Wednesday Diversions

Snagged straight from Theo's:

See also, Bob Belvedere, "They Don’t Make ‘Em Like That Anymore: Elaine Paul."

'Al Gore Is a Pervert & Sexual Predator'

Hey, that's my kind of headline!

At National Enquirer, "NEW EVIDENCE REVEALED: GORE SEX SCANDAL VICTIM TELLS ALL!!!":

AL GORE SEX SCANDAL ACCUSER reveals shocking NEW EVIDENCE -- ONLY to the NATIONAL ENQUIRER in a bombshell world exclusive interview!

"AL GORE is a pervert and sexual predator," declares MOLLY HAGERTY, 54, the massage therapist who told Portland, Ore. police that the ex-VICE President sexually assaulted her.

"He's not what people think he is - he's a sick man!"

Al Gore was unavailable for comment.

Yeah, but doubts persist, at Saberpoint, "Al Gore: Should Be Presumed Innocent Unless Further Support for Sexual Assault Tale is Forthcoming." Also at Memeorandum.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

My oldest son is excited. The film opens on November 19th. "Deathly Hallows Part II" is expected July 15th, 2011:

“Eat Shit and Die, ‘Blue Commie Texan’”

I can't recommend Melanie Phillips' new book enough: The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power. Those of us on the side of right are endlessly smacking down the upside-down destroyers of America. Phillips writes that the radical left possesses an "infallible" sense of certainty through which no amount of reason or evidence can penetrate. "It is hard to overstate the influence on our culture that is wielded by the doctrines of anti-imperialism, multiculturalism, feminism, environmentalism and the like." These are the foundations of the left's bankrupt "unchallengeable orthodoxy."

I mention this with reference to yesterday's beauty of a post, "Blue Texan at Firedoglake Trashes Right-Bloggers for Criticizing Senate Majority Cyclops Robert C. Byrd." It turns out that "Blue Texan" runs the asinine "Instaputz" blog, whose mission is in "Systematically documenting the putziness of Glenn Reynolds, Pajamas Media, and various other Putzen."

Right.

I guess it takes a putz to know one, given this case of classic upside-down leftist infallibility. Check the post. Blue Texan suggests I'm not very bright and then offers this epic-fail excuse of racist hypocrisy on the late KKK Senate Majority Leader: "Byrd renounced his past racism, and became a true champion for civil rights. Lott's voting record on civil rights sucks, and he's never renounced his ties to the CCC."

I'm tempted to dismiss Blue Texan as stupid, but that'd be getting off too easy. Blue Texan's in fact a morally decrepit liar. There was no Trent Lott renunciation of CCC? Well, yes there was, actually: "Lott Renounces White 'Racialist' Group He Praised in 1992." (This is what leftists do: lie and then lie some more as part of the never-ending campaign of death, denial, and destruction.)

And don't forget, Robert C. Byrd, that "true champion of civil rights," actually continued to slur "niggers" as recently as 2001. And let's remember, Blue Texan's Firedoglake patron never really did renounce her racist bona fides:

So let's sum up: Obviously, Blue Texan's one sick lying motherf***ing hypocrite.

And while I suggested yesterday that "words fail" with the deceit and depravity of Firegdoglake, Mike at Cold Fury disagreed:

Not me, they don’t. Eat shit and die, “Blue Commie Texan.” Everything you toss at us, we toss back from here on in. Don’t like it? I hate it for ya, you fuckin’ punk. Cry me a river, why don’tcha.

No links from me to the FDL sewer, but Donald has ‘em, along with screencaps.

Civil discourse? Here’s all the civil discourse these Red-toothed, America-hating douchebags deserve: fuck every last one of them. In the heart, railroad spike, cayenne pepper in the Vaseline; you know the drill.

Mofo! That's what I'm talkin' 'bout!

RELATED: From John Hawkins, "Right Wing News vs. David Frum, Little Green Footballs, Media Matters, & Excitable Andy!"

Russian Spies on Facebook?

The social networking cold war, you might say.

Hot alleged Russian spy Anna Chapman is on Facebook.

