I wasn’t a huge fan of this year’s White House Correspondents’ dinner, but I’ve given up criticizing the actual event itself — or similar events — as they are now a fixture of our political discourse and aren’t going away. So instead, why not judge them on a metric we are more likely to agree on: Was the host funny?

In my opinion, no. Conan O’Brien was a dud.

Here’s one example:

“The guys from Duck Dynasty are here. It can can only mean one thing: the guys from Storage Wars said no.”

Odd. Conan didn’t say anything negative about the bearded-ones when he had them on his show last year. Nor does Conan’s joke make any sense. His premise is that the stars of  Storage Wars are somehow a bigger draw then the stars of Duck Dynasty. 

Let’s go to the ratings:

Nearly 10 million people watched the “Duck Dynasty” gang fly to Hawaii for some much needed R&R Wednesday night, shattering A&E’s ratings record.

It was the show’s third-season finale.

Until “Duck Dynasty” hit town, the most popular A&E series was “Storage Wars” which hit its peak in late November of 2011 when an episode snagged an average of 5.6 million.

There is an explanation, however: Conan is jealous:

O’Brien’s ratings on TBS are not huge either — the show is averaging 906,000 viewers an episode. But TBS said it was pleased the show has one of the youngest audiences of any traditional late-night talk program. 

And now you know why Jimmy Fallon is the new host of The Tonight Show and Conan O’Brien is what you watch when you accidentally leave the TV on after a rerun of Big Bang Theory.

But back to what’s funny and what’s not. Check out this clip from the 2011 Congressional Correspondents’ dinner featuring Larry Wilmore. Now, that was funny stuff:

The rapper turned columnist for the Miami New Times has figured out “terrorism” in America:

Americans Caused Boston Marathon Tragedy

And. . .

Once everything cools down again, we’ll go back to bickering with one another about who’s better, conservatives or liberals. Meanwhile, the next terrorist — domestic or foreign — will be secretly plotting the next attack. The hatred Americans have for one another motivates radicals to commit unspeakable acts of horror here. Our divided nation, thanks to public trolls like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, inspires lunatics like Jared Lee Loughner, James Holmes, and Adam Lanza to kill children, women, and men, and seriously maim dozens of others. It’s time we take responsibility for creating terrorists at home and abroad.

Yes, it is time to take responsibility for creating “terrorists” at home, like the gangs in Chicago and thug-on-thug murders that are destroying America’s urban centers. But Luther Campbell and his extensive arrest record is probably not the best person to lead the change American cities need.

Here’s a list of topics I hope Conan O’Brien jokes about at tonight’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. I mean, what’s funnier than major news stories on how the whole world is falling apart?

French troops begin their withdrawal from Mali. But not to fear, the UN is sending 13,000 peacekeepers. I hope they test the peacekeepers for cholera this time.

Church attacked in Egypt.

New fatwa says rape in Syria is OK as long as it’s a non-Sunni woman.

Out: Red line in Syria. New red line in Syria.

Shocker: China might have lied about the terrorist attack in Xinjiang.

Sunnis forming a “tribal army” in Iraq.

“North Africa is becoming the new Afghanistan.”

But, hey, it’s not all bad. The government did fix the FAA mess. . .

. . .And just as soon as they correct the typo in the bill, the president can sign it.

I hope the delay in the FAA bill doesn’t affect Lindsay Lohan’s flight. It really would be a shame if she missed such an important event. 

Tom Friedman is quick to bash U.S. infrastructure in the course of idiotic columns on the miracle of wi-fi on China’s trains and the like, but he’s yet to write on last weekend’s earthquake in Sichuan. A disaster that’s killed nearly 200 people and set off a wave of protests against the government. Remember when Friedman wanted the U.S. to be like China for a day?

Well I pick today and encourage Tom Friedman to let us know what’s so great about China.

Media Matters was angry last night that the cable-news channels were not reporting on the West Fertilizer Co.’s Department of Homeland Security “regulation violation” regarding the storage of ammonium nitrate. They quote Reuters as their source:

Reuters: TX Fertilizer Plant Was Storing “1,350 Times The Amount Of Ammonium Nitrate That Would Normally Trigger Safety Oversight By The U.S. Department Of Homeland Security.” On April 20, Reuters reported that the West, Texas, fertilizer plant that exploded on April 17, owned by West Fertilizer, had been storing 270 tons of ammonium nitrate. Reuters noted that “[f]ertilizer plants and depots must report to the DHS when they hold 400 lb (180 kg) or more of the substance,” which “can also be used in bomb making,” but that West Fertilizer “did not tell the agency about the potentially explosive fertilizer as it is required to do.” [Reuters, 4/20/13]

There are two problems here.

