After an exciting day watching the paint dry, awaiting word of the whether the SCOTUS would allow a bypass of the 4th Circuit on Virginia’s ObamaCare suit. . .nothing happened. Via email from my rock star State AG Cuccinelli:
The Supreme Court did not make an announcement today on whether or not it was going to expedite the case. Instead, they relisted the case on their docket for this Friday, April 22nd.
What does that mean?
It means that they haven’t rejected our request – yet. Remember, requests to expedite are infrequently granted. However, it also probably means that one or more of the Justices want more time to consider the question.
It also means that there appears at least to be interest in the petition at the court, which is itself encouraging. If my numbers are right, over 90% of petitions addressed in these conferences are summarily rejected because no Justice has any interest in them. So, the fact that the Justices didn’t summarily dismiss our petition is itself interesting and at least modestly encouraging (hopefully not in the vein of what your mother told you growing up: “the worst thing they can do is ignore you”… of course, my mother has never filed a petition with the Supreme Court).
Generally speaking, we would expect an opinion issued Monday the 25th; however, it is Easter weekend, so I don’t know if that will have an impact on timing, but I’ll let you know as soon as we find out!
If you work for a man, in heaven’s name work for him!
If he pays you wages that supply you your bread and butter, work for him—speak well of him, think well of him, stand by him and stand by the institution he represents.
I think if I worked for a man I would work for him. I would not work for him a part of the time, and the rest of the time work against him. I would give an undivided service or none.
If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.
— Elbert Hubbard, 1902
A job like that calls for a man of immense experience in the newspaper business, and I’ve got ties older than Joe Lindsley.
UPDATE: Linked by Dan Collins at Piece of Work in Progress. Thanks! As for the main topic addressed in Dan’s post, I have many thoughts, none of which I feel particularly compelled to share in this context.
UPDATE II: Changed my mind, because of Jimmie Bise Jr.’s recounting how one his best blog posts ever — which got linked by Instapundit, National Review and the Anchoress — became fodder for a Glenn Beck monologue, without Beck bothering to mention Jimmie’s name or the name of his blog on the air. Jimmie’s post was linked at GlennBeck.com, but that’s not the same, is it?
Let’s say this: It’s about a star system. If your name is well-known — say, you’re Jonah Goldberg or P.J. O’Rourke — people are not going to use your work without giving you credit. In fact, if you’re already someone thought of as important, they’ll make a point of using your name, because the Famous Name lends authority to what is said. (There are some people who think they can settle an argument merely by invoking the words of a Famous Name.)
How to get from being nobody to being a Famous Name? That’s the tricky part, isn’t it? Being “blog famous” doesn’t mean much to people who are accustomed to dealing with the much larger audiences of nationally syndicated radio programs or TV shows.
Was Beck “stealing” or merely being thoughtless? Or, as I suppose quite possible, does the blame attach more properly to the young producers who work for Beck? Did someone just hand him this stuff (“Hey, look what I found …”) without bothering to note the authorship?
UPDATE III: Jeff Dunetz at Yid With Lid defends Glenn Beck: “The truth is most of the time when a site or a radio host forgets to give credit it is an error of omission.” And says he’s been ripped off by Bill O’Reilly.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Monday he feared a “stalemate” has developed in Libya that would lead to a more radical government in that country.
McCain, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. should revive its air attacks to incapacitate forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi’s regime.
“All we need to do is get sufficient air power in there to really nail Gadhafi’s forces, and we can succeed,” McCain said on KFYI radio. “A stalemate is a terrible outcome, because if you have a stalemate you open the door for radical Islamists to come in and hijack this revolution.”
OK, maybe some of my more hawkish friends will have no problem with Crazy Cousin John’s dubious use of the first-person plural (“we can succeed”), but exactly how much bombing does he suppose will be necessary to allow the half-assed Libyan rebels to defeat Qaddafi?
Tuesday will be the one-month anniversary of the start of “Operation Odyssey Dawn,” and in the past four weeks the rebels have demonstrated their absolute dearth of military ability. You could assemble any random group of 2,000 JROTC cadets, issue them the same weapons possessed by the Libyan rebels and expect a better results.
I’ll defer to the good advice of Geraldo Rivera (“I swear to god, if you give these people weapons more powerful than they have right now, they will be a grave danger to themselves and others”) because at least Geraldo has seen the rebels first-hand. John McCain just sits around stateside and yells, “Bombs away!”
While I am not prepared to rule out the possibility that Qaddafi will soon be overthrown (perhaps by a military coup), it should be bloody obvious by now what’s gone wrong in Libya:
After the relatively quick and easy ouster of Mubarak in Egypt, Obama got the idea that Qaddafi could be overthrown just as easily.
The French were, for some unknown reason (perhaps related to Sarkozy’s domestic political situation), very eager to see Qaddafi overthrown, and started militating for a NATO-led intervention.
Like some other American presidents of recent memory, Obama listened to advisers who told him this foreign adventure was going to be a cakewalk — a chance to “look presidential.”
With little or no accurate intelligence about the Libyan rebels, and with a U.N. Security Council mandate for “humanitarian” intervention, Obama then approved a limited short-term U.S. military action, thinking that would be sufficient to tip the balance against Qaddafi.
Well, guess what? It was a bad idea.
Either we go to war or we don’t. You can’t halfway fight a war. Either we should have resolved to do whatever was needed to overthrow Qaddafi, or we never should have gotten involved in what is, after all, somebody else’s civil war.
