Leahy, a lying sack of...

Well whatever... below is Senator Patrick Leahy's disingenuous Orwellian clarification, i.e. lie, today regarding the Democrat Senate's abuse of Miguel Estrada's nomination from 2001 to 2003. I am posting the full excerpt from Bench Memos at NRO as posted by Ed Whelan.

Senator Leahy’s Level of Integrity [Ed Whelan]

When Senator Lindsey Graham used the example of Republican support for President Bush’s D.C. Circuit nominee Miguel Estrada to make the elementary point that Republican concerns about Judge Sotomayor are based on her judicial philosophy, not on her Hispanic ethnicity, Judiciary Committee chairman Pat Leahy saw fit to respond in this way:

I'd just note, just so we make sure we're all dealing with the same facts, Mr. Estrada was nominated when the Republicans were in charge of the Senate, was not given a hearing by the Republicans. He was given a hearing when the Democrats took back the majority in the Senate ….

Well, let’s “make sure we’re all dealing with the same facts,” Senator Leahy:

1. President Bush announced his nomination of Estrada to the D.C. Circuit on May 9, 2001. Fifteen days later, Senator Jeffords left the Republican Party and flipped control of the Senate from the Republicans to the Democrats. Leahy surely remembers that well, both because Jeffords was his fellow Vermonter and because the flip made him chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

2. When Leahy says that Estrada “was not given a hearing when the Republicans were in charge of the Senate,” he is technically accurate in that Senate Republicans did not try to hold a confirmation hearing on Estrada’s nomination within its first 15 days. Had they tried to do so (even before the ABA completed its evaluation of Estrada), Democrats never would have permitted it.

To put this timing in context: During the Bush 43 administration, the average time from nomination to hearing for federal appellate nominees was 166 days overall, and 197 days while Leahy was chairman. No federal appellate nominee other than Clinton renominee Helene White (the beneficiary of a special deal) received a hearing in less than 30 days. And of President Bush’s first batch of nominees, the first to receive a hearing waited 62 days.

3. Leahy finally gave Estrada a hearing on September 26, 2002—more than 16 months after his nomination—but it was clear that Democrats would not vote Estrada out of committee. Once the Republicans regained control of the Senate in 2003, the Judiciary Committee promptly voted Estrada out of committee on a party-line vote (Republicans in favor, Democrats opposed). Democrats then filibustered his nomination on the Senate floor, defeating a record seven cloture votes.

4. It is outrageous of Leahy to give his grossly misleading account of the Estrada nomination in a context that vilely insinuates that Republican opposition to Sotomayor is based on her Hispanic ethnicity.

The "Caring" Tyranny of the Liberal State

Mark Steyn has a good article on the 'all-encompassing justification' of the ever-increasing tyranny of the modern western state... all for the good of mankind, mind you... But the main cost, if you take time to notice, is the shrinking liberty of real individuals.

Here's an excerpt:

Environmentalism... seeks to return us to the age of kings, when the masses are restrained by a privileged elite. Sometimes they will be hereditary monarchs, such as the Prince of Wales. Sometimes they will be merely the gilded princelings of the government apparatus — Barack Obama, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi. In the old days, they were endowed with absolute authority by God. Today, they’re endowed by Mother Nature, empowered by Gaia to act on her behalf. But the object remains control — to constrain you in a million ways, most of which would never have occurred to Henry VIII, who, unlike the new cap-and-trade bill, was entirely indifferent as to whether your hovel was “energy efficient.” The old rationale for absolute monarchy — Divine Right — is a tough sell in a democratic age. But the new rationale — Gaia’s Right — has proved surprisingly plausible.

Beginning with FDR, wily statists justified the massive expansion of federal power under ever more elastic definitions of the commerce clause. For Obama-era control freaks, the environment and health care are the commerce clause supersized. They establish the pretext for the regulation of everything: If the government is obligated to cure you of illness, it has an interest in preventing you from getting ill in the first place — by regulating what you eat, how you live, the choices you make from the moment you get up in the morning. Likewise, if everything you do impacts “the environment,” then the environment is an all-purpose umbrella for regulating everything you do. It’s the most convenient and romantic justification for what the title of Paul Rahe’s new book rightly identifies as “soft despotism.”

Jonah Goldberg on the 4th of July:

I read this over at The Corner and thought it the best thing I had read today:









"I Wish the Fourth of July Would Never End" [Jonah Goldberg]

I just returned from the annual 4th of July parade (and party) in my neighborhood. It's really becoming one of my favorite traditions, in part because it's one of the few times when DC feels like any other American town. My daughter loves to lunge for candy thrown from the amateurishly decorated cars and trucks. We all applaud the local swim team and the boy scouts and the "different drummer" marching band (complete with lavish gay patriotism), we even cheer — or at least smile — when Marion Barry comes up MacArthur blvd like an American general liberating some French town. The kids dance when the Bolivians come by, and they cheer when the DC horsemen (all African-American) trot past like cowboys heading home. There was a small scare at the fair when the moon bounce briefly deflated and the five-and-older kids nearly rioted. But otherwise, fun was had by all. The lines for the free hotdogs were too long and the balloon animal tent too. But everyone was in good cheer and parents did their best to keep kids from cutting in line. Lucy got an American flag painted on her face and chased bubbles from the bubble machines on the old fashioned fire engine. On the way home, I bought her a lemonade from a stand on someone's porch and told her we still had fireworks to look forward too, as well as the noisemakers we bought her. She squeezed my hand and said, "Daddy, I wish the Fourth of July would never end."

