Behind Us All The Way

They've got a long way to go:

The Association of European Chambers of Commerce in Brussels warned that the transatlantic gap had widened yet further in the past five years by all key measures, despite the pledge by EU leaders at the 2000 Lisbon summit to transform Europe into the world's 'most dynamic knowledge-based economy' by the end of the decade.

The EU-wide umbrella group, known asEurochambres said the EU's overall employment rate was still stuck at levels attained by the United States in 1978, chiefly due to an incentive structure that discourages women from working and prompts early retirement by those in their fifties.

It found that the European Union's research and development levels were achieved by America as long ago as 1979, while the lag time on per capita income is 18 years.

"It will take the EU until 2072 to reach US levels of income per capita, and then only if the EU income growth exceeds that of the US by 0.5pc," the study said.

Remember when the Russians, who also had a state-run economy and a massive bureaucracy, said that they would overtake us someday? I'm still waiting.

Get Your Game On

You'll be shocked to learn that video games have not led to society's collapse.

So far, the dire predictions many have made about the 'death' of traditional narratives and imaginative thought at the hands of video games have at best equivocal evidence to support them. Television and cinema may be suffering, economically, at the hands of interactive media. But literacy standards and book sales have failed to nosedive, and both books and radio are happily expanding into an age that increasingly looks like it will be anything but lived on-screen. Young people still enjoy sport, going out and listening to music. They like playing games with their friends, and using the internet to keep in touch and arrange meetings rather than to isolate themselves. And most research—including a recent $1.5m study funded by the US government—suggests that even pre-teens are not in the habit of blurring game and real worlds. This finding chimes with an obvious truth: that a large proportion of 'problem behaviours' in relation to any medium or substance exist for resolutely old-fashioned reasons—lack of education, parental attention, security, support and experience.

In other words-it's still the parenting, stupid.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1900

The Chinese Emperor finally takes action, sort of:

A dispatch from Shanghai, dated yesterday, says: "Yesterday the Chinese Government issued an edict prohibiting the "Boxers" organization, under penalty of death,

"The edict, which was signed by the Emperor, was couched in equivocal terms, and promulgated more as an excuse than in condemnattion of the movement."

Sir Halladay Macartney, counselor and English secretary to the Chinese Legation in London, says he regards the rebellion as grave, although he is hopeful that it may be suppressed. The danger lies, in his opinion, in the fact that among the Chinese there are "large numbers of inflammable persons."

If a person is inflammable, do they burn when you touch them?

Dude, Where's My Jihad?

According to the guy in charge, the bad guys are losing big time.

Hayden says Al Qaeda’s losses in Iraq are encouraging, not just for the United States' fight against them, but also for Iraqi groups Al Qaeda sought to force into its cause.

“Although it kind of seems operational and tactical, we should not dismiss the importance of that,” he said. “That creates the conditions for other kinds of success. Other kinds of success would be the Iraqi people … realizing that the Al Qaeda vision for Iraq is not something that they want to have for themselves or for their children.

“You could say Al Qaeda overplayed its hand. I'd say Al Qaeda revealed its true colors.”
In fact, Hayden says Al Qaeda is not only struggling in the military sense, but is also encountering increasing and broader resistance from other Muslims, even radical ones. Several are starting to question Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri about the group's tactics and philosophy.

“You are seeing significant portions of the Islamic world take issue, and take issue publicly with Al Qaeda’s world view and Al Qaeda’s tactics and Al Qaeda’s vision for the future,” Hayden said.

This is indeed good news, which means it won't get a lot of attention in the MSM. More like this, please.

Bill's List

Bill Clinton channels Nixon.

With Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign on the verge of defeat, Bill Clinton has been placing blame on enemies including a brazenly biased media that tried to suppress blue-collar votes, a powerful anti-war group that endorsed rival Barack Obama and weak-willed party leaders unable to stand up to either of these nefarious forces.

Pieced together from the former president’s public remarks at his wife’s campaign events and a private conversation last week with top donors to her campaign, the theory goes something like this: After Hillary recovered from a string of losses to rival Barack Obama with March 4 wins in Texas and Ohio, powerful forces conspired to pressure the superdelegates who will decide the nomination to back Obama by discouraging her supporters from voting and trying to hide evidence proving she would fare better than Obama against presumptive GOP nominee John McCain.

While the former president has offered parts of this theory publicly, he fleshed it out more explicitly during a conference call last week with maxed-out donors to his wife’s campaign, a recording of which has been obtained by Politico.

After rattling off a series of poll numbers showing Hillary Clinton faring better than Obama against McCain, Bill Clinton told donors: “We are in the strongest conceivable position electorally and not in a good fix with the superdelegates, because they have felt all the pressure from the Obama side, from the media, from the MoveOn crowd — who they think is an automatic ATM machine for everybody for life. So, they’re reluctant to take on all that.”

His wife once said that a vast right-wing conspiracy was out to get her husband. Now her husband says it's the vast left-wing conspiracy. I really wish these people would get their conspiracies straight.

Darwin Comes Calling

Let's see the creationists try and wrap their heads around this:

The Vatican is planning a special conference in 2009 to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin’s groundbreaking theory of evolution.

First printed in November 1859, Darwin’s evolutionary theories rocked the faith of Victorian Christians and are stoutly contested today by Creationists. The Vatican has traditionally backed a more nuanced approach. Three years ago, Cardinal Paul Poupard, the then president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said Darwin’s theory of Evolution and the Old Testament book of Genesis were “perfectly compatible” if the Bible were correctly read, saying: 'The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim,' explaining that the real message in Genesis was that “the universe didn't make itself and had a creator.'

Next year's conference will be held in Rome and organised by Poupard's former office, the Pontifical Council for Culture as well as by the University of Notre Dame and six pontifical universities. The event, claim its organisers, is a milestone in the rapprochement between science and the Church. They say it is time for the Church to look at Evolution again, “from a broader perspective”, explaining “appropriate consideration is needed more than ever before.”

This will not sit well with those who run the world's Flintstones Museums. If God is willing to tolerate Darwin, where will that leave them?

Barry Goldwater, The Sequel

On why John McCain may actually be the conservative movement's last, best hope.

Irascible, iconoclastic, sometimes a bit profane, always his own man and nobody else's, McCain is a curmudgeon's curmudgeon -- but still with much to offer his country. We all know, of course, why so many of us are so often so angry with McCain -- his sometimes bizarre heresies from conservatism, his insulting language and hair-trigger temper toward conservatives who disagree with him -- but we spend too little time acknowledging the man's strengths. On those issues on which Goldwater was strongest, about which he cared most deeply and on which he was most identifiably conservative, McCain is as strong or stronger than any national leader in the past 20 years.

Consider the fight against outrageous government spending. No major party nominee since Goldwater, Reagan included, has been as consistently and bravely dedicated to fiscal discipline as has McCain. Last week he both made a superb campaign speech and penned a hard-hitting column for the Chicago Tribune blasting the bloated, irresponsible Farm Bill for which 80 percent of his colleagues were cravenly voting. Likewise, McCain's longstanding record of opposing purely local pork barrel projects -- 'earmarks' -- is well known, and utterly unmatched. McCain also consistently has opposed expansion of entitlement programs, which of course are the biggest long-term fiscal problems facing this nation. Indeed, entitlements collectively represent an absolutely deadly time bomb, and McCain might be the only man in American politics today with the will power, the moral standing, and the sheer cussedness needed to defuse it.

McCain is an uncomfortable reminder to Bush Republicans and social conservatives of what Republicans used to be like. If voters can identify with that, then he becomes the next President.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1965

It's been a good week at the World's Fair.

Questions over the voting rights bill.

The University of Maryland apparently doesn't have enough protests. So some students decided to start some.

But what should they protest? After a long pause for thought, S.F.U. seized upon two yawning gaps in Maryland's academic life: the library closes at 10 p.m. instead of midnight, and students are not allowed to wear Bermuda shorts at dinner in the dining halls. S.F.U. began promoting a library study-in—even though the administration was already considering longer library hours, as well as abolition of all dress standards.

Hoping for bigger and better issues, S.F.U. appointed a committee to seek new problems to protest. One student found a long-forgotten and never-used rule under which the university could eject a student without explanation. That also proved to be a nonissue. "I don't see any point in keeping the regulation on the books either," said University Vice President R. Lee Hornbake, "and we are getting rid of it."

Keep trying, kids-I'm sure you'll come up with something to complain about.

Every Cent Counts

It seems the Democrats are finally learning fiscal responsibility.

Millions of dollars behind in raising money and unlikely to meet a fast-approaching final deadline, the Denver committee hosting the Democratic National Convention is considering spending cuts.

Committee sources say they are working with the Democratic National Convention Committee to consider lowering the $55 million in private cash and donated services that must be raised to bring the convention to town. The cuts would be made to the many parties the host committee is obligated to throw for the delegations and the news media, and other hospitality functions not tied to production aspects inside the convention hall.

'There have been no specific decisions made,' host committee spokesman Chris Lopez said. 'We're always identifying costs and weighing them against our anticipated revenue.'

Odd how their counterparts in Congress can't seem to do that...

How To Save The World In Ten Steps Or Less

A group of highly educated folks got together to try and solve the world's problems. Near the top of their list is...free trade.

Eight leading economists, including five Nobelists, were asked to prioritize 30 different proposed solutions to ten of the world's biggest problems. The proposed solutions were developed by more than 50 specialist scholars over the past two years and were presented as reports to the panel over the past week. Since we live in a world of scarce resources, not all good projects can be funded. So the experts were constrained in their decision making by allocating a budget of an 'extra' $75 billion among the solutions over four years.

Number 2 on the list of Copenhagen Consensus 2008 priorities is to widen free trade by means of the Doha Development Agenda. The benefits from trade are enormous. Success at Doha trade negotiations could boost global income by $3 trillion per year, of which $2.5 trillion would go to the developing countries. At the Copenhagen Consensus Center press conference, University of Chicago economist Nancy Stokey explained, 'Trade reform is not just for the long run, it would make people in developing countries better off right now. There are large benefits in the short run and the long run benefits are enormous.'

I guess the kind of isolationism advocated by Hillary and Obama doesn't matter so much to those countries that really need it.

Not Just Another Bush Basher

Peggy Noonan analyzes Scott McClellan's motives and finds them to be more than just about money:

Mr. McClellan attempts to reveal and expose what he believes, what he came to see as, an inherent dishonesty and hypocrisy within a hardened administration. It is a real denunciation.

He believes the invasion of Iraq was "a serious strategic blunder," that the decision to invade Iraq was "a fateful misstep" born in part of the shock of 9/11 but also of "an air of invincibility" sharpened by the surprisingly and "deceptively" quick initial military success in Afghanistan. He scores President Bush's "certitude" and "self-deceit" and asserts the decision to invade Iraq was tied to the president's lust for legacy, need for boldness, and grandiose notions as to what is possible in the Mideast. He argues that Mr. Bush did not try to change the culture of the capital, that he "chose to play the Washington game the way he found it" and turned "away from candor and honesty."

Mr. McClellan dwells on a point that all in government know, that day-to-day governance now is focused on media manipulation, with a particular eye to "political blogs, popular web sites, paid advertising, talk radio" and news media in general. In the age of the permanent campaign, government has become merely an offshoot of campaigning. All is perception and spin. This mentality can "cripple" an administration as, he says, it crippled the Clinton administration, with which he draws constant parallels. "Like the Clinton administration, we had an elaborate campaign structure within the White House that drove much of what we did."

His primary target is Karl Rove, whose role he says was "political manipulation, plain and simple." He criticizes as destructive the 50-plus-1 strategy that focused on retaining power through appeals to the base at the expense of a larger approach to the nation. He blames Mr. Rove for sundering the brief post-9/11 bipartisan entente when he went before an open Republican National Committee meeting in Austin, four months after 9/11, and said the GOP would make the war on terror the top issue to win the Senate and keep the House in the 2002 campaign. By the spring the Democratic Party and the media were slamming back with charges the administration had been warned before 9/11 of terrorist plans and done nothing. That war has continued ever since.

Certain folks on the right may call McClellan a Judas or a hack, but there's no denying that Karl Rove has poisoned the well of politics for years to come.

Taxes Are For Little People

Keith Olbermann seems to have pulled an Al Franken:

New York State has issued a tax warrant against Keith Olbermann for failure to pay taxes on his humbly named personal corporation, Olbermann Broadcasting Empire, Inc. Olbermann is listed in legal records as the President of Olbermann Broadcasting Empire, Inc.

A call to the Albany County Clerk's Office in upstate New York confirmed that the warrant is still outstanding and that Olbermann has still failed to pay his back taxes. State records show that Olbermann's company failed to pay $2,269.50 in state taxes. A judgement was entered against Olbermann last summer (Docket Date: 8/21/2007), just weeks before Olbermann closed on a a luxurious $4.2 mm condo at Trump Palace, at 200 East 69th Street.

Hey-he runs an Empire! I guess he figures he's entitled.

Crossing Over

Are Republicans losing the Catholic vote?

A Pew poll taken in January 2007 found only 38% of traditional Catholics favored a generic Republican presidential candidate. An August 2007 poll showed them three times as concerned with the economy as social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

'Conservative Catholics are very much in play,' Mr. Green says.

While Sen. Obama supports abortion rights, he has backed several bills to reduce unintended pregnancies and therefore the need for abortion. His campaign is hoping his record on other issues will carry the day. 'He has spent an entire career bringing people together and putting his faith into action, and that's a distinctly Catholic concept,' says Joshua DuBois, national director of religious affairs for the Obama campaign.

Sen. McCain is still establishing his conservative credentials among the religious right. In a speech at Wake Forest University in North Carolina this month, he assured conservatives he would appoint judges he characterized as strictly faithful to the Constitution, a signal they would be pro-life.

For now, wedge issues, like gay marriage and abortion, are taking a back seat, while issues like the war in Iraq, health care for the poor and concerns about the environment are keeping the conservative Catholic vote in play.

There was a time when people were scared of a Catholic president. It's ironic that Catholics may well elect the guy accused of being a closet Muslim.

A Natural Brand

What is conservatism? In an essay at National Review Online, which seems to be developing a split personality these days, Alex Castellanos says it should be the following:

Conservatives do have solutions. Our answer is not “no government”; our answer is a government that is more natural. Choice and diversity, if entrusted to people, require — and create — economic freedom. Conservatives need to learn the language of the environmental and civil-rights movements, not only because it is more marketable, but also because it more accurately reflects the organic liberty and self-government we cherish.

Our theme, our brand, our identity? How about this: Republicans are the not the party of a decaying, old, static, industrial-age, top-down government in Washington. We are the communications-age party of genuinely democratic, dynamic government — of, for, and by real people. We want to get money and power out of Washington and into the hands of the people — not because we want no government, but because we believe people who live in liberty create the best government when they are trusted to govern themselves.

The problem is, those who call themselves conservative are about "Transformational government" and waging culture wars, not about organic grass-roots activism. That is why Barack Obama is seen as the future while John McCain and most of his party are seen as the past. The past does not grow; it fades into history. Conservatives need to learn this lest their movement faces the same fate.

Houston, We Need A Plumber

This will really hit them where they live.

The crew aboard the International Space Station is working on a problem with the system for collecting solid and liquid waste, which is a trickier proposition without gravity than it is on the Earth. Space toilets use jets of fan-propelled air to guide waste into the proper container.

A NASA status report noted that last week, while using the toilet system in the Russian-built service module, “the crew heard a loud noise and the fan stopped working.” The solid waste collector is functioning properly, but the system for collecting liquid waste was not.

The crew tried replacing one device, an air/water separator, and then a filter, but nothing seemed to bring the toilet back to full operation. Russian mission control told the crew — Russian Cosmonauts Sergey Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, and Garrett Reisman, a NASA astronaut, to use the toilet on the Soyuz capsule that is attached to the station as a lifeboat. But that system has very limited capacity, and so repairing the system has become an increasingly urgent issue.

I'll bet this is something Stanley Kubrik and Arthur C. Clarke never thought of.

Port Of No Return

But I thought we were supposed to be safer. After all, the NRO tells me so.

WASHINGTON - A Department of Homeland Security program to strengthen port security has gaps that terrorists could exploit to smuggle weapons of mass destruction in cargo containers, congressional investigators have found.

The report by the Government Accountability Office, being released Tuesday, assesses the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT), a federal program established after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to deter a potential terrorist strike via cargo passing through 326 of the nation's airports, seaports and designated land borders.

Under the program, roughly 8,000 importers, port authorities and air, sea and land carriers are granted benefits such as reduced scrutiny of their cargo. In exchange, the companies submit a security plan that must meet U.S. Customs and Border Protection's minimum standards and allow officials to verify their measures are being followed.

A 2005 GAO report found many of the companies were receiving the reduced cargo scrutiny without the required full vetting by U.S. Customs, a division of DHS. The agency has since made some improvements, but the new report found that Customs officials still couldn't provide guarantees that companies were in compliance.

Well, at least the importers know that their cargo is safe from inspection. Too bad we're not safe from them.

Burps Away

I'll do my part.

Conservative grassroots group Grassfire.org wants people to waste as much energy as possible on June 12 by 'hosting a barbecue, going for a drive, watching television, leaving a few lights on, or even smoking a few cigars.'

The point: the group wants to 'help Americans break free from the 'carbon footprint guilt' being imposed by Climate Alarmists.'

Grassfire.org says it's skeptical over claims that man-made sources of carbon dioxide emissions -- from automobile exhausts to manufacturing plants -- are raising the Earth's temperature at a dangerous rate. Theories about global warming were highlighted by former Vice President Al Gore's 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth.

Grassfire.org president Steve Elliott, in a statement, said such theories are off the mark. 'It's time for Americans to purge ourselves of the false guilt that Al Gore and the Climate Alarmists have placed on us,' Elliott said.

If it's a belch they want, I am an experienced practioner.

Compassionate Warfare

Speaking of screw-ups, Soctt McClellan explains Bush's "Logic":

The president's real motivation for the war, he said, was to transform the Middle East to ensure an enduring peace in the region. But the White House effort to sell the war as necessary due to the stated threat posed by Saddam Hussein was needed because 'Bush and his advisers knew that the American people would almost certainly not support a war launched primarily for the ambitions purpose of transforming the Middle East,' McClellan wrote.

'Rather than open this Pandora's Box, the administration chose a different path — not employing out-and-out deception, but shading the truth,' he wrote of the effort to convince the world that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, an effort he said used 'innuendo and implication' and 'intentional ignoring of intelligence to the contrary.'

'President Bush managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option,' McClellan concluded, noting, 'The lack of candor underlying the campaign for war would severely undermine the president's entire second term in office.'

The moral? Beware of Presidents who believe in applying their ideas of "Transformational government" to all areas of their policies.

Losers R Us

They've turned into the Keystone Terrorists.

Today, al Qaeda has been shattered, with most of its leadership and foot soldiers dead, captured or moved from Iraq. As a result, al Qaeda attacks have declined more than 90 percent. Worse, most of their Iraqi Sunni Arab allies have turned on them, or simply quit. This 'betrayal' is handled carefully on the terrorist web sites, for it is seen as both shameful, and perhaps recoverable.

This defeat was not as sudden as it appeared to be, and some Islamic terrorist web sites have been discussing the problem for several years. The primary cause has been Moslems killed as a side effect of attacks on infidel troops, Iraqi security forces and non-Sunnis. Al Qaeda plays down the impact of this, calling the Moslem victims 'involuntary martyrs.' But that's a minority opinion. Most Moslems, and many other Islamic terrorists, see this as a surefire way to turn the Moslem population against the Islamic radicals. That's what happened earlier in Algeria, Afghanistan, Egypt and many other places. It's really got nothing to do with religion. The phenomenon hits non-Islamic terrorists as well (like the Irish IRA and the Basque ETA).

