Can you say "cheesy" ? - Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton actually traveled all the way to a town called UNITY, New Hampshire to meet, in an effort to bring Hillary supporters and Obama supporters together into one united Democratic party.

Unity, N.H. Oh, brother. Hand me an air sickness bag, please. Were all the hotel rooms booked up in Stupidsymboliccrap, South Dakota ? The candidates actually wasted jet fuel for such an empty gesture ? This one ranks pretty high on the list of all-time silly political theatrics. I half expected Michael Dukakis to show up in his tank.

In related news, John McCain's campaign made a stop in Deadhorse, Alaska.
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Speaking of dead things, contrarian Christopher Hitchens was interviewed by Rich Lowry on PBS and said "if the GOP was a dog, it would be shot", among other things. Indeed, it looks like the GOP will be shot, precisely on November 4th, 2008. The interview is standard Hitchens fare and pretty entertaining. He's an equal opportunity offender, and takes shots at everyone - McCain, the GOP, both Obamas, and both Clintons. See it here.
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We all know how the Left likes to ban things (guns, cigarettes, radio talk show hosts, army recruiting offices, free speech on college campuses, christian symbols, capitalism, logical thought, etc). Now, it seems they've even taken to separating food into patriotic and non-patriotic categories for purposes of banning the unpatriotic ones. For the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, the unpatriotic foods (fried) are banned, and only the patriotic foods (green) are allowed. Denver's mayor, John "Chickpea" Hickenlooper, called it "the new patriotism". Link.

Great. And here I thought the Soup Nazi was just a funny character on the Seinfeld show.

No word yet on whether onion rings and Southern fried chicken will be sent to Gitmo. Senate investigatory hearings are forthcoming, as soon as the Dems finish interviewing every last American citizen regarding their knowledge of Valerie Plame.
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Perennial presidential candidate Ralph Nader is tired of Democrats blaming him for Al Gore losing in 2000. Nader said, "They [the Democrats] are so small-minded to keep the myth up that it wasn't them that got Bush in the White House, it was Nader/LaDuke.”

This is news to me. I didn't think the Dems had finished blaming the Supreme Court for 2000 yet.
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In the weirdest story of the day, John McCain's former jailer at the Hanoi Hilton for 5 1/2 years said he'd vote for McCain if he was an american voter. From the Associated Press:

"If I were an American voter, I would vote for Mr. John McCain," Tran Trong Duyet said Friday, sitting in his living room in the northern city of Haiphong, surrounded by black-and-white photos of a much younger version of himself and former Vietnam War prisoners.

At the same time, he denies prisoners of war were tortured. Despite detailed POW accounts and physical wounds, Duyet claims the presumed Republican presidential nominee made up beatings and solitary confinement in an attempt to win votes.

Of course, if Duyet had admitted McCain and the other Hanoi Hilton prisoners WERE tortured, he'd be in jail himself. There is no freedom of speech in Vietnam. It is a communist dictatorship, due to the fact that………..well, you know. Peace with honor.

Over four months until the elections. It will only get deeper.

The conservative wing of the Supreme Court prevailed in the D.C. gun ban case. In yet another of those 5-4 rulings that prove swing voter Justice Anthony Kennedy is the most powerful man in the country, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment says what it says, that the people's right to bear arms shall not be infringed. Liberals were predictably outraged. In their view, when the Second Amendment says "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", it means that right SHOULD be infringed in any way liberals want. Hey, no worries, that's a mistake any blind ideologue could make. The reason liberals believe something so illogical is because they could care less about what the U.S. Constitution says. They just want what they want, and if the Constitution gets in the way, they will twist and/or discard it. How else can you explain liberals belief in a Constitutional right to, say, abortion, of which the Constitution speaks nary a word, and then their belief that there is no individual right to bear arms, which is explicitly stated in the Bill Of Rights ? Go figure.

The crowd who wishes to grab guns from law-abiding American citizens uses a selective reading of the Second Amendment in an attempt to usurp this basic civil right. The full amendment reads as follows:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed".

The gun grabbers focus on the "well regulated Militia" part, and try to ignore the "shall not be infringed" part. I have a question for the grabbers. If you take away the guns from We The People, how are we going to form that militia ? We can't. There would just be a bunch of guys standing around, maybe armed with broomsticks, shovels, and steak knives, virtually helpless against whatever enemy we needed to fight. Therefore, the "shall not be infringed" part is of utmost importance. Only a liberal could miss something so obvious.

"Wait just one minute !' shout the grabbers, "We have the government to do our fighting for us".

Yes, but what if it's the government we need to fight against ??? Surely liberals, who have been calling Bush a fascist criminal dictator for 7 1/2 years now, can see how our government might get out of control, no ?

