Internet Scofflaw

Interesting thoughts at Edgelings. Punchline:

Microsoft only wanted all of our money. Increasingly, it seems that Google wants all of our data. In running away from the Evil Empire, have we now instead rushed into the arms of Big Brother?

(Via Instapundit.)

More popular than Obama, McCain, or Biden, according to Rasmussen.  When asked whether Obama or Palin is more qualified to be president, people split about even, with a slight edge to Obama.  Of course, Palin isn’t running for president.

(Via Instapundit.)

At Real Clear Politics.

Well, at least Biden has promoted her from mayor:

“I heard a very — by the way, and I mean that sincerely — very strong and a very good political speech from a lieutenant governor of Alaska, who I think will be very formidable — and very formidable not only in the campaign,” Biden said.

(Via Instapundit.)

ASIDE: By the way, I don’t know anyone, in politics or out, who feels the need to reassure people of his sincerity nearly as often as Joe Biden.  (And I really mean it.)

The Obama campaign has come up with a new strategy for dealing with Sarah Palin: ignore her and hope she goes away.

Think it’ll work?

This summer, twice as many Americans were killed in Obama’s Chicago as in Iraq.  (Via Instapundit.)

For that matter, Iraq’s government is probably less corrupt.

Also, many believe Palin is more experienced than Obama, according to a new Rasmussen poll:

Over half of U.S. voters (51%) think reporters are trying to hurt Sarah Palin with their news coverage, and 24% say those stories make them more likely to vote for Republican presidential candidate John McCain in November.

Thirty-nine percent (39%) also believe the GOP vice presidential nominee has better experience to be president of the United States than Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

But 49% give Obama the edge on experience, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey – taken before Palin’s historic speech Wednesday night to the Republican National Convention.

While Republicans and Democrats predictably favor their party’s candidate by overwhelming margins, the experience gap among voters unaffiliated with either party is even narrower than the national totals. Forty-two percent (42%) say Obama has better experience to be president, but 37% say Palin does.

This was before her speech, too.  (Via Althouse, via Instapundit.)

A few days ago, we were told Sarah Palin was a helpless noob, with no business in a national campaign. Today, Joe Biden is lowering expectations:

I will be unrelenting in my debate with governor, the governor of Alaska in terms of the positions she has taken. But I will not do what she is able to do so well, and many of it’s not bad. I am not good at the one-line zingers that go at, you know, that’s not my deal. So if that is going to be the measure of how these debates go, then I’m not going to do very well.

Actually, Biden isn’t good at n-liners, for any n in less than three digits.

Jonah Goldberg:

One definition of fascism might be onomatopoetic: “fascist!” is simply the sound liberals make when they stub their toes on the hard corner of reality.

Whoa.  If CBS’s poll is to be believed, McCain has picked up 8 points since the weekend, with most or all of the polling conducted before Sarah Palin’s blockbuster speech last night.  The race is now tied, with McCain speech (and most of the impact of Palin’s) yet to be seen.

What’s happened since the weekend?  Thompson and Lieberman were good, but not 8 points good.  I think this is backlash against the disgusting behavior of the Democrats and their media enablers with regards to Gustav and Sarah Palin’s family.

Fox News reports:

The troop surge in Iraq has been more successful than anyone could have imagined, Barack Obama conceded Thursday in his first-ever interview on FOX News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.”

As recently as July, the Democratic presidential candidate declined to rate the surge a success, but said it had helped reduce violence in the country. On Thursday, Obama acknowledged the 2007 increase in U.S. troops has benefited the Iraqi people.

But even with this admission, Obama cannot admit he was wrong:

“I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,” Obama said while refusing to retract his initial opposition to the surge. “I’ve already said it’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”

That’s right, nobody could have anticipated that the Surge would work. No one at all. He certainly can’t be blamed for it; it’s beyond our wildest dreams.

Well, actually there are a few people who anticipated it would work. His opponent, John McCain, is a notable example. General Petraeus, with whom Obama refused to speak until recently, is another.

Survey USA:

Is the media rooting for Barack Obama? Rooting for John McCain? Or trying its best to be fair to both?

52% Barack Obama
8% John McCain
35% Being Fair To Both
5% Not Sure

(Via the Corner.)

The London Times reports:

A hotel that refused a wounded soldier a room, forcing him to spend the night in his car, was backed into a “grovelling” apology today after receiving a barrage of abusive phone calls.

Metro Hotel, in Woking, Surrey, had to call in the police as their lines were flooded with angry, abusive and threatening calls from members of the public.

The attack on the switchboards came after it emerged that Corporal Tomos Stringer, 24, had been told by hotel staff that it was company policy not to accept members of the Armed Forces as guests.

A soldier since the age of 16 and veteran of multiple tours in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, Cpl Stringer had travelled to Surrey to help with funeral preparations for a friend killed in action.

Cpl Stringer, who was not in uniform, presented his army warrant card when asked by the hotel for proof of identity. After the receptionist refused him a room, he was left with no choice but to bed down in his tiny, two-door car, his wrist, broken during a convoy ambush, encased in plaster.

Metro Hotel did not exactly get out in front of this:

After a resolute silence, the hotel, owned by a company called American Amusements, issued a statement.

“The Metro Hotel, Woking, sincerely regrets any upset caused towards Corporal Stringer and his family. The hotel management has always had an open-door policy to all its visitors and guests, including members of the military and Armed Forces.”

The statement said that the receptionist on duty at the time had made a mistake.

But their belated statement’s “open-door policy” turns out to be a lie:

A personal letter received by Mr Williams, MP for Caernarfon, went further, saying that the hotel had recently experienced “some rather serious incidents” involving soldiers from the nearby barracks.

Michael Chaussy, the manager of Metro Hotel, insisted there was no blanket policy, but that it was “a decision for the manager to assess whether the hotel booking is to be accepted”.

Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (who still apparently does not belong to a party) has pleaded guilty to two felonies and no contest to a third.  He will resign within two weeks.  (Via Politico.)

His appointee, Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings has also resigned.  The article does not say why, so I assume it’s unrelated to Kilpatrick’s legal woes.

Anyone who hoped she would wilt under pressure is sorely disappointed tonight. I just hope people were watching.

UPDATE: By the way, you know that a speech is a home run when the talking heads find it necessary to point out that she didn’t write it herself. Speechwriters? Who knew?

UPDATE: People were watching.  Excellent.  (Via the Corner.)

Also: these guys actually seem to be serious about the speechwriter line of attack!  I can’t believe it.

Anchor Rising has a rundown of Sarah Palin’s executive orders.  (Via the Corner.)

