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)
Paulson's Fannie Test - We're about to find out why Hank Paulson left that lucrative job at Goldman Sachs to be President Bush's last Treasury Secretary. Was it merely to add a fancy title to his obituary, or does he want to leave the U.S. financial system better than he found it? That's his test in the wake of his Sunday commitment to use taxpayer money to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (READ MORE)
'Free Our Oil' - That was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's catchphrase last week as she continued to grope for an energy policy. One of her ideas was to request "a small drawdown" in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, no irony intended. At least President Bush has finally called the Speaker's bluff by rescinding the 1990 executive ban on offshore energy exploration. (READ MORE)
The $4 Billion Senator - The federal takeover of IndyMac Bank over the weekend could cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. between $4 billion and $8 billion. But Senator Chuck Schumer, who helped to precipitate the collapse by publicizing a letter to the bank's regulator last month, has no remorse. (READ MORE)
Rangel's Pet Cause Bears His Own Name - House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel is soliciting donations from corporations with business interests before his panel, hoping to raise $30 million for a new academic center that will house his papers when he retires. (READ MORE)
Review Finds Slurs In '06 Saudi Texts - A Saudi-funded academy in Fairfax County used textbooks as recently as 2006 that compared Jews and Christians to apes and pigs, told eighth-graders that these groups are "the enemies of the believers" and diagrammed for high school students where to cut off the hands and feet of thieves, a Washington Post review of the books has found. (READ MORE)
Police: Iraq suicide bombers kill 28 army recruits - BAQOUBA, Iraq -- Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowd of army recruits Tuesday in an Iraqi province where devastating attacks persist despite security improvements elsewhere. At least 28 people died, the Iraqi police and military said. (READ MORE)
GM to Cut Salaried Workers, Production, Dividend - DETROIT -- General Motors Corp. said Tuesday it will lay off salaried workers, cut truck production, suspend its dividend and borrow $2 billion to $3 billion to weather a severe downturn in the U.S. market. (READ MORE)
D.C. on verge of new gun law - The District, rebuffed by the Supreme Court last month in a landmark decision on its 32-year-old gun ban, could soon be headed back to court over a new gun law that could take effect as early as Wednesday. (READ MORE)
Wall Street won't bank on it - With a crisis involving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac averted for now, Wall Street started fretting Monday about the prospect of more bank failures after the government's takeover of IndyMac. (READ MORE)
Mexico faults U.S. in border suspect's release - Mexican law-enforcement authorities released from jail a man suspected of running over and killing a U.S. Border Patrol agent during an aborted drug-smuggling attempt because U.S. officials never asked that he be held or sought his extradition during the five months he was in custody, the Mexican Embassy in Washington said Monday. (READ MORE)
Shift on war hits Obama's liberal base - Sen. John McCain on Monday accused his Democratic presidential rival of flip-flopping on the war in Iraq, as a pair of new polls showed the Republican's strategy of painting Sen. Barack Obama as politically expedient is beginning to take hold with voters. (READ MORE)
China concerned by Sudan arrest plan - BEIJING (AP) - China voiced concern Tuesday over an International Criminal Court prosecutor's decision to seek an arrest warrant for Sudan's president on charges of genocide in the African country's war-torn Darfur region. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Maziar Bahari: Ahmadinejad in 2009 - The next American president’s favorite rogue leader will most probably remain Iran's colorful Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Less than a year before the next Iranian elections in June 2009, Ahmadinejad has no serious challengers for his post who might steal his momentum. Like any leader, Ahmadinejad's popularity has been fluctuating since he became president in June 2005. Many Iranians are fed up with high prices, both a result of rising food prices around the world and the government’s mismanagement of economy. But even with oil prices at over $140 a barrel, he has managed to provide the minimum necessary to his core supporters, mainly poor Iranians used to living on the very minimum. Since becoming president, he has toured the country and visited parts of Iran that no other president had ever visited before. (READ MORE)
Thomas Sowell: Are Facts Obsolete? - In an election campaign in which not only young liberals, but also some people who are neither young nor liberals, seem absolutely mesmerized by the skilled rhetoric of Barack Obama, facts have receded even further into the background than usual. As the hypnotic mantra of "change" is repeated endlessly, few people even raise the question of whether what few specifics we hear represent any real change, much less a change for the better. Raising taxes, increasing government spending and demonizing business? That is straight out of the New Deal of the 1930s. The New Deal was new then but it is not new now. Moreover, increasing numbers of economists and historians have concluded that New Deal policies are what prolonged the Great Depression. (READ MORE)
