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• L.A. Board of Supervisors Impose $1,000 Fine for Having Fun on the Beach

  Michelle Malkin

  Doug Powers

  9 Feb 2012 | 1:42 pm

  **Written by Doug Powers If you outlaw throwing footballs on the beach, only outlaws will throw footballs on the beach: The Board of Supervisors this week agreed to raise fines to up to $1,000 for anyone who throws a football or a Frisbee on any beach in Los Angeles County. In passing the 37-page ordinance (PDF) on Tuesday, officials sought to outline responsibilities for law enforcement and other public agencies while also providing clarification on beach-goer activities that could potentially disrupt or even injure the public. The updated rules now prohibit “any person to cast, toss,…

• G.O.P. Race Has Hallmarks of Prolonged Battle

  FiveThirtyEight

  By NATE SILVER

  8 Feb 2012 | 12:03 am

  Whatever your perspective on how likely Mitt Romney was to lose the Republican nomination race prior to Tuesday evening, it should be acknowledged that he had about the worst results conceivable.

• Perry: Sure, I’ll run for President again

  Hot Air » Top Picks

  Ed Morrissey

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:05 pm

  Plus, a message for the current President. Earlier today, Governor Rick Perry visited Blogger Row at CPAC to chat with the group just before giving his speech to the general assembly — a well-received speech that shows that Perry has not lost the affection of conservative activists after a hard-fought but unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination.  In between his visit [...] Read this post »

• Matthews Scolds Heilemann For Regurgitating Incorrect WH Talking Pts On Catholic Contraception Issue

  Townhall's Featured Blog

  Greg Hengler

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:37 pm

  It looks like Matthew's leg thrill has been overridden by his Catholicism or something. The look of shame on John Heilemann's face...

• Truly “Innovative” Design for Politics

  Patrick Ruffini

  9 Feb 2012 | 6:39 am

  Many digital agencies promise “innovative design” for their clients’ websites, but few actually deliver. What’s more common in these agencies is developing cookie-cutter templates that can be re-used client after client. While that approach may be sufficient for some, we thrive working with clients who appreciate original, and truly innovative design of their online homes that will stand out to voters. Our latest site launch for Florida United States Senate candidate Connie Mack is a great example of a campaign who values great visual and user experience design. With a…

• 

  Michelle Malkin

• L.A. Board of Supervisors Impose $1,000 Fine for Having Fun on the Beach

  Doug Powers

  9 Feb 2012 | 1:42 pm

  **Written by Doug Powers If you outlaw throwing footballs on the beach, only outlaws will throw footballs on the beach: The Board of Supervisors this week agreed to raise fines to up to $1,000 for anyone who throws a football or a Frisbee on any beach in Los Angeles County. In passing the 37-page ordinance (PDF) on Tuesday, officials sought to outline responsibilities for law enforcement and other public agencies while also providing clarification on beach-goer activities that could potentially disrupt or even injure the public. The updated rules now prohibit “any person to cast, toss,…

• CPAC vs. the Occupiers: Keep calm and carry silly string

  Michelle Malkin

  9 Feb 2012 | 7:15 am

  Photoshop credit: VVM The Right twittersphere has been buzzing for the past week about planned ambushes of CPAC 2012, the annual gathering of conservatives in D.C., by the Occupier mob. The conference kicks off today and every major Republican speaker has a giant target on his/her back — because every fame-seeker, troll, Michael Moore wannabe, and glitter-bomber will be looking to claim their 15 minutes of infamy. Lachlan Markay at Heritage reported on the saboteurs’ schemes earlier this week: During a Thursday meeting at McPherson Square, until Saturday the epicenter of the…

• Report: Solyndra Sold Assets Cheap to Entity with Close Ties to Investors

  Doug Powers

  9 Feb 2012 | 7:08 am

  **Written by Doug Powers What’s a week without more suspicious Solyndra news? This should be enough to get us by until the inevitable almost weekly document dump that could come tomorrow. From the Washington Times: Fast running out of money, solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC last summer sold off nearly $60 million worth of inventory for less than $20 million in cash to a newly formed corporate entity closely tied to the company’s biggest investors, records show. Backed by $535 million in federal loan guarantees but burning through the little cash it had left, Solyndra made its first sale…

• PETA Heartache: Judge Tosses Out Lawsuit Seeking Slavery Protection for SeaWorld Whales

  Doug Powers

  8 Feb 2012 | 6:36 pm

  **Written by Doug Powers I’m reserving any sense of closure on this craziness until convinced the 9th Circuit isn’t going to jump in at some point and not only reverse this decision, but make SeaWorld pay the orcas reparations. From Fox News: An effort to free whales from SeaWorld by claiming they were enslaved made a splash in the news but flopped in court Wednesday. A federal judge in San Diego dismissed an unprecedented lawsuit seeking to grant constitutional protection against slavery to a group of orcas that perform at SeaWorld parks, saying the 13th amendment applies only to…

• Steny Hoyer: The Fact is You Don’t Need a Budget

  Doug Powers

  8 Feb 2012 | 12:27 pm

  **Written by Doug Powers I’ll give him this much: with or without a budget, they manage to find ways to spend almost equally irresponsibly, so maybe he’s onto something: At a briefing with journalists on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Hoyer was asked, “Mr. Hoyer, around the same time of the State of the Union [on Jan. 24], I think it was the same day, Republicans were trying to hit Senate Democrats for 1,000 days without passing a budget, and then you talk about this milestone today, 400 days without a jobs bill in the Republican House. But then on Friday [Democratic Senator Harry]…

• 

  FiveThirtyEight

• G.O.P. Race Has Hallmarks of Prolonged Battle

  By NATE SILVER

  8 Feb 2012 | 12:03 am

  Whatever your perspective on how likely Mitt Romney was to lose the Republican nomination race prior to Tuesday evening, it should be acknowledged that he had about the worst results conceivable.

• Live Coverage: Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri

  By NATE SILVER

  7 Feb 2012 | 5:05 pm

  Republicans today are holding caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota and a primary in Missouri. We'll be bringing you data-driven analysis, historical perspective and results as they become available.

• The High Stakes in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri

  By NATE SILVER

  7 Feb 2012 | 1:13 pm

  The results will provide an important test of how robust Mitt Romney's coalition is on less than favorable terrain and could bolster the campaign of Rick Santorum.

• Political Geography: Minnesota

  By MICAH COHEN

  7 Feb 2012 | 12:52 pm

  Minnesota's reputation as a liberal bastion obscures the fact that the state's Republican Party is deeply conservative, and has grown more so over the last decade.

• Political Geography: Colorado

  By MICAH COHEN

  7 Feb 2012 | 11:18 am

  A look at the constituencies that make up the state's Republican electorate and where they live.

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  Hot Air » Top Picks

• Perry: Sure, I’ll run for President again

  Ed Morrissey

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:05 pm

  Plus, a message for the current President. Earlier today, Governor Rick Perry visited Blogger Row at CPAC to chat with the group just before giving his speech to the general assembly — a well-received speech that shows that Perry has not lost the affection of conservative activists after a hard-fought but unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination.  In between his visit [...] Read this post »

• Oh my: Santorum now tied with Gingrich nationally for second place

  Allahpundit

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:30 pm

  Tipping point? On January 23, two days after South Carolina, it was Mitt 29, Newt 28, with Santorum dead last behind Ron Paul at 11 percent. Seventeen days later: Mitt 36, Santorum 20, Gingrich 20, with Senator Sweater Vest having gained another three points overnight. Two Not Romneys enter, one Not Romney leaves. Or maybe two Not [...] Read this post »

• Arizona legislature moves toward curbing union abuses

  Jazz Shaw

  9 Feb 2012 | 1:55 pm

  Right to work, not to coast Last year we brought you up to date with the efforts of the Goldwater Institute to fight union corruption and abuse of taxpayer dollars in Arizona. In what should serve as an inspiration to activists everywhere, their voices have been heard and the state government has opened up a series of legislative actions to remedy [...] Read this post »

• Abandon ship: At least five Senate Democrats now oppose Obama’s new contraception rule

  Allahpundit

  9 Feb 2012 | 1:20 pm

  Conscience. ABC says Lieberman, Manchin, Casey, and both Nelsons (Bill and Ben) have headed for the lifeboats, but I think that count’s already outdated. According to Fox News’s Chad Pergram, John Kerry also thinks the new rule “needs to be compromised, adjusted.” If all six vote with the GOP caucus to either repeal the rule or [...] Read this post »

• CNN’s suspension of Roland Martin is a teachable moment

  Howard Portnoy

  9 Feb 2012 | 12:40 pm

  But will he apologize to Soccer? Roland Martin, tweeted on Sunday, walked it back Monday, chastened on Tuesday, suspended on Wednesday… That’s the short version of recent events in the life of the CNN commentator and author of Speak, Brother! A Black Man’s View of America. The tale begins on Super Bowl Sunday, when Martin tweeted: If a dude at your Super [...] Read this post »

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  Townhall's Featured Blog

• Matthews Scolds Heilemann For Regurgitating Incorrect WH Talking Pts On Catholic Contraception Issue

  Greg Hengler

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:37 pm

  It looks like Matthew's leg thrill has been overridden by his Catholicism or something. The look of shame on John Heilemann's face...

• Video: Rubio Hammers Obama's Re-Election Strategy at CPAC

  Guy Benson

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:56 am

  Regular readers are likely aware that I am a card-carrying member of the Marco Rubio fan club. Earlier today, I was privileged to be among a...

• Obama Administration: Shamefully Anti-Choice

  Michael Medved

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:53 am

  The Obama administration’s insistence that Catholic hospitals and clinics must provide contraceptive services, including sterilization and...

