It's almost time for The 5th Annual "Twenty Most Annoying Liberals In The United States: The 2006 Edition." If you'd like to suggest liberals who should be included, please post them in the comments along with what they've done in 2006 that merits their receiving a slot.

For inspiration, here are the last 4 years of the "Most Annoying Liberals" lists.

The Twenty Most Annoying Liberals In The United States: The 2005 Edition
The Twenty Most Annoying Liberals In The United States: The 2004 Edition
The Twenty Most Annoying Liberals In The United States: The 2003 Edition
The Twenty Most Annoying Liberals In The United States: The 2002 Edition

From NewsMax.com...

"I'm very pleased with the vigorous enforcement record the FEC compiled in 2006. The numbers speak for themselves," FEC Chairman Michael Toner said in an interview. "It means strong confidence the FEC is properly prioritizing the most important cases and willing to pursue them to conclusion."

Oh really?

Let' look at those three "settlements" from the FEC's website...

League of Conservation Voters 527 and 527II -- $180,000 
MoveOn.org Voter Fund -- $ 150,000 
Swiftboat Veterans and POWs for Truth -- $ 299,500 

Of course the two noteworthy ones are the Swift Vets and MoveOn.org. The SwiftVets attempted to correct John Kerry's lies regarding his service in Vietnam. I donated to them myself. MoveOne.org was founded to encourage the nation to ignore Bill Clinton's peccadilloes and crimes, and continued, apparently, to incessantly harp about any and every imaginary fault George W Bush has ever been accused of. 

The purpose of these campaign financing laws is to prevent what happened in 1968 and 1972 when W. Clement Stone donated $6 million to Richard Nixon's campaigns. The Democrats, in their child-like naiveté, assumed that only filthy rich people supported the GOP and that the average, working citizen supported them. (in other words they made the mistake of believing their own lies). 

So when the FCC "fines" or "settles" with MoveOn.org, backed by billionaire George Soros, for a measly $150,000 it's in effect telling them that the price of skirting the law, is to pay them some pocket change.

It is interesting that while SwiftVets raised $22.5 million and MoveOn.org raise $21.3 million during the 2004 election season, the Swift Vets "settlement" is twice what the supposedly "unbiased" FEC demanded from MoveOn.org.

But then the whole thing was a scam from the start.

The FEC knew darn well that the law was vague, and Democrats and Liberals always go by what they assume they can twist the law to mean, rather than what it obviously was intended to mean.  That gave them a head start. The Swift Vets had to decide whether to cripple themselves by applying the strict interpretation of the law, or do what the Liberals were doing, and face whatever consequences came later. In the end the consequences were (as should have been predicted) minimal, since the Liberals would have to face the same (well, at least half the same) consequences, the FEC couldn't get too tough on their Liberal buddies.

Campaign finance laws are a farce to begin with. Crooks like Soros will always find a way to get around the law, and funnel money to whatever politicians or issues they want to fund. 

W. Clement Stone died in 2002. Isn't it time to give his ghost a rest, and just file away these idiot campaign laws as failed exercises in meaningless symbolism, and get back to more honest campaigns. 

You can read more of Danny Carlton's stuff at JackLewis.net.

Oliver North

On Dec. 6 Marine Maj. and Public Affairs Officer (PAO) Megan McClung, along with Operation Anaconda hero Army Cpt. Travis Patriquin and Spec. Vincent Pomante piled into a Humvee at Camp Ramadi, located outside of the city. They accompanied Lt. Col. Oliver North and his Fox crew plus at least one journalist from Newsweek downtown. This was a special favor to them as most journalists, self included, go into that treacherous area without PAO escort. Every single trip into Ramadi is a major risk. Indeed, shortly after dropping off North and crew, an enormous IED ripped apart McClung's Humvee. The journalists all escaped harm; all those in McClung's vehicle died. I had been embedded twice in Ramadi under McClung and attended her funeral at Arlington Cemetery. She was, as they say, "A Marine's Marine" and a vital asset to journalists seeking to embed in al Anbar province.

You might think North would want to honor the sacrifice of a fellow Marine; that Newsweek would surely write about McClung not just given the circumstances but because she was the highest-ranking American woman to die in the war. You'd be wrong on both counts.

Newsweek has yet to print her name. As to North, in a syndicated column of Dec. 8 he did mention McClung although he couldn't use her name yet pending notification of kin. Remarkably, he made no mention that she was killed accompanying him and his crew.

Maj. Megan McClung

"A proffered hot cup of coffee was gratefully accepted as the Major helped us load our backpacks, camera gear and satellite broadcast equipment aboard a dust-encrusted Humvee," he wrote. "Just hours later, this widely respected and much admired Marine officer and two brave U.S. Army soldiers were dead, killed by an IED -- an improvised explosive device -- the insidious weapon of choice for terrorists in Iraq."

That's it. He's never even written her name nor that of those who died with her.

In my case, when a soldier risked his life in Ramadi to help me because he thought I was hurt even though I had just hit the ground to avoid machine fire, I gave him full credit.

One brave soul, who proved to be Sgt. Falk, risks his hide by jumping from his relatively safe position along the wall to pull me in. "I'm just taking cover!" I yell. But he's determined to rescue me, even as my rolling [to a protective wall] and the lack of a handle on my body armor makes it impossible for him to grab me. That I wasn't actually hurt makes him no less a hero in my book.

That's the way it should be done. In this case, somebody did die trying to help these journalists and that should be acknowledged. Maybe you don't expect anything more from Newsweek, but we should expect more from Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North.

This month, the Weekly Standard published my article "The Chicken Littles Were Wrong: The Bird Flu Threat Flew the Coop." It was a follow-up to my cover piece from the year before, "Fuss and Feathers: Pandemic Panic over the Avian Flu."

After the blogger at Avian Flu Diary, whose expertise in the disease stems from being a former paramedic, declared me a fool on his website for writing that second article, he later made the mistake of making a prediction. Specifically, he said there was a "50%/50%" chance of such a pandemic in the next year. He didn't realize that one of the most important rules of alarmism is to never allow yourself to be pinned down by actual dates. You just say we're all doomed and leave the time frame open, allowing yourself a permanent escape hatch. In any case, I took advantage of Mr. Paramedic's oversight to bet him 10-1, with him picking the dollar amount, that there would be no such pandemic in the next 365 days. Odds of 2-1 would be even, so this is an offer you'd think he'd snap up. So far no reply. Now I'm extending the challenge to all bloggers who've ignored my flawless track record on disease scares dating back 20 years and who have said in no uncertain terms that I've been grossly irresponsible and a total idiot on the subject of pandemic flu. That includes Daily Kos, "Revere" at Effect Measure, ("I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and say something about this sleaze." Science as sleaze?) and Mike the Mad Biologist at Science Blogs ("What the piece shows is just how ignorant of public health Fumento really is.") Naturally it also includes Mr. Troll himself Tim Lambert at Deltoid.

Okay guys, put your bucks where your blogs are! Ten to one odds for each of you; each gets to pick the amount in question. I say the year 2008 will roll around and there will be plenty of terrible problems in the world, but pandemic avian flu won't be among them. Naturally some of these anti-scientists have insinuated that somebody must be paying me to say pandemic avian flu is a bunch of bird droppings -- that's also how the alarmist game is played; if you can't counter the facts, attack the messenger. Well this time I am going to make some money! Or at least try. If the year-long period sounds a bit short, keep in mind that it's our paramedic friend who suggested it and that I've been writing about pandemic avian flu alarmism since my "Chicken Little Gets the Flu" article in the Wall Street Journal in January of 1998 -- yes, nine years now. They've had their time. I'll let you know at my website if anybody has the courage of their alleged conviction to take me up on my generous offer. I'm guessing they're all chicken.

If you read nothing else today, or even this year, read this. It is just a short excerpt from an absolutely riveting essay by a man you may know more for bring you laughs than for sober analysis, yet it is probably the best thing I've read this year:

Since what we know about America flows mostly from the media, we can be certain that most of what we know is just plain wrong, or at least atypical. My old journalism professor used to say, ‘News is coups, earthquakes and three-legged chickens.’

In other words, Walter Cronkite was exactly wrong to say ‘That’s the way it is.’ Journalists don’t report the truth about life. They are carnival barkers selling the unusual, the atypical, the freaks. And we continue to reward them for doing so.

The actual truth about life in our great Republic is quite different from the daily portrayals in the media.

Everywhere in this God-blessed America covert radicals roam, committing seemingly-random acts of kindness — unmonitored, untallied, uncontrolled, unshackled from the federal government. It is, in effect, a shadow government that we have set up for ourselves to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty.

This decentralized movement of men and women accomplishes most of the great work of charity, compassion and community building. Their individual efforts are a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of government largess, but in the aggregate and ultimate their service far exceeds anything that government can deliver.

