Bill Maher lay in wait for Spencer Pratt, then suddenly sprang the trap: "Your wife... look I hate to put it this way, but what I remember about this story was huge tits...."

"What is the state of the tits? They're not what you would call huge but they were at one point. At one time they were okay. So what happened there?"

Yes, that's what Maher said to the man's face, 37 minutes into the interview, after some drinking.

I think Maher wanted to destroy Pratt and had that planned. Either Pratt loses his temper and struggles to respond or he displays a Dukakis-like coldness or Franken-like jocularity that would turn women against him.

But no:

Maher: "But so then she had breast reduction?"

Pratt: "Yes, she did.... So I don't think you respectfully would notice anything."

Maher: "I respectfully wouldn't comment...."

Pratt: "Well, you brought it up."

Touché. Maher blabbers — "Well, I just... I'm telling you..." — then jumps to his backup attack: "My history of you is like 2007 douchebag and then years of nothing?"

Anyway, I think Maher came in wanting to reduce Pratt to the nothing he believed he was — a washed up reality show star who's pissed that his own house burned down — but Pratt prevailed and I think by the end Maher either felt supportive or wanted to manufacture some last-minute evidence that he had backed the winner. 

"In states as disparate as Wisconsin and New Mexico, ads have labeled a Black candidate as 'different' and 'dangerous' and darkened a white man’s hands as they portrayed him as a criminal...."

"In Wisconsin, where Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is Black, is the Democratic nominee for Senate, a National Republican Senatorial Committee ad targeting him ends by juxtaposing his face with those of three Democratic House members, all of them women of color, and the words 'different' and 'dangerous.' In a mailer sent to several state House districts in New Mexico, the state Republican Party darkened the hands of a barber shown giving a white child a haircut, next to the question, 'Do you want a sex offender cutting your child’s hair?'... Appeals to white fears and resentments are an old strategy in American elections, etched into the country’s political consciousness, with ads like George Bush’s ad using the Black convict Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis in 1988, and Jesse Helms’s 1990 commercial showing a white man’s hands to denounce his Black opponent’s support for 'quotas.'" 

From "With Ads, Imagery and Words, Republicans Inject Race Into Campaigns/Running ads portraying Black candidates as soft on crime — or as 'different' or 'dangerous' — Republicans have shed quiet defenses of such tactics for unabashed defiance" (NYT).

The manipulation of the color of hands is a very specific problem, and I don't like seeing the name of my state mixed up in that accusation. I don't like "In states as disparate as Wisconsin and New Mexico, ads have... darkened a white man’s hands as they portrayed him as a criminal." That happened in New Mexico but not in Wisconsin.

Yes, there has been been relentless advertising against Mandela Barnes here in Wisconsin, but I haven't seen any photoshopping of the color of hands or other body parts. What I'm seeing — and it's practically the only advertising I'm seeing — is the connection of Mandela Barnes to crime and to policies advocated by the most left-wing Democrats. Yes, you can argue that is inherently racial, and the NYT article also does that, but it's a far cry from this awfulness from New Mexico:

DeSantis haters are driving more views to this DeSantis ad. They liken it to the Dukakis tank ride...

 ... but are they right or is this a good ad?

 

Did DeSantis successfully lure his antagonists into propagating this ad? I only noticed it because Gillian Brockell wrote this WaPo column: "DeSantis fighter jet ad conjures 1988 Dukakis tank debacle."

"In the final months of his life, when it was clear that he wouldn’t recover, Atwater lamented the dirty, divisive campaigns he’d run, and apologized far and wide for them."

"His memoir calls on politicians to instead follow the Golden Rule. Roger Stone, who formed an early consulting and lobbying firm in the Washington area with Atwater, along with Paul Manafort and Charles Black, remains unconvinced about Atwater’s spiritual awakening. 'Lee was a great storyteller,' Stone told me in a recent interview. 'But, in the end, he was just grasping at straws. The Atwater family disagrees and has no doubt that he became a Christian. But at that point he was also Buddhist, Hindu, and everything else.'... In Stone’s view, however, Atwater was more of an opportunist. 'We both knew he believed in nothing,' Stone told me. 'Above all, he was incredibly competitive. But I had the feeling that he sold his soul to the devil, and the devil took it.'"

Writes Jane Mayer in "The Secret Papers of Lee Atwater, Who Invented the Scurrilous Tactics That Trump Normalized/An infamous Republican political operative’s unpublished memoir shows how the Party came to embrace lies, racial fearmongering, and winning at any cost" (The New Yorker).