ABC’s Political Radar reports:

Looking to the future but with one eye on the past, Biden also promised that an Obama-Biden government would go through Bush administration data with “a fine-toothed comb” and pursue criminal charges if necessary.

“If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation,” he said, “they will be pursued, not out of vengeance, not out of retribution – out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no one, no attorney general, no president, no one is above the law.”

(Via LGF.)

He’ll have the support of the “Netroots” gang. Jerry Pournelle’s insight is relevant here.

UPDATE: Now Biden says he didn’t mean it.

(Via The Line is Here, via Instapundit.)

Barack Obama speaks of his time as a Senator in the past tense:

(Via Power Line.)

Allahpundit has an encouraging post about Sarah Palin’s political acumen.  The Time article he links is particularly good.  (I don’t get to use that sentence very often!)

Yesterday I predicted that the left would whisper that Bristol Palin was pressured to keep her baby, and that would be seen (by them) as terrible.  Apparently I simply do not know how to think as a leftist.

I had it precisely backwards.  It’s now being floated that Sarah Palin is a hypocrite because she did not pressure Bristol into keeping her baby.  Palin is pro-life after all, so (it is argued) she should have pressured her daughter.

I know that the left’s favorite thing in the whole wide world is accusing religious conservatives of hypocrisy (even more than winning elections, it would seem), but they just don’t have the material here.  The important point they are missing is that maybe, just maybe, Palin raised her children so that she didn’t have to pressure her daughter into keeping the baby.  The fact that she never lectured Bristol about it does not mean that she wouldn’t have if she had needed to.

On CNN, Barack Obama compared his qualifications to Sarah Palin’s:

COOPER: And, Senator Obama, my final question — your — some of your Republican critics have said you don’t have the experience to handle a situation like this. They in fact have said that Governor Palin has more executive experience, as mayor of a small town and as governor of a big state of Alaska.

What’s your response?

OBAMA: Well, you know, my understanding is, is that Governor Palin’s town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We have got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year.  You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month.

As his campaign has so many times recently, Obama completely ignores that Palin is governor of Alaska, and mocks the fact that she was formerly the mayor of a small town.  One could just as well mock Obama as a former state senator.  In fact, when Palin took office as mayor in 1996, he held no public office at all.

What’s funny, though, is Obama’s statement of his own executive experience: running for president.  He is arguing that running for president qualifies him to run for president.  This is not a serious argument; by that argument it would be impossible to elect an unqualified candidate.

But suppose we do take it seriously.  If his campaign is his qualification for president, he has to be saying that he would run his administration like a political campaign.  (In fact, I don’t doubt that that’s true.)  Is that the administration America needs?

(Via Ann Althouse.)

I’m not speaking figuratively. They are literally going stark, raving crazy. Here’s the latest, a ridiculous fake video not even Dan Rather would believe.  (Via Hot Air.)

A lot of people are wondering what political impact Sarah Palin’s daughter’s pregancy will have. For example, Charles Johnson asks:

This comes right after James Dobson and other far-right Christian conservatives enthusiastically endorsed McCain’s choice. It will be very interesting to see the reaction from that quarter.

I don’t take offense at the question. Despite being generally friendly to evangelicals, Johnson doesn’t really understand us, and unlike the Kos Kidz, he’s not licking his chops at the prospect of evangelicals eating Palin alive. But the question is easy to answer: this will not hurt Palin with them at all. If it has any impact, it will be the opposite. Anyone who thinks that this would hurt Palin with evangelicals has gotten their impression from Hollywood, not reality.

However, I predict that this will hurt Palin with far-left feminists. (Not that McCain-Palin had any realistic chance with them anyway.) They will whisper that Palin pressured her daughter to keep the baby, and that will be seen as terrible. Palin’s supporters will give two equally correct responses: (1) her critics have no evidence at all, and (2) there’s nothing wrong with talking someone out of an abortion anyway. Point 1 will be ignored, but the fact that point 2 is being made will taken as proof. How the argument will play out in the center is anyone’s guess, but I think that people will see that one side is behaving well and the other badly.

You heard it here first.

UPDATE: Like I said. (Via LGF.) Now waiting on prediction #2.

UPDATE: Haven’t seen prediction #2 fulfilled just yet, but Time’s Nathan Thornburgh is making the same prediction:

As for the idea — sure to be floated—that the avowedly anti-abortion Palin may have pressured her poor daughter to ruin her life by carrying an unwanted baby to term, I wouldn’t bet on it. The Palin family seems to share the same pro-life values going back at least as far back as anyone here can remember, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if Bristol wore those values, however imperfectly, as her own. At least, that’s what the town thinks. And Wasilla, above all, is pretty sensible.

(Via Hot Air.)

The article’s lede, by the way, is that the Wasilla press knew about this already, but considered it a family matter and left it alone.

UPDATE: Case closed on Palin and evangelicals.

LAST UPDATE: I had prediction 2 precisely backwards.  Apparently I simply do not know how to think as a leftist.

When Andrew Sullivan, formerly my favorite blogger, turned his politics around 180 degrees, I was disappointed, but I wasn’t ashamed I had ever liked him in the first place.  Until now.

(If you don’t know what this sewer diving is about — I haven’t been discussing it — you can look here, but I don’t recommend it.)

The former head of the DNC has apologized for his remarks chuckling about Hurricane Gustav and how it shows that God is on the Democrats’ side.

Well, sort of. While “apologizing” he tries to blame his remarks on someone else who’s not even involved:

Don Fowler, who was DNC chairman from 1995-1996, said he was just mimicking Rev. Jerry Falwell when he was caught on tape during a flight from Denver to North Carolina Friday. . .

“This is a point of national concern. I think everybody of good will has great empathy and sympathy for people in New Orleans,” Fowler said. “Most religious people are praying for people in New Orleans. There is no political connotation to this whatsoever. This was just poking fun at Jerry Falwell and the nonsensical thing he had said several years ago.”

What a weasel.

RideLust makes a great observation (within a larger article summarizing the extensive evidence that red-light cameras don’t work):

Under our current democratic government, good laws (laws that benefit everyone) are a “public good” (their “producers” don’t receive enough of their value to make it worth the effort) and thus are under-provided; while bad laws (laws that benefit special interests at the expense of everyone else) are a “private good” (their “producers” receive most of their value) and thus over-provided.

(Via Bruce Schneier, via Instapundit.)

My paraphrase, of course. A Politico article discusses how Obama keeps blaming his staff for misrepresenting him on policy and tone (giving several examples, the latest being a nasty statement about Sarah Palin). Nevertheless, he relies on them utterly:

Obama’s penchant for publicly rebuking his staff stands in sharp contrast to his declarations about how important they are to his management strategy, as well as the all for one, one for all mentality that he encourages in them. . .