You know you've got a problem when other terrorists think you suck.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1902

An African Peace

The Boer War may finally be ending:

The Daily Chronicle this morning asserts that the negotiations in South Africa are practically concluded, and that the present week will witness the termination of the war in South Africa. The paper says that it understands that the Government has declined to grant unqaulified amnesty to the rebels or to fix a date for the establishment of self government, and that English will probably be the official language in the two colonies.

All I can say is, I hope we never get involved in the colonization business to the same extent that the Europeans have.

T.R. Says He Can't Get Involved

President Roosevelt says it's not up to him to settle the strike:

After a conference with the members of his Cabinet to-day, President Roosevelt decided that there was no legal ground for interference by him in the settlement of the dispute between the coal operators and striking miners.

Sounds like the coal barons are on their own for now. Wait until Teddy does get involved.

Six Is Enough

How did this get into the National Review Online, of all places?

For many of us, the war was supposed to be about U.S. national security and only about U.S. national security. It would be nice if we could make Iraq a better place, just as it would be nice if we could make Afghanistan a better place, but that was never a sufficient reason to go to war. The reason to go to war was to find and kill every last son of a bitch who had anything to do with 9/11. And that job was not the main focus in Iraq, and in any event is unfortunately not finished.

One of the main reasons John McCain is facing such an tough job today is that we are now in the sixth year of a war that the president of his own party started by mistake. That's a major headwind when you're running for president; an error of that magnitude will exact a political price. Would anyone be surprised if voters say that they've had enough?

I think McCain does know that voters have had enough; the question is, will he be man enough to admit it?

Homeless Go Home

The times they are a' changing in the place known as the Midwest's answer to Berkeley.

"It used to be the homeless were tolerated and somewhat supported," said former six-term Mayor Paul Soglin, who led the city during antiwar riots in the 1970s. "But the combination of more homeless, more aggressive panhandling and these recent crimes has led to some not-so-politically-correct views."

After student Brittany Zimmermann was killed April 2, police interviewed dozens of homeless in the downtown area.

Police took DNA samples from some of the panhandlers, and more than a dozen were arrested on unrelated charges, Madison police Officer Meredith York said.

But department spokesman Joel DeSpain said "the homeless have been a focus, not the only focus" in Zimmermann's death and the January slaying of businessman Joel Anthony Marino, 31.

"We're just trying to talk to everyone who may have been in the area when the crimes occurred," DeSpain said.

Some Madison residents say such scrutiny is overdue in a city that allows the homeless to spend their days in the Capitol's basement, and provides meals for them on Sundays.

But civil rights and homeless activists say the city is unfairly using the homeless population as a scapegoat.

"You cannot blame an entire community of people, just because they live on the street, for crimes where there's not a single suspect," said Linda Ketcham, executive director of the Madison-area Urban Ministry, a nonprofit social justice organization. "If you do, all you're doing is fueling fear and hate."

As the weeks pass, downtown residents say they feel increasingly unsafe in a place that has long enjoyed a sense of small-town security.

"There's a lot more door-locking going on when people are home," said Mary Berryman Agard, who lives a few blocks from where Zimmermann was killed. "I know several young women who have left the neighborhood in fear. The bars and restaurants are starting to walk their staff home at night."

Suddenly, enabling the bums' lifestyle doesn't seem so popular now.

"Debate...For Your Freedom!"

One of the last sane leaders in the Old World is calling out the Prophet of Doom:

Washington - Czech President Vaclav Klaus said Tuesday he is ready to debate Al Gore about global warming, as he presented the English version of his latest book that argues environmentalism poses a threat to basic human freedoms. 'I many times tried to talk to have a public exchange of views with him, and he's not too much willing to make such a conversation,' Klaus said. 'So I'm ready to do it.'

Klaus was speaking a the National Press Building in Washington to present his new book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles - What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?, before meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney Wednesday.

'My answer is it is our freedom and, I might add, and our prosperity,' he said.

(snip)

Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the "climate alarmism" perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.

"Like their (communist) predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality," he said.

"In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat - this time, in the name of the planet," he added.

"They durk ur Communism!" Sounds about right...

Cards For All

Regardless of the Tory win, the Nannystate continues.

Every adult should be forced to use a 'carbon ration card' when they pay for petrol, airline tickets or household energy, MPs say.

The influential Environmental Audit Committee says a personal carbon trading scheme is the best and fairest way of cutting Britain's CO2 emissions without penalising the poor.
Under the scheme, everyone would be given an annual carbon allowance to use when buying oil, gas, electricity and flights.

Anyone who exceeds their entitlement would have to buy top-up credits from individuals who haven't used up their allowance. The amount paid would be driven by market forces and the deal done through a specialist company.

MPs, led by Tory Tim Yeo, say the scheme could be more effective at cutting greenhouse gas emissions than green taxes.

But critics say the idea is costly, bureaucratic, intrusive and unworkable.

Well, if it wasn't intrusive then it wouldn't be Government, would it?

Boggin' In The Years: 1980

Anderson, John Anderson

Reagan Versus Carter Versus John Who?

In the West, often regarded as a Reagan stronghold, the three candidates are also grouped quite closely. Reagan leads with 35%, Anderson is second with 30%, Carter is third with 29%. Reagan appears strongest in the Midwest, and Carter still holds a narrow lead in his native South. Anderson does poorly in both regions and also has little support among blue-collar workers, older voters, blacks and other minority groups. At this stage of the campaign, however, even this support is subject to quick change. When asked how firmly committed they are to their first choice for President, only 31% of those surveyed say they are 'very committed.' Fully 30% say they are 'not that committed.' And when asked who among the three candidates would be their second choice, more voters (31%) choose Anderson than either Carter or Reagan. Among both Democrats and Republicans, about one-third name Anderson as a second choice. That puts him in a good position to pick up disaffected party loyalists who are not attracted by the other party's standardbearer.

Maybe, but I still think a vote for John Anderson is a vote for the other guy.

Blutarsky Or Bust

Meanwhile, Ted Kennedy is still in it to win it, for whatever that's worth.

Stop Me, I'm Burning

When your body is on fire, you know it's time to quit:

An explosion rocked his bedroom, and black Comedian Richard Pryor was engulfed in flames. Hearing his screams, his maid summoned his aunt Jenny, who rushed to his room and smothered the blaze with bedclothes. In shock, Pryor bolted from the house in the Los Angeles suburb of Northridge and rushed into the street. When police arrived with an ambulance, he was still running. "I can't stop!" he shouted. "I'll die if I stop!" His polyester shirt had melted onto his arms and chest, and he suffered third-degree burns from the waist up. At week's end he was still on the critical list at Sherman Oaks Community Hospital.

The Los Angeles police say Pryor told them that the accident occurred while he was "free-basing" cocaine. This newly fashionable practice involves purifying the coke by mixing it with highly flammable ether, which, when it evaporates, leaves coke crystals that burn with a steady flame and are smoked through a water pipe.

How can you tell when Richard Pryor will be at the Olympics? They'll be using him to light the torch.

Sorry, Charlie

Why are they called the Stupid Party? Because the Republicans still listen to people who think like this:

The Brody File has been talking with pro-family leaders and activists and they all agree that if John McCain picks Florida Governor Charlie Crist as his running mate, there will be MAJOR dissatisfaction among social conservatives. Jim Backlin, a conservative activist with a hefty email list, told me:

'If the goal of the campaign is to shore up the base of the party, which is still critically needed, that pick would do exactly the opposite and many social conservatives, and conservatives in general, would sit on their hands this election.'

Connie Mackay, Senior Vice President for FRCAction tells me:

“We have concerns about Governor Crist. While he claims to be pro-life he has not been an advocate…We would not be supportive of his candidacy for Vice-President…I think it would not help him. McCain needs to continue to try and energize the base. I think that would certainly not energize the base and I think I could go one step further and say it would de-energize the base.”

Another important pro-family activist, Kelly Shackelford, President of Liberty Legal Institute tells The Brody File:

“I don’t think there is any way that would happen. That would certainly put the last nail in the coffin for social and Christian conservatives, but it won’t happen. Sen. McCain has been fairly clear that he will pick a solid conservative. The big question to me is the CA marriage ruling. When will he hit the softball resting over the plate? It is a gift and, so far, he has not taken advantage of it. It combines two beliefs he has- marriage is a man and a woman AND judges should not be activists- and he could speak sincerely and with conviction. Silence. It’s baffling so far. This is even more so in light of Obama’s being in a no win position if he has to respond to the CA decision.”

Another pro-family leader who did not want to be named tells The Brody File:

"There would be an open revolt. We would just not put up with it. He's not one of us and McCain pretty much needs to get somebody that is going to make people happier if he seriously wants to hold the base to being supportive…There's a general assumption that McCain is not stupid enough."

Barry Goldwater was right-some of these people need a good swift kick in the rear.

The Governator's Gravy Train

Life is good when you work for Arnold.

In Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's first four years, the total bill for state workers' salaries jumped by 37 percent, compared with a 5 percent increase in the preceding four years under then-Gov. Gray Davis, a Chronicle analysis of state payroll records shows.

One month before Schwarzenegger took office in November 2003, just eight state employees earned more than $200,000 a year working in the core state government, which excludes universities and the Legislature. In April of this year, there were nearly a thousand, according to records.

And the number of state employees making six-figure salaries has more than doubled since 2003, to nearly 15,000. Meanwhile, the number of state workers has grown by 26,000 under Schwarzenegger after being cut by Davis, who was recalled from office in the midst of a severe budget crisis.

Some of the pay increases in recent years have been out of Schwarzenegger's control, including previously negotiated pay raises for some employee unions and court-ordered pay hikes for medical workers in the state prison system that are estimated to have cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars.

It almost makes me want to move back and take a civil service exam or something...almost.

Viva Il Nukes

Italy leads the way in creating an atomic Europe:

ITALY, which last week decided to embrace nuclear power two decades after a public referendum banned nuclear power and deactivated all its reactors, could be just the first of several European countries to reverse its stance on nuclear power, a leading industry group has said.

Ian Hore-Lacey, spokesman for the London-based World Nuclear Association, said: 'Italy has had the most dramatic, the most public turnaround, but the sentiments against nuclear are reversing very quickly all across Europe.'

When asked which nations were likely to join Britain and France as major producers of nuclear power, he replied: 'Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Germany and more.'

So why aren't WE doing this?

From There To Here

How did it come to this? I think the following quotes sum it up:

From Ronald Reagan:

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. ... The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

To Rick Santorum:

One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a libertarianish right. ... This whole idea of personal autonomy, well I don’t think most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world and I think most conservatives understand that individuals can’t go it alone. That there is no such society that I am aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.

Santorum is one of the younger generation who rode in on the coattails of Compassionate Conservatism, which to me is really what has helped to erode the conservative movement and demoralize the Republican Party. Where's the Reagan of 1975 when you need him?

Earthquakes Are Icky

Oh, jeeze.

ACTOR Sharon Stone is in strife after claiming the Chinese earthquake which claimed the lives of 80,000 people was 'karma'.
Stone made the not so smart statement while on the red carpet in Cannes.
She was asked if she had heard about the disaster that hit China recently, and her answer was:

'Of course I have. Well you know at first I thought I'm not happy with the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans … and I've been concerned with should we have the Olympics because they're not being nice to the Dalai Lama who's a good friend of mine.

' And then all this earthquake and stuff happened and I thought, 'Is that Karma, when you're not nice and the bad things happen to you?'

Somebody needs to warn Pat Robertson that Sharon Stone is stealing his copy.

It's The Message, Stupid

A lesson on what the Stupid Party needs to do if it ever hopes to get its act together again:

Many Republicans are waiting for a consultant or party elder to come down from the mountain and, in Moses-like fashion, deliver an agenda and talking points on stone tablets. But the burning bush, so to speak, is delivering a blindingly simple message: Behave like Republicans.

Unfortunately, too many in our party are not yet ready to return to the path of limited government. Instead, we are being told our message must be deficient because, after all, we should be winning in certain areas just by being Republicans. Yet being a Republican isn't good enough anymore. Voters are tired of buying a GOP package and finding a big-government liberal agenda inside. What we need is not new advertising, but truth in advertising.

(snip)

Regaining our brand as the party of fiscal discipline will require us to rejoin Americans in the real world of budget choices and priorities, and to leave behind the fantasyland of borrowing without limits. Instead of adopting earmarks, each Republican can adopt examples of government waste, largess and fraud, and restart the permanent campaign against big government.

Republicans can tear up the "emergency spending" credit card and refuse to accept any new spending whatsoever, including for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, until Congress does its job of eliminating wasteful spending.

Unfortunately too many Republicans do currently live in a fantasyland of former majority status, spend-as-you-please and wars without end. They're the ones that more traditional Republicans like John McCain must fight an uphill battle against.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1998

We live in scary times.

U.S. officials said Thursday that Pakistan appears to be prepared for another nuclear test, even as world leaders searched for ways to stop a nuclear arms race on the Asian subcontinent.

Pakistan detonated nuclear devices underground in a remote area early Thursday, triggering world condemnation and almost certain hardship from economic sanctions.


U.S. officials, who asked not to be named, said U.S. spy satellites are monitoring a second location where it is believed a nuclear device has been placed in an underground shaft and encased in concrete.

U.S. officials told CNN that there are 'some indications' that Pakistan may be planning a second test -- but said they were not 'predicting' a test.

Pakistan's president declared a state of emergency hours after the first devices were detonated, citing threats of 'external aggression.'

India and Pakistan, both trying to give each other a nuclear hot foot. Just great.

The death of Phil Hartman keeps getting weirder:

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Tests showed that Brynn Hartman mixed cocaine, alcohol and an anti-depressant drug the day she killed her husband, actor-comedian Phil Hartman, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office.

Mrs. Hartman committed suicide hours after shooting her husband to death on the morning of May 28.

Toxicology testing revealed an alcohol level of .12 percent, along with traces of cocaine and the prescription anti-depressant Zoloft in her blood, said County Coroner's Investigator Craig Harvey.

Usually it's the stars of that show who wind up that way...Phil Hartman will be missed.

Clerical Error

There's one person in Iraq who isn't thrilled with the idea of McCain's Long View:

Iraq's most revered Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has strongly objected to a 'security accord' between the US and Iraq.

The Grand Ayatollah has reiterated that he would not allow Iraq to sign such a deal with 'the US occupiers' as long as he was alive, a source close to Ayatollah Sistani said.

The source added the Grand Ayatollah had voiced his strong objection to the deal during a meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the holy city of Najaf on Thursday.

The remarks were made amid reports that the Iraqi government might sign a long-term framework agreement with the United States, under which Washington would be allowed to set up permanent military bases in the country and US citizens would be granted immunity from legal prosecution in the country.

A better idea would be to go ahead and build the bases, but then turn them over to the Iraqis. Call me crazy, but I thought the idea was to help Iraq become both stable and free? Treating the country like one huge military base doesn't sound like it would go over well with the locals.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1982

Israel is at war, again.

A Cabinet communiqué issued yesterday defined the purpose of the invasion as "placing the civilian population of Galilee beyond the range of the terrorists' fire from Lebanon, where their bases and their headquarters are located".

In reply to a letter from President Regan to the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Begin claimed last night that Israel was exercising its right of self-defence, which he compared with Britain's invasion of the Falklands. The director general of the Foreign Ministry, Mr David Kimeche, said in a radio interview that Israel had no territorial ambitions in Lebanon.

The decision to send in the army was taken at an emergency Cabinet meeting on Saturday night in the middle of northern Israel's heaviest artillery and rocket bombardment since last July's war of attrition.

At least 23 towns and villages were hit in a barrage of nearly 1,000 shells and Katyushas, causing serious damage to property and sending the inhabitants scurrying into the shelters. The onslaught was continuing last night.

Will we get involved is the big question here.

Meanwhile, things went better for the British:

Suddenly, a bridgehead became a blitzkrieg last week in the embattled Falkland Islands. Members of Britain's Parachute Regiment moved rapidly out of their hard-won corner of East Falkland near the settlement of Port San Carlos, taken by invasion only a week earlier, and descended 20 miles south near the settlement of Darwin. Using helicopters to hop across the boggy ground, the crack British troops confronted an Argentine garrison once estimated at about 600. There were reports of sharp fighting, and then the British Defense Ministry tersely announced that Her Majesty's troops had captured both Darwin and the neighboring settlement of Goose Green, site of an important airfield. Said Defense Ministry Spokesman Ian McDonald: "The Argentines suffered casualties, and some prisoners were taken." British casualties, said McDonald, were light.

It looks like Britain's "Splendid little war" will draw to a close in short order.

A battle of a different sort is still ongoing between the U.S. and Japan.

As they have so often in the past, Japanese companies have proceeded slowly and cautiously into the personal computer market. As late as 1979, Japan accounted for almost none of the $447 million worth of personal computers sold worldwide. As the industry exploded, however, Japan's presence began to be felt. Last year Japanese manufacturers rang up sales of $210 million. The companies include a number of well-established firms with recognizable brand names in digital watches, stereo equipment and calculators: Canon, Hitachi, Toshiba, Seiko, Sharp and Casio. Nippon Electric Co., the giant electronics firm, is now selling $100 million worth of personal computer equipment in the U.S., and last week it introduced three versions of its latest model.

The Japanese have already won plaudits for the design and manufacturing quality of their machines. Says Marian Murphy, a vice president of ComputerLand, the largest retail computer chain, which has 210 stores in the U.S.: "Their hardware is as good as the American hardware." Experts are particularly impressed by the small handheld and portable computers that Japanese firms are producing.

U.S. manufacturers have usually been considered superior in two areas that are regarded as crucial to success in selling the small machines: distribution and software, the instructions that tell the computer how to perform specific tasks. The Japanese, however, have shrewdly avoided language and cultural problems by designing their computers to use American-made software. Moreover, some Japanese companies now expect to use their considerable experience in selling electronic equipment to both businesses and consumers to offset the current American advantage in marketing.

Today it's Japan. Tomorrow it might be China. Who knows? We'll still be here.

Super Management

Call it Obama-lust if you must (hey, that rhymes) but Andrew Sullivan may have a point here:

The strongest criticism of Obama is his lack of substantive achievements in public life. He is a freshman senator, and his record is indeed thin in comparison with that of McCain or Clinton. However, if his abilities in government are in any way similar to the skills he has shown in managing – and brilliantly not managing – his campaign, then this is a candidate not to be underestimated. Clinton has been sideswiped. And, privately, most Republicans I know are terrified.

I wouldn't call Obama's campaign brilliant so much as I would Hillary's abysmal, but if Obama can keep it up the Republicans may indeed have reason to be terrified.

Rove, Don't Run

Turd Blossom may have to take the stand:

President Bush's former chief political adviser denied meddling in the Justice Department's prosecution of Alabama's ex-governor and said Sunday the courts will have to resolve a congressional subpoena for his testimony.

'Congress, the House Judiciary Committee, wants to be able to call presidential aides on its whim up to testify,' Karl Rove said. 'It's going to be tied up in court and settled in court.'

Last week, the committee ordered Rove to appear July 10. Lawmakers want to ask him about the White House's role in firing nine U.S. attorneys in 2006 and the prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman, D-Ala.

Also under congressional subpoena are Bush's chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, and his former counsel, Harriet Miers. The White House is citing executive privilege, the doctrine intended to protect the confidentiality of presidential communications, in refusing to let them testify.