Gah! Why don't I have a "Lee Atwater" tag? I have about 10 old posts with his name. I'll bet every time I thought something like: No, he's a secondary character from a bygone age, not likely to come up enough to deserve his own tag. Meanwhile, I've got hundreds of tags for individual names that I've only used once. Atwater comes up a lot because his name is synonymous with "dirty tricks" and because he supposedly regretted it all when he came face to face with Death.

So that explains why I'm blogging this snippet from The New Yorker: It casts doubt on the deathbed conversion story. But it's just Roger Stone. We never actually believe Roger Stone. Then again, does it matter? Does it matter that a man regrets his evil deeds when he's no longer in a position to benefit from them? He took all his advantages when it worked in his favor, but he tells you to follow the Golden Rule. What's the basis for believing him?

FROM THE EMAIL: Richard writes: 

"Mr. Biden is far better known than Mr. Dukakis was and he has shown a resilience to caricature that Mr. Dukakis did not have."

"Mr. Trump is viewed unfavorably by a big swath of voters. His lack of credibility with many Americans has undercut his ability to deliver an attack. The nation is more pessimistic than it was when Mr. Dukakis faced Mr. Bush, who as Ronald Reagan’s vice president was effectively running as an incumbent.... 'This is going to be tricky for them: Biden is a pretty well-known quantity,' said Susan Estrich, who was Mr. Dukakis’ campaign manager. 'The way you usually burst balloons is paint the other guy as a risk.' Mr. Dukakis, proud and disdainful of politics, refused to believe these kind of attacks would hurt them, and did not heed the advice of his staff that he fight back. He allowed Mr. Bush to define him before Labor Day.... His opponents even raised questions about Mr. Dukakis’s mental fitness, decades before Mr. Biden faced the same. Conservative groups were circulating rumors, with no substantiation, that Mr. Dukakis was hiding the fact that he had been treated for depression. As the summer came to an end, Mr. Reagan was asked if Mr. Dukakis should release his medical records. 'Look, I’m not going to pick on an invalid,' he said. Mr. Reagan later said this was a failed joke, but by design or not, it succeeded in thrusting the rumor to the center of public attention. Mr. Dukakis called a news conference to say he had never struggled with mental illness."

From "A Glimmer of Hope for Trump? How Bush Mounted a Comeback in 1988/For Biden, a cautionary tale. For Trump, a search for his own Willie Horton" (NYT).

"Oh, I liked Dukakis. I like Buttigieg. I've finally lived long enough to realize I don't want a President I like."

Said Meade, just now. We'd been talking about the impeachment.

I'd read out an NPR headline, "Trump Impeachment Process Was 'Absolutely Worth It,' Schiff Says" — because I thought it was funny — so the subject was how the Democratic Party reacts after it focuses hate on a Republican President.

Meade and I lived through the Nixon hate fest in the 1970s. What did the Democratic Party give us after the hated Nixon withdrew from the scene? We got Jimmy Carter as a President, a notorious failure, and then 2 candidates who failed to win the presidency — Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.

I said "I liked Dukakis," and I really did at the time. I offered that Buttigieg reminds me of Dukakis. Something about his manner and his voice and style of speech. All of that was made to order for my taste.

Meade said: "Oh, I liked Dukakis. I like Buttigieg. I've finally lived long enough to realize I don't want a President I like."

If you're thinking of trying to top Meade's line by saying "I want a President who likes me," Meade already said that too, but I think "I don't want a President I like" is the more important concept here.

ADDED: From a PBS webpage:



The "other guy" was President Ronald Reagan. Neither Meade nor I liked Ronald Reagan. [CORRECTION: The other guy was George H.W. Bush. Meade and I did not like him either. Meade still doesn't like him: "He wasn't good enough."]

Michael Dukakis was Governor of Massachusetts. He was succeeded in office by William Weld, who's running for President right now, in the Republican primaries, challenging Donald Trump. The next elected Governor of Massachusetts was none other than Mitt Romney. After Mitt Romney came Deval Patrick, and he's running in the Democratic Party primaries right now.

Somehow, Governors of Massachusetts keep thinking they should be our President. There's a funny old NYT column about that. Hang on a second.

AND: How many newspaper columns stick in your mind for 30+ years? Here it is, "Well, if It Isn't the Governor of Massachusetts" by Veronica Geng (Sept. 22, 1988).

