Libertarian David Boaz lets both McCain and Obama have it for their collectivist attitudes and policy prescriptions. Obama, especially, for urging young people to eschew a money-grubbing career in business for "public service" instead.

Money Q:

There is a whiff of hypocrisy here. Mr. Obama, who made $4.2 million last year and lives in a $1.65 million house bought with the help of the indicted Tony Rezko – and whose "elegant suits" and "impeccable ties" made him one of Esquire's Best-Dressed Men in the World – disdains college students who might want to "chase after the big house and the nice suits." Mr. McCain, who with his wife earned more than $6 million last year and who owns at least seven homes, ridicules Mr. Romney for having built businesses.

But hypocrisy is not the biggest issue. The real issue is that Messrs. Obama and McCain are telling us Americans that our normal lives are not good enough, that pursuing our own happiness is "self-indulgence," that building a business is "chasing after our money culture," that working to provide a better life for our families is a "narrow concern."

They're wrong. Every human life counts. Your life counts. You have a right to live it as you choose, to follow your bliss. You have a right to seek satisfaction in accomplishment. And if you chase after the almighty dollar, you just might find that you are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do things that improve the lives of others.

Bingo!

Dear Mr. Spencer,

All do respects to you about your article concerning the Waterfront Board in your article of today May 28, 2008.

I am the Chadds Ford Twp Vice Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, not Concord as your article states. In addition, I have been an employee of Crozer Chester Medical Center since 1982 serving in various administrative and nursing capacities for the Medical Center and System.

I grew up in Aston Township and have been a lifelong resident of Delaware County. In addition, I graduated from Neumann College (when it was Our Lady of Angels) and am active on numerous boards of the College.

I hope clarifying my professional life outside of the elected role would allow you to understand why the appointment is more appropriate than you once thought and would make your readership better understand my qualifications.

Thank you for taking the time to read my email.

Respectfully,

Deborah F. Love , RN,MSN,MBA



Dear Ms. Love,

With all DUE respect, lighten up!

Cheers on your appointment and good luck,

F. Gilman Spencer IV, BA and high school graduate

British columnist George Monbiot tries and fails to perform a citizen's arrest on former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton for crimes against humanity.

Monbiot is, apparently, British slang for Moonbat.

According to the article the incident took place at a literary festival in England where Bolton was invited to speak:

"Mr Monbiot was blocked by two heavily-built security guards at the end of the one-and-a-half hour appearance, before he could serve a "charge sheet" on him.

"After being released by the guards the columnist - a fierce critic of the 2003 American-led invasion - made a dash through the rain-soaked tented village in a failed attempt to catch up with Mr Bolton."

Reminds me of rat chasing an lion. What would he do if he caught it?

Actress Sharon Stone channels Bill Murray as Carl the Greenskeeper from "Caddyshack"

CARL: So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one -- big hitter, the Lama -- long, into a ten-thousand foot crevice, right at the base of this glacier. And do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga...gunga -- gunga galunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consiousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.

SHARON: "All these earthquakes and stuff happened and I thought, "Is that karma?" When you are not nice, bad things happen to you. I'm not happy about how the Chinese are treating the Tibetans, I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else. They're not being very nice to the Dali Lama, who's a good friend of mine."

So she's got that going for her, which is nice.

If this is real, it's proof there is a just God.

If it's not, it's still hilarious.

UPDATE: I have viewed the video several times and it appears to me the first rock (brick?) flies over the head of the look-out. This argues for a doctored video. Spencerblog will investigate.

UPDATE II: I have just sent the following e-mail to lawyershop.com, the outfit responsible for YouTubing the video:

To Whom it May Concern:

I got a big kick out of your most recent video, the rock-throwing burglar who KO'd his look-out and then himself. 

But if you slow down the video, it appears that the first rock flies over the head of the look-out. 

So, my question is, are you sure this video is genuine? Has it been authenticated? Where did this happen? Was anyone arrested? Hospitalized? 

I am a newspaper columnist with a blog and I linked to the video for fun. However, if it is not a genuine act of stupid criminality but a hoax I would like to tell my readers.

Thanks,

Gil Spencer
Columnist 
Daily Times
Primos, Pa.

I'll let you know if when (and if) I hear anything.

UPDATE III: Haven't heard anything yet. Stay tuned. But I am beginning to think the rock in question was made of foam rubber and the LawyerShop folks have been had.
By the way, my college geology professor, Dr. Bork, had a foam rubber rock and one day he threw it at my head in class. Maybe I'll see him when I go back for my 30th college reunion this weekend.

