Internet Scofflaw

The glory of socialized medicine:

In the latest jarring illustration of the country’s doctor shortage, a family physician in Northern Ontario has used a lottery to determine which patients would be ejected from his overloaded practice.

Dr. Ken Runciman says he reluctantly eliminated about 100 patients in two separate draws to avoid having to provide assembly-line service or extend already onerous work hours, and admits the move has divided the community of Powassan.

Yet it was not the first time such methods have been employed to determine medical service. A new family practice in Newfoundland held a lottery last month to pick its caseload from among thousands of applicants. An Edmonton doctor selected names randomly earlier this year to pare 500 people from his heavy caseload. And in Ontario, regulators have heard reports of a number of other physicians also using draws to choose, or remove, patients. . .

The unusual practice seems to be a symptom of the times, said Jill Hefley, spokeswoman for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. A paucity of medical professionals has left an estimated five million Canadians without a family doctor.

UPDATE: More glorious socialized medicine in Britain:

The cleanliness of most NHS hospitals in England is threatened by frequent invasions of rats, fleas, bedbugs, flies and cockroaches, a report claims.

Figures released by the Conservatives show that 70% of NHS Trusts brought in pest controllers at least 50 times between January 2006 and March 2008.

Vermin were found in wards, clinics and even operating theatres. A patients’ group said the situation was revolting.

(Via Instapundit.)

Those who failed to compost their food waste could also have their garbage service cut off:

Garbage collectors would inspect San Francisco residents’ trash to make sure pizza crusts aren’t mixed in with chip bags or wine bottles under a proposal by Mayor Gavin Newsom.

And if residents or businesses don’t separate the coffee grounds from the newspapers, they would face fines of up to $1,000 and eventually could have their garbage service stopped.

The plan to require proper sorting of refuse would be the nation’s first mandatory recycling and composting law. It would direct garbage collectors to inspect the trash to make sure it is put into the right blue, black or green bin, according to a draft of the legislation prepared by the city’s Department of the Environment.

The program is designed to limit the amount of food and foliage that goes into the city-contracted landfill in Alameda County, where the refuse takes up costly space and decomposes to form methane, one of the most potent of greenhouse gases. It will also help San Francisco, which city officials say currently diverts 70 percent of its waste from landfills, achieve a goal set by the Board of Supervisors to divert 75 percent by 2010 and have zero waste by 2020.

Environmentalists are growing harder and harder to parody.

(Via the Corner.)

POSTSCRIPT: Zero waste by 2020!  That’s the best plan I’ve heard since Mike Huckabee said we should be free of energy consumption by 2017.  The laws of thermodynamics are really just guidelines, after all.

In response to falling oil prices, Brian Noggle writes:

Brothers and sisters, this is why Congress must act now! It’s not important what action they take, whether it’s foolish rule against oil speculators or more sensible plans to allow off-shore drilling or oil exploration on public lands.

What is important is that our ruling political class realize that unless it acts, citizens might get the impression that market forces alone can cause declining gas prices, and that sometimes the rain falls without the dances of the rainmakers on the floors of the House and Senate.

(Via Instapundit.)

As Glenn Reynolds points out, she can’t allow a vote because she knows she would lose. Fine, but the Speaker is no dictator. This seems like a perfect use for a discharge petition. The signatures on a discharge petition are public (a 1993 reform that hasn’t yet been undone), so it would serve to put Democrats on record.

Clark Hoyt, the New York Times ombudsman, has written his inevitable column on his paper’s rejection of McCain’s op-ed piece. (Actually, it came out a week ago, but it never got much attention and I only went looking for it today.)

Hoyt admits the paper screwed up. He concludes:

In the midst of an intense presidential campaign, publishing an Op-Ed from one candidate without a plan for one from his opponent, invites just the sort of beating The Times is taking this week.

But his critique is really that they should have finessed the issue better; he excuses the actual rejection:

Andrew Rosenthal, the editor of the editorial page of The Times, said McCain’s Op-Ed was not rejected. Shipley was asking for revisions, just the way The Times asks every Op-Ed contributor for revisions, Rosenthal said. “Barack Obama’s Op-Ed was also edited,” Rosenthal said. “We asked for revisions, and it was edited. Every article in The New York Times gets edited.”

But McCain was not being asked for some minor, routine editing changes. What Shipley wanted amounted to a total rewrite.

This is a distinction without a difference. As anyone in academia knows, almost never is a paper rejected outright. Instead, the author is invited to resubmit the paper after making major revisions. Often, those required revisions are enough (or even intended) to scuttle the paper.

What revisions did the NYT ask of McCain? Just this:

“We don’t use the Op-Ed page for people to respond directly to articles in the paper or other Op-Eds. That’s what letters to the editor are for,” Rosenthal said. “The McCain campaign was aware of that before they sent in their draft.”

Shipley told Michael Goldfarb, the deputy director of communications for the McCain camp, “It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece.” The article “would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory – with troop levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the Senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan.”

The first bit (arguing that they don’t publish responses to op-eds as op-eds) is not really true, but more importantly it’s a red herring. If they wanted a non-response, they could have simply asked for that. Instead, they went on to give a set of requirements that were tantamount to an outline of the op-ed they would be willing to publish.

Here’s the point that Hoyt misses.  The New York Times is hostile to McCain.  They don’t want to publish an effective McCain piece, and even if they did, they don’t think like he does (as is quite evident from their outline’s talk of timetables).  The New York Times simply cannot expect to dictate the content of an op-ed by the candidate they hate.  If they really wanted to publish a piece from McCain, they needed to give him the latitude to convey his own message.

Hoyt misses two other points as well.  First, their claimed “no response” rule, even if we accept that it is a real rule, hardly makes sense in this context.  Obama’s op-ed attacked McCain, and attacked the policy McCain has advocated (i.e., the surge).  Is it reasonable that Obama can attack McCain, but by virtue of having published first, he cannot be rebutted?

Second, even if we set aside the NYT outline, a piece explaining McCain’s policy would be pointless.  He already has a record, and has consistently and publicly advocated the course that we are finally on.  Unlike Obama, there is no need for McCain to explain what his policy is.

A new Rasmussen poll:

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the nation’s voters say they’ve seen news coverage of the McCain campaign commercial that includes images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and suggests that Barack Obama is a celebrity just like them. Of those, just 22% say the ad was racist while 63% say it was not.

However, Obama’s comment that his Republican opponent will try to scare people because Obama does not look like all the other presidents on dollar bills was seen as racist by 53%. Thirty-eight percent (38%) disagree.

This is looking like a major unforced error by Obama.

(Via LGF.)

Power Line notes:

In 2005, Congress considered energy legislation that included an off-shore inventory. The inventory would provide an estimate of our off-shore reserves. Taking it wouldn’t mean drilling; it would just tell us what’s out there. Yet Obama voted to kill the off-shore inventory provision. So, unfortunately, did John McCain. However, the effort to kill the inventory failed, and the first inventory report was issued in February 2006.

Obama, though, did not give up in his efforts to keep the public ignorant. In January 2007, he proposed legislation to eliminate the authorization to conduct the inventory, as established in the 2005 law. . . The key provision . . . provides that “Section 357 (42 U.S.C. 15912) (relating to comprehensive inventory of OCS oil and natural gas resources)” is “repealed as of the date of enactment of this act.” It’s my understanding that Obama is the only sponsor of this legislation.

Ironically, Obama called his legislation “The Oil SENSE Act.” How audacious a label for an act that would deprive the public of key information relevant to deciding whether off-shore drilling makes sense. . .

It’s wonderful that Obama now thinks it might be ok to drill off-shore, provided that such drilling is part of an “overarching really thoughtful” energy package. Perhaps now, as part of the package, Obama will stop opposing an inventory of our off-shore energy assets.

Dan Balz, a Washington Post blogger, reports:

Was it Barack Obama, who not so subtly pointed to John McCain and seemingly accused him of trying to scare voters by drawing attention to the fact that Obama doesn’t look like (read: he is African American) all the other presidents? Or was it McCain’s campaign, which cried foul over Obama’s statements with such vehemence that race became the story of the day on all the networks, in all the papers and on all the blogs? . . .

Four things are already clear from the controversy. First, Obama campaign officials, lacking any example of McCain ever pointing directly or indirectly at Obama’s race as an issue in the campaign, have backpedaled rapidly away from any suggestion that their Republican opponent is using the very tactics Obama suggested on Wednesday.

Campaign manager David Plouffe was pressed hard during a conference call on Thursday for examples and could not point to any. An inquiry to the Obama campaign later in the day produced no immediate response and later no answer to a direct question asking for evidence to buttress Obama’s suggestion that McCain would try to scare people into not voting for Obama because he’s black.

(Via Hot Air.)

This is interesting:

Most citizens know little about politics. They are rationally ignorant. Because there is so little chance that your vote will be decisive (less than 1 in 100 million in a presidential election), there’s no incentive to acquire political knowledge if your only reason for doing so is to cast a better-informed vote in order to ensure that the “right” candidate wins. Numerous studies find, however, that swing voters – defined as those who are in the ideological center and don’t have any strong identification with either party – are among the most ignorant. For example, in my research using questions from the 2000 National Election Study, I found that self-identified “Independent-Independents” could on average correctly answer only 9.5 of 31 basic political knowledge questions, scoring much lower than self-described “strong Democrats” (15.4) and “strong Republicans” (18.7). Many other studies find similar results.

Thus, the voters who know the least are the ones who tend to determine electoral outcomes. Not exactly a comforting thought.

Why do swing voters tend to be so much more ignorant than the rest of the electorate? It’s tempting to assume that it’s because they are stupid. However, ignorance is not the same thing as stupidity. Even very smart people are inevitably ignorant about a great many things. Indeed, as noted above, for most voters political ignorance is actually quite rational.

