Hillary Clinton - Someone Who Knows The Military?

Well, she does have experience ordering the Marines to serve canapés and formal White House parties.

Obama - Just Another Two Faced Demogogue Gas Bag?

Apparently, so.

Obama's threat to abrogate America's participation in a signed and ratified international treaty would do far more harm to America's international reputation than anything that George Bush is accused of.

To Democrats, Voter Fraud Equals Economic Stimulus

Don't take my word for it, take the Democrats' word for it.

"A couple of basic things this legislation would have done: first of all, it would have continued what we started in the end of last year, foreclosure prevention counseling dollars, to give money to organizations around the country that are certifiably expert at this, organizations like La Raza. I know the presiding officer knows that group. We know also the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now, known by the acronym ‘ACORN.’ "

Is Obama Black Enough To Portray Obama?

Saturday Night Live decided to choose its Obama character based upon talent rather than race, and that has a few people pissed off.

Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune put the question bluntly: "Call me crazy, but shouldn't 'Saturday Night Live's' fictional Sen. Barack Obama be played by an African-American?" Ryan went on to conclude: "I find 'SNL's' choice inexplicable. Obama's candidacy gives us solid proof of the progress that African-Americans have made in this country. I guess 'SNL' still has further to go on that front."

Hannah Pool, a writer for the Guardian newspaper in Great Britain, suggested the whole setup had "minstrel" overtones.

"Casting a black actor wouldn't have guaranteed the quality of the sketch, but it would have made the whole thing a lot less shoddy," Pool wrote. "Let's get one thing straight. The moment anyone starts reaching for 'blackface,' they are on extremely dodgy territory. Anyone who thinks it's either necessary or, for that matter, remotely funny to black-up needs to have the gauge on their moral compass reset."

If Bill Clinton was the First Black President and if John Kerry could aspire to be the second black president, then why not?

Bill Clinton: Cartoons Bad, Islmofascist Murders Okay

Bill Clinton sides with the Islamofascists regarding the dreaded Danish cartoons of blasphemy.

Clinton: “I strongly disagree with both the creation and publication of cartoons that were considered blasphemous to devout Muslims around the world because they depicted the Prophet. And I thought it was a mistake. I had no objection to Muslims throughout the world demonstrating their convictions in a peaceful way. But I thought it was also a great opportunity, which I fear has been squandered, to build bridges, because I can tell you that most people in the United States deeply respect Islam - it is the fastest growing religion in America - as do most people in Europe, and most people in Denmark. We live in societies where people are free to say the wrong things as well as the right things, but I would not be surprised if the person who drew those cartoons and the newspaper publisher who decided to print them did not even know that it was considered by Muslims to be blasphemous to have any kind of personal depiction of the Prophet.”

Is it any wonder that this guy lacked the balls to go seriously after Al Qaida when he was Commander-In-Chief?

Could The Endangered Species Act Doom Wind Energy?

It's a moronic convergence of environmental wackoism.

Whooping cranes have waged a valiant fight against extinction, but federal officials warn of a new potential threat to the endangered birds: wind farms.

Down to about 15 in 1941, the gargantuan birds that migrate each fall from Canada to Texas now number 266, thanks to conservation efforts.

But because wind energy has gained such traction, whooping cranes could again be at risk — either from crashing into the towering wind turbines and transmission lines or because of habitat lost to the wind farms.

"Basically you can overlay the strongest, best areas for wind turbine development with the whooping crane migration corridor," said Tom Stehn, whooping crane coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The service estimates as many as 40,000 turbines will be erected in the U.S. section of the whooping cranes' 200-mile wide migration corridor.

"Even if they avoid killing the cranes, the wind farms would be taking hundreds of square miles of migration stopover habitat away from the cranes," Stehn said.

Wind power is a dumb idea anyway. If it takes the Endangered Species Act to get rid of them, so be it.

No Wind Equals No Energy

Texas discovered something shocking recently. When you rely upon wind power, you're a bit vulnerable when the wind stops.

A drop in wind generation late on Tuesday, coupled with colder weather, triggered an electric emergency that caused the Texas grid operator to cut service to some large customers, the grid agency said on Wednesday.

Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said a decline in wind energy production in west Texas occurred at the same time evening electric demand was building as colder temperatures moved into the state.

The grid operator went directly to the second stage of an emergency plan at 6:41 PM CST (0041 GMT), ERCOT said in a statement.

Will Anyone Ever Show The Courage To Call Out Big Corn

The US government has dictated that we bur billions of gallons of ethanol in our cars. This has made Iowa corn farmers very rich and everyone else very much poorer, while not improving our energy status one little bit.

An analysis by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development suggested that replacing even 10% of America's motor fuel with biofuels would require that about a third of all the nation's cropland be devoted to oilseeds, cereals and sugar crops. Achieving the 15% goal would require the entire current U.S. corn crop, which represents a whopping 40% of the world's corn supply.

In the short and medium term, ethanol can do little to affect oil consumption. But the diversion of grain from food to fuel exerts widespread and profound ripple effects on various commodity markets. It has already been catastrophic for the poor around the world.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's food price index, which is based on export prices for 60 internationally traded foodstuffs, climbed 37% last year, following a 14% increase in 2006. Protests have erupted in Pakistan and Indonesia over wheat and soybean shortages, respectively, and China has imposed price controls on many staple foods.

Keith Bradsher, writing in the New York Times, reveals another outcome of the shortages: "Smugglers have been bidding up prices as they move the (palm) oil from more subsidized markets, like Malaysia's, to less subsidized markets, like Singapore's."

The shortages and rise in the prices of edible oils have had a devastating impact on the nutrition of poor families not only in Asia, but also in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Any sort of shock to yields, such as drought, unseasonably hot or cold weather, pests or disease in the next few years could send food prices further into the stratosphere and cause unprecedented social upheavals.

Big Oil, Big Pharmaceutic, Big Wal-Mart are all enemies, but each actually does good. What does Big Ethanol do for anyone?

New York Times Desperate To Sink McCain

The New York Times is going way overboard in its crusade to mend relations between John McCain and conservatives. Now the Times is arguing that he's not even eligible to run for president because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone.

The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming.

Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.

If this keeps up, the Times might drive even Ann Coulter to cast a sympathy vote for McCain.

Sixteen Foot Python Eats Family Dog

Will this will be our future, unless we junk our SUV's?

A 16-foot python stalked a family dog for days before swallowing the pet whole in front of horrified children in the Australian tropics, animal experts said Wednesday.

The boy and girl, ages 5 and 7, watched as the scrub python devoured their silky terrier-Chihuahua crossbreed Monday at their home near Kuranda in Queensland state.

Stuart Douglas, owner of the Australian Venom Zoo in Kuranda, said scrub pythons typically eat wild animals such as wallabies, a smaller relative of the kangaroo, but sometimes turn to pets in urban areas.

"It actively stalked the dog for a number of days," Douglas said.

"The family that owned the dog had actually seen it in the dog's bed, which was a sign it was out to get it," he added.

"They should have called me then, but (the snake) got away and three or four days later, I was called and went around and removed it" after the dog had been killed, Douglas said.

By the time Douglas arrived, all that could be seen of the dog was its hind legs and tail.

The zoo manager, Todd Rose, said pythons squeeze their prey to death before swallowing it whole. The 5-year-old dog would have been suffocated within minutes.

"The lady who was there threw some plastic chairs at the snake, but you've got to remember that this is about 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of aggressive muscle," Rose said.

