Ross Kaminsky’s American Spectator story explains, in part, why California is in an economic mell of a hess.

Consider that while California is home to one out of eight Americans, it is also home to one out of three welfare recipients (in part because the children of parents whose welfare has expired still get it).

Nevertheless, the piece proves that bad economic policy has consequences, whether in Greece or on America’s beautiful west coast.  Read the whole thing, and pay attention to the eye-opening comparison between California and Greece.  Oh, and pay attention to how California’s confiscatory tax code contributes to its malaise.

From the AP: “From California to Georgia to New York, children of families who live here illegally are ‘coming out’ — marching behind banners that say ‘undocumented and unafraid,’ staging sit-ins in federal offices, and getting arrested in the most defiant ways — in front of the Alabama Capitol, outside federal immigration courts and detention centers, in Maricopa County, Ariz., home of the sworn enemy of illegal immigrants, Sheriff Joe Arpaio.”

Since “undocumented and unafraid” is the latest slogan for some illegal aliens, it is worth it to spell out to ourselves why it is that they are unafraid as we craft policies to combat, among other things, the erosion of the rule of law.

Reach for your blood pressure medicine before you read George Will’s latest Washington Post column about a family business being confiscated by the federal goverment:

“Since 1994, about 30 [Caswell] motel customers have been arrested on drug-dealing charges. Even if those police figures are accurate — the police have a substantial monetary incentive to exaggerate — these 30 episodes involved less than 5/100ths of 1 percent of the 125,000 rooms Caswell has rented over those more than 6,700 days. Yet this is the government’s excuse for impoverishing the Caswells by seizing this property, which is their only significant source of income and all of their retirement security.”

The rub is that local governments rely on drug-related property seizures for their budget, and the federal government is perfectly willing to help those states whose laws make property seizures difficult (by having high standards of evidence).  A state need only seize the property, turn it over to the feds, and wait for a kickback of as much as eighty percent.

Outrageous.

The Washington Post reports today that the NAACP has endorsed gay marriage.  ”The NAACP’s board of directors,” the story begins, “voted Saturday to endorse same-sex marriage rights – adding the influential voice of the country’s leading black civil rights organization to a debate that has divided the African-American community.”

Where do we start?  With the silly notion that gay marriage is a civil right?  Or the sillier notion that the NAACP will change the minds of the majority of Africans Americans who are against it?

From The BBC: “Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng – who was at the centre of a diplomatic crisis with Washington – is on his way to the United States.

“The blind activist and his family boarded a flight to Newark, near New York, after being taken from a Beijing hospital to the capital’s airport.

“Mr Chen recently spent six days in the US embassy in Beijing after escaping house arrest in north-east China.

“He has been offered a fellowship at New York University.

“A White House spokesman welcomed news of Mr Chen’s departure.

“Mr Chen, a self-taught lawyer who campaigned against forced abortions under China’s one-child policy, was jailed for four years in 2006 for disrupting traffic and damaging property, and placed under house arrest after his release in 2010.”

Naturally, Team Obama will claim credit for this as another foreign policy triumph.  Yet to be answered is whether or not the Chinese government will allow Chen to return to China as a free man, and whether or not Chen’s relatives will harassed/harmed by the government in the wake of his departure.

Stay tuned.

Andrew McCarthy, writing about increased unrest in the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring, explains, “democracy is not a ‘process,’ it is a culture. It cannot be installed by a ‘system.’ Processes like popular elections and constitution-writing are democratic only when democracy’s principles have become ingrained in a society.

“That is an evolution that can and should be promoted, but it cannot be rushed. And the less democratic tradition there is in a country — or, for that matter, a civilization — the longer the evolution will take. If you try to hasten it by having the processes and the system drag a resistant society along, you don’t get democracy. You get the Muslim Brotherhood.”

This column, published in The Hill earlier this week, is worth a look, particularly if you’re pessimistic about Romney’s chances in November.  James Carville’s “It’s the economy stupid” slogan worked for Bill Clinton twice, and if Romney borrows it, Morris contends, it will work for him as well.

“

Fox doesn’t actually use the words “hate crime” in their online story, of course, but they paint the portrait:

“Many of the pertinent questions remain unclear: What was in Zimmerman’s mind when he began to follow Martin in the gated community where he lived?”

It’s a ridiculous question.  Zimmerman might have been thinking about his dog, or his favorite movie, or his least favorite food…

You get the point.  What was on his mind isn’t pertinent.  The fact (revealed in court documents released yesterday) that he had a broken nose and multiple cuts on the back of his head is.

Fox, taking Fair and Balanced to its logical absurdity, persists: “The case has become a national racial flashpoint because the Martin family and supporters contend Zimmerman singled Martin out because he was black. Zimmerman has a Peruvian mother and a white father…A distraught woman told an investigator that she stays away from Zimmerman because he’s racist and because of things he’s done to her in the past, but she didn’t elaborate on what happened between them.”

To paraphrase, while the speculation on some fronts is that Zimmerman fired the fatal shot because of Martin’s skin color, the growing body of evidence suggests otherwise.

Breitbart.com reports that Obama was born in Kenya.  The evidence comes from a booklet released in the early 90′s by Obama’s literary agency, in which ninety authors were profiled.

Obama’s profile begins, “Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”

Is this sufficient grounds for impeachment?  Romney could beat Biden more easily than Obama, after all.

From Yahoo News: “Mitt Romney says he rejects efforts to use President Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in ads attacking the president, insisting the campaign should remain focused on the economy.

“‘I repudiate the effort by that PAC to promote an ad strategy of the nature they’ve described,’” Romney said in an interview with Townhall.com. ‘I would like to see this campaign focus on the economy, on getting people back to work, on seeing rising incomes and growing prosperity—particularly for those in the middle class of America.’”

Of course, based on the primary campaign, one doesn’t see Romney losing sleep over the ad, which, to be fair is…fair.

Michael Walsh’s piece in today’s New York Post explains why the administration’s eagerness to leak the news of the foiled attack has made the world less safe.

“The leak,” he writes, “didn’t just blow our chances to nail the notorious bomb designer behind the plot, Ibrahim al-Asiri, and put the life of the double agent in mortal danger for no reason.

“It also seriously damaged Langley’s relationship with its foreign counterparts, who now understand that operational security and the lives of their operatives mean nothing to us (not in an election year, anyway).”

This blog from The Hill is delightful.

The best line is, “Apparently women’s success has all been a function of government. Whether you’re the star swimmer on your college team or the new CEO, it’s because Washington carried you there.”

The election this year, much to the administration’s dismay, won’t be about women, or the rich, or gay marriage.  It will be about ideas.

From a Gallup poll/story out today: “Some six months before voters head to the polls to choose the next president of the United States, Gallup finds several indicators of the economic and political climate holding steady at levels that could be troublesome for President Barack Obama. According to Gallup polling in early May, Obama’s approval rating is below 50%, Americans’ satisfaction with the direction of the country is barely above 20%, and the economy remains a dominant concern.”

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln…

In election, ‘a seat at the table’ costs $5,000

Analysis: Gay marriage decision not working in Obama’s favor so far

Romney wonders if Obama has ‘personal beef’ with the Clintons

And most troubling: Obama will win in November, Americans predict

We’ll talk about all this and more tonight.

Reasonable folks–Paul fans or not–have been wondering when this would happen.  The story comes from a blog at the Houston Chronicle.  In an e-mail   to his supporters, Congressman Paul said, “In the coming days, my campaign leadership will lay out to you our delegate strategy and what you can do to help, so please stay tuned.”

