Mickey Kaus asks "Does she know the guy?"

When Bob Wright informs him that I am marrying one of my commenters.

The Tuesday Sunset Café.

"Maul preserved after laws review."

Headline that amused and mystified me.

"If 'brain sex' sounds like gender stereotyping, Dr. Moir says there is a twist: Brain sex doesn't always match biological sex."

"There is a continuum, and some brain circuits are 'bi-wired' she believes, thus blurring traditional gender roles. She has developed a test to determine the sex of your brain, with a list of 20 questions about how information is processed. The male brain tilts toward a sequential approach, and the female brain toward a more scattered one. The 'girl' brain is more intuitive; the 'boy' brain more logical. 'From analyzing the tests, my hypothesis is that an awful lot of girls have mixed brains, but boys not so often,' she says. 'Play fighting at school is frowned on and yet many boys fight in order to bond.'"

My brain goes arrrrggggghhhhh! Does that make me a boy or a girl or one of your mixed up boy-girls, Dr. Moir?

"My problem was, how am I going to draw God?"

"Should I just draw him as a light in the sky that has dialogue balloons coming out from it? Then I had this dream. God came to me in this dream, only for a split second, but I saw very clearly what he looked like. And I thought, OK, there it is, I've got God. He has a white beard but he actually ended up looking more like my father. He has a very masculine face like my father... [I]f you actually read the Old Testament he's just an old, cranky Jewish patriarch." — Robert Crumb.

Untitled.

(Via.)

IN THE COMMENTS: Henry said:

I thought it was Andrew Sullivan looking for topics.

So k*thy said "It’s good to see the tone of this post turning to suggestions to just ignore him."

"I was reading this, last night, had started to post, but got interrupted. My initial response was in the voice of talking to a close friend. Saying with all the sincerity, clarity and love I could muster, 'Generally, folks are more worried about their own shit and really not at all that interested in yours. You’re not at the center of their universe, they are. Anyway, it’s all a bunch of snark. Really. Let it go.' Anyway, enjoy this instead."

("Centraal Station Antwerpen gaat uit zijn dak!" Translation?) AND: It occurs to me that this is exactly the sort of thing Andrew Sullivan frequently posts under the heading "Mental Health Break." Like this one, posted at 4:20 p.m. yesterday, just a few hours after he demonstrated — at my expense — his need for one. Oh, sorry, k*thy, I couldn't resist. I know. "Let it go." But... is that my approach to blogging? I don't think so. See that quote in the banner? "Althouse digs in." You know who tried to push me back with that observation, don't you? I'm not pushable back. Althouse digs in. By the way, my mother's stock response was "just ignore him." Usually, punched up with: "You'll only encourage him." And I know it's true. Sullivan digs in.
Bah! It will never end. Blog on, bloggers.

"They also recommend us to only use national toilet."

"They told me: 'Yes, you can.' Then they said no," whines the cosmonaut.

"When a family is burning to death in front of your eyes, rules should go out of the window – especially with kids. Everybody wanted to try and help."

"I thought the police were there to protect lives. At one time they would have have gone inside themselves to try and rescue them."

Don't be sad.

The government cares about you.

Beauty... love... kisses...

Yay! A baby!

Congratulations to Freeman Hunt — a longtime and highly valued commenter here — who just had a baby and is tweeting about it a lot and posting pictures: 1, 2.

Real diversity on the Supreme Court.

Lawprof Daniel J. Meador says:

Diversity is usually discussed in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity. But for the Supreme Court, other elements of diversity are also important—geography, educational background, and life experiences. In those respects, the Supreme Court today is less diverse than it has ever been in its history, and it is the poorer for it.

As to geography, seven of the nine justices come from the eastern seaboard....

[In the mid-1950s o]ne justice came from each of the following states: Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Texas, California, and Washington....

Six of the nine [current] justices are graduates of Harvard Law School. Rather than suggesting that this results from a search for quality, it suggests attention to too narrow a pool of prospects. It resembles the “old boy network,” or an “elitist” approach, especially combined, as it is, with an over-concentration on East Coasters....

[A]ll nine justices came to the Supreme Court from a U.S. court of appeals. In this respect, it is the least diverse Court since 1789...

[In the mid-1950s, there were] U. S. senators (one of whom had been a big-city mayor), a state governor, an attorney general, and a solicitor general....

More than three-fourths of this country lies beyond the Appalachians. We have 189 fully accredited law schools and more than a million lawyers. If only 1 percent were deemed qualified for the Supreme Court, that would provide a pool of some 10,000....

Yeah. Way too much New England, don't you think?

"We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody."

"The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat.... We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat."

"Heathers," etc.

1. The Daily News has a where-are-they-now photo essay on the various actors from the great 1989 movie "Heathers."

2. I didn't know Jennifer Connelly turned down the Winona Ryder role, though I did know that Ryder has done nothing of note since her 2001 arrest for shoplifting. That poor woman paid such a heavy price for her crime. Come on, everyone. Forgive Winona.

3. I didn't know Kim Walker/Heather Chandler died of a brain tumor in 2001. (Classic "chainsaw" video clip — language alert.) ("Please send Heather to Heaven.")

4. I was happy to see that Glenn Shadix/Father Ripper is still a busily working actor. ("I love my dead gay son.")

5. And look what became of the nerdy boy.

6. "Betty Finn" was a real Estevez.

7. They're working on the Broadway musical version of "Heathers." The new Veronica Sawyer might be Kristen Bell. What do you think of the idea of "Heathers," the musical? Is the movie popular with Broadway fans? Sort of like "Hairspray"? I loved the movie and I loved the original movie "Hairspray," but I had no interest in seeing the show "Hairspray" or the movie made from the show. But that's just me. I guess I don't want to see any Broadway shows made from movies, though I did see "Nine" many years ago... when Raul Julia played Guido.

8. I miss Raul Julia! But what the hell was going on here?

Habeas corpus denied.

It is not the way to get your daughter not to live with her boyfriend.

"I am a major and no one can tell me where to go or not. I am committed to being with my friend and he will take care of me. Please escort me to the main gate of the court and I will manage my life from there".

The Obama administration would like you to know that the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has been kicked down the road.

Shut up. They're busy.

"The happiness of the mother is far, far more important in shaping the life of the child than whether or not the child was breast-fed as a baby."

"If breast-feeding is an undue burden, or if breast-feeding creates tension between the mother and father, then it might be time to buy some formula."

Uh oh.

Andrew notices.

Not sure he quite sees the time line.... but... thanks for noticing.

ADDED: "Ten days of emailing ... and she was ready." I'm getting a little of that oh-those-heterosexuals-and-their-frivolous-marrying vibe.

AND: Here's the text of the email I sent to Andrew Sullivan:

Andrew, I don't think you've understood the time line here. And why link to the nasty Pandagon on this one? Your post is really disrespectful to me. If you'd watched the Bloggingheads you linked to, you'd know that my fiancé is someone who has interacted with me in writing on my blog for more than 4 years. We decided to meet in person after an exchange of email in December. We met in January and then, after a some additional email, decided to meet again in mid-February, and then we fell in love. We decided to get married after 2 more weekends and a 10-day spring break.

Why is this something that you choose to mock? Is there something ridiculous about a blogger coming to love someone who she first knew through writing in the comments and developed an affection for over a period of years? Or is it just that we decided to marry within 2 months of meeting each other in person? My parents met in the Army and got married 2 weeks later and loved each other until they died many decades later. I'd really like to know what part of my experience deserves "OMFG."

