What makes me angry today

I was perusing my local school district's annual School Board statement online and was struck by the following Q&A (emphasis is mine):

Have Lincoln's union's agreed to changes that will help alleviate our district's financial challenges?

By law, the Board is not at liberty to discuss details of the collective bargaining process. We are looking forward to far and equitable collective bargaining agreements with all of our district's unions.

What kind of garbage is it that the law requires that educational financial decisions be conducted via backroom dealings?

When is Hitch going to shut up?

Over at Slate, Christopher Hitchens yanks out yet another protracted column about how it's perfectly fine for him to discriminate against particular political candidates on the basis of religion. Going further, he argues that everyone should discriminate against candidates based on religious viewpoints.

What is so shocking is that Hitchens famously belongs to the group which faces the most widespread religious discrimination: he's an atheist. According to a recent Gallup poll, more than half of Americans would never vote for an atheist.

This begs a question: When you're in the most oppressed of the minorities, why are you encouraging oppression?

NIE report repudiation of Bush doctrine?

Settling down into Salon - probably my least favorite place for Liberal opinion work and the anthesis of the much better written, much more sane Slate - I found this gem: Gary Kamiya trying to spein the recent NIE report as somehow bad for the President. How can you take an article seriously when it leads with this?

Bush's disastrous legacy is now locked in place. The National Intelligence Estimate released last week, which stated that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, is an explicit repudiation of the Bush doctrine and a preemptive strike against war with Iran.

According to the new NIE, 6 months after the U.S. entered Iraq, Iran and gave up its nuclear weaponizing programs. At about the same time, Syria gave up their own nuclear and chemical weapons programs. Strange coincidence, isn't it? It just must be an absolute repudiation of Bush's foreign policy doctrine that during his time in office, his projection of American strength and willingness to engage in preemptive strikes led to Iran and Syria abandoning nuclear and chemical weapons.

Of course, Mr. Kamiya's article has to follow up with another interesting anecdote:

One of [National Iranian American Council President Trita] Parsi's more remarkable tales takes place in May 2003, just after U.S. troops occupied Baghdad. Fearing that the U.S. was about to invade Tehran, Iran approached the U.S. with an amazing offer. In a dialogue of "mutual respect," it offered to stop its backing of Hamas and Islamic Jahad, support the transformation of Hezbollah into a disarmed political party, open up its nuclear program to international inspection and accept the Arab League's two-state plan for Israel and Palestine, thus making peace with the Jewish state. In return, Tehran asked for the U.S. to abandon its plans to topple the reign of the mullahs, end sanctions, turn over antiregime terrorists and accept Iran's legitimate interests in the region.

Assuming that this is, indeed, more than a remarkable tale of an amazing offer, this seems to strengthen the position of the Bush Doctrine, does it not?

Bringing Iran in from the cold
Iran isn't a mad state bent on Israel's destruction but a rational actor that wants a place at the table.
Current Opinion for Salon

Bush's disastrous legacy is now locked in place. The National Intelligence Estimate released last week, which stated that Iran stopped its nuclear program in 2003, is an explicit repudiation of the Bush doctrine and a preemptive strike against war with Iran. The professionals have struck back against the ideologues.

But in spite of the NIE findings, Bush and the wider U.S. establishment still share a view of Iran as evil and unapproachable. Until Washington realized that it would be better off engaging with the Iranian regime than demonizing it, its Mideast policy will continue to flounder along the failed pat of Bush's "war on terror." To avoid that outcome, it's going to have to be willing to question everything it thought it knew about Iran.

Congress and the media's so-what response to the Bush administration's outrageous attempt to cook the Iran intelligence does not inspire confidence. The Bush administration sat on the NIE for more than a year, trying to change the report to make it harsher on Iran, and all the while beating the drums for war. This fact has gone largely uncriticized, even though it's Iraq all over again. Bush has gotten a pass on his deception yet again for a simple reason: America views Iran as so innately dangerous, irrational and undeterrable that it doesn't care what Bush lied about what he knew and when he knew it.

In the eyes of the mainstream media, Congress and much of the public, Iran is the ultimate bad guy, a combination of al-Qaida and Adolf Hitler. This substratum of fear and hatred, some reasonable but much irrational, explains why leading Democrats, from Harry Reid to Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama, have reacted so tepidly to the NIE and Bush's obvious lies about it. More important, it explains why even a Democratic president could still pursue a self-destructive course of confrontation with Tehran.

Dickerson lays it to the State Dems

This is sheer brilliance. Brian Dickerson of the Free Press slaps around the idiocy of the Democratic leaders and their continued pursuit at Michigan voter disenfranchisement.

Salvaging the primary wreckage
The Detroit Free Press

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, Michigan's Democratic leaders have figured out a way to make participation in their party's Jan. 15 primary even more meaningless.

Most observers figured the Democrats' primary fiasco had reached bottom last month, when Democratic state lawmakers couldn't muster the votes to assure that all their party's presidential candidates would appear on the Michigan ballot.

But now, in a new voter guide unveiled this week, state party leaders are urging voters who support any of the four Democrats who've dropped out of the Michigan primary to cast their ballots for "Uncommitted," effectively ceding their voices to an unknown slate of electors to be named later in party caucuses across the state.

That's right, citizens: The same party regulators who collaborated to render Michigan's vote a meaningless footnote to the Democratic presidential contest want your proxy to do as they please at the party's nominating convention.

If that's your idea of participatory democracy, I'd suggest a write-in vote for Vladimir Putin.

So angry that I can hardly type...

The News has an article about the recently passed House energy bill.

What makes me so angry?

1. All Michigan Democrats voted for the bill, even though it will kill Michigan jobs and continue our one-state recession.
2. The authors claim that Americans would save $2 billion in gas taxes without mentioning that Americans would spend $4 billion a year in costs to implement.
3. The authors claim that consumers would save "as much as $1,000 a year" in fuel costs, without mentioning that they would spend between $5,000 and $7,000 more for a new car - or between $1,000 and $2,300 a year (plus interest payments) for a car.

What kills me about this is, first, the dishonesty. This is not going to provide net financial savings for consumers. There is not a single hybrid on the market which is a net financial savings over the same vehicle with a standard power train. Eliminating the ability of GM and Ford to sell the only vehicles they make a profit on will not mysteriously "save" the companies by "forcing" them to "get with the times."

I hate to break it to the hippies, but no one in this country buys a car based on mileage. Even those who buy hybrids generally do it based on cosmetic reasons and precious few Americans buy hybrids. Cars in America are sold based on power, performance, safety, and utility - all items which will need to be reduced in order to comply with these guidelines.

Secondly, the solution to emissions problems is being placed primarily on Michigan. Cars account for about 25% of emissions but are expected to account for 90% of the solution. I'm still waiting to see the bills demanding a reduction in the emissions from California beef farmers or mandating "no-till" farming, even though agriculture dwarfs the automotive sector in emissions and switching strictly to "no-till" farming would have the same net effect as raising average fuel economy to 50 mpg.

Either way, we in Michigan have been betrayed by members of our representation. The UAW, the Union workers, the employees and management at GM, Ford, and Chrysler have placed their faith in Michigan's Democrats to protect them. They then turned on them, stabbed them in the back, and are working actively (knowingly or not) to destroy the auto industry and further wreck Michigan's economy. Is it too much to ask that Michigan voters hold these individuals accountable? They are: John Dingell, Sander Levin, John Conyers, Dale Kildee, Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick, and Bart Stupak.