• Crumble: Democrats Abandoning Obama on Unconstitutional Birth Control Mandate

  Guy Benson

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:02 am

  Pressure is mounting on the White House to reverse its appalling decision to force religious institutions to violate core doctrinein order to...

• MSNBC Panel Mocks Catholics: Contraception "Like Water" To Them

  Greg Hengler

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:43 am

  Democrats.

• 

  Patrick Ruffini

• Truly “Innovative” Design for Politics

  9 Feb 2012 | 6:39 am

  Many digital agencies promise “innovative design” for their clients’ websites, but few actually deliver. What’s more common in these agencies is developing cookie-cutter templates that can be re-used client after client. While that approach may be sufficient for some, we thrive working with clients who appreciate original, and truly innovative design of their online homes that will stand out to voters. Our latest site launch for Florida United States Senate candidate Connie Mack is a great example of a campaign who values great visual and user experience design. With a…

• The 1%

  7 Feb 2012 | 9:25 pm

  The 1%

• http://instagr.am/p/oD8oj/

  4 Feb 2012 | 4:09 pm

  http://instagr.am/p/oD8oj/

• http://instagr.am/p/nkhUT/

  3 Feb 2012 | 12:26 pm

  http://instagr.am/p/nkhUT/

• $FB

  1 Feb 2012 | 9:53 pm

  Facebook is a reminder that the simplest ideas are always the most valuable.  Or, as I tweeted earlier tonight:  Dumb ideas can be monetized better because the world is full of dumb people. A whole lot about Facebook, looking at it even semi-objectively, is just plain dumb. Putting up a Facebook page instead of a website comprised of HTML, JavaScript, good design, database hooks, and rich media is dumb. That kitteh photo on your profile is dumb. FarmVille is dumb. A low-res photo service that badly degrades image quality is dumb. Advertising just so you can get more Likes, without a…

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  Ace of Spades HQ

• Noted Moron Who Isn't Smart Enough To Be President Somehow Delivers Coherent Speech about Liberty and Government

  9 Feb 2012 | 5:59 pm

  Perry, at CPAC. There are teleprompters beside the podium, but he seems to be delivering the speech off his written notes. More: Once Ed takes the video out of the "private" category, you can watch him interview Perry. Perry says...

• "Wisconsin on Steroids:" Arizona Moves To Regulate Unions

  9 Feb 2012 | 5:40 pm

  I like that word "regulate." Aren't we forever told that the government needs to be regulatin' everything? We need to regulate these unions. Sounds good, except for one thing. Three of the four bills restrict the way unions collect dues...

• President Waffles When Asked About the Contraception Mandate: "Come on, guys."

  9 Feb 2012 | 5:15 pm

  About an hour ago, CBS News reporter Norah O'Donnell tweeted: In the Oval Office, President Obama refuses to answer if he stands by contraception rule. Says to reporter: "Come on guys." Uh, "come on" what? It's a legitimate question. He's...

• Obama Gives Ten State Waivers for NCLB On His Own Authority; The Law Does Not Include a Waiver Provision

  9 Feb 2012 | 4:36 pm

  Unconstitutional. This depressive egomaniac arriviste is doing tremendous amounts of damage to a constitutional system which has kept us united for 240 years (apart from the Civil War period). Even worse, nothing in federal law grants Obama the power to...

• Sen. Rubio at CPAC: "Is America Still An Exceptional Nation?"

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:18 pm

  Truly outstanding. Sen. Rubio killed it with his CPAC speech this morning. I can't find an embeddable one, so click here. It's long, but worth every minute. Ed Morrissey has video of and some thoughts about Rubio's meeting with bloggers...

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  Stately McDaniel Manor

• Barack Hussein Obama: Statist Christian?

  Mike McDaniel

  7 Feb 2012 | 11:00 pm

  Americans tend to be uncomfortable with politicians cloaking themselves in religion.  There are, to be sure, exceptions.  When Ronald Reagan …Continue reading »

• Education: Fundamental Values

  Mike McDaniel

  6 Feb 2012 | 11:00 pm

  Every now and then something comes along that reminds us of fundamental values.  Such a reminder is the case of …Continue reading »

• The Chevy Volt, Update for September 20, 2011: Reprised

  Mike McDaniel

  5 Feb 2012 | 11:00 pm

  This article was originally posted on September 20, 2011.  For those just tuning in, Bob Owens and I closed the …Continue reading »

• The Chevy Volt at PJ Media

  Mike McDaniel

  4 Feb 2012 | 11:00 pm

  The good folks at PJ Media have published my most recent piece on the Chevy Volt.  It’s a companion piece …Continue reading »

• Gun Ownership, A Rationale Part 5: Weapon Choice

  Mike McDaniel

  2 Feb 2012 | 11:00 pm

  In this installment of the series, I’ll discuss the primary differences, advantages and disadvantages between revolvers and semi-automatic handguns.  In …Continue reading »

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  The Gateway Pundit

• Governor Rick Perry Says He’ll Run Again “I’ll Remind People Ronald Reagan Wasn’t Successful the First Time He Ran” (Video)

  Jim Hoft

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:01 pm

  At the CPAC 2012 conference today Governor Rick Perry told me that he learned a lot from his run for president this past year. He also said he would run again and reminded me, “I’ll remind people that Ronald Reagan wasn’t successful the first time he ran.”

• Round Table with Republican Leader Mitch McConnell

  Jim Hoft

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:23 am

  I met this morning with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell during a breakout session at CPAC. Tina Korbe from HotAir, Alana Goodman from Commentary Magazine, blogger Brandon Kiser and Phil Klein were also at the meeting. I asked the Republican leader how hard it is to work with an the Democrat leader when he claims Republicans want arsenic and Mercury in the water? What he (Harry Reid) doesn’t wnt you to realize is that 12 democrat members agreed to the same mesasure. It’s a tactic. Obama held a signing ceremony in the middle of the night recently. Obama wants to continue…

• Caterpillar Says It Will Not Build New North American Plant in Illinois

  Jim Hoft

  9 Feb 2012 | 7:09 am

  The Fruits of Liberal Policy– (Illinois Policy Institute) A stunning new report by the Illinois Policy Institute revealed how Illinois lost one resident every 10 minutes during the past fifteen years. As Illinois lost residents to migration the state also lost out on a net of $26 billion in taxable income to out-migration from 1995 to 2010. Now this… Caterpillar Inc. announced that it would not be building its new North American plant in Illinois. Finance reported: Caterpillar Inc. will not be building its new North American plant anywhere in the state of Illinois, officials with…

• Freshman Rep. Ellmers Schools Henry Waxman in Committee (Video)

  Jim Hoft

  9 Feb 2012 | 6:41 am

  Freshman Representative and rising star Renee Ellmers (R-NC) schooled far left darling Henry Waxman in committee. This was great– From the video: Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.), took on Henry Waxman (D-CA) in spectacular fashion today in a joint House-Senate hearing on the payroll tax cut extension.

• New Gitmo Report Reveals 27% of Released Detainees Return to Terrorist Activities

  Jim Hoft

  9 Feb 2012 | 4:41 am

  Last September NATO troops killed Al-Qaeda leader and former Gitmo detainee in an overnight raid in eastern Afghanistan. Sabar Lal Melma, who was released from Guantanamo in 2007 after five years of detention, had been organizing attacks in eastern Kunar province and funding insurgent operations. A new report released by the House Armed Servicess subcommittee revealed that 27% of Gitmo detainees return to a life of terror after their release. Now Obama wants to release Taliban leaders from Gitmo. The AP reported: Facing domestic political pressures, the Bush and Obama administrations released…

• 

  RedState

• House Brings Conservative Reform to Broken Highway System

  ()

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:54 am

  This morning we awoke to find that the New York Times Editorial Board and Redstate’s Erick Erickson had aligned themselves on an issue by both taking a shot at the American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act, a bill the House will consider next week. Usually when a situation like that arises, something’s amiss. And that is certainly the case today. It’s not surprising the New York Times hates the bill – it’s the most conservative plan for America’s infrastructure in anyone’s lifetime. That’s why Erick’s post this morning was so surprising. But there’s an explanation.

• (With a Nod to Christopher Wren), if You Seek the Establishment, Look Around You…

  ()

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 am

  From the diaries… We had a smallish political brush-fire here in Michigan in 1982. The grizzled old William Milliken had finally decided that 124 terms was enough as Governor, and he was hanging up the cleats. Jim Blanchard, a weirdo Democrat downriver Detroit Big Labor congressman decided he would run, as did a few other miscreants from the Democrat party. Even the benighted John Conyers toyed with the idea, until someone pointed it out to the congressman that if he were elected Governor, he’d actually have to LIVE in Michigan, and to heck with that. On the Republican side, all…

• Tim Murphy’s Love Affair with Big Labor

  ()

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:30 am

  From the Diaries by Leon… Keith Impink runs Westmoreland Electric, a small business in Tarrs, Pennsylvania which was founded in 1988 with two employees and a truck.  His company, now 65 employees strong, is the type of job creator we should empower to move our state and country out of these difficult economic times. The painful irony for local job creators like Keith is their very own Congressman, Tim Murphy, has consistently voted to make it harder for small businesses to grow, thrive and prosper. Small business can’t compete against Big Labor, and it’s tough to find a more…

• The Fiscal Conservative “Go It Alone” Strategy Failed

  ()

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:00 am

  From the diaries by Leon… Let me begin with two brief qualifiers.  First, I believe in fiscal conservatism.  I am a 100% fiscally conservative believer in small government.  I also happen to be 100% in favor of social conservatism and a strong national defense.  So, in short, I am a Reagan conservative.  The following diary is not a critique of fiscal conservatism but rather those fiscal conservatives who continually bash social conservatives while at the same time asking for their vote.  Second, those aforementioned fiscal conservatives were not exactly loners.  They simply…

• The World America Made

  ()

  9 Feb 2012 | 7:00 am

  Download audio here Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Robert Kagan to discuss his new book, The World America Made, the importance of America’s military muscle, and how the world may change if America is no longer the world’s superpower. We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show. Related Links: Buy The World America Made on…

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  Right Wing News

• Dependence On Government Spikes 23% Under Obama

  William Teach

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:16 am

  And that’s just the way Government wants it (IBD) The American public’s dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program, according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation. The conservative think tank’s annual Index of Dependence on Government tracks money spent on housing, health, welfare, education subsidies and other federal programs that were “traditionally provided to needy people by local organizations and families.” The two-year increase under Obama is…

• Obama Reinforces Stance On Unconstitutional Contraceptive Mandate

  William Teach

  9 Feb 2012 | 5:47 am

  It boggles the mind why Obama would want to pick this fight with Catholics, which also means Conservatives, Tea Party members, Republicans, and the 60+% of Americans who oppose ObamaCare get riled up again, in an election year. Democrats, including Obama, avoided mentioning ObamaCare during the 2010 mid-term elections in the same manner people avoid discussions of their grandparents having sex. They avoided mentioning it during 2011. Obama avoided it during the 2011 and 2012 State of the Union campaign speeches. Why bring it up now? But, Obama is not giving ...

