Yes, the article does mention her husband is the CEO of a "liberal-progressive" radio network, but once again the Democratic party affiliation of the politician here is expunged from the record. And it's not as if liberals only marry liberals.

Anyway:

The co-founder and former CEO of the liberal-progressive Democracy Radio and husband of U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow was caught in February by a Troy police sting aimed at catching prostitutes, according to a police report.

Thomas L. Athans was stopped Feb. 26 by undercover officers investigating a possible prostitution ring in a room at the Residence Inn near Big Beaver and Interstate 75. Athans paid a 20-year-old prostitute $150 for sex in a Troy hotel but was not arrested, according to police reports obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by The Detroit News. The police report said officers observed Athans enter a room under surveillance and leave 15 minutes later. Detectives followed and stopped Athans' silver 2002 Cadillac DeVille on Interstate 75 near Square Lake Road.

Athans told police he stopped at the hotel to see a female friend he met online. After calling her on his cell phone, he was given a room number and met the woman at the door. Once inside he placed $150 on a counter top. The woman collected the money and performed oral sex on him, Athans told police.

Officers entered the room and found sex toys, condoms, $431 in cash and a laptop computer.

A feller could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff!

Or even Troy, Michigan, actually.

Thanks to Bruce.

Posted by: Ace at 10:14 AM | Comments (71)
Post contains 290 words, total size 2 kb.

Hmmm... I'm not sure if I have a problem with this.

One one hand, it shatters the myth that we're all in this together and that race doesn't matter and that people of differing races talk exactly the same way in mixed-race and single-race situations.

On the other hand, that's a myth that not a single person in the world believes anyway.

As long as he was doing the "Look, I'm a black man too, and I'm telling you right now you knuckleheads have to get your shit straightened out" thing, and not asking them where he could get some crack and ass, I guess it's okay.

I guess.

I wish Obama would come out and set us all straight on this, given that he's healing all of our racial wounds and all.

Though I guess it's obligatory to repeat Matthew McConnaughey's final summation line from A Time To Kill: "Now imagine that he's white."

Thanks to Andy the Squirrel.

Posted by: Ace at 09:50 AM | Comments (33)
Post contains 178 words, total size 1 kb.

The Indians are apparently trying, finally, to wrest the title of Weirdest Country in Asia from Japan.

Sorry, guys. Too little too late. Japan is just too good. They're like the East German Women's Deadlifting Squad at weird shit.

Still, not too shabby:

Indian army chiefs are set to deploy a "curry bomb" to win the war on terror.

India's weapons development experts have developed an eye-watering spice bomb, packed with a potent mix of red chilli and pepper which will be used to smoke out militants during counter-insurgency operations.

...

But scientists from India's Defence Research and Development Organisation have discovered that the spices which make your curry so hot can also bring an enemy to his knees in seconds.

They have created an 81-mm grenade packed with red hot chilli, pepper and phosphorus to use in Kashmir where Islamic separatists linked with al Qaeda are fighting a long-running insurgency war.

Ummm... how do you get the terrorists to eat the grenade?

PS, while I'm addressing Indians, I'd like to say this:

Yes, the power is on, I have checked that all my cables and connections are securely in place, and yes indeed, believe it or not, it did occur to me to try turning the computer and/or router and/or modem off and on again several times to see if that cleared the problem.

That did occur to me -- the turning it off and on again trick. I didn't even have to check the Troubleshooting Guide for that one, I thought of it all on my own.

Believe it or not, I actually try to do simple fixes myself before calling "Jimbo" (as he identifies himself) at the Help Center. It's not like I just call you guys because you seem pretty cool and I think we could all be buddies, going on crazy adventures together and solving groovy mysteries.

Can we move on now? We all know we're going to the Control Panel anyway, let's just go there straightaway, okay?

Thank you.

Posted by: Ace at 09:23 AM | Comments (80)
Post contains 351 words, total size 2 kb.

Just, wow.

Safford Middle School has a "zero tolerance" policy that prohibits possession of all drugs, including not just alcohol and illegal intoxicants but prescription medications and over-the-counter remedies, "except those for which permission to use in school has been granted." In October 2003, acting on a tip, Vice Principal Kerry Wilson found a few 400-milligram ibuprofen pills (each equivalent to two over-the-counter tablets) and one nonprescription naproxen tablet in the pockets of a student named Marissa, who claimed Savana was her source.

