Global warming doesn't appear to be happening.

What happened to global warming?

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

Of course, as the article points out, the high priests of the cult of global warming insist that even evidence that global warming isn't happening is no reason to believe that global warming isn't happening.

And pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Comes from the Democrat National Committee, of course.

"The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists - the Taliban and Hamas this morning - in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize."

One more example of civility and decency from the party that has made a point of demanding civility and decency – disagreeing with the undeserved awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama makes you just like the terrorists.

And while you are at it, don’t forget that patriotism stopped being patriotic at noon on January 20, 2009.

This should be engraved into the walls of the room where the committee meets to select the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel Prize Committee should be in the business of conferring celebrity on unknown human-rights and peace activists toiling in the most god-forsaken parts of the world; the people who really need the attention (and even the money). It should be in the business of angering powerful tyrants by giving their victims a moment in the sun. Choosing Barack Obama, who practically orbits the sun already, accomplishes the exact opposite of that. Let’s hope Obama eventually deserves this award. And let’s hope the Nobel Committee’s decision meets with such a deafening chorus of chortles and jeers that it never does something this stupid again.

Bravo to Peter Beinart for so clearly illuminating the reason that people with moral decency are outraged by the decision to give the award to this president at this time.

But apparently Barack Obama is – so the selection committee passed them over and gave the award to an accomplishment-free novice who gives nice speeches as long as the teleprompter is working.

Sima Samar, women's rights activist in Afghanistan: "With dogged persistence and at great personal risk, she kept her schools and clinics open in Afghanistan even during the most repressive days of the Taliban regime, whose laws prohibited the education of girls past the age of eight. When the Taliban fell, Samar returned to Kabul and accepted the post of Minister for Women's Affairs."

Ingrid Betancourt: French-Colombian ex-hostage held for six years.

"Dr. Denis Mukwege: Doctor, founder and head of Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo. He has dedicated his life to helping Congolese women and girls who are victims of gang rape and brutal sexual violence."

Handicap International and Cluster Munition Coalition: "These organizations are recognized for their consistently serious efforts to clean up cluster bombs, also known as land mines. Innocent civilians are regularly killed worldwide because the unseen bombs explode when stepped upon."

"Hu Jia, a human rights activist and an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, who was sentenced last year to a three-and-a-half-year prison term for 'inciting subversion of state power.'"



"Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for urging reforms of China's communist system. He now lives in the United States."

Seems appropriate that two of the individuals kicked to the curb are human rights activists in China – I guess the committee was just following Obama’s lead in appeasing the Red Chinese dictators by ignoring the gross violations of human rights in that communist dictatorship. And since Obama seems prepared to ignore the ugly human rights record of the Taliban, the selection committee decided to overlook those who have actually worked for human rights in Afghanistan.

All around, I’d say this is a pretty sick situation. Obama gets the Nobel Peace Prize while these much more deserving nominees with remarkable records of accomplishment receive the Nobel Piss-Off Prize.

However will the hoity-toity liberals in Harvard’s ivy-covered halls survive?

Gone are the hot breakfasts in most dorms and the pastries at Widener Library. Varsity athletes are no longer guaranteed free sweat suits, and just this week came the jarring news that professors will go without cookies at faculty meetings.

By Harvard standards, these are hard times. Not Dickensian hard times, but with the value of its endowment down by almost 30 percent, the world’s richest university is learning to live with less.

Color me unimpressed. Why don’t these yahoos try to make do on what my district spends on educating a student?

Oh, the humanity!

It used to be that winners of the Nobel Prize for Peace had to have done something significant to advance the cause of peace. Maybe they negotiated a peace treaty. Maybe they had worked for years for human rights. Perhaps they were internationally known for their human rights work.

And while I haven't always agreed with the choices made, I've at least understood them. Even Al Gore's award two years ago, tinged by political correctness and support for junk science, made some sort of sense, given his history of environmental work.

But now we have seen confirmed a simple reality -- the once-prestigious award has become a joke, the Nobel Prize for Liberalism.

In a stunning surprise, the Nobel Committee announced Friday that it had awarded its annual peace prize to President Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

“He has created a new international climate,” the committee said in its announcement. President Obama’s name had not figured in speculation about the likely winner until minutes before the prize was announced here.

Likely candidates had been seen here as including human rights activists in China and Afghanistan and political figures in Africa.

The committee said it wanted to enhance Mr. Obama’s diplomatic efforts. “We are awarding Obama for what he has done,” the committee said. “Many other people and leaders and nations have to respond in a positive way” to President Obama’s diplomacy.

In other words, they gave the award for Hope'N'Change, not for any actual accomplishment or substantive body of work on the part of President Obama.

Especially since nominations had to be in by February 1, 2009, a mere 11 days after his inauguration. Yeah, that's right -- he'd been president for eleven days on the deadline day for nominations. He had done nothing substantive then -- and still has no substantive accomplishments after less than nine months in office. Sort of like his lack of substantive accomplishments during his years as a do-nothing state legislator and his partial term as absentee Senator from Illinois

Let's say it -- the award is absurd. No, scratch that -- the award is obscene.

In one fell swoop, the Nobel Committee has degraded and discredited itself in the eyes of anyone with common sense and common decency. Today marks the day that the Nobel Peace Prize has jumped the shark.

The first Latina justice of the Texas Supreme Court has been appointed by Governor Rick Perry.

Houston judge Eva Guzman will be named today by Gov. Rick Perry to replace Scott Brister on the Texas Supreme Court.

Though the court has had several women and several Hispanics judges, Guzman, the daughter of immigrants, is the first Hispanic woman to take that bench.

Guzman sits on the Houston-based Texas 14th Court of Appeals. Perry made her the first Hispanic woman on that court in 2001. She was elected to the bench in 2002 and 2004. Her opinions have been on a range of topics, and she writes often for the court on family law issues.

She is also a former Harris County Family Court judge, appointed in 1999 by then-Gov. George W. Bush and elected to the position subsequently.

Congratulations to Justice Guzman, who it has been my pleasure to campaign for a number of times over the years. She is a fine jurist, and I am proud to see her on one of our state's two highest courts (the other being the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals).

And I cannot help but be struck by the fact that, despite allegedly being pro-minority and pro-woman, the Democrats never could find a qualified Hispanic woman for the Texas Supreme Court.

After all, even prisoners have certain religious liberties upon which the state cannot infringe.

A judge says the state of Pennsylvania cannot force a seriously ill prison inmate to undergo a blood transfusion - even if it could save his life.

In a ruling made public Wednesday, Commonwealth Court Judge Keith B. Quigley said inmate Anthony Lindsey's wishes must be respected under the First Amendment.

Lindsey suffers from a serious kidney ailment. A doctor at the Laurel Highlands state prison says the 37-year-old prisoner is in imminent danger of dying if he does not have a transfusion.

Lindsey says he refuses to allow a transfusion because it violates his religious beliefs as a Jehovah's Witness. He is serving a 13- to 36-year sentence for drug trafficking.

Now I recognize that the government can limit the exercise of religion in jails and prisons for security purposes, and I am generally supportive of their doing so to some degree. But attempting to limit a decision to forgo medical treatment made on religious grounds makes no sense, as it in no way burdens the state. That litigation was necessary here is just offensive.

The horrors! Cindy Sheehan has been arrested for protesting our warmonger president!

“Cindy Sheehan says she is moving to Washington. The anti-war activist was outside the White House for the second day in a row, with a bullhorn and a handful of protestors, shouting against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantanamo and calling for “health care not warfare.”

