A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
Fed to Pursue Aggressive Checks on Credit Cards - The Federal Reserve and two other banking regulators are set to unveil today one of the most aggressive efforts in decades to crack down on the credit card industry, prohibiting practices such as arbitrarily raising interest rates on outstanding balances. (READ MORE)
Operator of D.C. Call-Girl Ring Is Dead in Apparent Suicide - TARPON SPRINGS, Fla., May 1 -- Deborah Jeane Palfrey, facing a likely prison term of four to six years for running a Washington area call-girl ring, apparently hanged herself Thursday in a storage shed behind her mother's mobile home in this small Gulf Coast city, authorities said. (READ MORE)
Military Stressing Veterans' Counseling - Applicants for government security clearances will no longer have to declare whether they sought mental health counseling after serving in combat zones, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced yesterday. (READ MORE)
Senate Panel Moves to Shift Costs of War to Iraq - With energy prices soaring and the federal deficit approaching $400 billion, senators from both parties moved yesterday to force Iraq to shoulder more financial responsibility for its reconstruction and self-defense. (READ MORE)
At Least 35 Die As Bombers Hit Wedding Convoy - BAGHDAD, May 1 -- Two suicide bombers attacked a wedding convoy as it passed through a busy market area in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, killing at least 35 people and wounding at least 65, police said. (READ MORE)
Exxon Agonistes - Department of Irony: On Tuesday, members of the Rockefeller family won media huzzahs for airing their grievances against Exxon Mobil, the oil and gas giant in which they are the oldest continuous shareholders but which they say isn't doing enough to prepare for a greener world. Then yesterday, Exxon reported a 17% rise in first-quarter profit, to $10.9 billion. It was merely the second-largest quarterly profit in U.S. corporate history, though Exxon still holds the quarterly and annual records. (READ MORE)
False Claims Gold Rush - Imagine handing the tort bar a huge new lawsuit business, funded with dollars owed to taxpayers. Imagine that those doing this favor are Senate Democrats and Republicans. Welcome to the legal gold rush occurring under the cover of "reforming" the False Claims Act. This Civil War-era law was designed to let the federal government recoup money from entities that defraud it. (READ MORE)
Mideast Quartet holds skeptical Arab states to peace pledges - International mediators in the Middle East peace process, worried about widespread skepticism in the region about an Israeli-Palestinian agreement this year, called on Arab countries today to support the process in spite of their concerns. (READ MORE)
Bush seeks millions in food aid - President Bush yesterday asked Congress to authorize $770 million to ease the global food crisis, most of which will be focused on Africa, while the administration denied that corn-for-ethanol subsidies are a major cause of the worldwide surge in food prices. (READ MORE)
Employers cut fewer jobs in April - Employers cut far fewer jobs in April than in recent months and the unemployment rate dropped to 5 percent. It was a better-than-expected showing that nonetheless still revealed strains in the nation's crucial labor market. (READ MORE)
Feingold presses Chertoff on marshals - Sen. Russ Feingold wants the Bush administration to explain why federal air marshals were prevented from boarding some flights because their names matched those on the terrorist no-fly list, and whether the problem has been solved. (READ MORE)
Superdelegates line up behind Obama - The Democratic establishment is steadily moving toward ensuring Sen. Barack Obama's nomination for president even as more of the party's voters view him as a damaged candidate. (READ MORE)
McCain sets sights on moderates - Faced with a crumbling Republican Party image, Sen. John McCain is gambling on a general-election strategy that relies on winning over conservative Democrats and independents, breaking with President Bush's 2000 and 2004 game plan of focusing on the party's core voters. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Elizabeth Wurtzel: Obama's Other Radical Friends - When I was 15, I read an article in Rolling Stone about the Weather Underground and became fascinated with Bernardine Dohrn. As a leader of the militant arm of Students for a Democratic Society, she was renowned for her beauty and daring, for her revolutionary rhetoric, and for an FBI 10 Most Wanted poster that was pinup worthy. When she first showed up in New York City, wearing a tight miniskirt and Italian leather boots, Bernardine – she became quickly known on a first-name basis – started a craze among men in the antiwar movement. (READ MORE)
Will Marshall: Let's Pop the Deficit Bubble - The U.S. Treasury recently reported that the federal deficit will hit a record high of $311 billion for the first half of the fiscal year, thanks in part to plunging corporate profits and revenues. The report was greeted with stifled yawns by official Washington. Similar indifference greeted the Social Security and Medicare trustees when they issued their annual spring warning about an even bigger fiscal time bomb: exploding entitlement costs. The trustees are used to being ignored, but this year's warning is more serious than ever: (READ MORE)
