As many of you probably noticed, my site was down today for almost 2 1/2 hours. Here’s what that looks like graphically:

(more…)

In recent days, Jeff Goldstein has employed several wonderful turns of phrase to poke fun at the vainglorious, self-righteous entity known as Glenn Greenwald (aka Ellison, Rick Ellensburg, Thomas Ellers, and many more). I thought I’d isolate a few of them for you in this post.

First we have this:

This guy is so full of himself it’s a wonder he hasn’t knocked himself up—or at least drowned himself in a flood of him.

and, from the same post, this:

Still, give the guy some credit: his self-righteousness these days is so freakin’ pure you need to cut it with corn starch just to keep it from killing you during that first warm hit.

Here’s my favorite. It’s a little less one-linerish. But it’s incredibly well-written, and deflates this pompous ass like nothing else:

Anyway, as I’ve pointed out before, this sanctimonious, bombastic blowhard has followed Sullivan’s blueprint for success—the “conservative,” turned reluctantly by a rogue President, who is then embraced as a “brave” dissenting voice by the left, which respects his maverick individualism—and he’s making his nut with it.

But the whole thing is a sham. This guy has been a manufactured cutout from the very beginning (not just anybody made Kos’ Townhouse list for orchestrating talking point campaigns)—and that he is able to land book deals and plum gigs at Salon after having been caught sockpuppeting all over the place just goes to show that, as with Marcotte, the anti-war crowd is only concerned with whether or not you are on message. They couldn’t care less whether you are honest, or whether your emotion-packed screeds are embarrassingly shallow and rhetorically transparent. They’ll pretend otherwise, for the good of the cause.

Indeed. This is well illustrated by the fawning comments at the bottom of his latest diatribe, the hypocrisy of which I illustrate in the post immediately below.

Nice stuff, Jeff.

UPDATE: I would be remiss if I did not note Allah’s description of Greenwald:

Hypocrisy, egomania, apparent deceit, and stupendous sanctimony, all served cold in turgid, humorless prose . . .

That about sums it up, all right.

A suicide bomber apparently tried to kill Dick Cheney, and many commenters at the Huffington Post lamented his lack of success. The offending comments have been removed from the post in question, but you can read some of them here. Some examples include:

If at first you don’t succeed . . .

and:

Better luck next time!

and:

Dr. Evil escapes again . . . damn.

Glenn Greenwald is irate that conservative bloggers dared to take notice. Greenwald (also known as Thomas Ellers and Rick Ellensburg, among others) complains bitterly that conservative bloggers

went digging deep into the comment sections of various liberal blogs, found inappropriate and hateful comments, and then began insisting that these isolated comments proved something.

To the contrary, Greenwald insists, anonymous comments by hateful leftists prove nothing about the left generally. Nothing!

[T]he ideas and comments expressed by anonymous commenters at blogs prove nothing other than what those individuals think — particularly in the absence of an attempt to show that the commenters are representative of the blog itself. Is that really that difficult a concept to comprehend? To know what the views are of a particular blogger or “bloggers” generally, one can read those bloggers’ words.

But stray, anonymous comments prove nothing. And those who rely on them to make an argument — especially without bothering to make any effort to prove that they are reflective of anything — should be presumed to have no argument at all. That is why they are relying upon such transparently flimsy and misleading methods to make a point.

If your mouth is agape at the shameless hypocrisy of this, then you must be familiar with Greenwald.

These comments are staggeringly hypocritical, viewed in the light of Greenwald’s extensive history of spotlighting anonymous comments at conservative blogs to reach broad-brush conclusions about the entire conservative movement. Greenwald is a prime practitioner of this “transparently flimsy and misleading method” of tarring the other side. And, in marked contrast to Greenwald’s tender concern today for whether ugly leftist comments “are representative of the blog itself,” Greenwald is famous in conservative circles for highlighting extreme comments on conservative blogs — comments that in no way represent the views of the posts to which they are responding, or of the bloggers generally.

(more…)

Confirm Them is doing a three-part Q&A with Jan Crawford Greenburg about her new book Supreme Conflict, which I reviewed here. The first part of the interview is up, and can be read here. Here’s a taste:

1. Given the current political climate, who do you think President Bush will nominate to the Court if a third SCOTUS retirement occurs during his presidency?

Answer: Janice Rogers Brown or Maureen Mahoney. Now I know you’re asking how in the world I could possibly mention those two very different contenders in one breath, right? Ok, here’s why: It all depends on which justice leaves and when. President Bush will tap a solid judicial conservative (i.e., Brown) if he gets a nomination this year. He wants to change the subject, and this is about the only issue he’s got left to rally the base. (If you guys can think of another issue that will keep conservatives together with Bush, let me know.) Judge Brown would be an exciting nominee: She’s getting very high marks from colleagues on the D.C. Circuit, and her experience, compelling life story and demeanor (she’s fast on her feet and would be a terrific witness) would present those moderate southern Democrats (there are still a few of them) with a very difficult choice.

There’s much more to the answer, so be sure to read it all.

