No comments yet? Surely this is a trap.

The most important function of a vice president is to serve as a spare president. … Spares should be kept pristine, for when they are really needed.
Some snark should go here, but sorry, I got nothing. I won’t even express any marvel at the fact that this dude is a professor of law and this piece of drivel got published by the NY Times. I’ll just get stoned right away, maybe it will make some sense then.

Sweet mother of Joe DiMaggio. Why not just come right out in support of a Constitutional amendment requiring all office holders to be members of the GOP?

Ah yes, I remember all of Reynolds’ harping on the evils of the extra-constitutional activities of Dick Cheney these past 8 years.

I don’t want to look at the robophile’s exegesis.

That’s just gross.

Glenn Fucking Reynolds and William Fucking Kristol on the same op-ed page.

The Times is officially dead to me. I haven’t purchased one since the Judy Miller fiasco, but I innocently picked up a used one on my train ride home this morning.

And this is what I see.

Fuck. You. Times.

“Hi! I’m Glenn Reynolds. I’m an idiot.”

I weep for UT law students.

Just as important, a vice president who is enmeshed in the affairs of the president cannot offer a fresh start for the executive branch.

Wha? I think the Malfunctioning Glen Reynolds Bot is more coherent than the real one.

I mean, wha? Huh?

Okay, okay. Shorter Glen Reynolds: The Vice President should not participate in Presidential activities because America deserves to break his executive hymen when they get married.

OT, but did anyone else catch this Special Ed post at HotAir:

Let’s say someone created an effigy of a certain national political candidate and placed a noose around its neck, and then put the effigy on display for the neighbors to see this Halloween. What kind of reaction would you expect to see? People would start screaming about the Jena 6 and the latent racism of the American voter, and would assume that the neighborhood was located in a red state where people bitterly cling to their guns and religion.

Uh, Ed?

That segment title runs a little short; it should read, “Reliable Sources of Unhinged Glibertarian Wingnut Transhumanist Nonsense.”

It says in the Constitution that you just can’t trust them Democrat socialist terrorist Muslims with too much power and that it’s up to people like Glenn Reynolds to figger out when the Constitution gives a lot of power to somebody and when it takes it away.

‘Cause over the last 7.5 years the Constitution gave all teh power to the Unitarded Executrix and the leader of Fourthbranch, but now the Constitution will take that all away because it knows that Demon-craps aren’t supposed to have no powr.

Where Does the Vice President Belong?

Oh, well, that’s easy.

In prison.

This has been another installment of “simple answers to stupid questions”.

comsympinko: Fuck. You. Times.

Word. They must be kidding. By simple statistics, I know there must be conservatives out there who can write. Yet the Times consistently chooses to publish op-eds from the writing-impaired. First Althouse, iirc, now Reynolds. What’s next – Assrocket?

Jeesus fucking Christ I want to kick him so hard in the nuts that his swingers shoot out at relativistic velocity into the New York Times’ jumbly bits.

Seriously this contemptuous ass gets published for saying “Me like Cheney, Democrats are pee pee caca”?!?!
I’m already agitated from NPR telling me this morning that a McCain victory would be good and what the American People want because, er, they like divided government and neither radio idiot could find the courage or intelligence to point out that the GOP held 117% of the entire US Government for 6 fucking years!

The Constitution says “The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.” Since “exercising the Office of President” when necessary is in the Constitution as a Vice Presidential duty, and acting as President is not a legislative duty, it might be an icky bicky bit incorrect to say “the only vice presidential duties that are spelled out in the Constitution are legislative in character.”

Of course, the Constitution also discusses the election of Vice President in the section regarding the Executive Branch, and clearly places the Vice President in that branch, so it’s possible he’s being a little disingenuous. But what do I know, I’m not a Lawyer, just a person who can read.

Ow my eyes!! That jacket should be burned.

I think the words “reliable” and “sources” will also have to be burned. Also.

The VP is like a spare tire? This guy’s really a law professor?

I am reminded of the Spicoli Vs Hand verdict of 1982.

“You dick!”

” I know there must be conservatives out there who can write.”

Yes, there are. But both of them endorsed Obama.

Well, we can’t say we didn’t see this coming. The wingnuts didn’t, because their belief was that history had ended (again) and We Win FOREVAR!

While those in the reality-based community knew that if things went the other way, gospel like the Unitary Executive Theory would become heresy.

