BP to plug oil well with Rush Limbaugh

Fleshy protuberances would ensure snug fit

Sounds like a plan.

More of this Van Hollen non-story

Shocker: Republican Attorney General is on GOP mailing list

The Journal-Sentinel has also reported that Van Hollen had contacts with a GOP political consultant in Texas while deciding whether to sue to block the health care law.

Pure speculative innuendo.

How about some evidence of J.B. Van Hollen grappling in the throes of indecision at that time. I'll bet money he'd already formed an opinion on the matter long before these e-mails were transmitted.

None of them indicate otherwise.

Leading pundit describes news item

Over the past ten years, U.S. immigration "has become a known conversational reality crisis," Peggy Noonan, a Ronald Reagan-era speechwriter, informed some other pundits today on the teevee.

Feingold opponent will debate self

At 10:15 am, Dave Westlake, candidate for the U.S. Senate, will be introduced. His Republican challenger, Terrence Wall, is unable to attend. Westlake will participate and face questions from the moderators.

What, no Richard Leinenkugel either?

Woman escapes kitchen, imperils GOP support

Republican candidate for governor Mark Neumann is finished, Journal-Sentinel political calumnist Patrick McIlheran can now report, based on the findings of an anonymous goof calling himself "Dad."

Why? Because Neumann, filling in for a local radio bloviator, brought his wife along into the studio. Worse, gawd forbid, Neumann "frequently asked for her input and/or approval on his thoughts."

Meanwhile, an April Rasmussen poll showed Mark Neumann having gained ground and running neck-and-neck with his Republican rival.

Mr. McIlheran's impeccable reportage is award-winning.

AZ governor previews constitutional defense

Told to Faux News:

"You know Arizona has been under terrorist attacks, if you will, with all of this illegal immigration that has been taking place on our very, very porous border," Brewer said.

Told to Congress:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion ...

There you go: it's an organized terrorist Invasion.

Kind of like the "abortion Holocaust."

Mental illness is a liberal conspiracy

Says — who else — Wisconsin State Senator Glenn Grothman.

No, I'm the Reagan Republican

"I'm Brian, and so's my wife."

An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Sen. Feingold presented himself as a conservative Reagan Republican. The story should have said candidate Richard Leinenkugel presented himself as a conservative Reagan Republican.

— Chippewa Falls (WI) Herald

It's funny because Leinenkugel the sudden Reaganite is a former member of the detested liberal Democrat Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle's cabinet, now running in the Republican primary for the opportunity to oppose Russ Feingold in the November election.

Since Leinenkugel formally announced his ambitions earlier this week and on account of that résumé, he's been mercilessly attacked by the conservative True Believers as a "Republican In Name Only," and tarred with the disparaging Freeperish moniker, "RINOkugel."

Much of that opposition, it seems to me, arises from the fact that he's got lots of money and instant name recognition and is by all appearances considerably more competent than either of his two current GOP rivals, Terrence Wall and Dave Westlake.

That is, the local conservative Twit-terers aren't exactly renowned as the sharpest knives in a drawer. Unless they want to get trounced in November, Leinenkugel's probably their best bet against Feingold. He's certainly the least clownish of the three potential candidates.

But apparently the successful GOP candidate will need to present his credentials to the base as being slightly to the right of Attila the Hun.

And then move back toward Genghis Khan for the general election.

"Health care wasn't much of a debate. It was back room deals made by Senators," Leinenkugel said.

What a silly talking point. Those bills were in Congress — and the country heard about virtually nothing else — for 18 months. And it's comically disingenuous for an aspiring Senator to assail that chamber over "back room deals." The Senate operates on back room deals.*

* See, e.g., Robert Caro's marvelous account.

White person fails IQ test

I don't think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level ...

Harvard law student (which you have to pass an IQ test to be).

Come on, she was only saying she didn't think that that possibility was a controversial opinion for her personally to espouse.

I don't believe you can even determine "race" from genetic material.

