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)
Absence of Malice - A regrettable by-product of modern media proliferation is its frequent lack of restraint and good humor, especially on the Web. Tony Snow rose above such vituperation as a happy political combatant, which is one reason so many who knew him or watched him in action are now mourning his death from cancer on Saturday at age 53. (READ MORE)
The U.N. and Comrade Bob - As with Darfur and Burma, the depredations of Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe have become a target of the world's moral outrage. Also like those two countries, the chances of anyone doing something about Zimbabwe are falling into the diplomatic abyss that is the United Nations. (READ MORE)
The Fed to Latin America: Slow Down - For decades Latin America has been plagued by currency devaluations, inflation and lackluster growth. But just as some key countries have gotten serious about price stability and begun to reap the benefits through higher growth, the region is facing a new economic menace: the Federal Reserve. (READ MORE)
The Milberg Double Cross - The Justice Department recently took a bow in its legal victory over the law firm of Milberg Weiss. But now it seems Justice may itself have been conned by the notorious firm and its felonious former lead partner, Melvyn Weiss. It was only last month that Milberg agreed to pay $75 million as part of a nonprosecution agreement over Justice's charges that it had run a 30-year kickback scheme. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
L. Gordon Crovitz: Patent Gridlock Suppresses Innovation - The Founders might have used quill pens, but they would roll their eyes at how, in this supposedly technology-minded era, we're undermining their intention to encourage innovation. The U.S. is stumbling in the transition from their Industrial Age to our Information Age, despite the charge in the Constitution that Congress "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." For the third year in a row, Congress has just given up on passing a law reforming how patents are awarded and litigated. This despite growing evidence that for most industries, today's patent system causes more harm than good. Litigation costs, driven by uncertainty about who owns what rights, are now so huge that they outweigh the profits earned from patents. (READ MORE)
Peter J. Wallison: There Is No Reason to Panic - If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were ordinary corporations, the sudden collapse of investor confidence last week would have set them to work on their bankruptcy applications. But they are not ordinary corporations -- and they are likely to survive because their debt securities have been viewed for decades as ultimately backed by the U.S. government. Barring the unlikely event of a credit market loss of confidence in the U.S. government itself, they should be able to attract the necessary financing for continued operations. The key judgment about their financial condition will not be made by the equity markets, but by their regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO). As long as OFHEO believes they are adequately capitalized -- as James Lockhart, the director of the agency, affirmed in a public statement last week -- they will continue to operate: (READ MORE)
Christine Varney: Arbitration Works Better Than Lawsuits - Congress is taking up legislation this week that will wipe out arbitration provisions in hundreds of millions of consumer contracts -- for everything from credit-card agreements to cell phones to health-insurance policies, even a contract for the purchase of a kitchen sink. The bill is so sweeping that it wouldn't apply just to contracts consumers may sign in the future. It will cancel arbitration agreements agreed to in the past. The Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007, sponsored in the Senate by Russ Feingold (D., Wis.) and in the House by Hank Johnson (D., Ga.), is scheduled to be marked up by a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow and could be taken up by the full committee on Wednesday. (READ MORE)
Arlen Specter & Joe Lieberman: Foreign Courts Take Aim at Our Free Speech - Our Constitution is one of our greatest assets in the fight against terrorism. A free-flowing marketplace of ideas, protected by the First Amendment, enables the ideals of democracy to defeat the totalitarian vision of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. That free marketplace faces a threat. Individuals with alleged connections to terrorist activity are filing libel suits and winning judgments in foreign courts against American researchers who publish on these matters. These suits intimidate and even silence writers and publishers. Under American law, a libel plaintiff must prove that defamatory material is false. In England, the burden is reversed. (READ MORE)
Mary Katharine Ham: "For the Children" - It’s the battle cry of the modern American Left when arguing for everything from assault weapons bans to Head Start funding to a State Children’s Health Insurance Program that would serve an awful lot of adults. Liberals, in their wisdom, believe the children are our future, and we should teach them well and let them lead the way. Fair enough, but when liberal politicians and labor unions begin quoting from the pop prophet Whitney to justify their policy positions, the proper response from millions of American schoolchildren should be something from the catalogue of another popular ’80s songstress: “What have you done for me lately?” Liberal philosophy on education quite literally puts a price tag on doing something “for the children.” The more funding “for the children,” the better. End of story. (READ MORE)