My boyfriend, Ed, has authorized me to tell this personal story about us, because it bears on the Presidential campaign. A few years ago I developed an infatuation with someone else, and then it fizzled out - mainly because of the shrewd way Ed handled the situation. He just began referring to this other guy, whose name he knew perfectly well, as ''the Governor of Massachusetts'' (which he wasn't). I'd come home on cloud nine, and Ed would say, ''So, did you have fun with the Governor of Massachusetts?'' This would deflate me....

"The 1988 campaign was anything but kind and gentle. There was the racially charged Willie Horton ad, in which Bush attacked Michael Dukakis’s furlough program for Massachusetts prisoners."

"Bush’s opponents—and some of his friends—thought that he had cheapened himself in the bare-knuckled grasp of his young campaign manager, Lee Atwater. The opponents acted surprised, claimed they were disappointed in him, as if anyone ever got that far in the game without playing rough. (Al Gore had first gone after the furlough program, albeit without mentioning Horton, when running against Dukakis in the primaries.) Bush’s foes derided his résumé as a sort of gilded joke, reciting all the appointive offices he’d briefly held—U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Republican National Committee chairman, U.S. Special Representative to China, C.I.A. director—as if they were a string of presents meted out to some trust-fund boy who’d done nothing to earn them. In fact, Bush rose in the Party because of electoral, not appointive, politics. And he rose, curiously enough, by losing—twice, in Senate runs in a still-blue Texas, in 1964 and 1970.... Even when he tried to kick ass with the silver foot supposedly lodged in his mouth from birth, there remained an irreducible niceness to him, an appealing mixture of noblesse oblige, boy-next-door bonhomie, and parody-begging goofiness—'the vision thing.'... [K]inder and gentler was actually profound...."

From "The Irreducible Niceness of George H.W. Bush" by Thomas Mallon in The New Yorker.

Also in that article — a quote from Richard Nixon: "George is such a sweet guy."

"Trump revives 'Willie Horton' tactic with ad linking illegal immigrant killer to Democrats."

Headline at The Washington Post, based on this ad, which Trump displays in a tweet without a language warning, so you'll hear "fuck" repeatedly:

It is outrageous what the Democrats are doing to our Country. Vote Republican now! https://t.co/0pWiwCHGbh pic.twitter.com/2crea9HF7G

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018

WaPo identifies the man as Luis Bracamontes, who — after he'd been deported twice — killed 2 California law enforcement officers. In the video, Bracamontes laughs about the killings and says he wishes he'd killed more of those "motherfuckers."

One way to counter this intense presentation of the illegal immigration issue is say it's the "Willie Horton" approach, which good people are supposed to understand and know to be racist.

“This was a classic example of racial cuing,” Claire Jean Kim, a political science professor at the University of California at Irvine, said in a 2012 PBS special. “The insinuation is, if you elect Governor Dukakis as president we’re going to have black rapists running amok in the country. It’s playing to white fears about black crime.”...

[Trump's new] video was discussed at length by [CNN's Chris] Cuomo and Don Lemon on Wednesday. After pointing out that “much of the footage” in the ad “comes from Fox,” a network often praised by Trump and once helmed by [Roger] Ailes, the “Willie Horton” ad creator, Cuomo called both ads “grossly distorted, bigoted, but also effective.”...

The argument is that people are too afraid of crime, and we need to calm down and discount our primal reaction because to be virtuous we ought to discount our fear because we understand that some portion of it comes from inappropriate racial sensations. Nudged to restructure your feelings, watch Luis Bracamontes again and tell me whether you felt more calmly rational about the problem of crime in America.

ADDED: I see I used the word "discount" twice in the penultimate sentence. Too late to spruce that up. So let me say why that word was so important to me. It seems to me that the criticism based on the old Willie Horton ad is intellectually interesting, but not practical in use. Let's say Trump's ad activates something in the evolved human nervous system that we call racism or tribalism or xenophobia when we're conscious of it, but we're also properly afraid of crime, and there is something real about drug cartels and gangs that has something to do with poor control of our border. What am I supposed to do with that — downgrade my fear, take 10% off, 20% off, whatever part I estimate is the instinctive racism that a moral person would want to take out of the decisionmaking process?

