Let's be serious -- who really cares about this photo?

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe accused the Clinton campaign Monday of "shameful offensive fear-mongering" by circulating a photo as an attempted smear.

Plouffe was reacting to a banner headline on the Drudge Report saying that aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) had e-mailed a photo calling attention to the African roots of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

"The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat front-runner dressed as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya," the Drudge Report said. The photo created huge buzz in political circles and immediately became known as "the 'dressed' photo," reflecting the Drudge terminology.

Plouffe said in a statement: “On the very day that Senator Clinton is giving a speech about restoring respect for America in the world, her campaign has engaged in the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election. This is part of a disturbing pattern that led her county chairs to resign in Iowa, her campaign chairman to resign in New Hampshire, and it’s exactly the kind of divisive politics that turns away Americans of all parties and diminishes respect for America in the world," said Plouffe.

Clearly, the photo does not show that Obama is a Muslim. It falls into a long line of photos of American political figures putting on goofy-looking native gear for a photo-op or as part of some event as a show of respect. That he may look a bit silly is not in and of itself a problem -- at least he isn't riding in a tank like Mike Dukakis or wearing the "bunny suit" at NASA like John Kerry.

I guess I really don't see it as proving anything.

But unlike the Clinton spokesperson in the article, i do see a problem with those connected to the campaign circulating the photo. After all, it is an attempt to play into the old false rumor about Obama being a Muslim -- and that is a bigoted attack.

Once again, we get more of the "why doesn't Clarence ask questions" stories that pop up a couple of times a year in the media. This one notes it has been about two years sine the last time he asked a question during oral arguments.

Two years and 144 cases have passed since Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas last spoke up at oral arguments. It is a period of unbroken silence that contrasts with the rest of the court's unceasing inquiries.

Hardly a case goes by, including two appeals that were argued Monday, without eight justices peppering lawyers with questions. Oral arguments offer justices the chance to resolve nagging doubts about a case, probe its weaknesses or make a point to their colleagues.

Left, right and center, the justices ask and they ask and they ask. Sometimes they debate each other, leaving the lawyer at the podium helpless to jump in. "I think you're handling these questions very well," Chief Justice John Roberts quipped to a lawyer recently in the midst of one such exchange.

Leaning back in his leather chair, often looking up at the ceiling, Thomas takes it all in, but he never joins in.

Monday was no different. Thomas said nothing.

Of course, Thomas is in great company with his style. For most of the Court's history, oral arguments did not involve questioning the advocates during oral arguments. John Marshall, generally considered to be the greatest member of the US Supreme Court, generally didn't ask questions from the bench, nor did Joseph Story and the other giants of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. That changed with the coming of the Roosevelt justices in the 1930s, as FDR made a practice of picking law professors who took their classroom methodology into the courtroom.

Is there anything wrong with asking no questions during oral arguments? Certainly not -- indeed, I'd argue that there is something better about trying to give the lawyers for the parties a respectful hearing. We might be better served by having more of the members of the High Court follow his example

Now as I've said in the past, I have very little use for most of the high profile televangelists. I disagree with the theology put forth by most of them, which I believe borders on heretical. And yet I'm even more opposed by this effort by Senator Charles Grassley to dig around into the budgetary practices of their "ministries" in a public fashion -- and even more so by the threat to jail them if they do not cooperate with his kangaroo court.

"I've sent them some letters because I want some information. If they want to cooperate that's good, I expect they will. If they don't, they'll be the first people since a fellow named Abramoff, and he's in a jail cell."

So let's make this really clear -- Grassley is explicitly threatening to see ministers jailed for refusing to share the inner workings of their ministries with the US government. What's more, he is planning on holding hearings on their budgetary priorities, placing a US Senate committee in the position of passing judgment over whether or not their spending is in keeping with the beliefs and purposes of the ministry. That sounds pretty invasive of an area that is covered by the First Amendment to me.

Funny, isn't it, that the Left isn't at all interested in invoking the doctrine of the separation of church and state to condemn this witch hunt? And interesting, isn't it, that this liberal senator is only targeting ministries that are generally seen as conservative theologically and (because of that stance) politically?

I wonder -- when will Senator Grassley conduct the public investigation of the terrorist ties of Islamic non-profits, including mosques that preach extreme theology that is supportive of jihadi terror? Want to bet that the answer is NEVER -- because unlike the Christians he seeks to persecute now, Grassley knows that disgruntled Muslims may attempt to kill him.

This does, however, raise an interesting questions as to the constitutionality of requiring that churches and other religious groups apply to the government for tax-exempt status and the government's role in regulating them. There is a legitimate argument that religious groups, by their nature, should be exempt from taxes under the First Amendment. After all, as stated in the decision of the Supreme Court in McCulloch v. Maryland, "the power to tax is the power to destroy." It is undeniable that the First Amendment implicitly denies the government the power to destroy a religious organization, just as it explicitly denies the government the power to establish one. Senator Grassley's statement serves as a pointed reminder of why the free exercise and establishment clauses exist.

Turning 45 is traumatic.

Turning 45 while visiting a seriously ill family member is even more traumatic.

Traveling home by plane under such circumstances with a muscle spasm that won't quit in your lower back is even worse.

But the worst thing about the day was discovering that my favorite blog read of the day, Captain's Quarters, is going into permanent hiatus as Ed Morrissey goes to work for Michelle Malkin at her Hot Air blog.

I'm sure that I'll get plenty of wonderful posts from Ed at the new digs, but I'll miss CQ. Good luck to all involved.

A family issue has taken me out of town for a few days. That has been the reason for the limited blogging. We are back, the situation is under control and in God's hands. Normal blogging will resume in the next day or two -- and will include at least one post about our dealings with TSA screeners in a major metropolitan airport.

The winning entries in the Watcher's Council vote for this week are Make Washington's Birthday a National Holiday Again by Right Wing Nut House, and The Dungeon of Fallujah by Michael J. Totten.  Here are the full results of the vote:

Congratulations to all whose posts were considered, and to the winners this week. Keep up the great work!

If a conservative blogger had written something like this, there would be an uproar of cataclysmic proportions among the deranged denizens of the Left-osphere.

Ted Kennedy tells Texans to treat Obama as they did JFK

Utterly stupid, to the point of betraying an appalling lack of historical knowledge, journalistic competence, or both.

Where did this atrocious headline appear? On the Washington, DC bureau blog of the Houston Chronicle!

The headline was changed -- but would that have satisfied the lefties if the blog had belonged to Michelle Malkin, Ed Morrissey, or even me?

H/T Kevin Whited, Lone Star Times

Many of my fellow Republicans have received this letter or will be receiving it in the days to come. I thought I would share it with you.

Dear Fellow Republican:

It is never an easy decision to reject an incumbent and support a challenger in the primary. There are loyalties and friendships that develop over the course of years, and the benefits to the district that come from seniority. And yet in this particular race, we have reached the conclusion that the people of District 129 would be better served if the Republican nominee were the challenger, Jon Keeney, rather than the incumbent.

Here’s why we have reached this conclusion.

1. Jon Keeney has a clear vision for District 129 and the state of Texas. In the last sessions of the legislature, the incumbent has fallen short in meeting basic Republican principles like controlling public spending, cutting taxes, and promoting economic development in the district and the state as a whole. Jon Keeney recognizes the necessity of controlling property taxes so that Texans can afford to keep their homes and of encouraging business growth.

2. Jon Keeney recognizes the need for leaders to have high ethical standards. The incumbent has shamed District 129 with his unethical use of campaign funds. He has been fined for failing to fully disclose these expenditures as required by law and for using those funds for personal purposes. Rick Casey of the Houston Chronicle (March 1, 2007) noted that the incumbent has sought reimbursement from both his campaign and the state for gas mileage expenses. This raises serious questions about double dipping, which would be a crime under state law--questions to which John Davis has not provided an adequate answer. Honesty and integrity are values that Jon Keeney will uphold as our state representative, as he seeks to restore trust in government leaders.

3. Jon Keeney supports American security and sovereignty. When there were opportunities to gain more control of illegal immigration, the incumbent voted against HB 13 which funded training to properly apprehend illegal immigrants for all local law enforcement agencies. The incumbent has supported the Trans-Texas Corridor, giving control of our state’s highways to a foreign country for decades come. Jon Keeney believes in secure borders, the enforcement of immigrations laws, and Texans controlling the transportation infrastructure of Texas.

4. Jon Keeney will be a citizen representative, not a career politician. Jon Keeney is seeking to serve the people of District 129, not his own personal interests.

The incumbent has not been an effective representative in Austin, and has not adhered to Republican principles. Jon Keeney will change that, so that the people of District 129 can be proud of our representative in Austin. That is why I urge you to join me in supporting Jon Keeney for State Representative, to guarantee that we see conservative change in the legislature.

Greg Aydt, Precinct 333 Chair

Laurence W. Tobin, Precinct 90 Chair

Joseph Spence, Precinct 732 Chair

Pat Monks, Precinct 718 Chair

Dennis Hayes, Precinct 378 Chair

Barbara Brehmer, Precinct 782 Chair

There is a problem in District 129. That problem is John Davis. We can solve that problem by making Jon Keeney the GOP nominee for State Representative in District 129. Early voting is underway, and the primary is in 10 days. Get out and vote for Jon Keeney.

This looks bad on its face -- but isn't upon closer examination.

Charles Bacarisse, a candidate for the top Harris County government job, offered to use his contacts as district clerk to promote a process-serving company in return for a private consulting fee, according to the company's owner.

Bacarisse would not comment about the allegation Friday, but a spokesman denied any wrongdoing saying the company owner has misinterpreted the meeting she had with Bacarisse on Nov. 30, 2006, at a Starbucks.

The Chronicle reported this month that while serving as the elected district clerk, a job that pays $135,000 a year plus a car allowance, Republican Bacarisse ran a private consulting business that netted him $78,000 a year. Bacarisse said his private clients, a building management company and a process-serving and courier company, had no direct dealings with the county and hired him as a business strategist.

But Angela Clark of Houston, owner of Court Record Research Inc. and a former fundraiser for Bacarisse's district clerk campaigns, said Bacarisse offered in 2006 to use his government connections to help her process-serving operation — the type of private/public arrangement that Bacarisse has said he has never offered.

Could be ugly for a candidate (who I've endorsed) running on a platform of ethics reform.

Except that it appears to be missing any evidence of a quid pro quo that would make this a problem.

Clark said she was afraid to reject Bacarisse's consulting offer because that might lead to the loss of her free work space and afraid to accept because she viewed such an arrangement as a conflict of interest.

So she did nothing -- and neither lost her free work space nor clients.

Makes it seem much more likely that Bacarisse is correct -- Clark misunderstood the conversation and what he was suggesting.

I wonder if the reason for this story is that Ed Emmett is behind in the polls, and the Chronicle would much rather see "good ol' boy politics-as-usual" prevail over the grassroots movement within the GOP to clean up Harris County government that is backing Charles Bacarisse.

Well, the Houston Chronicle's Rick Casey just surrendered part of his reputation as a crusader against public corruption.

There's something to be said for an investigation. Rosenthal was, after all, the man who was in charge of prosecuting crime in Harris County. It would be unseemly for strong evidence that he committed a crime — even a misdemeanor — to go unpursued.

It would also be unseemly to seek much punishment beyond what he has already suffered, the loss of his prestigious position and the public humiliation he has suffered.

Rosenthal would hardly be the first elected official to receive a deal that amounted to resignation and, sometimes, a modest fine.

Yes, Casey backs this position up with examples -- examples that only prove how wrong he is.

These plea deals didn't do a damn thing to stem public corruption. If anything, they make it easier for public officials to break the law. After all, there appears to be no penalty for criminal activity when what you get is a plea deal in public corruption cases. If anything, the policy needs to be NO PLEA DEALS FOR CORRUPT POLS.

If illegal activity by public officials is to be discouraged, then it must be fully prosecuted and punished. And I take this stand in the case of a member of my own party to make it clear that my calls for clean government are based upon principle, not politics.

Chuck Rosenthal needs to go to jail, go directly jail, not passing "GO" and not collecting his government pension.

After all, if three hots and a cot were appropriate for the criminals he spent years prosecuting, it is good enough for our corrupt former DA.

I think we are seeing the redefinition of diversity here.

Although Chuck Rosenthal is gone, allegations of racism in the Harris County District Attorney's Office on his watch have those in charge of hiring about 50 new prosecutors in the next two years paying closer attention to diversity.

"I think we're below where I would like to see us as far as African-Americans and Hispanics — I would like to see more," said Marie Munier, a 29-year veteran of the DA's office who has headed up recruiting for the past two years. "With all the stuff in the media lately, it's been like someone dumped a bucket of cold water on my head and made me say, 'We do need to look at this.' "

Rosenthal was attacked after office e-mails were made public that contained racist jokes and images, along with sexually explicit images.

Several groups, including county Republican Party officials and black community groups, called for Rosenthal's resignation. He stepped down Friday, saying his judgment had been clouded by prescription drugs. Rosenthal's departure won't slow hiring, Munier said.

Munier, who is white, said she is working more with the three black attorneys on the 12-person hiring committee to address problems she had not considered.

"They pointed out some things that I hadn't thought about before, on how we're interviewing and about what strikes us as a good candidate," she said.

Munier also is adding three new seats on the committee, to include more diversity and youth. Munier said the committee will see several black and Hispanic candidates out of the 15 people they plan to interview this week. She also is focusing more closely on retaining black prosecutors, who account for 15 of the 262 positions — or about

5 percent of the staff. Eighteen prosecutors are Hispanic.

Now that is all well and good, and I certainly have no objection to hiring the best prosecutors out there, regardless of their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or other irrelevant criteria. But what I want is the best.

Still, I wonder if discrimination has really been a problem. Look at the Chronicle's own numbers -- a graphic available on the website, but lacking in the newspaper.

See, the number of minority attorneys in the Harris County DA's office is roughly equal to the percentages of minority lawyers in Texas. Now I've not been able to track down the figures for Houston, but since recruitment covers a wider area than just Harris County, the Texas numbers are a good measure to use for the pool of available lawyers.

Now that leads me to ask a question. Does this emphasis on increasing diversity in the office mean that we are not interested not in proportional representation of minorities, but in SUPER-proportional representation of those minorities? Will the policy of the office be to pass over well-qualified white lawyers in the interest of achieving this super-diversity? And how does this fit with civil rights law?

Go Navy!

A missile interceptor launched from a Navy warship has struck a dying American spy satellite orbiting 130 miles over the Pacific Ocean, the Pentagon announced late Wednesday.

Officials cautioned that while early information indicated that the interceptor’s “kill vehicle” had hit the satellite, it would be 24 hours before it could be determined whether the fuel tank with 1,000 pounds of toxic hydrazine had been destroyed as planned.

Even so, one official who received a late-night briefing on the mission expressed confidence that the impact had been so powerful that the fuel tank probably had been ruptured.

Completing a mission in which an interceptor designed for missile defense was used for the first time to attack a satellite, the Lake Erie, an Aegis-class cruiser, fired a single missile just before 10:30 p.m. Eastern time, and the missile hit the satellite as it traveled at more than 17,000 miles per hour, the Pentagon said in its official announcement.

“A network of land-, air-, sea- and spaced-based sensors confirms that the U.S. military intercepted a nonfunctioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite which was in its final orbits before entering the Earth’s atmosphere,” the statement said.

Hitting that target was a significant accomplishment, and it is highly likely that they hit the fuel tank on the first try. If not, there are additional opportunities to take an additional shot at the satellite before it reenters the atmosphere. And while the odds of the craft striking a person were always quite small, the elimination of the hydrazine has been the major issue.

