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)
Bush Says It's 'Important to Engage' China - ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE, Aug. 4 -- Three days before he is set to arrive in Beijing for the Olympics, President Bush offered a mixed assessment of China's role in the world, praising its efforts to curb the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran, expressing disappointment about its recent move to... (READ MORE)
In Alaska, Praise for Sen. Stevens - Last week, President Bush's Justice Department announced that Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska had been indicted on federal corruption charges. Yesterday, the two men came together at a military base in Stevens's state, where Bush warmly praised the Senate's longest-serving Republican. (READ MORE)
U.S. May Have Taped Visits to Detainees - The Bush administration informed all foreign intelligence and law enforcement teams visiting their citizens held at Guantanamo Bay that video and sound from their interrogation sessions would be recorded, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. The policy suggests that the United... (READ MORE)
Anthrax Dryer a Key To Probe - Bruce E. Ivins, the government's leading suspect in the 2001 anthrax killings, borrowed from a bioweapons lab that fall freeze-drying equipment that allows scientists to quickly convert wet germ cultures into dry spores, according to sources briefed on the case. (READ MORE)
Of Good and Evil - "The hammer banged reveille on the rail outside camp HQ at five o'clock as always. Time to get up. The ragged noise was muffled by ice two fingers thick on the windows and soon died away. Too cold for the warder to go on hammering." (READ MORE)
Justice and Milberg - Poor Bernie Ebbers, the former WorldCom boss now serving a 25-year prison sentence. If he'd been a class-action lawyer, the former CEO might have ended up with a fat payout from his employer despite his felony rap. At least that's one way to look at the Justice Department's recent nonprosecution agreement with the notorious Milberg law firm. (READ MORE)
Extracurricular Politics - Teachers' unions are expert at presenting the interests of their members and of public school students as one and the same. Which is why it's always illuminating to see how the nation's largest teachers' union, the National Education Association, spends its political money. (READ MORE)
Boston Tax Party - Massachusetts is about the last place one would expect a tax revolt, but that's what's brewing in Beantown. The state board of elections recently certified that citizen activists have gathered the 125,000 signatures required to qualify an initiative for the November ballot to eliminate the state income tax. (READ MORE)
Obama now backs tapping into oil reserve - LANSING, Mich. Sen. Barack Obama put his effort to pursue energy voters into overdrive on Monday, flipping positions to call for releasing oil from the government's strategic reserve just days after he said he was open to expanded offshore drilling. (READ MORE)
Bush extends Mexican truck program - Infuriated Democrats vowed Monday to kill a pilot program that gives Mexican trucks access to U.S. highways after the Bush administration - acting on the first day of Congress' summer recess - announced that it was extending the test project. (READ MORE)
Colombia to Ortega's offer: No thanks - Nicaragua's leftist president, Daniel Ortega, who led Latin America's last successful armed Marxist revolution, is billing himself as peacemaker between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the government of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. (READ MORE)
McCain, Obama agree on big issues - On some policy issues, the presidential election just won't matter - both Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain are prepared to overturn President Bush's policy and expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, one of a series of contentious issues pushed out of the presidential debate because those at the top of the tickets agree. (READ MORE)
Democrats hit shutdown threat - Democratic leaders slammed Republicans on Monday for threatening to force a government shutdown this fall unless Congress lifts the ban on offshore oil drilling and for simultaneously demanding lawmakers return from the August recess to vote on more drilling. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
William McGurn: McCain's Problem Isn't Bush - When John McCain stands before the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis one month from now, the American people will see more than a United States senator. They will see a man who served his nation as a young officer and suffered for it as a prisoner of war. They will also see in that life a truly American story of hope and faith and honor. Which leads to an impolitic question: Just where does George W. Bush fit in? If you ask Barack Obama, he will tell you that a vote for Mr. McCain is a vote for a "third Bush term." It's a clever strategy, because it works on many levels. Plainly it rankles the McCain campaign, and pricks at the "maverick" label their candidate takes such pride in. It provides a foil to Mr. Obama's own campaign theme of "change." Most obviously, it plays upon the fatigue of people who are tired after seven years of war and hunger for something different. (READ MORE)
