Note that just as many people "hate" a partisan like Howard Dean. Or Joy Behar. Or... Anthony Weiner.

Or Barack Hussein Obama, for that matter. Not sure if you've checked the polls or if you, like many liberals, have established a No Bummer Zone -- but your buddy-boy is pretty unpopular. Far, far more people hate Obama than Coulter -- simply because far more people know Obama than Coulter, and, oh, also: Ann Coulter didn't drop an atomic bomb on to the American economic system.

Why are these people never asked if the "hatred" gets to them?

Ah. That's right -- because the people who hate Joy Behar don't count. They are not really people, not fully. They are the Gamma Minuses of the world.

On the other hand, the people who hate Ann Coulter count. They're real people -- hell, they might be something above that. They are the Alpha Plus Alphas.

Also note that Moran speaks of the "hate" here in lighthearted terms -- because this hate, you see, is understandable.

To the extent a liberal ever gets asked about "hate," it's not this sort of puckish, jovial hate (which is well-earned). No, in that case, we put our Serious Faces on and ask how these Heroes are managing to survive in this dark landscape of evil murderous hatred.

Liberal hate: Good; how do conservatives feel knowing all the Good People justifiably hate them?

Conservative hate: Bad; alert the authorities and award medals of conspicuous bravery to the survivors of such hatred

The media continues to not get bias. They do not get that when they routinely only treat half of the population of the country as inhuman animals beneath respect -- respect, shit, beneath simple acknowledgement -- they are projecting over and over and over again that only they and their like-minded liberal buddies matter.

Well to hell with you. Your repellent suggestion that half the nation are some kind of lumpenproletariat too crude and embarrassing to as so much as mention in polite company is more disgusting than anything Anthony Weiner's done in the last month.

At least people notice what Anthony Weiner did. What you do, every day, is so common that people -- even the ones you insult and disregard -- hardly even notice it any more.

And here's one with a dirty word in it.

Corrected: It wasn't Terry Moran who asked the question. He teased the clip but the reporter was Dan Harris.

I've changed the headline, vaguely, to "Reporter." Because I honestly never heard of Dan Harris.

Posted by: Ace at 04:58 PM | Comments (112)
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A little late tonight. On Versus now.

Just under 13:00 left in 1st period.

Coming off Game 3 blowout and the Rome suspension, The B's need this one to even up the series.

Unrelated: I'm seeing this from a lot of people on Twitter tonight including FNC's Brett Baier.

I'm in RT @TerryMoran Alice is 15, has terminal cancer. She wants to trend on Twitter. Seems like a great girl. RET... http://tl.gd/b04nr8

If you're on Twitter, it might be a nice thing to do. Consider it a little palate cleanser after a week of Winergate.

Posted by: DrewM at 04:30 PM | Comments (96)
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Kristen Powers is very inconsistent in her new column damning Weiner, by the way.

Just pointing this out. I don't think it's a big deal.

Yesterday, or the day before, I heard Kristen Powers claim for those who allege "it's not about the sex, it's about the lying," it really is about the sex.

This is a Clinton-era go-to defense, that, as she says (and was said 100x in 1998-99), if you're going to have illicit sex, of course you will also lie about it; the two things are bundled, a package deal. Few people have illicit sex and then tell the truth about it.

Hell, we've accepted this idea so much that Presidents are permitted to lie under oath about it.

So her point is that this is just about sex, then -- the lying being a necessary consequence of the sex -- and that this is nobody's business, except his wife and family's.

I haven't hit the moral card very hard because I don't know how I feel about this. I know David Vitter had all the holes punched in his Subway Frequent Whoremonger Card (get a free girl sandwich!), and he stood for reelection, and won, and I'm not terribly upset by that.

So I guess maybe the liberals are right -- honestly, who knows, maybe the only thing that matters is, as Amanda Marcotte avers, whether they vote the right way. (Link to Stace McCain's piece challenging this notion.)

But that said, it's odd to see Kristen Powers reverse field so sharply and now aver No, it's about the lying.