Republican proposes unique immigration solution

Deport U.S. citizens born to inadequately ensouled parents

Shorter Ken Blackwell

Stewart: How, specifically, has Obama subverted the Constitution?
Blackwell: Buh buh buh buh buh buh buh tee hee hee!

Part 1 @ 6:45

And that's about the full extent of his "argument."

So much for that vacuous slogan

Gift keeps on giving.

Gillian the Plumber

Oh dearie, dearie me.

She predicted it, in her hesitation about complaining of "Eastern European" immigrants gobbling up the unemployment benefits.

Stateside conservatives should make a meal of this: your typical leftist politician's condescension toward the salt of the Earth, etc.

BBC: "Gone quite horribly wrong."

Speaker collapses in fear of FFRF lawsuit

"Thank you Jesus, for your death."

*THUD*

Another victim of the secular progressive Kulturkampf and the Supreme Court's incoherent Establishment Clause jurisprudence.*

* [eta] As if on cue, and proving truth in sarcasm:

KENNEDY, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which ROBERTS, C. J., joined, and in which ALITO, J., joined in part. ROBERTS, C. J., filed a concurring opinion. ALITO, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. SCALIA, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which THOMAS, J., joined. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which GINSBURG and SOTOMAYOR, JJ., joined. BREYER, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

Had to take a shoe off to keep track of that.

("I didn't know we had so many justices," Rehnquist quipped.)

It's notable that Justice Sotomayor has aligned herself with Justice Stevens, the closest thing to a strict separationist since Hugo Black.

A wise Latina, indeed.

Salazar v. Buono (.pdf, 71 pgs.)

Van Hollen counting on GOP to sue Obama

"So a 'no' from the assembly, senate and the governor?"

J.B. VAN HOLLEN, WISCONSIN ATTORNEY GENERAL:
I think with the political climate not just in Wisconsin but nationally the prognosis for one of the Republicans getting elected [governor in 2010] is high. Both of them made it very, very clear they would give me the approval to file the lawsuit, and so hopefully one of them will get elected and we'll be able to proceed after the first of the year.

He tells Greta.

Also: JBVH won't let OWN waive attorney general-client privilege

Mr. Manzi’s public flogging

More crack-up.

What do they expect: Their leaders are Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. It's not about elitism. It's about ignorance, lying, and pandering.

Creationists debunk Shroud of Turin

Radiometric dating works, suddenly.

Advertent expletives

Boy, that Timberwolf.

Even isolated utterances can be made in "pander[ing,] ... vulgar and shocking" manners, and can constitute harmful "'first blow[s]'" to children. It is surely rational (if not inescapable) to believe that a safe harbor for single words would "likely lead to more widespread use of the offensive language."

— Antonin Scalia

The boat people, from Thunder Bay

Bet you didn't know about them:

He is near the Canadian border, he was appointed a prosecutor, but Republican Congressional candidate Sean Duffy refuses to answer whether or how he would enforce the Republican anti-immigration law just passed, with strong racial connotations, in Arizona.

WisDems, in apparent all-seriousness.

I got two words for you

Shut the hell up.

TX GOP official is the go-to Commerce Clause guy

St. John said Taffora was not available for an interview but wouldn’t give a reason why.

Interesting little tidbit.

The wit and wisdom of William Kristol

I doubt that it violates the Constitution. If it does, it's a matter of federal preemption against State law.

— Faux News Sunday

Details, details. Next up, Arizona declares war on Iran.

On teh web: Refried swastikas.

Why Patty can't read

I think Patty can read, he just prefers not to. And that includes the award-winning scribe's non-reading of his own hyperlinks.

The troupe says it got the name from a Che Guevara quote about how America is a monstrousness to be fought.

Well, no. They said they got it from the Cuban essayist José Martí, who was dead 30 years before Che Guevara was born.

Martí was astonished by the "inviolable right of freedom of speech which all U.S. citizens possessed." Martí applauded the United States' Constitution which allowed freedom of speech to all its citizens, no matter what political beliefs they had.

Monstrousness, that Constitution, whose fundamental democratic precepts José Martí felt should be adopted south of the border.

