The country’s just going to hell in a handbasket. The vice president’s dropping F bombs, and our own Bubba Cromer can’t put out a little lighthearted entertainment without it getting all trashed up:

A former state representative has sued a pair of cable giants for confusing his film with a film he describes as soft-core porn.

James “Bubba” Cromer, who served in the House from 1991-1998, produced a film titled “The Hills have Thighs,” a satire. Cromer claims pay-cable channels HBO and Showtime promoted the airing of Cromer’s film but instead aired a different, sexually explicit film.

Cromer, according to a news release, is suing after telling family and friends through social networking sites his film would air.

“To Plaintiff’s horror, the film that Showtime and HBO exhibited as his work was in fact soft-core pornography, with which (Cromer) had absolutely nothing to do,” a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court says. “Defendants’ wrongful representations that (Cromer) is involved in making and co-starred in a pornographic film have subjected (Cromer) to extreme scorn, humiliation and emotional distress.”

“It’s the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies? Who can smell out the fox without running with him?” He made an awful stab at humour: “Mole, rather,” he said, in a confiding aside.

— Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Today I discovered an interesting blog at the Washington Post site: Spy Talk, all about what’s going on in the secret world. I’ve always been fascinated by reading news accounts about intelligence, and not just because I’m a big Le Carre and Len Deighton fan. There’s something ironic, a certain existential tension, between the worlds of intelligence-gathering and journalism. They are two universes that are not supposed to intersect — or rather, they intersect if the journalist is good at his job and the spy is bad at his. Unless, of course, the journalist is being used by the spy for disinformation, in which case it’s the other way around.

The fascinating thing about the intelligence world is that everything is up for question as to whether the reality you’re perceiving is real. It’s that way looking at it from the outside, and it’s that way on the inside. Are you dealing with a defector, or a double agent? Or a triple? (Not to start another argument about Iraq, but I’ve always thought it odd that people will look at Bush administration intelligence errors and assume, simplistically, “Bush lied,” utterly ignoring the fact that with intelligence, you very often have to make an active decision as to WHICH intelligence you will believe and act on, and if you assume that the policymaker who chose the wrong intelligence KNEW it was wrong, you’re essentially assuming that person was omniscient — which is ironic, given that Bush’s detractors generally think the opposite of him.)

Anyway, that ambiguity found a dramatic, and deadly, expression in the Khost bombing in late December. You know, that was the terrorist attack that actually killed seven Americans, as opposed to the one that didn’t kill anybody that same week, but which the news mavens went on and on about. In the actual deadly attack, seven CIA officers who should have known better let a double — or triple, depending on how you’re counting — agent get close enough to blow them and himself up in the Afghan province of Khost.

Now, Jeff Stein reports on the Spy Talk blog:

Nearly three months after an al-Qaeda double agent obliterated an important CIA team in Afghanistan, veteran spies remain agitated over the incident and the agency’s seeming inability to fix longtime operational flaws.

The latest eruption over the Dec. 30 incident that killed seven CIA officers and contractors in a powerful suicide fireball comes from Robert Baer, the former clandestine operations officer who has been pillorying his former employer in books, articles and television interviews since shortly the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But other agency veterans have been weighing in as well, and increasingly, on the record.

Writing in the April issue of GQ magazine, Baer depicts a spy agency where “the operatives’ sun started to set” in the 1990s and never recovered.

So it was that the spy agency sent an analyst to do an operative’s work in Khost, in desolate southeast Afghanistan, last year. Traditionally, the CIA’s station chiefs, or top agency officer in a country, and its base chiefs, deployed in outlying offices, were veteran case officers, or seasoned spy handlers….

I don’t know whether this Baer guy is right, but apparently we still have a ways to go to get humint where it should be…

Last week, we lost one of our regulars here on the blog: Greg Flowers, a man who personified the kind of civility and thoughtfulness that has always been the goal of this community.

I don’t know if you saw his obituary over the weekend, but here’s what ran on thestate.com:

William Flowers

COLUMBIA – William “Greg” Flowers, 52, died March 15, 2010. Born August 6, 1957, in Columbia he was a son of the late William L. and Nancy Green Flowers. He was a graduate of the University of South Carolina School of Law and the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn. Surviving are his brother, Steve Flowers of Columbia, and several cousins. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the United Way, 1800 Main St., Columbia, SC 29201. Please sign the online guestbook at www.dunbarfunerals.com.