Oh, and for those who wondered why the Navy was concerned about undertaking the mission under less than perfect conditions, let me offer you the best non-conspiratorial answer -- when you have several days to complete a mission, multiple windows for doing so, and the option of waiting until the most favorable conditions prevail, you take that option. It isn't like there was only one chance to hit that satellite. So don't go arguing, as I've seen a number of liberals do, that concerns about the weather means that the Aegis system is unreliable. Rather, it is a sign of prudent judgment in a situation where timing was critical but time was not.

And given the lack of any information about what actually happened in that celebrated case, I can't help but wonder if these two incidents are related.

A Columbia University professor who was the apparent target of a hate crime last October, when a noose was left on her office door, has been sanctioned for plagiarism, university officials confirmed today. The plagiarism investigation of the professor, Madonna G. Constantine of Teachers College, was reported today by The Columbia Spectator. This afternoon, she called the investigation “biased and flawed” and accused the university of a “witch hunt.”

The university would not specify how Professor Constantine, a psychologist, is being punished.

So she is clearly dishonest here -- and her statement plays upon the noose incident to cast herself as a victim.

In a statement sent by email this afternoon to Teachers College students and faculty members, Dr. Constantine called the investigation “biased and flawed,” saying that it, coupled with “other incidents that have happened to me at Teachers College in recent months, point to a conspiracy and witch-hunt by certain current and former members of the Teachers College community.”

“I am left to wonder whether a white faculty member would have been treated in such a publicly disrespectful and disparaging manner,” she wrote. “As one of only two tenured Black women full professors at Teachers College, it pains me to conclude that I have been specifically and systematically targeted.”

Interesting, isn't it, that she became the target of such a convenient incident right in the middle of an investigation that was going bad for her? Interesting, isn't it, that it allows her to turn a simple investigation of academic dishonesty into a racial cause celebre? It is enough to make me ask if she hung the noose herself -- after all, there have been a number of high profile noose incidents where the "victim" is the perp trying to distract from something else.

H/T Malkin

I guess that these special groups aren't so bad when they let Lady Macbeth Senator Hillary Clinton get a cash infusion and enable attacks on Obama that her campaign couldn't make.

Looking to boost Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's sagging fortunes, a group of Democratic political strategists has assembled an organization that will raise money from wealthy donors and run ads promoting her views in Texas and Ohio.

Called the American Leadership Project, the organization has been formed as a so-called 527 committee, which can raise unlimited amounts of money from some of Clinton's most deep-pocketed benefactors.

The group is targeting Texas and Ohio, the battleground states that hold primaries on March 4 and are considered Clinton's last best chance to keep her campaign alive against a surging Barack Obama. By law, the group cannot coordinate its activities with Clinton.

"We want to shine a light on issues that matter most to the nation's middle class — health care, freezing foreclosures, those sorts of things," Roger Salazar, the president of the new group, said in an interview. "Obviously Senator Clinton is a recognized champion on these issues."

Expect the high tech of Barack Obama to begin at the hands of these Clinton surrogates from California. Expect Hillary to say not a word against those who are running these ads. After all, bad things just coincidentally happen to those who get in the way of the Clintons -- but it isn't their fault.

To borrow from the Bard -- much ado about nothing.

Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

Interestingly enough, the story goes on like this for a couple of pages, but every single anecdote lacks one thing -- an actual act of wrong-doing on John McCain's part. The biggest question that arises anywhere in the article relates to one plane trip, and a dispute between different lawyers over whether and hoe it should have been reported on ethics forms. Pretty small potatoes, when you consider all the ink spilled on this story.

And there is, of course, the sexist double standard at work in this article, too. If the lobbyist friend had been male, would the NY Times have felt it necessary to invoke the issue of an extra-marital sexual affair when there was no evidence of one presented anywhere in the article? Doesn't hinting that female lobbyists give sexual favors to advance the interests of their clients while not making the same sort of claims about male lobbyists constitute an egregious attack upon the equality of women?

The biggest bit of evidence that there is nothing substantive to this story was published four weeks ago -- the endorsement of John McCain by the New York Times. This story has clearly been in the works for some time (indeed, dating back to at least December), and if there had been evidence of substantive wrong-doing by the Arizona Senator the endorsement would not have happened.

The Washington Post gives an interesting statistic at the end of its article that would appear damning to anyone who was too lazy to do the math.

Iseman and her firm, which includes high-profile Republicans and Democrats, have also represented a number of other companies that have had issues before McCain and the commerce committee, including Univision, a Spanish-language television network. Iseman clients have given nearly $85,000 to McCain campaigns since 2000, according to records at the Federal Election Commission.

Let's see -- depending upon how you count that, we would be talking about seven or eight calendar years worth of donations. Assuming that this sloppily constructed sentence means that the Post is only counting donations from the years 2001 through 2007 (it is a bit early to know about 2008 donations) we are talking about an average of $12,000 in donations a year from all clients of Vicki Iseman. That is peanuts when one considers her client list, constituting very small donations from the companies she represents. If anything, it would tend to show that everything is on the up and up in terms of the campaign finance end of things, and that John McCain hasn't been bought and paid for by Iseman's clients.

Now some may want to make an issue of the complaints by John McCain to NY Times editor Bill Keller and this statement attacking the paper.

U.S. Senator John McCain's presidential campaign today issued the following statement by Communications Director Jill Hazelbaker:

"It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

"Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career."

However, I ask those who argue (as one local blogger did) that McCain's objections to the story are proof of its truth a simple question -- if defending yourself from an accusation that you believe to be untrue and unfair constitutes proof of guilt, would you really consider silence in the face of such charges to be evidence of innocence? Or do you really care about the accuracy of the charges at all?

More At Captains Quarters, Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, Don Surber

As early voting soars here in Texas, I figure it is time for me to make public my endorsements on various races in Harris County.

PRESIDENT

Mitt Romney

Yes, I know that I’ve been talking for a while about the importance of supporting John McCain in November – but the primary is in March. Stopping McCain isn’t an option, but expressing a conservative vision is. I’m therefore going to cast my vote for the candidate I supported through this nominating process, as my way of supporting a conservative future for the GOP. I urge my fellow Republicans to do the same.

US SENATE

John Cornyn

John Cornyn is a competent Senator with conservative principles and rising star of the GOP. His opponent is running on a platform of secession and independence for Texas.

CONGRESS – CD22

Shelly Sekula Gibbs

Tom DeLay screwed the voters of CD22 in 2006 when he withdrew from the race for Congress after winning the primary. I quickly got behind Houston City Councilwoman Shelley Sekula Gibbs as she sought DeLay’s spot on the ballot. After a federal court ruled that DeLay’s spot could not be filled under Texas election law, she was the endorsed candidate for both the special election to fill out the remaining weeks of DeLay’s term AND as a write-in candidate for the general election. She won the special election handily, and made a strong showing against a Democrat whose name was actually on the ballot. She spent her short time in Congress highlighting conservative principles and issues in a series of speeches and press releases.

Fast-forward to 2008. Ten candidates seek the Republican nomination to take on Nick Lampson. Four are irrelevant no-names. Two, former Judge Jim Squier and former Pasadena Mayor John Manlove gave up secure posts for longshot congressional bids that have simply not ignited much passion. That leaves four serious candidates, who I will talk about in a moment. Ultimately, there will be a run-off in this race – with 10 candidates in the race it is extremely unlikely that any candidate can break 50%. It is a safe bet that the two candidates in the run-off are on the list below.

1) Pete Olson, a former staffer for Phil Gramm and John Cornyn comes highly recommended by Washington insiders and heavily funded by Washington insiders and lobbyists. While he does have roots in the district, he has been away for many years and did not even have a Texas drivers license a year ago. He’s conservative, but is he just as much a carpetbagger as Nick Lampson?

2) Robert Talton has a great record in the Texas Legislature, but is often perceived as extreme and volatile in his temperament. He was the favorite of most precinct chairman to take Tom DeLay’s place on the ballot during the 2006 fiasco – but he wouldn’t give up his safe legislative seat to make a write-in run. He wouldn’t put it on the line for us two years ago to help us keep CD22 Republican – why should we support him now?

3) Dean Hrbacek is a former mayor of Sugar Land, and compiled a great record in that position. He was strangely absent from the 2006 scramble for the seat, which is too bad – he would have made a great candidate and drawn many votes from the western half of the district. His experience and character would serve him well were he to be elected – but I think he missed his best chance in 2006.

4) Shelley Sekula Gibbs, as recounted above, hit the ground running in 2006 and hasn’t stopped running since. After her brief time in Washington was over, she began an immediate effort to take the seat she held for those few weeks after winning the special election. She has clearly and consistently enunciated a conservative platform during that time. She has high name identification and has raised significant funds for the race. I believe her to be the best choice for us in 2008.

I therefore urge my fellow Republicans to once again cast their ballot for Shelley Sekula Gibbs.

HARRIS COUNTY JUDGE

Charles Bacarisse

Ed Emmett became Harris County judge through a corrupt bargain between former County Judge Robert Eckels and the rest of the Commissioners Court. Rather than selecting a replacement who had the faith of the voters, they chose an Eckels crony who had not stood for office in two decades. This did not inspire confidence in the people of Harris County – and Ed Emmett has done nothing to earn that confidence since then. Charles Bacarisse has a solid record of accomplishment in his years as District Clerk, and has put forth solid conservative plans for dealing with ethics in county government and unpaid bills from both legal and illegal aliens treated by the Harris County Hospital District at taxpayer expense. He is not merely the best choice – he is the only choice.

HARRIS COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY

Jim Leitner

I won’t recount the recent scandal that led to Chuck Rosenthal’s decision not to seek reelection as DA and his eventual resignation. Suffice it to say that I’m pleased he is gone. Of the four candidates to succeed him in that office, three are clearly qualified and two have experience as prosecutors. In an ordinary year I’d be inclined to support Kelly Siegler, the best prosecutor on a staff of highly regarded prosecutors. However, Siegler’s husband is intimately connected with the scandal that brought down Rosenthal, and so I don’t believe she will be able to escape that shadow. Jim Leitner, on the other hand, is a defense attorney with who was also 1st Assistant DA in the office some years ago. He is highly regarded by the Harris County Bar, and has laid out a plan for restoring public confidence in the DAs office. I believe he is our best choice.

TEXAS HOUSE DISTRICT 129

Jon Keeney

There is a serious problem in District 129, and it is the incumbent Republican, John Davis. I’ve already made it clear that I believe he needs to be removed from office due to his ineffectiveness, unresponsiveness, and ethical lapses. Fortunately, retired businessman Jon Keeney has stepped forward to offer us a choice in the primary. He is running on a platform that supports high ethical standards and economic development in the region. Keeney is not only the best choice, he is the only choice.

JUSTICE OF THE PEACE, PRECINCT 8, PLACE 1

Holly Williamson

We have the good fortune of having three excellent candidates in this race. Indeed, I struggled with this one before deciding on Holly Williamson. Of the three candidates, Williamson strikes me as the one who is best suited to the position. Long active in the community in the Clear Lake area, Holly is a respected attorney with strong support form the grassroots Republican activists in the area.

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, A Blog For All, The Random Yak, Right Truth, Adeline and Hazel, Pursuing Holiness, , Diary of the Mad Pigeon, third world county, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, , Right Voices, The Yankee Sailor, and CatSynth.com, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

How does campaign finance law apply here.

The founders of Ben & Jerry's endorsed Barack Obama on Monday, and lent his Vermont campaign two "ObamaMobiles" that will tour the state and give away scoops of "Cherries for Change" ice cream.

I’m curious – does this constitute a personal donation from Ben and Jerry? What is the value of that donation? If they market this “Cherries for Change” Ice cream, will any reference to Obama be counted as a donation? Is Ben & Jerry’s Ice cream a partnership or a corporation – and if so, how do the rules on corporate donations come into play here? All in all, this hearkens back to my earlier post on campaign contributions.

H/T The Campaign Spot.

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, A Blog For All, The Random Yak, Right Truth, Adeline and Hazel, Pursuing Holiness, , Diary of the Mad Pigeon, third world county, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, , Right Voices, The Yankee Sailor, and CatSynth.com, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Two wins each, thank you very much. Whither Hillary?

Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) swept to victories in Wisconsin and Hawaii yesterday, bringing to 10 the number of consecutive contests he has won over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and raising the stakes for crucial votes in Ohio and Texas next month.

On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) easily beat former governor Mike Huckabee (Ark.) in Wisconsin and the Washington State caucuses, two wins that further cement his status as the race's front-runner.

The big difference is this -- with the nomination more or less secure, John McCain can work on defining himself relative to the two Democrats. On the other hand, the two Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton, will find it necessary to focus on securing the support of their own party base as they attempt to win the nomination. COnventional wisdom says this favors McCain -- but we shall see. After all, a string of victories for Obama (he is now up to 10 straight) could boost Obama's image as a strong candidate even higher.

If this catches on, the practice of introducing new shows in the fall will go the way of the dodo bird and the passenger pigeon.

NBC Universal took a big step toward undoing one of the television industry’s oldest traditions by announcing Tuesday that it would move to a year-round schedule of staggered program introductions. The move is intended to appeal to advertisers, who crave fresh content to keep viewers tuned in.

And if it succeeds — and leads other broadcast networks to shift from their focus on a mass introduction of new shows — it could alter an American cultural cycle that extends all the way back to the days of radio, when families gathered around the Philco every September, as the school year began, to sample the new entertainment choices.

NBC plans to announce a 52-week schedule in April, a month before ABC and CBS will unveil their fall lineups at splashy presentations known as upfronts. The decision means that NBC will be committing to a new lineup of shows earlier than any of its competitors, while also inviting advertisers to build marketing plans around specific shows and perhaps to integrate brands and products into the plots of the shows themselves.

We've been seeing a move this direction for some time. For example, the show 24 has always debuted in the winter (well, prior to this strike-plagued year). And there have been a number of limited run series that are shown during the summer. But as a rule, the fall has been the time to roll out the new product line, just like the auto industry. But there really isn't any solid business reason for doing so, especially as some shows die an ugly death at mid-season, or even earlier, and need replacements. This will also do away with the rerun desert that is the summer months -- we will always have something new on network TV.

Another successful mission for NASA.

The Atlantis astronauts on Tuesday prepared to return to Earth ahead of an attempt by the Navy to destroy a falling spy satellite. Forecasters predicted sunny skies over the ship's primary landing site in Florida.

The seven shuttle fliers, who were completing a 13-day mission to the international space station, plan to touch down today at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 8:07 a.m. CST, with a backup landing opportunity at 9:42 a.m. CST.

Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., where the outlook included a chance for rain and high runway crosswinds, was also prepared for landing opportunities at 11:12 a.m. and 12:47 p.m. CST.

"I'm real optimistic, looking at the weather briefs, that things will play out really well for the Kennedy Space Center — to land there on the first try," flight director Bryan Lunney, who will orchestrate the shuttle's return from Mission Control, said Tuesday.

Congratulations on a job well done -- to both the astronauts and all the NASA employees who have made the mission a success. Most folks don't think about the long shifts and strange hours you have to keep while these birds are flying, but those of us who live around you do.

And quit exploiting the real people of America?

After all, she works managing hedge funds -- and those are bad people, according to Hillary Clinton.

ABC News' Jennifer Parker and Eloise Harper Report: Sen. Hillary Clinton took a swipe at her daughter's profession today at an economic roundtable discussion at a restaurant in Parma, Ohio, suggesting wealthy investment bankers and hedge fund managers on Wall Street aren't doing real 'work.'

The former first lady's daughter, Chelsea Clinton, works for New York-based hedge fund Avenue Capital Group. She previously worked in New York for McKinsey & Company, her first job after graduating with her master's degree from Oxford University.

"We also have to reward work more," Clinton told a small group of Ohio residents today. "and by that, I mean, I have people in New York working on Wall Street as investment managers, as hedge fund executives. Under the tax code, they can pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes on $50 million dollars, than a teacher, or a nurse, or a truck driver in Parma pays on $50,000. That's very discouraging to people."

