ArchPundit

Just make it stop:

John Laesch, of Yorkville, said he supports the carbon-free and nuclear-free plan put forth by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research at www.ieer.org. He said that while he is in agreement with Foster on several points, he disagrees that money should go to more research. Laesch believes the technology for environmentally conscious energy is already available.

Instead, he said, consumers should be given incentives to buy electric and hybrid cars, solar panels and wind turbines, or to hook up to public power grids. And Laesch said the government could easily afford such subsidies by reordering some priorities.

The ‘plan’ he links to is absurd.
1.  This bans corn based ethanol.  A position I agree with, but I’m not running in the 14th District.

2.  This would require the retrofitting of all houses with gas heating and cooking.

Let me make this very simple.  While we need to reduce the amount of CO2 emissions, we do not need no CO2 emissions.  In fact, any reasonable energy plan will incorporate cleaner fuels like natural gas, especially since it is an accessible source for fuel cell hydrogen.

3 and Oh My God is John Laesch a fucking moron:

Adopt vigorous research, development, and pilot plant construction programs for technologies that could accelerate the elimination of CO, such as direct solar
hydrogen production (photosynthetic, photoelectrochemical, and other approaches), hot rock geothermal power, and integrated gasification combined cycle plants using biomass with a capacity to sequester the CO

The plan John likes so  much includes more money for research because the technology is not developed.

Nice newspaper ethical standards 

Agents of Paul Krugman are spreading the word in journalistic circles that he has scandalous information about his principal opponent in the profession , Bob Novak, but has decided not to use it. The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed.

This word-of-mouth among journalists makes Novak look vulnerable and Krugman look prudent. It comes during a dip for Krugman after he refused to take a stand on the Time’s editorial policy.

Experienced journalistic operatives believe Krugman wants to avoid a repetition of 2004, when attacks on each other by journalists Hunter Thompson and Judy Miller were mutually destructive and facilitated  Fox News’ rise.

I hear Novak likes to eat puppies.  What are you hearing? Feel free to be as outlandish as you like.  Put it in comments and I’ll then forward the rumors to the Sun Times which presented that piece of garbage column in their paper.  And have allowed him to out CIA agents in a story of no value, perhaps someone will start to think about, you know, editing him.

Micky Kaus rumors are encouraged to. It would be irresponsible not to after all.

And, of course, time for a blogger ethics panel!

Finally, the HRC campaign might think about it’s habit of using right wing mouthpieces like Matt Drudge. It makes their denials sound like crocodile tears.  And even if true in this case, why shouldn’t Obama react as if it’s true given the history?

Fun with the YouTubes

Wingnut law professor wine vlogs about her hair color.

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.

Treason in the Defense of Slavery Yankee is calling for a boycott of The New Republican because it is published Scott Beauchamp:

We know The New Republic attempted to stonewall their way through obvious, blatant, and grievous breaches of journalistic ethics. In so doing, they have attacked the service, integrity, and honor of an entire company of American soldiers serving in a combat zone to avoid taking responsibility for their own editorial and ethical failures.

I’ve never quite understood the big deal over the Beauchamp story–at worst it told the story of some people stuck in the middle of a civil war being cruel to a dog in the street.  Other than by Michael Vick rules of dogs are the most holy thing ever, is that shocking.  Anyway, Treason in the Defense of Slavery Yankee is claiming it is stabbing troops in the back and even left a classic over at Yglesias’ place.

The knives are being swung at the back of our soldiers comes from the hand of Franklin Foer.

It is unclear to just about everyone, but Treason in Defense of Slavery Yankee why a pro-war magazine that continues to cheerlead the Iraqi War and a publisher who is all a twitter at the thought of attacking Iran would want to undercut the troops, but a guy who calls himself Treason in Defense of Slavery Yankee is short a few marbles for pretty obvious reasons.

Anyway, he wants to boycott the TNR’s advertisers.  Yeah, for those who have actually read TNR, that’s pretty funny. Here’s a sample of the advertisers:

TiDoSY wants to boycott pharmaceutical companies, think tanks, academic presses, and interest groups.  Even in the cases of Ford and GM or Chevron and BP their advertising in TNR is oriented towards issues or corporate reputation more than actually selling products.  Oh, and insurance companies….like Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

There are virtually no products to boycott unless one is an academic.  Most of the advertisers aren’t there to sell things so much as to reach a very particular audience about issues.