Fuck the ole perfesser.

“None of this is to say that the President can’t, in his own capacity, decide to apply different rules to the VP (who, after all, is an elected official, unlike cabinet secretaries, NSC staffers, and the like) if he chooses.”

That’s some high-level stupid right there.

Damn, he is the exact spitting image of my ex-brother-in-law, who was convicted for fucking the foster child he and my very stupid half sister took in when her parents tossed her out for fucking her boyfriend. Considering the Ole Pervfessor’s thing for robosex, I’d say they are soulmates as well as perfect look-alikes.

I’m sorry, was that lookist?

tigrismus@18:41:
Ha ha! You said ‘doodies’!

““the only vice presidential duties that are spelled out in the constitution are legislative in character.”

There must be a requirement to have a memory span shorter than one year to be a “conservative pundit.” Otherwise their heads would explode with the contradictions.

Actually, I would like to see the Glenn Reynolds Robot malfunction live on CNN. He’d all be in the middle of explaining why the Unitary Executive was wrong, then someone would remind him of the last eight years. Sparks would fly out from around his head. His speech would speed-up to chipmunk-like speeds, then wind-down like a broken tape.

Afterward, the producers would go the supply closet and retrieve the next pundit-bot. The engineers would swear they have the contradiction-protection chip perfected this time.

If the vice president were like a spare tire he would be called the spare president. The vice president, like the vice squad, is best used in undercover prostitution and drug stings.

Dude, I’m no fashion plate, but that jacket, shirt, tie and haircut combo might just be the worst I’ve ever seen anyone trying to look their best.

I’m sure they’ll start screaming about the Patriot Act and abuses of the FISA court on January 21st, if not before.

In their zeal to reverse everything they ever said previously, I hope they remember that it’s their noses which run, and their feet which smells.

“feet which smell”

etc.

In the event that the President is incapacitated, the Secretary of State should be in control. Al Haig told me this.

Also, with respect to the NPR piece: I really, really hate it when an entire screed can be shown false by a casual argument. I’m stuck listening to someone either lie or be very stupid and cannot respond.

But the salt in the wounds is that these folks get to keep on talking. My desire for there to be consequences makes me feel positively republican. Then I remember the GOP is only for consequences when it’s someone else’s action.

Spares should be kept pristine

Ah, yes. I grasped the concept of preserving “precious bodily fluids” pre-puberty, in the early Sixties (thankyew, Stan Kubrick).

After puberty, I adjusted my grasp.

Glenn Reynolds will, too, if he reaches puberty. I suspect there’s an occlusion preventing his testicles’ descent. The MRI suggests they’re impeded by a rather large asshole.

Tom65 …

Yes, yes. Bring back the Black Helicopter craziness. I’m going to laugh so hard when I get to point out the US was running that sort of actual program with extraordinary rendition, but that was somehow okay because the president would never render a wingnut.

Maybe it is projection: if the wingnut were in charge, he’d set up a system of black helicopters to ferry away dissenters (people not in the heartland, people who did un-American things like read the constitution). Faced with this, it seems obvious to the winger that his hated opposition would do the same.

You know that if Dick Cheney personally declared war on Missouri on Congress’s behalf Reynolds would be out there defending the Vice-President’s constitutionally guaranteed right to operate as a Foucaultian monarch as surely as Pravda would suddenly develop a sweeping, consistent life-long hatred for the Socialism-Me State.

There are conservatives in America, but they’re in a tiny minority. The majority of the party is – and I think always was – diseased authority-worshipping jacknapes willing to say or do anything for a few well-lit flight-suit crotch pics. The reason we’re only noticing this so heavily now is that there hasn’t been an internal constituency for the sane, ideologically committed Republicans in the Party for a generation.

They’ve replaced the entire electoral team with the rat-fucking department, and they’re now paying the price for it. Buckley, may it be said, did, said, and believed some foul shit, but he actually had identifiable beliefs; if Romney – having won the election – had declared himself a Stalinist, Reynolds would be singing techno-utopian torch songs and fulminating against the possibility of a lax God letting kulaks into Kolob.

The Post-Gazette (10/25/08):

Additionally, said Lt. Kevin Kraus, investigators were struck “that it was a superficial, pristine ‘B,’ which seemed highly inconsistent with the story she reported that it was a violent attack, basically in which she was fighting for her life.”