Barack Obama’s proposed “Emergency Economic Plan” is unabashed redistributionism. He would give one-time rebates of $1000 per family paid for by a “windfall profits tax” on oil companies. A purer form of buying support with stolen money I have never seen.

Setting aside the immorality of robbing Peter to bribe Paul, the windfall profits tax has been tried before and failed. According to the Tax Foundation, the Congressional Research Service (a non-political government agency that provides analysis services to Congress) found that Carter’s windfall profits tax raised one-quarter of the projected revenue (or one-eighth, depending on how you count), and hampered domestic oil development by 3-6%, thereby increasing US dependence on foreign oil by 8-17%. Obama wants to try it again.

David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, on Good Morning America:

Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, acknowledged on “Good Morning America” Friday that the candidate was referring, at least in part, to his ethnic background.

When pressed to explain the comment, Axelrod told “GMA” it meant, “He’s not from central casting when it comes to candidates for president of the United States. He’s new to Washington. Yes, he’s African-American.”

David Axelrod, on NBC’s Today:

Barack Obama’s top strategist said Friday that John McCain’s campaign manufactured a racial debate when it accused Obama of “playing the race card” the day before. . .

Axelrod said in his interview Friday that Obama “in no way” intended his comments in Missouri to be interpreted as racial.

“He does this in a self-mocking way: ‘Look, I know I’m not from central casting when it comes to presidents of the United States. I am new. I am relatively young, I haven’t spent my life in Washington. And yes, I am African American, and that will be some fodder,’” he said.

But Obama was talking about Republican scare tactics at the time. And he has made the claim before.

At a June fundraiser in Florida, he said: “We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. … They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black? He’s got a feisty wife.”

I’m confused. It’s not racial for Obama to refer to his race in the context of “Republican scare tactics,” but it is racial for McCain’s campaign to respond to that? How’s that work?

I think Obama is making a mistake to pick a fight on this terrain, where the facts are so favorable to McCain. They don’t want to blow this up, they want to make it go away.

UPDATE: Obama himself admits it:

“I don’t think it’s accurate to say that my comments have nothing to do with race,” Obama said.

. . . and Obama ought to know it, according to an NYT op-ed:

LAST weekend, Barack Obama dazzled crowds in Europe. Discussing international security, he spoke eloquently about needing an American-European partnership to defeat terrorism.

In Paris, he said that “terrorism cannot be solved by any one country alone,” and that we should establish partnerships. In Berlin, he expressed hope that Europeans and Americans “can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks” of terrorists worldwide.

But there’s one problem. We already have a counterterrorism partnership with the European Union. And it works. Indeed, despite news media caricatures of aggressive Americans feuding with pacifist Europeans, both groups are quite serious about protecting citizens by working together. . .

In 2004, J. Cofer Black, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, testified about the success of these partnerships before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on European affairs. Had Senator Obama, who now heads that subcommittee, read the transcripts from the meeting, which took place before he came to office, or had he held a similar hearing, he might have known that the partnerships he called for last week already exist.

After years of investment and sacrifice, Americans and Europeans deserve accurate information about our efforts to defeat international terrorism, especially from a prospective commander in chief.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Power Line has some text the NYT cut from the piece. Here’s the original ending:

In 2004, the top State Department counter-terrorism official testified about such success before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Subcommittee on European Affairs. Interestingly, Senator Obama now chairs the same committee yet has not held a single hearing to become informed about the US-EU counter-terrorism partnership.

He explains that he has been too busy campaigning while maintaining that he possesses sound judgment. Yet, in matters of international cooperation against terrorism, the best judgment is informed judgment. As a potential commander-in-chief, Senator Obama would do well to study the successful US-EU counter-terrorism partnership and support its continued success.

One way to do that when overseas is not to focus on dazzling a public that envisions the next Kennedy gracing Berlin’s streets. Instead, he can learn from the intelligence and law enforcement professionals in Europe who protect the public. Otherwise, they may revise the famous quote in honor of Senator Obama: “Ich bin ein Beginner.”

You can’t make this stuff up: Louise Lucas, a Democratic Virginia state senator, drives a Hummer to her press conference blasting John McCain’s energy policy.

The Obama campaign concedes the obvious:

Sen. Barack Obama’s chief strategist conceded that the Democratic presidential candidate was referring to his race when he said Republicans were trying to scare voters by suggesting Obama “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”

The comment had triggered a charge Thursday from Sen. John McCain’s campaign manager that Obama had “played the race card… from the bottom of the deck.”

Obama’s camp initially denied the remark was a reference to Obama’s race. . . “He was referring to the fact that he didn’t come into the race with the history of others,” Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday. “It is not about race.”

But Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, acknowledged on “Good Morning America” Friday that the candidate was referring, at least in part, to his ethnic background.

When pressed to explain the comment, Axelrod told “GMA” it meant, “He’s not from central casting when it comes to candidates for president of the United States. He’s new to Washington. Yes, he’s African-American.”

That seemingly obvious reference sparked the first real fireworks between the two camps as backers of both candidates accused the other of trying to subtly inject race into the presidential contest.

Curiously, Axelrod also conceded that McCain’s “Celebrity” ad was not racist:

The Obama campaign made clear Thursday that they did not believe McCain was using Obama’s race, but accused the Republicans of “low road politics.”

(ASIDE: Will Josh Marshall and the New York Times retract their accusations of racism now? I won’t be holding my breath.)

For my part, I think it was a good ad. Obama has striking weaknesses as a candidate. He has no legislative accomplishments to speak of, is the most liberal Senator, is prone to gaffes, and has a bizarre inability to admit even obvious mistakes. But Obama is not a mere candidate, he is a phenomenon. His rallies resemble rock concerts or revival meetings as much as political rallies. When he travels, all the major anchors travel with him. Pop stars compose videos that sing his praises and recite his speeches. Indeed, many of his followers (including his wife) see him as a literal messiah.

For McCain to win, he needs to cut Obama down from a phenomenon to a candidate. That’s what the “Celebrity” ad tries to do: ridicule the Obama phenomenon and get voters to see him as a mere candidate. As a candidate, Obama can be beaten.

Of course Obama and his adoring fans hate the ad. Not only is it effective, but as the saying goes, “one easily bears moral reproof, but never mockery.”

(Previous post.)

UPDATE: It seems to be working.

UPDATE: Just for fun: more gaffes.

ANOTHER UPDATE: From the very mouth of the anointed one:

“I don’t think it’s accurate to say that my comments have nothing to do with race,” Obama said.

Power Line catches the latest Obama gaffe:

Barack Obama is a lot like Sean Penn or George Clooney. If you give him a script, he can deliver it pretty well. But if he tries to talk without a script that has been written for him by others, he quickly reveals that he is poorly-informed if not downright ignorant. Today he delivered another classic, by claiming that if only we would all properly inflate our tires, we could save as much gasoline as “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling.” . . .

The stunned silence with which the crowd greets this howler suggests that most Americans have a more practical understanding of energy consumption than Obama.

Just for fun, I did the math. . . [Calculations omitted.] So, on the above assumptions, it would take only 11,308 years of proper tire inflation to equal “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling.”

Obama is a curious case. He gives the impression of being an intelligent guy, but through his unscripted comments we have learned that he knows little about history, science or mathematics. He also seems rather shockingly short on common sense, as this most recent gaffe illustrates.

It’s no wonder why Obama cut off debating Hillary Clinton when people started paying attention, and is now dodging debates with McCain. Will the media be able to protect him until Election Day? Time will tell.

UPDATE (8/6): ABC takes Obama’s claim more seriously, but still finds it wanting. They’re bending over backward to be charitable to Obama, taking into account only the continental shelf (not Alaska) and assuming, implicitly, that we could only double oil production there. Even with those assumptions, they still come up with a full order of magnitude between drilling and tire inflation. (Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE (8/7): Time tries to cover for Obama.  Hilarity ensues.  (Via Instapundit.)

His successor will have some mighty small shoes to fill.

The AP reports:

Democrat Barack Obama, the first black candidate with a shot at winning the White House, says John McCain and his Republican allies will try to scare them by saying Obama “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”

Stumping in an economically challenged battleground state, Obama argued Wednesday that President Bush and McCain will resort to scare tactics to maintain their hold on the White House because they have little else to offer voters.

“Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Obama said. “You know, he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name, you know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”

(ASIDE: Setting the race card aside, “other people” might be more apt than “other presidents”, since Obama is not a president, and neither were Hamilton or Franklin.)

(Via Instapundit.)

The left is getting on the bandwagon, as witnessed by this Josh Marshall post, where he argues that John McCain’s “Celebrity” ad’s allusions to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are presumptively racist, and that criticizing Obama for pretending he’s the president when he’s not is also presumptively racist:

I note with interest today, John McCain’s new tactic of associating Barack Obama with oversexed and/or promiscuous young white women. . . Presumably, a la Harold Ford 2006, this will be one of those strategies that will be a matter of deep dispute during the campaign and later treated as transparent and obvious once the campaign is concluded.

But what I’m most interested in today is the new meme the McCain campaign has been pushing for the last few weeks that Obama is presumptuous, arrogant and well … just a bit uppity.

(Via the Corner.)

When the left is willing to see racism in cases like this, where there is not a hint of it, the game plan is clear. Any criticism of Obama will be castigated as racism. There’s no reason it will end with the election either. If Obama is elected president, for the next eight-to-ten years anyone who opposes to his radical program will be charged with racism. Naturally, many will still oppose him — particularly when his policies bring disaster — and the ensuing racism charges will leave America much more racially divided than today.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign tries to backpedal:

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday that the senator was not referring to race.

