A new organization is born: Artists for Child Rapists. See who belongs.

Iowahawk is sponsoring an art contest. No doubt inspired by the National Endowment for the Arts (a.k.a. The White House Propaganda Team.)

Iowahawk (a.k.a. Dave Burge) will endow the winner with $33.16. It's not the size of the prize that matters, it's the pleasure of being in his company.

Scroll through and enjoy, art lovers!

UPDATE: Oops! That's $33 and 18 CENTS!

Even the reliably liberal Steve Lopez (formerly of the Inky) gets it when it comes to Polanski.

Lopez is especially hard on Polanski's idiot defenders and excusers.

Polanski stood in a Santa Monica courtroom on Aug. 8, 1977, admitted to having his way with a girl three decades his junior and told a judge that indeed, he knew she was only 13.

There may well have been judicial misconduct.

But no misconduct was greater than allowing Polanski to cop a plea to the least of his charges. His crime was graphic, manipulative and heinous, and he got a pass. It's unbelievable, really, that his soft-headed apologists are rooting for him to get another one.

Good for him. Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Another progressive, WAPO's Eugene Robinson, joins LAR with this well-written piece.

UPDATE II: Add HuffPo's Jason Linkins to the LAR team.

My print column on the Valley Swim Club ruling is up.

Have you heard the one about the blind lawyer and the prostitute?

He sues. She lies.

Aww crap. Where's global warming when you need it?

Ann Althouse hands French philosophizer Bernard Henri Levy his head on the Polanski matter.

Read the whole thing.

Sarkozy diplomatically unloads on Obama for his kid-glove handling of Iran and North Korea on nukes causing the WSJ to opine:

We thought we'd never see the day when the President of France shows more resolve than America's Commander in Chief for confronting one of the gravest challenges to global security. But here we are.

Whoopi Goldberg joins the chorus of nitwits who attempt to defend Roman Polanski.

Patterico is on the case.

Meanwhile in Canada...

When the pain in Christina Woodkey's legs became so severe that she could no long hike or cross-country ski, she went to her local health clinic. The Calgary, Canada, resident was told she'd need to see a hip specialist. Because the problem was not life-threatening, however, she'd have to wait about a year.

So wait she did.

In January, the hip doctor told her that a narrowing of the spine was compressing her nerves and causing the pain. She needed a back specialist. The appointment was set for Sept. 30.

"When I was given that date, I asked when could I expect to have surgery," said Woodkey, 72. "They said it would be a year and a half after I had seen this doctor."

So this month, she drove across the border into Montana and got the $50,000 surgery done in two days.

"I don't have insurance. We're not allowed to have private health insurance in Canada," Woodkey said. "It's not going to be easy to come up with the money. But I'm happy to say the pain is almost all gone."

NYT columnist Paul Krugman announced some weeks ago that such scare stories about healthcare being rationed in countries with single-payer systems are "false."

So somebody is lying. It's either Christina Woodkey or Paul Krugman. You decide.

The French may be talking nonsense when it comes to Roman Polansky, but they're talking sense when it comes to Obama's naive speech about nuclear disarmament.

As Tom Bevan points out, this is not news in America

Public support for Dem/Obamacare continues to plummet.

A lawyer for Med-Mal reform.

A taste:

The upshot is simple: A few thousand trial lawyers are blocking reform that would benefit 300 million Americans. This is not just your normal special-interest politics. It's a scandal—it is as if international-trade policy was being crafted in order to get fees for customs agents.

Jennifer Rubin on Obama's view of America vs. Americans view of America.

Obama plainly embodies that mindset of liberal elites. America is flawed. America has no distinct message or values, and its interests are entitled to no more weight than Belgium’s or Cuba’s. It’s wrongheaded to assert our national interests. We should be seeking consensus and righting the great wrongs that America has done to other nations—both its stinginess in redistributing wealth and its failure to cater to other nations’ geopolitical and psychological concerns. Russia needs reassuring. The Arabs need validation. And it’s the president’s job to lower America’s profile so as to not incur the wrath of hostile powers.

Average Americans don’t buy into any of this. They have the notion—ridiculed by Obama and his supporters—that America is unique, both in its attributes and in its role in the world. They might grow weary of the burdens and prefer shorter and less costly wars (what democratic people do not?), but the notion that we should simply go along with the crowd, avoid hurting Russian sensibilities, or accede to false historical narratives of Arab nations in contravention to our own interests and those of our allies are alien and off-putting to them. If Iran is a threat to the world, ordinary Americans expect their president to do something about it, not merely call another meeting to talk with thugs spouting genocidal nonsense."