UPDATE IV: It seems half the YouTube commentors are on to this video as a "fake." Others are not so sure.
No word for LawyerShop.com, which I am beginning to believe is its own sort of hoax.

UPDATE V: Sen. Joe Biden wants to provide women with free lawyers, but not men. Find one at LawyersHop.com. But don't be surprised if it takes a while for one to get back to you. I'm still waiting.

Dear Mr. Spencer,

What the (insert an expletive here) is going on in Newtown Square and more importantly how could this happen? In addition to the 8M(illion dollars in) road improvements that BPG was going to provide (which now will be funded by taxpayers) I understand that BPG was going to provide the property access to sewer hook up free of charge to the town. Now we will have to purchase property to build a sewage treatment plant. Who pays for the plant?

Taxpayers? I just heard that this property will be purchased from Claude "the fraud" de Botton.!!! (Sorry, this "he has a dream BS is just that.BS). Say this isn't so. This is just wrong! There doesn't seem to be any 'red tape' when it comes to something Claude wants. Change from his original "Big Box" plan to a Town Center. No problem. Traffic study, not necessary. What can we do to stop this? Can we bring a lawsuit against our Supervisors and demand this be taken to a referendum?

Frustrated and ready to move,

Donna Sullivan

On the heels of a new report that climate change is seriously affecting the U.S. mainland right now, Czech president and climate crisis skeptic Vaclav Klaus challenges Al Gore to debate the issue.

Gore declines.

Money Q:

"The whole process is already in the hands of those who are not interested in rational ideas and arguments. It is in the hands of climatologists and other related scientists who are highly motivated to look in one direction only because a large number of academic careers has evolved around the idea of man-made global warming."

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and it Climate Change Project weighs in.

"They imagine all these ecological impacts are in some distant future," said Janetos, one of the lead authors, who noted that many animals and plants have shifted their migratory and blooming patterns to reflect recent changes in temperature. "They're not in some distant future. We're experiencing them now."

Hmmm, migratory and blooming patterns have been altered. That means government must be given unlimited power to deal with this crisis. I'm going with Klaus.

UPDATE: Heh.

Prestopundit calls it Bobby Kennedy's fascist moment.

Maybe this is where the Democrats went off the deep end. A major presidential candidate endorsing rioting. Ah, the 60s. We need to bring them back.

Reason.tv provides this video explaining why taxpayer-subsidized sports stadiums don't deliver on promises of economic growth and sustained development.

Just in time for tomorrow's print column on the Delaware County Chester Waterfront Industrial Development Authority. (Now there's a mouthful.)

Stay tuned.

Massive regulations supposedly to prevent climate change is the greatest threat to American free enterprise since the 1930s. The power shift to the political class will be monumental. And it will do little to help the environment.

That's progressive collectivism for you. Little progress with power collecting toward politicans and bureaucrats.

Money Q:

"The upshot is that trillions in assets and millions of jobs would be at the mercy of Congress and the bureaucracy, all for greenhouse gas reductions that would have a meaningless impact on global carbon emissions if China and India don't participate. And only somewhat less meaningless if they do."

By the company he keeps, you shall know him.

Doug Feith explains the Bush Administration's early screw up of the Iraq War: It was rhetorical.

George Will discusses the infantilization of the American electorate.

Money Q:

An occupational hazard of the inflated presidency is a hazard to the nation. It is what Healy (borrowing a term from psychiatry) calls Acquired Situational Narcissism. As repositories of absurd expectations, and surrounded by sycophants, presidents become deranged. Inevitably, the inflation of expectations causes what Healy calls an "arc of disillusionment" that diminishes one president after another.

Obama urges grads to go into "public service."

He should add, also write a couple of best-selling books so you can afford to live the good life, not to mention run for president.

Another interesting endorsement for Obama. Sort of.

Will John McCain's age be a factor in this year's election? Probably less so that Barack Obama's inexperience and rookie mistakes on foreign policy.

The McCain campaign has done a pretty good job at combating any of those concerns by 1. Trotting out his quite sharp, 95-year-old mother to stump for him. And 2. Cindy McCain's invitation to reporters to keep up with her husband's hectic schedule.

I think Democrats would be smarter to ask the American people if they want to elect a jail-bird to office. After all, someone who spent 7 years in prison has to be worrisome.

Blogger Dick Polman raises the age question and commited a howler in the process.

According to Polman: "Republicans are accustomed to smearing Democrats as terrorist-friendly weaklings on national security and not suffering any verbal blowback."

Polman must have missed the hysterical reaction of the Democratic establishment when George Bush recently denounced appeasement as an effective way of dealing with terrorists and the states that sponsor them. Bush didn't mention any political party or any person in particular and the highest ranking Democrats in the land assumed Bush was talking about them.

