My Kids Deserve Better

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive . . . . . those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” –  C. S. Lewis

President Obama said something at a White House healthcare event that should scare you out of your wits, especially if you are a senior citizen.

He suggested that one way to save health-care costs is not to spend on procedures that “evidence shows [are] not necessarily going to improve care” for the sick and the dying. “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller,” the President said.

This is socialist Obama-talk, and let me translate. Under Obamacare, some impersonal bureaucrat, based solely on cost to the government health-care system, will now decide whether you or your sick father or mother, die. Do you need a heart operation or expensive cancer therapy to give you a chance for life? Under Obamacare, a bureaucrat will “calculate” how much this care would cost the government.

The bureaucrat will then do a “cost/benefit” analysis, the “benefit” being extending your life or treating your cancer or heart disease. If you’re too old, forget about it. The bureaucrat will have to follow rules laid down by his superiors in a big book of “rationing” rules.

If, for example, you’re over 65 years old, the bureaucrat can tell you, “Sorry, extending your life by 10 years with this expensive heart operation is not “worth it” to the government health-care program or “other taxpayers.” So we won’t pay for your heart operation. Or, “you’ll have to wait nine months on our heart-operations list, and we’ll ‘reconsider’ your application at that time. The government only has so much money for health care, so we can’t spend it on people over 65 years old. Sorry. Next in line, please.” And you will DIE waiting on their heart-operation death lists.

Also, as health-care costs explode in a socialized-medicine paradise, bureaucrats will have to keep lowering the cut-off age for your CAT scan, heart operation or cancer care. First the cut-off age might be 68, then it will go to 65, then to 60, then to 55. The more health-care costs explode, the lower the cut-off age will go. Soon you will be caught in the net, with your LIFE at stake.

Think this is a frightening fantasy, that it “can’t happen here?” Think again. In England and Canada, where they’ve had a socialized-medicine paradise for the last thirty years, that’s exactly what happens, every day. In England and Canada, they have health-care rationing. Government bureaucrats decide who lives and who dies, who gets the expensive cancer care or heart operation, and who doesn’t. Who gets the CAT scan or heart operation quickly, and who waits on the health-care “death lists” for nine months for that CAT can or heart operation.

Every day, sick people who the bureaucrats decide are not “worth” the money, DIE on the death-lists in England and Canada. That is your health-care future in America, if socialist Obama gets his “heath-care” plan approved. I hope this scares the hell out of you, because it scares me.

Translation — “Imbecile Americans, just sign this contract for the used car I’m selling you, then I’ll tell you what’s in the contract. Don’t bother reading the 2000-page bill that will wipe out your health-care freedom. We’ll ram the bill down your throats, then you’ll see what we’ve done to you.”

Does socialist Pelosi belong in the US Congress or on the unemployment line, come this Nov. elections?

News Link  •  
Climate Change
In Denial
03-08-2010 • arclein
Now the IPCC is being disavowed like a Mission Impossible team with its cover blown. Senate Environment and Public Works chairman Barbara Boxer insisted on February 23 that she relied solely on U.S. scientific research and not the IPCC to support the  .  .  .

Robert Klein

See full article at: http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/News/065941-2010-03-08-in-denial.htm

Quote from Julie Pace, Associated Press Writer, On Monday March 8, 2010, 11:45 am

GLENSIDE, Pa. (AP) — President Barack Obama accused insurance companies of placing profits over people and said Republicans ignored long-festering problems when they held power as he sought to build support Monday for swift passage of legislation stalled in Congress.

“How much higher do premiums have to rise before we do something about it?” said Obama, making the first in an expected string of out-of-town trips to pitch his plan to remake the health care system.

*                *                *

My translation of Obama’s statement:

These statements by Obama show his utter Marxist mentality. The insurance companies are PRIVATE companies who are in business to MAKE PROFITS. Just like any business, if insurance companies don’t make profits, they go BANKRUPT. So if Obama required the insurance companies to make little or no profits, they would soon be out of business.  Every American who wants health insurance would then face the  Obama-created alternative of NO health-care insurance companies to choose from (they could all go bankrupt if their profits were strangled), or government-controlled health insurance (socialized medicine).

It looks like marxist Obama would love to see the health insurance companies go bankrupt so he could then impose a fascist health-care system called Socialized Medicine on the American people, like they have in England and Canada. By the way, in the socialized-medicine paradises in England and Canada, they have long waiting lists to get treatment for life-threatening diseases, call ‘death lists.’ That’s right, many people DIE in England and Canada waiting six months or more for a heart operation or cancer treatment because the socialized-medicine system in these countries are overburdened, understaffed, lack the money for expensive surgery, or because of general government-bureaucratic incomeptence.

But it looks like marxist Obama would love to force every American into our very own socialized-medicine paradise by  strangling the private insurance companies. Obama is ’shocked’ that private insurance companies demand the right to make profits from their private business, that they put ‘profits over people’. Only a blithering socialist whose main work experience was being a ‘community organizer’ and law professor, could condemn a for-profit private company for daring to want to make profits.

Perhaps marxist Obama might consider the shocking idea of allowing free competition between insurance companies throughout the United States, so insurance companies would be forced to lower their rates due to fierce competition. Perhaps he might consider removing the hundreds of thousands of Federal regulations now strangling the health-care industry and the health-insurance industry, regulations that are the main cause of high insurance rates. Perhaps marxist Obama might consider that GOVERNMENT regulations and strangulation of the heath-care industry is the problem causing high insurance rates, NOT the insurance companies.

No, I don’t think marxist Obama would consider such things. He has an agenda. That agenda is to push us into a socialist hell-hole that destroys our liberty and right of free choice.

by Joel Turtel

News Link  •  
Property Rights
Obama Plans 10MM Acre Land Grab
03/06/2010 • Uncommon Sense
As I have warned in previous posts the agenda to “fundamentally transform America” is following the Cloward/Piven handbook of community organizing. While the attention of the nation is focused on the health care debate, the administration has multiple .  .  .

Dave Johannes

See full article at:  http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/News/065887-2010-03-06-obama-plans-10mm-acre-land-grab.htm

News Link  •  
Healthcare
The Last Straw: HB 3200 pg 429, line 13-25: Govt to specify which doctors can write an end-of-life o
03-06-2010 So Much for Choice. Check it out for yourself. Population control

See full article at:  http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/News/065901-2010-03-06-the-last-straw-hb-3200-pg-429-line-1325-govt.htm

News Link  •  
Healthcare
Why Obama, Pelosi, and Reid Won’t Quit Pushing Health Care Reform
3/07/10 • Pajamas Media
Why Obama, Pelosi, and Reid Won’t Quit Pushing Health Care Reform If they can impose government-run health care, they’ll establish the framework for Democratic do

Anonymous Watchman

Full article at Freedom’s Phoenix —   http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/News/065905-2010-03-07-why-obama-pelosi-and-reid-wont-quit-pushing-health-care.htm

The Democrat-marxists in Congress now claim the right to ram Obamacare socialized-medicine down our throats through a Senate voting trick called “reconciliation,” which means ‘majority rule.’ This simple majority rule lets the Senate Democrats do an end run around Senate Republicans who will vote against the Obamacare abomination. “What’s wrong with majority rule?”,  the Democrat-marxists in Congress now whine, to justify their slimy tactics. “Isn’t majority rule the very ‘foundation’ of what America is all about?,” they say.

No. It’s not. Our Founding Fathers created a Republic, not a ‘majority-rule’ mobocracy/democracy. What’s the difference between a Republic and a Democracy? The difference between political life or death for our liberty as Americans.

At the end of the nineteenth century, federal taxes only absorbed about 3 percent of the national income ($6.64 per person), and state and municipal taxes added another 6 percent ($13.28 per person). There was no income tax, except a temporary one during the Civil War, until the 16th Amendment to the Constitution established this tax in 1913. The bulk of federal revenues came almost entirely from tariffs, excise taxes, and customs duties. The federal debt was small and steadily contracting. There were minor outlays for social services, and the Treasury often had a surplus.

Low taxes meant that workers or business owners kept most of their wages or profits to spend on themselves or their businesses. At the end of the nineteenth century, Americans had the right to keep what they earned. The combination of a free economy, political liberty, strict protection of property rights, and a small federal government was the spark plug that turned America into the most productive nation on Earth.

The Founding Fathers created a brilliant political structure, but they also made some serious mistakes; there were holes in the dam right from the start. Unfortunately, the Constitution gave the federal government the right to coin money, ‘regulate commerce,’ and ‘promote the general welfare’ of the nation. At the time, these phrases were strictly interpreted and government interference in the economy was minor.

But gradually those general phrases took on an ominous new meaning as the country’s moral-political philosophy took a sharp turn to the left. Over the years, like a spreading malignant cancer, government’s right to ‘regulate commerce among the states’ and ‘protect the general welfare’ turned into government’s right to strangle our economy with hundreds of thousands of regulations, and create the Welfare State.

The dominant political doctrine ruling America today is socialism. Socialism rests on the idea that compassion is a moral and political duty, not a personal choice. Under the socialist Welfare or Entitlement State, government forces us to help others, whether we like it or not. Compassion has been turned into compulsion.

As a result, the guiding principles of our Founding Fathers have been all but forgotten. Limited government and the scrupulous protection of our property rights are just a fading memory. In their place, government is again telling us that ’society’ or the collective is more important than you and I. Socialist liberals tell us that the ‘public good’ and the economic ‘rights’ of the needy are more important than our liberty.