Greg first started commenting on the old blog in the last year or so of its active existence. His very last comment was a good example of what we had come to expect from Greg. On Dec. 10, the last time we heard from him, he took me to task gently but firmly, demanding in his own reasonable way that I — who talk so much about civility — be fairer to him and others of the small-government point of view. Here is that last comment:

I think you make a mistake when you assume all small government types (and I am one) want to, as you so often quote Grover Norquist as saying, shrink government to a size where it can be drowned in the bathtub. That is a gross overgeneralization. I doubt Nikki Haley wants no government. She has been active in the governmental process. One who wants less government than you do is not an anarchist, merely one who feels that 1) in some areas we could get buy with less regulation; 2) many functions performed by government could be contracted to private firms with government acting as contract administrator; and 3) many necessary function are currently performed inefficiently as a result of the lack of a profit motive. While I know you find those who want less government than you to be tedious and nonsensical I find your broad brush mischaracterizations to be the same.
I don’t mean to be uncivil here, I just wish you would listen to what each individual is saying before you drop them under a handy label.

I smile when I read that, because whenever Greg called attention to my own failure to be sufficiently civil, he was generally right on the money. And I appreciated it, and him — even though we never met.

Greg was waked by his friends yesterday at Goatfeathers. And here the ironies abound. I learned of that wake today from Robert Ariail, who knew Greg personally rather than just in the blogosphere. I asked Robert what time Greg’s friends had gathered. He said 2 p.m. Wow. I was right across the street at that time having lunch and a couple of beers (it being Sunday, and Sunday not counting in Lent) with my wife and youngest daughter.

I pointed that out, and Robert said, “You realize the day before was our anniversary?…” And yes, I did. In the early evening of March 20, 2009, Robert and I left The State for the last time and headed for Yesterday’s. We each had a pint there, where the owner of Goatfeathers (another old friend of Robert’s) found us and insisted we go over to his place and have a few on him. So we went to Goatfeathers and, you might say, had an impromptu wake for our newspaper careers.

But my virtual friendship with Greg was not of the past, or so I would have thought. The kind of civil forum that he was instrumental in trying to build is a continuing laboratory in which we try to discover what will come after newspapers. I truly appreciate Greg’s sincere contributions to that endeavor.

He will be missed here at bradwarthen.com.

Here’s are your top stories:

1. Democrats hail landmark US healthcare bill — Dems engage in hyperbole competition, from Obama talking about “the call of history” to Clyburn (who got his picture on the BBC site) saying “This is the Civil Rights Act of the 21st century.” Meanwhile, Republicans hold an equal and opposite contest to exaggerate how bad it is…
2. Sidebar on political impact — Seriously, the political rhetoric has been wacky enough to take a separate look at that…
3. And what does it mean to YOU — Hey, I still haven’t figured out what it means to ME, but my situation is weird. Maybe you can find out how it affects you from one of the various stories out there that attempt to accomplish that, such as this one, or this one or this one.
4. Hillary Clinton warns Israel faces ‘difficult’ choices — The war of words continues.
5. Ex-official: S.C. gas tax ‘inadequate’ — There’s nothing new about this, but since most South Carolinians, particularly those in the State House, live their lives as though they don’t know this, it’s worth putting this on the front. The state tax on gasoline isn’t high enough even to keep our roads in good repair, much less to achieve Energy Party goals.
6. U-2 staging a big comeback — And no, we’re not talking about an Irish rock band. The spy plane that once carried Gary Powers into Soviet hands is still in active use over Afghanistan.

Their attorneys general are all promising to file suit against the health care bill.

And yes, some of those states were not actually a  part of the Confederacy. But they’re out West, which means they were settled by people who couldn’t get along with other folks well enough to stay back East. Hence their radical libertarianism, which sometimes makes them indistinguishable from a certain flavor of white South Carolinian with which we are all familiar…

So what’s my explanation for Pennsylvania and Florida? Hey, don’t look at me! No theory is perfect…

OK, this is from a fairly left-wing source (someone who had once hoped that the populist left could find some areas of agreement with the populist right, whereas I don’t really have time for any of ’em), but she does cite some fairly mainstream sources — which, of course, being an ideologue, she has to apologize for. This was brought to my attention by Kathryn Fenner, by the way.

So ignore the fact that she can’t spell Jim Clyburn’s name, and note how this fits with my previously expressed concerns about the overlap between the tea party movement and racism in this country:

A year later, though, it’s worth more of my time to say what many resist: The tea party movement is disturbingly racist and reactionary, from its roots to its highest branches. On Saturday, as a small group of protesters jammed the Capitol and the streets around it, the movement’s origins in white resistance to the Civil Rights Movement was impossible to ignore. Here’s only what the mainstream media is reporting, ignoring what I’m seeing on Twitter and left wing blogs:

• Civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis was taunted by tea partiers who chanted “nigger” at least 15 times, according to the Associated Press (we are not cleaning up language and using “the N-word” here because it’s really important to understand what was said.) First reported on The Hill blog (no hotbed of left-wing fervor), the stories of Lewis being called “nigger” were confirmed by Lewis spokeswoman Brenda Jones and Democratic Rep. Andre Carson, who was walking with Lewis. “It was like going into the time machine with John Lewis,” said Carson, a former police officer. “He said it reminded him of another time.”
• Another Congressional Black Caucus leader, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, was spat upon by protesters. The culprit was arrested, but Cleaver declined to press charges.
• House Majority Whip James Clybourn told reporters: “I heard people saying things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to try to get off the back of the bus.”
• There were many reports that Rep. Barney Frank was called a “faggot” by protesters, but the one I saw personally was by CNN’s Dana Bash, who seemed rattled by the tea party fury. Frank told AP: “It’s a mob mentality that doesn’t work politically.”
• Meanwhile, a brick came through the window at Rep. Louise Slaughter’s Niagara Falls office on Saturday (the day she argued for her “Slaughter solution” to pass health care reform, though it was rejected by other Democrats on the House Rules Committee).

On Thursday MSNBC’s “Hardball” host Chris Matthews grilled tea party Astroturf leader Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity about supporters who taunted a man with Parkinson’s disease at a tea party gathering in Ohio last week. Phillips insisted the bullies just didn’t represent the tea party movement. But such demurrals don’t cut it any more. At the Nashville tea party gathering last month, a proponent of the kinder, gentler tea party movement, Judson Phillips, tried to distance himself from crazed and racist elements – but later endorsed racist speaker Tom Tancredo even after he told the convention: “People who could not even spell the word ‘vote’, or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.” Tancredo blamed Obama’s election on the fact that “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.” He got some of the loudest cheers of the weekend.

So I’m having a hard time tonight trying to believe almost uniformly white tea partiers are anything other than a racist, right-wing reaction to the election of an African American president…

When I saw the headline “Wilson Condemns Health Care Bill” on an e-mail, I thought, “No kidding.” The only thing that made me wonder is that Joe Wilson’s people had forgotten to put “Takeover” into the headline the way they usually do.

But it wasn’t from Joe Wilson, but from his son Alan, who’s running for Attorney General. Unfortunately, Alan’s purpose in writing was to let me know that he admires Henry McMaster’s absurd gesture, and apparently would do the same thing were he to win the office.

Which is not encouraging.

Anyway, here’s the release:

Dear Friends,

As a father, I want to ensure that our constitution remains intact for my children and my grandchildren.

That is why, as Attorney General, I will stand up for the people of South Carolina and the Constitution of the United States, which I have defended at home and abroad.

As Attorney General, I will use whatever means necessary to block the unconstitutional expansion of the federal government – even if it means filing a lawsuit to block the government takeover of health care,  block cap and trade, force the federal government to keep its promise regarding Yucca Mountain,  or most importantly to save an innocent life.

We cannot stand idle or remain silent while this administration and liberals in Congress try to send our nation down the slippery slope of socialism.

I applaud Attorneys General from across the nation including our own Henry McMaster, Florida’s Bill McCollum and Virginia’s Ken Cuccinelli. These men have stood up for the constitutions of their states and the nation and I will follow their example as South Carolina’s next Attorney General.

What is most troubling about this bill is not the arrogance of Washington, the corruption of some inside the beltway, or the sheer disrespect some in Congress have for the Constitution – it is the fact that this bill forces states to pick up the bill for health care.

This bill charts a course for our federal and state governments to end up in the middle of a perfect storm of debt and bills as early as 2016.

As Attorney General, I would file injunction after injunction returning the bills for government run health care to their senders – Congress and the federal government.

In this economy, the last thing we needed was this atrocity of a health care bill. It raises taxes, expands bureaucracy, burdens employers, and uses our tax dollars to pay for abortions while limiting coverage for senior citizens.

This bill is bad medicine. It is bad policy. It is bad economics. And if I’m elected Attorney General, I will fight it tooth and nail all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

Doing so requires your help. Would you be willing to become part of my campaign and make phone calls, host a meet and greet, or contribute $10, $25, or $50.

We can still defeat this bill – but doing so will require an Attorney General with the courage to lead and keep our families safe.

I want to be that Attorney General.

Sincerely,

Alan Wilson

P.S. Would you mind replying to this e-mail with your personal endorsement so that we can add you to our leadership team?

Just now I called up an AP story at thestate.com about an immigration demonstration in Washington yesterday, and saw the above picture with this cutline:

Demonstrator Adrian Corona of Columbia, S.C. shouts slogans during a rally for immigration reform on the National Mall in Washington, on Sunday, March 21, 2010.
– Jose Luis Magana /AP Photo

There’s nothing about South Carolina in the story, though, except for the fact that our own Lindsey Graham is leading the charge to try once again to achieve comprehensive immigration reform:

Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., released an outline of a bill last week that calls for illegal immigrants who want to get on the path to legal status to admit they broke the law by entering the U.S., pay fines and back taxes, and perform community service. They also would be required to pass background checks and be proficient in English before working toward legal residency, required before becoming a citizen.