Kate Harding nails it on the Roman Polanski arrest.

Let's keep in mind that Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her, before we start discussing whether the victim looked older than her 13 years, or that she now says she'd rather not see him prosecuted because she can't stand the media attention. Before we discuss how awesome his movies are or what the now-deceased judge did wrong at his trial, let's take a moment to recall that according to the victim's grand jury testimony, Roman Polanski instructed her to get into a jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she begged to go, began kissing her even though she said no and asked him to stop; performed cunnilingus on her as she said no and asked him to stop; put his penis in her vagina as she said no and asked him to stop; asked if he could penetrate her anally, to which she replied, "No," then went ahead and did it anyway, until he had an orgasm.

Can we do that?

Gee, let's hope so.

So the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission has determined that "racial animus" drove the decision of the Valley Swim Club to cancel visits by a camp of mostly blacks kids. It has ordered $50,000 to be awarded the complaintant a single minority kid and his family.

This would be the same government panel that just a few years ago awarded a former radio employee $600,000 for the insult of being asked to read a book. The book called "New Dress for Success" suggested that people in business refrain from dressing in ethnically stereotypical ways.

The HRC's ludicrous award was appealed by the station. A federal panel tossed it out and that was the end of the matter.

In the swim club case, the club's attorney says the HRC's decision was a "fait accompli" once the media coverage got ahead of the facts of the story. He's got that right.

The media coverage of this story remains pretty poor and the commentary is simply over the top.

The Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial on the matter is jaw-droppingly bad. Here's a portion:

Here was a fully investigated conclusion that, yes, racism still exists in America, and earlier this summer it dashed water into the faces of little black and Latino children who naively ventured to a suburban pool for a swim.

The HRC certainly came to a conclusion all right, the same one the Inquirer and other enlightened types came to month's ago. But the HRC came to a conclusion in the New Dress for Success matter as well. That conclusion was bounced out of court. This one, ultimately, could be too.

There is, after all, plenty of evidence that the swim club as an organization didn't act out of racial malice, especially given the fact that the minority campers were invited to the pool in the first place. There is even more evidence the the club's leadership acted with amazing stupidity and arrogance in unilaterally cancelling their aggreement with the camp. But the case for racial animus remains as weak as ever.

The Inquirer tips it's hand in its lead paragraph:

A state investigation that found a Montgomery County swim club discriminated against a group of minority kids who visited its pool only underscores how much racism still remains a sad part of society. This was no philosophical treatise on the role of racism in some of the more agitated, animated opposition to ideas being put forth by this nation's first black president, in particular President Obama's health-care reform plan.

The editorial board would have us believe that racism not only remains a driving factor in lives of many white people, it explains the opposition to our first black president's idea of health-care reform.

This is a nothing more than a shoddy and disreputable attempt to marginalize people with whom the Inky's editorial board disagrees politically. Even worse, it won't work. The playing of the race card simply doesn't intimidate people like it used to, mostly because it has been played so promiscuously, unfairly and underhandedly for so many years now. This is just the latest example.

I suppose reasonable people can disagree about whether or not to provide taxpayer subsidized health insurance to illegal aliens, like these liberal House Democrats want to do, but it doesn't sound much like a political winner.

UPDATE: And if you'll recall this was the issue that led Congressman Joe Wilson to shout out to the president "You lie" during his address to congress. Obama said he was tired of misrepresentations about what the Democrats were proposing when it came to health reform, including that that they would cover illegal aliens. Every time, the Republicans sought to include an amendment into a health care bill that would explicitly exclude health benefits to illegals, Democrats voted then down. What would any reasonable person conclude from that? And now some Democrats are expliciting advocating such coverage for illegals. However impolitely Wilson challenged the president, on the issue he was speaking truth than Mr. Obama.

Here's Part Two.

I said something like this several posts ago. This says it better.

Why doctors hate Obamacare.

Dr. Mark Seigel explains:

All the current health-care bills are unfair to doctors. Even Sen. Max Baucus' "moderate" bill (like the other bills) includes cuts to Medicare and Medicaid that would directly affect hospitals and doctors: How far does Congress think it can cut our reimbursements before compromising care, if not driving us out of business?

