The Left's Cruelest Month (October was supposed to be the month that marked the meltdown of the Bush administration.)

By Bill Kristol
The Weekly Standard

OCTOBER, 2005 will turn out to be the left's cruelest month since . . . well, in a long time. A couple of weeks in, it seemed so promising. October was going to be the month that would mark the meltdown of the loathed Bush presidency. Iraq was failing, gas prices were rising, a weak Supreme Court nominee was under assault, and the White House was under siege from a special prosecutor. What more could a Bush-hater want?

But it was a false dawn for the left. On October 15, the Iraqi people voted for the second time this year, and progress--slow and difficult--gradually became visible on the ground. The economy, it turned out, was chugging along at a 3.8 percent growth rate. Harriet Miers withdrew--and President Bush followed that foul ball with a home run in the impressive person of Judge Samuel Alito. And the special prosecutor produced only one indictment, and one that will lead no further than a trial focused on what Scooter Libby said or didn't say to three journalists.

A Good Choice

From the Editors of National Review Online:

In one respect, Samuel Alito is a more reassuring nominee even than John Roberts was. Alito has a much longer track record as an appellate judge than Roberts did — and that track record suggests a deep understanding of the "limited role that our courts play in our constitutional system" (as he remarked in accepting the nomination). His opinions marry sound judicial philosophy with careful legal craftsmanship. President Bush deserves credit for having the good judgment to nominate him.

Butterfield, Watt Silent on Kambon (The two N.C. congressmen were quick to criticise Bennett's remarks)

By Shannon Blosser
Carolina Journal

WASHINGTON — Two North Carolina congressmen who were quick to criticize former U.S. Secretary of Education Bill Bennett for comments he made on his nationally syndicated radio show in September about aborting black babies have refused to comment on a statement made by a former NCSU professor that all white people should be exterminated.

The Roberts/Alito Court

Alito is a down-the-line judicial conservative. It’s not for nothing that he’s acquired the sobriquet “Scalito.” Here, too, we’re already seeing some scrambling by conservatives to deny that Samuel Alito is an Antonin Scalia clone, mostly taking the form of disparaging the latter as acerbic and personally abrasive in contrast to the former’s smoothness -- overlooking the fact that, on a personal level, Scalia is entirely affable. (Indeed, although it’s been forgotten, when Scalia was nominated his supporters and opponents agreed that his ability to get along with everyone might make him a unifying force on a divided Court. Sound familiar?)

Mark Tushnet

ACLU Urges Senate to Explore Supreme Court Nominee Alito's Record on Reproductive Rights, First Amendment

"Justice O'Connor has provided more than a swing vote," said Steven R. Shapiro, the ACLU's National Legal Director. "She has been a moderating voice on critical civil liberties issues ranging from race to religion to reproductive freedom. Judge Alito's position on each of these issues has been more hostile to civil liberties than positions taken by Justice O'Connor. His nomination therefore calls into question the court's delicate balance that Justice O'Connor has helped to shape and preserve."

These people make me want to vomit.

Faux GOP getting to me

Where have all the Republicans gone?

There was a time when the Republican Party stood for limited government and fiscal sanity. That's only a memory now.

The GOP has not only joined the race to buy its way into the hearts of Americans, it has pulled ahead of the Democrats. George Bush is this generation's LBJ.

A transportation bill bursting with special-interest projects (my favorite being a $200 million bridge to an Alaskan island for the benefit of its 50 residents), a pork-laden farm bill, the largest increase in entitlement history with a Medicare reform package are just a few of the hallmarks of the Bush administration.

And to show that Bush is truly a people person, he committed the federal government of rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast area hit by Katrina. Price tag: $260 billion and growing.

With Republicans like this, who needs Democrats?

Jon Caldara

These Courses Are Condemned

"Christian Morality in American Literature" is biased. "Feminine Perspectives in Literature" is not.

It is just such a class--addressing profound themes in a classic work of English literature--that has the University of California worried. Most California high-school students who apply to the university submit their grades as a part of their application. But the university must deem their high-school classwork to be sufficiently demanding for the grades to mean anything. And lately the university's officials have looked upon the classes in California's Christian schools with suspicion--even as they wave through lighter-than-air classes from public schools.

Naomi Schaefer Riley

Scalia's Younger Brother

The left is starting to bluster and sweat. A very positive sign.

Justice Alito

It’s beginning to look (at least on Intrade) like Justice Samuel Alito. Scrutiny will no doubt focus on his dissent in Casey. But, by my count (Westlaw search "OPINION OF THE COURT" W/2 ALITO & "CIRCUIT JUDGE"), Alito has also written 243 majority opinions. And as I discussed regarding Miers, e.g., here and here, it’s important we get a judge who will decide business cases with some sensitivity to the value of free markets and the problems firms face from litigation and regulation.

Based on a quick check Alito is such a judge.

Larry E. Ribstein

Samuel Alito's conservative views earned him nickname 'Scalito'

Among his noteworthy opinions was his lone dissent in the 1991 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the 3rd Circuit struck down a Pennsylvania law that included a provision requiring women seeking abortions to notify their spouses.

"The Pennsylvania legislature could have rationally believed that some married women are initially inclined to obtain an abortion without their husbands' knowledge because of perceived problems � such as economic constraints, future plans, or the husbands' previously expressed opposition � that may be obviated by discussion prior to the abortion," Alito wrote.

The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling, struck down the spousal notification, but Chief Justice William Rehnquist quoted from Alito's opinion in his dissent.

Donna Cassata

Harriet's Blog

A number of celebrity blogs have been created on the web. This one is pretty imaginative and funny.

Obstruction for What? (Libby is charged with lying about a crime that wasn't committed.)

From OpinionJournal.com:

Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation took nearly two years, sent a reporter to jail, cost millions of dollars, and preoccupied some of the White House's senior officials. The fruit it has now borne is the five-count indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Vice President's Chief of Staff--not for leaking the name of Valerie Plame to Robert Novak, which started this entire "scandal," but for contradictions between his testimony and the testimony of two or three reporters about what he told them, when he told them, and what words he used...

Mr. Fitzgerald has been dogged in pursuing his investigation, and he gave every appearance of being a reasonable and tough prosecutor in laying out the charges yesterday. But he has thrust himself into what was, at bottom, a policy dispute between an elected Administration and critics of the President's approach to the war on terror, who included parts of the permanent bureaucracy of the State Department and CIA. Unless Mr. Fitzgerald can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Libby was lying, and doing so for some nefarious purpose, this indictment looks like a case of criminalizing politics.

Americans won't let Democrats lose Iraq

By David Gelernter
LA Times

A FEW DAYS AGO, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) made a speech urging the U.S., in effect, to get out of Iraq the way we got out of Vietnam.

Leahy told the Senate that we cannot win in Iraq. "It has become increasingly apparent that the most powerful army in the world cannot stop a determined insurgency." (U.S. troops, Iraqi troops, long-suffering Iraqi civilians to Leahy: Thanks, senator, we needed that.) And Leahy announced that the president must lay out a public formula to tell the world just when U.S. troops will leave Iraq. Otherwise, Leahy said, he will urge the Senate to choke off the war by refusing to fund it. That's how the U.S. finally lost Vietnam: Congress snuffed out the money...

MANY OBSERVERS have noticed that Democrats of the left speak of Iraq as another Vietnam. Few have explained why: Because Democrats of the left want Iraq to be another Vietnam. Not that they took pleasure in Vietnamese suffering, but they rejoiced in the left-wing power surge that transformed the United States in the aftermath. Naturally, they hope to repeat that experience: to humiliate Republicans, moderate Democrats and the military by pinning the label "bloody failure" on another foreign war.

It's not going to happen.

Bad medicine (Canada's failed heathcare system)

The report on the state of our country’s health care system released by the Fraser Institute last week is a bitter pill to swallow. The gist of the report was that despite increased spending by government on the health care system, the improvement in the delivery of timely treatment has been negligible. In fact, the overall average time between a patient seeing a general practitioner and being treated by a specialist has decreased by only one day, which is a devastating condemnation of the efficiency of public healthcare in Canada.

Too bad Behethland is on vacation all this week. She really needs to read this...

BROOKS: WHY ARE DEMS SO OVERHEATED?

Brooks summarizes: "So some Democrats were not content with Libby's indictment, but had to stretch, distort and exaggerate. The tragic thing is that at the exact moment when the Republican Party is staggering under the weight of its own mistakes, the Democratic Party's loudest voices are in the grip of passions that render them untrustworthy."

I believe a lot of these liberal Democrats have gone off the deep end...

Pardon Me: Marc Rich Tied To Oil For Food Scandal

Steve's post mentioning Marc Rich reminded me that Marc Rich has been accused of being involved in the oil-for-food scandal. According to the Volcker report, this kickback scheme started shortly after he received his pardon from Clinton.

Bad Night for the GOP

Lewis Libby, a top Republican lawyer who is now vice president Dick Cheney's chief of staff, told the House Government Reform Committee last night that he agreed with much of Bill Clinton's widely discredited op-ed article outlining the former president's reasons for pardoning fugitive tax evader Marc Rich.

Byron York

This article is from March, 2001. The majority of Bush's political problems are self-inflicted, right down to keeping Clinton-era hacks and insiders around. More proof of what I have come to believe as a certainty: there's not a dime's-worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats in Washington.

Births to Unmarried U.S. Women Set Record

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON

Nearly 1.5 million babies, a record, were born to unmarried women in the United States last year, the government reported Friday. And it isn't just teenagers any more.

RE: Star Trek's 'Sulu' Comes Out of Closet

This makes the third time that Takei has "come out." Not only is he a homosexual, he appears to also be an attention whore.