Need, not individual rights, has become the ruling principle of our time. Government uses regulations and entitlement programs to allegedly protect the common good and create a safety net for everyone. Our government now forces us to live by Karl Marx’s dogma of socialism and communism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

That’s what a welfare state is all about. And when I say welfare I don’t mean simply for the poor, but for everyone. Most government subsidy, insurance, and entitlement programs are a form of welfare. Government taxes us to pay for food stamps, Medicare, bank bailouts, rent subsidies, farm subsidies, Social Security, unemployment insurance, and handouts to corporations. There’s an endless list of programs that benefit every conceivable pressure group.

Three entitlement programs are the powder keg behind exploding federal deficits: Medicare, Social Security, and federal pensions. In 2005, they accounted for over 75 percent of all federal entitlements. These programs’ millions of beneficiaries are not welfare recipients — they are middle-class retirees. Almost 75 percent of federal benefits are paid with no regard to a person’s financial status, and only about 17 percent of these benefits help Americans get out of poverty.

If we add up all the taxes we pay, including sales taxes, property taxes, Social Security taxes, city, state, and federal income taxes, and hundreds of business taxes passed on to consumers, we’ll find that government takes anywhere from 35 percent to 50 percent of our income. In the Middle Ages, feudal lords took about 20 percent of their serfs’ crops to pay for the lords’ protection. The medieval serfs of Europe were taxed less than the new middle-class serfs of America.

It doesn’t matter that we voted ourselves into serfdom. If government confiscates 40 percent of your salary or profits, it doesn’t matter if your ruler is a dictator, a medieval lord, or the ‘will of the majority.’ Our Founding Fathers didn’t base our government on unlimited majority rule. They had a healthy fear and scepticism about human nature, and men’s lust for power. Instead, they designed a political structure to protect us against majority rule. For example, freedom of speech and religion protects us against a majority mob that may not like what we say or who we pray to. That’s the purpose of the Bill of Rights and Constitution — to protect us against the whims, greed, or stupidity of the majority, or a majority party in Congress.

Majority rule doesn’t sanction or guarantee personal liberty. Instead, it usually violates personal liberty. A majority of the German people voted the Nazi party into office and approved most of its policies. The Obama marxists are a political horror show because they want to use ‘majority rule’ to violate our individual rights and ram socialized medicine down our throats.

Our Founding Fathers would be turning over in their graves if they saw what has happened to the Republic they so carefully crafted in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. They would be horrified that the monster they feared most, unlimited majority rule, has been unleashed and holds sway over our country, our future, and now our health care. They would also be horrified to see a marxist President and socialist majority in Congress who have utter contempt for the Republic our Founding Fathers created.

by Joel Turtel

Why should he care that man-made global warming is a nasty, self-serving hoax?  He’s already made his millions from falsely alarming the world.

If justice were to be done, Gore, along with all of the universities and “scientists” who promoted this rip-off, should be compelled to repay to taxpayers all of their ill-got gains, with interest compounded at 12% per annum.

Liberal-progressives want to send to prison for 15 years any CIA agent who speaks unkindly to Islamic terrorists.

Read The green jobs myth in the iconic, liberal-progressive Washington Post.

A new fiscal policy website, The Fiscal Times, provides a balanced presentation of news and a thoughtful presentation of opinion.  Unlike mainstream liberal-progressive media such as the New York Times, news articles do not state ideological positions as settled fact.  Instead, news articles report both conservative and liberal-progressive views, identifying each as such.

The reason for this balance undoubtedly is that the website is funded by Peter G. Peterson.

With regard to Obamacare, see two opinion pieces, Bipartisan Indifference to Controlling Health Care Costs and Health Reform Preview: The Obama Plan.

For a news report, see Health Care Odds Long, but Democrats Push Ahead.

- Scott Miller

Just when you begin think the Republican leadership has finally come around to principed leadership on fiscal issues, they blow it… big time.

As you well know, every Republican politician has been tripping over themselves trying to  prove that they were true fiscal conservatives. They would loudly decry, to any microphone or camera around, the massive spending and debt the liberals were piling on our children and grandchildren. But when it came time over this past weekend to back their collegue, Sen. Bunning, on his principled stand that any new unemployment benefits must be paid for, most in Bunning’s foxhole were beating a hasty retreat as soon as the liberal media fired their first shot.

Here’s a taste of the lib news coverage that scared those “pricipled” fiscal conservatives in the Republican party… from CNN

Over the last week, his block of an extension of unemployment benefits has angered much of America.

The Senate reached agreement Tuesday night to end Bunning’s filibuster of a measure that would extend $10 billion in benefits for unemployed workers and funding for road projects on a 78-19 vote.

The Kentucky Republican, who is retiring at the end of this term, had argued that he didn’t oppose extending the programs; he just didn’t want to add to the deficit.

Gloria Borger, CNN senior political analyst, who spoke with a Republican in the Senate on Tuesday, said members of the GOP felt Bunning had “the right idea” in questioning how the extension would be paid for but think “it is the wrong fight to wage right now.”

Bunning’s views, Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins said before the impasse was broken, did not represent the majority of the Republican caucus.

Ahhh yeah… Susan Collins… there’s a principled conservative for ya’. Not quite sure why one would look to her as having her pulse on the Republican caucus… but that’s just me.

How hard? How freakin’ hard would it have been to follow Sen. Bunning’s lead and expose the liberals as the disingenous slime they really are? The liberals had just passed, to much liberal fanfare, their so-called pay-go legislation less than ONE DAMN MONTH AGO, and then they waive their new rules on their first DAMN bill!

All Senator Bunning wanted was the liberals to pay for the $10 billion in new spending with cuts elsewhere. Are you telling me conservatives couldn’t have won that argument with the liberals?!  It could have been, and should have been, a walk in the park, but no…. looks like we still have many in the Republican Senate who are afraid of their own shadows… or still really like to spend like Democrats when it really gets down to it.

The other problem, that  needs to be raised,  is this idea that we somehow can afford to endlessly pay unemployment  benefits to people for not working. The unemployment program is quickly morphing into a new welfare program, sucking millions of Americans into a new dependant class. 

This from the Washington Post:

Through a series of laws, including the $787 billion economic stimulus, people in states with high rates of unemployment are eligible to get jobless benefits for up to 99 weeks, an all-time high. But Congress did this in a piecemeal fashion, and it must pass legislation to keep benefits going for an estimated 1 million people who would otherwise become ineligible at the end of the month.

The Senate approved a measure that extended benefits from 79 to 99 weeks in a unanimous vote last year, but GOP lawmakers have not yet said whether they will continue to support the benefits, particularly if they are included in a larger jobs package. And some Democrats favor extending the benefits only temporarily, while another bloc wants an extension that would last the rest of the year.

Unemployment benefits usually last just 26 weeks and have been extended to about 70 weeks in previous economic slowdowns. But this time, Congress not only has extended them but also is spending more than $13 billion each month to fund them, because the federal government is taking on all the cost after the 26 weeks, which states pay for. About 12 million Americans are receiving benefits.

99 weeks? 2 years of paying 12 million people  for not working? I don’t think it’s all that crazy to say that we simply can not afford to keep this going. We are not paying for those expenses, we are just racking up more debt. And even if we could afford it, is it really good public policy? To create that kind of dependency for such a long time I believe is counter productive. It has the potential to take away the strong sense of urgency that Americans need to have about getting right back to work after a job loss.

Don’t get me wrong, god knows it is tough out there for many without jobs, but there are jobs. It may not be exactly what someone was trained for. The job may not even be in their trade. Some may have to take 2 or 3 jobs to make things work, others may even take the opportunity to start their own business. One way or the other it will eventually be sink or swim time, and for most, the earlier their survival instincts are triggered the better. People do amazing things when they are faced with truly tough situations, so to take away that urgency I believe is counter productive.

Someone’s gotta’ say it.

Ok, I know that in the back of their minds, they think that they will be loved by all of humanity if they ram this healthcare bill through, but isn’t there anything front and center in their minds warning them that their political careers will be over if they do it?

Poll after poll shows that the majority of Americans do not want this monstrosity of a bill getting passed, but Nancy, Harry, and the President seem to be fine with ignoring that particular set of data. What they can’t ignore, however, is the fact that the 2010 mid-terms, and the 2012 national election are just over the horizon. Throw in their tanking job approval ratings, and it is not looking good for the Dems.

But hey, if they want to ram it through (with 51 votes), then who are we to stop them from hanging themselves out to dry?

Cross-posted at: TobyToons.com

One hour and forty minutes after the White House issued their Easter deadline for ObamaCare to pass Congress, Democratic House Leaders conceded “they may not meet President Barack Obama’s challenge for swift action.”

Whenever the House Leadership moves a vote, it means they don’t have the votes. In Spanish, that’s mañana.

With the White House issuing a deadline and the Dem House leaders immediately and publicly saying, not so much, the White House looks silly and limp and powerless. They look even more out of touch and desperate than they did when President Obama announced that he will not quit with his self-appointed Captain Ahab role of hunting the great-health-care-white-whale.

But the best news (finally) is that a group of Democrats are willing to have News at 11 film them shooting ObamaCare in the head. They are willing to say: we take responsibility for killing it. And they are telling anyone who will listen they will kill it:

“Yes. We’re prepared to take responsibility,” Stupak said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” when asked if he and his 11 Democratic allies were willing to accept the consequences for bringing down healthcare reform over abortion.

