Ripped from the headlines:

Brazilian transsexual model Lea T. stole the show Sunday at Sao Paulo Fashion Week as critics applauded her presentation and paparazzi mobbed her entourage.

The model, previously known as Leandro Cerezo and the son of famed Brazilian footballer Toninho Cerezo, received roaring applause as she took to the catwalk modeling a new collection by Alexandre Herchcovitch.

She wore pale makeup and was accompanied by somber music as she helped present a collection of black, gray, beige and green gowns with long sleeves.

The paparazzi swarmed her entourage as she left the venue accompanied by friends, agents and bodyguards, with one photographer kicking one of her managers before she was spirited away.

The runway star, who has also modeled for the French brand Givenchy, has become a fashion sensation following high-profile appearances on the European market in recent months, including a magazine cover in which she appears kissing British supermodel Kate Moss.

The Brazil-born model left for Italy when embarking on her career, citing ill treatment and questions over her sexual orientation.

If only Brazil had a law like the one proposed in Havertown, Lea would never have had to leave for Italy, which is experiencing an economic boon thanks to an influx of transsexual super models.

The Haverford Township Board of Supervisors is boldly moving to create a law and a board that will protect people based on their "sexual orientation." Or rather, some people's "sexual orientation." It will ignore the sexual orientation of people who suffer from pedophilia. The board will not protect their "right" to housing, employment, or public accommodation.

Havertown will protect the rights of a man who chooses to wear women's clothes to work. That's called transgenderism. But if you are sexually attracted to children and anyone finds out, you're on your own. That is, unless a discriminated-against pedophile sues the township for refusing to enforce its own ordinance fairly and consistently across the board. Or unless the upcoming Haverford Human Relations Board slips its leash and decides that pedophiles have to be covered under the new law. At which time, the board would be dissolved because of public outrage. Residents of Havertown would not tolerate a law that banned them from being intolerant of pedophiles.

There was never a real need for Haverford to pass this law. Gays face no significant discrimination in the township when it comes to housing, employment or public accommodation. The worst the law's promoters have been able to suggest is that a guy man was whispered about 15 years ago. Today, some "gay" kids are bullied in the high school. I bet some ugly kids are bullied too. That's a problem for school administrators, teachers, and parents to deal with. Not local lawmakers.

This whole process reeks of moralistic showboating. It is local government busybodyism at its most simple-minded. If put to a township vote, I have no doubt the setting up and empowering of a township Human Relations Board board would be rejected.

This is the pet project of only a handful of people devoted to the idea that gay people continue to be the benighted victims of an ignorant and superstitious society, desperately in need of their saintly protection.

Of course, probably the dumbest thing said during the public hearings on this question was the claim made by the mayor of Lansdowne that's its new anti-discrimination law has been a "boon" to the local economy. Is there a person in the county that actually believes that ridiculous claim?

Anyway, if I were a pedophile, I'd be gearing up to challenge the soon-to-be formed HHRC to stick up for my rights.

My print column is up.

UPDATE: From the comments section a mixed reaction:

sassychick wrote on Jan 30, 2011 8:34 AM:
" LOL!!! Points out perfectly how ridiculous this ordinance is. But it's easier for the commissioners to sit around and blow hot air about something stupid like writing an ordinance that's already covered by multiple laws on the books than it is to look at the Township and see how to fix the real problems. "

joe clark wrote on Jan 30, 2011 11:37 AM:
" Even for Spencer, this has to be one of a doozie of "Stupidity senerios" of the day? Always reaching for crap that will never happen to scare people and try in a lame way to make an idiot point. It is the lack of intelligence and believing that people who can read, will actually believe your fantasy comments of the day. Personally, I don't live there and what does this have to do with anyone who doesn't live there. That is what juries are for if there is a further dispute. The "Needing some work" is a tatic that was used to delay rights to African Americans, but eventually it happened and this is going to happen to. The world changes, you either change with it in a positive way or be left behind. "

Alleged hit and run killer turns down plea deal (12.5 to 25 years) that would have treated him like a kiddie porn freak.

My prediction: He'll do 25.

Congressman Dennis Kusinich (D-Ranged) files suit against the House cafeteria for selling him a veggie wrap containing an olive pit. He broke a tooth. Good to know that dental work is one thing we don't cover health-wise for our esteemed representatives.

Note that sign in the lower right-hand corner doesn't say "Tucson."

The President blows a teachable moment.

It was a teachable moment -- and Barack Obama didn't teach. Unless public opinion changes, we won't end our budget deadlock. As is well-known, Americans want budget deficits curbed. In a Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 54 percent urge Congress and the president to "act quickly" and 57 percent prefer spending cuts to tax increases. But there's little support for cuts in Social Security (64 percent opposed), Medicare (56 percent) and Medicaid (47 percent), approaching half of federal spending. The State of the Union gave Obama the opportunity to confront the contradictions and educate Americans in the unpleasant realities of uncontrolled government. He declined.

What we got were empty platitudes. We won't be "buried under a mountain of debt," Obama declared. Heck, we're already buried. We will "win the future." Not by deluding ourselves, we won't. Americans think deficits are someone else's problem that can be cured by taxing the rich (say liberals) or ending wasteful spending (conservatives). Obama indulged these fantasies.

This comes from a friend and colleague who read today's column on the draconian sentences being meted out to kiddie porn freaks:

Good column.

I've always wanted to know the breakdown of prosecutions between those who have actually harmed children and those caught in a sting.

There are all kinds of taboo impulses we would never act on, or be tempted to act on, because the opportunities never present themselves in the real world.

Whether that means stumbling upon a trail of $20 bills or a three-way with two playmates who just happen to arrive at my door with cases of beer under each arm.

I mean, people get married precisely because there's no shot of the latter scenario ever happening to them.
And why do police limit themselves to sex abusers? Shouldn't we lure potential murderers - people tempted to off their spouse for the insurance, kill a co-worker who replaced them on the fast track or the cop who pulled them over?