And at the Las Vegas debate, Obama said he relies on his staff to neutralize his disorganization, which he said was his greatest weakness.

“I ask my staff never to hand me paper until two seconds before I need it, because I will lose it,” he said, drawing laughter from the audience. “I’ve got to have somebody around me who is keeping track of that stuff. And that’s not trivial; I need to have good people in place who can make sure that systems run. That’s what I’ve always done, and that’s why we run not only a good campaign but a good U.S. Senate office.”

(Via Instapundit.)

The Washington Post reports:

Their first encounter was last February at the National Governors Association meeting in Washington. Sarah Palin was one of several governors who met privately with Sen. John McCain, by then well on his way to capturing the Republican presidential nomination, and her directness and knowledge were impressive.

Later that day, at a largely social gathering organized by his campaign, McCain spent 15 minutes in private conversation with the first-term Alaska governor. “I remember him talking about her when he came back,” a McCain adviser said. “He said she was an impressive woman. He liked her.”

But few people outside McCain’s inner circle were privy to just how much of an impression Palin had made that day. . . By the time she arrived in Arizona last Wednesday to meet first with two top McCain advisers and then the next day with the candidate and his wife, Cindy, the job was hers to lose. . .

Far from being a last-minute tactical move or a second choice when better known alternatives were eliminated, Palin was very much in McCain’s thinking from the beginning of the selection process, according to McCain’s advisers. The 44-year-old governor made every cut as the first list of candidates assembled last spring was slowly winnowed. The more McCain learned about her, the more attracted he was to her as someone who shared his maverick, anti-establishment instincts.

(Via Polipundit.)

This AP story ran last week, before Gustav targeted New Orleans:

Signs are emerging that history is repeating itself in the Big Easy, still healing from Katrina: People have forgotten a lesson from four decades ago and believe once again that the federal government is constructing a levee system they can prosper behind.

In a yearlong review of levee work here, The Associated Press tracked a pattern of public misperception, political jockeying and legal fighting, along with economic and engineering miscalculations since Katrina, that threaten to make New Orleans the scene of another devastating flood.

When your city’s life depends — literally — on levies, you ought to take them seriously.  Instead, New Orleans made them part of its system of patronage and corruption.  Apparently it still is.

It’s a little known fact that Katrina probably actually saved thousands of lives.  The Army Corps of Engineers investigation showed that the levies weren’t constructed properly and were doomed to fail eventually.  By breaking the levies when the city was largely evacuated, Katrina probably saved countless lives.  Imagine what would have happened if the levies had given way while the city was full.

We interrupt this election blogging with news from Grant Street: new corruption allegations leveled at Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.

Oh wait, that’s hardly news at all.

Video here of a conversation with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo about energy policy, from before she became McCain’s running mate. There’s nothing particularly newsworthy here, but she clearly knows what she’s talking about.  She also gets in some jabs at Biden for opposing the Alaskan pipeline.

Rasmussen finds the race in about the same place as before the Democratic convention.  This largely excludes any impact from the Palin pick.

He sets politics aside and hopes that Hurricane Gustav peters out before hitting the Gulf coast.

Just kidding. He’s delighted to see Gustav looming:

I was just thinking, this Gustav is proof that there is a God in heaven,” Moore said, laughing. “To have it planned at the same time – that it would actually be on its way to New Orleans for day one of the Republican Convention, up in the Twin Cities – at the top of the Mississippi River.”

The thing is, I don’t know why anyone would be surprised at this. Moore’s reaction to 9/11 (other than to blame America), was to lament that the hijackers hadn’t attacked red states instead. This is not a good person.

UPDATE: It’s not just Moore either.

I’ve been following Sarah Palin since she came out of nowhere to save Alaska in 2006.  I’ve also been following Bobby Jindal, the other future superstar on the GOP bench.  It’s an unfortunate fact that the GOP bench is not very deep right now.  I would have rather not have tapped either of them for another four years, but the fact is McCain needs a running mate now.

That said, Palin is simply awesome.  She has certainly accomplished more in her time as governor and mayor than Obama has in his time as senator and state senator.  This is easy since Obama has accomplished nothing at all, but we needn’t rely on that, because she has accomplished quite a lot in her short time in office.  First, she single-handedly cleaned up her state and saved the Alaska GOP, and had to scale mountains to do it: she came out of nowhere to defeat incumbent Frank Murkowski in the primary and former governor Tony Knowles in the general election, and then forced through ethics reforms that were opposed by her own party.

She has also fought against earmarks (again, sadly, against her own party).  She was the one who killed the most famous pork-barrel project ever, the “bridge to nowhere.”  Better yet (from Alaska’s perspective) she managed to hold on to the Federal money and spend it on more worthwhile projects.

She’s also been a leader on energy issues.  She negotiated a pipeline with Canada (not one of the other three candidates can make any such claim) and has been fighting to open up Alaska’s north slope for oil drilling.

Beyond her CV, Palin is simply really cool.  Her personal story is awesome, and she’s a terrific speaker.  Her first speech with McCain yesterday was electric and I think she’ll be very effective on the stump and at the convention.

Palin’s greatest weakness is her lack of experience compared to Biden.  Although one can argue that she has much more executive experience than all three other candidates combined, most people won’t see it that way, at least at first.  She needs to convince people that she is prepared for the office.  If she can do that, she’ll be a great running mate.

POSTSCRIPT: I confess to being overly glib above where I said that Obama has no accomplishments.  Obama does have one accomplishment, the Coburn-Obama-McCain-Carper earmark reform act.  Of course, he shares that accomplishment with McCain.

David Greenberg takes a trip down memory lane.  (Via Instapundit.)

Seattle is arbitrarily closing streets to discourage car use:

Car-free days is part of Mayor Greg Nickels’ campaign to encourage people to walk, bike or take mass transit.  One neighborhood is closed off to car traffic during selected weekends this summer.  On Sunday it was the area around 14th and Republican on Capitol Hill, a residential area that’s normally quiet anyway.

“I think it promotes awareness of whatever we’re promoting awareness of,” said resident Thomas Hubbard.

“A car passes by every once in a while, just people trying to get home. And they don’t know how to get home,” said resident Matt O’Connor. . .

Adding insult to injury, the cars owned by some residents in the neighborhood were towed because the city wanted to clear the streets.

Words fail me.

(Via the Corner.)

The Obama campaign is asking the Department of Justice to silence Harold Simmons, a man spending his own money to attack Barack Obama:

Sen. Barack Obama has launched an all-out effort to block a Republican billionaire’s efforts to tie him to domestic and foreign terrorists in a wave of negative television ads.

