The Discovery Channel is doing a show on the 100 greatest Americans and is allowing people to vote on their selections.

At this point, they've weened it down to 25 choices, and quite frankly, a lot of the selections are just godawful. I mean we're talking about a list that includes Oprah Winfrey, Bill Clinton, and Bob Hope (among other lousy choices), but not James Madison, Tom Paine, or Teddy Roosevelt. That tells you all you need to know about how well America's public schools teach history.

What's that? You say since I'm talking trash about the Discovery Channel list, I should put my own list out there? Sounds fair enough. Here is my unranked list of the 20 greatest Americans:

John Adams
Thomas Edison
Albert Einstein
Henry Ford
Ben Franklin
Alexander Hamilton
Andrew Jackson
Thomas Jefferson
Martin Luther King
Abe Lincoln
Douglas MacArthur
James Madison
Tom Paine
George S. Patton
Ronald Reagan
Teddy Roosevelt
Jonas Salk
William Tecumseh Sherman
George Washington
Orville And Wilbur Wright

Now, if that's enough for you, you can take a look who the blogosphere thought were the greatest Americans back in 2003, on the right & the left.

Furthermore, as an extra added bonus, if there are any bloggers out there who'd like to post their own lists, link back to this post, and then let me know about it in the comment section, via email, or via trackback, -- I'll link to your list.

*** Update #1 ***: Just for the fun of it, here's my next 20, also unranked:

Susan B. Anthony
Alexander Graham Bell
Andrew Carnegie
Vinton Cerf & Robet Kahn
Francis Crick & James Watson
Frederick Douglass
Dwight Eisenhower
Tommy Franks
Bill Gates
Ulysses S. Grant
John Hancock
Patrick Henry
Sam Houston
Lewis & Clark
George Marshall
James Monroe
"Black Jack" Pershing
James Polk
Harry Truman
Mark Twain

*** Update #2: Other blogs that have done their own lists include...

-- Betsy's Page
-- Res et Rationes
-- Conservative Response
-- This Blog Is Full Of Crap
-- Don Singleton
-- Iowa Voice
-- Right Wing Nuthouse
-- Isaac Schrödinger
-- John In Carolina
-- Bookworm Room
-- Villainous Company
-- The Daily Blitz

You have to wonder how many people are actually aware of the enormous impact our "lawsuit lottery" culture has on medical expenses. Sure, it's easy to count the costs of gargantuan awards paid out to victims of malpractice, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Once you look below the surface, there is a mountain of unnecessary costs that ends up being passed on to patients because doctors fear being sued.

Take a look at the results from a Journal of the American Medical Association survey and you will see the titanic scope of the problem:

"More than nine out of 10 doctors surveyed admit that they practice some form of "defensive medicine” – ordering unnecessary tests or jettisoning potentially troublesome patients to head off malpractice lawsuits.

The survey of 824 Pennsylvania physicians in six high-risk specialty practices, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), found:

Almost 60 percent said they often ordered more diagnostic tests than necessary.

52 percent referred patients to other specialists even when the referral was unnecessary.

About 42 percent said concerns about malpractice lawsuits had forced them to restrict some practices – eliminating procedures prone to complications, such as trauma surgery, or avoiding patients with complex medical problems or those who appeared litigious.

When asked to cite their most recent defensive act, more than half of emergency physicians, orthopedic surgeons and neurosurgeons mentioned ordering an unnecessary imaging procedure – a CT, MRI or x-ray they didn’t believe was necessary.

Women may suffer more than men from the effects of defensive medicine, because doctors specializing in obstetrics and gynecology said they sometimes limited obstetric care and some radiologists reported that they had stopped reading mammograms.

Overall, 93 percent of doctors surveyed said they practiced defensive medicine. "Defensive medicine is part of the social cost of a medical malpractice crisis,” according to the researchers who conducted the survey.

"Ordering costly imaging studies seems merely wasteful, but other defensive behaviors may reduce access to care and even pose risks of physical harm to patients.”

A second study published in JAMA found that states enacting malpractice reforms, particularly caps on damages in lawsuits, showed a larger increase in the number of physicians than those states not enacting reforms."

Whenever anyone advocates bringing a little sanity into our legal system by limiting how much money can be won in these medical malpractice suits, we hear a lot of talk about "the little guy."

"What about the little guy? Why shouldn't he become ridiculously wealthy if a doctor makes a mistake? Don't you care about the little guy?"

Hey, how about all the "little guys" (i.e. all the rest of us) who end up paying for tests we don't need? How about all the extra money we pay for insurance? How about the patients who end up wasting their time talking to specialists just because their family doctor wants to CYA?

So many people have this idea that the lawyers who win these cases are sticking it to doctors, hospitals, and corporations -- and they're rich -- so if they have to pay out a fortune, who cares, right? Wrong, because the people who really get screwed because of these extra costs are you and me, because all the doctors, hospitals, and corporations do is add that extra money right on to the end of our bills.

Legal costs are not the only thing that leads to high medical bills, but they're a significant part of the problem and until we get control of the lawyers, we have no hope of truly controlling health care costs.

"For a host of reasons, reparations are a terrible idea -- unjust, illogical, and dangerous. Living white Americans bear no culpability for slavery, and living black Americans never suffered from it. It would be unthinkable to make individuals responsible for the wrongdoing of their distant ancestors, or to require them to enrich the great-great-great grandchildren of the victims. The overwhelming majority of nonblack Americans have no family connection to slavery in any case -- most of us are descended from the millions of immigrants who came to this country after the Civil War.

...America long ago paid the price for slavery: a horrific Civil War that killed 620,000 soldiers, more than half of them from the North. It is as vile to insist that white Americans today owe a debt for slavery as it would be to insist that black Americans owe a debt for freedom. What the reparations extremists are demanding would make a mockery of historical truth and inflame racial strife." -- Jeff Jacoby

Charles Krauthammer puts his finger on what we should be really debating when we debate these judicial nominations: how they think and decide. Instead their opinions are over-simplified and then given code-words to make them sound so terrible. Since few people are going to actually read what these judges have written, we end up debating caricatures instead of reality.

