Some final thoughts, before I head back to the hotel and try to rinse all this strained GOP enthusiasm (and a splash or two of barmaid, whose name I’ve forgotten) off of me: 1) Were one to scroll through the photos of the PJM Xpress bloggers — the new mainstream GOP media’s picks for who gets to frame “conservatism” on the web for the next few years — one cannot

From Jammie Wearing Fool: Shocking, isn’t it? The man who is President Obama’s newly minted urban czar pocketed thousands of dollars in campaign cash from city developers whose projects he approved or funded with taxpayers’ money, a Daily News probe found. Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion often received contributions just before or after he sponsored money for projects or approved important zoning changes, records show. Most donations were organized and

The art advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged a visiting Hollywood delegation to apologise for “insults and slanders” about Iranians in films, the ISNA news agency reported on Saturday. “(Iranian) cinema officials will only have the right to have official sessions with… Hollywood movie makers when they apologise to the Iranians for their 30 years of insults and slanders,” Javad Shamaghdari said. “The Iranian people and our revolution has been

Hot chicks with conservatives edition! Knuckle-draggers Patrick Poole says bloggers were the red-headed stepchildren of CPAC, and adds: This year’s CPAC was the largest on record. It was encouraging to see the large herds of students moving throughout the hotel. Unfortunately, the constant theme those students heard during this year’s CPAC was that the proper role of the conservative movement is as cheerleader for the GOP. I must strongly dissent.

Andrew McCarthy at NRO: Indiana law professor Dawn Johnsen, Pres. Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Justice Department’s all-important Office of Legal Counsel, had her Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday. During questioning by Sen. Arlen Specter, the professor professed to be “shocked” by my contention that she had once analogized pregnancy to involuntary servitude, a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition of slavery. I made this contention in a profile of

Report 2: Again, nothing much happening here today — one of the bright lights of the mainstream conservative movement went on air and gushed that everyone who matters to conservatism is here at CPAC (thank God I decided to crash this bitch; I don’t think my psyche could have withstood further marginalization) before going on to interview an Obama bolster with whom he had a good chuckle over how dumb

But first vet the hire. Yet another installment in The Neverending Story, Instapundit via Riehl: White House general counsel Gregory Craig has seized control of Obama’s vetting process after a series of nominees with unpaid taxes. But his wife’s business may also have avoided taxes. Who vets the vetter? And a source within the D.C. government has told Culligan that authorities have begun a full-fledged investigation into Noyes Graphics. (The

Ed Morrissey blows it. Hotness!

Jawa has up some good video from the Chicago Tea Party. You will have seen most of this already, but Flopping Aces has a video that should be shown over and over and over. I’m going to keep on mentioning how absurd it was for Time to list 25 people to blame for the mortgage meltdown without naming a single Congresscritter. Here’s Frontline’s program on the issue. Who’s missing from

Next question: to where should they be redeployed? Three and a half years after Hurricane Katrina, the National Guard is pulling the last of its troops out of New Orleans this weekend, leaving behind a city still desperate and dangerous. Residents long distrustful of the city’s police force are worried they will have to fend for themselves. “I don’t know if crime will go up after these guys leave. But