• Professional Warmists Shocked No Ice Melt In Himalayas, Still Say We’re Doomed

  William Teach

  9 Feb 2012 | 5:11 am

  We’ve already had confirmation on massive errors in the UN IPCC’s “science”, and know that the errors were used intentionally to scaremonger. We know that the data came from an unfounded report which had no scientific data, written by a grad student who did no field research, like so much of the 2007 IPCC assessment. And now we find (UK Guardian) The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over ...

• Iran 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0

  Victor Davis Hanson

  8 Feb 2012 | 9:04 pm

  On the campaign trail, presidential candidate Barack Obama once called for a “reset” policy with Iran. Supposedly, the unpopularity of the Texan provocateur George W. Bush and his administration’s inability to finesse “soft power” had needlessly alienated the Iranian theocracy. After all, the widely quoted but highly politicized 2007 National Intelligence Estimate claimed that Iran had ceased work on a bomb in 2003 and would not have a weapon for the foreseeable future. That flawed analysis fueled another popular talking point: that the Bush-Cheney warmongers…

• The Anti-Romney Vote

  Thomas Sowell

  8 Feb 2012 | 9:03 pm

  A funny thing happened to Mitt Romney on the way to his coronation as the inevitable Republican candidate for President of the United States. Minnesota, Michigan and Colorado happened. Rick Santorum beat him in all three states on the same day — and beat him by huge margins in two of those states, as well as upsetting him in Colorado, where the Mormon vote was expected to give Romney a victory. The Republican establishment, which has lined up heavily behind Romney, has tried to depict him as the “electable,” if not ...

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  I Hate the Media Article Feed

• Man wanted in ’93 British armored car heist caught working as a cable guy in Missouri

  CO2Insanity

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:27 pm

  Man wanted in ’93 British armored car heist caught working as a cable guy in Missouri. Now we know. Every Englishman’s secret desire is to be Larry the Cable Guy. We wonder if he drove a beat up Ford pickup with an air conditioner stuffed in the rear window?

• Feds announce $25B settlement over foreclosure abuse

  CO2Insanity

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:13 pm

  Feds announce $25B settlement over foreclosure abuse. ” A deal that primarily helps underwater homeowners but pays just $2,000 to those already wrongly foreclosed upon. President Obama described the deal as a “landmark settlement” that would “begin to turn the page on an era of recklessness” while speeding relief to hard-hit homeowners.” A measly $2,000 is a “landmark settlement?” Another effing joke brought to you by President Zero and the banks who own him. Perhaps they should call this TARP II?

• Obama: I’m going after Romney, not Wall Street

  A. Smithee

  9 Feb 2012 | 1:34 pm

  Obama: I’m going after Romney, not Wall Street. “President Obama has message for Wall St. — I will not demonize you, just Mitt Romney and his ties to you. That assurance was conveyed by Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina in a private meeting with nervous Democratic donors from the financial services industry.” His presidency might not be transparent, but his motives are very thinly veiled…

• Majorities of liberal Democrats now support drone strikes, keeping Gitmo open

  Bonfire of the Absurdities

  9 Feb 2012 | 12:06 pm

  Majorities of liberal Democrats now support drone strikes, keeping Gitmo open. Remember all their sturm und drang about these issues during the Bush years? Neither do they. “It’s as if all that international-law, humanitarian, have-you-no-decency crap was just… crap. And partisan crap at that.” Pretty much.

• Obama administration struggles to contain uproar over birth-control mandate

  Bonfire of the Absurdities

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:52 am

  White House struggling to contain the growing uproar over its birth-control mandate as numerous prominent Democrats voice criticism. But the Big “0″ is digging in his heels on the matter according to some Democrats who attended a closed-to-the-media retreat (story here). “Hey, I won!” Room for a few more under the bus….

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  ChurchCrunch

• Seattle Library Allows Porn on Computers Despite Complaints

  Eric Dye

  9 Feb 2012 | 1:00 pm

  A Seattle woman was visiting her local library with her children, when she noticed a man viewing pornography on the library computers. The Seattle mother didn’t ask the librarian to remove the man from the library or even have him kicked-off the computers. No, she simply asked if the man could be relocated to a more discreet location. The librarian refused. Seattle Public Library spokeswoman Andra Addison said, “We’re a library, so we facilitate access to constitutionally protected information. We don’t tell people what they can view and check out.”…

• Study Likens Tweeting Urges to Smoking & Drinking

  Eric Dye

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:30 am

  This from Geek O System: A recent experiment headed by Wilhelm Hofmann of Chicago University’s Booth Business School shows that urges to tweet are extremely hard to resist, harder to resist than urges to drink, or smoke, for example. The study involved 205 people between the ages of 18 and 85 in the German city of Würtzburg. The participants were given Blackberrys and questioned seven times over the course of a 14 hour day, for seven consecutive days, about their desires. They were to report any desire they were currently experiencing, any desire they’d experienced in the past 30…

• Vintage Computer Ads from the 1950′s

  Eric Dye

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 am

  Can you believe the size of these things! These reminded me of the computers they would show in the old Disney movies. We’ve come a long way in 50+ years! If you thought these were interesting, you should take a look at the vintage computer ads from the 1940′s. [via Vintage Ad Browser] You just finished reading "Vintage Computer Ads from the 1950′s" on ChurchMag! Feel free to comment on it! We use the Standard Theme for our blog platform!

• What To Do with Multimedia By-Products?

  Paul Clifford

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:00 am

  I’ve been thinking about by-products. You know that when you do things there’s waste. When you cut down a tree for the wood, there’s sawdust left. When you wash your car, you have dirty water left. When you cook ground beef, you have fat left over. There’s a couple ways to deal with this fact. You can find a way to get rid of the waste and regard it as just a garbage, or you can find something useful to do with it. In the case of the dirty water from washing your car, you can use it to water your plants; it turns out they like dirt. When I was growing up, there was a…

• What Dr. Seuss Books Were Really About

  Eric Dye

  9 Feb 2012 | 6:47 am

  Having read all of these Dr. Seuss titles to my kids, I could quickly understand how these titles tell more explicitly what the books are about. There are a couple of things we can learn from this: Be mindful of what the media you are consuming is really saying. What are the books, TV shows and movies feeding us? Communicating the Gospel and Godly values doesn’t have to be dry and “in your face.” It can be done in a creative way. Just like Jesus did with His parables. Now, take a look at these Dr. Seuss titles and you’ll see what they are really about: See what I…

• 

  Outside the Beltway

• OTB Caption Contest Winners

  Rodney Dill

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:20 pm

  The Mongo Like Ghandi Edition OTB Caption ContestTM is now over. REUTERS/Rupak De … A lot of good captions for this picture, its worth checking them all. Here are the winners… ✰ THE WINNERS ✰ First: PeterOly – “I think we better get indoors. The Sand People are easily startled but they’ll soon be back, and in greater numbers.” Second: Peterh – Auditions for the Indian version of “What’s My Line” is about to get very monotonous… Third: Alan Bourdius – It will take more than just the ‘stache to win this…

• Don’t Know Much About The French I Took

  James Joyner

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:56 am

  Bryan Caplan makes an amusing point in favor of the idea that education is more about signaling than learning: If I’d failed Spanish, I couldn’t have gone to a good college, wouldn’t have gotten into Princeton’s Ph.D. program, and probably wouldn’t be a professor.  But since I’ve merely forgotten my Spanish, I’m sitting in my professorial office, loving life. Don Novello, most famous as Father Guido Sarducci on “Saturday Night Live” many moons ago, had a great stand up bit called Five Minute University based on the simple…

• Getting The State Out of The Marriage Business

  James Joyner

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:14 am

  Doctor Science reacts to a proposal “giving all couples a civil union and leaving marriage up to churches and other religious institutions.”  I have been civilly married for almost 25 years. In what respect is my marriage not “marriage” enough to keep the name — and the protection of a very large and well-established system of law? I haven’t been able to find good numbers, but I saw a vague estimate that 1/4 to 1/3 of US marriages are civil ceremonies. Have the people saying “government should get out of the marriage business and leave it up to…

• William F. Buckley Jr. Would Be Proud

  Doug Mataconis

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:16 am

  William F. Buckley Jr. was once quoted as saying that he’d rather be ruled by the first 400 names in the Boston telephone directory than the faculty at Harvard. Apparently, most Americans feel the same way: The public’s perception of Congress has sunk to yet another new low, with 43 percent of likely voters believing that a random name pulled from the White Pages would be better than the gang they’ve installed in Congress. According to Rasumssen polls, that is essentially equal to the worst public reading they have on record: 45 percent. What’s more, the pollster found…

• A Classically Conservative Argument on Same-Sex Marriage

  Steven L. Taylor

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:15 am

  I have an ongoing interest in the meaning of the term “conservative.”  This interest manifests in multiple ways, including personal introspection (I have long self-identified as “conservative”—although less so of late), teaching (I am a political scientist and one of my areas is political theory), and writing (it is obviously an issue in looking at contemporary American politics, for example). As a general proposition, I have decided that we use the word “conservative” (and, for that matter, “liberal”) rather imprecisely (this…

• 

  Wizbang

• Romney campaign has “Oops!” in Oklahoma.