Irving Cohen says, “Give me a B, a pristine B!”

On the New York Times opinion page (10/27/08):

The most important function of a vice president is to serve as a spare president. Using the spare president in the ordinary course of business is as unwise as driving on one’s spare tire. Spares should be kept pristine, for when they are really needed.

Ye Ole Professor says, “Give me a tire, a pristine tire!”

John McCain (December 2007):

I believe that ANWR is one of the pristine areas of the world, and I have opposed it. And I also believe that the amount of energy that could be recovered from that area is not that impactful, and I certainly wouldn’t want to see another Exxon-Valdez.

Sarah Palin says, “Give me a drill, baby, a drill!”

The most important function of a vice president is to serve as a spare president. Using the spare president in the ordinary course of business is as unwise as driving on one’s spare tire. Spares should be kept pristine, for when they are really needed.

Clearly, Professor Harlan Reynolds ought to check his owner’s manual on his pick up truck. It probably says right there in black and white under tire rotation that you always include the spare, if it’s a full size spare, in your tire rotation.

Of course, in Palin’s case, we’re looking at one of those mini-spares…

Maybe it is projection: if the wingnut were in charge, he’d set up a system of black helicopters to ferry away dissenters (people not in the heartland, people who did un-American things like read the constitution). Faced with this, it seems obvious to the winger that his hated opposition would do the same.

This is truer than we prefer to come to terms with; the eliminationist rhetoric always winds up being justified on ‘well, you started it!’ kind of a basis, in spite of nobody actually starting it on the left. The most radical DFH jackasses in American history – the ones McCain is tying to Obama on the basis of his scandalously radical hue – were less willing to accept the death of right-wing functionaries than the militia movement was to accept random civilians in the Evil Gubmint.

Fuck the ole perfesser.

You first.

Dear Ole Perfessor:

We’re buying it.

Sincerely,
Nobody

I’m already agitated from NPR telling me this morning that a McCain victory would be good and what the American People want because, er, they like divided government and neither radio idiot could find the courage or intelligence to point out that the GOP held 117% of the entire US Government for 6 fucking years!

NPR was dead to me the moment they gave Newt Gingrich airtime so that he could lecture us about how the GOP was the party of the ethical high road. Or some such nonsense.

I sometimes still listen, but I laugh when they ask me to pay for the privilege.

Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama. Heh. Indeed. We’re winning! Read the whole thing. Obama’s got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where’s my recession? The media are in the tank for Obama.

Is anyone considering writing a Letter To The Editor to give the Instapundit link and point out the hypocrisy?

I am about 80% there, but don’t know if I can craft a good enough letter.

The publishing of such noted Fail as Reynolds and Kristol might simply be the Grey Lady doing an act of salesmanship to make the NYT more appealing to Murdock.

How come no one is reading “Day by Day”? I kind of forgot about that.

alec …

Plus, the right wing has always been better at organizing death squads, especially in South America. They do it for the satisfaction of a man well-disappeared.

spence-bob…

NPR is still the best of the bunch, but their stock has fallen in my eyes. They keep having these winger commentaries. The last one I remember was the one about running out of technology workers. I couldn’t stop laughing, because I was on my way home from the dedication of the very,very large new Engineering building at the university.

might simply be the Grey Lady doing an act of salesmanship to make the NYT more appealing to Murdock Morlock.

Fixed.

Hold on a minute: I don’t read these nasty screeds, so someone tell me – is Professor Reynolds seriously suggesting a law be passed to revise the Constitution?

What in the fuck? How do you get a fucking degree without knowing that isn’t how it fucking works?

ps: how much you want to bet nobody’s going to think to thank the ‘activist judges’ in the Supreme Court (Scalia and Thomas excepted) who roundly refused the hyper-powerful role the neocons staked out for the Presidency? To their credit, I don’t think Biden or Obama would even think to engage in the kind of ridiculous horseshit Bush & co have, but all of a sudden the power to revise laws however he sees fit isn’t something they’re going to be enthusiastic about the Prez having.

There is, of course, one consistent theme: small government. Which is short for ‘small government for black people’.

So the undisclosed location occupied by Cheney was the trunk of the Presidential limo?