AND: Sullivan posts the time line part of the email I sent him and says:

I did watch [Bloggingheads], but got a little confused with the various timelines (I'm not much clearer now). And I'm all in favor of the right of straight bloggers to marry their straight commenters. It's a civil right. And more than I am currently allowed after living with my husband for almost five years.

This isn't about legal rights. This is about how individuals treat each other, and I want to know why you disrespected me. Explain why you linked to Pandagon's scurrilous OMFG, which, as you know, means "Oh, my fucking God." Is that the way you mean to speak to me? Is that the way you talk about God?

For the record, I support marriage rights for gay people. Click my "same-sex marriage" tag below to see the profuse evidence of this.

"After all, your pigs are far more intelligent than the other animals, and therefore the best qualified to run the farm..."

"... in fact there couldn’t have been an Animal Farm at all without them: so that what was needed (someone might argue) was not more communism but more public-spirited pigs."

The "Animal Farm" rejection letter, written by T.S. Eliot.

"Did Socialized Medicine Kill Natasha Richardson?"

Uh, probably, but since emergency helicopters sometimes crash, it all pretty much evens out, kind of.

Our bloggy President.

Barack Obama.

"A digital war has broken out, and the conservative movement is losing."

Says Andrew Breitbart:

Read the comment sections of right-leaning blogs, news sites and social forums, and the evidence is there in ugly abundance. Internet hooligans are spewing their talking points to thwart the dissent of the newly-out-of-power.

Huh? You mean there is a debate, with some people arguing for the other side?

"But I still find the greyness (which is mainly the non-backlitness) of the Kindle inferior to my iPhone."

Josh Marshall and I are on the same page about this:

It's designed that way in part because it allows the battery on a Kindle to last an insanely long period of time but also because it's supposed to be easier on the eyes. Maybe I just spend so much time in front of a monitor that my eyes are trashed and I don't know the difference. But for me, on the iPhone, it just looks more crisp and readable.

Can we just have an iPhone with a big screen? Or is this all about the batteries?

Marshall, unlike me, quickly settles into reading on the Kindle, then mulls over the prospect of a future without actual paper books and newspapers:

There's a lot I miss about print newspapers, particularly the serendipitous magic of finding stories adjacent to the one you're reading, articles you're deeply interested in but never would have known you were if it weren't plopped down in front of you to pull you in through your peripheral vision.

I miss that too, but I canceled my NYT subscription a while back because I was leaving the folded paper on the table as I read what I wanted, free-form, on the computer screen. As Josh says:

... I regret not reading [newspapers]. But I just don't. I vote with my eyes.

Yes, I've done that, and now my eyes — and my brain — have changed. It's hard now to read an unlit page.

Kitty cymbal orchid.

You remember the orchid from Sunday morning. I said: "And let that orchid symbolize what you — and I mean you — know it symbolizes." In the comments, American Liberal Elite said "I see a cat playing the symbols/cymbals." I agreed.

Now, look what Chip Ahoy did. Look closely now:

Midnight.

Writing under a deadline.

"The last candidate for president of the United States from a major party that will take public financing was me."

John McCain: "No Republican in his or her right mind is going to agree to public financing. I mean, that's dead. That is over."

"Maybe I’m old-school, but 'President fires CEO' looks as wrong as 'Pope fires Missile.'"

Lileks.

The headline.

E Pluribus Unum.

Detail from a ceiling in the Wisconsin State Capitol.

"What counts as a swot varies from school to school..."

"... but the threshold for what is constituted 'boffin behaviour' tended to be lower at poorer-performing schools."

Underachievement in Britain.

The Moot Court/Op-Ed Café.

I was going to put up a photograph of the snow — yes, we have a spring snow — but, after taking the trouble to open and lean out of my 3rd-floor window, the camera battery gave out. That prompted me to substitute this orchid from a few weeks back to set up today's café, where you can talk about what you want while I — after frittering away Friday and Saturday — apply myself to 2 tasks that must be done today: writing an op-ed with a Monday deadline and prepping for and judging the final round of the Evans Constitutional Law Moot Court Competition at Wisconsin Supreme Court Hearing Room:



And let that orchid symbolize what you — and I mean you — know it symbolizes.

"Who painted it?" asked Hillary Clinton, unaware that "the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously imprinted by Mary."

Our Secretary of State got an in-your-face answer: "God!"

Leaving the basilica half an hour later, Mrs. Clinton told some of the Mexicans gathered outside to greet her, “you have a marvelous virgin!”

The linked article, from the Catholic News Agency ends with this pregnant paragraph:

This evening Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to receive the highest award given by Planned Parenthood Federation of America — the Margaret Sanger Award, named for the organization's founder, a noted eugenicist. The award will be presented at a gala event in Houston, Texas.

CNA does not like the Secretary of State.

***

There is a lot of commentary on this story, and I won't clutter this post with all the details. It follows a predictable right/left split. Either Hillary is an idiot not to know the story of the miracle or it's a faux gaffe trumped up by Hillary haters.

I'll say that I didn't know this story myself, but I do think that if I was representing our country and visiting any cultural site, I'd have somebody telling me what I needed to know not to look stupid from the perspective of those whose respect I wanted.

Anyway, think how much worse it could have gone. I'm picturing this:

Who painted it?

God!

Ha ha ha. No really. Who painted it?

God!

Ha ha ha. You people kill me. Come on. Seriously.

God!

Look. I have seen paintings that were done by ordinary mortals. Leonardo. Raphael. Michelangelo. If God were going to suddenly make a painting, wouldn't it be... uh... you know... better?

"I heard a couple new-sounding tunes on the tubes and they blasted me sky-high..."

I was thinking about that lyric from the Lovin' Spoonful song "Nashville Cats" this morning as we were talking about the old days when you might stay up late at night to pick up the signal of a distant radio station that played music that you couldn't hear during the day.

In that song, John Sebastian sings of a radio station that captivated him when he was 13:

And the record man said every one is a yellow Sun
Record from Nashville
And up north there ain't nobody buys them
And I said, but I will

And so the boy from the north fell in love with country music. Me, back in the mid-1960s, I liked some college radio station that came in from Fort Wayne, Indiana. I heard songs they didn't play on WABC in New York City. Indiana seemed like a cooler place than NYC. (Oddly, I still think that sometimes.)

I used to write down the names of the artists they played that I'd never heard before. I remember, listening that way, late at night, hearing "I Got You Babe" for the first time and wrote down "Sonny and Cher."

That was my little experience. Did you have anything like that?

Consider this:

Dewey Phillips was on the air in Memphis around 1950. He was an anomaly at the time: a white DJ spinning regional rhythm and blues hits for black audiences. Rick Wright says Phillips and his African American contemporaries up the dial on Memphis' WDIA helped elevate disc jockeying to an art form.

People like Nat Turner, a young B.B. King, and, one of Wright's favorites, Rufus Thomas. "Now, Rufus comes in, 'Hey baby, this is Rufus Thomas, WDIA Memphis, Tennessee, where you can cop a smile about a quarter mile provided you've got time and don't mind this drive time line we're gonna try.'

Wright says that one Nashville station, WLAC Nashville was owned by the Life and Casualty Insurance Company - L-A-C. He says that that station would take this music and this DJ style to places it had never been. He says the course of American cultural history was changed one Saturday.