The fight over testimony for Bolten and Miers is in federal court and may not be settled until after Bush's term ends in January.

Siegelman was sentenced to more than seven years in prison for a 2006 bribery conviction. He was released in March when a federal appeals court ruled he raised 'substantial questions of fact and law' in his appeal. Siegelman has accused GOP operatives of pushing prosecution. His claims were bolstered last year by Republican campaign volunteer Jill Simpson, who issued a sworn statement that she overheard conversations suggesting that Rove was involved in his case.

I wouldn't put it past Rove, but as with most things about this administration we may not know the truth for many years to come.

Spin Machine

Selling the war may get more difficult in the future.

The Pentagon's internal watchdog is investigating a government public relations effort that relied on retired military officers to defend the administration's Iraq war policies.

The House this past week passed an amendment to a defense authorization bill calling for reviews by both the inspector general's office and the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm.

The Pentagon suspended the program last month after The New York Times reported that retired officers who acted as military analysts for major news outlets were given plum access to the Pentagon. The analysts, many of whom had undisclosed ties to military contractors, received regular briefings by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and a sponsored trip to the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba.

A Defense spokesman, Lt. Col. Brian Maka, said Saturday the inspector general's review will look at whether special access to Pentagon leaders 'may have given the contractors a competitive advantage.'

Earlier this month, 41 House members urged the Defense Department's inspector general to investigate and look into whether the program was illegal.

The GAO also said it was reviewing the program and whether it violated policies barring use of government money to spread propaganda in the United States.

You call it propaganda, they call it salesmanship. Who says military leaders can't have a future in politics?

Disorder In The Court

The GOP-that same organization which itself has been such a stellar example of efficiency-is worried about how McCain is running his show.

In interviews, some party leaders said they were worried about signs of disorder in his campaign and about whether the focus in the last several weeks on the prominent role of lobbyists in McCain's inner circle might undercut the heart of his general election message: that he is reformer taking on special interests in Washington.

'The core image of John McCain is as a reformer in Washington, and the more dominant the story is about the lobbying teams around him, the more you put that into question,' said Terry Nelson, who was McCain's campaign manager until he was forced out last year. 'If the Obama campaign can truly change him from being seen as a reformer to just being another Washington politician, it could be very damaging over the course of the campaign.'

Some leaders of state Republican party organizations said they were apprehensive about the unusual organization that McCain had set up: The campaign has been broken into 10 semi-autonomous regions, with each having power over such things as buying television advertising and the candidate's schedule, decisions normally left to headquarters.

So, maybe that's merely a sign of how McCain would treat the states as President. The less management, the better, remember?

Raising The Barr

I'm still skeptical. But this could be his year if anyone's:

Barr has the potential to win more votes than any LP nominee in history. If he helps the GOP learn that it’s time to boot the neocons and pay more attention to its limited government wing, all the better.

This is a good thing.

It says something about the state of the Republican Party that I agree with this more now than I did back in 1992, which was the last time there was a serious third-party spoiler in the form of Ross Perot. I do hope the GOP learns something from this, although I'm not too optmistic right now.

Goodbye Mr. Brown

And you thought the Republicans were in bad shape.

Gordon Brown was facing public and private pressure to consider quitting for the sake of his party last night after the Crewe by-election “catastrophe” left ministers and Labour MPs convinced that they could not win with him at the helm.

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, was being earmarked by senior backbenchers as the figure to tell Mr Brown that they had lost confidence in him and that he should step aside unless there was a swift improvement in Labour’s fortunes.

Graham Stringer was the first Labour MP to call for Mr Brown to go, saying that the party needed a new leader to save it from “disaster” at the next election.

Ivan Lewis, the Health Minister, said that Crewe & Nantwich, where the Conservatives overturned a 7,000 Labour majority to win with their own majority of nearly 8,000, could mark the “beginning of the end” for Labour."

Their party is in a shambles and their leaders are being shown the door. Who says Labour didn't learn anything from the Republican Party?

Bloggin' In The Years: 1977

It's a hit!

A universe of plenty—as audiences can discover beginning this week in Star Wars, a grand and glorious film that may well be the smash hit of 1977, and certainly is the best movie of the year so far. Star Wars is a combination of Flash Gordon, The Wizard of Oz, the Errol Flynn swashbucklers of the '30s and '40s and almost every western ever screened—not to mention the Hardy
Boys, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Faerie Queene. The result is a remarkable confection: a subliminal history of the movies, wrapped in a riveting tale of suspense and adventure, ornamented with some of the most ingenious special effects ever contrived for film. It has no message, no sex and only the merest dollop of blood shed here and there. It's aimed at kids—the kid in everybody.

'It's the flotsam and jetsam from the period when I was twelve years old,' says Director George Lucas, 33. 'All the books and films and comics that I liked when I was a child. The plot is simple —good against evil—and the film is designed to be all the fun things and fantasy things I remember. The word for this movie is fun.' For once, a director is right about his own work. Star Wars has brought fun back to the movies and glowingly demonstrated they still can make 'em like they used to.

After several years of grand but serious epics like 2001: A Space Odyssey and dystopian flicks like Logan's Run, it's about time Hollywood discovered how to make sci-fi fun again.

Well, I guess it's a win:

A controversial law prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals in housing and employment was repealed by a special Dade County election yesterday.

With 172 of 446 precints reporting, there were 79,393 votes for repeal of the law and 33,626 votes against repeal. A simple majority decides the issue, which has drawn international attention as the focal point of the gay rights movement.

"Anita Bryant danced a jig," when she learned the election results, said Mike Thompson, a spokesman for Save Our Children, which fought the law.

Hitler danced a jig when France surrendered, too, but he didn't win the war, did he?

Shake, Rattle And Flood

Talk about Chinese water torture:

Nearly 70 dams scarred by the force of China's most powerful earthquake in three decades were in danger of bursting, rattled again Sunday by one of the strongest aftershocks since the initial disaster.

Meanwhile, soldiers carrying explosives hiked to a lake formed by a blocked river near the epicenter, hoping to blast through debris to alleviate the threat of floods.

The confirmed death toll from the May 12 quake rose to 62,664, with another 23,775 people missing, the Cabinet said. Premier Wen Jiabao has said the number of dead could surpass 80,000.

An aftershock Sunday afternoon caused office towers to sway in Beijing, 800 miles away. There was no immediate information on any new damage.

Communist engineering+Mother Nature=not a good combination.

Life After Doomsday

Some people aren't waiting until the end of the world.

Convinced the planet's oil supply is dwindling and the world's economies are heading for a crash, some people around the country are moving onto homesteads, learning to live off their land, conserving fuel and, in some cases, stocking up on guns they expect to use to defend themselves and their supplies from desperate crowds of people who didn't prepare.

The exact number of people taking such steps is impossible to determine, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the movement has been gaining momentum in the last few years.

These energy survivalists are not leading some sort of green revolution meant to save the planet. Many of them believe it is too late for that, seeing signs in soaring fuel and food prices and a faltering U.S. economy, and are largely focused on saving themselves.

(snip)

These survivalists believe in "peak oil," the idea that world oil production is set to hit a high point and then decline. Scientists who support idea say the amount of oil produced in the world each year has already or will soon begin a downward slide, even amid increased demand. But many scientists say such a scenario will be avoided as other sources of energy come in to fill the void.

On the PeakOil.com Web site, where upward of 800 people gathered on recent evenings, believers engage in a debate about what kind of world awaits.

Some members argue there will be no financial crash, but a slow slide into harder times. Some believe the federal government will respond to the loss of energy security with a clampdown on personal freedoms. Others simply don't trust that the government can maintain basic services in the face of an energy crisis.

The powers that be, they've determined, will be largely powerless to stop what is to come.

Al Gore has created a new generation of survivalists. He must be so proud.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1992

Bill Clinton literally toots his own horn!



Meanwhile, what about Dan Quayle? Well, it's the end of Spring, which means he goes into extra goofy mode:

IF FOR NOTHING ELSE, DAN QUAYLE DESERVES POINTS for audacity. In modern America taking on a popular TV character, even a fictional one, is politically more precarious than taking a clear stand on a substantive campaign issue. And yet the Vice President dared to argue last week in a San Francisco speech that the Los Angeles riots were caused in part by a "poverty of values" that included the acceptance of unwed motherhood, as celebrated in popular culture by the CBS comedy series Murphy Brown. The title character, a divorced news anchorwoman, got pregnant and chose to have the baby, a boy, who was delivered on last Monday's episode, watched by 38 million Americans. "It doesn't help matters," Quayle complained, when Brown, "a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid professional woman" is portrayed as "mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another 'life-style choice.' "

Dan Quayle mocks the importance of knowing reality from fiction.

And then there's the other guy:

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton clinched the Democratic presidential nomination with cross-country primary victories yesterday, while President Bush continued his unbeaten string. But as the tumultuous primary season drew to a close, many voters said they were ready to reject both candidates and defect to Texas businessman Ross Perot in the fall campaign.

Perot was not on any ballot yesterday, but his appeal to a frustrated electorate, particularly evident in megastate California, underscored the continuing dissatisfaction with Bush and Clinton, even among voters loyal enough to participate in their party primaries.

Perot and Bush are both from Texas. Maybe Bush can challenge Perot to a shootout after he costs him the election.

Natural Crime

The great outdoors-now with more drugs.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — America's wildlife refuges are so short of money that one-third have no staff, boardwalks and buildings are in disrepair, and drug dealers are using them to grow marijuana and make methamphetamine, a group pushing for more funding says.

'Without adequate funding, we are jeopardizing some of the world's most spectacular wildlife and wild lands,' said Evan Hirsche, president of the National Wildlife Refuge Association and chairman of the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement.

The alliance said in a report released this week to Congress that the nation's 548 refuges and the 100 million-acre National Wildlife Refuge System — about the size of California — is underfunded by 43 percent. The refuge system needs at least $765 million a year but is receiving only $434 million, the report said.

A decrease in law enforcement has left the refuges vulnerable to criminal activity, including prostitution, torched cars and illegal immigrant camps along the Potomac River in suburban Washington; gay sex hookups in South Carolina and Alabama; methamphetamine labs in Nevada; and pot growing operations in Washington state.

'The refuge system has been underfunded for years but it has really mushroomed in the past several,' Hirsche said.

Well, even drug dealers and pimps need to get away from it all once in a while.

Don't Stand So Close To Me

McCain wants Bush to back off:

President Bush is scaling back next week’s fundraising swings for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) at the request of the campaign, which wants the events closed to the press, POLITICO has learned.

The change — in both Arizona and Utah — is part of McCain’s delicate effort to find the balance between embracing an unpopular president and taking advantage of his huge continuing draw with well-heeled Republicans.

The Arizona event, which was to be at the Phoenix Convention Center, was the first time Bush was to have appeared with McCain since their White House meeting in March.

A McCain aide said: “The McCain campaign has a policy that fundraising events are closed press. In keeping with that policy, the campaign requested the event be moved to a private home.”

In other words, McCain seems to be saying, "I like you, but let's just be friends."

They Durk Ur Slums

I guess this is another place the U.N. needs to send racism inspectors:

A wave of anti-immigrant violence in South Africa spread to Cape Town on Friday, even as troops and police appeared to have quelled the unrest in the hotspot of Johannesburg.

Police reported attacks against immigrants and foreign-owned shops in a slum area of picturesque Cape Town.

The southern coastal city is a major draw for tourists and had thus far been spared the mob violence seen in Johannesburg.

At least 42 have been killed, more than 500 arrested and 16,000 displaced in the province of Gauteng, which includes Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria, since unrest broke out 12 days ago.

Police spokesman for the Cape Town area Billy Jones said a public meeting to address the danger of xenophobia in the Dunoon slum area 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the city degenerated into violence on Thursday evening.

'Groups within the crowd started to loot shops owned by Zimbabweans and other foreigners,' he told AFP, saying 500 had since fled the area and were staying in community centres.

Gee, I wonder if they're also too racist to elect a black man as their leader?

Bloggin' In The Years: 1964

LBJ has big plans.

In a speech before 80,000 at the University of Michigan stadium at Ann Arbor—where he was given an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree—the President eloquently invited his fellow citizens to join in the pursuit of a 'Great Society' uniquely American both in spirit and promise. Excerpts:

'For a century we labored to settle and subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all our people. The challenge of the next half-century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life—and to advance the quality of American civilization.

'Your imagination, your initiative, your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time, we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society but upward to the Great Society.

'The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice —to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.'

Noble goals, to be sure-but then, FDR promised a "New Deal" thirty years ago, too. I would counter that it's NOT the job of government to make sure that everyone has a job, can have two Ford Mustangs in every garage or a new color TV set. Those come from work and initiative. Maybe government should stop concentrating on trying to be bigger, and more on trying to be better.

The Beatles make Britannica. What is the world coming to?

Hot Taxation Action

They'll literally tax anything these days.

LOS ANGELES - California state lawmakers are considering an unusual idea to solve the state's huge budget shortfall: Tax pornography.

The idea was proposed by a state assemblyman, and would impose a 25 percent tax on the production and sales of pornographic videos -- the vast majority of which are made in southern California.

It is unknown, however, how seriously lawmakers will take the idea or how the porn business would deal with the new tax. It is likely, though, that porm-makers would simply pass the cost along to consumers by making pornographic materials more expensive.

I can see it now: A huge tax revolt in the Valley...

They Saw Red

Hmm. First they complain.

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Russian Communist party members condemned the new Indiana Jones' film on Friday as crude anti-Soviet propaganda that distorted history and called for it to be banned from Russian screens.

'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' stars Harrison Ford as an archeologist in 1957 competing with an evil KGB agent, played by Cate Blanchett, to find a skull endowed with mystic powers.

'What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame,' said Viktor Perov, a Communist Party member in Russia's second city of St Petersburg."

So they don't like being reminded of their past. Then why are they trying to emulate it?

BEIJING - China and Russia sharply condemned U.S. missile defense plans Friday, taking a harder common line that reinforces an already strong strategic partnership during Dmitry Medvedev's first foreign trip as Russian president.

Pushing forward their robust energy cooperation, Russia also signed a $1 billion deal to build a uranium enrichment facility in China and supply low-enriched uranium for use in China's nuclear power industry over the next decade.

Rivals throughout much of the Cold War, Moscow and Beijing have forged close political and military ties since the Soviet collapse, seeking to counter the perceived U.S. global domination. They have spoken against the U.S. missile defense plans in the past, but Friday's declaration by Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao sounded tougher than before.

Without naming the United States, the two leaders said that "the creation of global missile defense systems and their deployment in some regions of the world ... does not help to maintain strategic balance and stability and hampers international efforts in arms control and nuclear nonproliferation."

They also warned against the deployment of arms in space — another clear reference to the United States. "The parties stand for the peaceful use of space and against the deployment of weapons in space and arms race in space," Medvedev and Hu said in the statement released after an afternoon of talks.

Medvedev-now the new boss, same as the old boss.

Tucker: The Host And His Dream

As if that clown car wasn't full enough already:

"Tucker Carlson for president?" That's the headline at the personal blog for Brendan Nyhan, a former Spinsanity editor who is now a graduate student in political science at Duke. Nyhan says that Carlson, the former 'Crossfire' host and former writer for The Weekly Standard, among other magazines, may seek the nomination of the Libertarian Party, according to a rumor making the rounds among delegates to the Libertarian convention, which is being held in Denver this weekend.

Note that Denver is also hosting the Democratic Convention later on. Is this their idea of a preview?

Hagee A No Go

Good for him.

UNION CITY, Calif. (AP) - Republican John McCain rejected the months-old endorsement of an influential Texas televangelist after an audio recording surfaced in which the preacher said God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land.

'Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them. I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well,' the presidential candidate said in a statement issued Thursday.

Hagee quickly responded that he was withdrawing the endorsement.

McCain actively courted Hagee, who leads a megachurch with a congregation in the tens of thousands and has an even wider television audience. Former GOP presidential rivals also sought Hagee's backing.

To paraphrase Goldwater, extremism in the defense of your fringe church is no virtue.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1927

From one pioneer to another.

The Great Flood is literally of Biblical proportions:

Extent. From Cairo, Ill., to the Gulf is 570 miles air line but 1,090 miles by the river line. Southwestern Illinois, western Tennessee and Mississippi, eastern Missouri and Arkansas, northern and central Louisiana have been flooded. Hardest hit has been Louisiana. Two Louisiana parishes were inundated when the Poydras levee was dynamited; 5,000,000 acres in north Louisiana were under water last week with 4,000,000 more in imminent danger.

The entire flooded area through the valley was estimated at 15,000 square miles, an area larger than Belgium, three times the size of Connecticut; almost as large as Switzerland.

Homeless. The Red Cross definitely listed 323,000 refugees in its care. This estimate did not include 35,000 to 50,000 additional refugees in Louisiana. If the hardpressed Red River levee line broke, as seemed likely, another 200,000 would be in the path of the waters.

Deaths. Death estimates have varied at from 350 to 500.

Property damage was beyond, estimate. Millions of acres of cotton land were under water, with the flood moving on the "sugar bowl" section of Louisiana from which comes much of the nation's sugar.

Those are the official statistics. But perhaps this is poetic justice:

Flood water swamped Mer Rouge, La., scene of famed 1924 Ku Klux Klan-Captain Skipworth trial. Bastrop, La., also scene of Klan sensations, was threatened by advancing waters.

Who says the Almighty doesn't have a sense of irony?

Television gets demonstrated to the home crowd.

Bloggin' in The Years: 1990

Rush Limbaugh-blowhard, or mad prophet of the airwaves?

On certain weighty, if arid, topics, Limbaugh will discourse (some would say harangue) long and earnestly: 'The tax code is the single greatest power Congress has. It is the means of social architecture in this country. . . . Oil is the fuel of the engine that runs the free world.' Blah, blah, blah.

But when he contemplates the universe of liberal activists and protesters, lecturer gives way to lampoonist and out pours the broad, bruising humor. For in that universe are Limbaugh's favorite enemies: black activists, gay activists, abortion rights activists, homeless activists, animal rights activists, militant vegetarians, environmentalists, artists with erotic tendencies and, above all, 'the NOW Gang.' Such people he sees as crackpot oddball weirdos yet somehow, at the same time, a growing menace. They arouse in him the irrepressible urge to tweak.

'The simple fact of the matter,' Limbaugh is apt to inform dolphin savers and tree lovers, 'is that we are human beings, and we are the most powerful, smartest species, and we can damn well do whatever we want.'

His penchant for the outrageous he explains thusly: 'I demonstrate absurdity by being absurd.'

Who says conservatives can't be entertaining?

A look at Bill Gates' newest offering.

Hailed by some as the product of the year, Microsoft Windows 3.0 is taking the microcomputer world by storm since its release last spring. Windows is a multitasking graphical operating environment with significant memory management capabilities for the IBM 286-plus computer family. It runs on top of MS-DOS, enabling users to create large applications, swap data between applications, and run multiple applications as if each were operating in its own "virtual" machine.

The wave of the future? Should Steve Jobs be worried?

Saddam Hussein is looking to get his butt whipped:

The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council today appeared in agreement on a U.S. call to authorize use of military force to end Iraq's occupation of Kuwait, but there was disagreement about whether the draft resolution should set a deadline of Jan. 1 or Jan. 15 for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to withdraw his forces.

Such a resolution, if passed, would not mean that allied forces would attack Iraq immediately as the deadline for withdrawal is passed. Rather, it would allow for the use of "all necessary means," implying the use of force, to end Iraq's occupation of Kuwait anytime thereafter.

