Emailer David Mosier has the correct name for Trent Lott’s scandal.

In the spirit of the season, I’d like to say that this is just…wrong.

Michael Medved makes a number of good points on the Lott situation, and brings up one that hadn’t previously occurred to me, though it’s obvious once pointed out.

In the case of Trent Lott, there’s not even an impressive record of success to recommend him. His career in the national limelight has produced a long series of public embarrassments and in each election they faced with Lott as their majority leader, Republicans actually lost seats in the Senate.

That says it all.

The liberation of Afghanistan appears to have been good for China.

Regardless of the final outcome, if nothing else, l’affaire Lott has shown that conservatives and so-called “right wingers” (I’m always amazed when I’m accused of being a right winger), aren’t the racists that they’re always demonized as by the “left.” It was great to see Abigail Thernstrom getting a lot of visibility on Meet The Press this morning.

The first, and most full-throated criticism of Lott came from that quarter, and not just because it made him a liability to Republicans. They were clearly and truly outraged. Lott and his fellow Dixiecrat ilk will know that they can no longer state such views with impunity from their own party.

I doubt that most of the media will notice, though.

Fox News’ John Scott is going to be doing a one-hour special on the last Apollo mission starting in about fifteen minutes (6 PM Eastern, 3 PM Pacific).

[Update at 4 PM PST]

I watched most of it. It was pretty good–a history of the manned space program through the end of Apollo, and then a look at where we may be going. They mentioned the X-Prize at the end. One phrase that stuck out that shows that the public perception may be changing. It was something like “Now we have three choices for the future of space–manned, unmanned, or you.”

That third choice used to never be considered, or even mentioned.

It will be repeating later, so you might want to check it out.

Gore isn’t running in 2004.

The clues must have finally accumulated, and reached critical mass.

I normally don’t announce this, but since Instantman is AWOL today, I thought I’d pick up the slack. It’s all Lott, all the time today.

…is forgiveable for most, but not for a former Vice Presidential candidate and possibly future presidential candidate.

On This Week this morning, Joe Lieberman said that someone with Trent Lott’s views shouldn’t be in the line of presidential succession.

Don’t worry, Joe, he’s not.

Senate Majority Leader is not in the line of succession at all, let alone high in it.

The order is:

Vice President
Speaker of the House
President Pro Tempore of the Senate
Secretary of State

and then down the line of cabinet secretaries.

Here’s the current batting order.

Interestingly, while Lott is not in the line of succession, Bob “Sheets” Byrd is President Pro Tem, at least until the new Senate is sworn in in January.

Mark Steyn explains.

For a century and a half, race is one issue the Republicans have been right on– or, at the very minimum, less wrong. We’ve grown used to the Democrats’ strange black-is-white world, where Al Gore apparently genuinely believes his father was a civil rights crusader rather than a civil rights obstacle. Segregation is the Democrats’ history, and for Trent Lott to give them an excuse to dump it on the GOP doorstep is all the reason Republicans needed to be done with him once and for all.