Warning: Partisan Rant Follows:

I have suspected for a long time that NY Sen. Charles Schumer is really the one in charge in the Senate.

To me he’s an obnoxious partisan to the point of nothing I have ever seen recently.

Today he is quoted as saying the following:

New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a powerful member of the Democratic leadership, said Friday the Senate should not confirm another U.S. Supreme Court nominee under President Bush “except in extraordinary circumstances.”

“We should reverse the presumption of confirmation,” Schumer told the American Constitution Society convention in Washington. “The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts, or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.”

Senators were too quick to accept the nominees’ word that they would respect legal precedents, and “too easily impressed with the charm of Roberts and the erudition of Alito,” Schumer said.

“There is no doubt that we were hoodwinked,” said Schumer, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

A White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said Schumer’s comments show “a tremendous disrespect for the Constitution” by suggesting that the Senate not confirm nominees.

“This is the kind of blind obstruction that people have come to expect from Sen. Schumer,” Perino said. “He has an alarming habit of attacking people whose character and position make them unwilling or unable to respond. That is the sign of a bully. If the past is any indication, I would bet that we would see a Democratic senatorial fundraising appeal in the next few days.”

It’s all about the party’s agenda and to heck with the constitution, isn’t it, Senator Schumer?

We want justices who will go to foreign countries’ law to decide law in this country rather than rely on the document that has kept us strong all these years, don’t we, Senator Schumer?

We want justices who will make law out of whole-cloth and proclaim it constitutional, don’t we Senator Schumer?

We want justices who will say the right to privacy is a constitutional guarantee someone can abort a baby for any or no reason, don’t we, Senator Schumer?

And last but not least, we want candidates for Supreme Court justices to testify as Ruth Bader Ginsburg did to the Senate, stating how she would rule in hypothetical cases, don’t we, Senator Schumer? In those days someone declared well-qualified by the ABA was all it took to be confirmed.

And I want to see you knocked down from your pedestal upon which you put yourself, Senator Schumer. I hope to live long enough to see that day. Yours is the face of the problems we are having in government right now, Sir, and you’re proud of it.

Sorry for the quick post but did not want to let this go without mention. Michael Totten is now reporting from Iraq while embedded with a unit in Baghdad.

This was a fascinating read and loaded with terrific pictures.

I found this paragraph and much of the article to be good news..I hope this trend is repeated in other areas of the country.

This was all purely defensive. The battalion I’m embedded with here in Baghdad hasn’t suffered a single casualty – not even one soldier wounded – since they arrived in the Red Zone in January. The surge in this part of the city could not possibly be going better than it already is. Most of Graya’at’s insurgents and terrorists who haven’t yet fled are either captured, dormant, or dead.

Do they even care.
I don’t know what else to say. While our men are dying on their streets, they are showing a complete lack of urgency.
This isn’t a post against the war.

Missing from Thursday’s session of the Iraqi parliament were about half of the members, including the speaker, the former speaker and two former prime ministers.

Also missing: a sense of urgency.

American officials have been pressing Iraqi leaders to prove their commitment to ending sectarian strife by enacting landmark legislation before mid-September, when the Bush administration is to present its next report on Iraq to Congress.

But even as parliament’s monthlong August break approaches, key issues aren’t being discussed. Quorums are marginal, or fleeting.

Despite the high stakes here, the Iraqi parliament appears to be deliberating at a pace to rival plodding legislative bodies around the world.

Thursday’s session, the 50th of the year, convened half an hour late.

A bell rang in the Convention Center in the fortified Green Zone reminding members to take their seats and raise their hands for roll call (the electronic system is broken). It showed 145 in attendance. That dropped to 137 as some members walked out after the first vote. The speaker on occasion has dismissed parliament for falling below the quorum of 100 legislators, but on Thursday, they proceeded. The opening Muslim prayer and 275-name roll call took half an hour, a quarter of the time, in what turned out to be a roughly two-hour session.