"And they were playing, basically, records by Guy Lombardo or whatever and it was that era of a 50,000-watter trying to find itself with no audience," says Wright. "And there were some African American students from Fiske University who had gotten past the security and got up to the station and brought a bunch of 78s with them."

And they walked into the studio and started talking to the DJ. "Mr. Nobles, can you play some of our folks' records on your radio show?"

And Nobles said sure, hand them over. Records of Fats Domino and Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Etta James, Laverne Baker.

And he played them.

"All of sudden," says Wright, "the phone started to ring, and the letters and cards were coming from all over the place. And they established that night, one of the real, first, mainstream R&B formats on a major powerhouse radio station. WLAC 1510 Blues Radio Nashville, Tennessee. The only full time R&Ber at night with 50,000 watts."

At night, 50,000 watts get you very far. Bob Dylan has said he owes much of his musical inspiration to listening to WLAC as young teenager all the way up in Minnesota.

***

It was the "Moonstruck" clip that I blogged last night that set me off thinking about Cher and the first time I ever heard her sing. It was observed that I love Cher, and I confessed to my longstanding affection for the durable diva. I loved Cher since the first time I heard 'I Got You Babe' on a radio station from Fort Wayne, Indiana, I said.

I remembered answering some questionnaire at the time about what famous person I would like to be. It was 1965, so I was 14. I said Cher. And it wasn't just that I wanted to be a female pop star. I was entranced by the strong affection that Sonny and Cher showed each other when I saw them on TV.

I searched YouTube for an early appearance — perhaps their first national TV appearance — when the two were singing IGYB while sitting at a little table. They were petting and kissing — a real public display of affection. There are, of course, a lot of clips of them doing that song, but I couldn't find that one or any other where they were transgressively pawing at each other, the PDA I'd seen when I was just 14.

So let me go in a completely different direction and show you this instead:

I GOT YOU BABE

More Cloris... much more... shall I blot my lipstick first?

The marriage proposal — an example.

The new school "no tolerance" policy: no touching!

"They said the new policy means no high-fives and hugs, as well as horseplay of any kind."

"All hail Althouse!"

I'm #1... if you count it like this.

"You might be smart enough to play chez Althouse, but you have got to try much harder. Get out of the boys' club..."

"... and see if you have what it takes. Don't be a pussy."

I'm stirring up the comments over at Bloggingheads. Thought you'd like to know.

Cloris Leachman had epic sex with Gene Hackman and would have had sex with Ed Asner if he'd lost 3 more pounds.

The secrets, revealed at long last.

And by the way:


via videosift.com

Spam.

The comment spam has been awful these last 2 days. I'm talking about robotic commercial spam — in Chinese characters linking to commercial websites — not annoying trolls or anything. I hate to turn on comments moderation, because it disrupts the flow, but I may have to. I can't spend an hour a day deleting comments.

ADDED: I saw that it's possible to turn on moderation just for older posts, which is where the problem is, so this is a great solution for now.

The compact fluorescent bulbs scam.

At some point the light bulb over your head should go on.

Incandescently.

"I inhaled. Frequently. That was the point."

Here's a folky political protest song (via Nick Gillespie, who's not amused by Obama's flippant response to the marijuana question the other day):

In Britain, police target 200 children as potential terrorists.

Outrageous or quite justified?

The ["Channel project"]... asks teachers, parents and other community figures to be vigilant for signs that may indicate an attraction to extreme views or susceptibility to being "groomed" by radicalisers....

"One of the four bombers of 7 July was, on the face of it, a model student. He had never been in trouble with the police, was the son of a well-established family and was employed and integrated into society.

"But when we went back to his teachers they remarked on the things he used to write. In his exercise books he had written comments praising al-Qa'ida. That was not seen at the time as being substantive. Now we would hope that teachers might intervene, speak to the child's family or perhaps the local imam who could then speak to the young man."...

Once identified the children are subject to a "programme of intervention tailored to the needs of the individual". Sir Norman said this could involve discussions with family, outreach workers or the local imam, but he added that "a handful have had intervention directly by the police"...

"We are targeting criminals and would-be terrorists who happen to be cloaking themselves in Islamic rhetoric. That is not the same as targeting the Muslim community."

"It's an unnatural act for a human being."

"When you see Shane jump off a cliff it's impossible not to be overwhelmed by it."

"Lost ... control of the van"? I don't think so.

"A 29-year-old pregnant woman [Ysemny Ramos] was killed Friday in Manhattan when a van driver who was catcalling her and a co-worker lost control and plowed into them, police sources and witnesses said.... Cops arrested Keston Brown, 27, of the Bronx, and charged him with driving while intoxicated and possession of marijuana. Sources said Brown... was flirting with the women while driving by them. When they spurned him, he lost his temper — and control of the van, they said."

Harry Reid just called Chief Justice John Roberts a liar.

"Roberts didn’t tell us the truth. At least Alito told us who he was. But we’re stuck with those two young men, and we’ll try to change by having some moderates in the federal courts system as time goes on — I think that will happen."

***

1. Senator Reid, you need to quote the transcript of Roberts's confirmation hearings. What, exactly, are the lies you are talking about? I want citations, so I can check your assertion that Roberts was deceptive. Until I see the relevant quoates, my position is that you, Senator Reid, are the liar.

2. Apparently, the judges whose opinions track your political positions are, in your book, the "moderates." That is the lesson I think you are trying to teach people. It is a lesson that undermines the integrity of law. It goes right along with Barney Frank's recent, despicable assertion that Justice Scalia is a homophobe.

3. We're stuck with Harry Reid.

IN THE COMMENTS: Chip Ahoy said:

This post moves me to open Photoshop like a force of nature asserting itself as it does in Fargo, inexorably, ineluctably, unrelentingly, compellingly. Goth Reid:

Tweeted out.

Tired of Twitter. I find I haven't tweeted in a while, and I'm not going to force myself. This was probably my last tweet:

I think I may have stopped tweeting. I'm a blogger not a tweeter.

Responses:

OrinocoPat@annalthouse Obviously

drawncutlass@annalthouse Shades of Dr. McCoy! Damnit, Jim, I'm a blogger, not a tweeter!

rhymeswithwhen@annalthouse Truly a distinction, I think. I can tweet all day long, but blogging wears me out.

Lawyer_Tom@annalthouse Quitters never win, Ann. We are like your tweets. Don't go!

I'm not a twitterer. I'm a quitterer.

And what do you mean, you are like my tweets? You are infrequent and short? Sporadic and stingy?

To blog is to create a place for people to visit. I love that feeling. I have many visitors. Come into this room that is my new post and say what you like. Be interesting. Hang out with us!

On Twitter, there's just an endless trickle of trivia and that vague feeling of obligation to dribble into the trickle from time to time. But what is it to me? It's not a place where I am. It's that thing over there.

I want to be here.

ADDED: "The trouble with Twitter":

James T. Kirk: SPOCK! WHAT IS GOING ON HERE!

Spock: It appears that your computer has been infected and overrun by twitters.

Dr. Leonard McCoy: What in blue blazes is a twitter!

Spock: It was a primitive form of communication in the early twenty first century normally engaged in by adolescent boys in the basement of their parent’s homes....

More at the link.

Have some.

(Thanks to Irene and Ray.)

(Candinas Chocolatier.)

Justine Lai paints herself having sex with each of the Presidents, beginning with George Washington.