Another grabber argument is that guns can't be used for self defense, only for use in that militia (even though the militia itself would be for SELF DEFENSE. I doubt we'd use the militia for bake sales). This is another bogus argument. The law recognizes self defense as valid, and the law recognizes the right to bear arms as valid. So, how can using arms in self defense NOT be valid ? It's nonsensical.

Liberals are making all kinds of wild predictions about blood running in the streets due to the D.C. gun ban ruling. They ignore the fact the violent crime in D.C. went UP after the gun ban, or that violent crime tends to decrease in places where gun laws are less restrictive. I heard one guy on MSNBC make the ridiculous claim that this ruling would bring about a return to the days of the Wild West. That was pretty nutty, but the guy did unwittingly prove that gun ownership is a traditional right in this country, because everybody had a gun back in the Wild West, and they weren't only used for militias either. Nevermind the fact that the Wild West was far LESS violent than D.C. under the gun ban today.

The liberal media is almost unanimously referring to the the D.C. gun ban decision as "the first time the Supreme Court has ever ruled in favor of an individual's right to bear arms". This is profoundly dishonest, since individuals have owned guns from the days of the Founders forward, for the entire history of the country. If you had tried to take away the guns of our Founding Fathers, you'd most likely have gotten yourself shot, no pun intended.

My advice to the gun grabbers is this - Stop trying to tell people the Second Amendment doesn't say what it says, and doesn't mean what it means. That's silly. If you really want to disarm the citizenry, you have to amend the Constitution to remove the right to bear arms. I think that would be a pretty bad idea, but that's what you should try to do. Or, you can stack the Supreme Court with more Justices like the four liberals in the D.C. gun ban case, who could care less what the Constitution says or what it's intent was.

P.S. - ALL the rights enumerated in the Bill Of Rights are INDIVIDUAL rights of the people. Don't let some gun grabbing liberal try to buffalo you into thinking the Second Amendment is somehow different.

P.P.S - I'm NOT a gun fan, a member of the NRA, or anything like that. It's just that the facts are the facts.

Now that Barack Obama has captured the Democratic nomination, it appears his campaign has moved into Presidential Calculation Phase 2.0, Operation Win The General Election. Obama has taken more non-left wing positions in the last few weeks than he's taken in his entire previous political career. He angered liberals by reversing his stance on public campaign financing. He reversed his position against the FISA bill and supported it. He reversed his position on NAFTA, said his previous smoke on the issue was "overheated campaign rhetoric", and now supports it. He came out in opposition to a Supreme Court ruling that abolished the death penalty for child rapists, and now, he has even come out in opposition to the Fairness Doctrine. Is that the gnashing of liberal teeth I hear ?

"Sen. Obama does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters," [Obama's] press secretary Michael Ortiz said in an e-mail to B&C late Wednesday. "He considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible," Ortiz added. "That is why Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets."

Holy Pelosi, Batman ! Is this a Democrat supporting democracy ? A Democrat supporting free speech ? Wow. They haven't done much of that lately. Of course, Obama's spokesman did say that stuff about network neutrality, public broadcasting, and minority ownership, so Obama doesn't support freedom THAT much, but it's still a giant step forward from the pro-Stalinist Pelosi position of reimposing the Fairness Doctrine to muzzle all those right-wing radio talk show hosts. You go, Barack ! Yes we can, er, I mean, good job.

Now try to remember the last time you heard a liberal come out in favor of the death penalty for ANY crime (other than the crime of being a Republican, that is). Yet, Obama favors the death penalty for child rapists, a stance that breaks with the liberal wing of the Supreme Court, who thought the death penalty for child rape was excessive and therefore unconstitutional. This was another of those 5-4 decisions, with the conservative wing of the Court voting that the death penalty was not unconstitutional for child rape. This is one of the times when I think the liberals got it right, because I believe the death penalty is only an appropriate and proportional punishment for the crime of murder. Obama has even veered to the right of me on this issue. Who woulda thunk it ? Oddly enough, Obama previously took a position against expanding the death penalty for gangbangers who DO murder people. I'd attempt to explain the contradiction to you, but I didn't attend Harvard, so it's beyond my capability. It's too nuanced for the likes of me.

On to Obama's reversal on the FISA bill. From the Washington Post:

The Illinois senator's reversal on the issue has angered liberal groups, but Obama told reporters at a news conference this afternoon that he was satisfied with changes made to the original bill, including a provision that gives a secret court, rather than the White House, the final say on spying procedures. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer also switched sides on the legislation, for the same reasons as Obama.