  David Robertson

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:38 pm

  Romney’s campaign in Oklahoma was taught a lesson while Santorum campaigned there. Make certain that your attack dogs are pit bulls, not beagles. Bloomberg is reporting the following story: Two Oklahoma state officials supporting Mitt Romney’s Republican presidential bid held their fire today on a conference call arranged by their candidate’s campaign and billed as [...]

• Obama’s Energy Policy In Action

  Rodney Graves

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:31 am

  Or is that inaction?

• Truing the Voter Rolls, Voter Integrity Project: Many States have More Voters Registered Than Voting-Age Population

  Warner Todd Huston

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:52 am

  Judicial Watch on an election integrity project to pressure the states to clean up voter registration rolls to satisfy Section 8 of the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA), a law that all too many states have been violating for years. Judicial Watch and True The Vote have sent letters to California, Ohio, Indiana, and Florida [...]

• CPAC 2012 Begins

  Warner Todd Huston

  9 Feb 2012 | 6:33 am

  I am here at the beautiful Wardman Marriott in Washington DC this week for the Conservative Political Action Conference or CPAC. We will be seeing a whole host of conservative icons coming to speak… and the presidential candidates will be here too (Sarcasm? What sarcasm?). I’ll be covering as much as I can but there [...]

• Himalayas not melting. Panic anyway.

  David Robertson

  8 Feb 2012 | 6:25 pm

  Al Gore probably won’t be please by the following story that was published by The Guardian: The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows. The discovery has stunned scientists, who had [...]

• 

  Drudge Retort

• Caterpillar Won't Build Plant in Illinois

  glasshouse

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:23 pm

  The Peoria-based Caterpillar won't be building its new North American plant in Illinois, company officials said Tuesday, in part over concerns about the business climate in the state. Instead, Caterpiller is looking for a location closer to its division headquarters in Cary, N.C. "Caterpillar's previously documented concerns about the business climate and overall fiscal health of the state of Illinois still would have made it unpractical for us to select your community for this project," the company said in a letter explaining its decision.

• Did Paul Secretly Win Caucuses?

  rcade

  9 Feb 2012 | 12:01 pm

  Dave Weigel: They all laughed at Ron Paul. They all laughed when he took a stage in Minnesota, having come in a solid second place, and reminded the faithful of a "little thing called delegates!" They were serious about it. Paul's people believe that they understand the delegate process, and that the media does not. There is truth here: The delegate process is confusing, and I assume that Paul supporters have used their four years of organizing and studying in a fruitful manner.

• Library Patron Watches Porn Around Kids

  MURPHY

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:55 am

  A Seattle librarian refused to force a man watching hardcore porn on one of its computer to move to a more discreet location, even after a woman with two children complained, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The Lake City librarian said the library "doesn't censor content" and could not "be in the business of monitoring what their patrons are doing at any given computer."

• Senators Favor War Over Containment

  monstman

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:29 am

  A bipartisan group of senators including Bob Casey (D-Penn.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) are circulating a draft resolution to pressure the Obama administration to limit diplomatic efforts to resolve concerns about Iran's nuclear program. The resolution rules out "a strategy of containment for a nuclear-armed Iran in the strongest and clearest terms," the senators said -- a move that would make war more likely.

• Hannity Can't Accept Obama Got Bin Laden

  reinheitsgebot

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:25 am

  Fox News host Sean Hannity, arguing that President Barack Obama shouldn't be credited with the U.S. finding and killing Osama bin Laden, said, "The public does give him credit for that. But it wouldn't have happened if he had his way, and I think that can be proved as well on tape." Hannity never explained what the tape is, or why he's never broadcast such evidence.

• 

  The New Republic - Top Stories Feed

• Enough With the Predictions About Brokered Conventions!

  7 Feb 2012 | 9:00 pm

  Another week, another set of primaries—and soon enough, undoubtedly, another cascade of speculations about the prospect of a brokered convention. Predictions of an unpredictable fight-to-the-finish have become an unfortunate refrain—not to say, cliché—of our presidential election campaigns. Enough! I hate to be the one to have to break it to my fellow political junkies, but the truth must be told: Not only isn’t there going to be no brokered convention this year—there probably isn’t going to be a brokered convention ever again. For starters,…

• A Requiem to an Age of Brilliant Polish Poetry

  7 Feb 2012 | 9:00 pm

  Poland in the postwar era was a supremely unlucky nation, but in one respect (and perhaps one only) it was among the world’s luckiest. This unassuming country, generally admired not for its scenery nor its cuisine nor its architecture, produced three of the greatest European poets of the last half-century. The first was Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004), born in Lithuania to a Polish family, who defected to France in 1951 and emigrated to the United States in 1960; he was Poland’s geopolitical poet, befitting his perch in exile, and its first poet Nobelist. The second was Zbigniew…

• Why Did Liberal African-Americans in Rhode Island Help Pass a Voter ID Law?

  6 Feb 2012 | 9:00 pm

  At a Senate hearing on voting rights last fall, Democrat Dick Durbin pointed out that voter ID laws were nothing more than a coordinated Republican effort to block poor and minority voters from the ballot. It’s a familiar charge, and Hans Von Spakovsky—Heritage Foundation fellow and leading voter ID proponent—squirmed briefly, before finding an out: “I don’t believe that the Democrats in Rhode Island who control...the state legislature would agree with that.” There’s a reason voter ID supporters have turned Rhode Island into a talking point: Of the…

• Stop Feeling Sorry for the Middle Class! They’re Doing Just Fine.

  6 Feb 2012 | 9:00 pm

  Commentators were right to point out that Mitt Romney committed a flagrant gaffe last week. Unfortunately, they were only half-correct in identifying the offense. Yes, Romney was impressively inartful in announcing that he was “not concerned about the very poor” because “we have a safety net there,” managing to upset both liberals (for his apparent insensitivity) and conservatives (for his apparent satisfaction with a welfare state they believe promotes dependency). But another objectionable part of Romney’s statement went mostly unremarked upon—namely, his…

• The Honor of Aleppo

  6 Feb 2012 | 9:00 pm

  I. Last November a protester on the outskirts of Damascus held up to the cameras a placard that mocked the people of Aleppo: “URGENT! ALEPPO REBELS—IN 2050!” It was hardly heroic, the caution of Aleppo, particularly against the background of a rebellion that had scorched Deraa and Hama and Homs and Banias and so many unheralded Syrian towns. Aleppo was known for its practicality and its dourness and its prudence: as an old expression had it, halabi chalabi, the Aleppine is a gentleman. Another adage was at once a rebuke and a boast: the Damascene and the Cairene are…

• 

  NRO Articles

• The Wages of Pandering

  The Editors

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 am

  Mitt Romney has done himself no favors in developing a reputation for political inconstancy, but a flip-flop on his recently reaffirmed support for automatic increases in the minimum wage would be welcome. Indexing the minimum wage to inflation is bad economics, bad public policy, and bad politics: the full trifecta of political incompetence. The law says that the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Reality says the minimum wage is $0.00 an hour, and millions of unemployed Americans are collecting that — especially the young, among whom unemployment persists at catastrophically high levels.

• Global Persecution of Christians

  Conrad Black

  9 Feb 2012 | 1:00 am

  Perhaps the gravest under-publicized atrocity in the world is the persecution of Christians. A comprehensive Pew Forum study last year found that Christians are persecuted in 131 countries containing 70 percent of the world’s population, out of 197 countries in the world (if Palestine, Taiwan, South Sudan, and the Vatican are included). Best estimates are that about 200 million Christians are in communities where they are persecuted. There is not the slightest question of the scale and barbarity of this persecution, and a little of it is adequately publicized. But this highlights the…

• Unconscionable

  The Editors

  9 Feb 2012 | 1:00 am

  The Obama administration is now telling liberals that it is not backing down on its new health-care mandate, even as it coos of compromise to religious groups appalled by it. These messages may seem to be contradictory, but actually the administration has been quite consistent: Nothing it has ever said on this issue has been trustworthy. Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, has been the leading misleader. The administration, recall, has decided that almost all employers must cover contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients in their employees’ insurance…

• Wooing the Millennials

  Michael Barone

  8 Feb 2012 | 9:00 pm

  The Republican presidential candidates, except for Ron Paul, haven’t been paying much attention to young voters in the primaries and caucuses so far. But any Republican nominee — which is to say probably Mitt Romney, or maybe Newt Gingrich, or Rick Santorum — had better be paying attention to them in the summer and fall. The reason three of the four Republicans haven’t paid much attention to young voters is that the under-30 folks have been turning out in the Republican contests in minuscule numbers.Keep reading this post . . .

