2007 | Scoundrels, Knaves & Fools

My New Year’s Day Prayer for 2007 is for someone with national clout to adopt a brilliant idea of my wife, Peaches: that since Congress almost certainly will never fund the completion of the 800-mile fence along our border with Mexico (federal legislation approving—but not funding—the fence passed last year), we should conduct a National Fence-A-Thon (Jerry Lewis could host it) and letprivate citizens and businesses fund and adopt sections of border fence. Clever marketers could sell sections of various lengths so that rich and poor alike could have ownership in a great national undertaking. You could sell advertising (which could help with maintenance and repair costs) on both sides of the fence, too. The Minuteman group has had no trouble getting volunteers to watch the border—I’ll bet many Americans would volunteer to help build the fence. This would not only save the gub’mint tons of money which it could then waste on handouts to special interests, but it would get the fence built and the border sealed in record short time and provide an incalculable boost to national self-esteem. In addition, it would deny Congress its secret goal of avoiding facing the border security issue. Millions of Americans would be proud to have their name on a piece of this. Where do I mail my check? (January 1, 2007)

In the Late Christmas Present Department was a ruling January 5 by a federal appeals court in Chicago that a lawsuit by the Democrat Party and assorted leftwing activists to throw out Indiana’s voter ID law was itself being tossed out. The plaintiffs howled and wailed and screeched that the law was unconstitutional, an outrage, a grievous violation of human rights, and a damnable rightwing scheme to disenfranchise innocent citizens. The 7th U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 that it was not. The national Democrat Party and its strident chairman, Howard Dean, stoutly supported the suit. The dissenting judge, Terrence Evans, charged that—gasp!—Indiana’s law was politically motivated, even though its constitutionality was the issue, not its “motivation.” There were dark mutterings from the left; the Indiana chapter of the ACLU said it may appeal yet again. Meantime, those showing up to vote in Indiana elections may be legally required to flash a photo ID, agonizing though it may be. (January 5, 2007)

Perhaps He Simply Saw Reality and Took Appropriate Action

“Grant, having won the war as a general, spent much of his presidency quietly drunk on bourbon, smoking cigars in a quiet corner of the Willard Hotel.”—Clinton Rossiter, Cornell University professor and author of The American Presidency, published in the 1960s, in which he ranked Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Warren G. Harding as the four worst presidents in history. Rossiter died (by suicide) in 1970, and so was unable to include consider some fairly awful presidents who came after. His book was cited by columnist Matthew Engel, writing in the January 6-7, 2007 edition of Financial Times.

“Democrats rent.” –P. J. O’Rourke, author and humorist, quoting what his grandmother said when he, as a mere wisp of a lad, asked her, “What is the difference between Republicans and Democrats?” O’Rourke offered this anecdote during a three-hour interview and call-in show on CSPAN-2’s Book TV program. (January 7, 2007)

“The “international community” has reacted in the usual ways—(with) calls for immediate cease-fires so an ineffectual force of United Nations peace-keepers can go in and enjoy their customary child sex with the locals while propping up the Islamists.”—Mark Steyn, author and columnist for Britain’s Telegraph Group, commenting on the fighting in Somalia, where radical Islamists are threatening to take over the country. (Washington Times, January 8, 2007 edition)

Arizona Republican Congressman Jeff Flake has been smacked down good and hard by his party’s leadership for holding their feet to the fire on that most unpleasant of topics, earmarks. Flake has been an outspoken critic of Republican spending profligacy and went so far as to appear on CBS’s “60 Minutes” in a segment about it, which the network mysteriously chose to run the weekend before last November’s election. Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner punished Flake by kicking him off the Judiciary Committee, while keeping six other Republicans with less seniority on it. This is an unmistakable clue about what the Party will do to anyone who places the national interest first. A sad day, indeed. (January 10, 2007)

Non-Confidence Builders Department: The Washington Times reports that a survey estimates that 73% of all illegal aliens in the U.S. have been previously arrested six or more times.

High-Steppin’ Lefties Headin’ For The Pentagon

The January 12, 2007, issue of the New York Times brought the comforting assurance that lefties are willing to stand up for something—if it’s Dubya’s immediate impeachment. A full-page ad (page A7) with an inch-and-a-half high headline screaming Impeach Now! lists Dubya’s multiple crimes against humanity—an illegal war; a worldwide network of secret prisons; wiretapping, reading the mail of, and searching and detaining indefinitely any American he dang well chooses, and, presumably, more. Former U.S. Attorney General and preposterous leftwing crackpot Ramsey Clark has graciously drafted the articles of impeachment. Over 810,000 people have already voted to impeach, the Times ad exults, and a big parade down to the Pentagon is planned for March 17. This will put a spring in the step of all true Americans. (January 12, 2007)

Dick And Don Jus’ Keep Loopin’ Around. . .

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof left us a gold nugget in the very last paragraph of his January 14 column on the topic of how often Americans screw up foreign policy. He used the Middle East to show examples as far back as the 1950s of American foreign policy decisions which backfired or blew up in our faces. Kristof then circled back to the present raging argument over Dubya’s plan for a “surge”—or “augmentation,” as Condi prefers to call it—in American troop levels to rein in the Baghdad loonies. The stage set, Kristof introduces us to the Rev. Bob Edgar, now the general secretary of the National Council of Churches but who in the 1970s was a U.S. Congressman. Kristof says Edgar recalls that in April of 1975—almost 32 years ago—he and his fellow Congressmen and women were facing a similar presidential request—only this time it was President Gerald Ford asking for more U.S. troops to stabilize Saigon. And here’s the golden nugget—Kristof’s last paragraph: “A White House photo captures Ford conferring with two of the architects of that request: senior administration officials named Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.” (January 14, 2007)

Word leaked over the weekend that Hildebeest’s website is making it official: she is a candidate for President in 2008. This is pleasing. Now the dread of it happening is gone. The specter is now reality. The enemy is now in tangible form, and we can have the Final Showdown the nation needs. We can find out, on a date fixed and certain (November 4, 2008—but perhaps later, to allow time for the Dems’ lawsuits), if we’re going to be saddled with this beast or be done with her. If she wins, then we endure eight years of the Sicks again infesting the White House; if not, she can be shoveled offstage and the rest of us can head for those fabled sunlit uplands. Though of course, they’ll never stop tormenting us, not even long after we and they are dead. Let’s get to war! (January 20, 2007)

The smartest thing Hillary could do is select Obama as her vice presidential running mate. That would give Barack eight years with training wheels, and a guaranteed two terms after Hillary finishes her two. Sixteen consecutive years of far left Democrats in the White House would cure us of everything and set up the party for a dynasty running to mid-century at least. (January 23, 2007)

How About Bill ‘n’ ‘bama?

