Allah drops this revelation in a rather off-hand manner, in a post about Nancy Pelosi’s ridiculous whine that voters weren’t told about the California Supreme Court’s decision:

Speaking as someone who would have voted no on Prop 8: Who cares?

I agree with Allahpundit about Pelosi’s whine, by the way. The California Supreme Court’s illegitimate decision ought to be utterly irrelevant to this question. Indeed, as someone who did vote no on Prop. 8, the only redeeming thing about its passage is that it squarely extends the electorate’s middle finger at the state Supreme Court.

The message: lefties can’t always win by doing an end-run around the electorate by way of the courts. If the issue comes up again, it will have to be without the interference of judges who write decisions with one hand, so they can pat themselves on the back with the other hand.

And that is a good thing.

The “exit question” is obvious: will Andrew Sullivan praise Allahpundit for his uncommon courage?

This teacher asks her students who they’re pulling for in the presidential election. When a couple of the students say they support McCain, she says: “Oh Lord, John McCain. Oh, Jesus, John McCain.”

In a different discussion, she says to one student: “So in other words, Barack is going to end that war in Iraq. What do you know about that war in Iraq?” She then says to a student with a father in Iraq:

Talk, ’cause your daddy in the military. Talk. It’s a senseless war. And by the way, Katherine, the person that you pickin’ for President said that our troops could stay in Iraq for another hundred years if they need to. So that mean your daddy could stay in the military for another hundred years.

The girl looks stricken. (Via Hot Air.)

This story hit the blogs yesterday, and there is already good news from the principal:

(Also via Hot Air.)

I love a story with a happy ending. But I want to know what this guy considers “appropriate.”

The L.A. Times reveals a truth many of us already knew, but that the electorate at large evidently did not — namely, that Obama’s economic policies are terribly worrying to many knowledgeable investors:

[P]lenty of people believe Obama’s ideas will be somewhere between hurtful and ruinous for investors over time.

Tom Kerr, who helps manage $2.5 billion in stocks for Reed, Conner & Birdwell Inc. in L.A., asserts that many of the policies Obama has espoused are “job destroyers and are bad for all size businesses in America.”

He ticks off his list: “Less free trade . . . more business regulation . . . increased union power . . . higher tax rates on big consumer spenders.”

It’s OK to say . . . now that he’s safely elected.

The L.A. Times reveals a truth many of us already knew, but that the electorate at large evidently did not — namely, that Obama oversimplified the foreign policy challenges he faced:

The other truth is that, even with wider international support, it may be impossible for Obama to win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, broker peace between Arabs and Israelis or stabilize African countries beset by civil strife. As Times correspondents explain on this page, the realities on the ground are more complex than presented by Obama the candidate.

It’s OK to say . . . now that he’s safely elected.

A reader writes:

What I think Jeff G. and some of your more vocal (and acknowledgedly unrestrained) detractors are concerned with is that you’ll take your desire for moderateness, a good and necessary quality, and you’ll hold back in calling Obama’s policies honestly for what they are. That you’ll not harp on his failures as a leader because it’s not nice to do that to a nice guy. There’s principled ground to be had in the middle, and it’s easier to attack from the middle than from the other side, but the danger is that you might forget which side you started on.

I have never held back in describing any Democrat’s policies honestly for what they are (or any Republican’s, for that matter), and I assure you that I won’t in the future. I’ve had a lot of people criticizing me recently, and that’s fine. Most of you have been civil about it, and that’s all I ask. I’ve also had some people who agree with me, and that’s fine too.

I get turned off by knee-jerk conservatives (or liberals), but I also get very annoyed with the people who praise themselves as Courageous Martyrs for saying things that buck the party line.

On the Internet, when you say things that people disagree with, people are sometimes nasty. It’s a fact of life. Usually, it’s the “other side” that gets nasty, but if you say things that your own side intensely disagrees with, your own side can get nasty too.

When that happens, some people flip out. And the way a lot of them react is to sprain their shoulder patting themselves on the back for their own Incredible Courage. Andrew Sullivan is the quintessential example of this sort of blogger.

To me, that’s a lot of self-aggrandizing nonsense.

Sullivan has tried to rope me into this mindset. He wrote that I was “courageous” when I opposed Proposition 8. A small handful of people have reacted similarly to things I have said in recent days about Obama. A (very) small group said the same thing when I had some mild criticism of Sarah Palin during the campaign.

While it’s very seductive to have people call you brave, and I don’t mean to be rude to people who are trying to compliment me, I utterly reject any such notion as ridiculous. If you’re going to regularly spout opinions, you have to be ready to have people disagree, from whatever side. That just comes with the territory.

The worst is when these self-described paragons of integrity abandon all their principles out of pique, and run to the other side. I do not respect Sullivan because I think he has no core principles. To me, he seems to crave adulation, and when he didn’t get it from the right, he ran to the left and positioned himself as a supposedly “courageous” conservative — a Fearless Man unafraid to Speak the Truth.

That’s not going to happen here. This is not a Balloon Juice or an Andrew Sullivan style site. I’m never going to become a Democrat just because I’ve been offended by some of the things Republicans have done, because Republicans still share more of my core principles (at least in theory).

[Guest post by DRJ]

Deborah Howell, the Ombudsman of the Washington Post, admits the Post’s coverage was biased for Obama:

“The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.”

Like most of the media, the Washington Post is addicted to Obama and Democrats and it needs a 12-step program to recover. I doubt it will happen, however, since the Washington Post refuses to fully examine and accept its errors:

“Some readers complain that coverage is too poll-driven. They’re right, but it’s not going to change. The Post’s polling was on the mark, and in some cases ahead of the curve, in focusing on independent voters, racial attitudes, low-wage voters, the shift of African Americans’ support from Clinton to Obama and the rising importance of economic issues. The Post and its polling partner ABC News include 50 to 60 issues questions in every survey instead of just horse-race questions, so public attitudes were plumbed as well.“

Translation: Sure, we were biased for Obama but did you notice how well we anticipated public opinion? Dear Ms. Ombudsman: The polls were “ahead of the curve” because the media, including your own Washington Post, were driving the news and public opinion in Obama’s favor. I’m not surprised your polls identified emerging issues and opinions given how religiously you were pushing them on the front pages of your newspaper.

The article concludes with a defense of its Palin coverage and a one sentence admission that it was a “serious omission” not to cover Biden. Apparently the Ombudsman is content with a 1-step program: We goofed. So much for taking transparent steps to prevent this from happening again.

I’m sure that for as long as there’s been a media, journalists have been lured by the temptation to manipulate the news instead of report it. But I think it’s become more acceptable in the industry since Watergate made Woodward and Bernstein media celebrities/heroes. Professionalism is a skill but it’s also a habit. Years of falling prey to the temptation of manipulating the news made it easier for reporters in this election to succumb with Obama’s candidacy. Further, the more one news source did it, the more the rest followed like lemmings.

The Washington Post powers may be glad they got this off their chests and they will undoubtedly reassure us we can trust them because they have reformed. But like most addicts, I have no doubt they will soon return to their shared addiction of making Obama’s Presidency a success.

Washington Post: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/07/AR2008110702895.html

UPDATE: Doug Ross on the media’s connections to Democratic campaigns and Presidents, including CNN selling Obama T-Shirts.

— DRJ

Serious question: is Chris hitting the sauce here?