Dead William F. Buckley Jr. has penned a RATHER RIBALD essay for Kathryn Jean Lopez’s National Review magazine about the year 1976, when the Buckley plutocrats invited the Reagan plutocrats to their 2,000-year-old chateau, “Great Elm,” in Connecticut colony, for the annual Thanksgiving bank holiday. Then! Drama! “…Ron Jr., in his first semester at Yale, had decided to quit college — more or less immediately. I expressed doubt that he was having academic problems, which indeed he was not, and his parents brought me to the heart of the matter. What moved him was a voracious desire to dance professionally.” Grandmother must never hear of this, she would be most dismayed! Later: “Ronald Reagan was as determined to subject his son to poverty as Ron Jr. was to live in it.” And that’s when dead W.F. Buckley knew that Ronald Reagan had fathered a Welfare Queen, the end. [National Review]

“The nation’s first family tree is about to gain a new branch,” the Washington Post reveals today. “The future in-laws, it turns out, are not unlike the Bushes.”

Really?! That is news. While many Americans expected Jenna Bush to eventually shack up with a meth dealer in a Florida trailer park, it turns out her “background” and “pedigree” sort of determined long ago that she would marry another rich white douche from another rich and powerful family that makes billions of dollars on something that kills poor brown people — in Jenna’s case, that industry is oil and war, while in Henry Hager’s case, that industry is tobacco. MORE »

* The ABA likes its lawyers all white and WASPy. [The Volokh Conspiracy]
* Texas just might lasso the next hurricane camped in the Gulf. [Off the Kuff]
* Cross-multiply, carry the 1 . . . yeah, it’s more like 1.9 million children left behind. [Captain's Quarters]
* Gore in ‘08: Pink Lungs For All. [Crooks and Liars]
* What do we want?! Less skewed and sensational presentation of news events! When do we want it?! Eh, slot it after Nancy Grace. [Eschaton]