AP:

Former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was sentenced to 2½ years in prison Tuesday for lying and obstructing the CIA leak investigation. …

“People who occupy these types of positions, where they have the welfare and security of nation in their hands, have a special obligation to not do anything that might create a problem,” U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said. …

The White House said that President Bush feels “terrible” for Libby and his family, but does not intend to intervene now. …

Walton fined Libby $250,000 and placed him on probation for two years following his release from prison. Walton did not immediately address whether Libby could remain free pending appeal.

Bush is not really on the spot, unless Judge Walton refuses to allow Mr. Libby to remain free pending appeal.

I would think myself that there is every reason to suppose that an appeal would be successful.

If Libby really does face imprisonment, and George W. Bush does not pardon him, regardless of the political cost, my own view is that Mr. Bush will have irretrievably disgraced himself.

AP reports:

Former President Carter says President Bush’s administration is “the worst in history” in international relations, taking aim at the White House’s policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy. …

“I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history,” Carter told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a story that appeared in the newspaper’s Saturday editions. “The overt reversal of America’s basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me.

Outgoing British PM Tony Blair also came in for criticism from the little peanut farmer from Plains:

Asked how he would judge Blair’s support of Bush, the former president said: “Abominable. Loyal. Blind. Apparently subservient.”

“And I think the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world,” Carter told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

I would call this a truly remarkable case of reporting so partisan that it simply becomes ludicrous.

Personally, I think there can be no doubt whatsoever that the worst president in United States history, both domestically and in foreign policy, was Mr. Carter himself.

The Carter administration’s supine failure to do anything effective in response to the revolutionary government of Iran’s taking US diplomatic personnel hostage, and the spectacle of the United States humiliated by a Third World country holding 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days is unquestionably the absolute US foreign policy nadir of all time.

The same president managed also to preside over double-digit inflation, a stagnant economy, and an energy crisis. During Mr. Carter’s term, the prime rate hit 21.5%.

Astonishingly, Mr. Carter has managed to continue to distinguish himself with respect to all other US presidents by bustling around the world to confer a personal endorsement of the validity of elections stolen by leftwing dictators, by championing continually the causes of the adversaries of the United States, and by an unprecedented (and ungentlemanly) habit of voicing open criticism of his successors.

AP demonstrates its own contemptible lack of journalistic integrity by openly lying to its readers, putting a claim into the mouth of an unidentified Carter “biographer” that today’s attack on the Bush Administration “is unprecedented.” Carter’s unseemly and disloyal attacks on the current president have not only been frequent but inveterate.

I recall noting the sour expression on Jimmy Carter’s wizened face as he watched with visible envy the outpouring of national grief during the funeral of Ronald Reagan. I’m sure he was thinking ahead, disgruntled over the obvious truth that the nation would have no similar response in his own case.

On the contrary, I expect there will only be a collective shrug, and a momentary thought of “Good riddance” from most Americans when Mr. Carter’s time comes.

Barcepundit reports a pretty spectacular election promise made by Tania Derveaux, a protest candidate for the Belgian senate running on behalf of the NEE (I think that translates as: “No!” -JDZ) Party. She is pledging to deliver 40,000 oral sexual services, either in person, or in the computer game Second Life.

The young lady’s campaign promise is clearly intended as a response to what her party believes are exaggerated promises of new jobs by other Belgian parties, so I would not necessarily count on receiving that promised service from Tania (live or on-line) if I were you.

She will probably get Bill Clinton’s endorsement though.

The latest Gallup Poll finds

Congress Approval Down to 29%; Bush Approval Steady at 33%

Dean Barnett, in the Weekly Standard, notes that John Kerry did himself a lot of political harm with Packer fans when he spoke of “Lambert Field.”

Barnett clearly thinks that Howard Dean should have identified Stairway to Heaven as his favorite song, instead of Jaspora, an esoteric piece of Haitian reggae by Jean Wyclif.

