Ace has some lengthy and thoughtful comments on why McCain will indeed continue to screw conservatives from here on out. Read it all, and tell me it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Yeah, I’ll still vote for the little [expletive deleted]er in the general election. But you know what? I’m going to keep bashing him anyway. And I’m going to make especially sure I bash him, by name, within 60 days of the election — in honor of his past assaults on free speech.

I love the Republican party — but I love irony more.

UPDATE: By contrast, Beldar says that you should vote for McCain if you truly believe we’re at war. And he loathes McCain.

I’m not sure I agree with Beldar — mostly because, as I have argued here, I subscribe to the Armed Liberal view that war supporters might actually be better off with Hillary, because she (and more importantly her party) will own the war when she takes the oath of office.

But Beldar’s argument is worth considering — as his arguments generally are.

P.S. And just because I feel I need to repeat this in every post in which I criticize McCain — I still plan to vote for him in the general election. Holding my nose every second of the way.

Linda Greenhouse has done it again: reported on a case that her husband had involvement in, without disclosing the conflict to her readers.

Ed Whelan writes:

In today’s New York Times, Linda Greenhouse has another article on the Boumediene case now pending in the Supreme Court—a case in which her husband Eugene Fidell and his nonprofit alter ego have participated. The article provides an interesting discussion of the interaction between Boumediene and a D.C. Circuit ruling (in Bismullah v. Gates) that the Bush administration will be asking the Supreme Court to review. The article is about both cases, which Greenhouse states are “inextricably entwined.”

Once again, Greenhouse and her editors have declined even to disclose to Times readers the fact and nature of Greenhouse’s conflict of interest in reporting on Boumediene. Indeed, they haven’t even complied with NYT public editor Clark Hoyt’s patently inadequate recommendation . . . that the conflict of interest be disclosed on Greenhouse’s website bio, where few readers would ever be likely to encounter it.

As Ed observes, Clark Hoyt recently said that Greenhouse should have disclosed her husband’s involvement in a case she reported on. Specifically, Hoyt said: “The Times should have clued in readers.” Yet here the situation has arisen again — and the Times is doing nothing.

Could there be a starker example of the contempt the New York Times has for its conservative critics?

My kingdom for a video of Sam Zell telling off Linda Greenhouse and Bill Keller.

(H/t to Dafydd ab Hugh, who brought the Greenhouse article to my attention.)

In an otherwise annoying Simpsons episode about illegal immigration, there is a scene that teaches us a valuable lesson about politics. It’s a lesson we should all remember — especially nowadays.

In the episode, Springfield is preparing to pass “Proposition 24” — a mean-spirited measure designed to throw all immigrants out of Springfield. (Subtleties about illegal immigration are overlooked/minimized in classic liberal fashion.) Homer learns that the measure will result in the deportation of his friend Apu, and his mind is changed. He stands up before an attentive crowd and delivers the following stirring speech:

Most of us here were born in America. We take this country for granted. But not immigrants like Apu. While the rest of us are drinking ourselves stupid, they’re driving the cabs that get us home safely. They’re writing the operas that entertain us every day. They’re training our tigers and kicking our extra points. These people are the glue that holds together the gears of our society. If we pass Proposition 24, we’ll be losing some of the truest Americans of all.

The crowd cheers, and Homer continues:

When you go to the polls tomorrow, please vote No on Proposition on 24.

The crowd begins to chant:

No on 24! No on 24! No on 24! No on 24!

As we watch a montage of citizens marching to the voting booths, we can easily see that Homer’s speech signifies the end of this divisive and ugly law.

Cut to TV newsman Kent Brockman, who announces:

It’s a landslide — Yes on 24! The proposition passed with a record 95 percent . . .

The lesson: just because everyone you know plans to vote a certain way, doesn’t mean the population at large will vote that way.

The phenomenon is nothing new. Recall Pauline Kael’s famous quote about Nixon: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon.” (Nixon had won the presidential election in a landslide.) Kael’s “special world” did not represent the country — and, most likely, neither does your special world.

The lesson is timeless, but has never been more timely. Over the past few days and weeks we have watched right-wing bloggers and talk radio hosts come out strongly in favor of a genuine conservative (Fred Thompson). When that didn’t work, we shifted our allegiance to a candidate who may not be a strong conservative — but who plays one on TV (Mitt Romney). It has all been for nought. Voters — Republicans, mind you — have voted in droves for John McCain and his unique brand of liberalism masquerading as Reaganesque conservatism.

Meanwhile, here in L.A., talk radio show hosts were (as far as I could tell) unanimous in their withering contempt for a phone tax that politicians stuck on the ballot with the deceptive message that it constituted a tax reduction. In fact, the talk show hosts screamed (accurately), it was a large tax increase — because the slightly higher tax it replaced has been declared illegal by the courts. If you listened closely, you could hear the chant: No on the phone tax! No on the phone tax! No on the phone tax!

It won, with the approval of 79% of the electorate.