Rep. Stupak and his gang of 12 to 20 pro-life Dems, are no doubt being encouraged by their colleagues to please kill-this-bill so we can run screaming from the room. Save us from Captain Ahab and the irrational Speaker who are hell-bent on making us walk the plank again. Please save us from the fatal political injury that will come from months more of health care as it winds it way through the House and then the Senate — where the Republicans have promised a scorched earth, time-consuming policy of death-by-amendment. Remember, Easter is too soon for the House to act — imagine how long it will take in the Senate?

I wrote earlier that I expected a block of no votes to come from the progressives. They may be starting to flex their muscles.

From ABC News:

“Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., the co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told Salon.com today with the inclusion of Republican ideas and compromises in the president’s health care proposal he is leaning now towards opposing the legislation.

“As I weigh it, I think — for me — a ‘no’ vote is something that I continue to lean toward,” Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz told Salon.com today, “Especially the last additions — that was kind of a slap in the face for all of us who fought for the public option.”

The lack of the public option in the so-called reconciliation package, contrasted with the President’s announcement that he was open to expand and leave Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) unmolested, is apparently a bridge too far for the constantly disappointed House Progressives.

On another troublesome front for the Dem Leadership, Ace of Spades posted this little tid-bit: one of the supposedly undecided no votes is now firmly decided to be still no. And from Plum Line, here is another. (Shocking, isn’t it?)

Not a single No vote has announced their switch to yes. Stupak and his gang are at no. At least one House Dem yes is now at no — U.S. Rep. Michael Arcuri, D-Utica — because he wants to have smaller, more incremental bill. And one of the co-chairs of the Progressive Caucus is leaning no. Every piece of news for the delusionals is bad, as in lose-the-vote-bad.

This is what happens when the delusionals and an irrational Speaker push a bill that is widely opposed by the public, which carries a lethal political blow-back for anyone who backs it.

And this is the really fun part. The political opposition to the bill is so great, Members of Congress can pretty much pick any single thing and use it as their excuse for voting no. Members of Congress could essentially say, I’d love to vote for ObamaCare, but I have to stay home and wash my hair. Er, I mean I’m concerned about the lack of cost control.

In fact, the political failure of the White House — lead by the President, David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett and their highly incapable lobbying shop — has tied a millstone around their fellow Dem Members necks. Millstone in tow, the White House is telling their House pawns to swim in the not-so-warm waters of ObamaCare — knowing some of them will drown.

Surprise, surprise, some Members are beginning to find their voice, and object.

The Dem herd is shifting their feet. They see Rep. Stupak confidently sunning himself in green pastures all over television, while they fight to stop drowning. Not surprisingly, Stupak is now saying his number has recently grown to include some others who voted Yes in November.

Simply put, for the Dems, the survival instinct is taking over. Others will start cutting the rope of the ObamaCare millstone around their neck, and head for the Stupak pro-life high ground, or the Grijalva either-put-the-public-option-in-or-I’m-moving-to-the-safe-and-sunny-pastures of No.

After all, the public hates the bill and wants Congress to stop working on it. Do nothing is their first choice. Members know, voting No will have the effect the public wants.

Even Howard Dean is giving them cover to vote no.

But the irrational and delusional will not let ObamaCare drift out into outer darkness. The irrationals and delusionals insist on having a vote. At least they are consistent.

But it turns out that the spell of the delusionals is finally wearing off, and Members of Congress are pushing back. And because the delusionals cannot understand or face the fact that all is lost, they continue to force their friends and colleagues in the House to jump off the cliff called we’re-going-to-vote-on-the-Senate-health-bill.

Not surprisingly, No-I’m-not-going-to-jump is going to be the dominant answer, because it is the answer that is rational and in their self-interest.

A bizarre thing is unfolding in Arkansas. The two candidates in the Democrat primary in Arkansas appear to be engaged in a mad dash… to the right.  Via Hot Air, behold the latest campaign ad from Blanche Lincoln:

 I agree with Allahpundit that the ad is well done and clever.  I’m just not sure about whether it’s very smart.  As I’ve written about extensively here, Arkansas Democrats are different from most other Democrats, and there’s room for Lincoln to point out that her opponent is funded by the sort of leftist wackos you’d expect to find in Vermont.  However, Lincoln doesn’t go after “liberals” or “outside groups” – she goes after her party.  Now, in this environment, in the state of Arkansas, that’s a great general election strategy. However, I still think a lot of conservatives in Arkansas stubbornly self-identify as Democrats and are proud of that. I’m just not sure naming the party specifically is a smart move.

Meanwhile, Bill Halter continues to disown issues that are important to labor unions and online leftist activists.  Not, mind you, that they appear to have noticed whatsoever - if anything, they appear to be even more eager to throw money toward a candidate who’s just as willing to throw them under the bus as Lincoln is:

Virtually overnight, outside groups have erased the seemingly insurmountable financial advantage Lincoln brought to the contest. On Tuesday, an umbrella of four labor groups that have long been frustrated over Lincoln’s refusal to support card check legislation — the AFL-CIO, Communications Workers of America, AFSCME and United Steelworkers of America — jointly announced they were each pledging to spend $1 million in an all-out effort to dislodge Lincoln.

 

By Wednesday morning, a coalition of liberal organizations led by MoveOn.org — which blasted out a fundraising appeal calling Lincoln “one of the worst Democratic senators” — had raised an eye-popping $1.1 million for Halter, Arkansas’s lieutenant governor, who announced his candidacy Monday.

 

The Sierra Club, meanwhile, announced it was going up with a radio ad blasting Lincoln for her effort to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases.

 

The progressive Netroots, for its part, has embraced Halter, with Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas writing, “Bill Halter will rescue the Democratic establishment from itself and help us hold a seat Lincoln is guaranteed to lose.” Firedoglake blogger Jane Hamsher prominently featured Halter in fundraising appeals on her site and blasted Lincoln as a “corporatist.”

It’s a fascinating dynamic shaping up to be sure. Apparently, there’s not going to be all that many things Halter and Lincoln will differentiate from each other on, but they’ll apparently be arguing over who’s funding their opponent.  In the end, that’s still good news for the GOP in the general.

When given the chance to vote on an amendment that would have prohibited social security surplus funds from being spent on other government programs, Senator Bob Bennett opposed this no brainer.

Streiff noted earlier David Broder beating down Dana Milbank over Milbank’s Rahm Emanuel stories.

Broder believes that Emanuel is not the source for Milbank, but it is abundantly clear Rahm Emanuel either directly or indirectly is trying to cover his bottom as the Obama administration crumbles.

It started mid-February with a hagiographic tale of woe in the Obama administration and how Rahm Emanuel is the hero and adult in the room.

A week later it followed with another look into the White House with Obama as the wimp and Rahm as the muscle. Earlier this week Rahm became the voice of reason according to the Washington Post and the Politico fawned over Rahm’s bromance with Sweet Lindsey Graham.

Reading between the lines, Rahm Emanuel is dead. He may not know it, but the man has no pulse left. His ghost is now trying to defend his legacy in the White House. Chief of Staff — the real one — Valerie Jarrett killed Rahm.

How do I know? I’ve heard from multiple people who, interestingly enough, are close to the White House who tell me that David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett are calling the shots and Obama increasingly relies on Jarrett for advice because she knows the Obamas, not necessarily Washington.

Then there are all the pro-Rahm stories in the last few weeks. Those stories do not happen randomly. There is a purpose. And the prevailing message is simple — if the President would listen to Rahm Emanuel, he’d not be in the mess he presently is in. And if Rahm is not being listened to and is now leaking that he is not being listened to, the wheels on the bus will go round and round over his body.

But the stories are right. The wheels are falling off the bus. Without a good knowledge of Washington, the Chicago Way fails in the inertia. Let’s start the Official Rahm Emanuel Dead Pool. We know Valerie Jarrett already killed him. But his body has yet to emerge from the White House.

It’s only a matter of time. And it’ll happen before summer.

Apparently, having seen the great success with with Democrats have used bogus ethics charges to bog down effective Republicans in the last several years, the Missouri Democratic Party in December decided to file a ridiculous ethics complaint against Roy Blunt for a mailer sent to his constituents about his vote on cap-and-trade legislation.  Yesterday, the bipartisan Commission on Congressional Mailing Standards has completely exonerated Blunt.

(Washington, DC) — A bipartisan commission in Washington D.C. has ruled Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) did not violate federal rules about postal mailings that explained his vote against the so-called “cap and trade” bill.

The mailer went out in mid-December and immediately drew fire from Democrats.  Edward Janosik of Springfield filed a complaint in late January with the Commission on Congressional Mailing Standards, questioning the use of public funds for the cost of the printing and postage.  Each member of Congress is allowed a certain amount of franking, or mailing, privileges to communicate with their constituents.

The same week the mailer went out, Missouri Democrat Party chairman Craig Hosmer held a news conference to raise questions about who was behind the piece.  “Missouri taxpayers deserve to know how many people this mailer went out to.  They need to know how much it cost Missouri taxpayers and they need to know who prepared the mailer.  Was it prepared by the lobbyists, special interest lobbyists or the oil industry or was it prepared by his political team?” Hosmer said at the time. 

Monday, the Commission replied to Janosik’s complaint, saying a bipartisan review found the mailer did not violate federal franking laws and that the mailing standards staff approved the piece before it was sent out.

Although this race has inexplicably not been polled very often, the Democrats have been able to see for some time that the trend lines, such as they are, are trending towards Blunt.  The Democrats can’t change the fact that their candidate is gaffe-prone and forced to defend an unpopular agenda and an increasingly negative national tide; so look for more of these bogus ethics charges in the future, especially as Democrats try to level the playing field with respect to their own MoCs retiring due to ethics violations right and left.