But Martí wasn't quite as enamored with U.S. foreign policy, imperialist as it was toward Latin America in the 19th century. Not that you'd ever hear Patrick McIlheran criticize government policy or even individual political leaders personally (except for always).

Or publish a correction, invented pagan gods forbid.

Here's a question: Would it constitute performance art if you went and, nauseated by the enormity of the waste [a $25K stimulus check], upchucked along the parade route?

Perhaps, but guess who would have to hose down the sidewalk.

National Day of Pretzels ruled constitutional

Pretzels date to 610 AD in France. Monks baked thin strips of dough into the shape of a child's arms folded in prayer.

Then again maybe not.

The freak show will be merchandised

Rachel Hamil, a home-schooled 17-year-old running a booth, smiled and pointed to one of the more popular pins: SOMEWHERE IN KENYA, A VILLAGE IS MISSING ITS IDIOT.

Irony is well and truly dead.

Diversity mocked

"Will Obama pick the former [Clinton] deputy assistant attorney general for the criminal division (Merrick Garland), the former [Clinton] deputy assistant attorney general for the antitrust division (Diane Wood) or the former [Clinton] associate White House counsel (Elena Kagan)?" Kerr wondered.

Mark Tushnet: What am I, chopped liver?

Pontiff considers strategy to avoid UK arrest

September visit could be canceled — Torygraph

Senior Papal aides suggested the British Foreign Office had not taken strong enough disciplinary action against those responsible for the document, which suggested the Pope should open an abortion clinic, bless a homosexual marriage and launch his own range of condoms while he is here.

Those aren't as good as the Foreign Office wag's recommendation the Pope "do forward rolls with children to promote healthy living."

The perpetrators were surreptitiously transferred to another parish.

Also: Milwaukee civil suit "illegitimate," sez Vatican

(Op-ed) Page under construction

Writes an Iowa attorney* in a Milwaukee paper:

The problem lies in the fact that the courts have read into the Constitution two religion clauses when there is in fact only one — "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." . . . The only way to consistently protect all aspects of religious liberty is to read it as one unified clause prohibiting religious discrimination by the government.

That's one unique solution, I suppose. It ignores the fundamental tenets of English grammar, but what the heck. Let's apply a similar rule to the federal law at issue and forget about the commas:

The President shall issue each year a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.

So the praying to God may take place only at churches, although you don't actually have to sit or stand near anybody else. That doesn't exactly solve the problem, however. In fact, it makes it even worse.

* Who, along with nearly every other editorial commentator in Christendom, claims the court found the National Day of Prayer to be unconstitutional. That isn't the case. The court found that a significant component in the method by which the establishment of a National Day of Prayer came about to be unconstitutional. To wit, Congress made a law, a brute fact that not even a single-clause reading of the First Amendment can successfully eradicate.

NRO reminscent of PRC: David Frum

Canuckian ex-pat's painful ascent to redemption continues

Two Corner [McIlheran's favored news source] contributors complained about Jim Manzi's "tone." Mark Levin is the most vituperative radio host this side of Mike Savage — but imagine anyone at The Corner complaining about Levin's tone!

Here's the backstory: Adventures in Bubble World.

Entertaining stuff. I'm nearly ashamed to admit I actually read Mark Levin's earlier "book," Men In Black.* Complete and utter garbage and barely suitable for birdcage-lining. It's too bad I hadn't seen this first.

There's also an .mp3 somewhere on the internets featuring Levin screaming about (or at?) Keith Olbermann's penis for half an hour. It's absolutely horrifying. Levin is a respected conservative intellectual.

* There has been at least one woman on the Supreme Court since 1981. The title alone is a pretty good indicator of Levin's scholarship.

UW med students examined human body

Of indeterminate gender, but dean said not to attend ball

Erick Erickson out-Palins Palin

Sarcasm FAIL:
Billy Graham's Son Is Too Christian For Barack Obama's Army

Apparently these prominent spokespersons of the right-wing would wish to see Franklin Graham starring in another terrorist video.