Lewis Libby Indicted, Resigns

By Melanie Hunter
CNSNews.com Senior Editor

(CNSNews.com) - Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was indicted Friday afternoon on five counts in connection with the investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame to the media - one count of obstruction of justice, two felony counts of making a false statement and two counts of perjury.

Christian Republicans

Almost 28 million Evangelical Christians voted in 2004. These folks split their votes in favor of President George W. Bush over Sen. John Kerry by a margin of 78% to 22%. That amounts to over 21 million voters. Throw in 6.9 million observant Catholics and nearly 1 million conservative and orthodox Jews and we end up with over 29 million religiously motivated voters that support the Republican Party.

Compare that number to MoveOn.org's 2.5 million Democrats. Or Big Labor's 16.7 million. Or the 11.8 million blacks who routinely vote straight Democrat.

Let's look at it another way. If the United States had a European-style parliamentary government, the Religious Right would be the "natural party of government," perennially winning a plurality of seats and serving as a mainstay in successive coalition governments. The Religious Right is the largest single voting block in American politics and whether John Danforth likes it or not, it is a predominantly Republican voting block.

Patrick Hynes

IT’S MORNING IN AMERICA!

By Ann Coulter

Since Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination to the Supreme Court, Democratic senators like Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, and Dick Durbin – i.e. all the people who had absolutely nothing to do with Miers’ withdrawal — have been blanketing the airwaves demanding that Bush now accede to their demands. So it’s good to see Democrats are still working on getting in touch with reality.

The Democrats didn’t utter a note of disagreement with the Miers nomination. But now they say her withdrawal is their victory, which Bush must be forced to acknowledge by nominating a candidate to their liking. I believe that’s what got Bush in trouble in the first place: Listening to Democratic Senator Harry Reid, who recommended Miers for the Supreme Court.

Although the circumstances were unfortunate – we prefer fighting liberals to fighting our president — the Miers withdrawal is an unparalleled victory for conservatives. Liberals were never able to do this to Clinton when he hosed them. It will be a long time before the White House thinks it can use and abuse conservatives again.

Starting Over (After Miers.)

By Rich Lowry
National Review

Within hours of the withdrawal of the Harriet Miers nomination, commentators were labeling President Bush a "lame duck." They have their analysis exactly backward. Continuing a debilitating fight with his own political base over a weak Supreme Court nominee would have hastened the day that Bush lost his political juice entirely. Withdrawing Miers is the first step toward recovery.

Satisfied Now?

Last night on Special Report with Brit Hume, Laura Ingraham & Charles Krauthammer appeared to talk about Miers withdrawing her nomination... Here's that segment.

After Miers (Lessons for the president's next nomination.)

From OpinionJournal.com:

The withdrawal of Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court was going to happen sooner or later, so better that it happened yesterday, which is to say quickly and before any Senate hearings. The issue now is whether President Bush draws the proper lessons from this unhappy episode as he contemplates his next nominee.

Ann Coulter on The O'Reilly Factor...

This is a pretty good interview that Bill O'Reilly had with Ann Coulter & Juan Williams last night...

Elvis Makes the Most Cash From Beyond the Grave

From Fox News:

NEW YORK — Elvis Presley tops the annual Forbes list of celebrities who are the top moneymakers from beyond the grave. The singer, who died in 1977, made an estimated $45 million in the past year.

Star Trek's 'Sulu' Comes Out of Closet

From Fox News:

LOS ANGELES — George Takei, who as helmsman Sulu steered the Starship Enterprise through three television seasons and six movies, has come out as a homosexual in the current issue of Frontiers, a biweekly Los Angeles magazine covering the gay and lesbian community.

Indictments

Journalists should focus on questions around lottery

by Kerra L. Bolton
Asheville Citizen-Times

Gossip and innuendo have undermined legitimate news questioning the lines between private relationships and public policy in the General Assembly.

In keeping watch over the process of establishing a state lottery, many reports have examined the influence of Meredith Norris, formerly an unpaid political director for House Speaker Jim Black.

The Teacher Certification Distraction

By John Hood
Carolina Journal

Members of a new state task force on teacher licensure and retention are downplaying the potential effects of a controversial bill on out-of-state teachers. They are right — there is a broader question.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Since Janice Rogers Brown's name is sure to come up again in light of Miers' withdrawal, here, for your reading enjoyment, is the smear page that NAG...er...NOW put up for her. I recommend you have your barf-bag nearby since it is a typically smarmy collection of spin, misdirection, and outright lies from the Perpetual PMS Gang. Or as one wag from Free Republic put it:

At least NOW, who uses the same recycled character assassination, has the decency to hire their own web designer. I keep thinking of two hairy legged, left-ette web designers sitting in their "life-partner" pad thinking of new names for anti-JRB sites. Maybe we'll find out the entire left is the same person? Or maybe Teddy Kennedy (the other white meat) ate the entire moderate left movement? Anyone seen Joe Lieberman lately????

RE: The Unoriginalist

Actually, you can narrow it down to this sentence:

"The necessary continued requirements by the Courts for progress frequently has the effect of hardening feelings and slowing the process and in my view the ultimate beneift of a society whose wealth is diversity and who pulls together against common enemies."

That is one of the longest content-free sentences I've ever seen.

RE: Fleecing American Consumers

Tsk, tsk, tsk. More editorializing in the title. Everything inside the parenthesis is added value, for those who don't click the link.

How, exactly, is Exxon Mobile fleecing American Consumers? Are they selling water and claiming it's gasoline? Are they claiming their gasoline will cure cancer? Have they misled their stockholders to believe profits were higher or lower than they actually are?

They are in business to sell a product. If American consumers don't want to buy the product, then they have free will and can stop. Exxon Mobile has competition. Consumers can buy someone else's product. I don't see National Guardsmen lined up with guns forcing people to drive into an Exxon Mobile station.

They made a profit. Their shareholders benefited. You could have been a shareholder and benefited.

Where's the fleece?

...fleecing of American consumers???

How is it fleecing??? What are the oil companies doing that's being dishonest??? It's supply & demand; that's how the market works. Besides, I thought liberals liked high gas prices because high gas prices usually leads to low demand on natural resources. Did you know that the federal gov't and state governments make more money off the sale of a gallon of gas than the oil companies do??? Where's the anger at government for their "fleecing of American consumers???"

The Unoriginalist

It seems this speech that Miers gave in 1993 is what did her in...

By George Neumayr
The American Spectator

"I can't see this nomination going forward," says a Judiciary Committee staffer to TAS. "The hearings would be so ugly." What will sink Harriet Miers, he predicts, is the "evidence that she can't write and think."

Fresh evidence of this appeared in the Washington Post on Wednesday. The Post reported on a speech Miers delivered before the Executive Women of Dallas in the 1990s in which she made a vague stab at addressing popular controversies. The speech's reliance on stale and mindless bromides is stunning. Sandra Day O'Connor could have given the speech, though surely she would have given it a little more sophistical polish.

RE: Re: My Pal Ronnie

I should probably clarify that I'm just a native son watching the action from Forsyth.

Interesting. You certainly seem to have a lot of inside information for one who is an external observer.

No, I enjoyed the letter because -— as usual -— the mudslinging in the Stokes News' 'Letters to the Editor' is the always most entertaining part of the paper regardless of who's doing the slinging.

Ah, my mistake. Having been both a pitcher and a catcher of that mud, I can understand the amusement. I used to pay a lot of attention to what was written in the Stokes County Fishwrap. Then one day it dawned on me that two-thirds of the people who live in Stokes County don't even know the paper exists, much less read it every week. It is simply a vessel for the political illuminati to use when rhetorically shooting at one another. I guess it beats the real thing. As I'm sure you're aware, the real interest is in who doesn't write in. As I said, Buster utters it and Ron Carroll's lips move.

Aside from all that, though, Carroll's letter was an interesting little bit of propaganda. He spent over a third of his ink on Sandy McHugh, yet the letter was really aimed at the Turpins (I noticed you ducked my question about which campaign promise they broke). He uses the fact that most of the people reading the letter will be ignorant of the budget process in county government. He claims that the Turpins didn't offer an alternative budget. That's a straw-man.

In county government, the county administrator or manager produces a draft budget. The commissioners meet and consider the draft budget. They may make changes, they may not. Not every county board does a line-by-line assessment of the budget submitted by the manager. Stokes County boards are highly responsible because they hold work sessions and evaluate the entire budget. In the process of evaluating the draft budget, I can assure you that the Turpins offered cuts and alternate suggestions in order to reach a revenue-neutral tax rate. Obviously, they were opposed by three other members of the board. Ron Carroll's straw-man goes up in flames.

In years past, assessing the budget was made more difficult since Ron Carroll and Frank Sells never submitted a legal school system budget. That meant over half the county's budget was unaccounted-for. There was no stomach before the Turpins came along to force that issue. I understand that no one forced it this year, so they were back to a half-invisible budget. So Ronnie-boy decries a defective process that he helped to create.

One final note, Ron Carroll has been flying that alternate budget straw-man for years. Back when I ran for the Board of Education (thank you, Jesus, I didn't get elected), I publicly criticized Ron Carroll's budget. How do you suppose he answered the criticism? You guessed it, he invited me to submit an alternative budget. Of course, he had no intention of making enough information available for me to do that, but then that's the nature of a straw-man, isn't it?

There's a combination county government and county politics lesson all rolled into one. I'll put it on your tab.

Okay, maybe I should've said one of their best; I was mostly referring to Andy's cousin, Robert Mitchell.

Robert is a definite improvement over "the usual suspects." He shows promise. If only we could get him past this odd Jimmy Carter worship.

