Scrapbook
Scrapbook Immodest Proposal Alan Dershowitz, like many liberals, was frustrated that Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats were unable to lay a glove on Samuel Alito in their questioning of the...
...More than a million of his books have been sold worldwide, in numerous languages, and more than a million people have heard him lecture around the world...
...To Know Him Is to Loathe Him "The world's biggest political blogger" is how Benjamin Wallace-Wells describes Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, Democratic consultant-on-the-make and proprietor of the popular lefty website dailykos.com, in the January/February Washington Monthly...
...Not long after that election, Moulitsas delivered a speech to Senate Democrats in which he explained why the party has done so badly...
...To the contrary, as he informs us in his Huffingtonpost.com bio, Der-showitz's "writing has been praised by Truman Capote, Saul Bellow, David Mamet, William Styron, Aharon Appelfeld, A.B...
...Alas, no such luck...
...Specifically, Dershowitz—himself a first-rate appellate lawyer with a background in constitutional scholarship—urged Senate Judiciary Committee members to "bring in three or four first-rate trial lawyers with backgrounds in constitutional scholarship to ask the hard questions," adding, "of course Committee members will consult with the litigators to ensure that they cover all the issues of concern to the senators...
...He mentions Watergate, a good example...
...But during the hearings, the senators' job will be to listen and then to vote...
...This will be doubly unfair, because, "relatively, Blacks are environmental Good Samaritans...
...So we're certain Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats will want to give serious consideration to Der-showitz's proposal, which he promises would finally "put substance before spectacle" in the committee hearings...
...Another Reason to Fear Global Warming Remember the old joke about the N^^ Yo-rk Times headline, come the Apocalypse: "World Ends: Minorities and Women Hardest Hit...
...Wallace-Wells may be right...
...And staff writer Matthew Continetti's forthcoming The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine (Doubleday) will do the same in April...
...We had been under the opposite impression, no doubt still influenced by the teachings of Leonard Jeffries, chairman of City College of New York's black studies department in the early 1990s...
...He speaks in twenty-minute chunks, so you don't need to ask questions so much as provision buckets to catch the flood...
...The war never materialized...
...He also mentions the Iran-contra sessions, during which, if The Scrap-book recalls correctly, an obscure Marine lieutenant colonel named Oliver North was so humiliated and destroyed by the expert questioning of the Democrats' hired lawyer, John W. Nields Jr., that he crawled from the hearing stand a broken man, and was never heard from again...
...Also on Mou-litsas's speed dial: Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid...
...Sounds good to us, and we bet the senators will think so, too...
...Moulitsas said it had been "deferred...
...Jeffries's unique contribution to scholarship was the theory that whites were "ice people" and blacks "sun people," for whom global warming would presumably mean global domination...
...Well, it's no longer a laughing matter...
...No one knows except the new Oracle of Delphi at The Weekly Standard...
...Executive editor Fred Barnes's new book Rebel-in-Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush (Crown Forum) hit the shelves last week...
...Then there's Moulitsas's hatred for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council—he's written that he wants to "euthanize" it—which led to his declaration, last August 22, of an impending war he would launch within his party...
...According to BET.com's Bruce Britt, "global warming impacts minorities and the disad-vantaged harder than other groups...
...Through his website, Wallace-Wells reports, Moulitsas raised some $500,000 in the 2004 election cycle, which makes him "one of the party's top fund-raisers...
...Over a year later, he has no regrets about his word choice...
...The self-described "best-known criminal lawyer in the world," "top lawyer of last resort," and one of America's "most distinguished defenders of individual rights," suggested to the senators that they "should check their egos...
...According to Dershowitz, "history provides instructive examples of committee lawyers helping conduct important Congressional hearings...
...He never blinks...
...What sort of man do Democrats turn to for advice...
...According to a story at BET.com, an affiliate of Black Entertainment Television, "Global Warming Could Spell Disaster for Blacks...
...Last week at Huffington-post.com, he meditated on the "lessons learned from the deeply flawed process," and offered a proposal...
...African Americans are not entirely blame-free, however, as Britt notes that "asking Black folks to give up gas-guzzling SUV's and other bling is a tough sell...
...Yehoshua and Elie Wiesel...
...Uh-oh,They're On to Us...
...Scrapbook Immodest Proposal Alan Dershowitz, like many liberals, was frustrated that Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats were unable to lay a glove on Samuel Alito in their questioning of the High Court nominee...
...Quite the contrary: Moulitsas told Wallace-Wells that he feels "vindicated" when he looks back at that post...
...Answer: They don't hate Republicans enough...
...Whatever you say...
...Then they might realize that a superior way to question Supreme Court nominees like Alito would be to outsource the interrogation to trained professionals...
...Everybody says I'm an ass—," Moulitsas tells Wallace-Wells...
...in which George Bush was running a respectable second behind osama bin Laden, 58-41 percent...
...Where do we go from here...
...Screw them...
...Well, last Friday, January 20, Daily Kos was running a poll—"Who do you despise more...
...They are there to wage war for profit...
...And they're right, I am...
...After all, this isn't just some attention-seeking lawyer mouthing off on his blog...
...As Britt notes, "per capita, we emit approximately 20 percent less carbon dioxide than Whites...
...Speaking with him, Wallace-Wells writes, like reading his blog, is a singularly withering experience...
...At least we don't think so...
...Rahm Emmanuel, the Illinois Democrat who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee...
...If global warming gets worse, many African-American communities will be more vulnerable to breathing ailments, insect-carried diseases and heat-related illness and death...
...But then, Moulitsas says a lot of things...
...Columnist Mansour El-Kikhia, San Antonio Express-News, January 20, 2006 Book Notes Congratulations to THE SCRAPBOOK'S colleagues, who have been writing up a storm...
...When the time comes, it will speak as it has done on a number of occasions during the past five years, and President Bush, who is not known for reading magazines and newspapers, will obediently follow...
...Since then, Moulitsas has held teleconferences every three weeks with Rep...
...In April 2004, when an Iraqi mob flayed the bodies of four American contractors in Fallu-ja, Moulitsas wrote on his site, "I feel nothing over the death of the mercenaries...
...Moulitsas is not a naturally commanding presence—he's 5'6", slender, with a high-pitched voice and a rounded face that puts you vaguely in mind of an animated frog...
Vol. 11 • January 2006 • No. 19