I know I could coax a lot of people into illegal behavior if given enough time.

I would guess the overwhelming number of people who troll for video or pics do it precisely because they are incapable of the interaction and couldn't execute an actual crime without being told how it will play out, where to go and what to bring.

It's lazy justice.

There, I'm done.

He also recommended this excellent piece by Mark Bowden in Atlantic Monthly about our own Delaware County Crimes Against Children Internet Task Force. Somehow I missed it when it first appeared.

Entrapment has long been a factor in the enforcement of vice laws, which seek to punish behavior that is furtive and widespread. Such ordinances answer society’s quest for moral clarity, positing a direct parallel between right versus wrong and legal versus criminal. Police patrolling the precincts of sin do not often find the streets empty. How are they to tell the difference between the casual sinner and the criminal?

American courts have long recognized the right of police to invent ruses. Sting operations flourish in a climate of fear. Courts and lawmakers become less and less scrupulous about basic fairness. The more frightening and reprehensible the threat, the more license and latitude are given to the police.

For a variety of reasons, few of them valid, the child-molester has become the pre-eminent domestic villain of our time.

Read it all.

Having found that developer Claude de Botton's lawsuit to prevent the development of the Ellis Preserve to be nothing more than a "ruse" to delay a competitor, Delaware County Court Judge Chad Kenny has ordered de Botton to post a bond of $ 1,297,362.60 a month, if he wants to continue his "frivolous" appeals.

Even for a rich guy like Claude, that's a lot of bread.

The order came down yesterday, more to follow.

UPDATE: I've got calls in to Claude's attorney, Jack Nilon and BPG's attorneys Marc Kaplin and Andy Reilly. Gee, I wonder why BPG hired Andy? Not that he isn't an awesome lawyer. Anyway, it's not like Claude didn't hire the Prince of Darkness himself, the brilliant Richard Sprague, to file suit against BPG in Philadelphia. Hopefully, I'll hear from some of them soon.

In the meantime, I did get hold of Steve Spaeder, President of BPG, who said this:

We're very pleased with the decision. It's consistant with what we have believed for a along time and were hopeful that it clears the way on de Booton's other actions against the project so that we can begin the development and (start) to the positive impacts that the community has long expected.

CORRECTION: The monthly bond required is $1,297,362.60, not $1,297,362.06, since corrected. It is based on the yearly cost for the delay as calculated by BPG and divided by 12.

UPDATE II: From Chad Kenney's decision:

NSE's approach in challenging the validity of the PRD Ordinance is therefore both frivolous and cynical.

As to the delay nature of this Appeal, NSE's Appeal is nothing more than a ruse to delay development of the Ellis Preserve Tract project. The principal of NSE, Claude de Botton, has a direct financial interest in delaying the development of the Ellis Preserve Tract. Mr. de Botton also owns a tract of land down the street from the Ellis Preserve Tract that Mr. de Botton seeks to develop as a similar mixed-use town center. It is clear that NSC's continuation of this Appeal is designed to delay the inevitable - a finding that the PRD Ordinance is valid. Therefore, NSE's Appeal is frivolous and done for the purposes of delay.

For some history on the case click here.

I've also placed a call to Newtown Square solicitor Bruce Irvine. I'm hoping to hear back from him too.

UPDATE III: I got a hold of Newtown Square Supervisor Joe Catania, who supported the township's final deal with BPG. He said,

I hope it ends the appeal so the township can stop wasting money on our solicitor litigation fees" to defend the township's zoning ordinance.

We have have costs involved with defending or appearing," Catania said. "Maybe Mr. de Botton is responsible for our fees as well... Now maybe they (BPG) can start building something so we can get the tax revenue. That's what we need."

I also called Supervisor George Wood, an oppponent of the project. Hope to hear back from him too.

Found hiding in the front hall closet of his multi-million dollar New York apartment muttering "I'm the Worst Person in the World."

It's not true, Keith. And someday some form of therapy will bear that out.

I was going to say something about Norwood's tax hike resulting in a $327,000 surplus but Mcgee (in the comments) sez it as good as I could:

" Let me get this straight. I was publicly admonished at November's meeting for not understanding how financial mathematics work by Mr. Fieo.

Now, we (residents of Norwood) have been paying too much in taxes, yet will not see a rebate from the surplus. Instead, ways will be found to spend the money.

My understanding of the taxes being raised last year was this: They were raised to cover a deficit. Therefore, with all other things being equal and the deficit having been covered, why would taxes not return to normal (or near-normal) levels in 2011? According to Mr. Feio, "That's not how it works."

Please, someone tell me; how does it work? We are overtaxed. Many of us are struggling. Some of us are unemployed. To me, this seems much the same as Democratic Taxing and Spending. Is this what we wanted from our Republican leaders, Norwood? "

Bingo! Once they get a hold of your money it's not yours anymore. Once they raise taxes, rolling them back becomes "irresponsible." Perfect!

Rep. Pat Meehan reacts to the President's speech:"

I am encouraged by the President's tone - he spoke of the shared
opportunity to create an environment for a strong economy, find solutions on
health care and cut spending. He rightly places the family at the core of
our purpose and an obligation to address tough issues on behalf of our
children."

"The great challenge is getting beyond the rhetoric to real solutions that
would put more Americans back to work. We must encourage innovation to
maintain our pre-eminent place in the world, but the President's call for
competitive tax rates and a reduction in needless regulation must be genuine
to support it. As with each of his challenges from education to energy, the
devil is in the details. I was disappointed that the President did not say
more about how he proposes to deal with the staggering debt our nation
faces. Our nation's ability to do "big things" will require tough choices.

Fair enough.

Kyle Wingfield asks:

How do you take seriously a speech in which the president says we will spend more money on educating students, rebuilding our infrastructure and funding research for innovation in alternative energy sources — all while saying we’re not going to spend more money?

How do you take seriously a speech in which the only budgetary dollar figure the president gives is a made-up one — a reduction in spending (even as spending is frozen, remember) as compared only to hypothetical future budgets?

