There are still rays of hope in these dark days, as I found when checking Drudge this evening.  A drunken Pennsylvania man gave the last full measure trying to resuscitate a dead possum. Alas, no good deed goes unpunished.

State police have charged a central Pennsylvania man with public drunkenness after he was seen giving mouth-to-mouth “resuscitation” to a long-dead opossum along a highway.

Trooper Jamie Levier says several witnesses saw 55-year-old Donald Wolfe, of Brookville, near the animal along Route 36 in Oliver Township Thursday about 3 p.m. The trooper says one person saw Wolfe kneeling before the animal and gesturing as though he were conducting a seance, while another saw the mouth-to-mouth attempt.

This is one of those times when the possibility of a neo-agrarian national coalition really comes home to you.  Of course, being that it was in Punxutawney and both possum and man were smashed (in their respective ways), he probably thought he was saving a groundhog.

In the spirit of Christian charity and Southern goodfellowship, however, we must not examine too closely; rather, we should raise a glass of bourbon in a tribute to a noble act on behalf of one of the least of these, our marsupial brethren.

One of my colleagues performed a similar act, raising a litter of possums after his dogs killed the mother.  Here’s one of the critters in my pocket.

It’s always nice when the unicorn-spotter extraordinaire, Andrew Sullivan, gets called out for making stuff up. It’s even better when a vastly superior mind and human being like Charles Krauthammer does it:

Sullivan’s post merits reading as the quintessential Sullivan, leaping from nonexistent fact to blanket ad hominem without even a pause for a reality check.

Read his dismantling of Sullivan here.

The papers this morning are over-joicing that somehow the Democrats have found a way to save money by spending money through the Baucus health care bill. The problem? Unicorns likely exist more than this bill; the only thing we have are  a bunch of expert summaries of what the bill will likely look like but no actual legislative language (i.e., fancy words for “a bill”), so says Volokh’s Jonathan Adler: (more…)

One of our commenters disputes there’s a “cult of personality” around our current president.

In the interest of fairness, we ask our readers to forward any similar renderings of Reagan or Bush, naked and triumphant. Unicorn optional.

—The Management

[As for naked paintings of Bill Clinton, let's just not go there.]

Yes. It’s true. The Afghans have only one pig in their whole country!!! That’s a pretty easy way to deal with Swine Flu, I suppose. We’re not in Kansas anymore….

(H/T: Fr. Z.)

According to reports, Cass Sunstein, Obama’s choice to be his Regulation Czar, is anti-hunting.

Sunstein has made no secret of his devotion to the cause of establishing legal “rights” for livestock, wildlife, and pets. “[T]here should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, scientific experiments, and agriculture,” Sunstein wrote in a 2002 working paper while at the University of Chicago Law school.

While I haven’t taken a look at the paper or done any other due diligence, it is safe to say that there needs to be extensive questioning of Mr. Sunstein about his views on these issues before there is a vote on whether to confirm him.

I am sure everyone is familiar with the old bromide, “A Conservative is a Liberal who has been mugged.” The obvious thought behind the platitude is that Conservatives are more concerned with “law and order” issues than our Liberal kith, at least when it comes to stopping crime. The assumption is that a Liberal’s concern for the individual rights of accused citizens goes out the window when weighed against the very real experience of a terrifying crime. (more…)