The Hound Of Ulster

The Drudge front page is making me sick to my stomach.

Voting Machines Woes Cause Early Delays…
Poll Workers Struggle With Touchscreen Tech…
*PA Problems…
**UPDATE: Polls ordered to stay open late in Indiana…
***Denver: Problems…
****Fixing charges fly in Utah town…
*****Ky. Poll Worker Charged With ‘Choking Voter’…
******Hundreds Get Wrong Ballots In Central Florida…
*******FBI Investigating Va. Voter Calls…
********Dem lawyers in TN going to court to keep polls open late…
*********FEDS SEND 850 OBSERVERS TO 22 STATES…
**********S.C. Governor Forgets ID, Turned Away by Poll Worker…
***********BOMB THREAT AT WISCONSIN POLLING PLACE…
************RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE: Man Smashes Touchscreen Voting Device in Pennsylvania…
GOP Control of Congress Hangs in Balance…
NYT: For Dems, Even a Gain May Feel Like a Failure…
Eastern States Seen As Election Key…
GOP: BEWARE OF EXIT POLLS…
PAPER: Election Outcome Expected To Be Known Early…

Yuck.

Jonah makes a good POINT. Frustrating, but true.

The more I think about it, the more likely tonight is going to be excruciating. Oh, I don’t mean for partisan reasons — i.e. because the GOP will get beaten like that fantasy beating of Tim Robbins in High Fidelity — I mean because in virtually every close race the absentee ballots will need to be counted which means we may not know the results of any of the nail-biters by tomorrow morning.

I could afford to hear more about this Tim Robbins beating, though.

The SC Governor STORY was amusing. And mildly encouraging.

And then there’s always THIS sort of thing. Which prompts THIS sort of thing.

HERE are the NRO folks predictions.

Oh, and HERE is a story that reminds me of how important pundits are.

Early returns in Tuesday’s midterm elections should offer hints of what’s to come, the first whiff of whether Democrats can seize the House and possibly the Senate.

Most of the heavily contested, down-to-the-wire races are east of the Mississippi River, in states with relatively early poll closing times. If a Democratic rout is going to happen, it will be clear from the first votes.

Translation: when results are in, we’ll be able to say what’s happening.

Thanks.

Talking about the Supreme Court and abortion on a day when the GOP might lose majorities in both the House and the Senate is somewhere between terrifying and terribly terrifying.

But TOMORROW is the day.

In what is probably the most important abortion controversy to reach the Supreme Court since it salvaged most of Roe v. Wade in 1992, the Supreme Court on Wednesday devotes two hours of argument to the constitutionality of the federal law that – for the first time – sought to outlaw nationwide an abortion procedure.

…

Unless Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a fervent dissenter in 2000, who complained about the majority’s inability to see the moral dimensions of the “partial-birth” procedure, is to switch sides this time, the federal ban may survive unless either Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., or Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., helps to make a fifth vote to follow Stenberg’s lead. Going into the Wednesday hearing, that seems like a long shot.

But opponents of the federal ban have not written off Kennedy. Indeed, a pair of their key points – first, about the virtue of following precedent (stare decisis) and, second, about the Court’s need to protect its constitutional decisions from simple legislative overruling by Congress – are issues on which Kennedy has sometimes been sympathetic. Indeed, he was one of the three Justices who worked out the compromise in 1992 (Casey v. Planned Parenthood) to reaffirm the basic abortion right declared in Roe v. Wade. And it was his opinion for the majority in City of Boerne v. Flores in 1997 that bluntly told Congress it could not overturn a constitutional ruling by a mere statute.

Captain Ed RECOGNIZES the major implications of today’s elections.

Ironically, this comes a day after the nation’s voters will determine whether the Senate will allow more strict-constructionist judicial nominees to be confirmed to the nation’s courts, especially the Supreme Court. The Times analyzes the changes in the court over the past six years, and acknowledges the impact that John Roberts and Samuel Alito will have on this decision, especially the latter.

This case holds heavy implications for the concept of the primacy of the people’s representatives, no matter how one feels about the specific procedures. Where no text in the Constitution applies to the specifics of the case, the Court should defer to Congress on all matters of policy. That, in a nutshell, is what judicial modesty means, and one has to wonder whether Roberts and Alito will stick with that philosophy in the face of the six-year-old precedent. They will face tremendous pressure to recant in favor of stare decisis, not just from activists but from other members of the Court who supported the Nebraska ruling.

Scary.

I am not looking forward to this. Not because I’m depressed, or anything. But because things seem to have gotten so ugly. I feel like our political process is nowhere near the founders’ ideals at the moment.

Still, it’s the system we have at the moment. We can start fixing it first thing tomorrow. Right now, we’ll have to see how this one plays out.

Here are some cheery folks. (I’m linking to them because they’re rare. Lots of the other kind of predictions around, so these stand out.)

Dean Barnett is CONFIDENT.

9) Underperforming expectations – seems like that’s been a pattern for Democratic candidates the last couple of years.

Yes, and that’s been the single most underreported aspect of this entire election season. Paul Hackett looked like he was poised to win. Didn’t happen. Francine Busby looked like she was going to win – didn’t happen. Ned Lamont was supposed to win by double digits – he won by four.

Now everyone seems to think that all the close races will wind up in the Democratic column. I just don’t see it. I guess I’m seeing patterns that not too many other people are.

So is WATCHMAN’S WORDS.

No one is talking about Republican pickups, but even in 1994 four Democrats won Republican seats. I know 1994. 1994 was a friend of mine. And 2006, you’re no 1994.

Geraghty’s OBI WAN is, too.

So… Obi Wan emphasizes that we can’t completely rule out the possibility of the Democrats still winning the House and having a good night. But there is a big, clear wave breaking the Republicans’ way in just about every competitive race coast to coast, and it could mean results very, very different from what the Washington crowd expected.