* * *

Park Police arrested Sheehan and 60 other protestors yesterday, after Sheehan chained herself to the fence on the North Lawn. Sheehan says she refuses to pay the fine and that she and other anti-war activists plan to “step up” their protests until the administration shows a willingness to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

“We’re going to create a movement that’s going to demand a change of policy,” she said, explaining that her plan is to create large, coordinated acts of civil resistance, “It’s going to be massive.”

Why hasn’t Barack Hussein Obama met with Cindy Sheehan? Why did he allow his fascist storm troopers to lock her up for daring to engage in patriotic dissent? And why wasn’t the media all over this horrific act of oppression?

Oh. That’s right. It is no longer the Bush Administration, and the president is no longer a Republican, so dissent against the policies of the American government are no longer acceptable. Indeed, I’m wondering how long until Maureen Dowd retracts her claim that Sheehan has absolute moral authority and instead opines that Sheehan is just another racist hater unpatriotically attacking America.

H/T Patterico

Anyone who has ever had a puppy knows that one thing is quite certain – there will be puppy accidents of both liquid and solid varieties. So when I read this story, all I could do was chuckle – and shake my head that anyone would even find it worth reporting on.

The mystery begins in a Pittsburgh bar where several high-flying airline types met last month.

The group swapped stories over drinks when three people present let loose with a good tale. Bo, the presidential puppy, recently left a present on the presidential jet, they said, and a flight attendant had nearly stepped in it.

“You can imagine the horror on board when they discovered what it had done,” a participant in the conversation said, referring to Bo.

Apparently my favorite member of the Obama family has even gotten loose aboard the presidential aircraft a time or two – something not too surprising for a pup of a breed known for being intelligent and having a high energy level.

My only thing is this – why does the White House see a need to deny that this incident happened? Set aside the issue of government transparency that Obama ran on last year (and has run from this year) – just remind everyone that Bo is a puppy and he does puppy things.

Truly a case of “news of the weird”.

And an opening sentence to a news article that will probably never appear in the press ever again.

A gay man tried to poison his lesbian neighbours by putting slug pellets into their curry after he was accused of kidnapping their three-legged cat.

Damn – sounds like its own punchline!

How dare they sell this product. RRRRAAAACCCCIIIISSSSTTTT!!!!

In CVS stores for less than a week, the Commander in Chia has already gotten the boot.

The chain Tuesday said it is no longer selling the Chia planter modeled after President Obama.

Chia Pet maker Joseph Enterprises launched an ad blitz leading up to the sales of its Chia Obama last week in Chicago, San Francisco and Tampa, Fla., the first time the item was in a major chain since Walgreens abruptly pulled it after a few days of testing last spring.

Walgreens officials said they received a few complaints. CVS would not say why it stopped the sales.

The product is the first Chia offering based on a living person.

Well, that is one more racist attack down. Now if we can only find a way to make sure that only votes for Obama are cast in presidential elections, we will have eliminated racism from our society.

I’ve never been a fan of the notion that schools, rather than families, are responsible for all the basic needs of kids. But now one school district is making the feeding of students a criteria for evaluating schools and their administrators.

In a locally unprecedented move, the School District of Philadelphia will hold principals accountable for the number of students eating breakfast in their schools.

Breakfast participation will be part of the report card that rates principals each year, along with categories such as attendance and math and reading performance.

All 165,000 students in Philadelphia public schools, regardless of income, are eligible for free breakfasts. But just 54,000 ate breakfast last year, district figures show.

The new system, which begins this year, is expected to increase the number of students eating breakfast, said Jonathan Stein, a lawyer with Community Legal Services, whose efforts - along with those of Public Citizens for Children and Youth (PCCY) - helped bring about the move.

Now set aside the argument that the school system should not be feeding every kid on the taxpayer dime because that is not one of the missions of a properly run system of education. But what does it say when we require a principal to discourage parents taking responsibility for the care and feeding of their own kids as a part of determining whether or not the principal (and the school) is doing his/her job? What we are encouraging in such situations is nothing less than womb-to-the-tomb dependency on government rather than self-sufficiency and personal responsibility.

What next? Feed the kids dinner before leaving school? Or perhaps turn-down and mint-on-the-pillow service provided by the district, which will ensure that all students get to bed at a reasonable hour?

Moe Lane points out that one particular prominent hate crime has gone unsolved for 10 months – and the media seems particularly intent on overlooking the offense and ignoring the lack of progress of the investigation.

I posted on this three months ago - and in those three months: if there has been anything done by the current government in investigating this hate crime that would merit an update, I haven’t found it.  Somebody attempted to murder several women and children via arson, and it’s becoming depressingly clear that that person (or persons) has gotten away with it clean.

This offends me.  It should offend you.  If it doesn’t, I don’t really care what your excuse is.

Yes, that’s right – there seems to be no progress in the investigation of the arson attack on the Wasilla Bible Church last year. Want to bet that if this had been an attack on Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ we would have seen massive amounts of federal resources poured into the investigation of the crime – one which would be seen as both a hate crime and an act of political terrorism, just as the attack on the WBC ought to be?

Why the lack of progress? Why the lack of press coverage? Why the lack of public outrage?

Not only does it put one class of citizen outside the requirements of the law, it also excludes everyone but a small class of citizens from the protections of a part of the Bill of Rights.

In 1972, in the U.S. Supreme Court case, Branzburg v. Hayes, which said there was no “news media privilege” on sources in federal courts, Justice Byron White conceded the difficulty of specifying who is a journalist. White wrote that arriving at such a definition would be “a questionable procedure in light of the traditional doctrine that liberty of the press is the right of the lonely pamphleteer who uses carbon paper or a mimeograph just as much as the large metropolitan publisher.” Fast-forward Justice White’s concerns to 2009 and he may well have added “… and the blogger sitting at home using a computer and the World Wide Web.” But that’s not where the law stands in Congress. The House already has passed its version of a shield law. It defines a journalist as (take a deep breath here if reading aloud): “A person who regularly gathers, prepares, collects, photographs, records, writes, edits, reports, or publishes news and information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public, for a substantial portion of the person’s livelihood, or for substantial financial gain.”

Got that – instead of Congress protecting the right of every American to the freedoms of the First Amendment, Congress is looking to define most Americans out of the protections of granted under the rubric of freedom of the press. After all, if only journalists are to be considered a part of the press for purposes of federal law, it will become axiomatic that other aspects of freedom of the press are applicable only to that small class of individuals when we have a judiciary that constantly attempts to discern not the original intent of the Constitutioon, but instead the meaning of a “living constitution” that is untethered to the original meaning of the text.

Because, after all, a request by a Senator to withhold true information about the Senator being in town so that his constituents wouldn’t know that they could meet up with him so as to engage in a constitutionally protected activity like petitioning for a redress of grievances ought to be respected. After all, the people have no place expressing un-liberal views to their betters.

A spokesman for U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) says the senator's office will no longer send media information to Quincy's oldest radio station because the station decided to let the public know he was coming to town.

Mike Moyers, general manager/vice president of STARadio Corporation, which owns WTAD-AM (930), said Christina Angarola of Durbin's Chicago office called WTAD on Monday to inform them they would no longer be included on the list of those receiving news releases from the senator when he plans to visit West-Central Illinois.

Moyers said Angarola was not pleased that WTAD chose to make public the time and place of Durbin's September 4 visit to Quincy's Blessing Hospital to hold a meeting on health care with officials from the hospital, Quincy Medical Group and Quincy Mayor John Spring and State Senator John Sullivan (D-Rushville).
The news release sent by Durbin's office on the afternoon of September 3 said NOTE: The times and locations of these events are for media planning purposes only and should not be published or aired in any form."