One, Reuters isn’t quoting someone from the DHS, but a person “familiar with DHS operations.” And two, I can’t find anything to verify that what the Reuters source says is accurate.

For example, Today’s Dallas Morning News reported, in great detail, the role of state agencies who regulate some portion of the West Fertilizer’s business – The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the Office of the Texas State Chemist, the Department of State Health Services — but the only federal agency that’s mentioned in the piece is the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (transportation regulation, not storage). The News adds “There are no uniform federal rules for ammonium nitrate storage, and state rules vary.”  

Well, reporting more than “400 lb” of ammonium nitrate to DHS would certainly qualify as a “uniform federal rule,” no?

Maybe the Obama administration can help. Here’s Jay Carney form Monday’s briefing:

On the issue that you raise, this is currently, obviously, an active investigation.  The cause is still unknown.  And it is still too early to point to specific violations, if any.  The National Response Team of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives along with the National Criminal Enforcement Response Team and a criminal investigative team from the Environmental Protection Agency are on scene to investigate the explosion at the fertilizer plant.

Let’s be clear, though.  Chemical plant safety is a high priority and all of the relevant departments and agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the EPA, the Department of Labor, including OSHA within the Department of Labor, the Department of Transportation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Chemical Safety Board continue to work together within their authorities to assess this tragic situation on the ground and provide technical assistance as requested.

Well, that didn’t help much, did it?

In any event, Reuters and Media Matters point to a specific violation. But there’s nothing from Team Obama on it. If such a glaring violation of a DHS law had been broken, wouldn’t there be some call to immediately investigate every fertilizer retailer in the country? Yet, there’s nothing.

According to the DHS website, there is a proposed regulation called the Ammonium Nitrate Security Program that might apply here, but a search of the Federal Register shows that the new regulation has yet to be adopted. The latest update on the proposal is from January 8, 2013 and states (emphasis mine):

On October 29, 2008, DHS published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) for the Secure Handling of Ammonium Nitrate Program, and received a number of public comments on that ANPRM. DHS reviewed those comments and published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the Ammonium Nitrate Security Program on August 3, 2011. NPPD accepted public comments until December 1, 2011, and is now reviewing the public comments and developing a Final Rule related to the Ammonium Nitrate Security Program.

And as for the 400 pound threshold, that gets a mention in a footnote from a 2008 proposal to amend the regulation of ammonium nitrate:

1/     The listing of AN in explosive form in Appendix A to CFATS covers any commercial grade of ammonium nitrate (with more than 0.2 percent combustible substances, including any organic substance calculated as carbon, to the exclusion of any other added substance). The screening threshold quantities for this form of AN are 5,000 lbs (as a release-explosive) and 400 lbs when in transportation packaging (as a theft-explosive). Appendix A also lists AN in solid form (with a nitrogen concentration of 23% or greater) with an STQ of 2000 lbs. This form of AN is commonly used as a fertilizer in the agricultural community and, when used in a mixture, will count toward the STQ if the mixture contains a minimum concentration of 33% or more of solid AN.

If there’s no “final rule” yet on the security program, what was the West Fertlizer Co. supposed to report to the Department of Homeland Security?

And one final thing doesn’t make sense, at least to me. Reuters wrote that the plant had on hand “1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).”

Here’s the math Reuters is using. The Texas Department of State Health service stated that the firm had 270 tons (540,000 pounds) of ammonium nitrate on hand last year. 540,000 pounds divided by 400 pounds gives us 1350. But that Texas Dept. of State Health number is for the entire year, not what was on hand the day of the plant explosion. Reuters has since reported that there was one rail car filled with ammonium nitrate at the plant and that rail car wasn’t the cause of the explosion, but the “victim of that explosion.”

And there’s nothing in this later Reuters report on any DHS violation by West Fertilizer.

Maybe the editor and writer from that first Reuters report can check again with their person “familiar with DHS operations” and find out for us.

I’ve e-mailed DHS for a comment on the Reuters story and will update this post when I hear back.

The president is off to Texas where he’ll do what he’s supposed to do . . .

Obama to Attend Memorial Service for Victims of Texas Blast

. . . do what he probably doesn’t want to do. . .

President Obama preps for Texas trip, dedication of George W Bush library

. . . and to do what he does best. . .