How do you take seriously a speech in which the president claims the mantle of fiscal restraint — while essentially bidding to make permanent the supposedly temporary, stimulus-inflated levels of spending we’ve seen the last two years?

More here.

Anthony Diordono is sentenced to 12.5 to 25 years for child porn possession. That's way too long. My print column is up.

Jennifer Rubin watched Rep. Paul Ryan's response to the President's State of the Union, so I didn't have to.

Highlights:

The facts are clear: Since taking office, President Obama has signed into law spending increases of nearly 25 percent for domestic government agencies -- an 84 percent increase when you include the failed stimulus.

All of this new government spending was sold as "investment." Yet after two years, the unemployment rate remains above 9 percent and government has added over $3 trillion to our debt.

Then the President and his party made matters even worse, by creating a new open-ended health-care entitlement.

And:

Whether sold as "stimulus" or repackaged as "investment," their actions show they want a federal government that controls too much, taxes too much and spends too much in order to do too much.

And during the last two years, that is exactly what we have gotten -- along with record deficits and debt -- to the point where the president is now urging Congress to increase the debt limit.

We believe the days of business as usual must come to an end. We hold to a couple of simple convictions: Endless borrowing is not a strategy; spending cuts have to come first.

Here's the full transcript of Ryan's rebuttal.

Why Brett Stephens will miss Keith Olbermann.

Rather, the real threat is Good Morning America-style niceness, USA Today-style consensus-seeking, all-round squeamishness when it comes to words like "Islam," the political masquerade of "news analysis" from papers like the New York Times, and so on. In today's media landscape, audiences are being presented with a choice between voices who are honest (at least about their biases) but not objective, and those who claim to be objective but are rarely honest. Not surprisingly, Americans increasingly prefer the former.

So far, conservatives have gotten the better of liberals in the new media world. But Mr. Olbermann has given conservatives, if not quite a run for their money, at least some honest competition. It'll be a rare person who can match Mr. Olbermann for ego, pomposity, volume, self-righteousness, monomania and sheer obnoxiousness. Should MSNBC ever find that person (and Lawrence O'Donnell he ain't), I'll make a point of tuning in.

Strange impulses you can neither describe nor explain impel you to take your life savings, drive to Vegas, and put it all on red.

That would be strange. Especially, since Harrah's is so much closer.

As President Obama celebrated Roe v. Wade, the day that abortion became a constitutional right in this country, Dr. Kermit Gosnell sat in a jail cell charged with eight counts of murder.

The editors at NRO noticed something interesting:

Gosnell’s Philadelphia clinic’s lack of hygiene is not the detail that has captured the most attention, or inspired the most outrage. It turns out that Gosnell frequently, perhaps hundreds of times, fully delivered intact fetuses and then used scissors on the newborn. In his words, he engaged in “snipping” to “ensure fetal demise.” In many cases, the fetuses were in the third trimester.

This procedure, sometimes called a “live-birth abortion,” is illegal. But not thanks to President Obama. As a state legislator in Illinois, he argued that the law should offer no protection to neonates if they had been delivered before viability. He said that protecting them would violate Roe v. Wade and undermine the right to abortion. What looked like infanticide to most people was for him, it must be inferred, a “private family matter.” When Gosnell applied his scissors to pre-viable children, he was, on Obama’s terms, merely exercising a cherished freedom.

Read the whole thing.

Based on Obama's own logic on the issue, a presidential pardon for Gosnell is in order. Or does the president consider that decision "above my pay grade" too?

Oprah Winfrey has been keeping a "family secret" for months, a "miracle" that "shook her" to her "core," and today on her show she's going to reveal that secret.

It can't be that she has a half-sister she's being reunited with because that's not a "miracle." That's just a cheap ratings grab.

Our prediction: She's pregnant! And it's a miracle because she's 56 years old and never had sex. Can't wait to find out. Can you?

What do you want to hear from the president?

I know what I want to hear:

"On second thought, maybe I should have listened a little less to Nancy Pelosi and a little more to the American people."

Fitness maniac Jack LaLanne died the other day. He was 96. Last year he said dying would ruin his image. He was wrong. His image as an Icon of Exercise endures.

Don't try this at home!

Anyone want to see a movie about Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his abortion house of horror? My print column is up.

This morning I received this e-mail from Msgr. Phil Cribben, Pastor, Saint Anastasia Parish in Newtown Square in response to the column.

Gil,

Congratulations for writing a superb article about Doctor Gosnell! The
timing of this breaking story – the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision
of the Supreme Court - could not be better for the pro life movement nor
worse for the pro choice movement.

While I do not take issue with any comment that you have made in your
article, I think that many film critics have failed to recognize the pro
life argument that is also presented in the film “The Cider House Rules.”

The rules posted inside the house are actually good for the occupants of the
house. The rules are protective of human life: Don’t smoke in bed.
Don’t walk on the roof of the house when you are drinking. Don’t fall
asleep in the hot sun. If you violate these rules, you will be injured or
die; if you keep these rules, you will live.

Furthermore, Homer Wells himself needs to be placed in the pro life camp.
He is repulsed by the abortion work that Doctor Larch does at the orphanage
even though he would allow for abortion in rare cases of incest. With his
symbolic name, *Homer* Wells is presented as a young man who has acquired
the wisdom of the great thinkers from Ancient Greece while becoming as
intellectually deep as the *wells* that supply life-giving waters to the
inhabitants of the earth.

My response can be found below.

Msgr. Cribben,

Thanks for the compliment and the kind note.

You make a good point that the pro-life side of the argument is presented in The Cider House Rules. But while Homer makes the argument, remember, he ultimately changes his mind. He succumbs to Dr. Larch's pro-choice position.

When he takes over for Dr. Larch, he not only accepts the need for abortion, he ends up performing them himself.

