Don't be entirely surprised if Michelle Malkin is wearing Pajamas in her next "Vent" video at Hot Air...

Just to continue our trip down memory lane, Peggy Noonan says that it's Pappa Bush meets Jimmy Carter time for GWB, writing bitterly that "President Bush has torn the conservative coalition asunder":

One of the things I have come to think the past few years is that the Bushes, father and son, though different in many ways, are great wasters of political inheritance. They throw it away as if they'd earned it and could do with it what they liked. Bush senior inherited a vibrant country and a party at peace with itself. He won the leadership of a party that had finally, at great cost, by 1980, fought itself through to unity and come together on shared principles. Mr. Bush won in 1988 by saying he would govern as Reagan had. Yet he did not understand he'd been elected to Reagan's third term. He thought he'd been elected because they liked him. And so he raised taxes, sundered a hard-won coalition, and found himself shocked to lose his party the presidency, and for eight long and consequential years. He had many virtues, but he wasted his inheritance.

Bush the younger came forward, presented himself as a conservative, garnered all the frustrated hopes of his party, turned them into victory, and not nine months later was handed a historical trauma that left his country rallied around him, lifting him, and his party bonded to him. He was disciplined and often daring, but in time he sundered the party that rallied to him, and broke his coalition into pieces. He threw away his inheritance. I do not understand such squandering.

Now conservatives and Republicans are going to have to win back their party. They are going to have to break from those who have already broken from them. This will require courage, serious thinking and an ability to do what psychologists used to call letting go. This will be painful, but it's time. It's more than time.

Needless to say, read the whole thing--and check out James Lileks' thoughts on the same topic, about 23:30 into this MP3 clip from Thursday's Hugh Hewitt Show.

If the truth from the 1990s has to be tossed down the Memory Hole, then I guess to compensate, headlines from the 1970s get dusted off for modern use, whether we need them or not: "Iran Hostage Count Rises".

Here's Al Gore yesterday on PBS's NewsHour, being interviewed by Gwen Ifil:

Ifill: You write of a "determined disinterest" in learning the truth, on the part of the Bush administration on pre-war intelligence. You accuse the White House of an "unprecedented and sustained campaign of mass deception," very strong words. And you say that President Bush "outsourced the truth." Are you suggesting that President Bush deliberately misled the American people when it comes to the Iraq war?

Gore: Well, there was certainly a coordinated effort in the White House and in the Department of Defense simultaneously to convey the image of a mushroom cloud exploding over an American city and to link it to a specific scenario, the very strong and explicit implication that Saddam Hussein was going to develop nuclear weapons and give them to Osama bin Laden, and that would result in nuclear explosions in American cities.

Here's a statement issued by the Justice Department in 1998 during the administration under which Gore served:

Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.

And here's Gore himself, five years earlier:

"The suffering inside Iraq can come to an end when Saddam Hussein's regime is replaced," said a top Clinton administration official at the time. "And I hope -- and most of the world community hopes -- that this regime based on terrorism and atrocities against his own people will be replaced. Over time, we hope to achieve that result."

The pivot--not to mention the Assault on Reason--continues apace.

Update: Another reality of the 1990s goes down the Memory Hole, this time courtesy of NPR.

Tim Blair quotes a passage from the New Republic’s Paul Berman regarding the hostility on the left that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has faced, both in Europe and the US:

Something like a campaign against Hirsi Ali could never have taken place a few years ago. A sustained attack on an authentic liberal dissident crying out against injustices in remote parts of the world and even in the back streets of western Europe, a sustained attack that appears nearly to have erased the mention of women’s oppression and the struggle for women’s rights from discussion - no, this could not have happened yesterday, except on the extreme Right.

This is a new event. This is a reactionary turn in the intellectual world.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn--not to mention Castro's many, many critics--might wonder at how new an event it is to be shunned as an apostate by the Western left.

David Frum writes, "It's Divorce":

That's what has happened between President Bush and his party over this immigration bill. And if they insist on pursuing it, I fear it is what will happen between the Senate GOP leadership and the party base as well. The issue has already all but killed the McCain candidacy. A letter from a reader expresses the sadness and anger I see in so much of my mail:

I voted twice for this man and his abdication of the most fundamental executive responsibility, to protect our country from foreign invasion, is cause for regret.

Talk is cheap. The most responsible course of action that this president can take on immigration is to do nothing. Leave it for the next president. Focus on Iraq and then go home.

