THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE

On the heels of the "White House -- CIA leak" investigation, which concluded that no laws were broken (but charged one administration staffer with perjury), liberals are attempting to parlay that non-starter into a much bigger political brawl. Their charges have no substance, and are completely contrived to keep Republicans off balance through next year's midterm elections.

Sens. Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid and Dick Durbin have accused President George Bush of lying about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, insisting he "lied us into war." They are even floating the suggestion that he be impeached.

Here are their accusations:

"The Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the intelligence to justify a war that America should never have fought." --Ted Kennedy

"We all know the Vice President's office was the nerve center of an operation designed to sell the war and discredit those who challenged it. ... The manipulation of intelligence to sell the war in Iraq...the Vice President is behind that." --Harry Reid

"I seconded the motion Sen. Harry Reid made last week. Republicans in Congress have refused, despite repeated promises, to investigate the Bush administration's misuse of pre-war intelligence, so Senate Democrats are standing up and demanding the truth." -- Dick Durbin, who recently compared U.S. troops to the Nazis and Pol Pot.

Naturally, the Democrat's media lemmings are reporting these charges as de facto truth, but there is considerable evidence that these Demo-gogues and their colleagues believed Iraq had WMD long before President George Bush came to Washington. Here is a small sample of that evidence from the Clinton years:

Bill Clinton: "If Saddam rejects peace, and we have to use force, our purpose is clear: We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."

Madeleine Albright, Clinton Secretary of State: "We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and the security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction."

Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Advisor and Classified Document Thief: "[Saddam will] use those weapons of mass destruction again as he has ten times since 1983."

Harry Reid: "The problem is not nuclear testing; it is nuclear weapons. ... The number of Third World countries with nuclear capabilities seems to grow daily. Saddam Hussein's near success with developing a nuclear weapon should be an eye-opener for us all."

Dick Durbin: "One of the most compelling threats we in this country face today is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Threat assessments regularly warn us of the possibility that...Iraq...may acquire or develop nuclear weapons."

John Kerry: "If you don't believe...Saddam Hussein is a threat with nuclear weapons, then you shouldn't vote for me."

John Edwards: "Serving on the Intelligence Committee and seeing day after day, week after week, briefings on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and his plans on using those weapons, he cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons, it's just that simple. The whole world changes if Saddam ever has nuclear weapons."

Nancy Pelosi: "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons-inspection process."

Sens. Levin, Lieberman, Lautenberg, Dodd, Kerrey, Feinstein, Mikulski, Daschle, Breaux, Johnson, Inouye, Landrieu, Ford and Kerry in a letter to Bill Clinton: "We urge you, after consulting with Congress and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions, including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."

After President Bush was sworn into office in 2001, his administration was handed eight years worth of intelligence analysis and policy positions from the Clinton years -- you know, the years of appeasement when Saddam was tolerated, when opportunities to take out Osama bin Ladin were ignored, as was the presence of an al-Qa'ida terrorist cell in the U.S. -- which reared its head on 9/11.

In the weeks prior to the invasion of Iraq, Democrats, who had access to the same intelligence used by the Bush administration (much of which was compiled under the Clinton administration), were clear about the threat of Iraq's WMD capability.

Ted Kennedy: "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."

John Kerry: "I will be voting to give the president of the U.S. the authority to use force if necessary to disarm Saddam because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security. ... Without question we need to disarm Saddam Hussein."

Hillary Clinton: "In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock. His missile-delivery capability, his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists including al-Qa'ida members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."

Carl Levin: "We begin with a common belief that Saddam Hussein...is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."

Al Gore: "We know that he has stored nuclear supplies, secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."

Bob Graham: "We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has and has had for a number of years a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction."

For the record: Here's a partial list of what didn't make it out of Iraq before the OIF invasion: 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium, 1,700 gallons of chemical-weapon agents, chemical warheads containing the nerve agent cyclosarin, radioactive materials in powdered form designed for dispersal over population centers, artillery projectiles loaded with binary chemical agents, etc. Assuming Irag had no WMD because only small caches were recovered after Operation Iraqi Freedom began is perilously flawed logic. That, in no way, affirms what he spirited out through Iran and Syria before OIF.

So, ask Ted, Dick and Harry, what is their real agenda?

One might fairly conclude that they are willing to reduce U.S. national security to political fodder by accusing the President of the United States of "lying." Problem is, the President had no political motive for Operation Iraqi Freedom -- only a legitimate desire to fulfill the highest obligation of his office -- to defend our liberty against all threats.

Ted, Dick and Harry, on the other hand, have plenty of political motivation for their most recent antics -- and all of America should look upon these disgraceful Demo-gogues, and anyone who supports this dangerous folly, as traitorous louts.

On Veterans Day, President Bush noted: "Today our nation pays tribute to our veterans -- 25 million vets.... At this hour, a new generation of Americans is defending our flag and our freedom in the first war of this century. This war came to our shores on the morning of September 11, 2001. ... We know that they want to strike again and our nation has made a clear choice. We will confront this mortal danger to all humanity. We will not tire or rest until the War on Terror is won. ... [I]t is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. ... We will never back down. We will never give in. We will never accept anything less than complete victory."

"Deeply irresponsible"? He is too kind.

Stuff!

Leaks:

For months and months we have heard how outrageous it was that somebody in the Bush administration leaked Valerie Plame's name to the media. A special prosecutor was appointed...and no crime was found to have been committed regarding the "outing" of Plame. All indications are that her identity was an open secret, and even her husband was running around telling people she worked for the CIA. But since the imagined "scandal" involves a Republican president, we will never hear the end of it.

So it is with a bit of hypocrisy that we see the Democrats jump up and down about the national security implications of the leaking of Plame's name....but when it comes to somebody leaking the existence of secret CIA prisons...well, they don't care about that as much. The CIA has started an investigation into who leaked the information about the prisons to the Washington Post. One could assume there are covert operatives working in those prisons at some point....having their locations outed would put them in danger.

Not that anyone on the left cares. They're more concerned with debating the existence of the prisons themselves. Suddenly their outrage about leaking classified information has disappeared. What happened? Liberals only care about national security when it serves their political purposes. As outraged as the left was over the leaking of the name of one pencil-pusher at the CIA, they just can't seem to work up an ounce of indignation over the outing of an entire operation abroad.

And what if it is found that a Democrat leaked the information to the Washington Post about the prisons? Will Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi take to the floor of the House and the Senate and demand they be fired? I wouldn't hold my breath, though I would like for them to hold theirs.

HARRY REID IS DERANGED
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to the White House and demanded that President Bush promise not to pardon Scooter Libby. He then made the most ridiculous statement that shows either a.) he has no grasp of the facts in the Plame investigation or b.) he is capitalizing on the general public's ignorance and he knows the media won't call him on it. Here's what he said:

"We're demanding President Bush make a commitment to the American people that he will not pardon Scooter Libby, who was involved in this mess, nor will he pardon anyone involved in this mess. Unless a pardon is ruled out by President Bush, the American people will certainly not learn the truth." What?

Not learn the truth about what? Does he not know that Fitzgerald found no evidence that a crime was committed regarding the outing of Valerie Plame? The truth has been learned, Senator Reid. Of course, he knows that. Furthermore, it is an outrageous request that they never made of Bill Clinton.

Where was the letter to Clinton asking him not to pardon his cronies? What about his last-minute pardon of Henry Cisneros...his former HUD secretary convicted of lying to the feds? They seem to have forgotten about that one. Well ... they haven't actually forgotten, but their hatred of George Bush overpowers all other emotions, including love of country and concern over the threat of Islamic terrorism.

ISLAM IS A RELIGION OF PEACE----Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigghhhttttttttttttt.

The people who shot those school children in the back in Chechnya were ... Muslims.

The people who cut off the heads of those Christian school girls in Indonesia were ... Muslims.

The sniper who terrorized the Washington beltway area a few years ago was a .... Muslim.