Personally, I find Dick Durbin’s request to be newsworthy in and of itself. Why is a US Senator so intent on making sure that his constituents NOT be able to contact him or speak to him? Why is the press being punished for daring to tell the truth – namely that the Senator would be in town for an event related to one of the most pressing public policy issues today?

And what are we to make of the explanation offered by Durbin for his reluctance for letting those who elected him actually talk to him on the issue of health care reform?

Durbin, the assistant majority leader of the Senate, has been an outspoken critic of health care town hall meetings, said he didn't want to get a "sucker-punch" from constituents and opted to have a session in a conference room before an invited few and a handful of reporters.

Four of the 10 people Durbin chose to meet on September 4 have donated to Durbin's campaign fund in the past: Blessing Corporate Services President/CEO Brad Billings, Niemann Foods Inc. Chairman Rich Niemann, Sr., [Quincy Mayor John] Spring and [State Senator John] Sullivan. Durbin has also funneled several thousands of dollars from his war chest back to Spring's mayoral campaign fund.

Got that – Durbin even admits that his goal was to ensure that his constituents were excluded from the policy making process because they might embarrass him or make him look foolish. Durbin has instead made himself look arrogant – and is punishing the press for having exposed that arrogance. How utterly shameful!

After all, she is claiming that there are many members of Congress who have the same sort of sleaze problems as Charlie Rangel – will she put up or shut op?

“Many members” of Congress suffer from the same disclosure issues as Rep. Charles Rangel (D.N.Y.), one of his allies said Wednesday. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) downplayed the seriousness of allegations against Rangel that he failed to disclose sources of income and pay taxes on some properties, saying that many lawmakers suffer from innocent lapses in judgment when filing mandatory financial disclosure forms. “I want to tell you, there are many members who, if you go back over all of their records, over all of the years, you’re going to find that there were disclosures that were not made,” Waters said during an appearance on MSNBC Wednesday morning.

My guess is that she won’t do either – her argument appears to be that Rangel’s many financial misdeeds just are not sufficient to do so much as censure him , much less expel him from the House.

Seems to me that she is telling us that dirty Dems are a dime a dozen.

Which is why Democrats defeated an attempt to remove Rangel from the chairmanship of the committee that writes the laws that he breaks.

From time to time I do sponsored posts. You may have seen my advertising policy button in the right column – and I always put such posts in a special category that is called Paid Advertising, which you see in the left column. As such, I think I have made it clear that such posts are compensated, and that I am speaking as a paid reviewer of such of the company or product. I don’t say anything in such posts that I do not believe to be true. I don’t claim to use products or services I haven’t used. I think that is a simple matter of responsibility.

But I’m still troubled by this new policy by the FTC.

The Federal Trade Commission is taking a tougher line on bloggers who accept cash or gifts to tout a company's products or services. Under revised rules announced Monday, the FTC will require bloggers and celebrities to clearly state when they receive cash or "payment in kind" for endorsing a company's products or services.

The changes, adopted on a 4-0 vote, are the first revisions to federal guidelines on endorsements and testimonial advertising since 1980 and the first to target bloggers.

Connections between advertisers and endorsers must be disclosed once the revised guidelines take effect on Dec. 1. The FTC said the stricter disclosure requirement will apply to comments on talk shows, blog posts and on social media as well as in traditional advertisements.

* * *

Advertisers and endorsers who fail to disclose material connections, or who make false, misleading or unsubstantiated claims may be subject to fines of $11,000 per violation. The FTC didn't set a specific dollar threshold; instead, it called for disclosure whenever a reward is large enough that it might affect the credibility of the endorsement itself.

Now here’s where I have a problem. The FTC isn’t clear what such disclosure has to look like. Are my posted policy and special category sufficient? And at what point is my compensation sufficiently substantial to trigger the FTC regulations? And does a post in which I simply note the existence of a company and an explanation of their services an endorsement, or is it something else?
My fear? That the rules are so vague that bloggers will find themselves in trouble without meaning to violate any rules. So while I don’t have a theoretical problem with disclosure rules, I remain troubled by these.

Are our men and women in uniform deployed abroad being denied their pay? If this report over at Red Ink: Texas is true, it appears that the unthinkable may be happening.

Nasty Rumor that I HOPE is not true. But I'm afraid it might well be...

This morning, a woman called in to Edd Hendee's show on KSEV and informed Edd that her friend's husband, who is deployed to Iraq, has not been paid in a month, and that he had been ordered not to discuss it. The wife of course was under no such obligation to keep quiet. When I heard that I thought to myself that it could not possibly be correct, or if it is, it can't be widespread. So I asked around. I discovered that a woman here at work has three cousins in Iraq, two Army, one Air Force, and none of them have been paid in over 5 weeks as well. This no longer sounds like a rumor, this is starting to sound like fact. And if it IS a fact, someone's head needs to roll. This is UNACCEPTABLE.

These men and women have signed a blank check for their very lives in service to this country. They often have spouses and families back home that depend on that income to eat and pay the rent. Soldiers are not paid a great deal for their sacrifice to begin with. To screw them out of a paycheck their families need to survive is simply unconscionable. If you know of anyone who is deployed to Iraq who has not been paid. Please let me know. I've been in contact with Congressman Ted Poe's office and they will ask around, but at this juncture no constituent who has not been paid has contacted them so their ability to look into it is limited. I urge all servicemen and women who's paycheck is in arrears to contact their respective congressmen and let them know about this.

Check with your friends and loved ones in the war zones about this. If there is any truth whatsoever to this story, then We the People need to raise some Hell about it -- Barack Obama and the Democrats can try to screw the American people all they want, but we will not tolerate them screwing our troops.

UPDATE: Perhaps less than meets the eye to this one -- a fellow-blogger with lots of military connections sends me this:

From what I'm hearing, it's not uncommon for combat pay/benefits to lag a couple of months, and it gets corrected eventually, but I've heard of no mass missing of paychecks in theater. In fact, no commander worth his salt would tolerate that, and you couldn't possibly enforce a gag rule on it.

He’ll meet with terrorists and dictators without preconditions – but screw the Dalai Lama, one of the most respected religious and political leaders on the face of the earth.

In an attempt to gain favor with China, the United States pressured Tibetan representatives to postpone a meeting between the Dalai Lama and President Obama until after Obama's summit with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, scheduled for next month, according to diplomats, government officials and other sources familiar with the talks.

For the first time since 1991, the Tibetan spiritual leader will visit Washington this week and not meet with the president. Since 1991, he has been here 10 times. Most times the meetings have been "drop-in" visits at the White House. The last time he was here, in 2007, however, George W. Bush became the first sitting president to meet with him publicly, at a ceremony at the Capitol in which he awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress's highest civilian award.

So in order to suck up to the Commies in Red China, Barack Obama is going to disrespect this figure who is almost universally revered in order to appease a dictatorial regime. And they are not even subtle about this fundamental change in US policy.

Before a visit to China in February, for example, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said advocacy for human rights could not "interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate-change crisis and the security crisis" -- a statement that won her much goodwill in Beijing. . . .

So please understand – for all his talk about making the US a moral paragon, Barack Obama has adopted a policy of minimizing human rights violations by left-wing regimes, just like he has minimized the terrorism of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

In other words, Barack Obama is shameless in his promotion of values at odds with those of most Americans – and will likely come away with nothing to show for it, other than abandoning the historical anti-Communist stance adopted by eachsuccessive Administrations dating back to the days of Woodrow Wilson.

And given his disregard for for the human rights of the people of Tibet and China, is it any surprise that he is also abandoning the human rights of the people of Iran as a part of his attempt to appease Mahmoud the Mad and the Mullahs?