Read the whole thing.

Mark Helprin on Obama's recent foreign policy blunders:

Money Q:

Stalin tested Truman with the Berlin Blockade, and Truman held fast. Khrushchev tested Kennedy, and in the Cuban Missile Crisis Kennedy refused to blink. In 1983, Andropov took the measure of Reagan, and, defying millions in the street (who are now the Obama base), Reagan did not blink. Last week, the Iranian president and the Russian prime minister put Mr. Obama to the test, and he blinked not once but twice. The price of such infirmity has always proven immensely high, even if, as is the custom these days, the bill has yet to come.

Another innocent Delaware County man is hauled up on very flimsy sex abuse charges, tried and acquitted. My print column is up.

From U.S. News and World Report:

This latest round of problems for ACORN may be the best documented, but they are not the first nor, for that matter, are they the most serious.

A report issued last summer by the Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, according to Sunday's Washington Times, "presented evidence that ACORN had engaged in criminal misconduct."

Among the findings, the report said, ACORN:

Engaged in tax evasion, obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting a cover-up of nearly $1 million embezzled by Dale Rathke, brother of group founder Wade Rathke;

Committed investment fraud, depriving the public of the right to "honest services," and engaging in a racketeering enterprise affecting interstate commerce;

Conspired to defraud the United States by using taxpayer dollars for partisan political activities;

Submitted false filings to the Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. Department of Labor; and,
Violated the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act.

Any one of these is a serious allegation. Taken together, they give ACORN most every appearance of being some sort of massive criminal enterprise worthy of a federal investigation of the sort made under the terms of the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act—or RICO.

In fact the group and its affiliates are currently the target of more than a dozen lawsuits related to voter fraud in the 2008 election alone."

This is why Democrats who have been supported by ACORN are now fleeing, cutting and running. They have voted to defund the group lest they be dragged down with them.

A special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate ACORN since the Obama Administration obviously has too many conflicts of interests to do a credible job.

Perhaps my favorite ACORN story, before this one, is when it sued the state of California to be exempt from its minimum wage laws. This, after organizing to push for a higher minimum wage. Hypocrisy doesn't come any clearer than that.

As with most criminal organizations it won't be its most significant crimes that take it down. (Remember Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion.) But the videos of ACORN workers across the country giving two undercover activist filmmakers advice on how to a child prostitution ring without paying taxes will by the death of ACORN.

And if the president, a past ACORN community organizer and top legal counsel, doesn't order a special prosecutor to dig deeper into its activities, the scandal could drag him down too.

Left-wing kooks will continue to defend ACORN until their dying breath, sucked in as they are by any group that claims to be on the side of poor people. But ACORN doesn't help the poor, it exploits and corrupts them for its own self-perpetuating gain.

PJTV salutes a tax-evading, tax-writing Real Member of Congress.

Heh!

A Bucks County sex tourist gets sentenced to 8 years for having sex with two underage Russian girls.

Where did this guy go for advice when it came to child rape? ACORN?

The head of the Council on Foreign Relations is lost trying to figure out Obama's strategy in Afghanistan.

Charles Krauthammer says Obama is distracted trying to push his domestic agenda while American soldiers are dying for lack of a new strategy and resources. He and others worry that he simply doesn't care that much about foreign policy and dangers posed around the world compared to his desire to impose a domestic agenda that is more European-like and statist at home.

So far, sounds right.

Democrats used to say that the important war was in Afghanistan. But they only said that to politically justify their criticism of the Iraq War and the Bush Administration. They wanted to sound like they weren't simply a bunch of soft-on-terrorists-anti-war nuts. If winning in Afghanistan was so important back then, why is it not important now?

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) takes on a case of a college administrator trampling the rights of a professor who asked a rather embarrassing question during a sexual harrassment training session.

The question?

If there any penalty for someone making a false charge of sexual harassment?

The answer was no. And the professor said that was a "flaw" in the policy.

Said professor was dragged in front of the college president and ordered to resign or be fired for being "divisive" to the campus community.

Read all about it.

A parade of signs at the recent tea party protest in Washington.

As Robert Tracinski explains these people aren't racist, as many lefties are claiming, they're pissed at government proflicacy and what they understandably perceive as attacks on their liberty.