I suspect that those making the argument that Trump's ad is a "Willie Horton" move don't mean for us to make a precise adjustment and consider the issue of border control after discounting the part of our thinking attributable to racism. I think they too are attempting to produce an excessive and emotional reaction. They would like us to think Trump is deliberately stimulating racist impulses in the deep reaches of the human psyche, and that makes him so despicable that he must be completely opposed. But that offers nothing to those of us who have — after discounting for racism — a genuine, justified fear of crime.

"Apparently, this is something the public needs to hear in 2016: Please stop drinking hand sanitizer."

"The common disinfectant is typically used on, well, hands. But a recent anecdote from a former Wells Fargo banker in an article in The New York Times, who claimed to drink it as a stress reliever, brought the issue into the national spotlight, the newspaper also reports. And earlier this month, it was parodied on 'Saturday Night Live,' when Emily Blunt's character needs to have her stomach pumped after downing hand sanitizer. Perplexing as it may seem, drinking the alcohol-based sanitizer appears to be a growing problem..." (U.S. News).

What's perplexing?! It's alcohol!

Remember when Kitty Dukakis drank rubbing alcohol? Here's the NYT, November 9, 1989 (a year after Kitty's husband Michael lost the presidential election):

Kitty Dukakis's doctor said today that she was hospitalized after drinking a small amount of rubbing alcohol....

''Kitty has suffered from chemical dependency and struggled with depression for many years,'' the statement said. ''These two problems are often related. Autumn has been a particularly bad season for her.''

Dr. Plotkin said Mrs. Dukakis was now ''completely out of danger,'' and was moved out of intensive care and into a private room today.

A "small amount"... "intensive care"...

The statement did not say how much rubbing alcohol Mrs. Dukakis had consumed. Dr. Plotkin, reached by telephone tonight, declined to elaborate on his statement and refused to say what her motive might have been....

Rubbing alcohol differs in its chemical structure and reactions from ethanol, which is the form of alcohol contained in standard beverages. Rubbing, or isopropyl, alcohol is also contained in after-shave and hand lotions and many other products. Isopropyl alcohol irritates the lining of the stomach and intestines, and ingesting three to four ounces of it can cause severe symptoms like bloody vomiting, diarrhea and flu-like symptoms. A relatively small amount of isopropyl alcohol can produce an extreme hangover. It can also produce changes in the blood similar to those produced by severe diabetes or starvation.

So is hand sanitizer made with ethyl alcohol or isopropyl alcohol? Don't take my word for it, but Wikipedia says Purell is ethyl alcohol and "Purell purposely adds an unpleasant bitter taste to its product to make it undesirable to drink and to discourage ingestion."

4 reactions to Trump's flag-burning tweet.

2 days ago, Trump tweeted:

Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!

I've had a series of reactions:

1. Stern criticism of his disrespect for the right to freedom of speech: "Trump flaunts disrespect for American freedom of speech."

2. In an update to that post:

I see the way this — like that "millions of people who voted illegally" tweet — may be simply a trick to bait his antagonists and amuse his fans. It's just junk, a distraction, and it's funny the way we jump at what should be nothing. Does he think the presidency is his plaything, some kind of joke? To ask that is to be distracted, but from what? Perhaps from how serious he really is.

3. Observing that his tweet was effective in doing something he may have intended: Even more anti-Trump protesters will burn the flag, and their antics will be self-defeating.

4. Trump is the anti-Dukakis. He was doing exactly what Dukakis failed — disastrously — to do when he was asked the question  "Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?"



It seems like a crazy question, but I think it was intended to give Dukakis a chance to show that he was a human being, with genuine emotion. But Dukakis gave a legal, passionless answer: He's opposed to the death penalty. That is, making it personal doesn't change his answer: This is no time to show that I lose my mind when I feel deep anger.

I'm one of the few people who liked that about Dukakis. He stayed on track and proved his devotion to law. But just about everyone else seems to think he made a fatal error in not putting law to the side and showing his deep love for his wife and intense outrage at rape and murder.

Donald Trump, by contrast, reacting to some recent flag burning, not even confronted with a question, seized the occasion to get theatrically emotional about his love for the flag and his rage at its desecration.

Yes, there's important law that could be talked about, but he's not going there. He's the man of staunch feeling, not a robot like Dukakis.

"Jolen cream bleach turns the mustache on your upper lip to the exact color of Richard Gephardt's hair, which is better than its looking like Frida Kahlo's mustache, but it's still slightly hairier than you mean it to be."

Wrote Nora Ephron, a while back.

