# Lawyer: “Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?”
# Witness: “No.”
# Lawyer: “Did you check for blood pressure?”
# Witness: “No.”
# Lawyer: “Did you check for breathing?”
# Witness: “No.”
# Lawyer: “So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?”
# Witness: “No.”
# Lawyer: “How can you be so sure, Doctor?”
# Witness: “Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.”
# Lawyer: “But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?”
# Witness: “Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.”
2. Tony vs. Paul. It must be excruciating details work to get that stop motion photography right.
Bill Clinton voiced his abiding anger at the media's coverage of him and his wife in Durham, N.H., today, and suggested that media bias will force Clinton to go negative on Barack Obama.
It takes a Clinton to come up with something like that.
4. Joseph Kellard points out this Hardball piece in which Hillary said she does not think she can lose. The Madeleine Albright clip at the end is also interesting, in which she claims Hillary Clinton's time as First Lady gives her the experience she needs to be President. Can you imagine the MSM's reaction if Laura Bush tried to use being First Lady to run for President?
5. Karl Rove says Hillary Clinton needs to find a new message other than inevitability. (Obviously.)
At the end of the day, Rove thinks Americans are still going to go for the nominee they think will keep them safe.
This advice might be a case of a general fighting the last war. Certainly national security determined 2002 and 2004, but not 2006. Barring a huge terrorist attack before the 2008 election, I don't see it as a factor.
6. More confusion on the right. Jeffrey Lord says conservatives must stand on principle and spurn moderation. He provides an excellent quote against moderation by the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison:
I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.
He asks what is the next "big thing" a conservative President should accomplish.
Is it winning the war in Iraq -- winning it period, beyond doubt and leaving a stable, vigorous democracy in the middle of the Arab world that is not just Israel? Or the crystal clear vision that ends with America -- and the rest of the world -- victorious over Islamic fascism? What about getting rid of the tax system as now structured? Extending the Bush tax cuts? Cutting the capital gains tax and eliminating the death tax? Adding more conservative justices to the Supreme Court and overturning Roe v. Wade? Passing a constitutional amendment banning abortion? Leaving the decision on abortion to the voters of each state? How about privatizing social security? Building The Fence while encouraging legal immigration? Is it something else?
I think this list is an attempt to preserve Reagan Republicanism: stay strong on defense, oppose abortion, cut taxes without cutting spending and hope supply-side economics will keep the economy growing enough to get by. Is it enough in 2008?
I think we need someone who attempts at least to repeal laws, cut spending and dismantle portions of the state -- if these things are possible yet. The Republican geniuses might know something I don't know about how my ideas poll with Americans at large.
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