Byron York reports Democrats abandoning ACORN in droves.

Not our Sen. Bob Casey though.

Somebody has to be brave enough to stand up for illegal immigration, tax fraud, pimping, child prostitution and the sex slave racket.

"Did we really need Jimmy Carter to tell us that racism is one of the driving forces behind the relentless and often scurrilous attacks on President Obama?"

Not when we have Bob Herbert of New York Times to tell us.

Even richer, Herbert quotes Jimmy Carter's past racist statements.

During his presidential campaign in 1976, he blithely let it be known that he had no problem with residents “trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods,” and he tossed around ugly terms like “black intrusion” and “alien groups.” He later apologized.

For liberals, it seems, playing the race card means no good deed goes unpunished.

Jonah Goldberg goes through the left's "tackle box" and finds nothing but "race bait."

The worst offender, worse than Jimmy Carter, worse than Al Sharpton even is...

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times hears Rep. Joe Wilson shout, "You lie!" And her instinctive response is: "Fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!"
It's the "fair or not" that gives Dowd away. She admits to hearing racism whether or not it's warranted. That's called prejudice. And unlike Wilson's foolish outburst, Dowd's was carefully considered. Dowd, Carter and Sharpton can't grasp that conservatives are less hung up on race than they are and that we can get past Obama's skin color. "Some people just can't believe a black man is president and will never accept it," writes Dowd. She's right. She's one of them.

Goldberg has hooked a race-baiter.

We have a state budget deal.

Here's my favorite part of the AP story:

The deal would slash spending by about 1 percent, but will not raise the state income tax or sales tax rates.

Slash? How come you never see a sign in a store window: PRICES SLASHED!!! SAVE 1 PERCENT on EVERYTHING IN STORE!

Also Big Ed says the taxpayers of Pennsylvania may not believe it but they're the "winners" in this deal.

Don't you feel like a winner? And it all thanks to the dealmaking abilities of our governor and state legislators? How can we ever thank them?

Any suggestions?

A thoughtful piece by David Brooks on what is dividing America today.

Hint: It isn't race.

UPDATE: Jim Sleeper also offers his views on this subject.

I have one bone to pick with Sleeper. He writes:

It's the absence of honest answers, more than racism, that's turned out people brandishing signs that liken Obama to Hitler and demanding, with stupefying illogic, that government keep its hands off their Medicare.

But there is nothing illogical about this "demand" at all. The left has been berating seniors for criticizing Obama's attempts to "socialize" medicine. What the seniors well understand is that Obamacare would significantly eat into spending on Medicare and reduce their choices when it comes to their health care.

When seniors protest, they tell politicians "Don't mess with my Medicare" they mean, "This is OUR program, it works for me and if you cut spending on it in order to include 47 milllion other people, I'll get less. I don't want less. Leave it alone."

This may be selfish. But it is not illogical.

My print column on the ACORN fiasco is up.

It should be noted that the Philadelphia office of ACORN did not fall for the secretly videoed pimp-and-prostitute-seeking-advice stunt. This is not amazing. What is amazing is that so many other ACORN offices across the country did.

Plus, a correction from the story, it's Tresa (not Trisa) Kaelke.

UPDATE: First Jon Stewart (as mentioned in the column) now Jay Leno makes fun of APORN, I mean, ACORN.

UPDATE II: The House votes overwhelmingly to cut ACORN's federal funding. But 75 house members voted against it. Guess how many were Democrats?

The Acorn hits just keep on coming.

Can you win an Emmy for a Youtube video?

Jimmy Carter accuses President Obama's political opponents of racism.

GOP head Michael Steele, argues otherwise:

It is becoming increasingly clear that some in the Democratic Party need a serious history lesson. Slavery was racist, Jim Crow laws were racist, segregation was racist – opposing a radical political agenda is not. Americans of all races and political mindsets applauded the election of America’s first African American president; it was a proud moment for every American. But our pride in electing an African-American president does not override our right to disagree with President Obama’s policies. It is obvious certain politicians are attempting to exploit racial anger to make up for their own policy failings.

Read the whole thing.

Where did these poor people go for housing advice, Acorn?

Headline: Obama Will Give You $2,500 To Go To School.

Isn't that nice of him? Kind of like Oprah giving audience members cars. Except, wait a minute, where did Obama get the $2,500 to give you? Oh from YOU, your children and maybe your grandchildren. It's stimulus package money voted by the Democratic Congress and approved by The One.