Signing this bill would render what little good he has done meaningless by comparison.

I wish he were already gone.

If it is divorce, not many want to pay the alimony.

Further thoughts from The Washington Examiner and Jim Geraghty.

Update: Allahpundit notes that the divorce may be mutual:

First it was Chertoff, then Bush, now Chavez: three Republicans, one of them president, another a cabinet member, the third a would-be cabinet member, all not merely criticizing the base’s position on amnesty but impugning their character for taking that position.

A few months ago, I explored the media's Red Queen's Race to the bottom--President Bush seems to engaged in one of his own, regarding the support of his base, and his poll numbers.

On March 11, after viewing 300, I wrote:

Will 300 impact Hollywood? Obviously, not in the short term.With the exception of Spider-Man 3, virtually all of the innumerable trailers yesterday before 300 highlighted Hollywood's current phase: dank, gross, low-budget nihilistic horror films, and, in a very similar genre, the latest effort by Quentin Tarantino, which featured the disgusting image of a buxom young woman whose leg is amputated and replaced with a machine gun, which she alternately walks on and fires at the baddies (baddies being a relative term in a Tarantino movie, of course) by crouching in some sort of kung fu-style pose spraying bullets upward. (No, really.)

Ad Age, which I doubt is a deeply entrenched bastion of Ashcroftian prudery, deplores "the newest rage in Hollywood: torture porn".

As Orrin Judd asks, “If Don Imus needed to be fired, why do the folks in Hollywood who produce such stuff still have jobs?”

Come the quadrennial paranoid "The President's Going To Cancel The Election And Impose Martial Law!" stories, kicking off, as with everything else election-oriented this year, remarkably early. As Extreme Mortman notes, these stories date back to the left and President Nixon---"he HAD to cancel the election, because with Youth in Revolt, he couldn’t possibly win". But I recall at least one regarding President Clinton on World Net Daily in 2000 as well.

In 1973, Daniel Patrick Moynihan looked back on the decade which had recently concluded and said, "Most liberals had ended the 1960s rather ashamed of the beliefs they had held at the beginning of the decade". And part of that sea change in their beliefs was replacing a JFK-era New Frontier optimism towards future progress with an enormous fear of modernity that in many respects continues to this day, seeking to replace life-enhancing technology with a Rousseauvian return to nature.

Perhaps wishing to live out Moynihan's observation, in 1972, Orson Welles narrated and appeared on camera in the McGraw-Hill(!) production of a short film presenting a few of the doomsday-ish concepts from Alvin Toffler's Future Shock. (Toffler's 1980 sequel, The Third Wave was a much more optimistic look at the near future, and blessedly free of the lingering effects of psychedelia which tainted his 1970 book.)

In a way, this is the culmination, the apex of 1970s Merdework, to borrow a Lileksian word. Thrill! To dissonant first generation Moog synthesizers! Gasp! At Orson Welles and his quick paycheck-seeking stentorian sell-no-documentary before-its-time tones--and his omnipresent 12-inch Double Corona Monte Cristo Cuban phallic symbol! Shudder! As Welles fears the technological ramifications of giant mainframe computers with less computing power than your Motorola cell phone!

These first ten minutes are presented as part of an ongoing public service to remind our readers how frightening the aesthetics of the 1970s truly were; more adventurous souls may wish to view the remainder of the documentary, available here.

“Terrorist financing is much trickier to crack down on than conventional money laundering. Because conventional money laundering is when you’re trying to take illicit assets and convert them into assets that are clean, that can be exchanged throughout the financial system. Whereas terrorist financing is often taking thoroughly legal assets and then using them for illegal purposes.”

--Daniel Drezner, on the next Blog Week In Review, coming soon to PJ HQ.

Jules Crittenden joins the Dark Side of the Force.

Don Surber writes--quite authoritatively, I believe--that the war is over, we've won, and we can start to demobilize our massed forces.

Fred Thompson is entering the presidential race, according to USA Today. Of course, in a sense, he's been in for several weeks at least via the Web, which "has allowed me to be in the hunt, so to speak, without spending a dime", Thompson says.

Is July 4th the date?

Building on George Orwell's “Politics and the English Language", John Leo explores how badly English has descended--particularly in academic usage--since Orwell wrote his seminal essay over 60 years ago.

As President Bush taps Robert Zoellick to be president of the World Bank, Larry Kudlow writes, "both the IMF and the World Bank are unnecessary artifacts from a bygone, post-WWII reconstruction era", and asks, "do we really need the World Bank?"