Peggy Noonan: Loyal to the Bitterness - I am out of step. There is something that is upsetting others whom I care about and whose thoughts are often not unlike my own. And it's not hitting me the same way. I am referring to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I disagree with and disapprove of the things he says. The U.S. government did not spread AIDS among the black community, 9/11 was not the chickens coming home to roost, etc. He seems like a bright man, warm, humorous and compelling, but also needful and demanding of the spotlight, a showman prone to crackpottery, and I have to wonder how much respect he has for his congregation. (READ MORE)
Kimberly A. Strassel: Indiana Tax Assessment - As Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton pick through this state's primary results come Tuesday, the last person on their minds will be Bart Peterson. Yet the Peterson ghost may well come looking for the eventual Democratic nominee. Mr. Peterson was, until recently, the popular Democratic mayor of this fine city. Then voters went to the polls in November and threw him out in favor of an unknown and underfunded Republican. It was among last year's biggest political upsets, and marked the first time in 40 years Indianapolis voters had canned a sitting mayor. The source of their anger? Taxes. (READ MORE)
Charles Krauthammer: Obama's Changing Moral Equivalence - "I can no more disown him (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown my white grandmother." -- Barack Obama, Philadelphia, March 18 WASHINGTON -- Guess it's time to disown Granny, if Obama's famous Philadelphia "race" speech is to be believed. Of course, the speech was not just believed. It was hailed, celebrated, canonized as the greatest pronouncement on race in America since Lincoln at Cooper Union. A New York Times columnist said it "should be required reading in classrooms across the country." College seniors and first-graders, suggested the excitable Chris Matthews. (READ MORE)
Oliver North: All the Wright Stuff - FRESNO, Calif. -- In the U.S. military, there is a wonderful little expression: "A good plan never survives the first contact with the enemy." The corollary to this rule is: "Expect the unexpected." Then, of course, there is the expanded version of the Boy Scouts motto: "Be prepared -- for anything." This week has served to remind me how apt these quaint little expressions really are. My plan for this week was very simple: conduct a series of quiet interviews for print and broadcast media and a few low-key appearances in preparation for the release of my new book, "American Heroes -- In the Fight Against Radical Islam." (READ MORE)
John Hawkins: Stop Apologizing for Being an American - A couple of days ago, I had the misfortune of being on a BBC radio show with an American college professor who sounded like he had read one too many Noam Chomsky books. Let me give you a short impression of the guy: "Blah, blah, blah, racists! Blah, blah, blah, of course Jeremiah Wright was right when he said...blah, blah, blah. No wonder people are angry at America!" Not to disagree with Professor Crabby McCommiePuss, but there is no nation in the world that has more to be proud of and less to apologize for than the United States of America. (READ MORE)
David Limbaugh: 'Willful Blindness' to the Jihad - You might expect the lead prosecutor against the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to tout the criminal justice system as the premier strategy to fight terrorism. If so, you're wrong. It is precisely because of Andy McCarthy's experience in that capacity that he understands -- in a way others can't -- the crippling limitations of law enforcement and criminal prosecutions in combating global terrorism. Though he led the Justice Department prosecution team that convicted Omar Abdel Rahman, the "Blind Sheik," McCarthy is painfully aware that "as a class, baby-boom attorneys know nothing of war. Prosecutors included." Even this successful effort left way too many militants in place and encouraged the idea that they could attack us with impunity. (READ MORE)
Amanda Carpenter: Iran Denounces Hillary's 'Obliterate' Comments - Iran is denouncing Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for threatening to “obliterate” the nation and is filing a formal protest over her comments. Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi called Clinton’s remarks “provocative, unwarranted and irresponsible” and a “flagrant violation” of the U.N Charter in a letter sent to the U.N Security Council, according to the Associated Press. These actions come after Clinton told ABC News she would take military action against Iran if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them." (READ MORE)
Rebecca Hagelin: Abstinence: In the "No" - Who could argue with the idea that, when it comes to sex education, our teenagers should be taught to say “no”? Considering what’s at stake (their health, their future, their dignity as human beings, their morality) -- and because we love them and want what’s best for them -- nothing short of a clear-cut abstinence message will do. At least, that’s how it appears out here in the Real World. In the rarified air of a congressional hearing room, it’s another matter. According to several witnesses (including John Santelli of the Guttmacher Institute, and Max Siegel of the AIDS Alliance for Children, Youth & Families) who spoke recently before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, abstinence education is not only impractical, it’s dangerous.(READ MORE)