Bret Stephens: My Bet With Francis Fukuyama - No matter what happens in November, the war in Iraq will not be brought to an end by either Barack Obama or John McCain. The war in Iraq is over. We've won. Exhibit A for my claim: Francis Fukuyama has agreed to write me a check for $100. In March 2006, I wrote a blistering review of "America at the Crossroads," Mr. Fukuyama's sensational repudiation both of the war in Iraq as well as the neoconservative movement of which he was once a leading light. The book was widely praised. I called its arguments weak, its policy prescriptions weaker, and its manner disingenuous, since Mr. Fukuyama -- an early advocate of regime change in Iraq who claimed to have changed his mind several months before the war began -- had given no unequivocal indication of his opposition when his views might have made a real difference. (READ MORE)
Arthur Levitt: You Can't Control Animal Spirits - Financial regulators are in the unenviable position of being constantly second-guessed. In good times, when markets are on a roll and the economy is booming, the people that they regulate complain loudly that regulators are heavy-handed, over-regulatory, antibusiness and get in the way unnecessarily. In bad times, times of crisis and economic turmoil, regulators are criticized for not paying enough attention, dropping the ball, letting excesses develop, and not controlling the people, markets and institutions for which they are responsible. Most recently, the regulatory oversight of investment banks by the Securities and Exchange Commission has come under question. Why didn't the SEC prevent the events leading up to the collapse of Bear Stearns? Is SEC oversight less rigorous than oversight by the Federal Reserve? (READ MORE)
John R. Bolton: While Diplomats Dither, Iran Builds Nukes - This weekend, yet another "deadline" passed for Iran to indicate it was seriously ready to discuss ending its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Like so many other deadlines during these five years of European-led negotiations, this one died quietly, with Brussels diplomats saying that no one seriously expected any real work on a Saturday. The fact that the Europeans are right -- this latest deadline is not fundamentally big news -- is precisely the problem with their negotiations, and the Bush administration's acquiescence in that effort. The rationality of continued Western negotiations with Iran depends critically on two assumptions: that Iran is far enough away from having deliverable nuclear weapons that we don't incur excessive risks by talking; and that by talking we don't materially impede the option to use military force. (READ MORE)
Franklin D. Raines: Truce Time in the Fan-Fred Wars - Is it over? After almost 10 years of Fannie and Freddie wars, has the policy and political contest over the future of the government-sponsored enterprises been resolved by the passage of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008? Apparently not. The free-market economists, commercial competitors and conservative pundits who have opposed the GSEs have deemed the law a short-term measure to deal with the immediate housing crisis. They've declared that, once the immediate problems have subsided, dramatic action should be taken to shrink, subdivide, eliminate or privatize the two companies. Not only have they ignored the policy decisions Congress made in the housing bill, they've tried to rewrite history to make their case. Many important policy issues have been raised over the past decade about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (READ MORE)
Richard Spertzel: Bruce Ivins Wasn't the Anthrax Culprit - Over the past week the media was gripped by the news that the FBI was about to charge Bruce Ivins, a leading anthrax expert, as the man responsible for the anthrax letter attacks in September/October 2001. But despite the seemingly powerful narrative that Ivins committed suicide because investigators were closing in, this is still far from a shut case. The FBI needs to explain why it zeroed in on Ivins, how he could have made the anthrax mailed to lawmakers and the media, and how he (or anyone else) could have pulled off the attacks, acting alone. I believe this is another mistake in the investigation. Let's start with the anthrax in the letters to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. The spores could not have been produced at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where Ivins worked, without many other people being aware of it. Furthermore, the equipment to make such a product does not exist at the institute. (READ MORE)
Thomas Sowell: Bad "News" - We have forgotten so much about the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that many people may not remember the deadly anthrax spores that were mailed to various prominent people in politics and in the media during that time. None of the intended victims was killed by the anthrax but five other people were, including two postal workers, who apparently became victims because they handled the mail containing anthrax spores. In the instant search for someone to blame, biologist Steven J. Hatfill was publicly named as "a person of interest" in the case by government officials. He became, in the media presentation, the villain du jour. The government was eventually forced to issue a retraction and agreed to pay a settlement of more than $5 million. But retractions never catch up with the original charges, which will blight this man's life the longest day he lives. (READ MORE)