A new era in espionage, that's for sure. See LAT, "Alleged Russian spy ring members led typical American lives":

Richard and Cynthia Murphy grew lettuce in a backyard garden, walked their daughters to the school bus each morning, and swapped Christmas cards with neighbors who had moved to Texas.

Their modest three-bedroom house sported maroon shutters and a wrap-around porch, and sat on a winding street in a well-heeled suburb across from Manhattan. They drove a green Honda Civic.

To all appearances, the Murphys were a typical, child-obsessed American family — not deep-cover Russian spies straight from a Cold War novel.

Their arrests, along with those of 9 other alleged Russian spies, has exposed a surprising side to modern espionage: The group led mundane lives far from the James Bond image. Instead of car chases and shootouts, they paid taxes, haggled over mortgages, and struggled to remember computer passwords.

As a result, the 11 — the biggest alleged spy ring every broken by the FBI — blended into American society for more than a decade. They joined neighbors at block parties, school picnics and bus stops. Four of the couples were married, and at least three had young children.

One suspect wrote columns for a Spanish-language newspaper in New York. Another ran an international consulting and management firm in Boston, while his wife sold high-priced real estate near Harvard University. Yet another drove a shiny blue BMW to his investment banking job in Seattle; he regularly updated his status on LinkedIn, a social networking site.

If their cover jobs were ordinary, their secret lives had a humdrum side that sometimes seems more like Woody Allen than John LeCarre.

One suspect, Anna Chapman, bought a Verizon cellphone in Brooklyn, N.Y., with a patently false address: 99 Fake Street. She also posted sultry photos of herself on Facebook and videos on YouTube. Another, Juan Lazaro, used a payoff from Moscow to pay nearly $8,000 in overdue county and city taxes, according to court documents.

Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley, the alleged spies in Boston, filed regular expense reports to Moscow Center, headquarters for Russia's foreign intelligence agency, called the SVR.

"Got from Ctr. 64500 dollars, income 13940, interest 76. Expenses: rent 8500, utilities 142, tel. 160, car lease 2180, insurance 432, gas 820, education 3600," plus medical, lawyers' fees, meals and gifts, mailboxes, computer supplies, and so on, they wrote in one, according to an FBI affidavit.

And the lettuce-growing Murphys of Montclair repeatedly argued with Moscow Center in encrypted computer messages last summer about who should legally own their $400,000 house — them or the SVR.

"From our perspective, purchase of the house was solely a natural progression of our prolonged stay here," the Murphy's explained, apparently after being reprimanded. "It was a convenient way to solve the housing issue, plus to 'do as the Romans do' in a society that values home ownership."

Murphy later whined to another spy about their bosses back in Moscow: "They don't understand what we go through over here."

The group allegedly attended one of Moscow's most elite spy schools before landing in America. Their mission was spelled out, somewhat awkwardly, in a 2009 message to the Murphy's from Moscow Center.

RTWT.

RELATED: Speaking of hot spies, maybe Donna Dixon will make a comeback.

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2010 Teaser #1

Continuing our series on Sports Illustrated 2010:

See also "Wedneday Wenches," at Theo's.

List of French Citizens Who Collaborated With the Nazis During WWII to Be Published Online

At London's Telegraph, via Theo Spark.

One day, we'll also see a list of Americans who collaborated with global jihad in the post-9/11 era.

Justice Thomas's Finest Hour?

His concurring opinion in McDonald v. Chicago, at WSJ (via Insty):

Down in our nation’s capital, the day belongs to a lot of people: To retiring Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens, who Monday capped his lengthy career on the court; to Elena Kagan, who survived her first day of Senatorial grilling; to Robert Byrd, an institution within the institution, who died on Monday at age 92.

But in the mind of some law professors and Supreme Court watchers, the day belonged to Justice Clarence Thomas, for his concurring opinion in McDonald v. Chicago. (Click here for the opinion; here for Nathan Koppel’s writeup in the WSJ; here for Adam Liptak’s treatment in the NYT.)

Understanding why requires us to back up just a bit.

