It’s been on my back burner to respond to this diatribe by Dana Milbank, claiming that NIH Director Francis Collins was telling the truth when he said that there would have been an Ebola vaccine but for budget cuts. Milbank goes on and on about the horrible budget cuts that NIH supposedly suffered from, defends origami condoms, etc. But this passage really got my attention:

Even hard-core libertarians tend to agree that medical research and public health, like national defense, are among the few things that should be a federal responsibility. Eric Cantor, the recently deposed House majority leader, made a big push for government funding of medical research.

I’m sorry? Milbank is citing Eric Cantor as an example of a “hard-core libertarian”?? Let’s review some of Cantor’s super-libertarian record:

Cantor helped usher the 2008 bailout to passage. He was the Chamber of Commerce’s most important ally in reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank in 2012, and was expected to play the same role again this year. He voted for the insurers’ and drug makers’ beloved Medicare prescription drug bill in 2003, and for the Republicans’ pork-filled energy bill in 2005.

I was suspicious of Milbank’s claim because the “hard-core libertarians” I am familiar with don’t even necessarily believe national defense should be handled by the government. (I disagree with them.) So I suspected they would not be big fans of federal funding for medical research.

I decided to look into the views of one fairly prominent “hard-core libertarian”: Ron Paul. Guess what? He believes medical research should be done privately. (Sorry, it’s a Prison Planet link, but that’s the only place I can find it.) Here’s Paul:

The issue is not whether the federal government should fund one type of stem cell research or another. The issue is whether the federal government should fund stem cell research at all. Clearly there is no constitutional authority for Congress to do so, which means individual states and private citizens should decide whether to permit, ban, or fund it. Neither party in Washington can fathom that millions and millions of Americans simply don’t want their tax dollars spent on government research of any kind. This viewpoint is never considered.

Federal funding of medical research guarantees the politicization of decisions about what types of research for what diseases will be funded. Scarce tax resources are allocated according to who has the most effective lobby, rather than on the basis of need or even likely success. Federal funding also causes researchers to neglect potential treatments and cures that do not qualify for federal funds. Medical advancements often result from radical ideas and approaches that are scoffed at initially by the establishment. When scientists become dependent on government funds, however, they quickly learn not to rock the boat and stick to accepted areas of inquiry. Federal funds thus distort the natural market for scientific research.

It’s impossible to know whether Milbank is just lying — or whether he really believes what he said, and has no idea what actual libertarians think. Either way, he is badly misinforming his readers.

[Guest post by DRJ]

Yesterday I posted in an update to this post regarding Dana Milbank’s claim that the Secret Service was running interference at Sarah Palin rallies to keep the press away from her supporters:

“I wasn’t at the Scranton event, but I have to say the Secret Service is in dangerous territory here. In cooperation with the Palin campaign, they’ve started preventing reporters from leaving the press section to interview people in the crowd. This is a serious violation of their duty — protecting the protectee — and gets into assisting with the political aspirations of the candidate. It also often makes it impossible for reporters to get into the crowd to question the people who say vulgar things. So they prevent reporters from getting near the people doing the shouting, then claim it’s unfounded because the reporters can’t get close enough to identify the person.”

Today the Secret Service denied Milbank’s claim:

“It’s not a function of the Secret Service to prevent or limit reporters from interviewing the people at events,” said Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan. “We’ve never been asked by any campaign to do that.”

Donovan said that at rallies for all the candidates, the Secret Service sometimes separates the press corps that is credentialed to cover the event—known as the pool—from the general public. That is for logistical and security reasons, he said.

“Being in a press pool gives them special access,” said Donovan. “But the other side is that they have to stay together. You keep national press away from the local press for the same reason.”

Any journalist can get around these restrictions simply by attending the rally as a member of the public rather than a part of the press pool, he said.”

Milbank attended an early October rally in Clearwater FL where he also reported a slew of slurs by Palin supporters and was among the first to report that someone at a GOP rally yelled “Kill him.” William March at the Tampa Bay Online raised doubts about this incident, reporting that while one anonymous contact claimed someone yelled “Kill him” regarding William Ayers, two other persons heard a man near Milbank yell “Tell him” which could have been mistaken for “Kill him.”