But the comments are the best:

tilting at windmills…

the advertisers are there because they’re interested in giving money to a liberal magazine and because they’re interested in the readers.

So….American Gas Station, Chevron, BP, the American Petroleum Institute, the Farging Hoover Institution,  FLAME, the Bleeping Nuclear Energy Institute, US Telecom, and Big Pharma are all interested in giving money to a liberal magazine.  Of course.

Never mind that the New Republic is not the New Republic of old, but pretty much a neo-con publication on foreign policy and DLC on domestic policy.  But whatever, these conservative stalwarts are backing the TNR because it is a ‘liberal’ magazine?

TNR, probably far less than it used to be, is a place to reach very specific policy audience with ideas, not sell televisions or cars and that is why this is probably the dumbest consumer boycott ever.

Seriously, someone at the Trib smack Dold over the head for allowing this crap in his paper.

The problem with dismissing the Carroll study because it is epidemiological is that you’ll also have to dismiss a multitude of public health studies, including ones claiming a link between radon and lung cancer. These are the same epidemiological studies that alarmed millions of Americans, frightening them into buying radon detectors and creating a huge radon mitigation business. No study is perfect, and Carroll’s shortcoming is that his data do not allow comparisons of individual women over time. But other major studies have, and according to one unchallenged compressive analysis of those studies, they show that a pregnant woman who has never had a child before and aborts in the first term increased her chance of breast cancer by 50 percent.

Let me offer up the model from the paper

Two explanatory variables are selected for modeling: (abortion)and (fertility).The trends for abortion and fertility are shown in Figures 8 and 9 for countries considered. The Mathematical Model is then:

Y_i = a + b₁x_1i + b₂x_2i + e_i

where Y represents cumulated cohort incidence of breast cancer within a particular age group; a is intercept, b₁ and b₂ are coefficients, and e is random error.

That creates a guffaw from those who know statistics at all.

He has a correlation Coefficient of .98.

Those who understand correlation coefficients are shooting liquid through their nose if they were drinking anything right now. I had to look at it about 20 minutes to understand this moron was trying to sell a .98 correlation coefficient.
What he has done is take mass data that shows one factor increasing (abortion) and another decreasing (fertility) and then regresses it upon a variable that is increasing-incidence of breast cancer.

So if I were to regress the number of abortions and the fertility rate on the number of televisions sold per person, I’d get about the same result over this period of time. So I can, according to this dumbass, claim credibly that television leads to breat cancer. Or, as the Orac points out, the reduction in the number of pirates has led to global warming.
There’s a variety of problems in this study starting with he throws out independent variables well established by other studies. In the case of linear regression, the problem is that if you do not include other variables, you cannot control for those variables and so not are just theoretical variables excluded, but well established variables demonstrated over and over are excluded from the analysis. To say the least, this is an underspecified

A regression model is underspecified if the regression equation is missing one or more important predictor variables. This situation is perhaps the worst-case scenario, because an underspecified model yields biased regression coefficients and biased predictions of the response. That is, in using the model, we would consistently underestimate or overestimate the population slopes and the population means. To make already bad matters even worse, the mean square error MSE tends to overestimate ?², thereby yielding wider confidence intervals than it should.

No one accepts a .98 coefficient. No one. That is essentially regressing one variable on itself and in this case, it’s the regressing less restrictive abortion laws with a number of factors that have led to an increase in breast cancer.

Ecological inference is not an acceptable means of imputing causation on individuals from macro level data and this study violates the principle. One might use it to explore potential causes and whether there is a gross correlation, but not to determine causality. For that one requires cohort information or some other way to address individual observations.

It’s junk science. Yet the Chicago Tribune keeps publishing a clown who insists there is a link, but is wholly unqualified to judge that and uses crappy studies to do it. Why?

