Natural disasters used as political footballs. Never!
Oh, but wait, yes they are says Ed Driscoll:

Just telling it like it is.

It’s been a tough couple of days for the Speaker of the House.
Cindy Sheehan has secured the signatures which will qualify her to compete against the Speaker in her upcoming re-election bid.
Now that could be quite interesting to watch. Not that I expect Ms. Sheehan to to a serious threat [...]

Obama-mania is in full swing, and between catching up on reading and trying to decipher the real from the fiction, my head is virtually swimming.
Frankly, I don’t give a whit if the Senator visited the wounded troops in Germany as in my mind it is his loss not theirs.
There is nothing [...]

Will the real mood in the room please stand up?
On CBS’ “Early Show” former Clinton chair Terry McAuliffe said there was “a great feeling in the room” at the Mayflower Hotel, added: “I love Barack Obama.”
ABC’s “Good Morning America” said there was “serious tension in the room” during Thursday’s meeting, but Stephanopoulos said Obama [...]

The wall has been hit.
This he said, he said, they said, she said election cycle has taken its toll.
Later will be soon enough (for me) to have the desire to read one more word about either of the two men who are the leading contenders for the big chair. Heck, it seems [...]

Civic responsibility in the form of Jury Duty calls today so I will not be posting the traditional Tuesday Tid-Bits.
I did however see this interesting video at the NRCC website which defines a series which has recently been completed.
The NRCC recently sat down with several Members of Congress to ask them about the [...]

Updated: Results are in.
Those interested in following the results of today’s South Carolina Primary may want to check out this site.
They will begin posting results after the polls close this evening and generally do a decent job of updating the tally.
This was a huge win for Barack Obama. With 99% of the precincts [...]

Have we become an apathetic electorate? In many instances I believe we have. The question is, why?
Is it possible this could be the reason?
I’ve often thought that one reason Americans don’t trust their government is that their government doesn’t trust the American people very much. This goes double for the mass media whose [...]

Well, it’s Thursday and I have searched the news sites, read through the blogs I frequent and looked through the on-line news magazine articles offered.
Maybe it’s me, but I have found nothing which is not old, rehashed news laced with a new opinion here or there.
Seriously, how many ways can you say we [...]

A proposed list of “National Commandments” are available at Stolen Thunder.
Here are just a few:
Thy nation shall promote Justice above all else.
Thy nation shall not suppress those who believe in God and live in faith.
Thy nation shall promote Freedom for all people as individuals, except that Justice must always come first.
Just some food for thought [...]

Few across the web can begin a post with the words, “at the end of the world only two things will survive, cockroaches and Cher,” and somehow incorporate politics, health, personal woes and entertainment successfully.
The Anchoress manages to do just that in her latest post with the flair which all of us who are faithful [...]

What an interesting take on our two party system at The Evangelical Outpost.
United by Our Differences:Electoral Politics in an Age of Choice
Almost everywhere I go I am faced with vast array of options: I can choose between 180 channels on my television, 170 stations on my satellite radio, 10,000 books at my local bookstore, [...]

Do Republicans have a counting problem? At the rate he’s going, Tom Cole, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, might wind up a dollar short and a month late come Election Day.
Cole (Okla.) this week e-mailed a fundraising letter, laden with exclamation points, to GOP supporters asking them to join the NRCC’s “Campaign for [...]

Speaks for itself.
According to the Evans-Novak Political Report, former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) will be resigning from Congress in November, instead of retiring at the end of his term. If true, this could have significant ramifications in determining his successor.
A shortened special election campaign would likely benefit the candidates with the highest name recognition [...]

And I suppose that he is looking to get revenge for 06.
I think that anything that is attached to Rove or Bush is going to be a rallying cry for the Democrats in 08. Just going by what I feel myself.
I think the press needs to get over itself.
Mr. Rove’s style Politics is caput for [...]