The people who flew those jets into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon were ... Muslims.

The people who invaded those American-built schools in Baghdad and killed the teachers were ... Muslims.

The so-called "pirates" who attacked that Miami-based cruise ship off the coast of Africa were ... Muslims.

The people who are rioting in Paris, shooting at police and paramedics, are ... Muslims.

The people who are rioting and burning cars in Germany are ... Muslims.

One of the first things you should do if you want to stay alive and healthy is to identify the people out there who want you dead. Pay attention.

It is now being reported that the three bombs that went off earlier today in Jordanian hotels were detonated by suicide bombers. The confirmed death toll is at least 67. (See Power Line News.) The photo below was taken at a wedding reception at the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman, just moments before one of the mass murderers set off his bomb.

The fathers of both bride and groom, at the far left and right, were murdered. The bride and groom were both wounded, but, thankfully, survived. The groom, Ashraf Mohamed al-Akhras, said from his hospital bed:

I lost my father and my father-in-law and I saw many other dead. This is a horrible crime. The world has to know this has nothing to do with Islam.

I understand his sentiment, but the fact is that this mass murder, like all the others committed by al Qaeda and like-minded groups, has everything to do with Islam. It is up to sane Muslims everywhere to reclaim their religion from the sadists and fanatics.

MARY MAPES--STUCK ON STUPID

What a difference a year makes, eh Mary Mapes?

Just think…a year ago you were a big shot producer at the “Tiffany Network” of CBS. You had gofers at your beck and call. A nice, fat, expense account. A couple of awards under your belt. The fawning admiration of your colleagues. Dan Rather even said hello to you in the CBS cafeteria.

Now, you’re a wreck:

I was extremely battered,” she said in an interview yesterday. “I’d had months and months of having my head kicked around a soccer stadium by much of the Western world. I needed some time to regroup.”

Just goes to show that the more elevated your own opinion of yourself, the farther you fall when you blow it. And Mary, let’s face it; you screwed the pooch big time.

But don’t worry. It appears you are landing on your feet, as your ilk usually does. And what better parachute to hang on to than a chatty, tell-all book in which everyone is accused of being against you, or undermining you, or trying to destroy you. It makes for great copy if not very accurate story telling. But hey! At this point, who’s keeping track?

“I’m a human being; I do things wrong from the first breath I take in the morning,” Mapes said. “I don’t in any way feel I am without responsibility in this. . . . I probably shouldn’t have been as pliable or as malleable as I was” when her bosses were finalizing the story. “This is a huge shortcoming. I didn’t know how to say no. . . . I was trying very hard to please them.”

There, there, little one. You also seem to have trouble saying “no” to partisanship. Remember that call to Kerry campaign mouthpiece Joe Lockhart offering to put serial liar and mentally disturbed Bill Burkett in touch with the Kerry campaign? Of course, that was just in furtherance of the story, right? It had nothing to do with trying to get the opposition party to help you smear the President of the United States in a time of war. After all, you’re just a victim of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

“Truth and Duty” unloads on Rove, the White House senior adviser, calling him “the mastermind of the Republican attack against the story.” Asked about this, Mapes said Rove was “an inspirational figure” for the critics. “I’m not saying I had any proof at all” of his involvement.

I am continually fascinated with the left’s fear of Karl Rove. It reminds me of the way the Union Army looked upon Robert E. Lee during the civil war. Prior to the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864, Union Generals were fretting that Lee would slip around their flank as he had on numerous occasions. The usually phlegmatic Ulysses S. Grant exploded upon hearing this saying “Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time.” This is the way the left sees Rove – as some kind of magic man who can not only cast a spell to bewitch the American people but also call upon his minions to do his evil bidding. I wonder if Captain Ed, the Powerline boys, Charles Johnson, and Michelle Malkin – the biggest conservative bloggers – laugh out loud when they read that they’re in Rove’s pocket and can be activated whenever The Evil One feels the need.

It takes a special kind of stupidity to believe that you are right when everyone else on the planet says you’re wrong:

She is disdainful of Moonves, the CBS president who ordered the outside investigation. “He doesn’t know journalism from dirt farming,” Mapes said. In the book, noting that Moonves courted and then married “Early Show” anchor Julie Chen, she writes: “I used to say everything Les knows about journalism had been sexually transmitted. Now I know even that hasn’t taught him much.”

She says Viacom, CBS’s corporate parent, threw her overboard because Chief Executive Sumner Redstone feared regulatory retaliation by the Bush administration.

There’s a clinical term for that kind of fantasy; paranoid delusion. There is not one shred of evidence that the Bush White House has ever even contemplated using the FCC to “intimidate” networks. In order to posit that notion, you’ve got to make it up out of whole cloth; something Mary Mapes is an expert at doing.

She’s also an expert at the put down:

Mapes is dismissive of Marian Carr Knox, the 86-year-old former secretary to Bush’s late squadron commander, who told Rather she believed the memos were fake but the substance of the documents was true. Mapes called her “maddening” and “a quite self-righteous typist.”

Being an expert in “self-righteous,” I can see where Mary Mapes would recognize that personality trait – especially in an 86-year old woman who by all reports knew a helluva lot more about the authenticity of those memos than you did.

But that still doesn’t answer the question of “why?” Why go after a story that’s 30 years old?

“Bush didn’t keep his promise to the country,” Mapes writes. “He swore he would fly military jets until May 1974 . . . .”

No Mary, he swore to serve the country until May of 1974 , something he did honorably which is more than can be said about you . The last time I looked, the oath taken upon entering military service does not specify anything like “I will faithfully drive a tank” or “I will gladly work as a PR flack” or even “I will command a swift boat for a couple of months and then carry on with traitorous anti-war activities while still in uniform.”

And what about us, your favorite people, the bloggers?

Perhaps her greatest fury is reserved for the “vicious” bloggers who pounced on the “60 Minutes II” report within hours—and who she believes provided the map that major news organizations, including The Washington Post, essentially followed.

“I was attacked, Dan was attacked, CBS was attacked 24 hours a day by people who hid behind screen names,” Mapes said. “I may be a flawed journalist, but I put my name on things.” Some of the key bloggers, however, posted criticism under their own names.

Okay, let me get this straight. The “map” supplied by bloggers to newspapers like the Washington Post contained information vetted by thousands of individuals with more expertise than any of the “experts” you retained to authenticate those memos (whose judgment you ignored anyway) and you have the unmitigated gall to say that bloggers were “attacking” you? Could it be because you were standing by a bogus story that you had cooked up for partisan political purposes?

The story of Mary Mapes is classic tragedy. There are two elements that mark the difference between tragedy and melodrama. The first is the main character’s “tragic flaw” which is usually one of the seven deadly sins. In Mapes case, you can take your pick; pride, envy, or anger will do. But it is the second element in tragedy that is the most difficult to achieve for both the playwright and the actor playing the tragic character. And that is the character’s cluelessness regarding why they are suffering this downfall. Look at the great tragic characters in literature and you will see that they go to their deaths without any idea of why their world collapsed around them. In that respect, their sin is always the sin of overweening pride and ambition.

Reaching for the brass ring carries with it the danger that eventually, you’ll fall of the horse. Mape’s fall may have been written in the stars long ago when she ceased being any kind of an impartial journalist and decided to become an advocate. It may have been emotionally satisfying for her to see herself on top of the battlements waving a bloody shirt. But in the end, her belief in her own moral superiority was her achilles heel. How can anyone so good she might have asked herself, be wrong?

The fault, dear Mary, lies not in our stars but in ourselves.

Dear Yasser,

Publicly, I'm condemning the blasts in Amman.

Privately, I'm thankful for them.

That means I can cancel my trip there and spend more time with you on the anniversary of your death.

I hear that meadows upon meadowns of flowers have been laid bare to make the garlands and wreaths that shall be heaped upon your tomb.