In fact, the vast majority of Americans behave as if the federal government did not exist in their day-to-day lives. This underground movement is entirely healthy and necessary for the maintenance of our Republic and for our pursuit of happiness.

We don’t have time to blame anyone for our misfortunes. We’re too busy working to overcome them. We don’t have faith in some distant bureaucrat, rather we turn to the resources that God has placed near at hand. We lean on our brothers. Many of us call on our Father in our time of need, and He sends our neighbors who love us more than we love ourselves. Later, we will turn to our helpers when they need us and repay the debt, only to learn that no debt existed because acts of compassion shower blessings on giver and receiver alike.

We find these local (and spiritual) solutions not only adequate, but invigorating and inspiring because it is only when we are pressed hard by life that we discover there is more life in us, among us and beyond us than we had imagined in carefree hours.

Though he would no doubt wish to decline the 'honor', I've always considered Scott my blogfather. ScrappleFace was the first blog I ever saw way back in 2003, beginning with Scott's famous post sending a message of support to the troops. All my oldest and dearest friends are people I met there, and I am blessed to count a good number of my readers.

An amazing post from an amazing person, and someone none of us appreciate nearly enough. Scott managed to capture, far more eloquently than I could have, what I meant to convey in my post this morning.

Don't miss it.

Erin Brockovich hasn't had much to laugh about this year

This hasn't been a good year for "America's Sweetheart." In one recent setback, in which she acted as plaintiff, she sued 31 hospitals she claimed were making unfair claims against Medicare. Her payoff would have been tremendous. But two separate judges tossed out all 31 cases, asserting that among other things Brockovich has no standing since she has no involvement in any way with Medicare nor was ever even treated by the hospitals in question. Any first-year law student could have told her that.

Far worse for Brockovich was the November 22 Los Angeles County Superior Court decision to reject the first 12 cases in litigation her firm of Masry & Vititoe began in 2003 against the city of Beverly Hills, the school district, and a slew of oil companies. The suit claims an oil rig on the campus of Beverly Hills High School caused extraordinary high rates of several types of cancer among the approximately 11,000 alumni who attended between 1975 and 1997. Yet the firm never proffered the least evidence that, while some alumni certainly have suffered from cancer, the rig had or even was capable of causing the diseases in question.

Now Brockovich is on the warpath against a proposed composting facility near the town that made her rich, Hinkley. She sides with those who insist that the material collected from municipal sewage systems would send harmful bacteria, viruses, or at the least nasty smells and flies towards the tiny California town. She's done radio shows on the subject, as always has gotten tons of media attention, and she even paid to bring in a bus load of activists.

But again, Brockovich is on the wrong side of reality.

The compost company, Nursery Products of Apple Valley, California, only takes in biomass from area sewage systems that have already gone through a four-step clean-up process. After it arrives at the composting facility, the biomass is mixed with wood fiber and heated to 131 degrees as mandated by the EPA to kill bacteria.

"The site without a doubt carries zero risk to public health and the environment," Alan Rubin, chief author of the EPA's regulation-setting standards on using and composting biosolids, told me. He's now a consultant to Nursery Products but worked at the EPA for 28 years. "There will be no impact to groundwater, no impact on surface water, and windblown pathogens wouldn't survive more than a few seconds" he said.

As to smells and flies, the closest edge of Hinkley to the facility would be eight miles away – plenty of space for odors and insects to dissipate. On the other hand, the town has a dairy farm right next to its school. Thus on a daily basis the dairy exposes kids to raw manure with accompanying bacteria, smells, and flies. Ah! But that's homegrown manure, bacteria, smells, and flies. Still, anything that embarrasses Brockovich and further reveals her as all breasts and no brains can't be all bad.

Thank you very much to John Hawkins for inviting me to blog today. This item is cross-posted at my website, www.fumento.com, where you can find more overly revealing photos of Miss Brockovich.

Little Green Footballs is holding its annual contest to vote for the Idiotarian of the Year. Who is the one person that you think made such a spectacular contribution to world stupidity that he or she rates the less-than-coveted award? The nominees are:

Hugo Chavez
John F. Kerry
Keith Olbermann
Mainstream Media
Kofi Annan
Cynthia McKinney
9/11 Conspiracy Theorists

Past winners are

2002 - Jimmy Carter
2003 - Rachel Corrie
2004 - Michael Moore
2005 - Cindy Sheehan

Since the winner can't repeat, Jimmy Carter is no longer eligible for the award but perhaps could win the lifetime achievement award.

My thinking is that such a prestigious award should go to someone who actually can have an impact. That rules out Cynthia McKinney, John Kerry, Keith Olbermann, and the 9/11 Conspiracy nuts. I'm not really fond of blanket awards such as choosing the MSM. It smacks too much of a Time Person of the Year copout. So, I'm going to have to vote for Kofi Annan, always dependable for saying something worthy of this recognition.

On the more positive side, you can also vote for the Anti-Idiotarian of the Year. Who has done the most to fight the stupidities of the Idiotarian set. In honor of Oriana Fallaci, this award has been nicknamed the "Oriana." The nominees are

John Bolton
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Robert Spencer
Mark Steyn
Melanie Phillips
Oriana Fallaci
Canadian PM Stephen Harper
Australian PM John Howard
Pope Benedict XVI
Wafa Sultan
Stuck Mojo

This is a tougher battle. Going with my previous thought that it should be someone who actually can have an impact, I would normally go for one of the prime ministers or the Pope. I'm not a music fan of Stuck Mojo and I'm not really sure what they're doing on the list. I deeply admire the courage of Ayaan Hiersi Ali and Wafa Sultan and they do deserve recognition for their bold stands against what has become of their own religion. They have risked more than many others in courageous statements against the tyranny and misogyny that they have suffered and observed in Islam. I've enjoyed the writings of Steyn, Phillips, and Fallaci, but Mark Steyn is clearly the most prolific and entertaining writer, yet still able to drive home some deep truths while using humor in his own inimitable fashion. That leaves John Bolton, who might not have had the impact that Harper or Howard have as leaders of countries, but he still stuck in there in a completely thankless and pretty hopeless job speaking truths that few wanted to hear. He was done dirt by the Senate, particularly the execrable Lincoln Chafee in blocking his nomination from even coming to the floor. Thus, in honor of his efforts in a job where he was truly surrounded by idiotarians, I chose him to be my candidate for Anti-Idiotarian of the Year.

Head on over to LGF and cast your own votes.

This post is cross-posted at my site, Betsy's Page.

Donald Lambro touches today on what I think few people understand about the Congress. Our Founding Fathers deliberately created a system of checks and balances to make sure that momentary passions did not force through bad laws. They gave powers to the minority to block such actions. And, over the years, the Congress, particularly the Senate, has evolved its own sets of procedures to give more power to individual legislators to block bills from becoming law. So, don't expect any massive change from the Democrats taking over the Congress.

But after the 100 hours of severely limited parliamentary procedures has played out, what then? That's where prospects look bleak.

House-passed legislation goes over to the Senate, known in some disgruntled circles on Capitol Hill as "the black hole," or "the roach motel," where numerous bills go in but few come out.

The Senate's rules, dominated by unanimous-consent agreements, are far different from the House. One senator can put a hold on a bill for just about any reason or block a measure from a vote for an almost indefinite period. Even on those bills that may make it to the floor, one senator or a handful of senators can demand that the majority, if there is one, must come up with a supermajority of 60 votes to end a filibuster and proceed to full and formal consideration.

Even if you succeed in passing the Senate version, the obstacles don't end there. It must be sent to a House-Senate conference where a group of appointed lawmakers negotiate to iron out differences. Often, as was the case with last year's competing illegal immigration bills, one chamber (in this case, the House) can refuse to go to conference, dooming any further action. Many, if not most, bills coming out of conferences are voted on, but they can run into the same obstacles they had to clear in the first go-round. All of these legislative, procedural and parliamentary hurdles are hard enough to overcome. In a narrowly divided, deeply polarized House and Senate, as the 110th Democratic Congress will be, compromises will be doubly difficult to achieve.

For younger observers of our system, forget "I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill" civics and realize how difficult it is for anything to go through the entire process and get signed into law. Our system is set up so that it is very difficult to pass any provision that doesn't enjoy wide public support. If any one group strongly opposes an idea and is willing to fight against it, it is almost impossible to enact that law.

Our country is deeply divided on issues and that is why it has been difficult to pass big changes. So don't expect the Democrats to be able to take over Congress and start enacting their dream legislation. It is much easier to block and play defense against the majority than to pass something through the entire legislative procedure. If the Republicans in Congress stand firm in their beliefs of what is best for the country, they can block actions just as the Democrats were able to do when they were in the minority. And Bush might discover that he has a veto pen and be willing to use it since he doesn't have to worry about running for another election.