This is his last term.

Representative William Delahunt will not seek re-election to Congress, the seven-term Democrat will announce tomorrow, ending a nearly 40-year career in elected office and giving Republicans hope of capturing the seat, which stretches from Cape Cod to the South Shore.

“It’s got nothing to do with politics,” the Quincy Democrat said today.

Nothing to do with politics, Senator Scott Brown (R, MA) dominating his district, the generally poor atmosphere for incumbent Democrats these days, his ties to Chavez, and/or Amy Bishop. So, an appropriate response:

…and a more relevant question: who should we be targeting next?

This week, a trio of fiscally conservative House Republicans
released a document painting a dire picture of the country’s
finances. “Over the last five years,” they write, “federal
spending has increased from nearly 20 percent as a share of the
economy to 24.7 percent as the government’s expenditures
increased from $2.47 trillion to $3.52 trillion — a 42 percent
increase.”

The congressmen point out that this is the highest level of
federal spending as a percentage of the economy since we fought
and won World War II. This high spending has been accompanied by
an explosion of government borrowing, as the federal budget
deficit has ballooned from an already-high $318.3 billion in 2005
to a staggering $1.4 trillion in 2009. The national debt has
grown from $7.3 trillion to $11.9 trillion over roughly the same
period — “a five-year increase equal to the nation’s entire
accumulation of debt from the presidencies of George Washington
to Bill Clinton.”

And this will be remembered as a golden era of fiscal
responsibility compared to what is to come. As the Baby Boomers
retire, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will as presently
constitute go bankrupt. The public debt will exceed 110 percent
of the economy in 2026 and climb past 200 percent by 2040.

Worse, all these projections assume that Washington does not take
on any further unsustainable spending commitments. That means it
doesn’t take into account trillion-dollar stimulus packages,
health care bills, bailouts, or wars. To keep pace, taxes would
have to more than double and the government’s share of the
economy would increase by a commensurate amount.

To contend with this looming crisis, Reps. Mike Pence (R-Ind.),
Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), and John Campbell (R-Calif.) have
proposed a constitutional solution: on Tuesday, they unveiled a
Spending Limitation Amendment (SLA) to cap federal spending at 20
percent of the U.S. economy. Yesterday Pence and Hensarling held
a conference call making their case.

“I’m not naïve about the fact that 5,000 amendments have been
offered and only 27 have been enacted,” Hensarling said at the
outset of the call, acknowledging the hurdles ahead of
ratification. But he believed the rising public concern over
excessive borrowing and spending by Washington required a
national consensus as to the proper size of the federal
government.

The SLA could only be waived when an official declaration of war
is in effect or by two-third majorities of both houses of
Congress. As its sponsors explain in the document announcing its
release, the proposed amendment “does not promise a particular
spending plan of which programs to restrain and by how much.”
They quote columnist George Will: “The Constitution stipulates
destinations. It does not draw detailed maps.”

Under the SLA, the stipulated destination would be a federal
government that consumes only its historic average share of the
national economy. “Total annual outlays shall not exceed
one-fifth of the economic output of the United States of America,
unless two-thirds of each House of Congress provide for a
specific increase of outlays above that amount,” the amendment
reads. “Total outlays shall include all outlays of the United
States Government, except for those for repayment of debt
principal.”

Neither Pence nor Hensarling let their own party off the hook.
The massive spending increases they identify in arguing for the
SLA all began under the big-government presidency of George W.
Bush. “Some of the toughest battles I’ve fought have been against
the leaders of my own party in Congress,” says Pence. “Both
parties have shown an inability to rein in spending. We’ve seen
Gramm-Rudman, the line-item veto, and PAYGO falter… the only
force strong enough to rein in spending is our national charter.”

Hensarling says that even the strongest budget-control rules were
“only effective for a short period of time, as political pressure
grew and Congress un-enacted what it enacted.” And the Texan
maintained that the Democrats were now making things even worse:
“We were already heading toward a cliff, they [Barack Obama,
Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi] are pressing on the accelerator.”

Most proposed constitutional amendments go nowhere, especially
those with ideological implications. The Equal Rights Amendment
came close before Phyllis Schlafly and company beat it back. The
political landscape is cluttered with conservative constitutional
amendments that have similarly failed, dealing with issues
ranging from abortion to flag burning and forced busing. Milton
Friedman concluded Free to Choose with several suggested
amendments, including one similar to the SLA.

Pence and Hensarling think it will be worthwhile to even start
the debate. “The amendment for women’s suffrage probably wasn’t
seen as likely for passage,” Hensarling says. “Just having the
balanced budget amendment debate in Congress during the early to
mid-’90s frankly had a beneficial impact on spending patterns for
the time.”

But they do hope the SLA can actually be ratified. “We need the
American people expressing themselves through our cherished
national charter,” Pence says. “Other than the Ten Commandments,
the highest bar you can set is the Constitution,” quips
Hensarling. They quoted Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) as saying
“you can peg California’s decline to when California eliminated
their state spending caps.”

Without some kind of brake on federal spending, we will see the
Californication of the United States. The suffocating growth of
government will compromise America’s freedom, prosperity, and
national security — “Look at who we’re having to borrow the
money we don’t have from,” says Pence.

Even without an amendment, it is a fiscal crisis that could have
been averted by heeding the Constitution in the first place.

There is something way off balance in the character of
Barack Obama. Something in the realm of zealotry, with a touch of
megalomania, and perhaps an authoritarian impulse too. He
combines  Alinskyite
tactics and
outlook with an air of self-assumed moral
superiority in a way that fails to respect the usual, small ‘r’
republican limits on American presidents. All presidents, of
course, think at some level that they know best about policy
choices. But almost none of them (Woodrow Wilson perhaps
excepted) were so willing to disdain, in pursuit of such radical
policy upheavals, such intense and overwhelming public opinion as
has been evident in the current health takeover attempt.

Grandiose plans are one thing. Most presidents fall prey to
them. It’s another thing entirely, though, to refuse to accept
the ordinary republican restraints on implementing grandiosities
without public support, and furthermore to do so by A)
bending
existing
rules; B) directly
violating multiple personal pledges; C)

ignoring constitutional limits; D) directly lying; and E)
demanding that other politicians sacrifice their own political
careers.

A little humility would be nice. So would a sense that he
answers to the public rather than to some self-proclaimed (and
self-determined) imperative of history and/or call of destiny.
What Obama seems to fail to understand is that his own, overblown
self-assurance and self-mythologizing is actually hampering his
own goals. One need not stretch too far to observe that one of
the factors adding to public opposition to Obamacare is a growing
public disquietude about the lack of responsiveness, the
authoritarian certitude, and the zealous near-fanaticism of the
government that would run the new health-rationing system –
all character traits as embodied by the president
himself.

As Obama ignores public opinion while pushing for
full-fledged Obamacare in one fell swoop, and as he insists that
he knows best and that the public is too ill-informed to know
what is good for it, he directly — as the very symbol of the
state — reminds the public of what they distrust about
government in the first place and of why they don’t want
government interfering in a realm as personal as health care.
These feelings are especially fierce because Obama is trying not
to change something with which most Americans are dissatisfied,
but instead to change (and arguably take away) a system in which
some
four-fifths of the public remains
generally satisfied with their own personal level of
care.

For most Americans, Obama doesn’t seem to be giving them
something they don’t have, but instead to be taking away
something they already value.

Worse, he and the increasingly unpopular Harry Reid and
Nancy Pelosi are doing it while hectoring the public, insulting
(at least by implication) the public by belittling the public’s
understanding of the issue, and treating opposition as if it is
guided by evil motives rather than sincere concerns.

Passage of this health overhaul/takeover under these
circumstances would be frightening. The harm it would do the
political system would be almost as great as the harm it would
cause the health system. The American republic was designed to
give a minority a way to slow down major changes buoyed by
popular passions. It was not designed to give a minority the
power to implement major changes against popular passions.

The Obamites are doing the latter. They are turning
American
checks and balances on their heads. They
are using temporary parliamentary advantages for a permanent
power grab. The Obamites are dictating to Americans rather than
representing them. Revolutionizing, not just evolving. Ruling,
not serving.

And it’s not just on health care. They work against public
opinion on matters of criminal justice, terrorist treatment, race
preferences, bank bailouts and corporate takeovers, overall
spending, domestic welfare requirements, fossil fuel development,
missile defenses, advocacy of American interests (and pride!)
abroad, and on the whole panoply of oft-unstated attitudes that
cohere as American exceptionalism.

This is not the way the system is supposed to work. This is
not the American government we grew up with. This is not the
national ethos that we love.

Yet Obama pushes on, perfectly cognizant of what he’s
doing, intentionally upending the American Way. This is a form of
mania — megalo- or otherwise. And, by any and all legitimate
means, it must be stopped.

The poor black and Latino children attending Sacred Heart School
in the Columbia Heights section of Washington, D.C., probably
don’t know that Century Foundation Senior Fellow Richard
Kahlenberg
thinks their participation in the D.C. Opportunity
Scholarship and other voucher plans merely helps to make
“’separate-but-equal’ work.” Chances are, they don’t even know
about the contention among progressives and even otherwise school
choice-supporting centrist Democrats that public funding of
parochial schools is somehow a plot among conservatives to cut
government spending and violates the Constitution’s ban against
the intermingling of church and state.