And if Hildebeest is too risky, then Bill Richardson is easily the next-best choice, with perhaps Obama as his running mate, for the same reasons. Richardson has excellent credentials and experience, is Hispanic, and would deliver a grand slam prize—the vast and growing-by-the-moment Hispanic voting bloc, both legal and illegal. Both parties are desperate to snare this group and if the Dems lock ‘em up, they can rule for decades. Richardson has almost no downside. His only major risk—the current “third rail” of politics--is the Illegal Immigration Unpleasantness. But he and the Dems can finesse that one—with the silently enthusiastic support of Republicans, who also are desperate to avoid dealing with the issue—so that voters will never know till it’s too late. (January 23, 2007)

“I spent one weekend there in six years, and I don’t ever want to spend another.”—Tom Coburn, Republican Senator from Oklahoma, quoted in the Patriot Post, commenting on the plague of career politicians—who move to Washington and stay forever. Coburn is widely known as a maverick and a troublemaker, who often takes stands opposed by his party’s leadership. He is a medical doctor, who prides himself on still maintaining his family practice in Oklahoma, and who goes home to his district nearly every weekend. He was first elected to the House in 1994 and served three terms. He was elected to the Senate seat in 1998, and re-elected in 2004. (January 23, 2007)

Sergeant Pendry Gets The Ball Rolling

Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, John Murtha, Dick Durbin, Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Carl Levine, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Russ Feingold, Hillary Clinton, Patrick Leahy, Chuck Schumer, the American news media (especially the New York Times).—Names in a list titled America’s Axis of Idiots, offered by someone identifying himself as Sgt. Major J. D. Pendry (Retired), in an essay floating around on the Internet in January, 2007. It’s not a complete list, but it’s a nice beginning.

Few issues in recent years better illustrate the old adage, “Watch what I do, not what I say,“ than illegal immigration. Both parties are frantic to win the Hispanic vote. Both parties are therefore desperate to avoid tough policies and actions on border control and illegal immigration. Thus politicians on both sides absolutely must continuously lie to us sweetly, and hide their motives and actions in euphemism and doublespeak. If citizens aren’t acutely alert, skeptical, and relentless insistent, both parties will sell us and the country down the river. (January 24, 2007)

Coming Soon To A Demagogue Near You!!

Dubya’s big push for greater use of ethanol fuels has already raised the price of corn futures. But it’s going to provide Dems and the hard left a new demon, too. I can see Big Corn joining Big Oil, Big Fast Food, Big Pharma, Big Unbridled Capitalist Greedsters on the hate list. Watch for it. (January 24, 2007)

Hildebeest made a January campaign appearance in Iowa to test Democrat pulses. While there, in one of America’s leading corn-producing states, she touted the increased use of corn-based ethanol as an alternative fuel. The crowd roared its approval. It took a week or two, but one of those ornery, troublemaking conservative organizations—Patriot Post—did the research and found that Senator Clinton had voted against pro-ethanol legislation at least six times. Will the word ever get back to Iowa? (February 2, 2007)

No sooner did John Kerry announced he would not be running for president in 2008—a sad development for the Republican Party—than the preposterous Al Franken announced he would be running for the U.S. Senator in Minnesota. An Associated Press report described Franken as a “comedian and political commentator.” Most recently, though, Franken sat behind the golden microphone at Air America, the wacko leftwing fruitcake radio network which declared bankruptcy at the end of 2006 for lack of an audience. Minnesota is one of only a very few states perfectly suited for a Franken candidacy. (February 3, 2007)

Rush Limbaugh’s listeners had a song in their hearts and a spring in their steps Tuesday. Rush played a new parody song about the preposterous John Kerry titled “The U.S.A.’s Pariah” (boldly warbled to the tune of “They Call The Wind Maria”) and hung the wonderful title of Exit Poll President-Elect—For A Few Hours on the long-faced Massachusetts Democrat. (February 6, 2007)

Republican Senator George Allen used the word “macaca” and the mainstream media last fall made it a front-page story and pounded away at it for weeks and weeks. Allen’s re-election campaign bid collapsed and he lost to seething super-lefty James Webb. A couple of months later Democratic Senator Joseph Biden used the word “clean” do describe fellow Democrat Barack Obama. Some found the term insulting. Biden apologized and the mainstream media dropped the story. Summary: Allen was crucified and Biden got a free pass for essentially equivalent slips. Please spare telling us that the media treated these episodes equally. (February 1, 2007)

Kate O’Beirne, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, and Mona Charen were panelists in late January at National Review’s weekend forum on conservative politics. The sight of them had to be heart-breaking for those in the CSPAN audience who despair over the current condition of the Republican Party. A man in the audience stood to ask the question millions of us would ask: “Where are the GOP fighters? Where are the Republicans who’ll stand up and fight back?” There were precious few names offered: “Certainly Rick Santorum,” said one panelist (Santorum lost his re-election bid last November). John Kyl, Jeff Sessions, Tom Coburn. . .and then no one could think of any more names. Newt Gingrich was mentioned, but he’s not in elected office. Conservatives would have superb representation if Ingraham, Malkin, Charen, Ann Coulter, Victor Davis Hanson,and a few other conservative media voices would run for office. But, being in their right minds, they’re not interested in a life in politics. (January 27, 2007)

Democrats freshly empowered in Washington are dropping their masks and pushing hard for a full withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. It’s Vietnam all over again. I believe the cut-and-run crowd has misread last fall’s election results as a mandate from the people to pull out of Iraq. I think people voted the Republicans out of power for being incompetent at prosecuting the war. Polls as recent at February 20 show about 60 percent of Americans opposed to pulling out of Iraq, and similar margins believing the war there is still winnable. What they want is leadership that knows how to win it. They’ll not find that in the Democrats. (February 21, 2007)