Amanda Carpenter: Mrs. Obama: Wright Drama Bad for Kids - Michelle Obama lamented the coverage of her family’s longtime friend and pastor in a joint interview with husband Barack Obama, who is running for the Democratic nomination for president. “This conversation doesn't help my kids, you know,” Mrs. Obama told NBC’s Meredith Viera. “It doesn't help kids out there who are looking for us to make decisions and choices about how we're going to better fund education.” NBC released early excerpts of the joint interview Thursday. The full interview will air Saturday. In addition to the NBC interview, Mrs. Obama appeared on CNN Wednesday to discuss her family’s relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright. (READ MORE)
Michael Reagan: Put the Blame Where it Belongs - In case you haven't noticed, gas prices are soaring, hiking the cost of food and just about everything else. If you believe Hillary Clinton, the blame for all this lies on the shoulders of those greedy oil companies and their bloated profit margins, a notion that like just about every other snake-oil remedy she tries to peddle is simply not the case. We're in the mess in which we find ourselves because of a small handful of people with the money and the power to inflict grievous harm on their fellow humans, whom they just happen to despise. (READ MORE)
Diana West: Iraq War Architects Shrug Off Truth - So there I was, listening to a few of the major "architects" of the war in Iraq -- Paul Wolfowitz, formerly No. 2 man at the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld; Douglas J. Feith, formerly No. 3 man at the Pentagon under Rumsfeld; Peter Rodman, another former senior adviser to Rumsfeld; and Dan Senor, former senior adviser to Paul Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). They had assembled at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., for a discussion of Feith's new book, "War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism," but what they were drawn to discuss was what went wrong with the war in Iraq. A rather large topic. (READ MORE)
Donald Lambro: America Should Be 'Oil' For More Drilling - WASHINGTON -- The law of supply and demand is the oldest and wisest axiom in free-market economics. Exceed the demand for something by overproduction and the price will fall. Sharply reduce its supply in the face of very robust demand, and the price will go up. Congress, well-meaning environmentalists, government regulators and assorted Malthusians seem to have forgotten this simple, fundamental rule, and the result is $120-a barrel-oil and $4-a-gallon gasoline. The United States and the global economy will need a great deal more energy in the decades to come. It is said that within the next two decades we'll need about 40 percent more energy than we used in 2005. (READ MORE)
Amanda Carpenter: Push for Anti-War Language in Dem Platform - Anti-war superdelegates are calling on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to incorporate anti-war language into the Democratic platform. “We must hold them accountable,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D.-Calif.), who has endorsed Obama. She said the Democratic platform should be changed to a “party platform that reflects the sentiments of the grassroots.” Lee is part of Win Without War, an anti-war advocacy group. WWW organized a conference call with Clinton-supporting superdelegates, Obama-supporting superdelegates and undecided superdelegates to demand the Democratic Party commit to withdrawing troops from Iraq. (READ MORE)
eddiebear @ Aces of Spades: Is Obama Tanking, And Is That A Good Thing? - I must confess, I was always a bit amazed at the Obama "steamroller". Despite few, if any, legislative achievements of note, he rode the wave of unyielding media support, activist enthusiasm, and internet backing into what appeared, after the Potomac Primaries, a coronation and victory lap to the Democrat Nomination in Denver, as well as a November victory that would have made the 1964 Election look like a nailbiter. Well, it appears as though much of the Obama hype is falling on a rough patch. Rev. Wright, Michelle's goofy comments, "bitter" and "clinging" remarks, more Rev. Wright, a disastrous debate performance, and Operation Chaos, to name a few events, have taken their toll. So much so, his Realclearpolitics.com lead is all but gone. (READ MORE)
Big Dog: Absolute Abuse of Taxpayer Money - WCBSTV has uncovered a story that is beyond belief and it involves the waste of taxpayer money by members of the House of Representatives. It seems there is a loophole that allows them to lease vehicles at the expense of taxpayers and there appears to be no limit as to how much they spend on the lease. Taxpayers also foot the bill for registration, insurance and the GAS. No wonder these chowder heads are not concerned about the price of gasoline. It is not bad enough we have to pay a fortune to fill our vehicles but we also pay to fill theirs. Charlie Rangel of New York drives a Cadillac DeVille, and taxpayers are charged $774 per month ($9288 a year) to cover the lease. (READ MORE)
The Belmont Club: London bridge is falling down - The big news from Britain is that the Labor Party is being beaten like a drum by just about anyone in the opposition. And although the result still wasn't known at the time of this post, there was speculation that even "Red Ken" Livingstone, the Mayor of London, would not escape the bloodbath. With results still coming in from elections around England and Wales, Labour’s projected national vote share was put at just 24 per cent, trailing 20 points behind David Cameron’s Conservatives on 44 per cent, and even behind the Liberal Democrats on 25 per cent. (READ MORE)