We will.  And tune in tonight for a chit chat about why Paul cares about delegates.

First there was this ad from Team Obama, blaming Mitt Romney for layoffs in the steel industry:

And then there was the Romney camp, firing back with a steel ad of its own:

Let the games begin.  When the subject is the economy and not gay marriage, Romney wins.

Check out this story from Politico, complete with a picture of the cover.  Andrew Sullivan, who authors the piece, explains, “[Obama] had to discover his black identity and then reconcile it with his white family, just as gays discover their homosexual identity and then have to reconcile it with their heterosexual family.”

So Obama, apparently, has used his tenure as president to reconcile his sexual identity with his family.  No word on Michelle’s reaction.

Update:

From Gallup: “Six in 10 Say Obama Same-Sex Marriage View Won’t Sway Vote.”

And the more you read, the bleaker Obama’s re-election aspirations appear.  Twice as many respondents to the poll say that they would be “less likely” to vote for Obama because of his stand on gay marriage versus those who said they would be “more likely.”

The President’s campaign implosion continues.

From Fox News: “Health-insurance companies must tell customers who get a premium rebate this summer that the check is the result of the Obama administration’s health-care law, according to federal guidelines released Friday.”

The creepiest part of this is not the administration’s megalomania, but this:

“Rules finalized by the Department of Health and Human Services on Friday instruct insurers to notify recipients of rebates in the first paragraph of the mailing by writing: “This letter is to inform you that you will receive a rebate of a portion of your health insurance premiums. This rebate is required by the Affordable Care Act-the health reform law.” (Emphasis mine.)

Think about that.  One week ago, the “notification mandate” wasn’t law under Obamacare; now it is, per the “instruction” of Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Is it time yet for a tutorial on the rule of law?

A friend of mine sent me this story a little while ago.  It begins, “Fifteen years ago, when advertisers got wind that Ellen DeGeneres was going to ‘come out’ on her popular sitcom show ‘Ellen,’ some advertisers fled.

“One of them was JC Penney.

“Flash forward to one of their newest clothing ads in the May catalog. It features a real-life same-sex couple. The photograph is of two models identified as Wendi and Maggie holding their two daughters.

“Both women appear be wearing wedding bands.

“Quietly, gradually and largely without protest, advertising is starting to reflect new attitudes and new realities about who we are.”

My friend demanded to know what I was going to do about this.  My answer was that I was going to do nothing–an unsatisfactory answer, in his opinion.

But it’s my answer, nonetheless.  What is there to do?  I imagine many folks will decide not to shop at JC Penney as a result of the ad, and I imagine JC Penney has anticipated as much.  May the market prevail.

How long have I been saying that this was the plan, or at least the desire?

From today’s New York Post: “Bill Clinton thought so little of President Obama — mocking him as an ‘amateur’ — that he pressed his wife last summer to quit her job as secretary of state and challenge him in the primaries, a new book claims.”

Edward Klein is the author, and he paints a picture of an angry ex-president unable to convince his wife, “loyal” to Obama, to run.

It’ll be interesting to see how the ex-president campaigns for the incumbent in light of this (if you haven’t read the book, read the column).

From Fox News: “Newt Gingrich says he will join the campaign trail for Mitt Romney next week with two events in Georgia, including the state’s GOP convention.

“Gingrich, the former House speaker who represented Georgia, last week suspended his 2012 GOP presidential campaign. Gingrich won only two primaries in his campaign – Georgia and South Carolina.

“A Gingrich campaign spokesman told CNN on Friday night about plans to help Romney, the likely GOP presidential nominee, starting at the GOP convention next weekend. He also reportedly will campaign for Romney in Las Vegas.

“Gingrich has said he fully backs Romney and did so in his May 2 exit speech, though the endorsement seemed less than overwhelming.

“‘I am asked sometimes is Mitt Romney conservative enough?’ Gingrich said. ‘And my answer is simple – compared to Barack Obama? This is not a choice between Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan. This is a choice between Mitt Romney and the most radical leftist president in American history.’”

Newt’s challenge–having clearly defined Barack Obama–will be to define Mitt Romney.

His piece in West Virginia’s “Columbian” today, arguing that the Founders would have gone along with Obamacare, includes this gem: “In 1792, [a] law signed by Washington required that all able-bodied men buy a firearm.”

I’m relatively certain that Mr. Spitzer wouldn’t feel comfortable enforcing that law today–though it is more Constitutionally justifiable (per the plain language of the Second Amendment) than a health care mandate.

…or at least the fault of voters in 9 “swing” states, all of which Obama won in 2008.

Xu Cheng, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics, quoted in today’s New York Times, says, “The so-called grumpy voter effect is that despite economic improvement in a state, if the economic situation in a state is really too bad, the voters will discount the improvement.”

Translation: a vote against Obama is bad sportmanship, ignorance, and impatience.  How is he supposed to REALLY “change” things without a second term?

So says The Washington Post’s Dan Balz today, in what might be the most ridiculous cheerleading presidential piece to date.  My favorite part is Mr. Balz’s description of the opening of Obama’s speech in Ohio yesterday:

“Obama showed he is ready for the fight. His campaign skills have lost little in the four years since iconic rallies became the trademark of his candidacy. Introduced by first lady Michelle Obama, he walked onto a runway in the Schottenstein Center on the campus of Ohio State University, paused, smiled, waved and smiled again.”

And when his speech was accomplished, he smiled and waved once more.

From ABC News: “President Obama told a largely Hispanic audience today [yesterday] that he is ready to sign the Dream Act and blamed Republicans for the failure of the legislation that would grant illegal immigrant students a path to citizenship.

“‘We’re going to keep fighting for this common-sense reform — not just because hundreds of thousands of talented young students depend on it, but because ultimately America depends on it,’ the president said at the annual Cinco de Mayo reception at the White House.  ‘No’ is not an option. I want to sign the DREAM Act into law. I’ve got the pens all ready. I’m willing to work with anybody who is serious to get this done, and to achieve bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform that solves this challenge once and for all.’”

Doesn’t this sound a little mob-like?  I’ve got the pens ready?  No is not an option?

Amnesty, Mr. President, is not an option.

Or at least Jay Carney did, in what surely was a slip of the tongue during yesterday’s daily press conference: “‘If the regime’s intransigence continues, the international community is going to have to admit defeat,’ White House press secretary Jay Carney said.”

But don’t forget, we’re tough–Obama got Osama.

Not exactly.

From CNN: “A possible breakthrough emerged on Friday in the case of Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese activist who made a daring escape from house arrest and took refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing before venturing out amid U.S.-Chinese negotiations over his future.

“The Chinese government said he could apply to travel to the United States to study — a development that the United States instantly cited as an encouraging sign of progress in what has been a thorny and controversial impasse.

“‘As a Chinese citizen, he may apply like other Chinese citizens according to the laws and normal procedures of the relevant departments,’ Liu Weimin, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said in a statement posted on the ministry’s website.

“Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States is ‘encouraged’ by the statement.

“‘From the beginning, all of our efforts with Mr. Chen have been guided by his choices and our values, and I’m pleased that today our ambassador has spoken with him again, our embassy staff and our doctor had a chance to meet with him and he confirms that he and his family now want to go to the United States so he can pursue his studies,’ Clinton told reporters in Beijing.”

So the news is that he wants to come to The United States, and the Chinese government has said he can fill out an application–just as I could drive to the bank and fill out an application for a million-dollar loan.