In the McDonald case, the justices were asked by the plaintiffs to strike down Chicago’s gun-control ordinance as a violation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

In order to do so, the justices would have to make two maneuvers. Of course, they’d have to rule that the ordinance runs afoul of the Second Amendment’s prescription that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” But they’d also have to rule that the Second Amendment restricts not just Congress’s ability to make laws controlling the use of guns, but that of state governments as well. Remember, the Bill of Rights, as originally constructed, only applies to the federal government ....

RTWT.

Toward an International Relations Theory of Zombies

Seriously. (Or not.)

From Daniel Drezner, at Foreign Policy:

This zombie boom is -- and should be -- taken seriously. For some international relations thinkers, the interest in all things ghoulish might represent an indirect attempt to get a cognitive grip on what former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once referred to as the "unknown unknowns" in international security. Or perhaps there exists a genuine if publicly unacknowledged fear of the dead rising from their graves and feasting upon our entrails. Major universities have developed mock contingency plans for a zombie outbreak, and an increasing number of college students have been found to be playing "Humans vs. Zombies" on their campuses, whether to relieve stress or prepare for the invasion of the undead. The Haitian government takes the threat seriously enough to have a law on the books to prevent outbreaks of zombiism. No great power has done the same publicly, but one can only speculate on what plans are being hatched behind closed doors.

From a public-policy perspective, zombies surely merit greater interest than other paranormal phenomena such as aliens, vampires, wizards, hobbits, mummies, werewolves, and superheroes. Zombie stories end in one of two ways -- the elimination/subjugation of all zombies, or the eradication of humanity from the face of the Earth. If popular culture is to be believed, the peaceful coexistence of ghouls and humans is but a remote possibility -- outside of Shaun of the Dead, at least. Such extreme all-or-nothing outcomes are far less common in the vampire and wizard canons. Indeed, recent literary tropes suggest that vampires can peacefully coexist with ordinary teens in many of the world's high schools, provided they are sufficiently hunky. Zombies, not so much. If it is true that "popular culture makes world politics what it currently is," as a recent article in Politics argued, then the international relations community needs to think about armies of the undead in a more urgent manner.

Individual Rights and the Authoritarian State

Via Blazing Cat Fur, in the comments at Small Dead Animals (re. Toronto G-20 protests):

Well Kate, the same question might be asked of you. People stand up for their rights and you have a hissy fit.

Sure Arnie and Kathy and Mike and thousands of other Torontonians could have sucked it up for the greater glory of PMSH's billion dollar photo op. They could co-operate by pretending not to notice when some cops beat up a visiting British journalist.

They could forebear from wearing black.

They could have ID cards hanging from their necks to make the cops tough job easier.

They could leave their cameras, cell phones and backpacks at home.

In fact, if they wanted to really co-operate with the authorities, they could have just stayed inside their own homes. That way the police could easily tell who the criminals were.

There is a strong cleavage within the conservative interest between people who assert that individual rights and autonomy matters and those who believe in order and an authoritarian state.

It is pretty clear which side of that divide you come down on Kate.

If I Could Fall Into the Sky...

Some morning music, from Vanessa Carlton:

And related diversions at Washington Rebel.

Dragonfly Blogging

Wonderful story, so check the links, at Tigerhawk (and I love the camera work):

When Ann Althouse Gets Ahold of Those Archives...

Here she is, on the news of the $100K bid for JournoList, "Andrew Breitbart offers $100,000 for the full Journolist archive — with a promise to keep the source secret":

Surely, somewhere among the 400 members of that former discussion group, there is someone who feels motivated to fulfill the desire of the information to be free. I've listed reasons why I think it would be doing a good thing to make the archive public, and now there is an additional motivation — $100,000. Now, virtue is mixed with venality. But virtue is mixed with venality when it comes to keeping the archive private. The motivations for not disclosing are not pure. People are protecting their careers, hoping for favors from powerful and well-placed co-Journolisters. Breitbart has added economic incentive to the other side of the balance, and he fortifies his offer of payment with an ethical....

Lots more at the link.

