A cute site for animal lovers (especially dogs).

Use simple commands and watch the dog respond, or if you have young children let them “play” for a bit. Type in the word “kiss” and watch what happens.
(Make sure your speakers are turned on.)

Enjoy!

The WSJ, to their credit, is continuing to follow the Norman Hsu story and today informs that his legal problems may be far from over.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating possible campaign-finance violations by top Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu, according to people familiar with the probe. On Friday, Mr. Hsu surrendered to California officials on an unrelated grand-theft charge dating to the early 1990s.

Norman Hsu surrendered on Friday to California authorities on grand-theft charges.
Mr. Hsu, who, until earlier this week was one of the biggest fundraisers for Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton, was booked at the San Mateo County jail, where he was handcuffed and later released on $2 million bail. Wearing a black suit and white shirt, Mr. Hsu rushed to a waiting black Chevy Suburban outside the jail lobby Friday afternoon without answering any questions from reporters.

If this investigation takes the path stated in the article it appears the Paw family will be closely scrutinized by the Department of Justice.

While California state prosecutors were dealing with the business-fraud case, the Justice Department was ramping up a look at Mr. Hsu’s more recent political activities. People familiar with the new probe said Justice officials are investigating a pattern of donations by acquaintances of Mr. Hsu’s in California. The investigation began following a Wall Street Journal story this past week about donations by these people — mail carrier William Paw and the five other members of his family who list their Daly City address as 41 Shelbourne Ave., a small house near San Francisco airport.

Hopefully this story and the Justice Department inquiry will continue to receive the attention they deserve until either all additional contributions connected somehow to Mr. Hsu are deemed legal, or those who cooperated in illegal activites are found and brought to justice.

For more information and a graph explaining both direct contributions by Mr. Hsu or indirect monies with a connection to him, take a look here. (Scroll down for the graphs and list of recipients.)

If the press and bloggers can compile all this information in short order, what is it with the candidates vetting process which obstructs them from doing the same?

Update More on this topic at the LAT.

As has been reported Tony Snow will depart his position with the administration on the 14th of Spetember. At yesterdays press conference a question was posed about the President to which Mr. Snow gave the following response.

Q Tony, have your views of the President or the press changed since you have been on the inside for the last year? Have you seen things differently than you might have when you were on the outside?

MR. SNOW: Well, I think that anybody who works closely with the President gets a much fuller appreciation of the person in the office. So, while I was naturally inclined to like the President, my admiration for him has grown by leaps and bounds.

Some of you have had the opportunity to see the President behind closed doors, talking with passion and in great detail about the job he does and the challenges he faces. And you find that, quite often, the public caricature of this man is a grotesque disservice to the man himself and to the job he does. And so there’s always a certain level of frustration when you see a man who is bright, who is engaged, who is passionate and who is principled being written off in kind of cartoonish terms by people who would rather appeal to stereotype than dig deep and figure out, in fact, he makes decisions.

But he’s a great guy to work for. And he’s somebody who manages to understand the real importance of the office, and also how important it is to conduct oneself in the office in a way that reflects honor upon it. And, at the same time, he’s somebody who has terrific historic insight. He’s not somebody who is going to allow himself to get whipsawed by passing controversies. He understands what his long-term obligations are to the country and to the office.

He has a wonderful sense of humor; he is generous; he is extremely kind. And he is somebody that I will be holding up to future friends, employees, and always to my children as a role model, not merely in terms of how he manages the office and conducts the responsibilities of the office, but the kind of person he is. He’s a good guy, a good human being.

I do not believe for one minute his assessment of the President is out of some false sense of loyalty. I believe he spoke from the heart which is something we see far too little of today in Washington.

Think of Tony’s words what you may, but if you really think of President Bush, the man, I believe he defined him very well.

(You must scroll down a bit to locate the above portion of the Press Conference)

Tom DeLay appeared on the Today show on Thursday and this is how some of it went:

Lauer prefaced DeLay’s Thursday morning appearance on the NBC program by reciting a litany of recent Republican problems, mentioning Rep. Mark Foley and Jack Abramoff among others.

DeLay responded: “I hate to say this Matt, but you just showed the problem, the double standard, and you just participated in it. You listed a whole lot of scandals that involve the Republicans, but you didn’t mention one Democrat…

“I think in your premise, if you had listed all the Democrats that are having problems right now, it would have been different. You see the Democrats re-elect the people with their problems. Republicans kick them out.”

DeLay mentioned several Democrats who have been afflicted by scandal, according to a transcript provided by the Media Research Center: “You have right now, Alan Mollohan, a Congressman from West Virginia, who is being investigated by the FBI, and the Democrats have kept him on as chairman of the committee that has oversight of the budget of the FBI. You have William Jefferson…”

Lauer cut in: “So, you’re saying it’s a positive thing. Is it a positive thing that the Republicans do this, they weed out immediately?”

A testy DeLay responded: “You don’t want me to finish it? Because you don’t want me to…”

LAUER: “No, no go ahead.”

DELAY: “You have William Jefferson caught with $90,000 of marked bills in a freezer. And they did put him off the Ways and Means Committee, but they put him on a highly sensitive Homeland Security Committee. You have Barney Frank, who was caught with a homosexual prostitute who was re-elected over and over again. Gerry Studds who was caught in a bathroom with an under-aged page and he was re-elected.”

Later on DeLay told Lauer: “The point here … is the Republicans handle it. They look at it, and when the evidence is right on that someone is guilty, they do something about it. On the other hand, the Democrats don’t. And the media, the double standard in the media is amazing. The feeding frenzy, the sharks in the water that’s going on right now because of a Republican. Where is the frenzy on Alan Mollohan from West Virginia or William Jefferson from Louisiana?”

LAUER: “I think you mentioned William Jefferson. There was an awful lot of coverage of William Jefferson when that story broke, Congressman.”

DELAY: “Yeah, for just a couple of days and then we went on. In the case of a Republican, believe me, I’ve experienced this, it’s day in and day out in the media, and they write this story over and over and over again. We all know the double standard in the media. It’s amazing.”

There is a double standard. Republicans push their offenders out of office while Democrats let them stand for re-election.

In the latest incident, the one with Sen. Craig, he has been told by the RNC if he runs again they will give him no funds, but will fund a Republican challenger. It’s kind of hard to run a campaign when the party refuses to support you, although Joe Lieberman was able to pull it off as an Independent.