The real question is never what judges decide but how they decide it. The Scalia-Thomas argument was not about concern for cancer patients, the utility of medical marijuana or the latitude individuals should have regarding what they ingest.

It was about what the Constitution's commerce clause permits and, even more abstractly, who decides what the commerce clause permits. To simplify only slightly, Antonin Scalia says: Supreme Court precedent. Clarence Thomas says: the Founders, as best we can interpret their original intent.

The Scalia opinion (concurring with the majority opinion) appeals to dozens of precedents over the past 70 years under which the commerce clause was vastly expanded to allow the federal government to regulate what had, by the time of the New Deal, become a highly industrialized country with a highly nationalized economy.

Thomas's dissent refuses to bow to such 20th-century innovations. While Scalia's opinion is studded with precedents, Thomas pulls out founding-era dictionaries (plus Madison's notes from the Constitutional Convention, the Federalist Papers and the ratification debates) to understand what the word commerce meant then. And it meant only "trade or exchange" (as distinct from manufacture) and not, as we use the term today, economic activity in general. By this understanding, the federal government had no business whatsoever regulating privately and medicinally grown marijuana.

This is constitutional "originalism" in pure form. Its attractiveness is that it imposes discipline on the courts. It gives them a clear and empirically verifiable understanding of constitutional text -- a finite boundary beyond which even judges with airs must not go.

And if conditions change and parts of the originalist Constitution become obsolete, amend it. Democratically. We have added 17 amendments since the Bill of Rights. Amending is not a job for judges.

The position represented by Scalia's argument in this case is less "conservative." It recognizes that decades of precedent (which might have, at first, taken constitutional liberties) become so ingrained in the life of the country, and so accepted as part of the understanding of the modern Constitution, that it is simply too revolutionary, too legally and societally disruptive, to return to an original understanding long abandoned.

And there is yet another view. With Thomas's originalism at one end of the spectrum and Scalia's originalism tempered by precedent -- rolling originalism, as it were -- in the middle, there is a third notion, championed most explicitly by Justice Stephen Breyer, that the Constitution is a living document and that the role of the court is to interpret and reinterpret it continually in the light of new ideas and new norms.

This is what our debate about judges should be about. Instead, it constantly degenerates into arguments about results.

The dishonest thing is that most of these politicians who are hurling accusations at these judges are lawyers. They know better. But they are willing to take a small part of a decision out of context and then accuse a judge they don't like of extreme views "out of the mainstream." Such dishonesty is disheartening, but not unprecedented in our nation's history. If we truly had a disinterested press, it would be their job to throw some light on what these judges have actually written instead of just pasting in opposing quotes like the debate was some tennis match with no way of finding out the essence of what these judges have argued.

This content was used with the permission of Betsy's Page.

Someone has got to clue the Pentagon in on the fact that the press is not their friend, that the press is going to smear, undercut, and generally put a negative spin on every single thing that they do.

You'd think the Pentagon would understand this, but they keep sending reporters out with the troops and almost nothing good has come of that practice since the actual invasion of Iraq, when the embedded reporters actually gave the troops fair and balanced coverage.

The reality is that if something good happens or soldiers act heroically, it's treated as a non-story by the press and it's usually buried or not reported at all. Meanwhile, anything that can be used to put soldiers in a bad light is going to be trumpeted by the media.

Just look at a story currently on the net version of the WAPO's front page called "Building Iraq's Army: Mission Improbable."

The whole piece is designed to convince the WAPO's readers that the Iraqis are hopeless losers who'll never be able to defend their own country. In order to do this, the reporters coax snarky quips out of a few Iraqi and American soldiers that portray the Iraqis as total, blithering incompetents. Here are a couple of quotations that'll give you a good idea of what the article is like:

"I know the party line. You know, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, five-star generals, four-star generals, President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld: The Iraqis will be ready in whatever time period," said 1st Lt. Kenrick Cato, 34, of Long Island, N.Y., the executive officer of McGovern's company, who sold his share in a database firm to join the military full time after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "But from the ground, I can say with certainty they won't be ready before I leave. And I know I'll be back in Iraq, probably in three or four years. And I don't think they'll be ready then."

"We don't want to take responsibility; we don't want it," said Amar Mana, 27, an Iraqi private...

Then in order to convince the readers that all hope is lost, the WAPO notes an incident that occurred last month with two dozen or so soldiers from the unit and focuses on a disaster that happened way back in December:

"Charlie Company collapsed at 9:15 a.m. on Dec. 5. A gray Chevrolet Caprice packed with explosives detonated among a crowd of Iraqi soldiers during a shift change. Among the five dead was Capt. Mohammed Jassim Rumayidh, the company commander. His death prompted all but 30 of the company's 250 soldiers to quit; many took their weapons with them."

An unbiased observer might not consider that particular event to be very relevant given that:

"The bombing coincided with the arrival of a battalion of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. The unit began rebuilding the Iraqi company from scratch. The Americans initially sent a small group of soldiers to work with the Iraqis."

So, if this incident happened 6 months ago and the unit is now comprised of the 30 guys who hung in there and all new guys, then why treat it like it's such an important event? Because the reporters want to portray the Iraqis as yellow-bellied cowards who'll never be able to stand on their own two feet. What rubbish!

Moving on, after the quote from Lt. Cato above, essentially saying that the brass are out of their minds if they think they can train these Iraqi idiots, the WAPO does include this:

Maj. Gen. Joseph J. Taluto, commander of the 42nd Infantry Division, which oversees an area of north-central Iraq that includes Baiji and is the size of West Virginia, called the Iraqi forces "improved and improving." He acknowledged that the Iraqis suffered from a lack of equipment and manpower but predicted that, at least in his area of operation, the U.S. military would meet its goal of having battalion-level units operating independently by the fall.