USA Today reports that something called The Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University has just finished a study which shows that voter turnout in 2004 was about 4 percent lower instates which had voter ID requirements such as asking a voter to sign his name or produce a valid identification card. Hispanic turnout dropped 10 percent and there was a six percent decline for blacks and Asians. The Star’s headline writer artfully chose wording which put a negative spin on things: “Voter ID Rules Hurt 2004 Turnout.” Richard Wolf, who wrote the story, noted that two researchers told something called The U. S. Election Assistance Commission that “they found little evidence of voter fraud at polling places.” But Wolf did not speculate--so I will--whether that might be due to potential fraudulent voters being scared off by the new rules. In Indiana, which adopted the nation’s stiffest ID law in 2005, turnout increased by 2 percent In November, 2006, compared to 2002. This may well be due to a wildly successful phony document ring which operated in the Indianapolis area a few year ago and extracted thousands of drivers licenses for illegal immigrants from local license branches before being discovered. Liberals are suing in many states to prevent the federal voter ID law from being implemented, but nearly half the states have already done so and half a dozen more are considering them this year. Keeping the doors open for voter fraud is a challenging task, but it’s a cause lefties can really get patriotic about. Rest assured they’re not giving up. (February 25, 2007)

William Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat who was videotaped accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from an FBI informant in July, 2005, and in whose refrigerator FBI agents found $90,000 in cash bearing serial numbers matching the cash the FBI gave to its informant to give to Jefferson, has been quietly appointed by Democrat Party leadership to a seat on the Homeland Security Committee. Republicans began squawking as soon as they learned of the move, which must be approved by the full House, and are promising to monitor House proceedings 24-7-365 to prevent the Democrats from clearing Jefferson in a late-night unrecorded voice vote. The GOP is even threatening to demand a recorded vote instead of the midnight squeakings. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Homeland Security was an “appropriate place” for Jefferson to serve, since he represents New Orleans and the committee oversees Hurricane Katrina-related matters. Jefferson’s house and refrigerator were raided by the FBI based on an 83-page affidavit the FBI filed to obtain a search warrant. The Justice Department is said to be still investigating. Jefferson called the fuss “simply politics as usual.” The story got little press coverage, no doubt because the Anna Nicole Smith-O-Rama was taking up so much of our time. The only account I’ve seen of it was in the March 5 issue of The Washington Times, a conservative weekly. (February 28, 2007)

Lefties and their drive-by media accomplices are in full-screech over the Dubya Administration’s firing of eight U.S. district attorneys. Don’t any of them remember that in 1993 the Sick Administration, with attorney general Janet Reno and First Friend Webster Hubbell doing the knifework, fired all 93 U.S. District attorneys? These people are political appointees and serve at the pleasure of any president. This is a non-story--unless it’s Republicans doing the firing. (March 10, 2007)

Dirty Rotten Right-Wing Trick?

A correspondent notes that during a February rally for Barack Obama there were two signs borne aloft behind the stage from which Obama spoke, and were easily visible in the television coverage. The signs read: Muslims for Obama.” (February 27, 2007)

Webb’s Forgotten Pistol

The story was tucked away on an inside page of the Chicago Tribune and bore a small headline, but at least it saw daylight. “A trusted employee” of angry (when last seen, Webb was fairly shaking with anger and contempt as he delivered his party’s response to Dubya’s State of the Union Address in January) Democratic Senator James Webb was arrested March 26 when he entered a Senate office building carrying his boss’s loaded pistol. Capitol Police made the grab, and said the aide, Phillip Thompson, was charged with carrying a pistol without a license and possessing an unregistered firearm and unregistered ammunition. An unidentified congressional official told the Associated Press that Webb gave his gun to Thompson when the aide drove him to the airport. Thompson then “forgot he was carrying the weapon,” the official said. I neither saw nor heard this story mentioned in any other place. I suspect the coverage would have rivaled the Anna Nicole Smith-O-Rama had some rightwing crackpot Republican been involved. (March 27, 2007)

Except For The Facts, There Wouldn’t Be Any Bias

The Huge Unpleasantness Said To Have Involved The Dubya Administration’s Attempt To Fire Eight Federal Prosecutors is a perfect example of the media’s liberal bias, even though my lefty friends insist there is no such thing. Mark Laswell of the Wall Street Journal did the research and here’s what he found. During the week of March 12-16, the three network evening news programs devoted 45 minutes to the 2007 prosecutor story (the War in Iraq ran second with 16 minutes), with “ABC World News with Charles Gibson” giving it 13 minutes. In 1993, when the Sick Administration fired all 93 of its federal prosecutors (the legendary Janet Reno was attorney general and little George Stephanopolous was White House communications director), ABC and CBS completely skipped the story and NBC gave it 20 seconds. Actually, this should be a non-story--or at least a tiny, tiny one--no matter what the Administration’s politics. It is instructive to see, though, how the media ignored the story when Democrats did the firing but are foaming at the mouth when Republicans do. (March 29, 2007)