Meanwhile, Wired's "Danger Room" blog wonders why the U.S. needs embassies in the Middle East, noting that they're essentially hardened concrete bunkers, designed much more to keep terrorists out, than to foster goodwill with the people at large of those countries.

As I wrote late last night, John Hawkins polled about 50 conservative bloggers and found that zero believed "that the bill in the Senate would, if passed, secure the border and stop the influx of significant numbers of illegal aliens into the United States".

Meanwhile, Rasmussen polls from a much broader sample of the general public and finds..."Just 16% believe the Senate bill will reduce illegal immigration", according to Bryan Preston of Hot Air, who writes:

Distilled, the bill is a turkey and most of America knows it. Or, most of America doesn’t want “what’s right for America.” Take your pick, Republicans. Take your pick, Mr. President.

In their regular Bloggingheads-style video debate, Jonah Goldberg and Peter Beinart have quite an interesting conversation on what makes Robert Novak tick.

And speaking of Bloggingheads, Glenn Reynolds and Conn Carroll debate the new, new and old, old journalism in general.

With Star Wars' 30th anniversary this month, I have a review of J.W. Rinzler's The Making of Star Wars, over at Blogcritics. If you saw the film five or ten times on its opening run, this thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated book will bring back a flood of memories.

John Hawkins crunches the numbers, including the results of this question:

5) Do you believe that the bill in the Senate would, if passed, secure the border and stop the influx of significant numbers of illegal aliens into the United States?

Yes: (0%)
No: 49 (100%)

Read the rest, here.

Yes, JFK would have plotzed over this. Yes, Bill Clinton and Teddy Kennedy will, too. But so what? This is the greatest innovation in voting technology, ever.

We can only hope and pray that it's approved for American use in time for the 2008 elections. I'm sure its manufacturer won't lack for beta testers, though...

Back in January, we linked to a post by David Frum, who wrote:

The day will come, and probably soon, when American liberals and the American left will wake up to the fact that (as Tom Wicker said of Richard Nixon in the book of the same name) on domestic issues Bush was "one of us." Much as they disliked Bush's foreign policies, cultural style, and political methods, he actually had more in common with them on domestic issues than he did with his own political base. It will someday be very hard to explain why liberals so hated Bush. I suppose it just goes to prove that - despite all those left-wing books about the false consciousness of those poor deluded rubes in Kansas - culture trumps economics for elites at least as much as for ordinary voters.

Today, Jonah Goldberg writes:

Richard Cohen discovers something some of us on the right have been saying for a while: if you hold your head just so and look at Bush from the right angle, he looks an awful lot like a liberal.

Related thoughts from Ed Morrissey; it's also worth re-reading Jonathan Rausch's "The Accidental Radical" from four years ago, which remains a pretty good look at Bush's overall governing "strategery".

Newsbusters spots Newsweek Celebrating "'Ecosavant' Al Gore As The Hot New Sensitive 'Beta Male'"; meanwhile, Tim Blair runs roughshod over Time's coverage of Gore's Assault On Reason with a full metal fisking.

Over on my wife's Bizlawblog, some potentially significant business news:

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in McNamee v. IRS, No. 05-6151 just affirmed a federal trial courts determination that the owner of an LLC (limited liability company) can be held personally liable for unpaid payroll taxes. This is a significant decision, which may well be appealed to the Supreme Court. But meanwhile, let's look at its significance.

Read the rest.

One of Charles Johnson's readers get the standard form letter that Google's been sending out every year since at least 2005 regarding their lack of a Memorial Day splash page, despite having pages commemorating World Water Day, and the birthdays of Edvard Munch, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Percival Lowell, and Ray Charles. (Though the international celebrity with a huge fanbase born on December 25th remains oddly unnamed each year by Google...)

Because the art designers at Google seem remarkably stumped by the unique design challenge that is Memorial Day, Zombietime is soliciting reader help.

Zombie is requesting that contest entrants keep things as tasteful and reverent as possible. Call me unnecessarily cynical and churlish, but something tells me though, whatever they design just won't make the cut with Google.

Like I said on Sunday:

What's especially fun is watching members of "Big Recreation" tie themselves up in knots when they feel the need for self-persecution over the eeeeevils of so-called manmade Gerbil Worming or Glowball Warmening, as Tim Blair is wont to malaprop.