Hey, Saddam-we know where you live...

Bloggin' In The Years: 1969

Apollo 10 comes home; the real thing is next!

The Fab Four find out that running a business isn't all peace and love:

A multimillion-dollar business cannot be run on fun and flowers, the Beatles be latedly discovered after the death in 1967 of their canny manager and mentor, Brian Epstein. More interested in gadding about than tending to their enterprises, they left their convoluted corporate empire (see chart) to run on its own momentum. Inertia was not a successful philosophy. Three of the biggest companies in which the Beatles hold stakes have lately tumbled into trouble.

(snip)

Apple Corps, wholly owned by the Beatles as their major corporate entity, is a disappointment. It was founded last year with the aim of promoting other talented people and creating businesses in recording, electronics, publishing, films and retailing. But Apple bankrolled stale ideas and supported a film division that never made a movie. Even the Beatles' enormous earning capacities could no longer comfortably carry the load. Last year they closed Apple's mod boutique after opening the doors for a two-day giveaway of more than $100,000 worth of bellbottoms, see-through blouses and other clothes. Then they shut down Apple's film operation. The firm grossed little more than $500,000 in its first fiscal year ending last month. "We tried to be the Ford Foundation," said John Lennon. "It was rubbish."

Boys, go back to making records-if you don't break up first.

Speaking of John Lennon-pillows for peace?

What it's like to walk on the Moon:

After a few short but interminable seconds, U.S. Astronaut Neil Armstrong placed his foot firmly on the fine-grained surface of the moon. The time was 10:56 p.m. (E.D.T.), July 20, 1969. Pausing briefly, the first man on the moon spoke the first words on lunar soil:

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

With a cautious, almost shuffling gait, the astronaut began moving about in the harsh light of the lunar morning. "The surface is fine and powdery, it adheres in fine layers, like powdered charcoal, to the soles and sides of my foot," he said. "I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles." Minutes later, Armstrong was joined by Edwin Aldrin. Then, gaining confidence with every step, the two jumped and loped across the barren land scape for 2 hrs. 14 min., while the TV camera they had set up some 50 ft. from Eagle transmitted their movements with remarkable clarity to enthralled audiences on earth, a quarter of a million miles away. Sometimes moving in surrealistic slow motion, sometimes bounding around in the weak lunar gravity like exuberant kangaroos, they set up experiments and scooped up rocks, snapped pictures and probed the soil, apparently enjoying every moment of their stay in the moon's alien environment.

So some people are saying it's fake. Screw 'em.

Out at last? Call me skeptical.

I hate it when hippies break up.

So much for peace and love.

Just what is it with this Agnew guy, anyway?

In Dallas, he decried unrest on American campuses as the work of a "minority of pushy youngsters and middle-aged malcontents." Last week the Vice President complained in Jackson, Miss., that the South has too long been "the punching bag for those who characterize themselves as liberal intellectuals." Maybe he had a point about the South, but he outdid himself in New Orleans by saying of the Oct. 15 Moratorium: "A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals."

The Jordan Rule. The instant outrage greeting the last sally showed that Agnew's intended targets are hardly exhausted. Perhaps the best put-down though, was the calm one that came from Senator William Fulbright. He wasn't disturbed by the attack, said the Foreign Relations Committee Chairman; "I just considered the source." The newest gag in the G.O.P. Senate cloakroom:

Q. What is the new definition of effete?

A. Effete is what Spiro puts in his mouth.

I don't like hippies or student protesters either, but at some point you have to wonder what good is a Veep who only says what his boss can't.

An accident of war-or a war crime?

So far, the tale of My Lai has only been told by a few Vietnamese survivors—all of them pro-V.C.—and half a dozen American veterans of the incident. Yet military men privately concede that stories of what happened at My Lai are essentially correct. If so, the incident ranks as the most serious atrocity yet attributed to American troops in a war that is already well known for its particular savagery.

(snip)

Last month, just two days before he was to be released from the Army, charges of murdering "approximately 100" civilians at My Lai were preferred against one of C Company's platoon leaders, 1st Lieut. William Laws Calley Jr., a 26-year-old Miamian now stationed at Fort Benning, Ga. Last week Staff Sergeant David Mitchell, a 29-year-old career man from St. Francisville, La., became the second My Lai veteran to be charged (with assault with intent to commit murder). The Army has another 24 men (15 of whom are now civilians) under investigation. If the accounts of others who have spoken out publicly stand up, C Company, as Ridenhour wrote, is indeed involved in "something rather dark and bloody" at My Lai.

If true, this will be one of the blackest eyes the U.S. has ever received in this war.

Have the Rolling Stones killed the Sixties? Or is it the hippies themselves?

Some two years ago, says Dr. Lewis Yablonsky, a close student of the phenomenon, criminals and psychotics began infiltrating the scene. They were readily accepted, as anyone can be who is willing to let his hair grow and don a few beads; they found, just as do runaway teenagers, that it is a good world in which they can disappear from law and society. "Hippiedom became a magnet for severely emotionally disturbed people," Yablonsky says.

A few of them, like Manson, also found other advantages to being a hippie. The true gentle folk were relatively defenseless. Leaderless, they responded readily to strong leaders. But how could children who had dropped out for the sake of kindness and sharing, love and beauty, be enjoined to kill? Yablonsky thinks that the answer may lie in the fact that so many hippies are actually "lonely, alienated people." He says: "They have had so few love models that even when they act as if they love, they can be totally devoid of true compassion. That is the reason why they can kill so matter-of-factly."

Emotionally dead? Well, thanks to Manson, their lifestyle may soon be, too.

Mortgage Crisis? What Mortgage Crisis?

I wonder if Congresscritters qualify for government bailouts:

California Rep. Laura Richardson today denied a published report that her $535,000 Sacramento home had slipped into foreclosure, saying she had renegotiated her loan to keep the home.

The house '... is not in foreclosure and has NOT been seized by the bank,' Richardson, a Democrat from Long Beach, said in a statement. 'I have worked with my lender to complete a loan modification and have renegotiated the terms of the agreement -- with no special provisions.' (Richardson's entire statement is at the bottom of this article).

Earlier, Capitol Weekly reported that Richardson walked away from the mortgage on her $535,000 Sacramento home, letting the house slip into foreclosure and disrepair less than two years after she bought it with no money down.

'While being elevated to Congress in a 2007 special election, Richardson apparently stopped making payments on her new Sacramento home, and eventually walked away from it, leaving nearly $600,000 in unpaid loans and fees,' the publication reported.

Richardson declined to comment for the Capitol Weekly story. Her office issued a written statement Wednesday afternoon.

Now you know why they have so much trouble managing our money...

Good Night, Don't Sleep Tight

I wonder if this explains liberals whose worries about the welfare of others keeps them up at night.

Being deprived of sleep even for one night makes the brain unstable and prone to sudden shutdowns akin to a power failure - brief lapses that hover between sleep and wakefulness, according to researchers.

'It's as though it is both asleep and awake and they are switching between each other very rapidly,' said David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, whose study appears in the Journal of Neuroscience.

'Imagine you are sitting in a room watching a movie with the lights on. In a stable brain, the lights stay on all the time. In a sleepy brain, the lights suddenly go off,' Dinges said.

The findings suggest that people who are sleep-deprived alternate between periods of near-normal brain function and dramatic lapses in attention and visual processing.

The lights are on but nobody's home? Hillary Clinton must be an insomniac.

Burn Witch Burn

Would this have happened to Elizabeth Montgomery?

A rampaging mob in western Kenya burnt 15 women accused of witchcraft to death, a local official and villagers told AFP Wednesday.

'This is unacceptable. People must not take the law into their own hands simply because they suspected someone,' said Mwangi Ngunyi, the head of Nyamaiya district. 'We will hunt the suspects down,' he added.

The gang of about 100 people moved from house to house late Tuesday, tied up their victims and set them ablaze, the official said.

Ngunyi added that the mob also torched 50 houses in Nyakeo village, located some 300 kilometres (180 miles) northwest of the capital Nairobi.

'I can't believe my wife of many years would be killed so brutally by people who cannot prove their case even before God,' said Enoch Obiero, a pastor.

'My mother has always been a role model to the entire village and why the mob had to kill her will remain a mystery to me forever,' lamented 32-year-old Emily Monari.

The region, populated mainly by the Kisii tribe, has been dubbed Kenya's 'sorcery belt' due to mob attacks on women suspected of witchcraft.

This is obviously another legacy of those evil British imperialists.

Sexy Shake

And now we have...disaster porn?

Beijing - A Chinese magazine has been shut down for printing pictures of scantily clad women posing in rubble for a special report on the country's devastating earthquake, officials said on Wednesday.

The New Travel Weekly, a small lifestyle magazine, ran photos of sultry models in their underwear amid the debris in an issue that hit the stands on Monday - the first of three days of national mourning.

The press and publication department of the southwestern city of Chongqing, where the magazine was based, said it decided to close the magazine down for 'rectification'.

The department said the magazine 'seriously violated propaganda discipline and went against social morals' and the report constituted an 'extremely evil social influence.'

It may be bad taste, but evil social influence? That's a word that American fundamentalists are prone to use.

No Carbons Allowed

Now there's even less of a reason for companies to come to San Francisco.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District's board of directors on Wednesday approved new rules to charge businesses a fee for the pollution they emit.

The group's board of directors voted 15-1 on unprecedented new rules that will impose fees on factories, power plants, oil refineries and other businesses that emit carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

The agency, which regulates air pollution in the nine-county Bay Area, will be the first in the country to charge companies fees based on their greenhouse gas emissions, experts say. The new rules will take effect July 1.

The modest fee -- 4.4 cents per ton of carbon dioxide -- probably won't be enough to force companies to reduce their emissions, but backers say it sets an important precedent in combating climate change and could serve as a model for regional air districts nationwide.

What about the massive amounts of carbons being emitted by the city's homeless population?

Drugs Versus Nukes

I'm not sure I'd go this far:

May 21, 2008 -- ABC'S John Stossel wants the government to stop interfering with your right to get high. The libertarian anchorman told a medical marijuana benefit the other night, "I think all of it should be legal: marijuana, cocaine, heroin and crack." The chatty, weed-loving crowd went silent at his call to legalize hard drugs, and Stossel admitted his own 22-year-old daughter doesn't think it's a good idea. He said although it might result in having more addicts, it's even more dangerous, in his view, to keep drugs illegal because the dealer gangs we're creating will soon be able to buy nuclear weapons.

Still, he has a point-when we see the Taliban profiting from the poppy crop trade in Afghanistan, I have to wonder if the Great Drug War will someday come back to bite us big time.

Cold War In The Sand

The nuclear genie is out of the bottle:

Iran's disputed nuclear program has sent a wave of interest in atomic energy across the Middle East, a think tank said Tuesday, warning that it risked setting the scene for a regional nuclear arms race.

At least 13 Middle Eastern countries either announced new plans to explore atomic energy or revived pre-existing nuclear programs between February 2006 and January 2007, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, or IISS, said in a report.

While the flurry of interest in nuclear power is still tentative, the report said countries such as Saudi Arabia, Algeria or Egypt could soon feel the need to match Iran's nuclear ambitions.

'If Teheran's nuclear program is unchecked, there is reason for concern that it could in time prompt a regional cascade of proliferation among Iran's neighbors,' it said.

Do we go to war against all of them? Or do we work with our allies in the region to contain countries like Iran-you know, like what we did with the Soviet Union? Or would that be some more of that there appeasement stuff?

See You In Court

I can't stand them either, but this sounds like a bad idea.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.

The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.

The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.
The legislation also creates a Justice Department task force to aggressively investigate gasoline price gouging and energy market manipulation.

'This bill guarantees that oil prices will reflect supply and demand economic rules, instead of wildly speculative and perhaps illegal activities,' said Democratic Rep. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin, who sponsored the legislation.

The lawmaker said Americans 'are at the mercy' of OPEC for how much they pay for gasoline, which this week hit a record average of $3.79 a gallon.

The White House opposes the bill, saying that targeting OPEC investment in the United States as a source for damage awards 'would likely spur retaliatory action against American interests in those countries and lead to a reduction in oil available to U.S. refiners.

It would be better if the White House said that we were serious about drilling on our own soil and investing in alternative energy, but I can see their point. It also shows how little the Democrats understand the free market they claim they want to protect.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1912

The Middle Kingdom is now a Republic.

Along with Arizona, New Mexico is finally a state.

Roald Amnundsen may have reached the South Pole, but England isn't giving up on Scott just yet.

How did the Titanic sink? Scientists hold forth.

Roosevelt's delegates have fled from Taft. As much as I respect T.R., a temper tantrum doesn't win Presidential elections. This can only serve to help Wilson.

The Balkan troubles-not as bad as feared?

Woodrow Wilson wins. I hope those who think third parties are an answer will remember this in future Presidential elections.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1939

SCOTUS says that sit-downs are illegal. Full text of the Court's ruling can be found here.

Gandhi scores a win over the British Empire.

The Spanish Civil War has apparently ended. Germany's happy. The rest of Europe, maybe not so much.

As befitting a fair with the theme "The World of Tomorrow," television makes a spectacular showing.

The Daughters of the American Revolution may not have wanted her, but the good people of Washington D.C. don't mind Marion Anderson's presence.

"Scientifiction" gets its own Convention:

Having formed, through correspondence, an organization called the New Fandom, some 200 fans gathered in a small Manhattan hall this week from California, New Mexico, the metropolitan area for three days of speeches, pseudo-scientific movies and discussion of stories with their authors. Cried Fan Will S. Sykora, from Astoria, L. I.: "Let us all work to see that the things we read in science fiction become realities." Said Leo Margulies, managing editor of Standard Magazines (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Startling Stories and Strange Stories'): "I am astonished. I didn't think you boys could be so damn sincere."

Time will tell if this stuff catches on.

Lou Gehrig is the luckiest man alive. Godspeed, Mr. Gehrig.

And now a new world war has begun. What this means for the future I can only speculate, but it will no doubt take another long, hard struggle for the Germans to learn another lesson.

Does this make any sense? At least Einstein came in second place.

"Gone With The Wind", one of the year's most anticipated films, has arrived just in time for Christmas. Merry Christmas, Atlanta!

By Their Fonts You Shall Know Them

You can't say they're campaigning against Type:

The designer of the typeface used by Obama, Gotham, is one of the United States greatest living type designers (seriously, there is a renaissance in type design happening right now and Toby is one of the leaders). Gotham is simultaneously urban and working class but also high end as well. It was carved on the cornerstone of the new World Trade Center complex but is based on urban san serif type made by local sign shop guys. Toby is a native New Yorker.
John Baskerville (Clinton’s type choice) lived during 18th Century in England. Baskerville is respectable but conservative and more an early 1990s choice.
Optima (McCain) was designed by Hermann Zapf, a well regarded soft spoken German type designer known for his calligraphic inspired type designs. Zapf is 90 years old and still hard at work (like McCain?)

I understand the GOP is relying on one of those sagging, retro fonts to show their determination to remain stuck in the past. The Democrats, on the other hand, are using outlined fonts to show how transparent they are.

A Graduation Of One

You know you come from a state with a small population when you're litereally in a class by yourself.

GREAT FALLS, Mont. (AP) — Jeff Greenwood is in a class by himself.

He was the only student to graduate from Opheim High School this year, but the small event Friday drew a big name. Gov. Brian Schweitzer gave the commencement address.

Greenwood, who plans to attend Dickinson State University in North Dakota, said the high school is the 'hub of activity' for rural Opheim, a town about 10 miles south of the Canadian border.

'The student-to-teacher ratio is pretty good,' said Greenwood, who is the student body president and, of course, the senior class president.

Greenwood had a few classmates before high school, but his last remaining classmate moved to Utah during freshman year. He took some classes alone his senior year while sharing others with juniors at the school.

(snip)


Principal LeRoy Nelson, who has also been school superintendent, said he thought this was the first time the school graduated just one student. Six students graduated last year and 12 are on track to graduate in 2009.

Nelson said he thinks single-member classes will become more common as enrollment drops at rural schools. Last year, one other Montana school had one graduate. Schweitzer spoke there as well.

Hmmm, isn't all of Montana pretty much "Rural?" But I understand the school's one football player played a heck of a game against the single football player from a rival school.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1957

Ike promises aid to Viet Nam with no strings attached.

The Negro students who just want to go to school are getting a lot of help.

Strom Thurmond wheezes his way through a filibuster:

A Soft Snore. A dull, droning speaker at best, Thurmond began by reading the texts of the election laws of all 48 states—from Alabama to Wyoming. By 11:30, Republican Everett Dirksen was passing the word: "Boys, it looks like an all-nighter." But at 1 a.m. Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater approached Thurmond's desk, asked in a whisper how much longer Strom would last. Back came the answer: "About another hour." Goldwater asked that Thurmond temporarily yield the floor to him for an insertion in the Congressional Record. Thurmond happily consented—and used the few-minute interim to head for the bathroom (for the only time during his speech). He returned and began talking again. His promised hour passed; Strom spoke on. Gallery attendance dropped to three: Thurmond's wife Jean, N.A.A.C.P. Washington Representative Clarence Mitchell, and an unidentified man who was snoring softly.

At 9 Thursday morning 54-year-old Strom Thurmond was still on his feet. Wires from back home began to pour in on other Southerners, demanding that they help Strom Thurmond in his heroic effort. They realized quickly how Thurmond's doublecross had put them on the spot with their constituents. Urgently, angrily, they put in phone calls to home-state newspapers, explaining the harsh facts: Thurmond was not helping the cause; he was playing with dynamite.

Grandstand Wind. Strom Thurmond mumbled on, sipping orange juice sportingly brought to him by Illinois' liberal Paul Douglas, munching diced pumpernickel and bits of cooked hamburger. At 1:40 p.m. he allowed: "I've been on my feet the last 17 hours and I still feel pretty good." At 7:21 p.m. Thurmond broke the old Senate record for longwindedness, set by Oregon's Wayne Morse in the 1953 tidelands oil filibuster.* And at 9:12 p.m., 24 hours and 18 minutes after he started, Thurmond shut up and sat down.

Never let it be said that old Dixiecrats can't be boring on their feet.

The Reds have given America a wake-up call with their newfangled satellite.

Fat Heat

So how does this affect Al Gore?

Now, in a letter published Friday in the medical journal Lancet, two scientists write that obese people are disproportionately responsible for high food prices and greenhouse gas emissions because they consume 18% more food energy due to their greater body mass -- and require increased quantities of fuel to transport themselves and the food they eat. 'Promotion of a normal distribution of BMI would reduce the global demand for, and thus the price of, food,' write the authors, Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts of the evocatively named London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

We don't imagine Edwards and Roberts wrote their letter to be mean -- their point seems to be that it would be good for various reasons if urban policies worked to promote biking and walking -- and we haven't yet heard of mobs with torches roving the streets in search of those with BMIs of 30 or above. Nonetheless, Yale University has been quick with a news release urging 'caution on obesity and climate change link.'

Declares Kelly Brownell, director of the university's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, 'Saying that obese people are contributing to climate change is highly stigmatizing and assigns blame to the individuals who are obese rather than the conditions driving the obesity in the first place.' Things, he says, like junk food marketing aimed at children, the demise of P.E. programs, behemoth portions offered up in restaurants, more.

But if making people fatter and more sedate in their daily lives reduces their overall movement and helps keep them in place, isn't that actually a good thing?

We Lose More Lobbyists That Way

This is getting old.