A fine, fitting place for the flowers to spend their final days than stealing nutrients from the soil and occupying land that should be used for launching rockets and building training camps.

Love,
Kofi

Joe Wilson is still a Fat Lying Weasel

Within the journalistic trade, only Stephen Hayes at the Weekly Standard and Clifford May at National Review Online have devoted significant attention to this story. The story has received extraordinarily little attention from the bigfoot journalists of the mainstream media, who have by and large contented themselves with peddling the canard that the Bush administration was out to "punish" Wilson by "outing" his wife.

Today's Wall Street Journal provides yet another instance of a journalistic outsider -- Washington attorney Victoria Toensing -- pursuing the relevant facts in the underlying story: "Investigate the CIA" (subscription may be necessary for access to this column). Ms. Toensing puts me in mind of the little boy who pointed out that the emperor wore no clothes. Toensing outlines the facts hiding in plain sight that point to the real scandal the lamestream media have declined to cover or pursue:

• First: The CIA sent her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger on a sensitive mission regarding WMD. He was to determine whether Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake, an essential ingredient for nonconventional weapons. However, it was Ms. Plame, not Mr. Wilson, who was the WMD expert. Moreover, Mr. Wilson had no intelligence background, was never a senior person in Niger when he was in the State Department, and was opposed to the administration's Iraq policy. The assignment was given, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, at Ms. Plame's suggestion.

• Second: Mr. Wilson was not required to sign a confidentiality agreement, a mandatory act for the rest of us who either carry out any similar CIA assignment or who represent CIA clients.

• Third: When he returned from Niger, Mr. Wilson was not required to write a report, but rather merely to provide an oral briefing. That information was not sent to the White House. If this mission to Niger were so important, wouldn't a competent intelligence agency want a thoughtful written assessment from the "missionary," if for no other reason than to establish a record to refute any subsequent misrepresentation of that assessment? Because it was the vice president who initially inquired about Niger and the yellowcake (although he had nothing to do with Mr. Wilson being sent), it is curious that neither his office nor the president's were privy to the fruits of Mr. Wilson's oral report.

• Fourth: Although Mr. Wilson did not have to write even one word for the agency that sent him on the mission at taxpayer's expense, over a year later he was permitted to tell all about this sensitive assignment in the New York Times. For the rest of us, writing about such an assignment would mean we'd have to bring our proposed op-ed before the CIA's Prepublication Review Board and spend countless hours arguing over every word to be published. Congressional oversight committees should want to know who at the CIA permitted the publication of the article, which, it has been reported, did not jibe with the thrust of Mr. Wilson's oral briefing. For starters, if the piece had been properly vetted at the CIA, someone should have known that the agency never briefed the vice president on the trip, as claimed by Mr. Wilson in his op-ed.

• Fifth: More important than the inaccuracies is the fact that, if the CIA truly, truly, truly had wanted Ms. Plame's identity to be secret, it never would have permitted her spouse to write the op-ed. Did no one at Langley think that her identity could be compromised if her spouse wrote a piece discussing a foreign mission about a volatile political issue that focused on her expertise? The obvious question a sophisticated journalist such as Mr. Novak asked after "Why did the CIA send Wilson?" was "Who is Wilson?" After being told by a still-unnamed administration source that Mr. Wilson's "wife" suggested him for the assignment, Mr. Novak went to Who's Who, which reveals "Valerie Plame" as Mr. Wilson's spouse.

• Sixth: CIA incompetence did not end there. When Mr. Novak called the agency to verify Ms. Plame's employment, it not only did so, but failed to go beyond the perfunctory request not to publish. Every experienced Washington journalist knows that when the CIA really does not want something public, there are serious requests from the top, usually the director. Only the press office talked to Mr. Novak.

• Seventh: Although high-ranking Justice Department officials are prohibited from political activity, the CIA had no problem permitting its deep cover or classified employee from making political contributions under the name "Wilson, Valerie E.," information publicly available at the FEC.

Toensing concludes:

The CIA conduct in this matter is either a brilliant covert action against the White House or inept intelligence tradecraft. It is up to Congress to decide which.

Boortz on target

THOSE EVIL OIL COMPANIES AND THEIR PROFITS

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the last week or so over the reports from major oil companies of increased profits. These reports have given many Americans the opportunity to exhibit their total ignorance when it comes to matters economic. For this we can thank our wonderful government schools, where basic education in economics is, for all practical purposes, non-existent.

October survey shows that 72% have an unfavorable opinion of oil companies. In the Sunday "Vent" in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution several of Atlanta's more poorly educated citizens chimed in with their thoughts on oil companies and their profits:

"When do the oil company profits for the quarter become proof of price gouging?"

"Oil company profits show we have been hosed."

Oil company profits can not in and of themselves be proof of price gouging, neither can they be proof that we've been "hosed." Once again the "Vent" serves as a platform from which people can demonstrate their ignorance.

Now .. just what have we read about oil company earnings. Generally, we've read that oil company profits are up. This, if you read the public opinion polls, is evidence of evil. How dare the oil companies allow their profits to go up? Now .. a little test. Ask someone in your office, school ... whatever ... what the difference is between profits and profit margins. See if they can come up with an answer. Simply put, your profits are the money that's left over from gross revenues after you pay the costs of doing business. Profit margins are the percentage of gross revenues that are left over after you pay those costs. I would bet you five bucks against a stale donut that 95% of seniors in our illustrious government high schools couldn't tell you the difference between the two ... and it will be those 95% who are screaming bloody murder about oil company profits.

Now ... for those of you who went to government schools, let's expand on the explanation. Let's say that the total gross revenues for a company for one year equal $1,000,000. That's a million bucks. This company spends $930,000 to bring in that million. The difference between the one million and the $930,000 is $70,000. That's your profit. Divide the $70,000 by the one million and you get 0.07, or 7%. That's your profit margin. Now let's say that the very next year the company sells twice as much product the second year and brings in two million bucks. Let's also say that the cost of making those products doubles as well .. to $1,860,000. How much money did you have left over? Those of you who went to government schools get out your calculators .. the rest of you can figure it out in your head. You have $140,000 left over. That's your profit.

Wait! Your profits have doubled! How dare you? What are you doing, price gouging? These are excess profits -- windfall profits -- and the government ought to step in immediately and take them away from you, you greedy capitalist pig!

Hold on ... before we get carried away with our little price gouging rant here, let's grab those calculators again. Divide the $140,000 in profits by the $2,000,000 in gross receipts and what do we have? Why, it seems the answer is once again 0.07, or 7%! The profits have doubled, but the profit margin remains exactly the same!

The problem here is that, thanks to the hideous education the vast majority of Americans have received at the hands of the government, few people know the difference between a profit and a profit margin. Whey they read that oil company profits have gone up they have no educational basis upon which to balance the fact that oil company revenues have also gone up ... thanks to the increase in the price of crude oil. Revenues go up. Profits go up. It's not really that hard to understand.

Now, as I've said, that explanation is rather simplistic. The tragedy is that most Americans don't understand the concept of profits and profit margins even at that basic level. Someone will now come along and point out that the oil company profit margins have been rising along with the profits themselves. They're right. You see, costs don't necessarily double when revenues do. There are some costs that remain fixed even when the prices for raw materials (crude oil) increase. This will mean that profit margins will also increase, though not anywhere near as much as profits themselves. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Hardly. Just where do you think the energy companies, including the oil companies, get the money they need to explore for new sources of oil, to build new refineries, and to conduct research on additional or alternate energy sources? That money comes from profits. If profits increase due to high demand met by a scarcity of product the oil companies will be in a position to use increased profits to expand production and to search for new sources of oil. If the government seizes these profits, as suggested by Hillary Clinton, then those dollars would not be available for energy company investments into expanding our energy resources.

