The report carries no good news for conservatives, but the writing is excellent and memorable:

[S]he showed why many people think she’ll be a true force on the Court: She effectively drew in other the justices with her questions–asking a follow up to a question by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for example, and then striking true gold by piquing the interest of human jump ball Justice Anthony Kennedy.

“Human jump ball”!! Heh. I’m going to remember that one. Next time I use that, remember where it came from.

When Justice Kennedy perks up and tells a lawyer, ” I want to know your answer to Justice Kagan’s question,” that means one thing. Justice Kagan is having a Very Good Day.

. . . .

Her questions were clear, concise and exactly on point. She pulled together various points other justices were making, and her demeanor was at once sincere and respectful, yet also forceful and confident.

Granted, it was just the first case on the first day. And the case–a technical, somewhat trivial bankruptcy dispute–wasn’t much to speak of. Reading too much into it would be like saying Boise State should be #1 because they beat Virginia Tech to start the season. (Ahem. No.)

But it was a good start for the newest justice. If you’re a liberal who hopes she will be an intellectual force who builds coalitions, you had to like what you saw. And if you’re a conservative, you had reasons to feel nervous.

Yes — especially because Crawford gives it to you straight, and isn’t some crazed liberal wowed by Kagan simply because Kagan is a leftist.

Still. “Human jump ball.” Great stuff.

Tim Rutten writes another column that leaves the reader screaming in frustration:

What really ought to concern people most are Diaz Santillan’s allegations that during the nine years she worked for Whitman and her husband, they repeatedly forced her to put in more than her agreed-upon hours without compensation and refused to pay her mileage even though she had to use her own car to perform household errands. Whitman denies all this, but she does agree that she fired Diaz Santillan within days of the June 2009 conversation in which the housekeeper asked for help in legalizing her status. That may not be labor code-style mistreatment, but it’s an odd way to treat somebody who’d worked in your home and taken care of your children for nearly a decade and who Whitman herself describes as “a member of our extended family.”

What in the hell are you talking about, Rutten?

Firing the maid after she said she was illegal was “an odd way to treat” her? When it was Whitman’s only option under the law??

Not to mention that the maid gave her phony documentation and had been lying to her for years?

Seems to me that’s an “odd way to treat” your employer.

But no: to Rutten, lying and committing felonies is perfectly normal, whereas firing an illegal worker as you’re required to is “odd.”

What could better illustrate the utter insanity of the liberals at this rag?

No, it’s not Linda Tripp. It’s Christine O’Donnell, denying she is a witch, and asserting that she is you:

Embedding the Monty Python bit feels like too much of a cliche. So what do you think? I just have one question: the white smoke behind the woman in the black dress . . . that’s not coming from a cauldron, is it?

UPDATE: For an “I’m not a witch” clip that is slightly less hackneyed than the Python bit above, enjoy this bit from the Princess Bride. The key line is at 3:09.

There’s no reason not to answer, unless she has something to hide. Which she clearly does:

Whitman should clip the early question and answer and run it on a loop.

When L.A. Times print readers received their paper last Wednesday, here is what they saw: a screaming banner headline that appeared to be about a terror attack on a TV network:

It turned out to be just an ad for the new Los Angeles-based Law and Order show on NBC.

To her credit, the Readers’ Representative writes about it, and notes reader reactions, which appear to be mostly appalled. I guess they’re used to seeing front-page advertisements for political candidates on their front pages, but not for TV networks.

Fake editors contacted by patterico.com for fake quotes said: “I never made enough money to be bought,” and “Advertising buys good will.”

Right. And Democrats never make any odd statements at all.

I find it amusing that the paper holds up Sharron Angle as the paradigmatic example of a candidate who says oddball things:

Who is she running against? Ah yes, Harry Reid. The guy who said that you can “literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol” in summertime?

Reid is also the guy who declared Obama could win because he is “light skinned” and “with no Negro dialect.”

Reid is the guy who declared Justice Thomas to be “an embarrassment to the Supreme Court,” claiming that one of Thomas’s opinions was similar to “an eighth-grade dissertation.” It was far inferior, Reid said, to the opinion of Justice Scalia in the same case. Except that Scalia hadn’t even written an opinion in the case.

Reid has compared opposition to ObamaCare to support for slavery; has decried a Supreme Court decision upholding a partial birth abortion ban that he had voted for; and has justified his vote against John Roberts by saying: “I’m not too sure if his heart is as big as his head.”

Oh — and if we were going to look at actual issues of honesty, as opposed to goofy statements, we could always remind people of Harry’s dirty land deals (which were actually exposed due to the good work of this newspaper, so they certainly know about them).

Or, we could just pretend that Republicans are the only people who say goofy things and write a big article about it.

Hey, it’s a paper that endorses Moonbeam Brown for Governor and Barbara Boxer for the U.S. Senate. What do you expect?