The pro-life position is set up to be knocked down by the book's author John Irving. He more or less has said so explicitly in interviews. When he won his Academy Award for Best Screenplay Adaption he thanked Planned Parenthood and NARAL for all their work. He made no secret of his message or intentions. There was no Cider House Rule against abortion EXCEPT in cases of incest. The "rule" was pretty much abortion on demand.

Thanks again for reading and your note.

Cheers,
Gil

Something to do with bringing civility back to the discussion? Who knows. I guess we'll find out soon. No doubt that Olby will be back soon. HBO signed Bill Maher after he was tossed by ABC. So figure someone will give Olbermann a platform for his schtick.

And why not. Idiots need a hero too.

UPDATE: TMZ reports Olby didn't play well with others in the company sandbox. Sounds right.

From the twisted mind of Iowahawk's Dave Burge:

CSI: Tucson

FADE IN. Chaotic supermarket parking lot, strewn with bodies in aftermath of shooting spree. Amid lights and sirens, a bearded man in black windbreaker and sunglasses ducks under the yellow police tape.

COUNTY DEPUTY
Sir -- sir! Please remain behind the cordon. This is an active crime scene investigation.

KRUGMAN (flashes New York Times OpEd badge)
I know. Krugman, CSI. This is my partner Lt. Matthews.

MATTHEWS
Who's in charge here? And where are the donuts?

DEPUTY
He's over there sir -- Sheriff Dupnik. He's in charge of the donuts, too.

Krugman and Matthews cross the parking lot, deftly stepping over sheet-covered corpses

DUPNIK
Krugman. Matthews. I was wondering when you two would get here. We've already booked a perp. Cruller?

MATTHEWS
No thanks, I'll take those two bear claws though.

KRUGMAN
What do you got with white icing? And what do you got on the perp?

DUPNIK
White male, 22, close cropped hair. Goes by the name of ‘Lucidfer Matrix Dreambrain.’ Another typical college Republican.

And just wait until officers Maddow and Olbermann show up. (Special Appearance by Andrew "Womb Hunter" Sullivan.) To dig it all, click here.

Jonah Goldberg has an idea for how President Obama can jumpstart the American economy.
Drill, Baby, Drill!

President Obama is fond of saying that we need to look to China’s example. They’re allegedly leading the way on solar and wind power. Maybe that’s true, though I think there’s a lot of hype there. But okay. What people leave out is that China is hardly curbing its fossil-fuel development.
Why can’t America have a similar do-it-all strategy?

As part of a grand bargain, the president could, in his State of the Union address, propose quintupling the amount of money we spend doing basic research on alternative fuels, the revocation of subsidies for the oil and gas industry, and a hike in the gas tax to pay for that infrastructure bank he wants. Throw in a ban on mountaintop-removal coal mining while he’s at it. All of this in exchange for creating good jobs here at home, lowering energy costs, reducing our reliance on foreign oil, and cutting the deficit.

Sure, the base of the Democratic party and the editorial board of the New York Times would scream bloody murder. But for a guy trying to get reelected, that’s a bonus.

God will appear to you in a dream and tell you that loving you is the part of His job He hates the most.

That's the problem with God, he's so judgemental.

It sure beats leaving office and your state with a $25 billion budget deficit.

More than any other group American blacks are tied to and depend on what Walter Russell Mead calls the "Blue" (liberal, big government) social and political model for advancement. Blacks have disproportionately benefitted from an activist and big spending federal government. The black middleclass has been able to grow so significantly thanks to this old model.

But now that it is about to be jettisoned because we can no longer afford it, it will be middle-class blacks, as a group, who suffer the most.

Mead says a way must be figured out to include blacks into the new opportunity growth model of government. He is quite right about this. To ignore the social and political upheavel that will come of leaving blacks behind is not only wrong, it is stupid. The politicians who get this will be the best ones to lead the country in the future.

Mead's essay can be read here. It's long but thoughtful, well-reasoned and worth the time.

Time for a better Super Bowl ad controvery over abortion rights. Thank you Dr. Mengele, I mean, Gosnell. My print column is up.

UPDATE: Christina Flowers weighs in strongly.

UPDATE II: Will Saletan, a moderate pro-choicer himself, quotes the view of his more radical brothers and sisters.

Last month, two leading reproductive rights activists, Steph Herold and Susan Yanow, published an essay rejecting the concept of time limits.

They write:

Women have no obligation to make a decision as soon as they possibly can. The only obligation women have is to take the time they need to make the decision that is right for them. Don't we believe that women are moral decision makers, and carefully consider their options when faced with an unwanted pregnancy? Don't we reject the anti-choice rhetoric that women make the decision to have an abortion callously? The pro-choice movement takes a step backward when we judge that a woman has taken too long to make what may be a life-changing decision. Shouldn't we want women to take the time they need to make the best decision, regardless of where they are in the pregnancy?

Yes, Yes. Take all the time you need Ms. Lady. That thing making your belly swell is of no more moral consequence than a kumquat.

Unless, of course, YOU decide that it is. Then you can have a BABY.

The power the pro-choice absolutist gives women over their unborn children is akin to that of a master over a slave.

Writes Saletan:

It's one thing to preach these ideas in the lefty blogosphere. It's quite another to see them in practice. That's where Kermit Gosnell, the doctor at the center of the Philadelphia scandal, comes in... Throwing Gosnell in jail won't solve the problem. The women who came to him at 26, 28, or 30 weeks will show up somewhere else. And if you won't say no to them, you will have to say yes.

That is the logic of the pro-choice absolutist.

And so they have not only lost the moral argument they have lost the political argument. Most state now restrict abortion, allowing few if any after 24 weeks. More and more Americans support even greater restrictions than that.

Meanwhile, as Flowers reminds, in New York City some 40 percent of all pregnancies end in abortion.

Pro-choice advocates have always claimed they wanted abortion to be "safe, legal and rare." Well, it is certainly not rare. It's not nearly as safe for the mother as the pro-choice left and government bureaucrats would like the public to think. (Thank you, Dr. Gosnell.) And it is never safe for its living human target.

As for legal, it is becoming less so, as more and more people come to recognize the violence it directs at the most innocent of human beings.