After Miers

From the Editors of National Review Online:

No conservative should be in a celebratory mood now that Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination. For one thing, reasonable conservatives who considered her unqualified for the Supreme Court conceded that she has had an accomplished career and that she has served the president loyally and, for the most part, well. Gloating would be unseemly. For another thing, the object of conservative agitation against Miers was to get a solid justice confirmed. So the conservative opponents of her nomination have not yet won a victory.

Astros roster has no black players

By BEN WALKER
AP BASEBALL WRITER

HOUSTON -- Joe Morgan worries about the face of baseball. Watching the World Series, the Hall of Famer is troubled by what he sees.

His old team, the Houston Astros, is down 3-0 to the Chicago White Sox, but it's not their lineup that concerns Morgan. It's their makeup.

The Astros are the first World Series team in more than a half-century with a roster that doesn't include a single black player.

"Of course I noticed it. How could you not?" Morgan said while the Astros took batting practice before the opener in Chicago. "But they're not the only ones. There are two or three teams that didn't have any African-American players this year."

Exxon Mobil posts record U.S. profit (or, more fleecing of American consumers)

By Deepa Babington for Reuters:

Exxon Mobil Corp. on Thursday posted a quarterly profit of $9.9 billion, the largest in U.S. corporate history, as it raked in a bonanza from record oil and gas prices... Analysts have warned that record profits for Big Oil, at a time when consumers are paying sky-high prices for gasoline, could add to calls for a windfall profits tax or other penalties on oil companies.
Third-quarter net income at Exxon, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, rose to $9.92 billion, or $1.58 a share, from $5.68 billion, or 88 cents a share, a year earlier.

Re: My Pal Ronnie

Considering your disdain for Mr. Carroll, are you saying that I've got friends in low places? Steve, you're such a jokester!

I'm not really for or against Mr. Carroll — or anybody in Stokes politics for that matter — although he was a congenial person on the occasions I've met him. I should probably clarify that I'm just a native son watching the action from Forsyth.

You seem to take an inordinate amount of glee in seeing Ron Carroll bash the Republican Commissioners.

No, I enjoyed the letter because — as usual — the mudslinging in the Stokes News' 'Letters to the Editor' is the always most entertaining part of the paper regardless of who's doing the slinging. All the letters are fun. Many of them remind me of post-match rants in 'professional' wrestling, thus my Steve vs. Ron cage match/WWE reference.

I previously said, 'In the last election, the Stokes Democrats had some of their best candidates ever, and they still lost.'

Steve: If that was their best, then no wonder they lose all the time.

Okay, maybe I should've said one of their best; I was mostly referring to Andy's cousin, Robert Mitchell.

Strother's Pal Ronnie

Actually, I enjoyed the letter.

Well of course you did. It's an attack on conservative Republicans by a liberal socialist who is pretending to be a Republican. I expect it warmed the cockles of your partisan Democrat heart (spare me the denials, no one believes them anyway).

Steve, so I guess I can assume that you think it's okay to make a campaign promise and then break it?

What campaign promise did the Turpins break? I must have missed that one.

Or maybe I can't, since you really didn't do anything in your response except make personal attacks against Mr. Carroll. Judging from this and various other tirades regarding this man, you obviously have some sort of personal problem with him.

At least my ad hominem is direct as opposed to yours which is vicarious. You seem to take an inordinate amount of glee in seeing Ron Carroll bash the Republican Commissioners.

You can call my comments tirades if you like, but you don't have the history that goes behind the "tirades." Second only to Willis Overby and Buster Robertson, Ron Carroll is the most dishonest, underhanded, fascist political figure in Stokes County and it nearly makes my gums bleed to see the amount of respect he is paid by the County leftists. He has skewered more teachers and done more harm to "public" education in Stokes County than anyone else, including Frank Sells, yet he is defended by the very people he has screwed over repeatedly. It boggles the mind. I suspect most of it is because he remains a Republican and certain forces within the County love to be able to hold up a "Republican" who criticizes other Republicans.

In the last election, the Stokes Democrats had some of their best candidates ever, and they still lost.

If that was their best, then no wonder they lose all the time. You are talking about Stokes County, aren't you? As I recall, it was the same, tired, retreaded socialists that the Stokes County Democrats have been running for years. They have also been using the same tired excuses for years: straight party voting and all. Maybe they should consider the fact that they run the same people with the same outmoded, failed, and tired ideas every cycle.

By the way. Everything in Carroll's letter is classic Buster Robertson. I find it fascinating that Buster says it and it comes out of Ronnie's mouth.

Bush 'reluctantly' accepts?

'Reluctantly' accepts? Har, har — yeah, right. More like gratefully accepts. In the midst of Dubya's numerous other problems these days, further p*ssing off his conservative base is the last thing he needed, I guess it finally sunk in, and they finally asked her to withdraw for damage control purposes. I mean, it looked bad enough already to begin with.

Enough Already (It's time to rein in special prosecutors.)

BY VIET DINH AND NEAL KATYAL
OpinionJournal.com

As the grand-jury investigation of the CIA leak nears its originally scheduled expiration date tomorrow, people of all political persuasions should take a moment to reflect on the dangerous grant of power given to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. In a pair of letters written Dec. 30, 2003, and Feb. 6, 2004, but disclosed last Friday, then-Acting Attorney General James Comey gave Mr. Fitzgerald "all the authority of the Attorney General." While laudable as an act of political courage, Mr. Comey gave Mr. Fitzgerald the sort of power that Kenneth Starr and Laurence Walsh held, in Whitewater and Iran-Contra, respectively. And for that reason, the current investigation will open itself up to predictable charges of structural overzealousness if and when someone is charged. There is a better way to conduct these investigations--and it is on the books already.

Re: Re: From the Oct. 20th edition of The Stokes News...

Actually, I enjoyed the letter.

Steve, so I guess I can assume that you think it's okay to make a campaign promise and then break it? Or maybe I can't, since you really didn't do anything in your response except criticize the letter’s author. Judging from this and various other tirades regarding Mr. Carroll, you obviously have some sort of personal problem with him. I urge you to resolve your anger before you blow a gasket. Maybe you should challenge him to a WWE-style cage match, paper-rock-scissors, a spelling bee — whatever — and just put this all behind you.

By the way, why would anybody change their party affiliation from Republican if they're running in Stokes County? In the last election, the Stokes Democrats had some of their best candidates ever, and they still lost. It's my personal opinion that Stokes voters look for the letter R on the ballot, not the names before them.

What I Have Seen -- Wisdom from a higher-ed career

The lament about our failed schools and universities is by now familiar. From the left, the complaint is that they are underfunded, even ignored by a shortsighted and heartless public. The pay of teachers and professors supposedly remains poor in comparison with similarly educated private-sector professionals. Schools are asked to educate troubled youth and thereby rectify societal ills, all the while seeking a broad equality of result among departing graduates; universities must also accept students who in the past were simply not college material.

Conservatives answer that the schools and universities have adopted a therapeutic curriculum in pursuit of political objectives. Teachers and professors — through powerful unions, archaic tenure protocols, and easy legal redress — are largely unaccountable, and the incompetent among them are immune from removal. While the cost of administration has grown, the quality of education — as measured by either test scores or the ability of students to meet traditional course requirements — has declined over the last four decades. The problem is not too little money, but rather how much money is misspent.

Victor Davis Hanson

Miers Withdraws; Bush 'Reluctantly' Accepts

Here's a source. It appears Miers took the Krauthammer option.

(CNSNews.com) - President Bush said on Wednesday that he has "reluctantly" accepted Harriet Miers' request to have her name withdrawn from consideration for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

In her letter to President Bush, Miers blamed it on senators' request for Executive Branch documents.

Miers Withdraws

I'm searching for a source, but it appears Harriet Miers has withdrawn her name from SCOTUS consideration.

Isn't the U.S. Constitution good enough anymore?

By Judge Janice Law
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

HOUSTON – Have activist justices on the U.S. Supreme Court dumped the U.S. Constitution, beguiled with foreign law enticements?

RE: Danforth Criticizes Christian Sway in GOP

Senator Danforth is full of mud. The Christian right, as a whole, has less actual influence in the GOP now than it ever did. Coming from a political hack and a member of a completely apostate sect, I think this can safely be ignored.

Kerry Critique

From the Fox News Political Grapevine:

In his speech Thursday, John Kerry criticized the Bush administration for failing to heed the advice of the now departed Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki, who said the Iraq operation would require more troops than the Pentagon had committed. They should have listened to him, Kerry said, "They chose not to. They were wrong."

Later in the speech, Kerry approvingly quoted Army General George Casey who said our large military presence "feeds the notion of occupation” and “extends the amount of time that it will take for Iraqi security forces to become self-reliant." Added Kerry, "It is essential to acknowledge that the insurgency will not be defeated unless our troop levels are drawn down."

As Opinionjournal.com noted, Kerry seems in his speech to have been for more troops before he was against them.

Danforth Criticizes Christian Sway in GOP

By DANIEL CONNOLLY
Associated Press Writer

LITTLE ROCK

The influence of evangelical Christians in the Republican Party hurts the organization and divides the country, former U.S. Sen. John Danforth said during a visit to the Bill Clinton School of Public Service on Wednesday.

RE: From the Oct. 20th edition of The Stokes News...

Ron Carroll is such an arrogant mutt. He has never been in a situation where he had to stick to principle (not that he would if he had) and he makes claims that he can't substantiate about what the Turpins did or didn't do during the budget. I guess he's thinking about running for County Commissioner again. I hope he changes his party affiliation before he does. He can't register as a Green, Socialist Worker's Party, or American Communist, which are probably the parties that would suit him best, but he can follow in Kucinich's footsteps and go to the next best place: the Democrats.