Obama’s campaign has written the Department of Justice demanding a criminal investigation of the “American Issues Project,” the vehicle through which Dallas investor Harold Simmons is financing the advertisements. The Obama campaign — and tens of thousands of supporters — also is pressuring television networks and affiliates to reject the ads. The effort has met with some success: CNN and Fox News are not airing the attacks.

What part of “freedom of speech” don’t they understand? In addition to trying to get the DOJ to investigate this guy (which presumably will not happen), they are threatening stations that accept the ads:

Obama’s campaign has written a pair of letters to station managers carrying the ads.

The letter calls the ad’s attempt to link Obama to terrorism “an appalling lie, a disgraceful smear of the lowest kind on the senator’s patriotism and commitment to the rule of law.”

Airing the ad “is inconsistent with your station’s obligations under Federal Communications Commission regulations,” the letter continues.

(Via JustOneMInute, via Instapundit.)

Also, remember the time when the word “lie” was reserved for statements or implications that were, you know, factually untrue? Here’s the ad Obama wants to squelch. It’s nasty, but every word is true.

Obama has also decided to run a response ad. Unlike Simmons’s ad, it actually does lie, by implying that McCain is running the ad when he isn’t. Other than that, the response strikes me as pretty weak. That’s mainly because there’s very little in Simmons’s ad to contradict.

POSTSCRIPT: Setting everything else aside, isn’t it strange that the Obama campaign has decided to make a big deal out of this? The media was covering it up for him before, but now they can’t.

Obama asked for this with his too-many-houses ad:

Iowahawk’s latest scoop:

With new polls showing Barack Obama’s once-commanding lead over John McCain all but evaporated, the Obama campaign announced today it has begun deploying its vast volunteer army of downtown hipster douchebags to help reconnect the presumptive Democratic candidate with middle-American voters.

(Via Instapundit.)

Lone accountant beats the IRS:

It took seven years, but Charles Ulrich did something many people dream about, but few succeed at: He beat the IRS in a tax dispute.

Not only that, but tax experts say potentially millions of other taxpayers could benefit from his victory.

The accountant from Baxter, Minn., challenged the method the IRS has used for more than 20 years to tax shares and cash distributed by mutual life insurance firms to their policyholders when they reorganize as public companies.

A federal court recently agreed with his interpretation.

Alas:

It’s not clear how many people could benefit from the ruling. Many of the 30 million policyholders are probably too late to seek refunds, since claims must be filed within three years of the April 15 tax deadline. That means the statute of limitations for taxes paid for 2004 ran out April 15, 2008.

And:

The government could appeal the ruling and likely will fight future refund claims, perhaps hoping for a different outcome in a separate court, tax experts said.

According to National Journal (which rated Obama the Senate’s most liberal member), Joe Biden is the Senate’s third most liberal member.  Although he scored less liberal than Barack Obama, he managed to beat out Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders, who came in fourth.

So the Democrats have taken it on themselves to nominate nearly the most liberal ticket possible out of the Senate.  Hillary Clinton is a moderate by comparison, ranked 16th most liberal.

(Via the Corner.)

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Sen. Barack Obama’s wife and three close advisers have been involved with a program at the University of Chicago Medical Center that steers patients who don’t have private insurance — primarily poor, black people — to other health care facilities.

Michelle Obama — currently on unpaid leave from her $317,000-a-year job as a vice president of the prestigious hospital — helped create the program, which aims to find neighborhood doctors for low-income people who were flooding the emergency room for basic treatment. Hospital officials say such patients hinder their ability to focus on more critically ill patients in need of specialized care, such as cancer treatment and organ transplants.

Obama’s top political strategist, David Axelrod, co-owns the firm, ASK Public Strategies, that was hired by the hospital last year to sell the program — called the Urban Health Initiative — to the community as a better alternative for poor patients. Obama’s wife and Valerie Jarrett, an Obama friend and adviser who chairs the medical center’s board, backed the Axelrod firm’s hiring, hospital officials said.

It’s quite possible that the poor patients that Obama is holding at arms length are better off for it.  Certainly the University of Chicago would make that argument.  But does anyone think that the argument would avail a Republican if his people were tied to this?  A Republican would be crucified for it.

Nancy Pelosi says that the Roman Catholic church has condemned abortion for only about 50 years. Ed Morrissey says she’s lying, but I think it’s much easier to assume she’s simply an idiot. Morrissey goes on to refute her claim, but that hardly seems necessary, does it?

ASIDE: Recalling last Earth Day, Pelosi really does seem to have a problem when she speaks on religion.

UPDATE: Another (unnecessary) rebuttal (pdf).  (Via the Corner.)

Tim Kaine, the Governor of Virginia, says that Delaware borders Virginia.  The sad thing, this isn’t Kaine’s biggest gaffe this month.

Trent Lott concedes the GOP might have gotten a little carried away with the pork:

“But you know what, in my heart I knew [John McCain] was right,” [Lott] said of his pork barrel ways. That’s no way to do business, we shouldn’t be doing all that earmarking — it got completely out of control.

“It got out of control with Republicans and that’s why we are being punished a little bit,” he added. “Because we forgot how we got there, what we believed in, the principles that after 30 years put us in the majority, gave us the White House, the congress, the senate, the house. And then we ran out of ideas…”

(Via Instapundit.)

Jane Hamsher and MoveOn think that the media coverage of Obama hasn’t been fawning enough; some critical articles have leaked through. They want the AP’s Washington bureau chief fired. (Via Jammie Wearing Fool, via Instapundit.)

Kos shows us why it’s best to delay evaluating something until it has actually happened:

This has been the best veep rollout EVER. But alas, all good things must come to an end. . . And is there a better example than this that old media is getting left out in the cold?

Wolf Blitzer on the Situation Room begging viewers to stay tuned so CNN can bring them coverage of a text message.

Brilliant! We’ve got a lot of campaign a head of us, but this has been the Obama campaign’s finest operation thus far.

I love seeing the old media left out in the cold as much as anyone, but I love seeing Kos be proved wrong even more, so I’m delighted to report that I learned about the choice of Biden from CNN around 1am last night, long before the next message went out.  Hours even before that, Biden looked almost certain from Fox News’s report of activity at his home.

CNN and Fox getting the story early is presumably the reason why the text message went out in the middle of the night, rather than when people were awake as the campaign promised.

In retrospect (note to Kos: best time to evaluate things), dragging it out until the last possible moment was too clever by half.  With camera crews camped outside the homes of all the candidates, there was no way to keep it a secret.