It's mordantly amusing that Mr. Graham the Junior considers himself an authority on what constitutes "True Islam" (it's "evil" and "wicked"), which he claims requires "murder[ing] your children if you think they've committed adultery or something like that."

Honor killing is an atavistic cultural institution that exists within a variety of religious traditions and it certainly predates Islam.

There is divine guidance in the Book of Deuteronomy (22:20-21) whereby if the father of the bride cannot produce evidence of her virginity (in the form of bloodstained bedsheets) then she must be brought outside where the devout can stone her to death.

Deuteronomy would be Graham's book, not al-Zawahiri's.

Come to think of it, Franklin Graham is an atavistic cultural institution. And CNN recently hired Erick Erickson as a political commentator, whether as a serious representative of modern conservative thinking or as a deliberate parody, it isn't clear.

As for Palin, she evidently finds it appropriate and even wonderful for the Pentagon to present Graham fils behind a national podium as an official spiritual leader while its armies are engaged in the Islamic republics of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which should give some further indication of the depth of her grasp on foreign policy issues.

It's little wonder Democrats support her presidential aspirations.

Atheist devil worshippers ruining everything

Barrett likely to succeed Doyle

Stephen Baldwin needs your silver and your gold

As the Holy Scripture commands it:

Now it's up to the Christians of the world to save him so he can yell at people some more and still pay for soul-patch wax and pouting cream.

All major credit cards in lieu of precious metals.

The Democrat has steadily been gaining ground

GOPers Scott Walker, Alf Landon within margin of error
Friday PM-release Rasmussen Poll: WI GOV 2010

Time to fire up the "nonpartisan" WPRI Survey-Sez machine.*
* Rotary 'phone / Literary Digest subscribers only

Jack Craver's courageous public service

For one thing, Jack Craver deserves a medal for slogging through a virtual Annapurna of pretentious tedium and producing a relatively demure profile of Ann Althouse at the Isthmus yesterday. For another, it elicited the following comment at Althouse's blog:

From looking at her vita, it appears as if Professor Althouse has not published any serious legal scholarship since 2005. Instead, it appears she is spending her time watching American Idol and blogging about it. Whether her blog brings in a lot of money or not is beside the point. The point is that she is a tenured professor, holds an endowed chair, is paid a salary commensurate with that position [reportedly $158K], and sure doesn’t seem to be producing much in the way of scholarship that taxpayers can see as a return on their substantial investment in her.

Which is to say, the prototypical Tea-Republican object of scorn.

Palin/Grothman 2012

Because of a few angry feminists ...

Democrats will turn America into a country like Africa.

— State Senator Glenn Grothman

Apparently he plays well in West Bend.

That informed electorate

Besides her ruling, as was pointed out many times in the previous blogs, was not based in law. The entitlement cause only applies to laws and the National Day of Prayer is not a law. If it was a law, Obama would not have been able to cancel it last year.

— FRS

Makes me want to pray.

That's not what's hard to understand

We find it hard to understand U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Crabb's ruling that Congress designating a day of prayer "establishes" religion in the United States.

That isn't what she ruled. Has anybody read her decision, or what?

Crabb, whose Western District Court is based in Madison, said that the National Day of Prayer violates the First Amendment of the Constitution ...

No, she did not. Oy vey. What's the point.

Obama goes through the motions

The appeals, to be precise:

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that defendants President Barack Obama and White House Press Secretary Robert L. Gibbs hereby appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from this Court's Judgment of April 20, 2010 as well as all other opinions, orders, and rulings that merge into that judgment, including, but not limited to, this Court's Opinion and Order dated April 15, 2010 and this Court's Opinion and Order dated March 1, 2010.

The latter is U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb's granting the FFRF standing to sue on the question of the constitutionality of the particular federal statute, but denying its standing to challenge the constitutionality of "prayer proclamations generally."

He might have better luck getting that reversed, although the opinion depends heavily on the Seventh Circuit's own precedent.

It is here (.pdf; 49 pgs.).

Judge Crabb's decision is wrong, just because

eta — Obama goes through the motions

Here's a couple of Marquette law professors in mutual agreement over their insistence that United States District Judge Barbara Crabb's recent decision in FFRF v. Obama is "wrong," except without either one of them offering the least shred of illumination as to why.