Oprah actually earned the money she gives away. Obama and Democrats, not so much.

Pat Meehan declares for Congress.

A few observations:

1. He gives the GOP a great shot to reclaim the seat they lost three years ago when an ambitious Joe Sestak knocked off a wounded Curt Weldon.

2. Sestak's giving up the seat to run for Senate shows how, bad judgement and personal ambition have hurt Democratic chances to hold Congress for long. Meehan might have ambitiously jumped into the governor's race, but was talked in to settling for a less difficult congressional run, thus increasing GOP's chances in both races. Democrats on the other hand are invovled in internecine fights throughout the party.
The party's liberal leadership is at war with its more moderate members.

3. Sestak challenging Specter is a great example of two men who put themselves before party. There is plenty of vanity to go around in politics but never was it more on display than in this race.

4. At 80 years old Specter jumped parties to stay politically viable. Sestak, Mr. Ants in his Pants, jumped in to challenge Specter against the wishes, advice, and demands of party leaders like Ed Rendell. It was Rendell who cleared the way for Sestak to run against Weldon when Swarthmore's Bryan Lentz was gearing up to run. Lentz took the second banana role of running for state rep instead.
Was there ever any chance the Sestak would listen Rendell and others to wait for his chance to run for Senate? Probably not.

5. Meehan, the former Specter chief of staff, county DA, and U.S. Attorney, has been more respectful, politcally cautious, disciplined and smart. He runs for Congress now, has a good shot at winning and can go anywhere from there. He is well known in the 7th, well-regarded, and despite the Democrats growing edge in voter registration, likely to beat either Greg Vitali or Lentz, both state reps.

6. Vitali, in particular, seems too liberal to beat Meehan, especially, given the growing public backlash against the statist policies promoted by this Democratic president and the very unpopular Democratic leadership in Congress. Lentz appears to be more of a moderate than Vitali, has the military background that mollifies right-leaning Independents, but isn't particularly well known.

7. All around, Meehan's run is a good example what the GOP needs to do nationally to rebuild itself. Get good, sensible, respectable candidates who know the values and interests of their districts. The GOP has been in disarray the last three years after the 2006 mid-terms, thanks to George Bush's mealy-mouthed compassionate conservatism and big spending. (The Iraq war didn't help either.) Republicans are lucky to have opponents who as arrogant and out of touch as this bunch of Democrats. They are spending the country into oblivion and grabbing more and more power for the state. The voters, especially a growing number of Independents, know it and don't like it.

Game on.

James F. Murphy e-mails to announce:

There is "a right way and a wrong way" in today's society in visiting
public schools and Mr. Spencer overstepped his authority in trying to
gain entrance to Media & Indian Lane Elementary schools. The (RTM)
superintendent Ms. Kerr should be commended in her decision to ignore
Mr. Spencer's unauthorized visit.

My question:

Just what authority does one need to visit a taxpayer-funded, government school in today's society, a note from some government bureaucrat?

Unbelievable.

UPDATE:

On a nicer note:

Dear Gil,

RTM officials certainly display a drastic, almost obsessive interest at protecting their students from what should be the crux of educating; questioning and developing a flare for independent thought. Or could it be based upon reading your Sunday, Sept. 6th piece entitled, Obama should listen as well as speak? I think your fictional "Tommy" touched an educational nerve.

Could it be that your Tommy exhibited too much independent thought? Certainly seemed out of whack from an RTM education. Keep it up Gil, it's fun to be annoying, isn't it?

Regards,
Jim Bowman, a sometime Guest Columnist living in Fla

Dear Jim,
And I didn't even mean to annoying. Must be a gift.

UPDATE II: This just in... from petition organizer Chris Westcott:

Good article yesterday. I appreciate your attempt to contact Mrs. Kotch.

My response:

Thanks Chris, will there be anything else.

My print column is up

This doesn't look much like "astroturf."

A contract is a contract. Read before you sign. My print column is up.

Kevin Williamson at NRO (formerly of the Main Line Times, I think) says Rep. Joe "You Lie" Wilson was "rude, but right."

He explains.

Want a hoot?

Check out this "tax expert" from the Baltimore office of ACORN trying to help a "prostitute" and her "pimp" (actually undercover filmmakers) withhold money from the IRS.