John R. Bolton: Israel, Iran and the Bomb - Iran's test salvo of ballistic missiles last week together with recent threatening rhetoric by commanders of the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guards emphasizes how close the Middle East is to a fundamental, in fact an irreversible, turning point. Tehran's efforts to intimidate the United States and Israel from using military force against its nuclear program, combined with yet another diplomatic charm offensive with the Europeans, are two sides of the same policy coin. The regime is buying the short additional period of time it needs to produce deliverable nuclear weapons, the strategic objective it has been pursuing clandestinely for 20 years. Between Iran and its long-sought objective, however, a shadow may fall: targeted military action, either Israeli or American. Yes, Iran cannot deliver a nuclear weapon on target today, and perhaps not for several years. (READ MORE)
Clint Bolick: McCain's School Choice Opportunity - Education is slipping in priority among many voters but not among Hispanics, many of whom see school choice as a deciding factor in whom to vote for this fall. This has implications for the presidential election. A new poll shows that 82% of Hispanics consider education as one of three most important issues facing this country. The survey also shows that, even while Hispanics trust Democrats over Republicans on education by more than a two-to-one margin, that ratio could change if Republicans heavily promote school choice while Democrats oppose it. The poll was conducted last year among more than 800 registered Hispanic voters for the Alliance for School Choice and the Hispanic Coalition for Reform and Educational Options, but never publicly released. (READ MORE)
Chuck Norris: Honey, I Shrunk the Congress! - I think it's time to let Congress feel our election fury this November. As reflected in the latest Rasmussen Reports, "Just 9 percent (of Americans) say Congress is doing a good or excellent job." It is the first single-digit approval rating for Congress in Rasmussen's history, and it makes Bush's 30 percent approval rating seem like a stat to boast. The study went on to explain: "Just 12 percent of voters think Congress has passed any legislation to improve life in this country over the past six months. That number has ranged from 11 percent to 13 percent throughout 2008." Even The Associated Press reported last week, in the story "Congress mostly going through the motions for now," that "some fights of the 110th Congress have lost their oomph in the waning months before the November elections, with both parties content to run out the clock on messy matters." (READ MORE)
Dennis Prager: False Equation: Opposing Same-Sex Marriage and Opposing Interracial Marriage - The most effective of all morality-based arguments for same-sex marriage, the one that persuades more people than any other argument, is the one that equates opposition to same-sex marriage with the old opposition to interracial marriage. The argument, repeated so often that it sounds incontestable, is this: Just as parts of American society once had immoral laws that forbade whites and blacks from marrying, so, today, society continues to have immoral laws forbidding men from marrying men and women from marrying women. And just as decent people overthrew the former, decent people must overthrow the latter. Thanks in large part to widespread higher education -- the higher the educational level, the more one is likely to hold this view -- vast numbers of Americans believe in this equation of sex (gender) and race. But the equation is false. (READ MORE)
William McGurn: The NAACP and Black Abortions - At the Good Counsel shelters for homeless pregnant women in New York, yesterday was business as usual: pregnant moms getting ready to deliver, other mothers feeding their children, still others going off to school or training for new jobs. There is a striking fact about these women: most are African-American. "These moms are attracted to Good Counsel because they know they will be in an environment where their baby is considered as beautiful and as worthy of life as any other," says Executive Director Chris Bell. Yesterday was not business as usual at the 99th annual conference for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. For one thing, the first African-American to head the presidential ticket of a major party was on hand. (READ MORE)
Gerald P. O'Driscoll Jr.: End the Mortgage Duopoly - Despite last week's protestations by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke, markets knew that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not well capitalized. Markets also anticipated the weekend bailout announcement by bidding down the share prices of the two mortgage giants, and also bidding up the prices of their debt (driving down their interest rates). That was a bet that the forthcoming bailout would result in a dilution of shareholder value, and protection for the bondholders. Yields on Treasuries rose, as the government's balance sheet was expected to expand by whatever the net liabilities of these two companies might be (less, presumably, than their $5.3 trillion gross liabilities). (READ MORE)