Patrick J. Buchanan: Mr. Obama, Welcome to the NFL! - Barack Obama just had the worst week since his beloved pastor, Jeremiah Wright, decided to expatiate on black liberation theology at the National Press Club. Coming off his royal progress through the Near and Middle East, Berlin, Paris and London, Barack had surged to a nine-point lead in the Gallup tracking poll. By Friday, he was back to a dead heat with a 72-year-old opponent with none of his natural skills, in a year when grocers are pulling Republican brands off the shelves. For all its gracelessness, the McCain campaign, given openings by Barack, stepped in and put Muhammad Ali on the canvas. The first opening was the clumsiness with which Barack dealt with a planned visit to wounded U.S. troops in Landshul, Germany. While the first half of his foreign trip, to Afghanistan and Iraq, was official, the European tour was campaign related. Yet, it was on this leg that a visit to wounded U.S. soldiers had been scheduled. (READ MORE)
Chuck Norris: The Forgotten - This past week, the Bush administration touted that there was a 30 percent drop (from 175,914 in 2005 to 123,833 in 2007) in the number of "chronically homeless" people in the nation -- those who are unaccompanied, disabled and have been homeless for longer than one year. I have my differences with the Bush administration, but credit needs to be given where credit is due. It is a step in the right direction that 50,000 more "chronically homeless" (of the roughly 750,000 total homeless in the U.S.) are off the streets, out of shelters and in secure environments. (Not counted here are those recently affected by the swell of foreclosures -- 739,714 filings in the second quarter of 2008 alone.) In particular, the executive director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, Philip Mangano, should be commended for leading communities across the country to develop plans for reducing homelessness. (READ MORE)
David Limbaugh: Liberal Press Circles Wagons Around Obama - The liberal media are unhinged over John McCain's recent ad campaign against Barack Obama, which erased Obama's 9-point lead in the polls and tied the race. How dare McCain challenge their anointed one? Obama is not the only one convinced he is "the one we've been waiting for." The media are also annoyed they have to endure this irritating uprising from McCain, who is officiously intermeddling with the inexorable flow of history. Sunday show hosts, editorial pages, and both print and TV news stories this past weekend were pregnant with outrage over McCain's "negative" campaigning -- "negative" being defined as anything, truthful or not, that places Obama in a less favorable light than they require. Their attitude toward Obama is not unlike their approach to the global warming issue: They accept the environmentalists' edict that man-made, apocalyptic warming is occurring, and no one is allowed to dissent. (READ MORE)
Dennis Prager: Barack Obama's Naive Berlin Speech -- Part Two - Sen. Barack Obama's recent speech in Berlin may have been a hit with American journalists. That, however, is due to most journalists' politics, not to the profundity of Obama's remarks. They were neither profound nor stirring. Indeed, a careful study of the speech should lead an impartial observer to be concerned about Obama's grasp of the world. I started my analysis last week; I conclude this week. Let me begin with that which was praiseworthy. Obama: "This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it. This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it. If we could create NATO to face down the Soviet Union, we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks that have struck in Madrid and Amman; in London and Bali; in Washington and New York." This was Obama at his finest -- defining the enemy and defining the task. (READ MORE)
Lawrence Kudlow: Drill, Drill, Drill Is Working - As Sen. John McCain and the GOP leadership nationalize the drill, drill, drill message, the Republican party might conceivably be riding a summer political rally. The question of offshore drilling, along with expanded domestic energy production, has suddenly become the biggest political and economic wedge issue of this election. Is there a Republican tsunami in the making? According to the major polls, Sen. McCain has overcome a big deficit to pull even with Obama. Meanwhile, according to a Rasmussen survey, Democratic party identification has slumped. While Republicans on the House floor shouted “vote, vote, vote” and “lower gas prices,” the Democratic majority turned off the lights, cameras, and microphones. Determined Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell offered unanimous-consent requests to vote on lifting the ban on deep-water exploration, and the Democrats objected. (READ MORE)