When the next round of Union layoffs comes around, know that these men and women actively worked to make it happen.

House OKs 35 mpg rule
But energy bill faces Senate, Bush opposition
The Detroit News

WASHINGTON - The U.S. House approved a landmark energy bill Thursday that increases fuel economy standards by 40 percent by 2020 but the measure faces substantial hurdles in the Senate and a likely veto by the White House.

"Democratic leaders in the House today pushed a partisan bill that members had very little opportunity to study before the vote, which they knew was unacceptable to the president and had no chance of being signed into law," the White House said. It is "a misguided approach and if it made it to the president's desk, he would veto it."

Raising fuel efficiency requirements to an average 35 miles per gallon for the total fleet of cars and light trucks built in the United States is the centerpiece of the bill approved by the House in a 235-181 vote.

The bill also requires the use of 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022 and forces utilities to produce 15 percent of electricity from renewable sources, such as wind and solar power. The measure will be funded by rescinding $21 billion in tax breaks, largely for oil companies.

What happened to fighting global warming?

This is why I hate the 'environmental' lobby: so-called environmental groups in Texas are desperately trying to derail the construction of wind farms. Too many environmentalists are just using environmental issues to try to push an anti-corporate, anti-capitalist agenda.

Coalition sues Land Office over wind farms
Groups, including King Ranch, want to require extensive environmental review of wind projects
The Austin American-Statesman

The famed King Ranch and a coalition of environmental groups sued Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson in federal court Tuesday, seeking to require extensive environmental review and public comment on two planned wind power projects along the Gulf Coast in Kenedy County.

The coalition, the Coastal Habitat Alliance, also sued over the wind project in state District Court in Travis County. That suit claims that the state's Public Utility Commission illegally denied the alliance's request to participate in permit hearings for the wind project's transmission time.

The lawsuits threaten to delay or stop the two massive wind projects, which could place more than 600 turbines on 60,000 acres near Laguna Madre, south of Corpus Christi. Part of the wind projects would place about 250 turbines just east of a portion of the sprawling King Ranch.

The federal suit, filed in U.S. Western District Court in Austin, said the turbines could kill untold numbers of migratory birds and damage the bay. It seeks to overturn the decision by the Texas General Land Office, which Patterson heads, to allow the projects to be built without environmental review or input fro the public. The suit contends that the Federal Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 and the Texas Coastal Management Program require a permit process for an energy generation facility on the coast, including wind farms.

Good news, bad news on Iran

By now you've likely heard about the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report and its statements on Iran. If you haven't, the short of it is this: the consensus among the U.S. intelligence agencies is that Iran had a nuclear weapons program but in the fall of 2003, about six months after the invasion of Iraq, Iran gave up their direct weapons program. MSNBC had a pretty good article yesterday on a summary, including some nuanced provisions. Key items from the report that MSNBC brings up:

• "Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons."
• "We do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons."
• "Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough HEU (highly enriched uranium) for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame."
• "Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so..."
• "We do not have sufficient intelligence to judge confidently whether Tehran is willing to maintain the halt of it's nuclear weapons program indefinitely..."

While there is good news that Iran decided to end their pursuit of nuclear weaponry right after the U.S. entered Iraq, deposed of the Baathist government, annihilated the Iraqi military, and forced the government either into hiding or prison, we need to keep a close eye on their uranium enrichment program. While we currently do not have to fear an eminent nuclear weapon, the idea of a radical theocratic regime hostile to the U.S. and desiring the eradication of Israel should give every Presidential candidate pause, even Sen. Barack Obama, who somehow thinks this isn't that bad of an option.

Capitol Hill tries to fathom Iran intelligence
Spy agencies can't say whether Tehran will halt nuclear effort indefinitely
MSNBC

WASHINGTON - Members of Congress tried to figure out Tuesday how to respond to the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released Monday which said that "Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program" in 2003.

The previous NIE, in 2005, said Iran was "determined to develop nuclear weapons."

On one level, the congressional reaction was hurt feelings and puzzlement that the Bush administration hadn't given a heads-up to key players in Congress.

Armed Services Committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Committee member Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., indicated by their comments that they felt crossed up.

"I was on a show Sunday on CNN and made some comments about Iran which I believed were true and basically are true, but I would have made them more conditional, more qualified had I known there was change coming," Levin told reporters.

GWOT is not WWII

John Derbyshire writes for the National Review, writing a blog tracking the election and political issues. In an recent post, he ponders:

"The folk who direct our armed forces have spent four and a half years struggling inconclusively with a rabble of fanatics who have no navy or air force, no armored units, no regular formations at all in fact, and munitions they operate with cell-phones and lengths of string. In three and a half years, our grandfathers turned two mighty, sprawling fascist empires to rubble. What am I missing here?"

I hate this line of argument. You hear this brain-dead idiocy from so many people these days - we only took three and a half years to win World War II, so why do we still have troops in Iraq after four and a half years? I hate to break it to you, but we still have troops in Japan and Germany and they faced resistance and civil unrest after the war. During World War II, we lost over 270,000 members of our armed forces and tens of millions of civilians died. In Iraq, we've lost barely more than 1/100 of that number in both service members and Iraqi civilians. Then, of course, there's the messy bit that World War II had been going on for several years before we got there. Oh, and don't forget how we ended up winning that war: we used nuclear weapons to annihilate two cities and kill a few hundred thousand civilians.

So, until we're willing to lose hundreds of thousands of soldiers, willing to kill millions of civilians, and willing to use such tactics such as firebombing Dresden or nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki while rounding up all American Arabs to put them into concentration camps, let's hold off on comparing the war in Iraq to World War II.

Brian Williams is not among the deep thinkers...

Time Magazine has some suggestions from a few people about who should be Person of the Year.

You have people like John Kerry (LCpl James Crosby, who is outreach coordinator for the Massachusetts Department of Veterans Services) and Aretha Franklin (Bill Cosby) who are making salient, informed, intelligent, well-thought out suggestions; you have Stephen King (Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears) who is making a very intelligent, astute observation about the situation of media in our country, and then you have Brian Williams making a ridiculously inane suggestions: Mother Earth. I'm not sure which is worse - that's he's making such an idiotic, mentally void statement or that he appears to think it's insightful in some way.

Would Sen. Clinton supporters vote for "Hillary Smith?"

Yet more bigoted, sexist drivel from a Hillary Clinton supporter.

Maybe Robin Gerber needs to step back and analyze her own prejudices. She honestly thinks that Hillary Clinton would be viewed differently if she was a man? Let's just set aside the straw man arguments that Ms. Gerber is postulating here, the waffling on abortion (a charge I've not personally heard) and on the war (a charge which rings very true) - her detractors are a little more concerned about things like the "vast right-wing conspiracy," her methods of dealing with the media, her former business dealings, the censorship of her notes and papers from her time as First Lady, the mysterious death of a former associate, the secrecy surrounding the Clinton White House, and the people who work for her engaged in personal destruction while working for her husband.

To address specifically the straw-man arguments and bigoted suggestions in the article. Hillary Clinton is neither effective nor qualified for the position. There is not a single piece of significant legislation she has enacted. She has never run a single thing in her life - never run a business, a city, a state, an Executive department, or even a legislative committee. She has accomplished exactly nothing as a legislator, as a First Lady, as a business manager, or as a lawyer. Further, the entire sum of her qualifications are 8 years in Congress. By that measure, there are - literally - hundreds of other lawmakers who are at least as qualified as she is.

