Well, yeah...

Glenn Reynolds:

Let me be clear: All you people who were playing the have-you-no-decency card under Bush, but who aren’t screaming just as loud now — which is pretty much all of you people who were playing the have-you-no-decency card under Bush — were and are miserable lying hacks. And I thank Obama for making that perfectly clear, at least.

"Round and round and round in the circle game..."

In which the NY Times reveals itself, yet again, to be a simple, partisan rag...

In 2005, the Republicans in the United States Senate were frustrated by the Democrats' use of the filibuster to thwart Presidential nominations to the Federal judiciary, and were particularly concerned with the threat of a filibuster on Supreme Court nominees, which had never previously happened. Because of this, they contemplated a rule change to eliminate, or significantly limit, the filibuster, a change that was termed the "nuclear option." The mainstream press, as represented here by the New York Times, was appalled. This despite the fact that, with Democrats in the White House and control of the Senate, they had favored filibuster reform. No, they were just wrong earlier, and their new, more fully matured position, was the right one. Clearly, the filibuster was wrong. A problem.

March 29, 2005 - Walking in the Opposition's Shoes

While the filibuster has not traditionally been used to stop judicial confirmations, it seems to us this is a matter in which it's most important that a large minority of senators has a limited right of veto. Once confirmed, judges can serve for life and will remain on the bench long after Mr. Bush leaves the White House. And there are few responsibilities given to the executive and the legislature that are more important than choosing the members of the third co-equal branch of government. The Senate has an obligation to do everything in its power to ensure the integrity of the process.

A decade ago, this page expressed support for tactics that would have gone even further than the "nuclear option" in eliminating the power of the filibuster. At the time, we had vivid memories of the difficulty that Senate Republicans had given much of Bill Clinton's early agenda. But we were still wrong. To see the filibuster fully, it's obviously a good idea to have to live on both sides of it. We hope acknowledging our own error may remind some wavering Republican senators that someday they, too, will be on the other side and in need of all the protections the Senate rules can provide.

On May 5, 2005, a little over a month later, they provided space on their editorial page to former Senator George Mitchell to make the same case against filibuster reform. Clearly, when the Democrats were in the minority, the filibuster was a vitally important tool for stopping the depredations of a Republican President and Senate. They recognized, at this time, the folly of their earlier position, that the filibuster was an archaic, anti-democratic nuisance, allowing Republicans to prevent the noble Democrats in the Senate and White House from getting done the vital work of the nation.

So, what goes around comes around. Again. As the editorial board has decided, again, that the principled (certainly not partisan or biased, but principled) position on the filibuster is that it must be reformed.

Fed up and rueful, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, made a startling admission on Thursday: he should have reined in the filibuster rule last year, when he had a chance...If Mr. Reid helped enact the proposal of [Senators Udall and Merkley], he would instantly make Congress more efficient and more democratic...We have supported eliminating the filibuster for judicial and executive nominees. Making other filibusters harder would be good for both parties. If Mr. Reid remains majority leader in January, he should lead the reform.

And, of course, they're not actually lying when they say that they "have supported eliminating the filibuster for judicial and executive nominees" - they're just conveniently omitting the fact that, when it was their guys doing the filibustering and not the other guys, it was A-OK with them.

Because it's not about principle. Never has been, never will be. The Times, despite its pretense to being a non-partisan purveyor of the news, is a partisan political actor. They are pro-Democrat, anti-Republican, leftist progressives and, to the extent that there's ever a "principle" behind their positions, that's the extent of it.

And it's been really obvious for a really long time. This was not hard to see coming, as this piece from 2006, during the "nuclear option" debate and the Alito nomination, demonstrates...

[I]f the Republicans don't change the rules, the Democrats will, as soon as it becomes in their best interest to do so. Is there any chance that a President Hillary Clinton nomination to the Supreme Court, a nominee with majority support in the Senate, could be kept off the court by a Republican minority with impunity? That a majority supported nominee could be filibustered without hysterical screeching from the legacy media? Of course not. The New York Times would compose frothy rants encouraging the Democrats to, for the good of the country, change the rules to overcome the obstructionists, so that they could back to the work of the American People...

No hypocrisy here, nosirree...

Q: What do you call a rich lawyer who supported "big insurance" in its efforts to reduce payments to workers who got cancer from working with asbestos?
A: Democratic "dream candidate" for the Senate!

...the Harvard professor also has a potential deadly political sin in her background. Maybe it is the reason President Obama didn’t nominate her to head up the consumer agency. It is not a secret that his administration believed Lizzy couldn’t survive the Senate confirmation process.

One of the Harvard professor’s many well-compensated part-time gigs included consulting for Travelers Insurance...What did Lizzy do to earn $44,000 in compensation from the insurance company? She made it harder for claimants to collect. Warren helped establish the bankruptcy strategy for companies to avoid crushing lawsuits. In short, go bankrupt to avoid paying victims.

It's amusing how often past activities that would cause shrieks of "principled" outrage on the part of the left if found in a Republican candidate's background produce, if found in a Democrat, the sound of crickets...

