Over at Word Around the Net there’s some pretty good, true (supposedly) anecdotes from a book called Disorder in the Court: Great Fractured Moments in Courtroom History. Here’s one, just to whet your appetite:

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

As I said: cruel.

Crossposted at Moe Lane.

Gene Taylor (D) represents a conservative district in Mississippi, and he apparently realizes that if Barack Obama’s agenda proves unpopular, he’ll be in the crosshairs in 2010:

Mississippi Democratic Rep. Gene Taylor blasted the budget outline President Obama submitted to Capitol Hill today, saying “I don’t like it…change is not running up even bigger deficits that George Bush did.”

“That’s what George Bush did very well. Apparently that’s what President Obama is doing.”

Taylor talks a good game. He voted against the stimulus, and he’ll probably vote against many of the individual elements of Obama’s budget when they come before Congress in bill form. But Taylor shouldered a share of the responsibility for the Obama deficits, and the Obama defense cuts, when he voted for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker. With that vote, the die was cast for big deficits, big spending, and defense cuts. Hopefully Taylor will have a vigorous opponent in 2010 who will remind his constituents of that fact.

How Much Is a Million? Only seven bucks, and goodness knows that it’s written at a level that even our most egregious Democratic spending artists will be able to comprehend by… the second or third reading, tops.

Congressional addresses here; Senatorial ones here; and, of course, the President lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (zip code is 20500, which is… odd, when you think about it.  00001 would have been cooler).  Pat Cleary had this idea first, and I am so totally down with passing it along…

Crossposted at Moe Lane.

There is a reason for the title. At this point, if Senator Burris decides to stay in, it will only be to give the voters a chance to kick him around and kick him out in 2010.

The federal government already owns some banks, is it time to add an automaker? General Motors is more insolvent than Medicare and Social Security. If Barack Obama intends to preserve this dinosaur, it’s going to take hundreds of billions:

[General Motors], dependent on government aid for survival, reported a fourth-quarter loss of $9.6bn, bringing the 2008 loss to $30.9bn. GM has racked up losses totalling $86.6bn during the past four years.

Adding to its woes, GM disclosed that its pension fund, one of the biggest in the US, has swung in the past year from a $20bn surplus to a $12.4bn deficit.

Kimberly Rodriguez, a restructuring specialist at Grant Thornton, described the going-concern tag as “a stamp on a situation that we all already recognise. The key is how people react. It does provide a vehicle for someone to get out of a lending situation or a commercial agreement.”

Ms Rodriguez said the doubt over GM’s status underlined the need for speedy decisions – one way or the other – on future government aid, not only for GM but also its parts suppliers.

GM has received $13.4bn in emergency loans from the US government and last week applied for another $16.6bn.

In addition, its foreign subsidiaries have asked for aid from governments in Canada, Germany, the UK, Sweden, Thailand and South Korea.

That’s seven countries that are paying to keep General Motors on life support. It would be much cheaper to start a car company from scratch - but that would sound a death knell for the United Auto Workers. Will Barack Obama stand with the union, or the taxpayers?

Courtesy of The Other McCain’s camera comes this photograph of Pajamas Media/TV/etc. mogul Roger Simon and Allahpundit’s favorite economist, Michelle Muccio, taken today at CPAC 2k9.

…and he screams very entertainingly about it here and here. (H/T: Instapundit)

OK, so I’m being unsympathetic; after all…

…nah, I feel like sticking with being unsympathetic. Enjoy the next four years, Marty.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

And no, David Brooks doesn’t qualify.

It bears asking anew: How, precisely, do we expect the recently-passed stimulus package to work when no one has read it?

Funny, the “reality-based community” always portrayed itself as being more intellectually serious than it turned out to be.