"Air Canada offers carbon-offset ticket".

(Via Relapsed Catholic.)

Gee, what a shocker--give an audience little more than an army of threequels, then wonder why they won't bite at the processed cheese-like food. But it's also a reminder of the trap that the movie industry is caught in, as pop culture continues to fracture. The sequels (particularly the sequels to pre-existing franchises, such as the movies based on comic books, old TV shows, and best selling novels such as the James Bond and Tom Clancy movies) are the most predictable vehicles at the box office, but you can only go to the well so many times before audiences tune out these days.

Of course, how slowly they tune out varies, and unfortunately, there are probably enough tickets sold--and enough DVDs will be sold--to know that in a couple of years, we'll be looking at the summer of four-quils.

As Canadian blogger Small Dead Animals writes, "Britain's descent into a surveillance state has been one of the creepier developments over the last twenty years. Just when you think it can't get worse it does".

Like the man said...

If Dan Rather's ratings on HD-Net ever start to drift below the blockbuster status I'm sure he's currently enjoying, network owner Mark Cuban may wish to bring some attractive (and, let's face it, younger) female talent to offset Rather's more geriatric demographic, much like CBS did in the early 1990s, when it pared Dan with Connie Chung.

Might I suggest two possible candidates, both recently unemployed, for the co-anchor chair, whose talents will seamlessly complement Dan--and Cuban's--worldview?

Meanwhile, IowaHawk and Jim Treacher look at saving another modern television benchmark with even higher ratings, before it too, stumbles from its current lofty artistic heights.

"The odd thing about the conversation is I could tell it was the first time he’d heard this argument", Tony Blair notes:

I was stopped by someone the other week who said it was not surprising there was so much terrorism in the world when we invaded their countries (meaning Afghanistan and Iraq). No wonder Muslims felt angry.

I said to him: tell me exactly what they feel angry about. We remove two utterly brutal and dictatorial regimes; we replace them with a UN-supervised democratic process.

And the only reason it is difficult still is because other Muslims are using terrorism to try to destroy the fledgling democracy and, in doing so, are killing fellow Muslims.

Why aren’t they angry about the people doing the killing? The odd thing about the conversation is I could tell it was the first time he’d heard this argument.

Given how even more attached to hidebound folk-Marxist nostalgia for 1968 the BBC is than even America's own collective MSM, I'm not at all surprised.

Here's a sobering fact: according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, there are only three US World War I vets still alive.

The Chicago Tribune profiles one of them: Frank Buckles, who at age 106 is the youngest of the three. The Tribune notes that quite appropriately, "Buckles will serve as a marshal in the National Memorial Day Parade in Washington, sharing the starring role with actor Gary Sinise".

(H/T: OJ)

A few months ago, we celebrated our fifth anniversary in the Blogosphere; this week Power Line celebrates theirs as well, as Hugh Hewitt writes:

Powerline's trio are thus the most significant citizen journalists of the first age of internet journalism, and wold be even had they not toppled Dan Rather. Like it or not --and those on the left won't-- their coming into being and their writings and associated endeavors will be studied far into the future. They didn't just occasionally make the weather in American journalism over the past five years, they changed the weather patterns. They set a standard, delivered a product, and obliged MSM to change how it dealt with citizen journalists and their work. They were aided in this by tens of thousands of other bloggers, of course, but to a degree not yet even remotely appreciated Powerline's authors had an enormous and lasting effect on American journalism.

If that sounds like hyperbole, remember that Mary Mapes, CBS's erstwhile producer who, along with Ra^therGate's namesake, foisted the scandal on the public, later admitted that she hadn't even heard of Power Line--nor any other Weblog on the starboard side of the 'Net. And prior to both parties' presidential conventions in 2004, when the TV networks had to fill hours of time somehow and interviewed bloggers, and then Ra^therGate itself, the general public as a whole had never really heard of blogs. For the previous three years, I felt compelled to explain in query letters to editors and publishers just what the heck a blog was. After 2004, there was no need to.

I think a big part of the credit for Ra^therGate should also go to Charles Johnson for his famous "throbbing memo" gif--once it hit the 'Net, the countdown officially began on both Dan's reputation, and his career at CBS--and of course, Buckhead of the Free Republic forum for initially noticing that there something seemed amiss in the documents that CBS uploaded to attempt to support their story. But beginning with "The Sixty First-Minute", there's no doubt that Power Line did much to advance the story--and in doing so very much helped to put the Blogosphere as a whole on the map.