“What Barack Obama was talking about was that he didn’t get here after spending decades in Washington,” Gibbs said. “There is nothing more to this than the fact that he was describing that he was new to the political scene. He was referring to the fact that he didn’t come into the race with the history of others. It is not about race.”

Obama often makes references to his distinctions as a candidate, such as saying there are doubts among some voters because he has “a funny name.” At times he refers to his race as well, saying he looks different from any previous candidate but then adding that the differences are not just about race. Addressing supporters Wednesday night at a fundraiser in Springfield, Mo., he said, “It’s a leap, electing a 46-year-old black guy named Barack Obama.”

UPDATE: In case anyone takes this seriously, this was Obama last month:

The choice is clear. Most of all we can choose between hope and fear. It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?

This is the same riff, almost point for point: Republicans have no ideas, they’ll try to scare you, funny name, black. If it weren’t obvious from his actual remarks that he was referring to race, it is certainly obvious from the way he’s phrased those same remarks in the past.

(Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: The New York Times agrees that likening Obama to Britney Spears is a racial attack. Also, it’s “contemptible” to point out that Obama is playing the race card. (Via Hot Air.)

UPDATE: The Obama campaign finally concedes the obvious.

UPDATE: The McCain campaign fires back at the NYT.  (Via Hot Air.)

You might accidentally discover a non-existent religious denomination.  (Via the Corner.)

AP reports.  (Via Hot Air.)

(Previous post.)

Oh geez:

Palestinian officials from the Gaza Strip have distributed a set of carefully-staged photographs they say are evidence that the smuggling tunnels running under the Gaza-Egypt border are for milk and other essential goods, not weapons.

The photographs show masked Palestinian militants lifting jugs of milk and sacks of baby food from the entrance to one of the tunnels on the Gaza side of the border.

Israel insists that the tunnels, of which intelligence estimates indicate there are hundreds, are used to import small arms and advanced weapons like heavy mortar shells, anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft missiles. The tunnels are also said to be the conduit via which the Palestinians receive the material used to build their Kassam rockets.

(Via Power Line.)

How to steal a state:

This November, voters in Michigan may be asked to consider a lengthy ballot initiative to revise the state’s constitution. Proposed by a group called Reform Michigan Government Now, the initiative’s ostensible purpose is to restore efficiency and accountability to Michigan government. A look at the fine print, and a recently disclosed strategy document, reveals something altogether different: A stealth campaign to restructure all three branches of government, including the state judiciary, for partisan advantage. . .

Buried in the text of the 19,500-word ballot initiative are provisions designed to shift partisan control of every branch of Michigan government, including the state courts. Among other things, the initiative would eliminate two seats on the Michigan supreme court and several more seats on the state Courts of Appeals. The constitutional revisions would also cut the size of the Michigan legislature, rewrite the standards for legislative districting, and adopt controversial election reforms, such as no-excuse absentee voting, which has the potential to increase voter fraud within the state. In all, the initiative would rewrite over two dozen provisions in the Michigan state constitution.

Proponents proclaim the ballot initiative is a bipartisan effort to improve Michigan government, but a recently disclosed strategy document revealed a more partisan agenda. According to a PowerPoint presentation drafted by political consultants working for initiative proponents, the ballot initiative’s primary virtue is its potential to hand control of Michigan government over to the Democratic party for at least a decade.

The presentation was delivered to a union leadership conference this past spring. A graduate student intern at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan-based free-market think tank, discovered the slides on the United Auto Workers Region 1-C website. This discovery revealed a breathtakingly cynical stealth campaign to rewrite the state constitution. As the title slide explains, the plan’s true purpose is “Changing the rules of politics in Michigan to help Democrats.”

Reform Michigan Government Now presents itself as a bipartisan good government initiative that seeks to make government more accountable and efficient. Yet according to the presentation, the real problem facing Michigan is not bloated or inefficient government, but the Democratic Party’s failure to control the state legislature and governor’s office.

In order to ensure pro-Democrat redistricting in 2011-12, the presentation explains, the Democratic party will need to control all three branches of government: the governor’s office, state legislature and the judiciary. According to one slide, control of the supreme court is the “most important,” as the court “can overturn redistricting” done by the political branches. It seems judicial oversight is a particular concern because the traditional state redistricting criteria, such as keeping communities together, are “systematically biased against Democrats.”

Most distressing, and revealing, is how the Reform Michigan Government Now plan “reforms” the state judiciary. Specifically, the ballot initiative selectively alters the composition of Michigan state courts at every level — trial courts, appellate courts, and the supreme court — each by a different standard. The only unifying theme is that each reform will increase the proportion of Democrat-appointed judges.

As in many states, Michigan’s supreme court justices are subject to re-election, giving court critics ample opportunity to seek change through traditional political means. But, the presentation explains, defeating incumbent justices would be costly and difficult. So, rather than promote candidates for the Court who would rubber stamp a pro-Democrat redistricting effort, and seek to have them elected fair and square, initiative proponents want to seize partisan control of the Court in one fell swoop by eliminating two seats and removing two Republican appointees from the Court. This is no accident, as the presentation makes clear when describing the relevant plank in the proposal: “Reduce the number of Supreme Court justices from seven to five; two GOP justices eliminated” (emphasis added).

(Via the Volokh Conspiracy.)

The LA city council is displeased with the verdict of the market:

In the impoverished neighborhood of South Los Angeles, fast food is the easiest cuisine to find — and that’s a problem for elected officials who see it as an unhealthy source of calories and cholesterol.

The City Council was poised to vote Tuesday on a moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in a swath of the city where a proliferation of such eateries goes hand-in-hand with obesity.

“Our communities have an extreme shortage of quality foods,” City Councilman Bernard Parks said. . .

Councilwoman Jan Perry, who proposed the measure and represents much of South Los Angeles in her 9th District, says that’s no accident. South LA residents lack healthy food options, including grocery stores, fresh produce markets — and full-service restaurants with wait staff and food prepared to order.

A report by the Community Health Councils found 73 percent of South L.A. restaurants were fast food, compared to 42 percent in West Los Angeles.

If the moratorium is passed, Perry wants to lure restaurateurs and grocery retailers to area.

Evidently, “healthy food options” have generally found South LA (formerly known as South Central LA) an unprofitable place to locate, otherwise there would be more of them there already. The LA city council did not explain how banning profitable businesses would make the area more attractive to unprofitable ones.

The latest Gallup tracking poll has Obama leading by 8.  The latest Gallup/USA Today poll has McCain leading by 4.  Hmm.

It’s no secret that the EU’s preferred strategy for dealing with the Irish no vote on Lisbon is for Ireland to vote again, and get it right this time. That’s now looking unlikely:

Almost three-quarters of Irish voters are opposed to a second referendum on the EU’s new reform treaty, a new poll published yesterday (27 July) revealed, dealing a blow to EU leaders’ hopes of rescuing the text.

71% said they do not want to vote again on the reform treaty, while only 24% are in favour, according to the Red C poll conducted for the eurosceptic Open Europe think tank.

Of those who voiced an opinion, 62% said they would vote no in a second referendum, while 34% said they would back the treaty, which aims to overhaul the Union’s institutions and procedures.

(Via Instapundit.)

Buchanan has a new book, the central thesis of which is (I gather) that WW2 need not have happened, and was only the result of the Allies’ unwise security guarantee to Poland.  Buchanan argues that absent that guarantee, Poland would have been willing to negotiate with Germany over Danzig and war could have been averted.

Sheer idiocy.  One does not have to be a military historian to recognize that Danzig was merely the latest in a series of increasingly unacceptable German territorial demands, and if granted, the demands would only have continued until Hitler ruled the entire world.

Victor Davis Hanson and Christopher Hitchens, who are military historians, take on Buchanan and the WW2 revisionists on NRO TV’s Uncommon Knowledge.

(Via the Corner.)  (Previous post.)

Jim Geraghty has uncovered the truth behind Obama’s cancelled visit to the Landstuhl Medical Center. (Obama has confirmed the principal facts himself.) To be fair, the truth looks a little better than the story did before. I think Obama still looks bad, but you can decide for yourself.

Apparently it was not a matter of bringing reporters and photographer to Landstuhl, but one specific campaign aide, Jonathan Gration, a retired general. General Gration, being campaign staff, not legislative or personal staff, was not permitted to attend. Gration “got torqued” (generals aren’t used to being told no) and shortly thereafter the visit was cancelled. The campaign has not revealed whether they considered the possibility of going without Gration.

The original story put out by the campaign, that the visit was cancelled because they didn’t want it to appear political, was misleading at best. If there is any truth to that story at all, their sudden concern about appearing political arose only after Gration got angry that he wouldn’t be able to go.

A second story put out later by the campaign was an outright lie. Gration himself, who was certainly in command of the facts, put out the false statement that the visit was scuttled by the Pentagon.

Will General Gration keep his job after causing this debacle and then lying about it to the press? We’ll see.

UPDATE: The NYT, of all papers, has started to wonder about this.  (Via Hot Air.)

Here’s a shocker: Obama Says Overseas Trip Confirmed Foreign Policy Views.

It covers the John Edwards sex scandal. I ignored this story as long as it was only in the National Enquirer, but now the Times has confirmed a key element of the story:

Every supermarket shopper knows that the preternaturally youthful former senator for North Carolina may have fathered a love child with a film-maker while Elizabeth, his saintly wife, is dying of cancer. There are sensational new details on the National Enquirer website, although most of the media have done their best to ignore them.

The tabloid magazine cornered Edwards, 55, leaving a Los Angeles hotel where Rielle Hunter, his alleged mistress, and her baby were staying, at 2.40am last Tuesday. He ran down a hallway and dived into the men’s bathroom. A hotel security guard confirmed the encounter. “His face just went totally white,” the guard said.

