FWIW, I just donated $100 to Bob Forrester's campaign against the pretender Lautenberg in NJ. Feel free to do the same.

Christopher Hitchens lays into Clinton, in the UK's Mirror.

Good analysis of the real result of the NJ Supreme Court's decision -- to strip control of the Democratic slot on the ballot and hand it to the national Democratic party leaders.

This whole thing is a disgusting perversion of the whole concept of a fair and open election, for which the Dems ought to be punished severly at the polls.

Lileks isn't happy either. I just love this bit:

I prefer clear laws with regrettable results to judicial legerdemain in the service of “higher causes,” the nature of which vary from person to person. You can always endeavor to change the law through elected representatives who serve at the electorate’s pleasure. Letting the courts allow a hand-picked candidate who did not run in the primary to replace a primary winner who screwed up his campaign does not strike me as, ahem, genuine democracy. It's playground logic: I call do-overs. Nor would this situation be acceptable and genuine simply because it allowed for a “spirited campaign” to follow. (The previous campaign was unspirited and unenlightening in the Times’ eyes, because it consisted mostly of the challenger pointing out that he wasn’t a greasy ball of vicious, solipsistic mendacity like You Know Who.) If the government decided to have the most boring candidate shot in the streets so the other candidates could have a spirited campaign about his assassination, I wouldn't see this as an improvement.

If all of these points seem like reducto ab absurdum, well, they are - - but that's what happens when you ignore what laws say in favor of what you say they should mean.

I'm watching the news right now; Angelo Genova, the New Jersey Democratic Party Counsel, just said this:

"The right of the voter to exercize a free and competitive choice is paramount to any technical nicety that might be suggested by a time limitation in a statute."

There you have it: all campaign regulations are meaningless, because they are "technical niceties" grounded in bothersome "statutes" that prevent a "competitive" choice. This is the future of American politics, right here.

I fear at the end of it all I’ll just wish they put on togas and went back to stabbing each other on the steps. If they’re going to call themselves the Senate, they might as well act like their namesake.

Porphyrogenitus is pissed about the Dem's doings in New Jersey. I think he's right. This is not a one-off affair. The mess in Florida and this are all of a piece, and reveal a disturbing new development in the Democrat Party, a complete disregard for orderly and republican elections. I'm afraid this sort of banana-republic shenanigans will be a frequent fixture of our elections for the forseeable future.

Excellent article by Victor Davis Hanson on U.S.-Euro rift.

It's a well-reasoned alternative interpretation to Kagan's Power and Weakness essay

(Via Instapundit)

I'm afraid it's Hesiod that doesn't get it.

Dave Kopel is completely correct. The NJ Governor cannot appoint someone to fill out Torricelli's term and set the election for two years hence (as a clause in the NJ constitution allows), because that would involve extending Torricelli's term to 8 years in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Hesiod's counter-example is specious. Jean Carnahan was appointed at the start of the Senate term to fill her deceased husband's vacant slot, and is currently involved in a special election two years later.

If Torricelli does resign, then any appointment is only valid until the new Senate takes office (or maybe until the election is decided -- there's some debate that the winner would immediately take office over the appointee).

In the preceeding blog on Hesiod's site, he attempts to claim that the Republican Douglas Forrester has already set a precedent for some related tactics in a GOP primary. Hesiod is clearly (and amusingly) unaware that primaries are of little interest to the U.S. Constitution, being essentially a party matter. Filing a suit against the GOP to influence the primary in no way compares to filing a suit to force the State to award the senate seat in contravention of the U.S. Constitution.

Given the choice between relevance and irrelevance, the U.N. has chosen the latter.

The palaces were the sticking point that destroyed the previous inspections regime. By capitulating on this point the U.N. has given Saddam the green light to hide whatever he wants in his "palaces" (which Saddam has traditionally defined as "Whatever I say is a palace").

We're going in. Probably sooner rather than later.

It's quite sad to see what the left has come to.

Jay Bookman think's we're on the verge of an empire. I think he's basically right, though he seems to be confusing hegemony with empire. I know we haven't seen a hegemony for a while, so the distinction may be somewhat excusable, but there is a crucial distinction.

Empires are a group of territories and nations ruled by a dominant power as a single political and economic unit.

Hegemonies are a group of territories and nations led by a dominant power as a confederation of political and economic units.

Bookman also mentions Kagan several times in his article, so I should mention that I'm currently reading Kagan's four-volume series on the Peloponnesian war which, along with Thucydides's contemporary account, should be required reading for any student of history, modern or ancient.

Kagan's influential book On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace is also a deeply perceptive analysis of how efforts to maintain peace can fail and produce wars. Highly recommended.