Over at Illinois Review

He’s remarkably impressive in his determination to demonstrate how ignorant he is:

The FEC, in their ruling said “First, the complaint does not allege, nor does publicly available information indicate, that Kos Media is owned or controlled by a political party, committee, or candidate.” (Page 5, lines 17-18). They state this because if there was such an allegation or if Kos Media was a political committee, the media exemption doesn’t apply. The problem is the entire complaint’s sole focus is the fact that Kos Media is a political committee. That was exactly what I alleged. They simply ignored that, pretended I was alleging something else, and dismissed the complaint. This means with about a two-page long pleading and a $350 filing fee, this decision could be overturned trivially on appeal.

So go for it, John. Don’t just act like a fool, be the fool. In fact, if you do get it turned over on appeal, I’ll pay the $350.

The point is the law always had a press exemption and Daily Kos fits that press exemption the same way Fired Up! did.
From the Fired Up! Opinion:

The Act and Commission regulations define the terms “contribution” and
“expenditure” to include any gift of money or “anything of value” for the purpose of influencing a Federal election. See 2 U.S.C. 431(8)(A) and (9)(A); 11 CFR 100.52(a) and 100.111(a). However, there is an exception for “any cost incurred in covering or carrying a news story, commentary, or editorial by any broadcasting station (including a cable television operator, programmer or producer), newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication . . . unless the facility is owned or controlled by any political party, political committee, or candidate[.]” 11 CFR 100.73, 100.132; see also 2 U.S.C. 431(9)(B)(i). This exclusion is known as the “press exception.”

The Commission has applied a two-step analysis to determine whether the press exception applies. First, the Commission asks whether the entity engaging in the activity is a press entity as described by the Act and Commission regulations. See, e.g., Advisory Opinions 2004-07, 2003-34, 2000-13, 1998-17, 1996-48, 1996-41, and 1996-16. Second, in determining the scope of the exception, the Commission considers: (1) whether the
press entity is owned or controlled by a political party, political committee, or candidate; and (2) whether the press entity is acting as a press entity in conducting the activity at issue (i.e., whether the entity is acting in its “legitimate press function”). See Reader’s Digest Association v. FEC, 509 F. Supp. 1210, 1215 (S.D.N.Y. 1981); FEC v. Phillips Publishing, 517 F. Supp. 1308, 1312-1313 (D.D.C. 1981); Advisory Opinions 2004-07, 2000-13, 1996-48, and 1982-44. Two considerations in applying this analysis include whether the entity’s materials are available to the general public and are comparable in form to those ordinarily issued by the entity. See Federal Election Commission v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, 479 U.S. 238, 251 (1986); Advisory Opinion 2000-13 (concluding that a website covered by the press exception was “viewable by the general public and akin to a periodical or news program distributed to the general public.”)

====

According to the House report on the 1974 amendments to the Act, the press exception made plain Congress’s intent that the Act would not “limit or burden in any way the first amendment freedoms of the press …” and would assure “the unfettered right of the newspapers, TV networks, and other media to cover and comment on political campaigns.” H.R. Rep. No. 93-1239, 93d Cong., 2d Sess. at 4 (1974) (emphasis added). Consistent with this intent, the Commission has already expressly extended the press exception to qualified activities that appear on the Internet. For instance, in Advisory Opinion 2000-13 the Commission found that iNEXTV, a company operating a network of specialized news and information websites with limited original content, qualified for
the press exception through its Internet activities even though it lacked a traditional “offline” media presence. The Commission concluded that iNEXTV and its EXBTV website were press entities “both as to their purpose and function.” Advisory Opinion 2000-13. The Commission characterized the network of news and information websites operated by iNEXTV as “webcast video periodicals.” Id. In finding EXBTV to be a press entity, the Commission noted the “news function” that EXBTV provided through direct access to news and commentary. The Commission concluded that the website was “viewable by the general public and akin to a periodical or news program distributed to 10 the general public.” Id.The Commission reaches the same conclusion here with respect to the Fired Up websites described in your request. Thus, Fired Up is a press entity and satisfies the first step of the press exception test.