He lied to her, personally, you see. That's why she's turned.

I guess I can see that, and I don't mean to bait, but of course he lied to a journalist, Kristin.

Here's her story. After Weiner reassured her this was all just a rightwing set-up...

He knew I was going on the show Hannity, where I would use this false information to defend him in front of millions of people. I did, and I regret it. The previous day I had reluctantly done an interview with the New York Post at his request to talk about what kind of boyfriend he was. In that story I didnÂ’t address the controversy but talked about my experiences with him. Nonetheless, my friends were furious when the real information came out and they realized he had allowed me to become involved in his sordid controversy. I just felt sorry for him and his wife.

In an interview with Greta Van Susteren the evening of WeinerÂ’s tearful press conference, I told her I didnÂ’t believe he needed to resign because his behavior was not related to his official capacity and that this was between him and his wife and, ultimately, the voters. Yes, he lied, I acknowledged, but everyone lies in sex scandals.

his is my general view of sex scandals. But there is lying and then there is what Weiner did. Due to nonstop meetings, I had not had time to watch his media blitz prior to my Greta interview and was slack-jawed when I saw clips of him the next day sneering and pointing fingers at other people for what he knew he had done. I am of the general view that politicians are not the most honest group of people, but, even using that very low standard, what I saw in those interviews was deeply disturbing. There is no way anyone can ever believe anything Weiner says again after that. In fact, I highly doubt that what he said in his press conference is even true.

Narcissism doesn’t begin to describe this kind of behavior. It seems there was nobody he didn’t lie to. The New York Times reported this morning that he told donors a week ago that the scandal was the result of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” and that “everything [would] be fine.” We also learned after his press conference that he coached a former porn star with whom he had communicated online on how to lie to the media.

So the distinction is between lying humbly and lying arrogantly?

Which of the two was Clinton guilty of?

It seems to me that is a quickly-crafted distinction to explain a sudden shift from one position to another.

And I'm not beating on her about that; we do not think with our brains. We think with our guts. Our brains just make up the logical-sounding words to make it sound like we came by our positions intellectually. We didn't. Few do.

So it could just be that in 24 hours her gut changed -- guts work on emotion -- and now her logic necessarily follows, as it tries to make sense of what the gut is saying.

I have to confess to being unsure of the path here. For days -- for two weeks, I guess -- I have wondered "Why am I doing this? What do I care?"

It wasn't because I hated Weiner. He was an annoying puffed-up partisan brat, sure, but there are dozen others ready to take his place on MSNBC and Kos' Wall of Heroes. He was inconsequential, politically.

Well, except for being well-positioned for a mayoral run, but honestly, I didn't even know about that until this story broke.

I guess it just annoyed me at some level that he was lying, and people weren't calling him on it.

It seemed obvious. He's lying. Isn't anyone going to note this in the media?

And don't we usually note lies? Why are we suddenly giving this one a pass?

Because he's a liberal and so Howard Kurtz takes his transparent lies as authoritative?

Because it's about sex? Have we all agreed to this idea, that lies about sex are okay? Does that mean the media gives the next Republican who lies about sex as similar pass?

Oh wait, no, then that's hypocrisy. Full spectrum flood-the-zone coverage.

So I don't know. Should this matter, especially when, if Kristen Powers' initial position is true (and I'm not sure it's not), that "everyone lies about sex"?

I don't know. I don't know.

I know that when the pictures were actually released Monday, I had a queasy feeling. And while I had previously been keenly interested in vindication, motivated by intellectual vanity, now I sort of began to have empathy and kept thinking, and writing, "Call the fight. Make it stop."

I wanted him to resign less to have a scalp than to just get it all behind us.

I don't know. I don't know what the hell happened here, really, now, looking back.

Great to "win" and be "right" and all that but today's revelation of a pregnancy really just makes this all seem less like partisan sport and more like simple cruelty.

I don't know. I'm just thinking. Or my gut is thinking, and I'm typing out the words my brain is giving me in translation.