Savana, an honors student with no history of disciplinary trouble or drug problems, said she didn't know anything about the pills and agreed to a search of her backpack, which turned up nothing incriminating. Wilson nevertheless instructed a female secretary to strip-search Savana under the school nurse's supervision, without even bothering to contact the girl's mother.

The secretary had Savana take off all her clothing except her underwear. Then she told her to "pull her bra out and to the side and shake it, exposing her breasts," and "pull her underwear out at the crotch and shake it, exposing her pelvic area." Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between drug warriors and child molesters.

"I was embarrassed and scared," Savana said in an affidavit, "but felt I would be in more trouble if I did not do what they asked. I held my head down so they could not see I was about to cry." She called it "the most humiliating experience I have ever had." Later, she recalled, the principal, Robert Beeman, said "he did not think the strip search was a big deal because they did not find anything."

Reason's claiming it's a 4th Amendment violation, which I'm not sure of; courts have been pretty firm on the 4th Amendment not applying to kids at school, mostly. Plus it's unclear from the facts if she "consented" by doing as instructed, or even if "consent" is a valid idea in this context. I dunno.

More likely a violation of the vague and mostly-discredited "shock the conscience" guarantee of due process under the Fifth Amendment. There aren't many times to break out that old chestnut, but this seems to be one of them.

Posted by: Ace at 07:52 AM | Comments (172)
Post contains 369 words, total size 2 kb.

By now I'm sure you've heard that the DoD has released the infamous "torture memo" that then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel John Yoo wrote describing the law governing military interrogations of alien unlawful combatants. Various parts of the Left blogosphere and the legacy media are screeching about it and alternating between calls for impeachment and cries of "Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib." They look and sound like nothing so much as a pack of overexcited baboons.

I'm not ready to defend it in its entirety (as Stuart Benjamin challenges), but there are parts of it that are indeed "near boilerplate." Moreover, Benjamin and other commentators are conveniently ignoring that the Supreme Court would later agree with key parts of the March 14 Memo--namely the scope of executive power and the limits of Constitutional guarantees for alien unlawful combatants--in cases like Hamdi (2004), Hamdan (2006), and even Rasul (2004), all of which were trumpeted as crushing blows to the Administration. Several decisions in the lower courts also adopted reasoning similar to that of Yoo's memo--without having even seen it, mind you.

So when Benjamin predicts that few lawyers who have expertise in the area of law will defend the March 14 Memo, I think he's expressing what he hopes will happen rather than what any person can actually expect to happen. I'm not certain that I care to spend the next week combing through the memo and responding to Yoo's critics, but I will address some immediate problems with the Lefty commentary.

First, contrary to Marty Lederman's characterization, the Yoo memo does not authorize the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Nor, by any stretch of the imagination, does it provide a "blueprint" for the types of things that went on there that led to seven courts martial, all of which included charges of dereliction of duty. In other words, the abuses that went on there were most certainly not authorized by the March 14 Memo or any other Administration action.

Second, there are several reasons for classifying the memo at the time it was released. Kevin Drum expands on a questino of Lederman, asking:

now that we know what was in the memo, what justification was there for classifying it in the first place? It wouldn't have been moot in 2003, and there was nothing in it that compromised national security either then or now.

Drum is obviously incorrect about this. In March 2003, there was little public information about our interrogation programs or the lengths to which our interrogators were legally allowed to go. Releasing the memo would have revealed to our enemies much about the Administration's intention to interrogate and possibly the severity of such interrogations (it goes into detail about what legally constitutes assault and maiming and discusses the legal ramifications of many interrogation techniques; it's discussion of the Convention Against Torture is particularly telling). The memo also obliquely references several things about the war effort that could have reasonably been seen as requiring secrecy, including various other classified legal inquiries made by the Administration and references to military installations abroad other than Guantanamo Bay where detainees may have been interrogated.

