“It all was part of a group effort . . . to shift the focus from the death of a U.S. Ambassador on a day when all the warning signs of trouble were in place but the U.S. government did little if anything to beef up security.
“It was a day on which the media could have been reporting facts as to the absentee President, the failure to heed the warnings and protect our diplomats, the failure of Muslim outreach, in fact, the failure of U.S. Mideast policy since the Arab Spring.
“But no, all the media wanted to talk about was their own opinions as to how badly Romney supposedly screwed up, with quotes from unnamed former Republican sources as the excuse for reporting it as news. This was . . . a clear attempt to frame the narrative to help a favored candidate presented as fact reporting.”
— Professor William Jacobson, “Middle East and Journalism in Flames,” LegalInsurrection.com, Sept. 13, 2012
Category: Legal Insurrection
Is Elizabeth Warren Willing To Go Deeper Than ‘Diving Klaxon’ Kennedy’s ’67 Olds To Win Back ‘His’ Seat? Why, Yes.
by Smitty
Via Instapundit, we have a Boston Herald editorial wherein Pseudajawea the Motorcyle Godess tries to say that, because Todd Akin (R) said Something Dumb, and all Republicans think alike, and Scott Brown is (OMG!) a Republican, that Scott Brown is liable for Todd Akin’s comments:
“Scott Brown and other Republicans want to pretend Todd Akin is an isolated individual, but he is clearly in line with the Republican agenda,” Warren said in a statement.
But what triggered this post was:
This is how low Liz Warren is willing to go, how much of her own dignity she’s willing to destroy, just to — as her campaign put it in a fundraising mailer — “win back Ted Kennedy’s seat.”
Maybe we should pity Warren; she seems to think that conservatives, have a Borg-like thought process. Conservatives no more think exactly alike than conservatives think that Senate seats are linked to any specific occupant. Bless her heart, she may not be capable of conceiving of liberty and independent thought. If only Ezra Klein had not succeeded in convincing Warren that the Constitution is too old to understand.
Kids! What’s the Matter With Kids Today?
Why can’t they be like we were, perfect in every way?
Actually, as Bush-era “brand damage” fades amid the grim reality of Obama-ism — hey, the economy sucks, right? — the kids are starting to figure this stuff out. In 2008, exit polls showed the Republicans lost the under-30 vote by more than a 2-to-1 margin (66%-32%), but as Ed Driscoll says, it’s not 2008 anymore. Obama has clearly lost support among under-30 voters:
Pollster John Zogby of JZ Analytics told Secrets Tuesday that Romney received 41 percent in his weekend poll of 1,117 likely voters, for the first time crossing the 40 percent mark. . . .
“This is the first time I am seeing Romney’s numbers this high among 18-29 year olds,” said Zogby. “This could be trouble for Obama who needs every young voter he can get.”
That’s via College Insurrection, a new campus-focused site launched by our friend Professor William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection fame..
All Right, Everybody Quit Making Fun Of Matthew Yglesias
by Smitty via (JWF)
Yglesias cannot be held to account for mistaking the Paul Ryan for the Congressman who engaged in insider trading after the 2008 housing meltdown:
| Public Servant | Drool Bucket |
|---|---|
 |
 |
To the best of my knowledge, ‘Gentleman’ Jim Moran has offered no explanation, much less an apology, for the allegations of day trading made in Schweizer’s book. I’m sure it was all ‘ethical’, by the standards of Nancy Pelosi’s Congress, if whiffy.
Prof. William Jacobson plays the Sheldon Whitehouse card. Just leave a little room under the bus for ‘Gentleman’ Jim, eh?
You might think that only an abject moron could mistake the two, given the facts, but ease up: everybody looks the same, if you spend your day in a Lefty Media Gimp Suit. So, a little forbearance is in order.
Update: thanks, Instapundit!
Everybody Keeps Getting a Busy Signal at the Blogger Burnout Hotline Nowadays
Professor William Jacobson laments Don Surber’s recent decision to quit blogging. It is probably just a coincidence that Don, one of the most valuable members of the conservative blogosphere since 2005, was never invited to speak at BlogCon. Instapundit grimly holds on.