Removing the half-swallowed dog could have harmed or even killed the python, Rose said, because dogs have sharp teeth and claws that could do the snake internal damage if it were wrenched out.

The snake was still digesting the dog at the zoo Wednesday. It will soon be relocated to the bush, Douglas said.

Hillary Whines: Everybody's Being Mean To Me

Comfort-tm
by luvnews

But, she's got a point, more eloquently illuminated by Mickey Kaus.

A Humbler, Gentler, Bill Clinton

You want sincerity? He can fake that too!

Bill Clinton is dutifully traveling from state to state and small town to small town on behalf of his wife's presidential candidacy. But the growling and snapping Bill Clinton that the country saw before the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries has been muzzled and leashed.

He is being kept as far from the media as possible to prevent any more of the red-faced, finger-wagging tirades and freelance political commentary that polls say cost Hillary Rodham Clinton a lot of support, particularly among black voters.

Maybe Democrats are just now beginning to appreciate why conservatives loathed Bill Clinton.

Hillary's New Campaign Theme Song: It's Over

Lewis Lapham Music Reviews

Lewis Lapham didn't even have to wait for the 2004 Republican National Convention to occur before reporting on the events that occurred there.

Now, Maxxim magazine's music critic has given a poor review to an album that he hadn't even heard.

Maxim magazine has apologized for publishing a negative review of the Black Crowes' new album by a writer who hadn't listened to the whole CD.

The review in Maxim's March issue gives the Crowes' "Warpaint" a rating of two-and-a-half stars out of five. The band posted an exasperated statement on its Web site last week saying the Maxim writer hadn't heard the entire album because advance copies weren't available. The Crowes' manager, Pete Angelus, said the magazine explained that its review was an "educated guess."

Al Gore? Global Warming? Never Mind

A century of global warming wiped out in one year?

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts compiled the results of all the sources. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year time. For all sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

As Lily Tomlin used to say, "Nevermind."

Obama's Raised Money For Islamic "Causes"

This is a lot worse than Obama in a turban.

Ali Abunimah, a Chicago-based Palestinian-American activist and co-founder of Electronic Intifada, a pro-Palestinian online publication, recalls introducing Obama at one such event, a 1999 fundraiser for the Deheisha Palestinian camp in the West Bank.

Abunimah is also a harsh critic of Israel and has protested outside pro-Israel events in the Chicago area.

"I knew Barack Obama for many years as my state senator – when he used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time," stated Abuminah during an interview last month with Democracy Now!, a nationally syndicated radio and television political program.

"I remember personally introducing [Obama] onstage in 1999, when we had a major community fundraiser for the community center in Deheisha refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. And that's just one example of how Barack Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation," Abunimah said.

Abunimah also was recently quoted saying that until a few years ago, Obama was "quite frank that the U.S. needed to be more evenhanded, that it leaned too much toward Israel."

And,

Obama's 1999 fundraising for the Palestinian Deheisha camp raised the eyebrows of one senior Israeli security official who was contacted yesterday for comment on the issue. The official, who was not aware of Obama's fundraising, noted Deheisha, which is located near the city of Bethlehem, had a "very active" Palestinian terror apparatus in 1999, carrying out scores of deadly shootings against Israeli civilians that year.

Two of the most deadly suicide bombings in 2002 also were planned from Deheisha, where the suicide bombers originated, said the security official. On one such bombing, in March of that year, 11 people were killed and over 50 injured, four critically when a Deheisha bomber detonated his explosives next to a group of Jewish women waiting with their baby carriages for their husbands to leave a nearby synagogue.

The Audacity Of Hopelessness

Ouch!

“It will be me,” Mrs. Clinton told Katie Couric in November.

About That Endorsement, Obama And Farrakhan

Louis Farrakhan has endorsed Barack Obama for president, in part because he has a white mother.

It was my understanding that every president in US history had a white mother, but that's beside the point.

This has created a bit of a public relations problem for Obama. As Scott Ott phrased it:

Meanwhile, Sen. Obama’s campaign moved to distance itself from Minister Farrakhan’s praise, as one Obama aide put it, “far enough away to assuage voters nervous about Farrakhan’s antisemitism, black nationalism and wacky conspiracy theories, while being careful not to alienate anti-Semites, black nationalists and conspiracy theorists in general, who make up an important element of the Democrat party base.”

But then, it's worth remembering that the pastor of Obama's church, is tight with Farrakhan.

The Final Word On The New York Times And John McCain's "Affair"

John McCain should hire these guys

Obama: I'm Not Qualified

Go Hillary!

John Kerry: It's All About Me

John Kerry cannot campaign for Obama without making himself the issue.

Sen. John F. Kerry is attending to some unfinished business.

Four years ago, his bid to topple President Bush fell short, damaged by a series of Texas broadsides that became known as the Swift boat attacks. His demise spawned a term that came to signify a political low blow. Now Kerry has returned to the campaign trail, this time as a spirited foot soldier for Sen. Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat who aims to succeed where Kerry did not.

Carrying his own overnight bag and following another candidate's script, Kerry jetted to small gatherings around Texas this weekend, telling audiences that Obama, 18 years his junior and barely schooled in Washington's ways, could lead a "transformational presidency." He said the way Obama thinks about politics and foreign policy is uplifting.

"You read all the tea leaves. You can understand the dynamics," Kerry told an audience in Brownsville on Saturday. "I believe Barack Obama has this moment of history to be able to change these politics and take the negative off, to take the politics of destruction away. He isn't seeking to perfect Swift-boating, he's seeking to end it. This is a man who understands we've got to talk to each other.

Never mind that Kerry was ultimately forced to admit that most of what the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth said about him was true and that they produced documentary evidence for what he did not admit to.

Obama Was Against Free Before He Was For It, Or Something Like That

Barack Obama says he's in favor of free trade, except for the free trade that exists now.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama assured U.S. trading partners on Sunday that he did not oppose free trade despite making increasingly critical comments about multilateral deals such as NAFTA.

Obama's Anti-Semitic Associations

Revisiting John Podhoretz's thought exercise, how would the MSM react if John McCain associated so closely with anti-Semites. We already know how indifferent they are when Obama schmoozes with such scum.

The board of a nonprofit organization on which Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe" and supports intense immigration reform, including providing drivers licenses and education to illegal aliens.

The co-founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group.

In 2001, the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit that describes itself as a group helping the disadvantaged, provided a $40,000 grant to the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, for which Khalidi's wife, Mona, serves as president. The Fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for $35,000 in 2002.

Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, according to the Fund's website. According to tax filings, Obama received compensation of $6,000 per year for his service in 1999 and 2001.

Obama served on the Wood's Fund board alongside William C. Ayers, a member of the Weathermen terrorist group which sought to overthrow of the U.S. government and took responsibility for bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1971.

Ayers, who still serves on the Woods Fund board, contributed $200 to Obama's senatorial campaign fund and has served on panels with Obama at numerous public speaking engagements. Ayers admitted to involvement in the bombings of U.S. governmental buildings in the 1970s. He is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Obama's Ties To Domestic Terrorists

Hot Air has more on Barack Obama's schmoozing with Weather Underground bombers William Ayres and Bernadette Dohrn. It wasn't a one time meeting.

The Left and the media will just wave this away, but John Podhoretz asks a pertinent question that we all know the answer to.

[H]ere’s a thought experiment. What if John McCain had visited the Unabomber’s cabin? Or had been photographed with Terry Nichols? Or had stopped off at David Duke’s house at some point because he was gathering support and donors?