Bill Murchison: About that Gramm 'Gaffe' - "Nation of whiners"? I don't know how you flesh out with mathematical exactitude ex-Sen. Phil Gramm's famous assertion of last week concerning how we talk about the economy. I'll say this: There's a lot of whining go on, and if, as Phil avers, he was "talking about our leaders," not our people in general, he makes a serious point with something of the blunt force requisite to the task. Alas for him! The glory of the First Amendment to the Constitution is that it lets you say practically anything about practically everything. The fly in the buttermilk is you can't keep people from trying to shovel your remarks back down your throat. "Nation of whiners" sounds like a general indictment. Phil's firmest fans would agree, well, that wasn't, you know, maybe the most prudent way of putting things: (READ MORE)
David Limbaugh: Tony Snow - I can't pinpoint the precise date I met Tony Snow, but I remember it was over the telephone. We talked about one of his passions: radio. And we became fast friends. From that point on, we talked every few months, until about three or four months ago when I could only get his voice mail. I knew something was up because he was always good about returning calls. Still, I probably would have chalked it up to his busy schedule, except that I read news reports that he was forced to cancel a number of speeches because of illness. I remember e-mailing a few mutual friends: Lucianne Goldberg and Kathryn Lopez. Both shared similar concerns, but we were all cautiously relieved when follow-up news stories reported Tony was OK. (READ MORE)
Bret Stephens: Descent From Entebbe - Liberated after six years of jungle captivity, Franco-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt exclaimed: "I think only the Israelis can possibly pull off something like this." If only. Tomorrow, the Israeli government is scheduled to release five Lebanese prisoners, including a man named Samir Kuntar – more on him in a moment – in exchange for two of its kidnapped soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, and information concerning the fate of airman Ron Arad, missing since 1986. The exchange might seem semiequitable, if only the three Israelis weren't all presumed dead. Israel is also trying to negotiate the release of Gilad Shalit, kidnapped by Hamas and held in the Gaza Strip since June 2006. Cpl. Shalit is almost certainly alive. The asking price for his freedom, should terms ever be met, will be high: Hamas has already turned down cold an Israeli offer to release 450 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for their one hostage. (READ MORE)
Amanda Carpenter: McCain Speaks to La Raza - GOP presidential candidate John McCain indicated he’d like to give immigration reform another try at the National Council of La Raza’s annual meeting in San Diego. “I don’t want to fail again to achieve comprehensive immigration reform,” McCain told those attending NCLR’s annual meeting Monday. There, McCain stressed his newly-held priority of border enforcement before discussions about granting legal status to illegal immigrants. “We must prove we have the resources to secure our borders and use them while respecting the dignity and rights of citizens and legal residents of the United States. When we have achieved our border security goal, we must enact and implement the other parts of a fair, practical and necessary immigration policy.” McCain’s Democratic rival, Barack Obama, spoke at the conference Sunday. (READ MORE)
Patrick J. Buchanan: A Phony Crisis -- and a Real One - Last week, the front pages of the world press blossomed with photos of four Iranian rockets, fired in salvo, heading skyward. The image was powerful, and the message reinforced by the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Should Israel attack Iran, said Ali Shira, Tel Aviv will be "set on fire." U.S. reaction was swift and bristling. "Rice Says U.S. Will Defend Gulf," declared the headline over the AP story that began: "Condoleezza Rice flexed America's muscles in the Middle East Thursday, forcefully warning Iran the U.S. won't ignore threats and will take any action necessary to defend friends and interests in the Persian Gulf. ... "Rice said Iran's leaders should understand that Washington won't dismiss provocations from Tehran and has the ability to counter them. 'I don't think the Iranians are too confused, either, about the capability and the power of the United States to do exactly that.'" (READ MORE)
Rich Lowry: Barack Obama's Anti-Factual Iraq War - At some point, Democrats decided that facts didn't matter anymore in Iraq. And they nominated just the man to reflect the party's new anti-factual consensus on the war, a Barack Obama who has fixedly ignored changing conditions on the ground. It's gotten harder as the success of the surge has become undeniable, but -- despite some wobbles -- Obama is sticking to his plan for a 16-month timeline for withdrawal from Iraq. He musters dishonesty, evasion and straw-grasping to try to create a patina of respectability around a scandalously unserious position. Obama spokesmen now say everyone knew that President Bush's troop surge would create more security. This is blatantly false. Obama said in early 2007 that nothing in the surge plan would "make a significant dent in the sectarian violence," and the new strategy would "not prove to be one that changes the dynamics significantly." He referred to the surge derisively as "baby-sit[ting] a civil war." (READ MORE)