The most interesting aspect of this has been the US media’s treatment of the story:

Tony Pierce, editor of the Los Angeles Times, issued an edict to the paper’s own bloggers to stay off the subject. “Because the only source has been the National Enquirer, we have decided not to cover the rumours or salacious speculations,” he wrote.

Mickey Kaus, a blogger for Slate magazine, leaked the memo. He noted: “This was a sensational scandal that the Los Angeles Times and other mainstream papers passionately did not want to uncover when Edwards was a formal candidate and now that the Enquirer seems to have done the job for them it looks like they want everyone to shut up while they fail to uncover it again.”

The New York Times has not deigned to touch the story, although it recently ran thousands of words on a relationship between McCain and a female lobbyist, which appeared to be based more on innuendo than fact.

Byron York, a conservative journalist, finally broke the silence in The Hill, a reputable, non-partisan congressional newspaper. “The media looks down on the National Enquirer but you look at the Edwards story and say, ‘Wow! There appears to be a lot of knowledge there’. It is darned fishy,” York said.

Now that the London Times has picked up the story, the LA Times will need a new excuse.

As far as Edwards is concerned, it’s been perfectly obvious for years that he is as phony as a $3 bill. For example:

Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he’d never told anyone else—that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he’d do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade’s ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before—and with the same preface, that he’d never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn’t pick Edwards unless he met with him again.

A look at the tactics used to keep race-neutrality and other voter initiatives off the ballot:

“The key to defeating the initiative is to keep it off the ballot in the first place,” says Donna Stern, Midwest director for the Detroit-based By Any Means Necessary (BAMN). “That’s the only way we’re going to win.” . . .

The police had to be called when BAMN blocked the entrance of a Phoenix office where circulators had to deliver their petitions. “BAMN’s tactics,” she concluded, “resemble those used by anti-abortion activists to prevent women from entering abortion clinics.”

But BAMN proudly posts videos on its success in scaring away voters, or convincing circulators to hand over their petitions to its shock troops. “If you give me your signatures, we’ll leave you alone,” says a BAMN volunteer on one tape to someone who’s earning money by circulating several different petitions. . .

The war against citizen initiatives has other fronts. This year in Michigan, taxpayer groups tried to recall House Speaker Andy Dillon after he pushed through a 12% increase in the state income tax. But petitioners collecting the necessary 8,724 signatures in his suburban Detroit district were set upon. In Redford, police union members held a rally backing Mr. Dillon and would alert blockers to the location of recall petitioners. Outsiders would then surround petitioners and potential signers, using threatening language.

Mr. Dillon denied organizing such activity. Then it was revealed two of the harassers were state employees working directly for him. Another “voter educator” hired by the state’s Democratic Party had been convicted of armed robbery. After 2,000 signatures were thrown out on technical grounds, the recall effort fell 700 signatures short.

(Via Instapundit.)

This is weird:

One interesting detail from Le Figaro: The Obama-Sarkozy meeting will be conducted with a minimum of fuss, to mark it off clearly from the trappings of a presidential visit.

“Nicolas Sarkozy’s advisers received only one demand from the team of the Democratic candidate: no American flag for the press conference, because it’s a candidate being received, not the president of the United States.”

For a candidate with his own presidential seal, who is already planning his presidential transition, and who is holding a joint press conference with a foreign head of state, his sudden reticence to pretend to be president is a little odd.  But that’s nothing compared to his strange belief — if this is being reported accurately — that the American flag is for the president only.

(Via Media Blog.)

(Update appended.)

When I read that Obama had cancelled his planned visit to injured troops at the Landstuhl Medical Center because he thought it would be “inappropriate”, I was inclined to give him a break. In fact, I agreed that it would have been inappropriate to use our wounded troops as political props.

That was before this scoop from NBC News, who learned that preparations for Obama’s visit were already being made and that the visit was cancelled after the campaign learned they would not be able to bring the media:

A U.S. military official tells NBC News they were making preparations for Sen. Barack Obama to visit wounded troops at the Landstuhl Medical Center at Ramstein, Germany on Friday, but “for some reason the visit was called off.”

One military official who was working on the Obama visit said because political candidates are prohibited from using military installations as campaign backdrops, Obama’s representatives were told, “he could only bring two or three of his Senate staff member, no campaign officials or workers.” In addition, “Obama could not bring any media. Only military photographers would be permitted to record Obama’s visit.”

The official said “We didn’t know why” the request to visit the wounded troops was withdrawn. “He (Obama) was more than welcome. We were all ready for him.”

(Via Hot Air.)

This casts the cancellation in a rather different light. Rather than an exhibition of good taste and judgement, it’s just the opposite. It would seem that Obama cancelled, not because he saw it would be inappropriate to use wounded troops as political props, but because the military wouldn’t let him do so.

I’m sure Obama’s defenders will say this is merely coincidence; that his last-minute change of heart about visiting Landstuhl during a campaign trip had nothing to do with his being told he couldn’t make it a campaign stop. There’s to way to know for sure (given what we know now, anyway), but I have to say that if this was an instance of prudence and good taste, it was entirely out-of-character for this trip.

UPDATE: The facts are now known, and Obama looks a little bit better than this.  Apparently it was a matter of certain campaign staff, not the media, that aborted the visit.

The Washington Post gets it:

THE INITIAL MEDIA coverage of Barack Obama’s visit to Iraq suggested that the Democratic candidate found agreement with his plan to withdraw all U.S. combat forces on a 16-month timetable. So it seems worthwhile to point out that, by Mr. Obama’s own account, neither U.S. commanders nor Iraq’s principal political leaders actually support his strategy. . .

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has a history of tailoring his public statements for political purposes, made headlines by saying he would support a withdrawal of American forces by 2010. But an Iraqi government statement made clear that Mr. Maliki’s timetable would extend at least seven months beyond Mr. Obama’s. More significant, it would be “a timetable which Iraqis set” — not the Washington-imposed schedule that Mr. Obama has in mind. It would also be conditioned on the readiness of Iraqi forces, the same linkage that Gen. Petraeus seeks. As Mr. Obama put it, Mr. Maliki “wants some flexibility in terms of how that’s carried out.” . . .

Yet Mr. Obama’s account of his strategic vision remains eccentric. He insists that Afghanistan is “the central front” for the United States, along with the border areas of Pakistan. But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country’s strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world’s largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama’s antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

(Via Power Line.)

Over the past week, while Obama made his ballyhooed overseas trip, the proportion of voters saying he was too inexperienced to be president rose to 45%, according to Rasmussen.  Less than a third thought he would learn anything from his “fact-finding” mission.

(Via Instapundit.)

USA Today: “Why can’t Obama admit the obvious? The surge worked.”  (Via Instapundit.)

With over three months to go before the election, Marc Ambinder reports that Barack Obama has begun work on his presidential transition.  (Via Instapundit.)

(Related item.)

Lanny Davis, former White House Counsel, writes:

. . . And then in early 2007 came the surge, which so many of us in the anti-war left of the Democratic Party predicted would be a failure, throwing good men and women and billions of dollars after futility. We were wrong.

The surge did, in fact, lead to a reduction of violence, confirmed by media on the ground as well as our military leaders.

It did allow the Shi’ite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the last several months to show leadership by joining, if not leading, the military effort to clean out of Basra the masked Mahdi Army controlled by the anti-U.S. Shiite extremist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and in the Sadr City section of Baghdad he claimed to control.

This willingness by the Shi’ite–dominated Maliki government to move against the Sadr Shi’ite extremists won crucial credibility for the government among many Sunni leaders and Sunnis on the streets, who joined together with Shi’ites to turn against the Al Qaeda in Iraq and other Taliban–like extremists.

These are facts, not arguments.

I think there are a lot of anti-war Democrats who, like me, are impressed by these facts and who now see a moral obligation, after all the carnage and destruction wrought by our military intervention, not just to pick up and leave without looking over our shoulders.

Surely we owe the Iraqis who helped us, whose lives are in danger, immediate immigration rights to the U.S. Yet the shameful fact is that most are still not even close to having such rights.

Surely we owe the Maliki government and the Shiiite and Sunni soldiers who put their lives on the line against Shiite and Sunni extremists and terrorists at our behest some continuing presence and support and patience as they strive to find peace, political reconciliation — and maybe even the beginnings of a stable democracy.

(Via Instapundit.)

On the anniversary of Obama’s meet-without-preconditions statement at the Democratic debate, Byron York notices that Obama is still rewriting his statement.

A good catch by Power Line:

Now, in terms of knowing my commitments, you don’t have to just look at my words, you can look at my deeds. Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran, as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon.

(Emphasis mine.)  Obama is not a member of the Banking Committee.

What’s the deal with this?  Is Obama confused about what committees he serves on?  (After all, he doesn’t attend many committee meetings.)  If not, why tell such an obvious lie?  Is it because he knows the media won’t call him on it?  So far, he’s right.

UPDATE: A related item: media contributions favor Democrats by at least 10:1.  Depending on how you count, as much as 100:1.  (Via Instapundit.)

Because to do otherwise would mean admitting he was wrong:

Q: If you had to do it over again, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?

A: No, because, keep in mind that…

Q: You wouldn’t?

A: Keep in mind… These kinds of hypotheticals are very difficult. Hindsight is 20/20. But I think that, what I’m absolutely convinced of, is that at that time we had to change the political debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one that I just disagreed with.

Commentary has his theory on what was going on with the Der Spiegel interview. (Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Boot follows up.  (Via the Corner.)