Liberal Obsolescence

By James Bowman
The American Spectator

On the same day that my review of George Stade's academic novel Sex and Violence appeared in the Wall Street Journal, John Tierney in the New York Times took up that old favorite question of why university professors are so liberal. Mr. Stade, who teaches English at Columbia, has lived for so long among people who think exactly as he does that he does not even think it in bad taste -- let alone wrong and deplorable -- to have his narrator and alter ego toss off the observation that Rush Limbaugh deserves to die. That hardly even counts as a controversial observation, I'm guessing, in the Columbia faculty lounge. But the profs do read the New York Times, so they were glad to write in to Mr. Tierney suggesting some possible explanations for the lack of conservatives in the academy. In his column he shared them with us. They are as follows:

1. Conservatives do not value knowledge for its own sake.
2. Conservatives do not care about the social good.
3. Conservatives are too greedy to work for professors' wages.
4. Conservatives are too dumb to get tenure.

From the Oct. 20th edition of The Stokes News...

Click on the image to zoom it out...

RE: 'Thank You, Free Market!'

The actual title of the article is ConocoPhillips profit beats forecasts. I guess the other is an editorial comment.

The financial adviser I listen to occasionally on the Internet and on the radio was recommending ConocoPhillips as a strong buy about three months ago. I wish I had listened and bought some. I'm going to have to pay closer attention. I'm also going to have to stop procrastinating and open that ScottTrade account.

'Thank You, Free Market!'

By Deepa Babington for Reuters:

ConocoPhillips, the No. 3 U.S. oil company, on Wednesday reported quarterly profit surged 89 percent, surpassing Wall Street forecasts, driven by record oil prices and sharply higher refining margins.
ConocoPhillips, like other major oil companies, has reaped a windfall from soaring crude oil prices -- which touched a record $70 a barrel in the quarter -- and better refining margins, as powerful hurricanes blew through the Gulf of Mexico, severely disrupting energy operations.

Pigging out

By John Stossel
Townhall.com

What Congress did is disgusting.

You heard what the Senate did to Tom Coburn's attempt to impose some sanity on spending.

How do they live with themselves?

Years ago, interviewing economist Walter Williams for a show ABC News called "Greed," I was perplexed when Williams said, "a thief is more moral than a congressman; when a thief steals your money, he doesn't demand you thank him."

That was silly hyperbole, I thought, but watching Congress spend, I see that I was naive and Williams was right.

Not Nixon

By Lisa Fabrizio
The American Spectator

On the salivation scale, this past week has been a veritable drool-fest for those who inhabit the newsrooms, editorial desks, and websites making up the liberal media world. The Sunday talk shows were awash in liberal glee; a level of happiness not seen since before a certain blue dress avoided a trip to the cleaners.

Wednesday Funnies

David Letterman... "Top Ways To Cheer Up George W. Bush": Fully loaded Tex-Mex fixins bar at every cabinet meeting; Use wacky sound effects for weekly radio addresses; Replace Oval Office bust of Theodore Roosevelt with bust of Kenny Rogers; Remind him it's only 6 weeks until "The Dukes of Hazzard" comes out on DVD; Speechwriters sprinkle in the occasional "You might be a redneck if..." joke; Two words: Free Gum; Get Air Force One pimped.

Jay Leno... They say Saddam is delusional. He still thinks he's president and gives speeches standing next to his bed at night. No, wait, that's Al Gore. ... [Saddam's] trial has begun. And Saddam's lawyers say they will accept any judge except Harriet Miers. They don't feel she is qualified. ... U.S. forces have captured Osama bin Laden's barber. I believe his name is Vidal Kaboom and his brother Infidel Sassoon. I believe they worked at a shop called Fanatical Sam's. ... As you know, President Bush's approval rating at its lowest number ever. It's gotten so bad that even Harriet Miers is refusing to take his phone calls. ... Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced he planned to expel every illegal immigrant in the United States. Boy, more bad news for the New York Yankees. [And it] would reduce the population of Los Angeles to 142 people.

Foxx Guards the Amen-House

Kudos to Rep. Foxx for voting against this...

By John Hood
Carolina Journal

Congress rushed to approve $62 billion in “emergency” Katrina relief, but most of the money remains unspent or uncommitted. A little less haste on Capitol Hill would have been in order — as a NC representative argued.

Family Squabbles (Harriet Miers was just the spark that lit the fuse.)

by Edward Morrissey
the daily Standard

The conservative base has competing interests and the avoidance of internal debate in recent years may have created a dangerous reserve of resentment that needed only one spark to explode. Perhaps in the future, members of the Republican coalition should have their healthy disagreements as they go.

Witness (Blacks, whites, and the politics of shame in America.)

BY SHELBY STEELE
OpinionJournal.com

The problem here is obvious: The black shame of inferiority (the result of oppression, not genetics) cannot be overcome with anything less than a heroic assumption of responsibility on the part of black Americans. In fact, true equality--an actual parity of wealth and ability between the races--is now largely a black responsibility. This may not be fair, but historical fairness--of the sort that resolves history's injustices--is an idealism that now plagues black America by making black responsibility seem an injustice.

Dead Jews Aren't News

Unfortunately for those who have sought to portray Corrie as a peaceful protester, photos of her burning a mock American flag and stirring up crowds in Gaza at a pro-Hamas rally were published by the Associated Press and on Yahoo News on 15 February 2003, a month before she died.
(Those photos were not used in the British press.)

While Thaler's parents, after donating their murdered daughter's organs for transplant surgery, grieved quietly, Corrie's parents embarked on a major publicity campaign with strong political overtones. They travelled to Ramallah to accept a plaque from Yasser Arafat on behalf of their daughter. They circulated her emails and diary entries to a world media eager to publicise them. They have written op-ed pieces, including a recent one in the Guardian.

Tom Gross

Sealed indictments coming this week (Special counsel expected to target up to 5 in investigation of CIA leak)

By Joseph Farah
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON – As speculation increases about Vice President Dick Cheney as a possible target of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's CIA leak investigation, knowledgeable sources tell WND that up to five sealed indictments are likely to be issued as early as tomorrow and certainly before the end of the week.

RE: 'Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal' hijacked US foreign policy

This is yet another case of Bush's policy chickens coming home to roost. If he had purged the bureaucracy of the State Department and CIA of partisan Clintonistas, he wouldn't have the "scandal" problems he has now. But he wanted to change the tone of Washington politics. Stupid mistake.

Even Jimmy Carter was smart enough to purge the Nixon/Ford political hacks from potentially damaging positions.

Paid Enough to Buy the Product

In the past several years, a virtual industry has been created in bashing Wal-Mart. From leftist church groups to the AFL-CIO to the Chronicles, Wal-Mart has been the favorite whipping boy of people on all sides of the political spectrum. Thus, it was no surprise when I recently received an emailed article from the quasi-Marxist Sojourners magazine not only attacking Wal-Mart for the usual set of "sins" that the critics claim, but also a new transgression: Wal-Mart's business practices, on net, make our economy worse off and leave us poorer.

In its latest example of Wal-Mart bashing (Sojourners gives its readers the links to anti-Wal-Mart websites and pathologically publishes attacks on the retail giant), David Batstone and David Chandler compare the company unfavorably with another giant, Ford Motor Company, or at least the Ford of the early 20th Century. Before going into detail about the contrasts that Batstone and Chandler make, however, let me say that their choice of comparison is odd, considering that Ford was the premier target of leftists of his day and socialists considered him to be the worst "reactionary" on the industrial scene in that era.

William Anderson

Vetting Ahead of Ourselves

By Paul Chesser
The American Spectator

I am sympathetic to the conservatives who have reservations about the choice of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, but where were these people six years ago when President Bush's Republican nomination was sealed?

RE: 'Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal' hijacked US foreign policy

The foreign policy of the United States is decided upon by the current presidential administration, not by a career bureaucrat in the State Department. Since Jan. 20, 2001, the job of the State Department is to carry out the policies of the Bush Administration. If they don't like the decisions, they should quit.

'Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal' hijacked US foreign policy

Retired colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Powell's right-hand man for 16 years in the public and private sectors, also skewered President George W. Bush, saying the US leader was "not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either.""I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran," Wilkerson, who was Powell's chief of staff at the State Department, said Wednesday at a policy forum at the New America Foundation."The case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process," he said."What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made," he said.

Two Face Bad-News Cascades

By John Hood
Carolina Journal

RALEIGH – Democratic and Republican partisans may bristle at the suggestion, but it occurs to me that House Speaker Jim Black and President George W. Bush face a similar predicament at the moment. Both have become the subject of bad-news cascades.

Wal-Mart's health premiums to be lower

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BENTONVILLE, Ark.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said yesterday that it is starting a plan to lower health-insurance premiums for workers, allowing some to buy coverage for as little as $11 a month.

Husband Is Conspicuous in Leak Case (Wilson's Credibility Debated as Charges In Probe Considered)

By Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers

To his backers, Joseph C. Wilson IV is a brave whistle-blower wronged by the Bush administration. To his critics, he is a partisan who spouts unreliable information.

But nobody disputes this: Possessed of a flamboyant style and a love for the camera lens, Wilson helped propel the unmasking of his wife's identity as a CIA operative into a sprawling, two-year legal probe that climaxes this week with the possible indictment of key White House officials. He also turned an arcane matter involving the Intelligence Identities Protection Act into a proxy fight over the administration's credibility and its case for war in Iraq.

Rebuilding the Gulf: Can North Carolina give up the pork?