Hillary's brilliant idea of seizing profits does not come as a surprise to many. After all, Hillary was identified by her college professors as a budding young socialist many years before she achieved fame as Bill's "wife." Hillary's idea is for the oil companies to hand over about $20 billion a year to the government to be used for "research" and to subsidize consumers. The subsidies, of course, would become just another government entitlement that Democratic politicians would use to buy votes. The research? Well, sad to say there are actually people out there who think that the government can do a better job conducting research to insure our future energy needs than can the private sector. The impact of state education is widely felt.

Let's explore Hillary's profit-seizure idea a bit more. Another source of funds for oil companies to use for exploration and the development of additional energy resources would be the money that comes from investors. These investors purchase shares of stock in oil companies because they believe that their investments will appreciate in value and, in some cases, will pay dividends. If the government bows to the paranoia and anti-capitalist ignorance of the state-educated masses and seizes those profits, what then will be the reason to invest in these oil companies?

Look. I'm not trying to hammer the government schools here; but the more I think about it the more I'm convinced that so many of the problems that we face today as a nation are the direct or indirect result of the abysmally poor education most Americans get from their state-operated schools. It's clear that vast numbers of Americans have scant knowledge of the role of prices in the allocation of resources by the marketplace, and the relationship of profits to those prices. Politicians, like Hillary Clinton, exploit that ignorance to enhance their personal political power at the expense of our economic liberty.

A Preview Of The Miers Confirmation Hearings

Oy Veh!

Deep Thoughts With Judith Miller

"I just think what that Karl Cove guy did to Mallory Flame like, sucks, you know?"

How in God's name did we ever take Al Gore seriously

In all the noise of the past week, with various individuals and groups saying regrettable things in a unfortunate ways, there has been a misconception created, that Conservatives are just the same as Liberals when it comes to emotional instability. But I think there are still significant differences, and so it is appropriate to re-examine a major figurehead of the Liberal movement, a man who holds considerable sway among the Left, and whose total lack of either candor or consistent principles makes it a chilling thought indeed, to consider that he very nearly came to claim the White House.

The following comments were made in a prepared speech to The Media Center’s “We Media” conference last Wednesday in New York City. The speaker was Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States, and present co-owner of a small independent television network, and celebrated speaker for both the Democratic Party and the “Progressive” political movement.

“Are we still routinely torturing helpless prisoners, and if so, does it feel right that we as American citizens are not outraged by the practice? And does it feel right to have no ongoing discussion of whether or not this abhorrent, medieval behavior is being carried out in the name of the American people?”

Just in case you ever wondered whether Al Gore and Michael Moore have experimented with the Mind Meld, I present this exhibit in hysteria and rumor-mongering.

“In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was - at least for a short time - a quality of vividness and clarity of focus in our public discourse that reminded some Americans - including some journalists - that vividness and clarity used to be more common in the way we talk with one another about the problems and choices that we face. But then, like a passing summer storm, the moment faded.”

A telling comment. The moment Gore seems to prize so highly, was when Mayor Nagin predicted 10,000 dead in New Orleans, and was screaming obscenities on a radio show at the President. It seems Gore is fondly reminiscing about the unbalanced Cindy Sheehan yelling about New Orleans being “occupied”. In those few days, the MSM picked up on that hysteria and began to parrot false rumors and harangue the President for not somehow foreseeing the disaster. Once it became obvious that the rescue and relief efforts were effective, and that casualties were far below predictions, and that local and state officials were far more culpable for the conditions creating the chaos and delay, then as Mr. Gore said, ”the moment faded”. Leave it to Al Gore to miss a mob frenzy.

“Our founders knew all about the Roman Forum and the Agora in ancient Athens. They also understood quite well that in America, our public forum would be an ongoing conversation about democracy in which individual citizens would participate not only by speaking directly in the presence of others – but more commonly by communicating with their fellow citizens over great distances by means of the printed word. Thus they not only protected Freedom of Assembly as a basic right, they made a special point - in the First Amendment - of protecting the freedom of the printing press.”

This is a great irony. Since newspapers and television networks broadcast to the public but do not allow for effective feedback and true communication from the public, this statement effectively proves that the Internet is the true great hope for democratic speech. Yet somehow Gore misses that obvious truth, and instead tries to build this statement into support for the chattering hairpieces of the television networks.

“Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers and, for the most part, resisting the temptation to inflate their circulation numbers. Reading itself is in sharp decline, not only in our country but in most of the world. The Republic of Letters has been invaded and occupied by television.”

Note that Gore makes no attempt to discover the reason why newspapers are losing readership. He simply assumes that the problem is with the public, rather than the bias of the newspapers. Note also that while Gore takes a distinct dislike to the syndicates and conglomerates of some cable and radio networks, he pays no attention at all to the growing monopoly of newspaper syndicates, who tightly control content and allowed opinion in their papers.

“Television first overtook newsprint to become the dominant source of information in America in 1963. But for the next two decades, the television networks mimicked the nation’s leading newspapers by faithfully following the standards of the journalism profession. Indeed, men like Edward R. Murrow led the profession in raising the bar.”

Only a Liberal could possibly believe that the television news of the 1970s and later was, in any way, honorable or observant of a professional standard.

“It was universally understood that the ultimate check and balance for American government was its accountability to the people. And the public forum was the place where the people held the government accountable. That is why it was so important that the marketplace of ideas operated independent from and beyond the authority of government.”

A distinctly ironic statement. That statement is completely true, and proves the need and virtue of the blogosphere. Yet Gore uses this statement not to support the New Media, but to try and defend the Old media oligarchy, as we saw for so many years under the Rather, Jennings, and Brokaw regimes.

“Instead of the easy and free access individuals had to participate in the national conversation by means of the printed word, the world of television makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation today.”

Again ironic. That statement, taken by itself, is very true, and would be a valuable caution to network executives and television managing editors. Instead, Mr. Gore misses the fact that the “world of television” which has so cut people off from the information and discourse they need is largely comprised of and controlled by the likes of CBS, CNN, and the Mainstream Media.

“Inexpensive metal printing presses were almost everywhere in America. They were easily accessible and operated by printers eager to typeset essays, pamphlets, books or flyers. Television stations and networks, by contrast, are almost completely inaccessible to individual citizens and almost always uninterested in ideas contributed by individual citizens. Ironically, television programming is actually more accessible to more people than any source of information has ever been in all of history. But here is the crucial distinction: it is accessible in only one direction; there is no true interactivity, and certainly no conversation.”

In that statement Mister Gore has, however accidentally, touched on the value and importance of blogs. Though the word “blog” never once escaped Gore’s lips, nor could the man who thought so much of himself that he implied he played a leading role in making the Internet a reality, bring himself to acknowledge the New Media and the effect of citizen journalists. So it is, that every salient point made by Mr. Gore is established by accident rather than intent.

“ Rush Limbaugh and other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves.”

Personally, I find Rush Limbaugh a bit of a pompous sort, and more than once he has handled himself in a manner I found unhumorous. That said however, I have heard Limbaugh’s show enough times to know that the man takes pride in open debate on most days, even keeping Fridays open to the topic of the audience’s choice. His callers regularly include Liberals and opponents to Limbaugh’s position, who are invited (“head of the line”, promises Rush) to express themselves and who are never insulted, degraded, or cut off so long as they can remain civil. Comparing Rush’s show to others like Larry King or Al Franken, I maintain that it is a particularly false claim to say that Rush Limbaugh has ever been an advocate of Hate, nor tolerant of hate speech; Rush has always maintained an atmosphere of tolerance and open speech, and far more than any show on the Left with a comparable audience . While his opinions are strong and he will mock the Left for contradictions and hypocrisy, not once has Limbaugh been guilty of the kind of violence advocated by Alec Baldwin in 1999, nor the race baiting advocated by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, nor the outright lies promoted regularly by Moore and Sheehan. In no sense can Mr. Gore’s charge be said to stand up to inspection, nor has Gore properly acknowledged the extreme hatred voiced so often by the Left.