"It is a close call for me," Obama told reporters. But he said the addition of the "exclusivity" provision giving power to the secret court, along with a new inspector general role and other oversight additions, "met my basic concerns." He said the bill's target should not be the phone companies' culpability, but "can we get to the bottom of what's taking place, and do we have safeguards?"

Most of the time, a decision that angers liberals groups is just fine with me, and this time is no different. Obama has the right concerns here. Oversight of the government's spying activities is the key. We don't want to handcuff ourselves in the fight against terrorism, but we do want to make sure the government doesn't exceed or abuse it's authority. I agree with Obama again (is this a sign of the apocalypse ???). Yes we ca…..never mind. I don't want to get carried away.

Now, if only somebody would teach Obama basic economics and convince him to stop trying to undermine the Iraq war when we're on the verge of victory………..

That would be change I could believe in.

And as long as Obama is making a right hand turn to sell himself to the general public, my estimation of him would increase greatly if he just admitted he was dead wrong about the Iraq surge.

But I won't be holding my breath. So far, the Obama spinmeisters have decided to flat out lie about that:

January 14, 2007: "We can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops: I don't know any expert on the region or any military officer that I've spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground." - Barack Obama

July 20, 2007: "Here's what we know. The surge has not worked." - Barack Obama

May 30, 2008: "[Barack Obama] never disputed the fact that if you throw a surge of American soldiers in an area that you can make a difference." - David Axelrod, Obama's campaign manager.

Sigh.

Finally, in the ultimate bow to mainstreaming, check out Obama's family values television ad. It's truly precious, complete with the flag pin and everything (and listen to the background music. If any of you are South Park fans, it's reminiscent of Mr. Tweek's Coffee Shop music, lol).

Didn't the old Obama say flag pins were phony expressions of patriotism ? America, meet the new and improved Barack Obama, Version 2.0.

It's time again for more quotable quotes from our leaders and intellectuals.

Supply sider - “It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now… Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.” - John F. Kennedy.

Can you say 'Democrats' ? - "We are the only nation in the world with access to known oil deposits on our own land or off our shores that essentially refuses to tap those resources. The main stumbling block is a lack of political consensus" - Linda Chavez.

Money talks, you-know-what walks - "I support a robust system of public financing of elections" - Barack Obama, speaking as he announced he was opting out of public campaign financing.

Apt description - "[Pinning down Obama's policies] is like trying to nail Jello to a wall" - Republican Senator Lindsay Graham.

A flip-flop you can believe in (offer subject to immediate expiration without further notice) - "the [offshore drilling] moratoria should be lifted” - John McCain, reversing his earlier position.

Don't tell us, tell them - "No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal" - Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Who knew this guy was so prescient ?- "Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future" - Adolph Hitler.

Only 2 in 5 voters can name the three branches of the federal government - "What good fortune for governments that the people do not think" - Adolph Hitler.

And who is the leading voice of YOUR politics ? - "The country is not as polarized as our politics would suggest" - Barack Obama

Are we sure this guy was the father of the Democratic party ? - "A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government" - Thomas Jefferson

Here's why he's the Republican nominee for president, and you're not - "We should be able to deliver bottled hot water to dehydrated babies" - John McCain

But he almost lost the working man's vote with this - "I will veto every single beer, um, bill with earmarks" - John McCain

And now for the classics. Yes, they made him head of the DNC - "I think with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, you can't play, you know, hide the salami, or whatever it's called" - Howard Dean

Classics part II, don't question his patriotism - "The idea that the United States is going to win the war in Iraq is just plain wrong" - Howard Dean

Classics part III, God only knows - "Now that we're on dog pee, we can have an interesting conversation about that. I do not recommend drinking urine…but if you drink water straight from the river, you have a greater chance of getting an infection than you do if you drink urine" - Howard Dean

In Gallup's annual institution poll, they found that only 12% of Americans have confidence in the the Democratic-led U.S. Congress. That is not only the lowest ranking ever for Congress, that's the lowest ranking of any institution in the history of the Gallup poll. Congress is looked upon so poorly by Americans that beleaguered president George W. Bush appears to be a rockstar by comparison. Bush's confidence rating is a soaring 26% percent. Congress even ranks a tick below the universally reviled Health Maintenance Organizations (HMO's got a 13% confidence rating).

I think it's time to get Democrats Tom Daschle and Joe Biden on the Sunday morning political talk shows to spin this into something positive, as they attempted to do on television yesterday regarding Barack Obama's flip-flop on public campaign financing. Daschle was spinning so badly on Chris Wallace's Fox News Sunday show that he couldn't even keep a straight face while he was doing it. Literally every word that came out of Daschle's mouth was an outright lie. Biden was a little more honest on Meet The Press (he at least admitted that Obama flip-flopped. Daschle wouldn't even do that), but not by much.