UPDATE II: Michelle Malkin lets loose on the "climate of death" enabled by the abortion industry.

Deadly indifference to protecting life isn’t tangential to the abortion industry’s existence — it’s at the core of it. The Philadelphia Horror is no anomaly. It’s the logical, bloodcurdling consequence of an evil, eugenics-rooted enterprise wrapped in feminist clothing.

UPDATE III/Correction: In my column I wrote that the Family Research Council produced the Tebow Super Bowl ad. It was the group Focus on the Family. Obviously, I regret the error.

[Posted by Jake]

On January 20, 1981, Iran released 52 American hostages. This release took place a mere twenty minutes after the first inauguration of Ronald Reagan. It was only 30 years ago, but the power of Reagan's positive, principled leadership seems far removed from today's executive impotence.

We watch Obama bowing once again, this time to a Chinese despot, furthering his weak foreign policy doctrine of expedience and accommodation. Or suffer through Obama's world apology tour, expressing regret for the ideals that have been the greatest force for good in the history of mankind.

I can't wait for the day when the Washington swamp once again aspires to be Reagan's "shining city on the hill".

Reading woman walks while texting. Falls into fountain. Sues mall because security guards laughed at her.

Hahahahahahahahahaa!

For Christmas my son Jake gave me a "The Onion" desk calendar. It includes a daily Horoscope reading. For instance, on Monday my horoscope was:

Beneath your tough exterior lies a sweet and senstive human being. Beneath that, however, it's pretty much all tumors.

So that explains the pain in my back.

But I don't believe these horoscopes are very accurate. On Tuesday, mine said:

Cigarettes will continue to take a toll on your health this week when you're traded back and forth for packs of them.

As far as I know that never happened, unless I'm in some Fantasy Prison Football League that I don't even know about.

Philadelphia's premier late-term abortionist has been put out of business.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, faces eight counts of murder in the deaths of a woman following a botched abortion at his office, along with the deaths of seven other babies who, prosecutors allege, were born alive following illegal late-term abortions and then were killed by severing their spinal cords with a pair of scissors.

“I am aware that abortion is a hot-button topic,” said District Attorney Seth Williams. “But as district attorney, my job is to carry out the law. A doctor who knowingly and systematically mistreats female patients, to the point that one of them dies in his so-called care, commits murder under the law. A doctor who cuts into the necks severing the spinal cords of living, breathing babies, who would survive with proper medical attention, is committing murder under the law.”

If it had been up to some people, it wouldn't be murder under the law to kill babies in such a fashion. As long as the "doctor" didn't allow the victim's head to slip out of the birth canal, attacking it with a pair of scissors was perfectly legal up until a few years ago. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum led the fight to outlaw these partial-birth abortions. He was well hated for it by feminists and pro-choice groups. No good deed goes unpunished.

In one year, Gosnell made $1.8 million plying his trade. Some bad deeds go unpunished too. Maybe not Dr. Gosnell's.

George Will explains why former Harvard President and Obama Administration econ advisor Larry Summers is a dunce. Well, maybe not a dunce but worse. A smart guy who has it all wrong about giving the federal government more money to do more stuff.

The idea that America's problem of governance is one of inadequate resources misses this lesson of the last half-century: No amount of resources can prevent government from performing poorly when it tries to perform too many tasks, or particular tasks for which it is inherently unsuited.

Read it all.

Tanned, hungover and with a pulled muscle in my back. I see they caught the Kensington Strangler while I was out of the country. That's nice.

Leaving the liberal plantation...



UPDATE: T.A. Frank at the New Republic explains how and why the media got the narrative so wrong.

But sometimes the shortcuts produce a journalistic stampede at the worst possible time. That’s what happened last weekend, when 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner shot six people to death at an Arizona Safeway and gravely wounded many more, including Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The dominant storyline in the press—one that persisted in the face of all the facts—was that right-wing hysteria and lunacy had given rise to Loughner’s atrocity. Only on Wednesday night, when President Obama delivered a speech that effectively told everyone to cut it out, was the stampede halted (one hopes). But it’s still worth reviewing how the nation’s leading periodicals descended into such mindlessness.

Read the whole thing.

Now that the whole “blame the tea party and Sarah Palin” effort has been thoroughly discredited and lip service has been paid to the “let’s tone down the political rhetoric and all play nice” idea, it’s time to consider some truly salient issues raised by the massacre in Tucson.

My print column is up.

In the meantime, left-winger Joe Conason comes late to the liberal effort to blame his conservative enemies for the "toxic environment" that encourages the "crazies" to act violently.

There is still no evidence that Jared Loughner acted out of any conservative political motive. All the evidence points to a lone madman in the grips of mental illness. The effort to slander and put blood on the hands of Palin, Beck and Limbaugh, has been repudiated, even by a fair number of liberals.

But rabidly partisan progressives like Conason are counting on a strategy of telling a lie often and long enough that it becomes accepted as common knowledge. Such behavior does not detract from the poisonous atmosphere they claim is so dangerous and that they pretend to be so concerned about.

When Conason's fellow liberal Jonathan Chait found that intellectual honesty required him to defend Sarah Palin from the smears being hurled at her, he was chided by one of his readers:

Good lord, Jon! Who cares if it's intellectually dishonest to attack her and pin this on her... If you're trying to argue that this won't work, then you're wrong... Most Americans will buy these attacks on Palin, by the way, regardless of the facts. Why? Because they don't like her."

That's Conason's strategy, in a nutshell. Honesty be damned.

On Wednesday night, President Obama avoided such partisan lies and attacks. He counseled against them, and in so doing rose to the occasion for which he went to Arizona; to mourn the dead, pray for the wounded and grieve with their families. Too many people in the crowed treated the occasion like a pep rally, whooping and cheering at inappropriate times. But that wasn't the President's fault. His speech was dignified, moving, statesman-like and honest.

