"It is not the job of the local police to enforce the federal drug law."

Says a California appellate court , ordering the police to give a man back his marijuana. State law did not bar his possession of marijuana,...

"And, to be blunt, he does not look like a creepy goofball."

Robin Givhan takes a look at Michael Jackson.

"I think the guy who's sitting pretty at the moment? John McCain."

Says David Corn in this Bloggingheads (with a response from Jim Pinkerton): ( Here 's the whole episode.)

Longest...

... leap. ADDED: "Knievel was the most complex man I’ve ever known — although I don’t claim to have known him."

"A man has just walked into the Clinton office, opened his coat and showed us a bomb strapped to his chest with duct tape."

News. UPDATE: The NYT reports that the man, Leeland Eisenberg, now in custody, was said to be "despondent," because he was facing...

So who's more likely to think they're mentally healthy — sane people or nuts?

"Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data ...

"Rudy's New Shag Fund Explanation!"

That's what Josh Marshall calls it. And here 's how Hog on Ice snarks: Giuliani appears to have cheated the taxpayers, although I...

"What we cared about was that he was real."

Sorry about the light blogging this morning. You might want to talk about this Howard Kurtz piece which looks at CNN's approach to sele...

The teddy bear teacher is sentenced to 15 days in prison.

Presumably, this is better than a flogging, but mobs are demanding that she be shot , and the prison conditions are hellish: The Omdurman pr...

Survivor!

Oh, how I love this show! Great episode. Spoil away in the comments.

"Mrs Gibbons technically faces three charges - insulting Islam, inciting religious hatred and contempt for religious beliefs..."

Those who subject her to those charges are inciting contempt for religious beliefs.

"What do you mean by 'right wing progressivism'?"

Jonah Goldberg explains what he thinks is so wrong with Huckabee.

"If I lose, then I think it's fine for people to speculate that I don't have the bloodlust."

TNR has an interview with Barack Obama that ends with the question: "Do you worry that people look at that and say 'Well, this guy...

Hillary as the woman behind the man.

I can now do little embedded clips from Bloggingheads. Try this: Here 's the whole diavlog. (And sorry for the insolent look on my face ...

A 47-year-old woman pretended to be a 16-year-old boy on line and tormented a 13-year-old girl she knew.

After getting the girl to fall in love with this nonexistent boy, the middle-aged woman turned mean, argued, and said "The world would ...

"A hall full of yowling Ron Paul loons and questions from Unabomber look-a-likes in murky basements."

Richelieu at Weekly Standard deplores CNN's YouTube debate: America got to see a vaguely threatening parade of gun fetishists, flat worl...

Live-blog the YouTube debate with me.

Let's cover tonight's debate in the comments. That way there will be automatic time stamps and we'll have a nice dialogue format...

"Ready at last to grind into her with the Hound, drive it into her piety."

Norman Mailer wins the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. The idea of the award is "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory...

"The ABA Journal Blawg 100."

The ABA Journal has put together a list of the 100 top law blogs — and they were nice enough to include me in the "Ivory Tower" c...

"They're watching us and laughing... to them we are pussies. It's like they look at us and they're like, 'Oh, look at those wimpy little pussies.'"

Fabio talks politics . Thats what he says about Abu Ghraib. On Iraq: "Those people, they hate us no matter what," he says. "A...

"Will the secular left soon attack the religious right for being pro-science?"

Joseph Bottum writes: : I have long suspected that science, in the context of the editorial page of the New York Times, was simply a stalkin...

The New York view.

Just now. ADDED: I took nearly the same picture in mid-August.

"A bureaucratic fiefdom... 500 officials... a 1,300-page plan.... sensitive to scrutiny... documents... locked away... 'We will demonize'..."

Stephen Braun, in the L.A. Times, looks into the proposition that Hillary Clinton's experience as First Lady is a legitimate credential...

"This whole Taser concept has gone way too far, but we suppose it's better than mass murdering crowds of people."

Gizmodo picks up on the Taser flying saucer drone. We were just talking about this last Sunday here .

Bloggingheads!

Check it out. I'm back... with a vengeance. ADDED: Topics: Norman Mailer on women The subliminal seduction of Mr. Whipple Living and lov...

Limbaugh.

