Sorry, Roman, but when you get Nick Gillespie pounding the table for more law & order, you lost the fight.

– Commenter “Abdul” at Reason’s Hit and Run blog after Gillespie posted comments hitting as “incredibly lame” an L.A. Times editorial criticizing Roman Polanski’s arrest and generally mocking the director’s defenders as “Hollywood Uber Allies.”

Obama, come over to the socialist side! Join the axis of evil, and we’ll build an economy at the service of the people.

– Hugo Chavez during his address Thursday at the United Nations.

The original Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome is now 250 years old. The Guniness Brewery just celebrated its anniversary. I’ve been celebating it myself off and on for a few decades now.

From the Washington Post today:

Terrorism Suspect Planned Peroxide Bombs, Officials Say

Whether or not Beyoncé ends up in the film, Perry has a special talent for creating the illusion that otherwise credible black actors don’t have enough talent for mystery dinner theater, so I have to consider anything he controls creatively a lost cause.

– Thembi Ford in Slate.com, discussing the oeuvre of Tyler Perry.

In a story twist so surprising Stan Lee wouldn’t have thunk it, Disney’s acquistion of of the Marvel Comics company hit a significant snag the other day when the estate of the late, great Jack Kirby sued to recover his copyrights for the characters he created for Marvel.

From the L.A.Times:

Walt Disney Co. may not end up with full ownership of many of Marvel Entertainment’s most famous super-heroes if new copyright claims by the children of the late artist Jack Kirby prove successful.

The four children of Kirby, who co-created a number of Marvel’s best-known super-heroes, including the X-Men, Fantastic Four, Thor and the Hulk, have served so-called notices of copyright termination for 45 characters to Marvel Entertainment, Disney (which recently agreed to buy Marvel for $4 billion), Sony Pictures (which owns movie rights to Spider-Man), 20th Century Fox (owner of movie rights to the Fantastic Four and X-Men), Paramount Pictures (which has a film distribution deal for four upcoming Marvel-produced films) and Universal Pictures (which has distribution rights to Hulk movies).

The filings came just a week after Disney unveiled its $4-billion agreement to purchase Marvel but were in the works before that deal was announced.

The children of Kirby, who died in 1994, are being represented by Los Angeles law firm Toberoff & Associates, which has represented Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel in a similar claim against Warner Bros.

Kirby was an astoundlingly prolific man. He literally co-created every major Marvel Comics hero and villian during the 1960s, with the exception of Spiderman and Dr. Strange. Should his estate win this case it will be a crippling blow to the Disney-Marvel merger:

Kirby’s children would be eligible to claim their father’s share of the copyright of the Fantastic Four in 2017, while the Hulk would come up in 2018 and X-Men in 2019. The copyrights would then run for 39 more years before expiring, after which the characters would enter the public domain under current law.

It would be a hell of a vindication for a man who was treated pretty shabbily later in life by the company that was built on his creations. So I think I know who Destroyer Duck is rooting for.

You know what’s a fun thing to do when you’re in Pittsburgh? Get the hell out. Seriously, there is a reason why you never hear the phrase “Supermodel from Pittsburgh.”

I know this because went there last week to cover the AFL-CIO’s annual convention. While in town, I was able to catch the first American screening of Michael Moore’s latest opus, Capitalism: A Love Story.

I wrote about the experience for Reason.com:

Life can take you on funny paths. Sometimes things just happen. For example, last week I marched with Michael Moore to end capitalism.

I was in Pittsburgh to cover the AFL-CIO’s annual convention. The week before the event, organizers tacked a late addition onto the schedule: the first American showing of Moore’s latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story.

Moore himself dropped in for the premiere. At a convention reception, the tubby populist spoke wistfully of his hope that the nation’s governors would call out the National Guard to stop corporate leaders and union busters. And then Moore led a march through the streets of Pittsburgh to the Byham Theater, where the movie was being shown.

I followed along and found myself in the company of about 500 union members and left-wing activists. They were shouting chants like, “Hey-hey, ho-ho, insurance companies have got to go!” Without intending to, I even ended up sitting just behind Moore in the theater.

Read the whole thing here. If you want, you can comment here.

My name is forever tarnished.

– Stalin Felipe, a Hofstra University student who was falsely accused of rape.

Hat tip: The Derb.

You might have found this site because, in the Politico today, I argue that President Obama is “failing miserably” in his attempts to transform the American economy and that he just might manage to become the president that George W. Bush would have been if 9/11 had never happened. While you’re here, feel free to browse the archives and please take a look at my latest book. Oh, and if anybody wants to email me, try jeremyal123 — at — (death to all spammers!) yahoo dot com.

From today’s Washington Post story about Youngstown’s lovable scoundrel and his release from prison and probable return to politics:

In a memorable Capitol Hill moment, he called a friend, Sandra Ferrante, as a witness during a committee hearing on Standards and Official Conduct. At the time Congress was considering expelling him. The conversation went like this:

Traficant: Were you and I sex partners?

Ferrante: No.

Traficant: Why not?