My interest was also piqued by her discussion of the blogs. In my review I noted that, according to Greenburg, Miers had recognized that the blogs would be important. Confirm Them picked up on that as well, and asked Greenburg about it:

As I reported in the book, Harriet Miers herself recognized what a key role blogs would play in a Supreme Court fight. (When Miers said the blogs would be important, Confirm Them and Bench Memos were two of the key ones she had in mind.) And of course those blogs—and other conservative legal blogs like Patterico—didn’t exactly embrace her nomination.

A commenter recently accused Miers opponents like me of helping us to lose the war — no hyperbole there! — because of the hit Bush took over the Miers nomination. I argued in response that we Miers opponents had merely stanched the bleeding of an unnecessary self-inflicted wound. Greenburg makes it clear that she agrees with that view:

Democrats ultimately would have opposed Miers in her Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. In that hearing, Miers would have been a proxy for Bush. The worse she looked, the worse Bush would look. The more she seemed like a crony and a hack, the more Bush would look like an incompetent. Her confirmation hearing would have been brutal. Democrats would have eviscerated her. And Bush knew that. But the opposition to her was so entrenched, I’m not so sure conservatives would have come around, as Bush believed.

I also think it’s a mistake [to] underestimate how the conservative opposition to Miers affected the course of events—even if Bush insists that’s not why he concluded she needed to pack it in. By laying bare her lack of qualifications and detailing how Bush had gotten it so wrong, the blogs helped marshal conservative outrage, which was evident among staffers and senators on the Hill.

Good stuff. Keep your eye on Confirm Them for future installments.

When I was growing up, my Dad’s drink of choice was scotch. I was in the Trader Joe’s and saw that they sell single-malt Scotch whiskies, so I thought: what the heck?

I got Laphroaig, which is the same whisky described by a Lawrence Block character in a passage I have quoted before:

Slow sipping, that’s the way to do it. You take little sparrow-sized sips, and you keep telling yourself that you like the taste, and by the time you get to the bottom of the glass, it’s true.

. . . . Somewhere around the fifth sip, it had achieved the virtue of familiarity. I was accustomed to it, and the question of whether I actually liked it no longer seemed pertinent. It was like, say, a cousin. The man’s your cousin, for God’s sake! What do you mean, you don’t like him? You don’t have to like him or dislike him! He’s your cousin!

I tried a little this evening, with no mixer or chaser. Tasted pretty much like wood.

But I’m going to go give it another chance — this time drinking it like Tim Worstall suggests: mixed with an equal part of flat spring water. I’m nearing the end of L.A. Rex. Nothing like kicking back with a good book and a glass of liquid wood.

I see Goldstein’s drinking Glenkinchie.

Any scotch lovers out there? What’s your favorite?

[posted by Justin Levine] 

A lot of attention was given to director Martin Scorsese for finally getting the Oscar monkey off his back by winning the award after 7 previous losses.

That is nothing compared to sound mixer Kevin O’Connell who has now been nominated for an Academy Award 19 times (yes, 19 times) and never won. There were even two occasions where he was nominated twice for two different films in the same year, but still didn’t win. I’m not sure, but he may very well be the most nominated individual in Academy Award history. He certainly has the longest streak for Oscar nominations without a win. Last night, he lost out for the 19th time when Apocalypto failed to win the award for best sound mixing.

I tried contacting Mr. O’Connell to see if he would be interested in coming on the radio show to discuss his Oscar streak. His wife was kind enough to call me back and explain that he would normally love to come on the program, but that unfortunately his father had passed away last night – shortly after the Academy Awards ceremony.

Losing the Academy Award for the 19th time, and then having your father pass away all in the same evening. In my book, that is what you call a rough night. Anyone who can endure nights like that is a hero in my eyes.

Condolences to the O’Connell family for its loss. (And while the issue pales in comparison, here’s hoping that he wins next year for his work on Spider-Man 3.)

[posted by Justin Levine]

Last night I ignored the Oscars along with my neighbor, Patterico reader Jeff C. We did this last year and had a good time, so we figured we’d make a tradition out of it.

I haven’t seen the Scorsese movie, but I’m a fan of his and I’m happy to see he won Best Director. But I’m annoyed that United 93 got nothing. It’s one of the best films I’ve seen in ages.

Teflon Don at Acute Politics needs your vote in the Milbloggies. You can vote for him here. (He is in the U.S. Army category.) If you haven’t registered, do so here.

I’m pushing Badgers Forward too, but Acute Politics is neck and neck for first place and needs every vote he can get. Certainly consider a vote for either one, but I really want to see Acute Politics take the top spot if he can.

I was an early supporter of both sites and want to see them do well.

The 11th witness of the trial and Monday’s third witness took the stand just after the lunch recess. Here is the testimony of Lorenzo Lucero Yrigoyen:

(more…)

This post sets forth the exchange of e-mails between me and the L.A. Times “Readers’ Representative” regarding the paper’s misstatement of Bush’s famous “sixteen words” from his 2003 State of the Union speech.

The background is here. In short, the paper recently claimed:

In his January 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush said Iraq had sought uranium for nuclear weapons from Niger . . .

When it is indisputable, as a factual matter, that he did not say that.

Here is the exchange of e-mails. Enjoy.

(more…)