The got-damned south scored itself another mouth. Watch for another in two weeks.

Patterico has the scoop.

Jimmy Carter is the gift that keeps on giving. One of his most infamous judicial appointments is Anna Diggs Taylor, the justice-loving, apolitical judge who infamously made a “highly irregular” effort to wrest an affirmative action case away from a judge she suspected of holding the wrong views on the issue. Now Taylor has stepped in it further, ruling the NSA surveillance program unconstitutional. The objectively pro-terrorist judge, who enjoys a cush job for life courtesy of the worst President in most of our lifetimes, smarmily patted herself on the back in her written opinion:

Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution.

If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. A bridge which, I might add, would not be exist today, but for the wiretaps this idiot judge deemed unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, more dissembling from the usual suspects, while the real scholars are somewhat less impresed by the ruling. Xrlq Goldstein nails it:

Even still, it’s amazing that we’ve reached the nuance point where only by revealing secrets can we show the the secrets in question should not be revealed, lest they damage programs meant to protect us from attacks, which only work while details of how they work remain secret.

Perhaps we can just tie stones to the NSA program, put it in a lake, and see if it floats. If it does, it is clearly unconstitutional and should be hanged. If it drowns from the weight of its own revealed legality, everyone will know for certain that it wasn’t, in fact, unconstitutional. Which, helluva lot of good that does us, sure.

But it’s the thought that counts.

UPDATE: Patterico has more.

Someone let Mona out of her cage, and now she’s calling to purge the libertarian movement of any self-described libertarians who commit the cardinal sin of disagreeing with her on such key issues as domestic policy, foreign policy, national security, which team to root for in this year’s World Series, or … what-EVER. She produces a long list of heretics, including me,^* based on all manner of perceived slights, most (though not all) of which have nothing to do with libertarian principles one way or the other. That doesn’t matter, though; the important thing is that Mona considers herself a libertarian, and Mona disagrees with them, therefore, they must not be libertarian.

In the classical passive-aggressive style, Mona then calls for their shunning and ostracization of all non-Mona libertarians, even while pretending merely to ask an innocent question:

But in the meantime I propose to discuss two questions in light of what I’ve set forth above:

1. Should any of these be ostracized and shunned from the libertarian ranks? and
2. On the basis of what litmus test(s)?

If you’re like me, you might read the above “questions” (or very thinly-disguised statements) and wonder if Mona is in some kind of competition with this chick over who can get higher on herself (moron her here, here, here, here, here, here and here), or maybe against this chick over who can be the more sanctimonious, self-righteous twit in the name of an ideology ostensibly based on tolerance. But you’d be wrong to think that. Terribly wrong. Lest anyone mistake her call for purges as a sign of intolerance, Mona quickly assures us that she only wants to ostracize people tolerantly:

Careful now. We are a tolerant people, we libertarians. Let us only protect the integrity in, and utility of, having a coherent definition for the libertarian descriptor, in all its pristine glory.

Ah yes, we’re not trying to ostracize you just to be mean, we’re just trying to cleanse our quaint little movement of any impurities. And oh, by the way, the “impurity” is you. So when we ship you off to tolerance camp, please don’t take it like anything personal, even though it is.

But. No icepicks or bullets in the head, please.

No threats on anyone’s toddlers, either. Thank goodness for small favors.

^*My unpardonable sin, in case you’re curious, lies either in (1) agreeing with Mona that Glenn Greenwald was wrong to dishonestly attack Jeff Jacoby for criticizing the word chickenhawk according to its commonly accepted definition (and one Greenwald himself has used in the past), or (2) disagreeing with Mona when she reflexively defended RyanGlenn for attacking another guy named Glenn on a matter Mona later admitted she knew nothing about.

UPDATE (8/17): Bwahahahahahahahahaha! That makes two Instalanches in one day. Thanks Glenn! To the other Glenn: jealous, much?