And another thing: Odyssey Dawn? What the hell kind of name is that for a military operation? Sounds like a disco cover band in lime-green leisure suits playing the Holiday Inn circuit in 1975.
At this point, then, I’d say Obama’s got two choices:
Either resolve to win this thing at all costs; or
Leave it to the Europeans and blame it all on Hillary Clinton.
I’m hoping someone can help me. I left on vacation last week, and when I got back, an entire war was missing. . . . Although I’ve found hints that it still exists somewhere, President Obama’s Libyan War is officially missing in action.
Exactly. If Obama’s Excellent Libyan Adventure had led to the quick toppling of Qaddafi and the liberation of Libya, the MSM stood ready to pronounce this a stunning triumph for the Commander-in-Chief. Now that it’s beginning to look like a complete botch, they can scarcely be bothered to notice.
Meanwhile, here’s the latest video report from Misrata:
As the father of six home-schooled kids myself, I’m very proud to see Miss Willoughby’s poise as a public speaker. However, she twice uses “enormity” in an incorrect sense. The word has a negative connotation: “an outrageous, improper, vicious, or immoral act . . . the quality or state of being immoderate, monstrous, or outrageous; especially: great wickedness.” While authorities differ on whether “enormity” can be used to signify large size (“enormousness” is preferred), using the word “enormity” to signify the momentous nature or historical import of an event one wishes to portray as positive (as Miss Willoughby does in reference to the Boston Tea Party) is always wrong.
Listen to him talking to his wife on the phone: “Oh, half a mile. . . . I’d say it’s coming straight towards me.” And he never sounds even remotely excited about it, much less scared:
I’m reminded of the story of a Tennessee soldier in Archer’s Brigade at Gettysburg. As they lay in the woods awaiting the orders to send them forward in the assault that would become known as Pickett’s Charge, the men watched as a rabbit — evidently frightened by the artillery barrage — took off running across the battlefield. The Tennessean laconically remarked: “Go on and run, rabbit. If I was a rabbit, I’d run, too.”
Her dance double for Black Swan has claimed that she did hardly any of the full body shots seen in the film.
And now it is claimed that Natalie Portman used yet another body double for her latest film Your Highness.
In fact, the actress is said to have avoided diving into an icy lake in Belfast and a local Irish girl was paid just £250 to take the plunge instead.
Caroline Davis from Ulster was paid the sum of money to jump into the cold waters meaning that Portman avoided braving the freezing lake.
The Irish student told The Sun: ‘I’m a film studies student so I jumped at the chance to be on set.’
In the interest of getting to the bottom of this scandal, I’m obliged to provide these photos to let readers examine the evidence for themselves:
UPDATE II: Yes, Professor Glenn Reynolds, I’m calling you a cynic. Because if you were an altruistic idealist, you would have linked me. (Life in an egocentric universe — where the only standard is whether I get more blog-traffic — makes such moral distinctions very simple.)
The Prime Minister insisted that there would be no “occupation” of Libya, but repeatedly refused to rule out short-lived ground-level operations by British forces. Mr Cameron’s words, in a television interview, led to renewed warnings of “mission creep” in Libya. . . .
It is understood that British Special Forces soldiers are already operating inside Libya and some military experts have suggested those troops could be asked to help train and lead rebel forces. . . .
Mr Cameron said that restriction had complicated the Western intervention. “Because we’ve said we’re not going to invade, we’re not going to occupy, this is more difficult in many ways,” he said. Asked if he was categorically ruling out putting any form of British forces on the ground in the Libya, Mr Cameron replied: “What I’ve said is there is no occupying force, no invasion. The position hasn’t changed.”
Asked whether a “temporary” ground operation was possible, he said: “I’ve answered the question. We’re not occupying, we’re not invading.”
Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader, said Mr Cameron had opened up the possibility of British ground forces operating in Libya. “The PM’s words need careful interpretation. ‘Occupation’ necessarily implies large numbers of troops being in Libya for a substantial period of time,” he said.
So, no “occupation,” but perhaps some more British troops to help stiffen the rebels. My colleague Wombat complained this morning about the difficulty of figuring out the military situation in Libya based on news accounts, which are at times wildly contradictory. Yesterday, I highlighted the artillery attack on Ajdabiya by Qaddafi’s forces. Here is a very informative video report filed yesterday by Al-Jazeera:
As of this morning, according to Bloomberg News, it appears that the rebels repulsed the attack by Qaddafi’s forces and are currently holding on at Ajdabiya.
UPDATE: By the way, I was just discussing on Twitter the fact that Al-Jazeera’s reporting on the Libya war has been quite good — which isn’t an admission I enjoy making, but there has been a shortage of clear, intelligible reporting, and so I’m grateful for what there is.
Speaking of grudging admissions, the New York Times has covered itself in glory with C.J. Chivers’s reporting from Libya. Chivers actually made it into besieged Misrata, where one of his blog updates included this:
A quick note: we have a terrible satellite connection here, and that and the ongoing battle beside the building we are working in has made swift updates difficult. Please excuse the delays.
That earned Chivers “Excuse of the Week” honors, according to Thomas Ricks at Foreign Policy, who recommends Chivers for a Pulitzer. I second that commendation, and add this advice for NYT publisher Pinch Sulzberger: Fire Tom Friedman, Paul Krugman and David Brooks, and give Chivers a raise.