Milbank’s most recent comments were made, in part, in response to a claim by a Scranton PA reporter that another Palin supporter yelled “Kill him” at a Scranton rally, a claim the Secret Service has since called unfounded.

— DRJ

Posted by WLS

Yeah, I know I mashed-up the scenes.  But this is classic.

Yesterday the left-wingnutroots shot one of their own when Keith Olbermann banned Dana Milbank from appearing on Countdown in the future, and just for good measure publicly impugned his journalistic integrity in the process.   On Kaily Dos yesterday, Olbermann posted this:

      Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, who notified us today that after four years appearing with us, he had accepted another television offer.

      This saved your crack Countdown staff an increasingly difficult decision. 

      For nearly a week we’d been waiting for him to offer a correction or an explanation for his column from last week in which he apparently reported an Obama quote without a full context turned the meaning of the quote inside-out.  

      Then he called criticisms of his column “whines” even though the dispute was over whether Obama said the self-deprecating: “It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign — that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It’s about America. I have just become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions” — or only the part about “I have just become a symbol…” 

      We had decided not to have Dana on this news-hour again until this was cleared up, and, sadly after some very happy years, he’s apparently chosen to make that cloud permanent.

The cause of the divorce was this much-talked about piece on July 30 by Milbank calling the Obama campaign out on its increasingly presumptuous conduct and tone.  I thought the piece was an early warning shot meant to benefit the Obama campaign by calling their attention to a building meme in the press on the subject.  Milbank quoted several examples of reporting being done by other journalists where that impression was being conveyed.  The hook for the piece might have been the exclusion of  New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza from the Obama press plane going to Europe, after the New Yorker cover which caused so much consternation.  There was lots of murmurring on the press blogs that Lizza was getting a taste of Chicago-style political payback.

The passage that Olbermann and his followers (the whole basement full of them) complained about was the one where Obama was quoted by an attendee at a Congrressional breifing of having made reference to himself as being a “symbol” in Europe of the opportunity for America to return to its “best traditions.”  The context for the quote was contested the day it appeared in print by others present who said it was really a self-deprecating comment wherein Obama was talking about the fact that the crowds in Europe were about American and a hope for a better relationship with Europe in the future, and the Obama campaign is just a symbol of that hope – or something like that.

Olbermann never addressed the column on Countdown, and Milbank never appeared after it ran.  But Olbermann’s alterego Rachel Maddow led the pushback against the column and the “arrogance” charge on other MSNBC shows.  From Olbermann’s post on Daily Kos is now seems clear that Olbermann was demanding a correction by Milbank before he would be allowed back on the show.  Milbank told him to go pound sand.

Now Olbermann has MIlbank sleeping with the fishes — which leaves Olbermann’s producers able to count on one hand the number of real journalists who will actually agree to appear on screen with him.    

My two cents:   While Milbank is certainly a lefty in the MSM, and while he has certainly not been friendly to the Bush/Cheney adminstration, I suspect he is one of those political reporters who enjoyed a good relationship with McCain going back to 2000, and probably still likes the guy for his willingness to talk to the press and answer questions.  He probably had no use for a return of the Clintonistas, so while Obama was slaying that beast he was an Obama fan — hence a regular at MSNBC, especially on Countdown.   But the Obama campaign has never been press-friendly, and Obama’s unwillingness to sit down with the press for unscripted on the record sessions is well-reported — and resented.

Now that the race has shifted to McCain v. Obama, there seems to have been a concern on the part of the Obama-chorus — like Olbermann — that Milbank couldn’t be counted on to stay on the reservation, hence this other comment from the link above:

Anybody who would come on television to talk about the Dick Cheney shoot-up, wearing an orange safety vest and a hunter’s cap automatically gets my benefit of the doubt. But even that had a shelf-life, which was nearing, when he took any further decision-making out of our hands. It was quite a surprise conclusion, obviously, and I’ll take it (before anybody tries to take it back).