Well, maybe he was in a round about way. Certainly, Obama has left himself open to criticisms of naivete when he said he would meet with terrorism supporters like Hugo Chavez, Mamoud Ahmadinejad, etc. without preconditions. And certainly it doesn't breed confidence in Obama when a spokesmen for a terrorist organization like Hamas says they would prefer him to be the next president of U.S.

But no verbal blow-back?

Maybe Polman thinks this is the exception that proves the rule. But Democrats have been whining loudly and for years about Republicans who have supposedly questioned their patriotism and stength in dealing with foreign enemies.

However, the strongest critics of the Democrats' weakness on national security has come from other Democrats, like Georgia's Zell Miller and Connecticut's Joe Lieberman.

In the meantime, when it comes to "smearing," they have been happy to engage in calling specific Bush administration officials liars, supporters of torturer, criminals, etc. over the past 7 years.

When it comes to smears, the Democrats and their fellow travelers on the left are peerless.

This nutty conspiracy theory never really got legs but it did in the fever swamps of MSNBC. Great to see that 60 Minutes can still be counted on to fall for a howler.

Al Sharpton has excellent advice for Hillary Clinton: Watch what you say!

Steve Pagones could not be reached for comment.

My Memorial Day print column is up.

Why is it alright for Bill Clinton to have lied about sex under oath, but it isn't okay for Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to lie about sex under oath?

Where are Kilpatrick's defenders? Where are the historians like Princeton's Sean Wilentz to say that history will hold in contempt those who are pushing for Kilpatrick's removal from office?

Oh well, maybe it's just another case of a liberal racism, giving a pass to white man when they won't give the same pass to a black man.

According to NASA, "Jupiter's recent outbreak of red spots is likely related to large scale climate change as the gas giant planet is getting warmer near the equator."

Must be all those Jupiterians driving SUVs.

My print column on Steve Barrar's Voter ID law is up.

The Dems look like idiots defending voting fraud. Even Jimmy Carter understands that protecting the integrity of the ballot box is essential to democratic self rule.

But since Ed Rendell opposed it before the Supreme Court decision making clear such laws are constitutional, he's stuck with his dumb partisan position.

And Thaddeus Kirkland is left comparing Voter ID to slavery.

Pathetic.

Anthropologist Lionel Tiger doesn't sound as concerned about actions of Texas authorities in taking kids away from a polygamist cult as he does about awfulness of the cult itself.

Money Q:

Those responsible for coping with this astonishing disaster would be well-advised to add a primatologist to the team. The fact is that, despite all the blather about faith and freedom of religion, the men operating the various compounds in question are behaving in virtually the same manner as countless dominant males in countless primate troops observed over the years.

The essence of the case is that the men who control the politics of the group (as well as the hapless women and children who live there) have used junk theology about heaven, hell, paradise and salvation to maintain their unquestioned access to all females of reproductive age (or younger).

George Will on the march of the bureaucrats and environmentalists to take over the world in the name of saving the polar bears.

Money Q:

The green left preaches pessimism: Ineluctable scarcities (of energy, food, animal habitat, humans' living space) will require a perpetual regime of comprehensive rationing. The green left understands that the direct route to government control of almost everything is to stigmatize, as a planetary menace, something involved in almost everything — carbon.

Legal analyst Stuart Taylor Jr. wholeheartedly supports gay marriage and believes the California Supreme Court's decision was dishonest, activist and imperial.

Taylor writes that the court's claim not to be imposing it policy prefences on the public...

"... was a deeply disingenuous dodge, if not a bald-faced lie, to conceal from gullible voters the fact that the decision was a raw exercise in judicial policy-making with no connection to the words or intent of the state constitution. It is inconceivable that anyone but a supporter of gay marriage "as a matter of policy" could have found in vague constitutional phrases such as "equal protection" a right to judicial invalidation of the marriage laws of every state and nation in the history of civilization."

Bingo.

Apparently, we have been misreporting that David Galdo and Krystal Mariani were boyfriend and girlfriend when they allegedly killed Galdo's 85-year-old great aunt for drug money.

According to Galdo's lawyer, Mariani was Galdo's "ex-girlfriend."

A note found in the car and dated March 15 was signed by Mariani, authorities said. It stated: “I wish I was what you wanted.”

Sad that. But that's what addictions do to people. In any case, given their circumstances, a reconciliation seems unlikely.

Another reason for foreclosed on homeowners to be careful of strangers bearing promises: unscrupulous ex-lawyers.

Jonah Goldberg says it time to save the environment from the environmentalists.