Of course, AP analyses are worth about what you pay for them.  Still, I think it’s interesting that even Obama’s choir is grumbling about this.

(Via Instapundit.)

It turns out that Niel Kinnock isn’t the only one that Biden has plagiarized:

During his first months at Syracuse University Law School, in 1965, Biden failed a course because he wrote a paper that used five pages from a published law-review article without quotation marks or a proper footnote. Since Biden was allowed to make up the course, the revelation was front-page news only because it kept the copycat contretemps alive.

He was lucky not to be expelled.  A youthful indiscretion?  Perhaps, but remember the Biden has (bizarrely) held out his college performance as evidence of his superior intellect.

(Via Power Line.)

(Via LGF.)

The New Republic profiled Biden in 2001. (Via the Corner.) Here are a few excerpts:

It’s a bright early October morning on Capitol Hill. Joe Biden is bounding up the steps of the Russell Senate Office Building, wearing his trademark grin. As he makes for the door, he is met by a group of airline pilots and flight attendants looking vaguely heroic in their navy-blue uniforms and wing-shaped pins. A blandly handsome man in a pilot’s cap steps forward and asks Biden to help pass emergency benefits for laid-off airline workers. Biden nods as the men and women cluster around him with fawning smiles. Then he speaks. “I hope you will support my work on Amtrak as much as I have supported you,” he begins. (Biden rides Amtrak to work every day and is obsessed with the railroad.) “If not, I will screw you badly.”

A dozen faces fall in unison as Biden lectures on. “You’ve not been good to me. You’re also damn selfish. You better listen to me…” It goes on like this for a couple of minutes. Strangely, Biden keeps grinning–even fraternally slapping the stunned man’s shoulder a couple of times. When we finally head into the building, Biden’s communications director, Norm Kurz, turns to me. “What you just witnessed is classic Senator Biden.”

Another:

Biden’s mouth does him as much harm as good. ” He gives Castro-length speeches,” says one exasperated Senate staffer. In Democratic caucus meetings, he is famous for declaring, “I’ll be brief,” and then talking the room into a stupor. (Biden’s colleagues have been known to burst into laughter when he makes that promise.) People who know Biden also warn that his loose talk often reflects muddled thinking. In his classic study of the 1988 presidential candidates, What It Takes, Richard Ben Cramer wrote, “Joe often didn’t know what he thought until he had to say it.” In one recent committee debate, recalls an observer, Biden delivered a rambling explanation of his opposition to a foreign aid amendment, by the end of which he had seemed to talk himself out of his original position.

And one more:

In fact, the only thing Biden likes better than reminding people about his anti-terrorism bill is reminding them that he predicted the September 11 attacks. On September 10 Biden delivered a foreign policy speech to the National Press Club complaining about the administration’s fixation on missile defense. “The real threat comes to this country in the hold of a ship, the belly of a plane, or smuggled into a city in the middle of the night in a vial in a backpack,” Biden said. So give the man credit. Just not as much as he’s been claiming. “Literally as recently as yesterday, I spoke to the National Press Club and talked about the fact it is just as easy to fly from National Airport into the White House as it is to, you know, do the same thing in New York,” Biden told ABC News. Unfortunately Biden said no such thing. His speech didn’t mention National Airport or the White House–or any kamikaze scenario at all.

The human gaffe machine strikes again.  (Via Instapundit.)

The non-partisan Annenberg Political Fact Check finds that Obama’s ad linking McCain to Ralph Reed is misleading.

Another rumored VP candidate for Obama is Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius.  Sebelius first came to my attention last year when she politicized a tornado disaster.  For reasons unknown, her emergency management teams blocked volunteers from helping in the devastated town of Greensburg.  But what made her famous was her claim that the war in Iraq was hampering recovery, because all the needed equipment was in Iraq.  This briefly made her the darling of the media, but it turned out to be false.  The Pentagon, when asked, said there was sufficient equipment in Kansas, plus additional resources she could have asked for (but did not) from neighboring states or the Federal government.  Indeed, only a tenth of the Kansas National Guard was deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

In fact, Sebelius’s claim never made any sense in the first place.  (This was obvious to me when I first saw it on the news.)  Units don’t ship out to Iraq with their heavy equipment; they move personnel but use the equipment that is already there.  The only way the Kansas National Guard’s equipment could have been in Iraq if it was part of the initial buildup.  Even if that were the case (which seems unlikely), they would have had plenty of time by 2007 to replace it, and would have had their own leadership (Sebelius) to blame if they had not.

This puts most of the Democratic party to the left of Jimmy Carter on trade.  (Via the Corner.)

Recall that the Democrats changed the House rules to avoid a vote on the deal, for no reason whatsoever.

Rumors are abounding that Obama will pick Joe Biden as his running mate. It strikes me as a bizarre choice. Biden is the premier windbag in an assembly of windbags (the U.S. Senate), a man who likes the sound of his voice so much he forgets to ask questions at confirmation hearings. It’s well known that he had to withdraw from the 1988 Presidential race after it was revealed that he plagiarized portions of his speeches.

And then there’s this, which I had forgotten:

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. issued a formal statement today acknowledging that he had misstated several facts about his past last April in a campaign appearance in New Hampshire. . .

Most of Mr. Biden’s statement was in response to a report in this week’s issue of Newsweek magazine on a tape recording made by the C-SPAN network of an appearance by Mr. Biden at a home in Claremont, N.H., on April 3. It was a typical coffee-klatch style appearance before a small group. . .

The tape, which was made available by C-SPAN in response to a reporter’s request, showed a testy exchange in response to a question about his law school record from a man identified only as ”Frank.” Mr. Biden looked at his questioner and said: ”I think I have a much higher I.Q. than you do.”

He then went on to say that he ”went to law school on a full academic scholarship – the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship,” Mr. Biden said. He also said that he ”ended up in the top half” of his class and won a prize in an international moot court competition. In college, Mr. Biden said in the appearance, he was ”the outstanding student in the political science department” and ”graduated with three degrees from college.” . . .

[The article goes on to show that four of these five claims were false.  For example, he graduated 76th out of 85.  The moot court prize was (probably) true.]

Mr. Biden acknowledged that in the testy exchange in New Hampshire, he had lost his temper. ”I exaggerate when I’m angry,” Mr. Biden said, ”but I’ve never gone around telling people things that aren’t true about me.” Mr. Biden’s questioner had made the query in a mild tone, but provoked an explosive response from Mr. Biden.

So by his own admission, when Biden gets angry, he tends to make things up — or (worse) he can’t remember the truth.

(Via Kausfiles, via Instapundit.)