Once the Democrats find that they can't pass legislation, they will focus on the things that they can do. They can hold hearings. They can call in administration figures for all sorts of investigations. They can block nominations. They have more power to pass budget provisions that can't be filibustered than to enact legislation. So, as Lambro says, don't expect major legislative action after their first 100 hours of pushing through easy provisions. After that, expect a return to the days of gridlock and recriminations. It may not be the most efficient system of government, but it is the one our Founders created to ensure that there not be big swings in action unless there was strong public support behind such actions.

Thank you very much to John Hawkins for inviting me to blog today. This post is cross-posted at my blog, Betsy's Page.

Four a.m.

It's cold and dark outside my small home in western Maryland. The slap of the newspaper hitting the driveway briefly jolts me awake as I blearily stare at the monitor. Behind my office chair a small but determined Weiner Beast wreaks havoc on carefully arranged stacks of Christmas wrap and bows with a destructive force that rivals the most fiendish IED as, via OpFor, I read that last week David Ignatius tried to convey a sense of Christmas during wartime:

He begins with a nod to our good friend and oberbloggenfuhrer BlackFive, and mentions several other sites as well as milblogging.com. But he never seems to get what they're talking about. "Misery may love company," he writes, "but in the military, it keeps its mouth shut." Actually, no it doesn't. Throughout history the soldier's only right has been to complain, and he does it in a variety of ways. But he doesn't always complain; sometimes he pokes fun at his predicament. I suppose you have to be there-- or have been there--to understand. He continues:

"This holiday season, America is struggling through a searing national debate about Iraq. The horror of the war feels immediate, even to people who've never been near Baghdad, but less so the humanity of the thousands of American soldiers who are serving there. That's part of the Iraq disconnect: The war dominates our political life, but the men and women in the midst of it often are nearly invisible. We see them in thumbnail photos in group obituaries but not as real, living people."

That last seems something of an understatement. The press rarely show us anything so accurate - or as human - as a thumbnail photo. Our battle dead and wounded are not accorded the human dignity and respect their voluntary sacrifices deserve. Rather, their service is all too often hijacked by those who oppose everything they gave their lives for; just another obscene weapon in the media's constant efforts to prove this is a war we should not have fought.

The first rule of writing is to know your subject. The press fail to tell our story because, by and large, as an institution they have withdrawn from the arena. Where there were over 800 embeds at the beginning of the war, now roughly 1% of that number remain to cover a war the New York Times has called worse by every available measure. For reasons best known to them, the press have elected to cover the largest story of our time at secondhand using, not professional journalists but unnamed, uncredentialed, and untrained sources whose identity and loyalties, according to AP at least, are not open to question.

But behind the often slanted montage of murder, mayhem, miserable failure and simmering discontent served up daily by the media lies a far different picture hinted at by Ignatius' ignorance of what every military person knows: complaining is less a sign of discontent than a normal pastime during both peacetime and war. We do it in the chow line, during PT, while standing in line at the PX, and we laugh insanely when the New York Times serves up the grumblings of yet another Lance Corporal (often as not laughably mislabeled as an "officer") as evidence that the military is dangerously close to mutiny.

But what do we know? Anyone who questions the media's conventional wisdom about the war is accused of having an agenda, as though somehow the hundreds of thousands of military men and women (not to mention their families) who have volunteered to serve on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan know less about what is going on over there than the members of the press who tell us they can't cover the war because conditions make it "too dangerous" to venture out of their hotel rooms.

It's true: there is danger over there. Whenever anyone in or out of the military dares to question press coverage of the war, we are huffily reminded how many journalists have been wounded or lost their lives in this conflict. We understand, because for every member of the media who has died, literally thousands more of us have made the ultimate sacrifice. It's just that we don't consider that risk a good enough reason to prevent us from doing our jobs and to be fair, very likely many reporters wouldn't either. Many would embed in a heartbeat if their management would support them. What does it say about the values of the media establishment that they fought for the right to embed with the military yet refuse to cover the war at firsthand because they refuse to share the risks with their own countrymen? What does it say when citizen journalists and bloggers like Michael Yon and Bill Roggio have paid their own way to cover the biggest event of our time, yet America's biggest newspapers not only decline the honor but sneer at those who take up the gauntlet in their absence?

And what of the faces behind the war? Why are we always shown victims and whiners rather than those who are doing good?

Carrie Constantini, a Marine wife and mother to a young Marine who worked with Operation Santa this year visited Ward 57 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center where some of our most severely wounded troops are recovering from their injuries, but oddly she didn't find a morass of miserable failure and despair. No doubt this is why the Washington Post (my hometown paper) had no interest in this local story - just as they refused to cover Project Valour IT when I called and tried to interest them in it - but the British BBC was all over it:

"It's very surprising ...The spirit is upbeat, the spirit is positive. I spoke with a young soldier:

"I'm so sorry that you have to be in the hospital on Christmas. But he smiled and said, "But I get to have another Christmas!"

"If they can be positive, well we can be positive too."

(continued...)

Incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wants you to know she is a Catholic. She’s going to receive Communion in a very public display of her Catholicism on January 3rd during her swearing in week. It is inappropriate that she do so. And it is inappropriate under Canon 915 that it be given to her.

Deal Hudson has been hammering away at this issue since before Christmas on his blog, which I contribute to. Hudson asks pointedly: “Speaker Pelosi is providing the perfect occasion to discuss the following: Should a pro-abortion Catholic politician go unchallenged if she (or he) uses the Mass as the occasion for a public, obviously political, event?”

And he has many other questions that need answering:

It may be that after the 2004 campaign most bishops have decided to give the issue a rest. If so, their acquiescence will only allow the Democrats to continue their charm offensive toward religious voters, especially Catholics.

It will be interesting to see how the media covers the return to Trinity University and the Mass--will they actually let the cameras inside to follow Pelosi down the aisle toward the altar?

Will Fr. Andrew Greeley be called upon to opine on the significance of this pro-abortion Catholic taking over the leadership of the House of Representatives? Will we hear ad nauseum that this ceremony marks the end of single issue politics, that Catholics are realizing once again that health care, education, war, and poverty are moral issues as well?

Is this the belated victory of the "seamless garment"?

Finally, who from Catholic officialdom will join her in the walk down the aisle? How many bureaucrats from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, how many presidents of Catholic colleges, how many bishops (surely Archbishop Wuerl would not attend) will join in the "celebration" of her Catholic faith?

Deal has much more on the subject on his blog, which he bills as “Theocon Commentary on Catholic Issues Spiritual, Theological, Cultural and Political.”

Patrick Hynes runs Ankle Biting Pundits and is the author of In Defense of the Religious Right, which would make a great belated Christmas gift.

As we approach the New Year, many of us will be planning for the year ahead and coming up with New Year's resolutions. Well, our country should do the same thing when it comes to foreign policy. In many respects, we treat our foreign policy the same way that we did back in the Cold War era even though the world has been completely transformed since then.

Although the UN has never been a model of efficiency, today it's completely non-functional. NATO, which was once a fearsome military alliance on the planet, is today a hollow shell that can't even muster up enough troops to adequately garrison Afghanistan. Without the threat of the Soviet Union to keep them honest, most of Western Europe has become militarily weak and lapsed into anti-Americanism.

Moreover, because the US has been such a benevolent giant, our help is now taken for granted. In South Korea, they want our troops to stay in the country to protect them from the Norks while "Americans Are Not Welcome Here" go up in their restaurants. Nations in Africa regularly bad mouth us and vote against us at the UN even as we funnel hundreds of millions of dollars of aid into their country. Middle-Eastern nations like Egypt take billions of dollars in aid from the US, even as their state controlled media trashes us day in and day out. And if you really want to see how bad it can get, look to Afghanistan, where the people were only avoiding starvation with our help while simultaneously, Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda plotted 9/11. Meanwhile, nations like Iran and Syria are being allowed to get away with supporting insurgents that are killing American soldiers, even though we're fully capable of putting an end to their entire civilizations from the air, if we so desired.

These are the new realities of the post-Cold War world we live in, but we're not adjusting to them. However, that can change.

We could build an organization of democracies outside of the United Nations and could gradually start going to them, instead of the UN, with key problems. Then, over time, we could devote more money and resources to the new organization and allow the UN to wither on the vine.

The Geneva Conventions are an outdated, unworkable set of rules for wars of a sort, between gentlemanly Western nations, that seldom seem to happen anymore. Why not write our own rules of conduct that apply to the sort of conflicts we face today and pull out of an agreement that only seems to apply to us anyway?

NATO is fast becoming obsolete because most of its members don't have the will or military capability to make a significant contribution during a war. So, let's start signing treaties with key countries that supersede NATO and do a better job of spelling out the obligations each country has in the event of a conflict. Do you want the military support of the world's only Super Power? Well, great, the next time we head into a country like Iraq, what are they willing to do for us?