Here’s a complaint that seems to miss the entire history of the press in America.

On "Meet the Press," David Brooks reiterated his critique of talk radio from Friday's Times, calling Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin "loons" and "harmful for America." (Limbaugh, on Friday, told POLITICO that Brooks is just jealous).

Continuing on discussion of partisan media divide, Republican strategist Mike Murphy -- an NBC News analyst who's made some appearances on MSNBC -- said "there is kind of a freakshow business of each side."

"We have one-party cable networks now," Murphy said. "One of each. What that does is dumb down the debate."

"Is Joe Scarborough -- which network is he on?" Rachel Maddow asked.

"He's on your liberal network," Murphy said.

"So how is that a one-party network?"

"I would take your prime-time and Fox prime-time and say it's the same dance toward dumbing the debate," Murphy said.

Frankly, I don’t agree.

And neither would the founding fathers.

Take a look at the state of the press in the 1790s, when our Republic was established under the current Constitution. The press was explicitly partisan, and explicitly allied with one side or the other of the political factions of the day. Still later, the press was allied with the earliest political parties of the day.

We see remnants of that today with newspapers named the Whig, the Democrat, or the Republican in many cities around the country. Those names are indicative of the very partisan roots of the papers in question.

In short, the founders would have no problem with the existence of “biased” “one-party” media outlets today. They would likely suggest that it was unthinkable that it would be any other way – and that the very notion that we have an unbiased media is a conceit that is not borne out by reality.

Seems to me that once the GOP reestablishes control at the national level, it may be necessary for there to be legislation passed in Congress and signed by the President that will ensure that our men and women in uniform are permitted to vote.

Virginia is the case in point right now, of attempts to disenfranchise the military. After the rejection of military absentee votes in Fairfax last year, we now have the state of Virginia claiming it has no obligation to send out absentee ballots for military personnel in a timely enough manner for them to actually be able to cast their ballots and return them.

The Virginia State Board of Elections argued in their most recent filing that they have no legal obligation to send out military absentee ballots in a timely manner. Restated, the State of Virginia has argued in a federal court filing that they can legally send out absentee ballots to active duty soldiers the day before an election. Restated again, theDemocratic Chairwoman of the Virginia State Board of Election (appointed by the Democratic National Committee Chair Tim Kaine, in his capacity as Virginia Governor) Jean Cunningham just claimed a legal basis for massively raising the barrier to voting for soldiers at war.

The claim? That there is no LEGAL obligation that the state act to ensure that military voters are able to exercise the rights which they are deployed to defend. And apparently these Democrat officials are not terribly interested in the MORAL obligation to guarantee the franchise of military voters – probably because they know that such voters will likely vote overwhelmingly for Republican candidates.

And interestingly enough, Democrat leaders in Congress are dragging their feet on bipartisan legislation introduced to ensure that military voters are, in fact allowed to vote in state and local elections as well as federal ones. Maybe that’s because they know that military voters could be the difference in the off-year gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey.

One of the most troubling questions arising from the Holocaust is that of why the Jews did not resist more. That is not intended as an attempt to blame the victim, but more a desire to understand how so many people could fail to act in an effort to save their own lives and those of their children in the face of so great an evil.

But it is to be eternally remembered that some Jews did stand and fight – in particular the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. And last week the world lost the last surviving leader of that heroic uprising against the murderous Nazi thugs.

Marek Edelman, who died on October 2, probably aged 90, was the last surviving leader of the armed Jewish revolt against the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto; having commanded the heroic but doomed struggle in April 1943 he was one of a tiny number of fighters to escape with his life, eventually taking part in the equally ill-fated citywide Uprising the following year.

Edelman was just 20 when the Nazis invaded Warsaw. By November 1940 the invading army had cut off his district from the rest of the city with walls and wire. As the anti-Semitic directives of the occupation were put into force, hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews were forced into the ghetto, inflating its population to almost half a million.

Conditions became intolerable and in the course of 1941 the ghetto population was decimated by disease and malnutrition. Early the following year however, with Hitler's decision to implement the Endlösung, or final solution to "the Jewish question", plans were put in place to liquidate the ghetto and its remaining occupants entirely.

From July 1942, Jews were herded through the ghetto to an umschlagplatz (or departure point), a square at its southern end, and on to trains 6,000 at a time. From there, the destinations were death camps. Two months after the ghetto clearance had begun, more than 300,000 Jews had been transported to the gas chambers. But even as Jews were encouraged on to the trains to Treblinka with promises of better conditions at their destination, Edelman and a small band of others were laying down plans for armed resistance.

And resist they did, fighting for three heroic weeks in 1943 against the Nazis who came to exterminate them Some escaped, while those who remained behind died in a last ditch resistance against the great evil of the age.

And Edelman provided a perspective on the question raised at the beginning of the post that to me is quite profound.

After the war, the 20 days of fighting in the ghetto were sometimes described as a rare example of violent Jewish resistance to the horrors inflicted on them by the Nazis. But Edelman always refused to make any distinction of character between those in the ghetto who fought and those who boarded the trains to the camps. Both groups, he said, were simply dealing with an inevitable death in the best way they could.

"We knew perfectly well that we had no chance of winning," he recalled. "We fought simply not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths. We knew we were going to die. Just like all the others who were sent to Treblinka." Indeed, Edelman added, far from going passively, those who went steadfastly to Treblinika had shown the ultimate courage. "Their death was far more heroic. We didn't know when we would take a bullet. They had to deal with certain death, stripped naked in a gas chamber or standing at the edge of a mass grave waiting for a bullet in the back of the head. It is an awesome thing, when one is going so quietly to one's death. It was easier to die fighting than in a gas chamber."

It is a perspective that I had never considered before reading this brave man’s obituary. I do not know that I agree with it. Still, I honor it as I honor the man who so many years ago led the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – and I am sure that his entry into the presence of God was one which saw him greatly honored as well.

As a Rams fan, I imagine he might be if this were to come to pass.

In 2003, Rush Limbaugh had a brief dalliance with the sport he loves, spending a month as the "voice of the fan" on ESPN's pregame show before resigning after a delayed reaction to comments made regarding Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb triggered a firestorm.

Since then, the mega-rich Rush's name has bubbled up from time to time as a potential owner of all or part of an NFL team.

And it could be coming to fruition.

Charley Casserly of CBS reports that, of the three groups that submitted bids to buy the St. Louis Rams, one group includes Dave Checketts and Limbaugh.

Given that the Rams are this year’s Detroit Lions, it seems to me that this may be the only thing that my friend and fellow Watcher’s Council member will have to cheer this season.

If, of course, it happens.

As a Christian, I would never dare to write a post on this blog suggesting that Moses, David, or Solomon (or any of the Hebrew prophets) was quitting Judaism over the policies of the Obama Regime towards Israel or the content of the platform of the Democrat Party. And under no circumstances would I put blasphemous words into the mouths of Jewish politicians and commentators, showing them as condemning any of those revered religious figures for their failure to adhere to the tenets of contemporary liberalism.

Not only that, I would never link to such a post on another blog -- except, perhaps, to condemn it as a vile bit of anti-Semitism.

I therefore feel I am well-within my rights to condemn well-known liberal pundit Alan Colmes, who is a Jew, for tweeting up and blogging about this bit of vile anti-Christian garbage. And what's more, I can't help but note the disingenuous tone he adopts in expressing surprise that Christians might take offense at his having done so.