 Nor should they or their parents care one way or
another. Although the District’s traditional public school system
is undergoing a much-needed overhaul led by Blackberry-touting
reform maven Michelle Rhee, just 49 percent of its high school
freshmen graduate four years later; a mere 12 percent of its
8th-graders in 2007 had reading skills rated “proficient” or
higher on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the
federal test of academic performance.

These families shouldn’t have to wait until Rhee turns
around the district’s performance in order to avail their
children of opportunities for high-quality academic instruction.
Their interest in improving the quality of education for their
children should outweigh concerns about the racial and ethnic
segregation that they choose. And their hard-earned tax dollars
shouldn’t remain captured by a district that isn’t delivering the
goods.

Centrist and progressive Democrat school reformers are
certainly familiar with these arguments. After all, they have
successfully used them in beating back efforts by teachers
unions, traditional school districts and some civil rights
activists (usually the kind that spend more time on manicured Ivy
League campuses than in gritty urban locales) to stamp out and
restrict the existence of public charter schools, the
publicly-funded-privately-operated entities that have become
their favored form of school choice. And they should keep it in
mind whenever vouchers (and similar tax credit programs) come up
for discussion. If nonprofit- and for-profit operators can be
trusted with public funding through charters, then school
vouchers used for Catholic and private schools shouldn’t be a
problem.

Vouchers and Catholic schools are once again in the
headlines thanks in part to an effort by U.S. Sen. Joseph
Lieberman this week to revive the D.C. Opportunity program after
it was all but shut down by Congressional Democrats last year.
Despite attempts by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and others
to quash discussion among Democrats about the program — which
helps 1,716 students attend Catholic and other private schools in
the District — calls for its revival continue to come not only
from conservative Republicans, but even from the likes of
disgraced former mayor Marion Barry, who launched his career as a
member of the local school board. A similar plan may be
considered in Illinois thanks to the decision by controversial
state Sen. James Meeks to reverse his past opposition to
vouchers. 

It also comes as the nation’s Catholic school systems, no
longer able to count on nearly-free labor from clergy and lacking
the taxing power granted to traditional school districts for
financing their (equally-unsustainable) teacher compensation
packages, continue their secular decline. Just yesterday,
Baltimore’s archdiocesan school system announced
that it would close 13 of its 80 school districts — nearly
all of them in the most-impoverished inner city areas. The fact
that Mob Town has just 34 charter schools — and that Maryland is
one of the most-restrictive states for starting charters — means
that 2,152 soon-to-be former Catholic school students have even
fewer options for high-quality instruction. This has Thomas B.
Fordham Institute scholar
Andy Smarick wishing that “we could give a little attention
to preserving the high-performing, high-poverty private schools
that are disappearing before our eyes.”

Certainly the school reform movement — especially centrist
Democrats — can claim stunning success in getting policymakers
and even parents to embrace their prescriptions of standardized
tests, stricter accountability measures, mayoral control of
school districts, and expansion of charter schools. Even
President Barack Obama has embraced reform through his $4.3
billion Race to the Top effort; the program has helped convince
legislators and governors in states such as California to turn
their back on their allies and eliminate restrictions on the
geographic and demographic growth of charters. But even as they
have spurred the creation of new charters, reformers are letting
dissipate the other choices for poor urban and rural families to
escape the worst traditional public education has to
offer.

The number of Catholic schools in the United States — 42
percent of which are located in big cities — has declined by 12
percent between the 1998-1999 and 2008-2009 school years,
according to the National Catholic Educational Association. But
it isn’t just diocesan and parish schools shutting down. Eleven
hundred sixty-two urban parochial schools shut their doors
between 2000 and 2006. The impact of these closures on urban poor
and even middle-class families cannot be underestimated,
especially given the success of parochial schools in improving
student academic achievement, stemming dropouts and even sparking
college completion. The average nine-year-old Catholic school
student scored 8 percent higher on the 2007 NAEP than his
counterpart in a traditional district; that gap remained constant
among middle-school and high school students tested.

It is especially problematic given that other school choice
options aren’t nearly as plentiful. Intra-district choice options
such as magnet schools — long touted by Kahlenberg and others as
the best solution over vouchers and charters — hardly exist.
When they do, these options usually end up being used by
middle-class households, who use their strong political
connections (and exploit ability tracking systems that serve as
the gateways into such schools) to assure seats for their own
children.

Charters — the more-preferable school choice option among
reformers — have generally proven to be better than magnets in
promoting choice and improving academic achievement; a study
released last March by the RAND Corporation shows that
children attending charters in Chicago and Florida are 7-15
percent more likely to attend college than those attending
traditional public schools. But, until recently, many states have
restricted the number and location of charter schools. And even
with Race to the Top, teachers unions and school districts have
assured that charters may not reach urban neighborhoods. Last
month, legislators in Alabama, at the behest of the National
Education Association affiliate there, rejected the latest effort
to allow the opening of charters.

None of this, of course, sways progressive critics of
vouchers (and ultimately, of private and parochial schools
altogether). This isn’t surprising. After all, Kahlenberg once

declared that “the purpose of public schools is not to
satisfy the individual preferences of parents.” But it doesn’t
explain why centrist Democrats such as former New America
Foundation scholar Sara Mead
thinks vouchers “just change where pupils are allocated among
existing schools.”

Certainly their discomfort with handing money over to
religious operators comes into play. But as pointed out by
Fordham in a 2008 report on reviving urban Catholic schools, the
federal government already pours $3 billion annually into
Catholic Charities alone. And don’t forget that school reformers
are more than happy to back charters, which are operated by
nonprofit and even for-profit organizations. Considering that as
much of the decline in the number of urban parochial schools is
related to the competition for instructors — fueled largely by
the dealmaking between school districts and teachers unions that
have made teaching the most-lucrative profession in the public
sector — a redistribution of wealth back to the urban parents
(who must pay for both private schools out of pocket and
traditional districts out of payroll withholding) wouldn’t seem
all that unfair.

There are efforts underway to preserve Catholic schools,
even if they aren’t exactly providing religious education. In
D.C., the Archdiocese of Washington has
spun off seven of its schools and converted them into
charters; a similar effort is likely to take place in
Indianapolis, where two schools are considering a conversion. But
in the process, the schools do end up losing some of the faith
and values that have helped make Catholic education successful in
the first place. To be sure, American public education has always
provided something similar to the religious instruction in
parochial schools in the form of civics (including pledging
allegiance to the flag); in fact, teaching students about
American values was one of the foremost reasons why public
schools were created. This is the
argument that may come to play in the next year
as Brookwood Presbyterian Church, a Columbus, Ohio church, sues
state officials after they rejected its efforts to sponsor a
charter school.

Given the success of charters, Centrist Democrat school
reformers can no longer argue against voucher plans. And if the
ultimate goal is to assure that every child, no matter their race
or wealth of their parents, has opportunities for high-quality
education, then preserving Catholic and other parochial and
private schools (and in turn, supporting voucher plans) is no
longer just an option. 

President Barack Obama will soon be entering the lion’s den of
Middle East politics with the same conviction that has guided all
his predecessors — that the solution to the Arab-Israeli
conflict lies in the Two-State Solution, leading to the early
establishment of a Palestinian state.

The received wisdom has it that the Palestinians wish above
all things to have a state of their own, but that their fervent
wishes are frustrated by Israeli delaying tactics, such as
endless arguments over West Bank settlements, security fences,
water rights, and the like.

While the Israelis probably do not want a Palestinian state
on their borders, an entity that could easily become Hamastan II
(and yet another missile launching platform), there is increasing
evidence that the Palestinians themselves are of two minds about
the prospect of their own statehood.

The first piece of evidence is the unchallenged observation
that Palestinian leaders have rejected or sabotaged every
proposal for statehood since 1947. In that year the Palestinians
rejected the UN-sponsored division of the former British mandate
into Jewish and Arab states on the grounds that they did not want
to share Palestine with the infidel Jews. Instead of developing
trheir own state, they tried through armed conflict to eradicate
the nascent Jewish state. Their leaders took this big step just
two years after the end of the Holocaust; and, guided by Hitler’s
associate Haj Amin Al-Husseini, their implicit goal was to
continue the slaughter. But if you start a war of politicide plus
extermination you had better win it; otherwise, like Hitler, or
Tojo, or the Palestinians of 1948, you will very likely end up
with a bombed-out wasteland, or — in the Palestinian case — as
a defeated rabble of landless refugees.

The Palestinian leaders did not draw the obvious
conclusions from what they call their “Naqba,” their
catastrophe. Instead, the next time a state was practically
handed to them, they again turned it down, in favor of war with
the Jews. Thus, when Clinton and Barak, reviving the stalled Oslo
Accords of 1994, made Arafat an offer he couldn’t refuse — 95%
of the West Bank, control of the Temple Mount, border
adjustments, etc. — he refused it, while giving an ultimatum
that only a thoroughly defeated Israel could accept: the
resettlement of some five million “refugees” within the
boundaries of the Jewish State. No diplomatic pause to negotiate
this new demarche: just “take it or leave it,” and Arafat
flounced out, to fire up the second, soon to be crushed,
Intifada.

Why don’t the Palestinians learn their lesson? Why won’t
they accept the grant of statehood? To repeat, perhaps because
they don’t really want their own country? There are, after all,
many bounties attached to their current status, perks that would
disappear under the condition of statehood.