Imagine what a candidate could get done if he achieved fluency in pop culture. Picture a candidate who could effortlessly segue from paying homage to Dale Earnhardt’s #3 to saying how much High Noon has always meant to him. Conjure up a contender who could unashamedly admit that if owning every George Strait record makes him a square, so be it, and then quickly pivot to the many times tears welled in his eyes when sports heroes like Curt Schilling or Willis Reed rose above pain to perform in an almost super-human fashion.

That guy wouldn’t just have a lot of admirers who wanted to have a beer with him. He’d also eventually be known as Mr. President.

But Professor Bainbridge rejects the proposed Barnett test.

That’s not pop culture. That’s rural Southern culture. Nascar. The opiate of the good ol’ boy masses. Gary Cooper. A great movie, but hardly au courant. George Strait, gawd help us.

Between Clinton and Bush 43 we’ve been ruled by Southerners for the last 4 presidential terms and Barnett wants to foist yet another good ol’ boy on us. Not that there’s anything wrong with Southerners, per se, of course. But maybe it’s time to let a Yankee city boy have a chance?

Personally, if I wanted to choose a President based on his or her fluency with pop culture (which is about the dumbest criteria I’ve ever seen anyway), I’d look for somebody who:

Can effortlessly segue from paying homage to Merlot Clone #3 to saying how much The Matrix has always meant to him. Conjure up a contender who could unashamedly admit that if owning every Bruce Springsteen record makes him a left-leaning pinko, so be it, and then quickly pivot to the many times tears welled in his eyes during the second quarter of Super Bowl XLI.

And proposes the following instead:

Knows which wine to match with the foie gras-stuffed quail being served at a state dinner

Won’t wink at the Queen

Doesn’t hunt, fish, or go with girls who do

Smokes cigars

Is sometimes accused of having a metrosexual streak

Only drinks beer with foods that would score at least 10,000 on the Scoville scale

Can credibly debate the relative claims of The Matrix, Star Wars, Bladerunner, and Star Trek II to be the greatest science fiction movie of all time

Can credibly debate the relative claims of The Who and Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band to be the world’s greatest rock and roll band

Came from a state that didn’t secede

Can recite at least one Monty Python skit from memory

Can credibly debate the relative claims of Blazing Saddles, The Producers, and Young Frankenstein to be Mel Brook’s best movie, while explaining why Spaceballs is a candidate for the worst movie ever

Has never sat through an entire Woody Allen movie, an entire Nascar race, or an entire Dixie Chicks concert

Wouldn’t camp out 5 days to get Garth Brooks tickets even if s/he was camping at the time

Went to Germany on vacation because s/he couldn’t find a highway with high enough speed limits in the US

Prefers football to basketball to baseball to soccer

Doesn’t play golf

Doesn’t bowl

Has no kids to foist subsequent generations of politicians on us

Has a spouse with no political ambitions

Lives with at least one golden retriever

CNN’s technical staff miscaptions this image of his successor Gordon Brown and outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

What a typical piece of leftist infantilism! They can’t even think clearly enough to remember that if Bush resigned, Dick Cheney would become president, which they wouldn’t like one bit.

Former Harvard Crimson editor, now law professor at the University of Oregon, Garrett Epps demonstrates the classic form of the dementia afflicting members of the democrat nutroots in this spectacularly self-righteous and paranoid rant in Salon.

By evil chance, I spent the Saturday night before Election Day 2000 at a jolly dinner for high-level Republicans. Most of the talk over the entrees concerned why then-candidate George W. Bush had been too pusillanimous to tell the voters that Al Gore was not just a liberal, but a Soviet-style Marxist-Leninist. But as the desserts circulated, so too did a piece of comic relief — an anonymous leaflet explaining to voters that because of heavy voter registration, the rules had been changed: Republicans would vote on Tuesday, Democrats and independents on Wednesday.