Obama draws an equivalence between Operation Iraqi Freedom and Russia’s invasion of Georgia:

Democrat Barack Obama scolded Russia again on Wednesday for invading another country’s sovereign territory while adding a new twist: the United States, he said, should set a better example on that front, too.

The Illinois senator’s opposition to the Iraq war, which his comment clearly referenced, is well known. But this was the first time the Democratic presidential candidate has made a comparison between the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Russia’s recent military activity in Georgia.

“We’ve got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies,” Obama told a crowd of supporters in Virginia. “They can’t charge into other countries. Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point.”

It’s not just that Obama cannot see the difference between building a democracy and destroying one.  But even in the analogy were valid, it’s not at all helpful to be giving Putin cover right now.  Can’t he see that?

This man wants to be President of the United States.  Lord help us.

(Via Gateway Pundit, via Instapundit.)

Megan McArdle suggests a good idea for fighting drunk driving among teens:

[Institute] driver’s licenses for convicted DUIs that tell bartenders not to serve you. Combined with a zero tolerance policy, this would be a pretty effective deterrant to drunk driving for teens. Right now, groups of teens drink together, in secret. But if your friends can drink at a bar, and you can’t, you’ll find your social life dramatically curtailed. Teenagers are very sensitive to penalties that separate them from their friends. I’d lower the drinking age to 16, as in Europe, but require licenses to show that you haven’t had a DUI.

Good news in Michigan: a stealth initiative to (in their own words) change the rules of politics in Michigan to help Democrats, has been tossed by a Michigan appeals court.  The case now goes to the Michigan Supreme Court.  Background here.

(Via the Corner.)

The Washington Times reports. (Via Instapundit.)

Apparently the speech was part of an effort to court military voters. I suspect military voters are not as stupid as he thinks.

UPDATE: Jim Geraghty points out that, just one month ago, Obama was saying the precise opposite, word for word.  (Via Just One Minute.)

Andrew Malcolm writes:

A hilarious new study of late-night political jokes, due to be released later today, finds the network comedians clearly avoiding humor about Democratic candidate Barack Obama, while piling the jokes on President Bush and Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton. . .

The study covered all jokes between Jan. 1 and July 31 in late-night monologues by Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, David Letterman, Stewart and Colbert. . .

The center found that the network shows broadcast only 169 jokes about Obama, compared with 428 about Bush. McCain drew 328 jokes. Hillary Clinton, who dropped out of the presidential race and much political news in early June, still drew more than twice as many attempted yuk lines (382) as Obama. . .

The study did not explore why Obama got off so lightly on the network shows from New York and Burbank. So we’ll all just have to guess: probably out of simple respect for Obama’s long public service.

(Via Instapundit.)

CBS’s Denver affiliate is reporting that Obama is selling tickets for his free acceptance speech to top Democratic supporters for $1000 a piece.  It’s probably not illegal, but the cloak-and-dagger nature of the operation makes it clear that they know it looks bad.  Also, once CBS4 started asking questions, the secret web page disappeared.

Jay Ambrose says Obama was wrong to call Americans selfish:

Barack Obama, in a discussion with evangelist Rick Warren about his Christian faith, said he had been guilty of a “fundamental selfishness” that had contributed to regrettable youthful behavior.

Then he confessed for the rest of us.

“Americans’ greatest moral failure in my lifetime,” he said, “has been that we still don’t abide by that basic precept in Matthew that whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me.”

Sorry, but he can hang that one up. Whatever the case is with his own selfishness, the evidence of an internationally superior American generosity is impressive, beginning with the numbers on our charitable giving. We give twice as much as the British per capita, and according to The American magazine, seven times as much as the Germans and 14 times as much as the Italians.

Even in inflation-adjusted dollars, the amount given each year just keeps getting larger, and meanwhile, we do far more volunteer work than in other industrialized countries.

We could do more, but there’s no way to make this a uniquely American failing when we manage better than most.

(Via Instapundit.)

This kind of story makes gun-control advocates sad:

An 85-year-old great-grandmother in Fayette County busted a would-be burglar by pulling a gun, then forcing him to call for help while she kept him in her sights.

“Yes, um, there’s a ma’am here and she thinks I broke into the house, which I didn’t, which I was just coming up here,” the suspect told a county 911 dispatcher.

Then, the suspect said, “Here’s the ma’am,” and handed the phone to Leda Smith so she could explain what was happening at her Springhill Township home.

A bunch of people are talking about Virginia Governor Tim Kaine as a smart running mate for Obama.  If Obama does pick Kaine, won’t McCain start saturating the air waves with Kaine’s claim that Obama arranged the Russian “cease-fire”?  Obama doesn’t need a running mate that makes his defense credentials even weaker.

Take this with a grain of salt, since it’s a Zogby poll, but still:

In a sharp turnaround, Republican John McCain has opened a 5-point lead on Democrat Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential race and is seen as a stronger manager of the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

McCain leads Obama among likely U.S. voters by 46 percent to 41 percent, wiping out Obama’s solid 7-point advantage in July and taking his first lead in the monthly Reuters/Zogby poll.

(Via Hot Air.)

UPDATE: Battleground gives McCain a slight lead as well.

The Illinois “born alive” bill that Obama helped to scuttle was no flight of fancy. It was a response to the practices of a Chicago-area hospital:

Were there “already” laws protecting premature infants, as Senator Obama has at various times stated in defending his vote against the born-alive bill?

The answer is that no law was protecting them. We know this for certain because the Illinois attorney general at the time, Jim Ryan — the man charged with enforcing state laws — wrote a letter on July 17, 2000, expressing his finding that Christ Hospital was breaking no laws in leaving premature babies to die after they survived abortions. . .

Note that this is this is the very reason legislators were trying to pass the born-alive bill in the first place.

(Previous post.)

In case you needed any more indication that the Bush Administration has lost its way: Libya will receive reparations for Reagan’s 1986 air strike. (Via the Corner.)

More here.

McCain wins big.  Byron York summarizes.

The New York Sun reports. Part one, Obama accuses his critics of lying about his record:

When it comes to his abortion record in Illinois, Senator Obama is taking flak from all sides. . . [Abortion foes] say his opposition to legislation aimed at protecting infants born alive after a botched abortion demonstrates his extremism on the flash point social issue.

The conservative attacks have intensified in recent days, with opponents of legalized abortion sending out missives against Mr. Obama and a YouTube video circulating that casts his position on abortion as more extreme than even the most stalwart supporters of a woman’s right to choose, including Mrs. Clinton and Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts.

The presumptive Democratic nominee responded sharply in an interview Saturday night with the Christian Broadcast Network, saying anti-abortion groups were “lying” about his record.