As Ed Morrissey writes, "If You're Reading This Blog Today..."

... you can thank a veteran, either one who gave his life in service to his country, or one who gave his youth and health. America has never lacked for heroes, men and women who exemplify patriotism, honor, duty, and sacrifice. All of us, whether Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, have members of our family who have devoted time in their lives to our country; we're all connected to them.

And if you're reading Google today, once again, you'd have no idea today was anything more than just another day.

Update: Power Line spots the New York Times applying its own special focus to Memorial Day.

Mickey Kaus explains why--amongst many, many, many other reasons--"the L.A. Times is doomed":

The following teaser appears, not on the front page, but at the bottom of the first page of the B section in today's Los Angeles Times.

Lindsay Lohan arrested The actress, 20, is arrested on suspicion of drunk driving after hitting a curb and shrubbery in Beverly Hills. B3

P.S.: By the time LA residents got up to get the Sunday paper, the Lohan story had already led Drudge and been replaced by a fresher bit of news. Meanwhile, the New York Post featured an inch-and-a-half headline, plus picture, on its tabloid front page:

LINDSAY DRUG SHOCK Stash found after DUI bust

That's the New York Post of the same day as the LAT, even though the story happened in L.A. and the Post is produced in New York. ... The Post account is also juicier. ...

Being, you know, actually in L.A., the L.A. Times should be chock-a-block full of sexy, newspaper-selling, browser-clicking front page--and Front Page--worthy scandals. But this is far from the first time it's had a hot story pop up in its own backyard, only to be scooped by a hustling New York paper (in other words, not the almost equally lethargic NYT), buried, or ignored totally.

Or as Mark Steyn told John Hawkins a couple of years ago:

In London, the most competitive newspaper market in the world, papers thrive by encouraging distinctive controversial voices. In America, the average Gannett or other monodaily prefers a tone of self-regarding dullness. As my friend John O'Sullivan put it, "They neither offend nor delight" - as a matter of policy. Yes, they're broadly “liberal,” but not in a lively virtuoso engaging way, only in a dreary J-school way. I think they're missing the point here. They don't realize that they do have competitors now, in new media. In 1978, having driven your print competitors out of business, you could afford to be a dull city newspaper. I don't believe you can now.

And there's absolutely no reason (other than the numbing effects of political correctness and the entrenched institutional belief that the news is a "calling" and not a business) to be a dull paper in a city loaded with as many juicy stories as L.A.

Sorry to dust off Telly Savalas' old Players Club TV commercial pitch, but I wanted to remind you of the evil planet-crushing dangers of...."Big Recreation"!

“Big Oil” sounds a bit sinister.

“Big Tobacco”, likewise.

“Big Pharma”…uh, what?

And now I’m being told to fear “Big Recreation“.

Big Recreation?

Like “Evil Kitten”, it doesn’t matter what the adjective is, because the noun just defeats all attempts at scare tactics.

Oh, nooosss! I’m going to be relaxed and entertained to death!! Will they stop at nothing??

What's especially fun is watching members of "Big Recreation" tie themselves up in knots when they feel the need for self-persecution over the eeeeevils of so-called manmade Gerbil Worming or Glowball Warmening, as Tim Blair is wont to malaprop.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Related: Just in time for Memorial Day, puritanical Newsweek conjures up its inner nanny in regards to outdoor cooking.

Don Surber writes that while there's talk of outsourcing coverage of local events in American newspapers to overseas reporters, readers are more than willing to go overseas themselves for a story if it doesn't fit the seemingly monolithic MSM's template:

As my next post pointed out, the major American newspapers continue to ignore the story of a graphic torture handbook being discovered at an al-Qaeda safehouse.

They were awfully quick to play up the UN’s latest cheapshot at the US. An organization whose human rights council includes every human rights violator from Burkina Faso to Zimbabwe should be laughed off the world stage.

Instead, the American newspapers treat UN press releases like the holy grail.

But American readers have the Internet. And foreign nations are publishing reports on al-Qaedan Torture — actual torture, no panties on the head or False Stories about flushed Korans.

It will be interesting to see if op-eds start appearing in newspapers discussing the torture manual--assuming that's the case, it will be yet another example of opinion writers assuming that their readers are more than a little familiar with an event that their local newspapers couldn't be bothered to report. Or as I wrote a few months ago:

In the early days of the Blogosphere, the mantra was that while Big Media would do the reporting, you'd go the Blogosphere for opinion. But increasingly, it's been the Blogosphere that's been doing the heavy lifting.