The fact that Lindsey is courageously trying to take this on again compensates somewhat for his hyperbolic yowling against the health care reform bill, such as in this release from last night:

“The Democrats may have won today in the House of Representatives, but the American
people lost.  Higher taxes, more government control of health care, and Enron-style
accounting define this bill.  The upcoming elections will be a referendum on the
substance and process used to pass it.  I believe it will be a clear choice.
Republicans will pick up a lot of votes from people who think this is bad for their
business, their family, and the process used to pass it was sleazy.

“I am committed to repealing this multi-trillion dollar health care nightmare and
replacing it with bipartisan reform that will lower costs and improve access.”

Nightmare? Come, now, Lindsey — really. It may not be the greatest thing since sliced bread the way Jim Clyburn lets on. Seems like pretty thin gruel to me. But nightmare? Come on…

And I say that while sharing Lindsey’s concern that this use of reconciliation may poison the well on other important legislation — such as his immigration bill. But that’s no reason to make the legislation itself out to be worse than it is.

OK, I’m a little confused here. I had thought John Spratt was pretty much for the health care reform bill.

But National Review Online seems to think there’s a chance of changing his mind, because they put his name on this list:

If you want to make your voice heard on the health-care bill before the House votes on Sunday, you’d better do so quickly. To make things easier for you, here, organized in alphabetical order by state, are the 40 key Democratic members of Congress whom Jeff Anderson and Andy Wickersham identified in a Critical Condition post last week, together with their direct Capitol Hill office phone numbers. (I haven’t kept track of all the developments since then, but it would be useful to congratulate or berate your member, as you see fit, if he or she has firmly adopted a position.)

The “(S)” means that the member voted for the Stupak amendment last fall.

The full House phone directory is here.

“Yes” on Obamacare Last Time but Might Want to Switch:

Gabrielle Giffords, (D., Ariz.)—202-225-2542

Ann Kirkpatrick, (D., Ariz.)—202-225-2315

Harry Mitchell, (D., Ariz.)—202-225-2190

Vic Snyder, (D., Ariz.) (S)—202-225-2506

Marion Berry, (D., Ark.) (S)—202-225-4076

John Salazar, (D., Colo.) (S)—202-225-4761

Melissa Bean, (D., Ill.) —202-225-3711

Bill Foster, (D., Ill.) —202-225-2976

Joe Donnelly, (D., Ind.) (S) —202-225-3915

Brad Ellsworth, (D., Ind.) (S) —202-225-4636

Baron Hill, (D., Ind.) (S) —202-225-5315

Bart Stupak, (D., Mich.) (S) —202-225-4735

Michael Arcuri, (D., N.Y.) —202-225-3665

Tim Bishop, (D., N.Y.) —202-225-3826

Bob Etheridge, (D., N.C.) (S) —202-225-4531

Earl Pomeroy, (D., N.D.) (S) —202-225-2611

Steve Driehaus, (D., Ohio) (S) —202-225-2216

Zach Space, (D., Ohio) (S) —202-225-6265

Charlie Wilson, (D., Ohio) (S) —202-225-5705

Chris Carney, (D., Pa.) (S) —202-225-3731

Kathleen Dahlkemper, (D., Pa.) (S) —202-225-5406

John Spratt, (D., S.C.) (S) —202-225-5501

Ciro Rodriguez, (D., Texas) (S) —202-225-4511

Solomon Ortiz, (D., Texas) (S) —202-225-7742

Tom Perriello, (D., Va.) (S) —202-225-4711

Alan Mollohan, (D., W.Va.) (S) —202-225-4172

Nick Rahall, (D., W.Va.) (S) —202-225-3452

“No” on Obamacare Last Time But Might Need Encouragement:

Mike Ross, (D., Ark.) (S) —202-225-3772

Betsy Markey, (D., Colo.) —202-225-4676

Allen Boyd, (D., Fla.) —202-225-5235

Suzanne Kosmas, (D., Fla.) —202-225-2706

John Barrow, (D., Ga.) (S) —202-225-2823

John Adler, (D., N.J.) —202-225-4765

Michael McMahon, (D., N.Y.) —202-225-3371

Scott Murphy, (D., N.Y.) —202-225-5614

Larry Kissell, (D., N.C.) —202-225-3715

John Boccieri, (D., Ohio) (S) —202-225-3876

John Tanner, (D., Tenn.) (S) —202-225-4714

Glenn Nye, (D., Va.) —202-225-4215

Brian Baird, (D., Wash.) —202-225-3536

Anyway, I was just thinking. If people who read National Review are calling these people, maybe some people who actually want health care reform should call, too…

Burl posted this over on his blog, the Honolulu Agonizer.