I'm finding that this morning, because Dick Gephardt is in the news today, blogged here, where William asked "How did Gephardt spend so many years in public life without being relentlessly mocked for his orange hair. I guess back then people were more tolerant of orange hair...."

Also, Bob Shrum, in "No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner," describes a Dukakis ad (in 1988) that mocked Gephardt by showing a "gymnast with comically dyed orange hair dressed in a suit... trampolining and tumbling forward and back and forward and back again" with the voice-over describing Gephardt's various flip-flops.

So orange hair got mocked, even in the old days. It's not just something invented recently to attack Trump. I certainly remember Reagan's hair getting mocked, especially since he denied dyeing it. The much-repeated joke attributed to Gerald Ford was: "Ronald Reagan doesn't dye his hair, he's just prematurely orange."

"She's not equipped to be President — in so many different ways."

Said Donald Trump, evoking — right? — among other things, genitalia.

Here's the NYT article on that speech to the NRA: "Donald Trump Tells N.R.A. Hillary Clinton Wants to Let Violent Criminals Go Free." The headline focuses on one of a few issues highlighted in the article:

Donald J. Trump accused Hillary Clinton on Friday of wanting to let violent criminals out of prison and “disarm” law-abiding citizens in unsafe neighborhoods, and warned that women, in particular, would be at greater risk if she were elected president. ... [Trump] said the November election would be a referendum on the Second Amendment....

The Times conspicuously rankles at Trump's daring to believe he can appeal to women, especially with a pro-gun message (though the NRA has made women-specific appeals for a long time):

Mr. Trump, whose record of sexist remarks, among other things, has left him at a potentially crippling disadvantage among female voters, polls show, appealed directly to women in his speech, imbuing his defense of gun rights with an undercurrent of fear.

“In trying to overturn the Second Amendment, Hillary Clinton is telling everyone — and every woman living in a dangerous community — that she doesn’t have the right to defend herself,” Mr. Trump said. “So you have a woman living in a community, a rough community, a bad community — sorry, you can’t defend yourself.”

But why does the headline zero in on Hillary's supposed plan to let violent criminals go free? You can see it here — racial politics:

If Mr. Trump’s comments seemed reminiscent of an era when crime rates were far higher — the Willie Horton ads attacking Michael S. Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, in the 1988 presidential race came to mind — they also appeared somewhat at odds with the broad bipartisan consensus on the need to reduce incarceration rates and prison populations: Mr. Trump sought to frighten voters about the idea of criminals being released from prison....

How irritating that Trump is trying "to frighten voters," just as Hillary is working the other side of the criminal law enforcement issue:

[O]n Saturday, Mrs. Clinton will speak at a dinner of the Trayvon Martin Foundation’s “Circle of Mothers” in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a group offering support to women who have lost a child to gun violence. And she is expected to press the issue to win over voters in Los Angeles, Oakland and other California cities before that state’s primary on June 7.

She's offering support to a group that offers support so that this other group  — those "voters in Los Angeles, Oakland and other California cities" — will offer her support as she continues her quest to defeat the gruff-voiced old socialist who isn't even really trying to win.

It's a hard life for a woman trying her darndest to be the most powerful person in the world — with the help of the most powerful newspaper in the world.

ADDED: "Circle of Mothers"! I was just talking about Hillary, mothers, and circles 2 posts down (in the context of the nonVenn diagrams: "Maybe they're just circles to be pretty. Circles are nice. So round! Here, they enclose words, words and numbers. Numbers can be hard, so soften them with round shapes, round shapes and soft colors, like the colors Mother used to decorate your nursery, Mother, who didn't trouble you too much with numbers but who comforted you with her round, round shapes.").

"Serge Kovaleski must think a lot of himself if he thinks I remember him from decades ago — if I ever met him at all, which I doubt I did."

"He should stop using his disability to grandstand and get back to reporting for a paper that is rapidly going down the tubes."

Said Trump, quoted by James Taranto, who sides with Kovaleski, because: 1. It's believable that Kovaleski really can't remember why he wrote what he wrote about cheering in Jersey City on 9/11, and 2. The video makes it "far likelier" than not that Trump's "gesticulations" were deliberate mockery of Kovaleski's physical disability.

I've already said what I have to say about the Trump/Kovaleski matter, so I'll just move on down Taranto column and quote this:

Hypothesis and Proof...