In Dallas tonight, 60 donors to pay between $10,000 & FEC max of $32,400 at DNC fundraiser with Pres Obama. Print pool coverage only.

This piece from today’s Dallas Morning News is probably the best summary I’ve read yet on the oversight issues surrounding West Fertilizer Co. The opener:

Texas’ environmental agency knew in 2006 that West Fertilizer Co. was handling 2,400 tons a year of potentially explosive ammonium nitrate in a warehouse near schools, houses and a nursing home, documents show.

The notation in a Texas Commission on Environmental Quality permit form apparently raised no concerns, either internally or with other agencies, about explosion risks or the proper management of a chemical already notorious in Texas history for its deadly qualities when heated to extreme temperatures or exposed to shock.

Other agencies that knew about the dangerous stockpile also failed to pose such questions to their peers, records and interviews indicate. The explosion April 17 in the Central Texas town of West killed 14 people, including 10 volunteer firefighters, burned a school and destroyed or damaged buildings over a 35-block area.

How a fire caused the ammonium nitrate to detonate is the focus of federal and state investigations into the explosion.

For the TCEQ, which has by far the longest reach of any Texas regulatory agency and issues permits for many agricultural companies, ammonium nitrate safety is the job of a much smaller agency that specializes in testing farm products for quality and purity, the Office of the Texas State Chemist.

“We don’t, at TCEQ, evaluate the explosive threat associated with these types of facilities,” said Bryan W. Shaw, Gov. Rick Perry’s appointee as TCEQ chairman. “We look at the environmental and health impacts,” such as whether routine air emissions will cause a local problem, he said.

Even when processing environmental permits for companies handling ammonium nitrate, asking about fertilizer fire and explosion risks is not the TCEQ’s job, Shaw said. At the explosion scene, the TCEQ has helped determine that the blast did not spread pollution through the town, he said.

Shaw identified the state chemist and the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration as having responsibility for regulating fertilizer fire and explosion risks.

No such scrutiny

But the regulatory scrutiny for ammonium nitrate storage that Shaw outlined does not exist.

The federal pipeline agency governs only transportation, not storage. And the head of the state chemist’s office, Tim Herrman, said his agency has no legal authority or expertise to pursue fire or explosive safety at places that store ammonium nitrate.

“That doesn’t fall within our purview, and it’s fair to say we are not fire-safety experts,” Herrman said. “Nor is that part of our inspection activity, nor is that in our law or rules.”

Uniform rules lacking

There are no uniform federal rules for ammonium nitrate storage, and state rules vary. But fire safety experts have long expounded best practices such as structural fire protection, emergency drills, worker training and protective buffer zones between storage facilities and homes and schools.

The rest here.

From today’s Washington Post:

More than a dozen Maryland state prison guards helped a dangerous national gang operate a drug-trafficking and money-laundering scheme from behind bars that involved cash payments, sex and access to fancy cars, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Thirteen female corrections officers essentially handed over control of a Baltimore jail to gang leaders, prosecutors said. The officers were charged Tuesday in a federal racketeering indictment.

The indictment described a jailhouse seemingly out of control. Four corrections officers became pregnant by one inmate. Two of them got tattoos of the inmate’s first name, Tavon — one on her neck, the other on a wrist.

The guards allegedly helped leaders of the Black Guerilla Family run their criminal enterprise in jail by smuggling cellphones, prescription pills and other contraband in their underwear, shoes and hair. One gang leader allegedly used proceeds to buy luxury cars, including a Mercedes-Benz and a BMW, which he allowed some of the officers to drive.

“The inmates literally took over ‘the asylum,’ and the detention centers became safe havens for BGF,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Stephen E. Vogt, using shorthand for the prison gang’s name.

I guess the officers had to behave in order to drive the fancy cars? What a disgrace. The rest here, including how this might possibly impact the chances of Governor O’Malley running for president in 2016.

As we debate guns in this country, why doesn’t the MSM get that cops matter? And what cops do matters? Here’s an excerpt from a WSJ interview with former NYPD chief William Bratton:

But the gun reform that truly gets Mr. Bratton fired up is one you don’t hear much about these days. It is what he calls “certainty of punishment,” or stricter gun-crime sentences.

“People are out on the streets who should be in jail. Jail is appropriate for anyone who uses a gun in the commission of an act of violence. Some cities have a deplorable lack of attention to this issue,” he says, citing Philadelphia.

