Legal Commentary

An indirect graphical indication of public interest in Sarah Palin

Posted on August 30, 2008
I'm not modest, but my blog's traffic is, and I'm okay with that. My normal traffic, as measured by Sitemeter, generally runs between 1-2k page views per day, for which I'm genuinely grateful. On days when InstaPundit or Hugh Hewitt or someone on The Corner or my friend Patterico links something I've written, I may get three or four times...

Palin and the résumé test: a respectful reply to James Joyner

Posted on August 30, 2008
[Note: I'm republishing here the photo that ran with the post to which I'm replying, not because it's at all relevant to the subject matter, but because it shows Gov. Palin in a relaxed office setting (probably her Anchorage office) that includes a bearskin and an Alaskan king crab...

A plea for patience with sour, conventional conservative pundits who are still getting their minds around the Palin pick

Posted on August 30, 2008
I've gotten more than a few emails urging me to take up the cudgels against David Frum or Charles Krauthammer or other conservative pundits who've expressed anything from serious reservations to outright alarm at the Palin nomination. One, whom I won't mention by name here, said that if the Palin nomination excites the GOP base, we ought to "get a...

Palin's kids are NOT named after TV witches (sheesh)

Posted on August 30, 2008
If there were any shred of doubt left as to whether Andrew Sullivan is a ridiculous tool ? and guest poster Alex my friend Patterico at Patterico's Pontifications has cataloged several other examples ? it's erased by his uncritical, enthusiastic republication of a reader email asserting that Sarah Palin's daughters Willow and Piper are named after TV witches in Buffy...

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Obama's first post-Palin-pick TV ad: Um, look over there, there's Dubya!

Posted on August 30, 2008
Voiceover: "Well, he's made his choice," says a female voice, "but for the rest of us, there's still no change." (Cut from video clips of energized crowd cheering McCain and Palin to videos of single man, then a single woman in facial close-up, both obviously painfully constipated, but thoughtful...

Single most clueless media "attack" on Gov. Palin's credentials

Posted on August 30, 2008
For the same day of the announcement, the Utterly Clueless "I'm a troll who lives inside the Beltway and could not possibly survive for 12 hours if abandoned in any red-state city for 24 hours" Award goes to Jonathan Martin at the Politico (boldface mine): Palin, 44, is less than two years removed from being mayor of Wasilla, Alaska; has...

Palin knows being pro-production doesn't mean being in the oil companies' pocket

Posted on August 30, 2008
Saturday's Houston Chronicle has a superb, insightful article by staff reporter Tom Fowler which quotes independent but knowledgeable energy industry experts who are familiar with Gov. Sarah Palin's record. It's packed with specific facts about that record, and the quoted experts ably draw a set of important distinctions...

Not a messiah, not even from Harvard, but the one (lower-case) we've been waiting for

Posted on August 30, 2008
Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard have both been Palin prophets, both online and as television pundits. Now they have up a pair of punchy, persuasive online pieces worth your while: Barnes' Providential Palin and Kristol's Let Palin Be Palin...

The Palin family's energy bona fides versus the Democrats' big talk

Posted on August 29, 2008
When Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi religiously intone, yet again, with serene and bleak confidence that "We can't drill our way out of this," I can't help wondering if either of them could tell the difference at a glance between a drillbit, a pumpjack, a derrick, and a blowout preventer...

Don't be misled into thinking that Gov. Palin has championed the same sort of "windfall profits taxes" on oil companies that Obama has

Posted on August 29, 2008
Stephen Spruiell was generous and self-critical enough to link today on The Corner a comment I wrote to one of my own Palin posts in which I took issue with a post by my excellent friend Ed Morrissey (formerly of Captain's Quarters) at Hot Air. Basically, I thought Ed (and, inferentially, Mr...

Why Biden won't be able to do to Palin what Bentsen did to Quayle

Posted on August 29, 2008
Some conservatives are worried that Sarah Palin will become another "Dan Quayle at the Veep debate, being skewered by Lloyd Bentsen." I've been thinking about that possibility since the Biden nomination. My first reaction was that as a life-long Texan, I knew Lloyd Bentsen (well, actually, my father did); Lloyd Bentsen was my friend...

Non-scandal involving Gov. Palin: Even though he's an admitted child-abuser who Tasered his own step-son and used a deadly weapon to break the law, Trooper Wooten still has a job

Posted on August 29, 2008
I'm republishing as a post in its own right what I wrote in a comment on July 21 on my post describing Gov. Sarah Palin as the "Most popular politician in the country" ? which she indeed is among her own constituents in Alaska, and, I predict, will soon become around the rest of the nation...

Yay! It's Palin!

Posted on August 29, 2008
I'm enthused ? and oh-so-pleasantly surprised! ? about John McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate, for all of the reasons stated in my previous posts about her [and new ones, which I'll be adding to this table as I write them ? Beldar]: POST DATE Would Alaska Gov...

Obama over the top

Posted on August 28, 2008
Events may prove me wrong. But I believe that in hindsight ? even, say, a year from now ? the high point of the failed Barack Obama presidential candidacy will be recognized as having occurred a few seconds before he spoke these lines in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention tonight: You know, John McCain likes to say...

Beldar at the beginning

Posted on August 28, 2008
When I started this blog in 2003, near the bottom of the personal information that's always been linked from my sidebar, I included an explanation for the origin of my nickname, "Beldar," during my days as a member of the Finquo Pledge Class of the Longhorn Band's Kappa Kappa Psi service fraternity 30 years ago...