Isn’t that a concession by Olbermann that he could no longer give Milbank the presumption that he would faithfully preach the Countdown gospel which is that only good flows from the Obamesiah, and all Republicans are the spawn of the AntiChrist?  I’m going to see if I can find examples in recent Countdown appearances by Milbank where he refused to go “all in” on behalf of the Obamesiah and against McCain.

Update:  Now we’ve got some sniper fire this morning from each side.  Milbank’s versiongiven to TVNewser:

Milbank, who, because of a partnership between his paper and the NBC cable news channel, has been a part of MSNBC’s programming since at least the 2000 election.  So where did Milbank end up last night? On CNN, opposite Olbermann. And what does Milbank say about this? 

As for his MSNBC departure and arrival on CNN, Milbank tells TVNewser: “It predated the column and nothing occurred along the lines Keith described.” A week ago tonight, Milbank appeared on Countdown and was identified as “MSNBC political analyst.” An insider tell us Milbank’s contract with MSNBC expired earlier this year.

Here’s Oblermann’s response to that claim today:

Dana appeared with us the night before his column appeared with the truncated Obama quote — and did so under the terms of his contract which both he and MSNBC obviously considered still in force. After the column, he contacted us, joking he was glad I hadn’t put him on the “Worst Persons” list, and then discussing with the producers coming on to clarify or explain what he wrote. Out of appreciation for his work for us, I had delayed a permanent decision on whether he should again appear on Countdown. Dana used this time to make another deal, which he told us about the day before he appeared on another network.

But Milbank’s not going to take that lying down from Olbermann:

Milbank also respondedto FishbowlDC’s Patrick Gavin, and seems to take a swipe at Olbermann: “The CNN contract was negotiated long before the Obama column. It’s just that CNN’s a better fit for me and my philosophy of holding all parties to account.”

There is danger here for Olbermann with the serious journalism community.  I remember listening to a long interview done by Hugh Hewitt with Mark Halperin, who was at that time the Political Director for ABC, and famously started The Note.  

In talking about whether there was a liberal bias in the press, Halperin defended some of his collegues who he knew to be politically liberal on the basis that they made great efforts to keep their biases out of their reporting — but admitted they weren’t always successful.  When Hewitt mentioned Olbermann and Countdown, and the journalists that appeared there, Halperin was critical and said he knew of several prominent journalists who would not appear because they didn’t think Olbermann was a serious journalist, and he never had anyone on the show who didn’t agree with him. 

So, that is out there.  Now Olbermann has publicly banned a prominent columnist for the Washington Post rather than quietly allow him to move on to another network — and called him out by impugning his journalism at the same time.

I suspect Milbank has more friends in the press corp than does Olbermann.  Before long Countdown may resemble nothing more than a political leftwing-gasbag version of Regis&Kelly, starring Olbermann and Maddow.

UPDATE NO. 2 — I’ve eliminated the misspellings of Olbermann’s name based on Cyrus’ comment  below, which I think makes a good point.  Don’t think for a minute, however, that juvenile humor is beneath me. 

But the censorship by Olbermann of lefties who don’t toe the party line in his opinion should be an important issue in the blogosphere, no matter what his rationalizations for it are.

[guest post by JVW]

Yesterday afternoon, Saule Omarova asked the Biden White House to withdraw her nomination as head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, to which President Biden had tabbed her back in September, but her nomination had been controversial owing to some — shall we say — idiosyncratic views about the efficacy of certain economic policies of the former Soviet Union. When the White House made the formal nomination — in the immediate aftermath of the Democrats’ disastrous showing in the 2019 elections — they failed to allay fears that she would be a firm advocate for central planning even among Senate Democrats, and subsequently five Democrat Senators announced that they could not support her, thus bringing her candidacy to a screeching stop.

The failure of a high-profile Biden nominee, owing to her ability to assuage moderate Democrats that she isn’t merely a Kazakhstani-born version of Elizabeth Warren, is to our feeble and incurious media naturally the fault of the GOP. David Harsanyi at NRO catches the media unsurprisingly prevaricating about why the Omarova nomination failed:

[. . .] NPR claimed in a tweet that Omarova withdrew her nomination “after facing personal attacks about being born in the former Soviet Union.” The New York Times says that “lobbyists and Republicans painted her as a communist because she was born in the Soviet Union.”

