And by the Obama administration, too. What a shock.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Farmers, The Committee, And Tinkerbells
Jeff Foust reports on Mark Albrecht’s diagnosis of NASA’s ills. And in comments over there, Mark Whittington once again demonstrates himself to be a tinkerbell.
[Update late evening]
Hilarious. Tinkerbell has showed up in comments here, whining about being aptly named, and cluelessly clapping her little hands to keep the useless SLS/Orion alive.
[Monday morning update]
Jeez, Mark is so bereft of the ability to understand Albrecht’s metaphor that he imagines I’m actually calling him a fairy.
Forget The Legitimacy Of The Court
How about the legitimacy of Congress and the White House?
[Update a few minutes later]
Actually, rather than enhancing the legitimacy of SCOTUS with this ruling among the public, the Chief Justice seems to have damaged it:
Thirty-seven percent (37%) now believe the Supreme Court is too liberal, while 22% think it’s too conservative. A week ago, public opinion was much more evenly divided: 32% said it was too liberal and 25% said too conservative.
In the latest survey, 31% now believe the balance is about right.
That’s got to help Mitt Romney, if he makes court appointments a campaign issue.
Exercise
Why it doesn’t help you lose weight.
The notion that eating less and exercising more is part of the medieval thinking that all calories are equal, and it’s just about thermodynamics.
Conservative Anger
It’s growing, over the ObamaCare decision.
Mark Steyn certainly isn’t happy. And they sure found a terrible picture of Roberts.
But I think that this will really fire up people in November.
The Mystery Of The Decision
Solved: “Randy Barnett made a wish on a cursed monkey’s paw that his commerce clause argument would be accepted. It explains everything, no?”
Seriously, here’s what I think happened. Roberts initially voted with the others to throw out the whole law, and has spent the last several weeks trying to pick up at least one more vote (perhaps from Breyer or Sotomayor — Ginsburg and Kagan were never a possibility) to make it 6-3 instead of a narrow 5-4. At the end, he gave up, and decided to narrowly keep it instead of narrowly strike it down. I think that explains the facts, and the bizarre opinion, which was nowhere near as cogent and well thought out as what became the dissent. And I’ll bet that the new minority is pretty angry at him right now (and have been since he switched).
Fast And Furious
[Update a while later]
Nostalgia for when the media loved whistleblowers:
These days, in the Obama era, Democrats and the media seem a lot less admiring of whistleblowers, oddly enough. Imagine for a moment that Rowley had been assigned a new boss at the FBI after her whistleblowing, one that had told others that the agency needed to “get whatever dirt we can” on her to “take her down,” and especially if that boss had previously said in the presence of at least one witness that the FBI needed to “f**k” said whistleblower. Can you imagine the media meltdown that would have occurred? Well, you’re going to have to be satisfied with imagining it, but Senator Charles Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa want answers as to why two Operation Fast and Furious whistleblowers got assigned to work for a man who said exactly that about them.
If this were a Republican administration, there would be calls for impeachment.
[Update a while later]
The Fast and Furious noose tightens around the Obama Justice Department.
Put Them On The Record
David Bernstein has a mischievous suggestion:
I’d schedule a new vote in the House on the individual mandate, but replace the “penalty language” with language specifically acknowledging that the “penalty” is actually a tax. If the Democrats vote “aye,” they’ve acknowledged breaking the Obama pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class. If the Democrats–specifically those who already voted for the mandate–vote “nay”, what becomes of the tax argument in future litigation?
It’s going to be an interesting campaign.
A “Bombshell” Letter
That’s what Darrel Issa reportedly just dropped into the Congressional Record. I wonder how much else he has? I’ll bet that the DOJ and White House (not to mention Elijah Cummings) do, too.
And meanwhile, what would you do after making history as the first cabinet member to be found in contempt of Congress? Eric Holder went to Disney World.
Yes, really. I’ll leave the obvious jokes to the commenters.
[Update a while later]
Well this is a shocking development. The Department of Justice isn’t going to prosecute its head.
[Update a while later]
The Roll Call story got Drudged, so it’s overloaded, but here’s another report from the Washington Times.
Explaining Fast And Furious
It is pretty incredible.