Amanda Carpenter: Bush Reverses Father's Order on OCS - Rising energy prices have prompted President George to rescind an executive order enacted by his father and extended by President Bill Clinton to ban offshore drilling. “The time for action is now,” President George W. Bush said in a Rose Garden speech Monday afternoon. A memorandum signed by the President rescinds former President George H.W. Bush’s 1990 executive order drafted in response to pressure from the environmental lobby after a 3 million gallon oil spill off the coast of California in 1969. The current President Bush argued “advances in technology have made it possible to have the oil production out of sight, protect habitats and protect against oil spills.” Before energy producers are permitted to explore offshore, however, Congress must lift their own legislative ban against drilling off the shores of California, Florida and Virginia that has been in place since 1981. (READ MORE)
Tim Walberg: Rush, Sean: We Need Your Help to Bring Down Gas Prices - Over the past few weekends, I’ve held multiple events in my largely rural south-central Michigan district to hear firsthand how high gas prices are affecting my constituents. One single mother offered remarks which I found particularly memorable. She shared how she drives an hour, from Adrian to Ann Arbor, each way to the hospital where she works. Because of high gas prices, she recently requested and received permission to begin working back to back 8 hour shifts, two days per week, so she doesn’t have to make the hour long commute each day. This remarkable woman then shared something that really struck me. She said that in a couple years, when her daughter turns 16, handing her daughter the keys to the family car will be an extremely stressful experience. But unlike when she was a teenager and her father was worried about her driving abilities and the car’s safety: (READ MORE)
Mike S. Adams: The Moral Minority - “Beware the people who moralize about great issues; moralizing is easier than facing hard facts.” - John Corry There is a well-worn path by the side of my garage that leads to the back yard where I spend a good bit of my free time. Recently, I decided to lay brick to cover the path so I wouldn’t track dirt into the house on my way back inside. This required about 500 bricks and a long afternoon’s work. Unfortunately, as I started working on the brick path, I made a frustrating discovery. About 450 of the bricks I bought were bright red but about fifty were of a lighter yellowish hue. So I loaded up the fifty lighter bricks and took them back to the place where I bought them. If you think I should have instead taken back the 450 bright red bricks, you may want to consider voting for Barack Obama. (READ MORE)
The Virtuous Republic: Why I Never Will Be a Great Blogger: The AP Taliban Snuff Pictures - I ran across these (be warned, very graphic pictures) pictures of burqa covered women being executed by the Taliban while researching the deaths of nine of our service men in Afghanistan yesterday. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure why the AP embedded these photos with the news of the deaths of our troops. Unfortunately, I didn’t pounce on the story, but Rusty at MyPetJawa did, here. Here are some screenshots, from the original AP story, to give you an idea of what is going on: My first reaction to this story and the selection of these execution pictures that are included with it, was that the author of the story was trying to get a “point” across. And that point? The Americans are weak and the Taliban have reestablished not only physical control, but they have reimposed their totalitarian form of Islam and that there is nothing NATO can do about it. (READ MORE)
The Belmont Club: Obama on Iraq - Barack Obama described his plan for Iraq in a New York Times editorial. Obama anchored is piece on “the call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq”. Obama wrote, “we should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.” The BBC had access to Maliki’s actual press conference and wrote this (emphasis mine): “US presidential contender Barack Obama has repeatedly seized on statements attributed to Iraqi leaders to support his call for a troop withdrawal deadline. The key statement cited by Mr Obama and others was made by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki last Monday in his address to Arab ambassadors in the United Arab Emirates. …. It was widely circulated by the news media, and caught much attention, including that of Mr Obama. There is only one problem. It is not what Mr Maliki actually said.” (READ MORE)
The Tygrrr Express: Ideological Bigotry Part XV–Hatred’s Finale From Amy Klein - One cannot teach an old dog new tricks, and one cannot teach an aging bigot the way to humanity and decency. It seems that at that this rate, I might need an entire new blog just to detail the hate speech coming from an agent of tolerance of the Jewish Journal, Amy Klein. When I use the word tolerance, I mean it the way a politically liberal person would mean it. One should show compassion for Gitmo detainees, Palestinian homicide bombers, and other terrorists, but republicans should be decried as evil at every possible turn. I can understand making anti-republican remarks if one is a liberal debater on a talk show. Both sides spout their talking points, and move on. (READ MORE)
John Hawkins: John McCain's Dishonest Flip-Flops On Immigration Continue: He's Now For Two Opposing Plans Simultaneously - John McCain was one of the Senate's biggest advocates of comprehensive immigration reform, which entails putting illegals on the path to citizenship while simultaneously putting security reforms in place that would be thwarted at the first convenient opportunity by members of Congress. The American people rejected that plan and conservatives were on track to reject John McCain's candidacy when he flip flopped on the issue and started supporting a security first position. A security first position on illegal immigration entails securing the border and improving enforcement first before illegals are put on the path to citizenship -- if they're ever put on that path at all. In John McCain's case, he explicitly said that he wanted security first and then he'd put illegals on the path to citizenship. Fine. (READ MORE)