I think of that dinner whenever I read about the widening scandal of the U.S. attorneys and the politicization of the Justice Department under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Gonzo is probably the most endangered man since William Tell’s son Walter. The pattern behind the scandal, however, transcends Gonzales’ fate or that of his underlings.

At least part of the U.S. attorneys plot seems to derive from the “election fraud” hoax that Republicans are trying to perpetrate in order to gain control of the country’s voter lists. So nailing this inept crew of thugs won’t be good enough. We need laws protecting the right to vote from the kind of phony, partisan prosecutors that Gonzales, Rove and Co. were trying to put in place, and from the punitive, restrictive voter-ID laws that are a prominent part of the far-right political agenda.

Republicans do cherish their little practical jokes — the leaflets in African-American neighborhoods warning that voters must pay outstanding traffic tickets before voting; the calls in Virginia in 2006 from the mythical “Virginia Election Commission” warning voters they would be arrested if they showed up at the polls. The best way to steal an election is the old-fashioned way: control who shows up. It’s widely known that Republicans do better when the turnout is lighter, whiter, older and richer; minorities, young people and the poor are easy game for hoaxes and intimidation.

Mr. Epps does not even seem to realize that he is telling us in so many words that he is an enthusiastic partisan of the claim to power of a coalition in which people so gosh-darned stupid that they can be made to believe absolutely anything, and people actively fearful of arrest, are essential components.

Voting returns from urban areas characteristically featuring democrat percentages resembling the margins achieved by dictators in the mock elections conducted in one-party states would tend to suggest that democrats don’t really have any such problem. But, personally, I am quite prepared to argue that anyone successful at persuading the cluelessly stupid and the inveterately criminal elements of society to stay out of politics was doing the Lord’s work.

Leftists, like Professor Epps, have long since abandoned any pretence of desiring a democratic process consisting of a rational debate based on Constitutional principles. For them, democracy simply consists of getting together a large enough mob to overwhelm any opposition so it can get down to work looting the means and property of others.

There is no issue about the quality of judgement or the purity of motive of the democrat voter. Stupid is fine, and selfish and greedy is even better. From the viewpoint of the left, Society is just a collection of warring factions, all fighting for the largest possible share of the spoils. The left doesn’t care if its constituents are dishonest or dumb, it just wants them numerous, loud, and aggressive.

David Broder, in today’s Washington Post, claims the left has a mandate for defeat, surrender, and withdrawal.

The gap between public opinion and Washington reality has rarely been wider than on the issue of the Iraq war. A clear national mandate is being blocked — for now — by constraints that make sense only in the short-term calculus of politics in this capital city.

The public verdict on the war is plain. Large majorities have come to believe that it was a mistake to go in, and equally large majorities want to begin the process of getting out. That is what the polls say; it is what the mail to Capitol Hill says; and it is what voters signaled when they put the Democrats back into control of Congress in November. …

The question that naturally arises is why the strongly expressed judgment of the people — responding to news of increasing American casualties in a seemingly intractable sectarian conflict — cannot be translated into action in Washington. …

One way or another, public opinion ultimately will be heeded on the war in Iraq. It is hard to imagine the Republicans going into the presidential election of 2008 with 150,000 American troops still taking heavy casualties in Iraq.

It’s true that the democrats won control of Congress last November, but many other issues and factors besides the war, and a number of Republican scandals, undoubtedly also played a role in that election’s results. The democrats gained a very narrow Congressional majority, and can hardly be described as possessing a mandate to do anything other than avoid taking bribes and molesting pages.

Which mandate alone should represent a more than adequate challenge, requiring all the moral resolve and political will the democrat party can possibly muster, if not more.

One hears the claim a lot these days that public opinion thinks this, and public opinion demands that, as if opinion polls conducted by news organizations represented some sort of meaningful, objective, binding, and official process. This sort of claim represents the grossest sort of attempt by journalists to usurp political authority.