You’ve probably heard the story about Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident who boldly escaped house arrest (he had no pending legal charges; his crime was simply protesting against forced abortions).  He managed to outflank security surrounding his house and, with the help of human rights activists, travel 300 miles to Beijing, where he ended up in the American embassy.

And then we let him go, as far as he knew, because the Chinese government promised to a) beat his wife if he didn’t leave the embassy, and b) treat his family just fine, assuming that he complied.

When he got out, he learned otherwise, and has since been literally begging us to give him asylum here in the United States.  He hasn’t heard back from us.

Meanwhile, Hillary is in China this week for a conference on, among other things, North Korea and Syria.  She opened the talks with a platitude about human rights, declaring that “The United States believes that no state can legitimately deny the universal rights that belong to every human being – or punish those who exercise them.”

There was no mention of Chen.  The Chinese government, after all, is outraged about our taking Chen in.  From a blog at the L.A. Times:

“‘It should be pointed out that Chen Guangcheng, a Chinese citizen, was taken by the U.S. side to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing via abnormal means, and the Chinese side is strongly dissatisfied with the move,’ said Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin.

“‘What the U.S. side has done has interfered in the domestic affairs of China, and the Chinese side will never accept it,’ Liu said at a briefing in Beijing.

“China demands that U.S. authorities investigate their handling of the Chen affair, hold anyone who violated international protocol accountable and provide guarantees that similar actions never recur, Liu said.”

This is reminiscent of the ’90′s, when Hillary spoke sternly about women’s rights in Afghanistan.  Her words accomplished nothing; it took Bush’s presidential backbone and military force to improve the lives of women there.  No one currently in charge of our government is willing to do whatever it takes to secure safety for Chen and his family.

Some will protest, “but Will, it’s not our job to police the world!”  True enough.  But each time we talk the talk without walking the walk, we look weaker and more vulnerable.

Dare I joke that there’s a looming Presidential apology to China for housing Chen?

This story from The Hill has made me back away from my absolute confidence that Obama is a one-termer.  Romney is following the stale strategy that prescribes moving Right during the primaries and then lurching Leftward (to the center) during the general election.

Never mind that Reagan won re-election in 1984 by consistently campaigning as a conservative.  Mondale, his opponent, lost all but his home state and Washington D.C.  It was the biggest landslide in our history.

Romney will now be for the bailout after having been vehemently against it; for parts of the DREAM ACT, contrary to his tough primary anti-illegal-immigration stance; and in agreement with Obama that interest rates on student loans should remain artificially low (costing taxpayers $6 billion a year).

What’s next?  A stump speech praising Roe V. Wade?  And while we’re vetting Mitt, what, exactly, is his foreign policy–and how do we know that it won’t change according to public sentiment as opposed to public safety?

Apparently not, I found out today while doing research for Friday’s “Athens Now” column.

I ran across an NPR story from December entitled “Report: High Levels Of ‘Burnout’ In U.S. Drone Pilots.”  Being in actual combat missions, the argument goes, is less stressful than piloting the drone in some ways.

From the story: “The particular nature of drone warfare is a contributor to higher stress levels. While the number is very small, officials who conducted the study said they did encounter a handful of pilots who suffered symptoms of PTSD — post-traumatic stress disorder — directly linked to their experience running combat operations. Unlike traditional pilots flying manned aircraft in a war zone, the pilots operating remote drones often stare at the same piece of ground in Afghanistan or Iraq for days, sometimes months. They watch someone’s pattern of life, see people with their families, and then they can be ordered to shoot.”

NPR is surely worried that war might not ever end if the drone program remains one of our chief tools in the war against radical Islam, and so it’s understandable that they would capitalize on some pilots’ problems with flying the drone.  Never mind that the ability to take out terrorists with zero risk to the pilot is a blessing.  The danger lies in the potential for Obama to lean heavily on the drone, thinking that there is no moral or strategic backlash to its overuse.

…but, like Ron Paul, perhaps, he’s definitely not out of the discussion.  And he’s going after Obama in his speech in Arlington fervently as I write.  On foreign policy, he just said, “It was nice that the President broadcasted from Afghanistan; the center of al Qaeda today in Yemen.  I’m not sure that the White House has gotten that briefing yet, but they will eventually.”

We’ll be talking about his speech on the show tonight.  My initial thoughts are that he sounds emotionless about suspending his campaign, and resolved to help Romney win.  And he talked substantively about the prescriptions for America’s revival with the enthusiasm that characterized his campaign, something unusual for a concession speech.  Governor Romney would be well-advised to include Newt on some front, even if it’s just regular campaign stops.  Newt inspires his base in a way that Romney simply isn’t capable of matching.

Oh, and he spent a good deal of time talking, in a visionary sort of way, about the urgent need to continue pursuing space.

The South Carolina Congressman took on Kathleen Sebelius, Health And Human Services Secretary, and she lost.  Watch:

Most of my fellow Tea party friends are against the Patriot Act.  Until today, I thought that opposition to the bipartisan bill which has helped us stop more than a few attacks was isolated.

A piece in the Wall Street Journal today suggests otherwise.  The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which reaffirms the President’s authority to try terrorists in military court, is, to pacifists and Tea Party folks alike, outrageous.

So much so that states are reacting.  From the Wall Street Journal Story: “This month Virginia became the first to forbid state employees from ‘assisting’ the feds ‘in the conduct of the investigation, prosecution, or detention of any citizen” under the provisions of the NDAA. This means that as of July 1 in Richmond a state trooper could not arrest the likes of the late Virginia cleric-turned-terrorist-recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki because he might end up in a military brig. A U.S. missile targeted and killed Awlaki in Yemen on Presidential orders, but Virginia police couldn’t detain him.’”

When the Tea Party started, the object, I thought, was to reign government in and return it to its proper and limited tasks, one of which is protecting the nation.

Now, it seems, some in the Tea Party have decided to treat terrorists the same way that the Left treats illegal aliens.  That must change.

From Fox News: “A top EPA official has resigned after coming under scrutiny for 2010 remarks in which he compared the agency’s enforcement strategy to Roman crucifixion.

“Al Armendariz, the top environmental official in the oil-rich South and Southwest region, resigned in a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on Sunday, saying he did not want to be a distraction for the agency. The resignation is effective Monday.”

I wonder if Armendariz was asked (euphemistic for told) to resign?  Naaaa! Surely not.

In other news, from the AP: “Federal prosecutors said Friday there was insufficient evidence to pursue charges against a U.S. Border Patrol agent in the shooting death of a 15-year-old Mexican national in 2010.

“The agent didn’t act inconsistently with Border Patrol policy or training regarding the use of force in the death of Sergio Hernandez-Guereca, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement announcing the decision, which was quickly denounced by the Mexican government.”

It seems that the administration, having lost many members of its base, is starting to court conservatives.

This time it is, to quote Gallup, “the bedrock of blue-collar Democrats”–working Americans without college degrees.  According to Gallup, the President’s approval rating among this key group was 66% in January of ’09, and is just 45% today.

In other Gallup Daily Tracking news, the President is down among those making $2,000 a month or less, 73% to 54% over the same time period.

Obama, inexplicably, has done better with high and low income earners than he has with the middle class.  That reality is a recipe for defeat for any Democrat.

Jose Rodriguez, who ran the CIA’s counter-terrorism center, is promoting his new book, “Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives.”  He was on “60 Minutes” last night and “CBS This Morning” today making a compelling case for the legality and the morality of waterboarding.

It’s a fascinating story; the year was 2002, and the CIA along with Pakistani intelligence captured several terrorists during a raid, including Abu Zubaydah, a top aide to bin Laden, who helped coordinate the twin embassy bombings in Africa in 1998.