"I can tell you, making assessments, I think we're on target," he said in an interview.

U.S. officers said the Iraqis had been particularly instrumental in obtaining intelligence that led to the detention of several suspected insurgent leaders in the region. They said it was unfair to evaluate the Iraqi forces by U.S. standards.

"We're not trying to make the 82nd Airborne here," Taluto said.

Overall, the number of Iraqi military and police trained and equipped is more than 169,000, according to the U.S. military, which has also said there are 107 operational military and special police battalions. As of last month, however, U.S. and Iraqi commanders had rated only three battalions capable of operating independently.

That excerpt, along with one less than glowing sentence from platoon sergeant Rick McGovern ("McGovern added that the Iraqis had 'come a long way in a very short period of time' and predicted they would ultimately succeed.") is what passes for "balance" in a 2700 word hit piece.

Of course, if the WAPO were really concerned about balance and informing their readers instead of "gotcha" journalism, they might have looked into a few other issues in the piece. For example: Does the Iraqi government seem to believe the Iraqis are trainable? Were there any Iraqis in that unit who thought they could succeed? How about the American soldiers: were there any of them who thought the Iraqis would be ready in time? There are plenty of other effective Arab police forces, so what makes the Iraqis different, if they are different? If the troops aren't going to be ready by the fall, when are they going to be ready? Surely the answer isn't, "never," right? There are Iraqi "battalions capable of operating independently," so why is it hard to believe more can't be trained? How about letting the readers know how many Iraqi battalions it will take to deal with the insurgency?

We don't get the answers to those sort of questions because the reporters were too busy posting the juicy quotes they managed to pry out of hot, stressed Iraqi and American soldiers out in the field who made the mistake of trusting WAPO reporters.

Regardless of what the WAPO and the rest of their anti-war, anti-Bush buddies in the MSM have to say, we will train the Iraqis to handle their own security, they will take over, the American casualties will drop tremendously, and large numbers of our troops will come home. All of that will start to occur this year, probably right on schedule, just like the Iraqi elections.

Then, probably by the summer of 2006, if not earlier, most of our troops in Iraq today will have come home, American casualties will slow to a trickle as they have in Afghanistan, the Iraqis will police their own nation, and the soldiers left in the country will spend their time in American military bases to make sure none of Iraq's neighbors get any funny ideas.

When it all happens, expect it to all be shrugged off by the WAPO and the rest of the MSM as they find some more mud to throw at all the usual suspects...

Apologizes for Omitting Insults from Recent Tirade

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean apologized today for calling Republicans “pretty much a white, Christian party,” saying that he failed to mention that they were “fat and ugly” as well.

Dr. Dean offered the clarification at a press conference at the DNC headquarters in Washington, D.C., telling reporters, “Any characterization of Republicans as white and Christian is unfair, since it totally omits the fact that they are pretty much the party of the fat and the ugly, too.”

The notoriously outspoken DNC chief immediately drew the ire of leading Republicans who objected to his characterization of Republicans as predominantly white, Christian, fat and ugly.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn) lashed out at Dr. Dean from the floor of the Senate, saying, “Anyone who says that Republicans are white, Christian, fat and ugly is only telling part of the story, and Dr. Dean owes an apology to all nonwhite, non-Christian Republicans who are skinny and attractive.”

But hours later, Dr. Dean continued to stoke the controversy with his response to Sen. Frist’s remarks: “I knew I was forgetting something – Republicans are really stupid, too, and Bill Frist, in my opinion, is not even a real doctor.”

In the aftermath of Dr. Dean’s latest remarks, leading Democrats were mulling what to do about their volatile party chief, exploring a range of options including driving him out to the country and ditching him along a secluded road.

Elsewhere, jurors in the Michael Jackson trial passed a note to the judge today, asking for the name of a really good literary agent.

This satire was used with the permission of The Borowitz Report

You can tell it's a relatively slow summer when breast feeding starts to become a topic of interest in the blogosphere. First it was Vox Popoli and now The Corner.

Well, never let it be said that a relatively unimportant non-political subject was discussed on political blogs without John Hawkins chipping in his two cents!

What inspired me to jump in was this dumb comment posted in an email to the Corner:

"I'm a conservative American but I think too many Americans are confusing the sexual aspects of the breast (which are real) with the feeding aspects of the breast."

This is a common argument, but it's the equivalent of saying urinating or defecating in public is OK because it's not sexual. No, those activities should be done in private, just like breast feeding.

Sure, some women don't like hearing that because it's more convenient to sit down and breast-feed in public than to go to the bathroom. Well, it would also be more convenient to whip out a towel and pee right into the fountain at the mall rather than go to the bathroom, but guys don't do that, right?

To me, breast feeding is the much less awful equivalent of the handful of 70 year old guys at the gym I used to go to, who, unlike anybody else there, seemed to always be walking around the locker room completely naked. Sure, it's a locker room and you're allowed to do that, but that doesn't mean you should.

Same deal with breast-feeding. Yes, you are allowed to do it in public, but you probably shouldn't.

Uh oh, it looks like the Democrats up in Massachusetts are getting worried that there are parents getting a little too "Gitmo" on their kids. So, they're proposing a bill that would make it illegal for parents to discipline their children via spanking:

Should parents be allowed to spank their children? Massachusetts lawmakers will be debating that question following the filing of a bill that would ban corporal punishment in the commonwealth.

NewsCenter 5's Kelly Tuthill reported that (Democratic) state Rep. James Marzilli, Jr., of Arlington, Mass., is one of the sponsors of the bill, which prohibits everything from spanking to "hot saucing," which involves putting undiluted Tabasco sauce in a child's mouth.

In April, a Plymouth, Mass., father landed on the front page of local papers and behind bars after he used a belt to spank his son Josh, 12.