The poll Mr. Broder cites in his own editorial was conducted by two notoriously biased news organizations, the Washington Post and ABC News. And its results are based on the responses of a mere 1082 adults, including an intentional “oversample of African-Americans.”

Opinion polls of 1000 or so of the people willing to talk to pollsters on the phone prove basically nothing. Opinion polls are typically artfully crafted. The questions they contain steer answers in the direction their creators desire.

That WaPo/ABC poll, which Broder cited, asked:

Do you think (the United States should keep its military forces in Iraq until civil order is restored there, even if that means continued U.S. military casualties); OR, do you think (the United States should withdraw its military forces from Iraq in order to avoid further U.S. military casualties, even if that means civil order is not restored there)?

But if I asked instead:

Do you think (the United States should abandon the civilian population of Iraq to Islamic Fundamentalism and sectarian violence, if that means destroying our future credibility in the eyes of both our friends and our adversaries abroad): OR, do you think (the United States should keep its word and implant stable and democratic government in Iraq, even at the cost of US military casualties)?

the poll results would be quite different.

Mr. Broder’s polls never can produce anything resembling a mandate. They only represent propaganda, typically created by dishonest and dishonorable advocates.

The only opinion polls which count occur officially and in November. The last election was inconclusive, as are the war’s current results.

Members of the left and its allies in the punditocracy looking for a mandate for surrender, withdrawal, and defeat need to look for it in the results of the 2008 election, and stop claiming that they already possess it.

Staggering rises in real estate prices caused many Boston-area workers to commute long distances from Southern New Hampshire in order to be able to afford a decent house. The Southern end of the Granite state also has been afflicted with tax refugees from Massachusetts who moved to New Hampshire, but brought their liberal politics with them. And, being scenic, comparatively unspoiled, and rural, New Hampshire was unfortunate enough as to attract wealthy liberal retirees and Trustafarian bolsheviks yearning to hug some trees.

David Shribman warns that the impact of the invasion of flatlanders into New Hampshire has alarming national ramifications.

New Hampshire, which voted for Richard Nixon on a national ticket five times and went for George W. Bush in 2000, might be regarded as the elusive last blue piece in the northeastern section of the political jigsaw puzzle. …

How does all this affect the national political scene?

The short answer can be rendered in the two-word way you might have expected from Calvin Coolidge, who was from Vermont but whose taciturn style was strictly northern New England: a lot.

It means that here in New Hampshire, where you are now more likely to get a handmade latte in a coffeehouse than a homemade slice of apple pie in a diner, the governing assumptions of Democratic primary voters next January will be that the war in Iraq is a travesty, that the Bush tax cuts should be repealed, that the respect New Hampshire voters have always given to solemn national institutions like the presidency is a thing of the past (expect a fusillade of anti-Bush ads in the coming months, no holds barred), and that the wage and wealth gap between rich and poor will be a point of departure for debate and not a point of debate itself. The voters have made New Hampshire safe for Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards.

But not only safe. New Hampshire, which lured Michael Dukakis and many of his campaigning colleagues over the years ever so slightly to the right, now will nudge Ms. Clinton, Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards to the left. This will not be hard to do, given their natural inclinations. …

New Hampshire has lost its distinction, which is a cultural shame and a national problem.

The cultural shame is that the state, once protected from foolishness by the White Mountains (and, farther south, by a lingering sense of remoteness), is more like the rest of the country than it used to be, which by any definition cannot be good. The national problem, for the Democrats this time, may be that New Hampshire won’t offer a cautionary brake for the party and its potential nominee. …

The result may very well be that the nomination process will be more warped than usual. This time the entire universe of voters in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary may be more motivated, more passionate and more liberal than ever. All politics may be local, but in New Hampshire, all local politics are national.