ToySoldier: What's Happening in Dover, TN? - That’s a question I ask myself, as I try to prepare a trip to visit the MoA compound there. I don’t necessarily expect violence to break out but reading of similar visits to compounds I definitely don’t plan on going without safeguards. The biggest problem I’m running into is cooperation with the Sheriff’s Office there. The Sheriff is never “in", will not return my phone calls, and no one at the office seems to know anything about the MoA compound except for the fact that it’s there. I can understand not wanting to stir the pot, but who follows the ideology of putting rabid animals where you can see them? You get rid of the rabid animal so it doesn’t harm anyone. This fear of “offending” Islam is a disease in this country, why do you fear offending people who care nothing for your way of life or your freedoms and would love nothing more than to see those very rights eradicated? (READ MORE)
The Duck of Minerva: Doctrinal confusion - In this morning's Washington Post, Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier deliver a sustained case for the next president's not having a "doctrine" of his own. "Solving problems is more important than laying out all-encompassing ideological pronouncements," they declare; "the world we live in is too diverse for anything else." I have no quarrel with their basic suggestion that attempting to force the world into an ideological straightjacket is almost certainly counterproductive (crusaders' protests about making history rather than living in the "reality-based community" to the contrary). This sensibility about the (perhaps tragic) limits of human social action is common to all varieties of realism, ranging from the materialist to the constructionist, and I'm in print as a "realist constructivist." So I don't mind the recommendation -- but I do mind the chain of logic that gets them there. (READ MORE)
Ron Winter: Congressman John Larson, #1 Cause of High Gas Prices; Poster Child for Government Dysfunction - Connecticut's First District Congressman John Larson, a 10-year veteran of failed Congressional policies, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's personal valet, appeared on national media Monday afternoon demanding that President Bush tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserves for additional oil supplies. This he said, while claiming to be the only man in America who knew the long-term answer to our energy needs, would create an immediate drop in gas prices for the consumer. He was, as usual, parroting Pelosi who has been making the same claim for some time now, and as usual these two "geniuses" couldn't mount a double digit IQ if they stood on each other's shoulders. (READ MORE)
Ilya Somin: Why Ideology, Not Interest Group Politics, Explains Academic Opposition to the new Milton Friedman Institute - Last month, I argued that ideological bias against Friedman's libertarian views explains the actions of the 100+ University of Chicago professors who signed a petition opposing the establishment of the new Milton Friedman Institute at their university. However, political scientists Jacob Levy and Daniel Drezner have put forward alternative explanations based on interest group politics. Drezner argues that the protesting professors are unhappy because their departments aren't getting a big enough slice of the $200 million in research funds that will go to the new Institute. Most of the signatories to the petition are non-economists, he points out, and economists will probably reap the lion's share of the Institute's research grants. Levy, by contrast, suggests that the signatories are motivated not by a desire for more money, but by fear that the Institute will will cause their departments to lose status relative to economics professors: (READ MORE)
Orin Kerr: Assessing Surveillance Laws in An Era of Sunset Provisions - In my blog post last week on the new FISA Amendments, and a follow-up on Friday, some commenters expressed strong disagreement — and in some cases, downright contempt — at my view that the most natural baseline for assessing the latest FISA Amendments was last year's FISA law, the Protect America Act. Our disagreement raises a conceptually interesting question: How should we characterize the direction of new surveillance laws in an era when so many surveillance laws are being subject to sunset provisions? And applying that to the specific case here, is the Protect America Act the right baseline for the new FISA Amendments? I think the question is tremendously important. Statutory laws require a feedback loop: The public needs to know if their policy preferences are being enacted into law. But the details of surveillance law are a mystery to 99.99% of the population. (READ MORE)
