Feeling Superior.

Hey, I've got a great idea. A great lakes idea. Let's drive all the way up to Lake Superior. I've never seen Lake Superior, an...

Terse.

Curse?

McCain.

Chicane?

Killer:

"Spiller!"

Ugly?

America?

Pentacle.

Pentagon?

Rubes.

Boobs.

Pissy.

Chessy.

Foley.

Folly.

"You do not create terrorism by fighting terrorism."

Said President Bush today. "If that ever becomes the mind-set of the policymakers in Washington, it means we'll go back to the old...

The restaurant where I had a very late lunch alone...

... looks so lonely in the photographs. ADDED: That ketchup and mustard, it's ironic, right? No one actually needs to squirt such mass ...

Yes, it was a tad ridiculous to pay $8 million for it...

... but now it isn't even it anymore . You've just constructed a replica of it... and therefore: a monument to your folly. It was ...

It's 1962, Barbie is dressed for a specific event.

What is it? (There is an official correct answer.) ADDED: There's also the "official" Althouse blog answer (I've decided).

Distinguished Lecture Series?

Laurie David? It's nice to tell people to use reuseable shopping bags and drive hybrid cars and things like that, but why is the univer...

"They can crack down on the parties all they want, but it's not going to stop us."

Underage drinking in Madison. The quote is from a 19-year-old UW student. I think a lot of the ugliness described in the article is caused ...

"We're back to America. We're a melting pot... I love it."

That's the line the "Survivor" editors chose to feature as the segregated teams were integrated in the third episode of the s...

Blogging about not blogging about the detainees bill.

Over at Volokh Conspiracy, where commenters had complained about the lack of posts about the detainees bill, Orin Kerr and Ilya Somin have...

Walking home...

I talk on the phone the whole way and the walk goes quickly. In what seems like just a few minutes, I find myself at the entry to the Height...

A chorus in the filmosphere: We hate Bush.

That's how I read the first paragraph of t his Manohla Dargis movie review : Is there something in the air, say, the stench of death and...

"Space smells like a 'burned almond cookie.'"

Space blogger. One night, [Anousheh Ansari] discovered her toes were bruised from gripping bars along the walls of the space station. She in...

8 things I did during a phone interview about women political bloggers.

1. Put on my contact lenses. 2. Put on makeup. 3. Flat-ironed my hair. 4. Finished getting dressed (including pants). 5. Checked that the l...

"If you think you've been wronged, it shouldn't take 100 years to investigate the conduct...."

Said Judge Richard Posner at oral argument in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals today in the slavery reparations lawsuit.

"What Do Patricia Dunn and Jeanine Pirro Share in Common?"

Three things!!!

Posts about pants.

I just realized I put up two posts about pants this morning! Uh-oh, now it's three. Cue the Althouse-is-obsessed-with-the-body fiends: A...

"Fornication pants."

That's a term coined in the 1830s by Brigham Young, who was appalled by pants with buttons visible on the fly. The reminder that pants...

"Orphans of the Pacific, you really are orphans now. How will you get home now that all your ships are lost?"

For saying that on the radio in 1944, Iva Toguri D’Aquino -- Tokyo Rose -- was convicted of treason. She died on Tuesday, at the age of 90....

Musharref on "The Daily Show."

Did you see Pervez Musharraf do an interview with Jon Stewart the other day? Beautifully done. Loved the Twinkie. And Musharraf was awfull...

"Voters now confront a Republican Party that understands the breadth of the threat but has bungled the central campaign..."

"... and a Democratic Party that is quick to criticize but lacks an understanding of the jihadists and a strategy for confronting them,...

"My legs would make you ashamed to be a woman."

That's what some reader informed me back in the comments to this old post . I'm trying to get my mind around the idea that the legs ...

"Our avant-gardist artistic establishment... prefers to exercise its anti-bourgeois animus within the coddled purlieus of bourgeois security."

Brilliant New Criterion editor Roger Kimball writes about the horrendous Hans Neuenfels production of Mozart's opera "Idomeneo...

"Project Runway."

Michael, who we all think is the nicest contestant, says "I'm going to kill you." Wow. Michael . But he had his reason. Uli go...