The next night, liberal rabble rousers, like Chris Matthews, were at it again. After pretending to be outraged and disgusted by Sarah Palin's use of the phrase "blood libel" the night before, he explicitly refused to guided by the decency expressed by the man who once put "a thrill up his leg."

He's got his job to do, Matthews told Pat Buchanan, and I've got mine.

Apparently, he sees his job to be the same as Joe Conason, Paul Krugman, and Chait's reader, fire up the base, use the tragedy to score partisan political points, and to hell with reason, fairness, decency and the truth.

Dan Henninger explains why some of the most strident and influential members of the American left attempted to blame tea partiers and Sarah Palin for the Tucson massacre.

They (Democrats and liberals) expected to take losses in November. What they got instead was Armageddon. Suddenly an authentic reform movement, linked to the Republican Party, whose goal simply is to stop the public spending curve, had come to life. This poses a mortal threat to the financial oxygen in the economic ecosystem that the public wing of the Democratic Party has inhabited all these years.

The stakes for the American left in 2012 couldn't possibly be higher. If then, and again in 2014, progressives can't pull toward their candidates some percentage of the independent voters who in November abandoned the Democratic Party, they could be looking in from the outside for as many years as some of them have left to write about politics. A wilderness is a terrible place to be.

And so driven in part by their own fears and the belief that they are justified in fighting the opposition by any means necessary, they quickly saw Tucson as a political opportunity. That effort has backfired badly.

Other liberals who saw that this effort was a bad move and immediately said so. They are eliciting some very telling comments.

In defending Palin from nonsensical and overwrought attacks, Jonathan "Lord Help Me, I'm Defending Palin" Chait, received this comment on is blog:

Good lord, Jon! Who cares if it's intellectually dishonest to attack her and pin this on her. I admire your honestly and lack of cynicism here, but the teaparty has crossed the line of good taste in their vile and violence-laced attacks and rhetoric aimed towards politicians in BOTH PARTIES. I should think that all elites would agree that they deserve this and that this will calm them down and reinforce the temporarily forgotten social norm that over the top rhetoric is inappropriate.

If you're trying to argue that this won't work, then you're wrong. John Boehner has every incentive in the world to quiet these nuts down before a presidential election. Their usefulness is limited to base turnout elections (midterms).

Most Americans will buy these attacks on Palin, by the way, regardless of the facts. Why? Because they don't like her.

Who cares if it's "intellectually dishonest"? And this from somebody who claims to be a "Virginia Centrist."

It doesn't get any more cynical than that.

In fact, it kind of reminds me of Spencer Ackerman's infamous suggestion on the now defunct Journ-o-list to call some conservative commentator a racist for political advantage.

"If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them—Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares—and call them racists. . . . This makes them 'sputter' with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction."

This is what happened to some on the left when they attempted to blame their opponents for the Tucson shootings. It led them to sputtering, overreacting and self-destructing.

... and Our President rises to the occasion

As Scripture tells us:

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.

As for 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green...

Christina was given to us on September 11th, 2001, one of 50 babies born that day to be pictured in a book called “Faces of Hope.” On either side of her photo in that book were simple wishes for a child’s life. “I hope you help those in need,” read one. “I hope you know all of the words to the National Anthem and sing it with your hand over your heart. I hope you jump in rain puddles.”

If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today. And here on Earth, we place our hands over our hearts, and commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of her gentle, happy spirit.

May God bless and keep those we’ve lost in restful and eternal peace. May He love and watch over the survivors. And may He bless the United States of America.

Pretty good stuff.

And what would we do without Jesse Jackson weighing in on the Tucson shootings.

Leave it to Rev. Jackson to equate what happened in Arizona to what happened to black people in the Alabama under the governorship of George Wallace.

Wallace was a Democrat, a segregationist, and a bigot. He was called as much at time and he became the target of a madman named Arthur Bremer. An assassination attempt left Wallace paralyzed for the rest of his life.

Bremer's original target had been President Richard Nixon, but it turned out that Wallace was more accessible.

I don't recall Republicans or Democrats at the time accusing civil rights activists of having created a "climate of hate" that incited Bremer to attempted murder. I don't recall anyone suggesting violent political rhetoric and imagery led to the attack on Wallace in 1972. Seems to me a lot of people, suggested at the time, that Wallace got what he deserved. Talk about a climate of hate.

In an excellent piece, Pete Wehner takes down Mark Halperin for his comments on MSNBC's Morning Joe yesterday. Host Scarborough countered Halperin but not as effectively as Wehner.

Today, however, Scarborough dropped the ball. He fell for a Krugman claim that Republican Michele Bachmann was part of the "climate of hate" for having told her constituents last year to be "armed and dangerous." Scarborough threw the quote at the Minesota Gov. (and possible GOP presidential candidate) Tim Pawlenty as something that was really beyond the pale. Caught unawares Pawlenty dodged the question.

Over at Powerline, John Hinderaker points out that the quote was ripped out of an radio interview he did with Bachmann. (He even provides the audio of the interview.)

For the record, here is what Michele said: "I'm going to have materials for people when they leave. I want people armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax, because we need to fight back." Yes, that's right: she wanted Minnesotans to be armed with "materials"--facts and arguments--not guns. If this is the best example of "eliminationist rhetoric" that the far left can come up with, you can see how absurdly weak the claims of Krugman and his fellow haters are.

Too bad neither Scarborough nor Pawlenty read the Powerline piece. Hopefully, someone will point out Joe's mistake to him and he'll correct it tomorrow.

UPDATE: James Taranto is on to this too.

David Harsyani knows a set up when he sees one.

But this impending conversation about civility and our climate of hate is not only a useless one but also meant to discourage dissent. It is a rigged talk because not only do we -- by any standard and context available -- reside in a highly civil and peaceful political system but also violence is almost nonexistent. The tea partyers didn't pick up pitchforks and storm the White House; they knocked off Republicans in primaries.

Driving to work the other day, I saw a bumper sticker on the back of a old red Taurus station wagon that said:

The True Revolutionary is Guided By Feelings of Love.