I don't take offense that Alan Colmes would speak ill of the GOP. I don't even find it troubling that he would be critical of Christianity. Rather, I am offended by the particularly vile and blasphemous way manner in which the post he so approvingly links does both. I guess that in Alan's liberal worldview, respect and tolerance for other faiths does not extend to Christianity -- because unlike the followers of certain other faiths, Alan knows that Christians like those he insults will turn the other cheek rather than seek to take his life in retribution.

On Friday, the following results were announced by the Watcher, based upon the votes of my esteemed colleagues on the Watcher's Council.

Winning Council Submissions

• First place with 1 2/3 points! – Rhymes With Right - A Note On The “Tenther” Smear


• Second place with 1 points – (T*) – Soccer Dad - Leaving the nest


• Second place with 1 points – (T*) – Joshuapundit - Welcome To The Babi Yar Hotel


• Second place with 1 points – (T*) – The Colossus of Rhodey - More on Obama’s ridiculous foreign policy


• Second place with 1 points – (T*) – Mere Rhetoric - Obama Knew About Secret Iran Facility During Transition, Experts Pushed Engagement Anyway With Pro-Iran Pretexts


• Third place with 2/3 points – (T*) – Right Truth - Why America Could Be Doomed


• Third place with 2/3 points – (T*) – Bookworm Room - Obama Keeps Hitler Analogy in the Public Eye


• Fourth place with 1/3 points – The Provocateur - Yet Another Defining Moment

Winning Non-Council Submissions

• First place with 1 1/3 points! – Jennifer Rubin/Commentary - Netanyahu’s Speech for the Ages


• Second place with 1 1/3 points – RedState - Common Sense Outlawed in Indiana


• Third place with 2/3 points – (T*) – Breitbart TV - Sources: Sarkozy Thinks Obama is ‘Incredibly Naive and Grossly Egotistical’


• Third place with 2/3 points – (T*) – The Anchoress - A Study in Contrasts


• Third place with 2/3 points – (T*) – WSJ/Bret Stephens - The Neocons Make a Comeback


• Third place with 2/3 points – (T*) – StreetWise - It’s Not a Real Estate Crisis, It’s a Debt Crisis


• Third place with 2/3 points – (T*) – The Times Online (UK) - The Anglo-world of settlers, not dominators


• Third place with 2/3 points – (T*) – Larry Greenfield / American Thinker - Liberal Jews and the Legacy of Neoconservatism


• Fourth place with 1/3 points – (T*) – Kausfiles @Slate - Did ACORN chicanery elect Al Franken?


• Fourth place with 1/3 points – (T*) – Simply Jews - Ich bin kein Berliner?


• Fourth place with 1/3 points – (T*) – Fore-Left - Speaking of Vast Conspriacies..

  I'm particularly honored to have won this week -- and surprised, too, given the strength of the competition. It just goes to show that I never can tell which post will garner the most respect from my fellow bloggers, because I very nearly submitted a different post this week. My thanks to those who honored me with their votes.

  ---

I guess that Barry Hussein has been too busy being an athletic supporter for Mayor Daley and the Chicago 2016 committee to take notice of this issue.

Fortunately there is a president with the time and moral clarity to speak out on the issue of jihadi recruiting on American soil.

The president of Somalia on Sunday denounced the recruiting of young men from Minnesota’s huge Somali community for terrorist activity in his war-ravaged homeland, and said he plans to work with the U.S. government to bring those still alive back home.

President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed spoke with The Associated Press while visiting the Minneapolis area, where authorities believe as many as 20 young Somali men—possibly recruited by a vision of jihad to fight—returned to the impoverished nation over the last two years.

At least three have died in Somalia, including one who authorities believe was the first American suicide bomber. Three others have pleaded guilty in the U.S. to terror-related charges.

Maybe he'll have something to say when one of these home-grown jihadis returns to this country and commits a terrorist act on American soil.

Or maybe not.

H/T Michelle Malkin

On one level, I don't really care whether David Letterman has been dallying with his female employees. On another, I am struck by the hypocrisy of it all.

But there is also a question that has been flopping around in my mind regarding the charges against his accused blackmailer.

David Letterman is a public figure. As such, virtually any detail about his life -- especially about his professional life (and his extracurricular activities with female staffers qualifies as a part of his professional life) is fair game for the paparazzi, the tabloids, and even for more legitimate media. This information, especially given that it is true, could be freely published by any media outlet with no legal repercussions -- and even if the charges were not true it would be difficult to sustain a libel claim because Letterman is a public figure.

So if Joe Halderman could have legally written a book and/or screenplay and could have legally sold them, published the book, or produced the screenplay, on what basis do we as a society make it a crime for him to offer them to the subject of those works (Letterman) rather than to a third party? After all, the only crime here is that he attempted to sell his silence to Letterman rather than his words to a publisher or production company. Isn't what he did morally no different than what he would have done had he sold the story to a third party?

Could be -- which would certainly help to explain his intense anti-Semitism.

The evidence is here.

A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.

The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad's birthplace, and the name derives from "weaver of the Sabour", the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior.

Experts last night suggested Mr Ahmadinejad's track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past.

Yeah, that's right -- if the official document he is holding is correct, the Iranian leader was born a Jew and became a Muslim only later wehnhis fatehr converted to Islam. And much like at least one American neo-Nazi leader, that would seem to explain his need to disassociate himself from his own beople throught the expression of violent hatred -- especially since Islam itself is thoroughly infused with anti-Semitism.

UPDATE: Guess not.

Because she so often makes posts like this one.

If a conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberal doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.
If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his enemy.
A liberal wonders how to surrender gracefully and still look good.

If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a black man or Hispanic are conservative, they see themselves as independently successful.
Their liberal counterparts see themselves as victims in need of government protection.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Liberals demand that those they don’t like be shut down.

If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church.
A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it’s a foreign religion, of course!)

If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

If a conservative slips and falls in a store, he gets up, laughs and is embarrassed.
If a liberal slips and falls, he grabs his neck, moans like he’s in labor and then sues.

If a conservative reads this, he’ll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.
A liberal will delete it because he’s “offended”.

H/t Colossus of Rhodey

UPDATE: For some reason this thought on the authoritarianism of the "liberal" seems to tie in well with this commentary on the desire of some liberals for a dictator to rule over us all.

I think the fine folks at Saturday Night Live nailed it last night.

Seems to me that Barack Obama is already an EPIC FAIL. And personally, I love the fact that SNL notes that the president has accomplished only two things -- JACK and SQUAT.

Because if she is right in the things she is saying, she has painted a great big target on herself.

It's obvious to anybody who has eyes in this country that tea-baggers, the 9-12ers, these separatist groups that pretend that it's about policy – they are clearly white-identity movements. They're clearly white power movements. What they don't like about the President is that he's black – or half black (applause) – and they, what also is shocking is that people keep pretending that that's not really the case with these people.

I'm not talking about people that do have problems with his policies, that's fine. But these people, who are also being led by the Glenn Becks, the Michelle Bachmans, the Rush Limbows [presumably Limbaugh], whomever, they are no different than any other white identify movement that's part of our history. This has been going on since the founding of this country that white power movements have tried to establish themselves and hold onto power.

Of course, the only thing actually missing from Janeane's little rant is proof of what she says is true. That's why I believe that the crap that comes out of her mouth is nothing but a schtick designed to keep herself in the spotlight as her career fades. After all, if she REALLY believed that conservatives were white supremacists out to seize power, she would know that she has just made herself one of the leading enemies of that white power movement -- a race traitor who has betrayed her race and sided with those that a real white-identity movement considers to be sub-human.

And we all know, based upon the actions of real racial supremacists in the past, exactly what would happen to someone like that.