2. Ownership Criteria and Legitimate Press Function

11
Fired Up is a for-profit LLC and is not owned or controlled by any political
party, political committee, or candidate. Given that Fired Up’s operation of its websites is at the core of its activities as a press entity, its provision of news stories, commentary,and editorials on its websites falls within Fired Up’s legitimate press function.Thus, because Fired Up is a press entity, and neither it nor its websites are owned or controlledby any political party, political committee, or candidate, the costs Fired Up incurs in covering or carrying a news story, commentary, or editorial on its websites are exempt from the definitions of “contribution” and “expenditure.” The Commission notes that anentity otherwise eligible for the press exception would not lose its eligibility merely because of a lack of objectivity in a news story, commentary, or editorial, even if the news story, commentary, or editorial expressly advocates the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate for Federal office. See First General Counsel’s Report, MUR5440 (CBS Broadcasting, Inc.) (“Even seemingly biased stories or commentary by a press entity can fall within the media exemption.”)

The Commission expresses no opinion regarding the application of State law or
the Internal Revenue Code to the proposed activities because those questions are not within the Commission’s jurisdiction.

This response constitutes an advisory opinion concerning the application of the
Act and Commission regulations to the specific transaction or activity set forth in your request. See 2 U.S.C. 437f. The Commission emphasizes that, if there is a change in anof the facts or assumptions presented, and such facts or assumptions are material to a conclusion presented in this advisory opinion, then the requestor may not rely on that conclusion as support for its proposed activity.

By the fact that Daily Kos isn’t owned by a committee and fits the definition of press, it’s exempt from being classified as a political committee. It cannot be a political committee because it is a press outlet.  Beyond that, it’s one person, and one person does not constitute a committee.
That Bambenek appears to not have read the relevant decisions that have been supported by the courts demonstrates his desperate need for attention regardless of whether he makes himself look like a fool.

John has been wanting one of these for a long time and I’ve always resisted, but now he has gone and done something so incredibly stupid, that he truly cannot be denied being today’s Daily Dolt:

The blogger who filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission against Daily Kos says he may appeal Tuesday’s FEC ruling on the matter, which found the popular left-leaning site did not violate the Federal Election Campaign Act as charged. A lawyer for the blog, however, dismissed the claims as a fantasy.

“I’m not entirely surprised,” said John Bambenek, a research programmer at the University of Illinois who submitted the complaint, in a Wednesday interview with RAW STORY. “[The FEC] doesn’t want to get into all the drama of blogs.”

Yeah, that’s it–they don’t want drama. John got his ass kicked by having the complaint dismissed before any investigation his complaint was so weak.  More

Reacting to the commission’s unanimous decision–which “found no reason to believe Kos Media, DailyKos.com, or Markos Moulitsas Zuniga violated federal campaign finance law”–Bambenek told RAW STORY that the FEC didn’t address his fundamental complaint.

“I asked a particular question and they answered a different one. They just ruled that blog posts don’t constitute a donation,” he said, acknowledging that the FEC had already given its opinion in 2006 as to whether favorable commentary about a candidate, published by an independent website, amounted to a campaign contribution.

“My question was: Can a political action committee avoid FEC disclosure rules simply by organizing online?” Bambenek continued. “What I did was ask about a group that self-identified as having the sole purpose of electing Democrats.”

Of course, this was all settled in the advisory opinion about Fired Up!  The difference being if you are going to deal with writing and advocacy as a site, that’s not being a committee, but if you were to, say, buy advertisements advocating an issue elsewhere that would most likely be a committee.  Not real hard to understand. Then again, no one has ever accused Bambenek of understanding simple concepts.
Worse, John is one of these guys who claims to understand the original intent of the Constitution, but apparently knows nothing of the context of the First Amendment when it was passed.

Papers at the time of the Constitution were largely partisan papers largely organized towards giving a Party an advantage.  IOW, the First Amendment specifically protected the kind of journalism Bambenek is trying to call a political committee.

Ray Hanania might want to read the Illinois Constitution:

They pushed Blagojevich into a corner. He was elected by Illinois voters to lead this state, twice, and yet Daley, Madigan and even Quinn think that they, not the voters, should decide what’s good for the state.

Blagojevich has certainly made his mistakes. His relationship with the humiliated sweetheart deal contractor Tony Rezko, remains. But outside of that, Blagojevich has shown that he can make the right decisions that are in the best interests of the state. And sometimes that means cutting pork barrel spending driven by clout rather than need.