I'm getting reports that I was mentioned on Rush Limbaugh's show today. Can anyone recount what was said UPDATE: I think the reason ...

Blogging the conventions.

I see the Democratic Party is about to accept applications to bloggers to cover their convention (in Denver next summer): The move gives bl...

English teacher in Sudan faces 40 lashes for letting students call the teddy bear Muhammad.

It's considered blasphemy. Of course, I'm opposed to whipping as a punishment, but it seems to me that if you go to a foreign countr...

I happen to think this a great Christmas gift... and a great fundraising idea.

The Plank reports: I'm sure many--if not most--Plank readers have spent the four days since Thanksgiving saying to themselves, "My ...

"It’s time to steel ourselves for the heavily advertised Bush-and-Condi show at Annapolis...."

While you're hoping the Iraq war fails, don't forget to gear up you hopes for a big collapse of the mideast peace talks.

"Gov. Mike Huckabee, Republican of Arkansas, what will it take to get you to run for president in 2008?"

Asked C-Span's Brian Lamb back in 2005 . Answer? "Oh! That's a big question. Probably a vision from above." So... was ther...

"Sen. Clinton is claiming basically the entire eight years of the Clinton presidency as her own, except for the stuff that didn't work out..."

"... in which case she says she has nothing to do with it," said Barack Obama . "There is no doubt that Bill Clinton had fait...

Was Lincoln already dying of cancer when he was assassinated?

Dr. John G. Sotos thinks so , based in part on the theory that Lincoln suffered from MEN 2B: He thinks the diagnosis not only accounts for L...

"There is an intensity and intimacy to Giuliani that can be unsettling."

"He has an authoritarian streak, as well as a penchant for secrecy and dependence on loyalists, that may remind voters of the current c...

"When conservatives feel comfortable mocking the victims gunned down by Clinton-era attorney general Janet Reno's FBI in Waco, Tex...."

"... it suggests that a complacent and increasingly authoritarian establishment feels threatened." Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch h...

An Althouse coffeehouse.

Good morning, everyone. I'll be off-line for most of the morning, so please use this space to gather and talk about what you like. I...

Vlog?

Stop me before I vlog again. Or raise some topics and ask some questions, and this might turn into a vlog day. ADDED: The vlog is done, and ...

Cat conversation and sexism in the algorithm.

Two cats are having a conversation. It's uncanny: Let's see that cat talk translated into English: Ha ha. I love it. Why did I run a...

That time Rick Lazio invaded Hillary's space.

Everyone talks about the time Rick Lazio invaded Hillary Clinton's space in a debate when the two were running for Senator. The myth is ...

"Being first lady is sort of half job and half life but good experience in either case."

Writes Michael Kinsley , analyzing Hillary Clinton and her recent jab "We can't afford on-the-job training for our next president....

"And who’s this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe?/That’s tiny baby Adolf, the Hitlers’ little boy!"

Wrote the poet Wislawa Szymborska. And who's this dashing young man? ( The book. ) IN THE COMMENTS: Bob says he's "pretty enoug...

"Good night, my darlings, I’ll see you tomorrow."

Noël Coward's last words, from a review by John Simon . Lots of good tidbits in the review. I like this one: "To me, the essence of...

"'Blame U.S. for 9/11' Idiots in Majority."

New York Post headline. Sixty-two percent of those polled thought it was "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federa...

"You cannot call it real pain. I just found that time was infinitely long."

Says Antoine di Zazzo , who's been tasered more 50 times. Di Zazzo — a Taser representative in France — has tasered the French politici...

"So then I realized I was in trouble."

Matter of fact recognition of what you have to do to survive. Just started cutting the meat away from the bone... Wow! What a great guy!

A child's skeleton, masks made of human skin, stuffed animals, Nazi memorabilia...

Things Marilyn Manson bought using his band's money, according to a lawsuit filed by keyboardist Stephen "Pogo" Bier. Showing...

"You are sometimes on the point of saying that so-and-so’s thighs showed that he wanted to travel in India!"

S ome critic said that to Leo Tolstoy . But, so what? Let's read "War and Peace" again: There's a new translation by the ...

If "every campaign is... a narrative," what's Hillary Clinton's narrative?

Mickey Kaus looks at John Ellis's idea, which he gleaned from the Nixon campaign. Ellis says: She knows what it's like to get her ...