The FBI began asking questions of the captured enemy, and initially he gave answers.  But after regaining his strength from injuries he had suffered pre-capture, he became increasingly recalcitrant.

From CBS News: “Rodriguez said high level detainee Abu Zubaydah had provided some initial information, but then he ‘clamped up and he was not talking anymore.’”

“We needed a new approach, a new technique,’ Rodriguez said. ‘Something new, something outside the box. That’s how we came up with the enhanced interrogation techniques.’”

And they worked. Zubaydah, after being waterboarded, provided the CIA with 9/11 mastermind KSM’s code name, and more importantly, led the CIA to Jose Padilla, the dirty bomb terrorist who, as directed by KSM, was on his way to America to blow up apartment buildings using natural gas.

Padilla arrived at Chicago O’Hare airport on May 8th of ’02 and was promptly apprehended thanks to the information provided by Zubaydah while being waterboarded. 

Which brings us to the conclusion that waterboarding is a moral imperative.  Hundreds, maybe thousands of Americans would have died in apartment complexes had the CIA decided not to employ it and other enhanced interrogation techniques to gain valuable intelligence.

He did, of course, and if you haven’t seen it, here it is:

What’s curious is that Obama would sanction the ad, given that Bill Clinton ignored bin Laden throughout his tenure as President, from the first WTC attack in 1993 (Clinton didn’t even visit the site) up through the U.S.S. Cole attack in 2000.  Oh, and let’s not forget the two fatwas (declarations of war) issued by bin Laden in ’96 and ’98 respectively.

Catching him, to be fair, was hard work; gathering intelligence, analyzing it, and acting on it successfully takes time and diligence.  Clinton might be given the benefit of the doubt, except for the inconvenient truth that Sudan offered Clinton bin Laden on a silver palate twice.  After Clinton was out of office, he argued in a speech that “At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him.”

Huh?  Again, Sir, is orchestrating the ’93 World Trade Center bombing not a crime?

The answer is, in fact, that it was an act of war.  And any president who doesn’t recognize it as such is not qualified to judge another president’s foreign policy acumen.

World Net Daily is a nice site, but no one who writes for them seems to have discovered the phenomenon known to the rest of us as “humor.”

Their story on last night’s White House Correspondents Dinner (an event where everyone takes the evening off from politics and tries to laugh a little–and no one or anything is sacred) begins with a birther rant, picking apart Obama’s jokes about his birthplace.

“Barack Obama,” WND writes, “opened last night’s White House Correspondents Dinner – an annual chuckle-fest with D.C. reporters and pop culture celebrities – with a pair of jokes and a wink about his supposed Hawaii birthplace.”

Someone call Michael Moore!  Oh, wait: he’s the Left-Wing conspiratorial kook.

WND continues, “He began with more veiled joke [sic] alluding to April 28 of last year, when the White House released to the press a copy of his purported long-form birth certificate, a move prompted in part by calls from Donald Trump to see evidence of Obama’s eligibility to be president.

“’My fellow Americans, we gather during a historic anniversary,’ Obama said. ‘Last year at this time, in fact on this very weekend, we finally delivered justice to one of the world’s most notorious individuals.’

“Video screens in the room then flashed a photo of Trump.”

As Larry The Cable Guy would say, “I don’t care who you are–that’s funny.”

But not to World Net Daily, which interrupted its own story to write–and the italics are theirs, not mine–“Join thousands of Americans in signing the petition urging Congress to take the issue seriously with an investigation of its own!”

The President, for the most part, left issues out of his opening act, taking light-hearted shots at everyone from Mitt Romney to himself.

On Mitt, he said, “I’m not going to attack any of the Republican candidates.  Take Mitt Romney — he and I actually have a lot in common.  We both think of our wives as our better halves, and polls show, to a alarmingly insulting extent, the American people agree.  (Laughter.)  We also both have degrees from Harvard; I have one, he has two.  What a snob.  (Laughter and applause.)”

Again, that was funny!

Kimmel, too, was refreshingly non-PC in his keynote speech.  “”Mr. President,” he said, “remember when the country rallied around you in hopes of a better tomorrow? That was hilarious.”  Obama, to his credit, seemed to be genuinely laughing.

If you’re a birther, pick a night other than one in which the object is humor to express outrage.  Otherwise, you’ll end up being the joke.

The headline from “The Times Of Israel” yesterday was “Obama lifts freeze on $192 million aid package to Palestinian Authority.”

The story begins, “U.S. President Barack Obama has lifted a ban on financial aid to the Palestinian Authority. An official with the US Agency for International Development said Saturday that the money had been restored.”

The “ban” was, in fact, a bill passed by Congress in October of last year–The Palestinian Accountability Act–in response to the PA’s decision to go ahead and seek statehood despite promises that they wouldn’t.  The bill reads, in part, “No funds available to any United States Government department or agency…may be obligated or expended with respect to providing funds to the Palestinian Authority.”

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor assures us that the money will be devoted to “ensuring the continued viability of the moderate PA government under the leadership of [Palestinian Authority] President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.”

Let’s not forget the agreement signed in February by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and the leader of the terrorist group Hamas, Khaled Mashaal, calling for a Palestinian national unity government for the West Bank and Gaza.  Leaving aside the Constitutional impropriety of Obama’s $192 million money grab, it will will be interesting to watch as the administration makes the case that a government which includes Hamas is moderate.

The story begins with this L.A. Times piece, published yesterday, which reported that Issa, the Chairman of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, had drafted a 48-page contempt of Congress citation against Attorney General Eric Holder for having “obstructed and slowed” a Congressional investigation into the Fast and Furious program.

In short, the ridiculous F & F plan involved the Phoenix office of the ATF (part of Holder’s Justice Department) knowingly allowing illegal gun sales to thugs with the hope of tracking the thugs to prominent leaders of Mexican drug cartels.  What could possibly go wrong?

Predictably, many of the guns alluded law enforcement, and two of them were found at the scene of the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December of 2010 (the program started in ’09).  Issa and his committee, along with Senator Charles Grassley, the Ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, have been trying to get answers from the Justice Department concerning what in the world they were thinking since late January of last year.  Holder and Justice have stonewalled.

And Issa has finally had enough.  “We are stalled,” he told Fox News today, “because of the cover up from the Justice Department…Getting to the truth, and the President knowing the truth and taking quick and decisive action…that’s going to take the kind of discovery we’re not getting.”

His words, while resolute, couldn’t match the mandate of sorts issued by South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy, also on the Oversight Committee, who said last night that Holder’s days of holding out are numbered.  “Before Memorial Day, Eric Holder will either comply or he will suffer consequences,” Gowdy told Greta, adding, for the sake of punctuation, that “[Holder's] appropriations bill is on the floor of the House in two weeks.  Unless [The Justice Department] wants to sell paper clips and scrap metal to raise money,” he’d best stop “playing this game.”

Eureka!  Congressional Republicans are finally challenging the White House’s presumption of extra-Constitutional power!

Not so fast, it seems.  Despite the fact that the L.A. Times story cited above said that “top committee officials recently met for most of a day in the House speaker’s office and were given the green light to proceed toward a contempt citation,” The Daily Caller is reporting that Boehner may be wimping out:

“After the initial reports, a House Republican leadership aide told The Daily Caller that the LA Times and CBS reports were inaccurate. The GOP leadership aide said that ‘while there are very legitimate arguments to be made in favor of such an action [holding Holder in contempt], no decision has been made to move forward with one by the Speaker or by House Republican leaders.’

