Dear Reader (and those of you who have had memories of reading this e-mail artificially implanted),

I for one am stunned by the news coming out of Pennsylvania. It is mind-blowing. Oh, just to be clear, I don’t mean the news that Arlen Specter lost in the Democratic primary. I saw that coming. No, what just blows me away is the fact that Specter hasn’t invoked a rare codicil to Scottish common law that allows him to now run as an independent.

Schadenfreude is an ugly word, as befits the ugly language that produced it, but I can’t apologize for being genuinely gleeful about Arlen Specter’s defeat. In fact, I’m not sure Schadenfreude even applies here, because, as I understand it, Schadenfreude is taking joy in another’s misfortune. Well, misfortune is another word for bad luck. And Specter’s defeat isn’t bad luck, it is a long-overdue comeuppance.

Arlen Specter was a geyser of asshattery, spewing his particular brand of a-holuarness (to borrow a term from social science) with a regularity that would put Old Faithful to shame. And what Bart Simpson said of Old Faithful, I will say of Arlen Specter: He both sucks and blows.

Does Dick Blumenthal Dream of Sheep Who Lie about Being Wolves?

A lot of readers complained about this post, in which I asserted that Richard Blumenthal is “toast” because of revelations that he has lied about serving in Vietnam. “Oh, not here in Connecticut!” insisted quite a few Nutmeggers, who have resigned themselves to the fact that they live in a quasi-post-American state. And it looks like they were right. Blumenthal doesn’t appear to be toastqua toast. In other words, he’s not done . . . yet. However, I do think he’s in more trouble than people think.

Look at how Joe Sestak won. Everyone knew that Arlen Specter was all political appetite, an ego-singularity in a funereal suit. Everyone knew that he switched to the Democrats because he considered political parties and principles to be mere expediencies to power. But Sestak didn’t really remind voters about that until very late in the game. That Specter-Bush-Obama ad was effective precisely because it concentrated and defined the issues when the issues needed to be concentrated and defined the most.

Linda McMahon’s decision to release her oppo research now was odd, and the fact that she decided to publicly admit it is flat-out bizarre. Regardless, it’s out there. It may indeed lie dormant for a while. In fact, it’s good news if it lies dormant. It’s also good news that Blumenthal isn’t leaving the race; otherwise, the Dems could just pull a Torricelli and (illegally) put up a new candidate. But I have to believe that, come the final weeks of the general election, an ad pointing out that Dick Blumenthal is a big fat liar who pretended he served in Vietnam would be devastating. It looks like November will not be a great time for lying, opportunistic politicians — or, rather, it won’t be a good time for politicians who can’t hide that they’re lying and opportunistic.

As for whether he was in fact lying, the short answer is: Of course he was. I particularly liked this statement from his campaign when the story broke: “Dick has a long record of standing up for veterans. Tomorrow, veterans will be standing up with Dick.”

It fairly screamed for the response, “Well, I guess veterans don’t know Dick.”

In fairness, a reader did come up with a plausible counter-explanation (and the inspiration for this week’s “Dear Reader” gag):

Dear Mr. Goldberg:

Well, well. Mr. Blumenthal was not in Vietnam and (shudders of disappointment) was not on the Harvard swim team. How to explain it, how to explain it (other than the well-supported theory that Blumenthal may lie a lot)?

I humbly submit that Mr. Blumenthal may not be an actual human being at all, but rather a Living Artifact, an Artificial Person, like the lovely but deadly female courier “Friday” in Robert Heinlein’s book of the same name. That would explain why he has ‘memories’ but little accurate history. Or to put it another way, “his mother was a test-tube, his father was a knife.”

Sid Goldberg, the Godfather of Spam?

Perhaps it’s a sign of the lowered expectations that accompany a recession, but my spam is less ambitious these days. Instead of the sons of Nigerian oil ministers asking for huge gobs of cash, I get e-mail from “friends” who claim to have lost their wallets in London and just need a few bucks to tide them over.

It dawned on me that my late father (“The Hop Bird”) may have been a pioneer. When he was an undergrad at the University of Michigan, he took out an ad in the local paper. All it said was “Send your dollars now!” along with his mailing address. He made like 23 bucks or some such.

On Unwanted E-mail Every morning, I get up, curse the heavens for raining burning sunshine down upon me, brush my teeth and attend to other pressing needs, and then check my e-mail. And every morning, I’ll get between 40 and 100 new e-mails since the last time I checked the night before. A huge percentage of them are press releases: from politicians (“Alderman Bud Gretnick Eats Locally Made Pie at Diner, Says Opponent Eats Store-Bought Cake Made in Mexico and Smuggled in Drug Mules’ Rectums”), publishers (“Shocking new book reveals that bears are still using our forestlands for toilets! Author available for interviews”), and websites (“TransvestiteMom.Com posts 10 Best Gifts For that Special Him/Her or Her/Him”). I spend a lot of time unsubscribing to these things, but like zombies outside a Midwestern shopping mall, there are always more coming.

I’ve never been able to explain it, but I have what is clearly an irrational hatred of press releases. From my — again, irrational — perspective, they are the text version of false compliments. I’m very bad at taking sincere compliments (“Good thing you don’t get them very often” — The Couch), but I loathe false compliments, because they both insult my intelligence and they demean both the flatterer and the flatteree. Without dwelling on that, I get a very similar feeling from about 85 percent of the press releases I receive. It’s as if the author thinks he can fool me, as if he can use his Jedi mind tricks to get me to read and review the third Norton Anthology of Hmong Lesbian Poets. Sometimes I feel so insulted I’m tempted to turn into a version of the phonebook sniper, only I really do hate cans — if by cans you mean press releases. I have no idea why I went off on this tangent, and that just makes me even crankier.

Defending Liberty, Fighting Zombies

But since we’re on the theme of irrationality, one of the things I appreciate most about having an office at the American Enterprise Institute these days is that it is supremely defensible against zombie attack (NR’s DC offices: not so much). The elevators can be turned off. There are thick, steel-gated fire doors on the stairs that block intruders from going up without a key. There are any number of locking or easily barricaded steel doors. There’s a well-stocked kitchen and excellent roof access for helicopter evac, etc.

I still think a really well-stocked boat would be the best spot for long-term zombie avoidance, but if the zombie attack came on suddenly, you could do a lot worse than hunkering down at AEI. And, when the zombie menace finally abated, AEI could serve as the new provisional government (Brookings would have become a viscera buffet almost overnight. I can totally see E. J. Dionne leaving one of the emergency doors open just in case the gang from SEIU needed a place to hide.)