"I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. The presidency itself is a seemingly immortal and impenetrable institution; by inserting myself in its timeline, I attempt to locate something intimate and mortal. I use this intimacy to subvert authority, but it demands that I make myself vulnerable along with the Presidents. A power lies in rendering these patriarchal figures the possible object of shame, ridicule and desire, but it is a power that is constantly negotiated."

"Not only is the Obama administration planning on freeing some detainees on U.S. soil..."

"... it is also going to pay them to live here."

Oops.

Good.

If you were getting married, would you want a wedding?

If you had a wedding in the past, do you wish you'd skipped it? Do you wish you'd scaled it way down? OhioAnne thought I should ask — a propos of my impending — to use the word everyone seems to want to use — nuptials:

How many would do what they did again if given the choice? How many wanted to do it in the first place?

Personally, the last thing I want to have to think about on such a day is whether the DJ showed up or not. I would opt for my fiancee, the minimum witnesses required by law and the officiator. (I have no kids, but, if I did, I would add them - especially if they could function as the witnesses.)

Then I would go on an extended honeymoon in a warm location.

Six months or later, I would have a party for the masses to thank them for the well wishes. Hopefully, it could double as a housewarming party.

I love my family, but the focus on the day should be on two becoming one — not on making some nameless relative happy about who they are seated next to on the occasion.

I think honeymoons should be questioned as well. So much pressure! And you're exiling yourself in a strange place, away from everyone you know, wondering whether you chose a resort with the ideal romantic scenery and obsequious staff. Personally, I love normal life, really seeing and experiencing the details of it, and the cool thing about being married should be that you are sharing it with the one you love.

As for that wedding, we're talking about a second marriage for both of us, and we're pretty old. I don't think I could put on a good enough show to justify forcing a lot of people to travel, dress up, and celebrate or give the impression of celebrating, and I don't see the fun in putting myself in the position of wondering whether I need to fret about whether I can. Some people who read my blog (or watch me on Bloggingheads) might think I'm a glutton for attention, but why do you think I've found such satisfaction in on-line expression? Putting classroom teaching to the side, I'm no exhibitionist. I live a very private and unusually secluded life here in my remote outpost in Madison, Wisconsin.

A sign in the law school...

Natural breast appreciation art.

In China.

The crusader.

(Another pic from Ted's Toys.)

IN THE COMMENTS: Joan said:

I looked it up, wondering if it might be a suitable stand-in for Jeanne d'Arc, but that's too much of a stretch. If it had been closer, I would've asked if I could borrow it for my profile picture.

Chip Ahoy says:

Photoshop for you, crusader figurine Jeanneified.

"She is hot in the way she is not detached, shows her emotions, seems often to say whatever comes into her mind..."

"...gets publicly and quickly agitated, yet at the same time in the midst of this hotness, keeps cooly her private self to herself, reveals only what she wants to reveal, does not make a complete exhibition of herself, and is, I believe, both calculated and spontaneous, if that’s possible, about her outbursts and her feuds. An example of that is her going teasingly public about her pending marriage yet being selectively guarded about her fiancée. That hot cold tension is consistent with her apparent openness to getting *married* on this site, where a fairly meaningless (to her) ceremony and a site on the blogosphere beget each other, and she can maintain her commitment to a certain measured trashing of public/private distinctions, such as in vouching for increased public kissing."

From an interesting comment on that Bloggingheads called "Love in the Time of Commenters." Written by one Itzik Basman, who — for good or ill — has partaken of the media philosophy of Marshall McLuhan.

Mickey Kaus leaks a JournoList thread.

We've discussed JournoList here before. (Remember? It seemed to trigger Ezra Klein's bizarre tweet that there were "a lot" of anti-Semitic commenters on my blog.) There are 300 journalists hanging out with each other on the list. Is that a bad thing? Are they coordinating their stories, losing their independence and sharp edge? Well, they aren't so coordinated that they can all keep the list secret, and here's what Mickey got hold of. They seem pretty tedious and unattractive. I don't mind if they keep it private, very private. That said, if there's anything on the JournoList about me — some scurrilous charge of anti-Semitism, perhaps — please pass it on.

ADDED: "The JournoList Sure Has A Lot Of Anti-Semitic Commenters."

"I love you Barack Obama!" exclaims Stevie Wonder...

... in the middle of a cool medley on "American Idol." He also exclaims: "I love you 'American Idol!'" What song was that? Need to Google some words. Something about taking a pill that would make us sisters and brothers? I find this Popular Science "Geek Musician" interview:

I have this song that I wrote which is called All About the Love Again… And it says:

What if someone made a soda that caused everyone to love each other.
Ummm, oh yeah, sounds good, so good to me
And if just a tiny pill would make us see that we're all truly sisters and brothers
Ummm, oh yeah that sounds so nice to me

POPSCI: Is there anything you would ask president Obama to make a priority?

WONDER: You know, obviously there are so many things going on in the world and so many people coming at him about everything, because they think that it can all happen just like that.

So I'm just taking a low profile…And at the right time, I will give him the information that I have to share and introduce him to the people who reaching out to make a better condition for those who are physically challenged--whether they are blind, deaf or paraplegic or quadriplegic or whatever that might be.

"An 18-year-old has secretly painted a 60ft drawing of a phallus on the roof of his parents' £1million mansion in Berkshire."

"It was there for a year before his parents found out. They say he'll have to scrub it off when he gets back from travelling."

Marijuana "ranked fairly high," says Obama, who was presumably not high...

... when he said: "I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high, and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation. And I don't know what this says about the online audience..."

And you must be high if you think Obama will legalize marijuana.

***

Famous old quote: "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though."

The 3 Stooges movie will have the perfect Larry.

Sean Penn!

(Jim Carrey is Curly and Benicio Del Toro is Moe.)

IN THE COMMENTS: Balfegor said:

Why would someone even think a 3 Stooges remake would be a good idea? It would be like remaking something by Buster Keaton, or Charlie Chaplin -- the pleasure isn't in the concept or the plot or witty dialogue, it's in who's doing it, and their skill at slapstick and physical comedy, no?

Well, now, wait. What about this?



The original:

"This is an experiment... an exciting opportunity for me to look at a computer and get a snapshot of what Americans across the country care about."

Obama and his computer and us.

As of Thursday morning, more than 71,000 people had submitted more than 77,000 questions. Taking a page, perhaps, from reality television shows like American Idol, the White House has asked Americans to vote on their favorite questions; nearly 3 million votes have already been cast.

I have some questions: How can we make government more like "American Idol"? What other reality TV shows could government be patterned after? Could we — "Survivor"-style — be empowered to vote one person out of Washington D.C. each week?

It was a long journey.

(Thanks to Bill Korte for sending me this picture of Meade. It's really him. In 2005.)

"He makes you see what you take for granted. And we do that in our houses. We do that in our marriages. We do that with our children."

"He has ability to stop time and let you see it and to remember why you fell in love with it."

Adam Lambert sings "The Tracks of My Tears."

Discuss: the Elvisification, the falsetto...

ADDED: I love Smokey at 0:38 going "America! Look at my face!"

Should the President be working harder?

Excuse me if I don't find this as charmingly cute as the NYT does.

IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said:

"Mrs. Obama and her staff also visited Miriam’s Kitchen, a soup kitchen, where the first lady bumped into Bill Richardson, a 46-year-old homeless man. Mr. Richardson was so stunned that he could barely stammer thank you as Mrs. Obama scooped a helping of mushroom risotto onto his plate this month."