“Initially, a spokesperson for Issa refused TheDC’s request for comment. But just hours after TheDC published a story detailing the appearance of infighting between Issa and Boehner, a House oversight committee spokesperson backed off and said the LA Times and CBS reports were inaccurate as well.

In other words, you’re still in the driver’s seat on this one, Attorney General Holder.  Don’t be afraid to trample upon Congress; Boehner has your back.

…I ran out of time at the end of the show before I could get through the most salient parts of an interview that Leon Panetta did with NBC’s Brian Williams shortly after Osama bin Laden was taken out by our brave Navy Seals.  My point in going back to the interview was to demonstrate that A) Getting Osama was a good thing, but in the big picture, it doesn’t change much in terms of the threat from radical Islamists that we continue to face, and B) He would probably still be at large had we not used waterboarding as one method of gathering valuable intelligence.  Obama can’t claim credit for killing bin Laden without renouncing his opposition to the “enhanced interrogation techniques” which helped make it happen.

I didn’t get through all the clips, again, because the clock ran out, so here’s the entire interview, with the most salient parts (the ones in which Panetta makes my case) coming around the 1:15 mark and the 9:00 mark.  Take a look:

Sessions’ guest editorial appears in today’s Washington Times.

An excerpt: “Under Senate rules, if a budget is opened for consideration on the Senate floor, it begins a period of extensive amendment and debate. Senators would be forced to face public accountability for how much they wish to tax and spend.

“Mr. Reid’s determination to keep a budget off the floor is part of a deliberate strategy to shield his members from tough votes and electoral risk – at the expense of duty, law and the American people.

By refusing to do a budget for three straight years – during a time of financial danger – the Senate’s Democratic majority has proved itself unworthy to lead.”

Sessions has an excellent point that more Washington Republicans should be echoing.  In essence, Reid, knowing that more than a few Senate Dems are vulnerable this year, has decided to minimize their political liability by breaking the law so that they don’t have to cast unpopular votes that would go along with the post-budget amendment process.  This is a cowardly abdication of leadership, and worthy of returning the Senate over to a party that would simply follow the rules.

Fox News reports that “President Obama pledged during his 2008 campaign to take a hands-off approach to medical marijuana, but four years later raids and other tactics have forced as many as 200 medical-marijuana growers and distributors to cease operations, resulting in sharp criticism from likely voters and fellow Democrats.

“Medical marijuana supporters say the reason behind the apparent policy shift remains a mystery.

“‘It’s really confusing, Kris Hermes of Americans for Safe Access said, Thursday. ‘The president’s tactics are worse than those of his predecessor, George Bush.’”

How many more of Obama’s core constituencies does he think he can alienate before his re-election chances are non-existent?  He has, to date, let down environmentalists (cap and trade failed); unions (he turned down the pipeline, after all, which would have created tens of thousands of jobs), gay rights advocates (gay marriage isn’t yet a Constitutional amendment); pacifists (war still exists); and now potheads, who are…confused.

Have I mentioned that Big Bird could beat Obama?

From The Hill: “Vice President Biden ordered supporters to ‘pretend you like me’ after mocking them as ‘dull as hell’ at a campaign fundraiser in Washington on Friday.

“The vice president was speaking to Turkish and Azerbaijani donors about the potential of the region as a democratic and economic force when he noticed he wasn’t getting much of a reception.

“’I guess what I’m trying to say without boring you too long at breakfast – and you all look dull as hell, I might add. The dullest audience I have ever spoken to. Just sitting there, staring at me. Pretend you like me!’ Biden said.”

What a way to talk to folks who paid $2,500 a head to be there!

From The Detroit News: “Vice President Joe Biden says the campaign’s re-election theme is simple.

“‘If you are looking for a bumper sticker to sum up how President (Barack) Obama has handled what we inherited, it’s pretty simple: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive,’ Biden will say this morning in a speech at New York University, according to excerpts released by the campaign. ‘Governor Romney is counting on our collective amnesia. But Americans know that we cannot afford to go back to the future.’”

Leaving aside GM’s woes, including the death of the Chevy Volt, does the VP really think that voters give President Obama credit for killing Osama?

And if Vice-President Biden wants to make that case, isn’t he obliged to concede that “enhanced interrogation techniques”–i.e. waterboarding–played a role?

Hint: Leon Panetta say so while head of the CIA under Obama.  Tune in tonight to hear Panetta’s words during an NBC interview last year in the wake of Osama’s death.

Bob Costa has a great piece at NRO discussing the Left’s latest shot to the Republican Party’s jugular: the portrayal of Paul Ryan as…an atheist, perhaps?

From the piece: “Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist, recently called Ryan ‘an Ayn Rand devotee’ who wants to ‘slash benefits for the poor.’ New York magazine once alleged that Ryan ‘requires staffers to read Atlas Shrugged,’ Rand’s gospel of capitalism. President Obama has blasted the Ryan budget as Republican ‘social Darwinism.’”

This is a new twist.  Republicans–and chairmen of the budget committee can be particularly vulnerable–are always characterized as the party of starving children and rendering the elderly homeless.  They’re Scrooges and Grinches.

But now they’re eugenicists?  Chairman Ryan, for instance, as an Ayn Rand fan (and thus necessarily an atheist) has a plan, through his budget, to weed out the undesirables.  Republicans, you see, hate women, minorities (Hispanics in particular), clean air, clean water, and rich people having to pay taxes.  It only makes sense to add God to the list, if you’re recipe for victory is vitriol.

This, from Washington Examiner columnist Noemie Emery: “Two years after passing their dream legislation, Democrats are in a bad place. They lose if the Supreme Court leaves it alone and gives the Republicans their dream of an issue. They lose if the Supreme Court calls it unconstitutional, as that would mean they wasted two years of effort and lost the House in exchange for nothing at all.

“How did the Democrats get themselves in this position? Jonathan Alter explains: ‘Democrats are wondering if it was worth it to lose the House … and perhaps the White House … over a bill that may be declared unconstitutional,’ he said last week in his column. ‘The answer is yes.’

“‘We need to be clear about the purpose of politics,’ he explains further. ‘It is not to win elections. … Public approval as expressed in elections is the means to change the country, not the means in itself.’ So the purpose of politics is to change the country in ways voters cannot stomach, while telling terrified congressmen it’s their moral duty to stiff their constituents by enacting a bill they abhor.”

The purpose of football, I guess, isn’t to win, but to change the country’s opinion about who should win.

Read the story here.

Both candidates came on my show and were exceptionally gracious, with different but equally relevant skills to bring to the table.  Congratulations to Patty Demos, who is poised to handily beat Tommy Ragland in November.

Today’s government-is-inherently-corrupt tale involves drug trafficking by four members of the TSA.

From Fox News: “Two former and two current Transportation Security Administration employees have been arrested and indicted on drug conspiracy charges for allegedly allowing large amounts of cocaine and other drugs to pass through security screening at Los Angeles International Airport last year.

“Seven people face drug-related charges in a 22-count indictment unsealed Wednesday in Los Angeles federal court. Other charges include paying and receiving bribes by a government official.

“The indictment says 30-year-old Naral Richardson orchestrated five incidents where TSA screeners agreed to waive narcotics through security checkpoints. In exchange, some of the screeners were allegedly paid as much as $2,400 for their involvement. The alleged incidents occurred from early February 2011 to July 2011, the release said, citing the indictment.”

For fun, trying Googling “tsa workers drug trafficking.”  As I’ve always maintained, if we’re going to stop the next terrorist hijacking, it’s going to have to be with intelligence that allows us to stop the terrorist before he makes it to airport security.