• Iran 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0

  Victor Davis Hanson

  8 Feb 2012 | 9:00 pm

  On the campaign trail, presidential candidate Barack Obama once called for a “reset” policy with Iran. Supposedly, the unpopularity of the Texan provocateur George W. Bush and his administration’s inability to finesse “soft power” had needlessly alienated the Iranian theocracy. After all, the widely quoted but highly politicized 2007 National Intelligence Estimate claimed that Iran had ceased work on a bomb in 2003 and would not have a weapon for the foreseeable future. That flawed analysis fueled another popular talking point: that the Bush- Cheney warmongers…

• 

  The Economist: The world this week

• Politics this week

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:02 am

• Business this week

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:02 am

• KAL's cartoon

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:02 am

• 

  Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines

• Silent State: Washington’s Campaign Against Whistle-Blowers

  editor@truthdig.com

  9 Feb 2012 | 12:01 pm

  By Peter Van Buren, TomDispatch There can be little doubt that government retaliation against whistle-blowers is not an isolated event, nor even an agency-by-agency practice. The number of cases in play suggests an organized strategy to deprive Americans of knowledge of the more disreputable things their government does. Related Entries January 31, 2012 Focus on Iran and China Could Hasten American Decline January 29, 2012 Note to Iran: U.S. Orders Up a Super Bunker-Buster

• Congressional Insider Trading Bill Clears House

  editor@truthdig.com

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:03 am

  Looks like that request President Obama made, in last month’s State of the Union address, to send him a bill to sign that would restrict members of Congress from taking financial liberties in their own investment activities wasn’t just a passing reference to score points with the public. On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed a modified version of a bill that would hold congresspeople accountable for information they might pick up on the job that could be used to inflate their financial portfolios. Next stop: the Senate, where the measure might run into some resistance…

• Steve Jobs, According to the FBI

  editor@truthdig.com

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:21 am

  Since his death last year, we’ve heard plenty of lionizing and denigrating takes on Steve Jobs and his challenging leadership style, but we can now add the FBI’s character sketch of the late Apple founder, circa the George H.W. Bush era, to that mix, thanks to the details of a background check the bureau was obliged to make available to the public this week.  —KA Computerworld: The documents, released by the FBI after the Wall Street Journal filed a Freedom of Information Act request, also detailed an 1985 investigation of a bomb and extortion threat against Apple.

• 10 States Get a Pass on ‘No Child Left Behind’

  editor@truthdig.com

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:54 am

  It’s one of the most maligned domestic relics of the George W. Bush era, and now President Obama has stepped in to let 10 states off the hook, at least for the time being, from the experiment in educational standardization known as “No Child Left Behind.” And the list is likely to keep growing.  —KA The Washington Post: President Barack Obama on Thursday will free 10 states from the strict and sweeping requirements of the No Child Left Behind education law in exchange for promises to improve the way schools teach and evaluate students. The move is a tacit…

• Banks, Gov’t Strike $25B Deal in Foreclosure Fraud Settlement

  editor@truthdig.com

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:59 am

  On Thursday, state and federal government representatives announced that five major banks—Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Ally Financial, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase—had agreed to pay their part in a settlement of more than $25 billion stemming from the mortgage market meltdown that caused millions of Americans to lose their homes and sent the economy into a near-death spiral. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called the settlement the largest of its kind. Here are some details of the big deal. Is it too little, too late?  —KA The Washington Post: Under the terms of the…

• 

  Power Line

• Obamacare’s Great Awakening

  Scott Johnson

  9 Feb 2012 | 12:54 pm

  (Scott Johnson) The Wall Street Journal has published a great editorial on the problem with the HHS regulation requiring the provision of free contraception, sterilizattion and abortifacients in health care insurance required to be provided to the employees of all but a narrowly circumscribed set of Church employers. The problem here is not the narrow ambit of the regulatory exception to the Obamacare requirement, but rather with Obamacare itself: The entire thrust of ObamaCare is to standardize benefits and how they must be paid for and provided, regardless of individual choices or ethical…

• The Woman Who (Partially) Silenced Chris Matthews

  Steven Hayward

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:36 am

  (Steven Hayward) Over on NRO’s Corner Charles Cooke notes with delight that Chris Matthews has abruptly stopped his nightly plugs for his new hagiography of John F. Kennedy, most likely because of the obvious embarrassment of Mimi Alford’s new memoir Once Upon A Secret.  There’s nothing in Alford’s story that we didn’t already know in general outline about JFK’s priapism, though the bit about how JFK pimped her out to Dave Powers ought to leave a mark. Alford’s book arrives too late to make it into my Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents, but for what it’s worth,…

• CRB: Measuring the slant

  Scott Johnson

  9 Feb 2012 | 5:29 am

  (Scott Johnson) This morning we continue our preview of the new (winter) issue of the Claremont Review of Books (subscribe here — please). One of the good things about the magazine is its occasional presentation of books that escape review in other publications aimed at a general audience of intelligent readers. One such book is Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind, by Tim Groseclose. Groseclose is a distinguished professor of political science. He is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA. He holds joint appointments in the political…

• And the House of Cards Starts to Come Down

  Steven Hayward

  9 Feb 2012 | 4:39 am

  (Steven Hayward) The Hopar Glacier is just fine. As John noted here Tuesday, and I have noted several times over the last few weeks, the climate campaign is suffering body blows on an almost daily basis.  The latest is the report, based on new and more comprehensive satellite data, that the ice melt in the Himalayas has been nil—zip, zilch, nada—over the last ten years.  Here’s how the left-wing Guardian newspaper in Britain reports it: The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no…

• Obama, the Billion-Dollar Hypocrite

  John Hinderaker

  8 Feb 2012 | 8:03 pm

  (John Hinderaker) The breathtaking hypocrisy of Barack Obama is hard to get your arms around, but Michael Ramirez takes a good stab at it:

• 

  WSJ.com: Politics And Policy

• Swing Nation

  9 Feb 2012 | 12:22 pm

  The Wall Street Journal is visiting three swing counties in swing states—Florida, Ohio and Colorado—periodically this year to gauge how the election campaign is unfolding.

• Chamber Starting Early Ad Blitz

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:34 am

  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is launching a $10 million campaign to support the re-election of 20 mostly Republican congressional candidates, a sign that it's not only the presidential race that could see record spending this year.

• Romney Country Seems Like No Sure Thing

  9 Feb 2012 | 7:53 am

  With Mitt Romney losing three GOP nominating races Tuesday, doubts have arisen about how he'll do Feb. 28 in the contests in Michigan and Arizona, where he polled strongly four years ago.

• Ground Shifts Again for Republicans

  9 Feb 2012 | 7:51 am

  Bruising defeats in three battleground states Tuesday have exposed lingering weaknesses in Mitt Romney's standing with conservatives.

• Rove: Newt's Southern Strategy Won't Work

  9 Feb 2012 | 7:28 am

  Santorum's Tuesday wins make him, for now at least, Romney's main conservative challenger.

• 

  LewRockwell.com Blog

• 'Freedom Watch' Cancelled

  Lew Rockwell

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:10 pm

  What an outrage. FOX has axed Judge Napolitano's show, and not for ratings reasons. But as much as we will all miss the greatest news and commentary show ever to appear on TV--this cretinous cancellation punishes the large audience most--there are more important things ahead for the Judge, and rightly so. In the meantime, read his books. (Thanks to Zach Kramer)

• Be Careful Who You Depose

  Lew Rockwell

  9 Feb 2012 | 1:45 pm

  John Bradley on the criminal intervention into Syria. (Thanks to Daniel McAdams)

• 11-Year-Old Homeschooler on What's Wrong With the US Food System

  Lew Rockwell

  9 Feb 2012 | 1:30 pm

  (Thanks to Tibor Kiss)

• Dronerica

  Lew Rockwell

  9 Feb 2012 | 1:20 pm

  30,000 of the totalitarian spying-killing devices will fly over the US, thanks to both parties. (Thanks to David Kramer)

• How Dare You Sell Healthy Milk to Willing Customers!

  Lew Rockwell

  9 Feb 2012 | 12:36 pm

  A government judge issues a "summary judgement" against an Amish farmer in Maryland. (Thanks to Daniel McAdams)

• 

  town hall

• First long run

  Stephanie

  7 Feb 2012 | 3:31 pm

  Oh man, last Saturday was hard.  Not so hard because I did my first long run, but because I did it with a terrible head cold.I'm one of those militant-ish exercisers who does not like to skip a workout.  I've been known to complete a workout even while suffering from cramps from h#&! because I'm just too determined to let something as lame as that get me down.So, Saturday I headed out to run eight miles around Sherwood = run circles around this sweet little town.It went just fine.  I'm supposed to run slow and easy on my long run days and I did just that.  Two things…

• Feed the beast

  Stephanie

  2 Feb 2012 | 1:29 pm

  Spencer came home from school yesterday with a frown on his face and threw his backpack on the floor.  I have started hating afternoons that start like that because I know we are in for a doozy with my semi-dramatic, very touchy little man of the house.Usually I just tell him to cool down and not to get mad at the rest of us for whatever happened to him that day at school.  But, this time I tried a slightly different technique to see if I could tame this wild beast before bad went to worse.  I sat him down at the kitchen table while he told me that life was not fair because…

• Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

  Stephanie

  1 Feb 2012 | 7:15 pm

  Whenever you have a baby you are taking a figurative roll-of-the-die.  You simply do not know what you're going to get and, you naively think you somehow have more control over that person than you really do.When Cate was born the first thing the nurses said to me was "My, what an alert baby!"  At the time I thought that was good, my newborn was paying attention or something, but really that meant I would be raising a person who never slept and was driven to go, go, go and do, do, do in ways that often seemed superhuman.Here's Cate on her first day of Kindergarten.  Of course,…

• Hall happenings...