By Ronald D. Utt
Fayetteville Online

Americans from all walks of life wasted no time in the wake of Hurricane Katrina rallying to help those who survived. From Scout troops to the Salvation Army, they dug into their wallets and volunteered their time.

American businesses stepped forward with multi-million-dollar donations, as did numerous entertainers, including Sean "Diddy" Combs and Celine Dion. Altogether, private contributions totaled more than $1.2 billion within the first four weeks after Katrina's strike.

That's a lot of selfless giving. But there should be more - especially from our political leaders. Yes, lawmakers have approved more than $60 billion in disaster aid. But that's taxpayer money and, given the existing federal deficit, borrowed money to boot. It's time for members of Congress to embrace an idea that's been attracting support nationwide and sacrifice some of their "own" resources to help the beleaguered citizens of the Gulf Coast.

Bush in PR blitz amid leak probe

By Rick Klein for the Boston Globe:

WASHINGTON -- It looked like business as usual at President Bush's Cabinet meeting yesterday. And that's exactly what White House aides wanted. The president ticked off the administration's preparations for Hurricane Wilma, mentioned the need to control federal spending, even found time to tease a reporter about her sunglasses.
But seated along the edge of the room were two poker-faced men whose fates could determine Bush's effectiveness through the rest of his term in office. The possible indictments of Karl Rove and I. Lewis ''Scooter" Libby hang over virtually everything the president is doing these days, but behind the scenes, the Bush administration and its Republican allies have already launched a campaign to minimize the damage of any criminal charges.

Gotta add this one point:

With indictments possible as soon as today, Republicans are preparing a public relations blitz aimed at shoring up public support for the Bush administration. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican with close ties to the White House, said on NBC's ''Meet the Press" that indictments may be based on ''technicalities," to justify the resources spent on the probe. ''I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment... that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars," Hutchison said.
Democrats began rebutting that strategy yesterday, by pointing out some of the Republicans who spoke of the serious nature of similar charges in the late 1990s, when President Clinton was under scrutiny in the Monica Lewinsky affair.
''When a Democrat was in the White House just a few short years ago, the seriousness of perjury and obstruction was pretty much all Republicans would talk about," said Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

White House Watch: Cheney resignation rumors fly

Not that it would really matter, but it would be fun to watch.

By Paul Bedard for U.S. News and World Report:

Sparked by today's Washington Post story that suggests Vice President Cheney's office is involved in the Plame-CIA spy link investigation, government officials and advisers passed around rumors that the vice president might step aside and that President Bush would elevate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"It's certainly an interesting but I still think highly doubtful scenario," said a Bush insider. "And if that should happen," added the official, "there will undoubtedly be those who believe the whole thing was orchestrated – another brilliant Machiavellian move by the VP."
Said another Bush associate of the rumor, "Yes. This is not good." The rumor spread so fast that some Republicans by late morning were already drawing up reasons why Rice couldn't get the job or run for president in 2008.
"Isn't she pro-choice?" asked a key Senate Republican aide.

Burr Votes to Redirect 'Pork' (He joins small group of senators voting in favor of Coburn amendment)

By Paul Chesser
Carolina Journal

RALEIGH — U.S. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina joined a small number of his colleagues last week to vote for the transfer of $125 million in federal spending, which was originally intended for a limited-interest project in Alaska, in favor of rebuilding a bridge near New Orleans, La.

The Bernanke Standard (The Fed nominee inherits his own inflation revival.)

From OpinionJournal.com:

When Alan Greenspan was nominated to succeed Paul Volcker as Federal Reserve Chairman in 1987, financial markets tanked. The more positive reaction to Ben Bernanke's selection yesterday shows how much the markets have come to trust Mr. Greenspan and how they expect Mr. Bernanke to run monetary policy in the same fashion.

He'll have a hard act to follow, or rather, two hard acts. As the nearby chart shows, the watershed year in modern monetary policy was 1979, when a rebellion by financial markets forced Mr. Volcker's selection on Jimmy Carter. With the stalwart backing of Ronald Reagan, who said the dollar should be "good as gold," Tall Paul killed inflation.

Memories of the 1970s were still fresh enough in 1987, however, to make markets wary of Mr. Greenspan's ascension. But he has continued the drive toward stable prices that Mr. Volcker began, albeit with some blips along the way. This is the Fed's one overriding duty: defense of the dollar's purchasing power, at home and abroad. And one of its byproducts has been a generation of extraordinary economic prosperity. Since 1983, Americans have seen their assets climb in value by some $20 trillion, and the Dow has multiplied from less than 900 to more than 10300. A stable price level lifts all boats.

The Legacy of Slavery

"Nothing so turns the tables on critics of social pathology in the black community as invoking the painful history of slavery. But because slavery has left bitter legacies, it does not follow that any particular bitter experience among blacks today can automatically be attributed to slavery. Cancer is indeed fatal, but every fatality cannot be attributed to cancer -- and certainly not after an autopsy has shown death to be due to a heart attack or gunshot wounds.

"One of the key misfortunes within the contemporary black community, from which many other misfortunes flow, is the breakdown of the family, or the failure to form a family in the first place. As of 1992, more than half of all black adults had never been married, quite aside from an additional 16 percent who had either been divorced or widowed. By contrast, only 21 percent of white adults had never been married. More than half of all black children -- 57 percent -- were living with only one parent and another 7.5 percent were not living with either parent. Thus, only a little more than a third of black children were living in traditional two-parent households. The great majority of those black children who were living with only one parent were living with their mothers, and more than half of those mothers were unmarried.

"...As in other areas where violations of societal norms have led to disasters, the first order of business for the anointed has been to turn the tables on society, which must itself be made to feel guilty for what it complains of. Blaming "a legacy of slavery" for the high level of unwed teenage pregnancy among blacks, and the abdication of responsibility by the fathers of the children, clearly performs that function. Whether it is actually true is another question -- and one receiving remarkably little attention.

"Going back a hundred years, when blacks were just one generation out of slavery, we find that the census data of that era showed a slightly higher percentage of black adults had married than had white adults. This in fact remained true in every census from 1890 to 1940. Prior to 1890, this question was not included in the census, but historical records and contemporary observations of the Reconstruction era depicted desperate attempts of freed black men and women to find their lost mates, children, and other family members -- efforts continuing on for years and even decades after the Civil War. Slavery had separated people, but it had not destroyed the family feelings they had for each other, much less their desire to form families after they were free. As late as 1950, 72 percent of all black men and 81 percent of all black women had been married. But the 1960 census showed the first signs of a decline that accelerated in later years -- as so many other social declines began in the 1960s. This new trend, beginning a century after Emancipation, can hardly be explained as "a legacy of slavery" and might more reasonably be explained as a legacy of the social policies promoted by the anointed, especially since similar social policies led to similarly high rates of unwed motherhood in Sweden, where neither race nor slavery could be held responsible."

-- Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed, Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy; Chapter 4, The Irrelevance of Evidence

George Clooney’s Clueless Movie

If George Clooney’s "Good Night, and Good Luck" is the best shot the left can unload on Joe McCarthy these days, the famous Red hunter is well on his way to a thorough rehabilitation. Ann Coulter has already begun the process in "Treason" and Stan Evans’ much anticipated book—due out next year—is likely to boost the late Wisconsin senator’s stock even further.

Allan H. Ryskind

Fred's Thesis

That’s odd, Steve. I thought that the heart of Fred's thesis was that positive, ambitious role models are essential to a child's success in life.

Umm, nope. The title and first paragraph should be the best clues as to his thesis: individual ambition, accomplishment, and responsibility are the keys to success and poverty is an excuse, not an impediment.

The other clue would be the summation, which you posted in part before:

“You don’t have to be helpless, nor useless, nor immoral because you were born poor. If this were not true, the Irish, Italians, Jews, the Chinese of railroad coolie days, the Poles and the Czechs would still be in slums. They aren’t. They made it, as Violeta made it, as Eva and lots of black cops made it, without Section Eight housing, welfare, scholarships, minority preferences with no expectations attached, medical charity, or monotonous self-pity. She has a contempt for those who could, but don’t, that would peel chrome from an engine block.”

Both success stories featured positive, influential teachers — in these two cases, good parents — who taught those who rose above their unfortunate beginnings.

Not really. Violeta's Dad was featured, but only as yet another example of Fred's thesis, as described above. Eva's mother is only mentioned in passing, so portraying her as an “influential teacher” is quite a stretch. Nice try, though. Full disclosure: I may have an advantage since I've been reading Fred for years. He is a strong libertarian who lands somewhat right of center. He has a fairly substantial disdain for government-run schools as well. No quantity of mutation will be able to make this into an essay on the importance of teachers and mentors.

Some folks have good teachers at home, and some don’t.

True, but that has nothing to do with the article.

What about those who don’t? "Welcome to the world, ‘The Unkilled’"… and then what?

The same what that has sustained society for millenia. Some people will use ambition, initiative, and personal integrity to improve themselves and have a great life. Others will stew in their own juices, play the victim, and whimper about poverty.

Re: Re: Whimpering About Whimpering About...

That’s odd, Steve. I thought that the heart of Fred's thesis was that positive, ambitious role models are essential to a child's success in life. Both success stories featured positive, influential teachers — in these two cases, good parents — who taught those who rose above their unfortunate beginnings.

Some folks have good teachers at home, and some don’t. What about those who don’t? "Welcome to the world, ‘The Unkilled’"… and then what?

RE: Whimpering About Whimpering About Poverty

Purposely provocative...

Of course it is. Everything Fred writes is purposely provocative.

In those instances, 'whimpering about poverty' may be justified, especially when no one has taught you to be anything but 'shiftless.'