…The Times is officially dead to me. I haven’t purchased one since the Judy Miller fiasco…

Me too. It’s my home town paper and I used to read it every day. After the Judith Miller mess, it took about a year to completely break the habit but, now, I read the Guardian (which you can get in NY fairly easily) and an assortment of other papers. I was so happy I missed Ann Althouse on the op/ed page and now I’m just as happy to miss Glenn Reynolds. The NYT has never been all good reporting but it’s had long stretches as the best paper in America, even if parts of it have always been crap. (Take a look at Friel and Faulk’s two books on the history of the NYT. They are absolutely devastating. Here’s one of them: http://www.versobooks.com/books/cdef/ef-titles/friel_falk_record_nyt.shtml)

Just an aside but I’ve long wondered if the Jayson Blair business wasn’t a set-up to get Howell Raines out of the Times. If you go back to Raines issues, you’ll see that the Times–even with many missteps–was clearly a paper divided, half great coverage and half just more Whitewater style crap. After Raines left, all of the management positions where handed over to the crap heads. How hard would it be to have identified Blair as a liar and then make sure he flourished under Raines?

Conservatives aren’t like stupid liberals, they know that you got to apply the Constitution differently for Republicans and Demon-craps.

Here’s something to cleanse your palate:

http://gretawire.foxnews.com/2008/10/27/obama-campaign-lawyer-trying-to-intimidate-student-jounalists-why-because-they-found-actual-fraud/

Go ahead, laugh.

Because if you think The One will brook any criticism from you just because you’re on his side of the ideological aisle you’d better think again.

Oh, sure, a relatively small blog like S,N! won’t show up on his radar but Kos, HuffPo, DU, and Jane Hamster (ha, see what I did there?) had better stay in line once the parade starts or they’ll find out what “chilling of dissent” really means.

How do you get a fucking degree without knowing that isn’t how it fucking works?

You’re forgetting that 9/11 changed everything.

I don’t like being an apologist but it’s a duty. My Ho has been employed in public broadcasting for some years.

NPR is the best of the lot but they and PBS do have some problems. NPR’s biggest problems are Juan Williams, who should in no way be mislabeled (as they do) an “analyst,” and Cokie Roberts who seems to have emigrated to another planet. On the PBS side, I see no reason for giving The Bobo airtime.

I think they’ve fallen victim, perhaps to a lesser degree than the MSM, to the “balance fallacy.” Still, it beats the heck out of listening to or watching any of the commercial alternatives.

John Boner (nee Boehner) has just informed me, via yet another Human Events spam e-mail, that

Only you can stop Obama-Pelosi-Reid

Woohoo! That’s fanfuckingtastic because I aint gonna do it. PHPTHPTHPHTHT to you Bonerhaid. nyaa nyaa nyaa nunanyaaa

“To: tiffany

In other words, I am going to read what you write and watch what you say. Hopefully you will be fair and impartial as you told me you would be.”

Oooooh, he’s going to be READING what she WRITES and WATCHING what she SAYS because he HOPES she’ll be FAIR and IMPARTIAL. I’m shaking in my boots at the clear signs of the Barackalypse.

Or is it the Obamageddon? I forget.

He’s also since APOLOGIZED. Eeeeeek!

A reminder: The most damning, incontrovertible evidence is always presented with a minimum of 20 question marks.

Surely you’ve not sunk to a fake Goober (or “GOOBER” as it’s suddenly spelt) troll, have you…? One not accurately emulated in style or even accurately named (“GOOBER” instead of “Goober”?) And trying the subtle link to the post you made a few days back that was really upsetting to realise everyone had ignored it (“see what I did there” again, and the ignored Flickr account under the same meme name?) Seriously dude (or dudette), if it’s either an attempt to annoy or discredit the originals, or just a desperate need for attention and the illusion of controlling the debate, either way it just looks really transparent, pathetic and completely easy to ignore…. You are like the GoodCelery! of Salon, instantly spotted and instantly skipped over.

And either way, Barak Obama is going to be President. Best start getting used to it… just as everyone here already is getting ready to celebrate it.

Why does the “esteamed” Dr. Reynolds dress like the bag boy assistant manager at the local Walgreen’s Drug Store?

If Reynolds says in the New York Times that Cheney’s actions in office were unconstitutional, doesn’t Pelosi have to institute impeachment hearings right now? Why promote these pundits if we won’t listen to them?

If Reynolds says in the New York Times that Cheney’s actions in office were unconstitutional, doesn’t Pelosi have to institute impeachment hearings right now? Why promote these pundits if we won’t listen to them?