Could it be that such furious spin is part of the problem ? If we could harness all the wind coming from the halls of Congress, we might finally get a handle on our energy situation.

Or is it simply that gasoline is over $4 per gallon and Congress is blocking domestic oil production ? It seems like the Democrats are intentionally working AGAINST American interests in that area. Or maybe it's all the wasteful spending by Congress, the pork, the pandering, the vanishing jobs, the national debt, the outsourcing of America, the entitlement tsunami, or the fact that our Senators and Representatives seem much more interested in playing 'Gotcha' political games with each other than in solving the problems we face.

Whatever it is, I'm here to tell you that your worries are unfounded. Congress put it's finger on the pulse of Americans last week and has solved one of the most pressing problems we face as a nation….

The sale of pet monkeys.

That's right. The House voted to spend $5 million of your taxpayer dollars on the prevention of interstate pet monkey sales. I know you'll be interested in the vote roll call on this major issue, so here's a link to that.

Whew. What a relief. No longer will there be gangs of wild monkeys ravaging the American countryside. The scourge has ended. It's safe to go outside again (but not it you live in the nation's capital, Washington D.C.). Plus, I hear Congress is going to address the urgent issue of underinflated bicycle tires next (hey, it's a hazard !), following a much deserved two-week break. Lord knows how many all-nighters our Representatives had to pull to build a consensus on the monkey thing.

I'd like to say something to the 12% of American who DO have confidence in Congress….

What are you 12% smoking ? Congress couldn't find it's butt with both hands. Everything that is happening there now, and I mean everything, is driven by hyper-partisan political considerations. It's a total disaster. Some people would say, 'oh, that's just how they act in an election year'. Okay, fine, but remember this - EVERY OTHER YEAR IS AN ELECTION YEAR. That means Congress is in almost nonstop campaign mode. It makes Congress irrational. There is no other explanation for America being dependent on Saudi Arabia and Venezuela for oil, and one party (begins with a 'D') taking no steps to stop that. Drilling in ANWR alone could result in NO Saudi oil imports for 20-30 years. Oh, and btw, ANWR is a subzero wasteland 8-9 months out of the year. Only irrationality can be responsible for people referring to a nearly uninhabitable desolate frozen tundra like ANWR as being "pristine". This means you too, John McCain. Wake up already, Mac. ANWR is a pimple on the world's backside, but it has oil. Let's get it. We WON'T be bothering the caribou.

Sorry, I didn't mean to start talking about oil again, but the insanity surrounding the issue is making me crazy. If Congress can't even get this issue right, then there really isn't any hope for them at all.

But good job on the monkeys.

You morons.

Oh, and if you are ever around a Congressperson who says we shouldn't drill in ANWR or offshore because we won't get the oil for another 5, 10, or 15 years, punch him/her in the mouth. I'll pay your bail.

The entire liberal media is telling you the FISA bill passed by the House Of Representatives on friday is the end of civil rights, the death of our Constitution, an example of Democrats caving to the lawless Bush administration, etc, etc. They try to drum this stuff into your head constantly, in the hope that you will forget what happened on 9/11, in the hope that you will forget WHY the Bush administration took the national security actions they took following that tragic attack, the worst ever on our homeland. They don't want you to ponder the REAL reasons for Bush's spying, because then it might look like Bush was only attempting to keep America safe from further attack, which is, after all, the job of the President. No, the liberal media wants you to believe Bush just woke up one day and illogically decided it was time to be a dictator and trample on the citizenry, for no reason really, just because Bush is an evil lawless tyrant and that's what evil lawless tyrants do. The liberal media wants you to know evil has a name, and that name is Bush. Also, the liberal media wants you to know that Bush=McCain=Republicans, just so there won't be any mistake. This IS an election year, after all.

But I assume most of you can see through the liberal media's shallow attempts at deception. Most people have the capacity for rational thought. This post is for you. I'll attempt to tell you what the new FISA update is really about.

In spite of the overblown protestations of the liberal media, many Democrats, most terrorist appeasers, and all outright Al Qaeda members, the new FISA bill is not the death of civil rights. There will be oversight of domestic spying with this new bill. It establishes a measure of balance between monitoring suspected terrorists and privacy concerns. It also attempts to establish limits on the president's executive powers. It spells out areas of domestic and international spying that needed to be spelled out.

