Washington Post Staff Writer Libby Copeland bemoans “poor Hillary” — or rather, that people say it of Hillary Clinton’s seemingly Quixotic quest for the White House:

“Poor Hillary,” write the op-ed writers and the bloggers and the newspaper letter-writers. “Poor Hillary’s done,” writes a gleeful reader in Portsmouth, Va., on Mother’s Day. “The Billstone Around Poor Hillary’s Neck,” reads a New York Daily News headline yesterday. The talk show host Bill Maher has used the phrase, and the occasional CNN anchor, and, of course, the conservative yakkers who like the pure, distilled schadenfreude of those two words.

***

Hillary hate is something profound, something that may never be fully unraveled. It is her very name, so polarizing; it is Slick Willy and Vince Foster and Whitewater and that nickname “Shrillary” and her supposed unending ambition and . . . something else, something ancient. It is Hillary Clinton stretched like taffy, the photos you see of her on right-wing Web sites with her eyes all big and crazy:

Is it about her womanhood? Or is it about this woman? Is that a false distinction? (”Poor Hillary: right gender, wrong woman,” goes the headline on the Web site of a Scottish newspaper, as if you can separate the two. But it’s all mixed up. And you don’t find too many references to “poor Johnny” or “poor Barry,” even when their campaigns hit black ice.)

Poor Libby apparently is unable to grasp the concept that many people might vote for a female candidate, but not for Hillary Clinton, due to many things Clinton has said and done in her past.  Poor Libby lives in a parallel dimension (i.e., the newsroom of the Washington Post) where conservatives yakkers would not lift up an American reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher.

Poor Libby lives in a special place where no one has ever referred to poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor, poor Barack Obama.

Poor Libby may not even know what a search engine is. Poor journalism.

(h/t Memeorandum.)

Anywhere else I am at the mercy of the government. It is very simple. I want to be in a country where I can defend myself when I am attacked.
– Ada Sereni, in James McNeish, Belonging, 1980

Earlier this week Hitchens posted an piece about Israel’s 60th anniversary in which he all but wished it would just go under so he wouldn’t have to stress about it anymore. The tone of the column is regrettably familiar by now, that Israel is a mistake, a vast mistake.
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Greedy President Bush:

President Bush’s financial fortunes appear to have declined over the past seven years, with his family assets dropping as low as $6.5 million, according to disclosure forms released yesterday.

Bush and his wife, Laura, were worth at least $9 million and as much as $24 million at the start of his term. The Bushes could still be worth as much as $20 million now, according to the financial documents filed with the Office of Government Ethics, which requires assets to be reported only within broad ranges.

What a grasping, avaricious man.   Bet he pardons a lot of people in positions to do him financial favors when he leave office, too.

The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (who knew) explains the sexual practices of the little brown peoples:

Throughout Indonesia, a majority of women regularly engage in a number of practices to “clean,” “dry,” “tighten,” or “deodorize” their vaginas. These practices derive from longstanding traditions designed to achieve conformity with expectations about the appearance, function, and sexual performance of the vagina. These are rooted in a widespread belief that “tight sex” or “dry sex”-vaginal intercourse without any or with minimal lubrication in the vagina-is more pleasurable for men and gender norms that require women to “please” men. . . .

Among the Javanese and Sundanese, and many other ethnic groups, a bride is prepared for the nuptials by a professional wedding dresser ( tukang pais ). There is no standard way of preparation, but jamu is typically used to reduce vaginal odors and any “excessive” secretions. Occasionally, the dresser will advise the bride to undergo a special pre-wedding beauty treatment. At a beauty salon or spa, the bride might have her vagina “smoked,” by sitting on a chair with a whole in the middle over a charcoal fire on which special herbs are placed to create a fragrant steam.

And all this time we thought “God, you make me wet” was a compliment.

Shamelessly stolen from Gail.

“The People have no role in the government when we have our own political beliefs to fulfill.” *

Two things will come out of this farce of muddled judicial “thinking”: California will be in play because now Obama is going to have to square his claimed opposition to same-sex marriage with the newly created “right” to it in a state that represents 10% of the nation, and the initiative for the California ballot in November to amend the state constitution to keep the statutory definition of marriage of one man to one woman just got a boost.