Baseless liberal victimology. Multitudes have overcome their shiftless environments to become productive members of society, most of them without the "help" of nanny states. Therein lies the heart of Fred's thesis.

At that point, the responsibility falls to us -— the members of society that know better -— to help them out.

As long as society is not confused with government. Society is usually a nebulous cloud on which liberal hopes and blame are hung. Responsibility for improving one's lot in life falls to the individual. The only thing the individual requires of society is that it does not impede him/her on the journey. If individual members of society choose to help along the way, so much the better.

And once ignorant people give birth, their children -— who live without suitable role models -— 'choose' to be ignorant too?

More baseless liberal victimology. Some children who live without "suitable" role models will overcome their environments and improve their lives, some will not. Once again, the foundation of Fred's thesis. A child who becomes an adult in our society does not have to remain shiftless because his/her parents were. Once awareness of the world in which we live dawns, ignorance becomes a choice.

On that note, Fred's point helps prove the importance of the public school system -— a system to provide education for all -— even if the system has inherent flaws.

The government-run schools are inherently incapable of providing education for all. The only task of which they are consistently capable is turning out future Marxists. Anyone who believes the government-run schools have improved their lives is short-changing themselves. If their lives improved, it was likely in spite of the government-run school system and they should take full credit for it.

If ignorant people who choose to have children aren't capable of teaching their own kids, someone has to step up to the plate.

This is a meaninglessly general statement. It assumes a need that may or may not exist and describes a situation for which there is no evidence. Scores of the offspring of the ignorant were able to achieve superior education levels before government-run schools ever existed. In fact, it can be convincingly argued that the relative levels of education, among the educated, has actually declined since the introduction of "public" schools. And the thousands of functional illiterates who are churned out of government schools every year certainly negates the accuracy of the statement.

And appreciating those who are able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps (which I too appreciate) shouldn't be confused with being helpful or compassionate.

Just as being helpful and compassionate shouldn't be confused with socialism.

NC Teachers Abandoning Unions (Defectors say they're professionals, don't like partisanship of NEA)

By Donna Martinez
Carolina Journal

RALEIGH — To many, the National Education Association is as synonymous with public-school teachers as the Teamsters is with truck drivers. The group boasts nationwide membership of 2.7 million people, while its state affiliate, the North Carolina Association of Educators, reportedly has nearly 50,000 active members who pay full-time dues and work in North Carolina schools. As the national organized labor movement faces defections and criticism from unsatisfied members, North Carolina teachers are doing the same. More frequently they’re turning to smaller, independent teacher groups with missions closely tied to education and less intertwined with social and political causes the NEA has championed.

US Senate Questionnaire from Harriet Miers

It's rather long, but I thought some reader of the BP would find it interesting...

Whimpering About Whimpering About Poverty

Why is this article called 'Whimpering About Poverty' anyway? Bad title. Purposely provocative and bad.

While there are a couple of inspiring stories and several valid points here, sadly, not all of the folks Fred refers to as 'The Unkilled' have parents that 'parent.' In those instances, 'whimpering about poverty' may be justified, especially when no one has taught you to be anything but 'shiftless.' At that point, the responsibility falls to us — the members of society that know better — to help them out.

I don't feel sorry for the shiftless, but I do feel sorry for the shiftless' children. And once ignorant people give birth, their children — who live without suitable role models — 'choose' to be ignorant too? Sorry, but I don't buy that. Maybe in some cases, but not in most.

On that note, Fred's point helps prove the importance of the public school system — a system to provide education for all — even if the system has inherent flaws. If ignorant people who choose to have children aren't capable of teaching their own kids, someone has to step up to the plate.

'They made it, as Violeta made it, as Eva and lots of black cops made it, without Section Eight housing, welfare, scholarships, minority preferences with no expectations attached, medical charity, or monotonous self-pity.'

And appreciating those who are able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps (which I too appreciate) shouldn't be confused with being helpful or compassionate.

Miers defenders miss the mark

By George Will
Townhall.com

As for Republicans, any who vote for Miers will thereafter be ineligible to argue that it is important to elect Republicans because they are conscientious conservers of the judicial branch's invaluable dignity. Finally, any Republican senator who supinely acquiesces in President Bush's reckless abuse of presidential discretion -- or who does not recognize the Miers nomination as such -- can never be considered presidential material.

Remembering The Gipper

"We don't have a deficit because we're taxed too little; we have a deficit because they're spending too much... And when it comes to spending your hard-earned money, they act like they have your credit card in their pocket. And believe me, they never leave home without it."

Ronald Reagan

Whimpering About Poverty

Poverty is a condition characterized by a lack of money. Shiftlessness involves a lack of backbone, morals, independence, self-respect, and drive. They are not the same thing. Of course, if you are shiftless, you are likely to be poor.

I note in passing that anyone who wishes can learn to read, short of the genuinely retarded. Illiteracy is a choice. So is ignorance.

-- Fred Reed

Another from Fred that I found topical.

What Went Wrong (Lessons the White House should learn from the Miers debacle.)

By John Fund
OpinionJournal.com

President Bush has returned from a weekend in Camp David, where much of the discussion centered on the beleaguered nomination of Harriet Miers. While the president is determined to press forward, the prognosis he received was grim. Her visits with senators have gone poorly. Her written answers to questions from the Senate were sent back as if they were incomplete homework. The nominee herself has stumbled frequently in the tutorials in which government lawyers are grilling her in preparation for her Nov. 7 hearings.

RE: U2's Bono kneels humbly in the spotlight

"I genuinely believe that second only to personal redemption, the most important thing in the Scriptures -- 2,103 passages in all -— refers to taking care of the world's poor," the singer told The Los Angeles Times.

I believe the boy has something there. Hopefully he takes both ideas to heart and doesn't try to turn the importance of feeding Christ's sheep into a socialist crusade. I have to say I haven't heard anything that indicates Bono falls into the same ideological boat with Pantload Springsteen. With his influence, he could be a force to reckon with in getting people from boardrooms to community centers to contribute. I'm sure God is pleased to have him on his side.

Quote Of The Day

"Any GOP senator who supinely acquiesces in President Bush's reckless abuse of presidential discretion...can never be considered presidential material."

George F. Will

All About Iraq (Patrick Fitzgerald is really investigating a policy dispute.)

From OpinionJournal.com:

Rampant leaks notwithstanding, no one but Patrick Fitzgerald knows all of the criminal evidence the special prosecutor is considering against senior White House officials. Our hope is that he also understands that the job of a prosecutor is not to settle what at bottom is a political and policy fight over the war in Iraq.

U2’s Bono kneels humbly in the spotlight

This article ran in Saturday’s WS Journal. While I’m sure that some celebrities use social causes to promote their favorite cause — their own careers — Bono’s heart consistently seems to be in the right place. Plus, I’ve never observed him trying to portray himself as being more than simply human.

By Tony Campolo in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette:

Celebrity and humility make an unusual mix, but not as unusual as you might think. Bruce Springsteen made the connection during his U2 induction speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March.

Springsteen acknowledged that Bono possesses "one of the most endearing naked messianic complexes in rock ’n’ roll," but then he completed the picture. "His voice is shot through with self-doubt," said Springsteen. "The constant questioning in Bono’s voice is where the band stakes its claim to its humanity and declares its commonality with us: ‘ Here we are, Lord, this mess, in your image. ’"

Perhaps Bono is helping us clarify some of our misunderstandings about humility and pride as suggested by Irish-born writer C. S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity. "If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step," wrote Lewis. "The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed."

Fred Plans To Devolve

I note that Compulsory Evolutionists are fellow travelers of the regnant cultural Marxism, though I don’t think that they are aware of it. They display the same hermetic materialism, the same desire to suppress dissent by the application of centralized governmental power, the same weird hostility to religion. They do not say, “I think Christianity is nonsense and will therefore ignore it,” but rather “These ideas shall not be permitted.” The justification often is pseudo-constitutional: “the separation of church and state.” Neither the phrase nor the idea is found in the Constitution. If, for example, it is unconstitutional to have a nativity scene on a town square, why did no one notice this, certainly to include the Founding Fathers, until at least 1950? One might point out, fruitlessly, that Creationism, communism, Christianity, and capitalism are all major intellectual currents and therefore ought to be explained to the young. Not likely. The free market of ideas applies only to one’s own ideas.

Fred Reed

Hillary Clinton 'Already Focused' on 2008, Analysts Say

By Randy Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor

(CNSNews.com) - Even though Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) has more than a year left in her re-election campaign, she is "already focused" on 2008 and a campaign to become the first female president of the United States, political analysts say.

The Swimmer to the rescue!!!

From the Federalist Patriot:

Fortunately Kennedy didn't wait until the next day to report the incident, as was the case in the 1969 death of Mary Jo Kopechne.

Ted Kennedy to the rescue! Last Sunday, Senator Ted Kennedy was walking his two Portuguese waterdogs on the shore of his family compound in tony Hyannisport, when he noticed six men stranded by high tide on a jetty. Kennedy claims he made several attempts to rescue the men in his Boston Whaler (now you know why they call 'em "whalers") but said it was too dangerous and he turned back. Kennedy then called the Hyannis fire department, which eventually rescued the men and transported them to Cape Cod Hospital with mild hypothermia. Fortunately for the Stranded Six, Kennedy didn't wait until the next day to report the incident, as was the case in 1969, when the young senator, completely inebriated, drove his car off a small bridge into a few feet of water on Chappaquiddick Island. The car overturned, trapping Mary Jo Kopechne, who died sometime later when the air pocket in the car was exhausted. Being a man of the people, Kennedy was never held accountable for the death of Miss Kopechne. To the great shame of his state and his Party, Massachusetts Demos have retained him in the Senate ever since—though some moderate elements in the state party suggest it's just to keep him out of the state.