  Stephanie

  30 Jan 2012 | 11:29 am

  Today is day one for my marathon training plan.  I'm a mess of mixed emotions as I look forward to my ultimate goal of finishing a full marathon.  This quote keeps running through my brain today:Our doubts are traitors and make us loose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.Emma has become the baker in our home.  She has mastered the art of delectable cinnamon rolls and we are all the fatter because of it!  She loves to read my Sur la Table and Williams and Sonoma catalogs.Spencer is playing his first year of city league basketball.  He is a fairly…

• hot chocolate

  Stephanie

  26 Jan 2012 | 2:17 pm

  A mug of hot cocoa is my guilty pleasure.I drink a mugfull when I wake up each morning, and another mugfull right before I go to sleep.I’ve become a bit of a hot chocolate connoisseur over the years.  I love Stephens, but with the consumption levels in our home (we drink it year-round) I’ve found the price of Stephens to be a bit too steep for my budget.  A fantastic alternative is the hot chocolate sold at the LDS Cannery in Milwaukee.  I no longer buy it by the can, but simply by the 25 pound bag.  **funny side note**  Wes likes to drink hot chocolate out of a…

• 

  JPost.com - Middle East News

• UN decries ‘appalling brutality’ as Homs assault continues

  9 Feb 2012 | 5:40 pm

  Dozens killed in protest hotbed; US weighs humanitarian aid, but expert says arms are needed.

• West offers words, only, as Syria killing rages

  9 Feb 2012 | 1:46 pm

  Opposition group in Homs puts death toll as high as 110 at nightfall; Arabs to discuss joint UN-Arab mission to Syria.

• 'Beduin kidnap police, armed recruits in Sinai'

  9 Feb 2012 | 12:52 pm

  The latest kidnapping in Sinai takes place in reaction to killing of a man who was caught smuggling to Israel, 'Al Ahram' reports.

• Hamas split over unity pact with Fatah

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:51 am

  West Bank leaders welcome deal, but Gaza members say it violates law.

• Lieberman: Hezbollah could soon provoke Israel

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:28 am

  Foreign Minister tells UNSC ambassadors that Lebanese group could spark conflict to draw world attention away from Syria.

• 

  Betsy's Page

• Remember this when Democrats ask for your vote this year

  Betsy Newmark

  9 Feb 2012 | 4:17 am

  They will evade a law just to avoid having to commit themselves to putting their fiscal priorities on the table. And Obama just doesn't care.The Senate last passed a budget 1,106 days ago—that would be almost three years—and now the White House is telling Democrats not to bother this year either. Harry Reid will be pleased, because last week the Majority Leader said he had no plans to do so.Asked yesterday about the lack of a Senate budget, spokesman Jay Carney said that "Well, I don't have an opinion to express on how the Senate does its business with regards to this issue." ABC's Jack…

• What's the rationale for the Gingrich candidacy now?

  Betsy Newmark

  8 Feb 2012 | 3:47 am

  Newt Gingrich has been trying to convince voters that he is the sole conservative alternative to Romney. While it's quite debatable how conservative Gingrich actually is, his hubris in commanding Santorum to drop out has come back to bite him. While beauty contest votes with no delegates aren't that significant when it comes to the real purpose of primary and caucus votes, they do help craft a storyline. And the storyline from yesterday's victories for Rick Santorum clearly is that Rick Santorum has emerged as the alternative to Mitt Romney. Although, as Jim Geraghty points out, the turnout…

• Cruising the Web

  Betsy Newmark

  7 Feb 2012 | 4:23 am

  Tevi Troy has a nice retrospective on Mayor Ed Koch, "The Last Sane Liberal." It's a refreshing reminder in these days of Bloombergery.Jonathan Tobin writes persuasively that the federal government shouldn't be involved in prosecuting athletes for steroid use.Explaining how the federal government screwed up the stimulus package: Part of a recurring series, I'm sure. Clip and save for arguing with your liberal friends this year.Yuval Levin and Ramesh Ponnuru put forth an argument that Mitt Romney can use if he is the nominee when Obama tries to argue that Obamacare was modeled on Romneycare.

• The myth of us all pulling together

  Betsy Newmark

  7 Feb 2012 | 3:46 am

  Rich Lowry exposes the bad history behind Chrysler's Clint Eastwood ad. Eastwood says that Americans are hurting and that “the people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together. Now, Motor City is fighting again.”We all pulled together? As euphemism, this is clever; as history, it is false. Congress never approved the bailouts. Given the option to do so explicitly, it declined. The Bush and Obama administrations acted on their own, diverting TARP funds to Detroit regardless of the letter of the law. In Eastwood’s telling, a…

• Government knows best

  Betsy Newmark

  6 Feb 2012 | 3:22 am

  Megan McArdle has a good point about the controversy over the Obama administration's decision to force Catholic hospitals and charities offer coverage of abortion.I've seen several versions of Kevin's complaint on the interwebs, and everyone [who] makes it seems to assume that we're doing the Catholic Church a big old favor by allowing them to provide health care and other social services to a needy public. Why, we're really coddling them, and it's about time they started acting a little grateful for everything we've done for them!These people seem to be living in an alternate universe that I…

• 

  Day by Day Cartoon by Chris Muir

• 02/09/2012

  8 Feb 2012 | 9:00 pm

• 02/08/2012

  7 Feb 2012 | 9:00 pm

• 02/07/2012

  6 Feb 2012 | 9:00 pm

• 02/06/2012

  5 Feb 2012 | 9:00 pm

• 02/05/2012

  4 Feb 2012 | 9:00 pm

• 

  The Fix

• Santorum ties Romney in Pennsylvania poll

  Rachel Weiner

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:46 pm

  Rick Santorum is up in Pennslvania, Huntsman has a spot at Ford, Obama has some music he’d like you to listen to and Joe Miller might run again in 2014. Make sure to sign up to get “Afternoon Fix” in your e-mail inbox every day by 5 (ish) p.m! Read full article >>

• CPAC 2012: Updates, photos and video from day one

  Aaron Blake, Rachel Weiner, Felicia Sonmez

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:07 pm

  The Fix team spent Thursday live-blogging the Conservative Political Action Convention. We’ll be back at it Friday morning. KEY LINKS: Read full article >>

• John Sanchez drops out of New Mexico Senate race

  Rachel Weiner

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:55 am

  New Mexico Lt. Gov. John Sanchez (R) has dropped his Senate bid — welcome news to former Rep. Heather Wilson, his chief primary opponent. Sanchez was competing for the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D). Read full article >>

• Ron Barber, wounded in Tucson shooting, to run for Gabrielle Giffords’s House seat

  Rachel Weiner

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:39 am

  Ron Barber, an aide to former representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), will run for the House seat she just left. Read full article >>

• Pete Hoekstra primary rival calls TV ad ‘demeaning’

  Rachel Weiner

  9 Feb 2012 | 7:58 am

  One of Pete Hoekstra’s (R) primary rivals is attacking the former House member for an ad that used crude Asian stereotypes. Clark Durant, a Christian charter school founder challenging Hoekstra in the race to take on Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), put out his own ad calling Hoekstra’s controversial spot “demeaning.” Read full article >>

• 

  Reason Magazine Full Feed

• Dating at CPAC

  Garrett Quinn

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:35 pm

  Washington, D.C. - Are you young, single, and conservative? Are you uncomfortable around women? Do you struggle when asking members of the liberal media out on a date? If you answered yes to any of these questions and you skipped the conservative dating seminar at CPAC you probably missed out on some of the most important advice you will ever receive. Ok, not really. But you still missed an entertaining time.  Wayne Elise, founder of Charisma Arts “a company devoted to helping people become more charismatic though fun online content and in-person instruction,” gave attendees an overview…

• Fox Business Network Cancels Judge Andrew Napolitano's Freedom Watch

  Matt Welch

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:04 pm

  Bad news, freedom fighters! Judge Andrew Napolitano's Freedom Watch, the best damned daily libertarian news & argument show in the history of television (name a better one!), has gotten the axe from Fox Business Network. From the press release: FOX Business Network (FBN) will debut a new primetime schedule featuring encore presentations of the channel's top post-market programs, announced Kevin Magee, Executive Vice President of the network. Starting February 20th at 8 PM/ET, viewers will find additional airings of The Willis Report (5PM & 8PM/ET), Cavuto (6PM & 9PM/ET) and Lou…

• Kurt Loder on In Darkness and Safe House

  Reason Magazine

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:00 pm

  In Darkness, Poland’s submission for this year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, is a movie that drives home the abomination of the Holocaust in a freshly chilling way, based on true events as recalled by survivors in a 1991 book. Safe House, on the other hand, is a faux Bourne movie, starring Denzel Washington as the ace CIA operative condemned as a rogue and now hunted by the Company throughout colorful foreign locations. Kurt Loder reviews them both. View this article.

• In Darkness and Safe House

  Kurt Loder

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:00 pm

  In Darkness In Darkness, Poland’s submission for this year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, is a movie that drives home the abomination of the Holocaust in a freshly chilling way. The story, based on true events as recalled by survivors in a 1991 book, begins in a Jewish ghetto in the Polish city of Lvov in 1943, where occupying German soldiers and their Ukrainian allies are slaughtering men, women, and children in the streets with the casual barbarity that was a hallmark of Nazi derangement. Polish director Agnieszka Holland presents some of this depravity (in one scene, a Ukrainian officer…

• Catholic TV Network Sues Obama Administration, FBI Releases File on Steve Jobs, Santorum Shoots to the Top of a Poll: P.M. Links

  Mike Riggs

  9 Feb 2012 | 1:52 pm

  Global Catholic Network files suit against the Obama administration over contraception rule.  FBI releases its file on Steve Jobs.  Poll: New Yorkers love NYPD Chief Ray Kelly, despite his organization's mounting problems.  Poll: Santorum has it all over Gingrich.  U.S. and Pakistan are murder-droning together.  Stocks close high! Do you want hot links and other Reason goodies delivered to your inbox twice a day? Sign up here for Reason's morning and afternoon news updates.