LOL Okay, so it's not that Bill Richardson, but the mental image was still funny.

AND: Glenn Reynolds answers my question — Should the President be working harder? — "I think he should take as much time off as he wants."

Rodrigo Díaz says:

Can you imagine the OUTRAGE, had GWB been this person with the brewski? The country is going to hell… This ass hat at a B-Ball game.

"You probably shouldn’t generalize from a single data point."

Indeed.

How bad and good can one man's luck be?

"Woman called Nutt over-run by squirrels."

Oonagh Nutt says: "Up close they are quite frightening - they look like puppy dogs with big hands, they growl and bark at you, they're vicious things. They'll go for you."

"Love in the Time of Commenters."

On Bloggingheads, Bob Wright wants to know all about what's been going on. Topics:

Ann gets engaged to one of her blog’s commenters
Is the internet full of shy, lonely men?
Are women always in it for the man’s money?
Ann accuses Obama of excessive frivolity
Should we be more freaked out about the economy?
Reviving the Althouse vs. BhTV commenter rivalry

I'll update with some juicy clips soon.

ADDED: The first clip, in which Bob speculates that Meade might be my sockpuppet. The clip ends with a surprising offer.



AND: I shock Bob with a very personal revelation:



AND: "All your commenters woo you, Ann."



AND: The test for how much you need to kiss in public:



IN THE COMMENTS: Mortimer Brezny said:

See? This is why Mortimer Brezny stopped blogging. He came on this damn blog to woo Ann into marrying him and all it got him was mockery from Trooper York and into flame wars with Simon Dodd. (For which I apologize, Simon.) Then some other commenter steals Mr. Brezny's idea and succeeds. I mean, all the defending I did of Ann was totally just a vain and pitiable attempt to get in the knickerbockers! Who cares about what Ron Bailey thinks! And it's Meade! Oh man, I could have put in so much less blogging effort! Gaaah! I mean, I threw Jessica Valenti through a plate glass window for Ann! And I broke her leg with a pipe! I mean, talk about full frontal feminism!

But at least this bloggingheads diavlog clears some things up. Ann is not dominant in her personal relationships. I guess that kills it, Simon. It kills it for me. I mean, I had fantasies, man. Mortimer had dirty, filthy fantasies. Mortimer came to the meetups to score, man! It hurts! The wooing I did here! The hardcore woo action that I put out here! I was devoting it up in here. I am fulminating with rage! Rage and fulmination and fire and brimstone! I mean, if I can't have Ann, no one else should! That is the cosmic rule, doesn't everyone KNOW that?

Anyway, I'm not a shy guy. I don't have any problems meeting women. I just use e-harmony. That's where the real sluts are. But, truly heartbroken. I am. Truly.

So: congratulations and stuff. To the happy couple. This post has all been performance art. Now I must go weep. And, I better get frontpaged for this crap.

Barney Frank: Justice Scalia "makes it very clear that he's angry, frankly, about the existence of gay people."

"If you read his opinion [in Lawrence v. Texas], he thinks it's a good idea for two consenting adults who happen to be gay to be locked up because he is so disapproving of gay people."

Well, Barney, I have read that opinion many times, and I know that you are either lying about having read it, lying about what Scalia wrote, or an embarrassingly incompetent reader. Here is the key passage:

Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means. Social perceptions of sexual and other morality change over time, and every group has the right to persuade its fellow citizens that its view of such matters is the best. That homosexuals have achieved some success in that enterprise is attested to by the fact that Texas is one of the few remaining States that criminalize private, consensual homosexual acts. But persuading one’s fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one’s views in absence of democratic majority will is something else. I would no more require a State to criminalize homosexual acts–or, for that matter, display any moral disapprobation of them–than I would forbid it to do so. What Texas has chosen to do is well within the range of traditional democratic action, and its hand should not be stayed through the invention of a brand-new “constitutional right” by a Court that is impatient of democratic change. It is indeed true that “later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress,”... and when that happens, later generations can repeal those laws. But it is the premise of our system that those judgments are to be made by the people, and not imposed by a governing caste that knows best.

That's plain old deference to the democratic process and a resistance to creative interpretation of constitutional text. There is nothing — absolutely nothing — to support the proposition that Scalia thinks it's a good idea to lock up gay people. It's the usual notion that judges shouldn't be basing their decisions on whether they think a statute is a good idea or not. It's the same point made by Justice Thomas (who, Frank says, is not a homophobe):

I write separately to note that the law before the Court today “is … uncommonly silly.” Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 527 (1965) (Stewart, J., dissenting). If I were a member of the Texas Legislature, I would vote to repeal it. Punishing someone for expressing his sexual preference through noncommercial consensual conduct with another adult does not appear to be a worthy way to expend valuable law enforcement resources.

Notwithstanding this, I recognize that as a member of this Court I am not empowered to help petitioners and others similarly situated. My duty, rather, is to “decide cases ‘agreeably to the Constitution and laws of the United States.’ ” And, just like Justice Stewart, I “can find [neither in the Bill of Rights nor any other part of the Constitution a] general right of privacy,” ibid., or as the Court terms it today, the “liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions,” ante, at 1.

Did you watch the Obama press conference? Me neither.

I'd had a busy day and wanted some trashy TV. I was irked that the Prez preempted "American Idol." So I watched last week's "Idol," which I'd missed when I was off on Spring Break. Today, the transcript is printed, for easy skimming, in the Washington Post. Skim along with me. Or let me skim for you:

... no quick fixes... no silver bullets... comprehensive strategy... jump-start job creation and put money in people's pockets... yesterday, I met with a man ... a tax cut to 95 percent of all working families... renewable sources of energy... there was a lot of outrage and finger-pointing last week... I'm as angry as anybody... the rest of us can't afford to demonize every investor or entrepreneur... We'll recover from this recession, but it will take time... let's look towards the future.... we're doing everything we can to reduce that deficit... All right? Thank you, everybody.

Crushed by Madoff: a dream of immortality through architecture.

Arakawa and Madeline Gins believed "that people degenerate and die in part because they live in spaces that are too comfortable. The artists' solution: construct abodes that leave people disoriented, challenged and feeling anything but comfortable." But they're victims of the Bernie Madoff scam, and they've had to close up shop.

They build buildings with no doors inside. They place rooms far apart. They put windows near the ceiling or near the floor. Between rooms are sloping, bumpy moonscape-like floors designed to throw occupants off balance. These features, they argue, stimulate the body and mind, thus prolonging life. "You become like a baby," says Mr. Arakawa....

Nobutaka Yamaoka, who moved [into a Gins-designed apartement] with his wife and two children about two years ago, says he has lost more than 20 pounds and no longer suffers from hay fever, though he isn't sure whether it was cured by the loft.

There is no closet, and Mr. Yamaoka can't buy furniture for the living room or kitchen because the floor is too uneven, but he relishes the lifestyle. "I feel a completely different kind of comfort here," says the 43-year-old video director. His wife, however, complains that the apartment is too cold. Also, the window to the balcony is near the floor, and she keeps bumping her head against the frame when she crawls out to hang up laundry, he says. ("That's one of the exercises," says Ms. Gins.)

Reminds me a little of this:



Anyway, is your life too comfortable? Is your comfy home aging you a bit too rapidly? Do you need a confusing building to drag you back to the challenges of babyhood?