It gets better. She also offers her advice about the hooker's plan to import a bunch of underage Salvadorean girls to put on the street as sex workers.

Priceless.

UPDATE: ACORN fires the workers involved. What a shame.

To paraphrase Chris Rock: I can understand drinking then driving. It's wrong but I unnerstand. But huffing WHILE driving? just don't get.

Arianna Huffington thanks Glenn Beck and welcomes Van Jones back to the barricades where he can "inspire" people.

People like those who believe 9/11 was an inside job run out of the Bush White House. And people who believe Mumia Abu Jamal is innocent. And people who believe white environmentalists want to "poison" black people.

Thank you, Arianna, for having Van Jones on your team. He'll be a terrific asset in the mid-term elections.

One retired Delaware County teacher's response to the President's lecture to students:

"Not that much different than what I had been telling my classes every year I taught in three different states. Very similar, in fact, except for the part about my father not being around and living in Indonesia!"

Thanks, Donna

Holman Jenkins got his hands on an advanced copy of the President's healthcare speech to Congress.

It's a pip.

Finally, an honest account of America's health care system, how we got here and where we're going... off a cliff.

The country's in the very best of hands.

Paul Peterson on the public's opinion of public education. It ain't good.

Money Q:

The president didn't hesitate to tell American kids to take responsibility for their behavior. It's time he delivered that same message to states, school districts and unions.

If the "public option" is so good why is Congress exempting itself from having to enroll in it?

It's back to school. My print column is up.

Camille Paglia wonders if fumbled healthcare reform hasn't undone his presidency.

As an Obama supporter and contributor, I am outraged at the slowness with which the standing army of Democratic consultants and commentators publicly expressed discontent with the administration's strategic missteps this year. I suspect there had been private grumbling all along, but the media warhorses failed to speak out when they should have -- from week one after the inauguration, when Obama went flat as a rug in letting Congress pass that obscenely bloated stimulus package. Had more Democrats protested, the administration would have felt less arrogantly emboldened to jam through a cap-and-trade bill whose costs have made it virtually impossible for an alarmed public to accept the gargantuan expenses of national healthcare reform. (Who is naive enough to believe that Obama's plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?)

And that's her just clearing her throat.

Obama lectures school kids. Joe Friday lectures Obama.

Ann Althouse notices Obama's speech to the kids is 10 times longer than Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

I read it and noticed that too. It is too long. But then, so are most politicians speeches these days.

As for those worried about the content, it's fine. It's pap, but it's fine.

Here's the text.Personally, I wouldn't want my own daughter dragged out of math class to hear it but that's just me.

It's OK to kill them if you're a cat or you do it by windmill. Not if you do it by oil or powerline.

"Capitalism is evil," says new Michael Moore film.

He's right. The lesser of two.

UPDATE: "Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil," the two-hour movie concludes. "You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy."

Of course, this is absurd. The opposite of free market capitalism is not democracy. The opposite of Capitalism is Marxism.

It's been tried as a replacement for capitalism and it has failed in every country in which it has been imposed because it has not been "good" for the people. Standards of living don't rise. Freedom is curtailed. And great Democrats like Hugo Chavez do it all in the name of what is "good" for people.

Moore makes his living in a Democracy that permits him to say any dumb thing he likes and to make millions of dollars doing it. He should be more grateful than he is to our Republic and how first and foremost it attempts to protect individual freedom and opportunity.

A prescient letter from a 6th grader to President Obama, in which the writer suggests the president's "Green Jobs Zar" be fired. (He left the administration late last night.)

My print column is up.

Funemployment, not unemployment.

Read this, or at least some of it, and then this, the whole damn thing.

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter explains the principles of Republican conservatism to Peter Brooks.

McCotter, number 4 in the Republican hierarchy in the House, has the demeanor of a mortician but the analytical skills and brains of an NFL football coach - a winning one.

Check out the four other episodes on which he appears.

Specter retains big lead over Sestak, but that's a helluva lot of undecideds.

You can judge a country by its greens. No, not those greens, putting greens.

Richard Haass has an interesting take on the civilizing, middle-class-building game of golf.

The Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail? Who'd a thunk it?

... Self-professed Marxist/Leninist Communist, signatory to a movement that believes the U.S. intentionally allowed 9/11 to happen, green-economy huckster, rabid-partisan, potty mouth and advisor to President of the United States.

