Libertyblog

Unanswered Question

The now famous video of Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter, idiot, having a constituent thrown out of a town hall meeting leaves an open item: Was the union guy from outside of her district?

The Week In Blogs

Includes bikini bottom problems. (Via InstaPundit.)

Since You Asked

Pols are asking this question about health care: “What Would Teddy Do?” Hmmm, let’s see, the initiative can’t help Fatboy, it’s submerged, and it’s down to its last breaths. Time to walk away and come up with an excuse.

Tom Ridge’s Mendacity Level ...

... has been raised to weasel:

Former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge, speaking for the first time about accusations made in his new book, says he did not mean to suggest that other top Bush administration officials were playing politics with the nation’s security before the 2004 presidential election.

“I’m not second-guessing my colleagues,” Ridge said in an interview about The Test of Our Times, which comes out Tuesday and recounts his experiences as head of the nation’s homeland security efforts in the first several years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

(Via Drudge.)

Chappa-Which?

A little bit of knowledge is an intriguing thing:

“The No. 1 search term at Google Trends Wednesday morning was ‘Ted Kennedy.’ Nos. 2 and 3: ‘Mary Jo Kopechne’ and ‘Chappaquiddick,’” wrote Politico’s Michael Calderone, noting that not everyone was observing the Massachusetts Democrat’s death in the hagiographic style of the mainstream press.

Consensus or conspiracy? The liberal watchdogs were vigilant, and Carly Carioli of the Boston Phoenix pounced, decrying evidence of “a right-wing smear campaign…an orchestrated movement” on the part of “ghoulishly insensitive right-wingers.”

Carioli was writing about Twitter, but she was again writing about search terms. My theory: It’s the hagiography itself that led Internet users to search for “Chappaquiddick” and “Mary Jo Kopechne.” MSM accounts had to balance their slavish devotion to Fatboy with the tattered remnants of their journalistic integrity. They had to say something to readers about Chappaquiddick and Kopechne, if only to explain how such a wonderful man was never elected president, but the MSM kept it brief. Too brief. Young readers unfamiliar with the incident—the MSM has hardly pounded away on it these forty years—were left no choice but to search online for more details.

Let me speak for the rest of the “ghoulishly insensitive right-wingers,” Ms. Carioli, in saying that we didn’t have to search for information about Chappaquiddick and Mary Jo Kopechne, we already knew it.

Say Cheese

Everybody’s posting this picture of a molecule:

Why didn’t they publish one where it wasn’t blinking?

If Iran Nukes Somebody, ...

... it won’t be Our Dark Lord Cheney’s fault. Don’t you miss him?

Guilt and Complicity

Mark Steyn goes medieval on Fatboy ... and on us for having indulged him.

The Smoking Gun

And it’s an oily smoke:

The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal.

Gordon Brown’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards.

The letters were sent two years ago by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, to Kenny MacAskill, his counterpart in Scotland, who has been widely criticised for taking the formal decision to permit Megrahi’s release.

The correspondence makes it plain that the key decision to include Megrahi in a deal with Libya to allow prisoners to return home was, in fact, taken in London for British national interests.

Ed Morrissey adds:

What does it say about the governments in Edinburgh and London that Moammar Gaddafi’s son has been more honest about this than Brown, Straw, and MacAskill?

That Gaddafi’s son never has to face voters. Absolute power begets indifference to public opinion.

A Kinsley Gaffe

Howard Dean speaks the truth about health care and tort reform:

This is the answer from a doctor and a politician. Here’s why tort reform is not in the bill. When you go to pass a really enormous bill like that, the more stuff you put in it, the more enemies you make, right? And the reason that tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everyone else they were taking on. And that is the plain and simple truth.

Classic Howard Dean: More interested in looking like the smartest guy in the room than helping his cause.