The biggest sticking point to passage of the bill had been the provision to shield the telecommunications companies from lawsuits following the telcoms post-9/11 cooperation with the government in tracking terrorists. 40 such lawsuits were in the wings. None of the 40 persons or groups that wanted to sue the telecoms had any idea if their phones were monitored or if their rights were infringed. They just wanted to sue on principle. Democrats were hesitant to bargain away those lawsuits. The new FISA bill will shield the telcoms from lawsuits if the telcoms receive certification from the attorney general that the president ordered them to perform wiretaps to detect or prevent a terrorist attack. I like this provision, because it puts the responsibility for wiretaps on the government where it belongs. It is very troublesome to put the responsibility for making decisions about terrorism on private corporations who are torn between helping their country and treading into questionable legal territory that could cost them millions or billions of dollars.

I have some personal experience in this area. Following 9/11, I was a computer programmer/analyst for a bank. The government requested anti-terrorist type information from the bank, which I was tasked with providing them. Some of the requests involved the tracking of certain financial transactions and some involved other information, such as the reporting of all account signers who didn't have Social Security numbers. If any of you think this is improper action by the government, I can also tell you that the government has been tracking your financial information for decades. If you think your banking transactions are private, think again. They aren't. Nowadays, there are even sophisticated methodologies to track any type of unusual financial activity, and even methodolgies to predict financial activity, but that is a discussion for another time.

The point is that I certainly wouldn't have wanted to face a lawsuit for attempting to help my government track terrorist activity a few months after 9/11. The new FISA bill addresses that problem.

Some other provisions in the new FISA bill, according to the linked article, are:

- It requires the inspectors general of the Justice Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies to investigate the wiretapping program, with a report due in a year.

- The government can initiate a wiretap without court permission if "important intelligence" would otherwise be lost. It has a week to file the request for approval with the court, and the court has 30 days to act on it.

- It would allow the government to tap a foreigner's overseas calls without FISA court approval.

- Require FISA court permission to wiretap Americans who are overseas.

- Prohibit targeting a foreigner to secretly eavesdrop, without court approval, on an American's calls or e-mails.

- Require the government to protect American information or conversations that are collected when in communications with targeted foreigners.

- Allow the FISA court 30 days to review existing but expiring surveillance orders before renewing them.

- Allow eavesdropping in emergencies without court approval, provided the government files required papers within a week.

- Prohibits the president from superseding surveillance rules in the future.

Is the new FISA bill perfect ? No.

Did the old FISA and spying procedures need to be updated to reflect the modern technological world and the new type of threat the terrorists present ? Absolutely.

Barack Obama claims to be a new kind of politician. He's a uniter, not a divider (hmmm, that sounds familiar). Obama is all about HOPE, and above all, CHANGE. We know all this because Obama tells us so, repeatedly.

It's a little bit ironic then that Obama won his first Democratic primary in 1996 by getting all four of his Democratic opponents thrown off the ballot. It's doubly ironic when you consider that Obama had run on a platform of expanding voter rights and empowering disenfranchised voters. Here's an excerpt from a Chicago Tribune article:

The day after New Year's 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.

There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of incumbent state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city's South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama's four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot.

Fresh from his work as a civil rights lawyer and head of a voter registration project that expanded access to the ballot box, Obama launched his first campaign for the Illinois Senate saying he wanted to empower disenfranchised citizens.

But in that initial bid for political office, Obama quickly mastered the bare-knuckle arts of Chicago electoral politics. His overwhelming legal onslaught signaled his impatience to gain office, even if that meant elbowing aside an elder stateswoman like Palmer.

A close examination of Obama's first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career: The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it.

One of the candidates he eliminated, long-shot contender Gha-is Askia, now says that Obama's petition challenges belied his image as a champion of the little guy and crusader for voter rights.

"Why say you're for a new tomorrow, then do old-style Chicago politics to remove legitimate candidates?" Askia said. "He talks about honor and democracy, but what honor is there in getting rid of every other candidate so you can run scot-free? Why not let the people decide?"

Why indeed ? Obama explains it this way:

In a recent interview, Obama granted that "there's a legitimate argument to be made that you shouldn't create barriers to people getting on the ballot."

But the unsparing legal tactics were justified, he said, by obvious flaws in his opponents' signature sheets. "To my mind, we were just abiding by the rules that had been set up," Obama recalled.

"I gave some thought to … should people be on the ballot even if they didn't meet the requirements," he said. "My conclusion was that if you couldn't run a successful petition drive, then that raised questions in terms of how effective a representative you were going to be."

Asked whether the district's primary voters were well-served by having only one candidate, Obama smiled and said: "I think they ended up with a very good state senator."