Correction: I initially wrote Larry Craig continues on as Senator, which he does not.

Regrets About Regrets: Commenters are having none of my 11th hour sweetheart act and point out this was pretty bad behavior.

Yes... but then, I guess it is about the sex, contra Kristen Powers.

One thing I reminded myself of, through my doubts, was that this was flagrant, brazen, reckless, begging-to-be-caught behavior.

Cheaters always get caught anyway, and when you're this out of control...? Forget about it.

And I did know those other pictures were in the mix a week before they dropped.

So I knew that he was really basically going kookoobananas online, trolling for cybersex with almost-complete-strangers, twice in a month, and that's just what we know about.

Who knows what the coming weeks will reveal.

So... this guy was having some kind of a blaze-of-glory cybersex dignity-firesale.

I guess this wasn't an investigation so much as an intervention.

Like I said, I don't know. I said that a dozen times. I mean that. From the gut to the brain to the fingers to the screen.

Oh: The other thing that I thought, frequently, when I asked myself, "Why push this?," is: Because this is what we do.

Is that a good system? I don't know, but it is the system.

And I know I got very angry indeed when champion dickweed Howard Kurtz sneeringly informed me that in this one case, it would not be the system.

Unacceptable, Kurtz. We shall not have a regime of hard, punitive rules for conservatives and soft, forgiving rules for liberals.

I was thinking that this is like the Prisoner's Dilemma.

I believe both parties, and most people in the public eye, would agree, if they could make an agreement which could be enforced and relied upon, that "We shall not beat up each other over this stuff."

That would accrue to everyone's interest in the political/media class. Note I speak only of this class. I am not saying that this agreement would serve anyone else's interests. But it would serve politicians' and media-types' interests.

You don't screw with me, I don't screw with you. For this class, such an agreement would be mostly upside.

But the problem is, of course, the same one as is the whole point of the Prisoner's Dilemma: You can't trust your opponents to go soft on you.

So what do you do? Concede the field, in which case only your own allies get pummeled like this, but you sweetly avoid pummeling their guys in the hopes that they will honor their side of the bargain?

They won't. They never do.

MSNBC placed an ad buy on my site in late 2006, before the elections. The ad was intended to be -- from the looks of it -- a rotating headlines ad, in which they'd update the headlines every few days.

They never updated it.

For three months, I had the Mark Foley story at the top of the column. Because that's the story MSNBC wanted on conservative websites.

I think this is why I yelled and bitched when not enough people on the right were, to my line of thinking, pushing the story hard enough. I thought maybe they were sort of looking at this in Prisoner's Dilemma terms and deciding that something like mutual restraint was the best strategy for both parties here.

The trouble is, the other side will never reciprocate in that strategy. Even if the Democratic B-Team honors it (the actual Democratic Party), the more important Democratic A-Team won't (the liberal media).

So even if we'd prefer, if it were possible, some kind of "let's go easy on each other's fallen angels" barter, it doesn't matter what we'd prefer, because we can't have that. It's not on the table; it's not being offered. It's impossible.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Actually, hate Steven den Beste, because this is all his fault.

Oh Yeah: And I completely failed to mention the "vast right wing conspiracy" gambit, in which innocent people are to be deliberately framed for a #Hack! that never happened in order to spare a narcissistic douchebag a moment of mortification.

Breitbart, PatriotUSA, everyone at the Big blogs... everyone was going to get framed and smeared to protect Weiner from his own Joe Esterhaus-level sexual compulsiveness.

At some point -- and that point was reached 12 hours after Weiner tweeted his junk -- it was either going to be him, the actual malefactor, or us, who didn't do anything except notice bad behavior, who was going down.

And yes, at that point, forget about it, I and other good people aren't going down just because the media finds us more attractive villains.

Forgot all about that.

One last point, and I do think this is a last point: As McCain gets at, isn't the claim to be a "feminist" -- all concerned about women's welfare and their treatment as equals rather than objects -- serve as a powerful predicate for laying the "hypocrisy" charge at the feet of liberal fallen angels?