The issue is, and always has been, that Hillary Clinton is an unsuitable candidate because of who she is - not that she happens to have two X chromosomes. Plenty of other female candidates would be much more suitable, most notably Christie Todd Whitman, Elizabeth Dole, Madeline Albright, Janet Napolitano, or Mary Jodi Rell. All of those women have actual accomplishment, have actual qualifications, and have actually led. Elizabeth Dole, in particular, is extremely well qualified.

The bottom line, however, is that the real question Ms. Gerber should be posting is not "would you vote for Hillary Clinton" but, rather, "would you vote for Hillary Smith."

Hillary should play her gender card to the hilt
NewsDay.com

Sen. Hillary Clinton has a trust problem. Polls in Iowa and New Hampshire show that voters give her very low marks for being trustworthy and honest. The media and her opponents have built and reinforced the charge.

But they're blaming the victim. Clinton is running for president in a sexist culture that persists in seeing strong, capable women as suspect.

It's not the voters and her opponents think Clinton's experienced and competent, and they don't like or trust her. It's that they think she's experienced and competent and that's why they don't like or trust her.

A study earlier this year by Catalyst, a nonprofit business research organization, showed the start dilemma that competent women face. In "the Double-bind Dilemma for Women in Leadership," women were criticized for being "too aggressive and self-promoting," but men with similar styles were praised for being direct.

Buy Michigan

Since 2002, 49 states in the nation have experienced job growth. Michigan is the only state which has lost jobs. We currently rank dead last in unemployment at 7.6%. That's significantly higher than Mississippi and more than twice the rate of Louisiana. For many this holiday season, Christmas and the New Year will be met with joblessness and poverty. As the holiday season approaches, we can all pitch in.

In the short term, please consider adopting a family through organizations such as Volunteers of America. The Michigan branch is sponsoring a holiday adopt-a-family program. Please consider the program. Even a small donation, $10 or $20, can make a significant difference.

For long-term help, please consider making a concerted effort to purchase primarily Michigan products. This will help spur job growth here in Michigan and many of these products are less expensive than their national counterparts. The organization Buy Michigan Now has a handy holiday guide on their website.

Please consider spending your holiday money in Michigan this holiday year.

The Final Betrayal

John Dingell has completed his sell-out of the American Auto Industry. The auto fuel economy standards will increase 40% over the next 13 years, which will cost the auto industry - and let's be honest, that means it will cost Michigan - $4 billion a year. Dingell has completely surrendered the entire battle without a fight, something I have been predicting for months. He wants to avoid a contentious debate in the House, he wants to avoid giving up the power he has in his party, and he has made it clear that his power and his party come before his constituents.

Lawmakers Reach Gas Mileage Boost Deal
Fox News

WASHINGTON - An agreements among congressional Democrats - including those from auto industry states - to support a 40 percent increase in vehicle fuel efficiency is likely to be the tonic needed to push energy legislation through Congress before Christmas.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., a longtime protector of the auto industry, settled their differences in an agreement late Friday on the fuel economy, or CAFE, issue, clearing the way for a House vote on a broader energy bill, probably on Wednesday.

Automakers would be required to meet an industry wide average of 35 miles per gallon for cars and light trucks, including SUVs, by 2020, the first increase by Congress in car fuel efficiency in 32 years.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada called the compromise "good news" and said he hoped to take up the legislation quickly after the House acts.

Slitting their own throats

One of Milton Friedman's biggest laments was when business interests forsook free-market capitalist and pro-business candidates and fund their opponents: the anti-capitalist, anti-business, anti-growth interests and their socialist candidates. He viewed this as the companies slitting their own throats. Were he alive, he'd likely feel that lament once again.

Banking on the idea that Democrats are going to come to power, corporate lobbyists are pouring money into Democratic candidates. Let's be very clear here, because obviously too many donors just don't understand this point: even if you can buy out a candidate's deeply held anti-capitalist convictions, you certainly can't do it for the few thousand dollars you're allowed to donate.

As bad as lobbying, special interests, and the entire funding process for American democracy, the issue is not candidates being bought. As someone who has been lobbied as a candidate, I can certainly tell you: successful lobbyists are not out trying to bribe people with different opinions; they're trying to identify and fund candidates who already share their opinions while shutting down candidates with differing opinions.

Business interests who think that donating ten thousand dollars to a congressional candidate will somehow cause the candidate to support their position only needs to look at John Dingell. Despite a quarter of his donations coming from energy and utility companies, he just negotiated an energy bill which would be devastating to those same energy and utility companies. Despite another quart of his donations coming from auto companies, the same energy bill includes mileage requirements which will be devastating to auto companies. If even John Dingell is willing to value personal political power over not only his donors but his constituents whose very livelihood depends on the success of the auto industry, why would companies think that candidates are willing to sacrifice their own personal political power within the party to serve their interests?

Business lobby increases pressure ahead of '08
Race is on ahead of presumed change in administration
The New York Times

WASHINGTON - Business lobbyists, nervously anticipating Democratic gains in next year's elections, are racing to secure final approval for a wide range of health, safety, labor and economic rules, in the belief that they can get better deals from the Bush administration than from its successor.

Hoping to lock in policies back by a pro-business administration, poultry farmers are seeking an exception from the smelly fumes produced by tons of chicken manure. Businesses are lobbying the Bush administration to roll back rules that let employees take time off for family needs and medical problems. And electric power companies are pushing the government to relax pollution-control requirements.

"There's a growing sense, a growing probability, that the next administration could be Democratic," said Craig L. Fuller, executive vice president of Apco Worldwide, a lobbying and public relations firm, who was a White House official in the Reagan administration. "Corporate executives, trade associations and lobbying firms have begun to recalibrate their strategies."

Democrats: Every vote must count!

The Democrats have finally, officially voted to disenfranchise the voters of Michigan. Not only will the Democratic Presidential contenders not campaign in Michigan, not only have half of them pulled out of the race, but the Democratic National Convention has now officially made it clear that no Michigan vote will count.

Michigan Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer apparently expects that the Democratic presidential nominee will make sure that Michigan's delegates will be counted at the convention. If it's a close race, however, and Michigan's delegates will make the difference - don't count on democracy to win out.

Democrats punish Michigan for early primary
MSNBC News

VIENNA, Va. - Democratic leaders voted Saturday to strip Michigan of all its delegates to the national convention next year as punishment for scheduling an early presidential primary in violation of party rules.

Michigan, with 156 delegates, has scheduled a Jan. 15 primary. Democratic Party rules prohibit states other than Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina from holding nominating contests before Feb. 5.

Florida was hit with a similar penalty in August for scheduling a Jan. 29 primary.

Michigan officials anticipated the action by the Democratic National Committee's rules panel. But Michigan Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer said before the vote that he didn't think the delegates would be lost for good. He expects the Democratic presidential nominee will insist the state's delegates be seated at the convention.

A mixed weekend for democracy

Jubilant news in our hemisphere, as Chavez's attempts to stack the vote in Venezuela to make him dictator for life have failed. Unfortunately, in the Eastern hemisphere, Putin's perversion of democracy has kept his party in charge of the government.

Chavez was making the largest push for more power, trying to institute a government which would allow him to have unilateral control over choosing election officials, allow him to stand as "President" indefinitely, and allow him unilateral control to declare states of emergency, which would give him the ability to stridently curb civil rights.

Putin's win was a perversion of democracy, as his government imprisoned dissidents and opposition leaders, bribed and threatened to get votes, and limited the access available to election monitors. The win will keep his party in power but he will be forced to step down as President and instead take a position as Prime Minister - a much weaker post in Russia. The only slight positive news is that this opens the opportunity for a strong, democracy-focused candidate to take over the Presidency.