Money Q:

Environmentalism’s most renewable resources are fear, guilt, and moral bullying. Its worldview casts man as a sinful creature who, through the pursuit of forbidden knowledge, abandoned our Edenic past.

On Good Morning America, Obama warns the GOP to refrain from taking shots at his wife.

The shot being fired at Mrs. Obama are her own words. Specifically, the comment she made weeks ago about how for the first time in her adult life she is "proud" of America because her husband is running for president.

She seems prone to making silly remarks. Like when she told a crowd in L.A., as president her husband "will require you to work."

"He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism ... that you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

Obama called the using of his wife's comments "an attack on my family" and "low-class."

Yes, well. The prickly senator from Illinois has been through this before. When his spiritual mentor embarrassed him, his first reaction was that he could no more disown him than he could his own white grandmother. A few weeks later, he disowned him.

Obama said his political opponents better "be careful" how they treat his wife. Please. What makes him think he can control what his political opponents do? It's his wife who needs to be more careful about what she says and how she says it.

Not that she needs to be worried about being "disowned" like their former pastor.

Still, if Obama doesn't like his wife's publicly-spoken words being used against his candidacy he shouldn't put her out there on the stump and risk her saying embarrassing things or he should hire a better speech writer for her.

My print column is up about two churches, white and black, moving beyond the dreaded conversation on race.

Amir Taheri explains the assist Obama gave to Iranian president Ahmadinejad by saying if elected president he would meet with the Iranian leader with no preconditions.

Not good. Not smart.

Former Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman will make no friends on the Democratic Left with this piece. And you know what? He doesn't want to.

I too was impressed with the photo of Obama in front of a crowd of 72,000 in Portland. Turns out, not all of them were there to hear a political speech

In Britain, women win the "right" to have children without fathers..

What a backward country. In America, millions of woman have children without fathers.

WaPo's Richard Cohen's ends his column:

"But in the end, when Obama is crowned king of the Democrats, Clinton will throw her arms around him and the music will swell and the crowds will cheer -- and everything will be forgotten. And when that happens, Hillary Clinton -- who will only be 65 in 2012 and four years after that still younger than McCain is now -- will be positioned to run for president, not as someone's wife, but as a gritty fighter who just would not quit."

Sounds like Cohen is pretty sure Obama is going to lose to John McCain in November.

Newsweek's Jane Bryant Quinn writes:

"We're in a box. The rising pace of foreclosures lies at the heart of this recession. But Washington hasn't yet hatched a rescue plan that seems likely to save many homes."

Actually, most of the homes are fine and they will soon be going to people who can afford to pay for them.

Oh yeah, and we're not in a recession. By definition you need two consecutive quarters of negative growth. We haven't even had one yet. We may get there. But we're not there yet.

After almost a year, Jahmir Ricks, 14, is being released from one prison and put in another.

He is accused of killing his older brother. Over a video game. The DAs office wanted to try him as an adult, not so much to punish him for committing an "adult" crime but so he would be under court jurisdiction for the next couple of decades instead of having the slate wiped clean when he was 21 (or is it 18?).

As it is, he will be transferred to the county juvenile facility in Lima, to be with kids accused of lesser crimes. He will spend less time alone in a jail cell and more time in the company of his peers.

From there he will probably go to another secure facility, possibly Pine Grove SCI for boys.

The county's handling of this case has been reasonable. It is not every day 13-year-old boys stand accused of murder. And making sure the community is protected from individuals capable of such violence is the job of cops, prosecutors and judges.

But the facts of the case suggest the violent act committed by this 13-year-old was the result of years of "toughening up" at the hands of brother. Anwan Ricks had told others he slapped his little brother around just for that purpose. He got back what he dished out in spades.

Whether Jahmir will ever recover from what he did that day and all that followed remains to be seen. Certainly, his brother won't.

As it does, the system and our society, will give this young man a second chance. He would have also gotten it had he been charged as an adult, just with more strings attached.

I met him a few months ago in the juvenile wing of the adult county prison. In his cell. He was not the stereotypical tough street kid. He was shy, docile and small.

Kids change. For better and for worse. We'll see.

Hey, the more the merrier, right? But I sense the coming of one confused 6-year-old.

Osama is tougher on Arab leaders than Obama.

This guy beats up his lawyer in court and then isn't given another one.

What kind of justice is that? Couldn't he have been strapped to a gurney and given one of those Hannibal Lechner masks?

New Zealand's first naked news presenter - exposed last week as a $7000-a-night call girl - is doing it for her son's "brilliant education".

"I'm proud of everything I put my name to or connect my name with. The phrase 'I am happy in my own skin' is a good representation of me."

And she hopes her clients are too.

