That’s Stop Journalists From Waterboarding Themselves, @TAC’s new help group.

According to the CIA, only a handful of terror suspects have been waterboarded. Yet SJFWT reports that thousands of journalists, suffering from chronic lack of inspiration, have had themselves asphyxiated for the sake a crumby article.

Christopher Hitchens is the latest hack to have put himself through the waterboarding experience. Having used up the perennial “women aren’t funny” provocation piece in the latest Vanity Fair, Hitchens felt there was nowhere else to turn: the waterboard beckoned. (Brave readers can watch the video here.)

You are not alone, Mr Hitchens. SJFWT can help.

(Self-inflicted waterboarding is no joke. Participants risk the following side-effects: a severe increase in self-righteousness and self-pity; a tendency to write really boring copy; and heavy fits of moral outrage.)

Jonah Goldberg notes, “I’m sure this isn’t the first, but I just caught this on Drudge. The Midwestern floods? Global warming. What else?”

Is it actually so absurd to suggest that a phenomenon linked to a greater likelihood of extreme weather events by scientists for some time might have something to do with extreme weather events now occurring? For anyone paying attention, there is a disturbing trend developing over the last few years: a deadly European heat-wave, droughts in the Southeast, the West and Australia; Midwestern floods and tornadoes, powerful tropical storms like the one that killed tens of thousands in Burma, etc. No weather event, however, is ever going to be accompanied by a footnote stating that “I am caused by global warming, just like Al Gore said.”

When environmentalists start saying that global warming causes tooth decay and the heartbreak of psoriasis, I’ll be sneering along with Golberg; but to suggest that climate change might affect the weather seems entirely reasonable.

Over the past weekend I had the pleasure of seeing Disney-Pixar’s new animated movie “WALL-E.” Set in the apocalyptic-lite 28th century, WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) is a small robot left behind on an abandoned planet Earth, which you discover through a set of video clips has been evacuated due to heavy pollution, brought on by mass consumerism and exploitative big business. His chance encounter with EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) is the catalyst for a surprisingly poignant love story that becomes the center of the movie’s plot. Without delving too much into my own personal opinions on the film–this post is not meant to be a review–I thought it was visually stunning, powerful, and deeply touching, and by my estimation the first Disney movie that is more meaningful and enjoyable for adults than for children.

The film has been received warmly by an overwhelming majority of critics, but some on the right are upset about some of the movie’s themes. Greg Pollowitz at the NRO blog “Planet Gore” writes:

I saw WALL-E with my five year old on Saturday night. It was like a 90-minute lecture on the dangers of over consumption, big corporations, and the destruction of the environment. All this from mega-company Disney, who wants us to buy WALL-E kitsch for our kids that are manufactured in China at environment-destroying factories and packed in plastic that will take hundreds of year to biodegrade in our landfills.

Much to Disney’s chagrin, I will do my part to avoid future environmental armageddon by boycotting any and all WALL-E merchandise and I hope others join my crusade.

These sentiments have been echoed by Shannen Coffin on The Corner, claiming the movie is a “Godforsaken dreck” and was upset about being “bombarded with leftist propaganda about the evils of mankind.” Indeed, a point that Coffin makes that is echoed by outraged film critic Kyle Smith is that, when the audience is introduced to the fat, dumb, technologically-enslaved humans, Pixar is insulting their target audience:

Wall-E…supposes that the human race of the future will become a flabby mass of peabrained idiots who are literally too fat to walk. Instead they zip around in flying wheelchairs surfing the Web, chatting on phone lines and stuffing their faces with food meant to be sucked down like milkshakes while unquestioningly taking orders from the master corporation that controls all aspects of their existence. I’m trying to think of a major Disney cartoon feature that was anywhere near as dark or cynical as this. I’m coming up blank. I’m also not sure I’ve ever seen a major corporation spend so much money to issue an insult to its customers.

The real tragedy of these callous conservative critics (say that three times fast) is that they are missing the real lessons of the movie, ones I found immediately attractive to a traditional conservative. In the film, it becomes clear that mass consumerism is not just the product of big business, but of big business wedded with big government. In fact, the two are indistinguishable in WALL-E’s future. The government unilaterally provided it’s citizens with everything they needed, and this lack of variety led to Earth’s downfall.

