Tom Boggioni aka TBogg, “one-time darling of the mail-order panties set and current czar of positioning cash registers to maximize retail commerce and flow,” photoshops a picture of the Palin family to make all its members — including the children — look devilish.

It’s funny because Boggioni uses Palin’s children to make a political point. Get it?

He is — literally — demonizing Palin’s children.

In the sort of humorous touch for which the “former bulk purchaser of women’s undergarments” has become famous, he includes Trig Palin in the picture. Because what’s a Photoshopped picture of Palin’s children without the Down’s Syndrome child? Original picture here:

Can such a performance be topped? Yes and no. HuffPo had a post up titled Palin Will Run in ‘12 on More Retardation Platform.

At least HuffPo was ashamed enough to take this down. Boggioni is proud of what he did.

My usual call for civility in the comments will be relaxed for this thread.

News is breaking now on CNN.com in a banner headline. No news story available yet.

UPDATE 12:27 p.m.: Word now is that she will resign within weeks. What’s going on here?

UPDATE x2 12:29 p.m.: Word now is she will resign at the end of the month.

UPDATE x3: The announcement has occurred. From Twitter, Breaking News says:

She did not take questions or give indications as to her future plans. Palin is expected to announce a run for the presidency at some point.

Meanwhile, Howard Kurtz says:

No way Palin can run for president now. But give her this: the governor has, at least briefly, knocked Michael Jackson off the air.

Fox News has a vague quote from Todd Palin about her wanting to do things “for the country.”

Odd.

UPDATE x4: Ace agrees with Kurtz: “It’s over. You can’t resign from a governorship and then run for higher office.”

UPDATE x5: Palin says on Twitter:

We’ll soon attach info on decision to not seek re-election… this is in Alaska’s best interest, my family’s happy… it is good, stay tuned

Allahpundit notes a mighty odd coincidence between this humorous image from a Daily Show segment:

And this previously published image from Slublog, published at Hot Air’s Green Room:

By the way, the clip containing this shameless theft is pretty funny. Jon Stewart is often quite good when he remembers to leave the clown nose on:

I’m not sure if I posted this before or not, but I watched it again last night and laughed and laughed. Thanks to Jeffrey Lewis.

Via Hot Air, where the clip has generated a lively discussion.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has issued its decision (.pdf) in the ethics complaint against Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski.

The good news for Judge Kozinski is that the panel does not find any ethical violation in his handling of the Isaacs case. Nor does the panel specifically find any ethical violation in his handling of sexually explicit material on his server — although the judge does come in for some criticism for carelessness and embarrassing the judiciary.

The panel “admonishes” Kozinski for failing to take safeguards to prevent the sexually explicit material from being distributed publicly:

We join with the Special Committee in admonishing the Judge that his conduct exhibiting poor judgment with respect to this material created a public controversy that can reasonably be seen as having resulted in embarrassment to the institution of the federal judiciary.

Don’t be misled: this “admonishment” is not a finding of judicial misconduct. If the panel had made a specific finding of judicial misconduct, you would have seen language like “reprimand” or “censure” in the opinion — options available under 28 U.S.C. §§ 354(a)–(b). That is not what the panel does. Rather, the panel has chosen to conclude the proceeding without a finding of misconduct:

We determine that the Judge’s acknowledgment of responsibility together with other corrective action, his apology, and our admonishment, combined with the public dissemination of this opinion, properly conclude this proceeding.

Somehow I don’t think Cyrus Sanai will be pleased. I’m sure we’ll hear from him in short order.

The panel says that “the Judge’s possession of sexually explicit offensive material combined with his carelessness in failing to safeguard his sphere of privacy was judicially imprudent.” This seems fair. Nobody ever said it was prudent. As the judges note: “Some of the content of the stuff subdirectory — the sexually explicit material — is undoubtedly offensive to many.” This is true, as the judge himself has acknowledged. However, the material was kept for its humor or novelty value — something media reports from the L.A. Times failed to make clear at the time. See my posts for some examples.