"He forgot his book. I went upstairs, I got my belt. I came downstairs. I gave him three swats on the rear end, with his pants on, like any concerned parent would do, and scared him, of course, you know. Hopefully I got the point across," Charles Enloe said.

But now, lawmakers are considering making "the willfull infliction of physical pain on children under 18," illegal.

You know, it's every bit as obnoxious to try to ban spanking as it would be to make it mandatory for all parents to spank their children. That's because whether a parent spanks a child or not is simply none of the government's business.

Parents deserve to be given an enormous amount of latitude legally to raise their kids and, quite frankly, the idea that a widely used and very effective method of disciplining children could be ruled illegal at the whim of some bunch of liberals in Massachusetts is ridiculous to the point of being farcical.

If James Marzilli, Jr and Company don't want to spank their kids and would rather rely on "time outs" and positive reinforcement to raise their kids, wonderful, more power to them. But, they should also respect parents who don't agree with that philosophy instead of trying to tell them how to raise their kids...

"For example; a friend of mine worked in a small business that had 5 employees. The parking lot had 7 spaces, so everyone was able to park in the lot and still leave room for guests. It was not the kind of business where customers frequently came on site, but when one did, parking was available. The town (where) they were located passed a law stating that each business had to have at least 4 handicap parking spots. Even though no employee was handicapped, and there was ample parking should a disabled person come to visit, they had to comply and redo the lot. Since handicapped spots take up more space, when it was finished, they had 4 handicapped spots and only one regular spot.

They complied with the law, but everyone suffered. All the employees now had to park blocks away so they could leave the last remaining spot free for the ocassional customer. The people the law was intended to help gained nothing, because they had always had a place to park before. The business was out a few thousand dollars after paying fines and getting the work done. And if you drive by today, you will see an empty lot. The idea seemed good, but failed in application.

Another friend was building a theater and had to spend $10,000 on a lift for wheelchair access to the stage in case a handicapped audience member wanted to come up. Even though there would be no ocassion when an audience member would be brought up on stage, he was told he could not discriminate against a persons right to do so should they wish." -- Comments/claims made by RWN reader magicalpat in the "You Can't Escape The Nanny State -- Even In The Toilet" post

"Of course, the bulk of Bush’s 2003 tax cuts on dividends and capital gains will help people with the highest incomes, but they pay the most taxes in the first place. The tax cuts will also help the entire 100-million-strong investor class — about 50 percent of U.S. households. But when the new IRS income statistics for 2004 and 2005 are published, we will undoubtedly find that lower tax rates — particularly on investment — have again generated much higher tax collections for the so-called richest among us. Already, for the twelve months ending April 2005, non-withheld tax receipts (read capital gains and dividends) rose an astronomical 36 percent.

There’s nothing new here. Through 2001, a tiny one-tenth of 1 percent of U.S. taxpayers generated a hefty 16 percent of total tax collections. That’s brainpower plus initiative, aided and abetted by the incentive to keep more of what you earn and thus work with more intensity and purpose. Meanwhile the top 1 percent paid 34 percent of tax collections, the top 5 percent paid 53 percent, the top 10 percent paid 65 percent, the top 25 percent paid 83 percent, and the top 50 percent paid 96 percent. These “rich people” are government’s best friend." -- Larry Kudlow

Today on my other blog, Conservative Grapevine, there are stories about a blogger fired for blogging, more Dean beatdowns from Dems, breast feeding, illegal aliens, John Kerry's medical records, taxes and more.

If you want to know what's going on around the blogosphere without having to read through 90+ blogs a day, CG is a blog worth bookmarking and checking every day right after you read RWN.

Just try the page out for a few days and you'll see what I'm talking about...

Howard Dean, otherwise known as the human gaffe machine, has been pumping out embarrassing and obnoxious quotes ever since he hit the national stage. But believe it or not, the frequency of Dean's mortifying outbursts have actually been increasing -- so much so, that "Mad How" has actually prompted a wave of Democratic heavies to try to distance themselves from him. From the Washington Post:

"Democratic New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Tuesday that Dean is doing a good job, but is not the party's spokesman.

Last weekend, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., and 2004 vice presidential candidate John Edwards criticized Dean for his recent remarks, saying he doesn't speak for them.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, talking with reporters Wednesday, said she did not agree with the statement Dean made about the Republican Party.

"The role of the chair of the Democratic National Committee is one that is different than the role of the Democratic leader of the House or in the Senate," the California congresswoman said, "and sometimes the exhuberance of that position results in statements that neither of us would make."

"I don't think that the statement the governor (Dean) made was a helpful statement," she said. But Pelosi said she thought that Dean was "doing a good job."

"Listen. Any one of us at any given time will make a statement that we may, in retrospect, say maybe that was a little over-enthusiastic," she said. "And I can put that statement in that category for Governor Dean."

Biden, asked about Dean Wednesday during an interview on the Don Imus radio show, also said the chairman is doing a good job.

"A lot of things he does say, I agree with," Biden said. But he also said that Dean "has views that are slightly different than mine .. .But look, he's a lightning rod. ... It's probably good that there's a guy out there that's a lightning rod ... ."

Biden, however, added that he thinks "the rhetoric is counterproductive." -- The Washington Post

But wait, there's more! From The Hill:

"Last month, (Dean) suggested that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who has been rebuked several times by the House ethics committee, “ought to go back to Houston where he can serve his jail sentence.” DeLay has not been charged with a crime.

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.) yesterday said Dean was not speaking on behalf of the party when he made those comments.

“I don’t agree with those comments, and I share the view expressed by Mr. Edwards,” Hoyer said in response to a question from The Hill at his weekly press briefing. “I don’t think they express the views of our party… and I think probably, upon reflection, they don’t express … Mr. Dean’s views. I think they were overstated.”

