The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has asked Ben and Jerry's to substitute human breast milk for cow's milk in the manufacture of their delicious product.
Really. You just can't make this stuff up.
The myth that anti-Christian fanatics seem to take the most glee in is that she attempted to ban books from the town library while serving as mayor. This has been repeated often, even making a story in Time Magazine and Salon (2), and an email with a list of 90 books that Palin supposedly attempted to ban is shooting around leftist inboxes as we speak. (The list is fake, ripped off from this page.)
All this, according to the Wall Street Journal:
As it turns out, not only was the list a fake, but when the Anchorage Daily News investigated the story, it found no evidence that Palin had ever sought to remove books from the library. [City librarian] Baker (who was then named Emmons) did tell the local paper back in 1996 that Palin asked her, in the Daily News's words, "about possibly removing objectionable books from the library if the need arose." Emmons "flatly refused to consider any kind of censorship."
Kilkenny makes an appearance in the Daily News story, quoting Palin as asking Baker at a City Council meeting, " 'What would be your response if I asked you to remove some books from the collection?' " Baker's response was firm and negative, according to Kilkenny, who acknowledges that Palin did not cite any specific books for removal.
The chairman of the Alaska Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee tells the Daily News that there is no evidence in her files of any censorship at the Wasilla library. As for Baker's resignation, it appears to be unrelated to the putative censorship.
So not only is the book banning story patently false, but another piece of the "retribution queen" story takes a hit.
If this is not the most watched video on the Internet, it is only because most people are incapable of looking in the mirror.
HT to InstaPundit via non-blogging Advised by Wolves.
Career Congressman Paul Kanjorski (22-year incumbent) from Pennsylvania:
I'll tell you my impression. We really in this last election, when I say we...the Democrats, I think pushed it as far as we can to the end of the fleet, didn't say it, but we implied it. That if we won the Congressional elections, we could stop the war. Now anybody was a good student of Government would know that wasn't true. But you know, the temptation to want to win back the Congress, we sort of stretched the facts...and people ate it up.
Wizbang has more, including the video. But the bottom line is a Democrat admitted that the official strategy of the Democrat party was to lie to the American voters in order to win congress so they could push their own agenda.
Un-freaking-believable.
Jay Grodner, the Chicago lawyer who keyed a Marine's car in anger because the car had military plates and a Marine insignia, finally got his day in court last week.
Grodner pleaded guilty in a Chicago courtroom packed with former Marines. Some had Marine pins on their coats, or baseball jackets with the Marine insignia. They didn't yellor call him names. They came to support Marine Sgt. Michael McNulty, whose car Grodner defaced in December, but who couldn't attend because he's preparing for his second tour in Iraq.
Journalist John Kass does an excellent job of covering this story. Read it all.
The Center for Consumer Freedom is allowing you to vote for the winner of the 2007 Nanny Awards. There are some real bastards this year, but my favorite is from the left wing Humane Society:
Wayne Pacelle, “If You Can’t Beat Them, Kill Them” Award -- It was a pretty rough year for the president of the $152 million Humane Society of the United States. In May, Pacelle got battered during a Congressional hearing for his claims about mad cow disease. In the wake of the Michael Vick dog fighting scandal, HSUS promised to care for the disgraced NFL star’s pit bulls. When it was later revealed that HSUS was doing nothing of the sort, Pacelle publicly recommended that government officials kill the dogs.
Go vote for your favorite.
Last May, according to The Smoking Gun website, U.S. troops unearthed an even more grisly site, an al Qaeda torture chamber in Baghdad itself. When they entered, the soldiers found an Iraqi man suspended from the ceiling by chains. The room contained torture implements including hammers, whips, meat cleavers and wire cutters as well as a crude torture manual, displaying various methods of inflicting unbearable pain. These included using a blowtorch on the skin, gouging out eyes, using an electric drill to cut through a hand, and many more.
It's useful to be reminded of what real torture looks like when the Democrats in Washington are working themselves into a characteristic froth about the CIA and the destroyed interrogation tapes. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., declared that for "the past six years, the Bush administration has run roughshod over our ideals and the rule of law." It reminded him of nothing so much as the "18-and-a-half-minute gap on the tapes of Richard Nixon." Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., smells "obstruction of justice."