And for Talk Radio in general, it truly speaks volumes that where he ought to be praising the first truly interactive current-events forum in media, both for its commercial success, accessibility and even field for participation, Mr. Gore instead derides the entire venue. Note further that Gore does not dare to suggest what he would put in its place, knowing that the sheer idiocy of specifically advocating the return of the monolith of Big Media Networks would be too much for even him to pursue with a straight face.

“The present executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations: from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. They placed a former male escort in the White House press pool to pose as a reporter - and then called upon him to give the president a hand at crucial moments. They paid actors to make phony video press releases and paid cash to some reporters who were willing to take it in return for positive stories. And every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President”.

That statement right there, I submit, is prima facia evidence that Al Gore has indeed gone over the edge. Not only are the charges baseless and without evidence, the irony of complaining about the blogs’ style of commentary by comparing them to Nazis is priceless. Never mind that blogs have nothing of the sort of resources of the major networks or the political parties, or that there are easily hundreds of blogs, on both the Right and Left which regularly criticize the President, his policies and his nominations. Mr. Gore has managed to indict his own positions, even as he attempts to slander the myriad individuals who write their own blogs without direction or organized control. The blogs are the sole independent reporters and analysts in the modern media, and Mr. Gore tacitly admits as much by his attempt to slam them all with the same vitriolic tantrum.

“ As recently stated by Dan Rather - who was, of course, forced out of his anchor job after angering the White House - television news has been “dumbed down and tarted up.”

Only a CBS executive or leading Democrat could now believe that Rather was anything but a criminal who got caught in his own fraud. Fascinating though, that in a speech about the responsibilities of the media, that Mr. Gore never once saw fit to acknowledge the multiple attempts by a major television network to influence a federal election.

“And it really matters because the subjugation of news by entertainment seriously harms our democracy: it leads to dysfunctional journalism that fails to inform the people. And when the people are not informed, they cannot hold government accountable when it is incompetent, corrupt, or both.”

Does anyone else here find it a strange thing that Al Gore, who once used a Buddhist Temple to launder his campaign funds from offshore contributors when he was Vice-President, and who was in all likelihood well aware of the goings-on at the Rose Law Firm and the various “special” arrangements made for the Clinton’s real estate deals, has the temerity to bring up the spectre of corrupt government? Does anyone else here, aware that the Clinton-Gore Administration was responsible for preventing the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden in 1997, and for creating the wall of bureaucracy between the CIA and FBI that prevented cooperation which could have allowed the Able Danger information to prevent the 9/11 attacks, find Mr. Gore’s statement just a bit disingenuous?

“We must ensure by all means possible that this medium of democracy’s future develops in the mold of the open and free marketplace of ideas that our Founders knew was essential to the health and survival of freedom.”

In the end, people must choose for themselves what information they desire, and by what means they wish to acquire it. Al Gore is as arrogant as he ever was, to presume that a handful of elites should decide what the public will be allowed to choose, or to pronounce actual participation by the public in news analysis as unhealthy, even as he attempts to paint Dan Rather and similar frauds as courageous defenders of the First Amendment. Blogs and Talk Radio and Cable Television were not imposed on anyone, but thrive because there is a market, a hunger, for them. People like being able to express their own opinions, they prefer being able to sort through the information and make their own decisions. And I am merely exercising my own First Amendment rights to clearly state that Al Gore is very wrong in his assertion that our democracy is “hollow”; on the contrary, our democracy is very sound and growing, and it is vain, hollow men like Al Gore who fear its strength and vitality. But as long as men like Gore can find a ready audience in the Old Media, and sponsors to support their destructive agenda in a campaign against the rights of ordinary people, we must make sure we know the ways and mind of our enemies, and for the good of the nation we must stand together in defense of our common rights, for our common hope.

Harriet Miers

President Bush is a politician trained in strategic thinking at Harvard Business School, and schooled in tactics by experience and advice, including the experience and advice of his father, whose most lasting political mistake was the nomination of David Souter. The nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court shows that he has learned his lessons well. Regrettably, a large contingent of conservative commentators does not yet grasp the strategy and tactics at work in this excellent nomination.

There is a doom-and-gloom element on the Right which is just waiting to be betrayed, convinced that their hardy band of true believers will lose by treachery those victories to which justice entitles them. They are stuck in the decades-long tragic phase of conservative politics, when country club Republicans inevitably sold out the faith in order to gain acceptability in the Beltway media and social circuit. Many on the right already are upset with the President already over his deficit spending, and his continued attempts to elevate the tone of politics in Washington in the face of ongoing verbal abuse by Democrats and their media allies. They misinterpret his missing verbal combativeness as weakness Top of Form

There is also a palpable hunger for a struggle to the death with hated and verbally facile liberals like Senator Chuck Schumer. Having seen that a brilliant conservative legal thinker with impeccable elite credentials can humble the most officious voices of the Judiciary Committee, they deamnd a replay. Thus we hear conservatives sniffing that a Southern Methodist University legal education is just too non-Ivy League, adopting a characteristic trope of blue state elitists. We hear conservatives bemoaning a lack of judicial experience, and not a single law review article in the last decade as evidence of a second rate mind.

These critics are playing the Democrats’ game. The GOP is not the party which idolizes Ivy League acceptability as the criterion of intellectual and mental fitness. Nor does the Supreme Court ideally consist of the nine greatest legal scholars of an era. Like any small group, it is better off being able to draw on abilities of more than one type of personality. The Houston lawyer who blogs under the name of Beldar wisely points out that practicing high level law in the real world and rising to co-managing partner of a major law firm not only demonstrates a proficient mind, it provides a necessary and valuable perspective for a Supreme Court Justice, one which has sorely been lacking.

Ms. Miers has actually managed a business, a substantial one with hundreds of employees, and has had to meet a payroll and conform to tax, affirmative action, and other regulatory demands of the state. She has also been highly active in a White House during wartime, when national security considerations have been a matter of life and death. When the Supreme Court deliberates in private, I think most conservatives would agree that having such a perspective at hand is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Other conservatives are dismayed that the President is playing politics (!), rather than simply choosing the “best” candidate. But the President understands that confirmation is nothing but a political game, ever since Robert Bork, truly one of the finest legal minds of his era, was demonized and defeated.

The President’s smashing victory in obtaining 78 votes for the confirmation of John Roberts did not confirm these conservative critics in their understanding of the President’s formidable abilities as a nominator of Justices. Au contraire, this taste of Democrat defeat whetted their blood lust for confirmation hearing combat between the likes of a Michael Luttig or a Janice Rogers Brown and the Judiciary Committee Democrats. Possibly their own experience of debating emotive liberals over-identifies them with verbal combat as political effectiveness.

In part, I think these conservatives have unwittingly adopted the Democrats’ playbook, seeing bombast and ‘gotcha’ verbal games as the essence of political combat. Victory for them is seeing the enemy bloodied and humiliated. They mistake the momentary thrill of triumph in combat, however evanescent, for lasting victory where it counts: a Supreme Court comprised of Justices who will assemble majorities for decisions reflecting the original intent of the Founders.

Rather than extend any benefit of the doubt to the President’s White House lawyer and counselor, some take her lack of a paper trail and a history of vocal judicial conservatism as a sign that she may be an incipient Souter. They implicitly believe that the President is not adhering to his promise of nominating Justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. The obvious differences between Souter, a man personally unknown to Bush 41, and Miers, a woman who has known Bush 43 for decades, and who has served as his close daily advisor for years, are so striking as to make this level of distrust rather startling. Having seen the Souter debacle unfold before his very eyes, the President is the last man on earth to recapitulate it.

He anticipates and is defusing the extremely well-financed opposition which Democrat interest groups will use against any nominee. Yes, he is playing politics by nominating a female. A defeated nominee does him and the future of American jurisprudence no favors. By presenting a female nominee, he kicks a leg out from under the stool on which the feminist left sits. Not just a female, but a career woman, one who has not raised children, not married a male, and has a number of “firsts” to her credit as a pioneer of women's achievement in Texas law. Let the feminists try to demonize her.