This is a very interesting article that will definitely give you something to think about.
The twilight of the idols has been postponed. For more than two centuries, from the American and French Revolutions to the collapse of Soviet Communism, world politics revolved around eminently political problems. War and revolution, class and social justice, race and [...]

Can Democrats handle power better than Republicans? They didn’t the last time they held the administration and the majority in Congress.
Karl Rove dreamed of creating a “permanent Republican majority.” But as President Bush’s longtime adviser exits the Washington scene, the political landscape he helped chart is already shifting beneath his feet: The era [...]

Have you ever looked at someone and thought this guy isn’t on the level? John Edwards is one of these people. At least that’s the way he strikes me. He may be one of the nicest people in the world but I just don’t trust him.
RALEIGH, N.C. - Once again, John Edwards’ money is [...]

I could see myself voting for Huckabee.
No one is happier with the results of the Iowa Straw Poll than charismatic evangelical Christians, who recently declared former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee “one of our own.”
Just a few weeks before the Iowa straw poll, a prominent evangelical publication identified the Republican presidential candidate whom it thought most [...]

A smart man who may have done stupid things.
Thirteen months before President Bush was reelected, chief strategist Karl Rove summoned political appointees from around the government to the Old Executive Office Building. The subject of the Oct. 1, 2003, meeting was “asset deployment,” and the message was clear:
The staging of official announcements, high-visibility trips and [...]

A very interesting read.
The Bush administration opposes a Democratic effort to restore full educational benefits for returning veterans, according to an official’s comments last week.
Senate Democrats, led by Virginia’s Jim Webb, want the government to pay every penny of veterans’ educational costs, from tuition at a public university to books, housing and a monthly stipend. [...]

Speaks for itself.
He has been hailed as the best White House speechwriter since Kennedy’s Theodore Sorensen, the muse behind President Bush’s most famous phrases, the moral conscience of the West Wing. But now Michael J. Gerson is accused by a former colleague of taking credit for words he did not write.
According to Matthew Scully, who [...]

They caved and that’s all that matters. I hope that these democrats loose in their next primaries. This is an editorial by E.J. Dionne Jr.
Shortly before noon last Saturday, about 20 House Democrats huddled in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office to decide what to do about a surveillance bill that had been dumped on them by [...]

Speaks for itself.
The state Republican Party is forming a loyalty committee so that it can punish officers who endorse or contribute to Democrats.
The GOP’s conservative-dominated state committee also is accusing a prominent moderate of trying to undermine the party’s fundraising. It has adopted a resolution criticizing Steve Cloud, a Lenexa businessman and former legislator who [...]

The way it stands now.
New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has significantly widened her lead over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination,” USA TODAY Washington bureau chief Susan Page writes.
She tells us that according to the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, Clinton’s support among Democrats and independent voters who “lean” Democratic stands at [...]

It’s all about politics and it’s always been about politics. It doesn’t matter who is in power. When are the Democrats and the Republicans going to do something for the people who put them in power? Probably never. At least that’s my opinion.
As House Democrats prepare for a floor fight over [...]

It is amazing how one could read the following and think, gee, it sounds like home.
These developments show that a majority in our parliament care only about themselves and their blocs’ interests much more than they do about the country’s in such difficult time and their attitude tells that the blocs don’t want [...]

What is going on? Seems like even the Republicans are giving more money to Democrats.
July 31 (Bloomberg) — Lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis, the law firm that’s home to Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr and Bush administration official Jay Lefkowitz, have given more to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign than to all of the top Republican [...]

I try my best not to be a Bush basher but things like this make it hard. Why on Gods great earth would this report not be released? Does this administration have a conscience?
A surgeon general’s report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public [...]

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Republicans increasingly are backing a new approach in the Iraq war that could become the party’s mantra come September. It would mean narrowly limited missions for U.S. troops in Iraq but let President Bush decide when troops should leave.
So far, the idea has not attracted the attention [...]