How many coeds do you have to dick-dial behind the back of your pregnant wife before someone notices that maybe that's not exactly congruent with the teachings of Gloria Steinem?

As Bob Loblaw famously asked, "Why should you go to jail for a crime that someone else... noticed?" more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:37 PM | Comments (524)
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Oy.

Now, it's my belief he will play the card, "All this sudden shock of responsibility just stunned me, scared me, I sought out juvenile pleasures because I was, in some way, trying to escape my adult responsibility, if only in a virtual way."

The "Sudden Responsibility Shock Syndrome" defense.

Who knows, might even be true. Guy was trolling recklessly and rampantly for virtual tail.

In just three weeks, guy's been in contact with more ass than a toilet.

Rumor: I've heard rumors, from a guy, from a guy, from a guy before; I thought he was resigning at that press conference. Before that, I'd heard he'd make the announcement to resign on Tuesday (the day after he wound up saying he wouldn't resign).

So rumors are... well, rumors.

So take this with a grain of salt. This man says it's the rumor on Capitol Hill that it's tonight, in an hour.

Now, I've been trying to avoid Weiner, mostly, and return to the previously-popular not-all-dick format, so I haven't noted this, but almost everyone is now calling on Weiner to resign, from former DNC chief Tim Kaine to former girlfriend and erstwhile defender Kristin Powers.

His supporters are angry that he lied to them, telling them, on the phone, that this was all just a "vast right wing conspiracy." He may still have voters, but he's hemorrhaging donors.

I don't think he'll be able to go to rallies or appear on MSNBC anymore. At least, not until he hosts the 10 o'clock MSNBC news show, Weiner Time.

Every five minutes comes someone else demanding he resign.

Of course, he doesn't have to. And he's got a kid to take care of now.

And possibly child support payments.

Again, this is just a rumor. It just seems... inevitable.

Posted by: Ace at 01:28 PM | Comments (381)
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On CSPAN's site.

Gabe is Tweeting a combination play-by-play and color commentary.

Really cool stuff.

Damn Fine Point: An anti-ObamaCare lawyer offers this assertion: If the Framers really intended to include a government power to compel the purchase of a product in the Commerce Clause, wouldn't they have also placed limitations on such a boundless power in the Bill of Rights?

The fact that this asserted power, supposedly implied, which essentially gives the government complete power over the individual, has absolutely no limitations laid upon it in the charter strongly suggests the power doesn't exist in the first place.

Randy Barnett On This Claimed Power: If Congress Can Do This, They Can Do Anything. At Hot Air.

Posted by: Ace at 12:53 PM | Comments (90)
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And he's calling Palin stupid!

A guy working for someone running for President, someone with a Palin-esque profile, someone who will definitely want a big chunk of those Palin-votes when/if Palin announces she's not running.

Not only did he imply Palin was not "the intelligent woman," not only did he then go one to opine Palin's not been "serious for years," but, when told to STFU by people who have more sense remaining in their skulls, he actually doubles-down, pridefully, on outrageous stupid.

Of Team Palin’s call for a retraction, he said, “What’s the retraction? I say she’s serious?”

Another Bachmann aide calls Palin "unstable," so who knows, maybe this is a scripted, approved play. In which case Bachmann shares in the stupid.

I don't think so, though. What I think is that many insider-y players have had hard feelings for Palin for a long, long time. I think they've had these opinions for a long, long time. I think they previously publicly counterfeited these beliefs for a long, long time.

I think now that they have people actually caring what the hell their opinion is on something, for a change, just because they got hired to manage things for a more important player, they just can't help themselves in unloading on Palin.

And I think they are using the excuse that they are working for someone else as a license to make what are personal blogger-level statements, rather than acting like professionals in the game to win it.

Hey, Ed Rollins? If you want to pipe up with the emotional restraint of a menstrual 15-year-old girl about every snit you're feeling coming on, let me suggest you peruse www.blogspot.com.