That post has numerous example of this phenomenon in action; there will be many more to come in the next few years.

Update: More on this topic from Ed Morrissey.

From what I've heard, once you go dual, you never go back. I'll let you know--I'm experimenting with dual 19-inch LCD monitors. Surprisingly, it was a PITA to install, because apparently my PC's ATI videocard, which is designed to simultaneously pump out both VGA and DVI video--and hence allowing two monitors--apparently had a defective DVI output. But now that I've replaced the card, and have both monitors working, it seems like it should improve workflow with recording programs such as Cakewalk Sonar, and video programs like Adobe Premiere Pro. Not to mention experimenting with rotating the monitor 90 degrees for Word documents.

Besides, it looks bitchin' cool to boot. Maybe I'll add a third!

Needless to say, the Associated Press's collective mindset would be well-at-home at the Whitney Museum's "Summer of Love" exhibit; their reporting emphasis has changed little since the days of LBJ and RMN, Jules Crittenden writes:

I thought body counts went out with the Vietnam War. The AP is kicking off Memorial Day weekend with a fresh body count in Iraq.

How come no mention of Americans killed in Afghanistan since last Memorial Day?

The AP story leads with the number of new graves opened for dead American soldiers since Memorial Day last, but only those killed in Iraq. Why this slight? Are the dead in Afghanistan not worthy of respect in the eyes of the Associated Press? It is possible that this article is not about honoring the dead at all, or even about reporting the news, but just another thinly veiled editorial attack on the Bush administration? Would the Associated Press be so callous as to use American dead in this manner, as a political tool?

I’m beginning to get the impression there is nothing more important to the Associated Press in its Iraq reportage than the number of “American soldiers killed in this unpopular war.” That phrase, with a number, is typically trotted out no later than graph three in AP stories on Iraq. It’s as though the body count is the sole measure upon which all decisions and action must turn. There certainly has been no effort by the Associated Press, or other major news organizations on the ground in Iraq, to examine progress in anything but the most dismissive manner, with a quick revert to body count.

What would the recently deceased pioneering New Journalism war correspondent David Halberstam think of the AP's hidebound reactionary approach?

He'd support it wholeheartedly, of course.

Update: Related thoughts from Chris Muir.

We've written about Annie Jacobsen a couple of times here back in 2004 and 2005. The author of Terror In The Skies and the original column (which originally appeared on a financial Website called Woman's Wall Street that Jacobsen frequently contributes to) that the book derived from received plenty of skepticism from--shocker--those wishing to displace their fears of terror.

Ed Morrissey notes that in light of the details contained within an FBI report obtained by the Washington Times via a Freedom of Information Act request, "It appears that a few people may owe Jacobsen an apology".

I wonder if Snopes will update its page on the incident Jacobsen described to reflect the background information on one of the passengers in question that Ed describes.

Update: Related thoughts from Philip Pidot, who notes, "Maybe Jacobsen was lucky to suffer only derision and disregard. Today, she might well have been slapped with a defamation lawsuit".

From Dean Barnett, here's a moment of tolerance and diversity, courtesy of “Actor/Activist” Ben Affleck:

First, during the conversation, Ben Affleck said of Mitt Romney, “The Mormonism thing is really suspect.” I’m not screaming racism. I’m not even insinuating racism. I am quite confident that Ben Affleck has nothing but love in his heart for all peoples. Probably more so for peoples who share his political views than those who don’t, but I’m sure he’s a man of goodwill. After all, he is the man who gifted society with “Gigli.”

I am noting, however, that much like Peggy Noonan’s drive-by last week regarding temple garments, it is acceptable in the mainstream to say thing about Mormons that wouldn’t be acceptable regarding any other minority. Can you imagine someone like Affleck saying in regards to a different candidate, “The Muslim thing is really suspect” or “The Jewish thing is really suspect” and not getting called on it?

Regarding the latter, isn't that how the word "Neocon" became such a euphemistic epithet in the media? And speaking of which, for some overall perspective, it's worth revisiting Rod Dreher's look at the dog that didn't bark.

As the New York Times reported in March of last year, Vermont "is losing young people at a precipitous clip":

Vermont, with a population of about 620,000, now has the lowest birth rate among states. Three-quarters of its public schools have lost children since 2000.

