The WSJ has a piece today on the continuing decline of my home state, where I still have family. It really makes all that nonsensical talk a few years ago about trying to amend the Constitution so that Granholm could run for president seem even more absurd.

Greyhawk explains why Walter Reed was underfunded. It wasn’t in anyone’s congressional district.

I scored a hundred percent on this test.

“A+ — Not only should you vote, you should consider a career in politics.”

And I, too, would strongly encourage anyone who doesn’t score well on it to stay away from the voting booth. A grateful nation will thank you.

Though it seems like they ought to actually deduct points for knowing the pop culture icons.

[Early evening update]

I agree with commenters who say that the test is much too visual. Actually, it’s kind of a dumb test. It’s like those “man on the street” interviews that provide so much fodder for late-night comics. As someone in comments started to do, what would good questions be?

Peter Mulhern thinks that the president should fire Patrick Fitzgerald:

The President has ample grounds for such action. Fitzgerald repeatedly lied, both in court and out, about the nature of his investigation in a successful effort to convince the jury that Libby had something to hide. Worse yet he pursued a criminal investigation when he had no reason even to suspect that any crime had been committed. This is the core of horrible prosecutorial abuse. In this situation there can be no legally sufficient conviction for perjury or false statements.

He may be right on the merits, but if he were to do what’s recommended here, it would set off a political firestorm that would make the Tokyo bombing look like a fall bonfire. Because he’s let people undermine him, and continue to do so without consequence, ever since he came into office, the president is now in a no-win position.

[Update in the afternoon]

Tom Maguire (who has been the go-to guy for all things Libbygate from the beginning) writes about Fitzi’s Dishonor.

Peter Mulhern thinks that the president should fire Patrick Fitzgerald:

The President has ample grounds for such action. Fitzgerald repeatedly lied, both in court and out, about the nature of his investigation in a successful effort to convince the jury that Libby had something to hide. Worse yet he pursued a criminal investigation when he had no reason even to suspect that any crime had been committed. This is the core of horrible prosecutorial abuse. In this situation there can be no legally sufficient conviction for perjury or false statements.

He may be right on the merits, but if he were to do what’s recommended here, it would set off a political firestorm that would make the Tokyo bombing look like a fall bonfire. Because he’s let people undermine him, and continue to do so without consequence, ever since he came into office, the president is now in a no-win position.

[Update in the afternoon]

Tom Maguire (who has been the go-to guy for all things Libbygate from the beginning) writes about Fitzi’s Dishonor.

Peter Mulhern thinks that the president should fire Patrick Fitzgerald:

The President has ample grounds for such action. Fitzgerald repeatedly lied, both in court and out, about the nature of his investigation in a successful effort to convince the jury that Libby had something to hide. Worse yet he pursued a criminal investigation when he had no reason even to suspect that any crime had been committed. This is the core of horrible prosecutorial abuse. In this situation there can be no legally sufficient conviction for perjury or false statements.

He may be right on the merits, but if he were to do what’s recommended here, it would set off a political firestorm that would make the Tokyo bombing look like a fall bonfire. Because he’s let people undermine him, and continue to do so without consequence, ever since he came into office, the president is now in a no-win position.

[Update in the afternoon]

Tom Maguire (who has been the go-to guy for all things Libbygate from the beginning) writes about Fitzi’s Dishonor.

Now that the trial is over, Bob Novak has a clarifying piece in the WaPo:

Democrats had been slow to react to my column of July 14, 2003, which reported that former diplomat Joseph Wilson’s mission to Niger was suggested by his CIA employee wife, Valerie Plame Wilson. By September, when the Justice Department began investigating the CIA leak, Democrats smelled another Iran-contra affair or Watergate. They were wrong.

The Libby trial uncovered no plot hatched in the White House. The worst news Tuesday for firebrand Democrats was that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was going back to his “day job” (as U.S. attorney in Chicago). With no underlying crime even claimed, the only question was whether Libby had consciously and purposefully lied to FBI agents and the grand jury about how he learned of Mrs. Wilson’s identity.

Fitzmas was a fizzle.

Mark Steyn:

…an anti-war deputy secretary of an anti-war department leaking to an anti-war reporter the name of an anti-war analyst who got her anti-war husband a job with an anti-war agency is supposedly an elaborate

…on the Maher-Coulter embroglio. But even though it’s from Iowahawk, it probably won’t be.

(Note, not a family-friendly link…)

Apparently I have to continue to correct the record, over and over and over.

This time it’s Vic Rubenfeld:

Frankly, I have to put a lot of blame for this on the Republicans, for using this tactic to impeach Bill Clinton. Having sex isn’t a crime, but he was impeached for lying about it.

Well, maybe if you were familiar with what actually happened, you wouldn’t have to do that.

Bill Clinton was not impeached for “lying about sex.” He was impeached for perjury, subornation of perjury from others, witness intimidation, and obstruction of justice, in the service of preventing a young woman from getting a fair trial in a civil law suit under a law that he signed with his own pen, but thought shouldn’t apply to King William. And he did this after having taken an oath to see that the laws of the land were faithfully executed.

Those aren’t my opinions. They’re black-letter facts. If you people are going to continue to whine about Clinton’s impeachment, at least get the history correct. Of course, this kind of spinning nonsense and mischaracterization of the president’s behavior was occurring in the media at the time, 24/7, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that people are still at it.