For too long, Madigan has run the state, not for the benefit of the state’s residents but for his own benefit. Political. Personal.

Madigan is the Speaker of the House. He is not the governor. Madigan has limits on his power but wants to extend those limits and make the office of governor irrelevant. But the reality is that he is NOT the governor and he should let the governor do his job.

Madigan had a shot at ousting Blagojevich in the last election. He took it and he lost. He may have risen in the ranks fo the Democratic party over the past 25 years, but the reality is Madigan often elevates himself above not just the interests of the state but above the interests of the Democratic Party.

What Madigan is doing is no different than what disgraced and now indicted sleazy former Chicago Alderman Edward R. Vyrdolyak did when Harold Washington was elected mayor of Chicago back in 1983.

Now, many of Blagojevich’s critics are not terribly sympathetic themselves, but they do have the Constitution behind their positions.  The people are sovereign in the United States and that sovereignty is represented by the General Assembly that passes laws and appropriates money. The  Governor’s job is to execute the law and spend the appropriations according to law.  Suggesting that the Governor has more moral authority to be the representative of the people is an incredibly silly argument.  The Governor’s job when it comes to legislation is implementing or vetoing the legislation, but he doesn’t get to pass it.  In fact, he is very limited in his veto power because he can be overridden by the General Assembly.

The Governor cannot remove the General Assembly nor any individual members.  The Governor cannot set rules for the General Assembly.  The General Assembly can legislate control over the Executive Branch.

Madigan is elected by the voters.  As are the other members of the Legislature, few of whom are happy with Blagojevich and not because of some desire to give Mike Madigan more power.  The Governor is not elected to legislate, he’s elected to run the executive branch according to the law of the state–the law the legislature passes.

Not that it’s that hard to do, but in Dan’s latest hysterical (double meaning intended) column he states:

Next year, “Muhammad” will be the most popular baby boy’s name in England. The radical elements of the Muslim world have been welcomed into European societies that subordinated their sense of self-preservation to an empty-headed commitment to value-judgment free diversity. No need to blow the front door off when it is unlocked.

Not so much. Mohammed comes in at number 22 and Muhammed comes in at number 44. Looking at past years, Mohammed hasn’t cracked number 20 ever. IOW, Dan’s making shit up.

But it goes a bit further. The variants on Mohammed both standout compared to the girl’s list where there are no clearly Islamic or Arab based names on the list of the top 50 meaning there’s something else going on–namely, Muslim parents of all ethnic backgrounds use the name Mohammed far more frequently than any other name. And so the number 22 and number 44 placing of the names don’t mean that there are that many new Muslim babies as much as a very high percentage of the boys are named one or the other.

The level of utter vapidness concerning several issues over the last week is staggering. First, a private citizen of the United States refuses to appear before the House of Representatives after being subpoenaed. Some seem to be buying some story that asserting a privilege doesn’t mean you don’t have to have your ass in the hearing chair. It does not. You must appear and we have someone who can arrest you and frogmarch you into the House to be tried for inherent contempt. We call that person the Sergeant at Arms and in the U.S. House that is Bill Livingood.

And tonight we get this gem from the Corner

This is a really, really stupid stunt, and I’ll tell you why: It can all be over in 15 minutes, unless the anti-war Republicans decide to cooperate — and why should they?

Right now, there are only 50 working Democratic Senators (Tim Johnson D, S.D. hasn’t cast a vote yet this year), and there are only 49 if you don’t include Joe Lieberman (who I hear isn’t really up for this sleepover, whether you want to count him as a Dem or not).

You need 51 senators for a quorum, in the event that someone makes a quorum call — which any senator can make at any time. So all it takes is one Republican to stay in the chamber, object to anything the Democrats try to do, and then note the absence of a quorum. When the quorum is called, and only 50 senators are present, the Senate adjourns (or at least it can’t come out of the quorum call without unanimous consent), and the whole stupid stunt is over before Senator Byrd can even begin his outraged four-hour speech.

Any parliamentarians out there can correct me, but I’ve checked with two Senate sources and I’m pretty sure I’m right about this. I can’t even imagine what Reid is thinking.