Former Rep. Thomas G. Loeffler, a Texan who is among the McCain campaign’s most important advisers and fundraisers, has resigned as a national co-chair over lobbying entanglements, a Republican source told Politico on Sunday.

It’s at least the fifth lobbying-related departure from the campaign in a week.

The McCain campaign, already facing the prospect of being badly outgunned in the general election, now also must cope with the disruption of the lobbying shakeout.

The McCain campaign’s stringent approach to the issue is provoking a bit of grumbling from some of its Washington allies, who point out that a lobbyist’s function is enshrined in the Constitution.

“No one in real America cares,” said one key Republican. “But McCain cares.”

Er, actually, people in "Real America" do care. The appearance of hypocrisy tends to do that.

Yes, I Was Talking About You

How ironic is this:

When things couldn't be looking worse for Sen. Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidency in 2008, as her rival Barack Obama closes in on gaining enough delegates to secure the nomination, the former first lady attended a church service in Bowling Green, Ky., Sunday featuring a sermon about lust and adultery.

The hour-long sermon focused on the sin of committing adultery -– as outlined in Mathew 5:27-32.

Clinton, D-N.Y., has often said her faith pulled her through the difficult time when her husband, former President Bill Clinton, had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Paul Fryman of the State Street United Methodist Church asked the congregation, 'How is your commitment level in your marriage this morning?’

He spoke about lust and the sin of cheating on your partner. Clinton looked straight ahead as the man spoke about the theme of the sermon, which was: 'Come Up Higher When the Devil Whispers Over Your Shoulder.'

I think Bill was listening to something else...

In Their Honor

Israel does what Ima Dinnerjacket would never do.

When Tel Aviv city councilman Itai Pinkas was in Amsterdam last year, he stared for a long time at the monument honoring homosexuals killed in the Holocaust, sensing its impact was going to stay with him for a long time.

Photo: CourtesyWhen he got back to Tel Aviv, he took that powerful feeling and raced straight to Mayor Ron Huldai's office to talk.

Now, Pinkas and Huldai have revealed the outcome of the meeting: Tel Aviv is going to be home to the country's first memorial to gay victims of Nazi persecution. The public sculpture is slated to go up in the centrally located Gan Meir by midwinter.

'Now these innocent victims will be remembered forever,' said Pinkas. 'There will be a reminder to all of us of what happened in the past, and unfortunately of the persecution that still continues in the present.'

This sort of makes the attitude towards homosexuality in our own military look rather petty, doesn't it?

Your Brand Has Been Terminated

The Governator has some advice for Republicans in denial.

The Republican 'brand' - thanks to an unpopular president, a war, gas prices, foreclosures and deficit - has become such damaged goods that GOP Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia groused last week that 'if we were dog food, they would take us off the shelf.'

The answer for GOP presidential candidate John McCain: take a page out of the Schwarzenegger playbook and sell a product that is 'counter' to the current GOP brand on issues like global warming, spending and even immigration reform.

McCain comes to the Golden State this week on a campaign and fundraising swing, including a rally Thursday in Stockton being publicized with an invitation graced by a picture of a McCain hug - not with President Bush but with Schwarzenegger.

And the governor, in an interview with The Chronicle last week, had some candid advice and observations, not only about the GOP brand - but on McCain's efforts to expand his appeal to independents and disillusioned Democrats.

'The Republican idea is a great idea, but we can't go and get stuck with just the right wing,' Schwarzenegger said. 'Let's let the party come all the way to the center. Let those people be heard as much as the right. Let it be the big tent we've talked about.

'Let's invade and let's cross over that (political) center,' he said. 'The issues that they're talking about? Let them be our issues, and let the party be known for that.'

Obama has selling the message of change. It's time for the GOP to try that message, too. Staying the same certainly hasn't been helping them.

Your Smiling Face

Wipe that grin off your face. No, really, it's not healthy.

FRANKFURT, Germany, May 16 (UPI) -- A German scientist has proved that people forced to smile and take on-the-job insults suffer more and longer-lasting stress that may harm their health.

Dieter Zapf of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt studied 4,000 volunteers working in a fake call center. Half were allowed to respond in kind to abuse on the other end of the line while the other half had to suck it up, The Telegraph reports.

He found that those able to answer back had a brief increase in heart rate. Those who could not had stress symptoms that lasted much longer.

'Every time a person is forced to repress his true feelings there are negative consequences,' Zapf said. 'We are all able to rein in our emotions but it becomes difficult to do this over a protracted period.'

So, if you work in the service industry and you want to tell some jackass of a customer off, you now have a medical reason to do so.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1910

Halley's Comet returns, and Mark Twain dies a day later.

Edward is dead; long live King George.

Some folks just can't stand losing. Jack Johnson won fair and square, get over yourselves.

The Pope is waging war against Modernism. I thought the Middle Ages were over.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1976

They wanted her to be innocent?

SAN FRANCISCO, March 21 The jurors in the trial of Patricia Hearst wanted 'all in our hearts,' as one said, to believe that she was innocent, but they felt obliged to vote for conviction, because 'the steady accumulation of evidence against her' and the quality of her defense left them no choice.

Yeah, brandishing an automatic weapon in a bank and spouting off revolutionary rhetoric has a way of changing jurors' minds.

Vice President Ford is back on track to win the Republican Nomination but I'll bet this isn't the last we've heard from Reagan.

Well, I guess it's official: Vietnam is now one big happy Communist family.

It's America's birthday, and even the Japanese are getting into the act.

Israel to Africa: Get stuffed:

After four days of emotional debate in the United Nations Security Council, the Israelis beat off the attempt by African states to have the Entebbe operation condemned as a "flagrant violation" of Uganda's sovereignty. Beamed a delighted Chaim Herzog. Jerusalem's U.N. ambassador: "Israel has not been condemned and has thereby been vindicated."

The African argument was simply that Israel's assault at Entebbe posed a threat to every nation's sovereignty. Herzog's rebuttal was slightly more complicated: that Israel had a right, long recognized in international law, to protect the safety of its citizens, and that Uganda's Idi Amin Dada had compromised his own country's rights by aiding the skyjackers.

When it comes to choosing between an African thug who thinks he's the King of Scotland and Israel, I'm going with the latter. Plus: Entebbe the movie?

Mission Control, the Viking has landed.

False Pot Profits

Ah, yes-another stunning victory in the Great Drug War.

(05-16) 11:07 PDT FRESNO -- Two Modesto men are facing mandatory 20-year prison sentences after being convicted of running a medical-marijuana operation that federal prosecutors labeled a criminal enterprise, authorities said today.

Luke Anthony Scarmazzo, 28, and Ricardo Ruiz Montes, 28, were convicted by a federal jury Fresno on Thursday of conducting a continuing criminal enterprise, growing marijuana and possessing marijuana with the intent to distribute.

The conviction for running a criminal enterprise carries a mandatory sentence of at least 20 years. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger is to sentence both men Aug. 4.

Federal officials said the case sends a message to marijuana growers and dealers who believe they are shielded from prosecution under the California law legalizing medical marijuana use.

'Scarmazzo and Montes made millions by exploiting and hiding behind California's medical marijuana law,' said McGregor Scott, U.S. attorney in Sacramento. 'In this case, there was no conflict between state and federal law, as their conduct was illegal under both.

'California's medical marijuana law clearly sets out that making a profit selling marijuana is illegal,' Scott said. 'These two set out to make as much money as they could as drug dealers, plain and simple.'

So, if these guys hadn't been making money, the Feds would have left them alone? Why do I find that hard to believe?

Bloggin' In The Years: 1989

And what a year it is turning out to be. First, Poland legalizes the Solidarity movement:

LEAD: A Warsaw court offically registered the Solidarity union today, restoring the organization's legal status and fulfilling an agreement reached on April 5 between the Government and union leaders.

A Warsaw court offically registered the Solidarity union today, restoring the organization's legal status and fulfilling an agreement reached on April 5 between the Government and union leaders.

''After eight years of fidelity, eight years of nonviolent struggle, we have finally obtained our legalization,'' said Bronislaw Geremek, a medieval historian and influential Solidarity adviser.

It seems to be the year of the revolution against the Revolution. In other news, the Russians have quit Afghanistan.

As the last Soviet soldier marched out of Afghanistan yesterday, apparently wipping away tears, Pravda said in Moscow that in future decisions to send troops abroad should not be taken by a small conclave but by the Soviet Parliament. Nine years and seven weeks of Kremlin military involvement ended five minutes before noon, when the Soviet forces commander, Lieutenant-General Boris Grosmov, walked across 'Friendship Bridge' linking the Afghan border town of Hayratan with Termez, in the Soviet Union.
Hours afterwards, the Kremlin appealed for an immediate ceasefire and an end to arms shipments by all countries. The statement said that the withdrawal of Soviet troops under last April's Geneva accords could provide a basis for restoring peace in Afghanistan.

There could be a civil war there now, and we may pay for it if we ignore the outcome.

Bush says Noriega needs to go.

[Bush], in an interview with a small group of reporters in the Oval Office, said: "I will discuss at the appropriate time what course of action I will take, but I'm not going to do that now. What I want to do now is encourage . . . Gen. Noriega to heed the appeal of those people who favor democracy and to heed the will of the Panamanian people. I don't want to go beyond that in terms of deployment of U.S. force."

Asked whether any ultimatum had been delivered directly to Noriega, Bush responded, "Put it this way: Gen. Noriega knows my position."

From what I know about Pineapple Face, he won't go quietly.


Ding dong, Khomeini's dead.

The body of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, sealed in a white shroud and encased in glass atop a pyramidal funeral bier, lay in state here today on a dusty plain as hundreds of thousands of Iranians gathered to pay tribute to their deceased spiritual leader.

By mid-morning, the wailing and chanting mourners, many of them beating their heads and chests in grief, had grown so dense around the 30-foot-high bier that eight people were crushed to death and hundreds more injured by the pressure of the crowd, Iran's state news agency reported.

Those Iranians sure know how to throw a wake.

And Hulk Hogan is the WWF champion:

Hulk Hogan defeated Randy Savage to regain the World Wrestling Federation championship Sunday in the main event of Wrestlemania V at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, N.J. Hogan lost the 1988 title to Andre the Giant. In the National Wrestling Alliance's Rajun' Cajun Clash at New Orleans, Ricky Steamboat defeated Ric Flair. Wrestlemania V

I would imagine that Hogan and Andre will have at least one more match together. And then what? Will Hogan do the unthinkable and become a heel, turning his back on the Hulkamaniacs? Nahhh...

Apple Computers is in hot water with the surviving members of the Fab Four.

Apple Records, the recording company created more than two decades ago by and for the Beatles-yes, John, Paul, George and Ringo-is suing Apple Computer, the darling of the Silicon Valley.

The suit, filed Tuesday in London on behalf of the interests of the Beatles, claims that the music-making capabilities of Apple Computer's machines violate a 1981 agreement between the two Apples outlining when each of the companies could use the Apple name and trademark.

Apple Computer introduced a computer with music-making technology in January, 1984, when it came out with the original Macintosh. The computer contained chips that allowed it to convert electronic impulses into sound. Later improvements to both the Macintosh and the Apple II product lines vastly improved the computers' abilities to produce music.

Why do I have the feeling this won't be the last we hear of legal fights between computer makers (and users) and record companies?

Meanwhile, the Berlin Wall comes down.

East German border guards began dismantling sections of the Berlin Wall today, just a day after Communist authorities threw open the nation's prison-like frontiers and more than 100,000 citizens poured across to the West.

West German government sources said [Helmut Kohl] was seeking an urgent meeting with East German leader Egon Krenz to discuss East Germany's political crisis.

Chipping away-East German makes point by slamming at Berlin Wall with hammer as thousands celebrate border's opening. / Agence France-Presse; Police, below, watch youths climb wall today near Checkpoint Charlie.; A West Berlin schoolboy holds bricks from the Berlin Wall found near the Brandenburg Gate.

It's the end of an era...will we be able to adjust?

I Am Blogger, Hear Me Roar

Does this make me a feminist?

Alison I. Stein, a student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, ... will present her paper – Women Lawyers Blog for Workplace Equality: Blogging as a Feminist Legal Method – at the Joint Annual Meetings of Law and Society Association and Canadian Law and Society Association, May 30 in Montreal. ...

'From cattle ranchers to diamond merchants to third-wave feminists … groups of people opt out of the legal system – and instead use personalized and informal methods of rights assertion – as a means of ‘overcoming the ineffectiveness’ of state-sponsored laws,” writes Stein. ...

[W]hile nearly one half of all law school graduates since 1992 have been women, only about 15% of law firm partners are female and women comprise only 25% of tenured law school professors, the career goal that Stein has set for herself. ... Female lawyers turn to blogging because the law’s ability to vindicate their rights is limited, their grievances are born out of institutional biases or mindsets, and because the anonymity of blogging lets them give voice to their complaints without risking their reputations.

Well, on behalf of my fellow feminists, I say, you go, blogger.

Senator, Interrupted

Ted Kennedy has been hospitalised:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, scion of one of America’s most enduring political dynasties, was rushed to the hospital Saturday after suffering what his staff called a 'seizure.'

The 76-year-old senator was airlifted to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston Saturday morning after falling ill at his home on Cape Cod. By evening, his spokeswoman, Melissa Wagoner, confirmed a report that the senator was 'conscious, talking, joking with family.'

And in Reno, Nev., Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), told reporters at the State Democratic Convention that, after talking to Kennedy's wife, Victoria, he “will be fine.”

Earlier, when he was stricken on Cape Cod and 'after discussion with his doctors in Boston,” Wagoner said, “Senator Kennedy was sent to Massachusetts General Hospital for further examination."

Make no mistake, I can't stand the guy's politics. But my thoughts are with his family. Get well soon, sir.

Radioactive Man

President Bush, the glow-in-the-dark lame duck?

AL HUNT: We begin the program with Congressman Tom Davis. Congressman, you wrote this now famous 21-page memo about the Republican problems this fall. You say it's the worst environment you've seen in 30 years. The Politico this week talks about the GOP crash. Things don't look good. What two things could the Republican Party do right now in order to head off a disaster in November?

REPRESENTATIVE TOM DAVIS (R-VA): Well, two things - number one, they've got to get some separation from the president. The president is the face of the party. He is absolutely radioactive at this point. And they're seen as just in lock-step with him on everything. They've got to go back and establish - I'm talking about Congressional Republicans at this point and McCain, to a certain extent.

MR. HUNT: How do you strike more distance than they are right now?
REP. DAVIS: Well, you don't have to -

MR. HUNT: And, as you know, Karl Rove said they ought to align themselves with the president.

REP. DAVIS: They've done that. I mean, they've done that on SCHIP and they've done it on stem cell and they've done it on the war. And, in every case, they've walked down an alley where they're 30 percent of the electorate. And that makes you a permanent minority.

Many of them do get it. The rest probably do, too, they just don't want to admit it.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1906

There's been a major disaster in California.

San Francisco has been devastated by an earthquake. The shock occurred shortly after five o'clock yesterday morning, and lasted three minutes.
In that brief space of time thousands of buildings were either damaged or destroyed, and several hundred persons killed. The city was virtually cut off from communication with the rest of the continent, owing to the collapse of all the telegraph wires except one, all the lighting arrangements were thrown out of gear, and save for the fires which broke out in numberless streets the whole place was in darkness.

The fires spread rapidly, owing to the impossibility of getting water from the burst mains, and in order to limit the area of destruction it was found necessary to blow up several buildings. The telegraph operators were compelled to abandon the Post-office, because it was partially wrecked, and the operating-room was rendered useless. The first hint of the disaster was contained in a Reuter's telegram from Chicago announcing that the telegraph companies there were entirely without communication with San Francisco, and that the Sacramento office of the Western Telegraph Company reported a heavy earthquake in the West.

I have no doubt San Francisco will rise again, but will the Nation be prepared to handle another major disaster, such as a hurricane?

Dreyfus is a free man.

Yesterday's proceedings in the Dreyfus trial began at five minutes past twelve.
The decision of the Court exculpated Dreyfus from all the allegations made against him, seeing that those allegations, whether based on handwriting or text, were completely unjustified, and that it was vainly asked with what object Dreyfus, who was wealthy, committed so great a crime.

Since the charge against Dreyfus had completely broken down no fresh trial ought to be ordered. Consequently the Court quashed the judgment of the Rennes court-martial convicting Dreyfus, stating that that conviction has been pronounced erroneously and wrongly.

French justice? Of a sort...at least they've finally admitted they were wrong.

Who laughs last? Our "Cowboy President", that's who. Of course, some people aren't happy about it, but what are they going to do-start a war?

Bloggin' In The Years: 1972

Continuing to shamelessly copy Ann Althouse, we turn our attention to 1972:

Wallace is shot

MONTGOMERY, Ala., May 15 -- When the word reached Montgomery today that Gov. George C. Wallace had been shot in Maryland, the news cut through the hazy May day like a cold rain.

And, surprisingly, life went on.

Something odd happened at a hotel in Washington, D.C.:

Five men, one of whom said he is a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, were arrested at 2:30 a.m. yesterday in what authorities described as an elaborate plot to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee here.

Three of the men were native-born Cubans and another was said to have trained Cuban exiles for guerrilla activity after the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

They were surprised at gunpoint by three plain-clothes officers of the metropolitan police department in a sixth floor office at the plush Watergate, 2600 Virginia Ave., NW, where the Democratic National Committee occupies the entire floor.

There was no immediate explanation as to why the five suspects would want to bug the Democratic National Committee offices or whether or not they were working for any other individuals or organizations.

Hmm,why do I get the feeling this might be much bigger than a simple robbery?

And is this a sign of weakness? Some would argue that talking to your enemies is appeasement...

Plus, the Battle of Minerva, which sounds like the kind of place I might want to live.

Blogging In The Years

In honor of Ann Althouse, who's started a cool side project wherein she blogs on topics from various years, I'm doing my part, starting with 1918, taken from a series of newspaper archives (pay-per-view only, alas). First up:

The Sedition Act. Is this what we really want as a country that has proclaimed itself "The Arsenal of Democracy?"

Peoria, Ill., May 8. -- Charles H. Kamann, former school principal and former president of the German-American Alliance here, was this afternoon found guilty of violation of the espionage act. He was sentenced to serve 3 years and was fined $5,000. He was charged with making seditious remarks to children in his history class.

The last time I checked, the Constitution allowed dissent during wartime. Was I wrong?

There's a nasty bug going around these days:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25.--Spanish influenza has spread over the country so rapidly that officials of the Public Health Service, the War and Navy Departments, and the Red Cross conferred today on measures to help local communities in combating the disease.

Sounds scary. There's even a children's rhyme to go with it:

I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
And in-flu-enza.

But adults have their own rhyme, what with people being asked to wear face masks:

Obey the laws
And wear the gauze
Protect your jaws
From Septic Paws

If the Great War is to be remembered for anything, it will probably be remembered most for this.

Czar Nicholas of Russia may be dead-or is he?

In view of the mystery which still shrouds the tragic death of Nicholas II at Ekaterinenburg -- his murder by the bolsheviki, the alleged consignment of his body to the depths of an abandoned mine or to a hastily dug hole in a remote portion of an adjacent forest, the subsequent exhumation of a corpse said to be his and its temporary entombment in a sarcophagus of the local cathedral with a view to its eventual and ultimate being laid to rest in the mausoleum of the old-time Czars of Russia at Moscow or in that of the emperors since Peter the Great in the fortress of SS. Peter and Paul at Petrograd -- it is only natural that stories should be in circulation to the effect that he is still in the land of the living.