Seems pretty self-serving, not to mention, um, divisive. And as for whether Obama's main opponent, State Senator and legendary Chicago progressive activist Alice Palmer, should have been on the Democratic primary ballot that year, well, it's pretty disingenuous of Barack Obama to suggest otherwise. She was the incumbent and the frontrunner. He was the rookie.

Palmer served the district in the Illinois Senate for much of the 1990s. Decades earlier, she was working as a community organizer in the area when Obama was growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia. She risked her safe seat to run for Congress and touted Obama as a suitable successor, according to news accounts and interviews.

But when Palmer got clobbered in that November 1995 special congressional race, her supporters asked Obama to fold his campaign so she could easily retain her state Senate seat.

Obama not only refused to step aside, he filed challenges that nullified Palmer's hastily gathered nominating petitions, forcing her to withdraw.

"I liked Alice Palmer a lot. I thought she was a good public servant," Obama said. "It was very awkward. That part of it I wish had played out entirely differently."

His choice divided veteran Chicago political activists.

"There was friction about the decision he made," said City Colleges of Chicago professor emeritus Timuel Black, who tried to negotiate with Obama on Palmer's behalf. "There were deep disagreements."

Obama's rhetoric was detached from his actions from the beginning. Uniter ? Not hardly. Power seeker ? Absolutely. As Obama showed again in his primary against Hillary Clinton in 2008, disenfranchising voters is no problem to him if he gains from it. Meet your "new kind of politician".

Btw, Alice Palmer, who at one time had hand-picked Barack Obama to be her successor, endorsed Hillary in 2008.

In praising the Boumediene v. Bush Supreme Court decision that granted Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) detainees habeas corpus rights and access to U.S. civilian courts, an unprecedented move, presidential candidate and historical revisionist Barack Obama said the following:

“…that principle of habeas corpus, that a state can’t just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process — that’s the essence of who we are. I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle yesterday.”

Wrong, Mr. Obama. The Nazis didn't get access to U.S. courts, and they were not granted habeas corpus. They could not challenge their detentions, which is what habeas corpus provides for. The Nazis were tried by……wait for it….. INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNALS held jointly by the USSR, the USA, France, and Great Brittain. The Gitmo detainees were also in process of receiving military tribunal hearings under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, before the liberal wing of the Supreme Court inexplicably declared those tribunals to be insufficient. In fact, the Nazis and the Gitmo detainees had virtually the same rights, until the Boumediene decision elevated terrorists and Taliban combatants to the level of American citizens.

What is strange here is that Obama supposedly taught constitutional law in Chicago, so he should know better than to make erroneous statements like this. I suspect he does know better, and is just playing his supporters for fools. Change you can believe in.
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Speaking of Obama - the high priest of global warming, Al Gore, endorsed Obama for president the other day, in an event about as surprising as this morning's sunrise. Gore said something about Obama being for hope and change in his endorsement speech. Thrilling.

But wait, there's more Al Gore news. The Co2 scold, who has cashed in to the tune of about $100 million with his alarmism speeches, has retrofitted one of his mansions to make it more environmentally friendly after coming under fire for hypocritically using more energy himself than does your average small town.

The results of Gore's enviro-improvements ???

You're going to love this…

Gore is now using 10% MORE energy than he was a year ago, according to the Tennessee Center For Policy Research. Here are excerpts from their report:

“A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.”

In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.

Since taking steps to make his home more environmentally-friendly last June, Gore devours an average of 17,768 kWh per month –1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations – at a cost of $16,533. By comparison, the average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year, according to the Energy Information Administration.

You can't make this stuff up. More 'do as I say, not as I do' from the Algorean gasbag.

P.T. Barnum was right on the money.

Here's another story the majority of the mainstream media will conveniently forget to report.

In the latest example of the Democrats ongoing effort to destroy America, the Democrats have voted down a proposal to allow offshore oil drilling. The measure, offered by Representative John Peterson (R-PA), was voted down 9-6 by a House subcommittee, strictly along party lines, with ALL the Democrats voting against Americans and ALL the Republicans voting for Americans. If adopted, the measure would have opened up U.S. waters between 50 and 200 miles offshore for drilling. The U.S. Minerals Management Service estimated that 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas can be found along the U.S. outer continental shelf, the area affected by the ban, which has been in effect since 1981. Link

Yeah, who needs 86 billion barrels of domestically produced oil ? It's not like there's a problem with the price of gasoline (over $4 per gallon and rising daily). It's not like there's a problem with the foreign sources of our imported oil (Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria). The Democrats seem to think they can wish this problem away by improving CAFE standards and increasing wind and solar power. In short, the Democrats are idiots, and not just run of the mill idiots either. The Democrats are DANGEROUS idiots who are risking our economy and national security. Just listen to the flimsy braindead excuses the Dems give for not drilling offshore or in ANWR:

"We are kidding ourselves if we think we can drill our way out of these problems," House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI).