Yeah, that's right -- she'd be deader than a terrorist in the hands of Jack Bauer. The sort of folks she claims that "tea-baggers, the 9-12ers, these separatist groups that pretend that it's about policy" really are have a history of violence and murder -- and by making such statements she would have drawn a target on herself. And she knows it.

Not only that, but she knows that such outrageous defamation of patriotic Americans who dare to dissent from this president like she did from the last one won't hurt her career, either. She knows she'll keep getting bookings from Olbermann, Schultz, Maddow, and Maher -- not to mention work on television series and movies. And that, my friends, is what I believe Janeane's little comments are all about.

Robert Stacy McCain also does a great job taking apart the argument made by this brain dead thespian.

As is so often the case, this one goes to lib talker Ed Schultz.

What the Republicans did, I think, rivals Jane Fonda sitting on a gun in North Vietnam.

Excuse me?

Failure to support the USOC's Olympic bid -- at least in part over political differences with the president -- rivals this?

So not wanting Chicago to get the Olympics because of political differences with the president is on the same level posing on an enemy gun during time of war, declaring American troops to be war criminals, and denying the claims of torture made by American POWs who carried the evidence on their own bodies? Was Ed smoking crack during this broadcast?

You know, since the enemy within Leftists like Ed have always considered Jane Fonda a hero for what she did in Vietnam -- and used it as an example of the sort of "dissent" that they call "the highest form of patriotism" and which most decent Americans recognize as treason.

Look and see what the future of America looks like if the Democrats get their way on healthcare.

Gordon Brown was warned last night to raise the retirement age above 65 and introduce NHS charges to tackle the soaring state deficit.

In a devastating intervention, the International Monetary Fund called for radical changes to the pension system and spending cuts that go far beyond the plans outlined by the Prime Minister this week.

The global watchdog said root and branch changes to public sector spending would be necessary to 'help keep a lid on the debt' and restore financial stability.

The system in the UK is broke, it is rationing care that is considered ordinary by American standards, and now citizens will be expected to pay for treatments that were formerly free under their womb-to-the-tomb government controlled healthcare system. That will be the future for Americans if Obama and the Democrats get their way.

Gotta love this one.

Helen Thomas is 89 years old and requires some assistance to get to and from the daily White House briefing. Yet her backbone has proved stronger than that of the president she covers.

Well, that is true – but then again, it isn’t like Thomas is responsible for actually accomplishing anything, unlike a president.

Just for fun, can you think of any other differences between Thomas and Obama? I’ll start you off with a few.

Unlike Obama, Helen Thomas sleeps in a coffin filled with moist earth and can be only be killed with a stake through the heart.

While Barack Obama’s followers may mistakenly believe he is Jesus, Helen Thomas dated the real Jesus back when she was an exchange student at Nazareth High School.

Feel free to add your own.

More proof that the reason ObamaCare won’t cover illegals only because Obama is going to act to legalize them all.

Although President Obama has put off an immigration overhaul until next year, the federal agency in charge of approving visas is planning ahead for the possibility of giving legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, the agency’s director said Thursday.

“We are under way to prepare for that,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the director of the agency, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in an interview. Mr. Obama has told immigration officials that a legalization program would be part of legislation the White House would propose, said Mr. Mayorkas, who became director in August. The agency’s goal, he said, is to be ready to expand rapidly to handle the gigantic increase in visa applications it would face if the legislation, known as comprehensive immigration reform, passed Congress.

Here’s a better plan – prepare for deportation hearings for those arrested by law enforcement. Don’t reward the bad behavior of those who break our laws and violate our sovereignty.

If this isn’t reason enough to jail this cretin for the rest of his natural life, I don’t know what is.

The evidence presented here – evidence which comes from Roman Polanski’s own mouth – makes it clear that the little girl he violently raped in at jack Nicholson’s house all those years ago probably was not the first he abused and certainly was not the last.

If this were Father Polanski the parish priest or Mr. Polanski the drama teacher at the local high school, we would not even be having a discussion of whether or not to jail him forever.

Last time I checked, the First Amendment still read as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So why, in this story about yet another expression of anti-Obama sentiment (what used to be called “dissent” and “the highest form of patriotism” when it was directed against George W. Bush), do we get this question asked?

Let us know what you think. Is the sign offensive, or is it freedom of speech?

Let’s try this answer on for size – it is certainly freedom of speech, but its offensiveness is purely in the eye of the beholder. The mere fact that something is offensive does not strip it of its First Amendment protection. Indeed, it is precisely those sentiments found offensive by the majority – or by a politically powerful minority – that are most surely covered by the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech. That’s why I find the question asked in the story to be so inane – and the equivalent of asking if a certain type of food is nutritious or delicious without considering that it could be both.

UPDATE -- 10/1/2009

Interesting, isn't it, that all of this Democrat uproar -- including death wishes for the perpetrator -- was directed at something that was the work of a juvenile, just like the case I commented on (to much ridicule) three years ago. Will anyone on the Left admit that I was right three years ago -- or admit that they were wrong to get so upset over some kid playing around?

ORIGINAL POST -- 9/28/2009

When I wrote about this incident three years ago, liberals poo-pooed it as not a big deal. Indeed, some were outraged that the Secret Service would even investigate such a thing on a social networking site.

Well, now the Secret Service is investigating an incident that I consider every bit as serious -- and this time the liberals are up in arms and spewing their venom.

The Secret Service is investigating the origins of a poll that appeared on Facebook that asked whether President Obama should be killed.

Posted over the weekend, the poll was removed by Facebook after the Secret Service received a tip and contacted the company, which was not aware of the survey, sources tell ABC News.

"When the Secret Service became aware of the poll we worked with Facebook to have it taken down and are conducting an investigation," said a spokesman for the Secret Service.

The poll asked: "Should Obama be killed?" The answer choices: "No," "Maybe," "Yes" and "Yes if he cuts my health care."

Now liberals are upset over the poll, and want the perp investigated and prosecuted.

So do I.

The difference -- I was for such actions by the Secret Service when the president was George W. Bush and not Barack Obama. They weren't. In short, I am consistent -- they are hypocrites.

After all, if the federal government is going to take care of "structural imbalances" in broadcasting and healthcare, shouldn't Congress also take action to address such imbalances in the publishing industry, where liberal political books are markedly less successful than their conservative counterparts?

That would seem to be the implication of a decision coming out of Dallas.

A Texas judge has cleared the way for two Dallas men to get a divorce, ruling that Texas' ban on same-sex marriage violates the constitutional guarantee to equal protection under the law.

The Dallas Morning News reported that a Dallas district judge's Thursday ruling finds that the court “has jurisdiction to hear a suit for divorce filed by persons legally married in another jurisdiction.”

But here's the problem -- if it is a violation of equal protection of the law not to recognize gay marriages or to dissolve them for this reason, it logically follows that the refusal to perform those marriages is a violation of equal protection for precisely the same reason.

Interestingly enough, I've only encountered one media outlet that seems interested in taking up that angle on the case. Not even Texas' most prominent liberal blog has yet commented on the implications of this decision.

Imagine that – her co-author is a conservative Republican who is an evangelical Christian!

Sarah Palin's most consequential choice since leaving the Alaska governor's mansion may be her co-author - a staunch conservative, devoted evangelical Christian, and intensely partisan Republican from far, far outside the Beltway. Lynn Vincent spent the summer working with Palin on a closely-guarded 400 page memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Life." The book is due out from HarperCollins Nov. 17 - but it shot to the top of the Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble bestseller lists Wednesday as word of its publication spread.