So now we will have an inquiry into whether the CIA has violated the law by destroying tapes it was under no obligation to make in the first place; concerning an interrogation technique that at the very worst (according to most reliable reports) involved making three notorious terrorists think, for a few seconds, that they were drowning.
Mona Charen, in Torture and the Democrats.
According to a state-by-state, district-by-district comparison of wealth concentrations based on IRS income data:
I've long said that Democrats are the party of extremes: the super rich and the poor. Now, it seems, they are expanding their hold on the upper class. It's the working man in the middle that gets screwed by the Democrats.
WaPo's Robert Novak tells us that next year's tax refunds will go out late. At issue is the alternative minimum tax (AMT) which could affect 23 million people.
The underlying reason is a 38-year-old congressional tax blunder that has never been corrected. In 1969, Congress passed the alternative minimum tax (AMT) to collect from 155 tax-avoiding millionaires. But because the scheme was not indexed for inflation, this year alone it would hit 23 million extra people with higher taxes. The AMT will be "patched" to provide relief, as it has been in every Congress, but not in time this year. Refunds totaling more than $75 billion will arrive many weeks late not only for taxpayers earning $100,000 to $200,000 who are unintentionally affected by the AMT but also for lower-income persons because the IRS refund procedure will be disrupted by the delay.
But the real reason that tax refunds will be late is Charles Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Rangel swore that instead of patching the AMT, the "mother of all tax reforms" would be passed which would eliminate the AMT and implement a massive tax on the "rich", thus taking a trillion dollars over the next ten years from working, successful people and giving it to those who, uh, aren't.
Although Rangel's tax bill was trimmed down even before it got out of the House (where it passed on a party line vote), everyone knew that it had no chance of gaining the necessary supermajority of 60 votes in the Senate to pass. But expecting a Democrat to abandon a foolish path without all the fluff and fanfare of a peacock spreading his tail to garner attention is naive and a little downright foolish.
Grave philosophical differences between Republicans and Democrats prevented passage. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell proposed permitting Republicans to offer four floor amendments to the bill. Reid did not want to subject his Democrats to voting against tax cuts, including repeal of the estate tax. So the two party leaders mutually refused to grant the unanimous consent needed for the Senate to take up the bill, and the senators left Washington with another piece of work undone.
The AMT patch will, Novak tells us, almost certainly pass in December. The IRS has already said that it will take 10 weeks to make the necessary adjustments to computer programs once the details of the patch are known.
And that is the reason your tax refund will be late next year. When it is, feel free to write Congressman Rangel thank him, or maybe to ask for a personal loan to cover your commitments until the government can meet its commitment to you. But then again, by then you probably won't remember who is responsible. After all, the NY Times and its MSM cohorts will have no doubt already spent weeks telling you that it is all Bush's fault.
190 federal nominations (including 23 judges, secretaries of agriculture and veterans affairs, three members of the Federal Reserve, two members of the Council of Economic Advisers and the surgeon general) are sidelined because Senate Democrats won't deal with them. In the past, Bush would take advantage of Senate absences to make recess appointments (for instance, his appointment of John Bolton as ambassador to the UN).
Recess appointments are not new — they are provided for in the constitution whenever both houses are in recess (Article II Section 2) and "intrasession" recess (like holiday breaks) appointments have been upheld by federal courts — although a firm number of days has not been established nor has the Supreme Court ever addressed the issue.
President Washington used the recess clause to appoint South Carolina judge John Rutledge as the second Chief Justice of the United States (replacing John Jay) during a congressional recess in 1795. More recently, President Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall (the first African-American to serve on the Supreme Court) during a recess because he feared opposition from Southern senators. President Clinton made 140 recess appointments, including making James Hormel the ambassador to Luxembourg, the nation's first openly gay ambassador.
But Democrats don't want Bush to take advantage of a Senate recess to make such appointments, so they are implementing a new tactic: pro forma sessions (meaning that although there won't be an official recess, there also won't be any formal proceedings):
Sen. Jim Webb (D) of Virginia, the designated presiding officer, called the [otherwise empty] chamber to order. "Under the previous order, the Senate stands in recess until Friday," he said. He banged the gavel, and then he left. It took 22 seconds.
A single Senator, calling an empty chamber into session. Ah, Democrats. Faux politicians holding faux sessions.
This is the first time in history that pro forma sessions have been used to stop recess appointments. In other words, Democrats are implementing a new weapon in their war of obstructionism.