I squeezed her hand back, just a little, and said: "Me too."


Me: it doesn't get much better than that...

Kodachrome taken away...

An end of a photography era.... Kodachrome immortalized in the Paul Simon song--

"... Mama don't take my Kodachrome away!"

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Eastman Kodak Co. (EK) will discontinue its iconic Kodachrome color film this year due to tumbling sales as photographers embrace newer Kodak films or digital imaging technology.

Kodak introduced the amateur color film in 1935 and it became the first commercially successful color film.



But sales are just a fraction of 1% of the company's still-picture film revenue. The company doesn't break out such figures, but the segment in which Kodak's film sales are recorded had first- quarter revenue of $503 million.

That 31% drop from a year earlier highlights the woes the company has been undergoing. The company thought that when it completed a wrenching multi-year transition to having a digital focus at the end of 2007 that its restructuring was behind it. But a continued sales slump has resulted in more retrenchment - Kodak in January announced plans to cut another 3,500 to 4,500 jobs, as much as 18% of its work force, this year.

Kodak estimates that current supplies of the film will last until early this fall.

The last rolls of the film will be donated to George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, N.Y., which houses the world's largest collection of cameras and related artifacts. In addition, Steve McCurry - known for a 1985 photo of a young Afghan girl peering from the cover of National Geographic magazine - will shoot one of those last rolls and the images will be donated to Eastman House.

The Kodachrome output stoppage is another sign of the company's transition - by 2004, the company that marketed its first snapshot camera in 1888 had stopped making film cameras.

Kodak shares closed Friday at $2.85 and were inactive premarket. The stock is down 57% this year.

DeVore's geurilla campaign...

... for U.S. Senator from California is having some fun at his opponent's expense, Mrs., er... Senator Boxer:

David Letterman "Apologizes"... Not

Here's the LINK to the article. Below is his second explanation. You be the judge.


“All right, here – I’ve been thinking about this situation with Governor Palin and her family now for about a week – it was a week ago tonight, and maybe you know about it, maybe you don’t know about it. But there was a joke that I told, and I thought I was telling it about the older daughter being at Yankee Stadium. And it was kind of a coarse joke. There’s no getting around it, but I never thought it was anybody other than the older daughter, and before the show, I checked to make sure in fact that she is of legal age, 18. Yeah. But the joke really, in and of itself, can’t be defended. The next day, people are outraged. They’re angry at me because they said, ‘How could you make a lousy joke like that about the 14-year-old girl who was at the ball game?’ And I had, honestly, no idea that the 14-year-old girl, I had no idea that anybody was at the ball game except the governor and I was told at the time she was there with Rudy Giuliani … and I really should have made the joke about Rudy …” (audience applauds) “But I didn’t, and now people are getting angry and they’re saying, ‘Well, how can you say something like that about a 14-year-old girl, and does that make you feel good to make those horrible jokes about a kid who’s completely innocent, minding her own business,’ and, turns out, she was at the ball game. I had no idea she was there. So she’s now at the ball game, and people think that I made the joke about her. And, but still, I’m wondering, ‘Well, what can I do to help people understand that I would never make a joke like this?’ I’ve never made jokes like this as long as we’ve been on the air, 30 long years, and you can’t really be doing jokes like that. And I understand, of course, why people are upset. I would be upset myself.

“And then I was watching the Jim Lehrer ‘Newshour’ – this commentator, the columnist Mark Shields, was talking about how I had made this indefensible joke about the 14-year-old girl, and I thought, ‘Oh, boy, now I’m beginning to understand what the problem is here. It’s the perception rather than the intent.’ It doesn’t make any difference what my intent was, it’s the perception. And, as they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it’s not a very good joke. And I’m certainly – ” (audience applause) “– thank you. Well, my responsibility – I take full blame for that. I told a bad joke. I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception. And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It’s not your fault that it was misunderstood, it’s my fault. That it was misunderstood.” (audience applauds) “Thank you. So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I’m sorry about it and I’ll try to do better in the future. Thank you very much.” (audience applause).


To me, this is just Letterman essentially saying, "My intent was OK (I was joking about Bristol), but because it was a flawed, poorly constructed (kind of coarse?) joke people heard it as aimed at Willow. My bad for the misunderstanding." He starts to go in the direction of what was objectionable when he says that the "joke, in and of itself, can't be defended." But after that he is off into a longer rationalization that at the core this was a Bristol - Willow confusion thing. This is not much more than a wordy explanation that repeats what he said in his first attempt to put out the fire. He does offer a direct apology of sorts to the Palin's and their two daughters. But unfortunately that is completely undercut by his obfuscation of what was offensive (the problem as he says), which was NOT to whom the joke was directed nor the perception of it, but the actual vile nature and content of the so-called joke... period, end of discussion!

Maybe Dave needs to go on an apology tour like Obama.

[Update] Governor Palin accepts Letterman's apology which is, at this point, the gracious thing to do. She knows it's time to move on.

Original post on his joke... Diddling Dave, Don Imus, And The Media

Follow up after the Letterman's first attempt to quell the growing anger and outrage... Letterman Joke Update: Man or Worm?

Good advice...

for all too many of us... in this SNL skit.

William Shatner SNL skit Get A Life 1986-12-20
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