It is a maxim, of course, that government is inherently inefficient.  Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, though, is driving home the point as well as the GSA ever could.

Panetta flew back and forth from Washington to his home in California twenty-seven times in ten months, at a cost of about $860,000, Fox News reported last week.

When asked about this at a press conference on April 16th (and to be clear, he has broken no laws here), he said, “I regret that it [my travel] does add cost that the taxpayer has to pick up.  The taxpayer would have to pick up those costs with any secretary of state–er…secretary of defense.”

From heading up the CIA to heading up the defense department, he still doesn’t know what he’s doing, saying, or, for that matter, what he’s heading up.

To put it all in perspective, Panetta traveled home more in those ten months than Bob Gates, the former Secretary of Defense, traveled in five years.  (Gates’ home is in Washington state.)

The administration has announced that it is almost (but not quite) prepared to usurp the Supreme Court’s Constitutional authority in the event that the Court decides that ObamaCare is unconstitutional, Reuters reports.

“‘There is no contingency plan that’s in place. We’re focused on implementing the law,’ [White House spokesman] Josh Earnest told reporters. ‘If there’s a reason or a need for us to consider some contingencies down the line, then we’ll do it then.’”

Translation: The law is going to be fully implemented, whether the judicial branch of government sanctions it or not.

The story continues, “administration officials have spoken openly about possible contingencies in the past.

“At a Reuters Health Summit last May, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said there would be a number of ways to expand health coverage if the mandate were overturned.

“‘There are all kinds of sign-up possibilities, auto enrollment and a variety of strategies,’ she said.

“But analysts say the week’s proceedings may have left Obama in too fragile a position to speak publicly about contingencies.”

Bob Beckel weighed in on Fox News’ “The Five” Friday, saying, “Here’s the problem…if they strike down the mandate, right now there are 2.3 million kids who are getting their parents’ health insurance because of this bill; there are over two million seniors who are getting relief on their prescription drugs…it’s all going to be taken away if this goes down.”

Forget the scare tactics.  The fact that the administration, bolstered by Beckel, thinks that the Court can be pressured into making a political decision in its favor (not to mention the mindset that there are ways around a “wrong” decision) demonstrates that, irrespective of what the Supremes decide, Congress must make overturning ObamaCare a priority next year.

And Obama has to go.

It comes from a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel interview with Gloria Steinem:

“Q. What if it’s a conservative Republican woman who gets elected? How would you feel?

A. I would be totally against her. The women’s movement in England was totally against Margaret Thatcher. She was a disaster.”

Leaving aside that she was one of three great leaders (the Pope and President Reagan being the other two) who brought down the Soviet Union, how dare you call her a disaster?  She was (for those who didn’t notice) a woman!

From USA today: “President Obama has opened the first significant lead of the 2012 campaign in the nation’s dozen top battleground states, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, boosted by a huge shift of women to his side.

“In the fifth Swing States survey taken since last fall, Obama leads Republican front-runner Mitt Romney 51%-42% among registered voters just a month after the president had trailed him by two percentage points.

“The biggest change came among women under 50. In mid-February, just under half of those voters supported Obama. Now more than six in 10 do while Romney’s support among them has dropped by 14 points, to 30%. The president leads him 2-1 in this group.”

The war on women, apparently is working.  The question is, why?  I’m a Newt guy, but I want to know what Romney has done to offend women, and what the President has done to attract them.

…Not Iraq or Afghanistan, but the trumped up effort to divide America by race, religion, and gender, there’s this piece, from Charlie Hurt, writing in the Washington Times about Obama’s bad week.

“Last Friday,” says Hurt, “Mr. Obama wandered into the killing of Trayvon Martin.  Aided by his ignorance of the situation, knee-jerk prejudices and tendency toward racial profiling, Mr. Obama played a heavy hand in elevating a tragic situation in which a teenager was killed into a full-blown hot race fight.

“Americans, he admonished, need to do some ‘soul-searching.’ And then, utterly inexplicably, he veered off into this bizarre tangent about how he and the poor dead kid look so much alike they could be father and son. It was election-year race-pandering gone horribly wrong.”

Hurt’s portrayal of Obama’s comments is on the mark.  The President is doing himself no favors.  All of us who want him to be defeated should, after we get over our initial (and justified) indignation, recognize that he is in the process–whether on race, religion, or gas prices–of defeating himself.

From The Star Tribune: “Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney faced a tough question about his Mormon faith while campaigning for Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary. A Ron Paul supporter asked Romney whether he agreed with a passage from the Book of Mormon that describes a cursing of people with a ‘skin of blackness.’”

I’m confused.  Since when did Ron Paul acolytes develop an intolerance for those whose religious beliefs don’t square with theirs?

In a piece at The Daily Beast, Begala, former Clinton advisor, is terrified that ObamaCare is now in the hands of the Supreme Court.  He writes, “These are the folks who disgraced themselves in Bush v. Gore.”

And then he addresses Justice Alito’s analogy of health insurance to burial insurance, in which Alito said, “I don’t see the difference.  You can get burial insurance. You can get health insurance. Most people are going to need health care. Almost everybody. Everybody is going to be buried or cremated at some point. What’s the difference?”

Begala’s answer?  “The difference, you want to scream, is we don’t have a burial-insurance crisis in America. We aren’t spending 17 percent of our total national wealth on burials year after year. We aren’t bankrupting families because burial costs are out of control. Perhaps most important, if a person doesn’t get good health care, he or she will die. If someone doesn’t get a good burial, well, she or he is not going to die. Because, you jerk—I mean, your Honor—that person is already dead.”

My question to Begala is, what if, as a result of no government health care, Americans start dying in droves?  Might there then be a burial-insurance crisis?  And if there is, would you then be on Justice Alito’s side?

And just for fun, the follow-up question is, how does it feel to bite your nails wondering whether or not the Court will rule your way, regardless of what the Constitution prescribes?

Watch this.  We’ll talk about it on the show tonight.

If arrogantly moving to the right is the game plan, we can all take comfort in my original forecast, offered up months ago, that Sponge Bob could beat Obama.  The President today, in his response to the Republican budget, sounded angry, nervous, and unappealing–even to the sought-after independent voter.  He mentioned Eisenhower, Reagan, and, yes, George W. Bush (all three favorably) to make his case.  The desperation was unattractive.

Tune in tonight as we examine the speech, complete with the nervous laughter from a press corps that wants him to succeed.

This, the beginning of his speech yesterday, confirms it:

The White House is starting to lose its confidence, and in the case of the usually congenial Jay Carney, his cool.  Irrespective of any premature poll putting Obama up against the Republican nominee and has him ahead, they’re getting worried.

…and the excerpt I read on the air: “where economic regulations are at stake, judges must respect legislative decisions aimed at protecting society’s most vulnerable members.”

Huh?!?

Read the whole thing here.

“

It’s been a while since Mo and I have chatted.  I look forward to getting his take on the Constitutional showdown between The White House and the Courts, among other things.  Tune in at six central on 106.5 FM, or, if you’re out of town, go to WBHPAM.com to listen live.

And we wonder how it is that our government can sanction trillion-dollar deficits.

From The Kansas City Star: “U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s car wash headache is raging once again [Cleaver is a Democrat from Missouri].

“The bank that loaned the Kansas City congressman and his wife $1.3 million in 2002 to buy the Grandview Auto Wash at 12204 Blue Ridge Extension is now demanding payment of more than $1.5 million, after the Cleavers repeatedly fell behind on repaying the loan.