In the meantime we can only speculate.*

Presumably the objections to Judge Crabb's verdict that a federal law ordering the president to announce a national day of prayer violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment are based in a notion of historical validation: the claim that if some government-directed religious practice is sufficiently ancient (1988?) then it's somehow exempted from an unequivocal constitutional prohibition.

This was the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist's preferred tactic of manipulating the First Amendment's plain textual declaration of "make no law" into becoming "make some laws" (as Leonard Levy and several others would have it).

That move entails combing through the documents and proclamations of various long-since-deceased political figures and selecting the ones that support the tactician's pre-ordained conclusions while at the same time ignoring the ones that don't.**

The latter technique is considered by some commentators to be a legitimate form of legal reasoning (the modifier "legal" having the desired effect of undermining the very methods and objectives of what is more generally understood as "reasoning").

Others might argue that the federal national day of prayer statute so mandating the president to executive action is merely an exercise of what's known in the constitutional law trade as "ceremonial deism," a judge-made doctrine which has been occasionally found within the relevant case law to be inoffensive to Establishment Clause concerns.

For example, those government acts which purport to acknowledge the (undeniable) role religious faith has played in shaping the contours of American society, such as erecting a granite block inscribed with Biblical commands and placing it alongside a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence in a courthouse display.***

But in fact the present example as correctly adjudicated by Judge Barbara Crabb is, by definition, "ceremonial theism."

The distinction between deism and theism is — or certainly should be — dispositive, but often overlooked. Deism posits a universal creator who created and then disappeared on an extended and still continuing sabbatical whereas theism stands for the proposition that the said creator maintains an interventionist interest in earthly conundrums such as the results of college gridiron contests and determining which missing children are chosen to be recovered unmolested.

So there isn't much effectual point in praying for direct, beneficial action to a deist-style god, is there? Ceremonial theism, on the other hand, remains constitutionally problematic. As the judge has shown.

* See, this blog can do theology with the best of 'em.

** And it's how Rehnquist's spiritual predecessor Associate Justice David Brewer, writing in 1892, could declare, "this is a Christian Nation" despite the U.S. Senate's unanimous affirmation nearly one hundred years earlier that "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

*** Not to be confused with the reindeer-in-a-nativity-set doctrine.

Vikings draft Tim Tebow in round 3:16

We'll never forget you, Brent.

[Buy a shirt.]

Graham Jr. prays himself clear off prayer day

Wisconsin judge's ruling an "assault against Christianity"

Evidently the Framers of the Constitution were onto something.

Pope suspends Roethlisberger for six games

Either that or else my Google News reader is on the fritz.

WPRI helps indict Gableman

Via the "nonpartisan" geniuses at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, in direct support of the Wisconsin Judicial Commission's case against Michael Gableman:

WJC: The false statement of fact [contained in Gableman's teevee ad] is that something that Louis Butler did during the course of his representation of Reuben Lee Mitchell allowed Mitchell to offend again. And that is demonstrably false.

Compare and contrast:

WPRI: The ad ... accus[es] Butler of freeing his client so he could then go on to molest another child.

Yes, that is precisely what the WJC contends. That is exactly the "statement" the WJC argues the teevee ad contains. And that accusation is indeed demonstrably false. And Gableman knew it.

Case closed: thanks for coming out.

The WPRI blog post is comically rife with baseless innuendo and general idiocy. For example:

Liberal Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson waited a full 110 seconds before interrupting WJC executive director James C. Alexander’s opening statement ... *

She didn't interrupt Mr. Alexander at all. The WJC's counsel had just finished reading aloud a complete paragraph from his prepared opening remarks and in fact was in the process of silently turning a page to the next one when the Chief Justice inquired of him:

Are we looking at this language [in the teevee ad] from the viewpoint of the speaker, and what the speaker's intent was, and what the speaker did, or are we looking at it from the listener's?