Those present circulated an agenda of 11 items, none related to the legislation Washington has been demanding, including laws concerning oil investment and revenue-sharing between regions, reintegrating former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime into government, disarming militias and holding provincial elections. Some members say the modest agendas at recent meetings are a symptom of parliament’s inability to overcome sectarian divisions and cobble together the two-thirds majority needed to pass major legislation.

“There’s a deficit in our performance, both in quantity and quality, especially when it comes to [passing] legislation. The fact of the matter is our will is big, but our action is too little,” said Saleem Abdullah, a member of the Sunni Tawafiq parliamentary bloc who missed Thursday’s session due to other official business. “It will affect the [American] view of the success of the political process in Iraq.

“It will show there haven’t been any achievements in the political process.”

Story

By now everyone knows Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are still arguing over an answer given in the YouTube debate on Monday night.

The question was: “Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea?”

Charles Krauthammer, conservative columnist says this plays to Senator Clinton’s strength in her answer, showing she has a better understanding of world affairs than Sen. Obama.

“I would,” responded Obama.

His explanation dug him even deeper: “The notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous.”

From the Nation’s David Corn to super-blogger Mickey Kaus, a near-audible gasp. For Hillary Clinton, next in line at the debate, an unmissable opportunity. She pounced: “I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year.” And she proceeded to give the reasons any graduate student could tick off: You don’t want to be used for their propaganda. You need to know their intentions. Such meetings can make the situation worse.

Just to make sure no one missed how the grizzled veteran showed up the clueless rookie, the next day Clinton told the Quad-City Times of Davenport, Iowa, that Obama’s comment “was irresponsible and frankly naive.”

Obama enthusiasts might want to write this off as a solitary slip. Except that this was the second time. The first occurred in another unscripted moment. During the April 26 South Carolina debate, Brian Williams asked what kind of change in the U.S. military posture abroad Obama would order in response to a hypothetical al-Qaeda strike on two American cities.

Obama’s answer: “Well, the first thing we’d have to do is make sure that we’ve got an effective emergency response — something that this administration failed to do when we had a hurricane in New Orleans.”

Asked to be commander in chief, Obama could only play first-responder in chief. Caught off guard, and without his advisers, he simply slipped into two automatic talking points: emergency response and its corollary — the obligatory Katrina Bush-bash.

When the same question came to Clinton, she again pounced: “I think a president must move as swiftly as is prudent to retaliate.” Retaliatory attack did not come up in Obama’s 200-word meander into multilateralism and intelligence gathering.

He gives the win to Sen. Clinton

E.J. Dionne, Jr. writes about the same exchange and comes to a different conclusion. (more…)

That’s what usually happens when all you care about is the bottom line. I could be wrong but what else could explain it. Companies just don’t like to be regulated. I wonder who funds the political careers of people in Washington? Better yet, I wonder who they go to work for after leaving political office?

The Consumer Product Safety Commission could soon shrink to the point where it can’t effectively protect the public, veteran Commissioner Thomas Moore says.
Many employees at the agency responsible for overseeing the safety of many thousands of consumer products are looking for other jobs because “they have no confidence the agency will continue to exist — or will exist in any meaningful form,” Moore said in a statement Thursday.

“The commission can either continue to decline in staff, resources and stature to the point where it is no longer an effective force in consumer protection,” said Moore, “or with the support of Congress it can regain the important place in American society it was originally designed to have.”

The number of full-time staffers has shrunk to about 400, less than half the size of the staff in 1980. Complaints from business leadership about the agency created in the early 1970s resulted in the staff being sharply cut during the Reagan administration, and staff size has continued to shrink. The Consumer Product Safety Act was amended to prohibit mandatory safety standards if a voluntary standard would eliminate or significantly reduce the risk of injury.

The safety commission usually negotiates voluntary recalls of unsafe products because a voluntary agreement is considered a faster way to get a product off the shelves. If a company refuses to recall a product, the agency’s commission has the authority to order a recall.