UPDATE x2 (8/18): Meanwhile, some Randroid preemptively purges me from Objectivism for insulting their dear leader, the Objector-in-Chief. In response, I declare today “intentionally misprounounce Ayn Rand’s first name day.” If you don’t know how to mispronounce her first name, not to worry, you’re probably doing so already.

UPDATE x3 (8/18): Lance offers a first-class fisking of Mona’s bologna.

UPDATE x4 (8/18): More dissembling here.

Since I don’t care to toss my bar card out the window, I’m still subject to California MCLE requirements. Most state bars say if you live in another state and comply with the CLE of that state, they’re cool with it. Not California. California says we’ll count the MCLE you take if its accredited by one of the states we’ve chosen to accredit ourselves, but you still have to complete all the requirements of our state even if they don’t make sense in yours. Thus, while I may have left the most politically correct state in the union behind, I still have to “educate” myself by allowing them to “eliminate” any “bias” I may have that’s out of sync with theirs. Since “elimination of bias” is not a recognized category here in the Old Dominion (or, I hope, anywhere else except Kalifornia), the only way to complete the requirement is through California providers, such as the California Bar itself. If the category “elimination of bias” sounds a bit politically charged to you, take a gander at what passes for education in that category. No “bit” there at all. Your taxes My bar dues at work.

Recently we’ve read that 38% of Americans polled believe the U.S. government is withholding information about UFOs proof of the existence of intelligent life from other planets, and 36% think 9/11 was an inside job. Now, E&P reports that 39% of Americans polled think think Muslims should be required to carry a special ID.

Time for my own poll. Is there any question so wacky that one-third of the population will not answer it in the affirmative?

UPDATE: Methinks more than one-third of the people who read this entry found it here. Does that mean y’all will become regular readers of this blog? Remember, if the last two guys before you said no…

This luminary thinks the real reason for our code red alert is RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman’s campaign against Democrats like that Nedwit Lamont who are soft on terror. Me I don’t know, but like Patterico, I have this sneaking suspicion it just might have a leetle bit more to do with the fact that the Brits just nabbed 21 suspected terrorists in a plot which, had it gone forward as planned, would have resulted in carnage rivaling 9/11′s. However, that doesn’t mean I’m unwilling to entertain silly, baseless conspiracy theories of my own. How about this one:

The British “government,” a wholly owned subsidiary of Karl Rove, Inc. (a Bermuda corporation of which “the” Karl Rove is widely believed but not proven to be the sole shareholder) has known about this terror ring for several months, and could have apprehended all 26 suspects anytime they wanted from June 10 on. However, when they asked their double-secret Grand Master Pooh-Bah Rove for permission to make these arrests, the request was denied. The bobbies wanted to make their catch early rather than take any chances, but Rove knew his party’s interests would be better served by having the enemy party nominate a mentally retarded political neophyte rather than nominating a popular, sane incumbent. He also knew the ‘Tard couldn’t possibly win a serious election unless at least 52% of Connecticut Democrats had forgotten that there was any such thing as international terrorism. No one would have made that mistake on 9/12/01, of course, but without putting too fine a point on things, let’s just say one of our nation’s major political parties is associated with an animal known for its long memories, and the other party predominates in Connecticut.

Given Connecticutters’ obvious handicap, Rove knew that if he could keep international terrorism off the radar screen until after the Connecticut primary, the chances that Connecticut Democrats would nominate an idiotarian boob were excellent. For this reason, he knowingly and willfully endangered the lives of every Brit or American who took a journey across the pond, just to make sure the retarded neophyte beat out the sane incumbent in the primary leading up to an election no Republican could win anyway. Fearful of the risk that the suspects may attack in the interim, Rove’s British subordinates begged and pleaded for a compromise, asking if they maybe arrest these guys on Election Day or at least on the very next day. Evil Karl replied:

Hell, no! Didn’t you know Great Britain is 5 hours ahead of Connecticut? If anything happened on Election Day, some news would almost certainly reach the Nut-Meg State, probably before our polls even opened, let alone closed. That’s all the Joe-mentum Candidate Sane would need to erase his Joe-bituary and waltz right back into the Senate with his Democrat bona fides intact. And no, I’m not going to let you all nab these guys on the following day, either. We need that day in case the race is close and there’s a court challenge or something. Don’t laugh; he’s tried that before. The only risk I’m willing to take is that if he challenges the result, he’ll almost certainly file his complaint on the day after the election. Once once all courthouses are closed in Connecticut on August 9, 2006, if there are no other surprises, I’ll give you the all-clear and you can proceed then, which should be roughly 1700 hours local time. No, you don’t get to roll out at 1700 “Greenwich” Mean Time. Just because the ‘Tard hails from Greenwich, that doesn’t mean his courts will close according to “Greenwich” mean time. Nice try, though.

All went according to plan, and Rove gave the go-ahead on August 9, 2006, at 5:01 p.m. EDT, which is 10:01 summer time in Great Britain. By then, the last the last trans-Atlantic flight had left for the day, and all the suspects had retired for the night. You know the rest.

Attorney Larry Walters was a guest on Bill O’Reilly’s show today to discuss the differing evidentiary standards in Britain and America for investigating terrorists. O’Reilly appeared to endorse the British rule, which allows cops to obtain warrants based on reasonable suspicion rather than probable cause. Walters, a self-described civil libertarian, disagreed:

O’REILLY: OK, in Britain it is, um, “reasonable suspicion,” and here it is “probable cause.” A huge gap, huge gap between them. Reasonable suspicion is basically, uh, Scotland Yard going to a judge and saying “Look, Abdul’s hanging around Mohammed. We know Mohammed’s bad. Therefore, we we want to go into Abdul’s house and see what we can see.” The judge says “Fine.” Here you do that, the judge laughs, you’re never going to get the warrant to go into Abdul’s house. It doesn’t seem to me, and I’ve lived there, that Britain is a fascist society, that the people there are oppressed in any way, shape or form, by their government. Why shouldn’t we have reasonable suspicion, rather than probable cause, in terror investigations, sir?

WALTERS: Britain is a different society, and we have a Bill of Rights, something that we fought the American Revolution against the UK to be able to obtain, and we’re the leaders in the world in terms of civil liberties. And when you’re talking about giving up basic constitutional rights to get a little bit of security. I wouldn’t be in favor of that. You know, it always reminds me of Thomas Jefferson’s quote, uh, “he who is willing to give up a little bit of freedom for a little bit of security is, uh, soon gonna have little of either.” And that’s true in this case.

The real quote, of course, was not about trading a little freedom for a little security, which sounds more like an even trade. Rather, it was about trading an essential liberty for a little temporary safety, not about trading a little of one for a little of another. Also, the real quote was not a prediction that those who trade any amount of liberty for any amount of safety will not have either; it was a moral pronouncement that they deserve neither. And the quote was attributed to Benjamin Franklin, not to Thomas Jefferson. And even Franklin probably never said it, either, having claimed merely to have published, not authored, the book in which it appeared, An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania. Other than that, Mr. Walters’s analysis was spot on.

I’ll second Uncle’s offer, adding a couple of minor caveats of my own:

Any organization^* that wants to run a political ad criticizing any politician in that window can do so here.^** Not only will I run the ad free, I’ll do a post on the ad on the front page.^***

Like Uncle, I advise other bloggers to offer the same.

^*The organization must pass the Xrlq Sanity Test, e.g., no NAMBLA, PETA, or other weirdo extremists.

^**I reserve the right to withdraw or limit this offer at any time, for any reason or for no reason. As a practical matter, I probably won’t withdraw or limit it unless I get deluged with requests, in which case I’ll have little choice

^***Depending on the content of the ad and my attitude at the time it runs, you may or may not like what I have to say in said post.

Apparently, George W. Bush is either in the process of outlining a proposal to resolve the crisis in the Middle East, or he’s off on a fishing trip. Or perhaps both?