Sandy’s Paper Caper Gets A One-Hour Special

Fox News, a key pillar in that vast rightwing conspiracy, devoted an hour-long special the night of March 31 to certain antics of Sick Willie’s former national security adviser, Sandy Scissorhands. It was impishly titled “Socks, Scissors, Paper: The Sandy Berger Caper.” (For the uninitiated, the title comes from Berger’s admission that he used scissors to cut up some of the stolen documents he spirited back to his office, and from testimony by a National Archives employee that he saw Berger stuffing documents into his socks—Sandy later was said to have stuffed them in his underwear and inside his jacket pockets.) Despite stonewalling by most of the principals, Fox managed to verify extensive details: Berger made four trips to the National Archives and stole numerous top secret documents; Berger placed numerous phone calls to unknown outsiders while inside the Archives “reviewing” the material; Berger lied to investigators repeatedly once caught; staff at the National Archives, from which Berger stole the documents, willfully and repeatedly violated their own policies and procedures for handling and review of documents by outsiders—Berger was allowed to use a staff supervisor’s large office rather than the camera-equipped, secure room visitors normally must use to review files, and was allowed to bring his own cell phone, briefcase and writing instruments into the room, all contrary to normal rules; Berger admitted in court that he stole the documents, said it was “an honest mistake” and negotiated a ridiculously lenient plea bargain with the Justice Department; it was stipulated that he would be given a lie detector test by the Justice Department as part of his plea bargain. He has never been given the lie detector test and when pressed by a congressional committee investigating the matter, the Justice Department replied in a letter that there “are no new facts” in the case and therefore there is no reason to give Berger the test. A committee staffer interviewed by Fox described the DOJ’s response as “basically, they gave us the finger.” Because Berger was looking at top-secret documents relating to terrorism, and the caper occurred shortly before he was called to testify before the 9/11 Commission, questions have been raised about whether information might have been kept secret from the Commission. Fox interviewed a former Justice Department official who described the arrangement for Berger as “the sweetheart deal of all time” and added that there is no doubt in his mind that Berger committed “a felony—more than one.” Berger was sentenced to 100 hours of “community service,” three years of prison (all on probation, not one second in jail), and a fine of $50,000 (the initial fine was $10,000, but a federal judge later raised it). Berger’s national security clearance was temporarily suspended (he can get it back when his probation is completed) and he walks the streets today a free man. In a society which was honestly serious about enforcing its own laws and serious about national security issues, Berger would be in prison today and for a long time to come, and this story would have been a national scandal. Three brutal realities: (1) the mainstream drive-by media ignored the story then, and continues to ignore it, (2) most of our countrymen don‘t care one bit that a federal crime was committed by a former high-ranking government official—most people regard it just as Scissorhands does, a mistake, an error in judgment, and (3) every government agency which touched this story was grossly derelict in its duty. None of this is shocking. All of it is deeply saddening. (March 31, 2007)

I could vote affirmatively for any combination of Newt Gingrich, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush for president (though poor Jeb’s future has likely been ruined by Dubya and his dad). If you stuck an AK-47 in my left nostril and threatened to kill me and all my family, I could vote for a Democrat—but only one—Bill Richardson. All the rest of the Dems I’d say go ahead, pull the trigger. (March 31, 2007)

Your Government At Work

In 2001 the federal government reported there were about 300,000 fugitive aliens (people who had been ordered by American courts to leave the country) loose in America. Then came 9/11. The government announced big efforts to find and deport these miscreants, and since 2003 over $200 million has been spent on the project .It’s now 2007 and the government reports there are over 600,000 aliens at large. (News item from the April 16, 2007 issue of National Review). (April 6, 2007)

Randall Tobias, a Bush Administration appointee, resigned his State Department position within hours after it was revealed he had used an “escort service” in Wonderland, D.C. Tobias told eager reporters there was “no sex involved” and that he had used to service to get a massage at his condo. Tobias, a former Eli Lilly & Co. CEO, showed amazingly poor judgment in this matter, but when “outted” he immediately did the decent and proper thing—he resigned. Contrast that with Sick Willie’s behavior—and that of his army of Clintonista spinners--when the Monica Lewinski Unpleasantness hit the headlines. Beautiful. (April 28, 2007)

ABC News is said to possess a list of roughly 10,000 “escort service” customers given to it by a proprietor. Let’s see how selectively ABC decides to make them public in its quest for truth and justice.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is resigning soon. Americans ought to be mourning. Blair was a stout supporter of the War in Iraq and a good friend to our country. He put his career on the line to stand with us. Public opinion there as here turned sour, too, and Blair was forced out of office. (May 20, 2007)

The malignancy that is former president Jimmy Carter got back in the news with a public accusation that Dubya and his policies are the worst in American history. It’s amazing that people take this man seriously. Carter himself is among the worst presidents in American history and he is a world-class, meanspirited buffoon to boot. He and Dubya may well belong side-by-side in history’s dumpster. (May 20, 2007)

The League Of Extraordinary Scoundrels

Spring put a spring in the step of the Chicago Tribune’s Tempo page editor, who celebrated with a massive and highly entertaining article about some of Chicago’s legendary political rascals, clowns, and crooks (and sometimes one was all three). A month’s newspapers could have been devoted to the category, but Tribune senior correspondent Charles Leroux bravely chose only ten to profile. Some highlights: “Long John” Wentworth, a two-term mayor from 1857 to 1861, stood 6-feet 6-inches and weighed over 300 pounds, was famous for consuming gargantuan meals and reportedly drank at least a pint of whiskey a day. When The Prince of Wales came to Chicago, Wentworth introduced him from a Tremont Hotel balcony to a crowd below, saying “Boys, this is the prince. Prince, these are the boys.”; Alderman William Henry, who died in 1992 while under indictment for bribery and extortion; John D’Arco Jr., state senator, son of a “political fixer for the mob” and a felon convicted of bribery, published his own poetry through a vanity publisher; William “Big Bill” Thompson, the last Republican to serve as a Chicago mayor, once brought a horse into the city council chamber, was suspected—though never proven—to have been on Al Capone’s payroll. He once led an expedition to South America to find tree-climbing fish, but the boat only reached New Orleans when Thompson abandoned the project. Thompson “allowed gangsters free rein” after he was re-elected in 1927, died in the Blackstone Hotel; Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna and “Bathhouse” John Coughlin, both lst Ward aldermen in the 1897-1938 period. Coughlin was described as a “big, often outrageously dressed buffoon,” whose statements to newspapers “seemed simpleminded” and who wrote poems which the Tribune published with such titles as “She Sleeps By The Drainage Canal,” “Why Did They Build The Lovely Lake So Close To The Horrible Shore?” and “They’re Tearing Up Clark Street Again.” The two were described as “twins in collecting graft and protection money” in their “notorious, crime-ridden ward,” and who “made indictments go away, doled out city jobs and licenses and zoning variances—anything for a fee.” The duo sponsored the First Ward Ball, whichTribune correspondent Leroux described as “the nexus of public debauchery in which attendance by every pimp, prostitute, madam, pickpocket, etc. was mandatory.” This gala was held in the old Chicago Coliseum and Coughlin opened the 1907 outing by leading a procession of prostitutes. Over 100 policemen attended that night. And finally, Bernie Neistein, a West Side ward boss under Mayor Richard J. Daley, who was mean-spirited before Democrats made the word part of their cherished mantra. Neistein, in a 1999 interview with the Tribune recounted by Leroux, recalled a long-ago election in which all but three votes in his ward went to Democrats. Neistein found out who the three “traitors” were—a man Neistein had gotten a job, his wife, and his mother-in-law. Neistein got the man fired. Then, he told the newspaper, “I bought the two-flat they were living in and watched as the guy and his wife and their kid and her mother were thrown out on the sidewalk. Later, I sold the building at a $500 loss. It was worth every penny. Neistein giveth and Neistein taketh away.” Neistein was also a talented violinist who serenaded Mayor Daley and fellow bosses at Morrison Hotel post-election victory parties by playing Beethoven. Leroux’s wonderful article nearly convinced me that since I’ve never lived in Chicago, I haven’t really lived at all. I have a hunch that observing through heavy lenses from a few hundred miles away is good enough, though. (May 17, 2007)