It's also time to end "no strings attached" aid to other countries, other than perhaps after some terrible natural disaster. We don't have to receive a dollar for dollar payback for helping another country, but voting our way at the UN, cooperating with us militarily, or giving preferences to American companies would be appreciated. At a minimum, we shouldn't be giving money to nations with state run presses that are telling their people that we're evil. Put another way, our new philosophy when it comes to doling out foreign aid should be, "If we don't get credit for it, we're not doing it." After all, it's not as if there is any shortage of nations that needs our help. Since that's the case, why not at least get help from nations that are willing to show their appreciation?

This isn't the same world that it was 20 years ago, when Western Europe was a strong, reliable ally and allegiances across the world were split between us and the Soviets, but our thinking on foreign policy, in most respects, hasn't adapted to the new reality. That needs to change.

At 4:15 EST today, I am supposed to be doing 15-20 minutes on the Ron Smith show. We're going to be talking about illegal immigration. You can listen by going here and clicking on the "Listen Live" button.

-- It's great to see Ethiopians routing the Islamo-Fascists in Somalia. Hopefully, behind the scenes, we're feeding cash and weaponry to Ethiopia because it's certainly in our interest to see the sort of Taliban clones that had taken over Somalia defeated.

-- This just goes to show you how we've gutted the First Amendment in the name of Campaign Finance Reform:

"It’s no secret that NASCAR drivers skew Republican, which is fine with the Federal Election Commission, just so long as they don’t display their preferences where anyone can see them.

In a decision announced Tuesday, the FEC sent an “admonishment letter” to Kirk Shelmerdine Racing. Kirk Shelmerdine, a former pit boss for the late Dale Earnhardt, has been an unsuccessful, underfunded and undersponsored driver. He has never finished higher than 26th.

So back in 2004, in a move perhaps designed to draw some attention to his car, he placed a “Bush-Cheney ’04” decal on his rear quarter panel, which was otherwise unencumbered by advertising. Democratic activist Sydnor Thompson complained to the FEC, and the agency found that Shelmerdine “may have made an unreported independent expenditure or a prohibited corporate expenditure.”

This is the sort of thing you'd expect to see in China or the old Soviet Union, not in the land of the free and home of the brave. The Founding Fathers would roll over in their graves if they knew we had a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington sitting around deciding "how," "when," and "if" the American people are allowed to express even the most basic of political sentiments.

-- Human Events scored an interview with Mitt Romney. It's a nice "get" and I think it also underscores how Romney has peaked. There were a lot of tough questions pitched at Romney and he didn't really have good answers for a lot of them. For example,

Some other things that have been looked upon in recent weeks have been comments you made about Jesse Helms and Ronald Reagan back in 1994—critical comments. Do you regret making those? And could you put those in a context to explain to conservatives what you were trying to say?

When I was running for office for the first time in 1994, I was trying to define who I was, not who I wasn’t. I was trying to define that I was an individual who had his own views and perspectives and I wasn’t a carbon copy of someone else. I’ve said since, and continue to reiterate, that one of my heroes is Ronald Reagan.

I’ve been asked time and again in interviews, who are your heroes? And I mention Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower among others as some of my favorite heroes, and I feel that deeply. But I am a different person than any other person and my interest is, of course, looking forward to defining who I am....

Ronald Reagan is one of Mitt Romney's "heroes" (cough, cough, now that he's running for the Presidency), but in 1994, when he was running for the Senate, he was critical of Reagan because he "was trying to define who I was, not who I wasn’t." What? That doesn't make any sense. I mean, obviously Mitt isn't a"carbon copy of someone else" today and he's claiming Reagan is one of his "heroes."

Here's an interesting question: Do you think Romney would have lots of nice things to say about Reagan today if he were planning to run for a Senate seat against John Kerry in 2008 instead of running for the Presidency? Personally? I really tend to doubt it.

-- John Edwards has now officially declared that he's running for President and have you noticed that basically, he's just the white Barrack Obama or conversely, you could say that Barrack Obama is the black John Edwards? They're both inexperienced candidates who really have nothing to offer except charisma.

-- Speaking of John Edwards, here are his top five priorities:

In his message to supporters, Edwards listed five priorities to change America. Among them: “Guaranteeing health care for every single American,” “Strengthening our middle class and ending the shame of poverty,” “Leading the fight against global warming,” and “Getting America and the world to break our addiction to oil.”

He also listed “Providing moral leadership in the world — starting with Iraq, where we should begin drawing down troops, not escalating the war.” (Hawkins' Note: This last sentence was apparently cut out of the original article for some reason because it appears in the TKS excerpt, but not in the piece on MSNBC.)

1) Socialized medicine. If you think it's expensive now, just wait until you see how much it costs and how poorly it works once it's "free."

2) "Strengthening our middle class" is always good, but that's not very specific and let's face it, unless we figure out how to make widely available Star Trek style replicators, we're never going to end poverty.

3) If global warming is occurring and if it's caused by man (and both of those are big "if's,") no way to "fix" the problem exists. Sure, we can hammer our economy by putting all sorts of incredibly expensive inconvenient regulations in place to reduce greenhouse gasses, but that doesn't affect China, Russia, India, or even Europe, where the growth rate for greenhouse gasses is actually higher than it is in the United States today.

4) Breaking our addiction to oil sounds good, but the reality is that technologically, we're not even close to being able to pull that off and even if Edwards were elected and reelected, we still probably wouldn't be close to having it done by the time Edwards left office. Yes, we can reduce our dependence on oil, but the only way to "break our addiction" currently would be to severely damage the economy by writing legislation that would force people to use less efficient, more expensive products, which incidentally, would also conflict with #2 on Edwards' list.

5) We already provide "moral leadership in the world." Quite frankly, if the rest of the world were more like us, it would be a much better planet. What Edwards really means here is that we should cut and run in Iraq and then suck up to Western Europe and the UN. To Democrats, being popular on the international scene is always more important than being right or defending America.

Also, there are a couple of glaring omissions here. The war on terror doesn't make an appearance on the list for Edwards. Nor does the deficit. Of course, liberals only really care about those issues when they can use them to bash Republicans, but it's interesting to note that Edwards isn't even going through the motions.

Every so often, a crazy who goes by the handle of "Bush-Adm-Planned-911" spams me with left-wing drek and lunatic conspiracy theories. I complained a few times to his provider, bellsouth.net, about the spam, but apparently their users are allowed to spam with impunity because they've never done anything about it.

Anyway, I decided to read Count Kookula's latest spam mail and as per usual, it was insane. Here's part of the email:

"TVNL Editor's Comments: So Gerald Ford is Dead? So What?

For those of you who do not already know this, Gerald Ford is a special man in American history in that he took part in not one but two cover ups related to the JFK assassination. First off he was one of the authors of the fictional piece known as the Warren Report. Then he pardoned Richard Nixon so that the real reason for the Watergate break-in would not be revealed. For those of you who do not know the Nixon connection the JFK assassination you should start doing a little research of your own, but I’ll tell you where to start looking…start with the Watergate burglars and the “tramps” who were picked up at the scene of the Kennedy assassination. They seem to be the same people. Then research where Nixon was on that fateful night. Nixon, along with the probable kingpin of the assassination George H. W. Bush, are the only two people on the planet who can’t remember where they were on that day but records show that they were both in Dallas. Start poking into this and you will be shocked at what you may find. In the meantime spend your emotions mourning for our nation, democracy, Iraq and its citizens or just about anything…rather than for Mr. Ford. Think about it! – Jesse, Editor, TvNewsLIES.org"

So, Gerald Ford, Nixon, and George Bush Sr. all teamed up to assassinate JFK? Geeze, if you're making up wacko conspiracy theories, why not go all the way and accuse Ronald Reagan and zombie Teddy Roosevelt of participating, too?

How do people come up with this crap? Worse yet, how can they get so many nutjobs like "Bush-Adm-Planned-911" to buy into it? It's like a "tidal wave of stupid" and it makes me wonder if it's new or if people have always been like this and we only figured it out because the internet allowed them all to proudly post their crackpot theories for the whole world to see.

Just a little follow-up to my Human Events column from yesterday.

Many people are presuming that an amnesty bill is good as through Congress now that the Democrats have taken over. They may be right. After all, the average Democrat is as bad on the issue as the worst offenders on the right, like George Bush and John McCain.

However, it's not over until it's over and there are a few reasons to think that amnesty isn't a foregone conclusion.

For one thing, after the beating the GOP took in 2006, in part because of George Bush, very few Republicans are going to be voting for an immigration package (or anything else for that matter) out of loyalty to W. At this point, they owe him nothing. Moreover, with the Democrats taking an amnesty bill that was pretty odious to start with and making it more liberal, the chances of a filibuster are going to go up considerably.