It was a cool and -- for me -- not hectic morning.

So that made it a good day to walk to work. (How fortunate I feel to have a job where I have to pause and think whether I want to write ...

NYT thinks Bush's release of NIE report was politically motivated.

The NYT, under fire for publishing leaked classified information, has this editorial about Bush's release of more of the document that ...

A big WaPo story on the sexy T-shirts teenagers wear.

Come on, should this be a long news story? It's all padded out with phrases that are printed on T-shirts, and surely you get the point ...

Should I resolve never to answer a telephone survey again?

I'm on the do-not-call list, and when I get a call that slips through one of the loopholes, I usually cut it right off. We do not accept...

The day I almost called 911 from a stairwell.

So I put the finishing touches on my notes for a noon hour talk to the Dane County Bar Association and finished my preparation for my two ho...

"It will stop all the speculation, all the politics about somebody saying something about Iraq..."

President Bush says about releasing more of the National Intelligence Estimate that was partially leaked the other day. I can't believe...

Hey, I'm on BloggingHeads.tv!

Watch me with Newsday's Jim Pinkerton , talking on the split-screen. Topics (and times): Jim McGreevey and the Church of Oprah (06:10) B...

"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda."

Condoleezza Rice responds to the substance of Bill Clinton's FOX News Sunday remarks. That link is to the NY Post article. The NYT rep...

Tierney on the “Beyond Bias and Barriers" report.

John Tierney is shocked -- TimesSelect link -- by how "cynical" it was for the National Academy of Sciences to publish its "...

"How can law both benefit from, and constrain, a power that is fundamentally lawless?"

Yale Law Journal has a new symposium issue on executive power. (The quote above is from the introduction ( PDF ). ) I don't have the ti...

"What's human sacrifice... if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?"

Mad Mel. Not just for right-wingers anymore.

"[ticked]."

WaPo quotes me , and cleans it up!

"Cyberculture was to be the fulfillment of counterculture."

Edward Rothstein writes about Fred Turner's book “From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the ...

The "bipartisan love-in" Bill Clinton's "been engaged in over the last several years has resulted in jack-squat."

Says Arianna Huffington interposing deep thoughts for what might otherwise be "popping champagne corks" after Clinton's perfo...

"We must recommit to victory in Afghanistan."

Concludes John Kerry in a WSJ op-ed. Great. Commitment to victory. Does he have anything to say about victory in Iraq? ...the disastrous di...

"I can honestly tell you he never got tired of playing that song."

Danny Flores, RIP. He played the saxophone on the 1957 number 1 hit "Tequila!" You know the lyrics to that song, I bet. Or should...

“I just follow my own common sense... And the hell with the law.”

New York's town and village courts. Nearly three-quarters of the judges are not lawyers, and many — truck drivers, sewer workers or labo...

Audible Althouse #66.

This podcast has a morbid theme! Yet somehow I fall prey to hysterical laughter at one point. You've been warned. Stream it right throu...

Unplayable 45s I won't throw out.

Here's "One": This is a perfect example of a song I was embarrassed to like back when it was a big hit but that I'm not th...

I don't usually talk about golf, but...

My nephew Cliff Kresge just won the Oregon Classic on the Nationwide Tour.

Are we safer?

We've heard that question a lot over the past few years. Now: An intelligence assessment that the war in Iraq increased Islamic radicali...

Clinton on "Fox News Sunday."

You read the transcript yesterday. You saw the clip. Now, you've seen the whole interview. Impressions? Knowing he was going to get mad...

Islamic fascists? Evildoers?

Sheryl Gay Stolberg has a nice essay in the Week in Review about the struggle to figure out what to call the enemy in the war on terrorism ...

Imaginative filmmaking about living public figures.

Two weeks ago we were talking -- and talking -- about whether it was wrong for filmmakers -- in "The Path to 9/11" -- to make up ...

Languedoc.

Nina returns for the harvest. Seriously, if you are into wine or France, you need to hang out over on Nina's blog. Even if you abstain ...

"The Netroots Hit Their Limits."

