Former Klansmen Byrd calls Large American Cities Dangerous Jungles

If it were Barak Obama maybe it would slide. A Senator with well known ties to the KKK, probably not...

"One's life is probably in no greater danger in the jungles of deepest Africa than in the jungles of America's large cities," he writes. "In my judgment, much of the problem has been brought about by the mollycoddling of criminals by some of the liberal judges who have been placed on the nation's courts in recent years."

I agree with the sentiment, that "mollycoddling" criminals has led to en explosion of crime, but to call cities more dangerous than African jungles seems to be a touch, shall we say, insensitive?

The story is basically about Byrd praising Judge Roberts, so it seems that his confirmation by the Group of 14 (who now control the senate it seems) is more and more likely.

Rove Still in the Spotlight (A "Rovian Ploy?")

And Kos is giddy about it.

Well, Roberts bought Rove all of what, 24 hours? I hope he got some sleep in, because he's got no reprieve.

I don't quite understand why.

Also, Drudge is reporting leading lefties are handing down marching orders instructing their minions to keep the heat on Rove.

ROLL CALL reports: "In a set of talking points issued Wednesday morning, the Senate Democratic leadership urged rank-and-file Senators to continue spotlighting Rove's involvement in the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. 'A Supreme Court nominee will not distract the country from the growing credibility problem at the White House,' Democrats were told to echo."

Most on the right like the nomination of Roberts and will be thrilled to have a 50 year old conservative (pretty on the record on everything except abortion) skate through confirmation as leftists focus on Rove.

This is great news to me. Pound on Rove all you want, tear him to shreds, the President has no more elections to win, only a legacy left to leave. Two or three staunch, young conservatives and a shift of the Court to the right is a pretty good place to start.

Lefties are claiming Bush released his nominee early to take the heat off of Rove, I disagree. It seems to me President Bush nominated Roberts in the midst of a leftists driven firestorm knowing they don't let go of a bone once they gets their jaws on it. This manufactured Rove story paves the way not only for a smooth Roberts nomination, but it sets a tone for future nominations, of which President Bush will surely get at least one, probably two more.

From the looks of it, and from the obvious way this is going to shake out, Rove will be battered a bit, Roberts will skate through, and a precedent will be set. Conservative are okay. Fillibusters are not.

I applaud the administration for using the rabid left to get a good man what looks to be an easy Supreme Court appointment.

Javon Needs a "Decent Wage"

Thank you, Mr. Rosenhaus, for putting things in perspective. I mean, it's not like Javon is asking for anything unreasonable. How do you expect a man to live on a measley half million a year? Javon has needs too people.

Seriously, if Tom Cruise is making $50 million a movie, surely Javon can get paid a decent, livable wage.

It's all relative, baby. It's OK for Tom Cruise to make $50 million a movie? But a guy who risks his life can't get paid a decent wage? B.S. I'm not standing for it."

No you idiot, your line of reasoning is bullshit, and Wisconsin won't stand for it. Perhaps you thought this time around Green Bay would buckle since new management was in town. Well as long as Thompson stays strong and keeps you and your meal ticket in limbo, I will put up with a thinner receiving corps. I will put up with two years of mediocre football to ensure that this never happens again.

At some point there has to be a massive backlash against people like Rosehaus, but first we need to find us some decent human beings who are willing to play football.

My email to a jackass...

As inspired by GBfan.

Finally, we get a glimpse into the men and women who write the editorials at the Journal Sentinel.

It is no longer shocking to me how you folks can be so incredibly stupid. It seems you simply are, in fact, incredibly stupid. I honestly hope you are an old codger a la Andy Rooney, because if you’re not you really need to get a life. I can’t wait to read your next complaint about Summerfest (I can’t sleep with that racket) the Milwaukee Mile (honestly can’t you find something quiet to enjoy, like a ballet?) or the NAACP convention (I couldn’t find a parking spot anywhere).

On pins and needles waiting for your next banal bitching,

I eagerly await his response.

Google Moon: Very Cool

Thanks again Lifehacker

In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, we’ve added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor. Happy lunar surfing. More about Google Moon.