Lawyers bringing class-action suit against big oil for climate change.

It was only a matter of time.

Paul Krugman says:

"Still, if we’re heading for a prolonged era of scarce, expensive oil, Americans will face increasingly strong incentives to start living like Europeans — maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives."

What Paul Krugman says doesn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world...

Headline in Inky: "Bush ends Mideast trip with a lecture"

Who does that darn Bush think he is, lecturing people, when he should be bombing them? Or something.

Hitler wouldn't have responded to lectures. I guess it beats appeasement.

Mark Steyn on the ninny pity party.

Money Q:

"It says something for Democrat touchiness that the minute a guy makes a generalized observation about folks who appease terrorists and dictators the Dems assume: Hey, they’re talking about me. Actually, he wasn’t — or, to be more precise, he wasn’t talking only about you."

Read the whole thing.

E.J. Dionne has changed his mind about gay marriage. The country is slowly changing its mind too. Too slowly though for some judges in California who decided to impose gay marriage on their state.

Money Q:

"Nothing the California Court majority said should deter these states from recognizing that gays and lesbians, no less than heterosexuals, have a right to the community's recognition of the seriousness of their commitments."

Now, there's an interesting "right" to have.

The people of California have voted against granting this right to same-sex couples. The California Supreme Court knows better. Just like a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court knew better when it found a right to abortion in the U.S. Constitution.

Suddenly, gays and lesbians have a right to "recognition" of the seriousness of their commitments.

So why don't polygamists? Why shouldn't they have the same right? Why shouldn't communities be forced to recognize and appreciate the seriousness of the commitment of one man and three women? On what legal basis is their right to enter into such an arrangement denied?

The way it is supposed to work is that communities (i.e. states) are supposed to decide these things through their elected representatives. If the people find a difference between the value of a heterosexual coupling and a heterosexual threesome, well, this is a democratic republic and the PEOPLE get to decide these things.

If gays want the right to marry - as they apparently do - all they need to do is convince a majority of the people that it's a good idea, good for the community, good for everybody. Public opinion has moved in their direction.

But most "communities" don't like to be told what they must recognize as good, like say, the busing of THEIR children to achieve racially integrated schools. They don't like it any more than they like government-forced segregation, which the PEOPLE outlawed over time.

This appeal to the judicial branch, is typically a tactic of progressives and liberals to impose their will on what they consider to be a backward majority.

They shouldn't be so surprised when the majority bristles at being ordered around concerning what they must respect.

UPDATE: Steve Chapman says pretty much the same thing here.

It was on vacation in Florida for a week playing in a geezer basketball tournament and drinking beer. Two pasttimes distinctly at odds with one another. Fun though.

Comes from Jack Phillippe

Mr. Spencer:

The key to Barack Obama's charter is Michelle. To start with, I believe that she paid close attention in church to Pastor Wright. She like the Pastor is a chronic complainer and as we all know, chronic complainer's can never be satisfied, even if you give them every thing, they still believe that you are holding out.

She whines about not being able to take piano ad ballet lessons, she finds little to be proud of as far as America is concerned, even thou she has been recipient of a wonderful life here and can not point to another part of the world where she could have done better.

Barack Obama picked her and there must have been something that attracted him to her --- usually the attraction is looks, character and an agreement in how an individual thinks. She only one of a cast of characters, who are radical thinkers that are attracted to Obama an one has to wonder why. More importantly thou, he came from no where to become the main stream medias hero.

There are "red flags" all over the place as far as Barack Obama is concerned and what he intends to do as far as (change) America is concerned, and I am plenty worried.

Jack,

Chronic complaining and whining is unattractive, especially in First Ladies. Now, that the Obamas are this close to the White House, I'm thinking Michelle Obama is smart enough to mind her P & Q's until after Election Day. If her husband wins, over the next four years, she'll be a great source of entertainment. If he loses, Spencerblog is quite sure she will not be at a loss to explain why?

In America, we free violent repeat criminal offenders giving them the opportunity to kill cops.

In England, they free rapists and give them a free place to live and benefits so they can rape and kill 14-year-old girls.

Money Q:

A convicted rapist sexually assaulted and murdered a teenage girl after a council was told he could not be evicted because it would breach his human rights.

Michael Clark, 40, was on the Sex Offenders Register and subject to official checks. But he was able to move into a city of his choosing where neighbours did not know his past.

Steve Chapman reports that despite the Hillary and Obama's slugfest, mud-fest, the Dems are in excellent position to win BIG in the fall.

It's hard to find a flaw in his analysis.

WaPo's Ellen Malcolm uses a less than persuasive analogy in her column urging Hillary Clinton to stay in the race.