The panel also makes it clear that the media did not take care to portray the matter accurately:

Some media reports in June 2008 suggested that the Judge maintained, and intended to maintain, a public website, as that term is commonly understood — a presentation of offensive sexually explicit material open for public browsing. This investigation has established, however, that such a characterization is incorrect. As explained in further detail, the computer files described in media reports in June 2008 constituted a small fraction of a vast aggregation of various items that the Judge had received by e-mail over many years and had retained in a folder, or “subdirectory,” on a personal computer in his home, which had been connected to the Internet using web server software.

Through a combination of improper security configuration and carelessness on the part of the Judge, the aggregation of retained files became accessible to the public.

It has always been quite clear to anyone following this controversy that Chief Judge Kozinski never intended that the general public be able to rummage through the contents of his server. This was not clear in the headline to the original L.A. Times article, which was titled 9th Circuit’s chief judge posted sexually explicit matter on his website.

This seems an appropriate resolution to the matter.

More at Above the Law and How Appealing.

[Posted by Karl]

From the Politico (via Allahtwitter):

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off the record, non-confrontational access to “those powerful few” — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health-care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it’s a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”

Well, yeah.  Not that the WaPo isn’t stocked with fawning fans of Obama who would promote his agenda for free.  But perhaps someone might ask White House flack Robert Gibbs at today’s presser why WaPo madam Katharine Weymouth is getting to pimp out members of the Obama administration for a series of high-priced circle jerks.

—-

Update: The WaPo’s sputtering response.  I would still like to know which Obama officials and Congressmen the WaPo was / is planning to sell.

Update x2: The WaPo’s executive editor said today he is “appalled” by the plan, which is your Captain Louis Renault Award winner for the day.

Update x3: Cathouse canceled.

–Karl

[Guest post by DRJ]

Senior Eye Chart.

Luxury yacht company offers pirate-hunting cruises along the coast of Somalia. [UPDATE by DRJ: Yes, it's a hoax.]

Beware the Obama Evil Eye.

Finally, a trip down memory lane for my generation: The Jackson 5 on Soul Train.

– DRJ

[Posted by Karl]

When the cap-and-trade boondoggle passed the House last Friday, I noted that the 219-212 margin sent the issue to the Senate with zero momentum.

Jay Cost shows how tough a road the climate bill faces in the Senate:

If the vote in the House on this bill had been calculated like the vote for President in the case of no majority winner in the Electoral College - where each state gets one vote - the climate bill would not have passed. Twenty-two state caucuses voted in favor of it while twenty-eight voted against. The bill passed in large part because of strong support from California and New York, which accounted for more than 26% of the total votes in favor of the bill.

Cost does not leave the analysis there, also noting that a number of Senate Democrats will face pressure to vote against cap-and-trade, while virtually no Senate Republicans will feel pressure to support it:

[M]any Senate Democrats face “pressure” to vote against the party. Nine face “significant pressure,” and another six face “moderate pressure.” A lot of these members might ultimately vote yea - but many of them might not. Of the fourteen Democrats under “significant” or “moderate pressure” who were in the last Congress - twelve either voted against cloture on the Lieberman-Warner climate bill, did not vote, or voted in favor but indicated to Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer that they opposed “final passage of the [bill] in its current form.” Thus, even with 59 Democrats (or 60 if/when Franken is admitted), passage could be difficult.

Cost could have added this year’s 67-31 vote against using budget reconciliation in the Senate for climate change legislation involving a cap-and-trade system. For that matter, he might also have noted the degree to which his map reflected the concentrated benefits of Waxman-Markey, which favors the coastal power companies and doles out boodle to farm states.

Sen. Jim Inhofe thinks that Senate Democrats can muster only 34 votes for cap-and-trade. That might be an underestimate, but the signs to date point to Democrats falling far short of 60 votes in the Senate.

One final note on the House vote: the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza reported:

Nearly three-quarters of the 44 [Democrats] who opposed the bill either are on House Republicans’ target list or are running for statewide office in a conservative leaning state in 2010 — a classic bifurcation between those who are on the ballot in a midterm election and a president who doesn’t stand in front of voters for another three plus years.

But, a deeper look at the list also suggests that the White House could well have driven their vote total on the bill higher if they absolutely needed to as a number (10-ish) of those who voted against the legislation could have been cajoled — or coerced — into casting a “yea” rather than a “nay” if it was absolutely necessary.