How big a story would that be?

Oliver Stone: Champion Of Underdogs, Castro and Obama

Junk Your SUV, Or Giant Snakes Will Eat Your Children

I'm kinda surprised that Al Gore didn't think of this first.

As climate change warms the nation, giant Burmese pythons could colonize one-third of the USA, from San Francisco across the Southwest, Texas and the South and up north along the Virginia coast, according to U.S. Geological Survey maps released Wednesday.

Muslims Are Running Low OnThings To Get Pissed Off About

The Religion Of Chronic Indignation is now steaming because a snack food contains trace amounts of alcohol.

"Even if it is a trace amount of alcohol, Walkers should make it clear on the packaging so that the customer can make an informed choice.

"I feel frustrated and angry. I have let my customers down simply because such a big company like Walkers is not sensitive to Muslim needs.

"Many of them were my daughter's favourite crisps. As soon as I found out about the alcohol in them, I called home to ask my wife to throw out all the packets.”

Shuja Shafi, who chairs the food standards committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that he intended to investigate. "Certainly we would find it very offensive to have eaten food with alcohol."

Masood Khawaja, of the Halal Food Authority, said that this was not the first time the issue had been raised with Walkers.

"They should have looked into the matter and solved it instead of hiding behind labelling regulations. It does not matter what percentage of alcohol is involved.

"Besides Muslims, there are a lot of teetotal people who would not like to consume alcohol in any form. As far as possible we try and lobby for halal symbols on popular products like Kellogg's cereals.

This is more than a bit prissy. As is pointed out in the article, bread contains similar, or even higher, quantities of alcohol.

New York Times: Will Spread Unsubstantiated Gossip For Food

Bill Keller and The New York Times nominate themselves for the "Bimbo Award."

Republican Congressman Indicted For Acting Like a Democrat

An Arizona congressman has been indicted for a crooked land deal.

Prosecutors allege that Mr. Renzi used his clout to push land sales that could then be traded for other property owned by the federal government. Companies that wanted to trade acreage in exchange for federal land they considered promising for mining opportunities were encouraged to buy property belonging to one of Mr. Renzi's business partners. In return, they were promised a smooth ride with the committee on the land swaps. When the sales went through, the Congressman allegedly got a cut of the proceeds from his pal, at least $733,000.

To get away with shady land deals, you have to be named Barack Obama or Harry Reid.

Gays Don't Do High Five

They're even more different than you ever thought.

Super Delegates And Superheroes

What's the difference? Jackie Broyles and Dunlap explain.

What The Hell Is Barack Obama Talking About?

Of course, we can count on the MSM to get to the bottom of this one.

Update: This is a crock of shit!

Will The 2000 Election Inspire Democrats To Cut Their Own Thoats

The Washington State Legislature has indulged itself in a greater than usual measure of foolishness this session. And considering its history, that’s quite an achievement. The “Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative,” would encourage tearing up roads in eastern Washington and a bizarre land use law would force development to arrange itself around light rail systems that few people care to ride. Ammunition serialization? Don’t get me started. But the worst of all the ideas that the legislature has cooked up this year is a law that would require the state to award all of its electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote nationwide.
Democrats still have not gotten over losing the 2000 presidential election. They imagined vote fraud and blamed the Supreme Court for calling a halt to Democrat legal shenanigans in Florida. But most of all, they blamed the Electoral College. Al Gore won the popular vote that year by a fairly wide margin, but George W. Bush won in the Electoral College. Al Gore whined afterwards that he had always thought that the candidate with the most votes won elections, proving that all his family’s tobacco and oil money could not buy him a good education.
Immediately afterward, Democrats vowed to abolish the Electoral College. Hillary Clinton promised that she would introduce legislation to that effect, proving that she had apparently never read the Constitution that she took an oath to uphold. Unanimous votes in both houses of Congress and a presidential signature cannot abolish the Electoral College. That would require amending the Constitution, Considering that more than a quarter of the states enjoy a disproportionate representation in the Electoral College, they would never agree to surrender to a nationwide popular vote. Without the Electoral College, presidential candidates would never visit Idaho or Wyoming. It wouldn’t be worth the jet fuel.
Understanding this, the Electoral College abolitionists took a new tack. They set out to convince individual states to disenfranchise their own citizens’ power to choose their electors and to surrender that power to a nationwide popular vote. Senator Eric Oemig, D-Kirkland introduced the law and the Senate sent it on to the House in an almost straight party-line vote. Had this law been in force in 2004, Washington’s electors would have had to cast their votes for George Bush.
The irony of this is that such a law would diminish the power of any individual vote, particularly those of minorities. By dividing the nation into 51 electoral units, the Electoral College increases the value of each individual vote, making it unwise for a candidate to ignore any minority, be it a racial minority or a demographic minority, such as rural voters, or a religious minority, such as Mormons. Because no candidate can afford to toss away electoral votes by ignoring 10 or 15% of the state’s voters, candidates must at least pretend to care about the voters in every state. Why do you think that Barack Obama came to Boise and declared himself a champion of the Second Amendment? Idaho’s 4 electoral votes could make a difference in November. Why do candidates travel to New York, Seattle or San Francisco and declare their commitment to gay rights? Because that three percent of the population could swing more than 40% of the electoral votes needed to win the presidency in a close election.
John Kerry’s awkward attempt to endear himself to Ohio hunters may have cost him the election in 2004. He could hardly have sounded more condescending when he walked into that convenience store and asked, “Can I get me a huntin’ license here?”
The current demographic battleground is the Hispanic vote. As such, we have Spanish translation debates. And while pandering for the identity vote rarely yields wise policy, at least it makes every minority important enough to be considered and not marginalized.
And this is what makes the Democratic Party’s embrace of this anti-minority crusade so ironic. If the country were ever so foolish as to abolish the Electoral College, it would essentially discourage the kind of tribal politics that that party relies upon.
It’s not surprising that these politicians are failing to consider subtleties like this all the way through. These mediocre people would never consider small issues if not for the Electoral College. So don’t expect a thoughtful debate. It’s all about 2000.

German Scientists Create Sea Sickness In Fish

I wonder how much money was invested to achieve this great moment in German science.

Seventy-two small fish were briefly launched into space by researchers Thursday, hoping their swimming patterns would shed some light on motion sickness.

German researchers sent the cichlids on a 10-minute rocket ride that blasted off from a launch pad in northern Sweden, said Professor Reinhard Hilbig, who was in charge of the project.

"They were very happy, I think they want to have another flight," he said.

The thumbnail-sized fish were filmed as they swam around weightlessly in small aquariums during the unmanned space flight.

The German team will now study the video to see if some of the fish swam in circles because that is what fish do when they experience motion sickness, said Hilbig, of the Zoological Institute at the University of Stuttgart.

At least it's better than what they did in the 1940's.

Obama's Bad Company

Obama's attempts to portray himself as a fresh, moderate face just got a little more complicated as we now learn of his association with violent radicals.

While Ayers and Dohrn may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists, they’re better known nationally as two of the most notorious – and unrepentant — figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s anti-war movement.

Now, as Obama runs for president, what two guests recall as an unremarkable gathering on the road to a minor elected office stands as a symbol of how swiftly he has risen from the Hyde Park left to a man closing in fast on the Democratic nomination for president.