Chavez: Plan may have been too ambitious
Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela - Humbled by his first electoral defeat, President Hugo Chavez said Monday he may have been too ambitious in asking voters to let him stand indefinitely for re-election and endorse a huge leap to a socialist state.

"I understand and accept that the proposal I made was quite profound and intense," he said after voters narrowly rejected the sweeping constitutional reform by 51 percent to 49 percent."

Opposition activists were ecstatic as the results were announced shortly after midnight - with 88 percent of the vote counted, the trend was declared irreversible by elections council chief Tibisay Lucena.

Some shed tears. Others began chanting: "And now he's going away."

and...

Monitors say Russian vote unfair
Associated Press

MOSCOW - Foreign election observers and Russian opposition groups accused authorities Monday of manipulating a sweeping parliamentary victory for the party of President Vladimir Putin, who hailed the vote as a validation of his leadership.

"Of course, it's a sign of trust," Putin said in televised remarks. "Russians will never allow the nation to take a destructive path, as happened in some other ex-Soviet nations."

The victory of the United Russia party sets the state for Putin to stay in charge as a "national leader" even after he steps down as president next spring because of term limits.

The presidential candidate to be named by his party this month is expected to be a figurehead who would take orders from Putin or even step down early to let Putin regain his seat. Any candidate who has Putin support could be expected to win easily amid tight Kremlin's control over media and official harassment of opposition groups.

CNN Republican Debate

Regarding the controversy over the unscreened (and biased) questioners on the CNN Republican debate Wednesday night, my quick pair of pennies:

1¢: I tend to value the substance of the question more than the questioner. I like that they faced hard questions, although I wished that when the Democrats debated in the same format, they had the same quality questions.

2¢: My understanding of this debate's format was that these were supposed to be members of the American Public at the very least, preferentially undecided likely Republican voters and caucus goers. Instead, we get questions from activists in CAIR, LGBT Americans for Hillary, United Steelworkers of America, and about another half dozen groups. This should not have been the "CNN/Special Interest Debate." We already have too many problems in this country with special interests, we don't need CNN giving them special access to Presidential candidates.

CNN hit for planted questions
The Washington Times

CNN intended for political sparks to fly during Wednesday's Republican presidential debate, but outrage and accusations of partisanship were directed at the network instead.

The backlash started after it turned out that a homosexual retired soldier asking about "don't ask, don't tell" has an affiliation with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign. The network was forced to apologize and scrubbed the exchange from its repeat of the two-hour debate, even though the Clinton campaign says retired Brig. Gen. Keith H. Kerr was not acting on behalf of the Democratic presidential front-runner.

But things spiraled downward for CNN yesterday as bloggers - a more natural audience for a debate co-hosted by YouTube - held each questioner under a magnifying glass and found anti-Republican links ranging fro the Council on American-Islamic Relations to a pro-Democratic labor union. The network defended its choice of questioners and noted that it drew 5 million viewers - the most-watched primary debate every.

Reports flew on the Internet that at least nine of the 34 questions posed via YouTube videos - on topics ranging from corn subsidies to Social Security reform - came from voters who have ties to Democrats or a vested interest in asking the Republicans to go on record.

"Would it have killed CNN to Google some of these people?" conservative blogger Jason Coleman asked.

White guilt is positive?

A University of Texas at Austin press release came out earlier this month, and was mentioned in yesterday's Opinion Journal. The University studied a method of teaching children about racism and concluded that teaching both white and black children about racism. They conclude: "Challenging the idea that racism education could be harmful to students, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin found the results of learning about historical racism are primarily positive." What's odd, though, is this statement: "White children whose lessons included information on discrimination showed more defensiveness, had more racial guilt (if they were older than 7) and were less likely to accept stereotypical views about African Americans."

I agree with James Taranto over at Opinion Journal. It's very odd that they talk about racial guilt and personal defensiveness among white children learning these and don't talk about how that balances against the positive effects. This leads to one of two possibilities:

1. They consider "white guilt" to be a positive thing; or,
2. They consider "white guilt" to be an unavoidable consequence of education but it is balanced by fighting stereotypes.

Either way, further explanation of this in the press release would be very helpful.

White Children More Positive Toward Blacks
After Learning About Racism, Study Shows
The University of Texas at Austin

AUSTIN, Texas -- Challenging the idea that racism education could be harmful to students, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin found the results of learning about historical racism are primarily positive. The study appears in the November/December issue of the journal Child Development.

Psychologists Rebecca Bigler and Julie Milligan Hughes found white children who received history lessons about discrimination against famous African Americans had significantly more positive attitudes toward African Americans than those who received lessons with no mention of racism. African-American children who learned about racism did not differ in their racial attitudes from those who heard lessons that omitted the racism information, the study showed.

"There is a considerable debate about when and how children should be taught about racism," says Bigler, director of the university's Gender and Racial Attitudes Lab. "But little research has examined elementary-school-aged children's cognitive and emotional reactions to such lessons."

If even John Murtha says we're winning...

If even Rep. John Murtha is willing to admit that we're winning, then where do the rabid anti-war Democrats - and Senator Clinton - get off claiming once again that we're losing? More importantly, if we're winning then why are the Democrats so dedicated to either cutting off troop funding or forcing us to surrender?

Murtha finds military progress in trip to Iraq
Warns that Iraqis must do more for their own security
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. John Murtha today said he saw signs of military progress during a brief trip to Iraq last week, but he warned that Iraqis need to play a larger role in providing their own security and the Bush administration still must develop an exit strategy.

"I think the 'surge' is working," the Democrats said in a videoconference from his Johnstown office, describing the president's decision to commit more than 20,000 additional combat troops this year. But the Iraqis "have got to take care of themselves."

Violence has dropped significantly in recent months, but Mr. Murtha said he was most encouraged by changes in the once-volatile Anbar province, where locals have started working closely with U.S. forces to isolate insurgents linked to Al Qaeda.

He said Iraqis need to duplicate that success at the national level, but the central government in Baghdad is "dysfunctional."

Funniest story of the day...

This is one of the most idiotic stories I've recently read.

Tom Baldwin of The Times of London accused Matt Drudge of conspiring with Hillary Clinton to bolster her campaign while taking cheap shots at The Times of London.

Could you ever imagine Matt Drudge trying to help out Hillary Clinton? Hasn't The Times of London heard of Monica Lewinski? Could you ever imagine Hillary Clinton, of all people, looking to Matt Drudge as an ally?

It must be the guilt, fermenting within him, of directly causing the impeachment of our country's best President (well, at least the best President that was in office when Clinton was impeached).

Even better - this is an author who is defending his paper against a perceived accusation of spreading innuendo. How does this author mount a defense? By spreading innuendo: "Why would a 'Hillary confidante' do such a thing? The mind boggles. Could it be to provide cover for other - alleged - activities at Camp Clinton and its surrounding outposts?"

History according to a "Hillary confidante" (and Matt Drudge)
The Times of London

My collegue, Tim Reid, travelled down to South Carolina last week where he soon found himself up to his ankles in what he described as the "foulest swamp of electoral dirty tricks in America".

Tim wrote about some of the smears and innuendos already floating by in the Palmetto state. His second paragraph reported some of the extraordinary allegations being spread about Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Barack Obama, Fred Thompson and, oh yes, Hillary Clinton.

The purpose of this report (read it for yourselves) was not to suggest these claims were true, but to provide a measure of their nasty. For instance, I'm pretty sure Obama is not a "Muslim extremist".