And keep your campaign clean of such excitable utterances. What is this, a bid for the coveted Andrew Sullivan endorsement?

This is horrifically stupid. I am not on Team Palin but if I were part of someone's campaign I would not be deliberately alienating Palin supporters, who already are alienated and feel betrayed by a party which increasingly refuses to take their preferred candidate seriously.

I think this is read not just as a snub of Palin, which would be one thing, but as a snub of Palin supporters -- primary voters -- on a personal level, a rejection of them and their own values, which is, of course, intensely personal.

And Rollins, and this other unnamed aide, just told them all they could go to hell and he didn't have any regard whatsoever for their beliefs or opinions.

Rollins will be fired by the end of next week.

Posted by: Ace at 12:13 PM | Comments (359)
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If so, Twitter will literally choke on dic-pics.

Well not literally.

Even though the justices "sound receptive" to the anti-ObamaCare arguments, this is a false tea leaf that gets reported a lot.

Judges questions only hint at their beliefs something like, I don't know, 60% of the time. In other cases, they want to seem fair and solicitous to one side; they want to get the best possible version of that side's argument so they can best reject it in their actual opinion.

Or, they pepper one side with tough questions, but what they're hoping is that that team's lawyers will give them the pretext they want to hold in their favor. Their frustration is sometimes of the nature, "Can't you guys do your jobs right and give me something close to a legal justification to do what it is I want to do anyway? Do I have to have my clerks work the weekend to find the right arguments and precedents that you boneheads missed?"

In the OJ case, the jury wanted to re-hear the limo driver's testimony that OJ did not answer the door for 30 minutes when he arrived, which of course strongly suggests that OJ was lying when he said he was home, because he was out killing Niccole.

"That means they're going to convict him," a guy said.

"No, that means they want to hear the most damning evidence again so they can make up a reason for it not being so damning. They'll acquit," I said.

That said, here are the tea leaves. I admit... these are tasty, sweet tea-leaves.

And yet, I've had crappy tea before.

A top Obama administration lawyer defending last year's healthcare law ran into skeptical questions Wednesday from three federal judges here, who suggested they may be ready to declare all or part of the law unconstitutional.

...

And in an ominous sign for the administration, the judges opened the arguments by saying they knew of no case in American history where the courts had upheld the government's power to force someone to buy a product.

That argument is at the heart of the constitutional challenge to the healthcare law and its mandate that nearly all Americans have health insurance by 2014.

"I can't find any case like this," said Chief Judge Joel Dubina of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. "If we uphold this, are there any limits" on the power of the federal government? he asked.

Judge Stanley Marcus appeared to agree. "I can't find any case" in the past where the courts upheld "telling a private person they are compelled to purchase a product in the open marketÂ…. Is there anything that suggests Congress can do this?"

If it's framed this way, and the judges are really looking at this way -- how can they let it stand?

Usually "There is no hint anywhere in the Constitution the government has this power" is not followed by "But, sidenote, the government does in fact have this power."

Posted by: Ace at 11:31 AM | Comments (126)
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Privatize New Jersey's stupid stake in public broadcasting? Yes please thank you.

You want a quote? You got a quote:

:We are looking forward to this new partnership, which we think will serve the people of New Jersey extraordinarily well,” Christie said. “It also meets our goal of making sure government is out of the broadcasting business. In my view that should have ended with the Soviet Union. It’s ending here in New Jersey a little later than the fall of the wall in Berlin, but we’re getting there."

It's unfair to talk like that and then not run. It's a GOP-tease.

Also there, and also at Patterico, Ed Schultz gets it "right" on WeinerGate. He calls for Weiner to resign.

However, someone pointed out the other day (forget who, sorry), Ed Schultz suggested this first as a need to "take one for the team," and continues urging resignation as a means of protecting the Democratic Party from further harm.

So is he doing the "right" thing? On one hand, it's nice to have confirmation that MSNBC is expressly, admittedly, avowedly a media arm of the DNC; on the other hand, they also continue to make a laughable pretense of not so being, so what's red-faced anger-slut Ed Schultz doing trying to wargame for them?