Said Senator Webb:
I'd much rather be doing this than allow the president to skirt the confirmation process in the Senate. This is an exercise in protecting the Constitution and our constitutional process.
Hmmm. As I recall, the constitution calls for the Senate to give "advice and consent", not stonewall for months on end. What constitution does Webb think he's protecting?
Ohio representative Matthew Barrett (D - Dist. 58) was giving a lecture to seniors at Norwalk High School about how a bill become law. When he inserted a memory stick into the computer he expected to see the presentation he had downloaded. Instead, the image of a topless woman was projected onto the screen. Hearing "snickers", he immediately pulled the memory stick out.
Later examination of the memory stick by the principal and "technology staff" (the nerd squad?) revealed that it contained a directory of nude images (in Ohio, that would be "porn").
Barrett swears he doesn't know where the directory of images came from and that he received the memory stick from a legislative liaison from the state Library of Ohio about three weeks earlier. So did Barrett put the images on there or is the source the state library? Either way ...
Still, I can't believe Barrett didn't know what was on a stick he was using. He can't be an idiot. This is a man with a BS in Aeronautical Studies and a law degree. He even has a blog. Of course, there are exactly zero entries on it, so maybe he is a moron -- or perhaps just a technophobe. Moron or technophobe, either way I wouldn't want him to be representing me.
But perhaps he was really fishing for future votes. "Dude, you gotta vote for that Barrett guy. Back when I was in high school he spoke to my class and showed us porn. For real!"
The Investor's Business Daily throws a little light on the secretive organizations that George Soros funds:
That's right, (James "NASA whistleblower") Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros' flagship "philanthropy," by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI's "politicization of science" program.
That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly "censored" spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda. . . .
The IBD goes on to list other projects financed by Soros: the "spontaneous uprising of 2 million angry Mexican-flag waving illegal immigrants demanding U.S. citizenship in Los Angeles" and financial backing for the lawyers that got the Supreme Court to abolish special military commissions for terrorists at Guantanamo. There's more:
OSI also gave cash to other radicals who pressured the Transportation Security Administration to scrap a program called "Secure Flight," which matched flight passenger lists with terrorist names. It gave more cash to other left-wing lawyers who persuaded a Texas judge to block cell phone tracking of terrorists.
They trumpeted this as a victory for civil liberties. Feel safer?
I don't.
via Lucianne.com
Professional writer and admitted lefty, Dr. John Barnes, took a look at the writings of the New Republic pseudonymous "Scott Thomas". His expertise leads him to conclude:
Based on a mix of semiotic analysis and my seat of the pants experience as a frequent reader of professional and near-professional writing by new writers, my guess is this: I think "Scott Thomas" is actually an MFA writing student, or a recent graduate of such a program, probably with some military experience – he may be serving in some non-combat specialty in Iraq – probably from one of the elite MFA programs, the twenty or so from which college creative writing faculty and small-press staff come disproportionately. I also think I know how his piece came to be published in New Republic, in outline if not in detail, and that story will also be somewhat instructive and revealing.
The entire article is a little long but surprisingly interesting as Barnes deconstructs the writing style. Then he takes a look at the editor that chose to publish the unknown author. Dr. Barnes is a straight shooter.
HT to non-blogging Advised by Wolves.
Yeah, I know, the post title is a bit of a "duh!" moment. But to bash an red-blooded American on national television when he doesn't know anything about the guy except that he owns a scary looking weapon?
Joe Biden brags that he authored the "assault weapons" ban and thinks an American gun owner "should have his head examined".
HT to Michelle Malkin on Townhall.
CNN begins its response to Michael Moore's criticism of their refutation of the "facts" in Moore's SiCKO with this nice quote:
It's ironic that someone who has made a career out of holding powerful interests accountable is so sensitive to having his own work held up to the light by impartial journalists, as we did in our examination of 'SiCKO,'
With the Gorebot's Live Earth event looming (just 3 more days!), son Al Gore III grabs the headlines by getting arrested for going 100 MPH (in a Prius) and being idiot enough to be doing so with marijuana, Xanax, Valium, Vicodin and Adderall (used for ADD) in the car.
Just One Minute reminds us of Gore III's past brushes with the law:
Riehl World View has words of advice for daddy Gore Jr.