"When I was growing up in the 1960s, I wanted to play basketball. In those days, the rules said girls could dribble only three steps and then had to pass the ball. To make sure we didn't overexert ourselves, we weren't allowed to cross the half-court line. It's a wonder our fans (our mothers) could stay awake when a typical game's final score was 14-10...

"It's a tremendous tribute to women of my generation that we sucked it up and learned to compete in the toughest environments."

Despite the rule changes, women still can't compete in the toughest environments when it comes to basketball or almost any other sport.

Rules changes for women's basketball have allowed women to have more fun playing the game and that's good. It has made woman's basketball more exciting to watch and that's good. But it is still played at an inferior level when compared to men's and boys' basketball at every level.

While it is true women can now compete in the workplace on equal footing, fewer women rise to positions of power than men. Why is this?

I would argue that is not because women don't have the abilities or talents to lead but because the pull of family life and rearing children is stronger on women than it is on men. As a group, men are more competitive than women. They seek and enjoy competition more than women - AS A GROUP. I put that in capital letters because one can always point to individual women who are very driven and highly competitive.

The pool of competitive, highly-driven and talented men in fields that reward highly competitive people (politics, business and sports) is larger than than the pool of similarly talented woman.

That said, I believe Hillary Clinton has proven that she is tough enough, competitive enough, smart enough and driven enough to be President of United States. I personally, wouldn't vote for her, first and foremost, because I disagree with her policy positions and her likely Supreme Court nominees.

I also think, as a lot of Democrats think, she lies too much. As has been said before by prominent Democrats (David Geffen and Bob Kerrey) all politicians lie, but the Clintons are unusually good at it.

The historical examples of women who have risen to positions of political power and effectively wielded it, are legion (Queens Elizabeth and Victoria, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, etc.) But men being men, they will seek power more and will be more ruthless in trying to get it.

It's not incidental that women have only risen to power in Democratic societies or in monarchies.

Men are more violent and are more willing to use violence to get what they want.

So while it is a tribute to American women on this Mother's Day that they have sucked it up learned to compete in the toughest environments, it is also a tribute to them that many of them have sacrificed career advancement and "power" to become mothers and do the lion's share of raising children.

Now, I have to make breakfast.

Austin Bay highly recommends Michael Yon's terrific book: "Moment of Truth."

Nobody has written with more insight, toughness, passion, and compassion than Yon in reporting the grunt's eye view of the war in Iraq.

Yon's intimate coverage on the Battle of Mosul is quoted at length by Bay.

"Here's the situation: Mr. Yon was accompanying the commander of the 1-24 Infantry, Lt. Col. Erik Kurilla. A terrorist had shot a young sergeant in downtown Mosul. Kurilla spotted a black Opel and — playing a professional's hunch — the chase was on. The three men in the Opel abandoned the car and ran.

Col. Kurilla, his command section and Mr. Yon (with a camera) left their personnel carrier and gave chase on foot. Mr. Yon picks up the story:

"There were shops, alleys, doorways, windows. Shots were fired behind us, but around a corner to the left Lt. Col. Kurilla began running in the direction of the shooting. He passed by me and I chased, [Col.] Kurilla leading the way. There was a quick and heavy volume of fire. And then Lt. Col. Kurilla was shot.

"Kurilla was running while he was hit in three places including his femur, which was shattered. The commander didn't seem to miss a stride. He did a crazy judo roll and came up shooting. ... Bullets were hitting all around Kurilla. The young second lieutenant and specialist who were part of Kurilla's crew that day were the only two soldiers nearby. Neither had real combat experience ... the interpreter had no weapon. I had a camera. ... I screamed to the young soldiers, 'Throw a grenade in there!' but they were not attacking. They didn't have grenades ... or the combat experience to grasp the power of momentum. Help arrived in the form of one man: Command Sgt. Maj. Prosser. Prosser ran around the corner, passed the two young soldiers, who were crouched low, and me, and started firing at a man inside who was trying to shoot Kurilla with a pistol. Prosser shot the man at least four times with his M4 rifle. But the American M4 rifles are weak. The man just staggered back, regrouped and tried to shoot Prosser. Then Prosser's M4 went black (no more bullets). Prosser threw down his empty M4, ran into the shop and tackled the man. I saw the very bloody leg of CSM Prosser inside the shop. He appeared to be shot down and dead. I saw Prosser's M4 on the ground."

Mr. Yon picks up Prosser's rifle, grabs a magazine, fires three wild rounds attempting to save Prosser as four more soldiers arrive. Yon writes: "Prosser wasn't dead, he was fighting hand to hand while the terrorist was trying to bite Prosser's wrist, but instead he bit into the face of Prosser's watch. Prosser subdued him by smashing his face into the concrete. The combat drama was ended, so I started snapping photos again."