Tim's article was duly picked up on Thursday by the Drudge Report and that, we thought was that.

The rich are getting poorer; the poor are getting richer

Thomas Sowell points out the secret truth that the Liberal Elite know too well but want to keep the masses from finding out: the Class War has been waged based on faulty intelligence.
For my entire life, the Democrats and the Liberal Elite in particular have been yelling loudly about "income inequality" and yammering nonsense about the "rich getting richer while the poor getting poorer." Never mind that the "poor" in America are largely food-secure, sheltered families with unimpeded access to plumbing, electricity, heat, cable television, and cellular phones. The Liberal Elite lament loudly that the "rich" are becoming more dominant. Of course, the Liberal Elite is large populated with ridiculously wealthy individuals such as Al Gore, John Kerry, and John Edwards, so they know a thing or two about arranging statistics to exclude themselves from the discussions.

However, Sowell points to a recent IRS study which tracks individual, not incoming bands, and sees how these individuals have progressed over ten years. The results? Half of those in the top 1% 10 years ago, and three quarters of those in the top 1/100th of 1% then, are not in those respective classes now. He does not point out more specifically that those in the bottom fifth of income have had their incomes doubled on average during that time period even after inflation is factored in.

What does this mean? America remains the one place in the world where someone like Bill Clinton or John Edwards can go from nothing to everything, built it himself most easily. America has the most opportunity to allow those in the bottom to work their way up, most opportunity for those at the top to fall, and we must resist the Liberal Elite's attempts at forming a dependant underclass which locks those within it in perpetual near-poverty.

That "Top One Percent"
Not an enduring class.
National Review Online

People who are in the top one percent in income receive far more than one percent of the attention in the media. Even aside from miscellaneous celebrity bimbos, the top one percent attracts all sorts of hand-wringing and finger-pointing.

A recent column by Anna Quindlen in Newsweek (or is that Newsweak?) laments that "the share of the nation's income going to the top 1 percent is at it's highest level since 1928."

Who are those top one percent? For those who would like to join them, the question is: How can you do that?

The second question is easy to answer. Virtually anyone who owns a home in San Francisco, no matter how modest that person's income may be, can join the top one percent instantly just by selling their house.

But that's only good for once year, you may say. What if they don't have another house to sell next year?

Well, they won't be in the top one percent again next year, will they? But that's not unusual.

Quote of the Day

"Those of you who live in Iowa, you have this extraordinary privilege. You are going to decide, more than probably any other American who the next president is going to be, who the next leader of the free world is going to be -- So I hope you all decide to take advantage of this opportunity."

- Senator Barack Obama, speaking to a crowd in Iowa.

Note also that Barack Obama has cooperated with the DNC's efforts to disenfranchise the voters in Michigan and Florida, going so far as to removing his name from the Michigan primary ballots. What concerns me the most about Barack Obama is that he seems to exemplify the Liberal Elite position: choosing the next leader of our country is a "privilege" which is dolled out by the powerful to certain special groups at the exclusion of others; voting is not a right to the Liberal Elite or to Barack Obama; it is a "privilege" which is allocated in "extraordinary" fashion, with differing weights given to different votes based on arbitrary historical esotary, the whims of the powerful, or whatever special interest happens to have either the ear or the pocketbook of the decision-makers.

Wikipedia's bias?

On Wikipedia, I noticed that the blog entry for "Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction" had a factual error. It indicated that no weapons were found after the invasion. I edited this to correct the entry, using the declassified report of chemical weapons found in Iraq from the U.S. Congress released last year. I changed it to state that a small number of pre-1991 weapons had been found, including mustard gas and sarin nerve gas and the artillery shells used to deliver these weapons. I used an electronic copy of the U.S. Congressional report as a source, and sourced the entry correctly. The edit has been removed twice with a threat to ban me from the site.

Hitch is again off his rocker

I'm generally a fan of Christopher Hitchens' writing. Even when he's writing about something that I stridently disagree with, he usually does so with intelligence, thoughtful purpose, and passion. Today's article published in Slate, however, has little of that. Mr. Hitchens questions why Mitt Romney shouldn't be asked about his faith and questions Gov. Romney's assertion that it is un-American to bring up faith as a qualification for the office of President.

The U.S. Constitution is very clear on the issue and answers both questions flawlessly: Article VI states that "...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." That does include Mormonism, no matter how personally repugnant Mr. HItchens may consider its tenants or how fickle he considers their positions. He goes on to slander the religion by comparing it to the KKK and to the Nation of Islam, both groups which have religious identities but not religions in their own right.

What's particularly surprising about the issue is that Mr. Hitchens' own religious views as an atheist would be more objectionable to most voters that Gov. Romney's views as a Mormon. We live in a nation where voters would rather have a fundamentalist Muslim or a Mormon as President than an atheist. Instead of trying to stir up religious persecution of a minority group that he finds offensive, he should shut up so as not to stir up further persecution of individuals with whom he shares ideology.

Mitt the Mormon
Why Romney Needs To Talk About His Faith
Fighting Words for Slate

Mitt Romney appears to think that, in respect of the bizarre beliefs of his church, he has come up with a twofer response. Not only can he decline to answer questions about these beliefs, he can also reap additional benefit from complaining that people keep asking him about them. In a video response of revolting sanctimony and self-pity last week, he responded to some allegedly anti-Mormon "push pull" calls in Iowa and New Hampshire by saying that it was "un-American" to bring up his "faith," especially "at a time when we are preparing for Thanksgiving," whatever that had to do with it. Additional interest is lent to this evasive tactic by the very well-argued case, made by Mark Hemmingway in National Review Online, that it was actually the Romney campaign that had initiated the ant-Mormon push-poll calls in the first place! What's that? A threefer? Let me count the ways: You encourage the raising of an awkward question in such a way as to make it seem illegitimate. You then strike a hurt attitude and say that you are being persecuted for your faith. This, in turn, discourages other reporters from raising the question. Yes, that's a three card monte.

According to Byron York, who has been riding around with Romney for National Review, it's working, as well. Most journalists have tacitly agreed that it's off-limits to ask the former governor about the tenents of the Mormon cult. Nor do they get much luck if they do ask: When Rob Schieffer of Face the Nation inquired whether Mormons believe that the Garden of Eden is or was or will be in the great state of Missouri, he was told by Romney to go ask the Mormons! However, we do have the governor in an off-guard moment in Iowa, saying that "The [Mormon] Church says that Christ appears and splits the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. ...And then, over a thousand years of the millennium, that the world is reigned in two places, Jerusalem and Missouri. ...The law will come from Missouri, and the other will be from Jerusalem."

It ought to be borne in mind that Romney is not a mere rank-and-file Mormon. His family is, and has been for generations, part of the dynastic leadership of the mad cult invented by the convicted fraud Joseph Smith. It is not just legitimate that he be asked about the beliefs that he has not just held, but has caused to be spread and caused to be inculcated into children. It is essential. Here is the most salient reason: Until 1978, the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was an officially racist organization. Mitt Romney was an adult in 1978. We need to hear how he justified this to himself, and we need to hear his self-criticism, if he should chance to have one.

A win for democracy in Michigan...

The Michigan Supreme Court has reinstated Michigan's January 15th primary.

Michigan court OKs early primary
USA Today

LANSING, Mich. -- Michigan's Jan. 15 presidential primary is a go again.