In Chicago, where the murder rate rose 16% last year, “to try to put someone in jail for gun-related activity you really have to go the extra mile,” he says. “If there’s one crime for which there has to be a certainty of punishment, it is gun violence.” He ticks off other places where help is needed: “Oakland, Chicago, D.C., Baltimore—all have gangs whose members have no capacity for caring about life and respect for life. Someone like that? Put ‘em in jail. Get ‘em off the streets. Keep people safe.”

Well, what good is the punishment of jail if jail does nothing to stop an inmate’s former illegal activity?

False alarm?

The Mississippi man charged with sending toxic letters to President Barack Obama and a U.S. senator has been released from jail, the U.S. Marshals Service said on Tuesday.

Paul Kevin Curtis, 45, was released on bond, Jeff Woodfin, chief deputy with the U.S. Marshals Service in Oxford, Mississippi, told Reuters.

His release came as court documents showed a hearing on his detention has been indefinitely postponed but the charges against him had not been dropped. 

Let me hazard a guess here that there will be no charges against Mr. Curtis Woodfin. 

And I think this should be a teachable moment for the cable-newsers who relied on Senator Reid as their source for the story. In the future, be safe and don’t trust a thing that comes out of his mouth.

Here’s economics reporter Catherine Rampell writing on income inequalities in different cities:

This two-tier economy can seem inevitable, but other middle-income cities — particularly Sun Belt hubs like Houston and Charlotte — are now offering a third option, says Edward L. Glaeser, an economist at Harvard. A large part of their appeal has to do with policies that make it easier to build homes and expand the affordable housing stock for those people fleeing cities like New York. Places like Detroit are cheap, Glaeser told me, because they have become drastically less attractive locations to live and work. But places like Houston are cheap — and staying cheap, even as they grow — because the local governments have realized their comparative advantage is in deregulation, not in fancy cookies

Well, that’s not something you read very often in the Times. I assume Catherine will get back in line shortly as she seems to have missed the latest liberal meme – that lax zoning laws and no unions contributed to the devastation in West, Texas. 

I’m not a total hater of Bill Maher and this clip from  his show on Saturday is another reason why.

Civil-rights attorney Brian Levin was a guest on the show and claimed that Christian and Jewish extremists are as bad as today’s Islamic ones.

Maher, rightfully, calls him on his “liberal bulls**t.” 

Levin’s cluelessness in on fully display when Maher asks him if a Book of Mormon–type play based on the Koran would be feasible; “possibly so,” he answers. If Levin truly believes that, might I suggest a Kickstarter campaign to bring such a play to Broadway —with Levin producing? Then Levin can see what the world is really like.

Enjoy:

By now I hope you’ve read David Sirota’s masterfully idiotic piece entitled, “Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American” from over in the Web Briefing.

He’s writing about “white privilege” and how the “identity” of the bomber somehow has policy implications:

Because of these undeniable and pervasive double standards, the specific identity of the Boston Marathon bomber (or bombers) is not some minor detail — it will almost certainly dictate what kind of governmental, political and societal response we see in the coming weeks. That means regardless of your particular party affiliation, if you care about everything from stopping war to reducing the defense budget to protecting civil liberties to passing immigration reform, you should hope the bomber was a white domestic terrorist. Why? Because only in that case will privilege work to prevent the Boston attack from potentially undermining progress on those other issues.

Not to burst Sirota’s bubble, but the bomber could be white, American, and . . . an Islamic terrorist. Like the two Americans President Obama’s drones offed in Yemen without a trial. Maybe Sirota will get real lucky and the bomber is a whitey with an assault weapon. Then the Left can use him as a prop to pass more gun laws.

Alas, we don’t have any clues yet about the bomber(s) or the motives behind the attack. Sirota will just have sit patiently to see if his progressive dreams are shattered — or not.

But I digress. If Sirota really wants to start a discussion on white privilege, however, might I suggest he bring the subject up at the next Salon editorial meeting? Check out the vanilla faces from Salon’s homepage under their “Voices” section:

Really? Maher tweets:

Its horrible, but this time, let’s not overreact, wallow, erect monuments to terrorism; let’s handle it Israeli-Munich style

The U.S. should send assassins into other countries and kill the terrorists without a trial? Hey, I’m for it but I don’t think Maher’s libby friends in Hollywood would agree.

So sad. Via the NY Daily News:

Howard Stern, King of All Media, denied $300 million after Sirius XM mergerThe shock jock claimed he was entitled to incentives tied to subscription growth.

The XM merger added 10 millon subscribers, but the state Appellate Division judge didn’t buy it.