Financial security is also a comfort of modern life. Perhaps it too is making you old.

Arakawa and Madeline: Why don't you welcome the discomfort wrought by Bernie Madoff? Why not rejoice at the rejuvenation?

And everyone: Revel in whatever disorientation comes your way.

"Wipe that f-----g s--t off your face."

Said the manager of the New York Palace Hotel to the bell captain on Ash Wednesday.

"Barack Obama extended the olive branch to Iran's leaders last Friday in a videotaped message praising a 'great civilization'..."

"... for 'accomplishments' that 'have earned the respect of the United States and the world.' The death of Iranian blogger Omid-Reza Mirsayafi in Tehran's Evin prison two days earlier was, presumably, not among the accomplishments the president had in mind."

"I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone who ever read her blog would want to meet her in person let alone marry her..."

A commenter over at Roy's place. Roy himself is being okay.

"When the argument turned to such First Amendment horrors as banning books..."

"... banning Internet expression, and banning even Amazon’s book-downloading technology, Kindle, the members of the Court seemed instantly to recoil from the sweep of arguments made by Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm L. Stewart."

I can't wait to read the transcript of the argument in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. It sounds as though Stewart may have made an advocacy blunder of historic proportion.

***

And how cool that Kindle got into the argument! I don't like my Kindle — because I need a sharper contrast (black on white) screen to feel good about it — but I love the technology of downloading books and want it to succeed. I would love to see this kind of technology unlock the Court's thinking and send it in the direction of greater freedom of speech.

ADDED: Here's the transcript (PDF). Justice Kennedy brings up the Kindle:

And I suppose it could even, is it the Kindle where you can read a book? I take it that's from a satellite. So the existing statute would probably prohibit that under your view?... Just to make it clear, it's the government's position that under the statute, if this Kindle device where you can read a book which is campaign advocacy, within the 60-30 day period, if it comes from a satellite, it's under -- it can be prohibited under the Constitution and perhaps under this statute?

And here's the NYT report on the argument:

The [government's] lawyer, Malcolm L. Stewart, said Congress has the power to ban political books, signs and Internet videos, if they are paid for by corporations and distributed not long before an election.

Mr. Stewart added that there was no difference in principle between the 90-minute documentary about Mrs. Clinton, “Hillary: The Movie,” and a 30-second television advertisement.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the government’s uncompromising position could have dire consequences for the McCain-Feingold law.

“If we think that the application of this to a 90-minute film is unconstitutional,” Justice Kennedy said, “then the whole statute should fall under your view because there’s no distinction between the two?”

Mr. Stewart said the two kinds of communications should rise or fall together, so long as each satisfied a test set out by the court in a decision in 2007. That decision said restrictions in the McCain-Feingold law applied only to communications “susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.”...

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked... whether a campaign biography in book form could be banned. Mr. Stewart said yes, so long as it was paid for with a corporation’s general treasury money, as opposed to its political action committee.

“That’s pretty incredible,” Justice Alito said.

Justice Alito replaced Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, an author of the 5-to-4 decision upholding the McCain-Feingold law in 2003.

So then, the question, I presume, is: How badly will the government lose?

AND: From Dahlia Lithwick:

Oh, Malcolm Stewart. Malcolm Stewart. With your Macbeth-y first name and your Macbeth-ier last name. You did not just say the government might engage in a teensy little bit of judicious, narrowly tailored book-banning, did you?

... Stewart clarifies that it wouldn't be banned, but a corporation could be barred from using its general treasury funds to publish such a book and would be required to publish it through a PAC.

The chief justice seeks to clarify that this would be so even in a 500-page book with only one sentence that contained express advocacy. Stewart cheerfully agrees. The chief justice wonders whether this would apply even "to a sign held up in Lafayette Park saying vote for so-and-so." Stewart doesn't quite say no.

A picture I didn't take.

Cool. Wow. Thanks.

"I look up, waiting for my friend, the one infused with love. There she is. See the tip of her blond head?"

"Oh, but wait, there’s another couple in love. Wow. It’s everywhere."

***

I love kissing in public. Come on, everyone! Do it today! Do it until somebody yells "Get a room!"

"As a general proposition, I think you certainly don’t want to use the tax code … to punish people."

Doesn't Obama deserve some points for moderation on this one?

IN THE COMMENTS: Jason (the commenter) wrote:

That's not what Obama said.

"And as a general proposition, I think you certainly don't wanna use the tax code to punish people."

Note that the ellipsis in the article seems to be indicating a confused pause. It does not indicate that part of the statement is missing.

Also, look at what Obama is saying.

"And" (there was a whole bunch more before we came to this statement)

"as a general proposition" (qualifying statement)

"I think" (qualifying statement)

"you" (not "I")

"certainly" (a double qualified certainly)

"don't wanna" (we often have to do things we don't WANT to do)

"use the tax code to punish people" (way at the end)

Drudge vs. Obama.

This is a particularly sharp composition of photo and headline. Drudge at his best.

The scourge of bachelorette parties in gay bars.

"The gay men are there because, well, they don't want to be around a lot of women"/"Gay men don't go to gay bars because we don't want to be around women."

Hey, Dan, he said "a lot."

***

Do I need to make an "a lot" tag?

***

Thanks to Peter Hoh for emailing that link.

"Obscene, but absolutely hilarious."

According to Right Wing News.

Okay, now I know what's right-wing hilarious. And I'm a little scared.

Especially the part that got me thinking about egg salad.

IN THE COMMENTS: The wonderful Bissage:

I can’t watch the video right now. I’m probably not the only one, so let’s see if something else might suffice:

Bill Bennett walks into an upscale D.C. nightspot and is surprised to see Pat Buchanan sitting at the bar eating an entire chicken. He watches in amazement as Mr. Buchanan tears into the hapless bird and doesn’t stop until all that remains is one chicken wing.

Mr. Bennett says, “You know, Pat, I can’t help but notice you ate that entire bird except for the right wing.”

Mr. Buchanan wipes the slobber and chicken bits from his face and says, “Well, there’s a reason for that but it has nothing to do with my right-wing political inclinations.”

And with that, the ghost of William F. Buckley appears out of thin air and kicks them both in the balls. They double over in agony and fall to the floor. Mr. Buckley sits down at the bar and orders an egg salad sandwich.

The End.

The Spring Break Nostalgia Café.

"Are you punch-drunk?"

Asks Steve Kroft as Obama keeps giggling.

(And what's wrong with Kroft? He sounds drunk.)

"It’s complex decisions, the ones that involve lots of information, that benefit the most from unconscious emotional processing."

"The conscious brain can only handle a very limited amount of information at one time — seven digits, plus or minus two. Unconsciously, however, you can process tons of information. It’s these complex decisions — like choosing a car, an apartment, or a leather couch — that often require the rational brain to turn off to some degree."

Jonah Lehrer on how we decide.

Could he do a Bloggingheads with Justice Scalia?

***

And here's the Bush/Obama part:

So if our gut is best at weighty decisions, a leader ought to think, “Should we go to war? Yeah, I’m feeling pretty good about this”?