“They have not been telling the truth,” Mr. Obama said. “And I hate to say that people are lying, but here’s a situation where folks are lying.”

He added that it was “ridiculous” to suggest he had ever supported withholding lifesaving treatment for an infant. “It defies common sense and it defies imagination, and for people to keep on pushing this is offensive,” he said in the CBN interview.

This statement is clear, isn’t it? Obama says he never supported withholding lifesaving treatment for infants. He said it’s “ridiculous,” and his critics “are lying.”

In fact, Obama is the one who is lying. He did do exactly that, and his excuse for doing so — that the measure didn’t have a provision to protect abortion rights — is untrue. As I noted last week, the National Right to Life Committee has found the documents to prove it. The NRLC then demanded that Obama declare the documents forgeries or apologize.

ASIDE: No one is more a scoundrel than the man who lies in accusing another of lying.

Now, the Obama campaign has conceded the facts, and adopted a vague new excuse. Part two:

The dispute flared again last week when a leading opponent of legalized abortion, the National Right to Life Committee, posted records from the Illinois Legislature showing that Mr. Obama, while chairman of a Senate committee, in 2003, voted against a “Born Alive” bill that contained nearly identical language to the federal bill that passed unanimously, including the provision limiting its scope.

The group says the documents prove Mr. Obama misrepresented his record.

Indeed, Mr. Obama appeared to misstate his position in the CBN interview on Saturday when he said the federal version he supported “was not the bill that was presented at the state level.”

His campaign yesterday acknowledged that he had voted against an identical bill in the state Senate, and a spokesman, Hari Sevugan, said the senator and other lawmakers had concerns that even as worded, the legislation could have undermined existing Illinois abortion law.

Will Obama apologize for calling his critics liars? (Just kidding.)

(Via Pro Life Blogs, via the Corner.)

UPDATE: In case this is hard to follow, David Freddoso tells the whole story in one place (except Obama’s concession of the truth, which happened subsequently).

The Telegraph reports:

A poll of nearly 2,000 Britons by YouGov/PHI found that 70 per cent of respondents incorrectly said it was true that the US had done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000. More than 50 per cent presumed that polygamy was legal in the US, when it is illegal in all 50 states. . .

Tim Montgomerie, [director of America in the World], said factual inaccuracies and mistaken assumptions have contributed to Britons and Europeans taking a hostile stance towards their most powerful ally, which often acted against national interests. . .

The survey showed that a majority agreed with the false statement that since the Second World War the US had more often sided with non-Muslims when they had come into conflict with Muslims. In fact in 11 out of 12 major conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims, Muslims and secular forces, or Arabs and non-Arabs, the US has sided with the former group. Those conflicts included Turkey and Greece, Bosnia and Yugoslavia, and and Kosovo and Yugoslavia.

Asked if it was true that “from 1973 to 1990 the United States sold Saddam Hussein more than a quarter of his weapons,” 80 per cent of British respondents said yes. However the US sold just 0.46 per cent of Saddam’s arsenal to him, compared to Russia’s 57 per cent, France’s 13 per cent and China’s 12 per cent. . .

Almost a third of Britons believe that “Americans who have not paid their hospitals fees or insurance premiums are not entitled to emergency medical care”; by law such treatment must be provided.

Via Instapundit, who adds this:

Reader Hank Bradley emails: “And the British public gets its information from where? The BBC. This poll says more about the BBC than it does about the poor fish who learn about the world from it.” Indeed.

Fox News reports:

Trustees at the Harrold Independent School District approved a district policy change last October so employees can carry concealed firearms to deter and protect against school shootings, provided the gun-toting teachers follow certain requirements.

Superintendent David Thweatt told FOXNews.com the policy was initiated because of safety concerns. . .  The Texas superintendent linked gun-free zones with the uprising of school shootings in recent years.

“When you make schools gun-free zones, it’s like inviting people to come in and take advantage,” Thweatt told FOXNews.com.

In order for teachers and staff to carry a pistol, they must have a Texas license to carry a concealed handgun; must be authorized to carry by the district; must receive training in crisis management and hostile situations and must use ammunition that is designed to minimize the risk of ricochet in school halls.

Thweatt said the small community is a 30-minute drive from the sheriff’s office, leaving students and teachers without protection.

Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter questions the patriotism of McCain’s foreign policy adviser.  Not in a vague way, like most allegations of questioned patriotism; he comes right out and says it.  (Via Instapundit.)

I guess it’s okay when Obama and his apologists do it.

I have no idea what prompted it, but John Derbyshire at National Review takes on the question of whether we can improve schools by throwing money at them:

Is wishful thinking really such a mighty power in the land?

Reader A:

Mr. Derbyshire — How can you say we don’t know how to close the school achievement gap? We’ve never really tried, not with real resources.[Me] False. The idea that you can close the gaps by spending oodles of money was tested to destruction in Kansas City, 1977-97. Vast sums of money were spent. The achievement gap didn’t budge, though several Kansas City education bureaucrats got modestly rich. Anyone — including any presidential candidate! — arguing that we can equalize school achievement by spending more money, should be confronted with the Kansas City case.

Derbyshire cites an eye-opening Cato Institute publication chronicling the disaster of the Kansas City public schools.  In the mid-1980s, a Federal judge awarded the Kansas City schools the right to spend–literally–as much as they wanted to improve their schools, with no consideration of cost, and ordered state and local taxpayers to foot the bill.  The results were not pretty.  The district succeeded in spending a lot of money, and built a lot of shiny new buildings, but accomplished nothing else.

The tire-gauge industry is a big contributor to the Obama campaign. Interesting.

(Via Instapundit.)

Despite considerable support from her own caucus, Nancy Pelosi has steadfastly refused to allow a vote on offshore oil drilling.  Now The Hill reports that she is on the verge of capitulating.  At the very end of the article is a little fact that explains why:

Democrats realize that it will be difficult to end their legislative year in September without a vote because the offshore drilling moratorium must be renewed every year.

(Via Instapundit.)

Pennsylvania wants to suspend Megan McArdle’s driver’s license for underage drinking.  She is 35 years old and lives in D.C.  I’m so proud.

(Via Instapundit.)

Good lord. I truly hope this is a case of a Hollywood celebrity exaggerating his own importance:

Oscar-winner Clooney, 47, is said to be helping the Democratic candidate to polish his image at home and abroad. But he is also sharing with Obama his strong opinions on Iraq and the Middle East.

Sources say the actor has tried to hide the pair’s friendship for fear his Left-wing views and playboy image would hurt the Presidential hopeful’s bid for the White House.

But Democratic Party insiders have revealed that Clooney and Obama regularly send texts and emails to each other and speak by phone at least twice a week.