• 

  Lehigh Valley Conservative

• Another Socialist Threat On Our Freedoms

  The Outsider

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:57 am

  This time it is the internet. Obama’s infringment on our freedoms no longer astounds me. I expect it from the man that has never had to EARN a living and follows the rules of  Saul Alinski!

• Socialists?

  The Outsider

  9 Feb 2012 | 6:14 am

  A “life long Republican” who constantly bashes Republicans, has implied that George W. Bush is a Socialist worse than our Socialist wannabe dictator, president Obama. Case in point: Bush’s drug program that is actually part D of Medicare, compared to Obamacare. Let’s review the 2 policies! G.W. Bush’s drug plan is Part D of Medicare and is NOT mandated and forced upon us and affects only those on Medicare.  It is a “stand alone” plan! These are people over 65 and most of these people PAID for Medicare during their working years. If one does not participate in part…

• Divided We Fall

  The Outsider

  5 Feb 2012 | 10:55 am

               No society will function well when we are divided along political lines that are used for procuring votes. No where in the Constitution does it say that some ethnic groups must be treated differently than others in an effort to “make” us equal. Equal to what and who makes that decision?             We have “Affirmative Action” that discriminates against groups that are not African American. There is the “Black Caucus” that is really a political arm of the Democrat party that helps only African Americans. Why is that legal? It should not be! Who…

• Is This True?

  Randy Toman

  3 Feb 2012 | 8:32 am

  This is the most believable video I have seen on this subject. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3aCfR8rmrw If in fact this video is true and it certainly seems to be well documented, naming particulars and supposedly facts that were to have actually happen. Any of you that are detail type’s ——- please do take it apart and let me know if there is truth there——-if you can get to the bottom of any so call truth I would be very much interested in hearing from you. Why that isn’t a major news story or one of the heavies in talk radio didn’t pick it up leads me to none…

• Seniors In America

  The Outsider

  2 Feb 2012 | 3:51 pm

  Here is an article by an anonomous writer and given to me by my friend Clyde! He feels like many of us in our later years, including your’s truly!   ”They like to refer to us as senior citizens, old fogies, geezers, and in some cases dinosaurs. Some of us are “Baby Boomers” getting ready to retire. Others have been retired for some time. We walk a little slower these days and our eyes and hearing are not what they once were. We have worked hard, raised our children, worshipped our God and grown old together. Yes, we are the ones some refer to as being over the hill, and…

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  The Corner

• Romney, Santorum, and the Debt Limit

  Brian Bolduc

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:15 pm

  Spooked by Rick Santorum’s triplet victories on Tuesday, Mitt Romney has taken to criticizing the former senator’s legislative record. “He voted to raise the debt ceiling, I believe, five different times to a tune of about an additional $3.5 trillion,” Romney said yesterday in Atlanta.Keep reading this post . . .

• More on Obama, Abortion and Infanticide

  Andrew C. McCarthy

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:00 pm

  In addition to what I just posted about the facts that were already known about Obama’s abortion extremism before the 2008 election, here are two other essays worth reading from October 2008 — both by our friend Robby George, both available at the Public Discourse website from The Witherspoon Institute. The first is “Obama’s Abortion Extremism.” The second, which Robby wrote with Yuval, is “Obama and Infanticide.”

• Santorum: Romney Campaign Focused on 'Serially Tearing Down Opponents'

  Katrina Trinko

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:45 pm

  National Journal reports:  Keep reading this post . . .

• Romney: 'I Expect That I'll Lose a Number of States'

  Katrina Trinko

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:24 pm

  In wake of Rick Santorum’s surprise trio of wins on Tuesday, Mitt Romney is dialing back expectations for the upcoming primaries in Michigan and Arizona. “I’d like to win Arizona and Michigan because there are a lot of delegates at stake in both states,” Romney said in an interview set to air tonight on Fox Business Network. “And I’ll be campaigning hard to win in those states. I can’t make a prediction as to what will happen. Last time I won, but I won by 2 points. So it was pretty close. I’m not expecting a landslide. I can’t tell you…

• When Obama Voted For Infanticide

  Andrew C. McCarthy

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:20 pm

  Peter has beaten me to the punch. What I personally find most offensive about the HHS mandate is the shock with which it has been met. Why? This is who Barack Obama is. There is no reason to be surprised by this. He is not being pulled to extremes by his base — he is the one doing the pulling. Obama’s abortion extremism is such that, as a state legislator, he opposed protection for — I’ll use his words here — “that fetus, or child — however way you want to say describe it” when, contrary to the wishes of the women involved and their…

• 

  The Weekly Standard Blog

• Iran Threatens Two More Naval Chokepoints

  Lenny Ben-David

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:32 pm

  Considerable attention is being given to Iranian threats to block the Strait of Hormuz, through which a large proportion of the world’s petroleum sails. The U.S Energy Information Administration estimates that “almost 17 million barrels in 2011, up from between 15.5-16.0 million bbl/d in 2009-2010,” sails past Iranian gun and missile emplacements along the coast, mine-laying ships, and Revolutionary Guard fast boats. In 2011, that amounted to “roughly 35 percent of all seaborne traded oil, or almost 20 percent of oil traded worldwide.” Yet the recent visit of two Iranian naval…

• Chrysler’s Wisconsin Moment

  Ben Schachter

  9 Feb 2012 | 1:19 pm

  By now the Chrysler Super Bowl advertisement has become well known. And not surprisingly it’s gotten political. “Powerful spot,” said David Axelrod. “Extremely well-done,” said Karl Rove, adding: It is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the President of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising and the best wished of the management which is benefited by getting a bunch of our money that they’ll never pay back. Indeed, the political aspect runs deeper. As the Hollywood Reporter…

• On the Path to a Brokered Convention?

  Michael Warren

  9 Feb 2012 | 12:30 pm

  Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics, who in the past has been skeptical of the likelihood of a brokered Republican convention, now sees the opening for one: My assumption -- and the assumption of many -- was that the GOP fight would eventually degenerate into an ideological battle between the very conservative and somewhat conservative/moderate wings of the party, with Romney on one side and a single alternative on the other. Unless there was a late entrant or Ron Paul caught fire in the caucus states, someone was virtually assured of claiming the requisite number of delegates in that scenario.

• Inflecting?

  William Kristol

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:30 am

  Yesterday I pointed out that "February 7 could prove to have been Super Tuesday if it turns out to be a key inflection point in the campaign."  Two indications, I wrote, of such an inflection point would be "if Santorum now passes Newt Gingrich in national Republican surveys" and if he "continues to do better than Gingrich (and than Romney?) in poll match-ups against President Obama." Today, the Gallup national tracking poll of Republican voters has Santorum catching Gingrich at 20 percent apiece. This is a five-day rolling average. Some back-of-the-envelope…

• Canned Response

  Victorino Matus

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:05 am

  All throughout Top Chef: Texas, Ed Lee has never been rattled. He may have made a few mistakes along the way, but his focus remained unbroken. (He also had little patience for incompetence and was never soft on his fellow chefs. When Sarah Grueneberg needed 9-1-1, Ed was actually annoyed by the inconvenience.) But on last night's semifinal, Ed's focus on a dish with oysters got the better of him. "Every time I went to that Whole Foods, they always had fresh oysters," recalled the chef. So it figures the one time he actually needed fresh oysters, there were none on sale.

• 

  Instapundit

• A PRO-OBAMACARE PRECEDENT: “We are all familiar with an individual mandate that was authorized by t…

  Glenn Reynolds

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:14 pm

  A PRO-OBAMACARE PRECEDENT: “We are all familiar with an individual mandate that was authorized by the U.S. Congress and notoriously upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court: the affirmative duty of persons of Japanese descent to report to a Civil Control Station. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1943). The distinction between mere prohibition and command played a large role in the internment cases. . . . Korematsu is a perfectly fine precedent: it has never been overruled. Moreover, it is the feds’ best and only precedent. So why don’t they cite it?”

• MEGAN MCARDLE: Battle Over California Medicaid Reimbursement is a Preview of Our Future. And it’s …

  Glenn Reynolds

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:13 pm

  MEGAN MCARDLE: Battle Over California Medicaid Reimbursement is a Preview of Our Future. And it’s not pretty. “It is, of course, absolutely true that you can save a great deal of money by forcing providers to sell things below their cost of goods. It is not necessarily true that this is a sustainable long-term strategy.”

• NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: New coating promises to turn an atomic force microscope into an even more us…

  Glenn Reynolds

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:04 pm

  NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: New coating promises to turn an atomic force microscope into an even more useful tool.

• ADULT STEM CELLS and “fracture putty.”…

  Glenn Reynolds

  9 Feb 2012 | 1:00 pm

  ADULT STEM CELLS and “fracture putty.”

• AT AMAZON, bestselling laptops. Plus, markdowns on HP laptops….

  Glenn Reynolds

  9 Feb 2012 | 12:00 pm

  AT AMAZON, bestselling laptops. Plus, markdowns on HP laptops.