Vermont also has the highest rate of students attending college out of their home state — 57 percent, up from 36 percent 20 years ago. Many do not move back. The total number of 20- to 34-year-olds in Vermont has shrunk by 19 percent since 1990.

The Times claimed Vermont's Republican governor, Jim Douglas, "is treating the situation like a crisis", quoting him as saying, "There's an exodus of young people. It's dramatic. We need to reverse it. The consequences of not acting are severe."

Maybe it's just me, but this action doesn't sound like it's on the cutting edge of demographic repair:

Gov. Jim Douglas used six pens Friday to sign his name to a bill that will ban school buses from running their engines while parked on school grounds, except under special circumstances.

Seated in the library at Browns River Middle School, Douglas rewarded a seventh-grade social studies class for its efforts on behalf of the bill by coming to the students to transform the legislation into law. He handed the pens he used to five students who led the lobbying effort and their teacher, Patty Brushett.

“This is a great step forward for our state,” Douglas said, listing benefits such as fuel conservation, improved air quality and reduction in greenhouse gases…

George Crombie, secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, joined Douglas for the ceremony and presented the school with a sign to post by the driveway.

“These signs will go to every single school,” Crombie said. The red sign reads, “Please turn off your engines for our health.”

Paging Julia Gorin and Mark Steyn--your next columns await.

As Tim Graham notes, "The Left Eats Its Own", but then, they often do. And not just the brain-eating zombies in San Francisco, either.

Tim Graham spots ABC's Jake Tapper claiming that "the most surprising part" of Al Gore's Assault On Reason "was Gore's implication that if a more competent person had been president during 9/11 -- like, say, him -- 9/11 might not have happened":

Gore argues that the president does not need enhanced domestic surveillance powers he has sought and received, often in secret, just competent use of the information already available. He points out, for instance, the fact that 9/11 terrorists Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almidhar were already on a State Department/INS watch list.

He does not flatly state that 9/11 would not have occurred during a Gore administration. But, he writes, "whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable, it almost inevitably leads to mistakes and abuses. In the absence of rigorous accountability, incompetence flourishes."

Then, using a study from the Markle Foundation, Gore shows how "better and more timely analysis" -- not the increased data sought by the Bush administration -- would have led to other hijackers Salem Alhazmi, Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi and so on. Bush received that dire warning in August 2001, Gore notes at two different points in the book -- "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." -- which he refers to as "a headline more alarming and more pointed than any I saw in eight years of six-days-a-week CIA briefings."

Gore notes that he took pre-9/11 warnings seriously, even if Bush did not. After all, "unilateral action to protect the nation from a sudden an immediate threat" is "inherent power that is conferred by the Constitution to the president," Gore says, noting that as vice president he "made that very point to President Clinton when he had the opportunity to seize an al Qaeda operative who was planning an attack against us. And the president took my advice, though the individual we attempted to capture escaped."

But instead, Gore writes, incompetence rules the day and Bush has "taken us much further down the road toward an intrusive 'Big Brother'-style government -- towards the dangers prophesied by George Orwell in his book 1984 -- than anyone ever thought would be possible in the United States of America."

It's a strong charge, laid out carefully, with tidbits dropped here and there throughout the book. I've covered Al Gore for years. He rarely misspeaks, never miswrites. He is smart and deliberate.

He's omniscient, our Goracle--too bad he couldn't prevent this attack on the World Trade Center. Or this bombing. Or this one, for that matter.

To be fair though, at least Al believes that 9/11 was caused by bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Rosie must be aghast.

Not that there are a whole lot of other blogging parodies out there of course. But this is exactly what my day looks like--including the moment when the scale model of stonehenge.blogspot.com descends on wires.

Run at 78 RPMs, and it would be exactly what the Professor's day looks like.

(Via Katie Favazza and Outside The Beltway.)

Ted Kennedy on immigration now and then...and then.

Jules Crittenden has this week's Great Moment In Headlines--and the story behind it is a pip, too.

But what role do the 72 midgets play?

In honor of the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, Mark Steyn makes the Spice Run To Kessel and back, reprinting his reviews of the original film, plus its recent prequels. Qapla'!

(Whoops--sorry, wrong galactic empire...)

Libertas' "Dirty Harry" begs Richard Schickel's indulgence, proceeds to review Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End, whose plot (and by plot, read: reasons by the writers to generate swordfights, terabytes worth of bitchin' CGI, or both) he finds remarkably convoluted:

Every added plo