To me there is no doubt that the Czar was indeed the last casualty of the Bolshevik Revolution. I'd sooner believe that his daughter had survived than him.

Ready, Aim, Misfire

Or, another example of what happens when you engage your mouth before your brain:

(CNN) – During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he's getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

Um, considering how many notable Americans have been shot while on the campaign trail, not to mention what happened to the last African-American leader who was taken seriously in this country, that comment might have been a bit tasteless, don't ya think, Mike?

House Of Cards

They're like the Department itself-largely ineffective and full of security holes.

About the size of a credit card, the electronic-passport card displays a photo of the user and a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip containing data about the user. The State Department announced recently that it will begin producing the cards next month and issue the first ones in July.

Security specialists told The Washington Times that the electronic-passport card can be copied or altered easily by removing the photograph with solvent and replacing it with one from an unauthorized user.

James Hesse, former chief intelligence officer for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Forensic Document Laboratory, which monitors fraudulent government documents, said the card should have been designed with a special optical security strip to make it secure and prevent counterfeiting. The selection of a card with an RFID chip is 'an extremely risky decision,' Mr. Hesse said in an interview.

'The optical strip has never been compromised,' he said. 'It's the most secure medium out there to store data.'

Joel Lisker, a former FBI agent who spent 18 years countering credit-card fraud at MasterCard, said the new cards pose a serious threat to U.S. security. 'There really is no security with these cards,' he said.

Mr. Lisker, a consultant to a competitor for the electronic-passport card contract, said the State Department's selection of the RFID card shows it favors speedy processing at entry points more than security. He charged that the department 'will not make changes until it is satisfied that compromises are occurring on a regular basis.'

It's security by expediency at its finest.

Where Da Money At?

It appears his political capitol isn't the only thing Bush has squandered.

President Bush's financial fortunes appear to have declined over the past seven years, with his family assets dropping as low as $6.5 million, according to disclosure forms released yesterday.

Bush and his wife, Laura, were worth at least $9 million and as much as $24 million at the start of his term. The Bushes could still be worth as much as $20 million now, according to the financial documents filed with the Office of Government Ethics, which requires assets to be reported only within broad ranges.

Vice President Cheney and his wife, Lynne, have fared better, reporting assets of at least $21 million and as much as $99 million, the forms show. The Cheneys are at least as wealthy as they were when the vice president entered office, and may have added as much as $29 million to their net worth during his tenure.

President Bush's biggest asset is a 1,600-acre family ranch near Crawford, Tex., which is listed as being worth between $1 million and $5 million. Most of the Bush family holdings are in real estate and a blind trust.

Last year, Bush reported assets of a minimum of $7.5 million.

Declining fortunes seems to be a running theme for the Bushes.

Past That

Peggy Noonan asks the question that dare not speak its name:

Could the party pivot from the president? I spoke this week to Clarke Reed of Mississippi, one of the great architects of resurgent Republicanism in the South. When he started out, in the 1950s, there were no Republicans in his state. The solid south was solidly Democratic, and Sen. James O. Eastland was thumping the breast pocket of his suit, vowing that civil rights legislation would never leave it. "We're going to build a two-party system in the south," Mr. Reed said. He helped create "the illusion of Southern power" as a friend put it, with the creation of the Southern Republican Chairman's Association. "If you build it they will come." They did.

There are always "lots of excuses," Mr. Reed said of the special-election loss. Poor candidate, local factors. "Having said all that," he continued, "let's just face it: It's not a good time." He meant to be a Republican. "They brought Cheney in, and that was a mistake." He cited "a disenchantment with the generic Republican label, which we always thought was the Good Housekeeping seal."

What's behind it? "American people just won't take a long war. Just – name me a war, even in a pro-military state like this. It's overall disappointment. It's national. No leadership, adrift. Things haven't worked." The future lies in rebuilding locally, not being "distracted" by Washington.

Is the Republican solid South over?

"Yeah. Oh yeah." He said, "I eat lunch every day at Buck's Cafe. Obama's picture is all over the wall."

How to come back? "The basic old conservative principles haven't changed. We got distracted by Washington, we got distracted from having good county organizations."

Should the party attempt to break with Mr. Bush? Mr. Reed said he supports the president. And then he said, simply, "We're past that."

Is the Republican party finally realizing how addicted it was to this presidency? As with all addictions, admitting that you have a problem is an important first step. Maybe a few years in minority-status rehab will do the party good.

Target CSI

I wonder if they have their own Who song, too?

Target got into forensics as a way to combat shoplifting and such crimes but has taken its skills far beyond the department store. Its seven-person team of investigators, most of them former law enforcement officials, spend 70% of their time fighting theft, fraud and personal injury cases involving Target's 1,600 stores. But the lab is also frequently tapped by city, state and federal law-enforcement agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to solve big cases....

Target installed cameras in most of its stores in the 1980s, but that wasn't enough to really make a dent in store thefts. 'We had a volume of evidence from our cameras but no expertise,' says Fredrick Lautenbach, the retailer's crime lab manager. He says the company also didn't want to rely on overburdened police departments to help it solve problems with theft. In 2003 the company created its lab...

[I]t decided to largely limit its volunteer work to cases involving murder, sexual assault or armed robbery. It doesn't charge for its services but asks police departments to donate a patch when it helps them out. It has 136 on display in its main office in Brooklyn Park, Minn.

I'm surprised Wal-Mart didn't come up with something like this. They do practically everything else.

United Nations: Racism Investigations Unit

Because there's apparently no racism in the rest of the world.

GENEVA (Reuters) - A special U.N. human rights investigator will visit the United States this month to probe racism, an issue that has forced its way into the race to secure the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

The United Nations said Doudou Diene would meet federal and local officials, as well as lawmakers and judicial authorities during the May 19-June 6 visit.

'The special rapporteur will...gather first-hand information on issues related to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,' a U.N. statement said on Friday.

His three-week visit, at U.S. government invitation, will cover eight cities -- Washington D.C., New York, Chicago, Omaha, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Ah yes, the evil racist America-which could be on the verge of electing a Black president. Yeah, that America.

Mission Finally Accomplished?

I'd question his prophetic skills:

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Republican John McCain declared for the first time Thursday he believes the Iraq war can be won by 2013, although he rejected suggestions that his talk of a timetable put him on the same side as Democrats clamoring for full-scale troop withdrawals.

The Republican presidential contender, in a mystical speech that also envisioned Osama bin Laden dead or captured, and Americans with the choice of paying a simple flat tax or following their standard 1040 form, said only a small number of troops would remain in Iraq by the end of a prospective first term because al-Qaida will have been defeated and Iraq's government will be functioning on its own.

'By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won,' McCain told an audience of several hundred here in the capital city of a general election battleground state.

Anytime you start talking about a definitive date for victory you're setting yourself up for a huge counterattack if it doesn't happen. I think McCain should focus on the here and now and put the crystal ball away for awhile.

Love And Marriage

Some reactions to the historic decision from the California court. First, the Governator.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is vowing to uphold the California Supreme Court's ruling striking down a state ban on gay marriage.

The Republican governor issued a brief statement shortly after the court announced its decision Thursday.

The governor said, 'I respect the court's decision and as governor, I will uphold its ruling.'

He also reiterated his previously stated opposition to an anti-gay marriage initiative proposed for the November ballot. That initiative would write a ban on same-sex unions into California's constitution.

Last month, Schwarzenegger told a gathering of gay Republicans that he would fight the initiative.

The governor has twice vetoed legislation that sought to legalize gay marriage, saying the issue should be decided by voters or the courts.

Well, the people did vote on it, and the California Supreme Court responded. But try telling that to Hugh Hewitt, whose head is exploding:

It is appalling. Incredibly, a feverish will to power on the part of small numbers of judges is rapidly eroding a citizen's standing as the ultimate lawgiver. Courts unbound by any sense of limits, by any sense of restraint, threaten the basic understanding that has long undergirded the Republic --that the laws proceed from the open consent of the people, and that the ultimate laws, the federal and state constitutions, are documents of fixed meaning and structure, not merely window dressing on the rule of judicial elites or empty phrases waiting for elites to fill them with meaning.

There's a lot more ignorance like this, unfortunately. But the decision was voted on by the legislature, and the Court made it legal. Isn't that the very definition of "State's rights" and "The will of the people?"

The Big Blue Machine

They're worried:

In both Louisiana and Mississippi, Republican attempts to link the Democratic candidate to Mr Obama failed. Polls suggest the Democrats could increase their Senate lead from a 51-49 split to a safer 55-45 majority and add to their majority in the House of Representatives by 10 to 15 seats in the elections in November.

“Since 1980 I have not seen a terrain so tilted against one party as it is against the Republicans in 2008,” says Norman Ornstein, a political analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “To be sure, Barack Obama may face a close race against John McCain, but there is no evidence his candidacy would harm Democratic congressional prospects.”

On Wednesday, John Boehner, the Republican House leader, said the Mississippi defeat was a “wake-up call” for Republican candidates nationwide. House Republicans this week acknowledged the yearning for new leadership among voters by unveiling a new campaign slogan – “Change you deserve”– mimicking Mr Obama’s “Change we deserve” slogan.

With just $7m (€4.5m, £3.6m) in the bank compared with $44m for congressional Democrats, there is a sense of urgency among Capitol Hill Republicans about what many fear could turn out to be an unstoppable Democratic juggernaut. “This is a change election,” said Mr Boehner, “and if we want America to vote for us, we have to convince them that we can fix Washington.”

Yes, except that they had six years and literally blew their capital in '06. And it should be noted that the Democrats who won those special elections ran as...fiscal conservatives. You know, like what the Republicans used to be.

Spicoli's Pick

Like, he's not so awesome?

Asked if he would be joining other Hollywood A-listers in pledging support for Obama, Penn gave him a less than ringing endorsement and warned that he has an awful lot to live up to.

”I don't have a candidate I'm supporting and I'm certainly interested and excited by the hope that Barack Obama is inspiring,” he said, but went on to accuse him of a “phenomenally inhuman and unconstitutional” voting record.

”I hope that he will understand, if he is the nominee, the degree of disillusionment that will happen if he doesn't become a greater man than he will ever be,” Penn said. “This is the most important election, certainly in my lifetime, and maybe ever.”

Considering that Obama's only been in office for a few years and that he voted against the Iraq War, I have to wonder what Obama has done that is so inhuman. Aside from daring to challenge the Queen, of course.

Money Hungry

A classic meme has caught on with a party that's licking its chops at the prospect of a landslide victory this year:

WASHINGTON - House Democrats are proposing a tax surcharge on millionaires to pay for a big increase in education benefits for veterans of the war in Iraq, lawmakers said Tuesday.

The plan, if accepted by rank-and-file Democrats, would clear the way for a vote Thursday on a long-stalled war funding bill that would pay for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next spring.

Conservative 'Blue Dog' Democrats blocked a vote last week over Democratic leaders' attempts to add an additional $51.8 billion over the next decade for veterans education to the $183.8 billion war funding tab. They insisted on finding a way to pay for the new benefit without simply adding to the deficit.

'What we're talking about is a one-half percent income tax surcharge on incomes above $1 million,' said Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., a leader of the Blue Dog group. 'So someone who earns $2 million a year would pay $5,000. ... They're not going to miss it.'

The $1 million income level would apply to couples. Individuals would pay the surcharge on income exceeding $500,000.

What's the difference between Republicans and Democrats? Republicans will spend like there's no tomorrow. Democrats will do the same thing, but at least they're hones in how they would get the money.

The Other Drug Problem

For a society that seems so keen on banning illicit substances, we're pretty hooked.:

For the first time, it appears that more than half of all insured Americans are taking prescription medicines regularly for chronic health problems, a study shows.

The most widely used drugs are those to lower high blood pressure and cholesterol - problems often linked to heart disease, obesity and diabetes.

The numbers were gathered last year by Medco Health Solutions Inc., which manages prescription benefits for about one in five Americans.

Experts say the data reflect not just worsening public health but better medicines for chronic conditions and more aggressive treatment by doctors. For example, more people are now taking blood pressure and cholesterol-lowering medicines because they need them, said Dr. Daniel W. Jones, president of the American Heart Association.

In addition, there is the pharmaceutical industry's relentless advertising. With those factors unlikely to change, doctors say the proportion of Americans on chronic medications can only grow.

'Unless we do things to change the way we're managing health in this country ... things will get worse instead of getting better,' predicted Jones, a heart specialist and dean of the University of Mississippi's medical school.

Add to the drugs we give to kids to control their behavior, the popularity of antidepressants and so on, it looks like our whole country is headed for rehab.

E.T., Pray Home

Well, okay, then.

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, says that the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.

In an interview published Tuesday by Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Funes says that such a notion 'doesn't contradict our faith' because aliens would still be God's creatures.

The interview was headlined 'The extraterrestrial is my brother.' Funes said that ruling out the existence of aliens would be like 'putting limits' on God's creative freedom.

So I guess this means Mulder's not a heretic?

Wanted: One Token

One small step for a professor, one giant leap for conservative kind.

How liberal is the University of Colorado at Boulder?

The campus hot-dog stand sells tofu wieners. A recent pro-marijuana rally drew a crowd of 10,000, roughly a third the size of the student body. And according to one professor’s analysis of voter registration, the 800-strong faculty includes just 32 Republicans.

Chancellor G.P. “Bud” Peterson surveys this landscape with unease. A college that champions diversity, he believes, must think beyond courses in gay literature, Chicano studies and feminist theory. “We should also talk about intellectual diversity,” he says. So over the next year, Mr. Peterson plans to raise $9 million to create an endowed chair for what is thought to be the nation’s first Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy.

Mr. Peterson’s quest has been greeted with protests from some faculty and students, who say the move is too — well, radical. “Why set aside money specifically for a conservative?” asks Curtis Bell, a teaching assistant in political science. “I’d rather see a quality academic than someone paid to have a particular perspective.”

Even some conservatives who have long pushed for balance in academia voice qualms. Among them is David Horowitz, a conservative agitator whose book “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America” includes two Boulder faculty members: an associate professor of ethnic studies who writes about the intersection of Chicano and lesbian issues, and a philosophy professor focused on feminist politics and “global gender justice.”

While he approves of efforts to bolster a conservative presence on campus, Mr. Horowitz fears that setting up a token right-winger as The Conservative at Boulder will brand the person as a curiosity, like “an animal in the zoo.” We “fully expect this person to be integrated into the fabric of life on campus,” replies Todd Gleeson, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

I'm sure the new prof will be invited to all the parties, too, where he can get the expected condescending and patronizing.

The Good, the Bad, And The Better

Newsweek has a cover story that says America's best days are behind her. Others disagree.

The fashionable view is that the American economy is a busted flush, a hollowed-out, deindustrialised shell housed in decaying infrastructure that delivers McJobs and has survived courtesy only of a ramped-up housing market and the willingness of foreigners to hold trillions of dollars of American debts.

China and India are set to overtake it in the foreseeable future. At best, the US will have to get used to living in a multipolar world it cannot dominate. At worst, it will have to accept, along with the West, that the new economic and political heart of the world is Asia.

The US economy is certainly in transition, made vastly more difficult by the spreading impact of the credit crunch. But the underlying story is much stronger. The country is developing the prototypical knowledge economy of the 21st century, an economy in which the division between manufacturing and services becomes less clear cut, in a world where the deployment of knowledge, brain power and problem-solving are the sources of wealth generation.

What counts is the strength of a country's universities, research base, commitment to information and communications technology and new technologies along with a network of institutions that supports new enterprise. Here, the US is so far ahead of the rest of the world it is painful.

The figures make your head spin. Of the world's top 100 universities, 37 are American. The country spends more proportionately on research and design, universities and software than any other, including Sweden and Japan. Of the world's top 50 companies ranked by R&D, 20 are American. Fifty-two of the world's top 100 brands are American. Half the world's new patents are registered by American companies.

This year, American exports have grown by 13 per cent, helped by the falling dollar, so that the US has reclaimed its position as the world's number one exporter. Moreover, and little remarked on, two-thirds of America's imports come from affiliates of American companies that determinedly keep most of the value added in the US. The US certainly has a trade deficit, but importantly it is largely with itself.

The US will recover from the credit crunch. Already there is an aggression and activism about how to respond that makes the British look limp in comparison. Four-fifths of new mortgages are underwritten by public mortgage banks, interest rates have been slashed and a bank bail-out was launched instantly. More activism is planned. There is a dynamic readiness to fix things in a tight economic corner, irrespective of ideology, that can only be admired.

It is a dynamism that infects the political process. I was in the US on the day Indiana and North Carolina went to the polls in the Democratic primaries. The conventional wisdom is that Obama and Clinton's fight is self-defeating and it would be better if Clinton had stood down earlier. I disagree. It has brought politics alive. Democrats are enrolling to vote in their hundreds of thousands because their vote and opinion now count. They will stay enrolled and vote in November.

There is also a great maturity about the process. It is a political argument that necessarily demands respect for your opponent because if you win you will need their support in November. Americans do public argument well. The tradition might have corrupted since de Tocqueville made the same observation in 1835, but it lives on. And it is a vital underpinning of American success.

It is this strange cocktail of argument, of plural institutions that check and balance, of investing in knowledge and of a belief that no problem can't be fixed that underpins American strength. China is the only country in the world with a similar continental-scale economy and bigger population that conceivably could mount a challenge, but it has none of these institutions and processes. Despite its size, it has only three universities in the top 100, not one brand in the top 100, not one company in the world top 50 ranked by R&D and it registers virtually no patents.

China has no tradition of public argument, nor independent judiciary. Unless and until its institutions change, it will always trail the US in the 21st century knowledge economy and experience upheaval and possible revolution along the way. India, a democracy with the right institutions, is much better placed - but with income per head 2 or 3 per cent of that in the US, a challenge will take centuries rather than decades.

It is the maligned EU that has the institutions and economic prowess to emerge as a genuine knowledge economy counterweight to America.

Sure, the US has problems. It runs its financial system like a casino. It is a grossly unfair society. Its road and rail systems have been neglected for decades. University entrance has become too expensive. It has fetishised deregulation. Money corrupts its political process. To compromise the rule of law in order to 'win' the war on terror was stupid. But none of those problems can't be fixed and the US is about to elect a President who will promise to try, in a world in which it remains the indispensable power.

It's a classic argument, but a valid one that most libertarians, regardless of what some social conservatives might think, share with most Republicans-America is still a vital country, and one that, hopefully after this election, will once again be seen as a beacon of hope and freedom to the rest of the world.

Basra Begins

Some good news out of Basra:

At the College of Fine Arts, female students said they felt more, but not entirely, free to wear the clothes they liked.

“I used to be challenged for what I wear,” said Athari, a 19-year-old student wearing heavy makeup and a bright orange headscarf pushed high back on her head in the liberal fashion disapproved of by Islamic radicals. “Makeup was forbidden; short skirts were forbidden. I will not mention their name, but they were extremists. They are still here, but quieter now.”

Qais, a music student, spoke of his relief at no longer having to hide his violin in a sack of rice in his trunk.

Most of the students were Shiite, but one youth named Alaa said that he was a Sunni and that 95 percent of his relatives had fled Basra after sectarian killings, including that of his uncle. “I want to thank Mr. Nuri al-Maliki, because he cleaned Basra of murderers, hijackers and thieves,” Alaa said.

It was not an uncommon sentiment. In his city center office, Yahya, a wealthy businessman said he had just begun going onto the streets without his customary 10 bodyguards. Insisting that he was not a political supporter of the prime minister, he said he was nevertheless so grateful for the security improvements that he and colleagues had downloaded Mr. Maliki’s face onto their mobile telephones as screensavers.