You just feel like, 'wait a minute. I'm working as hard as I can.' All those people you see in your law office. They're working as hard as they can and they feel like they're just getting further and further behind," Clinton said.

It's not the first time Clinton has taken a swipe against her daughter's profession. Campaigning in Wisconsin yesterday, Clinton railed against hedge funds as Chelsea sat off to the side.

"I saw a sign over here - someone has a t-shirt on, tax hedge fund dealers," Clinton said Monday, "well in this economy we are going to have a fair tax system again. A Wall Street investment manager, a hedge fund dealer, should not pay a lower percentage of taxes on his 50 million dollars worth of income.”

Gee -- David Shuster was suspended from MSNBC for criticizing the Clinton campaign's use of Chelsea Clinton as a surrogate. Now that Hillary is attacking her daughter's profession -- and, by implication, her daughter -- will there be some sort of penalty for the attack on Chelsea? Or does the Clinton campaign hold out a double standard on attacks on Chelse?

And by the way -- will Hillary insist that her daughter get a real job?

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Now I’m something of a contrarian in the field of education today. I firmly believe that we send too many kids on to college, and that we really need to be encouraging some students to consider a trade which suits their aptitude and interests and which will equip them for success in their lives. I’m not talking digging ditches – I mean skilled trades like plumbing, where there is good money to be made.

Well, over the last 3 years, Avand.co.uk has been helping folks find just such vocational training in the field of plumbing with their excellent Plumbing Courses . They act as a clearinghouse for plumbing courses. Now I’ll be really honest with you – I think plumbing is a spectacular field for someone to get into if they are skilled with their hands and technically minded. I think of the last guy I had in here to do plumbing work for me at my home – it was almost like watching a surgeon at work as he swiftly dealt with the technical aspects of the job in a way that I would have never considered. And I know he gets paid well, probably comparable to me if not better. So this is certainly a field that you might want to check into.

Mike Huckabee says that his reason for not withdrawing from the race for the GOP nomination is passion.

Mike Huckabee said Tuesday passion for his beliefs — not his ego — was the reason he remains in the Republican presidential race despite near-impossible odds.

Rival John McCain collected another primary win in Wisconsin and moved closer to the 1,191 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. Huckabee hasn't won a contest since Feb. 9.

"It's not about ego," Huckabee told reporters at a Little Rock hotel. The former Arkansas governor said he still wanted to deliver his message about issues important to him, such as opposition to abortion and a revised U.S. tax policy.

Sorry, Mike, I disagree. The issue is one of ego -- of the sort of pride that goeth before the fall. You are unable to win, and have never really been a serious candidate. Indeed, then electoral math shows that you cannot win this race. And yet still you run, pretending that you have something of significance to offer the GOP at this moment rather than working towards healing and reconciliation between conservatives and the presumptive nominee, John McCain.

Get out, Mike -- get out now.

After half a century, the dictator Fidel Castro will be stepping down from his position as the chief oppressor of the Cuban people.

An ailing Fidel Castro resigned as Cuba's president Tuesday after nearly a half-century in power, saying he will not accept a new term when the new parliament meets Sunday.

"I will not aspire to nor accept _ I repeat, I will not aspire to nor accept _ the post of President of the Council of State and Commander in Chief," read a letter signed by Castro published early Tuesday in the online edition of the Communist Party daily Granma.

The announcement effectively ends the rule of the 81-year-old Castro after almost 50 years, positioning his 76-year-old brother Raul for permanent succession to the presidency. Fidel Castro temporarily ceded his powers to his brother on July 31, 2006, when he announced that he had undergone intestinal surgery.

Since then, the elder Castro has not been seen in public, appearing only sporadically in official photographs and videotapes and publishing dense essays about mostly international themes as his younger brother has consolidated his rule.

Unfortunately, there is nothing in this development that tends towards freedom for the Cuban people. The Communists still control the island, the people are still not free, and it is presumed that Fidel's brother will be his hand-picked successor.

Interestingly enough, there was no public appearance by the ailing dictator. It is sufficient to make one question whether he is being kept on ice somewhere, pending the selection of Raul Castro as the new Cuban leader and his consolidation of power.

But until the people of Cuba are truly free, it really doesn't matter if Fidel Castro has received his infernal reward in the bowels of Hell or not. This does, however, seem to be one step closer to that glorious day of freedom.

More at Malkin, Neocon News, A Newt One, Ed Driscoll, American Mind, Matt Sanchez, TNOYF, Babalu Blog

I'll agree that it is important that anyone publicly endorsed as a saint by the Catholic Church ought to have a true reputation for holiness and that alleged miracles need to be thoroughly investigated -- but I've got concerns about this development.

The Vatican is making it tougher to become a saint.

New procedures were announced Monday calling for more "rigor" and "sobriety" by bishops when deciding to begin the process of beatification and in determining the required miracles.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, head of the Vatican's sainthood office, recently suggested that the Vatican was overwhelmed by causes following the pontificate of the late Pope John Paul II, who elevated more people to sainthood than all his predecessors combined.

Saraiva Martins said there are more than 2,200 beatification and sainthood causes pending.

The cardinal, speaking at a news conference Monday, stressed the need for a "true reputation for holiness" among candidates before a process begins.

He said "rigorous historical research is obviously intrinsic" to the investigation.

The troubling aspect of this case is that it almost seems to be a slap at Pope John Paul the Great, the predecessor of the current pontiff. He canonized and beatified more people than any prior pope -- partially out of a philosophy that the Church can and should recognize the sanctity of Christians in all parts of the world and all walks of life. I'm concerned that this change may challenge that view.

And I remain disturbed that the institutionalized process leaves out an older practice of the Church -- canonization via the acclamation of the people. Just as St. Thomas a Becket was recognized as a saint a mere three years after his martyrdom because the faithful of England had nearly universally proclaimed him as such, there needs to be a similar process today. Do the faithful (and the rest of humanity, for that matter) really need the curial bureaucracy to complete the paperwork to tell them what they already know in the cases of John Paul the Great and Mother Teresa?

I'm certainly not an Obama supporter -- anyone who has spent any time reading here knows that. But I do have to defend him against the silly plagiarism charge leveled by the Clinton campaign (and some of my fellow conservatives).

Howard Wolfson, the Clinton campaign's communications director, today accused Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) of committing “plagiarism” in a speech in Milwaukee on Saturday night.

Wolfson made the explosive charge in an interview with Politico after suggesting as much in a conference call with reporters.

On the call, Wolfson said: “Sen. Obama is running on the strength of his rhetoric and the strength of his promises and, as we have seen in the last couple of days, he’s breaking his promises and his rhetoric isn’t his own.”

"When an author plagiarizes from another author there is damage done to two different parties. One is to the person he plagiarized from. The other is to the reader," said Wolfson.

Now I'll be honest -- the idea is similar. And both Patrick and Obama admit that they had discussed the idea that underlies their respective statements. But the idea expressed is hardly original with Deval Patrick -- the notion that words are powerful things in and of themselves, and that they have the capacity to move entire societies and change the world.

When did I first encounter that idea? In Mr. O'Keefe's ninth grade English class. I heard it again in any number of classes -- speech, English, history, and political science -- during the rest of my academic career. I've said something similar to my students in my own classes

And let's look at what both men did -- they strung together some of the most electrifying words of American history and noted that they were "just words". It isn't an original idea. And while the phrasing is nearly identical, which initially raised some questions in my mind, there is really nothing distinctive what was said. Heck, it wasn't even a particularly profound idea -- I'd almost call it a platitude.

And one further point -- our politicians today rarely speak an unscripted word. Even the ad libs are planned in advance, as I would suggest this one was. Few and far between are the Daniel Websters and Henry Clays who produce all their own material -- most political speechifying is the result of the work of hired guns and advisers. Barack Obama took an idea proffered by one of them and ran with it. Hardly indicative of a character flaw. How many of her words on the campaign trail actually originated from the pen of Hillary Clinton, and how many came from those of her staff and supporters?

In my opinion Barack Obama is an empty suit -- but this particular issue doesn't prove it.

And it looks like at least one Clintonoid agrees with me.

Nancy Reagan had a bad fall over the weekend, and is hospitalized.

Nancy Reagan was hospitalized on Sunday after falling in her home, a spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman, Joanne Drake, said Mrs. Reagan, 87, was taken to St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica for examination and would stay in the hospital overnight. Doctors said she did not break a hip as had been initially feared.

Ms. Drake said Mrs. Reagan was staying in the room where former President Ronald Reagan stayed after breaking his hip in their home, in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, in 2001.

It appears that this is just a minor incident, with no long term consequences. Still, I'd like to ask folks to take a moment and offer up a prayer or a positive thought for this dear lady, who spent years devoted to the greatest president of my lifetime.

With John McCain the presumptive nominee at this point, the talk has turned to the selection of a Republican running mate. This is important for a lot of reasons, of course, but three in particular stand out.

1) John McCain has issues with the conservative base of the GOP, and he needs to woo them.

2) John McCain will be 72 years old when elected in November, and though his health is good his age makes it important that he have a qualified successor.

3) John McCain may very well be a one-term president due to his age, and his vice president is likely the presumptive front-runner in 2008.

So who are some possibilities? Well, other than a decision to reach out to a former rival like Mitt Romney (a good choice in light of point 1) or Rudy Giuliani (a bad choice for the same reason), one of the names I have heard on virtually every list is Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Even through the McCain campaign’s darkest days in 2007, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty remained a steadfast ally to the Arizona senator in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

As a result, with John McCain as the clear GOP front-runner and insider talk turning to speculation about his possible running mate, party insiders are now buzzing about the 47-year-old, second-term governor’s vice presidential prospects.

Why Pawlenty?

“First of all, his age is attractive,” Weber says, hinting at the nearly quarter-century difference between his fellow Minnesotan and the 71-year-old McCain. “Second, he’s from outside Washington. Third, he represents a battleground part of the country. And he has a nice balance of, on one hand being totally acceptable to the conservative wing of the party, especially to social conservatives, but at the same time sharing a couple of key maverick strains of thought with McCain.”

And let's be honest -- Pawlenty has a great following within the conservative blogosphere, which has been none-to-pleased with the rise of McCain. One of his big backers is none other than Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters. Ditto Hugh Hewitt, who it appears has spoken highly of the governor for years. That can't hurt a young governor with a proven record of success. Expect to here more speculation about Pawlenty in coming weeks.

In my eyes the question is not if the junior Senator from Illinois will get it, but when.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) paid a secret visit to his former rival, John Edwards, in quest of his endorsement on Sunday.

The meeting in Chapel Hill, N.C., where Edwards lives, is the latest effort by Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) to win "the Edwards primary" — the heatedly sought endorsement of the third-place finisher in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clinton also pulled off a secret meeting to the Edwards mansion earlier this month. Speeches by both candidates have been including frequent references to Edwards' message about ending poverty.

In a delegate race that's essentially tied, with Obama in a slight lead, the Edwards nod could be very valuable.

Obama's campaign said in a statement: "Sen. Obama visited this morning with John and Elizabeth Edwards at their home in Chapel Hill to discuss the state of the campaign and the pressing issues facing American families."

What I find amusing is the need for this to be a secret meeting at all. Everybody knows that both Obama and Clinton want -- need, actually -- Edwards' endorsement right now to make clinching the nomination quickly a real possibility. If Edwards withholds that endorsement, the Democrats will be facing a race that runs through May or June -- if not the convention itself due to the superdelegates.

Pictures and video can be found here.

The winning entries in the Watcher's Council vote for this week are Mandate Me, Baby by Right Wing Nut House, and Are We At War? And What Is the Political Consequence of That For Conservatives In This Election? by BeldarBlog.  Here is a link to the full results of the vote:

Congratulations to the winners, and good job to all those who entered. I was really impressed with the quality of this week's nominees. Can't wait to see what comes our way with the next set of entries.

Seems like the government of Mahmoud the Mad is demanding censorship of anti-Islamic speech here in the West.

The Iranian government has called on the Dutch government to stop the screening of a film in the Netherlands blaspheming holy Quran.

The film, by the Dutch member of parliament Geert Wilders, is regarded by the Muslims as blasphemous.

The Iranian justice minister, Gholam Hussein Elham, wrote to his Dutch counterpart, Ernst Hirsch Ballin, calling for a ban.

Gholamhossein Elham said freedom of speech should not be used as a cover for attacking moral and religious values.

Well, then, Minister Gholam Hussein Elham, I can only presume that you will ban this film and punish those who made or funded it.

A new movie in Iran depicts the life of Jesus from an Islamic perspective. "The Messiah," which some consider as Iran's answer to Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ," won an award at Rome's Religion Today Film Festival, for generating interfaith dialogue. The movie will be adapted into a television series, shown on Iranian TV later this year.

Of course, the film itself is an act of blasphemy from the Christian perspective -- it denies Jesus was the Son of God, denies the Crucifixion, and denies the Resurrection, and relegates the Messiah to the mere status of "the last Jewish prophet" rather than rightly honoring him as the Savior of all humanity. And given that this satanic, blasphemous work was funded by the Iranian government and is to be shown on Iranian state television, I'd have to argue that what we have got here is a massive display of hypocritical chutzpah by the Iranians.

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I am not into rubber stamping, but my wife is. She passed on this little bit of political humor from one of her favorite stamping sites.

Dear Paperlicious,

I live in South Gambusta and am unfamiliar with the US system of politics.  Do politicians stamp?

Signed,
Want to Know As Much As You Do

Dear WTKAMAYD:

Hey there other side of the world person!!  Welcome to my explanation of politics USA and its relationship to stamping.

First, here is a brief summary of the Presidential race.  The President runs the country.  Kind of like the Shelli Gardner of the USA. Not quite as influential, but pretty important.  Up until this year, the President has always been a POWG  (pretty old white guy).  This year, he may be John McCain (POWG), but may be a YAAG (young African American guy) -- Barack Obama, or a MAWW (middle age white woman).  Our heads are spinning at the thought!!!

Right now the Repubicans are about to select McCain to be their nominee for President but half the Repulicans hate McCain so we have no idea what's up with that.  The Democrats are in a knock down drag out fight between Obama and Clinton, so we have no clue where that is going.

Basically, we have no clue.

UNTIL TODAY!!!! 

I was lucky enough to interview each of them.

You'll have to click the link to read the actual interviews, which to my way of thinking seem to have captured the personalities of each of the three major candidates. If you have ever been dragged to a craft store by your wife visited a craft store with your significant other, this one will bring a smile to your face.

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When I was a little kid, I liked the Carpenters. Indeed, I even owned their Now and Then album (on vinyl!), which featured their home on the cover. The group is a bit of nostalgia for me.

But their home is NOT a significant historical structure -- no matter what some fans think.

Owners of The Carpenters' former home aren't feeling on top of the world about the legions of fans who keep stopping by to pay tribute.

The five-bedroom tract house, where siblings Karen and Richard Carpenter lived and penned some of their greatest hits, was featured on the cover of their 1973 hit album "Now & Then." It was also where an anorexic Karen Carpenter collapsed in 1983 before dying.

Owners Manuel and Blanca Melendez Parra have apparently grown weary of the parade of fans paying homage.

The couple have submitted plans to officials in Downey, a city about 15 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, to raze the 39-year-old main house, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. The Parras have already torn down an adjoining house and have begun construction on a larger home.

The proposal to level the rest of the residence has angered fans.

"This house is our version of Graceland," said Carpenters aficionado Jon Konjoyan. "When they photographed the 'Now & Then' cover here in 1973, the house was instantly immortalized."

The 57-year-old musician and promoter is heading a campaign to save the original home from the wrecker's ball. Some fans have proposed that Downey officials declare the house a historic landmark.

Good grief! The Carpenters, while good, must be retrospectively viewed as nothing more than the purveyors of cloyingly sweet pop music. They certainly have not left a legacy significant enough to necessitate the preservation of this home -- and in the process strip the owners of their property rights without compensation.