Peggy Noonan had a good day in the Wall Street Journal today:

There seems to me a sort of broad national diminution of common sense in our country that we don’t notice in the day-to-day but that become obvious after a story like this. Common sense says a person like Cho Seung-hui, who was obviously dangerous and unstable, should have been separated from the college population. Common sense says someone should have stepped in like an adult, like a person in authority, and taken him away. It is only common sense that if a person like Cho leaves a self-aggrandizing, self-celebrating, self-pitying video diary of himself to be played by the mass media, the mass media should not play it and not publicize it, not make it famous. Common sense says that won’t help.

And all those big cops, scores of them, hundreds, with the latest, heaviest, most sophisticated gear, all the weapons and helmets and safety vests and belts. It looked like the brute force of the state coming up against uncontrollable human will.

But it also looked muscle bound. And the schools themselves more and more look muscle bound, weighed down with laws and legal assumptions and strange prohibitions.

The school officials I saw, especially the head of the campus psychological services, seemed to me endearing losers. But endearing is too strong. I mean “not obviously and vividly offensive.” The school officials who gave all the highly competent, almost smooth and practiced news conferences seemed to me like white, bearded people who were educated in softness. Cho was “troubled”; he clearly had “issues”; it would have been good if someone had “reached out”; it’s too bad America doesn’t have better “support services.” They don’t use direct, clear words, because if they’re blunt, they’re implicated.

The literally white-bearded academic who was head of the campus counseling center was on Paula Zahn Wednesday night suggesting the utter incompetence of officials to stop a man who had stalked two women, set a fire in his room, written morbid and violent plays and poems, been expelled from one class, and been declared by a judge to be “mentally ill” was due to the lack of a government “safety net.” In a news conference, he decried inadequate “funding for mental health services in the United States.” Way to take responsibility. Way to show the kids how to dodge.

The anxiety of our politicians that there may be an issue that goes unexploited was almost — almost — comic. They mean to seem sensitive, and yet wind up only stroking their supporters. I believe Rep. Jim Moran was first out of the gate with the charge that what Cho did was President Bush’s fault. I believe Sen. Barack Obama was second, equating the literal killing of humans with verbal coarseness. Wednesday there was Sen. Barbara Boxer equating the violence of the shootings with the “global warming challenge” and “today’s Supreme Court decision” upholding a ban on partial-birth abortion.

One watches all of this and wonders: Where are the grown-ups?

John McCain has been making serious movements in a rightward direction recently, speaking out against gun control, urging America to stay the course in Iraq. (You might almost think he was running for president, or something.)

This little vignette at the Murrells Inlet, South Carolina VFW Hall was downright endearing. The moonbats were wetting their beds over at Daily Kos over it: Splash1, Splash2, Splash3.

0:42 video

That Kos-linked video is being flooded with attention, and isn’t loading in a timely fashion. Here’s the same thing at an alternative link.

Here’s the complete version (on a leftwing site, but I enjoyed it anyway).

Arianna Huffington has an interesting, and oh, so valid criticism of all of the contenders for the democrat party nomination.

There is a major disconnect in the 2008 Democratic race for the White House.

While all the top candidates are vying for the black and Latino vote, they are completely ignoring one of the most pressing issues affecting those constituencies: the failed War on Drugs, a war that has morphed into a war on people of color.

Consider this: according to a 2006 ACLU report, African Americans make up 15 percent of drug users, but account for 37 percent of those arrested on drug charges, 59 percent of those convicted, and 74 percent of all drug offenders sentenced to prison. Or consider this: America has 260,000 people in state prisons on nonviolent drug charges; 183,200 (more than 70 percent) are black or Latino.

Such facts and figures have been bandied about for years. But what to do about the legion of nonviolent — predominantly minority — drug offenders has long been an electrified third-rail in American politics, a subject to be avoided at all costs by our political leaders, who fear being incinerated on contact for being soft on crime.

Supporting ending Prohibition did not win Al Smith the election in 1928, but Smith’s politics certainly played a key role in the national political realignment which swept FDR into power and gave the democrat party political dominance from 1932 to 1966.

I think Arianna is on to something.