No, Mr. Obey, we're kidding ourselves if we think worldwide oil demand is going to do anything but RISE in the future. Drilling is what we MUST do for the shorter term to get ourselves off of our dependence of foreign oil, especially when the sources of that oil include unfriendly and unstable regimes led by nuts like Hugo Chavez or Wahabbists like the Saudis. We have to be crazy to put our economic future and national security in the hands of people like those, but that is exactly what the Democrats have done by prohibiting most domestic oil production for the last 27 years.

"It would take anywhere from seven to 10 years to bring those resources to shore — to have any measurable impact on supply,” Holly Binns, Environment Florida spokeswoman.

Ms. Binns, we aren't going to be off of oil in 7-10 years, so all you are doing is providing the reason for us to get started on domestic oil production RIGHT AWAY, not to mention that you have also unwittingly exposed the catastrophic results of the Democratic ban on domestic oil production for all this time. If not for the Democrats ban, we'd be far better off now.

"There are 68 million acres right now that is available for exploration right now that the oil companies have — an area the size of Illinois and Georgia. We ought to be focusing on doing that", Earl Blumenauer (D-OR).

This is a doozy of an excuse. The oil companies DO have some 3-5 year leases on land, but that DOESN'T MEAN THERE IS ANY OIL UNDER THAT LAND, a fact that Blumenauer leaves out. It doesn't do much good to drill for oil on land that doesn't contain any oil. We KNOW there is oil offshore and in ANWR, so that's where we should be drilling.

Blumenauer is also one of many Democrats who have blamed the oil commodity speculators for driving up the cost of oil. While this is true, Dems like Blumenauer leave out the fact that oil supply and demand is very tight, and worldwide demand is increasing, which leads to the increased price among speculators. The speculation doesn't operate in a vacuum. If the U.S. began producing it's own energy supply, that would drive down the speculated price in the commodity market.

Dems also love to blame Exxon for making big profits, even though Exxon's profit margin (7.5% on the dollar) is less than the industrial average (8.4% on the dollar), even though the government makes more money from a gallon of gas than Exxon does, even though the government doesn't do anything to get the gas to the pump. Exxon DOES.

Why should we be propping up unfriendly regimes by sending our oil money to them, when we have the ability to produce what we need right here at home ? There is NO valid reason. I'm not saying oil should replace renewable energy. Domestic oil should work in concert with renewable energy sources to meet our needs, so we can stop funding worldwide extremists, and so we can secure our own economy. Democrats are standing firmly in the way, and they must be stopped. If we took full advantage of our domestic oil reserves, we could stop buying oil from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Nigeria completely for decades, and probably forever if we do an adequate job with renewable sources to reduce demand. This is vitally important to our country. I can't think of an issue that is more important, because our entire economy is dependent on the price and availability of energy. We should be storming Washington D.C. to stop the Democrats on this issue, but it seems most of us are unaware or misled. When I went down to talk to the blue collar working men at the local pub, most of them actually thought Bush was the one setting the high gas prices, when Bush has little to do with it. Ignorance is NOT bliss. Ignorance is dangerous, and the Democrats thrive on it.

Recent comments by Barack Obama indicate the view that many liberals have had for years - that we needed to drive up the prices of energy in order to force demand down. The NY Times has promoted that view for quite some time. Here's what Obama said about the high gasoline prices during a recent CNBC interview:

"I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing…if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly U.S. automakers, then I think ultimately, we can come out of this stronger and have a more efficient energy policy than we do right now".

Did you get that, people ? Obama doesn't mind the high gas prices, just the abrupt way they rose. That's because the DEMOCRATS WANT GAS PRICES TO BE HIGH. The price of a gallon of gas has risen about $1.50 since they took over Congress in january 2007. That's less than a year and a half. Obama and the Dems WANT the price to be high, so they can get their energy policies forced through. They don't care who suffers in the meantime, and the "meantime" in this instance could last for a couple decades. It's downright evil, and completely unnecessary. It completely nullifies the Democrat's claim to be "for the little guy". They aren't for the little guy at all. They are royally screwing the little guy with their energy policies, and have been for years. We shouldn't have to turn America into a third world country in order to switch to renewable energy sources, but the Democrats policy seems to be exactly that.

Btw, Obama's middle class tax cut of $1,000 isn't going to come anywhere close to offsetting the gasoline price hike, and you poor people, well…apply for welfare, I guess. I'm sure there will be some scraps for you at Obama's big government table. Good luck. You'll need it.