Phyllis Schlafly: One Brave Judge Resists Feminist Agenda - A New Jersey judge recently confronted an issue that courts have been avoiding for years: Are restraining orders constitutional? Accused criminals have "due process" and many other constitutional rights, but feminists have persuaded many judges to issue orders that restrain actions of non-criminals and punish them based on flimsy, unproved accusations. These restraining orders are issued without the due process required for criminal prosecutions, yet they carry the threat of a prison sentence for anyone who violates them. Anibal and Vivian Crespo were divorced and rearing their children in the same household when they had a fight, and Vivian asked for a restraining order. Anibal was not charged with any crime, but the judge issued the restraining order, which banned Anibal from his own house and thereby separated him from his children. (READ MORE)
Rich Lowry: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Moral Giant - "This is dangerous." - Soviet apparatchik Yuri Andropov, upon learning of "The Gulag Archipelago" Andropov knew whereof he spoke. When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's three-volume chronicle of the Soviet prison system appeared in the West in the early 1970s, it delivered a decisive blow to the moral standing of Soviet communism. The book attained its power not just as a memoir, a philosophical reflection and a historical account of the gulag, but as a profound work of literature. Solzhenitsyn gave it the subtitle "an experiment in literary investigation." He believed that the Soviet system, even with an apparatus of a mighty state at its disposal, couldn't survive the threat of truth expressed through art. In his Nobel lecture in 1970, Solzhenitsyn spoke of how "the convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable." The ultimate weakness of Soviet communism was that it was built on deceit: (READ MORE)
John McCaslin: Snail Mail - With the apparent suicide last week of Army scientist Bruce E. Ivins, the federal government will soon decide whether to close its lengthy anthrax-poisoning investigation, which came on the heels of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. An additional question to be answered is whether U.S. mail destined for the White House, Congress and federal agencies in specific ZIP codes will continue to undergo irradiation. This columnist has just finished reading a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report dated July 31, 2008, showing that about 1.2 million containers of federal mail, each weighing up to 20 pounds, were irradiated from November 2001 through April 2008. The cost for the irradiation: about $75 million. In January 2008, the U.S. Postal Service abandoned its plans to build an irradiation facility in Washington, citing costs and other considerations, and will continue contracting for the services. (READ MORE)
Harry R. Jackson, Jr.: The Race Card Returns - Last week Barack Obama did the unthinkable – he played the race card. In an unusually clumsy attempt to pre-empt the onslaught of McCain’s increasing negative campaign, Senator Obama made a huge mistake. Reacting to the Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears ad and the “Messiah” ad, which depicts Obama as an “anti-Christ figure,” he spoke out against the fear tactics he believes McCain and the GOP will use against him. His mistake was that he made himself sound weak by inferring that attacking his race would be a part of the fear campaign of the Right. Last Friday, Laura Ingram, guest host for Bill O’Reilly, asked me why the senator would resort to such measures. My answer was that I believe he was planning to use the race card all along. The senator had no doubt braced himself for the return of Jeremiah Wright sound bites and stinging criticism by his opponents in the last 30 to 45 days of the contest. (READ MORE)
Donald Douglas: Surrendering Reason to Hate? - Rick Moran's morning essay made me think about what I do as an online commentator. The piece is a lengthy discourse on the craft of blogging. Moran explains his motives and development as an online writer, discussing some of the ups and downs of the trade. Of particular note is his discussion of partisan flame wars and the demonization of the other. Moran is introspective: “If my blog attracted only those who usually agreed with me and thought I was the bee’s knees when it came to commentary, blogging would be a marvelous daily exercise. But there is another side to blogging that most of us never talk about; the relentless, daily pounding of negativism, hurtful epithets, and outright spewing hatred that arrives in the form of comments and emails from the other side as well as other blogs linking and posting on something I’ve written. We all like to think of ourselves as having thick skins and that such criticism rolls off our backs and never affects us.” (READ MORE)
Atlas: Apocalypse Now ..... or shortly - In today's Wall Street Journal, John Bolton yet again, emphatically restates the obvious into what has become a lonely echo chamber. And while history will look kindly upon him, the same will not be said of American leadership. It escapes me how Bolton can be so measured and deliberate in the face of such crushing impotence. The facts point to a frightening and fatal future. Iran pursues its nuclear weapons program with malevolent speed and vigor and as its MO, uses "talks" to stall (and the only ones talking are the perm 5, to themselves). Further, Iran's announcement of a new marine weapon came on the heels of another ignored deadline for an Iranian response to a package of incentives offered by six world powers. Incentives? The Associated Press reported from Tehran, "Iran will not give up 'a single iota of its nuclear rights,' the country's president said Saturday... (READ MORE)
