The Frozen Four is underway, and Notre Dame leads Michigan 3-2 with 10:44 left in the second period. It was 3-0, but Michigan just scored two rapid-fire goals to get back in it.

Liveblogs here and here. The game is being televised live on ESPN2. Winner gets Boston College in the national championship game Saturday. GO IRISH!!! BEAT SKUNKBEARS!!!

UPDATE: Michigan tied it at 3-3… then Notre Dame just took a 4-3 lead with less than 9 minutes left.

UPDATE 2: Tie game 4-4, with 5:21 left. Ugh.

UPDATE 3: Overtime. And, alas, I have to go to bed. Go Irish.

UPDATE 4: IRISH WIN!!!! (Okay, so I didn’t actually go to bed…) WOOOHOOO!!!

UPDATE 5: The Associated Press is mean. Check out their lede:

Michigan has Notre Dame’s number on the football field. Not so the ice.

Jeez! Is that really necessary? The Irish hockey team makes it to the national championship game for the first time ever — upsetting the #1-ranked team in the country, and becoming the first #4 seed ever to advance this far — and the first sentence of the AP article takes an irrelevant shot at the football team? WTF?! Is Brian Cook working ghost-writing for the AP or something?

Moreover, it’s inaccurate. Yes, Michigan beat Notre Dame — badly — in 2007 and 2006, but the Irish won easily in 2005 (when Michigan was ranked #3 in the country, the Irish just #20) and in 2004 (when ND was unranked and Michigan was #7). Michigan won in ‘03; Notre Dame won in ‘02. That makes them 3-3 in their most recent series. (They didn’t play from 1998 to 2001.)

If you want to go back further, the Irish are 12-11-1 against the Skunkbears since the series was renewed in 1978 after a 35-year hiatus. Michigan leads the overall series 20-14-1, but somehow I don’t think the Wolverines’ 9-2 record between 1884 and 1943 was what the AP reporter had in mind.

In any event, 20-14 is hardly a massive advantage, and 11-12 isn’t an advantage at all, nor is 3-3. However you look at it, you simply cannot construct an accurate historical reality in which "Michigan has Notre Dame’s number on the football field," unless you’re looking only at the last two years, which is rather myopic and hardly a sufficiently representative sample to make such a sweeping statement. Neither team has the other’s number; they’ve been very even in recent years.

Maybe the AP’s hockey writers should stick to talking about hockey. How about that.

Anyway, here’s a better ESPN article about Notre Dame’s amazing run to the national championship game. In hockey.

P.S. Now, if you want to say that USC currently has Notre Dame’s number in football, thanks to six straight wins — five of them blowouts — that
would be accurate. :) Likewise, it would have been accurate to say that
the Irish had the Trojans’ number back during their 13-year undefeated
streak in the ’80s and ’90s. But no way does either ND or UM have the
other’s number right now.

"I really don’t understand why the Republican Party very clearly decided what they were going to do [about the Florida and Michigan delegations], and the Democratic Party can’t decide." –Hillary Clinton.

Actually, Senator Clinton, the Democratic Party did decide what to do. They decided to strip those states of all their delegates. This decision was made through the proper procedures, at the proper time, by the proper decision-makers — including your own adviser Harold Ickes, who voted "yes" on the delegate-stripping plan. The decision was clear and straightforward: if Florida and Michigan didn’t move their primary dates, they’d lose their delegations. Period. That was, and is, the decision.

You initially accepted this decision because it was politically necessary for you to do so — after all, you couldn’t be seen as the only candidate not currying favor with Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Now, you are refusing to accept that very same decision because it is, again, politically necessary for you to do so, as you can’t "win" without those "delegates" who were "elected" in those states’ illegitimate "primaries."

To make matters worse, you are dishonestly and absurdly cloaking this cynical Machiavellian maneuver under the guise of democratic idealism, arguing that there’s some sort of moral imperative to count the votes of citizens who chose to participate in "elections" that everyone knew were non-binding beauty contests. Better yet, you’re making this argument while simultaneously advocating the importance of a "popular vote" count that excludes all voters in Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington (whose caucuses didn’t report raw vote totals, only delegate counts), and all Obama and Edwards supporters in Michigan (whose candidates weren’t on the ballot).

And now, on top of all that, you have the unmitigated gall to gripe that your party "can’t decide" what to do, when in fact they decided long ago precisely what to do, and you acquiesced in that decision until you realized that you couldn’t win without changing the rules in the middle of the game — i.e., that you can’t win without cheating.

You are truly a piece of work, Hillary Clinton.

UPDATE: Welcome, Andrew Sullivan readers! I could be wrong, but I think this is my first Sully-lanche. :)

(more…)

“Freedom of expression is absolutely a human right but there are small limitations.” –Jacques Rogge, International Olympic Committee president, explaining the IOC’s rule against “propaganda” at the Olympics, which may limit athletes’ ability to express opinions about the raging controversy over Tibet and related protests.

(Sorry, Doc. Hey, at least I wanted until March Madness was over.)

The main suspect in the killing of pregnant fellow Marine Maria Lauterbach has been captured, the FBI says.

Andrew Hiller on this story: "It’s time to stop barking, and start listening. An invitation to a national conversation on dog race." Heh.

As the owner of a big, black dog, I am personally offended by the prejudice against said dogs, and I hereby demand that all the presidential candidates immediately and personally reject and denounce the dog-racist sentiments which CNN has bravely shined a light on… and if any candidate does not do so within the next five minutes, I will consider him or her to be presumptively a dog-racist! :P

Will Alaska’s corrupt U.S. senator and pork grand-champion, Ted "Bridge to Nowhere" Stevens, be defeated in 2008? Please, lord, let it be true!

I bet his opponent, Mark Begich, is funding his campaign in part by raising a bunch of money over a series of tubes.

The bad news: O.J. Mayo is going pro. (I’m shocked, SHOCKED.)

The good news: LSU has hired Stanford’s Trent Johnson, which obviously means they won’t be hiring USC’s Tim Floyd.

That whole McCain-Rice thing? Er, well, even if the parties involved wanted it to happen (and she has denied any such thing), this probably wouldn’t help:

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most
senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific
details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by
the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News. …

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation
techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the
interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number
of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic. …

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney,
former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA
Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings,
which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically
attended by most of the principals or their deputies. …

[After the leak of the 2002 "torture memo,"] CIA officials … returned to the Principals Committee for
approval to continue using certain "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Then-National Security Advisor Rice, sources said, was
decisive. Despite growing policy concerns — shared by Powell — that
the program was harming the image of the United States abroad, sources
say she did not back down, telling the CIA: "This is your baby. Go do
it."

Of course, the officials involved would dispute my headline, as they regard these "enhanced interrogation techniques" as "not torture." Duly noted.

Wrapping up the men’s NCAA Tournament Tuesday morning, Deadspin wrote: "Mostly: What a fun tournament. Even with all No. 1 seeds in the Final
Four, we had three legitimate glories: Western Kentucky’s last-second
win, Stephen Curry’s brilliance and Mario Chalmers’ massive shot.
That’s three more than last year. We’ll take it."

Along the same lines, yesterday morning College Hoops Journal posted the Top Ten games of the tourney, prefacing the list with the comment: "Who said it was a down year? Give me 10 games of the caliber listed below and I’ll be fine if the other 54 are snoozers."