Well, here’s the big caveat, and this is maybe the main distinction between Obama and Bush. There’s been extensive research over the last few decades about the danger of certainty, about believing you’re right. What that causes the brain to do is ignore all the evidence that suggests you’re wrong. We clearly tend to filter the world to conform to our ideology, to our preconceived notions. So if I had to identify one flaw of the Bush administration, it’s not that simply Bush trusted his gut instincts or that he was a “decider.” It was that he and his entire administration fell victim to the certainty trap. And I think you saw that very clearly with the Iraq war and WMDs. They believed they knew that Saddam Hussein had them. And so they ignored lots of relevant evidence and dissenting voices telling them that there were no WMDs. It wasn’t simply his gut instincts that led him astray, it was the fact that he didn’t seek out those dissident voices. And that’s a very natural human flaw, one of the frailties of the human brain. It’s also why liberals watch MSNBC and conservatives watch Fox News. It’s nice to have one’s beliefs reinforced. But it’s dangerous when leading a country.

"From the Mixed Up Twitter Files of Ashton E. Kutcher."

More evidence that — as previously noted — Twitter screws with your ethics.

Andrew Sullivan: "There’s a case for feeling that Obama is floundering."

"[T]wo months after a president has taken office in the middle of a global financial and economic crisis, as he grapples with two unending wars and a battered constitution, the whole idea of a definitive judgment is loopy. It’s also likely to be wrong."

Obama's immensely exuberant fan struggles as his idol deflates. Steady now. Obama was always only a man...

Does Obama not know who's president of France? Or is he intentionally insulting Sarkozy?

"'I am certain that we will be able to work together, in the coming four years, in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world."

Written to Jacques Chirac.

The suicide's baby commits suicide (at the age of 47).

"[Sylvia] Plath’s suicide in effect froze her children in time so that in the public memory they remained a one-year-old and a two-year-old lying in their cots, carefully sealed off from the gas leaking over their mother in the room next door. [Ted] Hughes did everything that he could to shield them from the increasingly lurid interest in their mother and did not tell them that she had killed herself until they were teenagers."

Self-murder and its aftereffects.

"While this crisis was caused by banks taking too much risk, the danger now is that they will take too little."

Geithner's plan.

ADDED at 8:52 a.m. Central Time: Politico:

Overheard: A conversation between two reporters at the White House after Tim Geithner's morning pen and pad briefing.

"I survived Geithner. I can survive anything," one reporter said.

"He didn't exactly instill confidence, did he?" the other responded

But the stock market is up. Right now at least.

For the annals of anti-Althousiana.

It's Jesse at Pandagon. I clicked his profile. Jesse Taylor. But no picture. I wanted a picture because it seemed really relevant to the issue at hand. So I did a Google image search and came up with this:



Not so sure I want to pick a fight with him.

ADDED: Actually, the blogger Jesse Taylor looks like this. You can do your own snark. I'm living on love.

Looking ahead.

It's better with 2:

Lucky 13.

Has Friday the 13th been good to you this year?

500 miles later, I'm back in Madison.

Did you understand the previous post? If not, the answer — along with much congratulations and debate — appears in the comments, notably here. Let there be no doubt about it: A blogger — Althouse — is engaged to be married to a man who began his connection to her as a commenter on her blog. After 4+ years of writing at each other, we met in real life and found real love.

ADDED: Here I am on July 25, 2008, expressing a near obsession with solitude:



IN THE COMMENTS: An Edjamikated Redneck says:

My congratulations to you both!

My only concern is whether Ohio has gained a Law Professor, or has Wisconsin gained a good Ohio man?

Or has Indiana gained the betrothed?

Although 250 miles one way is a long commute.

Later, he says:

I just heard that Xavier (in Cincinnati, but no law school) beat Wisconsin in the NCAA.

Guess that answers my question!

Goodbye to Cincinnati.

It's been lovely.



Scenic.



Beautiful.



Classic.

"Why Do Liberals Hate Ann Althouse?"

The conservative GayPatriot asks:

The thing I don’t get about this hatred of Althouse is that she is kind of like the South Park of blogging. She’s witty, directing her snark at pretty much anything she finds amusing. Is is that leftists in the blogosphere today are so humorless so self-righteous that they can’t abide the least bit of mockery, criticism or a combination of both?

Or, maybe it’s since they don’t have George W. Bush to kick around any more, they’ve decided to start going after prominent blogresses?

Perhaps it’s something else. Maybe Klein has a case of ADS (Althouse Derangement Syndrome), a syndrome afflicting partisans who can’t understand how a blogress can gain a following without subscribing to any ideology.

What they don't get is that I am a pure blogger, really a blogger, showing you what blogging is. I don't think they really are bloggers. I don't think they really are journalists either. I'm called deranged or whatever when I'm riffing in a bloggerly style that they obviously don't understand or appreciate. They are journalists posing as bloggers, mucking up their journalism and simultaneously writing dull blogs.

"Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans’ anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts..."

"... his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed."

Frank Rich says Obama's "Katrina moment" is here.

"An intense, 6-month campaign of Predator strikes in Pakistan has taken such a toll on Al Qaeda..."

"... that militants have begun turning violently on one another out of confusion and distrust... The pace of the Predator attacks has accelerated dramatically since August, when the Bush administration made a previously undisclosed decision to abandon the practice of obtaining permission from the Pakistani government before launching missiles from the unmanned aircraft. Because of its success, the Obama administration is set to continue the accelerated campaign despite civilian casualties that have fueled anti-U.S. sentiment and prompted protests from the Pakistani government."

Another opportunity for me to use my "Obama is like Bush" tag. Would Obama have initiated this, or does he simply have the sense to continue it?

"The media have exploited her and she has exploited them, and it seems to have worked very well for both of them."

The reality TV star, Jade Goody — dead at 27.

"Meta question. Is a tweet the equal of a blog post as cause for offense to be taken?"

"For a tweet, it's pretty normal to mention an association that pops into your head, while for a post one would want to conduct some research." Asks Ben Masel.

So Twitter is a special place for bullshit and lies?

The Sycamore Café.

"Café" in the post title signifies an open thread, where you can write about whatever you want, including how positively entrancing you find sycamore trees photographed through a fisheye lens.

"Did Ezra Klein post anti-Semitic comments to set up Ann Althouse?"

A fair post title?

Romulus, Remus, and Althouse.

Do you understand the inscription?



"Anno X." Get it?

ADDED: Here's the Smithsonian's info on the statue, which is in Eden Park in Cincinnati:

The original image of this ancient Etruscan she-wolf, owned by the Capitoline Museum in Rome, dates from 500 B.C. (The original Etruscan babies were lost long ago and were replaced during the Renaissance period with the present images of Romulus and Remus, which accounts for the difference in sculptural styles.) The she-wolf is the symbol of Rome and is known as the 'Lupa Romana,' or the 'Wolf of Rome,' because she is credited with saving the lives of Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome....

The replica of the Capitoline Museum's wolf was given to the City of Cincinnati by the Premier of Italy, Benito Mussolini, through the local chapter of the Sons of Italy. The "Anno X" in the inscription refers the tenth year of Mussolini's regime. The sculpture was given in recognition of the fact that Cincinnati is the only American city to bear the name of a Roman hero, the Roman general Cincinnatus.

AND: Let's take a closer look at those breasts:

The worst that could happen.

Winter cover crop.

About those Cincinnati sandwiches.

Trooper York has quite a picture — in a post that's about the Althouse Cincinnati meet-up (which I talk about minimally, with pictures, here). In Trooper's comments:

An Edjamikated Redneck said...

Now dag nab it Trooper; I ate the Hot Brown (which was actually more like a Hot White -- being chicken & all and not the original Roast Beef -- but the chicken is healthier, not that I'm worried about my health, but... Where was I? Oh, yeah).