“The suit, filed last week in Jackson County Circuit Court, said the demand for repayment came after three attempts to delay foreclosure. Bank of America also is seeking attorney’s fees and a receiver to protect collateral.”

Dear Will: Open your eyes, man.  If Reagan were running today he would be considered a moderate by the current standards of the Republican Party.

My Answer: Perhaps.  On the other hand, the Democratic Party’s icon, JFK, who was a tax-cutting-pro-military guy, would be considered a dangerous Right-winger by the Dem’s current standards.

I think I understand how delegates are assigned state by state, but I’m not confident enough to bet on it.

One thing’s for sure: no one really knows exactly how many delegates any of the candidates has at the moment.  It’s wise, then, to acknowledge that nothing is decided yet.

If the delegate process confuses you, you aren’t alone.  Tune in tonight–we’ll make sense of it.

The President, with remarkable audacity, is blaming Bush for the 2010 Vegas gathering of the GSA in which about eight-hundred-twenty-five-thousand dollars was spent on (for instance), a mind reader, and, (for another instance), the infamous video (watch the whole thing, including the awards ceremony at the end in which the guy who made the video is told “great job”).

It is true that the GSA blossomed under President Bush.  President Obama, though, promised to reverse such profligate spending, and he hasn’t.

So Blaming Bush for government excess is almost like blaming Clinton for 9/11.

Almost, of course, because it is true that by the time Bush took office, he couldn’t have stopped the attacks.  Obama could easily have reversed the excesses of the GSA.  He didn’t.

And, as usual, the buck never stops with him.

Yes, the story is as ridiculous as it sounds: “As a community activist in Queens, Muhammad Rashid has fought for the rights of immigrants held in detention, sought the preservation of local movie theaters and held a street fair to promote diversity.

“But few of those causes brought him anywhere near as much grief and controversy as his stance on yoga.

“Mr. Rashid, a Muslim, said he had long believed that practicing yoga was tantamount to “denouncing my religion.”

“’Yoga is not for Muslims,’ he said. ‘It was forbidden.’”

And we’re supposed to talk radical Islamists (the tiny minority of Muslims who remain our enemy) out of nuclear weapons, even as there seems to be no hope for yoga?

It’s not going to work, reports Sunday’s Jerusalem Post: “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday that Iran would continue on its nuclear path even if the whole world stands up to it, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported.

“Speaking at an event marking the country’s ‘Nuclear Technology Day,’ Ahmadinejad said Iran would defend its dignity and not bow to enemy pressure, IRNA reported.”

I would suggest that we designate a date down the road as our own “Nuclear Technology Day” just to show an increasingly recalcitrant Iran that we have it in our sites, but I’m a bit afraid of what we might find out, given the malignant negligence of the current administration.

So says visiting Irish journalist Tom Clonan in his culturally ignorant piece at the Irish Times.

The author visited Alabama thanks to an exchange program.  About being in Montgomery, Clonan writes that in the evenings, he and the others “attended a number of uniquely American cultural events. We watched the local Montgomery Biscuits take on Auburn University.

“Cops, cheerleaders, players and large family groups – black and white – mingled easily around hot dog stands and stalls selling ice-cold beer.”

And then, I guess, two inbreeds hopped out of a pickup and started playing “Dueling Banjos.”

Read the whole column–it can easily be laughed at sentence by sentence.

And by the way, surely there’s a goofier mascot than the “Biscuits” outside of the state of Alabama.

I hope Clonan examines racism somewhere up north the next time he visits.

The salient question is, if, as he said in his speech, “this presidential race is over for me,” why merely suspend the campaign?

Answer: So that he can get back in.  It’s that simple.  Tim Pawlenty, who officially “suspended” his campaign in August of last year, officially quit today.

Senator Santorum mentioned foreign policy more than once–Iran, for example, came up (a good thing, strategically).  My guess is that, if anything plagues the Romney camp, Santorum will be right back in–hence the “suspension” status.

Whatever the case, the Senator and his family are a class act, and deserve accolades for talking about social issues, and leading by example.  He remains a valuable asset to the Republican Party.

There’s this from today’s New York Times: “North Korea said on Tuesday that it was abandoning an agreement it made in February with the United States, in which it promised to suspend uranium enrichment, nuclear tests and long-range missile tests.

“The North Korean Foreign Ministry said that it ‘resolutely and totally’ rejected the United Nations Security Council’s condemnation of its failed rocket launching last week, and that it would continue to launch rockets to try to place satellites into orbit.

“The ministry’s statement hinted, but did not make clear, that the North may now conduct a long-range missile or nuclear test.

“No longer bound by the deal, ‘we have thus become able to take necessary retaliatory measures,’ the ministry said in the statement, which was carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. ‘The U.S. will be held wholly accountable for all the ensuing consequences.’”

Meanwhile to the “experts” who claim that the way to deal with North Korea’s recalcitrance is by engaging China, the story goes on, “Some analysts said on Tuesday that China may have broken a Security Council resolution by providing 16-wheel missile-launching vehicles that were seen in a military parade in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, on Sunday carrying a new type of missile.

“Ted Parsons of IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly pointed out similarities to a known Chinese vehicle: ‘The same windscreen design, the same four windscreen wiper configuration, the same door and handle design, a very similar grill area. almost the same front bumper lighting configuration, and the same design for the cabin steps.’”

In other words, what’s our next move?  It is unlikely (and il-advised) that we go on offense militarily.

Which is why our development of missile defense–something the President has abandoned–remains urgent.

This time their lead editorial addresses his gas price speech yesterday, in which he declared war on speculators.

The Post editors write, “With gas prices high and an election looming, the president announced a very public crackdown on ‘those who manipulate the market for private gain at the expense of millions of working families.’ He asked Congress to spend $52 million on more oversight, to allow regulators to set higher capital requirements in oil markets, and to mandate a few other steps…Yet the administration can’t offer any satisfying explanation for why they are so necessary as to require emergency congressional action. The only emergency seems to be a mindless election-year war over who’s to blame for sustained high gas prices — a question for which Mr. Obama himself has repeatedly given the most reasonable answer: those shadowy actors called supply and demand.”

Yet another reason I have always called the Washington Post America’s “non-kook” liberal rag.  Unlike at The New York Times, writers at the Post actually inject facts into their commentary, even if their op-eds usually reach the wrong conclusion (i.e. you won’t like the last sentence of the editorial, but the above excerpt makes perfect sense).

Charles C.W. Cooke, blogging today at National Review Online, unearths an excerpt from Obama’s 1995 book Dreams From My father, in which the President reflects, “With Lolo [Obama's stepfather], I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share.”

Add animal rights activists to the list of the Left’s base groups that are going to be outraged.

Holman W. Jenkins has a column in today’s Wall Street Journal addressing, brilliantly, what we talked about on the show yesterday–to wit: why do some of us hate when others might have more than we do, even if we have plenty?

Jenkins’ piece is worth reading in its entirety, but the two best parts are:

A) “If it were learned that the car driven by the average American is 10 times more likely to burst into flames than the car driven by the richest 1%, what should the policy response be? Should it be to mandate that cars driven by the rich burst into flames more often?

“Income inequality is a strange obsession, at least to the extent the obsessives focus their policy responses on trying to adjust the condition of the top 1% rather than improving the opportunities of everyone else.”

And…

B) “One can only wonder how much faster progress on tax reform or school choice would have been if the political capital devoted to income inequality had been devoted to fighting entrenched institutional resistance to useful reforms.”

Here’s a link to the video footage of the Iranian people having had enough of Mahmoud and the miserable state of their economy (from Fox News Wednesday morning).  Make that girl who jumps up in his face our Secretary of Defense!