Another lesson missed is portrayed perfectly in Coffin’s claim that WALL-E points out the “evils of mankind.” The only evils of mankind portrayed are those that come about from losing touch with our own humanity. Staples of small-town conservative life such as the small farm, the “atomic family,” and old-fashioned and wholesome entertainment like “Hello, Dolly” are looked upon by the suddenly awakened humans as beautiful and desirable. By steering conservative families away from WALL-E, these commentators are doing their readers a great disservice.

Barack Obama should be grateful for Britain’s restrictive free speech laws, according to London’s most fearless magazine, Private Eye. The Eye, which often covers stories other magazines won’t touch, claims that aggressive libel lawyers in Britain have censored web reports on Nadhmi Auchi, the mysterious London-based Iraqi billionaire who has been linked to Obama.

In February, the American press picked up on the possible Obama-Auchi connection. The key–and widely known–allegation is that there is a cash trial between and Auchi and Obama, via the notorious slum landlord Tony Rezko. It is understood that Auchi wired $3.5 million to Rezko, who in turn gave $625, 000 to the Obamas so they could buy a mock Georgian house on Chicago’s south side.

There is of course no evidence that Obama did anything wrong or illegal. Still, the candidate’s association with Rezko, who is still on trail for 16 counts of corruption, and Auchi, who was given a 15-month suspended sentence for his part in the French Elf Scandal, could have severely damaged his campaign. As it was, the story lost its legs, in part because–in the words of Private Eye–Auchi’s lawyers had “scrubbed the web of newspaper reports which displeased their master”.

For example, the Observer, fearing a libel suit, pulled down a series of articles on Auchi printed in 2003, which some U.S. bloggers had started to notice. The reports described how the arms and oil tycoon, who left Iraq in 1979, had kept close enough ties with Saddam’s regime to help with the sale of Italian Frigates to the Iraqi Defense Ministry. One report noted how Auchi collected politicians “the way other men collect stamps” .

The Eye report concludes,

Barack Obama is a lucky politician. If American journalists had led the way in investigating his shady connections, the U.S first amendment would have protected their work. As it was, the British press took the lead–and libel lawyers can censor it [sic] without anyone noticing.

Murky stuff.

Much has been made of the Supreme Court’s rejection of D.C.’s ban on handguns in the home, but the high court handed down another 5-4 ruling as well. It has gone relatively unnoticed–due most likely to the gravity of the handgun ruling–but is nevertheless worth mentioning, if for no other reason than it put a dent in one of the Presidential candidate’s signature pieces of legislation.

In Davis v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court struck a blow to McCain’s treasured “campaign finance reform” by declaring the so-called “Millionaire’s amendment” unconstitutional. It was arguably the most volatile clause in McCain-Feingold because it was not an attempt at fighting political corruption–the stated objective of McCain-Feingold–but rather it protected entrenched incumbents from wealthy challengers. The amendment created a new rule where federal candidates facing a self-financed opponent who contributes more than $350,000 to their own campaign are permitted to accept donations at triple the normal contribution limits ($6,900 rather than $2,300).

In George Will’s column on yesterday’s two decisions, he correctly argues:

Declaring the Millionaires’ Amendment unconstitutional, the court, in an opinion written by Alito, reaffirmed two propositions. First, because money is indispensable for the dissemination of political speech, regulating campaign contributions and expenditures is problematic and justified only by government’s interest in combating “corruption” or the “appearance” thereof. Second, government may not regulate fundraising and spending in order to fine-tune electoral competition by equalizing candidates’ financial resources.

One of the main arguments used to convince disillusioned conservatives to go to the ballot box this November and pull the lever for McCain has been just how destructive Obama’s court nominees will be, as opposed to McCain’s. Presidents primarily nominate judges that hold a view of the Constitution similar to their own, and this is said to be one of McCain’s conservative strengths. But while the second amendment has been–to a certain extent–upheld, the same five judges to uphold the second amendment against a liberal D.C. law voted to uphold the first against one of the Arizona Senator’s pet projects. The type of judges McCain has pledged to nominate (he has used Roberts and Alito as examples) have upheld the first amendment against McCain’s “clean government” proposals, and unless we can expect McCain to nominate justices that disagree with him on a fundamental interpretation of the first amendment, the Supreme Court case for McCain has been weakened.