CJ: Exclusive: Obama Supports Troops - …if they're anti war. A lot of mainstream press was given to Presidential hopeful Barack Obama when he spoke to veterans in Colorado earlier this month. On July 2nd, Obama spoke in Colorado Springs before a group of veterans. The context of his speech was to contrast his military experience and agenda with that of his main opponent, John McCain. At the rally, Obama said he hopes the military community will see him as “a guy looking out for us and not someone trying to score cheap political points.” Really? Is that why Barack stocked the audience behind him with members of "Colorado Veterans", an anti-war group based in the area? After all, it was an invitation only event. "Colorado Veterans" is another one of those kook organizations calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney and also prominently display the death totals on their website, highlighting a supposed toll of poor, Iraqi children killed "in cold blood" by the murderous United States troops. (READ MORE)
Melanie Phillips Blog: Obama and the eclipse of reason - I am currently in Los Angeles at the annual convention of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organisation of America, where I am due to take part in a panel discussion today on the subject of Iran and the Islamist threat to the world. Yesterday, though, I had my first direct exposure to Obamania (the suspension of reason by emotion provoked by the charismatic senator from Illinois). There are two thousand women here, and as far as I can see only a tiny minority are Republicans -- which is what one would expect from American Jews who remain overwhelmingly Democrat voters. Granted the vast majority would rather boil in oil along with the fried fish rather than ever vote Republican (pfui!) it was still unsettling, to put it mildly, to see them categorically dismiss the evidence suggesting that President Obama would not be good for Israel and the Jewish people. (READ MORE)
The Sundries Shack: Obama: Police Officers are Terrorists - If I asked you to give me ten words you would use to describe a police officer in the United States, I’m pretty sure that “terrorist” wouldn’t make the list. Then again, you’re not Barack Obama speaking in front of a racist separatist group who believes in abolishing the border between Mexico and the United States and funds school programs that teach that the southwest United States belongs to Mexicans. “When communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids, when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel, when all that is happening, the system just isn’t working, and we need to change it.” (READ MORE)
Warner Todd Huston: AP’s New Muckraking Style, From Just-The-Facts to In-Your-Face - For those unfamiliar, since May of this year the Associated Press has had a new Washington Bureau Chief, a past AP reporter named Ron Fournier. According to Politico, the previous chief was pushed out to make room for Fournier in a “hard-feelings shake-up” with the old chief left worried that Fournier might “destroy” the AP. A pretty stark assessment, of course, but not necessarily all sour grapes from the passing chief because there is a legitimate reason for her to worry about Fournier. You see, Fournier has decided that a more hard-charging, opinion oriented style of writing is the new direction the AP should take in this new Internet age and it’s a direction that makes the AP’s past bias even more pronounced. (READ MORE)
McQ: Liberty threatened by radical environmentalism - Brendan O’Neill has a piece in the UK Guardian which pretty well characterizes the threat radical environmentalism poses to our freedom and liberty. My one criticism of the article is his use of the broader term "environmentalism" as descriptive of the radical element. In fact, I consider myself an environmentalist of sorts in that I don’t want dirty air, dirty water or a polluted landscape and do believe we should be good stewards of our environment. But that, of course, is far short of the agenda of radical environmentalists. O’Neill puts the threat into perspective: (READ MORE)
Amy Proctor: Bush: Democrats Stand in the Way of Lower Gas Prices - Pres. Bush issued a memorandum to lift the executive prohibition on off shore drilling for oil today and urged Congress to lift their ban restricting oil exploration to reduce the U.S. dependency on foreign oil. Bush made it clear that the do-nothing Congress is responsible for impeding a solution to bring down gas prices and told the Democratically controlled Congress that the ball “is now squarely” in their court. “..we need to increase the supply of oil, especially here at home. For years, my administration has been calling on Congress to expand domestic oil production. Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal -- and now Americans are paying at the pump. It’s been almost a month since I urged Congress to act — and they’ve done nothing. They’ve not moved any legislation. And as the Democratically-controlled Congress has sat idle, gas prices have continued to increase.” (READ MORE)
Flopping Aces: Withdrawing From Iraq Will Increase Respect for America - Well, that’s the Democratic Party line at least, but is it true? For example, will an American withdrawal from Iraq give the United States more credibility and put this nation in a position of more authority when dealing with Iran (and their terrorist surrogates like Hezzbollah, or their allies like Syia and North Korea)? Apparently, uh…no. Seems like they already think the Democrats’ demands for an unconditional (non-”conditions-based” timeline for withdrawal to be PC) is a joke. No doubt, the talk not only destroys deterrence, and weakens the US at a diplomatic table, but it’s so funny to them that they’ve come to using the left’s mantra as a cartoon. Democrats like to ignore the facts about the war in Iraq and often prefer to make wild-ass-guesses rather than use real statistics in discussion. It’s made the entire discussion of the war nearly impossible given the lack of reality. (READ MORE)
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