McCain-Feingold takes a hit

Obama finds agreement between Israelis, Palestinians

AIP column: Beware the static analysis in the Baucus plan

I laid out Arlen Specter’s coming betrayal on card-check in May.

Card check = massively boosting union rolls = massively boosting Democrat voter rolls = permanent GOP minority.

You’re a real patriot, Sen. Specter.

***

Update: President Obama is speaking at the AFL-CIO. According to Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter Salena Zito, Obama singled out Specter for praise and cooed: “The White House is pretty nice, but there’s nothing like being back in the House of Labor.” (It’s a duplex.) He then claimed that when organized labor succeeds, America succeeds.

Tell that to the Boeing workers who just decertified their union.

Unbelievable: Maryland may prosecute O’Keefe for shooting ACORN video

No word on whether they’ll be prosecuting any ACORN people for conspiring to cover up sex slavery. They’ve got bigger fish to fry, I guess. Like … the people who exposed the people who conspired to cover up sex slavery.

This is what you get for doing the media’s job for them.

Note: Most of the “inquiries” they received from citizens — although perhaps not from reporters — surely were demands that ACORN be prosecuted. So they looked at the tape … and decided to go after O’Keefe instead. The news story at the link reminds us that they went after Linda Tripp for wiretapping too, coincidentally another person who made life uncomfortable for a Democratic president. Here’s the statute. You’ll find exception after exception provided for law enforcement to shield them from liability when they tape criminals surreptitiously to serve the public interest. Kind of like how O’Keefe did here.

Pro-life demonstrator murdered at Michigan high school

Video: GOP congressman yells “liar” at Obama; Update: Wilson apologizes

Obama science czar: Redistributionism as the cure for American exceptionalism

First, Holdren doesn’t know what “American exceptionalism” means. He can’t even get the term right. American exceptionalism has nothing to do with our size or our technological prowess, except in tertiary terms. Exceptionalism springs from the unique nature of our nation’s birth, the historical leadership in personal freedom that America has shown (with very notable failures, such as slavery and post-Civil War Jim Crow), and especially the role America inherited in the 20th century as the guarantor of Western security and international shipping.

This is no philosophical quibble, either. Part of the reason America consumes more relative to other nations on a per-capita basis is because we produce more for the consumption of others, and out of necessity for our role as global cop.  That is a large part of the reason that our defense spending outstrips those of other Western nations, as they do not contribute nearly as much to that role.  Seeing as how Holdren can’t figure out what he opposes, it comes as no surprise that he doesn’t see the connection between that role and consumption of resources, either.

One can oppose America’s role on the world stage from either the Right or the Left, and challenge the notion of American exceptionalism itself — but it helps to start off by knowing what it is.  Holdren should get bounced for his ignorance as well as opposed for his radical, redistributionist views.  This interview strongly suggests that Obama’s science czar got picked not for his dedication to science but for his redistributionist views under the cloak of climate change.

Why are we paying legal bills for Fannie Mae execs?

The media strikes (out) again on Jones resignation

Obama theme: incompetence?

How has this theme surfaced?  It would be impossible to count them all, but we can get them into broad themes:

• Personnel - Barack Obama’s appointments have been a continuing source of embarrassment.  His Treasury Secretary blamed Turbo-Tax for his tax evasion, but several more appointments also had tax problems.  Obama nominated Bill Richardson to Commerce knowing full well of the pay-for-play probe in New Mexico that forced Richardson to withdraw his name a few weeks later.  Van Jones, the Green Jobs Czar, is just the latest example of fumbled vetting that has plagued this White House since the transition.
• Economics - Remember when Obama told the nation that a $787 billion stimulus package would keep unemployment from getting above 8%?  Remember when Obama told the nation that his administration had shaved $2 trillion off of the projected ten-year deficit?  Remember when Obama promised that he would speed up stimulus spending this summer?  None of those came to pass, which is why Obama hopes you’ve forgotten all of that.
• Politics - One might have thought Obama would have learned from the debacle of the stimulus package that he needed to lead, rather than follow Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  Instead, he passed the buck on health-care reform and wound up losing control of the health-care debate.  Indeed, Obama made it worse by cheering on Pelosi and Reid, demanding that Congress bend to their wills and vote on an overhaul of 1/6th of the American economy with just a handful of days for debate.  This week, seven months after his inauguration, Obama’s press flacks announced with great fanfare that Obama would finally draft a proposal himself — as if he were President, or something!

Who could have warned us that a man who served seven years in the state legislature and three years in the Senate would not have been prepared for the toughest executive position in the Free World?  We did.  Repeatedly.  So did John McCain, and for that matter, so did Hillary Clinton.

Former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said Thursday that his previous assertion that it was "legitimate to question and examine" charges of CIA abuses of terrorism suspects did not mean he endorsed such an investigation.

"Contrary to press reporting and based on the information that's available to me," Mr. Gonzales said during an interview Thursday with The Washington Times, "I don't support the investigation by the department because this is a matter that has already been reviewed thoroughly and because I believe that another investigation is going to harm our intelligence gathering capabilities and that's a concern that's shared by career intelligence officials, and so for those reasons I respectfully disagree with the decision."