Bay writes: Quite a piece of prose — terror, courage, physical combat action, choices bad, good and maybe made palpable and immediate in the fearsome detail of direct experience.

Bingo!

In Minnesota, three students were suspended from school for refusing to stand during the pledge of allegience.

The ACLU says that's not constitutional. The ACLU is correct.

The school does not compel the saying of the pledge but it does compel standing for it. But any forced demonstration of respect for America by a government school is unconstitutional.

However, private schools may do so. As well as private businesses and organizations as a condition of belonging to them.

Recall several years ago, former NBA player Chris Jackson (aka Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf), a Muslim, refused to stand during the national athem during games and he was suspended. He claimed the American flag was a symbol of oppression. Blah, blah, blah.

After a one-game suspension he agreed to stand. Apparently his paycheck was more important to him than demonstrating his hatred of his country. (Today he runs a mosque in Louisiana.)

If these kids had brought an American flag to school and stomped all over it, they could have been legally suspended, not for being unpatriotic but for being disruptive of school order. The same as if they, say, started chanting anti-gay slogans. Such speech would be protected on the street but not in public schools.

Still, silent inaction during the pledge of allegience is not actionable by government authorities and that includes public school bureaucrats.

Jack Kelly corrects Obama's misstatements of how past American presidents have dealt with our enemies.

Mike Tremoglie points out that if the accused killers of Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski had been in jail for the violent felonies they'd been convicted of, Liczbinski might very well be alive today.

Money Q:

The mayor's lack of knowledge of weaponry notwithstanding, there is one patently obvious policy that definitely would have protected the officer.

If Levon Warner had served his full sentence, he would've been in prison until 2012. He could not have committed any crime in 2008.

If Howard Cain had served his full sentence, he would've been in prison to 2052. He would not have murdered anyone in 2008.

If Eric Floyd had served his full sentence, he'd have been in jail, not robbing banks, in 2008.

A janitor on an Indiana college campus is hauled up on racial harassment charges for reading a book about the Ku Klux Klan.

Incidentally, according to the janitor (who was also a student) the book was anti-Klan and available in the school's library. Just goes to show how nutty university "affirmative action" officers can be. (And see how well-paid too.)

Brian Fail, 21, rolled the dice and went to trial for the alleged rape of a 17-year-old girl who claimed he forced her to have sex with two other young men in a filthy garage.

A jury found him not guilty. He was lucky.

He and his attorney claimed no force or threat of force was used coerce the girl to have sex with the others. The only evidence against him was the word of the girl who was portrayed as someone who regretted her own conduct after that night.

Who knows?

The girl got to tell her story to a jury and the jury understandably had reasonable doubt to whether the crime of rape occurred.

The same jury had no reasonable doubt that Fail was guilty of corrupting the morals of a minor.

What Fail claims he did was itself a sleazy and contemptible thing. There can be no reasonable doubt about that.

Chucky the K analyzes Hillary's defeat.

Money Q:

There’s only one remaining chapter in this fascinating spectacle. Negotiating the terms of Hillary’s surrender. After which we will have six months of watching her enthusiastically stumping the country for Obama, denying with utter conviction Republican charges that he is the out-of-touch, latte-sipping elitist she warned Democrats against so urgently in the last, late leg of her doomed campaign.

My print column is up: Finally, the honest conservation about race, so many have been calling for. Just me and eight or so black guys at The New Shop and Salon in Chester.

Look for Part II on Sunday. Enjoy, I did.

I'm skeptical about the Smiley Face Killer story but I'm with Tom Booth's mom on this question: How does a 24-year-old man drown in a creek two feet deep?

Big Dems are telling Hillary: The party's over. It's time to call it a day. The question is, are they singing it?

Jen Rubin say that Republicans gleeful over the Democrats infighting need to stop being so gleeful and figure out how they are going to beat a quick study like Obama in November.

WSJ gets to say "we told you so" on ethanol.

Money Q:

"To create just one gallon of fuel, ethanol slurps up 1,700 gallons of water, according to Cornell's David Pimentel, and 51 cents of tax credits. And it still can't compete against oil without a protective 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on imports and a federal mandate that forces it into our gas tanks. The record 30 million acres the U.S. will devote to ethanol production this year will consume almost a third of America's corn crop while yielding fuel amounting to less than 3% of petroleum consumption.

"In December the Congressional Research Service warned that even devoting every last ear of American-grown corn to ethanol would not create enough "renewable fuel" to meet federal mandates. According to a 2007 OECD report, fossil-fuel production is up to 10,000 times as efficient as biofuel, measured by energy produced per unit of land."