Jon Konjoyan wants the home preserved -- either through government action, purchase of the home, or requiring it to be moved.

I want Jon Konjoyan to mind his own business and quit trying to interfere with the property rights of the Parra family, who bought the home when nobody considered it significant enough to purchase.

I wonder how this slipped by the editorial staff of the Washington post. After all, the conclusion is quite supportive of the war in Iraq and projects victory.

In Iraq, as we have seen with the anti-al-Qaeda, Sunni Arab "Awakenings," Sunni extremism is now in retreat. More important, the gruesome anti-Shiite tactics of extremist groups, combined with the much-quoted statements made by former Sunni insurgents about the positive actions of the United States in Iraq, have caused a great deal of intellectual turbulence in the Arab world.

It's way too soon to call Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda spiritual outcasts among Arab Muslims, but they have in fact sustained enormous damage throughout the region because of Iraq. The lack of holy-warrior manpower coming from the Muslim Brotherhood is surely, in part, a reflection of this discomfort with al-Qaeda's violence, the complexity of Iraqi politics and America's not entirely negative role inside the country. If bin Ladenism is now on the decline -- and it may well be among Arabs -- then Iraq has played an essential part in battering the movement's spiritual appeal.

Iraq could still fall apart (and if an American president starts withdrawing troops haphazardly, it probably will). The country's descent into chaos and renewed sectarian strife would likely reenergize Islamic extremism. But it is certainly not too soon to suggest that Iraq could well become America's decisive victory over Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and all those Muslims who believe that God has sanctified violence against the United States.

Yeah, I did bold that parenthetical comment -- because it goes to the very heart of the 2008 presidential election. We have one candidate still in the running for the White House who says he is prepared to do what it takes to ensure victory over the terrorists. and stability in Iraq. You have two others who are promising immediate withdrawal of American troops if they are elected. The choice is therefore clear -- a policy that will be a setback to the Islamists, or one that will bring about their resurgence. There is no question which outcome is better for the United States.

For all that the New York Times wants to make this into a scandal, their own reporting of the story proves why it is not.

A technical glitch gave the F.B.I. access to the e-mail messages from an entire computer network — perhaps hundreds of accounts or more — instead of simply the lone e-mail address that was approved by a secret intelligence court as part of a national security investigation, according to an internal report of the 2006 episode.

F.B.I. officials blamed an “apparent miscommunication” with the unnamed Internet provider, which mistakenly turned over all the e-mail from a small e-mail domain for which it served as host. The records were ultimately destroyed, officials said.

Bureau officials noticed a “surge” in the e-mail activity they were monitoring and realized that the provider had mistakenly set its filtering equipment to trap far more data than a judge had actually authorized.

The episode is an unusual example of what has become a regular if little-noticed occurrence, as American officials have expanded their technological tools: government officials, or the private companies they rely on for surveillance operations, sometimes foul up their instructions about what they can and cannot collect.

So what we have here is not overreaching by government. What we actually have is human error. And let me be quite blunt -- as long as we have human beings involved in the process of collecting intelligence, there will continue to be human error. If the New York Times wants to make a scandal out of these occurrences it can try to do so -- but I think it will look pretty silly doing so when its own reporting indicates that these are not terribly common and not intentional misdeeds.

I've started this post about three times since yesterday afternoon.

I've dumped everything I've written each time -- mainly because I've been unable to prevent myself from veering off into a profane rant against Chuck Roesnthal.

After all, as I have indicated earlier, I believe he should have left office weeks ago.

Instead he hung on and damaged the DAs office here in Harris County in ways which could and should have been avoided.

Besieged by an e-mail scandal and perjury accusations, Texas’s most powerful prosecutor resigned on Friday, saying that a combination of prescription drugs had “caused some impairment in my judgment.”

The resignation of the prosecutor, District Attorney Charles A. Rosenthal Jr. of Harris County, the state’s busiest criminal jurisdiction, ended removal proceedings by the Texas attorney general.

It was a relief to fellow Republican leaders who last month quashed Mr. Rosenthal’s bid for a third term.

The office of Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican who will appoint a successor, said it had not been formally notified by Mr. Rosenthal and had no immediate response.

Asked by e-mail for comment, Mr. Rosenthal, 62, sent a terse answer: “Yeah. Right!”

The resignation, announced in a one-page statement, followed by hours the filing of a state suit seeking Mr. Rosenthal’s removal “for intoxication, incompetence or official misconduct.”

Frankly, that is a pretty good summary, and decent reporting for the New York Times. And for what it is worth, I think that Rosenthal's response to the Times is indicative of the attitude he has shown throughout the recent scandal -- that he was a law unto himself and needn't answer to anyone.

The resignation press release itself is rather interesting.

As the Houston Chronicle points out, only ten days before he had been denying medication issues.

>As recently as 10 days ago, Rosenthal publicly denied having any problems with medication to deal with pain.

At a Feb. 5 meeting with about 20 of his upper echelon administrators, Rosenthal addressed "rumors that he was addicted to painkillers" that he had heard was going around, said Julian Ramirez, a division chief.

Rosenthal said he didn't even take painkillers, Ramirez said.

So if it isn't an issue op painkillers, what medications have been rendering Rosenthal unfit for office? Has he, as accused in a lawsuit filed by Democrat activist and C.O. Bradford surrogate Lloyd Kelley (his former law partner), been self-medicating with alcohol in the office?

Now some speculate the resignation -- and the reason for casting it in terms of involuntary intoxication due to prescription medications -- has less to do with the medical issues and more to do with legal ones surrounding possible perjury charges.

Rosenthal might have admitted pharmacological drugs impaired his judgment so he can raise involuntary intoxication as a possible defense if he is charged with perjury, Kelley said.

Involuntary intoxication — such as unawareness that a combination of drugs could have a certain effect — is a fact issue that can be considered by a jury in a perjury case, said attorney Pat McCann, president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association.

"It is a circumstance that could make it difficult to prove you intended to lie," McCann said.

And once again, we find Dr. Sam Siegler, husband of ace prosecutor and DA candidate Kelly Siegler, right in the middle of the entire mess. The information that comes out over the next few days could be critical in determining how badly damaged Kelly Siegler's candidacy is by this continually unfolding scandal. However, it confirms in my mind the correctness of my decision, communicated to Kelly Siegler in person at the GOP Executive Committee meeting on February 11, to endorse Jim Leitner for the DA nomination because he is not married to one of the principals in the unfolding scandal. She may be the single best courtroom advocate that the Harris County DA has had in recent years, but until the dust settles in this case I believe someone from outside the office and not closely related to a major figure in the case is a better option, even if her conduct has been undeniably above reproach.

And i agree with the Houston Chronicle on this point about the temporary replacement for Rosenthal.

Gov. Rick Perry now will have to appoint an interim replacement. The Chronicle urges Perry, a Republican, to pass over any of the four Republicans and the lone Democrat now seeking election to the office. Appointing a political candidate to fill Rosenthal's unexpired term would give that person an unfair advantage in the voting to permanently replace the outgoing district attorney. That would interfere with the voting public's right to choose the office's next leader.

The person who steps in to replace Rosenthal in the months before the November general election should be independent of politics, have a reputation for integrity and judgment that is beyond reproach, and have no desire to be elected to the office.

The ideal candidate, who would serve until an elected successor takes office Jan. 1, would be a person from outside the District Attorney's Office who has previous prosecutorial experience, perhaps in the federal system. Experience on the defense side of the bar would be an additional plus, because it would offer the balanced perspective that many have complained is lacking in the office.

The governor cannot be seen as taking sides between the GOP candidates two weeks before the primary, or between general election candidates. I tend to agree with the proposed qualifications as well, though I can think of candidates without all those qualifications who would help restore public confidence in the prosecutor's office again. Among these would be former DA Johnny Holmes, who built the office into one of the finest District Attorney offices in the nation during his tenure.

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Obama insisted that other candidates adhere to campaign spending limits -- but he has been raising cash like they don't apply. Seems a wee bit hypocritical to me. And he is getting hammered for it.

Hammering Senator Barack Obama for a fourth straight day, Senator John McCain said here on Friday that he expects Senator Obama to abide by his pledge use public financing for his general election if Mr. McCain does so as well.

“It was very clear to me that Senator Obama had agreed to having public financing of the general election campaign if I did the same thing,” he said after a town hall meeting here. “I made the commitment to the American people that if I was the nominee of my party, I would go the route of public financing. I expect Senator Obama to keep his word to the American people as well.”

Asked if he would use public financing even if Mr. Obama did not, he said: “If Senator Obama goes back on his commitment to the American people, then obviously we have to rethink our position. Our whole agreement was we would take public financing if he made that commitment as well. And he signed a piece of paper, I’m told, that made that commitment.”

Mr. Obama did not rule out the possibility of accepting public financing, but declared on Friday, “I’m not the nominee yet.”

“If I am the nominee, I will make sure our people talk to John McCain’s people to find out if we are willing to abide by the same rules and regulations with respect to the general election going forward,” Mr. Obama told reporters at a news conference in Milwaukee. “It would be presumptuous of me to start saying now that I am locking into something when I don’t even know if the other side will agree to it.”

Actually, at this point Senator Obama DOES know who the GOP niminee will be, and he has agreed to abide by the spending limits, so his refusal to commit is disingenuous.

Especially since his campaign is claiming that Barack Obama has never ACTUALLY committed to public financing.

“Obama is not the nominee, but this is a question we will address when he is," campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement Thursday. Burton rejected the idea that Obama was trying to have it both ways on the issue.

The context here is important. Obama made his original comments when his campaign was just getting started and his fundraising ability was largely unknown. Obama has since emerged as a record-setting fundraiser who likely would eclipse the $85 million public financing limit.

In other words, that commitment was back when he didn't know if he could raise much more then the spending limit -- but now that he sees he can, he doesn't consider what he said to be binding. Seems like the "candidate of change" is really the "candidate of change his mind".

And the Washington Post offers this observation.

But this kind of backtracking and parsing isn't what the millions of voters who have been inspired by Mr. Obama are looking for. It's not befitting Mr. Obama's well-earned image as a champion of reform. Instead of waffling, Mr. Obama should be pushing Ms. Clinton to go beyond her spokesman's statements that she would "definitely consider" forgoing public financing.

Why not let the candidates raise as much cash as they can and save the taxpayers' money? Because it's better for voters if candidates spend more time talking to them and less time cozying up to donors. It's better for democracy if candidates are less indebted to big bundlers who have raked in six- or seven-figure amounts for their campaigns. Mr. McCain seems to understand this. What about the Democrats?

Now I personally disagree with the whole premise of Political Speech And participation Limitation Laws like those supported by the liberal media, John McCain, and, supposedly, the Democrats. I believe it is better for the American people and the American political system if individuals (not corporations or unions, but individuals) are permitted to freely speak and donate money to campaigns without limits. I believe that it is better if candidates and campaigns and political parties are not muzzled by spending limits. And I believe that this piece in today's Washington Post makes a compelling case that such laws are inimical to the First Amendment. But if Barack Obama is going to argue that clean politics require the suppression of political speech and participation, he ought to bind himself to that regime right now.

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I fail to see how anyone can object to this program.

PHOENIX — The police in this city at the center of the immigration debate will soon ask all people arrested whether they are in the United States legally and will in certain cases report the information to the federal authorities, Mayor Phil Gordon announced on Friday.

People stopped for civil traffic violations like speeding will not be questioned, nor will crime victims or witnesses.

All those arrested on criminal charges like drunken driving and murder will be asked by officers whether they are in the United States legally.

The police may decide to recommend checking by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The change includes having the police notify the immigration agency about people who are detained but not arrested who officers have “reasonable basis” to believe are illegal immigrants.

This seems like a commonsense solution to me. In asking the question of those reasonably believed to be involved in criminal activity, the police will be targeting folks based upon conduct and not ethnicity. Furthermore, those involved in criminal activity are, the last time I checked, considered undesirable by the overwhelming majority of Americans, except for the open borders extremists among us.

For those on the Left who want to argue that C.O. Bradford, former Houston police chief and Democrat candidate for Harris County DA, should become our chief prosecutor in the county, let's take a look back at one of the two best-know scandals of his tenure. You know, the one that resulted in HUNDREDS of unjustified arrests of innocent individuals in the space of an hour and which will likely cost the city MILLIONS in damages by the time the lawsuits are through.

A federal judge has declined another city request to end the 10 lawsuits filed by people arrested in a 2002 Kmart street racing raid.

It's the second time U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas has ruled that the lawsuits can go forward.

In a decision this week, Atlas wrote that the more than 100 plaintiffs could sue about whether the Houston Police Department had a "custom of mass detention without individualized reasonable suspicion."

* * *

In 2005, the judge ruled that the police plan that led to the mass arrests was unconstitutional. In a scathing opinion, she called HPD tactics to detain and arrest people who were not observed violating the law "an unjustified, almost totalitarian, regime of suspicionless stops."

Civil rights lawsuits were filed after almost 300 people were arrested in August 2002 during a surprise raid on the Kmart parking lot in the 8400 block of Westheimer. The HPD operation was an attempt to combat street racing.

All of the cases name former HPD Chief Clarence C.O. Bradford, who is running as a Democrat for Harris County district attorney, and allege he knew about the plan. The lawsuits also accused police of brandishing firearms and being verbally abusive during the incident.

What a timely article!

It serves as a reminder that C.O. Bradford had no respect for civil liberties as police chief.

Add to that the fact that he, not the Harris County DA, was responsible for the crime lab debacle, and it becomes clear that he isn't competent to run a hot dog cart, much less the Harris County DAs office.

We in the GOP have only one living ex-President, having lost two in the last four years. On Monday, George H. W. Bush will endorse John McCain for the presidency.

Former president George H.W. Bush will endorse Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in Houston on Monday during a media availability at 9:30 a.m. Texas time, Republican sources say.

President Bush will be in Africa at the time. He told “Fox News Sunday” last weekend that he would help make the case for McCain’s conservative credentials as soon as there was an official nominee.

The endorsement by the former president does two things that are crucial to McCain as he tries to capitalize on the potential advantages of being the nominee when Democrats are still fighting it out:

— It begins to make former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee look like he’s not being a team player, raising expectations that he should drop out or run a quieter campaign.

— It also undercuts Republicans who are reluctant to fully support McCain because of his past differences with the party’s right wing.

This endorsement is important in that it serves as the second leg of the Bush trifecta of endorsements. Jeb Bush has already endorsed McCain, and President George W. Bush will give his endorsement after McCain numerically secures the nomination.

But here in Harris County, Texas, it is likely that this endorsement will carry some weight. After all, the former president lives here among us in Houston, where he and Barbara are respected and beloved members of the community. That might be enough to carry Harris County (and with it all of Texas) for McCain on march 4.

Obama is talking Second Amendment.

At first he sounds really good.

Obama said he spoke to Northern Illinois University's president Friday morning by phone and offered whatever help his Senate office could provide in the investigation and improving campus security. The Democratic presidential candidate spoke about the Illinois shooting to reporters while campaigning in neighboring Wisconsin.

The senator, a former constitutional law instructor, said some scholars argue the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees gun ownerships only to militias, but he believes it grants individual gun rights.

"I think there is an individual right to bear arms, but it's subject to commonsense regulation" like background checks, he said during a news conference.

Like I said, pretty good – and I think most of us are open to some discussion about what constitutes a “commonsense regulation”.

Unfortunately, Obama then turns around and proves that he is really just another gun-grabber.

At his news conference, he voiced support for the District of Columbia's ban on handguns, which is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court next month.

“The notion that somehow local jurisdictions can't initiate gun safety laws to deal with gang bangers and random shootings on the street isn't born out by our Constitution,” Obama said.

