A Nebraska judge recently ruled that driving one’s motorcycle at 128mph did not necessarily constitute reckless driving.

Since the late 1960s, Vermont, home of Calvin Coolidge and other rock-ribbed Republicans, has found its natural beauty a mixed blessing. The Granite State’s bucolic charms, its green mountains and Christmas card village greens, have attracted a major wave of immigration from the flatlands, bringing to Vermont the equivalent of an invasion of Californians. Vermonter Stephen Morris reports on a recent florescence of exotic political life forms.

Schoolfellows who know John Kerry from the old days in the Political Union will find awfully recognizable the spotlight-grabbing behavior featured in the incident of today described by Dean Barnett on Soxblog, who writes:

I know we’re never going to see the day where we all agree on the quality of George W. Bush as both a president and a man. But can we not at least agree that this country is fortunate to not have John Kerry as its president?

Another must-read posting from Wretchard, who takes the occasion of Representative Cunningham’s resignation to recall another very different day:

Whatever Randy Cunningham did in later life, it remains true that on the tenth of May, 1972 ShowTime 100 would shoot down two MIGs, then a third. …

Harry Hutton of Chase me, ladies, I’m in the cavalry observes that while “Arizona is the stupidest state in the whole United States -quite an achievement given what the rest of the country is like- yet last year their economy grew by 7.1%, second only to Nevada, the fourth stupidest place.” All of this is according to a ranking system quoted by Tim Blair.

In the post-1960s, Vermont, renowned in earlier times for laconic Yankee individualists, became a favored refuge for counter-cultural escapees from more densely populated states located to its south. Today, Vermont is more commonly identified with Ben & Jerry than Calvin Coolidge, and native Vermonters, derisively referred to as “chucks” (as in woodchuck), are regularly outvoted by recent immigrants, spoken of pejoratively in Vermont as “flatlanders.” The once most paradigmatically Republican state in the Union is currently represented in Congress by an Independent self-acknowledged socialist. Carried away by animosity toward the current administration in Washington, a portion of the Vermont flatlander population is talking secession.

‘Vermont still provides a communitarian alternative to the dehumanized mass production, mass consumption, narcissistic lifestyle which pervades most of the United States,” said Thomas Naylor, a former Duke University economics professor who retired to Vermont and has written a book called ”The Vermont Manifesto — The Second Vermont Republic.”

”Vermont is smaller, more rural, more democratic, less violent, less commercial, more egalitarian, and more independent than most states,” Naylor said. ”It offers itself as a kinder, gentler metaphor for a nation obsessed with money, power, size, speed, greed, and fear of terrorism.”

This time the president gave us what we hoped for. Our adversaries are skillful and determined, and we are unquestionably going to face a full scale, no-holds-barred effort to block Samuel Alito’s nomination. The fate of this particular nominee will be strongly influenced by his performance before the Judiciary Committee, but a filibuster attempt seems virtually inevitable. In recent years, conservatives have soundly trounced liberals in the domestic marketplace of ideas, but we still lack the political leadership in Congress capable of engaging the Kennedys and Schumers and their staffs on equal terms. Are GOP votes lined up and locked in for the “nuclear option” to be invoked? Is Senator John McCain under control on this one? Have we planned for the next step, in case Judge Alito’s confirmation is successfully blocked? It has seemed obvious, since the time of President Reagan, that the answer to unreasonable leftwing opposition to well-qualified judicial nominees is simply to make it clear to all concerned that the president has a list, and that on that list there is a nominee B more conservative, more unpalatable to the left, than nominee A, and that after nominee B, there is a still more conservative nominee C, and so on.

Todd Zywicki at the Volokh Conspiracy remarks on the appearance of ethnic Catholics like Judge Alito as Republican nominees as indicative of the watershed changes in American politics in recent years in which the children of working class Catholic immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe have moved up and out of the working class, and up and out of former ties to the democrat party.

He writes:

I think that the demographic fact of the make-up of the conservative Justices (Thomas, Scalia, and Alito) is a remarkable statement on the nature of modern conservatism… I don’t know Alito, but I feel like my background growing up is similar enough to his that I will hazard a few speculations on what this says about the nature of modern conservativism. For those like myself (and I hazard to guess Scalia, Alito, and Thomas) conservatism is attractive because it now seems to be the party of meritocracy where one is judged on your character and ability, and not on your connections or demographics. As the doors of schools such as Princeton and Yale Law School (in Alito’s case), and the professions themselves have been thrown open to Italians, Poles, Irish, etc., individuals such as Scalia and Alito have had the opportunity to prove themselves.

Among other things, I think this cultural upbringing reflects itself in a skepticism about racial preferences in college admissions and hiring. It is difficult to say, from what I can tell, that Sam Alito’s ascent to the Supreme Court came about through some sort of unfair advantage, money, or family connections. In the legal arena, I think this cultural temperament may reflect itself in a anti-elitist streak rebelling against the arrogance of the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary and a humility in the face of the common-sense of citizens as reflected through democratically-elected legislatures.

Professor Zywicki got lots of flack (from derisive liberals who will not abide references to meritocratic advancement) in comments on his posting, and evidently decided that his use of the term “ethnic Catholic” could be taken as a euphemism for someone Italian, or produced some other kind of offense to politically correct sensibilities, and removed a portion of his remarks. Pity! I’d like to have seen the unedited version.

This nomination was marred by absolutely outrageous behavior at the White House Press briefing by CBS Chief Correspondent John Roberts. Roberts subsequently proffered a patently insincere disclaimer of obscene intent and a bogus apology. If this administration were operating properly, the White House Press Secretary would have responded to a hostile interrogative couched in terms of obscene allusion by immediately calling security, and having Marine guards escort that reporter from the premises, while recessing the proceedings long enough to order his secretary to fire off a facsimile notifying that reporter’s employer of the permanent loss of the credentials admitting him to White House briefings.

No More Special Counsels

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey

“It is clear that, at least by sometime in January 2004 — and probably much earlier — Fitzgerald knew this law had not been violated. Plame was not a “covert” agent but a bureaucrat working at CIA headquarters. Instead of closing shop, however, Fitzgerald sought an expansion of his mandate and has now charged offenses that grew entirely out of the investigation itself. In other words, there was no crime when the investigation started, only, allegedly, after it finished. Unfortunately, for special counsels, as under the code of the samurai, once the sword is drawn it must taste blood.”