I don’t think that this analysis is right:

Bowers theorizes: “[E]very single candidate has seen their numbers drop from the time when their candidacy was first announced or first rumored. After the announcement, people learn more about candidates and media criticism grows harsher. That might actually explain Clinton’s rise better than anything else, since she is so well known and opinions on her are so fixed that she had less to fear from the inevitable drop-off. In other words, that people have fixed opinions on her has actually been an asset, rather than a hindrance, to her campaign. … Clinton, by contrast, is a rock who has been through the meat grinder several times in the past. Things were not going to get worse for her, but they were going to get worse for everyone else.”

First of all, Hillary has never been through a meat grinder. At worst, she’s been scraped over a dull cheese grater, relative to what could have been done had the press been doing its job in the nineties. Also, her opponents aren’t going to bring up her sordid past, because as Democrats they were complicit throughout in covering it up, and completely accepted the corruption of the Clintons as the price for political power (the straw that broke the back of my support for Democrats for my lifetime, or at least until a new generation comes along that renounces the behavior of their forebears). And the Republicans and other foes of a Hillary candidacy (like me) are going to keep their powder dry until she is actually nominated, and lay down the most withering fire in the campaign, not over a year before the election.

One other point. Even if she had “been through a meat grinder,” that was then, and this is now, and there are a whole lot of voters who are unaware of the events of over a decade ago, because they were young and not paying much attention, or paying attention to only the salacious aspects, not the criminality and corruption. Now that young people get so much more information from the Internet, and the traditional media gatekeepers who protected the Clintons in the nineties have lost so much of their power, I suspect that we are going to be reintroduced to both of the real Clintons in the coming year, via people like the “Slick Grope Vets for Truth.”

California, originator of most wacky laws, is about to make the sales of semi-automatic weapons and their ammo effectively illegal, by demanding science-fictional requirements from the manufacturers. The cops, unlike the little people, will still be able to buy real-world armament, of course. And the criminals, being criminals, will ignore the law. Only law-abiding citizens will be disarmed.

I wonder how this will stand up to a Second Amendment challenge? Given the composition and nutty opinions of that particular circuit, I’m sure that it will be found up to Constitutional muster, but I would hope that the Supreme Court would have something to say about it.

Oh, and is there any useful sense in which Arnold Scharzenegger can be considered a Republican? He seems to have gone completely native along with the legislature.

I think that this is a pretty accurate thesis. After all, what with their enemies list, and the “missing” FBI files, and IRS investigations on their enemies, the Clintons actually got away with things that Nixon could only dream of doing. And the difference was, of course, that the press hated Nixon, but loved the Clintons.

While I agree that Google’s behavior is blatantly partisan, that doesn’t excuse the continued misunderstanding of the First Amendment repeated in this Examiner editorial:

On its face, a policy that allows censorship of political speech critical of the trademark holder is a violation of the First Amendment. If Google maintains this policy, it will be handing a powerful tool for crushing dissent not only to political groups like MoveOn.org but to every corporation with a trademarked name.

Sorry, no. As I wrote not long ago:

Ahmadinejad had no First Amendment right to speak at Columbia, and he had no First Amendment right to not be criticized, either before, during or after his speech. And I have no First Amendment right to AT&T DSL service, or to not have it cut off if I express an opinion over its tubes. All that the First Amendment says is that “Congress shall make no law,” not “Columbia University will grant a podium and audience,” or “AT&T shall provide Internet service regardless of the behavior of the customer.”

It also doesn’t say that “Google shall not discriminate by political beliefs in which ads it chooses to run.”

Not that Google shouldn’t be criticized, and its hypocrisy pointed out on a daily basis, of course.