Also, in the House, you've got to consider that a lot of the Democrats who won in 2006 are going to have a hard decision to make. Many of them are in Republican leaning districts, most of them talked very tough on illegal immigration during the campaign, and they know that next time around in 2008, they're probably not going to have the same kind of advantage that Democrats had in 2006. Do they really want to hand their opponents in 2008 a club to beat them with? My guess is that for most of them, the answer is, "no." So, it's possible that the House Republicans might be able to form a coalition with those Democrats to block an amnesty bill.

Long story short, the odds have gotten longer, but the amnesty crowd hasn't won yet. And, in two years, if we're lucky, we can put a President in the White House who understands that flooding this country with perhaps as many (after chain migration) as 50 million uneducated, non-English-speaking day laborers is going to make this country a worse place to live, not a better one.

Check out the newest weapon we're working on, "The Dread." 120k rounds per minute...

Update #1: Here's more on the Dread Weapon System from Defense Review.

Foreign

Saddam Hussein's Baath Party Threatens To Retaliate If Their Leader Is Executed

Hundreds Of Iraqis Apply To Be Hangman

US Holding Two Iranians In Iraq

Israel Says It Will Retaliate Against Rockets From Gaza (Free New York Times Reg Req)

Islamic Forces Have Abandoned Somalia's Capital Mogadishu And Clan Militias Have Begun Taking Control

At Least 260 Dead In Nigeria Pipeline Fire

Euro Notes Cash In To Overtake Dollar

Domestic

Ford's State Funeral Starts Friday

Arlen Specter Visits Syria (Gag)

World's `Worst' Visa System Scares Business Away From The U.S.

Fewer Illegal Immigrants Arrested On Border

Claim By Bob Woodward: Ford Said Iraq War Not Justified In 2004

Nixon Never Thanked Ford For Pardon

Columns

Amir Taheri: The Boom Outside Baghdad

A NRO Symposium: The Good, Bad, And Ugly Of Politics In 2006

John Reiniers: 'Old Media' And Its Power To Sap The Nation's Resolve

Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis: Pendleton Commander Upbeat About Morale, Progress In Iraq

Left-Overs

Ten Moments The Web Shook The World (Free LA Times Reg Req)

Radio Host Dies On Air

Website Of The Day: Free Will

Since the election, you may have heard pro-amnesty Republicans or liberals saying something like this, "The 2006 election proves that being tough on illegal immigration doesn't work as a political issue. Look at J.D. Hayworth, John Hostettler, Randy Graf, and Henry Bonilla. After that debacle, the GOP is surely going to cave on illegal immigration now."

Well, as someone who followed the election very closely and did a better job of calling winners and losers than almost all of the political pundits out there (My final predictions, 5 Senate seats lost and 22-29 seats in the House lost. Final numbers, 6 Senate seats lost and 30 House seats), I can tell you that being tough on illegal immigration didn't hurt the GOP in 2006. Now you may be skeptical of that because it doesn't square up with the conventional wisdom that you've been hearing, but let me make a case to you.

First off, let's hit the candidates that get mentioned over and over.

John Hostettler was an incumbent congressman who supported the House illegal immigration bill, but he was also an odd bird when it came to fund raising. Essentially, he didn't do it. In the end, despite the fact that everyone knew he was in trouble for months, Hostettler only raised $586,314 compared to the $1,728,054 that his opponent raked in. That's the biggest reason why Hostettler lost. His position on illegal immigration had nothing to do with it.

Randy Graf, a tough on illegal immigration conservative, who was attempting to retain a seat held by Congressman Jim Kolbe, was torpedoed by the Republican Party. The Republican National Committee spent over $200,000 supporting his opponent, Steve Huffman, in the primary. Then, after Graf soundly defeated Huffman, the RNC threw a tantrum and refused to support him against his extremely well funded challenger, Gabrielle Giffords. Additionally, Jim Kolbe also refused to endorse Graf. This allowed Giffords, who had a massive fund raising advantage, to successfully portray Graf as a candidate who was too extreme for his own party and that, not his position on illegal immigration, led to his defeat.

J.D. Hayworth's loss was particularly noteworthy because unlike the other candidates being mentioned, he could fairly be called one of the leaders of the "tough on illegal immigration" crowd. However, what you will never hear amnesty fans mention about Hayworth's loss is that his opponent, Harry Mitchell, actually tried to run to his right on the illegal immigration issue. For example, on October 24, 2006, here's a message that was posted prominently on the front of Mitchell's web page:

"I’m proud to show you the second television spot of our campaign which highlights an important issue to all Arizonan(s): securing our border and ending illegal immigration.

My opponent likes to talk tough about immigration, but the truth is he and those in Washington have failed in their responsibility to secure our border.

The number of illegal immigrants in our state has increased 400% during his tenure in Congress.

My opponent has rewarded illegal immigration by voting for amnesty four times. Just last month, he voted against 12,000 additional Border Patrol agents and against implementing the border security recommendations of the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission. In his 12 years in Congress, J.D. has given us a lot of rhetoric, but not a lot of results."

Now, after reading that, does it sound like J.D. Hayworth had problems because he was "too tough" on illegal immigration? No, it doesn't.

Last but not least, we have Henry Bonilla, who may be the only candidate in the entire nation who was actually hurt by his tough stand on illegal immigration. Of course, he also ran a terrible campaign and came within 1% of winning the election without a runoff. Had Bonilla spent more of his huge war chest (He had over a million dollars in the bank when the first election occurred), there never would have been a runoff and he would have been reelected. And that's even though after the Texas redistricting, Bonilla ended up in a district that was 65% Hispanic.

So, now we've discussed 4 Republicans who lost in 2006 and were opponents of amnesty. But, what about all the Republicans who were soft on illegal immigration in 2006 and lost as well? Percentage wise, being soft on illegal immigration was much more dangerous to the political health of Republicans than being tough on illegal immigration. These statistics from Roy Beck at NumbersUSA certainly seem to support that conclusion:

# 9.6% with an A grade lost
# 25.0% with an F grade lost
# 9.2% with a B grade lost
# 6.4% with a C grade lost
# 9.5% with a D grade lost

In other words, about 9.6% of the tough guys on illegal immigration lost, while 25% of the amnesty crowd went down to defeat. Along those same lines, these numbers from the same article seem to be rather compelling:

* 11.5% of all Republican seats in Congress were lost as Democrats took back control of Congress

* But only 6.7% of the Members of Tancredo's Immigration Reform Caucus lost their seats.

If being tough on illegal immigration is supposed to be such a killer, then how can it be that the members of Tom Tancredo's Reform Caucus outperformed the rest of the House? The question answers itself.

But, what about the Hispanic vote? Didn't the GOP lose some Hispanic voters because of their illegal immigration stance? Yes, but the numbers related to illegal immigration were undoubtedly fairly small. Now, that's not what you'll hear from amnesty proponents. They'll point out that the percentage of Hispanics voting for the GOP dropped from 44% in 2004 to 30% in 2006. However, what they don't mention is that 44% was an all-time high for the Hispanic vote and that the support for the GOP dropped in almost every demographic group in 2006. For example, GOP support from Jewish voters dropped from 22% in 2004 to 12% in 2006. Support from Independent men dropped from 51% in 2004 to 41% in 2006. Support from women without a high school diploma dropped from 48% in 2004 to 30% in 2006. In comparison, is the drop in Hispanic support really all that large? No, not really. Moreover, if you compare the numbers from the last off year election in 2002 to the numbers in 2006, the drop in Hispanic support for the GOP is even smaller. It goes from 38% in 2002 to 30% in 2006. That's actually a percentage drop of 1% less than that of white males over the same period (63% in 2002 to 54% in 2006). So, did the illegal immigration issue hurt the GOP with Hispanics? Maybe a little, but even if illegal immigration hadn't been an issue, it seems likely that the GOP would have probably still dropped 8 to 10 points with Hispanics in 2006.

Furthermore, if you look at how the 2006 elections played out, it'll become obvious that the amnesty plan being pushed by the Senate was not a popular policy. All during 2006, across the country, local governments passed laws designed to make life tough on illegal immigrants. Moreover, in competitive races in the country, the voters were almost always given a choice between a candidate that was genuinely serious about securing our border and a candidate that just pretended to be serious about securing the border for political purposes. So while candidates on both sides of the race aired commercials talking about how they were the real choice for people who were serious about stopping illegal immigration, almost nobody ran any advertisements promising to allow illegals to become citizens or promoting amnesty. That tells you a lot about popular comprehensive illegal immigration reform is when you get right down to it. Additionally, percentage wise, tough on illegal immigration Republican candidates won more races than candidates who had a poor voting record on the issue.