Sarah Palin is trying to communicate who she is and her vision for America. In order to best do that, she needs to work with someone who is sympathetic to her point of view. If she didn’t, she would spend more time fighting with her co-author than writing the book. The choice of Lynn Vincent is therefore a good one – an experienced writer who shares Palin’s vision to communicate Sarah’s ideas. Sounds like a smart choice to me.

I grew up in a military family.

One of the benefits of that upbringing was that I met some extraordinary men and women during my childhood. And as a teenager I had the privilege of meeting a living recipient of the Medal of Honor. I learned that day exactly how special these men really are, and the sort of heroism they exhibited in the course of their duty. And so it is with that in mind that I read this commentary this morning about attempts to change the requirements – in effect to water them down – in an effort to award the MoH more often.

More than a dozen groups and lawmakers are lobbying the Defense Department to award this honor more frequently -- in effect, to lower its standards -- and to upgrade to the Medal of Honor other decorations that soldiers have received. In debate over the National Defense Authorization Act for 2010, the Pentagon was criticized for setting decoration standards too high. The "low numbers" led Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) to insert a conference report in the authorization act "to review the current trends in awarding the Medal of Honor to identify whether there is an inadvertent subjective bias amongst commanders that has contributed to the low numbers of awards of the Medal of Honor." It directs Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to report back to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees next March.

I’m sorry, but no matter how dearly one wishes to honor our men and women in uniform, this is not the right vehicle for doing so. This award is special – its recipients a mere handful among all those who have ever served – and so rarely bestowed that meeting a living recipient is rare. That is as it should be. If there is a desire to give more recognition to special acts of valor, then there is a case for creating a new award – but Congress should keep its hands off of this one.

Once again, we have an amazing anthropological find out of Ethiopia that sheds light – and raises questions – about the evolution of our species and our primate cousins.

After 15 years of rumors, researchers in the U.S. and Ethiopia on Thursday made public fossils from a 4.4-million-year-old human forebearer they say reveals that our earliest ancestors were more modern than scholars assumed and deepens the evolutionary gulf separating humankind from today's apes and chimpanzees. The highlight of the extensive fossil trove is a female skeleton a million years older than the iconic bones of Lucy, the primitive female figure that has long symbolized humankind's beginnings. After 15 years of rumors, researchers in the U.S. and Ethiopia on Thursday made public fossils from a 4.4-million-year-old human forebearer they say reveals that our earliest ancestors were more modern than scholars assumed and deepens the evolutionary gulf separating humankind from today's apes and chimpanzees. The highlight of the extensive fossil trove is a female skeleton a million years older than the iconic bones of Lucy, the primitive female figure that has long symbolized humankind's beginnings.

The potentially earthshaking aspect of this discovery is that anthropologists may have had it all wrong in thinking that humans evolved away from our earliest prehuman ancestors while chimps, monkeys and apes remain closer to our common ancestors. It appears that we may be more faithful to that common ancestor and the primates are the ones that spun of on an evolutionary tangent. I can’t wait to learn more – because I’ll be teaching this in my classes in the future.

Here is, from where I sit, the heart of Dionne’s argument on why it is common sense that so-called moderates should support the public option is found right here.

The strangest aspect of the debate over a public option for health coverage is that the centrists who oppose it should love it.

It doesn't involve a government takeover of the health-care system. The idea is that only consumers who want to enroll in a government-run health plan would do so. Anyone who preferred private insurance could get it.

The public option also uses government exactly as advocates of market economics say it should be deployed: not as a controlling entity but as a nudge toward greater competition. Fans of the market rightly oppose monopolies. But in many places, a small number of insurance companies -- sometimes only one -- dominates the market. The public option is a monopoly-buster.

He’s right in noting that the preferred method of folks in the middle – and on the right, too – is for the market over the government. The problem is that he doesn’t recognize the fundamental objection to the government entering the marketplace – namely that it will NEVER compete on an equal basis. After all, not one insurance company has the unlimited financial reserves of the federal government behind it, with the ability to operate at a loss in order to keep rates artificially low. What’s more, the impact of such a government player in the market would be to warp it in favor of the government and against the private sector – ultimately creating a system in which there is only one dominant company in the market – namely the government-backed option. The result will inevitably be the collapse of private insurance companies unable to compete with an entity bound by different rules and a different economic model – in effect meaning that while there will be no takeover today, there will be one tomorrow or the day after.

Isn't it sad that we have reached a point that a school would need to make a rule about this?

Dorm rooms doubling as steamy love huts have Tufts University throwing cold water on sex on campus - at least when horny students let it all hang out in front of red-faced roommates.

“You may not engage in sexual activity while your roommate is present in the room,” tuts Tufts’ 2009-10 guest policy, newly revised in response to student gripes about rambunctious roomies and their raunchy romps.

Tufts spokeswoman Kim Thurler told the Herald the 8,500-student school has fielded roughly a dozen complaints from chagrined scholars “who expressed concerns that they were experiencing uncomfortable situations" with their roommates’ sex-tracurricular activities.

The school put the rules in place because they didn't have a written policy telling students what the expectations were. One would have hoped that wasn't necessary.

Not, of course, that this is a new problem. I ran into it in college -- once. I was dating a girl who developed a serious illness., and one Saturday evening she and I fell asleep while watching television her dorm room one evening when she was feeling particularly sick. Her roommate -- who was noted for her promiscuity -- brought a guy back to the room in the middle of the night and the pair proceeded to hump like a couple of bunnies in heat, waking both my girlfriend and I (though we feigned sleep out of embarrassment). My solution -- the next morning I discretely dropped a hint to the guy in question that we had heard everything -- and my girlfriend did the same with her roommate. It was never a problem after that.

Of course, maybe morals are looser than they were in the mid-1980s. Or maybe we are just a more litigious society, and so the school feels a need to tell students to act with a little common decency.

The other day I wrote about out-of-control government prosecuting a woman for doing something technically criminal -- buying cold medicine for two different family members at two different stores on two different days within the same week.

But this one is even worse -- the criminalization of neighbors helping neighbors.

A West Michigan woman says the state is threatening her with fines and possibly jail time for babysitting her neighbors' children.

Lisa Snyder of Middleville says her neighborhood school bus stop is right in front of her home. It arrives after her neighbors need to be at work, so she watches three of their children for 15-40 minutes until the bus comes.

The Department of Human Services received a complaint that Snyder was operating an illegal child care home. DHS contacted Snyder and told her to get licensed, stop watching her neighbors' kids, or face the consequences.

"It's ridiculous." says Snyder. "We are friends helping friends!" She added that she accepts no money for babysitting.

Mindy Rose, who leaves her 5-year-old with Snyder, agrees. "She's a friend... I trust her."

Good grief! This is the sort of stuff we grew up with when I was a kid. My house was where the kids next door came after school until their mom, a nurse, got off at 4:00. Miss Carmen down the street watched some of us when our parents had doctors appointments and were running late. That sort of stuff isn't day care -- it is normal human interaction.

My diagnosis? Too many laws caused by too much government.

Big business gets a bad name too often. But stories like this one happen regularly, but don't always get reported.

Because of caring people and a caring company, a terminally ill little Green Forest girl was flown home Friday by air ambulance from M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, so she can spend her last days surrounded by the people who love her most.

Jada Harper, who turned seven on Sept. 1, has an inoperable malignant tumor in her brain and is in a coma with a ventilator doing her breathing for her. She has been at the famous cancer center in Houston since July, but her situation is now at the point not much else can be done to help her.

The story is tragic -- a little girl dying of cancer being brought home todie -- but the story itself is beautiful. After all, there is still a lot of caring and decency in this world -- the sort of thing that leads us to help others in their time of need.

