Author: Fuzzy Curmudgeon

The embarassment that is Rep. Julia Carson (D-IN) may be on the way out. According to yesterday’s Indianapolis Star, her race with Republican Brose McVey is too close to call (statistical dead heat). Latest poll had Carson 42% to McVey 38%, inside the poll’s 5% margin of error.
The Libertarian candidate polled only 5%, but Libertarians in this state are pretty much an error all to themselves. Some guy named “Undecided” got 14% and another guy named “Other” got 1%. (I’m guessing Mickey Mouse doesn’t poll well here, although by all rights he probably should, as many Hoosiers as hop the ATA 757 bus to Orlando. Have you ever flown on one of these things? Less elbow room than a 737, I swear…but I digress.)
The upsetting part is that Carson usually manages to pull her nuts (well, I speak metaphorically) out of the fire just in time to squeak by. But anyone who advocates daylight savings time ought to be drawn and quartered, not just diselected. (Actually I think McVey advocates it too, but he’s the Republican, so I’ll excuse him until after the election.)

Fred Barnes writes in the Weekly Standard (echoed on Fox in their Views section):

[] Democrats, who angrily insisted that a court should not have decided the 2000 presidential election, are going to court, seeking to have Torricelli’s name erased from the ballot and another name substituted. In its own way, this is as sleazy as the conduct that got Torricelli in trouble in the first place.

I keep hearing muted shouts of “Florida! Florida!”. Kind of like the Union Army shouted “Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!” when they repulsed Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg…

Or rather, the hole in it…is smaller and has split in two.
I’ve been convinced for years that there’s no story here. Nature does things naturally that we puny humans can’t even begin to have any control over. Like Mount Pinatubo and Mount St. Helens between them putting more ozone-destroying pollutants into the air than mankind has managed to do in all of industrial history.

…George Will, that is.

McDermott and Bonior are two specimens of what Lenin, referring to Westerners who denied the existence of Lenin’s police-state terror, called “useful idiots.”

Hee.

At least according to this American Prowler excerpt:

Former President Bill Clinton is at it again with his Hollywood types, but in this latest round there is reason for some Republican concern. Before heading off to Africa with movie stars Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker, Clinton stopped in on the set of Terminator 3 to spend some time with future California Republican star Arnold Schwarzenegger. “We were joking that he probably showed up thinking he’d see the naked female Terminator that’s in this movie,” says a cameraman on the film.

I’m afraid that about all I can say about this is to echo J.P. Morgan, who, when informed that Teddy Roosevelt had gone to Africa on safari, famously exclaimed: “I hope the first lion he meets does his duty.”

I always knew liberals were behind the 8 ball, but this site proves it.
Link via a friend of mine who doesn’t blog (and who doesn’t know about my blog, come to think of it).

You know, they call it the Garden State because Toxic Waste Dump State doesn’t fit on the license plates.
Anyway, I digress. What I had in mind was the following:

TORCH UPDATE: It’s official. I just saw a tape of New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey (D) explaining that New Jersey Democrats have asked the state Supreme Court to grant an exception to state election law. If New Jersey had better beaches it would almost be Florida.

Juan Non-Volokh hits the nail on the head. Dollars to doughnuts this doesn’t end with the NJ Supremes. I see another 5-4 decision coming in the next month out of the “handsome Parthenon-with-family-room-wing-and-attached-garage” out back of the Capitol.
(Description of Supreme Court building in DC courtesy of P.J. O’Rourke)

Since 1799, the United States has had on its books of law a little piece of Congressional piquery called The Logan Act.

Any citizen of the United States wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or any agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or any official or agent thereof, in relations to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined not more than $5000 or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

The act is named for a man named George Logan, a Quaker physician and friend of Thomas Jefferson, who took it upon himself in 1798 to travel to France to secure an accord with the United States. Note that he had no authority whatsoever to conduct foreign policy 🙂
The Logan Act was passed the following year by incensed Federalists (who were Anglophiles and didn’t appreciate Logan’s amateur diplomacy).
Logan, not to be deterred, seved as a US Senator from 1801-1807 and defied the law by conducting talks with England to reconcile various differences between the two countries. Now that’s interesting too, since Jefferson was president from 1801-1807 and was a confirmed Francophile 🙂
No one has ever been charged or convicted of a violation of the Logan Act, although it has been evoked many times by infuriated Americans with regard to a diverse lot of non-authorized diplomats ranging (just in recent memory) from Jesse Jackson to Henry Kissinger.
However, in view of the severity of the swinish assholishness demonstrated by Reps. Bonior and McDermott in the last couple of days vis-a-vis Iraq, I can’t think of a better first time to invoke the Act.

Rudy Giuliani still has his attention sharply focused.
Damn shame he was term-limited.

Damn. Fox as usual has the scoop on this seriously important problem. Well, via the NY Post.
I really prefer brunettes. My wife just plays a blonde in real life so I guess I got what I prefer 🙂