Should you be interested, here’s my latest review of conservative reaction to the Miers debacle, mostly negative, along with some liberal replies.

DeLay’s mugshot Smile, Tom DeLay, you’ve been charged with conspiracy and money laundering. And — to quote someone who recently spent some time behind bars — it’s a good thing. (I’ve previously written about this dirty rotten scoundrel here and here.)

It’s part of a larger quasi-conspiracy theory on the left, but it does seem that Mr. Russert has some explaining to do.

If you need a bit of a break from politics and, like me, you’re into food, I’ve got a post over at The Reaction on Rachael Ray, America’s #1 TV cook. I go back and forth, but there’s something to be said for culinary passion with a common touch, for bringing an appreciation of good food and a dash of experimentation to Fast Food Nation.

(Cross-posted at The Reaction.) That is, how Michael Brown ate dinner while New Orleans flooded and people died. Uh, yeah, nice job, Brownie: In the midst of the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina, a Federal Emergency Management Agency official in New Orleans sent a dire e-mail to Director Michael Brown saying victims had no food and were dying. No response came from Brown. Instead, less than three hours later, an aide to Brown sent an e-mail saying her boss wanted to go on a television program...

This terrifying image (click to expand) is from StormTrack, an excellent weather-related site with regular meteorological updates on major storms like Wilma. Highly recommended. Here are projections of where Wilma might be headed (click to expand): We’ll continue to monitor the storm and provide updates, especially with Wilma taking aim at Florida.

This piece was originally posted yesterday. I’m re-posting it today with some updates. From The New York Times, as it all gets going: Saddam Hussein defiantly faced a panel of Iraqi judges today in a heavily guarded courthouse in central Baghdad, as he was asked to answer charges for a 1982 massacre and begin the long process of public reckoning for the decades of brutal repression that Mr. Hussein brought to Iraq… The first case being brought against the former Iraqi leader centers around...

As if it’s not enough that she lacks the qualifications one would deem necessary of a nominee to the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers may actually be something of an extremist on one of the key wedge issues of our time: abortion. The Washington Post is reporting that “Miers once pledged that she would ‘actively support’ a constitutional amendment banning abortions except to save a mother’s life, participate in antiabortion rallies, and try to block the flow of public money...

The latest from Murray Waas at National Journal: As federal prosecutors in the CIA leak investigation reach the critical stage of deciding whether to bring criminal charges, they are zeroing in on contradictions between the testimony of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, and that of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, according to sources close to the investigation and attorneys for individuals enmeshed in the probe. The prosecutors and the federal grand jury...

That would be Al Gore vs. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. A lot of names are out there — John Kerry, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Evan Bayh, Tom Vilsack, Bill Richardson, Mark Warner, Russ Feingold, and Wesley Clark, among others — but at The New Republic Ryan Lizza argues that “Gore may be the only Democrat who can beat Hillary Clinton”. It’s an interesting and at times persuasive argument. I supported Gore in 2000, and I’ve always...

…may very well be another Sign of the Apocalypse.

There are persuasive arguments both for and against the status quo (i.e., lifetime tenure), but the intense politicization of the nomination process and the fact that justices may sit on the Supreme Court for decades (Roberts could be there for 30 years or more) suggest to me that a fixed term might not be such a bad idea. I have more on this interesting question at The Reaction.

What will President Bush do if Karl Rove is indicted for his involvement in The Plame Game and compelled to resign? (Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald seems to be leaning in that direction.) After all, Rove has been with Bush through two gubernatorial elections and two presidential elections, and it’s tough to imagine Bush’s political career without his long-time #1.

As some of you know, I do an occasional series at The Reaction called “Signs of the Apocalypse” — signs that our civilization is slip-sliding into self-destruction and oblivion. The series is a break from all my political blogging, but, in the end, the consequences of this decline and fall may be even more dire that the latest hot story coming out of Washington. Well, here’s another Sign of the Apocalypse: As you may know, Tom (Cruise) + Katie (Holmes) = Tomkat. That’s...

Does that get your attention? Honestly, I don’t know enough about Apple to be able to judge it either on its own or in relation to PC companies. I use Dell. That’s pretty much it. Apple’s products look cool, but… so what? But could it be possible that Apple, that ahead-of-the-curve purveyor of cool, isn’t quite everything it’s cracked up to be? Could it be that Apple’s success has depended to a great extent on effective marketing and media manipulation? For...

(Cross-posted at The Reaction.) At The Weekly Standard, that bastion of occasionally intelligent conservative commentary, Bill Kristol examines the ongoing investigations into the allegedly illegal or otherwise unethical behavior of four prominent conservatives: Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby. Here’s Kristol’s assessment: What do these four men have in common, other than their status as prosecutorial targets? Since 2001, they have been among the most prominent promoters...

I noted recently that there apparently are job opportunities at al Qaeda in such fascinating areas as video production and international reporting. Well, it’s now being reported that al Qaeda is setting up shop in the U.K. Zarqawi’s behind it, but I’m sure the Bush Administration would deny that the Iraq War has had anything to do with it.

Some on the right are already beginning to relent. While certain high-profile conservatives like David Frum and John Fund continue to attack the nomination, others worry about the fragmentation and disintegration of the conservative movement in the wake of Harriet “Yoko Ono” Miers’s nomination to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court. In brief, conservatives loathe the Miers nomination, but they fear losing power, and so some of them — the unprincipled ones...

Much is being made in the blogosphere, and especially the liberal blogosphere, of Richard Cohen’s column in yesterday’s Washington Post. Here’s the gist of his piece: The best thing Patrick Fitzgerald could do for his country is get out of Washington, return to Chicago and prosecute some real criminals. As it is, all he has done so far is send Judith Miller of the New York Times to jail and repeatedly haul this or that administration high official before a grand jury, investigating...

Michelle Duggar of Arkansas has just had her 16th child, and she and her husband, Jim Bob, are thinking of going for #17 (if “the Lord” says it’s okay). Someone please tell them to stop.

Australian researchers Robin Warren and Barry Marshall recently won the Nobel prize for medicine. For what, you ask? For discovering that most stomach ulcers are caused not by stress but by a bacterium, specifically by Helicobacter pylori. Warren and Marshall had been shunned by a skeptical medical community for about two decades. How did they convince it that they were right — so right that they won the Nobel prize? It seems that Marshall himself swallowed the bacterium and became violently...

No joke. Schoolgirls throughout Togo, a small West African country nestled between Ghana and Benin, were recently sent home to shave their heads because teachers had complained that they were wasting too much time playing with their hair.

Joe recently linked to my recent round-up of right-wing reaction to the Miers nomination. I’ve done a follow-up today. Both are quite long, but, if you’re interested, here are the links my two posts at The Reaction: Mad about Miers: Specter, Dobson, and the collapse of the Republican coalition Mad about Miers: Disharmony on the right, caution on the left I’m sure all of us will have more to say on this fascinating story going forward.

The answer to that question would seem to be a resounding Yes. Murray Waas has the story at National Journal: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove personally assured President Bush in the early fall of 2003 that he had not disclosed to anyone in the press that Valerie Plame, the wife of an administration critic, was a CIA employee, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the accounts that both Rove and Bush independently provided to federal prosecutors. During the same conversation...

And the Nobel Peace Prize goes to… Mohamed ElBaradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency. CNN reports: The U.N. nuclear watchdog and its head, Mohamed ElBaradei, won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their efforts to limit the spread of atomic weapons. ElBaradei told CNN he was “overwhelmed.” He said it was “a shot in the arm” for his agency and would strengthen its resolve in dealing with major issues like North Korea and Iran. The Norwegian Nobel Committee...