Star Parker: Change we should worry about - Are we undergoing some kind of sea change of attitudes in America today? Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne reflects such sentiment -- perhaps I should say wishful thinking -- by those on the left that indeed we are. He says capitalism is having a "reality check." The era of big government is back, according to Dionne. Americans now want to re-regulate, re-tax, redistribute, and re-socially engineer. I don't think so. What we do know is that Americans are unhappy with the state of their country (almost 85 percent say they are dissatisfied) and their political leaders (more than 70 percent are unhappy with their president and 90 percent are unhappy with the Congress). Although enthusiasm for the Republican Party is without question on the wane, there is no accompanying surge of popularity of the Democratic Party. (READ MORE)
Harry R. Jackson, Jr.: Jesse Jackson: Denied, Dethroned, and Dishonored - Jesse Jackson’s term as a the unofficial leader of the black civil rights movement ended abruptly with the release of excerpts from the Fox News’ tape of Jesse Jackson’s off-camera statements. Americans of all races have lost confidence in him. His own son, Jesse Jackson Jr, led the way in renouncing him as the reigning monarch of black political leadership. As many folks have suspected for years, Jesse Jackson revealed to everyone that he has an opportunistic side. His motives seem to be mixed and confusing. It’s safe to say that he, like many others, jumped on the Obama bandwagon because it suited his purposes. The contradiction of Jackson’s public praise of Obama and his private views highlights the truth of the expression, “Politics makes for strange bedfellows.” It also shows that the far Left is less unified than many Democrats would hope. (READ MORE)
Debra J. Saunders: Wiretapping and Toe Tapping - Hey, it's politics. In the primary, when Barack Obama wanted to connect with his party's disaffected left, he said that he would support a filibuster to stop a reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act if it granted retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that had cooperated with the federal government after the 9/11 attacks. Now Obama has those voters in the bag. So he is reaching out to the majority of Americans who want aggressive international surveillance to prevent another terrorist attack. And the average voter certainly isn't going to lose sleep if the price of that security is that the ACLU does not have carte blanche to sue AT&T for cooperating with the government. Wednesday, Obama was one of 69 senators who voted for the FISA bill that provided retroactive immunity to the telecoms. (READ MORE)
Andrew Langer: When Governments Attack! - A bedrock principle underlying the American tort reform movement is the understanding that litigation drains resources from a business—time, money, manpower, and attention. According to the American Tort Reform Association, the cost of the U.S. tort system runs nearly $250 billion annually, or nearly a thousand dollars for every American. Getting a handle on needless litigation has been a top-tier issue for the nation’s small business advocates, as small businesses are the least equipped to handle such lawsuits. Generally, such lawsuits are of the frivolous, disgruntled customer-type, like the $54 million “pants lawsuit” that was filed in DC. That lawsuit cost the Korean couple who owned the dry cleaning business at the heart of the suit thousands of dollars, and nearly their entire business. (READ MORE)
Carol Platt Liebau: Would Barack Obama Play Politics With Babies’ Lives? - In a little-noticed maneuver, on June 17, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid introduced a bill on behalf of its sole sponsor, Barack Obama – who was, apparently, unavailable. S. 3142 is the “Preventing Stillbirth and SUID Act of 2008,” and it authorizes the modest (in governmental terms) sum of $10,000,000 to “enhance public health activities related to stillbirth and sudden unexpected infant death.” That’s a laudable objective, of course. After a pregnancy full of dreams and eager anticipation, bearing a stillborn child is every mother’s nightmare. And SIDS – a sudden infant death syndrome where young babies die unexpectedly without any apparent reason – is a possibility that haunts all new parents. It’s just that Obama’s sudden interest in this topic and his sponsorship of S. 3142 is almost impossible to reconcile with his opposition as an Illinois state senator to a law intended to protect infants’ lives. (READ MORE)
Peter J. Wirs: Modern Political Corruption 101 - Would you like a peek inside what really happens on Capitol Hill? Or a preview of how an Obama White House would function? May we introduce you to Modern Political Corruption 101, a primer on American politics? What you’re about to read is not fiction from a dime-store pulp novel. Instead, what follows are extracts from the Grand Jury Presentment this past week in Harrisburg, the state capital of Pennsylvania. Locally it is called "Bonusgate." Although the indictment details Pennsylvania politics, anyone seasoned in politics knows this Grand Jury indictment could be easily be from a half-dozen other states as well as the District of Columbia. Obviously, this is only a Grand Jury indictment. The people accused are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. An indictment is only the prosecutor’s side of the story. The defense has yet the opportunity to present their version. (READ MORE)