100K is a lot of dough, but even the most self-interested might not want to get on the receiving end of Althouse's wrath (or at least Garance won't sell out):

RELATED: "'Welcome to the Journolist Top Secret Progressive He-Man Wingnut Haters Club and L33t H4xoR Chat Room'."

Change! Elena Kagan Backs 'Vapid and Hollow' Hearings at Her Own Confirmation!

The main story's at NYT, "Kagan Shifts on Disclosure of Legal Views at Hearings":

At the opening of questioning in her Supreme Court confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Solicitor General Elena Kagan quickly backpedaled from her past call for nominees to speak more openly and in specific terms about their constitutional views.

Under questioning by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, Ms. Kagan said she thought it would be inappropriate for her to talk about how she might rule on pending cases or cases “that might come before the court in the future” — or to answer questions that were “veiled” efforts to get at such issues.

Moreover, she said, she also now believed that “it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to talk about past cases” by essentially grading Supreme Court precedents, because those issues, too, might someday come again before the court.

In a 1995 book review, Ms. Kagan wrote that recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings had taken on “an air of vacuity and farce” because nominees would not engage in a meaningful discussion of legal issues, declining to answer any question that might “have some bearing on a case that might some day come before the Court.” She called on senators and future nominees to engage in a much more open and detailed discussion of legal issues.

Actually, Kagan was a little more elaborate in her 1995 article. She attacked what she called a confirmation process that was a "vapid and hollow charade."

Check the link and note (in the last few pages) how the public is served with a "serious" and "substantive" discussion of the constitutional issues when the nominee is Robert Bork (who threatened to bring about "Bork's America") and not someone like Elena Kagan (who took $20 million in royal Saudi money to establish a gender-oppressive center for Islamic studies at Harvard).

And check Neomi Rao, "Elena Kagan and the 'Hollow Charade': Progressive views of judging are difficult to defend. That's why no recent nominee has tried."

This woman is a disaster: Dishonest, indecent, and extremely radical. The public would be well served by an open and frank airing of Elena Kagan's views. Instead we get the vacuous spinelessness that is the essence of confirmation to the High Court in the post-Bork age.

Thanks Democrats.

More at The Hill and Memeorandum.

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2010 Brooklyn Decker Diary

Brooklyn Decker at Sports Illustrated:

And check out Daley Gator while you're at it!

Campaign Contributors Sue Charlie Crist for Return of Donations

At the Fox News clip, and also Legal Insurrection, "Charlie Crist Sued For Return of Donations - Copy of Complaint Here."

RELATED: At Miami Herald, "Tom Grady files lawsuit demanding Charlie Crist return donations."

The Second Amendment and the Incorporation Doctrine

From Glenn Reynolds, at Pajamas Media, "The New Normal: The Second Amendment After Heller and McDonald":

Following Monday's McDonald decision, gun ownership by law-abiding citizens is the new normal, and the Second Amendment is now normal constitutional law.

I’ve been interested in the Second Amendment for a long time, but for a long time, it wasn’t really part of the Constitution.

Oh, I mean it was part of the Constitution — right there between the First Amendment on one side, and the Third Amendment (the only part of the Bill of Rights that really works — when did you last hear of troops being quartered in someone’s house?) on the other. But in “mainstream” constitutional discourse, it just didn’t exist.

Courts routinely rejected Second Amendment claims, frequently with atrocious misstatements of what little caselaw existed, and usually with almost no discussion. Popular discussion was, if anything, even more dismissive. Former Chief Justice Warren Burger said that the notion that the Second Amendment protected individual rights was a fraud, and that it only protected “state armies.” (And wouldn’t that have been interesting if it had turned out to be true. …) The general position taken by most mainstream media types, and most academics, was that the Second Amendment didn’t protect individuals, only the right of states to have a national guard, a right that was obsolete anyway. It had nothing to do with individuals owning guns.