This can happen to anyone's children, but Gore might want to start spending less time lecturing the world with junk science and more time with his family. Perhaps they need him more than we do right now.
Daily Pundit says he didn't know a Prius could go that fast, and wonders about the inclusion of the make of the car in the news story:
I’m trying to figure out whether Reuters is being ironic or trying desperately to make the best of a really bad bit of PR for Al Gore just a few days before his global
revival meetingconcert extravaganza.
¡No Pasarán! observes:
I’d take all of that crap too if I couldn’t escape the shadow of a disingenuous, messianic, and thoughtless father who wanted us all to turn back the clock on human development, and impoverish humanity while he plays with his “enlightened” MacBook and Prius.
Ace of Spades quips:
A Gore family spokesman said the spirited lad was "attempting to raise awareness of the green lifestyle" by alerting the public to the little-known fact that Prius can hit 100mph at all.
Wizbang also suggests that Gore get his own house in order:
Perhaps former Vice President Al Gore should stop worrying about everyone else's carbon footprint and help his son beat his drug problem.
TJ's Anti-Contrarian Blog lectures:
But this doesn't excuse you for driving at 100 mph. Did you know that you burn as much fossil fuel driving a Prius at 100 mph as an SUV does at normal speed!!! Furthermore young man, burning hand-rolled doobies contributes to Global Wormening!!! Yee-Gads! what were you thinking.
Thought Mechanics leverages the opportunity to berate big government because "it has long been time to repeal the utopian Nannyism of drug prohibition."
Let's see, just how much press coverage did Bush's daughters get for trying to get a drink when they were 20 in a bar? Weren't the lefties all over it?
Looking for commentary from the Left was a bit difficult, but I did find where Jane Genova asks if we can "leave [the Gores] alone on this one" while Talk Left laments:
I hope he doesn't get the same "equal treatment" Paris Hilton got.
Yeah, the rest of us are hoping they finally take his license away before he kills someone.
A gay pub in Melbourne will be allowed to ban heterosexuals. To date, a similar ruling that allows a heterosexual bar to discriminate against gays has not been forthcoming, as that would violate the Australian Equal Opportunity Act. Evidently, the law is being interpreted to mean that gays are better than equal.
President Bush has vetoed the shameless Democrat surrender monkey legislation that would let the terrorists know when they can safely take over Iraq.
Or, at least, Mary Katharine Ham puts her answer to Reid's "the war is lost" defeatism to poetry ala "Green Eggs and Ham".
You will remember that when CNN's Dana Bash asked Harry Reid if he would believe General Petraeus if he testified that progress is being made in Iraq, the Majority Leader answered:
No, I don’t believe him, because it’s not happening.
In the face of blind arrogance, it seems to me that Seussian prose is exactly the way to frame this debate. Good job Mary Katharine!
With three Democrat presidential candidate promising to eliminate the gender pay gap in America's workplace, one has to ask what, exactly, is the problem? Steve Chapman reports:
Buried in the report is a startling admission: "After accounting for all factors known to affect wages, about one-quarter of the gap remains unexplained and may be attributed to discrimination" (my emphasis). Another way to put it is that three-quarters of the gap clearly has innocent causes -- and that we actually don't know whether discrimination accounts for the rest. ...
June O'Neill, an economist at Baruch College and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, has uncovered something that debunks the discrimination thesis. Take out the effects of marriage and child-rearing, and the difference between the genders suddenly vanishes. "For men and women who never marry and never have children, there is no earnings gap," she said in an interview.
This information is not new — every time the subject of male vs. female salary comes up we trot out the studies that show that the pay gap is non-existent in this day and age. But using facts to argue with a liberal is like trying to drive nails into a fog bank.
Bill Whittle takes on conspiracy theorists in his usual great form. A long but entertaining read, and a must for anyone forced to have contact with those who believe JFK's assassination was a government-ordered hit or 9/11 was anything other than an act of terrorism by Islmaofascists.
Besides, it's worth the time just for tidbits like this one (even though it made Mountain Dew spew from my nose):
There is a word for this diseased mental state. It begins with a “P” and if you blurted out “progressive” then shame on you, you horrible bigot. That may be a correlation without causality.
Hat Tip to non-blogging Advised by Wolves.
According to the Military Times, the Democrat's Ministry of Truth Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee will banish the phrase "Global War on Terror" from their vocabulary:
The House Armed Services Committee is banishing the global war on terror from the 2008 defense budget.