Overturning a pair of lower court rulings, a majority of the state Supreme Court Wednesday morning found the law setting the primary date and granting exclusive access to voter lists from it to the Democratic and Republican parties was not unconstitutional.

The 4-3 decision, after a string of setbacks for the seemingly star-crossed election, means the vote can be held as planned.

State election officials had said they needed to know the primary's fate by noon Wednesday to have time to prepare and deliver absentee ballots.

The court majority said reserving lists of voters (sorted by which primary ballot is chosen at the polls) to the two parties was within the authority of the Legislation and governor when they approved the primary bill last summer.

San Francisco, sanctuary city for identify thiefs

San Francisco is issuing ID cards to any individual who lives in the city. These would be usable for a variety of services and would exclude gender identification, would be issued without regard to legal immigration status, and would require only a very simple determination of residence such as a bill. According to some reports, they may even exclude photographs. They would not be matched with legal name identifications, so even if you change your name legally you could obtain an id with your old name or even with a completely different, made-up name.

What's really upsetting about this has to do with how it will affect banking. I have serious issues with ID cards that are accepted for banking which:

1. Are so easy to obtain that you only need a phone bill to obtain one.
2. Do not have a photograph.
3. Do not match the name on state issued ID cards.
4. Are issued to individuals who the Federal government has not had a chance to ensure are not terrorists or drug smugglers.
5. Are not subjected to ensuring that the name matches the legal name of the card holder.

This is such a ridiculously large hole in financial protections afforded to banks that it's shocking. The ability for con artists, identity thieves, and defrauders to operate easily in San Francisco leads one to expect massive increases in white collar crime.

San Fransisco approves ID cards that exclude gender
USA Today

Next year, San Francisco will issue municipal identifications cards showing the usual name, birthday, and photo.

What the card won't include: gender.

When other cities considered issuing ID cards without regard to legal status, the debate was over illegal immigrants. In San Francisco, where the Board of Supervisors approved such an ID on Tuesday, transgender activists added gender to the discussion.

"Transgender" is a broad term for people who do not identify with their birth sex. Those who refer to themselves as transgender include cross-dressers and transsexuals.

Have they taken the final step?

The budget battle between the Democrats and the Administration over funding has moved to the point of ridiculousness. It's a disgusting shame that people like Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, and Harry Reid are not only playing politics with funding the troops but are accusing the Administration of doing the same.

In fact, it's going a step further. The new stance of the Democrats is that the only two options for the Administration are either engaging in operations in Iraq absent of funding or precipitously, immediately retreating just now as the war has moved fully into a wind-down victory stage. What is particularly galling is that the Democrats seem to have moved beyond their immoral use of the troops as political pawns, moved beyond merely hoping that the U.S. loses the war in Iraq but now appear to be actively working to ensure our defeat.

Beyond unacceptable, beyond immoral, if the Democrats do not back down from this push towards defeat for the troops, back down from their attempts to deny funding for essential war operations, back down from their desire to turn victory into defeat then they are clearly and unambiguously operating at odds with the country. Holding to these attempts to ensure defeat is not patriotic descent. It is treason.

Democrats: Don't do this. Support the troops. Give them the money they need to be safe. Let them stay in Iraq to complete the job they're so close to completing. You say that you're patriotic. If so, stop using the troops as pawns; stop trying to push for our country's defeat. We are a nation at war. Start acting like it.

Dems Says Pentagon Using Scare Tactics
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - In their latest tussle with the White House on the Iraq war, two leading House Democrats said Tuesday the Pentagon was using scare tactics to try to goad Congress into passing another war spending bill.

And Reps. David Obey and John Murtha said they won't budge. Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and Murtha, D-Pa., head of the panel's Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, said they won't support more money for the war this year unless President Bush accepts a timetable for troop withdrawals.

Last week, the House passed a $50 billion bill that would keep operations afloat for several more months, but sets a goal of bringing most troops home by December 2008. After Bush threatened to veto the measure, Senate Republicans blocked it.

"If the president wants that $50 billion released, all he has to do is to call the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, and ask him to stop blocking it," Obey told reporters.

Yellow journalism is alive and well

The Independent (a London, U.K. based newspaper) reports that scientists there are about 10 years away from curing mitochondrial disease by merging the egg of one woman with mitochondria from a second woman, then using these to merge with a sperm to create an embryo. The Independent, in one of the most ridiculous cases of yellow journalism I've seen outside of the New York Time's "Al Qaeda in Iraq" euphemism*, calls this "Babies made by cloning techniques from the DNA of two women could be born within 10 years as ministers prepare to give the green light for embryos produced by biological material from three 'parents'."

Oh, come on. This has nothing to do with cloning, genetic alteration, or even DNA. They're talking about taking mitochondria; these aren't part of the human DNA. They're a separate organism that complex life has absorbed hundreds of millions of years ago. This has nothing at all to do with cloning or genes. It's horrifyingly irresponsible for the writer of this article to get such a ridiculously basic biological fact wrong.

*The New York Times requires its reports to refer to Al Qaeda in Iraq as "Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is led by foreigners" every time they refer to the group, despite the fact that it was created by a Jordanian and consists principally of Saudis, Jordanians, Pakistanis, and Syrians (thus, not "homegrown") and pledges allegiance to (and is accepted by) Osama bin Laden. They do this principally to discredit the U.S. operations in Iraq, also referring to action there as "occupation" even though the U.S. is there at the behest of a democratically elected government, is operating under U.N. Security Council resolutions, and does not control the government.

The cloning revolution: Ministers to back controversial change to law
The Independent

Babies made by cloning techniques from the DNA of two women could be born within 10 years as ministers prepare to give the green light for embryos produced by biological material from three "parents". A new law, to be debated in the House of Commons tomorrow, opens the door for such hybrid eggs to be implanted in women.

The novel procedure is designed to find a cure for mitochondrial disease, a range of life-threatening conditions that affect one in 10,000 people.

The development has delighted scientists who say it will usher in a new wave of groundbreaking genetic research that could prevent thousands of children from being born with debilitating diseases.

But Christian groups and campaigners concerned about developments in human genetics have reacted with horror at what they see as the beginning of human cloning and the approval of "Frankenstein science."

The novel procedure is designed to find a cure for mitochondrial disease, a range of life-threatening conditions that affect one in 10,000 people.

Squander your water like this and don't ask for ours

In Arizona, a developer is planning to create a 125-acre water park in the middle of the desert. What's particularly galling about this is two-fold: 1) This adds to the massive number of golf courses which waste water, throwing it up into the atmosphere instead of using it for drinking water, crop irrigation, or erosion management; 2) Arizona's congressional representation have a long history of pushing for "nationalizing" water resources, code-works for diverting water from the Great Lakes to Arizona.

Thankfully, the representation of the Great Lakes states have been very clear about opposing diversion of Great Lakes water; however, a time may come in the future where this sort of ridiculous waste will lead the rest of the nation to divert water from the upper-Midwest to the rest of the nation. We must immediately move to make this legal.

Huge Water Park Planned for Ariz. Desert
Developers Plan Massive Water Park in Arizona Desert; Project Would Use 100M Gallons a Year
ABC News

MESA, Ariz. (AP) - By tapping rivers and sucking water from deep underground, developers have covered Arizona with carpets of Bermuda grass and dotted the parched landscape with swimming pools, golf courses and lakeshore homes.

Now another ambitious project is in the works: A massive new water park that would offer surf-sized waves, snorkeling, scuba diving and kayaking - all in a bone-dry region that gets just 8 inches of rain a year.