Richard Landes: Gaza Anomalies Blow PCP’s Circuits: Result - The Sounds of Silence - A few friends of mine went to a party in Jerusalem that was primarily made up Anglophone reporters, people who work for NGOs and UN agencies. What amazed them was the pervasive sense of the people they met and spoke with that Israel was the greatest human rights violator in the world and that the dismantling of Israel would be a great step forward for global human rights. Now the idiocy of this position, the suicidal nature of this strategy to advance human rights is nothing short of breathtaking. Take Israel out of the Middle East and the region becomes nothing but Hama rules… especially when the nastiest people — those who want to destroy Israel — would feel empowered by such a victory. But try and tell that to people who are smart enough to believe they can’t be wrong, and credulous enough to believe the demopaths who pull their chains on a daily basis. (READ MORE)
Dafydd: Hamdan's Lawyer Admits Client Was Deep in al-Qaeda - I consider this story to be a rather stunning admission against interest -- or at least against the interests of those who have steadfastly proclaimed the innocence of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s driver and the poster-boy for al-Qaeda suspects held "without charge" at the Guantanamo Bay military detention facility (where "without charge" has that special meaning of "without charges in an American civilian courtroom; and we ignore any charges made by military prosecutors at military tribunals, because the corrupt and incompetent Bushies just made that all up.") During closing arguments at Hamdan's trial before a military tribunal, his lawyer, LTCDR Brian Mizer, has asked for leniency for his client because, he claims, Hamdan told military and CIA interrogators much valuable information... not only about bin Laden's whereabouts, but also details about specific al-Qaeda plots. (READ MORE)
Big Dog: Obama Does Not Need Fact Checkers - Barack Obama has had a devil of a time getting ads out that were factually correct. His ads tout bills he never voted on or sponsored and they make false claims about his opponent. None of this really matters because the people who support Obama are star struck and would believe anything he says. This is why he does not need fact checkers. They would never consider the truth as an alternative and in the unlikely event that people start to notice the chosen one shouts Hope and Change and all the supporters go back into a trance. Obama’s latest ad calls John McCain a tool of Big Oil (which is better than being a tool, like The One). Obama makes this claim because McCain has received money from oil companies and, according to Pbama, has voted to give Big Oil tax breaks. There is just one small problem with these two assertions. Obama has received money from Big Oil so he has no moral high ground from which to cast stones. (READ MORE)
Fort Hard Knox: And the Lights Went Out…In the U.S.A - While the fight goes on on the floor of the House of Representatives over the right to discuss and vote on the will of the people over the objections of the self proclaimed preserver of Earth Nancy Pelosi, Obama continues to spread misinformation in Lansing Michigan at a stump speech. Guess which event the mainstream media is covering? The mainstream media isn’t paying attention to Congressmen who are standing up for their constituents; instead they are following the empty suit Obama while he proselytizes his and Soros’ socialist beliefs. Obama wants to tap into our strategic reserves and institute a “windfall” gas tax on “big” oil. Shipments to the strategic reserves have already been suspended until the end of 2008, but then if Obama bothered to show up to work he would know that. (READ MORE)
Don Surber: A Berlin too far? - Before trip: Obama 46, McCain 36. After trip: McCain 42, Obama 41. The conventional wisdom is Democratic Sen. Barack Obama went to Europe and, as Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton once said: “Let’s get unified. The sky will open. The light will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing. And everyone will know that we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect.” Here’s the reality as reported in the Charlotte Post, a black newspaper: Obama’s 10-point lead before the trip is now a 1-point lead for McCain. “The poll follows what had been described as a blockbuster tour of the Middle East and Europe that was intended to boost Obama’s foreign policy profile. McCain used the trip as a launch pad to question whether Obama’s popularity abroad would translate into leadership at home,” Herbert L. White of the Post wrote. (READ MORE)