What it all adds up to is that the GOP had a lousy year across the board for a lot of reasons, but being "too tough" on illegal immigration wasn't one of the problems that they had. If anything, the miserable performance of George Bush and the Senate GOP on the issue made it impossible for Republicans in the House to be credible when they told their constituents that they could trust them to stop illegal immigration. In other words, the GOP suffered more from being "too soft" on illegal immigration than from being "too tough."

Make sure to check out Conservative Grapevine today, where you'll find links like:

Townhall Blog: Liberals attack little girl singing a Christmas song for her brother in Iraq.

Power Line: On his visit to Iraq, Senator Kerry apparently got something like the silent treatment from the troops who are "stuck" there. Here are some of the details.

Redstate: What would Dale Earnhart, Sr., think? The FEC goes after NASCAR.

You can check out all those links and more by clicking here. Don't forget to bookmark CG!

PS: If you'd like to submit articles to be linked to Conservative Grapevine, register at CG, and then shoot me an email.

You know for people who are always going on and on about fascism, liberals certainly do seem to be comfortable with certain fascist tactics as long as they're directed at the "right" people. Take popular liberal cartoonist Ted Rall, for instance, who has this to say on his blog:

"A reader responding to my column "When is a Win Not a Win?" from a few weeks ago has sent me a persuasive case for banning the Republican Party. As in making it illegal for the GOP to hold meetings or run for office. Forever.

It's not as wild as you might thing. Political parties are banned all over the earth. For instance, the Communist Party is banned in Russia and the Nazi Party is prohibited in Germany. The Republican Party hasn't murdered in the tens of millions, but why wait? The current band of GOP criminals, just getting started, has already killed over 600,000 Iraqis (Hawkins' Note: Not true at all). While they're currently on the wane, they're a malevolent influence who will surely return to make America a worse place sooner rather than later.

Anyway, it's tough medicine and I'll have to think about it..."

So, he'll have to think about Democrats getting into power and then banning members of the other major party from being able to run against them? That's a fascinating little glimpse into the way that Rall and his liberal ilk think, isn't it?

Hat tip to QandO for the story.

Since the New York Times editorial columnists have gone behind a subscription wall, the number of links to and discussion of their columns has dropped down to a very minimal level. Combine that with the holiday season and it's not a big surprise that I missed Paul Krugman, last Friday, explaining why it's OK for us to run a deficit now that the Democrats are in power:

"[Robert] Rubin was one of the ablest Treasury secretaries in American history. But it's now clear that while Rubinomics made sense in terms of pure economics, it failed to take account of the ugly realities of contemporary American politics.

"And the lesson of the last six years is that the Democrats shouldn't spend political capital trying to bring the deficit down. They should refrain from actions that make the deficit worse. But given a choice between cutting the deficit and spending more on good things like health care reform, they should choose the spending..."

In other words, when the Democrats were out of power, they complained about the deficit. Now that they're in power, it's, "Screw the deficit, let's tax and spend!"

Now, is this really a big surprise given that the Democrats customarily pretend to be moderates while planning to immediately veer way off to the left once they get in office? No, but the brazenness of Krugman's on a dime turn on the issue is noteworthy -- and oh boy, is this a 180 degree shift for Krugman.

After about 5 minutes of Googling, I was able to pull up all of these previous quotes from Krugman:

"The trouble with railing against the deficit is that it’s hard to get people completely enraged. They ought to be, because this is world class irresponsibility, and one day it’s going to take its toll." -- Paul Krugman on Nov 10, 2005

"...Mr. Bush has at last conceded that the deficit is indeed a major problem." -- Paul Krugman, Nov 11, 2005

"We already have a large budget deficit, the result of President Bush's insistence on cutting taxes while waging a war. And it will get worse: a rise in spending on entitlements - mainly because of Medicare, but with a smaller contribution from Medicaid and, in a minor supporting role, Social Security - looks set to sharply increase the deficit after 2010.

Add borrowing for privatization to the mix, and the budget deficit might well exceed 8 percent of G.D.P. at some time during the next decade. That's a deficit that would make Carlos Menem's Argentina look like a model of responsibility. It would be sure to cause a collapse of investor confidence, sending the dollar through the floor, interest rates through the roof and the economy into a tailspin." -- Paul Krugman, Jan 11, 2005

"If you were going to take a look at just the budget, we have a huge, immediate problem on the deficit about which Bush intends to do nothing, really." -- Paul Krugman, Dec 21, 2004

The deficit is a "huge, immediate problem" that people should be "completely enraged" about and it could send the "economy into a tailspin" if something isn't done. But, now that the Democrats are in power and have an opportunity to do something about this issue that they've talked about incessantly, they "shouldn't spend political capital trying to bring the deficit down."

How sadly typical for a liberal.

This Is DNN is a video that imagines, "What if Today's Media covered WWII?"

The video is clever and well done, but it was also shorter than I expected at 29 minutes. Although I enjoyed watching the video (and if you're conservative, you probably will, too), $19.95 seems like a pretty steep price for a 30 minute long video.

Here's a clip from the video to give you an idea of what it was like:

PS: If Roosevelt would have had to deal with the same sort of treacherous media that Bush has to deal with today, we would have lost.

PS #2: One of the cool things about getting up to a certain size in the blogosphere is that you get free books and videos like this for reviews. Now, if I can get a little bigger -- who knows? Maybe I'll be getting free Nintendo Wiis and Digital Camcorders to review -- or maybe not. But hey, a fella can dream, right?

The other potential title of this post is: "Why John McCain Is Not Fit to Be President." The collusion among all 3 branches of government in restricting Americans' right to air their opinions during election season - the Congress for passing, the President for signing and the Supreme Court for upholding McCain-Feingold - was one of the most egregious displays of limiting our civil liberties in this nation's history (the Court, plainly, was manifestly wrong). Now another court has ruled in a way that challenges McCain-Feingold, but upholds its overall legitimacy.

A federal court on Thursday loosened restrictions on corporations, unions and other special interest groups that run political advertising in peak election season.

The 2-1 ruling said groups may mention candidates by name in commercials as long as they are trying to influence public policy, rather than sway an election.

The ruling came in a challenge to the so-called McCain Feingold law designed to reduce the influence of big money in political campaigns. The law banned groups from using unrestricted money to run advertisements that name candidates two months before a general election or one month before a primary.

Some lawmakers have predicted such a ruling would create a loophole in the 2002 law. The case automatically heads to the Supreme Court for review.

Got that? Freedom of speech is OK, so long as the speech in question is not intended to sway an election. Excuse me, but what the hell else is the point of free speech if not to sway an election? This legalistic hair-splitting, which affirms the right of the government to silence critics, demonstrates just how dangerous McCain-Feingold is.

This content was used with the permission of GOP Bloggers.

The AP reports that, “at least 2,978? American soldiers have now been killed in Iraq, which is “five more than the number killed in the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.”

Some other bits of historical trivia:

* More American soldiers died during World War II than at Pearl Harbor.
* More people died during WWI than archdukes killed precipitating that war.
* More people died in the fighting that followed the Confederate shelling of Fort Sumpter than during that attack. Indeed, far more died during that war than the total of African slaves killed by their owners.
* More people died during the Spanish-American War than during the sinking of the Maine.

Offhand, it’s hard to think of a significant war where the number of casualties did not exceed those who died in the event that was its proximate cause. So what?

Now, it’s certainly arguable that ousting Saddam Hussein and trying to create a democratic regime in Iraq was a poor response to being attacked by al Qaeda. Or that the war was a bad idea, period. But silly anecdotes about the number of casualties trivializes those debates.

If the war was just and worth fighting, the number of American dead has been a worthwhile if sad sacrifice. If not, then every casualty was one too many.

This content was used with the permission of Outside The Beltway.

Domestic

Former President Ford Dies At 93 (Sorry To Hear That. RIP Gerald)

Democratic Lawmakers And Their Republican Allies Are Working On Measures That Could Place Millions Of Illegal Immigrants On A More Direct Path To Citizenship And Get Rid Of The Fence (Free New York Times Reg Req)

Nonprofit Connects Murtha, Lobbyists Ties to Pa. Group Mutually Beneficial (Free WAPO Reg Req)

NYT Reporter: I Was Assaulted by Pakistani Agents

Military Considers Recruiting Foreigners (Let's Not)

Foreign

Court: Execute Saddam Within 30 Days

Islamists Retreat In Somalia (Free New York Times Reg Req)

U.S. Deaths In Iraq Exceed 9-11 Count

Columns

Tim Wendel: Rejection

Logic Gaps And Leaps In Income Disparity

Walter Williams: Reinstating The Military Draft

John Stossel: Is Nothing Too Trivial For The Busybodies?