Whether this newfound stability will last is still an open question. But it's good to see that the Iraqis have learned something from Petraeus. More like this, please.

Tax Us, Please

These guys must be rolling in greenbacks:

A conservative legal-advocacy group is enlisting ministers to use their pulpits to preach about election candidates this September, defying a tax law that bars churches from engaging in politics.

Alliance Defense Fund, a Scottsdale, Ariz., nonprofit, is hoping at least one sermon will prompt the IRS to investigate, sparking a court battle that could get the tax provision declared unconstitutional. Alliance lawyers represent churches in disputes with the IRS over alleged partisan activity.

The action marks the latest attempt by a conservative organization to help clergy harness their congregations to sway elections. The protest is scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 28, a little more than a month before the general election, in a year when religious concerns and preachers have been a regular part of the political debate.

See, there's a reason why we've traditionally been against mixing religion and politics in this country. But if they want to lose their tax-exempt status, that's fine with me.

The Dark Days Ahead

When even Fred Barnes talks about the GOP's bad prospects, you know there's a problem.

In a Wall Street Journal/NBC survey last month, John McCain fared better with Republican voters (84 percent to 8 percent) than Barack Obama did with Democrats (78 percent to 12 percent). McCain was also stronger than Obama among independent voters (46 percent to 35 percent).

These are terrific numbers for McCain. But they aren't enough. In the overall match-up, McCain trailed Obama (43 percent to 46 percent). The explanation for this seeming paradox is quite simple: The Republican base has shrunk. In 2008, there are fewer Republicans.

"It's the erosion in party affiliation that's pulling
McCain down," says a Republican strategist, and it could doom his chances of winning the presidency. The strategist fears Republican leaders and McCain campaign officials "don't realize the trouble they're going to be in."

There have been some improvements in political atmospherics for Republicans. The 2006 midterm election was framed by intense voter dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq. The 2008 election won't be. The surge of American troops in Iraq hasn't turned the war into a Republican asset, but it's at least blunted it as an effective Democratic talking point.

With scandal after scandal involving House Republicans in 2006, the party became the target of voter fury. Now Democrats control Congress. "The anger against congressional Republicans isn't there," says Republican congressman Tom Davis of Virginia, who is retiring.

Davis, however, thinks Republicans have made little headway in improving their tarnished image. House minority leader John Boehner talks about fixing the Republican "brand." Davis's assessment: "We haven't done anything the last year and a half to re-do the brand." Instead, Republicans have focused on "looking out for the president."

Pollster Frank Luntz, a sharp critic of Boehner's leadership, believes the Republican image has gotten worse. "It used to be that Republicans won [in polls] on economic and values and foreign policy issues," he says. "Democrats won on quality of life. Now Democrats are winning on everything."

So, while on the surface McCain may be in good shape to beat Obama in November, he will be the leader of a minority party that by all accounts still doesn't understand why they lost. Nice going, guys.

Taxation Without Greenification

They're not falling for it:

More than seven in 10 voters insist that they would not be willing to pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change, according to a new poll.
The survey also reveals that most Britons believe 'green' taxes on 4x4s, plastic bags and other consumer goods have been imposed to raise cash rather than change our behaviour, while two-thirds of Britons think the entire green agenda has been hijacked as a ploy to increase taxes.

The findings make depressing reading for green campaigners, who have spent recent months urging the Government to take far more radical action to reduce Britain's carbon footprint. The UK is committed to reducing carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2050, a target that most experts believe will be difficult to reach. The results of the poll by Opinium, a leading research company, indicate that maintaining popular support for green policies may be a difficult act to pull off, and attempts in the future to curb car use and publicly fund investment in renewable resources will prove deeply unpopular.

The American Revolution began as a tax revolt. It appears to finally be coming full circle.

The Remedy

Suddenly, modern medicine doesn't seem so bad now.

BEIJING - The United States is offering to help China in its fight against a viral infection that has killed 34 children, including two reported Friday, and sickened thousands of others.

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt is making a previously scheduled trip to Beijing next week and plans to discuss health issues with Chinese officials, with the outbreaks of hand, foot and mouth disease expected to feature prominently, U.S. Embassy spokesman Susan Stevenson said.

The scope and volume of infections brings to mind the SARS epidemic of 2003, when China was criticized internationally for trying to conceal the emergence of the disease. American health experts have previously helped study and control infectious diseases like SARS.

I doubt Chinese parents will be overly concerned about giving their kids vaccinations this year.

The Great Online Novel

Skynet tries its hand at literature.

The text itself is terrible. Here's the opening paragraph:

The deep waters, black as ink, began to swell and recede into an uncertain distance. A gray ominous mist obscured the horizon. The ocean expanse seemed to darken in disapproval. Crashing tides sounded groans of agonized discontent. The ocean pulsed with a frightening, vital force. Although hard to imagine, life existed beneath. It's infinite underbelly was teeming with life, a monstrous collection of finned, tentacled, toxic, and slimy parts. Below its surface lay the wreckage of countless souls. But we had dared to journey across it. Some had even been brave enough to explore its sable velveteen depths, and have yet to come up for precious air....'

But the project itself is ripe for sociological study. It's a fully and publicly documented interaction between over a thousand would-be authors, a postmodern literary critic's orgiastic wet dream.

All the same, the Web shouldn't quit its day job.

Cocaine Is So Gay

Yet more evidence that the durn homosexual agenda is everywhere:

The drug ring centered on the El Flamingo Restaurant in Burien.

Court documents say the accused ringleader, 30-year-old Domingo Bailon-Yanez, is related to the restaurant owner and was indicted.

Also indicted were 43-year-old restaurant manager Rigoberto Sabalsa-Lozano, of SeaTac, and 26-year-old bartender Carla Rodriguez-Romero, of Kent.

The DEA called the investigation Operation Pink Tiger. The cocaine came wrapped in bright-pink cellophane.

But it looked fabulous on delivery.

Vegans Explained

I never thought all of them were crazy.

To demonstrate what a vegetarian really is, let's begin with a simple thought experiment. Imagine a completely normal person with completely normal food cravings, someone who has a broad range of friends, enjoys a good time, is carbon-based, and so on. Now remove from this person's diet anything that once had eyes, and, wham!, you have yourself a vegetarian. Normal person, no previously ocular food, end of story. Some people call themselves vegetarians and still eat chicken or fish, but unless we're talking about the kind of salmon that comes freshly plucked from the vine, this makes you an omnivore. A select few herbivores go one step further and avoid all animal products—milk, eggs, honey, leather—and they call themselves vegan, which rhymes with 'tree men.' These people are intense.

See, this is why I'm not one. It would get old pretty fast trying to prove my vegan credentials to tree people.

It's A Dirty Job

Blogging is a dirty business:

Sure, it may sound like a hypochondriac's excuse to stay away from the office. But a growing body of research suggests that computer mice and keyboards are, in fact, prime real estate for germs.

It's a phenomenon most recently illustrated by tests at a typical office environment in the United Kingdom. A consumer advocacy group commissioned the tests in which British microbiologist James Francis took a swab to 33 keyboards, a toilet seat and a toilet door handle at the publication's London office in January.

Francis then tested the swabs to see what nasty germs he managed to pick up. He found that four of the keyboards tested were potential health hazards -- and one had levels of germs five times higher than that found on the toilet seat.

Well, this is why we have handi-wipes.

Disorder In The Kangaroo Court

Canadians are finding out the hard way what happens when political correctness becomes law.

Once upon a time, it was simply a pain in the butt.

For the last two years, though, the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) has become an out-of-control juggernaut, rolling over unsuspecting bystanders in its path.

Fair enough, OHRC has always been a tad controversial -- some might say off-the-wall -- in its rulings.

But recent changes, and the way they are being implemented by Commissioner Barbara Hall, are pitting human rights protection against our fundamental rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Hall, a former Toronto mayor, appears to have gone completely over the top in her comments on an article by journalist Mark Steyn, 'The future belongs to Islam,' that appeared in Maclean's magazine.

Responding to a complaint by the Canadian Islamic Congress and some law students, Hall stated, correctly, the OHRC has no jurisdiction to hear the case. All the same, she went on to say this:

'The Commission strongly condemns the Islamophobic portrayal of Muslims, Arabs, South Asians and indeed any racialized community in the media ... '
So she basically said the OHRC can't judge the issue -- and then proceeded to judge it.

(snip)

In another worrying decision, the OHRC last week ruled Christian Horizons, a religious agency that operates 180 residential care facilities for 1,400 developmentally delayed individuals across the province, could not require an employee, Connie Heintz, to sign a "morality statement."

After being employed for five years by Christian Horizons, Heintz "came to terms with her sexual orientation as a lesbian," the report said. Her lifestyle contravened the morality statement and she was fired. The OHRC awarded her lost wages and damages and, more troubling, ruled that religious organizations such as this one cannot require employees to sign such statements.

In her statement, Hall had this to say:

"This decision is important because it sets out that when faith-based and other organizations move beyond serving the interests of their particular community to serving the general public, the rights of others, including employees, must be respected."

This comes perilously close to telling people of faith what they may and may not believe. It reinforces fears expressed when same-sex couples won the right to wed that religious institutions that are morally opposed to same-sex marriage would be forced to perform such ceremonies.

It's a slippery slope.

Although I may not entirely agree with the group's attitude, they should have a right to hire and not hire whom they wish. Welcome to the wonderful world of enforced political correctness.

Don't Believe The Hype

Apparently the world did not come to an end, after all:

When the votes were actually counted, after the fact, they showed that Bush would have won anyway. Nearly eight years later, it is safe to say that the case has not generated a jurisprudential revolution, even though a panel of Ninth Circuit judges tried to stop the California recall election by relying on Bush v. Gore, only to be overturned by an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit. The Supreme Court has not cited the case at all, as far as I know, since Bush v. Gore was decided. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a constitutional law case decided in the past eight years that has been referenced less than Bush v. Gore has been referenced.

Many predicted that Bush v. Gore would undermine public support for the Court. Justice Stevens wrote in his dissenting opinion that '[t]ime will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.'

Most of the studies of which I am aware show that Bush v. Gore has not, over the longer term, affected the Supreme Court's image in the public eye. Some studies show that there were short-term effects, but other research has demonstrated that over the longer-term the image of the Court has not been affected. If anything, some research has shown that public knowledge of the Court has increased, which is probably a good thing.

So the only people who care about Bush V. Gore are liberal Democrats who still think the election was stolen? Color me surprised.

Pins And Underpants

I think the obsession over flag pins and patriotic symbols overall is getting a little out of hand:

A president is expected to be a patriotic symbol himself, not the arbiter of patriotic symbols. He is supposed to be the face-painted superfan at every home game; to wear red, white and blue boxers on special marital occasions; to get misty-eyed during the most obscure patriotic hymns.

Um, no, a president is supposed to lead, not be a vessel for the mood of the moment. And quite frankly, if he started wearing face-paint and patriotic underwear in public, I'd be a little concerned.

The War On Porn

Leave it to a Bush-era Republican to push something like this.

GRAFENWOHR, Germany -- Legislation that would restrict the sale of certain men's magazines on U.S. military bases around the world would be bad for morale, according to soldiers at Grafenwöhr.

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., has introduced legislation that would close a loophole in the current law that allows the sale of some sexually explicit material on military bases by lowering the threshold required to deem material "sexually explicit."

A Department of Defense committee that reviews materials sold on bases ruled last year that magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse are not pornographic. But Broun's Military Honor and Decency Act includes language that could make those magazines eligible for the ban.

The prospect of missing out on men's magazines was not welcomed by soldiers at Grafenwöhr.

"We all read 'em," said Pfc. Paul Rubio, 31, of Bakersfield, Calif. "There are times we just read 'em for the technological parts like the new gadgets that come out. They have good stories sometimes too."

Sgt. Simon Brown, 34, of Daytona Beach, Fla., said men's magazines build morale. "It's not all about the pictures, although 80 percent of it is," he said.

Pfc. Greg Smith, 21, of Northboro, Mass., a regular Playboy reader, said soldiers should be allowed to buy nudie magazines at the exchange.

"Playboy is good entertainment while you are on the can. They have jokes and good stories," he said.

Broun, a Marine veteran, told Newsweek recently that the magazines sold in military exchanges are partly responsible for a rise in sexual assaults in the military and other problems.

"Allowing the sale of pornography on military bases has harmed military men and women by: escalating the number of violent, sexual crimes; feeding a base addiction; eroding the family as the primary building block of society; and denigrating the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad," Broun says on his Web site.

The legislation would require the DOD to annually review material that is not currently deemed sexually explicit to determine if it should be prohibited, according to the Web site.

Some soldiers say magazines that could be banned are particularly important downrange.

Brown deployed to Afghanistan in 2002 and 2005 and is preparing to go to Iraq with the 12th Combat Aviation Brigade this summer. When he was in Afghanistan he was one of the first to pick up a new copy of Maxim or FHM when it came out, he said.

"It would suck if they ban it," he said. "It's bad enough we are down there to begin with. Taking that away would be like a knife in the chest. I'm not saying I'm depending on Maxim to keep me alive over there, but it helps."

These guys are on the front lines. I think they have somewhat bigger things to worry about than whether their moral character is in danger from big boobs.

Jesse To The Rescue?

I almost wish he would.

Q: Could the Libertarian Party nomination fight draw in a third legendary former-office holder?

A: No. No, it couldn't. But former Minnesota Gov. Jesse 'the Mind' Ventura gave an interview to Maria Heller a week ago, from his Mexico hideaway, where he opened the possibility of the LP gratefully awarding him its presidential slot. Thirty-two minutes into the video he starts discussing it.

I had somebody from the Libertarians contact me, and they said their convention is in May, and I don't know if this is true but he claims they have ballot access in all 50 states.

They actually don't, but Ventura says he'll explore it 'when I get back in country May 15.' He follows up this thought with a discussion of the 9/11 'truth' movie Loose Change. If the party could reject the brainy-but-conspiracy-minded Aaron Russo, the chances of Jesse Ventura parachuting into the race a week before the convention and seizing the nod are... slim.

Too bad; the only thing more fun than watching the Obama/Hillary slugfest has been watching this third party royal rumble.

Philadelphia Story

The fallout from "When Cops Attack" continues.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Seven more police officers were taken off street duty Thursday as investigators look into the videotaped police beating of three shooting suspects during a traffic stop.

Thirteen of the estimated 15 officers on hand during the Monday incident have been taken off the streets as investigators pore over the television news footage, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey told a news conference Thursday.

The video shows officers kicking, punching and beating the men, who are all black. On his syndicated radio show Thursday, the Rev. Al Sharpton, compared it with the videotaped 1991 beating of black motorist Rodney King by a group of white Los Angeles police officers.

'I've not seen anything like that since Rodney King, and it's worse than Rodney King, and we cannot allow our community to be under siege,' Sharpton said. 'We've got to stop this nonsense in our community, acting like you got to be a certain level black to be treated within the law.'

But Ramsey denied the beating was racially motivated, saying at least one officer involved, a sergeant, is black.

'I know everybody's trying to make this into a racial thing. I don't believe it is,' Ramsey told The Associated Press later Thursday. 'We just had a policeman murdered on Saturday ... and emotions are running high,' he said about Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski, 39, who was shot while responding to a bank robbery.

Well, he's probably right in that it's not racial. Bad cops come in all colors, after all.

Ward's War

Bad move, Bernie.

Bernie Ward, the most prominent liberal voice on Bay Area talk radio for more than two decades, admitted Thursday to distributing child pornography by e-mail in a plea deal that will send him to federal prison for at least five years.

Ward, 57, a former Roman Catholic priest, was a fixture on KGO-AM 810 for three hours every weeknight, known in recent years for his fervent denunciations of President Bush and the war in Iraq during his news talk show. He also hosted 'God Talk,' a Sunday morning program on religion, and was a prolific fundraiser for the station's charity drives.

But his career disintegrated Dec. 6 with the unsealing of a federal grand jury indictment, issued three months earlier, that charged him with two counts of distributing and one count of receiving Internet images of child pornography. KGO fired him Dec. 31.

At a 30-minute hearing Thursday in federal court in San Francisco, Ward admitted he was guilty of a single charge of distributing child pornography, saying it involved 'exchanging an image of a minor engaged in sexually explicit activity' in December 2004. The plea agreement he signed, quoted in court, contained an admission that he had sent between 15 and 150 pornographic images via e-mail.

I know lefties love to say how they do everything for the children, but that's what I call a bit much.

Bang A Gong

This is pretty cool:

Comedy Central is reviving Chuck Barris' 'The Gong Show,' with comedian Dave Attell as host.

Cable net has ordered eight half-hour segs of the skein, which is set to premiere July 17. 'The Gong Show' will air weekly at 10:30 p.m. in tandem with new reality TV spoof 'Reality Bites Back' at 10.

Gameshow vet Andrew Golder will exec produce 'The Gong Show' for Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Prods. and Sony Pictures TV, which owns the Barris canon.

Like the original, the new-model 'Gong Show' will feature a revolving panel of celebrity judges weighing in on eight to 10 offbeat amateur acts in each episode.

I have many fond memories of how the original warped my mind as a kid. Hopefully it won't suck.

The Unfunny Farm

All he wants is the right to do what he wants on his own land. Of course they'll say he's nuts.

Joel Salatin is a self-proclaimed “Christian-conservative-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic” and the proprietor of Polyface Farms in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he practices the kind of small-scale agriculture that baffles (and sometimes infuriates) regulators. He rose to national prominence with a cameo in Michael Pollan’s popular 2006 book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. In the spirit of his own recent book, Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal, we asked Salatin to list three things he would like to do on his land but can’t because of state and federal regulations.

1. Make and sell ready-to-eat foods on the farm: “Virginia just legalized homemade jams and jellies to sell. As ridiculous as that sounds, that’s a pretty important shot across the bow.”

2. Sell raw milk and other dairy products: “Officialdom believes that only pasteurized milk is safe. The fact that people have been drinking raw milk throughout human history, and still drink it all over the world and in 20-some states, means nothing to them.”

3. Sell custom-slaughtered meat by the piece: “My position is that if meat [slaughtered outside the normal factory processes] is OK for people to eat, give away, or feed their children—which indicates that it is not an inherently hazardous product—we should have freedom to also sell it. The restrictions are on the commerce of it. The attitude is: The only thing that is safe to eat is something with a government stamp on it, unless you get it free. Exchange money, and it’s somehow not safe.”

Profiting from your own property. Now that's a radical concept, all right.

This Pol For Sale

At least he's honest.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CBS13) ― In this tight battle for the Democratic nomination we've heard a lot about the candidates courting superdelegates.

But, one superdelegate is courting the candidates. He says he'll sell his vote for a price. A very high price: $20 million.

Steven Ybarra of Sacramento says that eight-figure price is peanuts for the presidency.


When asked whether it was right to offer what is clearly a quid pro quo, he responded, 'yeah, absolutely. People do it all the time,' answered Ybarra.

But not like this. Not in public and not for such big bucks. It begs the question: Is he crazy?

'Nobody's said I'm crazy,' said Ybarra.

Ybarra wants every cent of the $20 million to go towards registering and educating eligible Mexican-American voters, who he calls the key to the White House.

'And I keep asking the question of the DNC: 'why won't you earmark money for these voters?' And their answer is, 'oh, we can't do that' Which is a lie,' said Ybarra.

With the Democratic National Committee saying 'no,' Ybarra waits for a 'yes' from already cash-strapped Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

Would he accept less? How about $5 million?

'No, $5 million is nothing,' said Ybarra.

So he's not cheap. He's a high-quality crook.