We can assume those Senate sources are Dumb and Dumber. Talking Points Memo disappoints me and brings in the very bright and very authoritative Sarah Binder to answer the question that they, above all, should know. It’s not that for hard questions they shouldn’t go to Binder, it’s that this isn’t a hard question. We have faced a very similar situation recently when the Texas House Dems fled to Ardmore, Oklahoma. The Texas Speaker ordered Texas law enforcement to track them down

Attempting to break a quorum is nothing new as Lincoln tried it as well–Rich Miller provided the details during the Texas standoff.

LINCOLN BROKE A QUORUM Back in 1839, the Illinois House was meeting in special session and hatched a plan to vote on a Democratic bill to require the state’s central bank to make payments in gold or silver, rather than paper money. The Whig Party strongly opposed the idea, and, led by Rep. Abraham Lincoln, decided on the spot that the best way to kill the proposal was to deny the majority Democrats a quorum. So, they left the building, the

Second Presbyterian Church in Springfield. But two members were required under law back then to demand that a quorum call be made. Lincoln and another House Whig, Joseph Gillespie, walked into the chambers and made the motion. No quorum was present and a vote couldn’t be taken. The next day, though, Lincoln and the Whigs made the same attempt, but the House Speaker ordered the doors locked behind them and summoned some members who had previously been too ill to attend the session. A quorum was now present.

Lincoln realized the problem and he and the other Whigs jumped out of a window to try to halt the vote, but the quorum was already certified and the Whigs lost. According to Lincoln friend William Herndon, the window jumping had no effect “other than to provide the Democrats with capital material for ridicule.”

I don’t mind that the average person walking down the street doesn’t know much about quorums and how members can be compelled to attend, but people writing for the NRO with supposed sources should. It’s very basic to Congressional procedure and has changed very little over the years.

And of course, the Senate Sergeant at Arms is

Terry Gainer, former head of the Illinois State Police

Katie Couric

She does zombie lies.

Teh Stupid

It burns
It’s a bit weird given this and thousands of other examples.

Except for a momentary defection to independent candidate Ross Perot in 1992, Luntz has been a Republican operative who has counseled Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and Trent Lott. But he often has worked for the media and made comments too harsh for the ears of reclusive Republicans. He has clashed frequently with Rep. John A. Boehner, the Republican leader of the House who stifled ethics legislation last year when he was still majority leader.

Boehner, elected chairman of the House Republican Conference when the party took control in 1995, tried then to keep Luntz from addressing closed-door meetings but was overruled by Speaker Gingrich. When Luntz warned publicly in October 2005 of rejection by voters in 2006, he was forced to deliver an abject apology before he could speak at a retreat of House Republicans held at the Library of Congress. After seven straight years on the program, Luntz was kept off last week’s 2007 session at Cambridge, Md., by Boehner.

More hysterical stupid:

Again, if House Speaker Newt Gingrich had done this to President Bill Clinton, the New York Times would still be covering it. No such coverage is likely in this case, because Speaker Pelosi is a Democrat.

Like this:

FLASHBACK: Hastert Traveled Abroad, Told Foreign Leaders Not To Listen To Clinton

President Bush yesterday said Speaker Pelosi’s bipartisan delegation to Syria sends “mixed signals,” implying that Pelosi overstepped her bounds by merely visiting Syria.

Bush’s supporters have been repeating the argument:

Former ambassador John Bolton: “I would simply hope that people would understand that, under the Constitution, the president conducts foreign policy, not the speaker of the House.”

Former Gov. Mitt Romney: “It has long been the established principle of this country that the president of the United States leads our foreign policy. And if you don’t like the president, then you change him. But you don’t have the two parties each conducting foreign policy in the way they think it ought to be conducted.”

Speaker Pelosi has done nothing to suggest that she intended to speak on behalf of President Bush or the U.S. Government. But her predecessors haven’t been so respectful.

In 1997, Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) led a delegation to Colombia at a time when U.S. officials were trying to attach human rights conditions to U.S. security assistance programs. Hastert specifically encouraged Colombian military officials to “bypass” President Clinton and “communicate directly with Congress.”