“I think the party spokesmen are [Senate Minority Leader] Harry Reid [Nev.] and [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi [Calif.], [Senate Minority Whip] Dick Durbin [Ill.], myself, chairs of the committees, the governors. ... They are the people who have been elected to make policy,” Hoyer said. “My belief is the party chair’s job is to organize the party to support policymakers and the policies they promote.”

The Hill also has a nice summary of Howard Dean's lackluster fund raising efforts:

"Dean faces other problems besides criticism of his rhetoric. DNC fundraising in the first four months of 2005 lagged behind the Republican National Committee by a margin of $24 million. The Republicans raised $42.6 million to the Democrats’ $18.6 million.

Three top DNC fundraisers recently resigned, The Hill reported yesterday, prompting concern in some Democratic circles that Dean’s fundraising operation is troubled."

Put it all together and you've got to think there are more than a few Democrats wondering if Howard Dean was actually a downgrade from perennial loser Terry McAuliffe. Fortunately for Republicans, the Dems do appear to have replaced McAuliffe, their buggy Windows Millennium version of a chairman, with Dean, the disastrous Windows 3.1 of the Democratic Party.

Here's issue #4,567,822 that the government has no business sticking its dirty, little, fingers into:

"Mayor Bloomberg signed the so-called "potty parity" bill yesterday, requiring more women's toilets in newly built arenas, bars, convention halls and movie theaters.

For every toilet in the men's room, there must be two in the women's, according to the new law.

So what if the clientele of a business turns out to be overwhelmingly male? Does this law make any sense then? Especially since bathroom space isn't unlimited or cheap. For businesses that are in that position, say a bar than has overwhelmingly male patrons, this is just another wasteful and unnecessary expense tacked on by the nanny state.

Moreover, why is the government even getting involved in this issue anyway? Sure, there may be some women who don't have as much bathroom space as they want in some establishments, but does that merit a law being passed to fix it?

This may seem to be a small issue, but this sort of "death by a thousand cuts" is a big part of what's wrong with government.

You have some niggling problem, the government gets involved, it leads to great cost and expense for the people effected, and as often as not, the problems created by the government intervention are worse than the original problem (extra expense, paperwork, decreasing space available floor space, and possibly even shortages of men's toilets).

The government shouldn't have gotten involved.

Hat tip to Ravenwood's Universe for the story.

*** Update #1 ***: Here's a suggestion made by kpu979 in the comments sections that will likely happen in some cases, especially in the renovated buildings that are covered by the law:

"Of course the cheap way for restaurant owners to comply with this silly law is to destroy half of the mens room toilets."

How's that for the law of unintended consequences?

Many Republicans probably voted for George Bush dozens, if not hundreds, of times in 2004, according to Democrat party Chairman Howard Dean, "by taking advantage of the fact that Democrat poll workers have difficulty distinguishing individuals from among a crowd of white Christians."

"Thanks to their pale skin, round eyes and khaki trousers, Republicans just blend in," said Mr. Dean. "So they vote, get in the back of the line and vote again. And because they've never made an honest living in their lives, they could do that all day long."

The party chief announced that the Democrat National Committee will invest $50 million in developing protocols to help poll workers tell the difference between one Republican and the next.

A spokesman for the DNC later clarified the comments, noting that, "Chairman Dean intended his offensive remarks to be heard only by party loyalists, not the general public."

This satire was used with the permission of Scrappleface.

A lot of bloggers, myself included, were invited by John Hinderaker from Powerline &/or Joe Trippi to sit in on a conference call with Sir Bob Geldof, the guy running Live8, the latest incarnation of the hippy-dippy rock show for Africa.

Now to be perfectly honest, I didn't expect much. Live8 seems like a waste of time to me especially since they're not even raising money this time, I detest the G8 protesters whom Geldof is encouraging, and come on -- it's a bunch of rock stars playing a concert.

However, like seemingly every other conservative blogger who participated, I was at least impressed by Geldof.

He said nice things about the Bush administration, seemed appreciative of the help America is giving, thinks Robert Mugabe is a hopeless tyrant, talked a lot about accountability in Africa, seemed to have a fairly good grasp of the political landscape in America and Africa, and generally came off as exactly the opposite of the airy headed, sniping liberal, rock star you'd expect.

Still -- while my opinion of Geldof improved considerably, I'm an enormous skeptic on Africa. Sure, we can always do something, feed hungry people, give a certain amount of aid, forgive debts, but -- the reality is that the problems Africa has are on a scale that simply can't be fixed by the West.

Just to name one issue, AIDs is completely out-of-control in Africa in a way that's hardly even imaginable here in the West. According to some estimates, "20 percent or more of the adult population in Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe are infected with AIDS".

How do you even begin to help a country in that situation get on its feet? You don't, they're essentially doomed -- at least for a generation -- no matter what the West does or doesn't do.

Furthermore, while Geldof seems to generally have the right idea about a lot of the things we should be doing in Africa, the whole "Let's fix Africa" project didn't just crank up this week. The West has pumped a trillion dollars plus into Africa over the last few decades and quite frankly, the results have been incredibly unimpressive.

So, does that mean we shouldn't do anything to help Africa? No, but I think it's a good idea to start with the premise that any charity we give to Africa is probably good money thrown after bad. Given that and the enormous sums we're already spending to fight AIDs in Africa, I'd say that any new aid we give to Africa should be a "I'll scratch your back and you scratch my back proposition." That means we should concentrate the bulk of any further aid we send to countries with strategic resources (like oil), that are in strategic locations, and nations that are somehow in a position to do something useful for the United States.

Is that harsh? Yes. But, thinking that Africa can be turned into a prosperous continent if only the West cares enough is about as realistic as thinking that Communism could work if only the right people were in charge. In the end, Africa has to help Africa and the West can't carry the whole continent on our back.