But such actions can be lengthy as they work their way through the legal system. The commission can also assess civil penalties on companies for failure to report possible problems and can set product standards.

Democrats in Congress have introduced legislation to increase funding and staffing for the agency as well as enhance its powers.

Moore, who was appointed to the commission by President Clinton more than 12 years ago, said he was pleased that Acting Commission Chairwoman Nancy Nord, an appointee of President Bush, is also in favor of modernizing the laws relating to the commission.

“This should send a really positive message to the public and to the safety community that this is a commission that can work together,” said commission spokeswoman Julie Vallese.

Story

Trying to figure out the Arab mind is like trying to figure out how God came about. I can’t fathom either, although I know God just always was and is.

I read this New York Times piece and I honestly can’t tell who’s telling the truth and who isn’t.

During a high-level meeting in Riyadh in January, Saudi officials confronted a top American envoy with documents that seemed to suggest that Iraq’s prime minister could not be trusted.

One purported to be an early alert from the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr warning him to lie low during the coming American troop increase, which was aimed in part at Mr. Sadr’s militia. Another document purported to offer proof that Mr. Maliki was an agent of Iran.

The American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, immediately protested to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, contending that the documents were forged. But, said administration officials who provided an account of the exchange, the Saudis remained skeptical, adding to the deep rift between America’s most powerful Sunni Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, and its Shiite-run neighbor, Iraq.

Now, Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they say has been Saudi Arabia’s counterproductive role in the Iraq war. They say that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian agent, the Saudis have offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.

One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that Saudi Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr. Maliki. He declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni insurgents because, he said, “That would get into disagreements over who is an insurgent and who is not.”

The Saudis are Sunni and Maliki and the Iranians are Shiites.

We know Maliki was aligned with al Sadr and that al Sadr hides out in Iran when things get too hot for him in Iraq. We also know Maliki is trying to paint a rosy picture of any meetings between the U.S. and Iran that discuss the future of Iraq.

On the other hand we know the Saudis have said if we leave Iraq they will supply weapons and support to the minority Sunnis in that country. We also know the Al Qaeda terrorists who attacked our country on 9/11 were almost all Saudis, if not all Saudis.

When you start dickering with these Bedouin-type people, who are so very tribal in everything including the sect of their religion, you realize you are dealing with people who will lie right to your face and do it in a way you believe them.

They will smile to your face while picking your pocket or turning a knife in your back, so reading this story just tells me what I already knew: You can’t trust these people.

Lying and deception are a part of their cultures and they have been since the beginning of time.

If I were about to be killed I would not want either one to be on my side as he would just as likely kill me as the next guy.

I’ll take the Israeli. He has more integrity.

This is an interesting article, though, especially if you look at it as a people who will deceive the devil himself if they thought they could get away with it.

We simply can’t trust the Shiites or the Sunnis to give us the unvarnished truth that we would stake our lives on their word.

AJ Strata hit the nail on the head today with this post. I was particularly impressed with this paragraph:

Most people are quite moderate in their views and open to discussion. I can force some banter through persistence, but it does take work. There are the exceptions, those very vocal. But they tend to be at the extreme ends of the political spectrum. One of the folks I work with just goes off on a liberal tirade against Bush whenever politics comes up - and trust me I like this guy a lot. He is great to work with. But it does seem the intensity of the fringes is muting the voices of the moderates left of center, center and right of center. This is not good for this nation. We need to discuss the issues and resolve a path forward. We need the debate.

One of the many reasons I agreed to write here at J’s was the philosophy she laid out from the very beginning. We would respect the views of those on the right, in the center and on the left and while we might not always agree, we could walk away friends feeling we learned something from civil discussion. Unfortunately, this is something we see very little of whether it be in the press, the blogs or the various mediums of the media.