The title on YouTube is “Beautiful Time-Lapse of the Milky Way over Hawaii.”

My recommendation? Use that little doohickey in the lower right of the frame to crank it up to 720p HD, and click on the thing at the far right to make it go to full screen.

Pretty awesome.

Roger Ebert had also posted a link to it on Twitter, saying “We are so small. It is so large.” Amen to that.

Given the Hospital Association PAC’s decision to donate to Vincent Sheheen, and the fact that our state’s lawyer is threatening to sue the federal gummint over health care reform, and seeing as how I just quoted SC Hospital Association President and CEO Thornton Kirby about the Sheheen thing, it occurred to me that y’all might be interested in hearing what Mr. Kirby said about health care reform at the Columbia Rotary on Monday.

Here’s an audio recording, which begins just a few seconds into his talk. (I keep forgetting to turn the thing on before people start talking…)

I didn’t take a whole lot of notes — why should I, when I’m recording it? Duh.

But basically he played the role of an explainer. He clarified some things that shouldn’t have to be said, such as the fact that this is about health care insurance, not health care itself (despite all that wacky talk from people such as Joe Wilson about a gummint “takeover” of health care). He also noted how schizophrenic we are in this country, insisting upon the best of care, and outraged at what it costs.

At the end of his talk, I asked him if he knew of a good source for learning the specifics of what is currently being debated in Washington. He suggested the Kaiser Family Foundation. Here’s a link to that. There’s also an interesting comparison between the House and Senate plans here, by the NYT.

A newsy afternoon we’re having:

1. McMaster promises to “kill” health care reform — Remember that silly resolution that came out of the State House renewing the Nullification Crisis? That was mere symbolism. This is something done in the same mindset, only with a substantial intended effect.
2. Congress moves toward health care vote — Key Democratic votes were still in play, and the White House has gone to a full-court press. Also, the NYT provides a handy interactive graphic to explain what’s in the bill.
3. Judge moves Cromartie replacement election to June 15 — To go to the post about this and comment, follow this link. Find the judge’s ruling here.
4. Clinton Calls Israel’s Moves to Ease Tension ‘Useful’ — Hillary, in Moscow, tries to step down the rhetoric of the last few days.
5. Afghan Bombs Grow, Forcing Troops to Adapt — Just to remind us there’s a war on, this interesting and ominous piece in the WSJ tells about how the Taliban is “building bigger and bigger roadside bombs, eschewing the kinds of sophisticated munitions that were used in Iraq in favor of mammoth explosives capable of destroying any U.S. armored vehicle.”
6. Day Two of NCAA tournament — Just to throw a little fun onto the page. Note: I think this is the first appearance of sports on one of my front pages. Hey, it’s the weekend…

This morning over coffee, Steve Benjamin told me he expected Judge James Barber would postpone the District 2 election to replace E.W. Cromartie, and he was right.

This afternoon, the judge ruled against the April 6 date set by city council, and set it for June 15, according to several news sources. The State‘s Adam Beam Tweets that means “Filing March 29 to April 16; public notice of election on March 28 and April 4; election day June 15.”

Here’s a link to the judge’s ruling.

That should give the six or seven candidates seeking to replace the disgraced ex-councilman a decent amount of time to make their respective cases. Quoth the judge: “Citizens in this circumstance were disenfranchised completely by the compressed schedule established by defendant Council.”

Vincent Sheheen (2008 file photo by Brad Warthen)

Remember that gubernatorial debate I moderated for the S.C. Hospital Association? That was part of the Association’s discernment process as they tried to decide whom, if anyone, to back in the election.

The Association has not yet decided whom to endorse in that election, or even whether it will endorse, Association chief Thornton Kirby told me Friday afternoon.

But financial support is another matter. The Association’s PAC has decided to go ahead and contribute financially to the Vincent Sheheen campaign. Mr. Kirby said that doesn’t mean the Association will necessarily endorse him, and it doesn’t mean the PAC won’t contribute to other campaigns. But so far, Sen. Sheheen is the only gubernatorial candidate the PAC has decide to contribute to. That reflects the fact that “He’s so solidly out there on some things that are important to us,” said Mr. Kirby.

The Sheheen campaign was celebrating the decision today:

SOUTH CAROLINA HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE VOTES TO SUPPORT VINCENT SHEHEEN FOR GOVERNOR

Columbia, SC — This week the South Carolina Hospital Association Political Action Committee (SCHAPAC) voted unanimously to support State Sen. Vincent Sheheen in the Democratic primary for governor.

“We believe that Vincent Sheheen will be a governor who will work with members of the legislature to get South Carolina moving forward again,” said SCHA CEO Thornton Kirby. “South Carolina’s hospitals can be confident that if elected governor, Sheheen will collaborate with health care providers to ensure South Carolinians have access to quality, affordable health care. He recognizes the important role hospitals play in our communities and how they contribute to the economic health of our state. We believe that his vision for creating a health care economy and his commitment to forging a working relationship with the hospitals in our state is in the best interest of South Carolina’s future.”