Stemming Specter

By The Prowler
The American Spectator

There are other, big fights going on up on Capitol Hill besides the SCOTUS nomination, and none is bigger than the imminent legislative action on embryonic and non-embryonic stem cell research. Sources up on the Hill say it's possible that within the next week, the Labor-Health and Human Service-Education Appropriations bill will hit the Senate floor. "It could come as early as tomorrow [Friday]," says a Senate source.

Senatorial Duties

From the Editors of National Review Online:

Five days into White House “qualifications week” in making the case for Harriet Miers her nomination is looking weaker rather than stronger. No matter how many times Scott McClellan says that she is “extremely well qualified” it doesn't make it so, especially when she makes basic constitutional flubs on her Senate questionnaire and is leaving senators singularly unimpressed during her Capitol Hill visits.

Doesn't Look Good

By John Tabin
The American Spectator

Harriet Miers will not join the Supreme Court.

It may seem a little early to say that; Miers's Judiciary Committee hearings, after all, don't even start for two weeks. But given the news this week, I think it's a pretty sturdy limb I'm out on.

Myths To A Plame: The Case Against Rove

From Investor's Business Daily:

Politics: As special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's mandate expires, Karl Rove's only crime may be not that he "outed" Valerie Plame as a CIA operative but that he exposed her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, as a liar.

"We Have to Exterminate White People"

Dr. Kambon also said that “white people want to kill you…because that is part of their plan” and that “the only n**ger on the planet is the white man and the white woman, and our people are not n**gers, they are imitation n**gers.”

Mike Adams

Your tax dollars at work, once again. The UNC system is completely degenerate and needs to be shut down.

Saving Face (A way out of the Miers mess)

By Charles Krauthammer
Townhall.com

WASHINGTON -- It's no secret that I think the Harriet Miers nomination was a mistake. Nonetheless, when asked how she will do in the hearings, my answer is, I hope she does well. I have no desire to see her humiliated. Nor would I take any joy in seeing her rejected, though I continue to believe it would be best for the country that she not be confirmed for the Supreme Court.

Katrina's Medicaid Boondoggle

by Michael D. Tanner and Michael F. Cannon

Michael Tanner and Michael F. Cannon are coauthors of Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It (Cato Institute, 2005).

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina seems to be providing Congress with an all-purpose excuse to increase federal spending. The latest example is a $9 billion Medicaid expansion proposed by Sens. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Max Baucus (D-MT), purportedly to help states pay for the costs associated with uninsured evacuees in the wake of the disaster.

The Miers Blunder (Walking the nominee into a political crossfire.)

From OpinionJournal.com:

Although skeptical from the start, we've restrained our criticism of the Harriet Miers nomination because we've long believed that Presidents of either party deserve substantial deference on their Supreme Court picks. Yet it now seems clear--even well before her Senate hearings--that this selection has become a political blunder of the first order.

Especially in the wake of his success with John Roberts, President Bush had a rare opportunity to fulfill his campaign pledge to change the Court by nominating someone in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. In the process, he would have rallied his most fervent supporters and helped to educate the country about proper Constitutional interpretation. Instead, he picked a woman who was his personal and White House counsel, and who was unknown to nearly everyone outside the White House and his Texas circle.

Tom DeLay Mug Shot

At least he's smilin'... :-)

It's gut-check time for the Republicans on the budget

by Townhall.com Editors

Congress hasn’t reopened a budget act by amendment since 1977. And were it not for the leadership of Mike Pence (R-IN) and the Republican Study Committee, that streak would have continued through 2005.

A right turn back to making cars (A MUST READ)

The people who still support the welfare state should read this...

by George Will
Townhall.com

WASHINGTON -- General Motors took an interesting turn on Monday. It is going back into the automobile business.

Granted, GM has always been in that, but it has also become the nation's largest private purchaser of health care. This supposedly secondary role has become primary.

RE: The Conservative Revolt

Fred Barnes is a "kool aid" drinker. He's waaaaaaaaaaay too apologetic for the Bush Administration. Barnes called the critics of Miers "snobs" a couple of weeks ago. I wish Fox News would replace him on Brit Hume's panel.

US planning invasion, says Chavez

These dictators are quite schizophrenic...

From BBC News:

Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, says he is in possession of intelligence showing that the United States plans to invade his country.

Pumping Gas Prices

By Doug Bandow
The American Spectator

Gasoline costs too much in almost everyone's opinion. President George W. Bush is urging Americans to drive less. Other politicians want government to push prices down.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) suggests giving the President the power to set retail gas prices. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) complains that companies are "profiting in an extraordinary way at the expense of the American consumer" and has proposed a windfall profits tax.

The Conservative Revolt

Fred Barnes is one of those annoying neo-cons who is busy undermining the conservative movement. He is whining about real conservatives and their outright rejection of Harriet Miers' nomination. A few talking points:

...a revolt was inevitable, sooner or later, simply because Bush is not a conventional conservative. He deviates on the role of the federal government, on domestic spending, on education, on the Medicare prescription-drug benefit, and on immigration. Given this kindling, it took only the spark of the Miers nomination to ignite a conservative backlash.

Good of you to finally admit this, Fred. But to translate for the masses: Bush is a Republican. That doesn't necessarily make him a conservative.

Bush, of course, is a conservative, but a different kind of conservative.

What rot. By that logic, Hillary Clinton could be called "a different kind of conservative." Bush is a statist and something of a socialist. That doesn't make him any kind of conservative.

Movement conservatives feel Bush doesn't respect them. They may be right.

May be right, Fred? There is no evidence to suggest Bush has any respect for conservatives or conservatism. As Robert Bork notes, both Bushes have shown an outright disdain for conservatism.

...the White House has grown a bit arrogant and self-centered.

They haven't grown arrogant, Fred, and it isn't just a bit. The only politician of national stature who ditched the constituency who elected him faster than Bush did was Bill Clinton, and not by a wide margin. They started out arrogant and have successively gotten worse.

Many conservatives, who rarely complained when Bush was riding high, have joined in the kicking.

Cry me a river, Fred. Conservatives gave Bush a pass on his socialist and statist tendencies because the opposition was so insanely worse than anything they could imagine Bush could be. Conservatives spent a considerable amount of their political capital getting those in their sphere of influence to back Bush because of the Supreme Court vacancies. They withstood all the slings and arrows of criticism by repeating the mantra of a conservative court. Bush repaid them by peeing on their shoes. Far from actually improving the court, Bush looks poised to actually damage it. We will probably be worse off now than if no vacancies had occurred. Spin all you like, Fred, but Bush brought this beating on himself.

...the press is happy to abet the revolt.

I thought you were enumerating reasons for the revolt, Fred. Are you implying that conservatives revolted in order to get the press, which most conservatives consider to be repulsive, to beat up on Bush? Again, that's complete rot.

...the Miers nomination didn't just trigger the revolt. It provoked deep anger toward Bush as well. The feeling of conservative critics was that Bush had trivialized an enormously important Supreme Court nomination by choosing his legal counsel. Despite Bush's assurances, they are doubtful Miers will turn out to be a judicial conservative.

Finally, you get to the meat of the matter, Fred. If you knew all this from the outset, why all the spin and rationalization?

Can the broken relationship between Bush and conservatives be repaired? Certainly. It's probably just a political phase anyway.

Don't bet the ranch on it, Fred. The level of bile and disgust with Bush among conservatives is something you shouldn't underestimate. Civil war in the Republican Party is inevitable. I hope that makes the neo-cons happy.

Stoked for Stokes

Winston-Salem Journal
Thursday, October 20, 2005

A high-tech Web site might just help Stokes County regain some of the allure it held as a tourist site more than 100 years ago. And the effort couldn't come at a better time.

Climbers discover body of lost airman in glacier

WINSTON-SALEM JOURNAL WIRE REPORT
Thursday, October 20, 2005

FRESNO, Calif. - Two climbers on a Sierra Nevada glacier discovered an ice-encased body believed to be that of an airman whose plane crashed in 1942.

The man was wearing a World War II-era Army-issued parachute when his frozen head, shoulder and arm were seen Sunday on 13,710-foot Mount Mendel in Kings Canyon National Park, park spokeswoman Alex Picavet said.

Park rangers and specialists say they expect the recovery of the body to take several days. "We're not going to go fast," Picavet said. "We want to preserve him as much as possible. He's pretty intact."

Park officials said that the airman may have been part of the crew of an AT-7 navigational training plane that crashed Nov. 18, 1942. The wreckage and four bodies were found by a climber in 1947.

Vulnerable Miers might not survive

BY ROBERT NOVAK
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

President Bush's agents have convinced conservative Republican senators heartsick over his nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court that they must support her to save his presidency. But that does not guarantee her confirmation. Ahead are hearings of unspeakable ugliness that can be prevented only if Democratic senators exercise unaccustomed restraint.

The Sequester Solution (Fiscal conservatism makes a comeback.)

From OpinionJournal.com:

It's only taken a decade or so, but suddenly there's momentum in Congress for spending restraint. We'll be watching the fine print, but you can tell Republicans are worried about complaints from conservative voters because for a change they're trying to act, well, like Republicans.

In a first good sign, House leaders are rewriting their Fiscal 2006 budget resolution to increase the amount of "savings" to as much as $50 billion over five years. This is far from onerous, but it is better than the $35 billion Congress passed the first time around.