This is the age of the sanctified victim; and any person or
group who can claim that title is automatically in a state of
grace. Nobody is allowed to “blame the victim,” and so these
lucky unfortunates can follow any course, however bloody, so long
as they can blame their violence on their victimized condition.
Convincing much of the world — including too many Jews — that
they were the embodiment of the new Christ, the latest targets of
Jewish savagery in the holy land, the Palestinians year ago
captured the victim’s high-ground, and have since worked their
claim for great profit. They are the darlings of the UN and of
European elites: The West Bank hums with idealistic foreign youth
eager to interpose their bodies between Palestinian flesh and
Israeli tanks, as well as with foreign NGOs eager to drip healing
valuta over the physical, psychological and financial
wounds of this martyred folk. Unable to beat the Jews militarily,
the Palestinians are winning the moral victories, and these are
leading to decisive political victories as an outraged world
threatens to sanction and boycott Israel.

But under statehood, the Palestinians will no longer have
their special charisma as the world’s premier victims, innocent
agrarians suffering under a harsh occupation. When the fickle
world turns its attention to the latest victim du jour,
their welfare benefits are likely to be sharply cut,

Then too, the wiser Palestinians, who remember Arafat and
his predatory crew, have their own good reasons for quietly
resisting statehood. They realize that, should they gain their
own country, externally imposed Israeli rule would be replaced by
internally based oppression, by the corrupt or fanatic leaders
who — via factional warfare and the Arab politics of
assassination — typically reach the top in their
societies.

Thus far, we have been looking at the Palestinians’
practical reasons for avoiding statehood. They don’t want to lose
their world-celebrity status, nor the funding that goes with it,
and they don’t want either the likes of Hamas forcing Sharia law
on them, or the likes of Arafat robbing them blind. But the
Palestinian resistance to statehood has also less rational but
equally compelling bases.

Foremost among these is the legacy of collective shame.
With the possible exception of the Japanese, no culture is so
vulnerable to a sense of shame and humiliation as the Arab world.
Even in the 21st century, Arabs continue daily to lament Crusades
that occurred nearly a thousand years ago. They still feel shame
over the loss of Spanish Andalusia (”Andaluz” to the
Arabs), their last European redoubt, evacuated in the 15th
century. More recently, Palestinian Arabs have been exposed to
traumatic humiliation by their defeat during the Israeli War of
Independence. I remember how they initiated that war with febrile
enthusiasm, confident that their magnificent Islamic warriors
would sweep away the puny, cowardly Jewish opposition, certain
that the Palestinians would inherit all of the Holy Land. But
when push came to shove, instead of chasing the Jews into the
sea, it was the majority of Arabs who ran away from the poorly
armed Israeli Hagana (a militia that added insult to Arab injury
by fielding women).

For example, the local Arabs had cleared out of Sidn’a Ali,
a fairly prosperous village on the Sharon Plain, before our
Palmach contingent had even arrived in their neighborhood. They
ran on the rumor of our coming, and before our sparsely armed
troops could have evicted them. The same drama was enacted across
Palestine. A vast Palestinian and leftist PR apparatus has been
developed to deny this truth, but the Naqba was largely
self-inflicted.

The refugees’ reluctant hosts in neighboring Arab states
were not as sympathetic as Europe’s Leftists: “You Palestinian
whores! You sold your land to the Jews, and then ran away!!” The
refugees, who had shamed not only themselves but also the whole
Arab nation, were not generally accepted as citizens of the Arab
countries to which they fled. Instead, they were penned up in
fetid camps, where many remain to this day.

The calculus of Shame dictates that the Palestinian stigma
of defeat can only be removed by a bloody victory over the Jews
who inflicted it. By the same token, their state cannot be handed
to the Palestinians by some benign international arbiter, or by a
generous Israeli government. These are people who elect Hamas,
who celebrate the “Victories” of Hezbollah, and who dance in the
street when Israeli teenagers are blown up in a pizza parlor. The
gift of a state that was not won in battle would only increase
Palestinian shame. The Israelis tore their state out of the heart
of Palestine; in order to get the Palestinians dancing again,
their shame must be exported, to become Israeli shame. The
Palestinian state must — in an act of bloody reparation — be
torn out of the heart of Israel. Until a defeated Israel begs for
terms, or better yet, is utterly destroyed, no final peace is
possible, and no state otherwise gained can be acceptable to the
Palestinians.

President Obama should realize that his dream of a
Palestinian state can only be realized after a new, hi-tech
Holocaust of Jews. These unfortunates would most likely die under
a cloud of missiles from Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Gaza, even as
Obama counsels them earnestly against any “disproportionate
reaction.”

Back in the days of World War II the Soviets had one former
foreign minister, Maxim Litvinov, and a current FM, Vyacheslav
Molotov, to share the two-faced duties of chief foreign
representative of the USSR. Litvinov would butter up the
politicos in Washington and London while Molotov was Mr.
Nyet in Moscow. Today, instead of the good cop/bad cop
system, there is the current “man for all seasons,” Sergei
Lavrov.

Lavrov’s style is an interesting and effective combination
of smooth, reasoned manner along with an unbending fault-shifting
technique that borders on bombast. His manner well reflects the
present Medvedev/Putin foreign policy itself. This policy has at
its core the residue of the old Soviet communist fear of NATO and
American influence in European affairs.

Why Moscow should fear Washington’s role in European
security matters is hard to understand when it is patently
obvious that the Obama Administration is so little concerned with
Europe. Yet this is the motivating factor behind the Russian
desire to create what has been described as Dmitry Medvedev’s
pan-European security treaty. If the implications of Mr. Lavrov’s
behind-the-scenes comments can be credited, Moscow’s perception
is that the United States is driving NATO toward building an
offensive capability challenging Russia’s “natural” border of
Eastern Europe all the way to and through Ukraine.

How the Kremlin could divine a conflict-avoiding Obama
government to be supporting a NATO push eastward is explicable
only if the Russian leadership seriously believes it needs a
neo-Cold War propaganda line to offset its domestic fears of the
future. The fears are legitimate even if the Moscow reaction is
not. But even these legitimate fears do not justify the type of
exaggerated response emanating from the Russian foreign and
defense policy establishment.

It is true that there is a serious potential fall in the
Russian population. It is true that the Russian economy has not
grown in proportion to the country’s new and important role as an
energy exporter. It is true that Islamic extremism threatens a
large portion of Caucasian Russia. But such circumstances do not
justify the dredging up of old attacks on the West’s “aggressive
ambitions.” There is more reason to fear Iranian efforts to
infiltrate and exploit the Moslem minority in Russia and the
growing Chinese economic influence in Eastern Siberia than the
imagined dangers of a U.S.-led NATO aiming to destabilize
Russia.

As great as may be the temptation to dismiss Russian
foreign policy mutterings by Sergei Lavrov as simply a replay of
earlier Soviet international agitprop, it is important
to recognize the Russian historical paranoia that goes back to
the 19th century. There is an opportunity now for Russia to take
great strides in just the areas about which its leaders most
rant–strategic defense. But they have chosen to ignore the
opportunity.

The program of U.S. anti-missile batteries placed in Poland
with radar in the Czech Republic aimed at countering Iranian
nuclear missile systems could have been used by Moscow to begin
an entirely new defense alignment with Washington. Instead Putin
chose to characterize these purely defensive weapons as carrying
the potential of aggression against Russia. It was deemed more
valuable to the Kremlin to revive fears of U.S. and NATO
aggression than to accept the advantages of a mutual defense
posture.

In the same manner the Lavrov/bad cop phase of Russian
diplomatic schizophrenia has treated nuclear arms reduction with
a far less welcoming attitude than it deserves. Of course this is
all directed from the current Putin/Medvedev tandem leadership,
but nonetheless the “bad cop” side of their foreign minister is
once again the same very useful device it was seventy years ago
under Vyacheslav Molotov.

This analogy holds true for other periods of contemporary
Russian history. Khrushchev tried the Molotov demeanor with the
young John F. Kennedy during their meeting in Vienna and then
reversed himself the next year when he pulled the Soviet missiles
out of Cuba. At present the Russian Foreign Ministry is working
overtime to show its two faces at once on Iranian matters,
simultaneously smiling in order to keep up Russia’s commercial
relationship with Tehran, while showing toughness in support of
threatened UN sanctions over Iranian nuclear weapon
development.

Although this game of offering opposing characterizations
of Russia to the world may strike Moscow as a clever way to
protect its own ambitions, two-faced diplomacy doesn’t really
work well in the globalized system in which we must all operate.
Operational tacking aside, it’s very important for great
countries like Russia to aspire to clear and consistent foreign
policies. How else can the rest of the world, West and East,
formulate its own consistent positions in return toward Russia.
Sergei Lavrov, and any successor to him, must be allowed to bury
the ghosts of Litvinov and Molotov.

It was a sunny, warm March day, the first truly pleasant day of
the year, but there was a dark cloud on the horizon.

I had just finished a brisk walk around the block, enjoying
the sun on my untanned face and the crisp winter air in my lungs,
when I stopped at the mailbox. There was the usual junk:
circulars, an ominous pink power bill, some coupons for junk
food, and something that looked curiously like one of those
magazines sent to AARP members.

It was one of those magazines sent to AARP
members! There was the standard geezer actor on the cover
grinning through his dentures (this time Michael Douglas), along
with the stock articles: which adult diapers are the most
absorbent, where to vacation free from obnoxious college kids on
spring break, how to start your own geriatric motorcycle
gang.