• “American Turks Anxious About Dukakis Presidency”—headline, Times-News (Hendersonville, N.C.), Aug. 7 1988
• “Michael Dukakis Would Very Much Like Your Turkey Carcass”—headline, Boston Globe, Nov. 25, 2015

George H.W. Bush, writing in his diary in 1988, called Michael Dukakis "midget nerd."

I'm looking for things in the the NYT article "Elder Bush Says His Son Was Served Badly by Aide" that you may not have already noticed.

After defeating the "midget nerd" in 1988, Bush wound up a one-term President, losing to Bill Clinton. I don't know what 2-word epithets he may have aimed at Clinton, but I see that, instead of going on to fight for the second term, he considered — over a year and a half before the election — announcing that he was not going to run for a second term:

He would “call a press conference in about November and just turn it loose,” he said in the audio diary. “You need someone in this job” who could give his “total last ounce of energy, and I’ve had” that “up until now, but now I don’t seem to have the drive.”

Energy. That's Trump's favorite buzzword, used most notably against Elder Bush's son Jeb.

More from the diary, making the job of President sound horrible:

“Maybe it’s the letdown after the day-to-day” 5 a.m. calls “to the Situation Room; conferences every single day with Defense and State; moving things, nudging things, worrying about things, phone calls to foreign leaders, trying to keep things moving forward, managing a massive project.... Now it’s different, sniping, carping, bitching, predictable editorial complaints.”

As for the criticism of Cheney and Rumsfeld, I'll briefly note Elder Bush's tendency to call everyone "iron-ass":

"[Dick Cheney] just became very hard-line.... Just iron-ass...."

“I’ve concluded that Lynne Cheney is a lot of the eminence grise here – iron-ass, tough as nails, driving,” he said...

“I think [Rumsfeld] served the president badly... I don’t like what he did, and I think it hurt the president having his iron-ass view of everything...."

"Nary a 'no' vote in Louisiana House on resolution urging Ginsburg, Kagan recusal in gay marriage case."

Reports The Times-Picayune.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan "have each engaged in public conduct suggestive of bias," reads Louisiana House Concurrent Resolution 85, sponsored by state Rep. Valerie Hodges, R-Denham Springs. In engaging on the issue of same-sex marriage, the justices have "thus demonstrate(d) an inability to be objective," and should therefore withdraw from the Obergefell v. Hodges case, the resolution says.

Embarrassing. 

And why Ginsburg and Kagan in particular? What was the "public conduct suggestive of bias"? Just because you can predict in advance where their thinking on a legal issue will lead them doesn't mean they are any more biased and bereft of objectivity than anyone else on the Court. In fact, unpredictability is more suggestive of bias. Consistency in legal reasoning, case by case and in expressions about law, suggests that you are following the norms of constitutional interpretation.

ADDED: A commenter says that the "public conduct" is officiating at same-sex wedding ceremonies. I'm seeing this at The Hill:

“Justices Ginsburg and Kagan, knowing full well that unique legal issues regarding the definition of marriage would soon come before them, deliberately officiated at so-called homosexual wedding ceremonies creating not merely the appearance of bias, but an actual and blatant conflict of interest,” [said Scott Lively, president of Abiding Truth Ministries].

“In my personal view they have committed an unparalleled breach of judicial ethics by elevating the importance of their own favored political cause of gay rights above the integrity of the court and of our nation.”

I don't see how participating in a wedding ceremony is a statement that you think there is a constitutional requirement that states must recognize same-sex marriage. Presumably, same-sex marriage was either already recognized in the place where Ginsburg/Kagan was performing the ceremony or it was a ceremony that wasn't recognized as creating a legal marriage. That probably shows they approve of same-sex marriage, though what Ginsburg did was perform a wedding for a former law clerk. Maybe she just treats all her former law clerks the same.

Anyway, doing something doesn't mean you believe you have a right to do it, and it would be utterly unworkable to say judges who do something must recuse themselves in cases about whether there is a right to do something. Should a judge who's had an abortion have to recuse herself in abortion cases? Should a judge who has given a speech have to recuse himself in a free speech case?

ALSO: A separate question is: Let's assume that doing something does equal a statement that one has a right to do it. Is belief that a right exists bias? I can't see that. I think the argument is more that a decision about the law was arrived at too early. But that doesn't make sense. Judges are always thinking, writing, and speaking about the law, forming beliefs about the answers. There's nothing wrong with that. I know there's this idea that Supreme Court Justices shouldn't express their conclusions about cases that might later come before the Court. That's the stock answer to every other question at confirmation hearings, though the Senators doing the questioning don't seem to think there's anything wrong with repeatedly inviting nominees to tip their hand.