UPDATE: Pat Austin is also grimly hanging on in Shreveport. She offers to chat over beer, and I’d love to take her up on the offer, as long as I don’t have to drive through Livonia.
UPDATE II (Smitty): Welcome, Instapundit readers! Let us link each other, to beat back burnout banshee!
It Is Not Often One Locates An Oversight In Professor Jacobson’s Reasoning
by Smitty
The Card Game is a great feature over at Legal Insurrection, and last night’s was no exception.
This is cold fusion on the race card (h/t American Power):
“The new racism is denying racism.”
And, a little further on:
Thanks to Bill Maher, of all people, we finally have a simple, effective, and self-perpetuating theory of racial grievance used for political purposes, in which not only racism is racist, the denial of racism is racist, so the charge of racism cannot ever be defeated because to deny it is to confirm it.
Unless of course the charge of racism is made by a Republican or conservative or Tea Partier, in which case the new racism rules do not apply.
And so we need a new term for this Schrödinger Card, and I have a suggestion:
Erasism, noun: (1) The Orwellian attempt to mask one’s own racism by continuously accusing members of an out-group of exactly that, while strenuously denying one’s own habitual DNA-driven thinking.
(2) A masterful blend of Postmodernism, hypocrisy, and racism.
Example: “That Bill Maher is one erasist pig.”
Update: Daily Pundit likes the usage, and Obi’s Sister also approves.
Professor Jacobson, Maybe We Should Both Start Blogging About Sports …
. . . or movies or food or something besides politics, because right now we are diametrically opposite and neutralizing each other:
Should the race come down to Santorum or Romney, I’d have to think about it, as shocking as that may sound given my criticisms of Romney. That’s not so much a vote of confidence in Romney, as it is an uneasiness with Santorum.
Your opposition to Santorum is somewhat less staunch than my opposition to Gingrich. I said bluntly several weeks ago that, if the fight for the nomination comes down to Newt vs. Mitt, I’m for Mitt.
Newt Gingrich simply has too much baggage, and to nominate the twice-divorced Gingrich would be to throw away the “family values” argument altogether. (See Jeffrey Bell on the importance of social issues to the GOP.) But weren’t you paying attention, Professor, to what a godawful mess of a campaign Newt ran in Nevada? Don’t you find it troubling that Gingrich hasn’t been able to get better results despite his enormous fundraising advantage ($12.6 million to $2.2 million through Dec. 31) over Santorum? (Maybe it’s that Tiffany’s bill, eh?)
Whatever my problems with Romney, and they are legion, he has at least stuck with his first wife and run a competent campaign.
Anyway, your blog’s hostility toward Santorum is effectively canceling out my blog’s hostility toward Gingrich, so maybe we should both find something else to blog about — celebrity gossip, perhaps — until this damned primary campaign is over.
Are We Really Just Too Stupid To Merit Free Elections Anymore?
by Smitty
A Montana case on corporate spending on campaigns is exhuming the hoary specter of the Citizens United ruling:
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justice Stephen G. Breyer, also supported the delay, but said that the case “will give the Court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance, Citizens United [v. Federal Election Commission] should continue to hold sway.”
Didn’t Whitman and Fiorina show in California in 2010 that throwing boatloads of cash at an election may not work?
Or, if formerly pre-emptive favorite Mitt Romney’s SuperPAC carpet bombing were really effective, wouldn’t he be, you know, a pre-emptive favorite for the GOP nomination right now?
Shag it all: let these corporations spend whatever, and let the informed voters figure out who’s worth the vote, and who is simply a venom bucket.
All of these recent attempts at federal over-reach are troubling in two ways:
- Managed speech is not free speech, and the stronger the precedent for managing speech, the more dissent-crushing will occur.
- Even more subtle than the attack on freedom of expression is the attack on the notion of liberty. Ginsburg and Breyer (or Sotomayor or Kagan, for that matter) support the notion of liberty? Or are they advocates for the nanny state that would eliminate liberty in the name of Holy Progress? Who am I kidding: of course they’re nanny-staters.
I would that this post were a trifle reactionary, and that the SCOTUS did not pose a threat to liberty. This blog will accept a little finger-pointing and mumblings of “tinfoil hat” in exchange for communicating the knowledge that people are paying attention back to those enemies of liberty.