When the 5-4 Supreme Court decision on the Boumediene v. Bush case was handed down, which granted foreign enemy combatants (Al Qaeda and Taliban) being held in Guantanomo Bay the right to have their cases heard in american civilian courts, it didn't take much cogitation to determine which five Supreme Court justices comprised the majority and which four were in the minority. The liberal wing of the Court - Stephen Breyer, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and John Paul Stevens, voted in favor of the enemy. The conservative wing of the Court - John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia, voted in favor of the president. The swing vote was Anthony Kennedy, who sided with the liberal justices, as he often does when the Supreme Court makes epic blunders, such as the Kelo v. New London decision, where the Supremes destroyed the private property rights of U.S. citizens.

The major issue to be decided in Boumediene v. Bush was whether foreign enemy combatants (prisoners of war) should be granted the civil right of habeas corpus. Justice Kennedy spews forth in his majority opinion:

It is true that before today the Court has never held that non-citizens detained by our Government in territory over which another country maintains de jure sovereignty have any rights under our Constitution. But the cases before us lack any precise historical parallel. They involve individuals detained by executive order for the duration of a conflict that, if measured from September 11, 2001, to the present, is already among the longest wars in American history. See Oxford Companion to American Military History 849 (1999). The detainees, moreover, are held in a territory that, while technically not part of the United States, is under the complete and total control of our Government. Under these circumstances the lack of a precedent on point is no barrier to our holding.

Kennedy admits that granting habeas corpus to non-citizen enemy detainees during war is unprecedented in American history. In fact, the majority ruling in Boumediene v. Bush overturned all precedent. In fact, this issue before the Court was decided 58 years ago (and prior to that as well). In the 1950 case of Johnson v. Eisentrager, the Court ruled that non-citizen enemies had no access to U.S. courts in wartime and that when captured and imprisoned abroad, they had no right to a writ of habeas corpus in a U.S. court.

Justice Kennedy's majority opinion attempts to rewrite Eisentrager, which was noted in Justice Scalia's dissenting opinion, as follows:

Eisentrager thus held — held beyond any doubt — that the Constitution does not ensure habeas for aliens held by the United States in areas over which our Government is not sovereign…. [The majority opinion] is a sheer rewriting of the case.… By blatantly distorting Eisentrager, the Court avoids the difficulty of explaining why it should be overruled.

So much for stare decisis.

In order to justify granting the enemy habeas corpus rights to which they are not entitled, Kennedy invents a couple reasons. He says the war has gone on for a long time (this is not a joke. He really used this as a reason), and also that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 setup by Congress is not a sufficient substitute for the habeas corpus rights to which the…enemy…is…not…entitled.

Scalia also notes the unnecessary wartime difficulties this ruling places on American military personnel:

The game of bait-and-switch that today’s opinion plays upon the Nation’s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed. That consequence would be tolerable if necessary to preserve a time-honored legal principle vital to our constitutional Republic. But it is this Court’s blatant abandonment of such a principle that produces the decision today… It sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner.

Note to American soldiers in the field - You don't want to be dragged into court and face some Johnny Cochran-like shyster every time you take a prisoner during war. That is simply an unthinkable and unworkable scenario. So, to avoid this exact circumstance from taking place, our Supreme idiots have pushed you into the following action - The next time you see a terrorist planting a roadside explosive in Iraq or Afghanistan, don't take him prisoner, just KILL HIM instead, or he may end up back in the field again to kill you before the war is over, or you could be dragged into court and charged with a crime yourself if the Johnny Cochran-like shyster is very clever. Our liberal Supreme Court justices care more about the rights of the enemy during wartime than they do about the welfare of our own American sons and daughters. They have just proven so.

I expect the raving loons on the far left will be heralding the Boumediene v. Bush decision as a great triumph, since it meets their ONLY consideration of being anti-Bush, even though this was another POLITICAL decision made up out of whole cloth that will further erode national security, and will most likely end up getting Americans killed.

Why does it seem every liberal triumph is an American failure ?

This should be a huge issue in the upcoming presidential election, since the next president will almost surely be appointing new justices to our aging Supreme Court. Barack Obama pledges to nominate justices based upon "social justice" and political correctness (so we get more rulings like this one, that have nothing to do with the law). John McCain has promised to nominate originalist justices who will stick to the law. Do you trust McCain to stick to his word ? No, I don't either, but there is certainly a better chance than what we'd get with Barry O, which is certain to be a disaster.

If you want to read a good condemnation of the Boumediene ruling, read this one by Fred Thompson. Too bad Fred didn't exhibit this kind of fire on the campaign trail.