In response to receiving the support of the South Carolina Hospital Association Political Action Committee, Sen. Sheheen offered the following comments:

“I’m honored to receive the backing of these dedicated health care professionals. It is critical that our hospitals have a seat at the table when discussing the economic future of our state. We need to develop and cultivate a health care economy that creates health care jobs in all parts of our state. The success of our hospital system is a vital component in putting South Carolina back on the path to success, and I look forward to working with health care providers to improve the health and quality of life of all South Carolinians. I am grateful to have their support. ”

# # #

You know why this PAC is putting it’s money behind Vincent Sheheen, as opposed to, say, Henry McMaster? Because our hospitals have to deal with the real-world, life-and-death consequences of this country’s insane system for paying for health care. The Hospital Association’s PAC can’t afford empty ideological gestures of the sort Mr. McMaster engaged in today.

One other point — this has to be a disappointment to Jim Rex, who had gone to so much trouble to position himself before the Association debate as THE guy opposing Henry on the cigarette tax.

Vincent Sheheen just took another small step toward being his party’s nominee.

Thornton Kirby (2008 file photo by Brad Warthen)

What else am I to make of this news?

APNewsBreak: SC AG set to sue on health care deal

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Top prosecutors in South Carolina and Florida said Friday they are ready to sue if health care reform legislation passes this weekend as expected.

South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster said he and Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum will file a federal lawsuit challenging the bill’s constitutionality.

“We are ready to kill it,” McMaster said. “When the national government and Congress start going wild, it’s up the states to rein them in.”

The U.S. House plans to vote on the plan Sunday. McMaster and McCollum will argue that it violates state sovereignty because it requires that all Americans have some form of health insurance….

Henry’s just gone over the edge now. I mean, set aside the substance, if you can call his argument “substance” (and how, pray tell, are we EVER to solve our health care problems without everyone being in the system?). Personally, I doubt this is going to do me and my health care situation any good, but I’ve got to tell you that I personally resent that Henry — and Joe Wilson and Jim DeMint  and even the otherwise sensible Lindsey Graham — want to make sure nothing comes along that might help. But never mind me, and never mind the substance, because this actually isn’t about anything rational.

I see this as a steady downward movement on the part of a guy who I thought had turned out to be a pretty good AG.

First, he refused to say whether he was a Graham Republican or a DeMint Republican (I would have sworn, before that, that he was a Graham type). Then, he came out totally against any cigarette tax increase, which is totally indefensible.

Now this.

What really gets me about these last-minute theatrics by the HELL NO crowd is that what they are protesting, what they are ready to go to the ramparts over, is so pathetically watered down from what we SHOULD be doing to solve the health insurance crisis in this country. What would they do if we were about to get what we NEED, which is a no-compromise single-payer plan? Would their heads spontaneously explode? And what are they saving for something actually BAD if it should ever come down the pike?

I don’t know the answers to all of those questions, but I do know that Henry’s just gone another hundred miles down the road away from Sensible, a place where he hasn’t been seen lately.

Sorry about not posting a front page yesterday. Part of it was being sick; part of it was getting ready for the debate last night, and I just ran out of time to do it.

But I have a fairly newsy one for you this afternoon:

Obama Delays Trip as Report Aids Final Push on Health Care — Obama catches a break for once on this thing, with a CBO report showing significant cost savings.

Sanford agrees to pay $74,000 fine, ends ethics case — Finally, after all of the turn-of-the-screw ethics stories we’ve seen, one actually worthy of the front page (and almost lede-worthy): A conclusion to this interminable flap.

New US-Russia nuclear deal ‘soon’ says Hillary Clinton — Remember the Russians? They’re still out there, and they’ve still got nukes, which makes this important.

SC Lawmakers Go All Night on Abortion Issue — Personally, I find the description of what happened and is happening a little unclear in this AP story, but it seems that lawmakers have contrived to find a way to drag out the Kulturkampf battle.

‘Davy Crockett’ and ‘Daniel Boone’ BOTH die at once — If you’re too young to know who Fess Parker was, I have no sympathy for you. He died today at age 85

Columbia Water Tastes Best — Just a nice talker, a water-cooler story that’s actually about water.

Woke up a bit better today. Well, I feel rotten, but the waterworks have stopped. For now.

I took off much of the afternoon yesterday to rest up for the debate last night, and on the way home E.E. Cummings was in my mind. I was driving past some of those white puffballs the city has planted in the medians along Assembly, and thinking to myself,

in Just-

spring …

when my head is puddle-wonderful…

And indeed, not only were my sinuses “mud-luscious,” to use another of his descriptions, but so was my brain. I was ready to slap “the goat-footed baloonMan” upside the head if he tried whistling far and wee around me…

But today my head feels more like a merely damp sandbag, and I’m not nearly as soggy in general. The drugs have taken hold, so I guess we’re near Barstow.