PS: Just to get a bit of added perspective on Africa, read "Let Africa Sink" by Kim du Toit -- a South African now living in America who once "was arrested and put on trial for my opposition to apartheid, in 1972". His pessimism -- in my mind -- is totally justified.

10. Have Bush stop referring to Kim Jong Il as "Poofy Goofy."

9. Have talks in Korean instead of the customary ancient Aramaic.

8. Make sure there is free pizza, because I know from experience at college that conferences are more likely to have people show up if there is free pizza.

7. Advertise event as "Disarmament Talks and Karaoke Contest."

6. Chain Donald Rumsfeld to a radiator to lessen the chance of him fulfilling his vow that he'll "squeeze the neck of the poofy-haired one until he is dead."

5. Have the Japanese bring to the talks some of those overly violent, porn-filled cartoons they're so famous for. Everyone loves those.

4. Special deal this time only - make three concessions, get one free!

3. Have some people there for Kim Jong Il to oppress (maybe some Democrats from Congress) so he'll feel more at home.

2. Promise Kim Jong Il that we won't invade his country while he's temporarily away.

And the number one way to get North Korea to resume talks…

1. All attendees get a lifetime supply of hair gel!

This satire was used with the permission of Frank J. at IMAO.

Yep, our border security is tight as a drum, fit as a fiddle, solid as a rock, and as good as any other cliche you can manage to come up with -- or so we're often told.

Of course, if that's so, it begs an obvious question, one which is helpfully posed by the Boston Globe:

"At a time when the United States is tightening its borders, how could a man toting what appeared to be a bloody chain saw be allowed into the country?"

Here are the details:

"On April 25, Gregory Despres arrived at the U.S.-Canadian border crossing at Calais, Maine, carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood. U.S. customs agents confiscated the weapons and fingerprinted Despres.

Then they let him into the United States.

The following day, a gruesome scene was discovered in Despres' hometown of Minto, New Brunswick: The decapitated body of a 74-year-old country musician named Frederick Fulton was found on his kitchen floor. The man's head was in a pillow case under a kitchen table. His common-law wife was discovered stabbed to death in a bedroom.

Despres, 22, immediately became a suspect because of a history of violence between him and his neighbors, and he was arrested April 27 after police in Massachusetts saw him wandering down a highway in a sweat shirt with red and brown stains. He is now in jail in Massachusetts on murder charges, awaiting an extradition hearing next month.

At a time when the United States is tightening its borders, how could a man toting what appeared to be a bloody chain saw be allowed into the country?

Bill Anthony, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the Canada-born Despres could not be detained because he is a naturalized U.S. citizen and was not wanted on any criminal charges on the day in question.

Anthony said Despres was questioned for two hours before he was released....Anthony conceded it "sounds stupid" that a man wielding what appeared to be a bloody chain saw could not be detained. But he added: "Our people don't have a crime lab up there. They can't look at a chain saw and decide if it's blood or rust or red paint."

Yep, it's tight as a drum on the border, tight as a drum...

Today's Democratic Party is fundamentally incapable of dealing with terrorism in a serious and substantial way. Want evidence? Well, despite all the tough talk we heard from Democrats in the run-up to the 2004 election, now that the heat's off, we have prominent liberals like Joe Biden & Jimmy Carter calling on the Bush Administration to close Gitmo.

Folks, how can the country count on the Democratic Party to fight against terrorism when the Dems don't even seem to have the stomach to deal with the terrorists we've captured?

Furthermore, what exactly are we supposed to do with these foreign terrorists other than hold them at Gitmo? Presumably Jimmy Carter and Company wouldn't support giving them military trials and then hanging them. You can also be sure that they wouldn't support sending them back to countries like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan where the government in charge would make them "disappear." Releasing them isn't an option either. It would be madness to let an Al-Qaeda terrorist who might fly a plane into one of our buildings go free.

So what's left? We could always funnel them into our court system, which is totally unsuitable for dealing with non-American terrorists, captured on foreign ground, and being held based on top secret info that really can't be made public.

Oh, the left would just love that, wouldn't they?

You'd have liberal lawyers coming out of the woodwork to represent the terrorists pro-bono, Democrat appointed judges would find technicalities to release them, and members of the MSM would fall all over themselves looking for military and intelligence gathering secrets they could post on their front pages.

Were this sort of disaster to come to pass, it would be especially ironic, since it has been liberals in the Democratic Party and the MSM who have been obsessively doing anything and everything possible since the beginning to gin up sympathy for captured terrorists who'd happily saw their heads off on video if they had the opportunity. Quite frankly, if Gitmo were seriously hurting America's image with Islam worldwide, which truthfully I don't think it is, it would primarily be because Muslims were taking the endless litany of wildly over-hyped complaints made by liberal Americans seriously.

So here's a suggestion for Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, Amnesty International and any other bleeding heart liberals out there who agree with them: How about you show a little bit more concern for American lives jeopardized by Al-Qaeda and a little less time trying to make life easier for the terrorists we've captured? The rest of us here in America would appreciate it...

"What will future generations think when they see the front pages of our leading newspapers repeatedly preoccupied with whether we are treating captured cut-throats nicely enough? What will they think when they see the Geneva Convention invoked to protect people who are excluded from protection by the Geneva Convention?

During World War II, German soldiers who were captured not wearing the uniform of their own army were simply lined up against a wall and shot dead by American troops.

This was not a scandal. Far from being covered up by the military, movies were taken of the executions and have since been shown on the History Channel. We understood then that the Geneva Convention protected people who obeyed the Geneva Convention, not those who didn't -- as terrorists today certainly do not." -- Thomas Sowell

The word is out on John Kerry's transcript at Yale and "shockingly," his grades were even lower than those of fellow Yalie, Chimpy McBushHitler, who we all know is dumb as a post because liberals keep repeating "he's dumb" ad nauseum, like brain damaged parrots. Here are the goods on Kerry's Ivy League marks:

"During last year's presidential campaign, John F. Kerry was the candidate often portrayed as intellectual and complex, while George W. Bush was the populist who mangled his sentences.