If they do so, almost inevitably, they will seize on her religious beliefs and practice. Some on the left will not be able to restrain their scorn for an evangelical Christian Sunday school teacher from Dallas, and this will hurt them. They will impose a religious test against a member of a group accounting of a third of the voting base. Speculation on her being a lesbian has already started. "She sure seems like a big ol' Texas lesbian to me," as one of the Kos Kidz put it.

They are going to make themselves look very ugly.

The President must also prepare himself for a possible third nominee to the Court. With the oldest Justice 85 years old, and the vagaries of mortality for all of us being what they are, it is quite possible that a third (or even fourth) opportunity to staff the Court might come into play. Defusing, demoralizing and discrediting the reflexive opposition groups in the Democrats’ base is an important goal for the President, and for his possible Republican successors in office.

Then there is the small matter of actually influencing Supreme Court decision-making.

This president understands small group dynamics in a way that few if any of his predecessors ever have. Perhaps this is because he was educated at Harvard Business School in a legendary course then-called Human Behavior in Organizations. The Olympian Cass Gilbert-designed temple/courtroom/offices of the Supreme Court obscure the fact that it is a small group, subject to very human considerations in its operations. Switching two out of nine members in a small group has the potential to entirely alter the way it operates. Because so much of managerial work consists of getting groups of people to work effectively, Harvard Business School lavishes an extraordinary amount of attention on the subject.

One of the lessons the President learned at Harvard was the way in which members of small groups assume different roles in their operation, each of which separate roles can influence the overall function. The new Chief Justice is a man of unquestioned brilliance, as well as cordial disposition. He will be able to lead the other Justices through his intellect and knowledge of the law. Having ensured that the Court’s formal leader meets the traditional and obvious qualities of a Justice, and is a man who indeed embodies the norms all Justices feel they must follow, there is room for attending to other important roles in group process.

According to a source in her Dallas church quoted by Marvin Olasky, Harriet Miers is someone who

taught children in Sunday School, made coffee, brought donuts: "Nothing she's asked to do in church is beneath her."

As the court’s new junior member, the 60 year old lady Harriet Miers will finally give a break to Stephen Breyer, who has been relegated to closing and opening the door of the conference room, and fetching beverages for his more senior Justices. Her ability to do this type of work with no resentment, no discomfort, and no regrets will at the least endear her to the others. It will also confirm her as the person who cheerfully keeps the group on an even keel, more comfortable than otherwise might be the case with a level of emotional solidarity.

But there is much more to it than group solidarity, important though that ineffable spiritual qualty may be. Ms. Miers embodies the work ethic as few married people ever could. She reportedly often shows up for work at the White House at 5 AM, and doesn’t leave until 9 or 10 PM. I have no doubt that she will continue her extraordinary dedication to work once confirmed to the Court. She will not only win the admiration of those Justices who work shorter hours, she will undoubtedly be appreciated by the law clerks who endure similar hours, working on the research and writing for the Justices. These same law clerks interact with their bosses in private, and their influence intellectual and emotional may be more profound than some Justices might like to admit.

The members of the Supreme Court all see themselves as serving the public and the law to the best of their abilities. Their self-regard depends on their belief in the righteousness and fairness of their deliberations. They must listen to the arguments of the other Justices. But their susceptibility to viewpoints they had not yet considered is matter of both an intellectual and emotional character. Open-mindedness uusally requires an unfreezing of deeply and emotionally-held convictions.

Having proven herself capable of charming the likes of Harry Reid, leader of the Senate Democrats, is there much room for doubt that Harriet Miers is capable of opening up opponents emotionally to hear and actually consider as potentially worthwhile the views of those they might presume to be their enemies?

George Bush has already succeeded in having confirmed a spectacularly-qualified intellectual leader of the Court in Chief Justice Roberts. If conservatives don’t sabotage his choice, Harriet Miers could make an enormous contribution toward building Court majorities for interpretations of the Constitution faithful to the actual wording of the document.

Where's Ozzie?????

Harriet Miers for High Court

Where's the coverage?

A suicide bomber on Saturday near the University of Oklahoma football game, and there's no national coverage? Odd. And if you watch the linked TV report, there was a second bomb.

What Bill Bennett Said

People have nothing better to do than blow the most mundane things out of proportion. This post is not so much a defense of Bill Bennett (because he has nothing to defend) as it is a response to people who are so intellectually vapid or just dishonest enough to understand what was said and in what context. (Bennett’s remarks).

Last Wednesday on his radio show, this is what Bennett said in response to a caller’s comment about abortion and crime:

But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose — you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, you know, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.

In typical fashion, black politicians and other hustlers are calling for Bennett’s head on a platter. In the backrooms, out of sight, white liberals are jumping for joy. If they can’t sell their ideas enough to win elections, they’ll keep floating the conservatives-are-racists meme because they know exactly how blacks will react.

First of all, I am embarrassed that blacks react in such predictable ways whenever a white conservative utters anything remotely related to skin color. All pretense of reason flies right out the window, blown about like a feather caught up in the wind. White liberals thrive on it, my friends.

Part of what makes Democrats liberal is that their agenda, devoid of real ideas and solutions, is based on race. In order to win elections, they must pit the races against each other. Constant racial and class warfare is what they wage, nothing more. For the love of God, I am asking blacks to think, use their minds and stop reacting with infantile emotion.

You’ve allowed the media to fan you into a feeding frenzy. The white men you vote for every election don’t give a rat’s behind about you or your black babies, so why, for crying out loud, do you allow yourselves to be manipulated and played like screechy violins by a bunch of snot-nosed, empty-headed goofs in left-leaning newsrooms?

Frankly, it makes black people look like insolent children. It magnifies either a reluctance or inability to think beyond the sound bite. If white Democrats are raging over it, it must be a big deal, right? The anti-intellectual streak in too many parts of the black community is absolutely abhorrent.

Why do black Americans, people who live in the greatest country in the world where they have more freedom that blacks in other countries can only fantasize about, believe they’re the most put-upon and oppressed race in the history of the world? Many cultures have done much worse to all kind of people, including people of their own race.

Second, black liberals have been voting for people who openly advocate abortion for the past 40 years. Child killing is morally reprehensible, as Bill Bennett said, but for some strange reason, it doesn’t bother black folks when it’s time to go to the polls. A full 90 percent continue voting for men who advocate the death of black babies. They cavort with women whose life mission is child killing via Planned Parenthood.

The head honcho was the late Margaret Sanger, who was a eugenicist.

Black women more than three times as likely than white women to kill their babies in utero. Thirty-six percent of all abortions are performed on black women. Bennett said that is morally reprehensible. But you won’t ever hear the media-addicted Jesse Jackson or the clownish Al Sharpton or the virulent Howard Dean or bigoted John Kerry say that. Your very own NAACP advocates the murder of their own people, and over 70 percent of black babies are born to women who didn’t bother to get married and create a stable home for their children, but you’re “outraged” over what some white man said?

A bunch of hysterical hypocrites, the whole lot of you.

Third, Bennett’s hypothetical is based on fact. Blacks are 12.3 percent of the population, and about half are black men, which means black men are approximately 6 percent of the U.S. population. Yet, they commit over half of the violent crimes (see Bureau of Justice statistics). Hypothetical speaking, if fewer black boys were born, there’d be fewer around to commit crimes. Bennett didn’t (and couldn’t if he wanted to!) say that all blacks commit crimes. But in the aggregate, blacks commit a disproportionate number of crimes relative to their numbers in the general population. It follows, statistically speaking, that the fewer blacks there are, the fewer crimes will be committed. This is not a racist statement, people. It is a statistical reality.

The problem with the black subculture in general — not each and every individual black person — is that facts have little meaning. Emotions and hair-trigger reactions to anything racial are the norm. And you know what? It sets a bad precedent for our children. They must learn to use their minds, to reason and to think critically about these issues, not throw tantrums because somebody said something they didn’t like.