These are lies. And neither outlet provides a single quote to back the assertion that Senate Republicans had personally attacked the Cornell professor over being “born in the Soviet Union.” Perhaps some of this confusion hinges on the fact that many in the media have tried to create the impression that Omarova is some kind of political refugee who escaped Soviet tyranny to come to the United States. That too was untrue, as it was happenstance that the exchange student found herself stranded in Wisconsin when the Soviet Union fell. She never defected.

Despite the claims of bozos like Dana Milbank, the media has in no way, shape, or form been harder on the Biden Administration than they were on the Trump Administration. And, in what should be an obvious corollary, the GOP opposition has not really behaved more viciously, partisanly, or unreasonably than Democrats did four years ago. Joe Biden, who appears to be mostly subcontracting his administration’s agenda out to the Bernard Sanders wing of the party, could have chosen among dozens — probably hundreds — of qualified center-left Democrats for this position. Why he saw the need to pick a law school academic (albeit one who had worked in private practice and in prior administrations) prone to musing about how for all of its gulags at least the USSR didn’t have a gender pay gap and flirting with the idea that perhaps the Federal Reserve should simply take over all bank deposits in the U.S. is only a mystery if you let yourself believe that he is truly making the decisions that go out under his name. Hopefully now Team Biden has determined that they have done as much as they can or should to placate the anti-capitalists in their party, and they can focus on being the centrist Democrats they claimed to be back in 2020.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

In the media’s continuing efforts to break Scott Walker and put him in his place, today’s New York Times opened their article titled For Scott Walker, a Consistent Approach to Tough Questioning by informing readers – as if it were a fact – that Walker is struggling with questions posed by the media:

As Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin struggled to respond to questions about the president’s patriotism and religion last week, some saw an unprepared presidential hopeful in the national glare — not ready for “the N.F.L.,” as one participant in a Sunday morning talk show put it.

As the NYT cited those two vexing questions that the existence of civilization apparently hinges upon, I thought surely I must have missed something in Walker’s responses. Something like a struggle, and an undeniable one at that.

Asked whether he thought Obama was a Christian, Walker answered:

I don’t know.

And when reminded that the president has publicly spoken about his faith:

I’ve actually never talked about it or I haven’t read about that. I’ve never asked him that. You’ve asked me to make statements about people that I haven’t had a conversation with about that. How [could] I say if I know either of you are a Christian?

Asked whether he thought Obama loved America, Walker answered:

You should ask the president what he thinks about America,” Walker told The Associated Press while in Washington for a weekend meeting of the National Governors Association. “I’ve never asked him so I don’t know.”

Struggle? What I see is a politician walking through a minefield with skill and dexterity and deftly taking control of the conversation. And I definitely see a man who is infuriatingly smarter than those who seek to trip him up.

Of course none of this has anything to do with Walker “struggling” to answer gotcha questions or what he really thinks of Obama, and it certainly has nothing to do with an indignant media defending the president’s honor, this in spite of Dana Milbank’s hysterical efforts to appear as such. It is simply further evidence of a smug and partisan press continuing their hit job on Walker and most amusingly being unable to grasp that their very actions are having the opposite effect they hoped for: instead of branding Walker as a president-hating presidential-hopeful who pandered to the “Obama is a Muslim from Kenya who hates America” crowd and displayed a cowardice and insidiousness by his responses, they have instead helped shoot Walker right to the top of the polls. When a group is so smugly enamored by their own cleverness they are rendered without self-awareness, and the painfully obvious goes unseen.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Scott Walker, refusing to kowtow to the media’s shameful “gotcha” game, is instead shrewdly taking advantage of the “press” he’s been getting and using it as a fundraising springboard. This in spite of his insidious and cowardly behavior which is causing Dana Milbank’s head to most amusingly explode.

In a bold move, Walker refused to be baited in answering the latest “gotcha” of whether he thought Obama was a Christian:

“To me, this is a classic example of why people hate Washington and, increasingly, they dislike the press. The things they care about don’t even remotely come close to what you’re asking about.

Team Walker, recognizing an opening, sent the following email out to supporters:

Governor Scott Walker has always believed in standing up for big, bold ideas.