(Ha ha. Hot White. Here's my pic of the Hot (supposedly) Brown.)

Any way, it was not a crap sandwich as you have portrayed (yeah it did look pretty wild when it came out of the kitchen with a knife stuck in it -- and this was a classy place; well classier anyway -- I mean it is usually the dives where something comes out of the kitchen with a knife in it- and its usually the cook... Where was I? Oh, yeah).

It was a pretty good sandwich (I mean the comments over at Althouse; Heart attack on a bun! It was CHICKEN for cryin' out loud! It’s the original white meat! Not like it was pork or something… Where was I? Oh, yeah).

And I was with some classy folks (not that I would meet and tell you understand, but you know Althouse was there; how much classier can you get? And the place actually served long neck PBRs! Do you expect a place like that to serve a crap sandwich? I mean hell, it’s not the Congressional Dining Room for Pete’s sake! I mean there they KNOW a carp sandwich when they serve one… Where was I? Oh, yeah).

Carp sandwich?

So, I want y’all to lay off my dinner; it was a great place and a helluva good time (you know the place has been open since 1861? My Great-Granddad ran a hotel on that block in the 1870’s; most likely he probably had at least one beer there himself, back in the day. He was German ya know we seem to have some sort of reputation as beer drinkers… Where was I? Oh, yeah).

Redneck responds to Darcy's request for details about the meet-up:

Any way Darcy, as much I would like to accommodate you and spill the beans on last night (now there’s a meal that would deserve comments! What if I would have had a plate of beans and rice? Not like a place classy as that, and on the northern side of the river would even serve beans, but… Dag nab it; did it again! Where was I? Oh, yeah).

A gentleman never tells the details. We had a good time, ate a good meal and all parted amicably.

One detail I will spill; Not only did I get to meet Althouse; I also got to meet Silvio.

And he took me at the light. I got to admit THAT was not the highlight of the evening (no redneck, even us edjamikated ones, like to admit that we lost a drag race, but her ‘chauffer’ caught me flat-footed trying to retune the radio when the light changed. First I knew the light was green was when I heard the roar of an Audi’s exhaust… Where was I? Oh, yeah).

The End.

Ha ha. Makes me think of this:

Protein Wisdom on what Ezra Klein said about my commenters.

Jeff G. — linking to yesterday's post of mine — said:

JournaList is keeping an eye on your behavior.

(Note: it's JournoList.)

I wonder, are they putting together a dossier on those sites that, you know, traffic in hate?

Because that might come in useful to some, especially in a climate wherein the Fairness Doctrine is ascendant.

Why Larry Charles shaved off his beard.

"'It was time. I think other people's reaction is much more radical than my own. They look at me like the Elephant Man now. They're like, "What happened to you?"... [I]t's ironic that I had to shave my beard to hide myself. I took those things off and people don't know who I am.'... On the other hand, he learned while collaborating with Sacha Baron Cohen on the wildly successful Borat movie how image and influence can go hand in hand. Before that he often looked like 'a dirty, hippy-like homeless person'... One day while directing an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, he went to grab some food and was accosted by a guard. 'He was like throwing me off the set,' he says, laughing. 'The AD (assistant director] had to come over and go, "Wait a minute, that's the director!"'"

Now, Obama has the Special Olympians taunting him: "That's not very good. It wouldn't beat us. He needs to practice."

The life of a President is not easy. All the criticism. Now, even the mentally disabled are taking their shots.

So much good will squandered:

[David] Axelrod's daughter, Lauren, is a longtime Special Olympian who has competed in swimming and track and field events. His wife, Susan, was part of a delegation led last month by Vice President Joe Biden to the Special Olympics World Winter Games in Boise, Idaho.

One punchline tossed on Leno far overshadows all that real connection that his administration had here. And it's especially sad because (I don't think) Obama was just spouting a new joke that sprang into his head. I think it was a scripted punchline.

Was the Special Olympics wisecrack scripted?
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AND: He gave Sarah Palin a big opening:

"This was a degrading remark about our world's most precious and unique people, coming from the most powerful position in the world," fumed former GOP veep pick and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whose youngest son, Trig, has Down syndrome.

"These athletes overcome more challenges, discrimination and adversity than most of us ever will," she added.

"If you are right that change has come, where is that change? What is the sign of that change? Make it clear for us what has changed.''

"Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed overtures from President Barak Obama...."

Preliminary observation: Yikes. The New York Times is misspelling the President's name in the first sentence of a lead news story. Is doom near?

Primary observation: Obama charmed us American's with his hopey-changey rhetoric. He even made (some of) us think that he would transform world politics by talking the right way. Like this:



But — it's no surprise — they aren't buying it:

In his most direct assessment of Obama and prospects for improved ties, Khamenei said there will be no change between the two countries unless the American president puts an end to U.S. hostility toward Iran and brings ''real changes'' in foreign policy.

''They chant the slogan of change but no change is seen in practice. We haven't seen any change."...

... Khamenei asked how Obama could congratulate Iranians on the new year and accuse the country of supporting terrorism and seeking nuclear weapons in the same message.

''As long as the U.S. government continues the same policies and directions of the previous 30 years, we will be the same nation of the past 30 years,'' Khamenei said. ''The Iranian nation can't be deceived or threatened.''

Of course not. And it was silly ever to think that it could.

About that prostitution thread.

Blake summarizes.

"It's hard to imagine what would push me to having sex. I'm not afraid of sex, it's just not something I want to do."

"That's probably why I delve into the world of science fiction and Transformers, where sex isn't an issue at all."

"Ann Althouse sure has a lot of anti-semitic commenters."

Ezra Klein tweets — without a link to any particular comment.

Well, Ezra, I do not delete comments based on viewpoint. I believe in the marketplace of ideas, and to the extent that there are some anti-Semitic comments here, there are many more comments that strike back. Is it not better to have scurrilous ideas out in the sunlight where they can die?

ADDED: In fact, Ezra Klein owes me a correction. He has published a lie about my blog. Alternatively, let him list the commenters he's writing about — I can search their old comments and see if there is anything that deserves to be called anti-Semitic — and we will see if his list constitutes "a lot." I think he cannot do it, so he really ought to put up a correction immediately.

AND: Glenn Reynolds asks: "Was the tweet pre-vetted on JournoList?" Well, I'd like to know whether they are defaming me on JournoList.

AND: Ezra partially apologizes.

AND: Jac asks Ezra: "Do you think Peter Beinart & Jonah Goldberg are anti-Semitic?"

More Cincinnati food: Mongomery Inn and Arnold's Bar and Grill.

1. Lunch, yesterday, at Montgomery Inn. The side dish chosen with the ribs was "onion straws." These were thin sliced onion rings, which were not anywhere near as good as the ribs but which I enjoyed well enough:



2. Dinner was the blogger-commenter meet-up downtown at Arnold's Bar and Grill. I've already shown you the hot brown. And I won't post the group photo because not everyone wants his photo on the blog. But here's a photograph of the room:

We had such high hopes for maggots.

They may not be the miracle healers we'd thought.

Christopher Dodd: "Had I known at the time that there were any A.I.G. bonuses involved..."

"... that this was somehow going to assist in that matter — I would have rejected it completely."

An impossibly lame excuse. It's his job to know. He holds a public trust. Which he doesn't deserve.