The problem is that the DC law in question sweepingly bans an entire class of guns and limits the rest in such a manner as to render them inoperative. Indeed, under that law the act of meaningfully bearing arms within the District of Columbia is a criminal offense when that “individual right to bear arms” is exercised by an average citizen.

Obama, then, is trying to have it both ways. While he pays lip service to the Second Amendment, he actually is willing to see it eviscerated through legislation that restricts the individual right to keep and bear arms. To argue for something like the DC law is like arguing that the expansive right to freedom of religion guaranteed in the First Amendment is subject to “commonsense regulation” so that it includes only the right to be a member of a government-approved and licensed church.

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Well, that is certainly one way to interpret this statement.

In an effort to persuade the academic community that Harvard’s financial muscle should not be feared, Harvard will make the point that at best it will enroll 200 black freshmen each year. Thus, it will be argued that its new financial aid plan will have a negligible effect on enrollments of blacks at America’s leading state universities.

Now why should it be that Harvard will only enroll 200 black freshmen each year? What happens if more than 200 qualified black applicants apply? Will they be rejected on the theory that more than that number of blacks will unbalance the “diversity” that Harvard seeks? And why this notion that X number of black students somehow belong to public universities?

But more to the point, what is wrong with the possibility that the new Harvard financial aid plan, likely to be adopted by many other top-tier private institutions of higher learning, will siphon away many of the best and brightest students OF EVERY RACE AND ETHNICITY (but especially minority students) into these elite schools? After all, doesn’t making attendance at such elite institutions more affordable go a long way to matching students with the institutions where they best fit academically?

H/T Discriminations

I’ve always been troubled by the notion that a president or potential president is expected to release his or her tax returns and lots of other personal financial data to the public. For that matter, I’m troubled by the amount of information made available to the public through ethics disclosure forms. That’s why I’m in complete disagreement with this NY Times editorial.

As the presidential campaign narrows and its costs skyrocket, detailed disclosure of financial resources becomes ever more important. Of the leading contenders, so far, only Senator Barack Obama has released his full income-tax returns — a level of disclosure once routine for candidates after the political corruption of Watergate.

Release of the tax returns should not be made conditional on winning the nomination, as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has made it. Both Senator John McCain, the Republican front-runner, and she owe it to their parties and to voters to promptly make available their Internal Revenue Service filings, and to respond to any questions about them. It is true that as senators, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain are required to file financial disclosure forms. But those forms present only general parameters of family financial resources, not the detail available on tax returns.

I fundamentally disagree. John McCain and Hillary Clinton don’t owe ANYONE the information available on their income tax returns. Indeed, it would be healthy for America for them to flat-out REFUSE to release their tax information even after they are nominated. And while I have questions about the business dealings of Bill Clinton, I respect his privacy enough to recognize that the American people are not entitled to the details of his speaking fees and other financial dealings just because his wife is running for the office he once held. For that matter, we don’t need to know the detailed medical information related to post-cardiac care for Mr. Clinton following his heart problems or any medical conditions for which the younger McCain children may be receiving treatment – information that might well be a part of the two families’ tax returns.

Speaking personally, I’m often curious about the business dealings of certain commentators, certain reporters and members of certain editorial boards. Their slant on the news is of great public import – and yet we never get a glimpse into the nitty-gritty details of, for example, the finances of Keith Olbermann. What about the public’s right to know?

When down to it, this isn’t a matter of the public’s right to know. Rather, it is a matter of the right to privacy of American citizens – which, let us recall, is the highest title that will ever be held by either of these two senators or their fellow candidate, Senator Obama.

What would Reagan do?

Michael Reagan tells us how his father would respond to the McCain nomination.

In 1976 the Ford vs. Reagan campaign for the Republican presidential nomination got so heated it looked as if my father and Jerry Ford would never again talk to one another. When it was over and Ford had won, what did Ronald Reagan do? He simply went all-out to help Ford win his re-election, as did I and as did my sister Maureen. My dad simply followed his rule of backing the Republican candidate no matter who he was. Assuming that John McCain will be the Republican nominee, you can bet my father would be itching to get out on the campaign trail working to elect him even if he disagreed with him on a number of issues.

In other words, those of you claiming to be Reagan conservatives who persist in stating that you will not vote for John McCain for president are posers and imposters. You appropriate the good name of the father of modern conservatism and the architect of nearly three decades of GOP dominance of the executive branch in order to justify political behavior diametrically opposed to that he engaged in himself.

What’s more, what was the outcome when a group of conservatives failed to heed his example in 1976 and chose to sit out the election or vote third party?

Unlike my father, a lot of conservatives stayed home in 1976, and we got four years of Jimmy Carter, whose main legacy was to drive the Shah of Iran from power and create the Islamic Republic of Iran with a bunch of wild-eyed mullahs running the show. He also gave us 20 percent inflation and long, long lines at the gas pumps. And don’t forget 440 days of Americans held hostage by the mullahs. By staying home those conservatives made possible the future election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We are still suffering from the legacy of James Earl Carter, thanks to the conservatives who refused to follow Ronald Reagan’s example and instead sulked at home while the nation was being handed over to the worst president in American history. We were still in the middle of the Cold War in those days, and by staying home conservatives risked losing that war by allowing an incompetent leader to become commander in chief.

We stand at a crossroads this election. We can choose to back a leader willing to pursue a policy of victory over Islamism, or we can allow the election of a president dedicated to a policy of weakness and surrender. We can capitalize on the advances of conservative principle over the last three decades, or we can squander them by refusing to back a candidate who isn’t pure enough. We can aid the election of a moderately conservative president, or ensure the election of an unabashedly liberal one.

The real question, though, is not “What would Reagan do?” That is in the past, and we know what he did when confronted with precisely this situation.

My friends, the real question is “What will we do?”

As for me, I choose to follow in the footsteps of Reagan – and urge you to do the same.

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Mitt Romney does the honorable thing in the name of party unity and the good of the country.

One of the bitterest feuds of the 2008 presidential race ended Thursday when Mitt Romney threw his support — and vowed to try to throw his delegates — behind his former archrival for the Republican nomination, Senator John McCain of Arizona.

The formal backing of Mr. Romney was the latest coup, though an expected one, for Mr. McCain as he seeks to unite a fractured Republican Party behind his candidacy. And while the fate of Mr. Romney’s delegates will be determined by rules that vary from state to state, his request that they vote for Mr. McCain at the convention is expected to push Mr. McCain closer to the 1,191 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination.

“I am honored today to give my full support to Senator McCain’s candidacy for the presidency of the United States,” Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, said at a hastily arranged news conference with Mr. McCain in Boston. “I am officially endorsing his candidacy. And today I am asking my delegates to vote for Senator McCain at the convention.”

Mr. Romney decided to make the endorsement on Thursday morning during a meeting with his advisers. Mr. McCain, who was already on a New England swing through Rhode Island and Vermont, quickly added a stop in Boston to collect it.

These two went against each other tooth and nail. John McCain won. Mitt Romney recognized -- quite appropriately -- that there is more that unites us with McCain and his supporters then divides us from them, and that the best way to advance our goals is to work with McCain to reach a conservative result. It isn't an abrogation of principle -- it is an accommodation with reality.

Do I minimize my differences with John McCain? No, I don't -- and I stand by every criticism of him that I have offered during th course of the campaign for the GOP nomination this year. That said, I know he is a lot better than either of the options that the Democrats will offer the American people, and so I choose the good of America over ideological purity.

More At Michelle Malkin, including some deluded sounding Huckabee comments.

We don't know why this happened yet -- but it has to be described as tragic.

A former graduate student armed with two handguns and a shotgun opened fire Thursday in a large lecture hall on the campus of Northern Illinois University, killing five students and wounding 16 others before killing himself, authorities said.

University President John G. Peters said six students — four women, the shooter and another man — were killed in what he described as a “very brief, rapid-fire assault.” Sixteen other students were injured by gunfire or flying glass, authorities said.

All of the victims were students, including the shooter and the instructor, a graduate teaching assistant, who survived, Peters said. At least two of the wounded were hospitalized in critical condition.

There is a lot more to be learned here, but we don't have the details. Was there a specific target? Why this class in this room?

This event again raises the question of gun-free zones and their danger to students -- but now is not the time to discuss it at length. Instead, it is time to pray for those killed and wounded, and for all their loved ones.

For me this strikes close to home. Having grown up in Illinois, I visited the NIU campus a number of times and had many friends who went to school there. I interviewed at schools in the area some years ago, and could have been teaching just down the road from the campus had I gotten one of the jobs -- and former students could have been among those in the classroom if that had been the case. It does give one pause.

It is 5000 pounds of out of control space junk with half ton of poisonous fuel aboard. It is going to crash to earth sometime in the next month or so. The solution? Try to shoot it down so as to minimize damage.

President Bush has ordered the Pentagon to use a Navy missile to attempt to destroy a broken U.S. spy satellite — and thereby minimize the risk to humans from its toxic fuel — by intercepting it just before it re-enters the atmosphere, officials said Thursday.

The effort — the first of its kind — will be undertaken because of the potential that people in the area where the satellite would otherwise crash could be harmed, the officials said.

Deputy National Security Adviser James Jeffrey, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, did not say when the attempted intercept would be conducted, but the satellite is expected to hit Earth during the first week of March.

Yes, there are concerns about classified technology and injuries to people on the ground, but the big concern is the hydrazine fuel. We down here in Texas learned about that when Columbia broke up over the state just minutes from landing. Folks were urged not to touch the wreckage because of the toxic nature of the fuel -- and friends of min from NASA told me privately that the description is NOT an exaggeration. Indeed, the best outcome is to puncture the fuel tank of the satellite in order to dissipate the contents before it can enter the atmosphere.

UPDATE: The NY Times offers up an editorial about the shoot-down (siding with Russia and China against the US, naturally), and an article about the impact of the plan on missile defense systems (slanted, of course, to fit the paper's editorial policy). Interesting pieces, but not for those looking for an unbiased look at the plan.

Here it is -- the trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Indy looks older, and he has a young stud to be his protege. Could this signal a new way to revive the franchise? And correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that look like the warehouse where they stored the Ark of the Covenant? My only question is this -- why does it look like the US military is the bad guy in this one?

Anyone who read this blog during the past football seasn knows that I am a big fan of NFL football. And while my team of choice today is the Houston Texans, I follow several other teams as well – among those being the Denver Broncos. Of course, the most exciting player in Denver Broncos team history has to have been John Elway. Year in and year out, it was guaranteed that Elway would be one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. Over at 20Yardline.com, you can learn all about the Broncos – or any other NFL team you are interested in. I know I’ll be adding the site to my list of favorites for the fall.

But we won't be visiting any time soon -- it is 5000 light years away.

Astronomers said Wednesday that they had found a miniature version of our own solar system 5,000 light-years across the galaxy — the first planetary system that really looks like our own, with outer giant planets and room for smaller inner planets.

“It looks like a scale model of our solar system,” said Scott Gaudi, an assistant professor of astronomy at Ohio State University. Dr. Gaudi led an international team of 69 professional and amateur astronomers who announced the discovery in a news conference with reporters.

Their results are being published Friday in the journal Science. The discovery, they said, means that our solar system may be more typical of planetary systems across the universe than had been thought.

In the newly discovered system, a planet about two-thirds of the mass of Jupiter and another about 90 percent of the mass of Saturn are orbiting a reddish star at about half the distances that Jupiter and Saturn circle our own Sun. The star is about half the mass of the Sun.

Neither of the two giant planets is a likely abode for life as we know it. But, Dr. Gaudi said, warm rocky planets — suitable for life — could exist undetected in the inner parts of the system.

What is truly fascinating with this one is not just that they found this solar system, but how. It involves application of some of Einstein's principles to determine whether a star has planets -- and is explained better in the article than I could possibly do. Suffice it to say it involves the bending of light from one star around another star -- something that almost sounds like science fiction, but clearly is not.

Sounds good to me.

The "Star Wars" universe, already substantially rendered by computer generated imagery, is giving in all the way to animation.

"Star Wars: The Clone Wars," an animated film, will open in theaters Aug. 15 and be followed by a TV series of the same name, to air on the Cartoon Network and TNT this fall.

"I felt there were a lot more 'Star Wars' stories left to tell," said "Star Wars" creator George Lucas in a statement. "I was eager to start telling some of them through animation and, at the same time, push the animation forward."

Add to that the upcoming live-action spin-off series, and I think there is still some life left in the franchise.

However, there is one aspect of the Star Wars universe that this leaves unexplored – one that really ought to be done.

As most fans (especially of my generation) know, at one time Lucas' conception of Star Wars involved a "trilogy of trilogies". We now have the classic Star Wars trilogy (episodes 4-6) and the more recent trilogy (episodes 1-3), showing us the descent of the Republic into Empire and the overthrow of that Empire. Why not give us that additional trilogy – what were originally to be episodes 7-9 – as animated films. This would complete the original George Lucas vision without the difficulties of writing, directing, and producing three more live-action films.

Not content to disgrace and exploit her heroic son in the US, Cindy Sheehan has now gone abroad to lend support to the ideological/theological confreres of those who killed him.

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan joined a protest Wednesday seeking the support of Egypt's first lady in ending a military trial of members of the country's largest Islamic organization.

Under the watchful eyes of dozens of black-clad and helmeted anti-riot police, some 50 heavily veiled wives and children of 40 senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood detained for the past year, gathered in front of the headquarters of first lady Suzanne Mubarak's National Council Women carrying banners calling for their release.

* * *

"As a mother of a son who was killed in the war, I presented a letter to Ms. Suzanne Mubarak to realize how those women and children are suffering."

Yeah, my heart bleeds for the children of terrorists and terrorist supporters.

Not.

And when you consider the history of the Muslim Brotherhood and the ideology it supports, for Cindy Sheehan to be campaigning in favor of them while invoking her son's sacrifice is the moral equivalent of her fornicating with a dog on her son's grave.

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Once we get rid of the current crop of border jumpers and figure out how to avoid turning this into an anchor baby creation program, this proposal might not be too bad.

Mexican president Felipe Calderon called for a return to the bracero programme of the 1950s as a way to address issues of immigration and illegal workers between the US and Mexico. Calderon made the statements in an address to the California legislature, where he said that immigration "carries off the best among us" and vowed to create economic conditions that would allow Mexicans to find well-paid work at home.

"While my government is committed to protecting the rights of all Mexicans, including those living beyond our borders, we are taking great efforts to ensure that in the future no Mexican needs to leave our country to find job opportunities elsewhere," he said.

Calderon reminded legislators that Mexico is the top destination for California exports, and he recalled the bracero programme from the 1940s-60s as a system that met both countries' needs.

"We need to make migration legal, safe and organized," said Calderon, who met with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And I think Calderon hit on one point – Mexico needs to clean up its act politically and economically so that border jumping ends. After all, the current immigration situation is indicative of the reality that, at this point in time, MEXICO SUCKS! I know that is a harsh statement to make, but the reality is that the country is currently a kleptocracy in which the common people are oppressed by corrupt government officials on the one hand and criminal gangs on the other -- to the degree that the two are not one and the same.

And let me say it again – I am not opposed to Mexicans coming to work, or even live permanently, in the United States. I object to their doing those things in violation of our nation's laws and sovereignty.

Barack Obama wants to ensure that retirees who make more than I do a year pay no taxes.

"We'll also eliminate income taxes for any retiree making less than $50,000 per year, because our seniors are struggling enough with rising costs, and should be able to retire in dignity and respect."

I'm curious -- as a public school teacher who makes less that $50K a year, will I be given the opportunity to work with dignity and respect? After all, I struggle with rising prices, too!

Somehow I doubt it. After all, the junior Senator from Illinois wants to ensure that my Bush-sponsored tax cut is eliminated, effectively giving me a tax increase.

So much for respect and dignity for workers – you know, the very folks the Democrats CLAIM to represent.