The quote is attributed to Che Guevara and the bumper sticker contained his iconic image. So loving was Che that personally executed 180 people while attempting to spread the "love" that was the ideology of communism.

Che was an international terrorist and a mass murderer but that hasn't prevented him from being lionized by the left as a romantic and misunderstood hero to the cause of social justice.

Of course, I can't possibly know the exact message of what the owner of the red Taurus was trying to convey to his fellow motorists. Was he or she being ironic? Or does the car's owner actually believe it was "feelings of love" that drove Che, Castro, Lenin, and Mohammed Atta to act as they did.

I don't know. For all I know the sticker was put on there by a vandal and the owner of the car just hasn't scraped it off yet.

What I would not assume or suggest is that the owner of the car was guilty of contributing to the "climate of hate" that caused the shooting spree in Arizona.

As for the "climate of love" created in Cuba and other lands by the revolutionary spirit of Che, Castro and others, I'll take those who hate it over those who defend it, every time.

Within two hours of the reporting of the Arizona shooting spree, while the victims were still bleeding, suffering and dying, a surprising number of political bloggers and commentators leaped on to the Internet to attribute blame for the crime.

Before the identity of the suspect was known, before any law- enforcement agent or agency made a statement concerning a possible motive for the attack, these learned men and women were typing away.

A moderate Democratic congresswoman had been shot at a “meet and greet” in front of a Tucson supermarket — a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl were among the dead — and the culprit, according to these people, was America’s “climate of hate,” as created by the Grand Old Party.

These brilliant and allegedly thoughtful men and women saw the carnage, put two and two together and got Sarah Palin.

My print column is up.

Worst-First thinking is turning America and the Western world in to a worse and, in some cases, more dangerous place.

"Treating all men as potential predators doesn't make our kids safer," says Leonore Skenazy.

Last week, the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, Timothy Murray, noticed smoke coming out of a minivan in his hometown of Worcester. He raced over and pulled out two small children, moments before the van's tire exploded into flames. At which point, according to the AP account, the kids' grandmother, who had been driving, nearly punched our hero in the face.

Why?

Mr. Murray said she told him she thought he might be a kidnapper.

And so it goes these days, when almost any man who has anything to do with a child can find himself suspected of being a creep. I call it "Worst-First" thinking: Gripped by pedophile panic, we jump to the very worst, even least likely, conclusion first. Then we congratulate ourselves for being so vigilant.

Read it all.

Holman Jenkins on Ray LaHood's misguided campaign for stricter laws against "distracted driving."

He calls it a deadly "epidemic" on the highways, but once again he is spreading darkness as much as light. No less a harridan for safety than the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has dubbed his campaign misguided. The group's own studies show that the numerous laws enacted around the country to ban or restrict cellphone use have produced no impact on accident rates. Even where phone use has measurably declined, crashes haven't.

Read it all.

I wrote about this last year. If politicians are going to pass laws against driving while cell phoning they should at least pass one that actually works, don't you think?

Glenn Reynolds points out the indecency of the left's attempt to blame Sarah Palin and the Tea Partiers for Saturday's massacre in Arizona.

To be clear, if you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a) asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?

I understand the desperation that Democrats must feel after taking a historic beating in the midterm elections and seeing the popularity of ObamaCare plummet while voters flee the party in droves. But those who purport to care about the health of our political community demonstrate precious little actual concern for America's political well-being when they seize on any pretext, however flimsy, to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.

Where is the decency in that?

Good question.

UPDATE: Now, it is being suggested that it was the suspect's interest in the occult that may have driven him to this murder spree. As the search for Jared Loughner's motivations continues, the families of the dead will bury their loved ones and the wounded will struggle to recover, maybe for the rest of their lives.

My own sense is that Loughner was so debilitated by mental illness that his victims were almost random. Not that he didn't plan the shooting. Unstable for months, he appparently fixated at some point on Gabby Giffords. But he could just as easily have fixated his attentions on some other high profile or famous person. Giffords accessibility at just the right time made her and the people around her targets for destruction.

A little like the Travis Bickle character in Taxi Driver. Although that movie dealt far too unrealistically with mental illness, the target of his rage went from being a presidential candidate to a low-life pimp. Instead of being villified, he was deemed a hero, at least that was the silly conceit of Martin Scorcese's film.

The attempts to pigeon hole Loughner into being driven to murder by overheated political rhetoric range from ignorant to despicable. The most famous and influential person leading that charge was, and is, the New York Times' Paul Krugman.

Within hours of the tragedy Krugman blamed the attack on the climate of hate created by right-wing activists. In typical fashion he doubles down on that theory here.

The point is that there’s room in a democracy for people who ridicule and denounce those who disagree with them; there isn’t any place for eliminationist rhetoric, for suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary.

And it’s the saturation of our political discourse — and especially our airwaves — with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence.

Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

This is nonsense. There are plenty of examples of the same sort of martial talk coming from the left, as Glen Reynolds points out above. During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama said right here in Philadelphia "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

No reasonable person managed to confuse Obama's theft of a quote from "The Untouchables" with a call for his supporters to get guns and actually shoot Republicans. The hypocrisy of leftists like Krugman on this issue would be jaw-dropping if it wasn't so common.

Was it right-wing "eliminationist" rhetoric that led to the assassinations of RFK and John Lennon? Did it lead to the attempts against Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, George Wallace, et al.? The ignorance of history and/or cynicism being displayed by the left is simply appalling.

There is not a scintilla of evidence that Loughner was driven to murder because he was a Sarah Palin fan.

What Krugman and his ilk are up to here is beyond slimy. They are being called on it. And they should be.

U)DATE II: As I said, they're being called on it.

The much publicized complaint against District Justice McCray is lame in the exteme and does not credit to the cops and politicians who made it. My print column is up.

The shooting spree that killed a federal judge named John Roll, a 9-year-old girl, four others, and seriously injured Congresswoman Gabby Giffords is a national tragedy.