Captain Ed REPORTS on Europe’s opinion.

There’s nothing wrong with our friends in Europe expressing their opinions on American politics. We often do the same thing here. However, it seems rather telling that the same people who have cocooned themselves into a crumbling nanny-state economy want the Democrats to come to power in order to have more company. It’s just another reminder of the likely direction that a Democratic Congress will take, and another point of consideration for voters today.

And Orson Scott Card SPEAKS his piece. (HT: AKIN)

There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that’s the War on Terror.

And the success of the War on Terror now teeters on the fulcrum of this election.

If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.

Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case — if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.

But at least there will be a chance.

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America’s role as a light among nations.

But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party seems hellbent on losing it — and in the most damaging possible way — I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its own temporary partisan advantages.

To all intents and purposes, when the Democratic Party jettisoned Joseph Lieberman over the issue of his support of this war, they kicked me out as well. The party of Harry Truman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan — the party I joined back in the 1970s — is dead. Of suicide.

THIS is supposed to be a good place for tracking results. And now I’m off to listen to the Brandenburg Concertos. There is no better way to stay calm.

Bond BLEEDS, apparently.

For decades, the debate among 007 fans has been who is the best Bond — Sean Connery or Roger Moore.

Now a new contender has arrived, in the shape of Daniel Craig — the blond 38-year-old, who despite being a cold-blooded killer, manages to fall in love with his Bond girl and show emotional vulnerability.

The critics were struggling to contain their excitement last night, ahead of the first British screening of the 21st Bond film, Casino Royale. And when they came out of the showing, they were thrilled.

I’m not a Bond fan, really. But I enjoy Craig quite a bit. And the trailer looks like a very different kind of film that the Brosnan ones. Or the Connery ones, as well. And look at this statement:

There is no sexual innuendo in this film; Craig’s Bond is more sophisticated than that.

Nice to see someone admit that innuendo is not sophisticated. As for the claim itself, I’ll have to wait and see. That would definitely be taking the films in a very new (and good) direction.

Novak has some interesting thoughts on the Talent-McCaskill race. (Sorry, couldn’t stay completely away.)

The x-factor, which we believe will cut decisively in Talent’s favor, is Amendment 2, the cloning and stem-cell amendment on the ballot. Whether it succeeds or fails, the balloting on Amendment 2 will be very close, and its opponents are much more motivated to vote than its supporters. More people may vote for it, but few will go out specifically to vote for it. Its presence on the ballot can only help Talent in a race that promises to come down to a few thousand votes.

He also has this on The Two:

Whether it passes or not — and there is very real doubt that it will — the margin will be so slim as to call into question whether embryonic stem-cell research is such a great issue for Democrats — and that goes double if Steele scores an upset in Maryland and Talent pulls out the victory in Missouri, despite the Michael J. Fox ads against those candidates on the stem-cell issue.

Michael Barone has a great POST. (Yeah, I know. Redundant. But I like to say it every now and then anyway.)

He makes a point that has been bothering me for a long time, though. And that’s why I find this post particularly good.

On the whole issue of WMDs in Iraq, I keep coming back to the thought that no responsible American or allied leader could assume, before March 2003, that Iraq was not developing weapons of mass destruction. It had developed and used them in the past, and it refused to cooperate with weapons inspectors. If your duty is to protect Americans, what piece of intelligence could convince you that Iraq was not developing WMDs? In my view, there was no need to continue the inspection process in 2002 and 2003, and we evidently did so to get the support of Britain and other allies.

It’s tragic that the failure to find much in the way of ongoing WMD programs has been used to delegitimize the overthrow of Saddam. But that’s the prevailing meme in MSM.

Combination back-seat drivers and Monday morning quarterbacks. Of course, that’s why the whole “BushLied” approach is so important. Because if it really does boil down to Bush (and pretty much everyone else, no matter what Wilson says) being wrong, people are going to remember their glass houses.

Note to entire world: not finding WMD’s does not mean that the invasion was wrong. (If the invasion was wrong, it will not be for those reasons, no matter how hard folks try to re-write 3/2003.)

And HERE is something I started to write about, but had to stop. I was getting way too angry. And besides, a lot of other people have written on it, and much better than I can.

“A very disabled child can mean a disabled family. If life-shortening and deliberate interventions to kill infants were available, they might have an impact on obstetric decision-making, even preventing some late abortions, as some parents would be more confident about continuing a pregnancy and taking a risk on outcome.”

…

Joy Delhanty, professor of human genetics at University College London, said: “I would support these views. I think it is morally wrong to strive to keep alive babies that are then going to suffer many months or years of very ill health.”

Dr Richard Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, who has admitted hastening the death of two severely handicapped newborn babies when he was a junior doctor in the 1970s, said: “I wouldn’t argue against this.” He spoke of the “pain, distress and discomfort” of severely handicapped babies.

The college’s submission was also welcomed by John Harris, a member of the government’s Human Genetics Commission and professor of bioethics at Manchester University. “We can terminate for serious foetal abnormality up to term but cannot kill a newborn. What do people think has happened in the passage down the birth canal to make it okay to kill the foetus at one end of the birth canal but not at the other?” he said.

Edna Kennedy of Newcastle upon Tyne, whose son suffered epidermolysis bullosa, said: “In extremely controlled circumstances, where the baby is really suffering, it should be an option for the mother.”

I agree with John Harris - at least the point he is actually making. Not, however, the one I suspect he is trying to make.

Sparta all over again. Just for all the wrong reasons. Could we try adopting the “detachment from earthly goods and pleasures” part of their system, and drop the “killing babies because we’re not happy with them” part?

Just a thought.

(HT: SOME HAVE HATS and Rob)