A Newt One: One Party's Scare Tactic Is Another's SOP - The American nation is about to be rocked and reeled in the aftermath of the explosive front page image on the 21 JUL 08 New Yorker magazine. The intention was to portray the presumptive winner in the race to the White House in a satirical manner. It appears to have backfired and the backlash has been gaining more and more virally reactive opinions from the thin-skinned Leftinistra. I often wonder why Truth causes those on the Left to react in such manners as is all so excruciatingly and painfully obvious. The reactions thus far reveal a typical DNC Double Standard. Where has the outrage been when President Bush has been depicted in images unbecoming? Politicians are targets for satire - or are they? Studying the fall-out for the last few hours it has become crystal clear that only specified politicians are allowed to be or at least selected to be targets of satire. And, apparently, the only acceptable targets are members of the GOP. (READ MORE)
Lawhawk: China Fueling War In Darfur - China is busy propping up the Sudanese regime. This isn't surprising given the way the Chinese communists have been busy running interference for Africa's thugs, including Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. “The Panorama TV programme tracked down Chinese army lorries in the Sudanese province that came from a batch exported from China to Sudan in 2005. The BBC was also told that China was training fighter pilots who fly Chinese A5 Fantan fighter jets in Darfur. China's government has declined to comment on the BBC's findings, which contravene a UN arms embargo on Darfur. The embargo requires foreign nations to take measures to ensure they do not militarily assist anyone in the conflict in Darfur, in which the UN estimates that about 300,000 people have died.” (READ MORE)
Donald Douglas: The Elite-Radical Fist Bump from Heaven - It's deliciously tasteless, which is the oxymoron that came to me upon seeing the New Yorker's July 21st cover image of Barack and Michelle Obama: The cover's certainly going to draw fire over the next couple of days, from folks on the same side of the spectrum to which the magazine calls home. An added bonus is the New Yorker's new feature story, "Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama," an expose of Obama's politically successful assimilation to the Windy City's leftist political machine. The piece discusses Obama's run for the State Senate, begining in early 1995, and includes this passage on Obama's campaign associations: (READ MORE)
Pamela Geller: Stupid Dangerous Dems:Global Warming Led to ‘Black Hawk Down - This is teaching our young? This snake oil lunatic is lecturing at high schools? Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) is the chairman of the House (Select) Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee. A global warming committee? Where is that located? Next to the tooth fairy committee or the Vast right wing conspiracy department? Liberalism is a mentally disorder. As if. We are confronting an implacable enemy here and abroad and the leftards have to create bogeyman? Only to rip off the taxpayers and fund the enviro-industrial-complex: “Global Warming Led to ‘Black Hawk Down,’ Congressman Says On the Spot (CNSNews.com) – A top Democrat told high school students gathered at the U.S. Capitol Thursday that climate change caused Hurricane Katrina and the conflict in Darfur, which led to the ‘black hawk down’ battle between U.S. troops and Somali rebels.” (READ MORE)
Dafydd: How Bush Got His Groove Back - Today, President George W. Bush did something that shocked some of us: With a sweep of his presidential hand, he rejected the attempt by a low-level advisor to the Environmental Protection Agency to force the administration to regular carbon dioxide (which we all exhale) as a "pollutant," defying both the Democrats and the Supreme Court: “The Bush administration, dismissing the recommendations of its top experts, rejected regulating the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming Friday, saying it would cripple the U.S. economy. In a 588-page federal notice, the Environmental Protection Agency made no finding on whether global warming poses a threat to people's health or welfare, reversing an earlier conclusion at the insistence of the White House and officially kicking any decision on a solution to the next president and Congress.” The Democrats -- both their political wing in Congress and their journalistic wing -- reacted with befuddled fury: (READ MORE)
Big Dog: Gov. Schwarzenegger (RINO-CA) on Global Warming Hoax - Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (RINO-CA) is criticizing the Bush Administration for failing to recognize global warming and for not acting on it because the Chinese and Indians did not act. Schwarzenegger’s remarks came after the EPA decided not to pursue further action against global warming during the Bush presidency. It would appear as if the Terminator has swallowed the global warming Kool-Aid by the barrel. Hey Arnold, what science exists that proves global warming is a man made issue? How do you explain the warming and cooling cycles that the Earth has experienced for centuries, long before man was emitting huge amounts of carbon? How do you explain the fact that warming and cooling coincide with sunspot activity and finally, how do we explain the global warming that the planet Mars has experienced since no life has been discovered there and humans certainly do not live there? (READ MORE)