The Wall Street Journal reports:

For the Pritzker family of Chicago, the 2001 collapse of subprime-mortgage lender Superior Bank was an embarrassing failure in a corner of their giant business empire.

Billionaire Penny Pritzker helped run Hinsdale, Ill.-based Superior, overseeing her family’s 50% ownership stake. She now serves as Barack Obama’s national campaign-finance chairwoman, which means her banking past could prove to be an embarrassment to her — and perhaps to the campaign.

Superior was seized in 2001 and later closed by federal regulators. Government investigators and consumer advocates have contended that Superior engaged in unsound financial activities and predatory lending practices. Ms. Pritzker, a longtime friend and supporter of Sen. Obama, served for a time as Superior’s chairman, and later sat on the board of its holding company.

Sen. Obama has long criticized predatory subprime mortgage lenders and urged strong actions against them. . .

The Obama campaign recently faced a controversy related to mortgage lending. A member of Sen. Obama’s vice-presidential selection committee resigned after a Wall Street Journal story said he received favorable treatment on personal loans from Countrywide Financial Corp., a major subprime lender. . .

Superior’s failure could still cost the federal deposit insurance fund tens of millions of dollars or more. And hundreds of people whose deposits exceeded federal insurance limits, such as Ms. Sweet, are still out millions of dollars, which will be reduced some by future Pritzker settlement payments.

(Emphasis mine.)  (Via Instapundit.)

It’s starting to get hard to keep track of all of Obama’s corrupt friends.

That’s how long Obama says he’ll be in office.  (Via Instapundit.)

My take on Obama’s civilian national security force was it sounded like the American Protective League, part of Woodrow Wilson’s experiment in American fascism. But Classical Values has a more positive interpretation. (Via Instapundit.)

President Bush’s domestic program: a picture is worth a thousand words.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has written a response to the NYT’s ombudsman’s column arguing that they were right to reveal the identity of a CIA interrogator.

Charles Krauthammer is not a believer in our new messiah:

Americans are beginning to notice Obama’s elevated opinion of himself. There’s nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted “present” nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history — “generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment” — when, among other wonders, “the rise of the oceans began to slow.” As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, “Moses made the waters recede, but he had help.” Obama apparently works alone. . .

For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?

We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when “our planet began to heal.” As I recall — I’m no expert on this — Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas.

Dean Barnett and Ed Morrissey are crowing over the latest Obama gaffe:

Throughout our history, America’s confronted constantly evolving danger, from the oppression of an empire, to the lawlessness of the frontier, from the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor, to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Americans have adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world.

(Emphasis mine.)

Come on, let’s be fair.  This would make perfect sense (or at least be fully defensible) if he had said “bombs” rather than “bomb”.  That makes this most likely a verbal flub, not evidence of Obama’s appalling ignorance.  It’s hardly worth our attention, particular with such more compelling material available.

That said, it should go without saying that if George W Bush had made the same remark, the left would be crowing about the latest proof of his stupidity.

The Onion reports:

The United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in the case of Wright v. Dreckman, which calls into question professional baseball player David Wright’s 2005 check swing against the San Diego Padres and whether or not the resulting strike call should be upheld. . .

The road to the Supreme Court for Wright v. Dreckman has been lengthy, convoluted, and filled with more than its share of tumult. After the 2005 Shea ruling, the case was appealed to the U.S. District Court of the state of New York, where the decision was reversed in favor of Wright. However, when it was revealed that the presiding judge was a lifelong Mets fan, the decision was thrown out and the case was again argued in front of the New York State Court of Appeals. That court, citing the 1994 case Bonds v. Davidson, sided with Dreckman.

According to attorney Reiss, however, the decision in Bonds v. Davidson was inapplicable. Though the court upheld the original ruling on the field, Reiss was quick to note that Bonds was left-handed, and thus the case set legal precedent with third-base umpires, not first-base umpires. Reiss believed Wright being right-handed constituted a legitimate enough reason to file a writ of certiorari, or “cert petition,” an order for the case to be heard by the Supreme Court. . .

This is far from the first instance in which the Supreme Court has been called upon to decide matters of the national pastime. In the 1903 case of Wagner v. The Chicago White Sox, the court ruled 5-4 in favor of the defendant that “a base-ball hit far and high, only to bounce fairly onto the field-of-play, and then spring forth into the seats of the ‘bleachers’ should earn the bats-man no more and no fewer than two bases, and not an out.” A landmark 1976 ruling established the infield fly rule. And more recently, a 2006 decision in the case of Rodriguez v. The Fans of New York cemented the legal precedent established in the 1940 case of Williams v. The Fans of Boston, which made it clear that baseball fans are free to boo, no matter how nonsensical it may seem, players on their home team.

Ha ha. As if the judicial system would ever inject itself in a rule-making capacity into private affairs. How silly.

(UPDATE: I’m reminded of this non-Onion article.)

Also at the Onion: ‘Time’ Publishes Definitive Obama Puff Piece. (Via the Corner.)

Under DC’s new gun law, people who already had guns despite the now-overturned gun ban, can register them (maybe). But, law-abiding citizens who previously abided by the ban still cannot get a gun. Why? There are no gun shops in DC, and there won’t be, because zoning regulations prohibit them. You can, however, buy a gun outside DC and ship it to a federally licensed firearms dealer. That’s where things get interesting:

As WTOP first reported, there are only six federally licensed firearm dealers in the District, and only one of them is willing to handle the transfer of handguns. Until gun shops open in the District, residents will have to buy their handguns out of state and have them shipped to a licensed dealer in the District. Charles Sykes is that licensed dealer, and he’s told WTOP he’s willing to handle the transfer of handguns for residents, just has he has for security companies since 1994. “On a low key basis,” Sykes says. “By appointment.”

But Sykes has a problem. He lost his lease and has had to relocate, and the District has refused to issue him the necessary permit to open his new office. Sykes told the Washington CityPaper he thinks the city is withholding his Certificate of Occupancy for “political” reasons. He may be right.

A spokesperson for the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, which issues the permit, could not say what the status of his application is, or why it was being withheld in time for this report.

DC does not appear to be acting in good faith.

Here’s what I find amazing, though. Violators of the old law can now have legal weapons (under the amnesty), but those who obeyed the law cannot. DC has actually managed to arrange matters so that a classic problem with gun bans (law-violators are armed, but law-abiders are not) is preserved even when the gun ban is lifted. Way to go, DC!

(Via Outside the Beltway, via Instapundit.)

The no-oil-development caucus in Congress, led by Nancy Pelosi, has settled on a strategy to defuse calls for more oil drilling.  It’s a political strategy, in that it doesn’t do anything about the underlying problem of insufficient supplies of energy, but they hope it will deal with the increasingly popular calls to open up ANWR or the continental shelf to oil exploration.  The strategy is to shift blame to oil companies that have signed leases for oil exploration in other areas but have not yet exploited them.

Oil companies are in the business of developing oil, so if they are not developing areas in which they have the right to do so, it’s obvious that those areas must be unattractive for some reason.  It makes no sense to suppose, as Pelosi would have us, that the oil companies are spitefully refusing to develop profitable oil reserves.

So why are those existing leases unattractive?  Power Line has a post explaining why.  The area currently open for development is called NPR-A (National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska).  The other area in question is ANWR-1002, a tiny piece of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.  Both areas were set aside for future production of oil, but ANWR-1002 requires Congressional authorization to begin, which as we all well know has not been granted.

Two main obstacles have impeded the development of NPR-A:  First, the ubiquitous environmental litgation.  Second, the lack of any infrastructure to move oil out of the area.  NPR-A is enormous, and even at its closest point is far from the Alaskan pipeline.  Furthermore, no permit has been granted even to begin extending the pipeline to NPR-A.  (If Pelosi were serious about NPR-A, her legislation would authorize immediate commencement of an extension.  Even then it would take years to build.)

ANWR-1002, on the other hand, is small and not far from the existing pipeline.  Moreover, it has the same reserves as NPR-A, despite being one-tenth the size.  Thus, the density of oil reserves is an order of magnitude greater.  So it’s not hard to see why ANWR-1002 is so much more attractive: much denser (and therefore cost-effective) oil deposits and a practical means to move that oil to market.

The irony of Pelosi’s plan is that if we focused on NPR-A, as she feigns to wish, the environmental damage would be much greater than if we developed the much smaller and readily reachable area of ANWR-1002.  Since increased environmental damage is clearly not Pelosi’s aim, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that she supports NPR-A development precisely because she knows it won’t happen.

They write:

BARACK OBAMA yesterday accused President Bush and Sen. John McCain of rigidity on Iraq: “They said we couldn’t leave when violence was up, they say we can’t leave when violence is down.” Mr. Obama then confirmed his own foolish consistency. . . After hinting earlier this month that he might “refine” his Iraq strategy after visiting the country and listening to commanders, Mr. Obama appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timetable is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq. . .

“What’s missing in our debate,” Mr. Obama said yesterday, “is a discussion of the strategic consequences of Iraq.” Indeed: The message that the Democrat sends is that he is ultimately indifferent to the war’s outcome — that Iraq “distracts us from every threat we face” and thus must be speedily evacuated regardless of the consequences. That’s an irrational and ahistorical way to view a country at the strategic center of the Middle East, with some of the world’s largest oil reserves. Whether or not the war was a mistake, Iraq’s future is a vital U.S. security interest.

(Emphasis mine.)  They also note than Obama was dead wrong on the surge.

(Via the Corner.)

In the war between residents and commuters, Megan McArdle sides with her own:

People who commute into DC have put the city into their mental “Work” basket. Wherever they are in the city, they tend to act as if they are in some commercially zoned suburban office park, where children and pedestrians basically don’t belong. . . Bicycles and pedestrians slowing down their commute seem like unreasonable intrusions.