Granted, some of the articles interested me, like where to
vacation without obnoxious college kids, but that was beside the
point. Why was AARP sending me, of all people, their crummy
magazine? I’m only 46, for crying out loud. Yes, I know “only 46″
is a relative term. To my 16-year old son, I doubtless resemble
some recently unearthed fossil from a bygone era. But I’m a long
way from needing a walker. Most days.

Or am I?

That’s how they get you, those dadgum AARP folks — them
with their fancy, high-priced marketing gurus. They plant little
seeds of doubt and up springs the green shoots of uncertainty.
Who knows, maybe they’re right? Maybe I am getting old.

See what I mean?

Until that fateful trip to the mailbox, I had thought of
myself as middle aged. After all, the life expectancy of the
American male is 78. So half of that would be 39.

Maybe that’s not a good way to look at it. A better plan is
to see middle age not as an exact age, but more of a range. Like
35-45, more or less.

Or maybe the range shouldn’t be ten years, but twenty.
Let’s say 35-55. Why not? I wanted to see what the experts
thought, so I went online, which proves two things: that I don’t
know where to find experts, and that I’m still middle aged. A
real AARP member couldn’t even figure out how to turn on a
computer, let alone look something up. According to
the Oxford English Dictionary, which I
would never dream of second guessing because it has both Oxford
and English in its name: “the period between youth and old age
[is] about 45 to 60.” So, on the authority of the venerable and
estimable OED, I’ve barely tasted middle age. Take that
AARP.

Less reassuring was the definition of the U.S. Census
Bureau, which, even though it is a government agency run by
sluggish bureaucratic drones, still gets to call the official
shots. The Bureau lists two periods of middle age, a sort of
lower middle age of 35 to 44, and an upper middle age of 45 to
54. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to this division other
than the general idea that, as far as bureaucrats are concerned,
the more categories the better.

OF COURSE, YOU don’t have to be a retired person or a
person at retirement age to be a member of AARP. You need only be
50 years old, which I will be soon enough, thank you. And, as my
much younger girlfriend never fails to point out, there are
benefits to AARP membership. Such as “senior” discounts for
travel and dining. Oooooh, I can’t wait to sign up for one of
their “exciting spiritual journeys and pilgrimages”
to the Yakov Smirnoff Theater in Branson, Missouri.

Needless to say, I was, for the rest of the afternoon, in a
blue funk, which soon darkened into a brown study. I turned up
the thermostat and wrapped myself in a warm quilt and I sat in my
rocking chair and fumed. My girlfriend brought me some chamomile
tea and some stewed prunes and put on my Tommy Dorsey records to
try to cheer me up. And there I sat, glaring at that damn AARP
magazine in my lap, until, at length, I sighed and surrendered
the last of my youth. “Might as well read this article about how
to avoid telemarketing scams,” I muttered to myself.

That was when my girlfriend leaned over and said, “You
blind old idiot. This magazine isn’t address to you. It’s address
to somebody named Gertrude Freen.”

“What?” I shouted. “Quick, fetch me my readin’
glasses!”

Sure enough, the post office had gotten the address
wrong.

I jumped up and I threw off my quilt and I swept up my
girlfriend in my strong, virile arms and I danced her around the
living room, just like when we were kids.

For a good half minute, anyway.

The Wolfman remake, directed by Joe Johnston and
starring Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, and Hugo
Weaving, is a mostly faithful and sometimes worthy update of the
original, 1941’s Universal classic starring Lon Chaney, Jr. and
Claude Rains. The move alters a number of things, but the basic
story is the same: Lawrence Talbot (del Toro) returns to his
ancestral home in England after 20 years away upon learning of
the death of his brother, reconciles uneasily with his estranged
father (Hopkins), and deals with his cursed family history. Out
at night investigating his brother’s death, Lawrence is attacked
by a rampaging, wolf-like beast and wounded; most moviegoers can
guess the rest of it from here, and but for an unexpected family
back story, they’ll guess right. 

In a sense, the predictability is refreshing, as it signals
the filmmakers’ desire to revive a genre, not cynically co-opt it
for other purposes. The film looks great: it changes the time
period from the 1940s to the 1890s, and the Victorian trappings
are perfectly suited to a story about curses and the
supernatural, and where most of the action takes place on the
fog-bound English moors. Del Toro is an appealing and convincing
successor to Chaney’s haunted Talbot.

As for the wolf himself, well, this is 2010: you can
imagine the effects will look pretty good, and they do, thanks to
famous makeup man Rick Baker, who also did An American
Werewolf in London. Baker is a longtime admirer of
Universal’s legendary makeup artist Jack Pierce, who
created and applied the iconic looks for Boris Karloff in both
Frankenstein and The Mummy and for Chaney in
The Wolf Man. Baker wanted to update that look, and when
you see his final creation you understand why he is regarded as a
modern master.

But during production Baker
complained that the filmmakers had decided to do
the transformation scenes — the highlight of any werewolf
picture, when viewers watch the character change from man to wolf
— in computer-generated imagery. Pierce, of course, did not have
access to CGI, and his transformation scenes required a
painstaking physical process. Baker wanted to make an attempt at
emulating that effort. But the film’s real sin in the use of CGI
is not so much in the transformation scenes as in the action
scenes, when the wolf man catapults around like a superhuman
creature. All is thunderous movement and blinding speed and
improbable leaps in the air, including leaps between buildings in
an urban scene that makes one think he is watching
Spiderman with fur.

In this regard The Wolfman becomes the latest
entry in the long-running trend to make all such fantasy films
into superhero movies. I suppose the reason why the superhero
approach always wins out is simple enough — it’s popular; in
other words, it pays — but maybe someday a director will create
a monster who, while no longer an ordinary man, is still subject
to the mortal world that the rest of us inhabit. Most of that
nuance is lost in The Wolfman and other films of this
kind.

Nuance is also thrown to the winds when it comes to the
film’s depictions of violence, which revels in ripped flesh and
blood, relying on sensory assault to do what suspense and
character development did in the days before computers made us
all lazy.

But there are other aspects to like. The movie achieves one
fine moment of tension in its most memorable scene, which also
seems a sly homage to King Kong. Lawrence, who by now
has been institutionalized, is wheeled into a medical class,
strapped to a wheelchair, to demonstrate that his lycanthropy is
an illusion from which he has been cured by psychological
counseling (which in truth consists of brutal and sadistic
torture, including a submersion treatment that seems a clear
allusion to waterboarding). But as the audience knows, Lawrence’s
problems are not in his head. The scene has the same
kind of churning tension and cathartic violence as the scene in
King Kong when Kong breaks
out of his shackles on a New York stage.

Director Johnston clearly reveres the Wolf Man
original (if not 1935’s
Werewolf of London, the genre’s true
ancestor, though it’s mostly forgotten now). He’s brought back
the gypsies who played such a key role in the 1941 film, and
though there is no one to fill Maria
Ouspenskaya’s shoes as Maleva, the old woman who sees
Talbot’s fate clearly, Geraldine Chaplin (daughter of Charlie)
does a solid enough job reprising the role. The remake even
features torch-bearing bands of men on the hunt for the monster,
a staple of the old Universal films. That one detail alone put me
in a forgiving mood.

The Wolfman is also blessedly free of
the kind of ironic mockery that so many remakes of old classics
seem unable to resist. There are no wolf jokes, no agitprop
feminist characters comparing lusty men with ravenous beasts;
even the Talbot family dog is principally used to illustrate the
changes in Lawrence, not to provide a canine comic foil. In fact,
The Wolfman’s very earnestness, as refreshing as it is,
may have met its match in the ironic consciousness of today’s
audience. Throughout the movie, we hear the distinctive wolf howl
echoing across the desolate moors; this works well so long as we
don’t see the wolf man doing it. But when we do — and again,
it’s in that urban scene, where the trappings are all wrong –
it’s hard to suppress a chuckle or the suspicion that one has
stumbled onto an excellent beer commercial.

Irony really is this culture’s silver bullet, against which
even well-meaning tribute can only defend itself so much.

CHOICE WORDS
Re: Jeffrey Lord’s
An Open Letter to Michael Smerconish and Jennifer
Stockman:

Toward the end of Jeffrey Lord’s open letter,
addressed to Michael Smerconish and to me (February 24, 2010), he
poses the central question of his marathon missive: “At some
point, one has to ask, when is enough enough?” My sentiments,
precisely. And I’m not just talking about Lord’s rambling
assertion that my position as a pro-choice Republican is somehow
anti-choice. What I and other reasonably-minded Republicans have
had enough of is the party’s extremes exercising disproportionate
influence on policy and political decision-making.

Mr. Lord is right on one point: the abortion debate has
been costly and divisive for our party and for our country. But
he points his finger in the wrong direction.

Moderates like myself and others in the Republican Majority
for Choice organization support a Big Tent GOP,
which focuses on common sense solutions — not division. We have
members who are personally anti-abortion but support the ideal
that families and individuals should make choices best for them,
whether that be adoption, parenthood or abortion. Furthermore, we
support proven and effective ways to reduce the number of
abortions through access to prevention methods, family planning
and education instead of laws that would criminalize women who
seek abortions.

Mr. Lord’s intellectual calisthenics make no contribution
towards solving biology’s basic dilemma: women will
become pregnant, often unintentionally, and they sometimes will
do so when it is virtually impossible for them to successfully
raise children, with or without a partner. On top of that,
pregnancy itself can be fraught with danger to a woman’s health
and well-being. At those moments, women need to consult with
their doctors, their families and their own consciences — not a
political party looking to round up votes in the next
election.