“I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,” said Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician and advocate for single-payer health care, of the informal gathering at the home of Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn. “[Palmer] identified him as her successor.”

Obama and Palmer “were both there,” he said.

Obama’s connections to Ayers and Dorhn have been noted in some fleeting news coverage in the past. But the visit by Obama to their home—part of a campaign courtship—reflects more extensive interaction than has previously reported.

Moqtada al-Sadr Has Another Six Months To Live

The fat cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, has announced that he will extend his cease fire another six months.

None Dare Call It Pimping

I guess Chelsea doesn't have the allure and magnetism that the Clintons hoped for.

Marquette University junior Jason Rae had a personal breakfast with Chelsea Clinton and was wooed on the phone by Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright.

But after seeing the enthusiasm for Barack Obama in Wisconsin on Tuesday, Rae tells ABC News he is supporting the Illinois senator in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

At 21, Rae is the youngest DNC superdelegate, one of the 795 free agents who can back any candidate in the race for the Democratic nomination. He has never even voted in a presidential election because he turned 18 after Election Day in 2004.

"As I think about my role as a young DNC member and a young superdelegate, my generation clearly spoke on Tuesday saying Obama was their choice," Rae told ABC News. "I was inspired by him as well. He has inspired a new generation of voters to get active and energized in the political process."

The Real Surge: Turkish Oil Wrestling

Does anyone seriously believe that Osama bin Laden can compete with this?

I'm Not A McCain Supporter, But.........

I have a feeling that the New York Times oafish attempt to torpedo the McCain campaign will backfire.

The Republican establishment had been counting on visceral Hillary hatred to unite the party. NYT hating runs deep and broad in the Republican party and this clumsy, poorly sourced smear could substitute quite nicely.

How do you feel about that New York Times endorsement now John?

150 Miles Per Gallon? I'd Buy One - Maybe

This ain't no silly Smart Car. This looks like a serious car.

The Loremo's German designers revisited the basics — engine efficiency, low weight, and minimal drag — to create a car that offers fuel-efficiency in the neighborhood of 130 to 150 miles per gallon. The Loremo is likely to dazzle drivers not with its acceleration, but with its ability to drive from New York to L.A. with only three stops at the pump.

Of Clintons And Cigars

Shouldn't the Clintons be a sensitive to the issue of cigars? I mean, all that Monica stuff, you know?

Obama's Divine Boogers

Obama worship has gotten so weird that his discipline applaud when he blows his nose.

[A]bout a half-hour into a speech here, the Illinois Democrat announced that he had to take a quick break. "Gotta blow my nose here for a second," Obama said.

Out came a Kleenex (or perhaps it was a hankie), and he wiped his nose.

The near-capacity audience at the Reunion Arena, which his campaign said totaled 17,000, broke out in a slightly awkward applause.

Pakistan Elections: A Win For The Bush Doctrine?

The MSM was eager to portray Pervez Musharraf's defeat as a repudiation of the Bush Doctrine. The truth is quite the opposite.

Osama bin Laden and I agree on one point: Democracy is poison to radical Islam.

How Liberal Can You Get?

Jane Fonda uses the "c-word" on network television. Can you get any more liberal than that.

Jackie Broyle and Dunlap explore the question with Talmudic thoroughness.

CNN Continues To Coddle Dictators

Now it's Fidel Castro who's getting the velvet glove - and its official policy.

An email has emerged that challenges CNN's journalistic integrity and institutional neutrality and calls all of it's Cuba coverage into question.

First reported by The Natural Truth blogger Michael Graham, Babalu Blog's Henry Gomez said he “independently confirmed” the email which issued marching orders directing the proper “[g]uidance” on reporting Fidel Castro's resignation. Gomez said he posted the full document, which was sent Tuesday morning by Allison Flexner, whose current position is unknown but at one point was a CNN producer of Cuban reports.

The email recommended against using wording that implies Castro didn't write his letter of resignation and to rely on reporting by Communist Party daily Granma. It then reminded “Fidel did bring social reforms to Cuba” and “'[w]hile despised by some, he is seen as a revolutionary hero...for standing up to the United States.”

Of course, we all remember when it was official CNN policy to sanitize Saddam Hussein's tyranny.

Democrats and the Clintons ?Culture of Corruption

The trial is set for October.

Where in The World Is Al Gore?

Perhaps he's in Southeast Asia, where they're suffering through their worst winter ever.

Vietnam is currently suffering from the longest ever cold spell on record.
60,000 head of cattle are dead and 100,000 hectares of rice are ruined due to the record cold.

Northwest Meteorite

The meteorite was actually captured on at least two video cameras, one in Spokane and the other in Boise!

Here a video from Moses Lake.

Why I Don't Google

I'm a die hard Yahoo guy. And it's not just that Google's welcoming page is so clunky. It's Google's hard left, pro-tyranny attitude. As evidenced by this latest disappearance.

It began with an innocuous-sounding yet chilling form letter from Google to Lee, e-mailed on Feb. 8:

"We periodically review news sources, particularly following user complaints, to ensure Google News offers a high quality experience for our users," it said. "When we reviewed your site we've found that we can no longer include it in Google News."

As soon as he read it, Lee immediately suspected one thing: That someone at the UNDP had pressured Google into "de-listing" him from Google News — essentially preventing Inner City Press from being classified on Google News as a legitimate news source and from having its stories pop up when someone conducts a Google News search.

Over the last couple of years, Lee has proved to be a constant — and controversial — thorn in the U.N.'s side.

Though his writing is clunky, his methods unorthodox (and often highly annoying) and his news judgment sometimes more than a little off the mark, Lee has hit his share of bullseyes and became an outlet for whistleblowers inside the U.N.

Of course, Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has previously been disappeared for shining too bright a light on Islam. And Google's protection of leftist cesspools like Moveon.org, and its censorship of wrong thinking conservatives has contributed to my boycott. And who could fail to note that Google ignores Veterans Day and Memorial Day when it puts up special graphics, but remembers Muslim holidays and even gets nostalgic about the Evil Empire.

I'd move my blog from Blogger, it I were computer savvy enough to pull it off as seamlessly as the Blogfather did.

Bill Clinton Plays the Race Card - Again

Obama won in Maine because he's half white.

Michelle Obama Doesn't Hate America Anymore

I'm so relieved that we now live up to her standards.

Press Corp Quagmire

The White House Press corp are trapped in a narrative and they can't get out.

Let me put this in context with three contentious issues -- one economic, one cultural, and one on foreign policy. In each case, President Bush took a clear stand. In each case, he was accused of stupidity or stubbornness and sometimes both. In each case, the facts on the ground increasingly bear the president out, sometimes dramatically. Yet the beat goes on -- with no sense of the great irony that it may be our writers and pundits who are stubbornly clinging to old assumptions.

I was not quite surprised a couple of years ago when a large plurality of Americans indicated that they believed that we in an economic recession when in fact the economy was historically robust. Where do you suppose Americans got such inaccurate information?

Barack Obama's Plagiarism

If it's intentional, then it really is plagiarism - right?

Just wondering: Is Obama seeking Joe Biden's endorsement?

Tort Lawyers For Terrorism

There's a very good reason why Nancy Pelosi adjourned the House without passing a new FISA bill that would have protected the United States from terrorist attacks. She was just doing the bidding of some of the Democrats' most generous contributors.

The recess by House Democrats amounts to a judgment that losing the generous support of trial lawyers, the Democratic Party's most important financial base, is more dangerous than losing the anti-terrorist issue to Republicans.