Fifteen years ago we were bitching about American jobs being exported to Mexico and Asia. Now our politicians are finishing this dirty business by bringing the cheap labor here through unchecked illegal immigration. Joke’s on us. Again. (June 1, 2007)

“John Edwards is a male Paris Hilton.”—Mark Williams, described as a “political consultant,” on Fox News. (June 9, 2007)

“One thing the Left was right about is that President Bush is a boob. He needs all the help he can get.”—Mark Williams, on Fox News. (June 9, 2007)

“The leading voice of the America Is Evil Club.”—Nolan Finley, syndicated columnist, describing former president Jimmy Carter.

Lefties have resumed grumbling about resurrecting the Fairness Doctrine. This has nothing to do with fairness. It has to do with the fact that conservatives, in free and fair competition, completely dominate the nation’s radio talk show format. So liberals are doing what they always do when they can’t win in a fair fight—they try to legislate the other guy off the playing field or find a judge who will. (June 15, 2007)

Polls show overwhelming public support for border control, and high public anger at government officials for not enforcing existing immigration laws. Yet mid-summer brought us the bizarre spectacle of our ridiculous President joining hands with the likes of Ted Kennedy and John McCain in trying to ram an amnesty bill for illegal immigrants down our throat. Only a vast mobilization of citizens burying Washington in e-mails, faxes, phone calls and protests kept this evil legislation from being passed. The only conclusion we can reasonably draw from this is that for reasons they will not—dare not--admit, America’s political elites have united in their determination to ignore the clearly expressed “will of the people.”

The votes of Indiana’s two Senators on the amnesty bill were the opposite of expectations. Evan Bayh, a Democrat, voted against it; Richard Lugar, a Republican, voted in favor. Lugar followed this a week or two later by joining the Left and critics of Bush’s policy on the war in Iraq by calling for a troop withdrawal. I am finished supporting Lugar. He is a decent man, dignified, scholarly, gentle, but he is not a conservative, and in his entire career has seldom if ever taken a position requiring great courage. He should either retire or switch to the Democrat Party.

But Wait, Wait!! This is Different!! Romney’s A Republican!!

The Mitt Romney presidential campaign has drawn sly whispers from lefty blogs and assorted Democrats inserting “the religious issue”—you know, the one that was laid to rest when Catholic Jack Kennedy ran for president in 1960s—by hinting that some of Romney’s Mormon ancestors may, just may, have had—egad!!—multiple wives. Columnist Thomas Sowell noted this and added that Romney seems to be one of the few current politicians who has had only one wife. (June 30, 2007)

A Mere Oversight, Surely

Indiana’s property value reassessment was botched so badly that within a couple of weeks of the new tax bills being mailed—many containing raises of 50% or more--Governor Mitch Daniels, a dastardly Republican, ordered an entire new assessment. Once troublemakers got a chance to review and analyze the new valuations, it was discovered that over 70 percent of all commercial property in the county had somehow not been re-assessed at all. Township assessors are responsible for this and it stretches the imagination to ask us to believe that all this business property was simply overlooked by accident. There’s a wonderful opportunity here for the ink-stained wretches down at the Star to do some prize-winning investigative reporting. (July 19, 2007)

At a mid-summer gathering of friends on the plains of central Indiana, I conducted an informal poll on whom each guest would vote for if the presidential election were held that day. The results: Rudy Giuliani got three votes, John McCain one, and Fred Thompson, not even a declared candidate, two (with one conditioned on Mike Huckabee being Thompson’s vice-presidential running mate). This and $240 will get you a medium Starbucks coffee. (July 15, 2007)

A telling fact: the Democratic Leadership Council, long a moderating influence on the party, held its annual “National Conversation” in Nashville late in July, and not a single one of the 11—or is it 41?---announced Democrat presidential candidates attended. (August 1, 2007)

Bad News

The month of July produced the lowest number of deaths in Iraq in many months. Even an occasional lefty was heard acknowledging that the troop surge might—just might, mind you—be doing some good. This is a potential nightmare for Democrats. (August 1, 2007)

More Bad News

A New York Times/CBS News poll in late July showed an increase in the number of Americans retrospectively supporting the invasion of Iraq. Times editors were so concerned—the Times explained on its website that this result was “counterintuitive”—that they ordered the poll to be taken a second time. Same results. Dang!

Just a Guess: He Was Thinking We Should Be Prepared To Take Aggressive Military Action Against The Iranians

“What was Joe Lieberman, the maverick Democrat from Connecticut, thinking when he recently said that the United States should be prepared to take ‘aggressive military action against the Iranians’?“ –Mark Hosenball, writing in what could only be mock puzzlement in the Periscope section of the July 2/9 issue of Newsweek magazine.

Democrats finally claimed a couple of scalps they’d long targeted when Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and Dubya’s top advisor, Karl Rove, resigned in August. Not much can be said from our side except that Gonzalez was a Friend of Dubya who was guilty of what plagued the administration from the beginning—gross incompetence—and Rove, because of his many successes, drove lefties utterly crazy. Their departure brings closer an end to this long national embarrassment. (August 31, 2007)

One of the big newspapers ran a picture of Al Gore in mid-September. God knows why. But there he was, huge sweaty head on him, big as a medicine ball, jowls flapping, finger wagging, mouth frozen in mid-snarl. Still mad as hell, obviously. This is one of the weirdest people ever to hold public office or inhabit the national stage. An utterly bizarre creature. (September 10, 2007)

Fred Thompson finally declared his candidacy. His eight-year term in the Senate (he was elected to fill the remaining two years of Weird Al Gore’s term when Gore became Sick’s vice-president, then was re-elected in 1996 for an additional six-year term) left him no legacy except a few maverick votes on legislation. Now the Republicans have a candidate whose credentials are as empty as Obama’s. My guess is Fred will fade fast and have little impact on the election. (September 10, 2007)