A crucial point. Once again, according to WPRI, it's the former:

WPRI: The ad ... accus[es] Butler of freeing his client so he could then go on to molest another child.

The WPRI describes itself as a "think tank." Good work.

* To be sure, Alexander was interrupted repeatedly by "conservative" Justice Patience Roggensack, but apparently those interruptions were deemed unworthy of notice by the "nonpartisan" tank-thinkers.

(Of course it's ludicrous to criticize any of the justices for interrogating either attorney. That's what they're all there for.)

Jesus is (almost) everywhere

Just not on Tennessee license plates:

Yes, we think a court would conclude that the establishment of a new specialty earmarked license plate asserting that "Jesus is Lord" violates the federal and state constitutional provisions against the establishment of religion.

Because, said the TN attorney general, such assertions are government speech and forbidden, particularly where plates proclaiming "Cthulhu is Lord" or what-have-you are unavailable.

I used to work with a welding inspector who carried his Bible wherever he went but would never put it inside his briefcase, which contained his secular documents and his various accoutrements. Something about avoiding contact between the sacred and the profane, so he would presumably endorse the AG's opinion.

But the Tennessee lawmaking people can ignore it if they want.

John Hiatt — Tennessee Plates

Earlier: Separation of Church and Taste.

Van Hollen owes Doyle bigtime

Remember, the WI Gov wouldn't let the WI AG join this lawsuit:

Fifty-four percent of Florida voters believe it was a "bad idea" for their AG to sue over health care reform, compared with 40 percent who said it was a "good idea." In another surprise for the McCollum campaign, 41 percent of independents said it made them less likely to vote for him, compared with 27 percent who said it would sway their vote in his favor.

I was there for ya broham.

Impeach Barbara Crabb

Rages Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council,

for violating her "sacred oath of administering justice ... under the Constitution and laws of the United States."

There isn't any requirement under the Constitution for federal judges to swear any oaths at all, sacred or otherwise.* They're subject to "good Behavior," that's about it. Following the law likely counts as good behavior, although maybe not in Tony Perkins's phantasies.

Judge Barbara Crabb of the Western District of Wisconsin also said her ruling was not about prayer itself, but instead about the statute establishing the National Day of Prayer.

I think of all the reports I've seen about this decision, this is the first one to mention this rather important fact, albeit in the 11th paragraph. Even the distinguished professor of law Rick Esenberg said that it was the day of prayer which violated the Constitution.

Incorrect:

[T]he case raises the question whether the statute creating the "National Day of Prayer," 36 U.S.C. § 119, violates the establishment clause of the United States Constitution. . . . Although the [U.S. Supreme Court case] law does not always point in the same direction on matters related to the establishment clause, my review of that law requires a conclusion that 36 U.S.C. § 119 is unconstitutional.

How could Judge Crabb have been any clearer? You need to be extravagantly delusional to consider this an impeachable offense.

I've read a lot of these Establishment Clause decisions, and I can't think of one other that involves such a literally, facially direct violation of the First Amendment. Good luck getting it reversed.

Now if all the individual States banded together and proclaimed a National Day of Prayer, they'd probably be able to get away with it.

* A simple affirmation suffices. Demanding a "sacred oath" of any federal officer would itself be a plain violation of the Constitution.

McIlheran Global Initiative

Bill Clinton is a "has-been" — Patrick McIlheran

Since 2005, commitments made through CGI have affected more than 200 million lives in 170 countries. More than 1,700 commitments have been made, valued at $57 billion. More than 300 commitments have been fully completed.

Since 2005, Patrick McIlheran made a link to powerlineblog.com.

Shorter The Ed Show

Guest: Obama is anti-freedom.
Ed: Obama is anti-freedom?
Guest: I didn't say that.

Earlier, Larry Pratt, executive director of a gun club that makes the National Rifle Association look like the Brady Campaign, told Chris Matthews on Hardball that Obama "hates the Constitution" and called J. Edgar Hoover a socialist. Pratt allegedly aspires to seriousness.

Religion Clause predates Ratzinger papacy

Belated felicitations to the indispensable Prof. Howard Friedman.