All of the 100 watt incandescent's that I could possibly use for the rest of my life...

...won't equal the "carbon footprint" of this one-day fund-raising trip...

Obama mines riches of Aspen in re-election bid

But those with Aspen ties aren’t done giving. First Lady Michelle Obama will arrive in our fair city a week from today, on Tuesday, July 26, for a luncheon to benefit her husband’s bid for a second term, according to the Chicago Sun Times. The first lady will be hitting up two ski resorts in one day, first stopping in Park City, Utah, for a breakfast before hopping a flight to Aspen. It will be a quick fundraising trip. She will promptly return to Washington, D.C.

If the people who claim to believe in Global Warming¹ won't even pretend to behave as if they believe it, why should we?

(H/T: Instapundit)



¹ - And the contrary evidence is mounting...more on that later.

Obama's Super Bowl Party menu...

...serves as a reminder, once again, that the media only recognizes hypocrisy as a Republican sin...

The rest of the menu for the 100 or so guests at the White House bash is tailgate-friendly even if served inside the Executive Mansion: bratwurst, kielbasa, cheeseburgers, deep-dish pizza and Buffalo wings with sides of German potato salad, twice-baked potatoes and assorted chips and dips.

But you see, it's OK when the food nannies in the White House eat those foods that they condemn everyone else for eating because, after all, they're good people, with good intentions, doing good and progressive things to make the world a better place...

Odds and ends...

Odds and ends:

• From the "you just can't make that up" file: "An expedition team which set sail from Plymouth on a 5,000-mile carbon emission-free trip to Greenland have been rescued by an oil tanker."



• Andy McCarthy outlines an almost - almost - unbelievable example of hypocrisy from the Obama administration.
  

  [The Obama Justice Department's] Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is nearing completion of a 220-page report which will recommend that Attorney General Eric Holder refer former Bush administration lawyers to their state bar disciplinary committees over purported ethical lapses in the legal analysis those lawyers drafted to justify harsh interrogation techniques that critics — including President Obama himself — have labeled “torture.”...Yet, even as the OPR report is being finalized, even after Obama declared himself open to the possibility of criminal prosecution against the Bush officials...the Obama Justice Department is relying on the very same legal analysis in order to urge a federal appeals court to reject torture claims. In fact, as the Obama Justice Department argued to that appeals court a little over a week ago, the torture law analysis in question has already been adopted by another federal appeals court.




• Yes, I know that liberals can't be hypocrites. There are two reasons. The first is, when you don't have any fixed principles, you cannot be accused of violating them. Secondly, they cannot be criticized because of the moral superiority demonstrated by their stated goals, whether the goals are good or not, whether the means chosen will promote those goals or not.



• There are a few conservatives in Hollywood. Some of them post at Big Hollywood. And say interesting or provocative things. I think that this bit from Orson Bean does a nice job pointing out perspective that some on the left miss.
  

  The Los Angeles Times tries hard to present different viewpoints on its Op-Ed page. But last week, they hit a new low with a column by a lawyer named Joseph Margulies, pleading for mercy on behalf of one of the three terrorists America has water-boarded since 9/11: Abu Zubaydah..."The enduring torment is the taunting reminder that darkness encroaches. Already he cannot picture his mother’s face or recall his father’s name. Gradually his past, like his future, eludes him.”
  
  ...
  
  When I had calmed down a bit after reading this, I typed out a letter to The Times which they printed. Here’s what the letter said:
  
  “She looks into his eyes. Hers are filled with terror. The heat is unbearable. Her skin is beginning to blister. He reaches out and takes her hand. His hand has a deep gash in it from the shattered glass of the window he has helped to smash. ‘Hold on tight to me,’ he whispers. ‘Keep your eyes closed. Don’t look down.’ Together, they step through the jagged opening of a high floor of the World Trade Center. On the sidewalk below, people shriek in horror.
  
  I don’t know the young woman’s name, but I do know that, like Abu Zabadah, she can’t picture her mother’s face either.”

  
  
  
• While it's getting some traction, I'm not sure that there's been adequate coverage of what's happening with Chrysler. I don't detect any of the outrage that people should be feeling as the Obama adminstration violates pretty much every principle of fairness and law. Michael Barone addressed a lot of it in a good piece.
  

  ...the Obama deal ... would give the bondholders about 33 cents on the dollar for their secured debts while giving the United Auto Workers retirees about 50 cents on the dollar for their unsecured debts.
  
  This of course is a violation of one of the basic principles of bankruptcy law, which is that secured creditors — those who lended money only on the contractual promise that if the debt was unpaid they’d get specific property back — get paid off in full before unsecured creditors get anything.
  
  ...
  
  Think carefully about what’s happening here. The White House, presumably car czar Steven Rattner and deputy Ron Bloom, is seeking to transfer the property of one group of people to another group that is politically favored. In the process, it is setting aside basic property rights in favor of rewarding the United Auto Workers for the support the union has given the Democratic Party.

  
  Read the whole thing.