…a congressional delegation led by Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) which met with Colombian military officials, promising to “remove conditions on assistance” and complaining about “leftist-dominated” U.S. congresses of years past that “used human rights as an excuse to aid the left in other countries.” Hastert said he would to correct this situation and expedite aid to countries allied in the war on drugs and also encouraged Colombian military officials to “bypass the U.S. executive branch and communicate directly with Congress.”

Subsequently, U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Myles Frechette sent a cable complaining that Hastert’s actions had undermined his leverage with the Colombian military leadership.

In other instances, Hastert actually guided congressional staff to unilaterally reach deals with Colombian officials:

House Foreign Affairs Committee staff, at the direction of the Hastert group, would fly to Colombia, meet with the nation’s anti-narcotics police and negotiate the levels and terms of assistance, the scope of the program and the kinds of equipment that would be needed. Rarely were the U.S. diplomatic personnel in our embassy in Bogata consulted about the “U.S.” position in these negotiations, and in a number of instances they were excluded from or not even made aware of the meetings.

If the right is looking for members of Congress clearly infringing on the president’s constitutional prerogatives, they should look at Hastert, not Pelosi.

Dear Jewish Terrorist Plotter/Planner/Funder/Enabler/Apologist,

You do not know me. But I am on the lookout for you. You are my enemy. And I am yours.

I am John Doe.

I am traveling on your plane. I am riding on your train. I am at your bus stop. I am on your street. I am in your subway car. I am on your lift.

I am your neighbor. I am your customer. I am your classmate. I am your boss.

I am John Doe.

I will never forget the example of the martyrs at Hebron refused to sit back and let themselves be murdered in the name of Judaism without a fight.

I will never forget the Muslims who died in Ahmad Hallaq’s bombing and those who captured him.
I will never forget the alertness of Syrian intelligence, who notified the world about Mossad’s bombing of public buses filled with working Muslims.
I will act when homeland security officials ask me to “report suspicious activity.”

I will embrace my local police department’s admonition: “If you see something, say something.”

I am John Doe.

I will protest your Arab-hating, America-bashing “scholars.”

I will petition against your hate-mongering synagogue leaders.

I will raise my voice against your subjugation of women and religious minorities.

I will challenge your attempts to indoctrinate my children in our schools.

I will combat your violent propaganda on the Internet.

I am John Doe.

I will support law enforcement initiatives to spy on your operatives, cut off your funding, and disrupt your murderous conspiracies.

I will oppose all attempts to undermine our borders and immigration laws.

I will resist the imposition of judaic principles and judaic law in my taxi cab, my restaurant, my community pool, the halls of Congress, our national monuments, the radio and television airwaves, and all public spaces.

I will not be censored in the name of tolerance.

I will not be cowed by your Beltway lobbying groups in moderate clothing. I will not cringe when you shriek about “profiling” or “Anti-Semitism.”

I will put my family’s safety above sensitivity. I will put my country above multiculturalism.

I will not submit to your will. I will not be intimidated.

I am John Doe.

===================

But you know, Malkin isn’t a racist.

Nedra Pickler  of the AP

WASHINGTON – The voices are growing louder asking the question: Is Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) all style and little substance? The freshman Illinois senator began his campaign facing the perception that he lacks the experience to be president, especially compared to rivals with decades of work on foreign and domestic policy. So far, he’s done little to challenge it. He’s delivered no policy speeches and provided few details about how he would lead the country.

No policy speeches.

Are you kidding me?

 Just from a quick look at his Senate web site.
Iraq War Speeches

March 21st

March 13th

January 30th

January 19th

November 20th
Africa

Aids December 1

Zimbabwe March 15th

Kenya August 28th (In Kenya)

Latin America March 8th

Foreign Policy/Israel–March 2nd

Veterans March 22nd

January 8th Ethics Legislation

Bills/Actions Introduced:

Health Insurance Tax Breaks for Better Fuel Economy

Housing Summit on Foreclosures

Reform Troop Care–something he’s worked with Durbin on since entering the Senate

The entire article seems to be because Obama doesn’t have a detailed health care plan.  It’s legitimate to say Edwards is ahead of him on the issue, but to say it signifies a lack of policy positions when he has a ton of substantive positions and has given a number of speeches on foreign policy in the just the last few months is ridiculous and could only happen in the DC press corps that cannot help itself, but to fit every candidate into their particular view–facts be damned.