There wasn’t actually much support for this “collective right” position, in terms of scholarship or caselaw — the 1939 case of United States v. Miller, often cited for that position, doesn’t actually say that, but for many years, unanimity substituted for understanding, and ridicule substituted for research. (Burger’s “state armies” claim appeared not in a law review, but in Parade magazine.) That began to change with Don Kates’ article, “Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment,” in the Michigan Law Review, and really picked up after the publication of Sandy Levinson’s “The Embarrassing Second Amendment” in the Yale Law Journal. Soon, scholarship accumulated, and it was possible even to speak of a ”Standard Model” of the Second Amendment, in which the linguistic, structural, and historical elements came together to explain, in a widely accepted way, why the Second Amendment did, in fact, protect an individual right to own guns.

Opponents continued to criticize this view and to characterize its proponents as shills for the NRA, but it was a rearguard action — especially as polls continued to show, despite contrary media efforts, that around three quarters of Americans believed the Second Amendment gave them a right to own a gun, and that legal efforts to limit gun ownership were unconstitutional.

RTWT at the link.

Professor Reynolds argues that the Second Amendment has now been incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment, and thus made a normal part of constitutional law.

RELATED: "5 Ridiculous Gun Myths Everyone Believes." And see all the discussion at Memeorandum.

Jennifer Love Hewitt Encore!

A sizzling hot encore to my recent Jennifer Love Hewitt blogging, posted at Theo's.

Elena Kagan Confirmation Hearings — Day 2

Picking up from yesterday, at USA Today, "Kagan Promises 'Impartiality' as Senate Hearings Begin."

And this morning at Daily Caller, "Republicans Bring Up Kagan's Record on Military":

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan on Tuesday defended her policy of barring military recruiters from the Harvard Law School career counseling office, saying the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell” policy violated its anti-discrimination policy.

“We were trying to make sure that military recruiters had full and complete access to our students,” Kagan told Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, “and we were also trying to protect our anti-discriminatory policy. So we were trying to do both of those things.”

Kagan repeated before the Senate Judiciary Committee her opposition to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and said she subsequently eased the policy at the request of the Department of Defense.

Kagan said that as dean of the law school, she never totally cut off military recruiters’ access to students, but rather encouraged military veterans’ organizations, rather than the school, to sponsor these efforts.

“I said on many occasions that this (military service) was a great thing for our students to think about doing in their lives,” she told the Alabama senator. Kagan said that Harvard had a strict anti-discriminatory policy, “and the military could not sign that pledge.”

The recruitment matter is one of the few points on her resume that Republicans have been able to use against her. Her policies and writings on the issue call up broader themes of patriotism and equal rights, both emotional topics at a time when the nation is at war and both parties are gearing up for the midterm elections. In some measure, the November balloting will be a referendum on her patron, President Barack Obama.

But see John McCormack, at Weekly Standard, "Kagan Defends Discriminating Against Military at Harvard" (via Memorandum). And at Weasel Zippers, "Kagan Defends Discriminating Against Military at Harvard... Had No Problem Using Saudi Money to Establish an Islamic Law Program..."

Plus, live-blogging at Althouse.

RELATED: From Ed Morrissey, "Kagan's SCOTUS Deception to Defend Partial-Birth Abortions."

Blue Texan at Firedoglake Trashes Right-Bloggers for Criticizing Senate Majority Cyclops Robert C. Byrd

This is really rich.

Yesterday left-wing extremist Blue Texan at Firedoglake erupted in outrage at the right's relatively mild reaction to the death of former Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd. See, "Conservatives Trash Robert Byrd While His Body is Still Warm." Check the link. For reminding folks of Senator Byrd's disgraced past as an Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, Blue Texan writes, "As always, the right remains a paragon of class."

But back in January, Blue Texan attacked former GOP Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott as "chummy with racist hate groups." See, "Senate Majority Leader was Affiliated with White Supremacist Group."

Words fail.

Screen caps below.

I can't speak for fellow right-bloggers, but my personal policy is to denounce racism when I see it. That's apparently not the way it works with Blue Texan and Firedoglake. The hypocrisy is stunning of course. FDL is home to at least two of the biggest racist bigot bloggers on the web, Jane Hamsher (more here) and Tom Boggiani.

All in a day's work, I guess. Don't rest, friends. Expose these people for the enemies of truth and decency that they are.

Added: Cold Fury links with, "Death becomes them."