The ideal outcome (which is something the wingnuts, whose enemies are all in confederation against them, don’t quite get) would be Reid and Pelosi suddenly growing a spine when Obama required them to do anything except be soft-right cretins.

At that point, you could rely on a sort of backbenchers’ revolt – not out of any ideological grounds, but because the finance-handlers and power-brokers have a powerful sense of partisan duty and won’t stand for the leadership trying to hobble the national party to keep their own lobbyists happy. Winning AL-02 means a lot more to the people who matter than winning CA-08.

Glenn’s rictus grin is freaking me out. I’m going to have the ‘Happy Clown’ nightmare again tonight.

Suggested caption:
“After implantation of the electrode, the subject rapidly learned to press the lever and would press it up to 7000 times per hour, repeating the behavior for hours if allowed, ignoring thirst and hunger.”

God, McCain said “impactful” too? Can we please excise that word from the English language? With a flamethrower?

I’ll stick up for NPR, too. It’s only news source where no one yells at you. It’s true that they sometimes let wingnutteria slip through unchallenged, but such is life.

“The most important function of a vice president is to serve as a spare president. Using the spare president in the ordinary course of business is as unwise as driving on one’s spare tire. Spares should be kept pristine, for when they are really needed. ”

WTF!
And if we keep our Vice Presidents properly inflated, we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Jan. 20, 2009

Biden goes to the White House after the Inauguration ceremony. Cheney meets him in the drive.

“God love you, Dick, I’m here to take delivery of my Vice Presidency. I’m very excited because I know you’re a real aficionado of the VP, and I’ve heard good things about what you’ve done with it.”

Cheney growls.

“Is that it? Bless me, it’s beautiful! Is that a laser-gun mounted on the turret? And the seats are heated!”

More growling from Cheney.

“Dick! Don’t tell me that’s a nuclear missile launcher installed in the trunk? It’s Christmas in January! Lieberman better watch his back.”

Cheney lunges for the souped up VP, but is restrained by the FBI.

“Dick, I can’t tell you how grateful I am for your efforts. Your mother must have taught you to leave things as you would wish to find them. God rest her soul. Well, I got to go. I’ve got a rendezvous with some black helicopters to get to. A world government isn’t going to spring from Barry’s forehead.”

Biden does a vertical takeoff in the shiny VP, and launches a celebratory fusillade of automatic weapons fire into the sky.

Was that Seersucker or C*cksucker?

Well, certainly all those powers that Cheney claimed should be removed from the vice-presidency.

Except one: the VP should be allowed to shoot lawyers in the face. ESPECIALLY if they teach law school at UT, and their initials are GR.

I think that’s in the constitution, written in invisible ink somewhere between the lines of the 25th amendment. Really, the only problem is that recent VPs haven’t exercised it vigorously enough.

When I was a kid I learned that spares should be rotated. But that was before radials and directional tread tires.

Now there’s a concept, rotating Presidents. Five of them, like the five tires on or in your car, each on seventy-two day shifts, so all five Presidents-elect alternate every station every calendar year.

We don’t want to give up the tradition of the White House, so we’ll have them all live and work there. With the exception, of course, of the Vice President.

At any given moment, one of the Presidents-elect is the Vice President. Safe – pristine – in his cold, silent undisclosed-location underground bunker his one and only job all day and night is to sit and wait, coiled to leap, for the unlikely but ever-possible abrupt demise of the acting President himself. Deep in the dark bunker, the Vice President waits, and waits, and broods.

Next in the cycle is the job of Press Secretary. Here, seventy-two days in a row he looks the Main Stream Media and Helen Thomas straight in the eye, and says whatever needs to be said.

The next step is to appointed as a Cabinet Secretary of a random department. The department is chosen by lottery, but the lottery is supervised by the previous Secretary of whatever. Here intra-Presidential acrimony is sharpest and most naked, war indoors.

A brief purgative is necessary after all the horrible back-stabbing of the Secretarial phase; for the following seventy-two day task our President-elect is appointed White House cook.

Finally he arises to the glory of the active Presidency itself! Seventy-two days of majestic autonomy, of ultimate responsibility!

If you count carefully, this scheme leaves America for twenty-one days or so in every four-year term un-Presidented. These days are to be officially declared jubilee days. What I have in mind is something like Mardi Gras, but nationwide.