Laughing Wolf @ Blackfive: Some Thoughts On Soldier's Angels - Well, I got distracted the last couple of days (darn work!) and Jimbo beat me to getting up the news that Patti is a finalist in the America's Favorite Mom contest. More on that in a few, because a few days ago, a comment was made in this post which was frankly disturbing. It was disturbing on several levels, being as it could be and was seen as both a slap at an organization as well as at an individual I consider to be a friend. In further discussions both here and offline, some other comments came forward and I found behind this were some thoughts and concerns I've heard elsewhere. What follows below is not aimed at any one person; rather, it is a response to some thoughts I've been hearing for a while now and that need to be addressed. What follows is part polemic and part rant, but if you are interested in Soldier's Angels you should read on. (READ MORE)
Dr. iRack: The Senate Plays Chicken with the Sons of Iraq - Like Dr. iRack, you probably noticed that their was bipartisan outrage during the recent Petraeus/Crocker testimony over the tens of billions of dollars from windfall oil profits that the Iraqi government is not spending at a time when the war is costing U.S. taxpayers $10-12 billion a month. Some argue that this is due to a lack of Iraqi capacity to execute budgets; others attribute it to a lack of political will. We are about to put these two competing hypotheses to the test. According to today's Washington Post: “On a unanimous vote taken late Wednesday night and announced yesterday, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved legislation that would prohibit the Defense Department from funding any reconstruction or infrastructure program that costs more than $2 million.” (READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped: Understanding Self Esteem and its Misuse in Education - A significant part of the foundation of the PC edifice rests upon a misunderstanding and misuse of the concept of "self-esteem." Along with the quasi-Marxist dialectical differentiation of identify groups as either victims or oppressors, much of the rationale for PC thought involves efforts to avoid offending or hurting anyone's self-esteem. Self-esteem may well be the psychoanalytic concept most thoroughly perverted by the pop psychology movement since the 1960s. It has led to especially pernicious effects in pedagogy. Schools routinely refuse to rank students, demur from teaching actual math or spelling skills (versus allowing and encouraging students to find their own approach to math and spelling with the correct answer being less important than the effort), ban games of tag or dodgeball, and reduce competitive games to unscored exercises, all in the name of protecting the self-esteem of their young charges. (READ MORE)
Blackfive: Bragg Barracks Scandal - I arrived home from China on Monday to hear about and see the YouTube video of the barracks in horrendous condition awaiting the paratroopers of Charlie Company, 2/508th Airborne returning from a 15-month deployment to Afghanistan. There is no excuse for this kind of treatment of our troops. Peeling paint is one thing, the other items like raw sewage and mold, however, are unconscionable. Those who wish to lay these issues at the feet of our President are wrong. This is an Army problem and has nothing to do with the Bush Administration or even the DoD (no matter what the Presidential candidates are saying about it). (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Taco tax - As West Virginia can attest, taxing food does not lead to good health. In the 1950s, the West Virginia Legislature hit upon a great idea for funding a medical school at West Virginia University. Lawmakers decided to tax soft drinks, including soda and even Kool-Aid. This is a Democratic state. The state also decided to tax food, then it stopped taxing food, but in 1988 it started taxing all food again. A few years ago, a tax was slapped on snacks. While 11 states have limited obesity-related lawsuits, West Virginia has not. West Virginia is one of 4 states that have a nutritional standard set for snacks in vending machines in schools. No more peddling junk food in our schools. (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: WaPo nine weeks behind the Times on McCain citizenship - At the end of February, the New York Times launched its odd broadside against John McCain, alleging that some rational basis for denying him the Presidency might exist because of his birth at an American military base in Panama — to two American citizens, one of whom was stationed there in service to the US. Apparently, the Washington Post didn’t learn from the guffaws that article produced, because Michael Dobbs reports on the exact same subject more than nine weeks later: (READ MORE)
Allahpundit: Voter to McCain: Did you call your wife a c*nt? Update: Questioner signed in as HuffPo contributor - Oh, the screeching, the wailing, the wall-punching outrage if a conservative had put a question this obnoxious to a Democrat. HuffPo, bless its withered heart, describes our interrogator as a “Baptist minister” but read further into their blockquote and you’ll see he’s a former campaign worker for Joe Biden. The peg here is an anecdote from lefty journo Cliff Schechter’s book, “The Real McCain,” alleging that Maverick once dropped this term of non-endearment on his wife in front of reporters. The story’s been circulating in nutroots circles for months, decked out in the trappings of a “legitimate” campaign issue to disguise its real purpose. (READ MORE)