Further, today’s offering from Tom O’Bedlam, above, is another Cummings poem about spring, one I haven’t read before. And this version isn’t one they’d make you read in school, for while it celebrates the season, it is unromantic about it, dealing forthrightly with the goddess who is also a slattern, with “soggy legs,” a “muddy petticoat,” and an all-around “sloppy body.”

Now that spring I recognize, and unforgiving slattern though she may be, I suppose I wouldn’t have her otherwise.

By the way, I learned something new from “Tom’s” commentary — that E. E. Cummings didn’t necessarily want other people writing his name in lower case, and only occasionally did it himself.

What misery! The trees are in flower and I am about to drown. I haven’t had hay fever like this since… since the last time this wretched season rolled around.

My condition is immune to drugs. I’ve had to warn the organizers of the debate tonight at the Law School that I won’t be able to moderate, because I can’t stop blowing my nose long enough to ask a question.

If the nasal spray I picked up a while ago from the pharmacy (ipratropium bromide) suddenly works in the next hour, I’ll show up. Otherwise not.

I feel terrible about that, although I feel worse physically. I hear one of the candidates might not make it, either, but that’s no excuse for me not to. Maybe if I try that spray one more time…

This just in from Nikki Haley’s campaign:

Friends,

Yesterday we received some incredibly exciting news – former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has endorsed our campaign for Governor.

“Ann and I got to know Nikki Haley during my campaign for president and came away enormously impressed with her as a person of character and as the spokesperson for a new generation of leadership for South Carolina,” Governor Romney said. “She has a proven conservative record of fighting wasteful spending and advocating for smaller, more efficient government. I’m honored to call her my friend and prouder still to endorse her campaign for governor.”

Governor Romney is a national leader and one of the most successful businessmen of his generation, and I’m honored to receive his support. He knows how to create jobs and turn the economy, and his support and advice will be invaluable over the months and years ahead as we do everything we can to put South Carolinians back to work.

The momentum for our campaign is continuing to grow and yesterday is yet another example of the exciting news we are getting day in-and-day out. I am so proud of the campaign we have run, how far we have come in the relatively short time we have been at this, and the prospects for all of us as we approach the primary on June 8th.

And we need your continued support to get our message of pro-business, good government reform to as many voters as possible. Would you donate, put a bumper sticker on your car, and put a yard sign in your yard?

Thank you again for all you have done for this campaign. Together, we can and will change South Carolina forever.

Well, maybe not forever. But if she succeeded where Sanford failed at enacting his agenda, it would just SEEM like forever — to the rest of us.

Yesterday, I kept a long-standing engagement to speak to Kelly Payne’s class at Dutch Fork High School. I forget the name of the course, but it has kids from all grades, 9-12, and they study current events and media and such. She told me in advance that they all read my blog (the poor things) and some of my columns from when I was with the paper.

They had a list of questions, which they asked me from little strips of paper.

You may peruse these questions with particular interest, of course, since their teacher is a candidate for the GOP nomination for state superintendent of education. On a couple of occasions, my answer included an aside along the lines of “with all due respect to your teacher and her political allies…” I asked Kelly to send me the full list of prepared questions — including some they didn’t get to — afterwards. So here are the questions, with short versions of my answers:

1. How do you feel about elected officials leaving office and then going to work for the government they left? I’m the wrong journalist to ask, because I tend not to get my shorts in a knot over stuff like that per se, but most journalists get mighty indignant over it. I actually have a long history of making OTHER people indignant over my lack of indignation. (NOTE: Probably because of my answer on that one, the student didn’t ask me the followup:) Why is it different for a member of the media to leave his or her position and go to work with a government agency as a media relations expert?

2. How much were you making as an editor for the paper? I told the kids – and then warned them NEVER to expect to make that much working at a paper in the future, and explained to them the only reason I was laid off was because I DID make that much – but I’m not going to put it on the blog. That would be tacky. And did USC pay you more than that when they hired you? Nope, it was less (I took that as a reference to the three-month consulting gig I did with the university last summer.)

(Isn’t that the problem with government? They pay more for the same position than the private sector does) Once again, the followup question wasn’t asked, probably because my answer wasn’t what they expected. Interesting assumption, though. Wonder where they got that idea?

3. How can anyone defend the approach the administration is taking to national health care reform? I didn’t know how to answer that; instead I went into a rambling discourse on health care reform in general, and confided that at the moment I’m not sure what’s in the bill, so I’m not sure what I think about it.