It’s not just the abortion aspect of the Kermit Gosnell murder trial that’s being underreported, there’s a race element to the story, too. Via the AP:

[Prosecution witness Ashley Baldwin] described [Co-defendant Eileen] O’Neill as a caring doctor who saw mostly older patients for high blood pressure or diabetes. O’Neill kept her office neat, in contrast to the rest of the clinic, Tina Baldwin said. So that’s where Gosnell steered wealthy or white patients, she said. Gosnell also met with them and administered their medications himself, she said.

“Nine out of 10 times, if the patient was white … he didn’t want me to (administer the drugs), because he wanted to meet with them himself,” she said.

Gosnell, who is black, would apologize to his mostly black staff, but say “that’s the way it is,” Tina Baldwin testified.

Now, this might not be such a big deal if the president hadn’t been so quick to call out other race issues such as the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida and the arrest of Professor Gates in Cambridge.

I guess if the president had a gynecologist  he wouldn’t look like Dr. Gosnell, nor did Dr. Gosnell act stupidly when killing babies born alive.

More hypocrisy from the left is that Gosnell was originally raided by the FBI and DEA on prescription drug abuse charges. Compare the left’s silence on Gosnell with their cacophony of outrage directed at Rush Limbaugh and his past drug problems. 

Does having a gun make you safer in a mass shooting?

Well, it depends on which left-wing rag you ask.

I’ll put the New York Times in the “possibly” camp with this piece: ”In Shift, Police Advise Taking an Active Role to Counter Mass Attacks,” while Mother Jones disagrees: “New Research Confirms Gun Rampages Are Rising—and Armed Civilians Don’t Stop Them.”

And what’s more interesting is both MJ and the NYT are using data from the same study of 84 mass-shooting events from 2000 until 2010, but reaching the opposite conclusion.

From the NYT:

Research on mass shootings over the last decade has bolstered the idea that people at the scene of an attack have a better chance of survival if they take an active stance rather than waiting to be rescued by the police, who in many cases cannot get there fast enough to prevent the loss of life.

In an analysis of 84 such shooting cases in the United States from 2000 to 2010, for example, researchers at Texas State University found that the average time it took for the police to respond was three minutes.

“But you see that about half the attacks are over before the police get there, even when they arrive quickly,” said J. Pete Blair, director for research of the university’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center and an author of the research, which is set to be published in a book this year.

In the absence of a police presence, how victims responded often made the difference between life and death, Dr. Blair said.

In 16 of the attacks studied by the researchers, civilians were able to stop the perpetrator, subduing him in 13 cases and shooting him in 3 cases. In other attacks, civilians have obstructed or delayed the gunman until the police arrived.

But from MJ:

Data on 84 attacks echoes MoJo’s investigation and further debunks the NRA’s “good guys with guns” myth.

[. . .]

Moreover, our investigation made clear that so-called “good guys with guns” do not stop public shooting rampages. Likewise, Blair’s data couldn’t be any clearer when it comes to the National Rifle Association’s favorite myth: He found just 3 cases out of 84 in which an armed individual who had been on the scene used a firearm to stop the shooter. And none of the three were ordinary citizens. According to Blair, in two instances those who intervened were off-duty police officers: one in a case in upstate New York in 2010, and another in a case in Philadelphia in 2005. The third case took place in Winnemucca, Nevada, in 2008; the man there who intervened and shot the rampaging gunman, as I’ve reported previously, was a US Marine.

Notice the edit by MJ where they omit the entire point of Blair’s research that suggests fighting back against an armed individual increases your chances of living through the encounter. Dr. Blair, quoted in the Times makes this perfectly clear:

“The take-home message is that you’re not helpless and the actions you take matter,” Dr. Blair said. “You can help yourself and certainly buy time for the police to get there.”

The Times links to this video produced by the Houston police department and titled “Run. Hide. Fight” as an example of how a city is preparing its citizens to deal with potential future shootings. As the title suggest, Houston is advising citizens to run, hide and then fight back if need be. Here’s screenshot of the office workers fighting back. . .

. . .somehow Mother Jones would have us believe that we’re safer with a “good guy with a fire extinguisher” than a “good guy with a gun?”

If Dr. Blair is correct and the new-normal is that fighting back against a shooter is the best way to survive the attack, Mother Jones is going to have to make a convincing argument why the guy in the simulation above is better off with an aluminum tube than a pistol.