And he refuses to be distracted by the small, petty, and pale ideas that the “gotcha” headline writers for the Liberal Media want to talk about. He refuses to be drawn into the sideshow of answering pointless questions about whether and how much President Obama loves our country. To Governor Walker, what matters are ideas, issues, his record, and results. If you agree, please stand with him with a contribution of $10, $35, $50, $100, $250, or more.

When you have a record like President Obama and the Democrats’, the last thing you want to talk about are results. That is why their defenders in the mainstream media love to distract the public. That is why they sensationalize the news, promote Democrat propaganda, and demonize Republicans.

Enough is enough.

Now is the time to stand up against the publicity hounds and the journalistic pack, and help Governor Walker fight back with a “Friends of Scott Walker” contribution of $10 or $100 or $1,000 or whatever amount is right for you. Your support will show the clueless and mindless journalistic herd that you know what matters most and that it is not the pointless minutiae that they are pushing.

Of course, not everyone thinks Walker is being smart about his handling of the press:

The challenge for a new presidential candidate is not limited to coming up with a cogent answer for how you would win the war against ISIS or raise wages. You’ve also got to come up with a strategy for handling the circus. You can engage, duck, or turn it to your advantage. Walker is trying to transform a duck into a weapon by making the press an issue.

Time will tell, but for a lot of us, enough is indeed, enough.

–Dana

UPDATE BY PATTERICO: I think Walker is leaving some rhetorical opportunity on the table. I think he should say, as I have said here recently: “I don’t know if Barack Obama is a Christian or not. What I do know, however, is that he used his claimed Christianity to sell an opportunistic political lie about his beliefs on gay marriage to the American public. I think we need leaders who won’t lie to the citizens, about their religious beliefs or anything else.”

[guest post by Dana]

Scott Walker, notorious college dropout, is ruffling feathers. How do we know this? He is now the target of a full-blown #12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. He’s being Alinskied, making it plainly clear he’s perceived as a threat that needs to be shut down and brought to heel. Good for him.

His blasphemies include favorable polling, declining to answer questions about evolution, declining to criticize this administration’s foreign policy while on foreign soil, and dropping out of college for no better reason than GETTING A JOB. Further, when taking into consideration his lack of requisite apologies for these decisions and evidencing a backbone as well as his historical resiliency and popularity in Wisconsin (despite repeated attempts by the left to take him down), it’s clear to see why he’s on the Alinskyites’ radar.

With that, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank is throwing a tantrum as he clumsily pushes ahead with #12. Milbank asserts that since Walker was sitting just a few seats away from Giuliani at the dinner they were attending when that comment was made, Walker, on top of all of his other sins, behaved with cowardice by not defending the president and taking Giuliani to task. During a televised interview the next morning, Walker explained:

“The mayor can speak for himself. I’m not going to comment on what the president thinks or not. He can speak for himself as well. I’ll tell you, I love America, and I think there are plenty of people — Democrat, Republican, independent, everyone in between — who love this country.”

But did he agree with Giuliani? “I’m in New York,” Walker demurred. “I’m used to people saying things that are aggressive out there.”

Quelle horreur!

Milbank, upon hearing Walker’s explanation for not intervening, called him “spineless” and hysterically asserted that Walker’s act of “cowardice” should disqualify him from being a serious presidential contender:

This is what’s alarming about the Giuliani affair. There will always be people on the fringe who say outrageous things (and Giuliani, once a respected public servant, has sadly joined the nutters as he questioned the president’s patriotism even while claiming he was doing no such thing). But to have a civilized debate, it’s necessary for public officials to disown such beyond-the-pale rhetoric. And Walker failed that fundamental test of leadership.

Milbank concludes:

Walker surely knew it was horrible, too, but he refused to say so — and in this failure he displayed a cowardice unworthy of a man who would be president.