Watch this exchange between Department of Energy Inspector General Greg Friedman and Texas Republican Joe Barton on the question of how much money the Department of Energy spends on travel (taking place during a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee Wednesday):

So asks Stephen Marche in May’s The Atlantic magazine.

“When you sign up for Google+ and set up your Friends circle,” he writes, “the program specifies that you should include only ‘your real friends, the ones you feel comfortable sharing private details with.’ That one little phrase, Your real friends—so quaint, so charmingly mothering—perfectly encapsulates the anxieties that social media have produced: the fears that Facebook is interfering with our real friendships, distancing us from each other, making us lonelier; and that social networking might be spreading the very isolation it seemed designed to conquer.”

That may be a little extreme, but I must say, as a relative social media neanderthal, it’s irritating to be out with a group of friends, all of whom are multitasking on their Smart Phones.  I feel quite lonely, and usual ending up embracing strangers.

And I must add that even though I’m not a big bumper sticker fan, I saw one not too long ago that I loved.  It read (and I paraphrase) “I only said yes to being your Facebook friend, not ‘I do.’”

1) High gas prices/speculators;

2) The soldiers who posed with the bodies of terrorists who killed themselves;

3) The Secret Service Agents who partied in Colombia in advance of the President’s recent visit?

Follow-up question: Will the Secret Service, with, at least in part, its cavalier concern for safety, let Nugent have it to deflect attention away from their foibles?

For those who have forgotten, he was Obama’s environmental jobs czar who resigned in 2009 after several controversial diatribes.

He’s back.  His latest is this interview with allhiphop.com.

Perhaps this is today’s Obama embarrassment?  It’s in the running, anyway.

So says Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air.  Noting that 11 vulnerable Democratic Senators voted with 47 Republicans last month, nearly breaking a filibuster against the pipeline, Morrissey goes onto describe the growing disenchantment among Congressional Dems with regard to the health care bill.

Morrissey writes, “Obama has to defend ObamaCare in this election; other than Dodd-Frank and the Lily Ledbetter Act, it’s his only real legislative accomplishment…

“…Right now, though, it looks like Democrats on Capitol Hill aren’t concerned about loyalty to a sinking Obama.  It’s every politician for him/herself.”

As has been pointed out for years on the show, the Democrats continue to be mired in an entrenched internecine battle.

This is not from “The Onion,” but rather from the AP: “Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia says he’s unsure whether he’ll vote for President Barack Obama or likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

“In a statement Friday, Manchin said he has real differences with both Obama and Romney. He also said many West Virginians believe the last 3 ½ years have not been good.

“One of the more moderate Senate Democrats, Manchin is seeking re-election this year in a state Obama lost to Republican Sen. John McCain, 56-43 percent, in 2008. Obama fared worse in the Democratic primary against Hillary Rodham Clinton, losing 67-26 percent.

“Manchin, the former governor who won the Senate seat in 2010, remains popular in West Virginia.

“He told the National Journal that he will look at the options for president.”

This is way beyond the “please Mr. President, don’t campaign for me” that Obama will be hearing from vulnerable Senate Democrats nationawide in coming weeks.

Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich has a piece in The San Francisco Gate today entitled “Tax fairness would increase growth.”

Reich argues that we face a deficit in public investment, and “unless the rich pay their fair share of taxes, [it] will only become worse.”

Forget for a moment the fact that “the rich” pay a disproportionately unfair share of taxes as things currently stand; once again, we have a choice between the merits of public versus private investments. 

And once again, the opportunity arises to compare and contrast Reich’s view of things to J.F.K.’s.

The former President, in a a speech on taxes in 1962, said, “every dollar that is released from taxation…will help create a new job and a new salary.”

Read Reich’s piece, and watch President Kennedy below.  Kennedy is right.  And Romney, surely, is relishing the debate.

From Kerry Picket in today’s Washington Times: “The EPA is doing their part to research air pollution and is engaged in testing the effects of air pollution on our bodies. According to an EPA case study published in Environmental Health Perspectives in September 2011 a human test subject was used by the EPA to study the effects of air pollutants on our bodies.”

Picket’s report includes a case of a woman (there were more than 40 human “volunteers” in all) who suffered atrial fibrillation after being voluntarily exposed to an air pollutant.”

She ended up being fine, though, so why should anyone be outraged?  She volunteered to study the effects of air pollution, after all, unlike the cute mice who are forced into helping us find a cure for cancer.

That’s The New York Times headline.  The story begins, “Reacting to the bird strike that resulted in the nearly disastrous ditching of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in January, government agencies announced new efforts on Thursday to control the region’s noisy, prolific and seemingly indefatigable Canada geese.

“A focus of the plan is the removal of up to 2,000 of the birds for the first time from more than 40 city-owned parks and other facilities within five miles of the city’s airports.”

Removal means the death of the birds.  It makes sense, of course, but, as pointed out below, do the birds not enjoy the same rights that humans do?

“Of course not” is the answer.  We can only hope that most folks reading this story, and the one below, value human life more than the life of birds or mice.

Chris Cillizza has an opinion on the subject in today’s Washington Post.  ”Viewed broadly,” he writes, “it appears that the tea party may well be a victim of its own success. In 2010, it proved its powers — beating establishment-backed candidates in Senate races in Delaware, Colorado, Florida, Utah and Alaska to name a few. The result? Candidates are far more wary of crossing the tea party this time around, moving to embrace it rather than stare it down.

“’The reason for the appearance of less tea party success is that the establishment candidates have moved markedly to the right this cycle,’ said Jon Lerner, a Republican consultant. ‘As the establishment candidates have moved to the right, there is less of a gap for tea party candidates to exploit.’”

My question–and Cillizza’s–is what is the tea party’s next move?  He suggests that the answer, perhaps, is fiscal austerity, a euphemism for tax hikes.  I say, in a word, not.

…comes from Peter Diamond, a Nobel prize winner in economics, and Emmanuel Saez, a UC Berkeley economics professor.  In a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, they write, “we conclude that raising the top tax rate is very likely to result in revenue increases at least until we reach the 50% rate that held during the first Reagan administration, and possibly until the 70% rate of the 1970s. To reduce tax avoidance opportunities, tax rates on capital gains and dividends should increase along with the basic rate.”

Translation: We think that people don’t react to higher taxes on income by avoiding them, but in the event that they do, let’s raise taxes on capital gains, as well.

It should be noted that even Bill Clinton had enough sense to lower the capital gains tax in ’97, resulting in higher revenue.

The CATO Institute’s Alan Reynolds ran the numbers last year, examining tax rates from the fifties forward, and the resulting tax revenue.  You can read his entire analysis here.

Writing at The Daily Beast, Beinart references a recent Gallup poll, which says that “the percentage of Americans who say they would not vote for a Catholic, a woman, an African-American, or a Jew has dropped sharply since the 1960s and 1970s. The percentage saying they would not vote for a Mormon, however, hasn’t budged. In 1967, the first year Gallup asked the question, 17 percent of Americans said they would not back a Mormon candidate. When Gallup asked again last summer, the figure had risen to 22 percent.”

So how to explain the increase in anti-Mormonism?  “According to Gallup,” Beinart writes, “while only 18 percent of Republicans said they would oppose a Mormon candidate, among Democrats the figure was 27 percent.”

The question, then, is, are Democrats religious bigots, or secular rats, using religion to try to affect the outcome of the election?  Either way, it’s safe to say that they’re shameful, and probably more than a little bit afraid of losing.