Libertyblog

“What’s the Secret to Com—” “Timing!”

Poor Al Franken. He gets to join the Dems just as the nation realizes their whole enterprise—stimulus, nationalization, health care, cap and tax, anti-Americanism—is a dangerous, unworkable, unaffordable scam.

Revision 1

The Lovernor has revised and extended his tearful, heartfelt apology of a week ago to reveal some new facts. At the now-inoperative news conference, Maria from Argentina was his only paramour. Now he admits to having some relationships with other women that “didn’t cross the sex line.” This will inevitably resurrect Clinton-era speculation about what does and doesn’t constitute sex in a mind eager to rationalize. His contacts with Maria herself were more numerous than previously reported. His claims that no taxpayer money financed his fling remain unverified.

The one bright spot I see is that his wife’s claim that she was blindsided by all this appears less convincing. Her self-righteousness was getting to be a bit much. Let’s bid a fond farewell to both of them.

I’m thinking about having some apparel made: “My Governor Went to Argentina and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.” (Via Drudge.)

Let Me Repeat

Say what you will about the Lovernor, there were no homos, no hookers.

Some Ricci Follow-Up

First, Ed Morrissey notes that among those who opposed Senora Sonia’s summary judgment against the white firefighters was ... the Obambi Department of Justice. Bungling the biggest case of her career was no barrier to her nomination. Her taxes must be in perfect order.

Second, I heard yesterday that the years-long delay in justice prompted New Haven to staff its supervisory firefighting positions on a rotating basis while the case was resolved. This rotation presumably involved both those who did very well on the competitive exam, and those who did very poorly. How comforting it must have been for New Havenites—of all races—to know that their lives might be in the hands of a randomly selected failure. This is of particular interest to those of us living near Charleston SC, which lost nine firefighters due in large part to poor leadership. By the way, since fear of racial discrimination litigation was the thin veneer of an excuse offered by the city, was there no fear of liability for deficient firefighting supervision?

Free Speech Is Unfair, Democracy Is Terrorism

We’re hearing this, not from a mullah, but from the Dem Speaker of the California Assembly.

Hot for Teacher

In Georgia:

A second Miss Georgia has been crowned in two days.

One day after winning the title Saturday night at the annual pageant in Columbus, Gwinnett County school teacher Kristina Higgins relinquished the post, now filled by the runnerup, Emily Cook, a Marietta law student.

Higgins said she stepped down because her responsibilities as a middle school teacher would not leave her time she would need to serve as Miss Georgia.

Which middle school is that? The one where all the boys are walking around with boners:

Thank heavens law school places no demands on one’s time.

Not the Wrong Approach, the Wrong Side

On matters of foreign policy, Obambi is in one respect Clintonian: He talks toughest when the stakes are small. Clinton couldn’t remove Saddam Hussein, but was eager to jump into war in the Balkans. Obambi shies away from confronting the mullahs of Iran, but is calling the removal of the president of Honduras a “coup.”

Only he’s getting it wrong. The coup in Honduras was conducted by its president against its constitution:

Hugo Chávez’s coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation’s constitution.

It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya’s abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court’s order.

The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out. Yesterday, Mr. Zelaya was arrested by the military and is now in exile in Costa Rica.

I’d like our Congress’s defense committees to ask America’s military leaders where they would stand in a similar situation, with our Constitution or our duly elected president. It may be more than a theoretical question before long.

“Sympathy” a Code Word for “Empathy”?

Justice Alito tells the Court’s Ricci dissenters, his wannabe colleague Senora Sonia, and Obambi where they can stick their emotive approach to the law:

Petitioners were denied promotions for which they qualified because of the race and ethnicity of the firefighters who achieved the highest scores on the City’s exam. The District Court threw out their case on summary judgment, even though that court all but conceded that a jury could find that the City’s asserted justification was pretextual. The Court of Appeals then summarily affirmed that decision.

The dissent grants that petitioners’ situation is “unfortunate” and that they “understandably attract this Court’s sympathy.” But “sympathy” is not what petitioners have a right to demand. What they have a right to demand is evenhanded enforcement of the law--of Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination based on race. And that is what, until today’s decision, has been denied them.

Because She Did Such a Bang-Up Job Raising Michael, ...

Katherine Jackson has been granted temporary guardianship of his “offspring.”

A Double Shot of Justice

Bernie Madoff gets 150 years, which is about 140 more than he’s likely to be around for. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.

Meanwhile, a shockingly narrow 5-4 majority of the United States Supreme Court has decided that white people still have some vestige of equal rights. The Court has ruled in favor of Frank Ricci and other New Haven firefighters. They were denied advancement because they brought well-prepared minds rather than pigmented skin to their promotion exams. In the process, the Court has bitchslapped Senora Sonia, who was part of the appeals court that rubber-stamped injustice with a one-paragraph opinion.

We now have the complete Senora Sonia narrative: recipient of racial preferences in her education, proponent of racial preferences in speeches and writings, would-be enforcer of illegal racial preferences in her jurisprudence.