Accordingly, even if the House GOP had stood unanimously against Waxman-Markey, the Democrats likely had the votes to pass it. It might have been nice if that handful of squishy Republicans had not voted “yea” to force some vulnerable Dems to make a tough vote. But to the extent that those squishy Republicans are in swing districts where the “nay” vote would have hurt them, the exercise in party unity could easily have been a wash.

—
Update: The Politico has an account of how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi whipped the votes. The Democratic sources for the story have every incentive to make this look like a big achievement, but a close reading shows it was mostly about guilting the more leftist members of the Congress into supporting Pelosi’s position.

–Karl

[Guest post by DRJ]

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy relays the following quote from a law professor who directed a legal writing program for new hires at a large law firm. The law firm also asked the law professor to share his advice with the partners. He told the partners to focus on correcting actual mistakes and avoid imposing their personal writing preferences on the new associates. This was the response of one partner:

“A partner objected strenuously. He said, and I kid you not, “One of the reasons I became a partner was to impose my personal preferences on others.”

I was not asked back.”

Heh. Anyone who’s ever worked in a big law firm knows this partner.

– DRJ

[Posted by Karl]

Blogger spats are often a bit “inside baseball,” but occasionally, such spats may shed light on a bigger issue.

Verum Serum reports on such a spat between HotAir’s Ed Morrissey and the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, ostensibly over whether Klein believes the “public plan” Pres. Obama would like to see as part of healthcare reform is a “sneaky” Leftist strategy for moving the US towards single-payer health care. It seems to me that Verum Serum has the videos (of both Klein and his fellow travelers), as well as the American Prospect article in which Klein referred to the public plan strategy as “single payer by stealth,” to show that Ed was not out of line in drawing the inference he did, especially given the nature of Klein’s continuing support for a public plan:

This would be like Medicare for the rest of us. It could throw the federal government’s weight around. It could negotiate deep discounts with providers. It could muscle its way into networks. Outside groups like the Commonwealth Fund estimate that it would save the average consumer 20 percent to 30 percent. That would give it a massive competitive advantage over private insurers, and would probably result in tens of millions of Americans dropping their current coverage and entering the public plan to save money. A variant of this was in the draft of Ted Kennedy’s bill that was leaked last week.

As someone who thinks cost control and efficiency are important in health reform, I’m most interested in the strong public plan. Folks who are more interested in preserving something that looks like the current private insurance market tend to fall behind the trigger public plan, largely under the theory that it would be pretty much the same as no public plan at all.

Given the extent to which Medicare dominates its market, Klein’s support for “Medicare for the rest of us” is rather telling.

Moreover, it is not difficult to figure out why Klein would have his backpedal in motion. Pres. Obama has declared, “[W]hen you hear the naysayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run health care, know this: They’re not telling the truth.” Pres. Obama has always been at war with Eastasia, just as he has always supported the protesters in Iran, and so people like Klein take up the party line.

The dispute is of larger interest because, even as Klein denies that a public plan is a sneaky Leftist strategy, he is blogging the sneaky Leftist strategy to get the public plan into the final version of Obamacare. Klein believes that as long as the Senate passes some healthcare reform bill, it will return from the House-Senate conference with a public plan, at which point moderate Democrats will be strongarmed into allowing a vote. Klein may overestimate the degree to which Senators will be willing to cross their voters and donors for the sake of party unity, but maybe not. Either way, everyone right of center owes Klein a debt for flagging sneaky Leftist strategies on healthcare before they are a fait accompli.

–Karl

Many of you already know about this, but for those of you who don’t, Patterico is now on Facebook. I was reluctant to make an announcement until I had successfully registered “Patterico” as my username, which I just did. You can visit my page at http://facebook.com/patterico.

I am happy to add any recognized reader as a friend, but I want you to send something along with your friend request that proves to me that you are who you claim to be. Be creative. I have access to all your comments, so the best way is to provide me with the secret e-mail address that you use to comment.

I am also on Twitter at http://twitter.com/patterico. Follow me there! It’s social media MADNESS!