UPDATE: The Fox New Allstars (including the reliably reasonable Mara Liasson) predict Jones will be gone from the Obama Administration by Tuesday. We'll see.

The grown-up governor of Indiana explains the state budget crunch across the country. Raising taxes and counting of federal bail-outs is not the way the way to go.

If there was a Governors of the United States League, I'd vote to trade Ed Rendell and any number of state legislators for Mitch Daniels right now.

Obama wasn't dragged to the left by the left-wing leadership of his party. He IS the left-wing leader of his party.

Charles Krauthammer sums up Obama's troubles.

He campaigned as a centrist and as a likeable, intelligent person. Now he's telling people to shut up and "get out of the way" and implying that grass-roots opposition to his proposals is misinformed, ignorant and evil. He is no longer the post-racial, post partisan "magical negro" (don't blame me, a liberal columnist came up with that appellation) who will bring people together and lift the country up as one, he is but a mere mortal, just another Chicago pol who rewards his friends and punishes his enemies.

As the political turmoil surrounding the leadership of the Delaware County Field and Stream Association and gun club continue to swirl its virtues remain in tact. Todays' print column is up.

Henninger on the global "no-confidence" vote.

(I)t's beginning to look as if the globe's lumpen proletariat has decided they've had about enough of the lumpen bureaucratariat.

Read the whole thing.

NYT's Nick Kristof argues that "government" can run the healthcare system better than the private sector.

Kristof writes:

Throughout the industrialized world, there are a handful of these areas where governments fill needs better than free markets: fire protection, police work, education, postal service, libraries, health care. The United States goes along with this international trend in every area but one: health care.

So Kristof says. But he has to go all the way back to the 1800s to paint squabbling volunteer fire companies as ineffective in a place as big as NYC. Whatever the advantages of a "government-run" fire company, no one that I know of has suggested a U.S. Department of Fire Fighting for the entire nation. Cities have their own fire departments, not nations.

As for police work, maybe there are too many local departments but few people are arguing to federalize all policing.

Education? Quick question. If Kristof lives in New York City does he send his own kids to government-run schools? Because an alarming number of public school teachers don't.

Recently HBO's Bill Maher wrote a sophomoric piece for the Huffington Post about how stupid Americans are. He didn't blame the nation's "public" schools for failing to educate millions of students. Mostly he seemed to blaming stupid and mean Republicans. Maybe we need to federalize the thousands of school systems across the country. You think that smarten everybody up, Bill? Nick?

The postal service remains a national joke, unable to compete against more efficent private carriers, thanks to federal union work rules and the like. And libraries get funding from cities and states but are run locally.

Kristof cites Veterans Administration hospitals are being well run, though we recall a scandal from just a few years back at Walter Reed Army hospital where wounded soldiers were not getting the care they needed and deserved.

Comedy Central's Jon Stewart thinks everybody in this country deserves the same care as our veterans and he made serious fun of conservative Bill Kristol when he disagreed on the Daily Show. But, as Kristol said veterans have, after all, served their country and many put themselves in harm's way to defend her and us. Maybe they do deserve a little something more than the rest of us, non-servers.

Kristof writes:

On my blog, foreigners regularly express bewilderment that America may reject reform and stick with a system that drives families into bankruptcy when they get sick. That’s what they expect from the Central African Republic, not the United States.

Really? That's a problem in the Central African Republic, citizens are being driven into bankruptcy by health care costs? No, not really.

In fact, the citizens of the CAR, would probably LOVE to be bankrupted by health care costs because it would mean they had SOMETHING in the way of property and money in the first place.

From Wikipedia (I know, I know but it was the first site that came up and I've got a column to write today):

The country is self-sufficient in food crops, but much of the population lives at a subsistence level. Livestock development is hindered by the presence of the tsetse fly.

In 2006 due to ongoing violence, over 50,000 in the country's north-west were at risk of starvation,[6] and this was only averted thanks to United Nations support.

Bill Maher should be making fun of Kristof's foreign readers.

Aston's Beth Curlett is the winner of the Time's Yours contest that will allow her to work as a sideline interviewer for the Eagles Television Network during a pre-season game against the Jets.

She's a cutie.

Plus, we can't wait to find out if Michael Vick served potato salad or cole slaw at events during his dog-fighting career. Or if Andy Reid goes with baked beans or pasta salad at his cook-outs.