For residents of DC, the city is the mental equivalent of your suburban cul–de-sac. . . When we see commuters behaving as if they were on a highway, rather than in a residential area, we get, well, a tad miffed. And as you’ve probably guessed, I think we have the right of it.

I’ll be the first to agree that people should drive safely in residential areas (or anywhere else). But I have noticed that people’s claims of high principle in battles of us versus them never last very long after they switch categories. I’ve watched people curse pedestrians and then, without a hint of irony, turn around and curse motorists moments after getting out of their car. Heck, I’ve even caught myself doing it. Dividing the world into residents and commuters sounds like a good innovation to avoid cognitive dissonance, since you don’t change categories nearly as often.

Then McArdle goes on to say something very interesting:

Commuters into DC do not even have the excuse for their sense of entitlement that commuters into New York or San Francisco have: that without them, the businesses wouldn’t be there, and the economy of the city would drastically suffer. The business of DC is mostly various non-profit, or very thinly profitable, entities that do not pay significant taxes–only a quarter of DC’s revenue comes from sales and business taxes, and of course a lot of those are paid by the residents. The business that does bring substantial revenue into DC, tourism, is not going anywhere, because they’re not going to move the Washington Monument to Silver Spring.

Nor, as some of the commuters have alleged, do their gas taxes pay for the roads. Federal highway funds provide about 20% of the capital budget for DC streets; the rest comes from those of us who live and pay taxes in the city.

As a former Pittsburgher, now living in the suburbs, this is a very familiar argument. The City of Pittsburgh is bankrupt. This is mainly due to years and years of appallingly bad financial choices that show no sign of ending. But to those who approved those budgets and to their supporters, another culprit is needed. That culprit, of course, is the commuters.

The commuters are responsible, we are told, because most of the major employers in Pittsburgh are non-profit, and therefore do not pay taxes. (ASIDE: This isn’t actually true; the non-profits do pay taxes, but they’re called “voluntary contributions”. “Shakedowns” would be more appropriate.) Consequently, all those commuters working at non-profits aren’t paying for the services they consume.

This leads to an obvious solution: annex the suburbs, or at least get the county or the state to permit them to levy taxes on them. It’s the time-honored solution for polities with financial difficulties: conquer your neighbor and plunder them. The only problem is we don’t want to be conquered.

The District of Columbia is a bit different, because the plundering is already under way. McArdle helpfully linked the DC budget (pdf), wherein I was able to find the following statistic: of the $254 million in DC revenues, $146 million is “subsidy from primary government.” That, I assume, is us.

Moreover, looking at everything in terms of taxes misses the point. The lifeblood of a city is not tax revenues, the lifeblood is the commerce and other activity of the people there, residents and commuters alike. Without the hospitals and universities, Pittsburgh would cease to exist. And without the Federal government, DC would still be a swamp.

So perhaps us versus them isn’t the right way to look at it after all. Maybe we should just say that people should drive safely in residential areas.

Some people are upset that the Colombian hostage rescue operation may have employed a red cross emblem as part of its ruse:

Colombian military intelligence used the Red Cross emblem in a rescue operation in which leftist guerrillas were duped into handing over 15 hostages, according to unpublished photographs and video viewed by CNN.

Photographs of the Colombian military intelligence-led team that spearheaded the rescue, shown to CNN by a confidential military source, show one man wearing a bib with the Red Cross symbol. The military source said the three photos were taken moments before the mission took off to persuade the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebels to release the hostages to a supposed international aid group for transport to another rebel area.

Such a use of the Red Cross emblem could constitute a “war crime” under the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law and could endanger humanitarian workers in the future, according to international legal expert Mark Ellis, executive director of the International Bar Association. . .

The unpublished video and photos of the mission, hailed internationally as a daring success, were shown to CNN by a military source looking to sell the material. CNN declined to buy the material at the price being asked; it was therefore unable to verify the authenticity of the images.

(Via LGF.)

Geez. If we suppose this even happened at all, the Colombians weren’t using the emblem to launch attacks or transport weapons, they were rescuing hostages held by terrorists for years. If you think this was wrong, much less a war crime, that says more about you than it does about Colombia. Indeed, it strikes me that one’s opinion about this could be an excellent shibboleth to determine one’s general stance regarding terrorism.

Also, before one sheds any tears for the now-terribly-endangered humanitarian workers, it might be worthwhile to read Mary Anastasia O’Grady’s WSJ piece on the NGO-FARC axis.

The McCain campaign has a response piece out rebutting Obama’s brazen attempt to rewrite the history of his statements on Iraq, and the Surge in particular.  (Via the Tank.)

For what it’s worth, the response leaves out one important point.  Obama says that Iraq has “not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.”  This was stupid last September, when Democrats seized on the “benchmarks” to deny the achievements of the Surge.  After all, for our purposes, those political goals were merely means to an end (i.e., to bring stability to Iraq) that was being met without them.  Now, however, it’s doubly stupid, since now nearly all the (largely forgotten) benchmarks have seen satisfactory progress.

The NYT reports. (Via No Silence Here, via Instapundit.)

The Economist looks at a few cautionary tales of abuse of asset forfeiture.  It’s always struck me that creating financial incentives for law enforcement would cause dangerous conflicts of interest.

Citizen stops youths from vandalizing a WW2 memorial.  Citizen is convicted of assault.  (Via Instapundit.)

Obama’s old Iraq plan, which attacked the Surge and proved to be wrong in every regard, has disappeared from his web site.  I think this is as close as Obama is capable to admitting he was wrong.

These people must be stopped.  (Via Instapundit.)

Political work at taxpayer expense.

That’s economic genius (and potential VP candidate) Christopher Dodd (D-CT), speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

With share prices of Fannie and Freddie plummeting daily, are the government-sponsored entities really in a position to help rescue people whose homes are headed for foreclosure?

“They’ll be fine,” Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., told reporters Friday. Dodd, who helped shepherd the bill [increasing regulation of Fannie and Freddie] through the Senate, says the companies are “fundamentally sound and strong,” noting that they hold excess capital and that their portfolios are primarily made up of healthy, 30-year fixed-rate loans.

“There’s no reason for the kind of reaction we’re getting,” Dodd added, referring to what he described as “panic” on Wall Street. Fannie and Freddie shares have experienced multiple sell-offs after an analyst report Monday indicated that they needed to raise a combined $75 billion.

It’s always charming to hear a legislator tell us that the market is wrong.

Two days later, the Federal Reserve and the White House announced that Fannie and Freddie need a government bailout.

In Obama’s speech on public service, he said this:

“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set,” he said. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”

A “civilian national security force” that is as powerful and well-funded as the military. What’s this you say? What exactly does a civilian national security force do? (We’ve had one before, you know, and it didn’t work out so well.)

Also, in Obama’s America, public service would not be optional:

Obama called for greater integration with schools, so that young Americans are better prepared to be active citizens. He said he would make federal assistance conditional on school districts establishing service programs and set the goal of 50 hours of service a year for middle and high school students.

“Just as we teach math and writing, arts and athletics, we need to teach young Americans to take citizenship seriously,” he said.

Presumably, high-school students would need to get their public service projects approved with the school (i.e., with the government).  Any project that couldn’t get approval would actually lose volunteers, since not many kids are going to do their official 50 hours, and then do more for an unapproved project.  And certainly no church-related project would be able to get official sanction. So really, this isn’t just a proposal to draft kids into government-approved projects, but also a proposal to starve the lifeblood from church projects and other insufficiently progressive endeavors.

(Via Protein Wisdom, via Instapundit.)

Not to be watched by those with blood-pressure issues.  (Via Instapundit.)

Having lost their Supreme Court case on banning handguns entirely, it appears as though DC will try to keep their ban on magazine-fed guns (which, no joke, they call “semiautomatic machine guns”).  Bob Owens observes that forcing people to adopt revolvers will actually encourage the purchase of more dangerous weapons, not less.

In Canada, you can now lose your children over unpopular political speech:

A Canadian woman who describes herself as a white nationalist lost custody of her children after sending her daughter to school twice with a swastika drawn on her arm, the CBC reported.

The Winnipeg mother told the CBC she regrets redrawing the Nazi symbol after a teacher scrubbed it off. She is fighting the child welfare system to regain custody of her daughter, 7, and son, 2, who were removed from her home four months ago.

“It was one of the stupidest things I’ve done in my life but it’s no reason to take my kids,” the unidentified woman told CBC News. She is currently allowed to see her kids for two hours a week.

In a free country you’re allowed to hold unpopular views, even white supremacy.  The worst excesses of McCarthyism paled in comparison to what’s going on in Canada today.

Despite indications that the Democrats may relent and allow more domestic oil exploration, Nancy Pelosi is bound and determined to stop it:

Ms. Pelosi, who considers energy legislation a personal priority, does not appear ready to shift her view, based on discussions in a private meeting with members of the leadership on Thursday. According to accounts from those present, Ms. Pelosi said that if Democrats relented on drilling, “then we might as well pack it up and go home.”

Ms. Pelosi instead forged ahead with the effort to encourage the White House to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, even listing the White House telephone number and e-mail address on a poster at a news conference to encourage consumers to join the appeal. She said the release of less than 10 percent of the 700 million barrels of oil in the reserve would influence the price at the pump “now, within 10 days, not within 10 years.”

Sure, dump one-tenth of our nation’s strategic reserve into the market and you can push down the price of oil, for a while. Then, when you stop, everything goes right back where it was (except we have a smaller reserve for national emergencies). What an idiot. (Via Power Line.)

(ASIDE: By the same token, we could balance the budget — for a while — by selling off Federal property. Why not sell ANWR?)