Flopping Aces: Political Blogs and Influence Just how important are we? - The LA Times today ran an article today by Geo Washington U’s Eric Sides and John Lawrence - “Who listens to blogging heads?” - that basically poo poos any influence the Internet’s plethora of political blogs have over fellow citizens. “In fall 2006, political scientists, including us, representing about 30 universities conducted a survey of 16,000 Americans, the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. The survey asked respondents whether they read blogs and, if so, which ones. We analyzed the answers, and the result is the first detailed portrait of political blog readers. About 34% of the respondents said they read blogs, but only 14% named at least one blog that focuses on politics.” Of course, the major flaw is the age of their “survey”… (READ MORE)
Zenster: What the Hedgehog Knows - The fox knows many things, the hedgehog one big thing. - Archilochus - The sly and cunning fox may know many things but what does it really know? For all its conniving and craftiness, just as often the fox finds itself hounded to death by red-clad hunters, shot at the henhouse door or ignominiously draped about some vapid starlet’s shoulders. How can such wiliness just as often meet with so ignoble an end? Even though foxes may be clever by half, their predatory nature still can get the best of them, if not the worst. As Spinal Tap’s David St. Hubbins observed, “It’s such a fine line between stupid, and clever.” Rapacity is not all it’s chalked up to be. Robert Browning once said, “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” While that may be the case, an overly grasping nature can just as easily clap onto prizes far more dubious in worth than they might first appear. (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: Obama on Iraq: Where’s the beef? - Barack Obama takes to the pages of the New York Times to attempt another explanation of his Iraq policy, but winds up back in the Big Muddle. He starts by seizing on Nouri al-Maliki’s call for a timetable for American withdrawal and heralds the success of the surge without understanding the connection between the two, and he reiterates his timetable for redeployment without acknowledging the impossible logistics it suggests. In all, it is a tour de force of ignorance and vacillation. For starters, he hails the success of the surge without admitting that he made the wrong call when it was proposed: “In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.” (READ MORE)
Michelle Malkin: Finally: Bush to lift offshore drilling ban - You’ll remember that I took the White House to task for its “You go first!” games on lifting the offshore drilling ban. See here. There’s an executive order ban that his dad signed and there’s the congressional ban. Back in June, I highlighted the Institute for Energy Research’s open letter to President Bush pressing him to tear up the executive order. Took him long enough, but he’s finally listening: “The White House says President Bush is planning to lift an executive ban on offshore oil drilling. In a Rose Garden statement on Monday, the president plans to lift the ban. But by itself, the move will not lead to more drilling off America’s coastline. Congress must still lift its own legislative ban before offshore drilling can happen.” (READ MORE)
Melanie Phillips: Levelling the workplace -- to the ground - For a brief and hallucinatory instant, when I saw the beginning of this story in today’s Times: “The radical extension of maternity leave and parents’ rights is sabotaging women’s careers, according to the head of the new equalities watchdog. Nicola Brewer said that it was an inconvenient truth that giving women a year off work after the birth of each child - soon to be paid throughout - was making employers think twice before offering a job or promotion.” I thought sanity had broken out at last. The equalities commisariat actually seemed to be acknowledging the inconvenient truth that ruinous leave arrangements for women discouraged employers from hiring them. This is hardly news to anyone in the real world; of course employers won’t hire workers who claim equality but then demand terms which are radically unequal and prohibitively expensive or unworkable. But since when did the Equality and Human Rights Commission inhabit the real world? (READ MORE)
Ron Winter: 'Frisco Attack on JROTC Racist - Anti-Military - I have been of the opinion for a long, long time that much of what passes for news reporting on the military in America has at its core a basic anti-militarism, that will result by design or as a natural consequence with increasing difficulty in maintaining strong, cutting edge, capable respected armed forces. Much of the anti-military reporting is subtle, showing the difficult living conditions or the horrors of combat, for instance, but not showing the end results where countries are saved and rebuilt, or soldiers are honored either with medals for bravery or warm welcomes and respect from their communities. Features on former service members who have made successful careers by applying the lessons they learned in the military to civilian life are exceedingly rare. (READ MORE)
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