Today is my last day as a Townhall Intern. Three months is such a short time, but I certainly enjoyed my experience here immensely.

Interning here provided me the opportunity to put my editorial skill into practice and to see how a website like Townhall operates on a day to day basis. I also was able to get paid for a bunch of stuff I could probably get tricked into doing for free, so that’s always good.

The office atmosphere here is warm and inviting, and not once did anyone ask me to make them coffee (someone once asked me how the coffee machine worked, and another time someone stole the coffee I had made, but that’s neither here nor there). Amanda did ask me to cover a press conference on the Hill once (I was three feet away from Ted “Jabba” Kennedy, and lived to tell about it!) and I helped Matt out with some stuff on the blog. I can really say I felt like part of the team here, and not “just an intern,” a condition which befalls too many of my underpaid summer brethren in this city.

This will most likely be the last post for me at this blog, but I can’t say that for sure. If you’re still curious as to what I’m blogging about, I’ll be writing Jokers to the Right (now going into it’s 4^th year). 

I’d like to conclude this farewell “speech” by thanking Chuck, Jonathan, Katie, Mary Katharine, Josue, Matt, Amanda, Hanlon, Matt the video guy (I hardly knew ye), and my fellow interns Kelley, Amber, and Kristen. And of course, Collin.

Now I’m headed back to the University of Delaware to see if they’ll let me graduate at the end of this year.

The sign I had on the door to my "office" all summer:

The LA Times has a piece wondering whether Bill Clinton is eligible to become vice president:

The 24th Amendment, adopted in reaction to Franklin Roosevelt's 1944 election to a fourth term, declares that "no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice." Although it was not the focus of the amendment, it is notable that the amendment does not preclude a former two-term president (such as Clinton) from serving as vice president. Nor does it preclude a former two-term president's succession to the presidency for all or part of a third term.

It might seem that the 12th Amendment's dictum that "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President" also ought to doom Clinton's chances -- but no again: He is ineligible for election to a third term, but he is constitutionally eligible to succeed to the presidency after election to the vice presidency.

There is, however, one last constitutional wrinkle. The 12th Amendment declares that the members of the electoral college "shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves." This effectively prevents the president and vice president from having the same state residency, because if running mates shared a home state, the electors from that state would be unable to vote for both of them. Thus, unless the former president returns to Arkansas, "Hill-Bill" or Clinton2 is out.

That leaves only one alternative. You heard it here first, Democrats: Obama-(Bill) Clinton 2008!

Thanks to Gary for the hat-tip!

In doing research for this post, I stumbled across one of the oddest campaign videos I've seen so far this cycle:

Last week I made The Washington Post my hack for running an article devoted entirely to Hillary's...uhh...cleavage. Even after being asked "Can that be the first and last time you ever say Hillary Clinton and cleavage in the same sentence?" by my friend Ryan Mc. of Liberal Delight, I am forced to breach the topic again (my response, by the way, was "God willing, yes.").

It seems Hillary and her campaign reacted similarly to the way I did about the article. Accroding to the WaPo's "The Trail" blog:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign has sent out a fundraising letter calling a Washington Post fashion writer's column on Clinton's cleavage "grossly inappropriate" and asking donors "to take a stand against this kind of coarseness and pettiness in American culture."

I wholeheartedly agree. Does this make Hillary the values candidate?


What hath God wrought?

 Code Pink is having a rally July 21 at Arlington National Cemetery.*

It's sickening that they would try and degrade the honor of those buried there for political purposes.  While I disagree with their aims, it is their tactics that are truly cringe-inducing.

And remember kids, Pink is just a lighter shade of Commie Red.

*There should be a link there, but I refuse to link to website whose design aim seems to be to give me premature glaucoma.

Barack Obama:

"Folks in D.C. still don't have a voice in their national government. That's wrong. Residents shouldn't be treated like tenants. You are part of our government, which is why I will support full voting rights."

I wonder if Obama is aware that people in DC do have a voice in their national government. Besides having an elected (but non-voting) Member of Congress, they can vote for president of the United States (as per the 23rd Amendment).  Makes me wonder if he'll be asking any DC residents for their votes.

From the Britain and America blog:

The BBC has not been a supporter of the Iraq war so it is quite something when its World Affairs Editor John Simpson concludes that America might finally be pursuing the right tactics in Iraq.  Mr Simpson made his conclusion at the end of a report on BBC1's main evening news bulletin.  After interviewing General David Petraeus, the Commander of US troops in Iraq, the BBC journalist said that the real battle was no longer in cities like Baquba which American troops had just liberated from Al-Qeada but in Washington where patience was running out.