"It's about delivering a sport that's not typically available in an urban environment," said Richard Mladick, a Mesa real-estate developer who persuaded business leaders in suburban Mesa to support the proposal called the Waveyard.

Artists' drawings of the park show surfers gliding through waves that crash onto a sandy beach and kayakers navigating the whitecaps of a wide, rolling river. Families watch the action from beneath picnic umbrellas. If constructed, the park would use as much as 100 million gallons of groundwater a year.

Mladick, 39, said he wanted to create the kind of lush environment he remembers from growing up in Virginia Beach, Va., and surfing in Morocco, Indonesia, Hawaii, and Brazil.

"I couldn't imagine raising my kids in an environment where they wouldn't have the opportunity to grow up being passionate about the same sports that I grew up being passionate about," he said.

The APs problems with photographers

A terrorist posing as a photographer and infiltrating the AP is set to be charged with terrorism in an Iraqi court, according to AFP reports. He was captured at his home with bomb-making materials, insurgent propaganda, and surveillance photographs of military installations.

The problem with the situation is the AFP's view of the situation as a matter of criminal behavior, they say he "has been held for more than 19 months without charges in US military custody." The U.S. government has allowed the ridiculous mindset that individuals captured on the field of battle somehow are criminal defendants. They are not. They are militarty combatants. The best resolution is for the U.S. government to reclassify these individuals as prisoners of war, even though they are correctly classified as unlawful combatants. By granting them POW status in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, we can avoid the messy complication of the media expecting that these people will be dealth with as criminals instead of under the Geneva Conventions as combatants.

We need to make this very clear distinction: terrorism is an illegal act of war. It is not a criminal offense. We must treat these people as POWs first and war criminals second and must avoid using the criminal system. We tried for years to treat terrorism as a police and criminal matters, with horrible consequences.

US military accuses AP photographer of being "terrorist media operative"
AFP

The US military has filed a formal complaint with an Iraqi criminal court accusing a detained, award-winning Associated Press photographer of being a "terrorist media operative," the Pentagon said Monday.

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said the military made the complaint about Bilal Hussein, who has been held for more than 19 months without charges in US military custody, to Iraq's Central Criminal Court.

"We believe Bilal Hussein was a terrorist media operative who infiltrated the AP," he said. "MNF-I possesses convincing and irrefutable evidence that Bilal Hussein is a threat to security and stability as a link to insurgent activity."

Morrell said an investigative hearing into the case by the court is scheduled to begin on or after November 28.

Why isn't this obvious?

Nancy Pelosi is attempting to block legislation to allow companies to require that their employees speak a common language. I frankly have no idea how anyone could possibly have a problem with this. The ability to communicate within a company is essential. How can you work with someone if you don't speak the same language? Were I to get a job for Volkswagen and the requirement was that I speak German, then I'd sure as hell better learn German. Communication within a company is essential. Trying to require companies to hire employees who can't communicate with each other is ridiculous.

Mi Casa, Su Casa
Nancy Pelosi tries to force the Salvation Army to hire people who can't speak English
Opinion Journal for The Wall Street Journal

It's been less than a week since New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Gov. Eliot Spitzer had to climb down from their support of driver's licenses for illegal aliens. Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has moved to kill an amendment that would protect employers from federal lawsuits for requiring their workers to speak English. Among the employers targeted by such lawsuits: The Salvation Army.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, a moderate Republican from Tennessee, is dumbstruck that legislation he views as simple common sense would be blocked. He noted that the full Senate passed his amendment to shield the Salvation Army by 75-19 last month, and the House followed suit with a 218-186 vote last month. "I cannot imagine that the framers of the 1964 Civil Rights Act intended to say that it's discrimination for a shoe shop owner to say to his or her employee, 'I want you to be able to speak America's common language on the job,'" he told the Senate last Thursday.

But that's exactly what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is trying to do. In March the EEOC sued the Salvation Army because its thrift store in Framingham, Mass., required its employees to speak English on the job. The requirement was clearly posted and employees were given a year to learn the language. The EEOC claimed the store had fired two Hispanic employees for continuing to speak Spanish on the job. It said that the firings violated the law because the English-only policy was not "relevant" to job performance or safety.

"If it's not relevant, it is discriminatory, it is gratuitous, it is subterfuge to discriminate against people based on national origin," says Rep. Charles Gonzalez of Texas, one of several Hispanic Democrats in the House who threatened to block Ms. Pelosi's attempts to curtail the Alternative Minimum Tax unless she killed the Alexander amendment.

Bring them here!

Daniel Byman, writing for Slate, calls for the U.S. to dramatically expand its acceptance of Iraqi immigrants. He bases this on two justifications: morality and strategic interest. Both are pretty straightforward. As we invaded the country, it is our responsibility to deal with its ramifications. The displacement of Iraqis has the potential to create the sort of discontent that the displacement of Palestinians has caused.

I'd like to add a third criteria: an economic one. The people of Iraq tend to be well educated and secular, particularly those who have been displaced. We should very easily to be able to attract Iraqi engineers, doctors, nurses, and scientists in addition to providing for humanitarian and strategic interest concerns. Bringing in highly qualified immigrants will be a boon for our nation, particularly here in Detroit where we have the ability to acclimate Arab immigrants and the desperate need for hard-working, well-educated individuals willing to work to build up our local economy.

The Next Phase of the Iraq War
Why We Must Welcome Thousands of Iraqi Refugees To The United States
Foreigners for Slate

Rarely do morality and strategy come together in the Middle East - particularly in the case of Iraq. Yet there is one area where the right thing to do for Iraq is also the best option for America's long-term interests: preventing the Iraqi refugee crisis from further destabilizing the region. So far, the debate in the United States has focused on the fates of Iraqis who have worked with U.S. diplomats and soldiers, as translators, and so on. Although these individuals are owed a special debt, our responsibility does not end there. The United States should accept tens of thousands of refugees and must encourage other major powers to do the same. Washington should also initiate a program to boost the capacity of neighboring states to host refugees and prevent them from becoming a source of instability.

Although casualty reports dominate the headlines, Iraq is also suffering a staggering exodus of refugees. More than 2 million Iraqis - from a total population of 27 million - have fled the chaos, and the numbers grow every day. (Even more Iraqis have fled their homes but have resettled in other parts of Iraq, thus technically avoiding the label "refugee.") So far, the migrants have clustered in nations close to Iraq, particularly in Syria and Jordan. The U.S. efforts to help these refugees have ranged from feeble to nonexistent. The United States has so far taken in barely more than 1,000 refugees but will reportedly boost this to 12,000 next year: a significant percentage increase on the surface but only when the absurdly low base rate is considered.

It is both morally abhorrent and strategically ill-advised to abandon these refugees. To state the obvious, the U.S. failure to establish security in Iraq drove them to leave their homes. Literally millions of people have fled under horrific circumstances, and the United States bears much of that responsibility. Americans may, understandably, say that they can no longer sacrifice to bring stability to Iraq, but that does not excuse us from the broader duty to help those who continue to suffer.

Putting aside our moral responsibility, the United States needs to take in refugees to offset significant strategic risks. The 1948 Israeli war of independence produced more than 700,000 refugees. Almost 60 years later, the region still suffers from the failure to solve this refugee problem. The Palestinian refugee crisis contributed to wars between Israel and its neighbors in 1956, 1967, 1982, as well as to Israel's constant terrorism problem.

Few Iraqi refugees are incorporated into the nations that are hosting them, but there is no prospect that they will return to Iraq in large numbers in the near future. It would not be surprising if, 20 years from now, millions of Iraqis still lived outside their home country. In other words, this problem will not disappear if we ignore it.