Tony Blankley: 2006 -- A Good Year For Our Enemies

Robert Stacy McCain: Doing Jobs Republicans Won't Do

Left-Overs

Researchers Say Lake Tahoe Fault Could Deliver Massive Earthquake

Pill That Tricks You Into Losing Weight

Wired's 2006 Foot-In-Mouth Awards

Website Of The Day: Airborne Combat Engineer

Honorable Mention) Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Suffered A Stroke And Cerebral Hemorrhage: Israel's Prime Minister is laid low by health problems after he formed a new party. Would Hezbollah have been picking fights and Iran talking so tough if the old soldier were still running the show? Probably not.

Honorable Mention) Hamas Wins A Landslide Victory Over Fatah: The Palestinians opted for sweeping change in their country -- by picking a different group of terrorists to be in charge.

20) Tim Johnson's Surgery: After brain surgery, poor Senator Tim Johnson is stuck in the hospital recuperating with the Senate in the balance. Let's hope he recovers soon!

19) Saddam Sentenced To Death: After a long, bizarre trial, the "Butcher of Baghdad" is finally scheduled to meet the Hangman. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

18) Joe Lieberman Loses And Survives: Joementum may be pitiful, but at least it beats Nedmentum!

17) John Mark Karr Claims To Have Murdered JonBenet Ramsey: When creepy looking pedophile John Mark Karr claimed to have killed JonBenet Ramsey, a lot of people bought it because, well, just look at him! However, it turned out that Karr had a more fanciful imagination than JK Rowling because he made the whole thing up.

16) Mel Gibson's Anti-Semitic Rant: He may be a drunk, an anti-Semite, and lame enough to call a female police officer "sugar t*ts," but it doesn't seem to have hurt his career.

15) British Airlines Terror Plot: Terrorists planned to destroy up to 10 airplanes in mid-air. It's just another reminder that whether we like it or not, we're at war, and it doesn't end whenever we get tired of fighting.

14) The North Korean Nuclear Bomb Dud: What's the only thing that's scarier than a poofy haired psycho with nuclear weapons? A poofy haired psycho with nuclear weapons who's too incompetent to operate them properly.

13) Mark Foley Cyber Seduces Congressional Pages: Not only did the Mark Foley scandal blunt the momentum of the GOP shortly before the election, because of him, the American public got to find out a lot more about gay cybersex than it ever wanted to know.

12) Duke Lacrosse Case: A group of Duke students aren't being let off the hook for a crime that a 10 year old could see that they didn't commit primarily because they're white. In other words, this is the reverse OJ case.

11) Dick Cheney's Hunting Accident: The veep shot his friend in the face while hunting. If he'd do that to his friend, just imagine what he'd like to do to our enemies. It's almost enough to make you wish he was President.

10) Al-Zarqawi Is Killed In Iraq: Al-Qaeda's main man in Iraq, Al-Zarqawi, was granted blessed martyrdom a bit sooner than he expected. Reportedly, he didn't die immediately after he was hit by the bomb and his last words were, "Tell my goat I love her."

9) Dome Of The Golden Mosque Destroyed In Iraq: Al-Qaeda tried to dramatically escalate sectarian bloodshed in Iraq by blowing up the Golden Mosque in Samarra. It worked like a charm.

8) The New York Times Reveals The Government Monitoring Of Banking Records: The American people spend billions on their intelligence agencies every year while Al-Qaeda just needs a subscription to the New York Times.

7) The United States Found 500+ Chemical Weapons In Iraq: When it became known that Saddam Hussein had over 500 pre-Gulf War WMDs when we invaded, the "Bush lied, people died," crowd acted as if it was unfair to reveal that information just because it spoiled their bumper sticker slogan.

6) The Dubai Port Deal: When the United Arab Emirates-based Dubai Ports World acquired a British company and prepared to take over some US ports, the American people flipped out and George Bush showed that he has perhaps the worst case of "political tin ear" since Jimmy Carter by high-handedly ignoring concerns about the deal. Long story short, Congress killed the deal, Bush suffered a massive political blow, and then, everyone hunkered down and tried to forget that we have lots of foreign companies running our ports.

5) Ahmadinejad Does His "Hitler Light" Impression: Iranian madman, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spent the year working on building an atomic bomb, targeting American troops in Iraq, putting together a Holocaust denial conference, and threatening to destroy Israel -- incidentally, you ever notice that people who deny the Holocaust always come across as the sort of people who'd love nothing better than to participate in a new Holocaust if they were given the chance? In any case, all Ahmadinejad has managed to accomplish so far is raise Iran to the top of the "most likely to be bombed in 2007" category.

4) The Illegal Immigration Debate: There were debates about fences, anti-illegal alien ordinances passed all across the country, massive rallies featuring foreign flag waving illegals demanding things from the American people in Spanish, and a gruesome political struggle which tore the GOP apart -- and the bruising fight is still far from over.

3) The Danish Muhammad Cartoon Controversy: Muslims worldwide had a hissy fit because some Danish cartoonists drew pictures of Muhammad. There were protests, riots, threats made, people murdered -- you know, if "moderate" Muslims got as upset over their fellow Muslims murdering innocent people in the name of Allah as they did over these cartoons, the war on terrorism would be as good as won.

2) Israel Invades Lebanon: Israel rolled into Southern Lebanon, killed Hezbollah fighters left and right, tore up their infrastructure, and then next thing you know, the UN was involved and Israel was sitting at home branded as "losers" by most of the world. If only they'd bombed Hezbollah's patrons in Syria, things might have been very different.

1) Democrats Take Control of Congress: Hold onto your wallets and burn proof your American flags because the Democrats are back in charge and this time? It's personal!

-- Do you know what we have at the top of the food chain on the Republican side for 2008? A conservative when it's convenient (John McCain), a Johnny-Come-Lately conservative (Mitt Romney), and not a conservative (Rudy Giuliani). Quite frankly, the conservative wing of the Republican Party isn't well represented by any of these guys.

-- Speaking of Mitt Romney, after Allen lost, he made a real effort to claim the mantle of the "conservative candidate" in the race. Because he sounded good and perhaps more importantly, because a lot of people desperately want an alternative to McCain and Giuliani, Romney managed to get a little traction and pull into the three slot.

However, now that it has come out Romney referred to himself as a moderate, distanced himself from Reagan, and was opposed to the Contract with America back in 1994, he can no longer credibly fill the role as the "conservative candidate." Moreover, he has a record of flip flopping on abortion, minimal "war on terror" credibility, and the ever present "Mormon question" hovers over his candidacy and seems to make it unlikely that he can be elected.

Put it all together and it looks like Mitt Romney has probably peaked -- way too early and with far too little support to have a chance to win the nomination.

-- For a while now, some of us have been saying that, Hillary isn't anywhere near as strong a candidate as some people seem to think. Her latest performance in Iowa would seem to support that contention:

"KCCI released on Thursday the results of The Research 2000 Iowa Poll, which was conducted from Dec. 18-20.

The poll consisted of telephone interviews of 600 likely Iowa voters and has a margin of error of no more than plus or minus 4 percentage points.

...The poll asked Iowa Democrats which candidates they would vote for if the 2008 Democratic caucus were held today.

The top three candidates were Sen. John Edwards at 22 percent, Democratic U.S. Sen. Barack Obama at 22 percent and Vilsack at 12 percent. U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton of New York came in fourth at 10 percent."

"Lil Mrs. Invincible" got crushed not just by Barack Obama, but by John Edwards and she finished in 4th place. That's not too impressive for a candidate that's supposed to be a front runner, especially when you're talking about Hillary, who already has near universal name recognition. What it means is that a whole heck of a lot of Democrats know Hillary well, know she's supposed to win, and still said, "not interested."

Additionally, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Hillary's recent admission that she wouldn't have voted for the war knowing what she knows now was a direct result of early internal polling numbers from Iowa. Hillary tried to run as a faux-hawk for as long as she could because she thought it would be useful in the general election, but she may be starting to worry that it's all slipping away from her. Time will tell.

-- I was surprised to hear Fred Barnes, who's a real squish on illegal immigration, saying nice things about Duncan Hunter on the Beltway Boys. Here's Barnes:

Personally, I hope he gets a lot of those conservative voters because I suspect that Gingrich and Tancredo aren't running, and unless an impressive governor jumps in soon, from what I've seen, Hunter looks to be the only candidate who could potentially gather enough support over the next few months to compete with Rudy and McCain.

Stories like this one really help put the left's hysteria over what they claim is "torture" at Gitmo into perspective.

"Forcing store clerks to listen to the same holiday music over and over could be akin to torture and should change, a British noise pollution group said.

The UK Noise Association and labor unions are suggesting legal action on behalf of store employees who listen to endless looped recordings of holiday music, the Observer said Sunday.

...Exposure to the same music constantly is "no different to being tortured," added Val Weedon, the noise association's national coordinator."

Yeah, listening to Jingle Bells and White Christmas on a constant loop is no different than say hooking electrodes up to someone's genitals or jamming bamboo shoots under their fingernails.