But newly released records show that Bush and Kerry had a virtually identical grade average at Yale University four decades ago.

In 1999, The New Yorker published a transcript indicating that Bush had received a cumulative score of 77 for his first three years at Yale and a roughly similar average under a non-numerical rating system during his senior year.

Kerry, who graduated two years before Bush, got a cumulative 76 for his four years, according to a transcript that Kerry sent to the Navy when he was applying for officer training school. He received four D's in his freshman year out of 10 courses, but improved his average in later years.

Now, I know the first thought a lot of conservatives probably have after reading this is something like: "Na, na, na, John Kerry's grades are lower that W's! So if Bush is supposed to be stupid, that means Kerry is as dumb as Paris Hilton! Har, har, har!"

But, isn't the real lesson here that if a very prominent US Senator and the President didn't get particularly good grades, then grades aren't necessarily all that important in the real world or a very good measure of intelligence?

The way they talk about Hillary -- you'd almost think she was destined to be President. The mainstream press dotes on her, Republicans fear her, and any cleverly crafted poll that makes her look good gets press for days.

However, she has a critical flaw that certainly makes me unlikely to support her candidacy were I a Democrat: her poll numbers stink.

That jumps right off the page at you when you take a look at the latest data from Rasmussen polling:

""If Senator Hillary Clinton runs for President in 2008, just 26% of Americans say they would definitely vote for her. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that 41% would definitely vote against the former First Lady.

...In states John Kerry won by less than five points in Election 2004, 30% say they would definitely vote for Senator Clinton while 36% would definitely vote against. These six states have 72 Electoral Votes and are essential to any plans for Democrats to recapture the White House.

In the four states that President Bush won by less than five points, 22% of voters will definitely vote for Mrs. Clinton. Forty percent (40%) say they will definitely vote against her. These states have 42 Electoral Votes.

Ideologically, there is no change in perceptions of New York's junior Senator compared to recent surveys. Forty-five percent (45%) continue to believe that she is politically liberal,....Thirty-two percent (32%) of Americans view the former First Lady as a moderate while 8% believe she is politically conservative.

...Thirty-eight percent (38%) of Americans have a favorable opinion of Senator Clinton. Forty-five percent (45%) have an unfavorable view. That's down from 42% favorable and 40% unfavorable in our previous survey."

Spin it anyway you like it, these are terrible numbers. Geeze, Hillary even has a higher unfavorable rating (45%) than Kerry did at the END of the 2004 campaign.

Those are particularly scary numbers for Democrats because other than Robert Byrd & Ted Kennedy, Hillary probably has more baggage than any other Senator up on Capitol Hill and some of it, like her shady "cattle futures" deals will still make for potent campaign commercials in 2008.

Hillary isn't another Dukakis or Mondale, but she's not looking like a particularly good candidate either at this point.

Hat tip to the The Drunk Report for the story.

*** Update #1 ***: Correction: One sentence from the post was removed because it was based on a misreading of the original article.

Despite Amnesty International's recent statement that the U.S. military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay is a 'gulag', President George Bush today said that Amnesty is "not exactly like" the Soviet-era newspaper Pravda.

Gulags were Soviet forced-labor prison camps where the communist government sent millions of its own citizens as political prisoners to be tortured, starved and ultimately murdered.

William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, acknowledged on Fox News Sunday that his group's previous statement branding the Guantánamo Bay facility 'the gulag of our time' may be a poor analogy since there is no forced labor, and nutritious meals are served regularly to the suspected terrorists and avowed enemies of the U.S. who are held there.

President Bush welcomed the near apology.

"Pravda was the official organ of the Soviet communist party," said Mr. Bush, "Masquerading as a legitimate news organization, Pravda made false and outlandish claims against America to advance the cause of global communism and to give aid and comfort to our enemies. Let's be clear: Amnesty International is not precisely like Pravda. There are some differences between Pravda and Amnesty that would likely come to mind if you sat down and thought about it for a spell."

In related news, the president announced he would comply with Senator Joseph Biden's call for the shutdown of 'Gitmo' by transferring the 540 detainees to the Democrat Senator's home state of Delaware.

This satire was used with the permission of Scott Ott from Scrappleface.

And you'll never guess who did it!

Has the entire world gone mad? It's not enough for Dana Milbank to imply that Bush ships people who criticize him off to Gitmo or Linda Foley to say US troops are targeting journalists. No one seems interested in these outright slanders, nor in their obvious lack of truthfulness.

Now German PBS has run a mystery show, the plot of which places the Bush family behind the 9/11 attacks:

Throughout the mystery the woman was chased by groups of unidentified villains who were out to kill her because she had a CD with photographic evidence of the Boston hijacker who got away. The subtext of the plot was her explicitly stated allegation that 9-11 was instigated by the Bush family for oil and power. The hit men were CIA/FBI types and the TV audience is led to believe they were the ones who killed the pilot and were now after the woman to insure her story would never be known. The conclusion of the mystery has the detectives believing her story as she escapes the CIA by fleeing to an unnamed Arab country.

Got it. BushReich bad. US intelligence...evil. Arab countries good...safe.

I'm so glad we could clear that up. It's good to know which side you're on.

The content was used with the permission of Villainous Company.

Who says there are no heroes anymore? What about Sgt. Leandro F. Baptista? Who is Leandro F. Baptista you ask? A Marine who won a Silver Star for heroism under fire in Fallujah. And just in case you're wondering, oh yeah, he earned it:

With six men wounded and two vehicles out of action, Baptista "sprinted across a shallow canal, climbed a 10-foot berm, and charged towards the enemy."

Under fire, he knocked out one gun emplacement and grabbed three other Marines to help continue his charge.