Facts are stubborn things. Studies show that abortion rates
in countries in which the procedure is illegal are similar to
those in which it is legal. The starkest divergence between
places where abortion is legal and illegal is the safety of the
procedure and the number of woman who may die. The consequence of
Roe is that American lives have been saved and
preserved. Legal abortions are safe abortions — even if we
personally aren’t happy that they occur.

But this assumes that Mr. Lord spends time thinking about
the health and well-being of American women. He
seems more interested in the intellectual back and forth about
what constitutes a conservative, so let’s return to that line of
argument.

I was raised on the idea that less government frees the
individual to live a productive, entrepreneurial, responsible
life. Uncle Sam should stay out of your bank account, your
bedroom and your doctor’s office. Giving states the option to ban
abortion, as Mr. Lord argues, would be the
antithesis of this Republican ideal. Legislatures
and governors would have the power to dictate the very dynamics
of the American family: its size, its economic prospects, even
its physical condition (depending on the mother’s ability to
carry and bear a child, and the child’s own health once it’s
delivered).

Is this the conservative position in 2010 America?

Mr. Lord asserts that I support a judicial philosophy that
is “expressly designed to circumvent the real choices the America
people wish to make,” which, by extension, makes me anti-choice.
He attempts to back up that nonsense with a misguided
dissertation on the court’s history with slavery. He conveniently
ignores more salient decisions, such as Brown v. Board of
Education, which declared separate public schools for black
and white children to be unconstitutional (I’m assuming he agreed
with that bit of judicial activism). Brown upended state
laws that denied black children access to equal educational
experiences. Similarly, Roe prevents states from
legislating away the rights of women. Access to quality family
planning — which shapes the entire lives of adults and children
— should not be dictated by where you live or how much money you
have.

Unlike Mr. Smerconish, I have not left the Republican
Party. As a voter and activist I still believe in the Party’s
philosophy of limited government. My views are completely
consistent with that philosophy. Where I differ with the
fundamentalists’ right is their failure to
acknowledge the views that I and so many other Republicans hold,
and to work with us toward common goals.

The GOP’s recent surge is an exciting development for those
of us who believe in a vibrant two-party system. However, this
momentum will grind to a screeching halt if Party leaders pursue
litmus tests for candidates, with abortion being at the top of
the list. GOP victories came from the middle, where the American
people happen to be. Groups like the Republican Majority for
Choice remain central to those victories because we signal to
voters that the right to personal freedom remains one the most
important GOP ideals, and one which we will not
easily give up to a vocal minority.

Mr. Lord, Mr. Lincoln would be proud.
– Jennifer Stockman
Former chair,
Republican Majority Coalition for Choice

Jeffrey Lord
replies:
Thanks to Jennifer Stockman for responding.

First, whether she realizes it or not — and the “not”
seems operative here — while Ms. Stockman cites the GOP’s
“extremes” she is quick to call her side in this
almost-40-year-old mess “reasonably-minded Republicans.” She
seems honestly unaware that to many she and the Republican
Majority Coalition for Choice have repeatedly and deliberately
book-ended themselves as the other extreme in this equation,
making them appear as the “Non-Republican Minority Coalition for
No Choice.” There is nothing “moderate” or reasonable about
denying choice on abortion policy to the American people.

Typical of this mindset is Ms. Stockman’s line that implies
I have not spent time “thinking about the health and well being
of American women.” Sigh. The obvious counterpoint of the
pro-life activist (which, I should say, I am decidedly not) is to
wonder whether Ms. Stockman spends any time thinking about the
health and well-being of the millions of babies whose lives have
been snuffed out because of Roe. Both lines are, well,
out of line. Yet typical of the raw emotion that Roe
brings to the surface, typical of its tendency to push good,
rational people to extremes, one of which Ms. Stockman occupies.
And for the record, I harbor no such unkind thoughts about
Jennifer Stockman who, I believe, is the mother of, I’m sure, two
wonderful daughters and doubtless loves babies.

A few points:

•  The Big Tent
argument. Sounds wonderful, infers broadmindedness. Really? In
2004 pro-life Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Rick Santorum had done
the Big Tent thing and provided crucial support for pro-choice
then-Republican Senator Arlen Specter in a tight primary fight
with the conservative Pat Toomey. Specter won, and promptly
thanked Santorum. In 2006 Ms. Stockman went out of her way to
oppose Santorum, running ads against him and editorializing
against him in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
In effect, Ms. Stockman vividly demonstrated the real idea behind
the Big Tent. Which is to say, the Big Tent is for me but not for
thee. She in fact believes religiously in a litmus test on
abortion for candidates, and vigorously demanded a litmus test
for Santorum. She talks the talk but refuses to walk the
walk.

• It startles
to see that Jennifer Stockman says I “conveniently” ignored
Brown v. Board of Education in my list of Supreme Court
decisions that, as with Roe,
deliberately violated the Constitution. I confess I simply
believed that Ms. Stockman understood Brown and no
explanation was needed. Obviously not so. Far from being an
example of judicial activism, Brown was precisely the
judicial antidote to the judicial activism that was Plessy v.
Ferguson, which, in the style of Dred Scott and
Roe, conjured a right for states to segregate, a direct
violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Judge Robert Bork,
famously pro-life and very much the originalist, called
Brown  a “great and correct decision,”
which it was. Not because it was morally correct — which it also
was. But because it righted the constitutional wrong that was
Plessy, specifically violating the plain intent of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Plessy,
like Roe, was judicial
activism. Brown is
its opposite.

• To airily
dismiss the idea that “legislatures and governors” — i.e., the
people’s chosen representatives directly elected by those same
people — should set abortion policy, while defending, Roger
Taney-style, the right of judges to write in their own personal
abortion policy prescriptions that deny choice to Americans, is
morally wrong but more to the point constitutionally wrong. To
update the essence of the quote from dissenting Justice Curtis in
Dred Scott, one woman’s common sense is another woman’s
nonsense. Which is why we have a Constitution and the rule of
law. The law is not about Jennifer Stockman or Sarah Palin. It’s
about — the law. Which both Jennifer Stockman and Sarah Palin –
and all the rest of us — have the opportunity to write.

• The
“conservative position” in 2010 America should be to let the
American people chose the abortion policy they wish to
have.

Last.

With the greatest of respect I think Jennifer Stockman
should take a leadership role in resolving this issue for good
while upholding her point of view. Let me suggest the following
language for a proposed 28th Amendment to the
Constitution.

The right of a woman in the United States to have an
abortion is unlimited.

Two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states, and
the abortion issue is resolved in a simple, quite plain
Constitutional fashion, with the American people getting to chose
the abortion consensus they prefer by supporting or not
supporting it. Surely she could get the support of President
Obama and Speaker Pelosi and, I bet, even the pro-life Harry
Reid, not to mention pro-choice Republicans who are, she insists,
the Republican Majority.

No fuss, no muss. No government in the bedroom. No judges
in the womb. True to the Constitution. Choice for all Americans,
not just judges. Women free at last, as embedded specifically in
the Constitution itself, to “consult with their doctors, their
families and their own consciences — not a political party
looking to round up votes in the next election.” And most
attractive, surely, it would be the end of those irritating
pro-lifers for good.

The problem? Ms. Stockman told Sean Hannity she opposed
abortion at the very last stage of a pregnancy. Which makes
her…drum roll please…not just an opponent of a Constitutional
amendment legalizing abortion, but one of those irritating
pro-lifers after all.

Over to you Jennifer.

Thanks for writing.

Headline writing is fun.  One can take information and twist it to fit a political agenda.  The bubble media does it all the time as witnessed by its feeding frenzy last week and earlier this week when Jim Bunning wanted to amend a piece of legislation to provide temporary funding for unemployment insurance so that the needed money would be paid for with cuts in other areas instead of by additional borrowing.

So using their journalisitic standards, the Democrats in the Senate voted against working Americans who are vulnerable and struggling.  The vicious act by the uncaring Democrats occured when they voted against a piece of legislation offered by Scott Brown to create $80 billion in tax cuts to help 130 million working Americans paid for with existing unused pork package money.

Working Americans have been given the shaft by Obama and the Democrats who have bailed out big banks, big autos and big union bosses.  Obama was more than happy to give huge bonuses to his big bank CEO cronies, but the Democrats can’t give a tax break to the middle class.

Why do Democrats hate the workers of America?  Why did they refuse to help them?  They have attacked the most vulnerbale among us.  Where is the outrage in the bubble media?  How may people will starve because of the cruel and dehumanizing act of the Democrats?

See how much fun being a journalist can be?  You can simply write whatever you want, and then claim moral superiority if attacked as being partisan.

More information has come to light that indicates a cover up by Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer over a sex scandal involving a Democraitc member of the House.  According to a report from Steny Hoyer’s office yesterday, Hoyer was informed of allegations of sexual harassment by New York represntative Eric Massa on February 8th.  Hoyer directed Massa to inform the ethics committee within two days, or Hoyer would do so.

But, the ethics committee is only today, forming a sub committee to investigate the allegations.  That is some three weeks since Hoyer’s ultimatum, and comes only after the allegations were made public yesterday.  A reasonable conclusion would be that Pelosi and Hoyer tried to cover up the allegations of the sexual harassment, and only after it became public have they acted to correct the situation. Pelosi’s denial that she knew about the problem after Hoyer said that House leadership knew, only adds smoke to a fire that the bubble media is ignoring.

Update,Pelosi said her office was never "formally notified".  Her staff was told about "rumors" by Hoyer’s office, but they never told her about the "rumors".  Hoyer’s statement however, made it clear that it was no rumor.