So, Milbank believes there is an obligation on the part of public officials to disown beyond-the-pale rhetoric? Really? Because I didn’t hear any disowning come from the White House when Obama car czar Steve Rattner framed Tea Partiers as suicide bombers , or when Steny Hoyer (D) said that Republicans want to shoot every bullet they have at the president, or when Rep. Andre Carson (D) said tea party members want to see people like him hanging from a tree or when Rep. Steve Israel (D) blamed Tea Party political rhetoric-turning-violent for the Gabrielle Gifford shooting or when President Obama accused Republicans of holding a gun to the head of the American people, etc. And not to get on my high horse or anything, but I also didn’t hear Milbank level accusations of cowardice at the White House for their silence in these matters.

But really, if the vice-president himself declines to disown beyond-the-pale rhetoric and instead refers to it as “venting”, what’s the problem with Walker not disowning Giuliani’s “venting” as well?

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Following the turbulence in Ferguson, the president held several meetings today with elected officials, community organizers and… Al Sharpton. The president asked Congress for $263 million, a three-year community policing initiative that would include “funding for up to 50,000 body-worn cameras, expand training for local law enforcement and community-police engagement, and boost federal support for police department reform” and he also established a task force to study how to improve the effectiveness of law enforcement in cities around the country. The task force will report back in 90 days with their findings. Also, the president addressed concerns about the possible militarization of law enforcement and the acquisition of surplus military equipment:

The Obama administration, however, declined to call for shutting down the military equipment transfers, which became controversial after images of well-armed law enforcement attacking demonstrators were broadcast around the world in August. Mr. Obama instead vowed to sign a new executive order tinkering with the program.

“I will be signing an executive order that specifies how we are going to make sure that that program is accountable, how we are going to make sure that that program is transparent and how we’re going to make sure that we’re not building a militarized culture inside our local law enforcement,” Mr. Obama said.

Further, the president made it clear that he believes the issues in Ferguson are the issues of America at large:

This is not a problem simply of Ferguson, Missouri. This is a problem that is national.

“It is a solvable problem, but it is one that unfortunately spikes after one of them and then fades into the background until something else happens. What we need is a sustained conversation in which, in each region of the country, people are talking about this honestly and then can move forward in a constructive fashion.”

In the president’s view, the Brown shooting in Ferguson:

…laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis … and that is a simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color.

He cited civil rights leaders’ opinion ‘that in a country where one of our basic principles, perhaps the most important principle, is equality under the law, that too many individuals – particularly young people of color – do not feel as if they’re being treated fairly.

Sharpton, for his part, referred to the meeting as:

[an] historic meeting that the president and vice president sat with all of us and law enforcement to commit to not just another commitment, another study … but that he would put his full weight behind it.’

‘We live in a country that we must support law enforcement but law enforcement must support justice.

And attempting to convince the public that this is more than just about race, Josh Earnest noted before the meetings:

“The underlying issues here are broader then just race in that this goes to sort of a foundational relationship again between law enforcement agencies and the communities they are sworn to serve and to protect. Surely discussions of race are an important part of that relationship. There is no doubt about that, but its more than just that.”

The twitter feed of Operation Ferguson reveals some positive reactions to the president’s meetings today:

T-DUBB-O ‏@TDUBBOHMYGOD

@BarackObama is actually pretty cool #letsgetfree #stl #ferguson2dc @WhiteHouse

And while TDUBB might be impressed, Dana Milbank most amusingly, isn’t:

The grand-jury decision not to charge the white police officer who killed an unarmed black teenager in Missouri has given Obama another opportunity to show strong and decisive presidential leadership. And, once again, Obama is using the bully pulpit like a 98-pound weakling. If any more chin-stroking goes on at this White House, the president’s advisers are going to have chafe marks on their jawbones.

Apologies for a big clumsy post, but I wanted to include the highlights of what took place today. More at the various links.

–Dana

The House voted yesterday to authorize a lawsuit against Obama for unilaterally changing the date by which businesses must comply with the provisions of ObamaCare. Democrats raised a lot of money recently by comparing this to impeachment — so naturally Big Media makes this, not about the merits of the lawsuit, but about whether conservatives are ruling out impeachment. Just look at Dana Milbank’s column, which doesn’t even tell you what the proposed lawsuit is about — but spends the whole column discussing whether the lawsuit is a stalking horse for impeachment.