Neptunus Lex: A difficult man - My favorite professor at the US Naval Academy was a nattily dressed Pole with a charming accent and a casually exuberant attitude that stood in vivid contrast to the dour, patched elbow shabbiness of his departmental colleagues. Most of them were humorless liberals of the garden variety East Coast cohort, men and women who seemed to have purposefully installed themselves within the belly of the military-industrial beast, the better for to shake us from the bourgeois certainties of our middle class upbringing and preach the gospel of the Omnipresent Virtuous State. So long, you know, as the machinery of state was composed of bureaucrats from correct-thinking cadres. Otherwise, not so much. My professor’s father - an officer in the Polish Army - had been murdered by the Soviet Army in the Katyn Forest in 1940. My own father had delivered war supplies to the Soviet Union on the Murmansk Run from New York, nearly losing his life in the process... (READ MORE)
Allahpundit: Pelosi to at-risk Dems: Go ahead and oppose me on drilling - Politico confirms what many suspected, that the internal Democratic “debate” on drilling is really just a puppet show starring Pelosi as the bad guy and Dems like Jason Altmire with tough re-election bids as glorious pro-drilling heroes pleading with their leadership for action. (“Democratic House aides say the energy agenda has been carefully gamed out in strategy sessions…”) The point, of course, is to protect the current majority and stall until the election, when they’re bound to pick up seats and can use their new leverage next year to water down any GOP drilling proposals even further than they might now. In other words, they’re running out the clock — on the public, which overwhelmingly supports action in this area and is going to get much less of it if Pelosi’s strategy works. The depressing part: “Democratic insiders said that Pelosi and other party leaders were ‘not rattled’ by the GOP floor rebellion, and at this point, it’s not clear if the Democrats will even pay a price on energy.” (READ MORE)
Greyhawk: Raw Deal - London Times: Secret deal kept British Army out of battle for Basra. Many unnamed MOD officials quoted. ("While we had a strategy of evasion, the Americans just went in and addressed the problem.") And while there may be some degree of (ahem) interpretation going on here, this shouldn't go over too well on the home island: “The British were partly handicapped because their commander, Major-General Barney White-Spunner, was away on a skiing holiday when the attack began.” Whether the larger claims are accurate or not, none of this should reflect on the British soldiers, who've risked much and suffered more with far less support from their government and folks back home than the Americans. (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: (Video) Obama doubles down on energy - The Barack Obama campaign didn’t release their “National Priority” ad to the media last week when they began running it in battleground states, and after watching it, it’s not hard to see why. It tries to succeed where “Pocket” failed miserably, and exposes Obama yet again as an obstructionist on oil development. “National Priority” also goes negative yet again, and with Obama dropping in the polls, this may provide even more self-inflicted damage: “John McCain. He’s been in Washington for 26 years. And as gas prices soared and dependence on oil exploded, McCain was voting against alternative energy, against higher mileage standards. Barack Obama. He’ll make energy independence an urgent national priority, raise mileage standards, fast-track technology for alternative fuels. A thousand dollar tax cut to help families as we break the grip of foreign oil. A real plan, and new energy.” (READ MORE)
Cassy Fiano: Is Obama accepting donations from Palestinian brothers living in the Gaza strip? - It sure looks like it. Pamela Gellar broke the story of two Palestinian brothers from Rafah in the Gaza strip -- currently controlled by Hamas, a notorious terrorist organization -- who have apparently donated over $29,000 to the Obama campaign. A series of donations were made in 2007 by Monir Edwan and Hosam Edwan. The online form for donations on Obama's campaign site was filled out by the two with the city listed as "Rafah, GA". The only problem is that there is no Rafah in Georgia. There is, however, a city of Rafah in the Gaza strip. The brothers also used a zip code of "972", which, of course, is not a zip code in Georgia. Here's the file from Atlas Shrugs. While I'm sure that Obama will have some far-fetched explanation, the least of which will probably include blaming staffers, it doesn't matter. (READ MORE)
The Duck of Minerva: No-nothing politics - What should we consider the limits of responsible campaigning? Like many people, my ideal campaign would focus on policy issues rather than attacks on character. A President's character matters, of course, and I see no ethical reason why attacks on character should be "out of bounds" in a Presidential campaign (but the qualities that make someone a good leader of the Executive Branch are, I would argue, quite different than those the electorate fixates upon). We can all agree, I imagine, that dishonest attacks--those predicated on clear cut falsehoods--have no place in an ethical political campaign. But what are the limits of cynical opportunism? Let's consider four examples: the "celebrity" narrative, support for a "gas tax holiday," a tax on "windfall profits," support for expanded offshore oil drilling, and the "tire pressure" attack on Obama. (READ MORE)
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