This is not because the war has been won, lost or even called off, but because the committee’s Democratic leadership doesn’t like the phrase.
A memo for the committee staff, circulated March 27, says the 2008 bill and its accompanying explanatory report that will set defense policy should be specific about military operations and “avoid using colloquialisms.”
Not to worry, there'll be no gap left in our communication because Newspeak phrases are being substituted:
The memo, written by Staff Director Erin Conaton, provides examples of acceptable phrases, such as “the war in Iraq,” the “war in Afghanistan, “operations in the Horn of Africa” or “ongoing military operations throughout the world.”
Hmmm, I reckon the more accurate phrase War on Islamofacism is out of the question.
Hat Tip to GOP Bloggers.
Courtesy of the office of Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, a rather nice montage of clips showing the Right side of the debate about the meaningless "non-binding resolution" on Iraq:
I like the inclusion of Kennedy in there. Nice job.
South Dakota Rep. Mary Glenski (D-Sioux Falls) introduced a bill that would tax free speech in the form of political advertising.
New York Sen. Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn) is planning to introduce legislation making it illegal to be using an iPod, telephone, Blackberry, or any other electronic device when crossing the street.
Texas Rep. Wayne Smith (R-Baytown) wants to fine parents who miss a meeting with their child's teacher. [Hat Tip to Right Wing Nation.]
New York City Council member Gail Brewer is proposing legislation that would ban "ultrathin" fashion models.
And of course, the root of much evil, one must consider the continuing restriction of free thought on our college campuses:
Official censorship—now renamed speech codes and antiharassment codes—pervades the campuses. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) recently surveyed more than 300 schools, including the top universities and liberal arts colleges, and found that over 68 percent explicitly prohibit speech that the First Amendment would protect if uttered off campus. At 229 schools, FIRE found clear and substantial restriction of speech, while 91 more had policies that one could interpret as restricting speech. Only eight permitted genuine free expression.
Maybe this is a disturbing trend, or maybe I'm just more sensitive these days. It's still unsettling.
Nancy French lists last year's Blue State Blunders. My favorite:
September: The View host Rosie O’Donnell compares conservative Christians to Islamo-fascists: “Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have separation of church and state.” In response, roving bands of Presbyterians attack the New York subway system, Methodists issue a blistering fatwa, and Episcopalians blow themselves up in a nearby shopping mall after consuming their last Starbucks frappaccinos.
On Christmas Eve day, the LA Times publishes 10 myths about atheism. In the piece we are told that the scripture being written under the direction of a deity is "ridiculous", scientific thinking is not "congenial" to religious faith, and "religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe".
Best of all, I find, is that the reason that godless despots like Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot became the greatest murderers of all time is not that they rejected religion, but rather that their movements too closely resembled religion.
Honest. You can't make this insanity up. Oh wait, I guess columnists for the LA Times can.
Booksellers and school librarians in Australia won't publish a book that portrays an Arabic-speaking character as a "baddie" and has references to a mujaheddin extremist group.
On the other hand, they had no problem with a book that portrays terrorists as victims of the West and describes Jesus Christ as "history's first ... suicide bomber".
Read all about it at The Gathering Storm's old site (he just moved).
One member told CNN that Murtha, referring to the lobbying reform bill Pelosi has advocated, said "even though it's total crap I'll vote for it and pass it because that's what Nancy wants."
Anyone, absolutely anyone, can get elected in this country.
He explained to Chris Matthews that he meant that it's "crap" that congress should have to deal with ethics reform when there's more serious things like Iraq to worry about.
Yeah, that's just what I want — dishonest politicians running the War on Islamofacism. I feel so safe.
Technorati tags: War on Islamofacism, War on Terror, John Murtha, Idiotic Things Liberals Say.
Dennis Miller on the prospect of Nancy Pelosi becoming third in line for the presidency:
Hat tip to Blogs for Condi.
The good professor at Right Wing Nation is fed up with conservatives acting afraid. I sympathize.
Update: Mary Katharine Ham at Townhall says, "Hey, Liberals! Lecture me about racism when you've stopped creating more of it."
Others have told me it was a Republican gaffe, racist or not, because it could be read as racist. Well, frankly, if we limit our political advertising things that won’t offend liberals, we will have no political advertising.
Hat tip to Dissecting Leftism.