Conservatives, for their part, are refusing to let Big Media set the narrative for them, and focusing on Obama’s unconstitutional actions dutifully falling in line with the Big Media narrative, and making this all about impeachment — with the True Conservatives pushing it, and the Pragmatists worried about the effects it might have on mid-term elections.

I will admit that my kneejerk reaction was that the suit was a dodge for a body unwilling to take on Obama for his excesses. But a kneejerk reaction is not always the right one. If you’re interested in the actual merits of the suit, and reading some reasons why the arguments you’ve heard against it might not be right, here’s a primer from National Review. Short version: contra what you may have heard, courts are sometimes willing to take on these issues (see the recent Supreme Court decision on recess appointments as one example), and why not sue in addition to other possible remedies? My view is: there’s no need to run down a possibly successful tactic until you have fully examined it.

Anyway, as interesting as the impeachment debate might be, we might consider focusing on what the lawsuit is about: Obama’s usurping of the legislative function. Or, you can just keep on playing into the lefty Big Media narrative and talk impeachment, impeachment, impeachment. Your choice — but as Simon Jester often says, think twice before doing something that makes David Axelrod smile.

In the meantime, here’s some good fun: Sheila Jackson Lee proclaiming yesterday that Democrats did not seek to impeach Bush.

I ask my colleagues to oppose this resolution for it is in fact a veiled attempt for impeachment and it undermines the law that allows a president to do his job. A historical fact that President Bush pushed this nation into a war that had little to do with apprehending terrorists. We did not seek an impeachment of President Bush, because as an executive, he had his authority. President Obama has the authority.

As BuzzFeed noted, Sheila Jackson Lee was a co-sponsor of Dennis Kucinich’s resolution to impeach Bush for leading us into the Iraq War.

The surprise is not that they lie, but that they are so laughably bad at it.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Note: This post was retitled. Originally it was a round up on pre-resignation news, called “Weiner Links” and the news of Weiner’s resignation broke seconds after I posted it. That post will follow, under the fold, as is, but above the fold we will concentrate on the Weinerfreude.

Also updates will be constant, so keep scrolling down.

Update: Facepalm-facepalm-facepalm, how did I forget to thank Lee for covering this, especially over the memorial day weekend when all of you were out there grilling? The whole body of work was important, but he seems to have extra affection for this post.

Hey, let’s have a musical interlude:

Anyway, sorry for the omission, Lee. Can I plead a too-quickly-moving story and lack of caffeine?

Update: Literally just after I hit “post,” I saw this:

Representative Anthony D. Weiner has told friends that he plans to resign his seat after coming under growing pressure from his Democratic colleagues to leave the House in the wake of revelations of his lewd online exchanges with women, said a person told of Mr. Weiner’s plans.

Read the whole thing, but I am with Emily Miller on this: “I need a press conference of his smug face before I believe it.”

Update: I just got a Cnn breaking news email that confirms it. It’s worth noting that it was believed the final decision would be made when his wife came home, and she came home early from Africa yesterday.

Update: From the tweeter to the blog: Our long national Weiner joke appears to be over.

Update: More from the Times:

Mr. Weiner, a Democrat, came to the conclusion that he could no longer serve after having long discussions with his wife, Huma Abedin, when she returned home on Tuesday after traveling abroad with her boss, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

And let’s give a shout out to everyone who made this possible. Andrew Breitbart, who forced him to admit it wasn’t a hack and of course Patrick who uncovered sufficient evidence to justify a police investigation into his interaction with a teenager. And even though we don’t know him, etc., I guess we have to thank Dan Wolfe, too. And how can I forget Mike, a.k.a. Goatsred? Update: Shouldn’t have forgotten Ace, either.

Update: Iowahawk tweets: Reports: Weiner to Quit #TypingThroughTheTears

Update: Maybee correctly reports that Gennette Cordova’s twitter has gone dark. Maybee alleges it was last night when this happened. If true, would that mean that Gennette knew it was coming? On the other hand, she said several times she planned to deep-six the twitter anyway. So who knows? And even that is not necessarily nefarious. He might have simply emailed her about his decision at his wife’s request so he doesn’t mess up her life any more, and she kept her mouth shut about him.

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