There was a famous instance of a recusal by a Justice who tipped his hand about a pending case. Back in '03, Justice Scalia dropped out of the case about whether "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance violated the Establishment Clause:

According to press accounts, in his talk to the Knights of Columbus, Justice Scalia adverted to the lower court rulings in the Newdow dispute twice -- both in his prepared remarks and in response to a protestor in the audience.

First, Scalia mentioned prior rulings by his own Court indicating that government could not favor any religious sect or religion over non-religion. He observed that such rulings were "contrary to our whole tradition, [and] to 'in God We Trust' on the coins," and said that these rulings had created inconsistencies that lent "some plausible support" to the lower court rulings in Newdow.

Second, when Scalia saw a protest sign in the crowd, he remarked: "The sign back there which says, 'Get religion out of government,' can be imposed on the whole country. . . . I have no problem with that philosophy being adopted democratically. If the gentleman holding the sign would persuade all of you of that, then we could eliminate 'under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance. That could be democratically done." Scalia thus arguably implied that the elimination of the "under God" phrase could not be accomplished by any Court -- even his own.

Was that recusal required or even advisable? I don't think so. And I'm suspicious. I think the recusal served the interests of conservatives. As it happened, the Supreme Court weaseled out, but if the Court's liberals had not figured out a way to avoid the merits — they used standing doctrine — they might have had to say that "under God" violated the Establishment Clause, and that would have been very useful to conservatives in the 2004 presidential election. It was well-remembered that in the 1988 election, George H.W. Bush had battered Michael Dukakis over the Pledge of Allegiance:

With President Reagan at his side in a raucous campaign rally here, Vice President Bush intensified his argument with Michael S. Dukakis today over the Pledge of Allegiance. He said he would have signed a bill that Mr. Dukakis vetoed in 1977 requiring teachers to lead their classes in the pledge.

'What is it about the Pledge of Allegiance that upsets him so much?'' Mr. Bush said of Mr. Dukakis, as an enthusiastic crowd roared its agreement. ''It is very hard for me to imagine that the Founding Fathers - Samuel Adams and John Hancock and John Adams -would have objected to teachers leading students in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States.''

Newdow was a rich political opportunity, and I'm sure Scalia knew that. So one could say that his recusal was biased, since he would have voted on the side that would not have leveraged the conservative presidential candidate.

Justice Scalia wants you to know that he's not going to tell you what he's pretty much telling you.

What a scamp this man is!

After giving a speech against the concept of an evolving Constitution, Justice Scalia at the University of Colorado was asked by a high school student about Colorado becoming the first state to allow recreational-pot sales...

Scalia smiled and said, “I’m not going to respond to that because it would force me to have to recuse myself” if the question ever went to the high court.

But he added, “the Constitution contains something called the Supremacy Clause,” which is the provision stating that federal laws trump state laws.

The justice was also asked when we’ll find out if the high court will take up the question of whether state same-sex marriage bans are constitutional.

“I know when, but I’m not going to tell you,” he reportedly replied, getting a big laugh from the audience. “Soon! Soon!” he added.

By the way, years ago, Justice Scalia did recuse himself in a case where he'd commented on the issue in public. It was the case about whether "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance violates the Establishment Clause:

[I]n his talk to the Knights of Columbus, Justice Scalia... mentioned prior rulings by his own Court indicating that government could not favor any religious sect or religion over non-religion. He observed that such rulings were "contrary to our whole tradition, [and] to 'in God We Trust' on the coins," and said that these rulings had created inconsistencies that lent "some plausible support" to the lower court rulings in Newdow.

[And] when Scalia saw a protest sign in the crowd, he remarked: "The sign back there which says, 'Get religion out of government,' can be imposed on the whole country. . . . I have no problem with that philosophy being adopted democratically. If the gentleman holding the sign would persuade all of you of that, then we could eliminate 'under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance. That could be democratically done." Scalia thus arguably implied that the elimination of the "under God" phrase could not be accomplished by any Court — even his own....