"Patronage does not mean giving a job to someone who supported you politically."

"It means giving a job to someone only because he supported you politically." So wrote Rudy Giuliani in his book "Leadership,...

"These patients are still people, they are still emotional and they still need love."

The story of Justice O'Connor and her husband, who, debilitated by Alzheimer's, found a new love, makes us want to think more deeply...

"Maybe yellow blotches, wrinkles, and phantom fetuses really get a pubescent neotenic mole salamander in the mood for love."

What's the web's most reliable source of amazing sentences? I think it's Go Fug Yourself .

"I'm coming to your planet, but with gifts."

Don't you love Elisa? Spit and all .

How dare you question her! To question her is to wish my son had died!

Howard Kurtz notes that the candidates are using a type of ad that looks very mellow but is designed to inoculate them against future attac...

How I know who the NYT wants to be President.

I looked at these 3 photo s. (Thanks to my son John for this insight. And here 's an earlier post on the linked article.) ADDED: Hey, re...

"The wind of freedom blows." "No, that slogan blows."

Think you've got a good college slogan? Think again . Consider Cornell's motto, "rated No. 1 by Motto " (there's a Mot...

What Lola wants...

... is to be a star. (And that first commenter over there is mean... and also uninformed about the significance of Frida Kahlo in the mind o...

"Our prescribed drugs do extra duty as political sedatives."

Frederick C. Crews looks at the dynamics of "Big Pharma." [T]he pharmaceutical companies haven't so much answered a need as t...

"Iowa is a state where, if you work very hard and are a very good speaker..."

"...you can get to speak at a gazillion small meetings and have a gazillion people say, 'Holy heck, this guy is really good.'...

The candidates and their food issues.

The NYT presents the full array. Hmmm.... Barack Obama was "chubby" as a child.  Mitt Romney "eats the same thing every day....

Come on, Democrats, please, attack Hillary!

Kimberly A. Strassel looks for weakness in Hillary Clinton's campaign: Mr. Obama has come the closest to delving into Mrs. Clinton'...

"At the moment, Giuliani and fellow moderate Mitt Romney are attacking each other for being insufficiently Tancredo-esque."

Writes David Brooks:   [T]hey are participating in the greatest blown opportunity in recent political history. At its current nadir, the G.O...

Leopard.

Ah! I'm so happy with Leopard, which I've just installed in my MacBook, and I can boil my reason for happiness down to one word: But...

Happy Thanksgiving.

Yes, it's Thanksgiving. I hope you're geared up properly to observe the occasion according to your family traditions or your quirky ...

A vlog about Thanksgiving squirrel, Mancow, guns, law school, commenters, and Madison versus New York.

"The unknown can be very anxiety provoking, You don't know what will be served. You don't know who you will sit next to."

That's a quote from the front-page article in the Wisconsin State Journal: "Thanksgiving a difficult time for people with eating d...

Vlog?

In some quarters, they're clamoring for a vlog. I think I might do that, in maybe about an hour. But you've got to throw some questi...

I meant to post this before I got on the plane in NYC.

It's a NY fall picture. I'm not sure if this is beautiful or upsetting:

Greetings from Madison, Wisconsin.

I hope you've all made to your holiday destinations or, if not, that you'll be getting there soon. It's a little chilly here... ...

"[A prison doctor] said he saw in me what he called 'the consciousness of innocence.'"

"It’s very dangerous. He said if you bring it into prison with you, you will have the most horrifying experience that a human being can...

"Probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations is the fact I spent four years overseas when I was a child in Southeast Asia."

So said Barack Obama . Terrible choice of words, "foreign relations." And Hillary Clinton takes full advantage: "Voters will ...

The 6 imams case survives a motion to dismiss.

In a decision by U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery: According to a police report, the men were arrested because three had one-way tickets a...

What effect will the Supreme Court's gun case have on the '08 election?

Jack Balkin asks a great question. To answer his question, he predicts what the Court will say in its decision in District of Columbia v. H...

Gloomy Brooklyn.

Monday afternoon Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.

Let's talk about guns.

The Supreme Court has granted cert. in the Second Amendment case from the D.C. Circuit. This should prove very exciting to those on both si...