You can get some of the funniest situations.

Take today. I was using a personal anecdote to illustrate a point, and was about to say something about my education that no ninth grader could have possibly known about me. Suddenly, one of the boys chimed in with exactly the bit of information I was about to mention – and I responded with surprise.

From there, it got really funny, with the following exchange:

Girl: How did you know that?

Boy: Easy – I’m psychotic!

Girl: I think you mean psychic.

Boy: Yeah – that, too.

Psychotic and psychic. Could be a long school year.

When it is clear that a legal product is being legitimately purchased for its intended purpose, a prosecutor ought to make a common sense decision to drop charges against someone who committed a technical violation of the law.

But for some reason, prosecutors in Indiana simply refuse to do so.

When Sally Harpold bought cold medicine for her family back in March, she never dreamed that four months later she would end up in handcuffs.

Now, Harpold is trying to clear her name of criminal charges, and she is speaking out in hopes that a law will change so others won’t endure the same embarrassment she still is facing.

“This is a very traumatic experience,” Harpold said.

Harpold is a grandmother of triplets who bought one box of Zyrtec-D cold medicine for her husband at a Rockville pharmacy. Less than seven days later, she bought a box of Mucinex-D cold medicine for her adult daughter at a Clinton pharmacy, thereby purchasing 3.6 grams total of pseudoephedrine in a week’s time.

Those two purchases put her in violation of Indiana law 35-48-4-14.7, which restricts the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, or PSE, products to no more than 3.0 grams within any seven-day period.

That the purchase of two boxes of over-the-counter cold medicine is a crime is ludicrous. Moreover, that law enforcement and prosecutors still insist upon prosecuting this woman despite freely admitting that these over-the-counter purchases were not for illicit drug production and were, in fact, intended for legitimate use by sick family members is a serious abuse of the judicial process and waste of taxpayer money.

My diagnosis in this case? Indiana is clearly suffering from too many laws and too much government.

Looks like it is happening again.

Dan Fuchs said business was just starting to pick up at his kiosk in the Mall at Johnson City.

Fuchs’ business, the Graphic Edge, printed slogans and pictures on items such as coffee cups, bumper stickers and T-shirts. He said more than half of his business came from the sale of anti-Obama merchandise. Bumper stickers with slogans such as “SOS: Stop Obama’s Socialism,” “Nobama,” and “Chicago got the party, but the country got the hangover” were displayed around the small stand.

Now it appears Fuchs is out of business at the mall, but mall officials say this decision was not based upon political views.

Friday afternoon, Fuchs was handed a lease termination notice by mall officials and signed by Mall General Manager Tembra Aldridge. The letter states that the option to terminate the lease agreement is effective 11:59 p.m. today and that he must vacate the mall premises and remove his property before then.

Fuchs said he was given no reason for this termination and was shocked and upset. Thursday evening, Fuchs said mall officials met with him and told him to take down the anti-Obama items on display by closing time or face immediate eviction.

I’m curious – how much anti-Bush merchandise was banned during the previous eight years? How many retailers have been ordered out of malls for being too pro-Obama? And will we Americans continue to spend our money in malls that show such contempt for the views of so many Americans?

Feel free to contact the management of the Mall at Johnson City to express your disapproval – and the property’s owner, the Glimcher Realty Trust.

And remember -- this isn't the first time this has happened.

How dare the justice system pursue a cretin who drugged and then used force to vaginally and anally rape a child, admitted his guilt, and then fled to avoid justice!

Let there be no doubt about what he did to this girl. And that he voluntarily entered a plea of guilty to over three decades ago.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland on a decades-old arrest warrant stemming from a sex charge in California, Swiss police said Sunday.

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The director pleaded guilty in 1977 to a single count of having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, acknowledging he had sex with a 13-year-old girl. But he fled the United States before he could be sentenced, and U.S. authorities have had a warrant for his arrest since 1978.

Out of fear that a judge might actually make him go to prison for this deviant sexual assault on a minor, Polanski fled the country to France, a land that would not extradite him despite his having committed crimes that would have drawn a jail sentence there.

There are those in the press, Europeans, and the “celebrities can do no wrong” community who think that this is a miscarriage of justice, that we should allow Polanski to walk away a free man. I say no – and if Polanski wants to try to prove that there was some sort of prosecutorial misconduct in his case that merits a different disposition than the time to which he was sentenced over three decades ago, then he can come to this country and make his case – just like any other child molester.

Where are Nancy Grace and Jane Velez-Mitchell to cause a stir when we need one?

Seems to me that they are out to prove Joe Wilson right when he said that Obama lied about border-jumping immigration criminals not being covered under ObamaCare.

Fearful that they're losing ground on immigration and health care, a group of House Democrats is pushing back and arguing that any health care bill should extend to all legal immigrants and allow illegal immigrants some access, The Washington Times reported on Monday.

The Democrats, trying to stiffen their party's spines on the contentious issue, say it's unfair to bar illegal immigrants from paying their own way in a government-sponsored exchange. Legal immigrants, they say, regardless of how long they've been in the United States, should be able to get government-subsidized health care if they meet the other eligibility requirements.

Of course, the next argument is that illegals too poor to afford the insurance should get it for free – expect it. And there will certainly be a bar to using data from ObamaCare for purposes of locating illegals and deporting them. In other words, this will just be welfare for lawbreakers.

Not only is Elizabeth Edwards making blog comments using the persona of a black woman, but there are some other fun details as well.

Along with claiming that Edwards and Hunter made a sex tape, the proposal alleges:

* Edwards had had affairs with other women on the campaign trail.

* When Edwards was forced to call off a birthday date with Hunter because he found out that Elizabeth's cancer had returned, an unsympathetic Hunter screamed at him.

* After learning of the affair, Elizabeth made John sleep in their barn though she would wake him up with accusatory rants.

* Hunter relied on a California psychic named Bob to tell her where to live and what to do.

* Edwards had little affection for John Kerry - once comparing him to Richie Rich - but changed his tune when the Democratic presidential nominee tapped him as his running mate.

* Ted Kennedy once told Young about a would-be assassin who managed to get into his Senate office because one of his bodyguards was having a gay liaison with one of his top aides.

Interesting, isn’t it, that the media isn’t giving this situation the same sort of coverage as Mark Sanford, Larry Craig, or other Republicans with fidelity problems. I guess that the D after Edwards’ name is sufficient to keep the press from being too interested.

I don't know how many folks caught the fact that one of the targets of home-grown jihadi Talib Islam/Michael Finton was a federal office building named for one of America's leading apologists for Palestinian and jihadi terrorism.

Michael C. Finton, known as Talib Islam, was arrested Wednesday after trying to detonate a van he believed was stuffed with explosives near the Paul Findley Federal Building in Springfield.

Finton must not know that he was going to blow up a building named for a guy who blamed the Jews for 9/11. Finton must not know that he was going to blow up a building named for the best friend of terrorist fronts like CAIR. Finton must not have known that he was going to blow up a building named for a man who has long argued that the US should force Israel to cease all self-defense in the face of Muslim terrorism and actively cooperate in creating a terrorist state that will have as its stated goal the pushing of the Jews into the sea.

Given his track record, my guess is that Findley would probably support Finton's plot, and blame Israel and the Jewish Lobby for being the true responsible party in this attempt at terrorism on US soil. What's more, in doing so he would likely be joined by his fervent admirers like David Duke and the assorted freaks at StormFront.

On the other hand, my guess is that most decent Americans don't know that our nation's government has honored such a despicable individual by naming a federal office building for him -- and would be properly shocked if they actually discovered who Findley is.