Bill Clinton Attempts To Bully Pro-Lifers

Another Slick Willie temper tantrum.

Angry White Men

From last week's Aspen Times. Not bad for a liberal rag.

There is a great amount of interest in this year’s presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates — a woman and an African-American — while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party’s nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain.

Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians.

There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from all economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, deep South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard.

His common traits are that he isn’t looking for anything from anyone — just the promise to be able to make his own way on a level playing field. In many cases, he is an independent businessman and employs several people. He pays more than his share of taxes and works hard.

The victimhood syndrome buzzwords — “disenfranchised,” “marginalized” and “voiceless” — don’t resonate with him. “Press ‘one’ for English” is a curse-word to him. He’s used to picking up the tab, whether it’s the company Christmas party, three sets of braces, three college educations or a beautiful wedding.

He believes the Constitution is to be interpreted literally, not as a “living document” open to the whims and vagaries of a panel of judges who have never worked an honest day in their lives.

The Angry White Man owns firearms, and he’s willing to pick up a gun to defend his home and his country. He is willing to lay down his life to defend the freedom and safety of others, and the thought of killing someone who needs killing really doesn’t bother him.

The Angry White Man is not a metrosexual, a homosexual or a victim. Nobody like him drowned in Hurricane Katrina — he got his people together and got the hell out, then went back in to rescue those too helpless and stupid to help themselves, often as a police officer, a National Guard soldier or a volunteer firefighter.

His last name and religion don’t matter. His background might be Italian, English, Polish, German, Slavic, Irish, or Russian, and he might have Cherokee, Mexican, or Puerto Rican mixed in, but he considers himself a white American.

He’s a man’s man, the kind of guy who likes to play poker, watch football, hunt white-tailed deer, call turkeys, play golf, spend a few bucks at a strip club once in a blue moon, change his own oil and build things. He coaches baseball, soccer and football teams and doesn’t ask for a penny. He’s the kind of guy who can put an addition on his house with a couple of friends, drill an oil well, weld a new bumper for his truck, design a factory and publish books. He can fill a train with 100,000 tons of coal and get it to the power plant on time so that you keep the lights on and never know what it took to flip that light switch.

Women either love him or hate him, but they know he’s a man, not a dishrag. If they’re looking for someone to walk all over, they’ve got the wrong guy. He stands up straight, opens doors for women and says “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am.”

He might be a Republican and he might be a Democrat; he might be a Libertarian or a Green. He knows that his wife is more emotional than rational, and he guides the family in a rational manner.

He’s not a racist, but he is annoyed and disappointed when people of certain backgrounds exhibit behavior that typifies the worst stereotypes of their race. He’s willing to give everybody a fair chance if they work hard, play by the rules and learn English.

Most important, the Angry White Man is pissed off. When his job site becomes flooded with illegal workers who don’t pay taxes and his wages drop like a stone, he gets righteously angry. When his job gets shipped overseas, and he has to speak to some incomprehensible idiot in India for tech support, he simmers. When Al Sharpton comes on TV, leading some rally for reparations for slavery or some such nonsense, he bites his tongue and he remembers. When a child gets charged with carrying a concealed weapon for mistakenly bringing a penknife to school, he takes note of who the local idiots are in education and law enforcement.

He also votes, and the Angry White Man loathes Hillary Clinton. Her voice reminds him of a shovel scraping a rock. He recoils at the mere sight of her on television. Her very image disgusts him, and he cannot fathom why anyone would want her as their leader. It’s not that she is a woman. It’s that she is who she is. It’s the liberal victim groups she panders to, the “poor me” attitude that she represents, her inability to give a straight answer to an honest question, his tax dollars that she wants to give to people who refuse to do anything for themselves.

There are many millions of Angry White Men. Four million Angry White Men are members of the National Rifle Association, and all of them will vote against Hillary Clinton, just as the great majority of them voted for George Bush.

He hopes that she will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, and he will make sure that she gets beaten like a drum.

Barack Obama: Just Plagiarism?

Barack Obama flagrantly plagiarizes Deval Patrick.

Iraq, We're Winning

But, we could still snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

A former case officer for the CIA compares Islamist reaction to the Iraq War and the Soviet's Afghanistan War and notes that we have every reason to expect a far more favorable outcome in Iraq.

Sunni extremism is now in retreat. More important, the gruesome anti-Shiite tactics of extremist groups, combined with the much-quoted statements made by former Sunni insurgents about the positive actions of the United States in Iraq, have caused a great deal of intellectual turbulence in the Arab world.

It's way too soon to call Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda spiritual outcasts among Arab Muslims, but they have in fact sustained enormous damage throughout the region because of Iraq. The lack of holy-warrior manpower coming from the Muslim Brotherhood is surely, in part, a reflection of this discomfort with al-Qaeda's violence, the complexity of Iraqi politics and America's not entirely negative role inside the country. If bin Ladenism is now on the decline -- and it may well be among Arabs -- then Iraq has played an essential part in battering the movement's spiritual appeal.

Iraq could still fall apart (and if an American president starts withdrawing troops haphazardly, it probably will). The country's descent into chaos and renewed sectarian strife would likely reenergize Islamic extremism. But it is certainly not too soon to suggest that Iraq could well become America's decisive victory over Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and all those Muslims who believe that God has sanctified violence against the United States.

It's all turning out as I predicted a year ago(here, here and here). To defeat Islamic extremism, we need to change the course of history and not just get even after we are attacked.

It's About Time This Finally Happened

An attention hound gets dumped on television.

The again, this could happen too.

I'm With This Guy

Minnesotans for global warming.

The Clinton Vote Fraud Machine

Did predominantly black precincts in New York really vote unanimously for Hillary?

Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama.

That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district.

Hmmmm.

Barack Obama: He Was For Public Financing Before He Was Against It

After signing his name to a pledge promising to accept public financing for the general elections, Barack Obama's having second thoughts.

[I]n response to a questionnaire in November from the Midwest Democracy Network, a group of nonpartisan government oversight groups, Obama said: "Senator John McCain has already pledged to accept this fundraising pledge. If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election."

That was then. This is now.

Obama told reporters on Friday that it would be "presumptuous of me to say now that I'm locking myself into something when I don't even know if the other side is going to agree to it."

The problem for Obama is that McCain has already said that he's going to accept public financing.

"I made the commitment to the American people that if I were the nominee of my party, I would accept public financing," the likely GOP presidential nominee said Friday in Oshkosh, Wis. "I expect Senator Obama to keep his word to the American people as well. This is all about a commitment that we made to the American people.

"I am going to keep my commitment," he said. "The American people have every reason to expect him to keep his commitment."

Raking in $32 million in a month might be the explanation. Apparently, Obama's honor has a price.

Islamic Rage Boy - He's BA-ACK

The world's most pissed off Muslim has found his way back in front of a camera.