A new paradigm

An interesting article from The Detroit Free Press this morning points out an interesting twist to the new UAW agreements with Ford and GM. With the shift of retiree health care from being a corporate responsibility to being a responsibility of a trust being managed by the UAW, the two companies gave the UAW the ability to convert debt owned by Ford and GM to the trusts into stock in the company. This gives the UAW the potential to own 16% of GM and 15% of Ford.

The potential for this is staggering: instead of an adversarial relationship, this would turn GM and Ford into a company which is largely employee-owned; basically the world's two biggest co-op companies. This would help hasten the company towards the new paradigm they need for survival: cooperation between the Union and the companies in order to beat back the non-Union foreign automakers, the Democrats trying to give amnesty to illegals and dramatically increase CAFE standards, and to reach broadly into new foreign markets and take control of the North American market once again.

UAW's new role: Shareholder
Health trust could own key chunks of Ford, GM
The Detroit Free Press

The UAW, traditionally a mighty force in the struggle of Labor against Capital, could be on the brink of a new role: Detroit's biggest stockholder.

New 4-year labor agreements that UAW members ratified with the Detroit automakers shift retiree health costs to an independent trust under the auspices of the union, which could take control of hundreds of millions of shares of General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. The fact that the UAW could virtually be holding almost one-sixth of the equity in the nation's two biggest automakers could drive profound changes in the way the union thinks and acts, experts say.

"Equity as part of the VEBA does bring the UAW membership into being an investor group," said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor.

"What we are witnessing is the transformation from a confrontational way of working to one of collaboration, which is absolutely necessary."

GM = "Green Motors?"

A Detroit Free Press article this morning reports that the Chevrolet Tahoe hybrid has won the Green Car of the Year award at the L.A. auto show. Of the five finalists, three were GM vehicles - the Tahoe, the Saturn Aura Hybrid, and the Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid. GM appears to be abandoning the small-car hybrid market to Toyota in order to concentrate on midsize cars, trucks, and SUVs. Being the first to market with a full-size hybrid SUV (the Tahoe) combined with their other hybrid products (the Saturn VUE, Aura, and Malibu) should help encourage consumers on the coasts to give GM a try once again. Here's to hoping that this helps the company's - and Michigan's - turnaround.

Green In A Big Way
Hybrid Tahoe's honor helps Chevy redo image
The Detroit Free Press

LOS ANGELES - Chevrolet's new campaign to establish itself as an environmentally friendly brand got an early endorsement when its Tahoe hybrid full-size SUV was named Green Car of the Year at the Los Angeles Auto Show on Thursday.

The hybrid Tahoe is a revolutionary vehicle that combines the room and capabilities SUV owners need with a 50% increase in city fuel economy to 21 m.p.g., Green Car Journal editor and publisher Ron Cogan said. The hybrid is to go on sale early next year. No price has been set.

"This is a milestone in many respects", he said. "People don't think green when SUVs are concerned and generally for good reason. Chevrolet's Tahoe hybrid changes this dynamic."

The Tahoe's win capped a strong performance for General Motors, which also placed its Saturn Aura and Chevrolet Malibu hybrid midsize sedans among the five finalists. The Nissan Altima sedan and Mazda Tribute SUV were the other finalists for the award, which is given by the editors of Green Car Journal and a panel of outside judges that includes performance-car legend Carroll Shelby and undersea explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau.

Reassuring developments?

The IAEA has released a report stating that Iran is being generally truthful about their nuclear program. What is still troubling about the entire issue, however, is that there is little difference between refining uranium for power production use and refining it for military use. The EU, Russia, and the U.S. have offered to construct reactors for Iran and supply them with non-weapon use nuclear fuel but Iran has demurred; they do not trust having foreign countries in control of their energy resources.

What makes this particularly frightening is that Iran, while not directly providing oil to the U.S., nonetheless can exert tremendous influence on our energy supply. If Iran is concerned about U.S. influence on their energy supply why do we stand for Iran having influence on our own energy supply?

Report: Iran mostly honest on nuclear issue
But U.N. agency says its knowledge base is shrinking
MSNBC News

VIENNA, Austria - A report from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency on Thursday found Iran to be generally truthful about key aspects of its nuclear history, but it warned that its knowledge of Tehran's present atomic work was shrinking.

The International Atomic Energy Agency report, released to its 35 board members, also confirmed that Tehran continued to defy the U.N. Security Council by ignoring its repeated demands to freeze uranium enrichment, a potential pathway to nuclear arms.

The White House said it would continue to push for a third round of U.N. sanctions against Iran despite the findings.

"We believe that selective cooperation is not good enough," White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

Quote of the Day

"[T]he Democrats who run Congress have an 11 percent job approval rating. Let's just note that in my polling in 1995, O.J. Simpson was at 16 percent."

-- John Zogby

This is why people hate HIllary

I was over at Slate.com and they have their "XX" feature where a few of their female opinion writers collaborate on a blog. They've been pretty universally furious about the "How do we beat the bitch?" question asked to John McCain this week. Their argument, however, is that people hate Senator Clinton and want her to fail because she's a woman. I don wonder where their anger was when Condoleezza Rice was being called much worse than that. The the point, though, the entire "don't pick on her because she is a woman" argument is getting trite.

ABC News revealed today that people who received some of President Clinton's final-hour pardons have donated money to her campaign. Considering the millions of dollars that was paid by the family and friends of the pardoned criminals to the Clinton's (through their infamous "wedding" registry, the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library, and President Clinton's legal defense fund), their family members, and political organizations of their choosing, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Senator Clinton is accepting dirty money from criminals her husband pardoned. Don't forget, of course, that this group includes a group of terrorists convicted of heinous acts of violence.

The "don't pick on her because she's a woman" line needs to be turned around; non one is "picking" on Senator Clinton. She's taking the heat she deserves for being a two-faced, dirty, apparently corrupt, special-interests-focused, condescending, hypocritical, and fake politician. What the people calling for a reduction is criticism are really saying is "because she's a woman, don't pick on her."

Pardon Me?
Hillary Clinton Takes Cash From Recipients of Husband's Controversial Pardons
ABC News

Three recipients of controversial 11th-hour pardons issued by former President Bill Clinton is January 2001 have donated thousands of dollars to the presidential campaign of his wife, Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., according to campaign finance records examined by ABC News, in what some good government groups said created an appearance of impropriety.

"It's not illegal," Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told ABC News. "But, of course, it's inappropriate and she should return the money. It does raise the appearance that this is payback."

"One can only hope that she wasn't yet aware of who made the donations," said Sloane.

"We have raised over $65 million from over 200,000 people," said Clinton campaign manager Howard Wolfson, adding sarcastically, "I appreciate your bringing the instance of this $5,300 and these three people to our attention."

Pardonees Donate to Clinton

One of the pardonees who has become a donor to Sen. Clinton is David Herdlinger, a former prosecutor in Springdale, Ark., who, according to press accounts at the time of his pardon pleaded guilty in 1986 to mail fraud after taking bribes to reduce or drop charges against defendants charged with drunken driving offenses.

Now a life and business coach in Georgia, Herdlinger was pardoned by President Clinton in January 2001; he donated $1,000 to Sen. Clinton's presidential campaign in August.

Insurance agent Alfredo Regalado, who have Hillary Clinton $2,000, was pardoned by her husband for failing to "report the transportation of currency in excess of $10,000 into the United States," according to the Department of Justice.