PAYBACK TIME: Eleanor Clift observes: “I’m beginning to think Hillary Clinton might pull this off and wrestle the nomination away from Barack Obama. If she does, a lot of folks—including a huge chunk of the media—will join Bill Richardson (a.k.a. Judas) in the Deep Freeze. If the Clintons get back into the White House, it will be retribution time, like the Corleone family consolidating power in ‘The Godfather,’ where the watchword is, ‘It’s business, not personal.'”

MICHAEL WEISS ISN’T BUYING Obama’s new strategy.

FOR THE GUY WHO HAS EVERYTHING: Tool-o-rama.

AMY ALKON ON “Deadbeat Dads” who are actually moms. But that doesn’t alliterate!

THE NEW YORK TIMES says that the Jeremiah Wright ad in North Carolina is “race-baiting.” But Ann Althouse disagrees:

But look at the ad! It’s about left-wing politics and anti-Americanism. . . . Is it racism simply because Jeremiah Wright and Obama are black? It would make more sense to accuse the NYT of racism for thinking that that anything that black people say or do is about their race.

Watch it for yourself. Note that the impact of these denunciations is to discredit those who reflexively play the race card on Obama’s behalf, and to ensure wide circulation of the ad beyond North Carolina.

RADLEY BALKO: Should prosecutors be immune from civil lawsuits?

I’ll just note that such immunity is a judicial invention, as much the product of judicial activism as any other doctrine that gets more complaint. Judges have been similarly generous with absolute immunity for judges, something also not found in the Constitution. In my opinion, such immunities should exist by statute, if at all.

HUGO CHAVEZ: Hunger, misery, and violence have overtaken the United States.

No, actually that’s just Chicago.

UPDATE: Stephen Green on dubious reports of famine.

ANDY MCCARTHY WONDERS what the State Department is thinking. People seem to wonder that a lot.

NEW IDEAS ON THE NEW ORIGINALISM: Some thoughts from Larry Solum.

MORE ON THE TEXAS POLYGAMY CASE: “Instead of being judged on an individual basis – each parent considered separately from the rest of his or her community – the state is treating the sect as a whole. Kids are being removed on the basis of their cultural background, not because they are in immediate danger. . . . I’m sympathetic to what a sudden influx of more than 400 kids must do to an overburdened system but I’m more sympathetic to the children especially given that the kids shouldn’t have been removed in the first place, not without proof of immediate harm.”

As I noted before, this is looking more and more like a screw-up of the first order.

BEWARE THE Detroit zombies.

IN THE MAIL: Daniel Flynn’s new book, A Conservative History of the American Left.

THOUGHTS ON the professionalization of blogging.

THE FORGOTTEN X-PRIZE: The one that can save your life.

ARTHUR CAPLAN ON LIFE EXTENSION: “Despite a lot of hand-wringing and finger-pointing, it is not obvious that wanting to live a lot longer is evil or immoral. The case against trying is not convincing.” Indeed.

CHRIS WILSON: It is time for Barack Obama to drop out.

HEH: “It seems to me that based on their low-class behavior, the protesting UGA faculty deserves to have Jerry Springer as their Commencement speaker.”

MORE ON PROBLEMS IN AFGHANISTAN, at Abu Muquwama:

Doctrine, as Colin Gray once wrote, is the skeleton upon which the sinew and flesh of armies are built. Perhaps then, with no NATO doctrine for the conduct of a war among the people, it should be no surprise that the NATO-led ISAF in Afghanistan has often appeared spineless.

Read the whole thing.

WATERLESS URINALS, banned in Minnesota: “Plumbers have not been supportive of waterless urinals and have fought against them in other states arguing they will impact jobs.” (Via Buzz.mn).

I’d say it’s the reverse. The Men’s Room in my local mall has ’em, and one or two are always covered with big plastic bags. The old, flush-type urinals seemed to have a lot less downtime.

A REPORT ON sports in outer space. No, really.

KILLING RESISTANT CANCER CELLS with nanotechnology.

MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT BERNARDINE DOHRN.

TODAY IS ANZAC DAY!

JERRY POURNELLE:

Democrats seem to be drifting toward the concept of prosecution of former office holders by criminalizing policy differences. That’s a certain formula for civil war; perhaps not immediate, but inevitable. The absolute minimum requirement for democratic government is that the loser be willing to lose the election: that losing an election is not the loss of everything that matters. As soon as that assurance is gone, playing by the rules makes no sense at all.

Good point.

UPDATE: Mark Lardas emails:

The best example of what happens when you criminalize political opposition is the Roman Civil War.

Gauis Julius Caesar was a republican to the core. He believed in the Roman Republic, and its unwritten constitution. When his political opponents, the Optimates, made it clear that they were going to prosecute him and either exile or execute him, the moment Caesar set down his military command they made war inevitable. Especially since it was clear that they were not interested in following the law, except at their convenience.

Caesar was not given a choice between going to war and destroying the republic or preserving it by going quietly to his doom. He could see that the republic was doomed no matter what his choice was. He could either start a civil war or let Rome slide into a tyranny run by the Optimates. Given that choice, let the dice fly and hope you can put the pieces back together after you win. At least, you can die trying.

The Democrats remind me of the Optimates in many ways. William Clinton seems like a 21st century version of Pompey Magnus. That Bush has not played Caesar is a tribute to two things: George W.’s fundamental decency, and the fact that the United States is yet not in as bad a shape politically as the late Roman Republic.

The ability of Presidents to pardon themselves, and others in their administrations, before leaving office is more evidence of the Framers’ wisdom. They were not unaware of classical politics.