Sigmund, Carl and Alfred: From The Author Of SC&A: Plaza San Marco And Blog Wars, Part Two - Yesterday, we wrote part one of From The Author Of SC&A: Plaza San Marco And Blog Wars, in which we discussed the recent flare up between some right of center bloggers. We noted yesterday that, ‘Ideas are meant to provoke thought, not necessarily agreement.’ Unfortunately in just about every environment and discipline, personalities often obscure that truth. There are global warming scientists who take great umbrage at their peers who question their work and conclusions, there are politicians who will insist that evil cam be negotiated away and there are entire populations who will embrace dysfunction with open arms so as to avoid reality. There are still others who will hold on to ideas long after they are disproved because they feel that somehow, they have been personally discredited. The same behavior can be found in the lesser disciplined blog world. Personalities often trump ideas when it comes to criticism or even the validity of ideas. (READ MORE)
Baron Bodissey: Private Virtue and Political Vice - In a West Wing episode a few years ago the (fictional) President of the United States had to resign his office temporarily when his daughter was taken hostage by terrorists. This illustrates the important distinction between private and public duty. If my child were taken hostage, I would do whatever it took to secure his release — pay the ransom, publicly renounce my cherished beliefs, surrender my own life — but if I held political office, my duty would be first and foremost to ensure the general commonweal, and only secondly to consider the life of a single hostage. It may well be morally and ethically correct to accept the death of one captive, and thus spare the lives and well-being of hundreds or thousands of future captives by discouraging the taking of hostages. (READ MORE)
Confederate Yankee: Another Gaza Media Moment - Three days ago, I contacted Associated Press Director of Media Relations Paul Colford, asking him about photos taken by AP photographer Khalil Hamra, in Beit Lahiya, a town in the northern Gaza Strip, on Monday, April 28, 2008. The caption for one Hamra photo read as follows, without a hint of uncertainty: “A Palestinian woman reacts as she stands next to a house hit by an Israeli shell that killed a mother and her four children, in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Monday, April 28, 2008. An Israeli tank shell slammed into a tiny Gaza Strip home on Monday, killing a Palestinian woman and four of her children as they prepared to sit down for breakfast, officials and relatives said.” (READ MORE)
Jeffrey Breinholt: Polygamy and Terrorism: The Religion Factor in Texas - You might think that the raid on the dissident Mormon compound in Texas and its aftermath are not related to terrorism, but they actually are. The question is whether a state or federal government can define what constitutes a crime, and whether that crime can be enforced where the alleged conduct is religiously-inspired. In this sense, the Texas case involves a common issue in counterterrorism - the ability of the government to take action against religiously-inspired conduct. (More ominously, we know that Timothy McVeigh acted out of outrage over the raid on the Branch Davidian compound at Waco. I pray we don't see a spike in domestic terrorism as a result of what's occuring in Texas). (READ MORE)
Crazy Politico: Poor Obama Supporters - The poor Barak Obama supporters have been trying to find a way to spin their candidate out of the Rev. Wright mess all week, and not have Obama look like either a fool or a bigot. Unfortunately for them, he put himself in a position that leaves only those two views available. Charles Krauthammer has an excellent piece in today's Washington Post called The 'Race Speech' Revisited that has those supporters in a tizzy in the comment section. Krauthammer calls the race speech in Philadelphia "that shameful, brilliantly executed, 5,000-word intellectual fraud", and he's correct. Wright himself proved that on the main stage of the National Press Club, by repeating all of his "out of context" quotes (as Obama called them) in full context, to a national audience. (READ MORE)
Dr. Sanity: THE ECONOMIC EQUIVALENT OF CREATIONISM, OR, "GIFTS" FROM ABOVE - In my clinical practice over the years I have had many patients who dismiss the idea of planning for the future or doing anything now in anticipation of future events or to prevent future discomfort. One patient, I recall, was bemoaning the fact that, while she wanted to get out of her dead-end job, she could not go to college and get the degree that might be her ticket to that destination. "Why?" I asked her. "It will take four or more years!" she exclaimed. "That's too long." "But, four years is going to pass anyway, no matter what else you are doing," I point out to her. "Where would you rather be in four years---with a college degree, or still talking to me about wanting to get out of the job you are in?" (READ MORE)
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