The Perils Of Ammunition Serialization

Leave it to the Left to probe the Constitution for vulnerabilities. Both the United States Constitution and the Washington state constitution quite clearly respect that individuals have the right to keep and bear arms. Individual gun ownership is a real bone in the throat for many on the left, and they chafe at impediments to the imposition of power known as constitutions. So, leftist Democrats in the Washington State Legislature have decided to go after ammunition.
The late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once introduced a Second Amendment work-around by proposing what he called, “arsenal” regulation. His law would have allowed citizens to own a few guns without any great inconvenience, but would have made ammunition difficult to acquire or own. That idea failed, but it certainly inspired a fresh line of thinking in gun controllers. People may have the right to keep and bear arms, but the Constitution does not explicitly permit ammunition ownership. Outlawing ammunition would have been a bit like allowing us to own cars but making gasoline inaccessible.
A recent fad among gun controllers is to propose sensible sounding “ammunition serialization” laws. State Representatives Al O’Brien , Brendan Williams , Dennis Flannigan , and Jamie Pedersen, all Democrats, introduced a bill requiring that all handgun ammunition manufactured or sold within the state of Washington be marked with a serial number. The publicly pronounced, touchy-feely goal of ammunition serialization is to imprint every handgun bullet with a unique serial number that could be matched to the purchaser of that ammunition and that information would be stored in a state maintained database. In theory, bullet serialization would permit law enforcement to match bullets used in violent crime to the original purchaser.
That certainly sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Who could be against that?
Well that’s not the true intention of the law. Requiring ammunition manufacturers to print every bullet with a unique serial number would force ammunition makers to purchase tens of millions of dollars worth of new equipment. Serialization would force manufacturers to produce ammunition in lots of 20, 50 or 100, instead of millions. Ultimately, this would force the price of ammunition so high that very few would be able to afford it. They may as well just mandate that every bullet be made of a precious metal.
Oops! I hope that the Brady Center for gun control doesn’t read this column. I don’t want to give them any new ideas.
The United States Constitution does not confer the right to keep and bear arms upon Americans. It recognizes that the right exists and forbids government from infringing upon that right. For all the debate about what that dangling participle, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,” means, the author of that amendment, James Madison made it quite clear in subsequent writings that he intended to protect the rights of the individual. By his definition, a militia as every able bodied man.
The Washington State Constitution is even more clear: “The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to
organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men.”
Gun controllers believe that they can subvert this right by restricting ammunition purchases. But I’m reminded of a law meant to limit abortions a couple of decades ago. If my memory serves me well, the state of Ohio enacted a law that would have required women who were seeking to abort their pregnancies to first view a sonogram of the doomed child. The courts found that this represented too great an imposition upon the exercise of a constitutional right.
I’ve read the constitution and the word abortion appears nowhere in the document. The Supreme Court declared that they could discern this right in the "penumbras, formed by emanations" from the Constitution. So one might predict that a right enumerated in clear text would be more worthy of defense than an ethereal right floating around in an emanation. On the other hand, while the courts have upheld the right of free speech for pornographers, they’ve shown less interest in protecting political speech.
As such, we should not rely upon the courts. This bill needs to be aborted early in its gestation.

Filth and Wisdom - How Could Madonna's Movie Not Be Great

The critics don't like it.

I wonder why? With a plot line like this, how could it fail?

Filth and Wisdom is the 81-minute story of a Ukrainian immigrant who finances his dreams of becoming a rock star by moonlighting as a cross-dressing dominatrix.

Set in London it stars Eugene Hutz, the lead singer of New York gipsy punk band Gogol Bordello, in the main role of a philosophising S&M escort.

The ensemble of characters also includes a thieving pharmacy worker and a ballet dancer who is forced to lap dance.

Dictators For Obama

First he gets a big thumbs up from Iran's Mullahs and now he's gotten the highly coveted Daniel Ortega endorsement.

President Daniel Ortega, who led the 1979 revolution in Nicaragua, says Barack Obama's presidential bid is a "revolutionary" phenomenon in the United States.

"It's not to say that there is already a revolution under way in the U.S. ... but yes, they are laying the foundations for a revolutionary change," the Sandinista leader said Wednesday night as he accepted an honorary doctorate from an engineering university.

Ortega led a Soviet-backed government that battled U.S.-supported Contra rebels before he lost power in a 1990 election.

Has The New York Times Apologized For Enabling Stalin?

The New York Times sanctimoniously congratulated Australia for apologizing to its aborigines.

I'm just wondering. Has the Times apologized to the Ukraine yet?

Minnesota's Jihadi Congressman

Keith Ellison.

But of course, he's really not at all out of step with the Democratic National Committee.

Happy “Day for Public Flogging of Infidels Who Insult Islam.”

Valentine's Day has different meanings wherever you go.

On the other hand, you might want to celebrate National Condom Day.

Step Right Up! Git Yer Hillary Clinton Puppet Right Here!

It's a real Hillary Clinton puppet, from the British television show, "Spitting Image." Better hurry. Soon this might be the last vestige of the woman's celebrity.

The News From Iraq Is Good, But......

The New York Times editorial page admits that there's good news coming out of Iraq. But, refuses to believe it.

Good news is rare in Iraq. But after months of bitter feuding, Iraq’s Parliament has finally approved a budget, outlined the scope of provincial powers, set an Oct. 1 date for provincial elections and voted a general amnesty for detainees.

All these steps are essential for national conciliation. As always in Iraq, it is best to read the fine print. Final details of the legislation aren’t known. The country’s three-member presidency council must still sign off. And then the laws have to be implemented.

The real truth is not that "good news is rare in Iraq." What's rare is that good news is reported in the New York Times.

I Meant To Vote Yes When I Had Voted No

Somehow, Barack Obama's weaseling is far less presidential than John Kerry's, "I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

Barack Obama angered fellow Democrats in the Illinois Senate when he voted to strip millions of dollars from a child welfare office on Chicago's West Side. But Obama had a ready explanation: He goofed.

"I was not aware that I had voted no," he said that day in June 2002, asking that the record be changed to reflect that he "intended to vote yes."

That was not the only misfire for the former civil rights attorney first elected to the state Senate in 1996. During his eight years in state office, Obama cast more than 4,000 votes. Of those, according to transcripts of the proceedings in Springfield, he hit the wrong button at least six times.

Maybe Now We Can Get Rid Of Ethanol

Ethanol has made for good politics in Iowa, but it's terrible for the economy. Nevertheless, politicians continued to hype ethanol as the answer to all out energy and environmental woes.

Except, it's not. In fact, it's far worse for the environment than fossil fuels.

[I]ncredibly, when the hidden costs of conversion are included, greenhouse-gas emissions from corn ethanol over the next 30 years will be twice as high as from regular gasoline. In the long term, it will take 167 years before the reduction in carbon emissions from using ethanol "pays back" the carbon released by land-use change. As they say, it's not easy being green.

Maybe now we can start down a more sensible road.

And Another One Bites The Dust

A Hizbollah terrorists blamed for the murder of hundreds of Americans became pink mist in Beirut today.

Imad Mughniyeh, a senior but shadowy Hezbollah commander accused by the United States and Israel of masterminding suicide bombings, hijackings and hostage-taking that spanned 25 years, was killed by a car bomb in the Syrian capital of Damascus, the Shiite Muslim group and other officials said Wednesday.

Hezbollah accused Israel of carrying out the attack on Mughniyeh. A spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Mark Regev, said Olmert's office had no comment.

The elusiveness of Mughniyeh, the target of several assassination attempts and kidnappings by the United States and Israel, rivaled only that of Osama bin Laden and stretched over many more years. Until Sept. 11, 2001, the attacks for which the United States blamed him represented some of the deadliest strikes against Americans. Along with bin Laden, he was included on the list of 22 "most wanted terrorists" released by President Bush a month after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Although Hezbollah has always denied a role, the United States said he orchestrated two bombings of the U.S. embassy in Beirut -- in 1983 and 1984 -- killing 72 people, including the CIA's then top Middle East expert, Robert Ames. Even more devastating were the suicide truck bombings organized against U.S. Marines and French paratroopers in Beirut in October 1983. Together, those attacks killed 300 men.