AJ closes with the following words:

We need to take the time to open up America. And we need to respect the differing views. No more “RINOs”. No more “rightwing”. Because when we do not use our freedom of speech the right way, we end up on a path where we may lose it all together. Showing respect might be hard for some, but it is something we should be doing more of.

Check out the comments under this post while you are there. It seems there are many of us who are feeling the same way these days. Let’s hope it is us who win this battle and not those who do no more than demean and belittle.

Sometimes the appearance of corruption is as bad as being involved in it. I’m glad that Sen. Murkowski is going to sell the property back.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said that she and her husband will sell back their Kenai riverfront property to Anchorage businessman Bob Penney.

Murkowski announced the give back a day after a Washington watchdog group filed a 15-page Senate ethics complaint against her, alleging that Penney sold the property well below market value. The transaction amounted to an illegal gift worth between $70,000 and $170,000, depending on how the property was valued, according to the complaint by the National Legal and Policy Center.

Murkowski told reporters in her office Thursday that Penney, a real estate developer who does business in Alaska and Outside, has agreed to buy back the property for the $179,400 purchase price she and husband Verne Martell paid Dec. 22, 2006.

“While Verne and I intended to make this our family home and we paid a fair price for this land, no property is worth compromising the trust of the Alaska people,” Murkowski said in a written statement. “I cannot allow this to become a distraction from the major challenges faced in representing Alaska. So we have decided to sell this property back to Bob Penney at the same price for which it was purchased.”

Murkowski said it was a heart-wrenching decision, because she and her husband and two sons - all avid fishermen — have long sought a place on the Kenai River. “My family is amazing, and they make incredible sacrifices for me,” Murkowski said. “For them to be living in Washington D.C. for nine months out of the year, working here, going to school here, and giving up Alaska is a huge sacrifice. We want to be able to have our place back home, in Alaska. And that’s what this was all about, it was nothing nefarious or underhanded or improper.”

Story

I must say it takes a lot to surprise me but this was totally shocking. Actually I used to watch it until I found out they voted Republican.

It was a moral quagmire no 10-year-old should be tortured by: On Thursdays at 8 o’clock, I could either pedal up Canyon Road to my Awana Club meeting, memorizing Bible verses for the chance to fasten a new pin on my vest, or stay home and watch “The Simpsons.”

Most weeks I chose eternal damnation.

In 1990, “The Simpsons” — once crude drawings on the “The Tracey Ullman Show” and now rude heroes for the nation’s youth — were borderline heretical.

In 1992, at the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters association, former President George H.W. Bush famously vetoed the show: “We seek a nation that is closer to ‘The Waltons’ than to ‘The Simpsons.’”

When the show first debuted, the “moral majority” folks felt Fox was marketing bad manners to kids (“The Simpsons” reportedly sold 1 million T-shirts per week at the height of Bartmania). This was before “Adult Swim” and cartoons for grown-ups.

Nearly one-third of “The Simpsons’” adult audience describe themselves as conservative, according to the Simmons Research National Consumer Study conducted in fall 2006.

Of respondents who had viewed the show in the last week, about 34 percent said they were “any conservative,” compared to about 42 percent of average American adults who’d describe themselves the same way.

Conservative columnists have lauded Homer has a hero, and GOP strategists discovered that the show does well among young Republican male viewers. The experts say it’s because the longest-running sitcom in history paints every political gag with the same brush.

Story

I can’t say as I blame them after the fiasco on Monday but come on guys suck it up and show what you’re made of.

Four days after the Democratic debate in Charleston, S.C,. more than 400 questions directed to the GOP presidential field have been uploaded on YouTube — targeted at Republicans scheduled to get their turn at videopopulism on Sept. 17.

But so far, only Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) have agreed to participate in the debate, co-hosted by Republican Party of Florida in St. Petersburg.

“Aside from those two candidates, we haven’t heard from anyone else,” said Sam Feist of CNN, who’s co-sponsoring the debate with the popular videosharing site.

Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney, both with dozens of videos on their YouTube channels, have not signed up. Neither have the rest of the Republican candidates, including Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.), whose “Tancredo Takes” on his YouTube channel draw hundreds of views. Sources familiar with the Guiliani campaign said he’s unlikely to participate. Kevin Madden, Romney’s spokesman, said the former Massachusetts governor has seven debate invitations covering a span of 11 days in September.

“We haven’t committed to any of them yet,” Madden said.

In an interview Wednesday with the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, Romney said he’s not a fan of the CNN/YouTube format. Referring to the video of a snowman asking the Democratic candidates about global warming, Romney quipped, “I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman.”

The Sept. 17 Republican debate was announced last Friday by YouTube, CNN and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) , who called Monday’s Democratic showdown “the people’s debate.” An informal “save the date” reminder was sent about a month ago to the candidates, CNN’s Feist said, and individual campaigns were called shortly after Friday’s announcement. Formal invitations arrived at campaigns yesterday. YouTubers can upload videos until Sept. 16.

Erin Neaves, 25-year-old mother of three, uploaded this question: “You hear a lot about supporting the troops from the Republicans, and we’re not getting any kind of support from the government ….. We are getting more than 15-month deployments. We are getting cut out of our bonuses. ….. How will you support the troops?” She’s a Democract and her husband serves in the U.S. military.

John King, a paramedic student at Cincinnati State, has a direct question for Giuliani about his business, Giuliani Partners. “I’m not saying that’s wrong to make money off your image, but why are you keeping it such a secret — the clients, how much they paid you, what kind of work you did for them?” asks the 24-year-old Republican.
Patrick Ruffini, former eCampaign director at the Republican National Committee who served as online adviser to Giuliani for a few months earlier this year, said it would “very problematic” if the Republican candidates declined. “What’s worse — questions from the public, many of whom are supporters, or questions from the media, who many Republicans believed are biased? This is YouTube. That’s not something they’d want to snub,” Ruffini said.

So far YouTube, CNN and Florida’s Republican Party are staying optimistic.

Story

For more information go here

I hated this man during Clinton’s impeachment. He worked for the Reagan administration, so he had to be a very partisan person. My better half would watch him on TV with me and always said that he was right and if I would only listen, I mean really listen I would see it.
Isn’t it strange how a person can become so one sided? Truth and values go out the window for the Party.
I was wrong, very wrong. It’s times like this that you find out who the real principled people are. You wouldn’t think that in today’s world there would be any left but there is and this man happens to be the one and only Bruce Fein.
Try to take off your partisan hat and read this article and see if it doesn’t make sense.

Suppose Democrats capture control of one or both chambers of Congress in November. A conservative would instinctively cringe. On the domestic front, Democrats still don’t get Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, which teaches the superiority of free markets to government-regulated markets euphemistically styled “industrialization policy” or otherwise. Smith lacerated the economic philosophy of modern Democrats: “The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.” With Democrats controlling Congress, we could expect command-and-control laws requiring windmills on every farm, photovoltaic cells in every home, and hydrogen fuel in every car.

In foreign affairs, Democrats are stalled in the horse latitudes. They have no philosophical starting point. They sport no strategy for confronting the nuclear ambitions of Iran or North Korea, the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the growing friction between Japan on the one hand and China and South Korea on the other. Beating swords into plowshares and making war no more is not a strategy but utopian faith.

So conservatives should weep if Democrats prevail in the House or Senate.

But perhaps not.

The most conservative principle of the Founding Fathers was distrust of unchecked power. Centuries of experience substantiated that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Men are not angels. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition to avert abuses or tyranny. The Constitution embraced a separation of powers to keep the legislative,

executive, and judicial branches in equilibrium. As Edward Gibbon wrote in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.”

But a Republican Congress has done nothing to thwart President George W. Bush’s alarming usurpations of legislative prerogatives. Instead, it has largely functioned as an echo chamber of the White House.

(more…)