In another miracle, they are also moving to "deauthorize" 98 federal programs that long ago outlived their usefulness. These include such pork-barrel classics as the Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholarship Program. A deauthorization doesn't cut any spending, but it does reduce the likelihood that money will be spent on these fiscal dodos in the future. Political symbolism has its uses.

Mark Steyn: The death of Mother Russia

So the world’s largest country is dying and the only question is how violent its death throes are. Yesterday’s Russia was characterised by Churchill as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Today’s has come unwrapped: it’s a crisis in a disaster inside a catastrophe. Most of the big international problems operate within certain geographic constraints: Africa has Aids, the Middle East has Islamists, North Korea has nukes. But Russia’s got the lot: an African-level Aids crisis and an Islamist separatist movement sitting on top of the biggest pile of nukes on the planet. Of course, the nuclear materials are all in ‘secure’ facilities — more secure, one hopes, than the secure public buildings in Nalchik that the Islamists took over with such ease last week.

Mark Steyn

Yes, I know, you have to register, but this is one of the best articles Steyn has ever written.

How Bush Can Save Bush

Now Mr. Bush is in the first political crisis of his presidency, a crisis unusual, even perhaps unprecedented, in modern American politics, in that his own side has risen up and declared it no longer sees him as one of them. (It is comparable to what happened to Margaret Thatcher in 1990, when Conservative Party members turned on her. That rebellion was more personal than policy-based, but an old rule of politics pertains in both cases: Friends come and go but enemies accumulate.)

Peggy Noonan

This piece is overly maudlin, even for Peggy Noonan, but I found it interesting. I think it constitutes a last warning to Bush from the right. He has an awfully long time to stew in the lame-duck sauce. Maybe he'll take Noonan's advice, but I'm not holding my breath.

GOP Facing More Budget Heat, Left and Right

It's time for congressional Democrats to either "put up or shut up." They are always complaining, but they never put forth a plan of action.

By Randy Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor

(CNSNews.com) - With the U.S. House Republican leadership now pushing $50 billion in budget savings over the next five years in programs like Medicare, Medicaid and student loans, Democrats charged Wednesday that the GOP budget plan was "immoral and irresponsible."

Who Was the Second Choice?

We've been waiting 30 years to end the lunacy of nine demigods on the Supreme Court deciding every burning social issue of the day for us, loyal subjects in a judicial theocracy. We don't want someone who will decide those issues for us – but decide them "our" way. If we did, a White House bureaucrat with good horse sense might be just the ticket.

Admittedly, there isn't much that's more important than ending the abortion holocaust in America. (Abortionist casualties: 7. Unborn casualties 30 million.) But there is one thing. That is democracy.

Democracy sometimes leads to silly laws such as the one that prohibited married couples from buying contraception in Connecticut. But allowing Americans to vote has never led to crèches being torn down across America. It's never led to prayer being purged from every public school in the nation. It's never led to gay marriage. It's never led to returning slaves who had escaped to free states to their slave masters. And it's never led to 30 million dead babies.

Ann Coulter

'Merlot Democrats' to the rescue

By Jonah Goldberg
Townhall.com

"No longer will the Democratic Party allow itself to be defined by the Republican Party," Dean thundered recently at a Nevada confab.

So, after years of denouncing the GOP for unfairly labeling Democrats as effete, coastal liberals out of touch with heartland America, what label does Dean think best describes the Democrats? What cuts to their core? One word: Merlot.

He described the contest as "Merlot Democrats" vs. "Reliable Republicans." Ah, yes, that's a term that will rally the lunch-bucket crowd. That'll put steel in Dean's prediction that the "The South will rise again, and when it does, it will have a 'D' after its name!"

The doomsday provision

By John Stossel
Townhall.com

Guns are dangerous. But myths are dangerous, too. Myths about guns are very dangerous, because they lead to bad laws. And bad laws kill people.

Wednesday Funnies

David Letterman... "Top Signs Your Barber Is Working for al-Qa'ida": You change part in your hair, that night it's top story on Al Jazeera; Instead of small talk about sports, it's small talk about streets flowing with Zionist blood; Customers pay with cash, credit card, or goat; Disinfects his combs in a jar of sarin gas; When he makes a mistake, says, "Ah, the turban will cover that"; Got his license at the Al Masadah Barber School and Training Camp; Manicures are done by sister, Tammi Bin Laden; During haircut he shouts, "Death to uneven sideburns!"

Jay Leno... The FBI now says they are considering relaxing their drug policy on new applicants who want to join the FBI. If you've smoked marijuana it's ok. So much for the war on drugs. I guess the new slogan is "if you can't beat, join them!" ... The Bush administration announced that they have captured al-Qa'ida's top barber. Well, who says we're not winning the War on Terror? Osama's cable guy—you're next! ... Al Gore said this week he is ruling out ever running for president again. He said he has no desire to be a presidential candidate ever again. Apparently sounds like he might have had some bad experience in the past. ... Listen to what the Democrats are doing: For a $2,500 donation, you can sit next to Hillary Clinton at a U2 concert in Washington, DC. And what could be more fun than going to a rock concert with Hillary Clinton? Maybe going to a disco with Al Gore? ... In speech earlier this at Harvard, Bill Clinton said he has no idea if Hillary will run for president. But he says if he ever sees her again he'll certainly ask. ... Ted Kennedy is being called a hero after he tried to rescue some fishermen who were in trouble. If you were drowning and the first face you see is Ted Kennedy...

RE: Dumb(_!_) Quotes Of The Day

Another race pimp proves the old adage: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

[I]t is the duty of government to either prove the rumor is false...

Someone needs to remind Farrakhan that proving a negative is logically impossible. Then again, he may be well aware of that since his intent is not to be constructive, but to enhance his self-importance by making outrageous demands and claims.

FEMA is too white to represent us and so is the Red Cross...

Imagine the outrage if a white activist had said some organization was too black.

Every Cuban who gets sick can go to a doctor or a hospital and get medical attention...

Yet the per-capita disease and death rates in Cuba are higher than almost anywhere on Earth. I have got to get busy posting some of Sowell's material from The Vision of the Anointed. Especially the material on the irrelevance of evidence to leftist assertions.

Remember, this is the guy who says the mother ship will return to Earth one day and carry all the black people off to planet paradise.

Dumb(_!_) Quotes Of The Day

"When you have people who politically feel that they get their advantage by killing people and blaming it on somebody else, then it makes us wonder what really happened to the Twin Towers... Was the heat from fuel from two airplanes sufficient to compromise the steel in that building? (sic) People had said they heard explosions and the buildings came down like we see old buildings in Vegas or in Florida or in other places, implode... [I]t is the duty of government to either prove the rumor is false or prove that their suspicions are true and that somebody is not only guilty of the mass destruction of billions of dollars worth of property, but that somebody is guilty of mass murder." ... "FEMA is too white to represent us and so is the Red Cross, so we're going to demand our place at the table... FEMA is insensitive because there are not enough blacks high up in FEMA, and certainly the Red Cross is the same. It's too white. It is. If it represents those who are victims of disaster, should not those who are culturally sensitive to us be a part of that?" ... "Every Cuban has a house to live in, no matter how meager. That house is provided by government. Every Cuban who gets sick can go to a doctor or a hospital and get medical attention while 45 million Americans don't have medical insurance. Every Cuban can get education from the kindergarten through college and they don't have to pay. What is Castro doing that we might benefit from—if we are not too arrogant and falsely proud to see what he is doing in a small nation and what we have not been able to do or not been willing to do in the greatest nation on the earth?"

Louis Farrakhan at the "Millions More" rally in DC, which attracted thousands of people

Gonzales: International law of no use to high court

O'Connor, Kennedy, Breyer, & Ginsberg have all cited international law as a reasoning for some of their opinions in cases that went before the court.

WINSTON-SALEM JOURNAL WIRE REPORT
Wednesday, October 19, 2005

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales yesterday joined critics of the use of international law in Supreme Court opinions, calling it anti-democratic and unworkable.

"Foreign judges and legislators are not accountable to the American people. If our courts rely on a foreign judge's opinion or a foreign legislature's enactment, then that foreign judge or legislature binds us on key constitutional issues," Gonzales said in a speech at George Mason University Law School in Arlington, Va.

There has been a growing divide on the high court over references to foreign laws to support decisions that interpret the Constitution. Earlier this year, justices ruled 5-4 to outlaw the death penalty for juvenile killers, in part because international sentiment is against it.

McCain calls for quicker digital TV transition

I've looked all over, but I seem to have misplaced the section in my copy of the US Constitution that grants Congress the power to regulate any of this. Maybe it's somewhere in the vicinity of the section that grants them the power to regulate major league sports.

It is genuinely frightening to contemplate that someone who openly disdains the foundations of our government and our nation could be seriously considered as a future White House occupant. Oh wait, that already happened. We already turned aside John Kerry and Al Gore. Hope springs eternal that Americans are still smart enough to do the same with McCain.

The Plantation Right (A MUST READ)

By Andrew Cline
The American Spectator

I write editorials for a conservative editorial page. After my newspaper editorialized that U.S. House Republicans should replace Majority Leader Tom DeLay with someone more concerned with ideology than partisanship, we were deluged with letters from angry Republicans. Almost all of the letters made the same argument: No real conservative would oppose Tom DeLay because of all the good he has done the GOP. Of course, "Republican" and "conservative" are not synonyms. Until more conservatives make clear that they understand this distinction, they are in for continued abuse from the Republican leadership...

Conservatives have to stop giving Republicans a pass on spending. This habit has only emboldened GOP leaders to act more irresponsibly. If the base is not willing to hold party leaders accountable -- by abandoning them if necessary -- then they will quickly become the lapdogs of the Republican Party, stroked every now and then, but wholly controlled by their masters.