How stupid do you think we are?

From Barbara Boxer:

"Without prejudging the nominee, I do believe Judge Roberts' record raises questions about his commitment to the right to privacy, protection of the environment and other important issues."

So, without prejudging the nominee she goes ahead and prejudges the nominee? Why even begin the sentence that way you stupid hag?

NYT on Roberts, quick and dirty hit

In an interesting editorial, the New York Times suggests that Senators take their time and wait for hearings before passing judgement, and then promptly passes judgement on what type of SC Justice Roberts WILL be.

The far right is on a drive to resurrect ancient, and discredited, states' rights theories. If extremists take control of the Supreme Court, we will end up with an America in which the federal government is powerless to protect against air pollution, unsafe working conditions and child labor. There are reasons to be concerned about Judge Roberts on this score. He dissented in an Endangered Species Act case in a way that suggested he might hold an array of environmental laws, and other important federal protections, to be unconstitutional.

That's right ladies and gentlemen, John Roberts wants America to have forced child labor. How do we know? Because he dissented in an Endangered Species Act case.

Are there really that many homeless insane in New York that the liberal press is forced to employ them? Who the hell wrote this insane bit?

Luttig in DC (Bench Memos)

KLo is reporting that CNN has shown Luttin family in DC shots, and that the kids are in "uncomfortable-for-D.C.-in-July kinda clothes."

I think this would be astounding, and fantastic. A Luttig/Edith Hollan Jones pick would be great.

Check out the DU thread already!

RedState.org: Bait and Switch

The folks over at Red State are claiming they are getting tips that President Bush will actually be nominating Edith Jones, whom they call "the female Scalia." I like that idea.

However as they say themselves:

Reminds me of the Novak generated Rehquist retirement frenzy of two weeks ago, but with more credible people participating this time.

Blowing CIA Cover, NYT Style

Remember when extraordinary rendition was the outrage of the day amongst pacifists and defeatists? They couldn't believe that we would send prisoners to foreing countries to be interrogated. They went so far in arguing this point that on May 31st of this year, Scott Shane, Stephen Grey and Margot Williams, in a NYT article written by Scott Shane, OUTED THREE CIA FRONT COMPANIES.

Central Intelligence Agency has rapidly expanded its air operations around world since 9/11, using rural hideaways, front companies and shell corporations to conceal its ownership of at least 26 planes; planes, regularly supplemented by private charters, are operated by real companies controlled by or tied to CIA; companies are Aero Contractors Ltd, Pegasus Technologies and Tepper Aviation

Where is the outrage? I am curious as to whether or not these companies had trouble flying their aircraft into "places American military craft would not be welcome" which is the reason the article gives for using these front companies?

cap tip econopundit

Boom Goes the Dynamite

President Bush will announce his first nominee to the Supreme Court at 8 o'clock tonight. Most likely wil be Judge Edith Clement.

More on her here, here, and here.

I assume Bench Memos over at NRO will continue their fantastic coverage.
I'm gonna head over to DU to see what they have to say about it.

Bomb Mecca? I Like It

Perhaps Tom Tancredo would be a good Presidential candidate after all!

WASHINGTON: A Republican congressman said in a radio interview aired by a Florida station that if a multiple-city attack happened in the United States in the next 90 days, as predicted by an Israeli expert, and was found to be the work of extremist Muslims, then “we should take out their holy sites.” Congressman Thomas G Tancredo, Republican from Colorado, was being interviewed by AM 540 WFLA radio host Pat Campbell, who asked him what the response of the United States should be were terrorist attacks on US cities to take place and were attributable to extremist Muslims. The Congressman replied, “ ... then we could take out their holy sites.” Asked if that meant Mecca, Tancredo answered, “Yes.”

Could there be a more appropriate response? Maybe not Mecca, perhaps other sites would be more appropriate, but if terrorists want to strike at our way of life why should we not retaliate in kind?