From today’s ‘Morning Jolt’ (sign up here if you haven’t!):

Mother Jones Bugs a Lot of People

Don’t read the Morning Jolt out loud, because for all we know, David Corn and Mother Jones could be listening to us right now.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) accused opponents Tuesday of bugging his headquarters and asked for an FBI investigation after a recording from an internal campaign meeting surfaced in a magazine report.

The 12-minute audiotape released by Mother Jones magazine reveals McConnell and his campaign staff at a Feb. 2 meeting lampooning actress Ashley Judd — then a potential Senate candidate — and comparing her to “a haystack of needles” because of her potential political liabilities. Judd has since decided not to run.

“We’ve always said the left will stop at nothing to attack Sen. McConnell, but Nixonian tactics to bug campaign headquarters is above and beyond,” campaign manager Jesse Benton said in a statement.

An FBI spokesman confirmed that the agency was investigating the incident following a report filed by McConnell’s office.

First of all, I had better audio quality holding up my cassette recorder to our home stereo to make mix tapes. In fact, I’m pretty sure Billy Joel is singing in the background.

I mean, right there on the tape, you can hear McConnell make really incriminating, scandalous statements, like, “Mmmrrrhg mmm rhgmmm rghmmm brmmm crm” and “mmmrgh hrrgnm mrrgh hrgmm rghghgrmm.”

David Corn posted this; he and Mother Jones posted the secretly-recorded video of Mitt Romney making his “47 percent” comment. Boy, he sure got past his Bush-era qualms about secret wiretapping, huh?

Jeff Dunitz lays out Corn’s shock and horror at the violation of privacy presented by the government attempting to listen in on the conversations of terrorists . . . privacy that is apparently utterly irrelevant if you’re just some lawmaker that Mother Jones opposes speaking in a private meeting. Perhaps Corn resents the competition from the National Security Agency, or maybe he’s just jealous that they have better equipment. 

Of course, Mother Jones was particularly shocked and horrified that some unidentified presenter declared about Ashley Judd:

“She is emotionally unbalanced. I mean it’s been documented. Jesse can go in chapter and verse from her autobiography about, you know, she’s suffered some suicidal tendencies. She was hospitalized for 42 days when she had a mental breakdown in the ’90s.”

I’m sorry, is the argument from the shocked-and-horrified Mother Jones crowd that if a candidate had a mental breakdown, that was none of the electorate’s business?

Obvious joke: “Of course, it’s Congress, perhaps no one would notice.” Hey, a candidate’s mental illness never affects his ability to perform his duties, right? Just ask former congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.

Representative David Wu, do you have any thoughts on this?

“ROAR!”

Thank you, Congressman.

Kevin Williamson writes, “One sympathizes with people who suffer from mental illness. If you have ever been around somebody with psychological problems of the sort that necessitate hospitalization, you appreciate what a grim business that is. And if you breathe oxygen and possess a dozen or more functioning neurons, you also know that if Sarah Palin had spent a month and a half in a mental hospital, Mother Jones – which took a notably indulgent attitude toward Trig trutherism – would have led the chorus of jeers rather than write oh-so-sensitive headlines about the awfulness of using somebody’s mental health as “political ammo.” And as for the legitimacy of using somebody’s religious beliefs as a campaign issue, maybe we should ask Rick Santorum about that.”

But Judd isn’t running, so her mental-health history and nuttier statements are all moot. Let’s hope she has a long, happy, and mentally healthy life, and that she and Morgan Freeman will finally uncover the conspiracy.

Our Dan Foster wonders what Mother Jones expected to hear at a strategy session, and puts the shoe on the other foot.

Where did Mother Jones get the tape? They’ll only say, “We were recently provided with the tape by a source who wishes to remain anonymous. We published the article on the tape due to its obvious newsworthiness. We were not involved in the making of the tape, but it is our understanding that the tape was not the product of any kind of bugging operation.”

My guess is that it was delivered to them by a woman named Lucy Ramirez, who directed Bill Burkett to get them from a mysterious unidentified man at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.

Details here. I hope his first guests are George Stephanopoulos and Martin Robinson, the current voice of Sesame Street’s Snuffleupagus.

I joke, of course, and from what I’ve read it looks like it’s a good hire for CNN as he’s at least something different than the cookie-cutter shows we’re currently served by the cable newsers.

Details here.

Might I suggest a segment where cameras follow him around as he berates photographers? I’d watch that.

Hilarious. Stephen Colbert helped Bill Clinton join Twitter with the username “@PrezBillyJeff“:

Well, better to get instructions on the use of social media from Colbert than from say Anthony Weiner.