One more from Verum Serum: Anyone notice the politicians all use the same "Serious Shame" face?

What's up with that? Is that because this is just a real Serious Shame face that we all use, or is this rehearsed, like the stupid crap they do with their hands when speaking to appear "authoritative but not threatening," like that stupid bent-over thumb-point all the Democrats do?

Posted by: Ace at 11:10 AM | Comments (76)
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Sounds like Durbin reads the HQ.

I think you can expect to see this a lot in the coming year. Pretty much every time Obama says, "the previous administration". And you know how often that is.

Via Right Turn

Posted by: DrewM at 10:43 AM | Comments (72)
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I saw this story being linked on Twitter, as at least four media outlets -- CBS, ABC, CNN, and Fox -- began with the live video feed of CSIs and cadaver dogs at the "Texas Murder Lawn" as DrewM. called it (I called it "LAWN OF HORRORS").

I began joking about it when I realized the media had not actually confirmed 20-30 mutilated bodies, including those of children, before breathlessly reporting such.

I came in just as the media began doing a few walk-backs about just how many bodies might be buried under the Texas Murder Lawn.

I put my chips on "hoax" and began making fun of them, although, actually, I jumped the gun, too. I mean, if this turned out real... well, a lot of these tweets would have looked rather ugly and callous.

But it was a hoax. My psychic powers divined that this other psychic was a fraud, unlike me.

Someone said "Maybe they had inside information that this was legit." Well, I think it's more likely that they had hopes they were about to get some awesome footage of body excavations.

Hat tip to @allahpundit, who put me in the mind of joking when he asked, "Wait, the media didn't bother confirming there were 30 children's bodies buried here before reporting that?"

Top Twelve Breathless Media Headlines Reporting "Fact" of 20-30 Bodies Buried In Texas Murder Lawn... Or, Maybe, None At All

12. CBSNews BREAKING: "Lawn of Horrors" Said To Contain Either 20 Multilated Children's Corpses, or Dirt

11. CNN BREAKING: FURIOUS RACE AGAINST TIME TO PRESERVE EVIDENCE OF LOAM

10. FOX NEWS: Six Recovered Bones May Be Human, or KFC

9. New York Post: SLAYGROUND -- TEXAS MURDER LAWN ESTIMATED TO CONTAIN UP TO ZERO HUMAN BODIES

8. CNN: Quiet Suburban Death-Lawn May Hide Evidence of Ritual Murder; Or, Kickball

7. New York Daily News: MURDER PLOT: SUSPICIOUS DAFFODILS MAY HOLD KEY TO SOLVING TEXAS WEED-WACKER MASSACRE

6. CBSNews: "One Child's Body So Badly Mutilated It "Resembles Old Soccer Ball;" Investigators Ponder Riddle of Killer's Codeword-Clue, "FIFA"

5. NBCNews: CADAVER DOGS CONFIRM POSSIBLE MASS GRAVE AND/OR SQUIRRELS

4. Local News Tease: "Tips from experts on how you can avoid being buried in a Texas Murder Lawn. Plus, the seven-week slim-down diet."

3. CNN UPDATE: BODIES IN TEXAS MURDER LAWN HIDDEN "WITH SURGICAL PRECISION"

2. NBCNews: New Theory That Killer Preyed Only on Invisible People; Hunt On For the Man Some Are Calling "The Tinkerbell Killer"

And the number one media headline on the Texas Murder Lawn, coming in after the hoax was confirmed...

1. Tease for this Sunday's Geraldo Rivera Live: GARDEN OF EVIL: BLOOD-SOAKED SEX-LAWN MAY YET YIELD HOT DEATH SEX VICTIMS

Bonus After-Hoax Headline:

0. Howard Kurtz' "Reliable Sources" Roundtable Segment Title: "Don't you think that the media was wise, justified, and prudent in furiously jumping the gun on the Texas Murder Lawn?"

Posted by: Ace at 10:06 AM | Comments (184)
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