Bennett’s crime was alluding to black crime rates. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s OK to discuss black grievances and entitlements but taboo to discuss black criminality. James Taranto of the Opinion Journal concurs:

So why do we see this as a sign of political correctness’s decline? Well, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, we kept hearing from our liberal friends that what this country needs is an honest discussion of race. Of course, liberals who call for a discussion of race never actually want it to be honest. Rather, they want to engage in the old familiar ritual in which blacks air their grievances, white liberals trumpet their moral superiority, the rest of us shut up and listen, and dissenters are shamed and silenced (see John Conyers’s and Wade Henderson’s demands regarding Bennett, above). (Emphasis added)

If I were Bennett, I wouldn’t apologize for jack.

A man named Steven Levitt, author of the best-seller Freakonomics, made a similar argument about crime rates and abortion. He said that the legalization of abortion in the 1970s led to a reduction in crime a generation later.

Levitt’s assumptions rest on the belief that abortion reduces the number of “unwanted” babies. Sailer says that crime actually went up in the generation after Roe v. Wade, owed in part to the crack epidemic and middle-class black women killing their babies. In that regard, since middle-class women are more likely to be married than women in the underclass, black babies aborted after the legalization of child killing would’ve had better upbringings than babies born to underclass women.

I ask you, why weren’t the media up in arms about Levitt’s book? Because he is not a white conservative man, and it would make for a dull sound bite. It’s as simple as that. If the media don’t cause a firestorm about something, blacks don’t pay much attention to it.

Must Read

Shameful Attacks
Bill Bennett stresses our morality…and pays the price.

In the course of a free-wheeling conversation so common on talk-format programs, Bill Bennett made a minor point that was statistically and logically unassailable, but that touched a third rail — namely, the nexus between race and crime — within the highly charged context of abortion policy.

He emphatically qualified his remarks from the standpoint of morality. Then he ended with the entirely valid conclusion that sweeping generalizations are unhelpful in making major policy decisions.

That he was right in this seems to matter little. Bennett is being fried by the PC police and the ethnic-grievance industry, which have disingenuously ripped his minor point out of its context in a shameful effort to paint him as a racist. He’s about as bigoted as Santa Claus.

Here’s what happened. In the course of his Morning in America radio show on Wednesday, Bennett engaged a caller who sought to view the complexities of Social Security solvency through the narrow lens of abortion, an explosive but only tangentially relevant issue. Specifically, the caller contended that if there had not been so many abortions since 1973, there would be millions more living people paying into the Social Security System, and perhaps the system would be solvent.

Bennett, typically well-informed, responded with skepticism over this method of argument by making reference to a book he had read, which had made an analogous claim: namely, that it was the high abortion rate which was responsible for the overall decline in crime. The former Education secretary took pains to say that he disagreed with this theory, and then developed an argument for why we should resist “extensive extrapolations” from minor premises (like the number of abortions) in forming major conclusions about complex policy questions.

It was in this context that Bennett remarked: “I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose — you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.” Was he suggesting such a thing? Was he saying that such a thing should even be considered in the real world? Of course not. His whole point was that such considerations are patently absurd, and thus he was quick to add: “That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do.”

Bennett’s position, clearly and irrefutably, is that you cannot have tunnel vision, especially on something as emotionally charged as abortion, in addressing multifaceted problems. It is almost always the case that problems, even serious ones, could be minimized or eliminated if you were willing to entertain severe solutions. Such solutions, though, are morally and ethically unacceptable, whatever the validity of their logic. The lesson to be drawn is not that we can hypothetically conceive of the severe solutions but that we resolutely reject them because of our moral core.

This is a bedrock feature of American law and life. We could, for example, dramatically reduce crimes such as robbery and rape by making those capital offenses. We don’t do it because such a draconian solution would be offensive to who we are as a people. But it is no doubt true that if we were willing to check our morality at the door, if the only thing we allowed ourselves to focus on were the reduction of robbery and rape, the death penalty would do the trick.

We are currently at war with Islamo-fascists, and our greatest fear is another domestic attack that could kill tens of thousands of Americans. The attacks we have suffered to this point have been inflicted, almost exclusively, by Muslim aliens from particular Arabic and African countries. Would it greatly reduce the chance of another domestic attack if we deported every non-American Muslim from those countries? Of course it would — how could it not? But it is not something that we should or would consider doing. It would be a cure so much worse than the disease that it would sully us as a people, while hurting thousands of innocent people in the process.

The salient thing here is the moral judgment. But, to be demonstrated compellingly, the moral judgment requires a dilemma that pits values against values. Remarkably, Bennett is being criticized for being able to frame such a dilemma — which was wholly hypothetical — but given no credit for the moral judgment — which was authentically his.

Statistics have long been kept on crime, breaking it down in various ways, including by race and ethnicity. Some identifiable groups, considered as a group, commit crime at a rate that is higher than the national rate.

Blacks are such a group. That is simply a fact. Indeed, our public discourse on it, even among prominent African Americans, has not been to dispute the numbers but to argue over the causes of the high rate: Is it poverty? Breakdown of the family? Undue police attention? Other factors — or some combination of all the factors? We argue about all these things, but the argument always proceeds from the incontestable fact that the rate is high.

The rate being high, it is an unavoidable mathematical reality that if the number of blacks, or of any group whose rate outstripped the national rate, were reduced or eliminated from the national computation, the national rate would go down.

But Bennett’s obvious point was that crime reduction is not the be-all and end-all of good policy. You would not approve of something you see as despicable — such as reducing an ethnic population by abortion — simply because it would have the incidental effect of reducing crime.

Abortion, moreover, is a grave moral issue in its own right. It merits consideration on its own merits, wholly apart from its incidental effects on innumerable matters — crime rate and social security solvency being just two.

“[T]hese far-out, these far-reaching … extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky,” Bennett concluded. It was a point worth making, and it could not have been made effectively without a “far-out” example that highlighted the folly. Plus he was right, which ought to count for something even in what passes for today’s media critiques.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Must Read

Shameful Attacks
Bill Bennett stresses our morality…and pays the price.

In the course of a free-wheeling conversation so common on talk-format programs, Bill Bennett made a minor point that was statistically and logically unassailable, but that touched a third rail — namely, the nexus between race and crime — within the highly charged context of abortion policy.

He emphatically qualified his remarks from the standpoint of morality. Then he ended with the entirely valid conclusion that sweeping generalizations are unhelpful in making major policy decisions.

That he was right in this seems to matter little. Bennett is being fried by the PC police and the ethnic-grievance industry, which have disingenuously ripped his minor point out of its context in a shameful effort to paint him as a racist. He’s about as bigoted as Santa Claus.

Here’s what happened. In the course of his Morning in America radio show on Wednesday, Bennett engaged a caller who sought to view the complexities of Social Security solvency through the narrow lens of abortion, an explosive but only tangentially relevant issue. Specifically, the caller contended that if there had not been so many abortions since 1973, there would be millions more living people paying into the Social Security System, and perhaps the system would be solvent.

Bennett, typically well-informed, responded with skepticism over this method of argument by making reference to a book he had read, which had made an analogous claim: namely, that it was the high abortion rate which was responsible for the overall decline in crime. The former Education secretary took pains to say that he disagreed with this theory, and then developed an argument for why we should resist “extensive extrapolations” from minor premises (like the number of abortions) in forming major conclusions about complex policy questions.

It was in this context that Bennett remarked: “I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose — you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.” Was he suggesting such a thing? Was he saying that such a thing should even be considered in the real world? Of course not. His whole point was that such considerations are patently absurd, and thus he was quick to add: “That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do.”

Bennett’s position, clearly and irrefutably, is that you cannot have tunnel vision, especially on something as emotionally charged as abortion, in addressing multifaceted problems. It is almost always the case that problems, even serious ones, could be minimized or eliminated if you were willing to entertain severe solutions. Such solutions, though, are morally and ethically unacceptable, whatever the validity of their logic. The lesson to be drawn is not that we can hypothetically conceive of the severe solutions but that we resolutely reject them because of our moral core.