Hitchens on Rove: Good stuff

Christopher Hitchens, quickly becoming the intellectual version of Dennis Miller, writes a great piece in today's Slate (how long will they let him keep working there?). He has managed, throughout this ridiculous witchhunt, to look at the entire thing from a rational and detached point of view, at least compared to leftists at Time and the NY Times.

He manages to put Joe Wilson into perspective:

First, the most exploded figure in the entire argument is Joseph Wilson. This is for three reasons. He claimed, in his own book, that his wife had nothing to do with his brief and inconclusive visit to Niger. "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," he wrote. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip." There isn't enough wiggle room in those two definitive statements to make either of them congruent with a memo written by Valerie Wilson (or Valerie Plame, if you prefer) to a deputy chief in the CIA's directorate of operations. In this memo, in her wifely way, she announced that her husband would be ideal for the mission since he had "good relations with both the Prime Minister and the former Minister of Mines (of Niger), not to mention lots of French contacts."

And the law which nutters everywhere claim Rove has broken:

OK, then, how do the opponents of regime change in Iraq make my last sentence into a statement of criminal intent and national-security endangerment? By citing the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. This law, which is one of the most repressive and absurd pieces of legislation on our statute book, was a panicky attempt by the right to silence whistle-blowers at the CIA. In a rough effort to make it congruent with freedom of information and the First Amendment (after all, the United States managed to get through the Second World War and most of the Cold War without such a law), it sets a fairly high bar. You must knowingly wish to expose the cover of a CIA officer who you understand may be harmed as a result. It seems quite clear that nobody has broken even that arbitrary element of this silly law.

While I am not entirely sure that the protection of covert CIA operatives is a "silly law" I do agree that it is absurd to think Rove broke this law. Any attempt to say such a thing is ludicrous on its face.

Hitchens doesn't let the journalists covering this story off the hook either:

But the coverage of this non-storm in an un-teacup has gone far beyond the fantasy of a Rovean hidden hand. Supposedly responsible journalists are now writing as if there was never any problem with Saddam's attempt to acquire yellowcake (or his regime's now-proven concealment of a nuclear centrifuge, or his regime's now-proven attempt to buy long-range missiles off the shelf from North Korea as late as March 2003). In the same way, the carefully phrased yet indistinct statement of the 9/11 Commission that Saddam had no proven "operational" relationship with al-Qaida has mutated lazily into the belief that there were no contacts or exchanges at all, which the commission by no means asserts and which in any case by no means possesses the merit of being true. The CIA got everything wrong before 9/11, and thereafter. It was conditioned by its own culture to see no evil. It regularly leaked—see any of Bob Woodward's narratives—against the administration. Now it, and its partisans and publicity-famished husband-and-wife teams, want to imprison or depose people who leak back at it. No, thanks. Many journalists are rightly appalled at Time magazine's collusion with a prosecutor who has proved no crime and identified no victim. Far worse is the willingness of the New York Times to accept the demented premise of a prosecutor who has put one of its own writers behind bars.

In the end, the left is going to be left holding the bag on this one. The only chance they are still clinging to is that Rove purjured himself before the grang jury, but if we learned anything from Bill Clinton, its that purjury isn't a crime if you work in the White House.

Happy 36th Anniversary Teddy-Boy

On this day, 36 years ago, Teddy Kennedy caused the death of one Mary Joe Kopechne. This is not disputed. He drove the car into the Chappaquiddick, causing his companion to drown. Not disputed.



Was he drunk? Was she is pregnant girlfriend? Is there, as Mr. Kennedy claimed in 1973, "one system for the average citizen
and another for the high and mighty?"

Sure seems that way. At the least, manslaughter seems appropriate, if he was drunk as is widely believed, vehicular homicide.

So, how did a drunk, womanizing known killer become the voice of a political party? I honestly have no idea. These days the media goes wild over the thougth a President may have "inahled" or unfounded rumors that another did coke in college. How the heck does a guy who kills his pregnant girlfriend in a drunk driving accident avoid scrutiny?

It's a mad mad mad mad world.

Cheers Teddy, tip one back for your victim on this, the anniversary of your deed.