General David Petraeus presented his promised report to Congress mid-month. The Democrats were calling it a fraud before he even addressed them. The party’s blog voice, Moveon.org, ran a full-page ad in the New York Times calling Petraeus the equivalent of a traitor and a liar. The party’s far left screechers are obsessed with their hatred of Bush. They are a wonderful gift to the Republicans. If the 2008 election is anything less than a full-scale disaster for the GOP, it will be due to the left’s unhinged viciousness. (September 15, 2007)

Weird Al received a Nobel Peace Prize for his work and his lies on the global warming issue. He thus joins Le Duc Tho, Jimmy Carter, and Yasser Arafat on the list of the most preposterous recipients of our lifetime. And while we’re at it, can someone explain the connection between a peace prize and global warming? I could understand a climatology prize, but a peace prize? W.A. and the Gorenians are still counting votes in darkest Florida, by the way, and will keep on counting them until he is declared President. (October 14, 2007)

El Rushbo Prevails, Even With Half His Brain Tied Behind His Back

Lefties loathe Rush Limbaugh. One reason is he’s way, way too smart for them. Dingy Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, recently engineered an angry letter to Limbaugh’s network boss. It bore 41 signatures of outraged Dems—Teddy, Kleagle Bob, Biden, Dodd, Feinstein, Boxer, Durbin, Hildebeest, Schumer, Webb, Levin, that crowd--demanding that Rush be repudiated publicly for his comments about “phony soldiers.” Rush, ever impish, somehow got hold of the letter. He offered it for sale on eBay and relentlessly trumpeted the news to his 20 million daily listeners. All the proceeds are going to a scholarship fund for children of Marines and federal officers killed in the line of duty. Rush is matching the winning bid with his own money. He invited Dingy and his forty lefty friends to provide matching funds, as well. They declined. The winning bid was $2.1 million, a record amount for eBay. Limbaugh’s match pushed the total fo $4.2 million. Dingy and his pack of wackos must be biting off their own arms, they’re so angry. Beautiful, just beautiful. (October 15, 2007)
WQAD-Channel 4 television in Moline, Illinois, offers a multi-question quiz on its website which it claims is designed to identify the presidential candidate most closely aligned with one’s own political views on the burning issues of the day: Iraq/Iran, Immigration, Social Security Reform, Taxes, the Death Penalty, Health Care, and a few others. Peaches and I answered the questions and emerged with remarkably similar candidate preferences. Seventeen candidates (nine Republicans, seven Democrats and one “Other”) are listed. Republican Tom Tancredo ranked first for both of us. The preposterous Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat, ranked last. The test seemed to confirm the obvious: we both are conservatives, but would decline any invitation to brand ourselves Republicans. In my quiz results, Republicans ranked 1 through 9 as follows: Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson, Sam Brownback, Jim Gilmore, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, and Rudy Giuliani. All the Democrats, plus Libertarian Ron Paul (running officially as a Republican) ranked 10 through 17 with Joe Biden at No. 10, followed by Ron Paul, Bill Richardson, Barack Obama, Hildebeest, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, and Kucinich. The quiz does not take into account the question which I suspect will be of profound importance to all non-Democrats on Election Day: Which candidate has the best chance of defeating Hildebeest? (October 29, 2007)

Ten Bucks Says Mary Jo Would Have Preferred A Life Jacket

Dems in full assault mode against Judge Michael Mukasey, Dubya’s nominee to be the new attorney general, thought they’d found the killer issue when they insisted that Mukasey admit publicly that waterboarding is torture and therefore illegal. Mukasey declined. The party grew so desperate that finally its blubbery senior eminence, the Senator from Chappaquiddick, testified—in broad daylight, no less--that waterboarding was the equivalent of drowning. He added several graphic descriptions of what happens when one drowns. He should know. This no doubt thrilled the Moveon.org crowd, but I doubt it was uplifting to any of Mary Jo Kopechne’s surviving relatives and friends. (November 6, 2007)

Hey! A Mere Field Goal Ties It!

Former Illinois Governor George Ryan, protesting his innocence to the end, reported to a minimum security prison in Wisconsin November 7. He vows to keep appealing even though numerous appeals have already been turned down and a judge finally told him the jig was up. Ryan is in his 70s. If the rest of us are lucky, he will rot and die in prison. He was found guilty of all 18 counts of corruption brought against him in an Illinois federal court, and he deserves no mercy. It may be noted in passing that Ryan is the third Illinois governor of the modern era to do prison time. Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass observed that this gives Illinois Governors a 3-0 lead over Chicago Mayors. (November 7, 2007)
Peaches and I enjoyed a Kodak Moment on Election Day—we both voted for someone who won (an upstart Republican, Greg Ballard)—this time for mayor of Indianapolis. Ballard was snubbed by the county Republican party, the city Chamber of Commerce, and most of the power hitterati. Ballard was universally regarded by the punditry as having no chance. A month before the election, the incumbent Democrat, Bart Peterson, has $3 million in his campaign war chest, and Ballard had $10,000. The local paper endorsed Peterson and said Ballard was completely unqualified for the job. But a huge late summer poll lead somehow evaporated and Ballard’s shocking win was by 6,000 votes, roughly 51 to 47 percent. Ballard is a retired Marine colonel, who has promised to change some things. We have a feeling he will make a lot of people very nervous, and do just fine in his new job. (November 7, 2007)
In a little-noticed speech in early November at John Hopkins University, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman (a lifelong Democrat ostracized by his own party in the 2006 election for supporting the war in Iraq) said in public what many have believed for years (and I paraphrase): The Democrat Party has nothing more important on its agenda than its devotion to destroying George Bush and his presidency. His exact words: “Since retaking Congress in November, 2006, the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror, or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East, or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically elected government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush.” Lieberman’s speaking of this truth is close to the ultimate heresy in the eyes of the Democrat left, and in many countries he would be assassinated for saying it. He is a courageous man, a patriot in a time when precious few of them can be found on the left. (November 16, 2007)
Question: If Hillary is elected president, what will Bill’s title be? Answer: First Scumbag. (December 4, 2007)

Twenty Bucks Says Mary Jo Would’ve Preferred A Life Jacket

Fewer people died in Abu Ghraib prison than died in Ted Kennedy’s Oldsmobile.---Wisecrack circulating on the Internet at year’s end? (December 31, 2007)