Sic 'em Beth and congratulations.

The Ugliest Dog in the Universe? I don't think so. Just imagine how she'd look without that stupid thing in her hair.

My new favorite web twitter site.

Obama's poll numbers keeping sinking. He is down to 41 percent favorability. But I think these numbers are bound to improve. At the current rate by sometime next year Obama will be polling at zero favorability, which means that not one person in America will well disposed toward the President.

I don't see that happening. If he scraps the current healthcare overhaul and comes up with a more modest reform plan that both Republicans and Democrats can get behind, his numbers will rebound.

Also if he captures and tortures a few terrorists his numbers will begin to soar. He may lose some of the angry soft-on-terror left but just imagine how that will play with Independents. Even some right-wing kooks who will have no choice but to give him credit.

Instead of closing Guantanamo he should it into a Terrorist Zoo, a place where vacationers can go and see real live terrorists in a safe setting.

On second thought, scrap that. Too many people will see terrorists looking forlorn and demand they be released back into the wild.

Nevermind.

Dottie Berry was the first female president of the Delaware County Field and Stream Gun Club until she was impeached. The story get screwier from there.

My print column is up.

Dan Henninger on the Obama Administration's war on the War on Terror.

To supervise future interrogations, the administration is creating something called a High Value Detainee Interrogation Group. Interrogation techniques will be limited to those in the Army Field Manual or that are "noncoercive," which suggests more constrained than a big-city police department. Authority is being moved from the CIA to the FBI.

This means that the class of person who blows up skyscrapers, American embassies or the USS Cole would spend less time under a bare light bulb than a domestic robbery suspect. The Los Angeles Times reported in May that the goal of a proposed administration "global justice initiative" would be to get all terror suspects into a U.S. or foreign court.

Democrats and liberals viciously attacked the Bush Administration and the CIA as being war criminals and torturers the last four years. Obama and his party are taking a softer, more legalistic approach to protecting the country.

If there is another significant terror attack the Democratic party generally and the Obama Administration specifically will have to defend their self-proclaimed more enlightened approaches to combating terrorism. Liberals have a reputation for being soft on national security issues.

Despite all the gnashing of teeth on the left about the rights of terrorists, the American people are not nearly as upset that the man who cut off Daniel Pearl's head and engineered 9/11 was waterboarded 183 times before becoming an "asset" to the CIA.

As long as Al Qaida and other anti-American terrorist groups lay low, the Obama team may be able to muddle through. But should terrorists succeed in carrying out another attack against this country, there will be hell to pay and Obama and his fellow softies will quite deservedly be stuck with the bill.

George Will waves the white flag in Afghanistan. His argument is bracing and powerful.

UPDATE: Pete Wehner forcefully disagrees with George Frederick Will

Ralph Peters on the Obama-approved witch-hunt of the CIA.

And let's get real: Attorney General Eric Holder (whose top career achievement was finessing the presidential pardon of a criminal Clinton donor) is not acting independently.

Anyone who believes that Holder didn't pre-brief the president and get the nod prior to announcing his determination to crucify high-achieving CIA agents probably believes that government-run health care will balance the federal budget.

When: Wednesday night
Where: Muhlenberg College
Over: Healthcare reform

As the two challengers spar the old guy with the belt (and the job) stays in training.

Prediction: In his hometown, Toomey will wipe the floor with Sestak. But it doesn't matter. Sestak is simply looking to get his name and face out there so that when he gets his title shot against Specter next Spring, he's ready. If he wins that, he'll have a very good chance against Toomey in a statewide rematch.

By then unpopular Healthcare reform will be a thing of the past. It will either have passed in a more acceptable form or have been defeated. Either way, a year from now, the main issue will once again be the economy. If things are better, Sestak will have a strong edge. (That is if he can knock off Specter.) If not, Toomey will have a slight one.

UPDATE: A preview of tomorrow's debate today (courtesy of Alex Rose.) Round one went to Toomey and the crowd. But give Joe credit for staying on his feet. He's keeping his "left" up but it isn't blocking many punches.

Conservatives outnumber liberals in every state. Gallup buries the lede.

Of course, Independents swing elections. The President and Democrats are losing them in large numbers. As of Aug. 10 Obama's favorability rating was down to 45 percent.

The mid-terms could be a disaster for the Donkey party if the President doesn't get his groove back.