Adapt Or Die

David Frum gets it.

The anti-incumbent mood is stronger in 2008 than in 1988. Ronald Reagan’s approval rating was almost 60 per cent in 1988 against George W. Bush’s 30 per cent rating today. Mr McCain’s campaign is much less focused and determined than the elder Bush’s.

Yet there are deeper reasons we will not see a replay of 1988. Atwater’s attacks on Mr Dukakis were not plucked at random, but carefully chosen to resonate with Democratic weaknesses and Republican strengths: patriotism, religion and public safety.

Today, however, Republican conservatism is tired and confused. Once the party of limited government, now it is the one that enacted the largest new social programme since the 1960s: the prescription drug benefit. Once the party of law and order, it now offers amnesty in all but name to illegal immigrants. Once the party that ran against Washington’s special interests, it is now run by lobbyists. Once the party of sound management, it is now tarred by the managerial disasters of the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina.

Those Republicans who imagine that the party can regain its strength by returning to the core conservative doctrines of the 1980s are making a serious mistake. They are like tourists who believe uncomprehending locals will understand them if only they repeat their message louder and slower.

The country has changed since 1988. Polls capture a shift to the left on economic issues. The once decisive tax issue has faded altogether, and no wonder: 80 per cent of Americans now pay more in payroll taxes than in federal income taxes. Americans care less about taxes than healthcare and fuel prices, issues where Republicans offer few solutions and speak with something less than passionate urgency. Americans are expressing a new pessimism about upward mobility and their children’s chances of leading a better life – an understandable reaction to the stagnation of median wages since 2000. Even on the signature issue of the war on terror, Americans are turning away from Republican ideas. The proportion of Americans who believe that terrorism can be defeated by military force has sharply declined since 2002.

So, 2008 is not 1988. The problems are different and so must the solutions be. The Reagan themes do not carry the power they once did. The conservative voting majority is not a majority any more. To compete and win this year Republicans have to adapt and change, not revert and revive.

Instead of mimicking the tactics of a different era, the Republican Party needs to recognize the reality of this one. Unfortunately the GOP seems to have made a habit of being unwilling to recognize reality.

Elephant Fatigue

McCain's got his work cut out for him.

If there is any good news here for Mr. McCain, it is that he’s not running for the House or Senate this year. Because of the nature of the office they are seeking and the lack of media coverage (particularly in House contests), it is much tougher for candidates for these offices to break free of their party labels and to force voters to consider them as individuals. Personality counts for almost nothing in Congressional races, leaving candidates at the mercy of partisan trends and, perhaps, the coattails effect from the top of the ballot.

At the Congressional level, then, the recent special-election results portend disaster for the Republicans this year. Already, the party has been hit with a spate of retirements in marginal House districts, and G.O.P. Senate retirements have Democrats poised to pick up seats in Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico. And strong recruitment by Democrats and a massive fund-raising advantage have darkened the prospects of numerous G.O.P. House and Senate incumbents. Add to this a powerful Democratic tide, and 2008 could yield Congressional majorities for the Democrats that can withstand several down cycles.

But unlike the average Republican House candidate, Mr. McCain will at least have an opportunity to make most Americans overlook the “R” after his name. Virtually none of the Republicans who vied with Mr. McCain in the primaries were suited for this task, but Mr. McCain, thanks to his enduring reputation for “straight talk,” is.

At a certain point, though, you wonder: How much is too much for him to overcome? These should be heady days for the McCain campaign. Their candidate wrapped up the G.O.P. nomination more easily than anyone could have predicted, and unity within the party has not been as elusive as many forecasted. Meanwhile, the Democrats are locked in a primary that just won’t end. The likely nominee, Barack Obama, has been bloodied, and supporters of the likely loser, Hillary Clinton, are loudly threatening to stay home—or even to vote for Mr. McCain—should Mr. Obama secure the nomination.

McCain's problem is that he is coming on the heels of a President and a GOP that squandered its winnings on arrogance, complacence and Iraq and is now in dissaray largely through their own making. McCain may win, but he may end up having not much of a party to hold together.

Those Nasty Subversives

Pity the poor professor who actually gets challenged by her students.

Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will "name names."

The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." This caused "subversiveness," a principle English professors usually favor.

Ms. Venkatesan's scholarly specialty is "science studies," which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, "teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth." She continues: "Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct."

The agenda of Ms. Venkatesan's seminar, then, was to "problematize" technology and the life sciences. Students told me that most of the "problems" owed to her impenetrable lectures and various eruptions when students indicated skepticism of literary theory. She counters that such skepticism was "intolerant of ideas" and "questioned my knowledge in very inappropriate ways." Ms. Venkatesan, who is of South Asian descent, also alleges that critics were motivated by racism, though it is unclear why.

After a winter of discontent, the snapping point came while Ms. Venkatesan was lecturing on "ecofeminism," which holds, in part, that scientific advancements benefit the patriarchy but leave women out. One student took issue, and reasonably so – actually, empirically so. But "these weren't thoughtful statements," Ms. Venkatesan protests. "They were irrational." The class thought otherwise. Following what she calls the student's "diatribe," several of his classmates applauded.

Ms. Venkatesan informed her pupils that their behavior was "fascist demagoguery." Then, after consulting a physician about "intellectual distress," she cancelled classes for a week. Thus the pending litigation.

I don't know much about French narrative theory. I guess it means you can't debate the combination of literary theory with life sciences. Viva le subversives!

From One Loser To Another

The word is out: it's time for Team Hillary to pack it in.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Apart from George McGovern, a plainspoken man who knows something about losing elections, not a single Democrat of national stature publicly urged Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday to end her campaign for the White House.

They didn't have to.

There was no shortage of other ways to signal, suggest, insinuate or instigate the same thing. And certainly no need to apply unseemly pressure to a historic political figure, a woman who has run a grueling race, won millions of votes and drawn uncounted numbers of new Democratic voters to the polls.

Instead, many Democrats instead preferred to say softly what the party's 1972 presidential nominee said for all to hear. Barack Obama has won the nomination 'by any practical test,' McGovern said.

'Hillary, of course, will make the decision as to if and when she ends her campaign,' he added. 'But I hope that she reaches that decision soon so that we can concentrate on a unified party capable of winning the White House next November.'

Considering that this time around they actually have a shot at winning, Hillary really should quit while she's ahead.

What If They Gave A Protest And Nobody Came?

This is rich.

After $500 billion in spending and 4,000 military deaths, this was supposed to be an election year dominated by the war.

Both Democratic presidential candidates, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, support a withdrawal, while Sen. John McCain, a Republican, argues that the U.S. risks losing Iraq to terrorist groups and Iranian influence if troops leave before the country is stable.

In Washington, D.C., Congress is preparing to consider President Bush's latest emergency funding package for the fighting, with a price tag of $108 billion.

But a worsening economy has easily overtaken Iraq as the top concern for voters, according to a New York Times/CBS poll released last week. Only 17 percent of respondents picked the war as the 'one issue' they'd like to hear the candidates discuss more.

Americans still have strong feelings about the conflict: 62 percent want the next president to pull out of Iraq within a year or two of taking office, the poll said. Yet war opponents and supporters are having trouble getting the public's -- and the media's -- attention.

A March survey from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press discovered that just 28 percent of Americans knew the approximate number of U.S. deaths in the war.
'Obviously, I wish that the American people were more engaged in understanding what's at stake in Iraq,' said Pete Hegseth, who served there with the 101st Airborne Division and is now executive director of Vets for Freedom. 'I think it's unfortunate that here on the homefront we're not interested in what's going on overseas.'

The main reason for that seems to be that, as weary as most Americans are of the conflict and as unpopular as President Bush is, they know he'll be gone in a few months and the next President will most likely be a Democrat who will have some sort of a plan for a gradual withdrawal, so the antiwar movement will lose its main argument. They wanted this year to be their 1968, but it's turning out to be more like 1972.

Bad Prosecutors Beware

The Ninth Circuit lays a legal smackdown on prosecutorial misconduct:

The district court did not abuse its discretion in dismissing the indictment. The government egregiously failed to meet its constitutional obligations under Brady and Giglio. It failed to even make inquiry as to conviction records, plea bargains, and other discoverable materials concerning key witnesses until after trial began. It repeatedly misrepresented to the district court that all such documents had been disclosed prior to trial. The government did not admit to the court that it failed to disclose Brady/Giglio material until after many of the key witnesses had testified and been released. Even then, it failed to turn over some 650 documents until the day the district court declared a mistrial and submitted those documents to the court only after the indictment had been dismissed. This is prosecutorial misconduct in its highest form; conduct in flagrant disregard of the United States Constitution; and conduct which should be deterred by the strongest sanction available. Under these facts, the district court did not abuse its discretion in characterizing these actions as flagrant prosecutorial misconduct justifying dismissal. Nor did it abuse its discretion in determining that a retrial — the only lesser remedy ever proposed by the government — would substantially prejudice the defendants.

It appears at least somebody was paying attention to official wrongdoing. Good for them.

Here Come De Judges

The McPander Express continues.

John McCain promised on Tuesday to nominate conservative judges to the Supreme Court and for other judicial vacancies, seeking to quash doubts among some Republicans about his conservative credentials.

The Republican presidential candidate said he would use John Roberts and ­Samuel Alito, who were appointed to the Supreme Court by President George W. Bush, as his “model” when choosing nominees.

Judicial nominations have become one of the most explosive flash points in the US “culture war” between liberals and conservatives, with each side accusing the other of pushing their agenda through the courts.

Mr McCain is viewed with suspicion by some conservatives because of his willingness to work with Democrats in Congress and his history of conflict with fellow Republicans. But the senator insisted he would stick to conservative principles when appointing judges.

“I have my own standards of judicial ability, experience, philosophy and temperament,” he said. “And Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito meet those standards in every respect.”

Sorry, but it is NOT the job of justices to adhere to any one group's beliefs; it's their job to understand and interpret the Constitution, which does not play political favorites. I really wish the so-called "Conservatives" would get that.

A Big Wind

Leave it to Al Gore to use a disaster to advance the Climate Change Crusade:

“And as we’re talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated,” Gore said. “And last year a catastrophic storm from last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China – and we’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.”

Gore claimed global warming is forcing ocean temperatures to rise, which is causing storms, including cyclones and hurricanes, to intensify.

“It’s also important to note that the emerging consensus among the climate scientists is although any individual storm can’t be linked singularly to global warming – we’ve always had hurricanes,” Gore said. “Nevertheless, the trend toward more Category 5 storms – the larger ones and trend toward stronger and more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming and specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures in the top couple of hundred feet of the ocean, which drives convection energy and moisture into these storms and makes them more powerful.”

Well, except for new evidence showing that the oceans are actually cooling off. And past predictions haven't been all that accurate to begin with. Of course, accuracy and evidence don't really matter to fanatics.

You Say You Wanted A Revolution

In looking back on the chaotic mess that was 1968, Christopher Hitchens notes one side effect that is often overlooked by misty-eyed revisionists:

In the ideological world, Marxism was the most obvious victim. The May ’68 leaders were anti-Communist. Those who claimed to be Maoist, as some did (without any understanding of Maoism’s true nature), were, above all, anti-Stalinist. The revolts in Eastern Europe rendered Marxism comatose, both as an ideology and as a mode of governance. While another 20 years would pass before the Communist Party gave up power in Eastern Europe, the seeds of its demise were sown in ’68. True, there were a few deviations: the Red Brigade in Italy, the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany, and the guerrillas in Latin America. But these were ideological last gasps.

Of course it could be argued that we ultimately got more big-government nannystatism out of '68 than the rebels ever dreamed-remember that many of today's neocons and Bush Republicans were part of that generation and took their big dreams with them into adulthood. No wonder you see Hillary Clinton trying to channel George W. Bush. They both want to keep their establishment freak flags flying.

Wal-Care

Who needs Hillary?

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, announced Monday it would expand its discounted prescription drug program to offer 90-day supplies for $10 and add several women's medications at a discount. It also said it would lower the price of more than 1,000 over-the-counter drugs.

The move marks the third phase of a company program that began in 2006 to provide a 30-day supply of generic prescription drugs for $4. The Bentonville-based company said the program has saved customers more than $1 billion.

With the expansion, the company began filling prescriptions Monday for up to 350 generic medications at $10 for a 90-day supply at Wal-Mart, Neighborhood Market and Sam's Club pharmacies in the U.S. Almost all the prescription generics in the company's $4 program were included in the expanded $10 offer, said Wal-Mart senior vice president John Agwunobi.

In addition, the company will add several women's medications to its list of prescriptions available for $9, including drugs to treat breast cancer and hormone deficiency.

But I thought government health care was the only solution. I must be missing something.

Meet The New Boris

So, what about this new guy?

London voters just voted out Ken Livingstone, the iconoclast left-wing antiwar mayor, and replaced him with the iconoclast right-wing antiwar Boris Johnson....

Johnson is not a neocon. In fact, he comes from the same sort of paleo-conservative roots as Pat Buchanan. He is opposed to British imperial dreams, and is in direct conflict with much of the UK Conservative Party.

In the last few years, he has been a strong opponent of the Iraq War, the rush to war with Iran, and Blair's crackdown on civil liberties.

Who says libertarians can't win elections?

America No Libre

Let's hear it for the War on Drugs!

OPA-LOCKA, Fla. -- Federal agents on the hunt for criminals on Thursday raided the wrong house while searching for drugs.

Police and federal agents raided 50 marijuana grow houses around Florida on Thursday, calling it 'Operation D-Day.'

They seized $7 million worth of pot plants, but they also kicked in the door of Noel Llorente's Opa-locka home and found nothing but bewildered homeowners.

'I was frightened for my husband because they threw him on the ground,' Llorente's wife said. 'I was scared.

Llorente said he was just leaving for work when unmarked cars pulled up, Drug Enforcement Administration agents jumped out, threw him down with guns drawn, handcuffed him, stormed into his home and searched for drugs.

'I asked them why they came to my house, they said a neighbor or somebody called and said I had a hydroponics lab in my house,' Llorente said. 'Then I asked them if a marijuana plant could grow inside my underwear drawer.'

The Llorentes said they don't speak much English – they're immigrants from Cuba. They said one of the reasons they came to the U.S. was to escape oppression from the Cuban police.
Isabel Llorente said she never thought this could happen here.

'Never, because they criticize Cuba so much,' she said. 'I've never gone through anything like this.'

Welcome to America. It's becoming more like what you left behind than you thought.

Smotherly Love

Attention, Supermoms: you are your own kids' worst enemy.

Helicopter parents, who think they are drenching their children with love, are raising lonely sons and daughters. The kids’ constant self-focus, developed under the tonnage of unending parental intervention, handicaps them in every social setting. Self-focused kids—whether they’re shy and withdrawn or brash and mouthy—do not reach out to other people. They’re not friendly, so they don’t make friends well. Their near total self-consciousness appears to others as self-absorption. What they need is wise guidance and encouraging nudges. Problem is, that’s exactly what many overprotective parents find distasteful and don’t want—nudging their kids outward, even little by little, would negate their constant presence and persistent meddling. And when they do allow their children to enter “the realm of others,” by demanding special consideration, they expect others to coddle their child. They tend to unleash harsh words and passive-aggression on those who don’t, whether grown-ups or youngsters. Such parents, mostly mothers, stack the deck against their own best interests as they contaminate play and turn their children into the pariahs of the kid world. These lonely children tend strongly toward depression—again, they don’t learn how to think and choose for themselves, and their brain gradually becomes more and more unable to manage their situations. Furthermore, though, because their parents’ words and actions teach them that virtually everyone else is an enemy or an antagonist, they can also become unreasonably suspicious, or in a word, paranoid.

I fear for the rest of society when these mama's boys grow up.

Down With the Sickness

See what happens when you reject that scary science?

Measles outbreaks in at least seven states are expected to produce more cases in 2008 than in any other recent year, federal health officials said Thursday, warning that measles is highly contagious and can cause severe illness and even death.

Most of the cases have occurred in people who were never vaccinated.

There were 64 cases from January through April 25, more than in all of 2006 and the highest number during that four-month period since 2001. None have yet proved fatal, but officials said they expected the total to keep rising.

“We haven’t seen the end of this,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fourteen patients, or 22 percent, have been hospitalized, mostly for pneumonia.

You can thank your friendly neighborhood Luddites, and the politicians who pander to their fears, for the next plague that will come and kill us all.

Let Every Pander Count

Egads, even for her this is pretty shamless:

MUNSTER, Ind. (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton called for a vote Friday in the Democratic-controlled Congress on a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax, a plan that Barack Obama dismissed as a political stunt that would cost thousands of construction jobs.

'It's a Shell game. Literally,' Obama said to laughter from his campaign audience, adding it would mean little for hard-pressed consumers.

The Democratic presidential rivals highlighted their differences in ads and speeches across North Carolina and Indiana, two states with primaries Tuesday.

Polls point toward a particularly close finish in Indiana, which is next door to Obama's home state of Illinois.

Note that the two candidates who are most in favor of this nonsense-Hillary and McCain-are the ones who are the most in agreement with each other. I find that rather scary.

Labour Revolt

There's been a big change in British politics:

Gordon Brown has admitted a 'bad and disappointing' election for Labour, as the party suffered its worst council results in at least 40 years.

BBC research suggests Labour won 24% of votes cast in England and Wales, behind the Tories on 44% and Lib Dems on 25%.

In total Labour lost 331 councillors and key councils like Reading. Tory gains include Bury and North Tyneside.

Mr Brown insists his party will learn lessons. David Cameron called it a 'big moment' for the Conservative Party.

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said his party had 'regained momentum' by gaining 30 councillors despite its projected national share of the vote falling on last year.

I guess voters finally got tired of Tony Blair's old crowd. We'll see if this means a slowdown in the march towards the nannystate in Britain or not.

The Minister's Musings

Now that he's no longer running for President, Mike Huckabee is actually making sense.

Former Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said Wednesday Barack Obama's bid for the White House is not being derailed because he is black, but because his former pastor does not want him to show the country's race relations have progressed.

Obama, a Democrat, has struggled in recent weeks to distance himself from incendiary comments made by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

'His (Obama's) campaign is not being derailed by his race, it's being derailed by a person who doesn't want him to prove that we have made great advances in this country,' Huckabee told reporters.

Obama represents the first post-Jesse Jackson, post-Al Sharpton presidential candidate. He's driven not by anger or thoughts of payback the way they were, but by a sincere desire to be all things to all people. If Obama pulls off a win, it would mean the end of an era in racial politics. That's what the Wrights of the world are scared of.

School's Outing

This is not cool:

Memphis, TN - Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union say Daphne Beasley, the principal of Hollis F. Price Middle College High School in South Memphis, went way beyond her role as educator.

The ACLU says in September 2007, Beasley asked her staff to give her the names of students who were couples, heterosexual and homosexual, because she wanted to keep an eye on them to cut down on public displays of affection.

She's accused of publicly posting the names of those students, including two boys, Andrew and Nicholas, who had just started dating. The ACLU says that in doing so, Beasley revealed their relationship to other students, teachers and even their parents.

In a letter sent Tuesday, April 29, 2008 to Memphis City Schools, the ACLU says the principal's actions violated the students' constitutional rights to equal protection, freedom of expression and association, due process and privacy.

'Our first reaction was wow, this is unbelievable that a principal has gone this far,' says ACLU attorney Christine Sun. 'The constitution protects all of us from the government intruding in our private lives when there isn't a reason to do that. This was morally and legally wrong.'

It's certainly good to know that the Affection Police are on top of things, isn't it?