Via Hot Air, Ann Coulter says that if McCain is the nominee, she’ll campaign for Hillary.

Really?

The thing is, judges aside, she almost has a point.

Good judges are just about the only reason to vote for McCain, because I think supporters of the war may have a better chance with Hillary than with McCain. Yes, McCain will fight to stay in Iraq until he keels over. But he needs support for that. And I’m an adherent of the Armed Liberal position that if Hillary wins, the Democrats will own the war the day she takes the oath of office. That makes it harder for a Democrat-led Congress to fight the President on the war with the same intensity they would use against a Republican like McCain. (The argument doesn’t work as to Obama, who is just crazy enough to actually pull all the troops home precipitously.)

Illegal immigration? Hillary and McCain are both terrible on that issue.

I don’t trust any of these parties any more on spending. We did better on that under Bill Clinton than we did under any Republican president in decades.

Taxes? You know, if you’re going to spend money without regard to how much money the Government actually has, maybe we need to pay for that somehow. I’d prefer less spending and lower taxes, but if we’re going to have higher spending anyway, maybe we need higher taxes to keep from passing the bill on to our children.

Even Hillary’s shrill personality wouldn’t be much harder to take than McCain’s arrogance, temper, and stubbornness. I dislike them both strongly.

Judges are the only thing that makes McCain any better than Hillary, in my view. And he’s losing credibility on that issue too. If I completely lose faith in him on judges, I’ll sit out this election. Tell me why I shouldn’t.

I won’t go so far as to say I’d campaign for Hillary. But, judges aside, why should I care?

P.S. While we’re praising Clintons, Bill really let a Truther have it. Good for him.

Just in case you wanted to say something about it.

Robert Novak says John McCain did make that crack about Justice Alito after all. He claims to have two independent sources who say they weren’t John Fund’s sources.

Despite my documented revulsion for John McCain, I have been trying to take a mature attitude about him — mostly because I think (and still do) that he would appoint much better Justices than any Democrat would.

But he’s making it really, really hard — with things like his supercilious performance in the debate last night, and now this . . . an article that, if true, makes him out to be not only weak on judges, but a liar.

[posted by Justin Levine]

Andrew Ferguson has convinced me – even if he wasn’t specifically trying to do so.

The report is now confirmed; Romney has not bought TV ad time in any February 5 state, and his spokesman is refusing to say whether he will.

UPDATE: The earlier report was wrong. Romney is planning a major ad blitz.

I’m very encouraged by that, because after watching John McCain’s wretched debate performance last night, I no longer think he’s electable. He’s Bob Dole without the sense of humor.

Dahlia Lithwick recently published a blog post that reprinted an e-mail from a famous legal figure. That figure has retracted an important part of his e-mail. How she chooses to notify readers about that retraction will be a test of her honesty and integrity.

In a recent Slate blog post, Lithwick published a letter from Walter Dellinger arguing that the Linda Greenhouse conflict of interest was no big deal, because hey, everyone has views, and Greenhouse (he claims) does an amazing job of setting those views aside and getting her facts right. Dellinger ended his letter with a passage that I had read as accusing Ed Whelan of intellectual dishonesty:

So the critics must actually know better. Which is why Emily and Dahlia are so right that it is very wrong to dignify these attacks as if they were honest complaints that deserved an answer.

Dellinger since wrote Whelan and retracted that passage, admitting that 1) he had never read Whelan’s criticisms; 2) he did not mean to call Whelan dishonest; and 3) more people than not agree that Greenhouse’s conflict is substantial. Here are some key passages from Dellinger’s retraction:

Dear Ed — In a posting last week on Slate, I included a sentence that could easily be read to call in question your “honesty.” I had no such intention and I write to you now to recall that defective passage. The issue involves criticism of Linda Greenhouse for “bias” and the New York Times’ (in my view) tepid defense of her work. I concluded that the Times was “wrong to dignify these attacks as if they were honest complaints that deserved an answer.” I regret that last hastily written sentence. Since you have been a central figure in this debate, readers would naturally assume I was referring to you. In fact, I had not even read what you had written on this subject. . . . While I disagree with your position on the relevance of a spouse’s role, your position, I believe, has far more adherents than mine.

(My emphasis.)

Ed says: “I thank Walter for his retraction, and I trust that Dahlia Lithwick, who posted Walter’s original observations, will call his retraction to the attention of Slate’s readers.”

Ed’s trust is touching, but may prove misplaced. I have perused the blog where Dahlia’s entry quoted Dellinger. There is no notification of Dellinger’s retraction yet. Will there be? I don’t know. I think it’s 50/50 — and if one appears, I suspect it will be in the form of an update to the old post, and not as a new post that people might actually read. Even if it’s a new post, it’s overwhelmingly likely that the post will contain snarling sarcasm that undercuts the force of the retraction.

I could be wrong. Dahlia does have flashes of intellectual honesty amongst her usual routine of slanting the facts to support her liberal position. I’ll be watching closely to see how she handles this. It will say a lot about her character.

UPDATE: I e-mailed Dahlia, and she said she hadn’t seen it. She says she’ll post something in the morning. I really hope the post surpasses my admittedly low expectations.

When we last checked in Stephen Yagman, he was supposed to surrender for his prison sentence on January 15. After the 15th, I wrote Patrick Range McDonald, who checked and told me that Yagman’s surrender date had been delayed until January 29.

McDonald has an update on Yagman’s case here. Turns out Yagman got yet another delay. It looks like he will have to surrender within a week or two, when a federal motions panel rules on his appeal of Judge Wilson’s denial of his motion for bail pending appeal.

You can’t stay out forever, Yagman. The day will come when you have to surrender and head off to the pokey.

I’ll be here to gloat about it.

Could he be our only hope?

Only would Democrats really be stupid enough to vote for him again?

Here’s a fun little video of a younger Mitt saying he’s not trying to return to the Reagan/Bush era, as he was an independent at that time:

Here’s Mitt from tonight:

[W]e’re in the house that Reagan built. It’s important that we, as Republicans, stay in the house that Reagan built. If we want to take the White House again, social, economic and foreign policy conservatives have to come together.

. . . .

I would be with Ronald Reagan. And this party, it has a choice, what the heart and soul of this party is going to be, and it’s going to have to be in the house that Ronald Reagan built.

Now watch the video again.

It’s short, and perhaps it’s ripped out of context. It’s hard to imagine how context could help much — but you never know.

UPDATE: The same YouTube poster has an effective little video showing Mitt supporting a woman’s right to choose — time and time and time again:

Great ending.

How excited are Republicans about their candidates? This excited!

Beldar:

John McCain is a grumpy, grumpy old man. He is mean. And he rambles.

. . . .

I became gloomy tonight trying to imagine John McCain debating [Barack] Obama in the general election.

Agreed.

Mitt Romney is improving dramatically as a debater, and tonight he was better, by far, than I’ve ever seen him.

Agreed.