The motive of the shooter, apparently a 22-year-old screwball named Jared Loughner, will be interesting to try to discern. But all indications are he is a deranged individual acting alone and that's it.

Efforts by to politicize this by partisan activists from either side are pathetic and just awful.

Voters willing to identify themsleves as Democrats down five percent.

(CNN) – The number of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats is at its lowest point in seven years, according to a new survey by Gallup - a warning sign for the president and his party as the next race for the White House gets set to begin.

Democrats are not only losing Independents. They're losing Democrats. Heck of a job, Nancy! Heck of a job, Harry. Heck of a job, Barry.

UPDATE: Then there's this too:

By any standard, white voters’ rejection of Democrats in November’s elections was daunting and even historic.

Fully 60 percent of whites nationwide backed Republican candidates for the House of Representatives; only 37 percent supported Democrats, according to the National Election Poll exit poll conducted by Edison Research. Not even in Republicans’ 1994 congressional landslide did they win that high a percentage of the white vote.

Maybe liberals and Democratic leaders can guilt these voters into coming back into the fold by calling them racists. But I doubt it.

John Bussey charmingly observes that the "new normal" is really "old hat" to guys like his 91-year-old father.

Read it all.

Ummm. And nice hat, Nick.

Ultimate Fighter Jacob Volkmann was paid a visit by the Secret Service for saying he'd like to fight the President of the United States because he thinks he's an "idiot."

After defeating McKee, Volkmann was asked who he would like to fight next. Volkmann first requested Clay Guida, then said “Actually, Obama. He’s not too bright … Someone needs to knock some sense into that idiot. I just don’t like what Barack is doing.”

A few days later, government agents showed up at Volkmann's gym to make sure he wasn't serious about doing harm to the leader of the free world.

It amazing that's all it takes to warrant a visit from the SS. And it will be more amazing still if the president isn't innunated with more fight offers in the coming months, if only to get free publicity for the challengers.

I missed this piece about Tiger Woods and why he will NOT break Jack Nicklaus' record for major championships.

I found it quite convincing. But then I find just about everything Charles Murray writes convincing. (I especially liked the caveat under the headline "Why Tiger Won't Catch Jack" at the beginning in which Murray says:

I know, I know: This essay guarantees that Tiger Woods will win the PGA Championship in a few weeks and win all four major golf championships next year. But even if he does, he shouldn’t have, in theory, which is the most important thing. Here’s why:

He sums it up thusly:

The combination of qualities that enabled Nicklaus to win 18 majors and has enabled Woods to win 14 is freakish. To take just one example, Woods has an astonishing record of sinking difficult putts at critical moments, including on the final hole with victory at stake. That’s not just a matter of reading the greens accurately and having a good putting stroke. It’s a product of a mental state that the rest of us can barely imagine, the product of a Chinese puzzle of psychological strengths—including, one sometimes suspects, telekinesis.

The role of those psychological strengths is why so much of the commentary about Woods’s play since he returned is beside the point. The commentators focus on whether his component skills are returning to their pre-scandal levels. He can return to precisely the same place on the bell curves of the component skills that he occupied before the meltdown in his personal life, but the package will not be the same. Tiger Woods has experienced a sort of concussion to that Chinese puzzle of psychological strengths, and there must be some residual damage that won’t ever go away.

The long-term effects can be quite small. When we are talking about the extremes of human accomplishment, there is no wiggle room. The package changed at all is no longer at the one-in-many-millions extreme that is required. Woods will still be a sensational golfer, winning a lot of tournaments and probably a few more majors. But to predict that Woods can win five majors between now and the end of his career—something that only 17 other golfers have done in their entire careers—assumes that nothing in the last year has significantly degraded the freakish combination required for extreme accomplishment. I find that assumption untenable.

Well, we know Tiger didn't win the PGA last year. So for Murray's theory, so far so good.

John Kass gets off a peach of a column about the "Chicago way" and its grip on our young president.

They seem quite desperate to paint the Billy appointment as something it is not. They want it to be a symbolic move, one of Daley bringing Obama closer to the political center.

It's a neat construction, quite explainable and reasonable, the kind of thing spinners put together and feed feeble-minded reporters on background, so that a favorable consensus may be reached.

And once a consensus is reached, those who adopt it become zealots intent on hunting down the stray heretics.

"Using Chicago's early history as bare-knuckled politics and back-room dealmaking is a favored tactic among those outside the region seeking to tarnish the reputations of local Illinois political leaders who rise to the national stage," admonished the Christian Science Monitor, offering up my column as evidence of such heresy.

Early history? You mean like Thursday, when the federal grand jury indicted the former business partner of the mayor's son over that city sewer contract deal?

Dahlia Lithwick points out the reading of the U.S. Consitution on the House floor yesterday is no so significant for what GOP leaders wanted to leave in but what they wanted to leave out.

The House's public reading of the Constitution today opened with a brief but meaningful hiccup. When it became clear that the Constitution would be read in its "most modern, amended form" (i.e., without references to portions that had been superseded by later amendments, including the explicit language in Article 1 that classified slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of congressional apportionment and taxation), several House Democrats raised objections to what was—quite literally—a constitutional whitewash.

She's right. There's no good excuse for that. And especially because it shows that the constitution can be changed (amended, which it was) and improved to help us form a more perfect union.

It took a civil war and several constitutional amendments to recognize the God-given rights of all Americans. It was not changed by the legal whims of liberal judges, but by a democratic process set up by the constitution itself.

Still, many liberals remain frustrated by the restraints the constitution puts on progressive government to the point where they simply ignore that such restraints exist. Today's great political argument is over the size and scope of government. The constitution was clearly meant to limit the power of the federal government to impose its will over The People by legislation, regulation and threat of force. That is what makes it the force for the conservative movement that it is today.

In the last two years, under a Democratic president, House and Senate, the federal government was never busier, bigger or more intrusive in the lives of the American people. November's election was a rebuke to all that heavy-handed, process and constitution-be-damned progressivism. It was about time.