Says Time Magazine: Moderate Democrats say it with remorse, conservatives with glee, but the conventional wisdom is bipartisan: progressive ...

Now we know it's a publicity stunt.

Oprah's suing him for running an Oprah for President website, and Patrick Crowe continues to push for Oprah for President. And don'...

"I'd like to go back and do the impeachment again."

Says Henry Hyde , who prosecuted Clinton and has had time to reflect on what went wrong: "I was soft on the treatment we received from ...

"Copy editors do the line editing and Dummifying."

"It’s a word we use to talk about how to make text comply with our style guide.... We address the reader as you — you can, next you do ...

"Do you really think that's the place for a thousand words of pitchfork-waving, tax-cut-hating, populist agit-prop?"

Howard Dean is asked by Kevin Drum, who reminds him "Dude. You were writing in the fucking Wall Street Journal." Quite aside fro...

The notion that it's wrong to celebrate birthdays.

I'm interested in the notion that it is wrong to celebrate birthdays. Some religions proscribe the celebration of birthdays. Do you know...

Clinton, he's red-faced and angry.

Bill Clinton has been injecting himself into the news a lot lately, and it inevitably gives his critics a new opportunity to go through the...

"Saudi security services are now convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead."

According to a leaked French intelligence document: "The chief of al-Qaida was a victim of a severe typhoid crisis while in Pakistan on...

"What has this social experiment taught us? All races hate fat musicians."

Oh, you're just including "musicians" to keep from facing the reality of prejudice against the fat . How unsettling that must...

And we will know you by your font.

Wow. Howard Bashman figures out that Richard Posner wrote the per curiam opinion in a case by knowing his propensity to use the Book Antiqu...

Another Unplayable 45, this time: vlogged!

Oh, my friends, are you in for a treat. Today's Unplayable 45 is vlogged . And what a very vloggy vlog it is: Some links to help you wit...

Mad Cat.

Just a Madison building that amuses me.

Biting.

Have you been reading the Time.com blog Political Bite, which is "hosted" by Ana Marie Cox (formerly of Wonkette)? Well, go read ...

Hello, Sausalito.

Home of the 6 millionth visitor to this blog. You arrived on the Electoral College post from an unknown URL. Whoever you are, thanks for cli...

The compromise on the detainee legislation.

It's not easy to evaluate the compromise on the detainee legislation . You've certainly got to look beyond the President's consp...

Is the depiction of crucifixion offensive?

Some people are taking great offense: Anatomist Gunther von Hagens will use a real body to show how people died when crucified in the 90-min...

A fantasy scenario of trying Bin Laden.

Lawrence Wright, author of “The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11," was asked by a "member of the intelligence communi...

"When people complain that it’s an end run, I just tell them, 'Hey, an end run is a legal play in football.'"

So says John R. Koza , a computer scientist who thinks he's devised way to bypass the Electoral College by statutes. But law isn't f...

Don't you have anything from the 80s in that stack of unplayable 45s you won't throw out?

Why yes I do: And I will stand by this recording as one of the best pop singles ever. Nice video too. And it holds up over time so much bett...

The right to die, not just for the terminally ill anymore.

Why not for people who just don't want to live anymore, for whatever reason they find sufficient in their own scheme of thought? Ludwig...

"I think it is extremely important to defend the autonomy of art, and of literature."

Said the Turkish novelist Elif Shafak , who was charged with the crime of insulting Turkishness, for things the characters said in her nove...

"There may come a time when a lass needs a lawyer..."

Don't you wish you ended up with $15 million worth of jewelry to auction off when the relationship crashed? Ms. Barkin said the marriag...

Madonna's new look.

I'm getting a lot of traffic to this post from last year about "Madonna's new look." I'm sure it's because people...

"This should be an industry of beauty and luxury, not famished-looking people that look pale and sick.”

Said David Bonnouvrier (who runs a top modeling agency). There's a lot of talk about too-thin models lately, with calls to ban models w...

"I'm in the middle without any plans..."

"I'm a boy and I'm a man..." I've chosen "Eighteen" by Alice Cooper as today's Unplayable 45 I Won'...