But that’s not all. Democrats worry that when an energy bill comes up, Republicans will offer amendments to permit more drilling and force Democrats to vote on them. Instead, they decided offer no energy bill at all.

Exactly when Democrats will change their present course and bring an energy bill to the floor remains uncertain.

“Right now, our strategy on gas prices is ‘Drive small cars and wait for the wind,’ ” said a Democratic aide.

(Via Power Line.)

Sean Oxendine thinks so. I’d wondered if Obama’s new donors would eventually get squeezed dry, but I hadn’t had the courage seriously to hope so.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE (7/17): Never mind.

When faced with a conflict between environmentalists and gays, what’s a poor liberal to do?

(Previous post.)

Megan McArdle has a discussion of the effect of capital gains tax rates on revenue collected. Her overall point is good, that a examination of capital gains revenue collection (at the very least) fails to disprove the idea that cutting the rate might have increased revenues.

Then, alas, it seems that she must establish her credibility by attacking “supply-siderism”:

Now, I’d be the last person to suggest that correlation is causation–I’m only pointing out that if they didn’t raise revenues, you couldn’t prove it by this graph. Moreover, there is a not-ridiculous argument that over the long term–five, ten years–they do raise revenues, by spurring capital formation and economic growth. This is very different from the supply sider argument that you could jam personal income tax rates to 1% and enjoy higher tax revenues therefrom.

The idea that cutting capital gains rates spurs capital formation and economic growth isn’t far from the supply-side argument, it’s exactly the supply-side argument, although most supply-siders would suggest that it would take less than five to ten years. The idea that you could increase revenues by cutting income tax rates almost to zero is ridiculous. I don’t know of anyone who believes that.

Moreover, we should remember Hauser’s Law, which observes that overall tax revenues (as a fraction of GDP) are remarkably insensitive to tax rates. Consequently, nearly any policy that improves the economy increases revenue. Whether Hauser’s Law would remain true at rates as low as 1% seems very unlikely, but it’s certainly the case that we haven’t found its bottom yet. We ought to be looking.

The ACLU has a post-Heller position statement up. It’s disappointing, if not surprising:

The Second Amendment provides: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

ACLU POSITION
Given the reference to “a well regulated Militia” and “the security of a free State,” the ACLU has long taken the position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right rather than an individual right. For seven decades, the Supreme Court’s 1939 decision in United States v. Miller was widely understood to have endorsed that view.

The Supreme Court has now ruled otherwise. In striking down Washington D.C.’s handgun ban by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in D.C. v. Heller held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms, whether or not associated with a state militia.

The ACLU disagrees with the Supreme Court’s conclusion about the nature of the right protected by the Second Amendment. We do not, however, take a position on gun control itself. In our view, neither the possession of guns nor the regulation of guns raises a civil liberties issue.

ANALYSIS
Although ACLU policy cites the Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Miller as support for our position on the Second Amendment, our policy was never dependent on Miller. Rather, like all ACLU policies, it reflects the ACLU’s own understanding of the Constitution and civil liberties.

Heller takes a different approach than the ACLU has advocated. At the same time, it leaves many unresolved questions, including what firearms are protected by the Second Amendment, what regulations (short of an outright ban) may be upheld, and how that determination will be made.

Those questions will, presumably, be answered over time.

The ACLU is standing by a “collective right” (i.e., no right at all) interpretation of the Second Amendment, that has been refuted by all nine Justices and nearly all recent scholarship, as well as the vast majority of public opinion. I wonder if they feel any dissonance claiming to be a civil rights organization while opposing some civil rights.

Democrats are waking up to the reality that they cannot continue their opposition to domestic oil development with $4 gasoline prices. (Via Instapundit.) We needn’t however, imagine that they suddenly understand economics:

Although Senate Democrats are slowly easing away from opposition to offshore drilling, it’s clear that the majority party is not giving it away for nothing.

One idea floated by Reid would require that whatever oil is drilled in newly opened areas would need to be sold in the United States.

Democrats also want any compromise plan to include investments in clean and renewable energies, a crackdown on oil speculators and proof that the oil and gas companies are fully utilizing land that is already leased for exploration.

“If they were showing in good faith that they were drilling on some of the 68 million acres they have now, it might change some of our attitudes,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).

Investment in renewable energy might be a reasonable idea. Cracking down on “speculators” is idiocy (for one, how do you distinguish between speculation and hedging?). The other two are simply funny.

You want to require that the oil be sold in the U.S.? You go right ahead; it won’t make any difference. Since oil is a fungible (i.e., interchangeable) commodity, if oil companies want they can sell those particular oil molecules in the U.S. and sell other oil molecules abroad. (True, there are different grades of crude oil, but we already use them all in America.) The only way this would make a difference is if we actually obtained more oil in the new drilling than America’s total usage, or if there were significant cost to ship oil from the Gulf of Mexico to the U.S.

You think that oil companies are declining to drill in promising areas for oil exploration that are already open? That makes no sense. What possible reason could they have? Spite? Concern over making too much money? Geez.

POSTSCRIPT: To give credit where credit is due, Jim Webb (D-VA) is pushing nuclear power. Good for him.

(Via Instapundit.)

Fake Maureen Dowd.  I have to say, no one is more deserving of being misquoted.  (Via Instapundit.)

Massachusetts voters will have the opportunity to repeal their state’s income tax.

Radley Balko wonders:

Out of San Jose, California comes a story about a well-connected former police officer who, apparently flat-out knockered, rear-ended an Escalade, which then flipped the median and struck an oncoming Jetta.

The ex-cop’s name is Sandra Woodall. We only know that thanks to the San Jose Mercury News. The police department wouldn’t release her name. Woodall now works as an investigator for the Santa Clara district attorney’s office. Her husband is a sergeant with the local police department. And her father-in-law was formerly a lieutenant at the same department. He’s also now an investigator for the district attorney’s office. . .

The police didn’t give Woodall a field sobriety test. They didn’t ask her to take a breath test. And they didn’t take her blood.

Woodall has now finally been charged with felony drunk driving, though no thanks to the investigating officers. It took an outraged phone call to senior police officials from one of the people Woodall hit to get a proper investigation.

I’m sure Woodall will lose her job with the DA’s office. The real question is whether the officers who covered up for her will lose their jobs, too.

Will cops lose their job for extending “professional courtesy” to another cop?  That’s no question at all.

(Via Instapundit.)

Jesse Jackson apologizes for vulgar Obama remarks:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson apologized Wednesday for saying Barack Obama is “talking down to black people” during what he thought was a private conversation with a FOX News reporter Sunday.

Jackson was speaking at the time about Obama’s speeches in black churches and his support for faith-based charities. Jackson added, “I want to cut his nuts off.”

I’m not going to say that this was orchestrated; first, because I don’t go in for conspiracy theories, and second, because I don’t think Jackson is the sort to be willing to look like an ass for someone else’s benefit. However, I’m sure the Obama campaign is delighted by the incident. Being attacked by Jesse Jackson can only help him with white moderates, and it won’t hurt him with black voters. There’s no downside that I see.

UPDATE: Stephen Green goes with the conspiracy theory.

One area that I might have thought I could agree with Obama is on bilingual vs English-only education. I am not a person who is concerned about Spanish-speaking immigrants ruining our country. Courtesy of Tom Maguire, here are his remarks on the subject:

You know, I don’t understand when people are going around worrying about, “We need to have English- only.” They want to pass a law, “We want English-only.”

Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they’ll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.

You know, it’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say [is], “Merci beaucoup.” Right?

You know, no, I’m serious about this. We should understand that our young people, if you have a foreign language, that is a powerful tool to get ajob. You are so much more employable. You can be part of international business. So we should be emphasizing foreign languages in our schools from an early age, because children will actually learn a foreign language easier when they’re 5, or 6, or 7 than when they’re 46, like me.

There are several different questions to ask here:

1. Should children learn English? Of course. No reasonable person could contest the proposition that your future is much brighter in America (and nearly anywhere else, for that matter) if you can speak English.
2. Should children be required by the government to receive English-only education? The principle of personal liberty says no. I think the evidence is that bilingual education hurts English skills, but if your family disagrees, that’s your business.
3. Should some children be required by the government to receive bilingual education? Absolutely not.
4. Do parents actually want bilingual education? Real data on this question would be useful. Anecdotally, in the few districts with school choice, I’ve read that they have trouble filling bilingual schools but have long waiting lines at English-only schools. Also, one rarely if ever hears of bilingual private schools. (Note, I’m not talking about schools that emphasize teaching foreign languages, but schools where primary education (eg, math) is conducted in a foreign language.) Therefore, it’s at least plausible that the problem is #3, not #2.
5. Does the issue of bilingual vs. English-only education have anything whatsoever to do with the Federal government? No.
6. Should American children master a foreign language? I guess so. It’s hardly essential, though. I studied Latin in high school, which in practical terms is rarely different from learning no foreign language at all, and I’ve never found it a handicap. In academia, everyone speaks English, and I suspect the same is true in business. If children had a choice between a foreign language or computer science, they’d be much better off with the latter.
7. Should American children be required by the Federal government to master a foreign language? I don’t really have to answer this one, do I?
8. If you are going to learn a foreign language; should it be, as Obama suggests, Spanish, French, or German? There might be a case to be made for Spanish, due to its prevalence in Latin America, but if you’re looking to the future, you don’t want to learn a European language at all. Europeans after all, tend to speak English already, and the real growth markets are in Asia. Chinese, Japanese, or Hindi would be much more useful.

So how does Obama score? It appears that we agree on #1 and perhaps #2 (although there’s no hint of a libertarian principle in Obama’s position). We also agree on #6 (grudgingly on my part). Obama does not address #3 or #4. (However, I suspect there’s good reason to worry about #3, and he probably would prefer #4 weren’t even asked.) #5 he gets wrong, and by strong implication #7 as well.