After disarming an improvised bomb that threatened backup forces, Baptista split his men up, and the ad hoc team charged a group of 11 insurgents from two angles. Baptista killed at least four of them himself "at close range," while his team attacked the other seven, the citation said.

Marines at the ceremony said at least one Marine was killed during the 30-minute ambush and firefight.

The citation concluded that by his "bold leadership, wise judgement and complete dedication to duty" Baptista upheld the "highest traditions of the Marine Corps."

After pinning the heavy star on Baptista's shirt pocket during the ceremony Friday, Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, the 1st Marine Division's commanding general, said that hearing the events of that day recounted "brings chills to my spine."

He said Baptista's actions were "part of the legacy of our Corps, of this division," and ranked him alongside heroes from World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

So is all that praise going to Baptista's head? No, he handled it the right way:

Baptista, who only left the side of his fiancee long enough to shake the hand of his former 1st Recon comrades, said he was "just doing my job."

"I'm thankful, but I really didn't want to make a big deal of this," he said after the ceremony.

"Everybody out there should be recognized," he said. "People died out there. People got wounded. Everybody did their part. I was just in the position where I had to make a decision and take charge."

Now that is a real American hero...

Hat tip to the Mudville Gazette for the story.

I was pleased to get an opportunity to do a phone interview with sydicated columnist Jack Kelly. Mr. Kelly is former Marine, Former Green Beret, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.

We discussed a number of topics including Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Israel, China, chickenhawks, the cycle of violence, the MSM's hostility to the military, the future of the MSM & blogging.

Enjoy the interview!

Last week, I wrote about our infuriating and irresponsible catch and release policy for non-Mexican illegal aliens in Texas. In effect, if you cross the border in certain parts of Texas and you're not from Mexico, not only do you have nothing to fear from the border patrol, they actually MAKE LIFE EASIER FOR YOU.

There is a new story out on this surreal practice from The San Diego Union-Tribune with details in it that will absolutely blow your mind.

To begin with, the article describes a group of 20 illegals from Brazil who immediately started LOOKING FOR THE BORDER PATROL (What's wrong with that picture?) as soon they crossed into the US. Here's why...

"The group was detained overnight and given a court summons that allowed them to stay in the United States pending an immigration hearing. Then a Border Patrol agent drove them to the McAllen bus station, where they continued their journey into America.

The formal term for the court summons is a "notice to appear." Border Patrol agents have another name for it. They call it a "notice to disappear."

Of the 8,908 notices to appear that the immigration court in nearby Harlingen issued last year to non-Mexicans, 8,767 failed to show up for their hearings, according to statistics compiled by the Justice Department's Executive Office of Immigration Review. That is a no-show rate of 98 percent."

Maybe we could try this wildly successful approach to law enforcement with other types of crimes.

"Hey you, stop breaking into that house! No, no, I'm not going to take you to the station. Look, just show up at the court house in a month for your trial. What if you don't show? Well, then duh, you'd get away free and clear. It's not like we have the manpower to look for you. But, you look like an honest guy -- despite the whole "burglary thing," so I'm sure I can trust you to appear for court despite the fact that there are going to be no consequences whatsoever if you don't. Yep, no consequences whatsoever. Well, I'm off to foil some other crimes. See you in a month!"

Perhaps this policy explains why -- according to the article -- 260 illegals from Brazil were apprehended crossing the border in 1995, and 22,000 were "captured" in the first 8 months of this year.

But guess what? You haven't even heard the worst of it....

"The morning after Agent Balderas encountered the 20 Brazilians, another Border Patrol agent drove them to the McAllen bus station where they headed toward their destinations. They were armed with notices to appear that carried them safely past Border Patrol checkpoints.

Two days later, Graice De Olveira-Silva and three companions from Brazil were working for her relatives' house-cleaning business in Atlanta."

You get that? We're actually driving these illegals around and giving them what are essentially "get out of jail free cards." Why don't we just hand them big sacks of cash and welcome signs?

Now you may be wondering: while we're making life comfy for these illegals, who's guarding the border? Good question! From the article:

"Many Border Patrol agents express frustration over the dilemma. They also worry that the high volume of non-Mexicans is taking up much of their time and might be making it easier for potential terrorists to slip past. Some said they spend much of their 10-hour shift processing non-Mexicans.

One night last month when six agents were processing non-Mexicans at the Border Patrol's Rio Grande City station, for example, only seven agents were patrolling the 84 miles of river under their watch.

Agent Isidro Noyola, who that night detained illegal immigrants from Brazil and Honduras, said, "Our fear is that when we are processing and not patrolling the border, somebody else is going to be coming through."

Get that? We have 84 miles of river being watched on 13 guys -- which seems ridiculous to begin with. But on top of that, we have 6 agents actually helping non-Mexican illegals get into the country while the other 7 agents are covering the border.

Here's what it comes down to, folks:

"Others with the Border Patrol complained that they are being reduced to little more than gun-toting travel agents in uniforms."

You remember that "gun-toting travel agents in uniforms" quote the next time you hear a politician talking about what a great job we're doing on the border in this country. In reality, when it comes to illegal aliens and border security, this country operates like a corrupt banana republic. The politicians in Washington, Republican and Democrat, give us a little tough talk about how they're locking down the border; meanwhile, they couldn't care less that they're allowing illegals to flood into this country, that they're allowing drugs to flow over the border, and that they're leaving us wide open for another 9/11.

The way this issue is being handled is a travesty, it's a national disgrace, and we just cannot continue on this way...

(*** It hardly seems as if it could be possible, but yesterday was the one year anniversary of Ronald Reagan's death. It seems as if it were only a few months ago that Reagan left us, and rereading those old posts is more...difficult that it seems as if it should be at this point.

But time marches on and so must we.

So, in order to honor the Gipper and pay tribute to other American heroes, the soldiers who participated in D-Day 61 years ago, here is Ronald Reagan's magnificent speech given at Pointe du Hoc, France on the 40th anniversary of D-Day. ***)