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I’m Back

AP: If It’s Not New York, It Must Be “South.”

Looks like the Associated Press has some problems comprehending modern American geography:
The AP, today: “With Sen. Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democrats, the Republican Party is increasingly at risk of being viewed as a mostly Southern and solidly conservative party, an identity that might take years to overcome.”
<snip>
Even in their shrunken minority, Republicans hold 19 [...]

Another Democrat Not Embracing Specter

Uh-oh, poor Arlen Specter can’t get no respect in either party.
JOE SESTAK: The question is, what’s he running for? He also, somehow, failed to use his leadership to shape the Republican party to be towards what he believes in.  So he’s now going to shape the Democratic party? So the final analysis is, would he [...]

Specter Switches Parties

So, most folks know by now, Arlen Specter, Senator of Pennsylvania, is switching from the GOP to the Democrats.
Good friggin’ riddance.
First off, let’s be clear. Specter is no Reaganite conservative. His lifetime ACU rating is 44.47… that means he took the conservative position less than half the time he spent in the Senate. His 2008 [...]

Democrats And The Culture Of Corruption, Part Five

This time it’s a governor: Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell.
State Attorneys General regularly hire private plaintiffs lawyers on a contingency-fee basis to prosecute cases. The trial bar returns the favor with campaign donations to state office holders. And despite the inherent conflicts of interest and questionable ethics of the practice, corporate defendants have rarely challenged such [...]

Good Question

Mike Wallace of Fox News Sunday inquires of Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), who supports trying Bush administration officials for “war crimes”:
WALLACE: Senator Levin, let me just present a hypothetical to you. What if the next president decides that President Obama, in the decision he has made to continue these drone attacks over Pakistan, where they [...]

Clinton: We’re Not Abandoning Iraq

From the Credit Where Credit Is Due File:
BAGHDAD (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday assured Iraq that the Obama administration would not abandon the country even as it presses ahead with plans to withdraw American troops amid a recent surge in violence.
Clinton, on an unannounced trip to Baghdad, said the [...]

An Equitable Discussion Of “Enhanced Interrogations”

For those who want to read a discussion of the enhanced interrogation/torture issue that’s fair to both sides, check out this article in National Journal:
“A democracy as resilient as ours must reject the false choice between our security and our ideals,” President Obama said on April 16, “and that is why these methods of interrogation [...]

The Political Memory Hole

Former CIA Director and House Intelligence Committee Chairman (and he was in that latter post during the time around the 9/11 attacks, which is relevant) Porter J. Goss has apparently had enough of his Congressional colleagues’ conveniently faulty memories:
A disturbing epidemic of amnesia seems to be plaguing my former colleagues on Capitol Hill. After the [...]

More Taxes For Your Grocery Shopping Trip

It’s not a joke, one lawmaker wants to tax plastic grocery bags:
US Rep Jim Moran, who co-sponsored the bottle deposit bill, also introduced on April 22 the Plastic Bag Reduction Act of 2009 which would place a 5 cent fee on grocery bags, dry cleaning bags, take-out food bags, retail bags and service station bags, [...]

What Is It With Blaming Canada?

First Janet Napolitano, now Senator McCain:
Just days after Janet Napolitano, the U.S. homeland security secretary, sparked a diplomatic kerfuffle by suggesting the terrorists took a Canadian route to the U.S. eight years ago, McCain defended her by saying that, in fact, the former Arizona governor was correct.
“Well, some of the 9-11 hijackers did come through [...]

Biased Polling 101

I don’t post a lot on polls here, primarily because I believe that most modern polls are biased. And just today a new poll was posted that provides a very good example.
WASHINGTON – For the first time in years, more Americans than not say the country is headed in the right direction, a sign that [...]

Let’s All Act Like Rome In The Final Days

I don’t often agree with David Frum, but this time he’s managed to hit the nail squarely on the head:
Since Watergate, American politics has moved into a new era of the criminalization of politics. Special prosecutor begets special prosecutor in a cycle of reprisal that has by now embittered the lives of dozens of former [...]

Obama Administration Edits Interrogation Memos

This, folks, is what is known as a lie of omission:
WASHINGTON – President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists.
“High value information came from interrogations in which [...]

Democrats and the Culture Of Corruption, Part Four

And, here we go again…
On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband’s real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.
Mrs. Feinstein’s intervention [...]

Even The AP Is Unimpressed With Obama’s Spending Cuts

I think we can now conclude that Obama’s weak attempt to look like a fiscal conservative has failed; even the Associated Press is now calling him on it:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Cut a latte or two out of your annual budget and you’ve just done as much belt-tightening as President Barack Obama asked of his Cabinet [...]

Behold, The Bacon Blowtorch!

Hmmm… the things you can do with bacon:
I recently committed myself to the goal, before the weekend was out, of creating a device entirely from bacon and using it to cut a steel pan in half. My initial attempts were failures, but I knew success was within reach when I was able to ignite and [...]

Here Come The “I’m Cutting Spending” Talking Points

From the Washington Post:
President Obama convened his Cabinet for the first time today and instructed department heads to trim their budgets by a combined $100 million over the next 90 days, cuts he said would help overcome a “confidence gap” among the American people about the use of their tax dollars.
Speaking to reporters after the [...]

Democrats and the Culture of Corruption, Part 3

You know it’s bad when even the Bible of the left, the New York Times, feels compelled to criticize a Democrat:
The House investigation of Representative Charles Rangel’s ethical gaffes and misdeeds was supposed to be completed in January, by the initial estimate of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But the inquiry blithely rolls forward in secrecy — [...]

Another Falsehood On Guns

Bumping this post: Since the President repeated this lie (yes, I said lie) yesterday, I figured it was time to remind folks of the truth. It was originally posted 4 April 2009.
While we’re on guns…
You’ve heard this shocking “fact” before — on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the [...]