H/T The Campaign Spot

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Now if he would just have the decency to get out of the Senate immediately.

Oh, wait -- if he had any decency he wouldn't have been trying to pick up guys in bathroom stalls.

So I don't expect this aciton by the Ethics Committee to have much effect.

Senator Larry E. Craig was admonished by his colleagues on Wednesday for conduct that reflected poorly on the Senate as the result of his arrest and guilty plea last summer in an undercover sex sting in a men’s bathroom at the Minneapolis airport.

The reprimand handed down by the Senate Ethics Committee said that Mr. Craig’s conduct in the bathroom was improper and that his actions after his arrest appeared to be an effort to evade the legal consequences in violation of the code of ethics for government service.

Committee members also raised questions about Mr. Craig’s conversion of over $200,000 in campaign money to pay legal fees, noting that he had not cleared that action as required with the committee. The panel said it would consider further use of campaign money without approval as showing a continuing disregard for ethics rules.

Unfortunately, the committee didn't recommend more serious sanctions, especially in light of the financial misconduct that was cited. That's too bad, because it signals that there is a serious flaw in the ethics process.

The GOP has called upon Larry Craig to get ut of the Senate. I wonder why the Ethics Committee failed to take steps towards making that a reality. Could it be fear by top Democrats -- including San Francisco's own Barbara Boxer, who chairs the committee -- that taking that drastic step could be seen negatively by the gay community?

Change is coming in Iraq, bit by bit, as the Sunni, Shi'a and Kurds work to forge a stronger, freer Iraq.

Iraq’s parliamentary leaders on Wednesday pushed through three far-reaching measures that had been delayed for weeks by bitter political maneuvering that became so acrimonious that some lawmakers threatened to try to dissolve the legislative body.

More than any previous legislation, the new initiatives have the potential to spur reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites and set the country on the road to a more representative government, starting with new provincial elections.

The voting itself was a significant step forward for the Parliament, where even basic quorums have been rare. In a classic legislative compromise, the three measures, each of which was a burning issue for at least one faction, were packaged together for a single vote to encourage agreement across sectarian lines.

“Today we have a wedding party for the Iraqi Parliament,” said Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker, who is a Sunni. “We have proved that Iraqis are one bloc and Parliament is able to find solutions that represent all Iraqis.”

Yes, there is still more work to do, but this is one more key step along the way.

And for those who claim that this is all taking too long, I offer the reminder that it took several years to get the Articles of Confederation approved after they were written -- and several more years to produce a truly functional government under the Constitution. Indeed, it was 13 years from the signing f the Declaration of Independence to the inauguration of George Washington. In other words, creating workable political institutions takes time.

That's what it looks like, with the campaign's firewall (Ohio and Texas) not coming until March 4.

It’s a high-risk play for the once undisputed Democratic front-runner. It also may be the only maneuver she has left after rival Barack Obama managed to effectively counter her planned Super Tuesday knock-out punch.

Since then, he’s seized momentum by racking up eight wins on friendly turf, including three more Tuesday in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

“How do you survive all of the Obama money, momentum and media between now and March 4 when it looks like you are going to lose everything in between, including the Democrats Abroad vote?” asked unaligned Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh.

And there is a particularly dangerous aspect to this strategy -- she has to dismiss Obama voters as somehow unimportant and unrepresentative of America.

But her strategy is fraught with risks, not the least of which is dismissing the relevance of thousands of pro-Obama Democratic voters in small caucus states and in the seemingly hostile terrain of traditional Republican strongholds.

“It’s not a factor,” was how Clinton dismissed Obama victories in Maine, Nebraska, Louisiana, Virgin Islands and Washington state in an interview with WJLA and Politico on Monday.

“We had a great night on Super Tuesday. We’re winning the states that we have to win. The big states that are really going to determine whether the Democrats win,” she said during the televised discussion.

So got that folks -- if you live in a state won by Barack Obama, you really aren't all that important to Hillary. I'm sure that will leave you motivated to get out and vote for her in November, right?

Yeah, Hillary Clinton is starting to look and sound a lot like Rudy Giuliani -- without the charm.

I was expecting a paleontology article when I clicked on the link to this NY Times blog. And while there was certainly a fair amount of science included in the piece, I also got this unusual reflection on the mating habits of the T. Rex.

I want to take a journey 68 million years back in time to see a Tyrannosaurus rex couple mating. What was it like? Did they trumpet and bellow and stamp their feet? Did they thrash their enormous tails? Did he bite her neck in rapture and exude a musky scent? Somehow, I imagine that when two T. rex got it on, the earth shook for miles around.

And if I could only take this journey, I could answer a question that sometimes bothers me. Did T. rex have a penis? Did he even, as lizards do, have two?

Uhhhhhhh. . . YEAH.

I'm pretty sure that the above will be the single most unusual thing i will read today.

And require years of therapy to expunge it from my brain.

Somehow the national media has avoided this story about blatant bigotry at work in the Democrat Party in Tennessee. I wonder why the only major media source covering this is a blog for the Washington Post?

Yeah, that's right -- the Klan with a Tan is back at work. Congressman Steve Cohen (D-TN9) is too white and too Jewish to be allowed to represent a district in Memphis that is predominantly black and Christian -- and securely Democrat.

If you thought race was an uncomfortable issue in the Democratic presidential primary, wait 'til you get a load of what's going on in the Democratic primary in the Memphis area's 9th District of Tennessee, where a shockingly worded flier paints Jewish Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) as a Jesus hater.

"Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen and the JEWS HATE Jesus," blares the flier, which Cohen himself received in the mail -- inducing gasps -- last week.

Circulated by an African-American minister from Murfreesboro Tenn., which isn't even in Cohen's district, the literature encourages other black leaders in Memphis to "see to it that one and ONLY one black Christian faces this opponent of Christ and Christianity in the 2008 election."

Congressman Cohen's (black) opponent, Nikki Tinker, cannot even stir herself to condemn this vile garbage. She is clearly unfit for ANY office -- and any black minister in the vicinity who does not loudly condemn this sort of garbage is unfit for his or her pulpit.

Oh, wait -- the black ministers of the area already started a race-baiting pogrom against Cohen several months ago. I guess that you don't have to be a Christian to pastor a black church in Memphis -- for in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, or any other racial distinction.

But if this is the game the game that these folks want to play in 2008, maybe Hillary Clinton can adopt the the following slogan for her future campaign ads:

Somehow I think that we would not see anything approaching the level of silence that we have gotten in the case of these race and religion based attacks on Cohen.

Speaking for myself, I condemn the attack on Cohen, the ministers making it, and the Democrat Party for not speaking out against it.

I further invite anyone offended by such racism to join the party of inclusion and equality -- the Republican Party.

And to quote the always spot-on Ed Morrissey:

We've listened to insults from Democrats for years for far less than this.

After all, this is real bigotry, not the ersatz kind the Democrats accuse the Republican Party of supporting.

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Their media will not be intimidated by the threats of Muslims.

Denmark’s three main newspapers will take the provocative step today of reprinting a cartoon showing the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb instead of a turban after the arrest yesterday of three suspected Islamic terrorists for plotting to murder the artist.

The cartoon by Kurt Westergaard was one of 12 depicting the prophet which triggered riots around the world leading to dozens of deaths when they first appeared in 2005. The violent backlash demonstrated starkly the incendiary interface between Islam and the boundaries of freedom of expression in Europe.

Mr Westergaard, who has spent three months moving between secret addresses while security services tracked the alleged plotters, was back at work yesterday to draw a self-portrait for today’s editions. It shows him still clutching his pen and a Danish flag, but he is obscured by a dark and bloody cloud featuring Arabic script which declares: “Glorious Koran.”

>
H/T Gates of Vienna

At least Westgaard is willing to say exactly where the threat to his life is coming from -- the very heart of Islam itself, not some theological outliers. After all, even mainstream Muslims have demanded that human rights take a back seat to Islam's parochial prohibitions on depicting their false prophet.

Bravo to the editors who have decided that such threats and intimidation cannot stand.

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Gee, Maureen, we on the Right have only been saying this for the last few YEARS!

As a possible first Madame President, Hillary is a flawed science experiment because you can’t take Bill out of the equation. Her story is wrapped up in her marriage, and her marriage is wrapped up in a series of unappetizing compromises, arrangements and dependencies.

Instead of carving out a separate identity for herself, she has become more entwined with Bill. She is running bolstered by his record and his muscle. She touts her experience as first lady, even though her judgment during those years on issue after issue was poor. She says she’s learned from her mistakes, but that’s not a compelling pitch.

Hillary Clinton is, arguably, an impressive woman. She is, arguably, intelligent and competent. But the reality is that we cannot separate her from Bill Clinton in the popular mind. She not only made it to the top by marrying well and promoting her husband's career until it gave her a springboard into the national limelight, she did so in a way that excused his every flaw and put personality above principle. Indeed, much of her campaign is based upon her husband's presidency, not any compelling aspect of her own life, experience, or qualifications.

The day is coming -- and will hopefully come soon -- when we elect a woman to the White House. But when that day comes, we need to be electing her -- or rejecting her, for that matter -- on her own merits. That will never happen with Hillary, which is part of why we are seeing such weakness in her candidacy. I just wish the feet of clay had not been exposed until after she had secured the nomination.

John McCain now needs only about 300 delegates to win the GOP nomination outright. Barack Obama has surged into the lead in the Democrat delegate count. And all this with just three primaries on a single day.

Senator Barack Obama rolled to victory by large margins in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia on Tuesday, extending his winning streak over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to eight Democratic nominating contests.

The outcome provided him his first chance to assert that the Democratic race, which had seemed to be heading into a protracted standoff, is beginning to break in his direction. And it left Mrs. Clinton facing weeks in which she has few opportunities for the kind of victory that would alter the race in her favor after a string of defeats notable not just for their number but also their magnitude.

* * *

In Tuesday’s contests, Mr. Obama showed impressive strength among not only the groups that have backed him in earlier contests — blacks, younger voters, the affluent and self-described independents — but also among older voters, women and lower-income people, the core of Mrs. Clinton’s support up to now, according to exit polls. Mr. Obama also won majorities of white men and Hispanic voters in Virginia, though not in Maryland.

With almost all precincts reporting, Mr. Obama won 75 percent of the vote in the District of Columbia and 64 percent in Virginia. He had 60 percent of the vote in Maryland with results from 67 percent of the precincts.

On the Republican side, Senator John McCain won in Virginia over Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, virtually eliminating any threat that Mr. Huckabee might have posed to Mr. McCain’s status as his party’s all but certain nominee.

Mr. Huckabee got a boost from conservative and evangelical Christian voters in the state, but not enough to overcome support among moderates and nonevangelical Christians for Mr. McCain, who won 50 percent of the vote. Mr. McCain also prevailed in the District of Columbia, with 68 percent of the vote, and in Maryland, where he had 55 percent of the vote with 67 percent of the precincts reporting.

My fellow Republicans, it is time to accept the reality that this race is over on our side. Barring a miracle -- like winning every remaining state with 75% of the vote -- Mike Huckabee is effectively out of the race for the nomination EXCEPT as a way of expressing your discontent with McCain, something I feel is better done by casting your vote for the candidate of your choice (in my case Mitt Romney) than for the last challenger standing. But regardless of this race, remember it is still important for you to vote in the primary because of all the down-ballot races, whether we are talking about Congress, the state legislature, or local races.

On the Democrat side, I see a stark choice. The Democrats have to decide between a moderately qualified candidate with high negatives and an ill-defined novice whose appeal is more charismatic than anything else. A vote either way sows dissension, due to the skill with which each side has played interest group politics and divided the voting blocs within their party. Ultimately, I urge Democrats to remember that the important thing is not which first comes first, but rather which candidate will be a more effective president. I don't pretend to offer advice as to which one that is, simply ask that you pick wisely for the good of the nation.

So it would appear, according to Fort Bend Now.

Fort Bend County Elections Administrator J.R. Perez is concerned that the county won’t be able to handle an anticipated high voter turnout at the March 4 primary elections, and he’s taking that concern to county Commissioners Court today.

Florida experienced a 45% voter turnout – three times the normal turnout – and California also saw numbers approaching triple its normal voter turnout, Perez said.

“If we have even two times the normal turnout, it would be 35% to 40%” of the voters turning out in Fort Bend County, Perez said Tuesday morning. “We don’t have the equipment to handle a 40% turnout. No matter what I do, I don’t have enough equipment.”

Excuse me? You don’t have the machines to handle a 40% turnout? What were you planning to do in November, during the general election?

And then there is this asinine statement.

Perez said he has been calculating the anticipated amount of time it will take people in various Fort Bend County precincts to vote in the March election, giving the anticipated high turnout, and the number of available election workers and voting machines.

In numerous cases, he found it would require 14 hours or more in order for everyone to cast their ballots.

Unfortunately, poll locations are only open for 12 hours.

Not exactly true.

While polling places in Texas are open from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM on Election Day, state law requires that every voter in line at 7:00 PM be permitted to vote before the polls are closed. And while this might cause the precinct conventions to start late in many precincts, that inconvenience is a small price to pay to ensure that every voter does get to vote.

But if Fort Bend County Elections Administrator J.R. Perez doesn’t realize that the polls must remain open – after not ensuring that the county had sufficient voting machines – then perhaps he needs to be replaced.

A Muslim conspiracy to murder one of the cartoonists has been disrupted – and ineffectively dealt with by the Danish authorities.

Early Tuesday morning, Danish police arrested several people with a Muslim background suspected of conspiring to kill Kurt Westergaard, a Danish cartoonist with Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten.

Two of those arrested are Tunisian citizens, one a Danish citizen, according to the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, which has followed the group for months. The 40-year old Danish citizen is of Moroccan origin. He has been charged with attempted violation of section 114 of the Danish anti-terrorism act. After being interrogated, he will probably be discharged, according to the security and intelligence service.

Pursuant to the regulations of the Danish aliens’ act, the two Moroccan citizens are held in custody in preparation for expulsion from Denmark.

Excues me? They are just going to let them go? What about firm retribution and imprisonment for their terroristic plot?

And even more galling is the reaction of a leading Danish Muslim.

Kasem Ahmad, a spokesman for the Copenhagen-based Islamic Faith Community, a network of Muslim groups that spearheaded protests against the cartoons in Denmark, said he hoped Tuesday's arrests would not rekindle the uproar.

"We urge Muslims to take it calmly," he told the TV2 News network.

Muslims ought to take it calmly? Why? Because the Danish authorities were so disrespectful of a group of Muslims out to bring a little sharia justice to Kurt Westergaard? If anything, this follower of the religion of jihad ought to be begging the Danish people to show restraint in the face of one more unacceptable provocation by followers of a religion that claims the right to do violence to those who dare to use their human rights.

They certainly are if this proposal goes through.

The State Department is considering supporting the Palestinian Authority in its quest to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments won by American victims of Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israel, according to Palestinian officials and defense lawyers involved in the cases.

U.S. officials insist that no decision has been made regarding the complex litigation, which could force the Bush administration to choose between supporting compensation for victims of terrorism and bolstering the Palestinian government as the United States presses for a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Testimony in Israeli courts has connected senior Palestinian leaders -- such as the late Yasser Arafat -- to specific terrorist attacks involved in the lawsuits. But Palestinian officials have argued that it makes no sense for the United States to be providing millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian Authority while U.S. courts are threatening to bankrupt it.

1) It already makes no sense to provide even one thin dime to the Terrorstinian Anarchy.

2) Refusing to allow American citizens to be made whole following terrorist attacks is, in my opinion, nothing short of complicity in those attacks.

3) Exactly whose interests does the State Department represent?

If the Bush Administration intervenes here on the side of the Terrorstinians, I’ll support impeachment.

After reading this article, I’m not sure that the Nineteenth Amendment was such a great idea.