	Scoundrels, Knaves & Fools American Pile Whoops & Squawks Splinters From the Bench Indiana University Sports Lists & Other Minutiae Contact the author	2009 \| 2008 \| 2007 \| 2006 \| 2005 \| 2004 \| 2003 \| 2002 \| 2001 \| 2000 \| 1999 \| 1998 \| 1997 \| 1996 \| 1995 \| Pre-1995 Scoundrels, Knaves, and Fools My New Year’s Day Prayer for 2007 is for someone with national clout to adopt a brilliant idea of my wife, Peaches: that since Congress almost certainly will never fund the completion of the 800-mile fence along our border with Mexico (federal legislation approving—but not funding—the fence passed last year), we should conduct a National Fence-A-Thon (Jerry Lewis could host it) and letprivate citizens and businesses fund and adopt sections of border fence. Clever marketers could sell sections of various lengths so that rich and poor alike could have ownership in a great national undertaking. You could sell advertising (which could help with maintenance and repair costs) on both sides of the fence, too. The Minuteman group has had no trouble getting volunteers to watch the border—I’ll bet many Americans would volunteer to help build the fence. This would not only save the gub’mint tons of money which it could then waste on handouts to special interests, but it would get the fence built and the border sealed in record short time and provide an incalculable boost to national self-esteem. In addition, it would deny Congress its secret goal of avoiding facing the border security issue. Millions of Americans would be proud to have their name on a piece of this. Where do I mail my check? (January 1, 2007) In the Late Christmas Present Department was a ruling January 5 by a federal appeals court in Chicago that a lawsuit by the Democrat Party and assorted leftwing activists to throw out Indiana’s voter ID law was itself being tossed out. The plaintiffs howled and wailed and screeched that the law was unconstitutional, an outrage, a grievous violation of human rights, and a damnable rightwing scheme to disenfranchise innocent citizens. The 7th U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 that it was not. The national Democrat Party and its strident chairman, Howard Dean, stoutly supported the suit. The dissenting judge, Terrence Evans, charged that—gasp!—Indiana’s law was politically motivated, even though its constitutionality was the issue, not its “motivation.” There were dark mutterings from the left; the Indiana chapter of the ACLU said it may appeal yet again. Meantime, those showing up to vote in Indiana elections may be legally required to flash a photo ID, agonizing though it may be. (January 5, 2007) Perhaps He Simply Saw Reality and Took Appropriate Action “Grant, having won the war as a general, spent much of his presidency quietly drunk on bourbon, smoking cigars in a quiet corner of the Willard Hotel.”—Clinton Rossiter, Cornell University professor and author of The American Presidency, published in the 1960s, in which he ranked Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Warren G. Harding as the four worst presidents in history. Rossiter died (by suicide) in 1970, and so was unable to include consider some fairly awful presidents who came after. His book was cited by columnist Matthew Engel, writing in the January 6-7, 2007 edition of Financial Times. “Democrats rent.” –P. J. O’Rourke, author and humorist, quoting what his grandmother said when he, as a mere wisp of a lad, asked her, “What is the difference between Republicans and Democrats?” O’Rourke offered this anecdote during a three-hour interview and call-in show on CSPAN-2’s Book TV program. (January 7, 2007) “The “international community” has reacted in the usual ways—(with) calls for immediate cease-fires so an ineffectual force of United Nations peace-keepers can go in and enjoy their customary child sex with the locals while propping up the Islamists.”—Mark Steyn, author and columnist for Britain’s Telegraph Group, commenting on the fighting in Somalia, where radical Islamists are threatening to take over the country. (Washington Times, January 8, 2007 edition) Arizona Republican Congressman Jeff Flake has been smacked down good and hard by his party’s leadership for holding their feet to the fire on that most unpleasant of topics, earmarks. Flake has been an outspoken critic of Republican spending profligacy and went so far as to appear on CBS’s “60 Minutes” in a segment about it, which the network mysteriously chose to run the weekend before last November’s election. Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner punished Flake by kicking him off the Judiciary Committee, while keeping six other Republicans with less seniority on it. This is an unmistakable clue about what the Party will do to anyone who places the national interest first. A sad day, indeed. (January 10, 2007) Non-Confidence Builders Department: The Washington Times reports that a survey estimates that 73% of all illegal aliens in the U.S. have been previously arrested six or more times. High-Steppin’ Lefties Headin’ For The Pentagon The January 12, 2007, issue of the New York Times brought the comforting assurance that lefties are willing to stand up for something—if it’s Dubya’s immediate impeachment. A full-page ad (page A7) with an inch-and-a-half high headline screaming Impeach Now! lists Dubya’s multiple crimes against humanity—an illegal war; a worldwide network of secret prisons; wiretapping, reading the mail of, and searching and detaining indefinitely any American he dang well chooses, and, presumably, more. Former U.S. Attorney General and preposterous leftwing crackpot Ramsey Clark has graciously drafted the articles of impeachment. Over 810,000 people have already voted to impeach, the Times ad exults, and a big parade down to the Pentagon is planned for March 17. This will put a spring in the step of all true Americans. (January 12, 2007) Dick And Don Jus’ Keep Loopin’ Around. . . New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof left us a gold nugget in the very last paragraph of his January 14 column on the topic of how often Americans screw up foreign policy. He used the Middle East to show examples as far back as the 1950s of American foreign policy decisions which backfired or blew up in our faces. Kristof then circled back to the present raging argument over Dubya’s plan for a “surge”—or “augmentation,” as Condi prefers to call it—in American troop levels to rein in the Baghdad loonies. The stage set, Kristof introduces us to the Rev. Bob Edgar, now the general secretary of the National Council of Churches but who in the 1970s was a U.S. Congressman. Kristof says Edgar recalls that in April of 1975—almost 32 years ago—he and his fellow Congressmen and women were facing a similar presidential request—only this time it was President Gerald Ford asking for more U.S. troops to stabilize Saigon. And here’s the golden nugget—Kristof’s last paragraph: “A White House photo captures Ford conferring with two of the architects of that request: senior administration officials named Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.” (January 14, 2007) Word leaked over the weekend that Hildebeest’s website is making it official: she is a candidate for President in 2008. This is pleasing. Now the dread of it happening is gone. The specter is now reality. The enemy