It gets worse. Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Robert McFarland, however, says let's not give up on energy independence.

Today's print column is up. Penn Delco dead-enders get sillier, Haverford gets transgendered, and Newtown Square passes the town center to de Botton.

An Iraqi who wants American troops to stay in Iraq to prevent a "hurricane" of violence.

Money Q:

So we still need the Americans because if they intend to leave, there will be something like a hurricane which will extract everything - people, buildings and even trees. Everything that has happened and all that safety will be past, just like a sweet dream.

As people say in my neighborhood: “The Americans are now Ansar al Sunna.” Protectors of the Sunni.

Richard Cohen finds Obama's greatest appeal: His lack of a flag pin.

Money Q:

"Sometimes I think the best thing about Barack Obama is that little empty space on his lapel. It is where other politicians wear their American flag pin, a kitschy piece of empty symbolism that tells you nothing about that particular person except that he or she thinks like everyone else. Obama's flag, invisible to the naked eye, is the Jolly Roger of a politician thinking for himself."

I'm thinking Richard doesn't wear a flag pin himself. Fine, neither do I. But does the presence of a flag pin actually mean that the wearer thinks "like everyone else"?

Could it be that the people who are offended by the sight of flag pins like to think they're better than everyone else because they "think for themselves?" (Even as they run with the herd of independent minds.)

And what about the presence of six or seven actual American flags in the background when Obama gave his famous speech on race after being embarrassed by his Rev? What emptiness does Jolly Richard believe they symbolized?

Hussein feared getting AIDS in a U.S. government run prison.

No, not that Hussein, Saddam Hussein.

How long was Saddam a member of Jeremiah Wright's congregation?

The critics like/love Ironman. I think I'll wait for the DVD.

Close Guantanamo. Free all the detainees!

Oops!

Thomas Sowell says both Rev. Wright and Barack Obama are playing their audiences for suckers. Encouraging a sense of victimhood and loserdom is their path to success.

UPDATE: Michelle Obama is up to the very same thing.

Quote of the Day (stolen from Opinionjournal.com)

"When Bill Clinton was first elected, baby-boomers had just become an absolute majority of working journalists, and among some of them simmered an envy-cum-distrust of the first baby-boomer commander-in-chief. Somebody our age is president? Then, over the course of Bill Clinton's (bungled, distasteful) presidency and Hillary Clinton's (bungled, distasteful) campaign for the presidency, the couple have separately and together become incarnations of the most unattractive attributes of their generation's elite – blind ambition cloaked in do-good self-righteousness, a sense of entitlement, high-handed snobbiness ('I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies'), hedonism (Monica et al.), narcissism. As a poster couple for people of a certain age and demographic, they have become a bit of an embarrassment."

-- novelist Kurt Andersen,
in the current issue of
New York magazine.

In a couple years they'll be saying the same thing Barry and Michelle.

It appears the Town Center in Newtown Square is DEAD.

After years of trying to get the more attractive Town Center approved, the developers are going ahead with the "by-right" plan, that will require no zoning changes, less open space and maybe a big box store or two.

I just opened this e-mail from BPG's John Forde:

All,

I have been asked to relay this message to you all. Board of Supervisors Chairman Joe Catania confirmed to me that it is an accurate statement of the Board's position.

"The Board of Supervisors has indicated there is insufficient support for the
Ellis Town Center and as a result BPG will proceed with its development plans in
accordance with the present “by-right” zoning."

Therefore, the May 7th meeting is cancelled.

Thanks

J. Forde

Your public servants at work. It will be fascinating to see the political fall-out from all this.

UPDATE: Especially when the residents figure out that the Board of Supervisors cost them $6 million in traffic improvements and and $2 million sewer hook-ups by not approving BPG's Town Center plan. They don't have to negotiate the "by-right" plan because HELLO! It's By-Right! So no traffic or sewer goodies for the township. Any of that will now have to come out of taxpayers pockets, not BPG's!

Leonard Pitts doesn't disown his cousin but says he's wrong about the wonderfulness of Rev. Wright.

One thing Pitts is wrong about; he says Willie Horton was created by George H. Bush, while Wright created himself.

It was Al Gore campaigning against Michael Dukakis who "created" the Willie Horton controversy. It was a Dukakis program that allowed Horton, a violent criminal, to be furloughed and gave him the opportunity to rape and murder.

It was an inconvenient truth about liberalism's soft-on-criminals approach to criminal justice.

"The magician has lost control of the show."

My print column on the continued silliness of the Penn Delco School Board is up. Can't anybody here play this game?