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  Eunomia

• Obama and Missile Defense

  Daniel Larison

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:27 am

  Mark Adomanis finds that Hanson still misunderstands foreign policy issues: In reality, Obama’s foreign policy vis-a-vis Russia has failed not due to its cowering weakness and accommodation, but due to its significant overlap with the previous administration’s bullheaded and illogical insistence on pursuing ballistic missile defense in Eastern Europe. That’s a criticism I would love to hear made, but it’s one that Hanson is incapable of making because it would require that he recognize Obama as a persistent and forceful advocate of American power. Another obstacle for Hanson is that…

• Rubio’s Iran Hyperbole

  Daniel Larison

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:40 am

  Jennifer Rubin asked Marco Rubio about Iran before he spoke at CPAC: Rubio replied, “Iran is an existential threat not only to Israel but to the region….” It’s remarkable how Iran hawks keep building up the Iran threat with increasingly preposterous claims at the same time that some high-ranking Israeli officials are trying to use less alarmist language. As Haaretz reported late last year: “What is the significance of the term existential threat?” the ambassadors quoted [Mossad chief] Pardo as asking. “Does Iran pose a threat to Israel? Absolutely. But if…

• Russia Still Isn’t Going to Abandon Assad

  Daniel Larison

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:50 am

  As part of his proposal for U.N. safe zones protected by Turkey and other regional governments, Soner Cagaptay engages in some wishful thinking: Washington must assure Russia that it will have access to Tartus after Assad leaves. Give Russia their warm water port, and they will not veto the resolution. The obvious problem is that the U.S. cannot guarantee that a future Syrian government will allow Russia access to this base. Even if the U.S. could guarantee that the next Syrian government would agree to this condition, why would the Russians believe our government about this? Assuming that…

• What Would Arming the Syrian Opposition Achieve?

  Daniel Larison

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:13 am

  Marc Lynch describes some of the other problems with a plan to arm the Syrian opposition: First, who exactly would be armed? The perennial, deep problem of the Syrian opposition is that it remains fragmented, disorganized, and highly localized. This has not changed. The “Free Syrian Army” remains something of a fiction, a convenient mailbox for a diverse and unorganized collection of local fighting groups. Those groups have been trying to coordinate more effectively, no doubt, but they remain deeply divided. For all their protestations of solidarity, the Syrian National Council…

• Arming the Syrian Opposition Will Provoke More Regime Violence

  Daniel Larison

  9 Feb 2012 | 7:35 am

  Dan Drezner argues for arming the Syrian opposition, but he also acknowledges the likely consequences: Arming the opposition will have costs: The loss of life will escalate; the uprising against Assad could turn into a sectarian conflict; Iran might retaliate by fomenting armed resistance in Bahrain; and the result might simply be an arms race-by-proxy inside Syrian borders. And for the United States, the Syrian crisis matters, but is nevertheless a distraction from the Obama administration’s highest stated priority in the region: getting a handle on Iran’s nuclear program. That said, the…

• 

  The Spectacle Blog

• Exposing 'Truth and Lies' in Afghanistan

  Reid Smith

  9 Feb 2012 | 12:16 pm

  A veteran U.S. army officer has broken ranks, and written a scathing article about the war in Afghanistan. In so doing, he's publicly confessed what many American servicemen have been hinting at for years, in private: reports of progress from the Pentagon are little more than window-dressing on a faltering campaign. Davis, a 27 year vet with four combat deployments under his belt, spent the last year assigned to the Army's Rapid Equipping Forces, traveling over 9,000 miles to visit every important area where American soldiers engage the enemy. He now contends that there is a growing…

• Obama WH Doesn't Care if the Senate Passes a Budget

  Aaron Goldstein

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:44 am

  Mark Hemingway of The Weekly Standard draws our attention to this exchange yesterday between ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. Tapper asked Carney if he agreed with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that the Senate did not need to pass a budget or if he agreed with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that the Senate not passing a budget has created uncertainty and affected growth: Tapper: So therefore, the Senate should pass a budget as well. Carney: I don't have a -- Tapper: I'm asking. Carney: Well, I don't have an opinion to express on…

• Sen. Paul Introduces Amendment to Halt Aid to Egypt

  Reid Smith

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:17 am

  Senator Rand Paul has introduced an amendment to the Highway Bill (S. 1813) calling for an immediate suspension of foreign aid to Egypt until detained American citizens are released by the Egyptian government. In the senator's words: We are subsidizing behavior through US taxpayer foreign aid to Egypt that is leading and allowing for the unjust detainment of American citizens in Egypt. Not everyone in this body agrees on foreign policy or on the role of US foreign assistance but the reckless actions of Egyptian authorities in the matter should bring us together to form one undeniable…

• The Origins of Romneycare and Coultercare

  W. James Antle, III

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:14 am

  Avik Roy has posted what may be the most comprehensive account of the individual mandate mania that once swept the right (or at least the subset of the right made up of health care policy wonks). Roy also points out that a lot of serious conservatives were actually anti-mandate way back in the 1990s, when Newt Gingrich felt they were necessary to combat Hillarycare. I do have two quibbles, however. Roy writes: "Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who were both House backbenchers in 1993, were also in favor of an individual mandate in those days." Gingrich was minority whip, the second-ranking…

• No Waiver for Thee

  Ross Kaminsky

  9 Feb 2012 | 6:55 am

  There have been over 1200 waivers handed out for companies to avoid complying with parts of Obamacare, including waivers that cover over half a million labor union members -- and fewer than 70,000 non-union workers. Today it is being reported that 10 states are being granted waivers from certain provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act because they will not be able to have enough students proficient in math and reading by 2014. Did anyone think that a federal law would actually change student performance? Fox News quotes a government official who says that "28 other states, as well as the…

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  Politics4All Latest Blogs

• Billigare el

  9 Feb 2012 | 12:19 pm

  billigare el är något som alla hushåll vill ha men det finns så mycket man ska tänka på när det gäller elpriser. För att få billig el är det viktigt att ni jämför de olika aktörer som finns på marknaden. Försök också att samtidigt utvärdera ert hushålls behov. Men det kanske finns några andra alternativ, som tex en öppen spis, tända ljus, stänga av onödig hemelektronik mm som kan minska elräkningen? Att få billigare el handlar inte bara om vilken typ…

• Protests against Occupy time has come?

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:48 am

  A small group of people in Oakland, California may have taken the first steps against Occupy that has the potential to spread across the United States during the coming months. The recent break in and destruction at the Oakland City Hall may be have been a trigger point. Costs of the damage Occupy has done to the city are said to be over $5 million.   Read more http://www.examiner.com/watchdog-politics-in-national/protests-against-occupy-time-has-come

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  9 Feb 2012 | 9:28 am

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  Bob McCarty Writes

• Rick Santorum Needs to Show His Intellect

  BobMcCarty

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:30 am

  By Paul R. Hollrah, Guest Blogger During Barry Goldwater’s five terms in the United States Senate, there was never any doubt where he stood.  Goldwater attracted a great many young conservatives.  And to the extent that establishment Republicans … the Rockefellers, Sen. Hugh Scott (R-PA), Gov. Bill Scranton (R-PA), etc… were scared to death of [...]

• NY Times Best-Selling Author Praises Book

  BobMcCarty

  8 Feb 2012 | 4:33 pm

  Richard Miniter, the award-winning investigative journalist, best-selling author, radio host, public speaker and frequent world traveler, informed me weeks ago that he had finished reading my book, Three Days In August: A U.S. Army Special Forces Soldier’s Fight for Military Justice. Today, however, he made time in his busy schedule to offer some words he [...]

• Maybe There Should Be A Law Against Campaign Consultants Telling Their Candidates What to Do

  BobMcCarty

  8 Feb 2012 | 2:30 pm

  On several occasions during my lifetime, I’ve found myself thinking maybe there should be a law against political campaign consultants and other “handlers” telling their candidates what to do.  Why?  Because, sometimes, they give bad advice.  One of those occasions happened early on a Friday afternoon almost two weeks ago following a speaking engagement I [...]

• Georgia Judge Ignores Precedent in Citizenship Ruling, State AG Fails to Take Principled Stand

  BobMcCarty

  8 Feb 2012 | 6:02 am

  By Paul R. Hollrah, Guest Blogger On Feb. 3, 2012, Atlanta Judge Michael M. Malihi, Deputy Chief Judge of the Georgia Office of State Administrative Hearings, issued a decision in four cases brought by eight Georgia residents. The plaintiffs challenged Barack Obama’s eligibility to have his name appear on Georgia’s March 6 Democratic Presidential Preference [...]

• Real Justice Hard to Find in Germany

  BobMcCarty

  6 Feb 2012 | 7:10 am

  Once again, political correctness appears to be rearing its ugly head in Germany. I reached that conclusion after reading a recent Stars & Stripes article about the trial of a man charged in the shooting deaths of two U.S. airmen at the Frankfort Airport in March. According to the article, journalist Franz Feyder testified in [...]

• 

  Post Politics: Breaking Politics News, Political Analysis & More - The Washington Post

• U.S. Chamber of Commerce begins multi-million dollar ad campaign in congressional races

  T.W. Farnam

  9 Feb 2012 | 12:59 pm

  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a multi-million dollar ad blitz in House and Senate races across the country on Thursday. The launch marks the earliest start ever to the Chamber’s biennial ad campaigns in congressional races. The ads back Republicans in 11 House races and eight Senate contests. The group is supporting one Democrat: Rep. Jim Matheson of Utah. Read full article >>

• Landmark settlement announced on foreclosure, mortgage fraud

  Brady Dennis, Sari Horwitz

  9 Feb 2012 | 12:10 pm

  State and federal officials on Thursday announced a settlement of $26 billion with five of the nation’s banks over flawed and fraudulent foreclosure practices that affected several million homeowners and became commonplace after the housing boom turned to bust in recent years. It is the largest government-industry settlement in more than a decade. Read full article >>

• John Sanchez drops out of New Mexico Senate race

  Rachel Weiner

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:55 am

  New Mexico Lt. Gov. John Sanchez (R) has dropped his Senate bid — welcome news to former Rep. Heather Wilson, his chief primary opponent. Sanchez was competing for the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D). Read full article >>

• Featured Advertiser

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:55 am

• Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry speak to CPAC, as conservatives call for unity

  David A. Fahrenthold

  9 Feb 2012 | 11:53 am

  On the first day of the annual convention of conservative activists, the losers had their moment. “Running for president of the United States,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who dropped out of the race earlier this year, “is really one series of humiliations after another.” Read full article >>