You can see it in their flushed-face smiles and hear it in their screams. They say the phenomenon is difficult to describe, but once they experience it they tell their friends, sisters, mothers and daughters, and they come back for more if they can.

"He's very charismatic. It was a 'you-had-to-be-there' kind of experience," said Lolita Breckenridge, 37, after hearing Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama address a packed rally at the University of Maryland on Monday.

A dedicated supporter, she brought two of her friends to hear the Illinois senator deliver one of his much-talked-about speeches.

"Not too much of the speech was new to me," she admitted. "But hearing him live..." she trailed off, shaking her head and grinning.

When Obama addressed the crowd of 16 000 on the eve of primaries which he is tipped to win in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC, he carried himself with his habitual worldly confidence, interspersed talk of foreign policy with recollections of his childhood and even poked political fun at his Republican adversaries.

He did not flinch when women screamed as he was in mid-sentence, and even broke off once to answer a female's cry of "I love you Obama!" with a reassuring: "I love you back."

Oh.

On.

And if anything, the stories in this article get even more saccharine sweet. But what the article fails to deal with, but Hillary Clinton points out in this article, is that Obama is lacking in any specifics.

But then again if all you are into is sex appeal and vague promises of “change” by a candidate who you want to “Barack My World” I guess that substantive policy proposals aren’t all that important.

She's likely going to get dumped on today in the Chesapeake Primaries in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC. That means she needs some big wins -- and Ohio and Texas seem to fit the bill.

Mrs. Clinton held a buck-up-the-troops conference call on Monday with donors, superdelegates and other supporters; several said afterward that she had sounded tired and a little down, but determined about Ohio and Texas.

They also said that they had not been especially soothed, and that they believed she might be on a losing streak that could jeopardize her competitiveness in those states.

“She has to win both Ohio and Texas comfortably, or she’s out,” said one superdelegate who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and who spoke on condition of anonymity to share a candid assessment. “The campaign is starting to come to terms with that.” Campaign advisers, also speaking privately in order to speak plainly, confirmed this view.

This means, of course, that we folks here in Texas should expect the former First Lady to be in the state a great deal over the next three weeks. That also means that we will see a lot of her husband in town as well. Quick! Lock up the women!

But seriously, folks, this is a race that was supposed to be all locked up by now, according to the conventional wisdom. That it isn't is a sign of big trouble for the Clinton campaign, which is taking body blow after body blow with defeats in the primaries. And with polling numbers favoring Obama in the general election, there is a serious question about who the Democrats will nominate.

Pass a law to make it exonomically difficult for those in this country illegally to stay in your state, and many of them leave.

And where are they going? In many cases, back home.

Property managers report that families have uprooted overnight, with little or no notice. Carlos Flores Vizcarra, the Mexican consul general in Phoenix, said while he could not tie the phenomenon to a single factor, the consulate had experienced an “unusual” five-fold increase in parents applying for Mexican birth certificates for their children and other documents that often are a prelude to moving.

Hasta la vista, baby! Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Lawbreakers are not welcome here.

But if you go get in line with the honest people seeking legal admittance to this country, you'll be welcomed back with open arms.

And it is a pity that we can execute them only once, rather than 2,998 times.

The Pentagon has charged six detainees at Guantanamo Bay with murder and war crimes in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials said Monday they'll seek the death penalty in what would be the first capital trials under the terrorism-era military tribunal system.

"These charges allege a long term, highly sophisticated, organized plan by al-Qaida to attack the United States of America," Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser to the tribunal system, told reporters. He said a total of 169 charges were sworn against suspects "alleged to be responsible for the planning and execution of the attacks" in 2001 that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Hartmann said the six include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the attacks in which hijackers flew planes into buildings in New York and Washington. Another hijacked plane crashed in the fields of western Pennsylvania.

The case here is likely to be air-tight, given the time it took to build it and the efforts made to create a tribunal system that is the equivalent to what our troops receive under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And any sentence less than death will certainly appear inadequate due to the crimes committed against this nation by these terrorist bastards.

Now the timing of this will make for some interesting politics. These guys are quite clearly guilty -- but no doubt some diseased segments of the body politic are going to want them let off due to issues related to Gitmo and waterboarding. That response of the presidential candidates will show who is serious about national security against terrorism and who is not.

Look what showed up in the Houston headquarters of the Barack Obama campaign!

Democrat Presidential candidate Barack Obama already has an issue with wearing American Flag lapel pins, and even with putting his hand over his heart when the American National Anthem is playing. It will be interesting to see how he'll react (if at all) to the flag hanging in one of his new campaign offices in Houston, Texas.

Yep, that's right -- that is the national flag of Cuba hanging on the wall with none other than Che Guevara superimposed on it.

I somehow doubt that will go over well here in Houston. I hope our Cuban-American County Treasurer Orlando Sanchez makes a big issue out of this one. After all, is a candidate promoting communism -- and a murderous beast like Che -- out of his campaign office really fit to be President of the United States?

UPDATE: Captain Ed has some pointed comments on this situation -- and is involved in a war of words with John Cole of Balloon Juice over it. Cole wants to paint it as a protest against America's Cuba policy -- but is that really what this is?

Besides, Cole and his commenters, as well as the DUmmies (according to Flopping Aces, who waded into the feever swamp), are arguing that it isn't a big deal since the office is currently staffed only with volunteers -- that it would only be significant if there were actual paid staff working there. I'm curious -- would they take the same position if there were Swastika flag with the face of Hitler in a John McCain office? How about something more innocuous -- a Confederate flag with a portrait of Robert E. Lee? Am I alone in believing that there would be a sh!t storm over either of those displays, and that the Left would insist that it didn't matter if the workers were volunteers or not?

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In a shameful repetition of 1936 in Berlin, British athletes will be expected to remain silent about the evil of the host country at this summer’s Olympics – not only in Beijing, but between the time of their selection and their return to the UK.

British Olympic chiefs are to force athletes to sign a contract promising not to speak out about China's appalling human rights record – or face being banned from travelling to Beijing.

The move – which raises the spectre of the order given to the England football team to give a Nazi salute in Berlin in 1938 – immediately provoked a storm of protest.

The controversial clause has been inserted into athletes' contracts for the first time and forbids them from making any political comment about countries staging the Olympic Games.

It is contained in a 32-page document that will be presented to all those who reach the qualifying standard and are chosen for the team.

From the moment they sign up, the competitors – likely to include the Queen's granddaughter Zara Phillips and world record holder Paula Radcliffe – will be effectively gagged from commenting on China's politics, human rights abuses or illegal occupation of Tibet.

But then again, this should be no shock. The current head of the British Olympic Association, Lord Colin Moynihan, violated the 1980 boycott of the Moscow Olympics to suck up to the Reds in Moscow. Of course he will act in a manner supportive of Communist dictatorship and oppression again in 2008 when given the chance.

No telling if British Olympians will be required to offer a salute to the dictators in Beijing like their predecessors were seven decades ago.

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Who cares what a dumb boxer with a history of racist talk has to say about Barack Obama?

World champion boxer Bernard Hopkins, who will fight the undefeated Briton Joe Calzaghe in April, believes black Democratic contender Barak Obama would be assassinated "within months" if he became US president in November.

Hopkins, the world light-heavyweight boxing champion, told The Independent on Sunday: "I don't think America is ready for an African-American in the White House. If he gets the nomination they won't let him become president, but if they do, it will be for a short time, maybe less than a month or two. His life would be in jeopardy.

"People may say it is time for change but when it comes down to it, I don't think America is ready for that type of heat."

Hopkins, 43, arguably the most politically controversial figure in US sport since Muhammad Ali, has been accused of being racially motivated for saying he would "never lose to a white boy". He refused to retract the comment when he came face to face this week with Calzaghe, the undefeated world super-middleweight champion, in London.

I’ll put my money on the Brit, Calzaghe.

Not because he is white, but because Hopkins is a racist who believes that his political views are particularly significant. The reality is that Obama is popular among most Americans, and even those of us on the GOP side respect him and generally like him. But I do not see the level of racial animosity – other than that stoked by the Clintons for their own political ambitions – that Hopkins is claiming exists here.

I’m wondering – will Hillary denounce this supporter and his hateful words?

I don’t have to agree with you to respect you.

We don’t have to come from the same political party.

You just have to be a decent person.

The US House of Representatives lost one of those today.

Rep. Tom Lantos of California, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, has died. He was 80.

Spokeswoman Lynne Weil said Lantos died early Monday at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center in suburban Maryland. He was surrounded by his wife, Annette, two daughters, and many of his 18 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Annette Lantos said in a statement that her husband's life was "defined by courage, optimism, and unwavering dedication to his principles and to his family."
Lantos, a Democrat who chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee, disclosed last month that he had been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. He said at the time that he would serve out his 14th term but would not seek re-election in his Northern California district, which takes in the southwest portion of San Francisco and suburbs to the south including Lantos' home of San Mateo.
White House press secretary Dana Perino announced the news of Lantos' death to reporters at a morning briefing.

And I never doubted that this amazing man truly loved this country – or that he was an example of just how great this country is.

Lantos, who referred to himself as "an American by choice," was born to Jewish parents in Budapest, Hungary, and was 16 when Adolf Hitler occupied Hungary in 1944. He survived by escaping twice from a forced labor camp and coming under the protection of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who used his official status and visa-issuing powers to save thousands of Hungarian Jews. Lantos' mother and much of his family perished in the Holocaust. * * *

"It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress," Lantos said upon announcing his retirement last month. "I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country."

“An American by choice.” What a marvelous phrase. Indeed, what a tribute to the country he loved. And what a beautiful tribute to this country, where he truly lived out the American dream.

But that was not the only turn of phrase that will stick in my mind. When confronting internet executives who had turned over information about dissidents to the Red Chinese dictators, Lantos was forthright.

"Morally, you are pygmies," he berated top executives of Yahoo Inc. at a hearing he called in November 2007 as they defended their company's involvement in the jailing of a Chinese journalist.

I wish I had said that, for it expresses my sentiments better than I did at the time.

And then there is this profoundly moving happening in his life, something I had not known but which is in many ways proof of the old saying that love overcomes time and place and events.

In 1950 he married Annette, his childhood sweetheart, with whom he'd managed to reunite after the war.

How do you manage to find the ones you love after a profoundly evil happening like the Holocaust? That they managed to do so is a tribute to the love they had for each other – a love that endured for some six decades. My deepest condolences to Annette Lantos and her family.

If you can't stand the heat, have your shills in the media demand that your opponents turn down the oven.

The bitterness of the fight for the Democratic nomination is, on the face of it, bizarre. Both candidates still standing are smart and appealing. Both have progressive agendas (although I believe that Hillary Clinton is more serious about achieving universal health care, and that Barack Obama has staked out positions that will undermine his own efforts). Both have broad support among the party’s grass roots and are favorably viewed by Democratic voters.

Supporters of each candidate should have no trouble rallying behind the other if he or she gets the nod.

Why, then, is there so much venom out there?

I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.

Of course, the problem is that the "Clinton rules" were developed during a time when we had an administration in office that was dishonest to its root. If the Clinton's claimed it was raining, you still needed to look outside just to make sure. The ease with which the Clintons lied and attempted to reinvent themselves was striking -- and the damage that they did to this country was horrific.

I don't want to see Barack Obama elected president. i think he is wrong for America. But I do believe that he has a moral compass -- something that is sorely lacking on both sides of the Clinton marriage. And if noting that fact makes either me or th supporters of Barack Obama "unfair" to Hillary Clinton, then the problem is with the media lap dogs who view the Clintons as American royalty to whom there should be incredible deference.

After all, Mr. Krugman, the Clintons earnd the contempt in which they are held by much of the American public.

I guess it all comes down to how you view the goals.

If it was defeating the enemies of the US, it is a success.

On the other hands, it is an unmitigated disaster if the goal is providing the Democrats with an issue to beat the Republicans with.

Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman, said the documents released Sunday offered proof that al-Qaida in Iraq had been severely disrupted by the so-called awakening movement and changing U.S. tactics, but he stressed the terror network was by no means defeated.

The military said the two documents were discovered last year by American troops in November as the Sunni movement that began in Anbar province was spreading to Baghdad and surrounding areas.

One was a 39-page memo written by a mid- to high-level al-Qaida official with knowledge of the group's operations in Iraq's western Anbar province; the other a 16-page diary written by another group leader north of Baghdad.

The documents tell "narrow but compelling stories of the challenges al-Qaida in Iraq is facing," Smith told reporters in Baghdad. "This does not signal the end of al-Qaida in Iraq, but it is a contemporary account of the challenges posed to terrorists from the people of Iraq."

He said the documents are believed to be authentic because they contain details that only al-Qaida in Iraq leaders could know about battlefield movements and tactics. The U.S. military gave reporters partially redacted copies of the full diary but only four pages of the Anbar document, citing security reasons.

In the Anbar document, the author acknowledges a growing weariness among Sunni citizens of militants' presence and the U.S.-led crackdowns against them. He also expresses frustration with foreign fighters too eager to participate in suicide missions rather than continuing to fight.

"The Islamic State of Iraq is faced with an extraordinary crisis, especially in al-Anbar," the author wrote, referring to an umbrella group of insurgents led by al-Qaida.

Smith also quoted the document as lamenting the loss of "cities and afterward, villages," adding "we find ourselves in a wasteland desert."

It said U.S.-led forces had learned from their mistakes and improved security had made it harder to transport weapons and suicide belts and forced foreign fighters to go underground because of their distinctive dialects.

The military said the memo was believed to have been written last summer and was intended for the author's superiors.

The diary, seized by U.S. troops south of Balad, was written in autumn 2007 by Abu Tariq, who refers to himself as sector leader for al-Qaida in Iraq. Tariq wrote that he was once in charge of 600 fighters, but only 20 were left "after the tribes changed course" — a reference to how many Sunni tribesmen have switched sides to fight alongside the Americans, Smith said.

So with such words coming from al-Qaeda leaders, you would think that leading Democrats would admit that the Surge accomplished major goals, especially since there is progress on every single one of the political goals as well, even if that concession were good for the Republicans. After all, US military success is good for America, and patriots put America first.

Which is why Nancy Pelosi desperately tried to present the Surge as a failure.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said twice Sunday that Iraq “is a failure,” adding that President Bush’s troop surge has “not produced the desired effect.”

“The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “They have not done that.”

The speaker hastened to add: “The troops have succeeded, God bless them.”

Pelosi’s harsh verdict is a reminder of the dilemma for Democrats as they head into this fall’s presidential and congressional elections:

They need to make the case that the country needs to depart from the direction set by Bush. Yet they don’t want to look like naysayers at a time when Iraq has become more stable, albeit still violent.

And those who argue that it is the GOP unfairly trying to paint the Democrats as defeatists, please consider that we are not providing Pelosi and other Democrats with their talking point.

Barack Obama goes four for four this weekend in the Democrat nominating contests.

Senator Barack Obama defeated Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Maine caucuses on Sunday, giving him his fourth victory this weekend as he headed into three more state contests on Tuesday.

With 90 percent of Maine’s precincts reporting, Mr. Obama received 58.7 percent of the vote, compared with 40.7 percent for Mrs. Clinton.

Voter turnout in parts of Maine was reported to be strong on Sunday afternoon, despite a snowstorm. The Portland Press Herald reported on its Web site that there were long lines at the caucus in Portland, while a large crowd in Cape Elizabeth delayed the start of the caucus there by more than an hour.

Mr. Obama’s victory in Maine follows those in Washington, Louisiana and Nebraska on Saturday. Combined with his advantage in fund-raising, these victories should give him momentum going the primaries on Tuesday in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.

And this should be an interesting race, filled as it is with establishment Democrats AND a major city which is overwhelmingly African-American. The Clinton campaign had expected to be done with the nomination fight by now, but that is not anywhere close -- or anywhere near certain to happen at all.