Justin Levine at Patterico’s

The majority decision goes well beyond the narrow question of gay marriage. It also holds for the first time that sexual orientation is a “suspect classification” under the California’s Equal Protection Clause. Therefore, any law in the state that discriminates against homosexuals will be subject to “strict scrutiny” by the court - essentially treating it the same way as laws that discriminate against racial minorities. [This part of the ruling can be found in Section V-B of the decision PDF, starting on pg. 95.] […]

While I have no problems with the result of this decision as a matter of social policy, it remains problematic in terms of the judicial activism debate. In addition to the dissenting opinions, you might want to pay particular attention to footnote # 52 in the majority’s decision (starting on pg. 79 of the PDF document) which underscores the problem. Ironically, the majority doesn’t seem to grasp the obvious contradictions and tensions in their reasoning that footnote 52 presents. Merely citing past court decisions is not a valid substitute for reasoning in this instance, nor is it adequate to explain the blatant double standards in social policy (beyond the personal whims and political preferences of the Justices).

It should be noted that the WHOLE court found that there was no discrimination on the basis of sex in the marriage statute. Where it split so on the 4-3 was the majority found the marriage statute was discriminatory on the basis of sexual orientation. This is especially mindboggling since the marriage statute never ever has had orientation as a qualifying/disqualifying factor in obtaining a license.

But hey, four people in robes know what’s best for 37 million people, even if 61% of voting Californians directly approved of the marriage statute.

 *****

PS: any discussion of this issue should include making the distinction between a constitution right and a statutory right, something the majority judges blur in their rush to make social policy by fiat.

As much as I disdain this [insert rude epithet], I don’t think that the courts are the way to go.  You may feel otherwise: perhaps to make an example is worthwhile in such a notorious case?

Sister Toldjah’s writing about it, too. (h/t memeorandum)

Investigations: while Specter wants Congress to look into “Spygate,” Patterico drops a bombshell on the LA Times, and David Vitter was acquitted for having instrumentalized the (presumably) suicided DC Madame’s employees prior to joining the Senate, in case you missed that.

Applebee’s.  Where the Racists Are.

Orin non-Volokh has his say.

Ptooie. 

Bemoaning the party’s problems, Peggy doesn’t provide much in the way of constructive advice: 

What happens to the Republicans in 2008 will likely be dictated by what didn’t happen in 2005, and ‘06, and ‘07. The moment when the party could have broken, on principle, with the administration – over the thinking behind and the carrying out of the war, over immigration, spending and the size of government – has passed. What two years ago would have been honorable and wise will now look craven. They’re stuck.

Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party’s fortunes from the president’s. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn’t be left with a ruined “brand,” as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership.

So, the party ought to have judged things as Peggy has, and it could have avoided disaster.  She wrings her hands until it looks like she has Marfan syndrome.

I’m terribly sorry to break this to Peggy, but about the only part of the Republican Party that has operated with any effect during the past 6 years is the Presidency.  What remains of the Republican Congress that was thrown over in 2006 may find it convenient to blame the President–just as Peggy has–but has nobody to blame but itself, for being a pork-ridden, craven, lard-assed bunch of ninnyhammers.

Undoubtedly, history will show that the Bush Administration commited many errors.  At the same time, I think it will go down in history as, if not a Golden Era, then a Silver one of shining honesty with respect to how it presented its policies, despite the continuous abuse of partisan hacks and morons.  You don’t think so?  Well, I hope to live long enough to see the Bush Papers compared with those of his predecessors.  These people should be afraid of the vicious backbiting beast that they have unleashed, but they haven’t the sense.

So, pardon my language, but f*ck you, Peggy, and f*ck the Republican Party.  For some of us, it never was about the standard, but about what it was supposed to represent.  You want us to mourn a party whose leaders have given naught but lip-service to its express principles for all these years?  Even Superhero Zombie Reagan couldn’t help you now.

Where do we go from here?  This might be a good start.

Via Reuters:

Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.

So obesity adds to global warming, which we know is responsible for pretty much all of the ills of society. And they didn’t factor in the air conditioning?

The upside is that if John McCain manages to win the election, he could nominate Mike Huckabee for HHS Secretary to put us all on a diet.  Those losing weight would receive emission credits under a cap-and-trade system, with just a small kickback commission paid to Al Gore’s company.

Thing In a Jar.

500 Years of Women 

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