Bubba and Slow Joe at the DNC

Posted on August 27, 2008
Can there be any remaining doubt that Bill Clinton is the most accomplished and brazen liar in the history of the United States of America? Could anyone who was watching be so naïve as to believe that he believed a single word that he said about Barack Obama, or about his own intentions to campaign for Obama? (I skipped John...

Hillary at the DNC

Posted on August 27, 2008
I wasn't able to watch last night's live coverage of the Democratic National Convention, but I watched replays in the wee small hours. I was fascinated by the reports that the Obama campaign juggled former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, the supposed "key-note speaker," into an earlier time slot with fewer TV viewers because he was refusing to deliver up enough...

Teddy at the DNC

Posted on August 25, 2008
Only a grinch could begrudge the Democrats their convention. I hope they have a good time. I'm prepared to be entertained by any conflict that breaks out, but I won't be disappointed if there is none. And I'll watch quite a bit of it, and maybe share a few of my reactions here...

Why I probably ought never be in the same room with Barack Obama

Posted on August 25, 2008
I've never been arrested. The closest I've come as an adult to being in a fist-fight was more than 10 years ago, when a drunk sucker-punched me after I knocked on the door of his ski condo at 3:00 a.m. to ask him and his friends to turn down their music, and by the time I got off the floor...

Michelle and Barack Obama as national mom and dad

Posted on August 25, 2008
Let's just stipulate that Barack and Michelle Obama have adorable daughters. I expected Michelle Obama's speech to be thoroughly homogenized and pasteurized and reassuring. Was it? I don't know, although the part I saw was bland. I fell asleep, and only woke up near the end, when Barack Obama "joined" his family via a teleconferencing hookup from Kansas City...

Why Obama's conventional Veep choice should free McCain to make an unconventional one (Palin or Jindal)

Posted on August 24, 2008
Barack Obama, who is at least superficially a very unconventional presidential candidate, has now picked an exceptionally conventional vice-presidential running mate in Joe Biden. Biden was born in 1942; he was first elected to the Senate in 1972, when Obama was 11 years old, and Biden has been there ever since...

Obama picks Veep nominee whose main claim to fame is being caught repeatedly as a plagiarist

Posted on August 23, 2008
As I post this, the NYT is announcing on its website that Barack Obama has chosen fellow senator Joe Biden as his running mate. If true, then Obama has apparently made NYT pundit David Brooks a happy man. He's certainly made me happier as a committed Obama opponent! I'm pretty sure that David Brooks is a nice man...

Obama's belatedly acknowledged case comment in the Harvard Law Review raises questions about his campaign's fundamental honesty

Posted on August 22, 2008
On June 23, 2008, prompted by what I thought was a poorly researched and incomplete article by Jeffrey Ressner and Ben Smith on the Politico website, I wrote a post entitled Why Didn't Obama Publish anything in the law journal he edited? The key passage from the Ressner and Smith article, at least for purposes of my own post, was...

McCain versus Obama: "placelessness," faith, and dreams

Posted on August 16, 2008
Peggy Noonan wrote an op-ed in yesterday's Wall Street Journal entitled The End of Placeness. Although more often lately I have found myself disagreeing with her political observations, I remain a fan of her prose, in part because it has a vivid and authentically consistent voice even on the printed page...

Fashion and The One

Posted on August 16, 2008
Per the front page of today's WaPo, on what must surely be a slow news day: The Barack Obama campaign, which has been actively courting the fashion industry, has coordinated some 20 or so designers who are creating official merchandise for the candidate's Web site...

Not from Kansas

Posted on August 12, 2008
It's amazing how bad the fact-checking can be in a newspaper like the Washington Post (emphasis mine): Obama's embodiment of a newer America begins but hardly ends with the fact that he would be the first black president. In a country where people liked to know where you were from, Obama lacks a ready answer ? he is part Hawaii,...

Windfall profits taxes on energy companies?

Posted on August 07, 2008
Here's a current affairs multiple choice question that is dirt simple: For the second quarter of 2008, two highly pertinent financial figures reported by ExxonMobil were its net income (as calculated according to U.S. GAAP, i.e., generally accepted accounting principles) and the taxes it paid...

Beldar to Lowry, for the benefit of McCain, on ANWR

Posted on August 06, 2008
Rich Lowry, the editor of the National Review, asks a question on The Corner today that I don't think he means to be rhetorical (bold-face mine): Drilling is, of course, the best domestic issue Republicans and McCain have going for them. Can you imagine what the debate would look like if McCain hadn't changed his position on off-shore drilling a...

Under the most favorable characterization, Obama displays the stupidity of youth in urging the tapping of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Posted on August 05, 2008
Depending on the circumstances, sometimes only a few years' difference in life experience can translate into an enormous gap in wisdom. I was born in November 1957, at the tail-end of the Baby Boom. Teens from small towns in the west Texas prairies learned to drive early in those days...

Beldar has no fault to find with Obama's special airplane chair

Posted on August 04, 2008
I was among those most mocking when it came to the Great Seal of Obama. But unlike my blogospheric friend Hugh Hewitt, I don't have a particular problem with Obama's "special chair" on his campaign airplane, as shown in this CBS photo (which I've enlarged and enhanced to make the printing on the leather more obvious): It's not a knock-off...

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