's to find out which they're actually turning to, not for others to speculate about who they'll be turning to. Why speculate when we can have real answers?

Genghis proposed this -- noting that this, sadly, will be the second "Where do you turn now?" poll he's answered.

Posted by: Ace at 07:11 PM | Comments (50)
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50% in, McCain with a 50,000 vote lead, and apparently many of Romney's winning districts counted.

What next?

What a revoltin' development this is.

You know who this benefits?

Oh, damn, I'm too depressed to even do the joke.

Timing is everything. Just as the season was heating up, when people were really making up their minds, Giuliani got hit with that made-up fake scandal about the cops driving around Judith Nathan.

Romney, meanwhile, had been getting it from all sides all the way through, as he was expected to win in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Fred imploded for whatever reason. We don't need to get into that again.

McCain had meanwhile flown under the radar during this critical period, being in the single digits most of the time. By the time McCain surged and Giuliani crumbled, there wasn't a lot time to start vetting McCain seriously.

So here we are. He peaked at precisely the right moment. This was his good luck.

I don't believe in providence and wouldn't ascribe this to providence even if I did. It seems random and unfair to me. I guess we'll see if this is all disastrous or not.

Giuliani giving his valedictory... This isn't a concession speech, this is a withdrawal speech.

It's a nice speech.

It's all in the past tense. "We ran," etc.

He's done.

Allow me my damn-my-guy-is-out moment, especially because it appears that a liberal Republican is going to win anyway. And I have to think Giuliani is preferable to McCain, if we're to have a liberalish Republican candidate.

Posted by: Ace at 06:12 PM | Comments (203)
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Via Hot Air, no further details, but here are what "sources say."

Posted by: Ace at 06:00 PM | Comments (17)
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McCain Wins? The Romney camp is offering the spin that Mitt managed a "stunning comback" after a ten point deficit a week ago.

Which is code, I take it, for the likelihood McCain will win. With almost half the vote in, McCain leads by 3%. I imagine his lead is largely due to independents registering as Republicans in the past several weeks, as there is no real Democratic contest there. (The DNC stripped Florida of its delegates as a punishment for moving up its primary.)

Romney can still pull this out, even without Florida. But it's obviously tough sledding.

After Mega Tuesday, we're probably going to have to make a very difficult decision.

Very sketchy results at the moment. I just posted that Romney was up by 0.5%, now I see Drudge has McCain up by 2.0%.

Prof. Rusty Shackleford emails me an interesting outcome: No winner in Florida until after Mega Tuesday. If the race is close enough, and if every absentee ballot needs to be counted, and if enough districts in Florida allow fairly late postmarking to count... well, you can see what I'm driving at.

Results... Precinct by precinct. Not enough there to figure much out. (Link fixed, thanks to AliceH.)

Fred Thompson's getting 1.4%. Aaarggh.

More: Sixty percent of GOP primary voters self-identify as conservative. That's up 10% from 1992 when only half did.

Exit polls mean very little, of course. But for what it's worth.

The first wave of exit poll numbers, including absentees: McCain 34.3 percent, Romney 32.6 percent, Giuliani 15.3 percent, Huckabee 12 percent.

Including absentees? I guess they just poll people and ask if they've voted absentee.

There are still two hours of polling. So vote -- against McCain. Sorry, but even if he's to be our nominee, I'd like to at least force Mr. Straight Talk to pander to win.

A nice start would be a vow not to consider Comprehensive Piece of Shit his first term. Any realistic plan of "securing the borders" would take three years, minimum, even assuming McCain worked at hard (which is daft assumption), so a four year promise isn't even inconsistent with his current position.

If he means it, that is.

Lowry Hears McCain 33, Romney 32... whic is slightly better. But then, these polls are going to be off at at least 4 or 5% both ways, so these differences are pretty trivial.

Updates: Conservative turnout high, absentees breaking by six points for Mitt? so says the Binary Beta Male.

Partisan Radio Talk Show Raises Questions of Faulty Voter Technology, "Disenfranchisement," Double-Voting: Relax, it's Limbaugh having trouble with his touch-screen voting booth.

He may have voted twice. I'm sure there'll be Congressional investigations into this by week's end.

This electronic voting is idiotic, by the way.

Thanks to Alice H. for that.

Posted by: Ace at 04:59 PM | Comments (190)
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Go read it all. Michael reports on the Fallujah PTT effort. Very well written and genuinely informative. Vastly superior to any of the shallow inept hackery out of AP/Reuters/NYT/McClatchy,etc.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 04:44 PM | Comments (5)
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Imagine! She tells people what she thinks they want to hear and then does whatever is in her own interests to do!

It turns out that Hillary's promise not to "campaign" in Florida -- a promise made to a bunch of gullible saps in New Hampshire and Iowa who were stupid enough to believe her -- wasn't so much a promise as a, what's the word, expedient lie.

Not only is Hillary campaigning in Florida -- just a little, you understand; nothing to get upset about -- but she's pondering restoring Florida's and Michigan's votes (stripped from them due to violating the DNC's order not to try to preempt NH and Iowa) restored in the delegate count.

And who won Michigan, and will almost certainly win Florida?

Why, Hillary! But that's a coincidence, you know. She's just doing this for the voters. For me, for you. For all of us.

Here's something that would really tear the Democratic Party up: those votes, if restored, just may be enough to give Hillary the nomination.

The trouble is that if Obama's actually come that close, I can't imagine the DNC would be stupid enough to change the rules in the middle of the game just to give the nomination to the weaker candidate.

Posted by: Ace at 04:08 PM | Comments (27)
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