Israel accused Mughniyeh, 45, of masterminding the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 87 people and of a role in a 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in the Argentine capital that killed 28. He was wanted by the authorities there.

Enjoy your virgins asshole.

Berkeley: We Were Wrong, But We're Not Gonna Apologize

The Berkeley City Council admitted that, "We failed our city. We embarrassed our city."

But, they refused to apologize to the Marines.

Chris Berman Scores Dope In Canada

If anybody can find any occasions of Chris Berman making fun of Rush Limbaugh's drug problem, I'd love to hear about it.

Recalling Bill Clinton's Terrorist Embrace

With his wife running for the US Senate from New York senate, Bill Clinton sought to shore up support from New York's Puerto Rican community by pardoning terrorists.

FALN bragged about the bloodbath, calling the victims "reactionary corporate executives" and threatening: "You have unleashed a storm from which you comfortable Yankees can't escape." By 1996, the FBI had linked FALN to 146 bombings and a string of armed robberies -- a reign of terror that resulted in nine deaths and hundreds of injured victims.

On Aug. 7, 1999, the one-year anniversary of the U.S. African embassy bombings that killed 257 people and injured 5,000, President Bill Clinton reaffirmed his commitment to the victims of terrorism, vowing that he "will not rest until justice is done." Four days later, while Congress was on summer recess, the White House quietly issued a press release announcing that the president was granting clemency to 16 imprisoned members of FALN. What began as a simple paragraph on the AP wire exploded into a major controversy.

Mr. Clinton justified the clemencies by asserting that the sentences were disproportionate to the crimes. None of the petitioners, he stated, had been directly involved in crimes that caused bodily harm to anyone. "For me," the president concluded, "the question, therefore, was whether their continuing incarceration served any meaningful purpose."

His comments, including the astonishing claim that the FALN prisoners were being unfairly punished because of "guilt by association," were widely condemned as a concession to terrorists. Further, they were seen as an outrageous slap in the face of the victims and a bitter betrayal of the cops and federal law enforcement officers who had put their lives on the line to protect the public and who had invested years of their careers to put these people behind bars. The U.S. Sentencing Commission affirmed a pre-existing Justice Department assessment that the sentences, ranging from 30 to 90 years, were "in line with sentences imposed in other cases for similar terrorist activity."

Islamic Terrorism: Forbidden Words?

Barack Obama Headquarters, Houston, Texas

This is certainly comforting, isn't it? Video and story here.

Al Gore To Endorse Obama?

Supposedly, the Clintons are fearful of this. I dunno. Look at the boost Gore's endorsement gave Howard Dean's campaign.

But, It's Not Pimping

Bill Clinton arranges dates with his daughter for a pimple-faced 21 year old "superdelegate."

Where in The World Is Al Gore?

India is suffering through its coldest February EVER!

Tajikistan is shivering too.

Record cold has forced 90% of the factories to close down in Tajikistan.

Obama Turns A Phrase

More accurately, he twists it into something unrecognizable.

John F. Kennedy: "Let us never fear to negotiate, but let us never negotiate out of fear."

Barack Obama: "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but never let us fear to negotiate."

Paul Krugman Discovers Hate In Democratic Party

A truly bizarre column, even by the standards of Paul Krugman.

In 1956 Adlai Stevenson, running against Dwight Eisenhower, tried to make the political style of his opponent’s vice president, a man by the name of Richard Nixon, an issue. The nation, he warned, was in danger of becoming “a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland.”

The quote comes from “Nixonland,” a soon-to-be-published political history of the years from 1964 to 1972 written by Rick Perlstein, the author of “Before the Storm.” As Mr. Perlstein shows, Stevenson warned in vain: during those years America did indeed become the land of slander and scare, of the politics of hatred.

And it still is. In fact, these days even the Democratic Party seems to be turning into Nixonland.

Considering the extremity of the deranged hatred that has animated the Democratic Party of the last couple of decades, one has to wonder, where Paul Krugman has been. Oh yeah, I remember now. He was fomenting the hate. Maybe it's hard to see the forest when you are one of the trees.

Nancy Pelosi Declares The Surge A Failure

Pelosi is trying to make lemons out of lemonade.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said twice Sunday that Iraq “is a failure,” adding that President Bush’s troop surge has “not produced the desired effect.”

Glenn Reynolds "almost" feels sorry for Pelosi.

I don't.

Where in The World Is Al Gore?

Fully 10 percent of China's forestry resource have been destroyed by snowstorms in just the last 3 weeks.

Olbermann Joins The Clinton Grovel

The guy who once accused the Bush Administration of assassinating Pat Tillman, apologizes for his colleague, David Schuster.

It's Crying Time Again, And Again, And Again

Hillary's turning on the tears again.

It worked for her husband.

Tim Rutten's A Liar?

Patterico makes a pretty strong case for it. Here's Rutten's LA Times article and Patterico's dissection.

An Al Qaida Diary Of Despair

A captured diary chronicles the decline and fall of Al Qaida in Anbar.

Over 16 pages, the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader detailed the organization's demise in his sector. He once had 600 men, but now his force was down to 20 or fewer, he wrote. They had lost weapons and allies. Abu Tariq focused his anger in particular on the Sunni fighters and tribesmen who have turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and joined the U.S.-backed Sunni Sahwa, or "Awakening," forces.

Of course, Democrats would have willingly suspend disbelief to believe that we might actually win.

Frank Rich Doesn't Like Hillary

I'm gonna go (not very far) out on a limb and call Frank Rich a sexist. He really, really, really dislikes Hillary Clinton and her cynical, scripted, poll-tested campaign.

What makes me think he's sexist is that he really, really, really liked Bill Clinton, who did exactly the same thing.

Obama: The Messiah?

Obamamania is really, really getting creepy?

How long before the grape Kool Aid?

Hillary's Incredibly Bad Fashion Sense

Would you trust somebody who can't even manage her wardrobe to run the country?

Berkeley's Tofu Eating Surrender Monkeys

The Berkeley pinkos have a price - $2.3 million.

As six Republican senators devised a plan to yank $2.3 million in federal funding for Berkeley programs, the mayor of the famously liberal city apologized Wednesday for his hard stance against a Marine recruiting center.

Two City Council members vowed to soften their stance as well.

At their Tuesday council meeting, leaders will discuss scrapping a letter that might be perceived as targeting the center or the Marines.

The letter said that the recruiting center was not welcome on Shattuck Avenue and that the Marines were uninvited and unwelcome intruders.

That letter will probably be pulled back and maybe more moderate language will be put in place which is appropriate I think," said Berkeley mayor Tom Bates.

"Subtly stated in the resolution is perhaps an impugning of the soldiers fighting for us in Iraq and other places," Berkeley City Councilman Laurie Capitelli. "And that was never the intention but that really needs to be cleared up. As I walked to my car that night I realized I regretted it and I had made a mistake."

Bates said the city didn't mean to offend anyone in the armed forces and the focus should have been on the war not the troops.

"There's really no correlation between federal funds for schools, water ferries and police communications systems and the council's actions, for God's sake," said Bates, a retired U.S. Army captain. "We apologize for any offense to any families of anyone who may serve in Iraq. We want them to come home and be safe at home."

The letter was originally approved in January and has not been sent.