In short, the Left--with the legacy media right behind them--are ready to launch into all kinds of insupportable attacks on the March 14 Memo like linking it with Abu Ghraib or so-called "unlimited war" plans by the Bush Administration. If you are interested in looking at yourself, Part 1 is here (PDF) and Part 2 is here (PDF). Whether I return to the subject will depend on how incompetent the Lefty and other blawg discussion gets.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:44 AM | Comments (12)
Post contains 610 words, total size 4 kb.

Hm. Does this mean I can stop rooting for this vile woman?

Hillary Clinton is maintaining a lead over rival Barack Obama among Pennsylvania Democrats, who are split along racial lines three weeks before the state's primary, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.

The poll also found Clinton does better than Obama in a match-up against Republican John McCain in Pennsylvania and two other swing states, Florida and Ohio.

The March 24-31 survey released today found that Clinton has support of 50 percent of likely Democratic voters in Pennsylvania compared with 41 percent who support Obama. A March 18 Quinnipiac poll found that Clinton had 53 percent to 41 percent for Obama.

...

The racial divide also showed up in voter preferences in a general election contest in the three swing states, which together have 68 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

...

The survey found that Clinton leads McCain in all three swing states where the poll was conducted. In contrast, Obama, 46, would lose to McCain, 71, in Florida and edges him by slight margins in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

In Florida, Clinton has support from 44 percent of voters compared with McCain's 42 percent. In a theoretical match-up against Obama, McCain garners 46 percent of the vote compared with Obama's 37 percent, according to the poll.

In Pennsylvania, Clinton has a 48 percent to 40 percent lead over McCain, while Obama leads McCain 43 percent to 39 percent.

In Ohio, Clinton is leading McCain 48 percent to 39 percent, while Obama has a narrow lead over McCain of 43 percent to 42 percent.

Ah, well. I guess it doesn't matter much who wins. Which is good, because Obama's going to win. There's just nothing she can do about it. Not even attempting to destroy him, in order to save the Republic, of course.

Any time the Clintons act ruthlessly to acquire or cling to power it's to save something or other. Anything except their own asses. Always for the folks, as Bill O'Reilly calls 'em.

Posted by: Ace at 07:24 AM | Comments (28)
Post contains 363 words, total size 2 kb.

The smartest woman in America.

The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.

Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

Of course, Obama's a lying, corrupt machine politician too.

Interesting that this Democrat lawyer sat on this until Hillary threatened to sink a more liberal presidential candidate. Correction: Alex informs me he didn't sit on this; he told David Brock about it for his book on Hillary, way back when Brock was a "conservative." (An Andrew Sullivan conservative.) So a long time ago, in other words.

Poll: 45-43, one poll says, in favor of Obama. Probably not right, but other polls do seem to be trending in Obama's favor.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 06:15 AM | Comments (33)
Post contains 344 words, total size 3 kb.

Huh.

Allah notes that a certain website is now more relevant than ever before (see second link). He also has the Breitbart tv video.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 05:48 AM | Comments (29)
Post contains 84 words, total size 1 kb.

Actual Toyota ad picture showing Ace dumping a hobo in a lake. I've been told this is 100% true and authentic. But then again, I've been told a lot of stuff that turned out to be bullshit over the years. There's no way Ace drives a Prius. A '78 Caddy with that monstrous trunk for all your "stuff", sure. Prius? No way.

H/T urthshu more...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 05:04 AM | Comments (27)
Post contains 76 words, total size 1 kb.

Women and children Democrats hardest hit.

Asian stocks surged Wednesday amid a growing belief that the worst of the credit crisis is over, following a similar rally on Wall Street.

The Nikkei 225 index rose 4.2 percent to 13,189.4 in Tokyo. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index climbed 3.2 percent to 23,872.4...

..."Investors believe the credit crisis in the U.S. is over," said Francis Lun, a general manager at Fulbright Securities in Hong Kong. "They think the worst has gone."...

...optimism that the U.S. economy is faring better than expected.

Damn - I just bought 10 cases of J-B Weld and 5,000' of baling wire too so I could keep everything around the Bat Cave working when times got really grim and we'd have to tough it out eating rat stew garnished with tree leaves.

This is the problem with Democrats. They make all kinds of promises and never deliver. I was promised a fucking depression, acted accordingly with all due diligence, and now no depression. WTF? I want my damn depression.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 03:57 AM | Comments (32)
Post contains 185 words, total size 1 kb.