This is a bedrock feature of American law and life. We could, for example, dramatically reduce crimes such as robbery and rape by making those capital offenses. We don’t do it because such a draconian solution would be offensive to who we are as a people. But it is no doubt true that if we were willing to check our morality at the door, if the only thing we allowed ourselves to focus on were the reduction of robbery and rape, the death penalty would do the trick.

We are currently at war with Islamo-fascists, and our greatest fear is another domestic attack that could kill tens of thousands of Americans. The attacks we have suffered to this point have been inflicted, almost exclusively, by Muslim aliens from particular Arabic and African countries. Would it greatly reduce the chance of another domestic attack if we deported every non-American Muslim from those countries? Of course it would — how could it not? But it is not something that we should or would consider doing. It would be a cure so much worse than the disease that it would sully us as a people, while hurting thousands of innocent people in the process.

The salient thing here is the moral judgment. But, to be demonstrated compellingly, the moral judgment requires a dilemma that pits values against values. Remarkably, Bennett is being criticized for being able to frame such a dilemma — which was wholly hypothetical — but given no credit for the moral judgment — which was authentically his.

Statistics have long been kept on crime, breaking it down in various ways, including by race and ethnicity. Some identifiable groups, considered as a group, commit crime at a rate that is higher than the national rate.

Blacks are such a group. That is simply a fact. Indeed, our public discourse on it, even among prominent African Americans, has not been to dispute the numbers but to argue over the causes of the high rate: Is it poverty? Breakdown of the family? Undue police attention? Other factors — or some combination of all the factors? We argue about all these things, but the argument always proceeds from the incontestable fact that the rate is high.

The rate being high, it is an unavoidable mathematical reality that if the number of blacks, or of any group whose rate outstripped the national rate, were reduced or eliminated from the national computation, the national rate would go down.

But Bennett’s obvious point was that crime reduction is not the be-all and end-all of good policy. You would not approve of something you see as despicable — such as reducing an ethnic population by abortion — simply because it would have the incidental effect of reducing crime.

Abortion, moreover, is a grave moral issue in its own right. It merits consideration on its own merits, wholly apart from its incidental effects on innumerable matters — crime rate and social security solvency being just two.

“[T]hese far-out, these far-reaching … extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky,” Bennett concluded. It was a point worth making, and it could not have been made effectively without a “far-out” example that highlighted the folly. Plus he was right, which ought to count for something even in what passes for today’s media critiques.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

This is a "Code Pink" protestor from yesterday's Hate America March led by the Queen Moonbat Cindy (Media Whore) Sheehan. Let's stipulate that the left is not made up of pretty people. 

Queen of the Moonbats and her bestest pal 

MSM keeps Cindy (Media Whore) Sheehan alive

While about 100,000 aged hippies, anti-American socialists and assorted conspiracy-theorists gathered in DC for a hate-America fest, you need to see this comment from a Marine serving presently in Iraq.

**"The battlefield this weekend will be on the homefront. The only thing that truly concerns me is that the seditionist groups will succeed in causing the American people to lose their will and the enemy will win politically the victory we have denied them militarily. Let there be no mistake: we are winning here. Morale is outstanding and we are successfully taking the fight to the enemy. You will see a successful referendum in less than 3 weeks and a successfull election in less than 3 months. I see the positive resuts of our actions everyday. The MSM ignores or denigrates almost every piece of positive news, exaggerates every negative and makes the enemy and his actions out to be more than they are. They absolutely cannot defeat us militarily and have no strategic vision except the destruction of all who oppose them. A strategy based on such a negative is doomed to fail, unless we cut and run."**

Git it? What is so obvious that it hurts--is that the MSM and the "Hate America" crowd are so blinded by their hatred of all things Bush that they are ready to spit on the graves and wounds of our best and brightest to make a political point. They actually believe that they can force Iraq to be Vietnam and win the political and PR war making the USA lose the fighting war to a bunch of rag-tag fanatics.

It is a strange commentary on our modern world that what we've got here is a Marine, facing death all the time in Iraq, trying to ensure that our morale here at home remains high. I think I can understand the worry: After years of effort and so many of our best killed, it would be criminal for the United States to lose heart at this point and betray our troops in the field - but this is the worry of our best over in Iraq and elsewhere in the War on Terrorism. There isn't a thing the enemy can do to stop the United States military - only a failure of will here at home can defeat us.

Fortunately, I don't see any lack of will to win. President Bush is determined, and his supporters are behind him 100%. 100,000 people in DC means about 1% of the hard-core anti-Americans showed up...hardly a good showing; and this is their best time...with the war becoming a grind and Katrina/Rita depressing spirits, if there was a time when an anti-war movement could tap into public dismay, this was it. It hasn't happened - and for two reasons:

1. We really do want to win - all of us who support the liberation of Iraq will do whatever proves necessary to secure absolute victory.

2. The anti-war protestors aren't really anti-war - they are actually anti-American. I feel for those who are just misguided into the anti-war movement, but one has to face the fact that if you are within a country mile of the really horrible people of ANSWER, then you are besmirched with the muck of treason. The broad mass of the American people will never sign on to a group which not only says that the war should end, but calls our efforts to date part of a criminal conspiracy.

Something about Mary

Today's loser hails from the state that received the least amount of damage from Hurricane Katrina yet you would think that it was the only state hit.

Mary Landrieu (Dumbass-LA) has recently garnered National attention by threatening the President of the United States. This being the only thing that she has accomplished since she was voted out of Louisiana. "Her" website HERE.

Mary was elected to her first term in 1996 at a time when Republicans were being slaughtered in the streets in Louisiana by desperate Democrats. She was re-elected in 2002 when she ran on the platform of an Escalade in every driveway in New Orleans. Surprisingly enough only seventeen votes were cast in her Senate election and ALL were for her. That is odd coming from the loins of a former New Orleans mayor and U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Moon Landrieu, her DAD.

Since Mary has never had an iota of impact on the Senate or government in general, it is assumed that she is just there because no one wants her in Louisiana. Mary's committee asignments include Appropriations where she makes the coffee, which everyone complains about and she also serves on the District of Columbia Subcommittee where she is tasked with making DC's school system into the worst in the entire industrialized world. So far she has been a smashing success at that.

Since 1999, Mary has served on the Senate Armed Forces Committee where she is tasked with picking out the pillows for each Senator's chair. Most of them admit that she is less than talented at this important position. On to Part Two.

No lie, this is from the "About Mary" part of "her" website. I'm just surprised that she didn't put "There's Something" in front of the "About Mary" part. Remember when she put Ben's love potion in her hair? Ahem, nevermind. While I am almost certain this moron attended a university, I can find nothing about it on "her" website.

She was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives when she was just twenty-three years old. Who in their right mind would elect a twenty-three year old dumbass? I remember when I was that age and I wouldn't have voted for myself then. Anyway, she was elected and has never had to accomplish another thing. Please folks, don't make this a habit. Otherwise, your levee might break and everyone's stuff gets ruined. Oh, that's right, Mary lives ABOVE Pontchartrain, imagine that.

Mary is married to an attorney from Monroe named Frank Snellings. They have two kids, Connor and Mary Shannon who attend an exclusive private school in DC. This is ironic in itself since Mary makes policy concerning the public school system in the area.

The best thing that I found on "Mary's" site was the link to her staff. Forty total. I know that every Senator has a staff this large or larger, but do you have to rub my nose in it? Why in the holy Hell would a Senator need a staff of forty? This is completely outta hand.

Mary, there was a time when I considered Barbara Boxer the dumbest Senator (of the female persuasion) but alas I'm now torn. Okay----Boxer is sitll the dumbest but you are gaining.

Hollywood loves Dan. Of course they do.