This is the sort of mentality that handicaps not just America, but the West in the war on terrorism. We're up against terrorists with an "anything goes" mentality while our guys at Gitmo have to actually put on gloves before they can touch the Qur'an and our troops in the field are sometimes forced to ask permission from lawyers before they're allowed to kill the enemy.

We don't have to fight like utter savages, as our enemies do, but by trying to take too much of the cruelty and brutality out of war, we're giving our enemies a huge advantage that our soldiers are paying for in blood.

Supposedly, Muhammad Ali was the inspiration for Apollo Creed in the original Rocky movie and quite obviously, George Foreman's return to boxing was the inspiration for Rocky in his sixth movie -- and yes, it's really Rocky #6!

In this last movie, Rocky has long since retired from boxing, his beloved Adrian has passed away, and he spends his days running a restaurant and generally being kind to people. But then, the champion of the world loses a computer simulated bout to Rocky that gets a lot of press attention and next thing you know, he wants to prove himself against Rocky in the ring and collect a big paycheck for his trouble.

From there on out, it's the standard training montage and then off to the fight which, as always, consists of Rocky and the other guy trading haymakers from start to finish.

It is the same formula you've seen 5 times already? Yes, pretty much. But, was it good? Again, yes. If you liked the first four movies in the Rocky series, you'll like this one, too. It's also worth noting that this film was a huge improvement over Rocky V, which, incidentally, came out way back in 1990! On the inspirational scale, I'd put this one below Pursuit of Happyness, but above Invincible. 3 stars out of 5. It's a thumbs up!

Make sure to check out Conservative Grapevine today, where you'll find links like:

Times Watch: The absolute worst quotes of 2006 from the New York Times.

Relapsed Catholic: The GOP turned into the Adultery Party so gradually, I didn't even notice.

Michelle Malkin: 2006 Year in review: What ever happened to...?

You can check out all those links and more by clicking here. Don't forget to bookmark CG!

PS: If you'd like to submit articles to be linked to Conservative Grapevine, register at CG, and then shoot me an email.

Outraged Democrats initiated impeachment proceedings today aimed at ousting Republican President George W. Bush from office, following the Administration’s failure to prevent the destruction of Israel by nuclear weapons.

Israel’s destruction yesterday by Iran was accomplished by the use of five nuclear weapons, one in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheva, Jerusalem and Nazareth. It was timed to coincide with the start of Ramadan celebrations.

The mood on the Arab street was generally upbeat with only minor celebratory gunfire and bombings, but some voiced concerns that it was a Jewish plot to anger the West at the Arab world.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid voiced outrage at President Bush. According to Senator Reid, “we knew this was coming for years. President Ahmadenijad told us as much, and what did the Pentagon do about it? Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi commented favorably on the bipartisan effort behind the impeachment proceedings. “While I’m sad to say Republicans did nothing about Iran for years, they are at least on board with these proceedings, which is as it should be.” Speaker Pelosi continued, noting the horrible death toll, “the three or four million Jewish people of Israel, not to mention countless Arab and Christian Israelis, perhaps another three million, have been destroyed in a new Holocaust. And what did George Bush do to stop it? Nothing.”

The Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, the Hon. John Conyers, stated that he already had impeachment papers drawn up for just such an emergency, and that it would not take long to get Bush “and that pacifist imp, Cheney” impeached. Conyers predicted that following the House preceedings, the Senate would convict within a matter of days. He added that Congress would install Speaker Pelosi as President shortly thereafter, as is proper under her role as third in line to the Presidency.

Senator Chuck Shumer, an impassioned advocate for Israel during three terms in the Senate, said he was “shuddering with rage that this Second Holocaust would occur on our watch. It is inexcusable what this White House has allowed to happen, and the President must be made to pay. It is our fault.”

Washington hand Jim Baker was circumspect and appeared almost happy, saying “I feel vindicated by this. The criticism that cut us to the core in the Iraq Study Group was the argument from certain neo-con quarters saying we should get tough with Iran. In the Study Group, we all knew that we needed to talk to Iran, to negotiate with them, to find some concessions we could make. That this happened, proves we were right, and proves I have been right all along.” Baker predicted “a long golden age of peace and prosperity” in the Middle East, “now that the Zionist project” is gone.

Not all voices were in agreement. Senator Joe Lieberman (R-Conn) argued that “the White House tried to confront this threat, but we thwarted them at every turn and made sure that the necessary public support to do so, would not be in place. It is our fault as surely as it is President Ahmadinejad’s.”

—————————————————-

Of course “be prepared” is not what the Democrats are saying today.

This content was used with the permission of Cold Fury.

"The Fascists and the Nazis are only on the right if you yourself are communist—and therefore, they are barely to the right of you on the political spectrum. To the rest of us, Fascists, Nazis and communists are different sub-species of the same murderous monster, a blood-drenched beast that believes in the power of the state and seeks to dismember or murder every individual and every group in society that refuses to bend to its will.

Those of us who believe in free speech and, its economic equivalent, free trade, limited government, tolerance, the equal freedom of the artist and the entrepreneur, the separation of church and state, and so on, are the enemies of fascists and, their ill-clothed counterparts, communists. Indeed, capitalism is the opposite of fascism, which favors government control of the every economic decision. Calling us (liberals and conservatives) “fascists” simply reveals the Left’s nostaglia for truly evil enemies (like Nazis) and its current reluctance to engage in a battle of ideas." -- Richard Miniter

Foreign

U.S. Is Holding Iranians Seized In Raids In Iraq (Free New York Times Reg Req)

Security Council Approves Very Weak Iran Sanctions

Iran To Install 3,000 Centrifuges After Sanctions

Egypt Slams Iranian President

Claim: Islamic Terrorists Want To Attack The Channel Tunnel Between England And France During The Holiday Season

Ethiopia Opens 'War' On Somalia Militia (Go Ethiopia!)

Internal Document: Japan Considers Going Nuclear

Domestic

Curt Weldon's Alarming 9/11 Claim Is Found Baseless. A Military Analysts' Chart Did Not Identify Hijackers Beforehand, Senators Report (Free LA Times Reg Req)

Will Taxpayers Now Pay Legal Bills For Illegal Aliens?

Medi-Cal Pays For Over 100,000 Births By Undocumented Women

Border Patrol Agent Fatally Shoots Rock-Throwing Man

Duncan Hunter, Other U.S. Leaders In Favor Of Troop Increase In Iraq

Columns

Mark Steyn: Biggest Story Of Our Time -- Our Self-Extinction

Jack Kelly: A Bigger, Better Military

Michael Barone: Our Optimism Can Be A Problem

Froma Harrop: Working Poor Getting Stomped By Illegals

Don Surber: Earth To Bush -- We Are Winning

Left-Overs

Singer James Brown, The 'Godfather Of Soul,' Dies At 73 In U.S. (Rest In Peace)

The Human Events Man Of The Year: Jim Sensenbrenner

Wall St. Bonuses: So Much Money, Too Few Ferraris (Free New York Times Reg Req)

Monica Lewinsky Had Just Graduated From The London School Of Economics (Free WAPO Reg Req)

Website Of The Day: Support Susan Rajic

I'm going to be on vacation Friday and Monday, but, I will still be putting up retro-RWN posts on both of those days. So, have a great Christmas, consider this to be an open thread, and look for new content on RWN, Tuesday.

5 Misconceptions About Blogs & The Mainstream Media

Why There's A Dearth Of A-List Female Bloggers

25 Pieces Of Advice For Bloggers

Right-Of-Center Bloggers Decide Who Should Rule The World

The 10 Most Fascinating People In The Blogosphere For 2005

The 40 Most Obnoxious Quotes For 2005

The 10 Biggest Stories Of 2005

The 3rd Annual 10 Worst Quotes From The Democratic Underground For 2005

The 10 Greatest Star Trek Characters Of All-Time

Pick Your Favorite TV Shows Of All-Time

Q&A Friday #26: Can You Give Us A Mega RWN Non-Political Reading List

My Top 50 Songs Of All-Time (2005 Edition)

The St. Valentine's Day Job Massacre Or Alternately Freedom, Horrible Freedom!

The 100 Greatest Americans Of All-Time According To RWN

The Case For George Washington As The Greatest American

The 12 Stages Of Scandal

Don't Trash All Muslims Because Of The Actions Of The Terrorists

It's Time To Take A Stand On An Important Issue: Chelsea Clinton Is Hot

Q&A Friday #23: The Korean War, Vietnam, & The Gulf War -- Were They Justified?

Give War Toys A Chance!

A Really, Really, Really Long Post About Gay Marriage That Does Not, In The End, Support One Side Or The Other

A List Of Some Of The Most Embarrassing Quotes To The MSM

Conservative Economics In Quotes