In the midst of whining about the Republican “Pledge to America” (which I haven’t had time to read, and may not find it for a while), we get this email from a Pelosi aide:

“Congressional Republicans are pledging to ship jobs overseas, blow a $700 billion hole in the deficit to give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires; turn Social Security from a guaranteed benefit into a guaranteed gamble; once again, subject American families to the recklessness of Wall Street; and take away patients’ rights.”

Emphasis mine.

I know it’s nitpickery, but it drove me crazy when Al Gore bellowed “blow a hole in the deficit” over and over a decade ago. A deficit is a hole. How do you “blow a hole” in a hole? Whenever I hear this expression, it results in at least a twenty-point drop in my estimation of the user’s IQ.

In which I completely agree with Ramesh (not to imply that I generally disagree with him, though I occasionally do, being more libertarian than conservative):

If O’Donnell loses the Senate race, she should become Slate‘s chief legal writer. It would be a step up for the publication.

A big one.

And it’s just another example of the contempt in which people like Dahlia (and frequent commenter Thomas Matula) hold the Constitution and its requirements for elected officials and their oath.

[Update Thursday morning]

I can’t link it, because, well, it’s an email, but here are Jonah Goldberg’s thoughts:

This is awesome. It’s not just that Lithwick dismisses a perfectly sensible and mainstream argument. It’s not just that she is ignorant of the contents of the actual Constitution (it does not provide for the Supreme Court serving as the either sole or final arbiter of what is constitutional). It’s not that she seems to have forgotten Marbury v. Madison. It’s not that she cannot grasp the idea that some legislator might not want to vote for unconstitutional legislation. No, what really makes this great is the absolute bunkered pomposity behind her instinctual certainty that anyone who disagrees with her bouillabaisse of ignorance and ideology must be “weird.”

Indeed.

…testifies before fake lawmakers.

Yes, this will enhance their credibility going into the election.

Katherine Mangu-Ward has a blog post on yesterday’s presser, with a bonus link to The Onion.

All the President’s creeps.

[Update a few minutes later]

I liked this comment:

Obama distrusts and/or despises the U.S. military, so he takes a job as Commander-in-Chief when two wars are ongoing.

Obama has little positive to say about America, so he takes a job where he is the Head of State of a nation he largely abhors.

Obama despises capitalism so he leads a nation that has a reputation as a paragon of capitalism and which built its prosperity on this economic system.

Obama, who perceives himself as black, is an academic racialist and sometime racist who wants to lead a nation that is two-thirds white.

Obama, who believes Western Civilization is ultimately the cause of all that is ill in the world, takes a job as chief executive of the nation that is preeminent in the Western world.

Obama, who is neither Christian nor Muslim and who attended an anti-Semitic church for 20 years, wants to lead a nation whose citizens are mostly Christian and whose history is steeped deeply with Judeo-Christian sensibilities.

Obama is thin-skinned and overly sensitive to criticism, so he takes a job where he is criticized every minute of every single day, all across the world, for some reason or another. Much of the criticism is ill-informed, but some of it is well-informed and cuts right to the bone.

…

…

What could possibly go wrong?

The irony is amazing.

Why won’t the press stand up for Molly Norris?

Freedom of speech and press are in deep trouble when the American government thinks the best it can do to protect a journalist from death threats is to counsel her to go into hiding, and when the elite voices of American journalism can’t be bothered to say anything in her defense. But it’s actually worse than that. The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof thinks Muslims are owed an apology. “I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you,” he wrote Sunday. “The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you.”

Instead of telling the rest of us that we’re all bigots, shouldn’t Kristof and the rest of the journalism profession be outraged by what has happened to Molly Norris? And shouldn’t they be angered that her government believes it cannot protect her? Imagine what they would be saying if white-hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan were threatening to kill Norris in Selma, Ala., instead of radical Muslims in Seattle. Would the FBI tell Norris she had to stop being a journalist and go into hiding? And would ASNE and SPJ look the other way as the First Amendment and freedom of the press were symbolically turned to ashes by flaming white crosses?

Cowards.

…for Chrissie Matthews.

[Update a while later]

Chrissie’s not the only one.