(With shutting down debate and calling for an up and down vote on a bill no one knows what’s contained in it) The student didn’t include the parenthetical, which might have helped me to answer the question. I probably would have said I don’t know whether it’s true that no one knows what’s in it; it’s just that I don’t.

4. When you endorsed candidates for primary and general elections what percentage of the time did voters agree with you? About 75 percent of the time. I expounded on that, but that’s the short answer.

5. We read the account of your leaving The State paper. If you were the master of every function why did they let you go? Because I made too much money. But in the future I think I might adopt that as a sobriquet, the Master of Every Function.

6. Why do think the print media is losing so much of its market share? I explained that market share wasn’t the problem, loss of advertising revenue is. Again, it would have helped if the student had included the parenthetical:

(We keep reading advertising revenue is declining)

7. What do you think will be Mayor Coble’s legacy? Oh, boy, I don’t know. I spoke of the Vista vision of Mayor Finlay finally being realized.

8. Through the years you’ve been pretty easy on former councilman Cromartie? What? You’re kidding, right? Who’ve you been reading? Again, this rest of the question wasn’t included: “He’s been a slumlord” and was often notoriously delinquent in paying his taxes and utility bills. Are there other elected officials you’ve been that tolerant of?

9. Warren Bolton seems to be a single-issue editor. Why or why not is that a good idea? I had to ask what the single issue was. I was told it was predatory lending. I said good for Warren.

10. Where do old newspaper editors go when they die? Someplace good, I hope.

11. People say newspapers lost their souls when they lost their local ownership. Why is that the case? Basically, I gave them the pros and the cons: The pro: Outside ownership makes the newspaper independent, rather than having sacred cows according to whom the local owners like. The con: It becomes entirely about the money. Again, the rest of the question wasn’t asked: It marches to the beat of a national owner rather than to the sensitivities of the community. If I HAD heard that part of the question, I would have said no, you’ve got that backward: Outside ownership has no agenda other than to make money. That’s good and bad.

12. In your writing do you pull for the “underdog?” They didn’t get to this question, but I would have said not necessarily. Sometimes the overdog is right. Always pulling for the underdog would be as arbitrary as always agreeing with Democrats or Republicans. I suppose if there’s a powerful person I agree with on one issue, and an underdog I agreed with on another and I only had time and room to right about one of the other, I’d probably go with the underdog because the big shot wouldn’t need the help.

13. Realizing that you pride yourself on being balanced and middle of the road would it be easier for you to be an extreme liberal or an extreme conservative and why? It is my perception that people who DO identify with the right or the left do so because it IS easier, much easier. They don’t have to think anymore. All judgments are already made for them. Also, they have a ready-made team of supporters. Me, I can do without that.

14. How would you refute the widespread belief that schools of journalism are overwhelmingly liberal? I didn’t hear that question right; I thought it was that journalists trend liberal. I said that was the case for two big reasons, ones I’ve gone into on the blog before. The very, very short version: First, journalists are change-oriented, or they wouldn’t go into such a profession. Second, because they try hard not to inject opinion into their work, the opinions they do hold tend to go unexamined, and therefore never develop beyond the rather facile, vaguely liberal views they had when they were sophomores in college. Oh, yeah, there was a third reason: Journalists who work for morning newspapers don’t have normal social lives, and tend to associate mostly with other journalists. So they don’t think they have particularly liberal views because they think like everyone else they know…

15. How often did it happen that you advocated for an issue that you eventually regretted? No issues popped into my mind, but I mentioned some endorsements, such as the one for Mark Sanford, and the one against Lindsey Graham.

16. What sort of tension and competition existed on your editorial board the last couple of years you were with the paper? Explain the dynamics? They never asked this question, and I’m not sure how to answer it. The greatest tension was the constant effort to do less with less, and waiting for the next ax to fall.

17. Who was your favorite publisher when you were with the paper? They didn’t ask this one. It’s a tough one. In some ways Ann Caulkins, in some ways Fred Mott. Probably Ann, ultimately – Fred and I had more disagreements, although they were amicable.

18. How have career opportunities changed in the print media over the last decade? They didn’t ask this, either. The answer would have been, they’ve essentially disappeared. There certainly are none for them, with a huge cadre of experienced scribes looking for work.

19. When you left The State Paper why didn’t go to another one? They didn’t ask this either, but there are two reasons: I’d had enough of being in that dying industry – it was really, really depressing and frustrating the last few years — and I wanted to stay here.

20. How much of the current economic problems could be caused by too much spending by government and can anything be done about that? I said I had no idea. I did tell them that this certainly wasn’t the case on the state level, but whether it was on the federal level was highly debatable (and hence the interminable debates). I talked about the problem with entitlement spending, and talked about the relative merits of Keynesian theory and letting the market work, but I told them that any ideologue who said it was all one way or the other is full of it.