The standard for recusal is vague — "[a]ny justice, judge or magistrate of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned" — and there's a great deal of analysis of it at that last link by Vikram David Amar. Excerpt:

The truth is that Scalia's judicial opinions are often far more sweeping, far more dismissive, and far more harsh in their treatment of legal theories, contentions and cases — including fact-patterns not yet before the Court — than any of his extra-judicial public statements have been. And yet no one in the world thinks that simply because a Justice in a published opinion has made clear in passing, say, that he does not agree with an earlier ruling and would overrule it when given a chance, that he is "biased" against that ruling — in the sense that he cannot participate in a case that comes up in which the continued vitality of that ruling is squarely presented. Having opinions about the law is very different from being biased in a particular case.

But cases must be decided. It's the judge's duty. He doesn't have to fly about the country and the world doing speeches and question-and-answer sessions. There, he's choosing to speak, and what he says on those occasions may seem more freely spoken from his mind: I'm saying this because I've got a will to say it. Within the constraints of the opinion-writing duty, there is paradoxically greater freedom: I'm saying this because I must.

But, now, Newdow was a very special case. For one thing, the plaintiff Michael Newdow asked for the recusal and pushed that demand in the press. Another thing is, the Newdow case was to be decided in the presidential election year of 2004, and to leave the liberals to determine that "under God" couldn't be in the Pledge was to invite them to burden the Democratic candidate and help President George Bush get his reelection. (Remember how his father kicked Dukakis around over the Pledge in 1988?)

In Newdow, the liberals ended up figuring out some weird tweak on the standing doctrine and avoided saying something inopportune about the Establishment Clause and the Pledge. And that maneuver has always been enough for me — arguably, a reasonable person — to question their impartiality. But the recusal statute can't mean that. Otherwise, it would be recusals all the way down and nothing could ever be decided.

"The easiest way Hillary can be stopped is if she stops herself."

"There is a reasonable chance she’ll decide not to [run again]," writes Bill Kristol (reacting to TIME's question "Can Anyone Stop Hillary?") 

She’s an intelligent woman. She remembers that her last experience of running for president wasn’t fun and didn’t end well. She knows that winning the Democratic nomination won’t be as easy as the media now pretend and that the general election will be, at best, a 50-50 proposition....

Hillary has no agenda different from that of other generic Democratic candidates, or for that matter from Barack Obama, the man she would succeed. Hillary’s first term would in reality be Obama’s third. She’d be tinkering with his successes and trying to cope with his failures. Becoming president in 2009 after eight years of dastardly Republican rule, with a chance to make things anew, was an exciting prospect for a liberal. Succeeding the modern liberal president after two terms?

Not worth it... maybe. When's the last time we had a President who followed a 2-term President from his own party? It was when we had Bush I, the man Hillary's husband defeated. Basically, Americans don't want more than 2 terms of the same. The 22d Amendment, barring anyone from election to a 3d term, was our reaction to FDR's election to a 3d and a 4th term. Before him nearly everyone followed the principle demonstrated by George Washington, serving only, at most, 2 terms, and the few who tried for a 3d failed.

Since the ratification of the 22d Amendment (in 1951), not only has it been impossible for anyone to serve a 3d term as President, efforts by other members of the President's party to follow on, being — to use Kristol's phrase — "in reality" the "third" term have all but one have failed. The one exception, George H.W. Bush, not only had Reagan as his predecessor, but also had a weak opponent (Michael Dukakis).

If Kerry becomes Secretary of State, his replacement could be... Michael Dukakis!

Democratic Governor Deval Patrick will get to appoint someone pending a special election (which would come in late spring or early summer).

Dukakis is — we're told — the obvious choice if the idea is to install a placeholder.

67% said Romney won the debate.

And "No presidential candidate has topped 60% in that question since it was first asked in 1984," according to CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

That is, it was by far the most decisive win they'd ever measured. And they measured that time Dukakis didn't seem to mind if his wife was raped and that time Reagan said "There you go again."

"The vocabulary of class warfare may have begun on the left—a very socialist left..."

"... but in mainstream American politics it didn’t gain much traction until the Republicans took it up."

Framing the struggle as cultural and tribal rather than as economic, they proved to be more effective class warriors than the Democrats. Richard Nixon won over the “silent majority” by casting intellectuals, student radicals, and the media as enemies of those he awkwardly termed “the so-called unimportant people.” Ronald Reagan called out “welfare queens” for bilking the government. The Bushes brought down their opponents by igniting incipient racial and cultural resentments. Michael Dukakis fell to the vicious Willie Horton ad. The infamous Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry impugned his war heroism; an ad showing him windsurfing off Nantucket became an emblem of unseemly privilege.

 So what's Obama supposed to do?