#8 is telling. How many people in the world are there with whom you can communicate well in French or German and not in English? Now, how many people are there in China, Japan, and India? (A great many Indians speak very good English, but even more don’t.)

Of course, I’m sure Obama knows this. Despite that, western Europe is where he first goes for examples, not Asia where his case would be much stronger. There is a sort of educated elite in America that thinks in European terms, and feels privately (or not-so-privately) that we Americans really ought to be more like (educated, elite) Europeans. These remarks place him in that camp (if his remarks about bitter Americans clinging to religion hadn’t done so already).

UPDATE: Obama doesn’t speak Spanish himself.

UPDATE (7/18): Actually, Obama doesn’t speak any foreign language at all.

British police side with brick-throwing thugs and arrest their victim. Rachel Lucas is not happy. (And no one does unhappy better than Rachel Lucas.) I always used to think that Margaret Thatcher saved Britain, but the Thatcher years are starting to look like just an aberration.

(Via Instapundit, who wonders if Britain is ripe for a revolution. I fear it might be, but not the one he wants.)

Public approval of Congress is into single digits at 9%, according to Rasmussen.  Democrats and Republicans both give Congress better ratings than unaffiliated voters, 3% of whom approve.

(Via Don Surber, via Instapundit.)

The New York Times has finally found the ombudsman “public editor” it needs, one who will stand by the paper no matter what.  Clark Hoyt’s latest column defends the paper’s decision to identify a CIA interrogator (who is not accused of any wrongdoing) by name:

I understand how readers can think that if there is any risk at all, a person like Martinez should never be identified. But going in that direction, especially in this age of increasing government secrecy, would leave news organizations hobbled when trying to tell the public about some of the government’s most important and controversial actions.

Left answered (and indeed unasked) is the question of why then it was so bad for Robert Novak to identify Valerie Plame by name.  Plame, after all, was a central character in a huge story about another of the government’s controversial actions.

As I’ve said before, it’s a good thing the Plame-Novak-Armitage affair has largely run its course.  After this, any more crocodile tears from the NYT on Plame’s behalf would be awfully hard to take.

(Previous post.)

England’s National Children’s Bureau wants to brand my toddler a racist:

The National Children’s Bureau, which receives £12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care.

This could include a child of as young as three who says “yuk” in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food.

The guidance by the NCB is designed to draw attention to potentially-racist attitudes in youngsters from a young age. . .

Nurseries are encouraged to report as many incidents as possible to their local council. The guide added: “Some people think that if a large number of racist incidents are reported, this will reflect badly on the institution. In fact, the opposite is the case.”

These people are beyond parody.  I couldn’t even make this stuff up.

(Via the Corner.)

In my last post, I mentioned the National Journal rating of Obama as most liberal Senator of 2007. Naturally, Obama supporters find this rating inconvenient, and have challenged its accuracy. For example, Crooks and Liars claims that Obama is actually among the least liberal Democratic senators. (Their claim is based entirely on a stale link, so there’s nothing to rebut.) They also point out that in 2004 National Journal rated Kerry and Edward the most liberal senators. (National Journal’s old ratings are subscription only, so I’m taking their word for it, but in any case, it’s not hard to imagine that Democrats move left when running for president.)

Anyway, this made me wonder what the Americans for Democratic Action scorecard said. ADA is indisputably liberal, and is well-known for its scorecards. Indeed it has the distinction of being the first organization to compile them.

(ASIDE: Economists Groseclose, Levitt (famous for his book Freakonomics), and Snyder have shown how to normalize ADA ratings so they can be compared between years and chambers. The long-existence of ADA scorecards allows them to track the politics of the US Congress over fifty years. Also, Groseclose and Milyo showed how to use the normalized ADA ratings to infer a quantitative measure of media bias (pdf), in an article that made a big stir in the blogosphere a few years ago.)

So what does ADA say about Obama’s voting record? Good question. I was unable to find information on any ADA scorecard more recent than 2005, when they gave Obama a perfect score. Today, it seems that not only has ADA discontinued their venerable scorecard, but they have erased all mention of it from their web site. Every external link I found (for example) to ADA scorecards is now 404, and a search on their web site returns zero (!) hits on the term “scorecard”.

When did this happen? (At least one chapter hasn’t gotten the word yet, with a stale link to ADA’s web site.) Judging from the Internet Archive, it happened some time in early 2007. (I realize this makes me pretty slow on the uptake.)

More importantly, why? If they had simply stopped doing them, they wouldn’t have taken steps to erase their old scorecards so thoroughly. (Even some external sites that purportedly once held copies are 404 (linked here).) It strikes me that they must have decided that the existence of their scorecards was counter-productive to their aims, despite the attention their particular organization received for them.

Returning to my original point, it’s not hard to see how they might have decided that. Any centrist, conservative, libertarian, or non-partisan ratings can be dismissed as right-wing propaganda, but the ADA’s scorecard (being indisputably liberal, as well as the oldest) cannot. Liberals, unlike most political stripes, don’t like to be labeled liberals, because it makes it harder for them to be elected, and ADA was doing them no favor.

I find it a pity, and not just because of the slight political advantage the ADA’s scorecards gave my side. ADA’s scorecards are a venerable institution, and it’s a shame to see them go. Moreover, the economic work using the ADA ratings is really cool, but it’s less useful now. The methods could presumably be applied to another organization’s scorecards, but we lose the fifty years of perspective.

UPDATE: I’m embarrassed to admit that it did not occur to me to look in the Internet Archive, but a reader suggested it to me. The Archive last saw the main scorecard page on April 9, 2007. Obama did indeed get a perfect score for 2005, as did many Democrats. It appears the ADA compiled a scorecard for 2006, but it wasn’t archived. Every link on that page (that I checked before getting bored) has since gone stale, but most of them are in the Archive.

I’ve edited the post to incorporate this.

Mara Liasson points out why, everything else aside, Obama cannot today be trusted with the Presidency:

HUME: All this does raise a question, Mara, whether he is making sort of the normal changes in emphasis to position himself as more of a centrist or whether what we’re seeing here is a real flight from previously held positions into something completely new.

LIASSON: Well, that’s the big question. And what I think is so interesting is how few people seem to know which one it is.

I mean, Paul Krugman, who’s a liberal columnist, wrote this week, “Gee, is he a centrist just masquerading as someone who’s a transformational progressive figure or is he really the opposite?” You know, people just don’t know. He’s a blank slate. Because he’s so new, he is a kind of Rorschach test.

With an ordinary candidate you have a record to examine, and that gives you some idea where that candidate stands. With Obama, you have no record to speak of, which leaves you with only what he says. Trusting a politician’s current rhetoric is always a risky proposition, but it’s particularly so with Obama, who specializes in lofty and inspiring (to some), but substance-free rhetoric. (Moreover, on the occasions he does make a clear statement — such as promising withdrawal from Iraq in 16 months, or stating the D.C. handgun ban is constitutional — he won’t stand by them for long.)

(ASIDE: Obama’s voting record is even thinner than you would expect from his brief tenure in government.  In the Illinois legislature he made a specialty of voting “present”, and in the 110th Congress he has missed 43% of the votes.  (On the occasions he did vote, he voted with his party 97% of the time; earning the National Journal’s title of most liberal Senator.))

Obama makes the point himself in his book, The Audacity of Hope:

I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.

The upshot is we haven’t the slightest idea what kind of president Barack Obama would be.  This strikes me as profoundly dangerous.

This is an outrage:

Two schoolboys were given detention after refusing to kneel down and ‘pray to Allah’ during a religious education lesson.

Parents were outraged that the two boys from year seven (11 to 12-year-olds) were punished for not wanting to take part in the practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped.

They said forcing their children to take part in the exercise at Alsager High School, near Stoke-on-Trent – which included wearing Muslim headgear – was a breach of their human rights.

(Via Instapundit.)

I’m starting to think that 9/11 and 7/7 were actually a masterstroke for the Islamists.  Sure, the war itself has been disaster for them; they lost Afghanistan and Al Qaeda has been eviscerated.  But now we’re bending over backward to be “sensitive” to Muslims, and they’re getting accommodations (like sharia courts in western countries) they could never get before.

The Guardian reports:

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% – far more than previously estimated – according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

I don’t see why this would be an embarrassment to President Bush. The 2008 farm bill was passed over his veto:

The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to approve a five-year, $307 billion farm bill, sending it to President Bush for what is expected to be his futile veto.

The 81-to-15 Senate vote, like the 318-to-106 House vote on Wednesday, attracted broad bipartisan support and received far more than the two-thirds that would be needed to override Mr. Bush’s veto, should he keep his pledge to wield his pen.

Mr. Bush has said he wants to sharply limit government subsidies to farmers at a time of near-record commodity prices and soaring global demand for grain. Most legislators were not swayed by Mr. Bush’s description of the bill as bloated, expensive and packed with “a variety of gimmicks.”

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, defended the measure as “one of compromise.” . . .

[The bill] extends many existing federal subsidies that the president and other critics say are difficult to justify in such flush times for agricultural producers. . .

In the House chamber on Wednesday, longtime critics of farm subsidies in both parties echoed Mr. Bush’s complaints about the current bill.

“Where’s the beef?” asked Representative Ron Kind, Democrat of Wisconsin, standing in the House floor next to a poster showing sharp increases in commodity prices — 126 percent for wheat, 57 percent for soybeans, 45 percent for corn. “Where’s the real reform?” he said.

For the record, neither presidential candidate voted on the bill.

(Via Instapundit.)

Good story, here.  (Via the Corner.)

(Previous post.)