General Petraeus said that the kind of counter-insurgency operation now underway usually took nine to ten years but his hearts and minds approach to building security in Iraq had only just begun.  Mr Simpson contrasted the liberation of Baquba where "only" eleven Iraqi civilians had been killed with the situation in Fallujah where large-scale civilian casualties had hardened Sunni opinion against the coalition.  The people of Baquba had also grown tired of the suffocating rule of Al-Qaeda and welcomed the arrival of the Americans.

Look for a much longer post on this subject over on my main blog, Jokers to the Right to go up this evening.

A UT Law Prof is stressing that Harry Potter (or J. K. Rowling, at least) has a libertarian bent:

"What would you think of a government that engaged in this list of tyrannical activities: tortured children for lying; designed its prison specifically to suck all life and hope out of the inmates; placed citizens in that prison without a hearing; ordered the death penalty without a trial; allowed the powerful, rich or famous to control policy; selectively prosecuted crimes (the powerful go unpunished and the unpopular face trumped-up charges); conducted criminal trials without defense counsel; used truth serum to force confessions; maintained constant surveillance over all citizens; offered no elections and no democratic lawmaking process; and controlled the press?

I'm no libertarian, but this has to be better than trying to make kids into statists.


Related: Reason magazine article on libertarianism in children's lit.

 Quote of the Day goes to Tim Blair talking about Live Earth:


Brilliant. Sadly brilliant. I love the environment too, but I don't trust Al Gore and his celebripals to keep it safe any more than I do the government.

(h/t: Instapundit)

 I forgot about the Democratic Debate last night (got sucked in by a marathon of The Office), but Hube at Colossus of Rhodey has a great post about the hilarity and hypocracy that abounded.

He writes:


The Democrat presidential candidates "debated" again last night, this time at the historically black Howard University. You know what that means: Time to declare that "there's still much to do" in the country with regards to race, that "racism" still exists and is still to blame for many ills in society, and that the GOP really doesn't care about black people (with apologies to Kanye West). And you know MSNBC.com's coverage is guaranteed to offer to softball coverage, too!  


Really comprehensive post. Click away!

 All I have to say is:


The Hill has the breaking story:

The comprehensive immigration reform bill that has dodged attacks from the left and right for weeks, survived “poison pill” amendments, and was once pulled from the Senate schedule failed its most important test Thursday. Passage of the legislation now appears unlikely.

(cross-posted from Jokers to the Right)

Reading a story on Politico about Mike Huckabee's health commitment  brought this gem of a line to my eye:

It's one thing to take a stand, give a speech or write a policy paper on an issue. Huckabee staked the ultimate claim by dropping a best-selling book on obesity and a healthy lifestyle, "Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork." He backed it up by personally shedding the equivalent of nearly one whole Dennis Kucinich. (Emphasis mine)

We could all lose Kucinich.

Once again, Mark Steyn hits the nail on the head:

There's something creepy about a political class so determined to impose a vast transformative bill cooked up backstage in metaphorically smoke-filled rooms on a nation that doesn't want it. It's an affront to republican government and quasi-European in its disdain for the citizenry. It's hard to imagine Senator Trenthorn Lotthorn as an EU Commissioner but his position on this immigration bill is basically the same as that of Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg and European "president", on the EU constitution. When asked what difference the referendum result in France would make, "President" Juncker replied:

If it’s a Yes, we will say ‘on we go’, and if it’s a No we will say ‘we continue’.

Same with the immigration bill. I think I say somewhere in my book that the first line of the European constitution is: "We the people agree to leave it to you the people who know better than the people." That suits the US Senate, too. They'll teach this one as a textbook definition of "bipartisanship": both parties gang up on the electorate.

As I heard Stan Evans (of early National Review) say recently, a GOP Senate staffer once said that  when the Democrats (Evil Party) and the Republicans (Stupid Party) get together and do something that is both Stupid and Evil, that's called bipartisanship.

I've been there too many times. Sigh.
 
 
From xkcd.

Sorry Eddie Cochran, but my problem is the United Nations. Today is the 62nd Anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter (you know, the one that lists Japan and Germany as enemy states...well 62 years later!).

What I really think about the UN here.