So what is the solution? A Clinton campaign shake-up!

Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton replaced campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle with longtime aide Maggie Williams on Sunday, a staff shake-up coming just hours after presidential rival Barack Obama’s Saturday sweep of three contests.

Campaign aides said Solis Doyle made the decision to leave on her own and was not urged to do so by the former first lady or any other senior member of the team. But it comes as Clinton struggles to catch Obama in fundraising and momentum and faces the prospect of losing every voting contest yet to come in February. On Sunday, Obama also won the caucus count in Maine.

Solis Doyle announced the shift in an e-mail to the staff on Sunday.

And how many of us believe that Solis Doyle REALTY made the decision to quite without being pushed by Hillary and her other close advisers? Not many, I'm sure. But will this change really help the campaign at all? And will dumping a Hispanic woman for a black woman really be of any benefit for a campaign that is strong among Hispanics and weak among African-Americans? Frankly, there is an air of desperation hanging about the Clinton campaign.

When you play the race card for political advantage, it is only appropriate that it come back to bite you in the ass.

The question now is how much more racial friction the Clinton campaign will gin up if its Hispanic support starts to erode in Texas, whose March 4 vote it sees as its latest firewall. Clearly it will stop at little. That’s why you now hear Clinton operatives talk ever more brazenly about trying to reverse party rulings so that they can hijack 366 ghost delegates from Florida and the other rogue primary, Michigan, where Mr. Obama wasn’t even on the ballot. So much for Mrs. Clinton’s assurance on New Hampshire Public Radio last fall that it didn’t matter if she alone kept her name on the Michigan ballot because the vote “is not going to count for anything.”

Last month, two eminent African-American historians who have served in government, Mary Frances Berry (in the Carter and Clinton years) and Roger Wilkins (in the Johnson administration), wrote Howard Dean, the Democrats’ chairman, to warn him of the perils of that credentials fight. Last week, Mr. Dean became sufficiently alarmed to propose brokering an “arrangement” if a clear-cut victory by one candidate hasn’t rendered the issue moot by the spring. But does anyone seriously believe that Howard Dean can deter a Clinton combine so ruthless that it risked shredding three decades of mutual affection with black America to win a primary?

A race-tinged brawl at the convention, some nine weeks before Election Day, will not be a Hallmark moment. As Mr. Wilkins reiterated to me last week, it will be a flashback to the Democratic civil war of 1968, a suicide for the party no matter which victor ends up holding the rancid spoils.

But let's face it -- the Democrats have lived by sowing racial division for the entire life of their party. They have made a fine art of it in the last few decades, convincing groups with diametrically opposed interests that they are all on the same side. Now the ethnic chickens come home to roost -- and may bring about a major realignment of American political life before our eyes at this year's Democrat convention.

My buddy Hube over at Colossus of Rhodey notes this double-standard from MSNBC.

As Mike Matthews reported when it happened (as did many other places, but I like to highlight the local blogs that nail it quickly!), MSNBC's David Shuster was suspended indefinitely for saying that Chelsea Clinton was being "pimped out in some weird sort of way" regarding her supposed contacting of "super delegates" on behalf of her mom's campaign. There's news that he actually was close to being fired on the spot for the comment. I think Shuster's comments probably were inappropriate, but that even a suspension is just plain ridiculous. The term "pimped" doesn't exclusively mean what it used to.

But consider: If Shuster can get suspended for that comment, and possibly even fired, what about Keith Olbermann? Olbermann has also apologized for Shuster, by the way ("David has been suspended and remains only for me to apologize without limit to President Clinton and to Ms. Clinton on behalf of MSNBC. We are literally, dreadfully sorry." "Literally, dreadfully sorry"?? Please, someone clean up my vomit! -- Hube); however, he used the very same term regarding President Bush and General David Petraeus back on Sept. 20!

Don't hold your breath. But like Shuster, I don't think Olbermann should even be suspended for his comments, but it surely demonstrates the clear double-standard: Against Republicans and conservatives, feel free to use whatever language you want.

Now we can debate about the issue of whether or not the use of the word "pimping" is appropriate in either case -- but I'm hard pressed to see how it is acceptable to use the term about a career military officer providing truthful information to Congress about a successful military policy while unacceptable to use it about a child acting as surrogate for a candidate, especially when that candidate for years has insisted that the child is not a part of their political life and is off-limits for any comments, much less criticism. After all, remember the outrage over this little SNL gem.

And even after Chelsea became an adult, the Clintons demanded that she be treated as apolitical. Now that Mrs. Clinton is making use of this "apolitical asset, is it not legitimate fodder for comment?

But when you suspend one "professional journalist" over the use of the term while promoting another as your network's biggest draw when he has used the same word (and worse) is rank hypocrisy.

But then again, this incident also illustrates Hillary Clinton's unfitness for office. Her little snit over David Shuster's words tells me that she is going to demand to control press coverage of her and her administration, and punish journalists who speak of her and her administration in ways she dislikes. Heck, that is a bigger threat to a free press than anything done by the Bush Administration, which didn't even prosecute journalist who violated federal law by disclosing classified national security information during time of war!

The winning entries in the Watcher's Council vote for this week are A Short Hitch by Done With Mirrors, and Changing the Organizational Culture (Updated) by Small Wars Journal.  Here is a link to the full results of the vote:

COngratulations to the winners, and thank you to all participants in the vote.

I'm glad to see this move by leading conservatives.

Some 50 stalwarts of the political right privately met with Mitt Romney minutes after he dropped out of the Republican nominating race to discuss the former Massachusetts governor becoming the face of conservatism, as Ronald Reagan became en route to his 1980 election win.

Participants said the group was not organizing against the presidential bid of Sen. John McCain, the party"s presumptive nominee, but only seeking to revive core values such as lower taxes, limited government and free speech.

"The purpose of the meeting was for him to announce his willingness to fight shoulder to shoulder with true conservatives from here on out," said political strategist Paul Erickson, who worked for Mr. Romney"s campaign. "He did just that."

In 1964, Ronald Reagan became the face and voice of the conservative movement in America with "the speech". His years as governor and work for conservative values eventually led him to the White House and immortality as one of America's greatest presidents.

Mitt Romney has the potential to take up the leadership mantle laid down by the Gipper as he faded into the twilight of Alzheimer's Disease. If he accepts this challenge, I predict that he will be our president one day -- perhaps in as few as four years.

"They" will assassinate him if he is elected.

If Barack Obama becomes the next US president he will surely be assassinated, British Nobel literature laureate Doris Lessing predicted in a newspaper interview published here on Saturday.

Obama, who is vying to become the first black president in US history, would certainly not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would murder him," Lessing, 88, told the Dagens Nyheter daily.

No words on who the mysterious "they" would be.

However "they" will do it and quickly -- but would be mollified if Hillary Clinton were to become president instead.

Clearly the senile dementia has set in.

Good on you, Ace! I'm honored to share a server with CPACs blogger of the year.

And I'd like to say that I agree with another fellow MuNuvian, Little Miss Attila, on this key point.

Speaking of which, why is Ace getting the award, rather than me? There is such prejudice against blogs that do not actually get read.

I feel exactly the same way, you little hottie.

And to Andrew Sullivan, I offer the suggestion that the petulant whining of a gay diva like you about this award and Power Line's book of the year award to Norman Podhoretz (and accompanying contribution to a worthwhile charity like Soldiers' Angels, not a small fortune to the winner) are really unbecomeing, and show how you really have much more in common with the Fringe left like Kos, DU, and HuffPo than with anything in the mainstream of contemporary conservatism.

For a century, the use of the electric chair for executions has been accepted in this country. Yesterday a court in Nebraska ruled differently, saying its use constituted torture and violated the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Is it a proper decision rooted in the Constitution, or judicial activism?

The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday that electrocution is cruel and unusual punishment, outlawing the electric chair in the only state that still used it as its sole means of execution.

The state's death penalty remains on the books, but the court said the Legislature must approve another method to use it. The evidence shows that electrocution inflicts "intense pain and agonizing suffering," the court said.

"Condemned prisoners must not be tortured to death, regardless of their crimes," Judge William Connolly wrote in the 6-1 opinion.

"Contrary to the State's argument, there is abundant evidence that prisoners sometimes will retain enough brain functioning to consciously suffer the torture high voltage electric current inflicts on a human body," Connolly wrote.

Ordinaily, I'd argue that this is a bit of judicial activism. However, is it possible that increases in our knowledge about the human body and the effects of electrocution have led us to the point where we now know that what once seemed to be a humane form of execution is in fact excessively cruel and amounts to torture? I'm willing to reserve judgment there, given that the opinion goes to great lengths to examine the scientific evidence on the matter. i do, however, struggle with whether it is the proper role of the courts to make that decision.

There is, of course, a simple, effective, and quick method of execution out there that I believe would meet any and all objections under the Eighth Amendment.

Properly modified, equipped with an ultra-sharp surgical steel blade and a hydraulic system designed to instantaneously separate head from body (and body from soul), it should meet any Constitutional objection to the method of execution.

There is a question as to whether or not this decision will make it into the Federal courts, because of the grounds on which the decision was made. The Nebraska Supreme Court didn't actually SAY the decision was based upon the US Constitution, but rather upon virtually identical language in the state constitution -- but then cited nothing except precedents interpreting th US Constitution. That might make taking this case into the federal courts a bit more tricky due to federalism issues.

I recently got into a bit of a debate with a Democrat over the issue of political participation limitation legislation like McCain-Feingold. Having been accused of “confusing money with speech” and “supporting the buying of elections”, I noted one of the fundamental inequities of the current law – namely that while cash and “in kind” donations are strictly limited on the assumption that a successful candidate will “owe something” to a campaign contributor who “expects something” once the recipient is in office.

However, let’s think about that for a minute. Setting aside the fact that support for such legislation betrays the low ethical standards of the proponents of such legislation, who recognize that their own willingness to be bought and sold for a few dollars cash. Let’s instead consider that such legislation does not take into account that volunteering for a campaign also constitutes the contribution of a thing of value (namely, the volunteer’s time and labor). After all, if the expertise of such an individual may be quite valuable – for example, a CPA who serves as an unpaid campaign treasurer. Why shouldn’t such an individual’s participation be capped at the number of hours that would bring their contribution to the contribution limit when valued at their standard hourly rate? After all, haven’t they effectively given the maximum contribution – and more – via their donated time and work? Can’t it be equally presumed that they “expect something” from a candidate who now “owes them” for this contributed time, work, and expertise? And what of paid campaign staffers, such as those from the Clinton campaign, who decide to forgo salaries in the interest of preserving campaign cash for their candidates. Aren't those contributions, in some cases exceeding the $2300 limit when combined wih cash contributions tehy may already have made?

What about speeches, endorsements, or commercial appearances by celebrities?
Don’t they have a high value, every bit as insidiously corrupting as a check? For example, how much does a speech by Oprah Winfrey cost? I don’t know, but I’d imagine that it would easily exceed $25,000 – if it doesn’t exceed $50,000? Shouldn’t Barack Obama and his campaign be required to count her appearances and speeches at events as in-kind contributions, given that Oprah’s product is Oprah? Moreover, if counted as such, wouldn’t that violate federal contribution limits in presidential races? What does Obama “owe” Oprah, and what is the something that she expects from him in return for her services, which are easily valued at well over ten times the legal contribution limit?

One would object, quite rightly, that subjecting Obama and Oprah to criminal or civil penalties for her political activity on his behalf would be fundamentally contrary to the First Amendment, as it would severely curtail her ability to exercise her rights under the First Amendment, despite the high cash value of this “in-kind” contribution. After all, her contribution is quintessentially American in nature.

But the reality is that the value being protected by the First Amendment goes beyond freedom of speech, press, and association -- it is the free and unfettered ability of individuals to participate in the political process, including by banding together to engage in speech on behalf of candidates. For some of us the most effective way is to give our time. For others it is the donation of needed materials. For still others it is their words. No form of contribution should be either privileged or limited, though reasonable requirements on disclosure and reporting are arguably acceptable. Let’s make all Americans and their respective forms of contribution equal again by removing all artificial government imposed limits on such all-American activity.

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I don't watch network news -- ever. however, I was hoping to see how NBC dealt with MSNBC's David Shuster and the sh!t-storm over his "pimping out Chelsea" comment. The didn't. But I did end up seeing one of the most fascinating stories about blogging ever -- a voice from the distant past, digitalized for our edification and education.

This is part of a convergence of events around WWI that has taken place in my life over the last few weeks.

Right before Christmas, one of the men from our church gave me a copy of his father's WWI memoir, Argonne Days in World War I. I find it humbling to read the words of an actual doughboy, who constructed this memoir from notes kept in a book of scripture given him and his fellow soldiers by the YMCA.

As i'm working my way through the book, I am also preparing to teach about "The Great War" in the next couple weeks, so I am re-immersing myself in the ins-and-outs of the conflict.

And now I this fascinating website, composed of slowly unfolding letters of a British Tommy, William Henry Bonser Lamin, better known as Harry to his family and his mates. It makes for fascinating reading, nine decades after they were first written.

I didn't get a chance to read over Mitt Romney's speech yesterday. Now that I have, I'd argue that this is the real money passage, the one that reveals the principles that led Romney to withdraw from the race for the nomination.

If this were only about me, I'd go on. But it's never been only about me.

I entered this race — I entered this race because I love America. And because I love America, in this time of war, I feel I have to now stand aside for our party and for our country.

I will continue to stand for conservative principles. I'll fight alongside you for all the things we believe in. And one of the things we believe in is that we cannot allow the next president of the United States to retreat in the face of evil extremism.

It is the common task of each generation and the burden of liberty to preserve this country, expand its freedoms and renew its spirit, so that its noble past is prologue to its glorious future.

To this task, accepting this burden, we're all dedicated. And I firmly believe, by the providence of the Almighty, that we will succeed beyond our fondest hope.

America must always remain, as it has always been, the hope of the Earth.

A presidential race should never be about what the electorate can do for the candidate – it should be, to paraphrase a president from Massachusetts, about what that candidate can do for the country as president. Mitt Romney recognized that and stood aside for that reason. He has not abandoned the principles upon which he campaigned, but he instead recognizes that the best way to see them carried to fruition is to allow an opponent to carry the banner of the GOP. That is a true rejection of the "Politics of I" in favor of the "Politics of We".

I respected Mitt Romney when I endorsed him a year ago. I supported him over the last year, even when other candidates appealed to me more on some issues, because I believed Mitt Romney to be the candidate most suited to implement a vision parallel to mine and that of my party for the good of the country. And I admire Mitt Romney even more today, having seen him withdraw from the race rather than fight to the bitter end and harm the prospect of seeing victory abroad and constitutionally limited government at home.

And for the record, I will be voting for Mitt Romney in the Texas GOP Primary on March 4 -- because it is important to make clear that while I will support McCain in the general election, he is not my choice as the nominee.

Not only are Mexicans crossing our border illegally, but now some of their kidnapping gangs are targeting Americans for kidnapping when they cross the border.

Organized, well-financed and violent Mexican kidnapping cells are targeting a growing number of U.S. citizens visiting communities popular with San Diegans and other California residents.

Last year, at least 26 San Diego County residents were kidnapped and held for ransom in Tijuana, Rosarito Beach or Ensenada, local FBI agents overseeing the cases said yesterday. In 2006, at least 11 county residents had been kidnapped in the three communities.

“Some of the 26 were recovered, some were hurt and some were killed,” said agent Alex Horan, who directs the FBI's violent-crime squad in San Diego.

“It's not a pleasant experience. Victims have reported beatings, torture and there have been rapes. . . . Handcuffs and hoods over the head are common,” he said.

Now that is 26 from the San Diego area -- that we know about. There may be more, and certainly are more in other areas along the border. How much longer until these gangs start operating on the US side of the border, bringing one more Mexican social problem into the United States.