Man up, Republicans. You can console yourself with this thought: we are going to lose no matter who we put up. But if we put up McCain, the lesson of the election will be: you can’t win by picking a liberal for your Republican candidate. And maybe the next time around, we’ll get someone who is actually conservative.

Or we won’t. Because, you know, our opinions don’t seem to mean much of anything nowadays.

P.S. As I say in the post immediately below, I will vote for McCain if he is our candidate. Just so there is no misunderstanding.

I may be on NPR’s “Morning Edition” tomorrow morning.

Or I may not. You never know how these things might go . . .

If I am, I’ll be railing about John McCain — but admitting that, in the end, I’ll vote for him in the general election if he is the nominee.

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein will be on too. Cool. He has a great excuse for any incoherence. I wish I did.

[Guest post by DRJ]

Twenty voters in Chicago whose ink pens did not work were told their pens had invisible ink and their votes would count:

“Twenty voters at a Far North Side precinct who found their ink pens not working were told by election judges not to worry.

It’s invisible ink, officials said. The scanner will count it. But their votes weren’t recorded after all.

“Part of me was thinking it does sound stupid enough to be true,” said Amy Carlton, who had serious doubts but went ahead and voted anyway.”

It sounds like the schools are doing an excellent job getting people to think creatively. Now we need to reintroduce the notions of common sense and civics lessons.

— DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

The Houston Chronicle reports a surprising claim by a 42-year-old woman who was convicted for her role in a Houston-area home invasion. She claims her accomplice in the robbery was one of the men shot by Joe Horn:

“A woman sentenced to prison in a Sugar Land home robbery told a court an accomplice in the crime was one of the men killed by Joe Horn after they burglarized his neighbor’s Pasadena house, prosecutors said.

Rafaela Davila, 42, made the claim during a punishment hearing Monday in the court of state District Judge Cliff Vacek, said Fort Bend County assistant district attorney Mike Hartman.

Hartman said police have not been able to verify Davila’s assertion but have contacted prosecutors in Harris County to determine if it is true. “They (Harris County officials) were definitely interested in this,” Hartman said Tuesday. “They were going to pull up their records and see if they could corroborate this and make a connection.”

The case resembled the incident in Pasadena involving Joe Horn, including that the victims were Asians robbed of substantial assets and cash and the perpetrators were Columbian.

— DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

The Politico confirms that Hillary Clinton loaned her campaign $5M last month. It may be she had to since she lost the January fund-raising race with Obama by a 2-to-1 margin.

No wonder she has tears in her eyes. I’d be weepy, too.

— DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

I doubt this Accuracy in Media article will get much attention since it’s old news, but it should:

“I have just seen Hillary Clinton and her former Yale law professor both in tears at a campaign rally here in my home state of Connecticut. Her tearful professor said how proud he was that his former student was likely to become our next President. Hillary responded in tears.

My own reaction was of regret that, when I terminated her employment on the Nixon impeachment staff, I had not reported her unethical practices to the appropriate bar associations.”

That’s just the first two paragraphs. Read it and weep.

— DRJ

Who should we rule out?  I’d start by lining out Huckabee.  He’s been useful to McCain thus far, but I don’t think McCain is going to feel beholdened to him.  He would encourage the evangelical base, but in many ways he’s more liberal than McCain, and he’s certainly not qualified to be CinC in the event something were to happen to McCain before the end of his term and I think that is McCain’s over-riding consideration.

I also don’t think he will pick a Senate colleague since he’s not widely liked there, and the Senate has not been much of a springboard to the WH anyway.

I’m thinking its going to be one of the big-state Governors that have endorsed him.  But only one of them really adds strength to the ticket — Charlie Crist of Florida.

He’s popular in Florida and would likely keep Florida in the GOP column against Clinton.  Against Obama its more of a toss-up since Obama will drive AA turnout in Florida in a general election. 

But Crist also brings some geographic balance — while McCain is a Senator from a western state, given his political history he could just as easily be considered a Senator from Conn. or NY.    His own record is all he needs to be competitive in the NE.  If he can’t do it on the back of his own political history, a running mate from the NE isn’t going to help him.

Does Crist do anything for the conservative base?  I’m not too sure about that. 

In my view, the most important election news from yesterday was reported long before the polls closed: the Democrat nomination is going to be resolved by “superdelegates” (members of the party elite) and not voters. Allahpundit explains:

2,025 delegates [are] needed to clinch, but the Messiah’s made such a contest of it that realistically neither [Obama nor Clinton] can win enough pledged delegates (i.e. delegates you earn by picking up districts and winning the state popular vote) to do it. Which means it falls to the 796 unpledged “super” delegates — the party elite, many of whom are accountable to no one — to decide.

(My emphasis.)

After yesterday’s results, nothing has changed. Democrat elites will be picking the nominee. As Allah says: “Say it with me: Selected, not elected.”

Let’s see how long it takes our friends in the Dinosaur Media to catch on to this disturbing reality. I don’t see any mention of it in today’s L.A. Times story on the current state of the Democrat race.