One said last night: ‘They are extremely close. A number of members of the Hollywood community, including Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, offered to help raise funds for Barack but it was with George that he struck up this amazing affinity.

‘George has been giving him advice on things such as presentation, public speaking and body language and he also emails him constantly about policy, especially the Middle East.

‘George is pushing him to be more “balanced” on issues such as US relations with Israel.

‘George is pro-Palestinian. And he is also urging Barack to withdraw unconditionally from Iraq if he wins.’ . . .

The acquaintance added: ‘He has tried to keep the true extent of their involvement out of the Press because he is frightened of alienating voters.’

Clooney himself has admitted in an interview: ‘I’ve had the conversation with him saying, “Look, I’ll give you whatever support you need, including staying completely away from you.”’

As if Samantha Power and the other loonies weren’t bad enough.

Yuval Levin at NRO reports that Barack Obama’s excuse for voting against Illinois’ version of the Born-Alive Act appears to be a lie:

Six years ago, Congress passed the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act,” making it illegal to kill a child who is fully born during an attempted abortion. The bill passed without a single opposing vote in either house, and was signed into law by President Bush on August 5, 2002. When he was a state senator at that same time, Barack Obama opposed a state version of the bill in Illinois. His explanation for the vote since then has been that the state version did not include a so-called “neutrality clause” which says explicitly that the bill is not meant to influence the legal standing of a fetus before birth one way or another. The federal law contained such a clause, and the state law, Obama has long insisted, did not. As recently as June 30, the Obama campaign made that case to answer the charge (in that case from Bill Bennett) that Obama had opposed the Born-Alive Act.

But now, the National Right to Life Committee has uncovered proof that Obama in fact voted in committee against even the version of the Illinois Born-Alive Act that did include exactly the same “neutrality clause” as the federal bill. On March 12, 2003, when the bill was being debated, an amendment was added that inserted the neutrality language of the federal bill verbatim into the Illinois bill. Obama voted for the amendment (that’s the vote on the left-hand column on this committee vote record), and then voted against the amended bill (that’s the vote on the right on the same document). All the Democrats on the committee (which Obama chaired) followed his lead, and the bill was defeated.

This was, again, legislation that in the same form had by then passed unanimously at the federal level. Even NARAL did not oppose it. Apparently Barack Obama did, and his old explanation for doing so seems at odds with the facts.

It’s good to know that Pittsburgh doesn’t have the nation’s worst mayor, I guess:

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was ordered released from jail Friday on condition that he post $50,000 US cash bail and wear an electronic monitoring device.  He’s also forbidden to travel.

A lower court judge revoked Kilpatrick’s bail and sent him to jail Thursday for violating his bail conditions.

The mayor had made a trip to Windsor, Ont., on city business July 23 without informing the court in advance. That requirement was one of the bail conditions imposed on Kilpatrick while he and a former top aide await trial on charges of perjury, misconduct and obstruction of justice. . .

The charges against the mayor and his aide arise from their testimony in a civil trial last year, where they denied having a romantic relationship. Steamy text messages have cast doubt on that claim.

Moments after the judge’s ruling, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox announced that he’s also charging Kilpatrick with assaulting a police officer for allegedly interfering with a detective who was trying to deliver a subpoena to a friend.

Cox said an arrest warrant has been issued and police are expected to pick up Kilpatrick at the Wayne County Jail, where he was being processed for release.

He writes:

Some 900 days after I became the only person in the Western world charged with the “offence” of republishing the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, the government has finally acquitted me of illegal “discrimination.” Taxpayers are out more than $500,000 for an investigation that involved fifteen bureaucrats at the Alberta Human Rights Commission. The legal cost to me and the now-defunct Western Standard magazine is $100,000.

The case would have been thrown out long ago if I had been charged in a criminal court, instead of a human rights commission. That’s because accused criminals have the right to a speedy trial. Accused publishers at human rights commissions do not.

And if I had been a defendant in a civil court, the judge would now order the losing parties to pay my legal bills. Instead, the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities won’t have to pay me a dime. Neither will Syed Soharwardy, the Calgary imam who abandoned his identical complaint against me this spring.

Both managed to hijack a secular government agency to prosecute their radical Islamic fatwa against me — the first blasphemy case in Canada in over 80 years.

(Via the Corner.)

Bloggers have been going through Obama’s campaign filings:

Palestinian brothers inside the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip are listed in government election filings as having donated $29,521.54 to Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign.

Donations of this nature would violate election laws, including prohibitions on receiving contributions from foreigners and guidelines against accepting more than $2,300 from one individual during a single election, Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the Federal Election Commission, told WND in response to a query. . .

Last week, the Atlas Shrugs blog outlined a series of donations in 2007 made to Obama’s campaign from two individuals, Monir Edwan and Hosam Edwan, totaling $29,521.54. In an online form on Obama’s campaign site, the Edwans listed their street as “Tal Esaltan,” which they wrote was located in “Rafah, GA.”

Rafah is not a city in Georgia. The Atlas blog immediately raised concerns that the money may have been donated from the Gaza Strip town of Rafah. . .

A WND investigation tracked down the Edwans, who are brothers living in the Tal Esaltan neighborhood of Rafah, a large refugee camp in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.  The Edwans are a large clan that include top Hamas supporters.

Speaking to WND, the two brothers praised Obama and admitted giving the money online to his campaign. They said they are not U.S. citizens or green card holders but are citizens of “Palestine.”

Byron York writes:

One thing that hasn’t received much attention in conservative and Republicans circles is the ongoing conversation on the left about the possibility of Nuremberg-style war-crimes trials for members of the Bush administration should a Democratic president take office. I’m not exaggerating or introducing the Nazi analogy myself; they actually use the phrase “Nuremberg-style” when they discuss “war-crimes tribunals.” And they are quite serious (although the more moderate of them prefer a “truth commission.”)

At the Netroots Nation gathering in Austin, Texas last month — that is the successor to YearlyKos — Dahlia Lithwick, of the Washington-Post-owned website Slate, did an interview with the Talking Points Memo site in which she described a panel discussion she had just taken part in on what is known as the “first 100 days of accountability.”

As Jerry Pournelle wrote a few months ago, this would bring the end of democratic government in America.

AP reports:

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, charged with perjury and other felonies for his testimony in a civil trial, was ordered to jail Thursday because he violated his bond by taking a quick trip to Canada without notifying authorities.

Kilpatrick apologized and acknowledged that he made a mistake when he visited Windsor, Ontario, minutes away from Detroit, for city business last month. But 36th District Court Judge Ronald Giles was not moved, saying he needed to treat the mayor like any other defendant.