City officials said they got a flood of e-mails, many asking them to reconsider their position.

Councilmembers have said they would replace the "intruder item" with words expressing their support for the troops but not the war in Iraq.

The Republican plan would give the funds, intended for a school lunch program, UC Berkeley and ferry service, to the Marines instead.

"Patriotic American taxpayers won't sit quietly while Berkeley insults our brave Marines," said one of the senators.

The recruiting center opened about a year ago and quickly became a target of anti-war protesters including the group Code Pink.

Last week the council passed resolutions giving Code Pink a place to park out front. Some have said that meant the city giving was giving the group a place to continuously protest the Marines.

"What we're doing is we're announcing a bill that we intend to get on the floor to strip transportation from the city of Berkeley," said East Bay Republican Assemblyman Guy Houston. "What they have done in Berkeley is they have set aside a parking spot and in my opinion a public right of way, a public transportation corridor, specifically for a private organization -- in this case Code Pink -- to harass and annoy the United States Marine Corps and their recruiting efforts. We think that playing around and having an agenda with the public right of way is subject to ramifications. There is $2.3 million in proposition 1B transportation dollars. We think that should be in jeopardy."

Others on the Berkeley City Council seemed quite firm on their stance, NBC11's Christie Smith reported.

Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Barbara Lee said they plan to fight the Republican bill.

Code Pink announced they would have what they called a "24-hour peace-in" leading up to Tuesday's city council meeting. They will be camping out but will have a lot of company. A group of pro-troop protesters will also be there.

"I was under the impression that we have the right of free speech," said Xanne Joi of Code Pink. "To me, I thought free speech meant you get to say what you want without recrimination."

Group members have made their organization infamous by intentionally getting arrested at protests and congressional hearings.

An Olive Branch

Berkeley City Councilman Gordon Wozniak extended an olive branch to the Marines. He went to breakfast with a recruiter Thursday morning.

"Berkeley is supposed to celebrate diversity and free speech and we welcome homeless people here. We welcome illegal immigrants. We give them sanctuary. We should welcome the Marines. I mean they're basically dedicating their lives to protect their country."

Wozniak said he does not support the harsh language of the letter to the Marines originally authorized by the city.

Ann Cooper with the Berkeley Unified School District wants both sides to play nice.

"Senators sitting 3,000 miles away are trying to take food away from the children of Berkeley," said Cooper. "Why? Because the Marines and the city aren't playing nice -- and that's just not OK."

When I first heard that Berkeley intended to treat Marine recruiters like porn shops, I assumed that meant that the Marines would be welcome anywhere. This is Berkeley after all.

Obama Charms The Rubes

Who'd a thunk it? Obama convinces Idahoan that he's for God, guts and guns.
I really wish that I had gotten to hear Barack Obama's speech in Boise. Obama has shown a talent for adopting the accent of his audience. When he's up north addressing the high-born, he can sound like a Boston Brahman. When in the south, he adopts a southern drawl and deletes a few words from his vocabulary. In the 'hood, he can produce a convincing Snoop Dog impersonation. I'm just wondering: When he assured Idahoans that he was a gun-toting bible thumper just like them, did he deploy a western twang?
Adopting what he must have inferred was a typical regional inarticulation he sought to comfort those in the audience who might fear that he was a typical, gun-grabbing liberal: "There are people who say, `Well, he doesn't believe in the Second Amendment,' even though I come from a state — we've got a lot of hunters in downstate Illinois. And I have no intention of taking away folks' guns."
His words in Boise contradicted his former stand on the Second Amendment. He has previously advocated "banning the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns."
This prompted his irony-proof opponent, Hillary Clinton, to remark that, "Well he has to speak to his own record, which has obviously changed over a relatively short period of time."
Does anyone else recall Hillary's one week 180 as regards drivers licenses for illegal aliens? Or perhaps she's hoping that nobody will remember that, until recently, she supported the war.
However Obama said it, his God and guns message must have gone over well as Obama scored 79% of the vote on Super Tuesday and seems to have vacuumed up all of Idaho's few delegates. Certainly Idaho is a state where a Democrat can be forgiven for using Ronald Reagan's name in a non-pejorative context.
The condemnation he absorbed from his primary opponents after calling Ronald Reagan a "transformative leader" was easily the shrillest and fieriest of the campaign. At least we know that the left does acknowledge the concept of sin even if those of us on the right don't quite grasp the left's moral priorities.
In any event, very few of Obama's Idaho fans were struggling with the conundrum frequently described by the mainstream media. More than once I've read or heard that black women were struggling with their decision. Should they vote for Obama because he's black, or should they pull the lever for Hillary Clinton because she's a woman?
It's too bad that those black women weren't Republicans. According to post-Super Tuesday voting analyses in the Politico and the Washington Post, Republicans and Democrats took their voting decisions via very different routes. Democratic votes were divided largely along race and gender fault lines. In other words, it was all about tribalism, victimology and identity politics.
Republicans cast their votes according to ideology. Republican voters need more than a photograph to make their decisions. Republican must listen to the speeches and familiarize themselves with the candidates' records. And considering that conservative talk radio was almost unanimous in its opposition to John McCain, we can dispense with those clichés about the Republican voters marching in lockstep to the orders of Rush Limbaugh.
Unfortunately, for Republicans, the only passion is in opposition to its candidate field. Familiarity with John McCain's record explains the grumbling in the Republican base. His McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill is an egregious trampling of the First Amendment. Along with Ted Kennedy, he tried to bestow citizenship upon illegal aliens, and then insulted those of us who opposed this scheme as "nativists" and "racists," although Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he assured us that he now "respects" us.
Mitt Romney has lately portrayed himself as the only true conservative in the field. This self-characterization conflicts with his senatorial campaign against Ted Kennedy when he tried to convince voters that he was more liberal than Kennedy himself. And his reign as Massachusetts governor was far from conservative.
And finally, there is Mike Huckabee. Huckabee has revealed a frightening unfamiliarity and naiveté in foreign affairs along with a propensity to sink into a simple-minded populism indistinguishable from John Edwards'. And his record on ethics while serving as governor of Arkansas lent credence to Bill Clinton's defense of his own tenure - "honest by the standards of Arkansas."
If nothing else, Democrats have enthusiasm in their favor. As for me, I'm with Jackie Broyles.

And Another One Bites the Dust: Adam Gadahm

Enjoy those virgins asshole!

More Crooked Clinton Fundraising?

Ed Morrisey thinks that Ron Burkle, a devout Friend of the Clintons, found a way to funnel $20 million into Hillary's campaign.

Where did Hillary get $5 million to loan a presidential campaign? Bill and Hillary have done well on the speaking circuit, and Bill recently got $20 million or so for backing out of his partnership from Ron Burkle. At the time, speculation had Bill wanting to eliminate any potential conflicts between Burkle's business and Hillary's election.

Now, however, one has to wonder whether Burkle may have attempted to float money into Hillary's campaign while bypassing campaign-finance regulations. Did the $20 million, which came just two weeks ago, actually represent a fair-market settlement for Clinton's services and ownership stake in Yucaipa? Or did Burkle inflate it in order to allow Hillary to "loan" herself $5 million to keep pace with a surging Obama campaign?

The Clintons always seem to live at the nexus of questions regarding cash and politics. Whether we talk about Norman Hsu or Ron Burkle, their opacity in financial operations suggests a very, er, flexible attitude towards ethics in government -- and serves as a reminder why so many people oppose a Clinton Restoration.