is now in tangible form, and we can have the Final Showdown the nation needs. We can find out, on a date fixed and certain (November 4, 2008—but perhaps later, to allow time for the Dems’ lawsuits), if we’re going to be saddled with this beast or be done with her. If she wins, then we endure eight years of the Sicks again infesting the White House; if not, she can be shoveled offstage and the rest of us can head for those fabled sunlit uplands. Though of course, they’ll never stop tormenting us, not even long after we and they are dead. Let’s get to war! (January 20, 2007) The smartest thing Hillary could do is select Obama as her vice presidential running mate. That would give Barack eight years with training wheels, and a guaranteed two terms after Hillary finishes her two. Sixteen consecutive years of far left Democrats in the White House would cure us of everything and set up the party for a dynasty running to mid-century at least. (January 23, 2007) How About Bill ‘n’ ‘bama? And if Hildebeest is too risky, then Bill Richardson is easily the next-best choice, with perhaps Obama as his running mate, for the same reasons. Richardson has excellent credentials and experience, is Hispanic, and would deliver a grand slam prize—the vast and growing-by-the-moment Hispanic voting bloc, both legal and illegal. Both parties are desperate to snare this group and if the Dems lock ‘em up, they can rule for decades. Richardson has almost no downside. His only major risk—the current “third rail” of politics--is the Illegal Immigration Unpleasantness. But he and the Dems can finesse that one—with the silently enthusiastic support of Republicans, who also are desperate to avoid dealing with the issue—so that voters will never know till it’s too late. (January 23, 2007) “I spent one weekend there in six years, and I don’t ever want to spend another.”—Tom Coburn, Republican Senator from Oklahoma, quoted in the Patriot Post, commenting on the plague of career politicians—who move to Washington and stay forever. Coburn is widely known as a maverick and a troublemaker, who often takes stands opposed by his party’s leadership. He is a medical doctor, who prides himself on still maintaining his family practice in Oklahoma, and who goes home to his district nearly every weekend. He was first elected to the House in 1994 and served three terms. He was elected to the Senate seat in 1998, and re-elected in 2004. (January 23, 2007) Sergeant Pendry Gets The Ball Rolling Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, John Murtha, Dick Durbin, Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Carl Levine, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Russ Feingold, Hillary Clinton, Patrick Leahy, Chuck Schumer, the American news media (especially the New York Times).—Names in a list titled America’s Axis of Idiots, offered by someone identifying himself as Sgt. Major J. D. Pendry (Retired), in an essay floating around on the Internet in January, 2007. It’s not a complete list, but it’s a nice beginning. Few issues in recent years better illustrate the old adage, “Watch what I do, not what I say,“ than illegal immigration. Both parties are frantic to win the Hispanic vote. Both parties are therefore desperate to avoid tough policies and actions on border control and illegal immigration. Thus politicians on both sides absolutely must continuously lie to us sweetly, and hide their motives and actions in euphemism and doublespeak. If citizens aren’t acutely alert, skeptical, and relentless insistent, both parties will sell us and the country down the river. (January 24, 2007) Coming Soon To A Demagogue Near You!! Dubya’s big push for greater use of ethanol fuels has already raised the price of corn futures. But it’s going to provide Dems and the hard left a new demon, too. I can see Big Corn joining Big Oil, Big Fast Food, Big Pharma, Big Unbridled Capitalist Greedsters on the hate list. Watch for it. (January 24, 2007) Hildebeest made a January campaign appearance in Iowa to test Democrat pulses. While there, in one of America’s leading corn-producing states, she touted the increased use of corn-based ethanol as an alternative fuel. The crowd roared its approval. It took a week or two, but one of those ornery, troublemaking conservative organizations—Patriot Post—did the research and found that Senator Clinton had voted against pro-ethanol legislation at least six times. Will the word ever get back to Iowa? (February 2, 2007) No sooner did John Kerry announced he would not be running for president in 2008—a sad development for the Republican Party—than the preposterous Al Franken announced he would be running for the U.S. Senator in Minnesota. An Associated Press report described Franken as a “comedian and political commentator.” Most recently, though, Franken sat behind the golden microphone at Air America, the wacko leftwing fruitcake radio network which declared bankruptcy at the end of 2006 for lack of an audience. Minnesota is one of only a very few states perfectly suited for a Franken candidacy. (February 3, 2007) Rush Limbaugh’s listeners had a song in their hearts and a spring in their steps Tuesday. Rush played a new parody song about the preposterous John Kerry titled “The U.S.A.’s Pariah” (boldly warbled to the tune of “They Call The Wind Maria”) and hung the wonderful title of Exit Poll President-Elect—For A Few Hours on the long-faced Massachusetts Democrat. (February 6, 2007) Republican Senator George Allen used the word “macaca” and the mainstream media last fall made it a front-page story and pounded away at it for weeks and weeks. Allen’s re-election campaign bid collapsed and he lost to seething super-lefty James Webb. A couple of months later Democratic Senator Joseph Biden used the word “clean” do describe fellow Democrat Barack Obama. Some found the term insulting. Biden apologized and the mainstream media dropped the story. Summary: Allen was crucified and Biden got a free pass for essentially equivalent slips. Please spare telling us that the media treated these episodes equally. (February 1, 2007) Kate O’Beirne, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, and Mona Charen were panelists in late January at National Review’s weekend forum on conservative politics. The sight of them had to be heart-breaking for those in the CSPAN audience who despair over the current condition of the Republican Party. A man in the audience stood to ask the question millions of us would ask: “Where are the GOP fighters? Where are the Republicans who’ll stand up and fight back?” There were precious few names offered: “Certainly Rick Santorum,” said one panelist (Santorum lost his re-election bid last November). John Kyl, Jeff Sessions, Tom Coburn. . .and then no one could think of any more names. Newt Gingrich was mentioned, but he’s not in elected office. Conservatives would have superb representation if Ingraham, Malkin, Charen, Ann Coulter, Victor Davis Hanson,and a few other conservative media voices would run for office. But, being in their right minds, they’re not interested in a life in politics. (January 27, 2007) Democrats freshly empowered in Washington are dropping their masks and pushing hard for a full withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. It’s Vietnam all over again. I believe the cut-and-run crowd has misread last fall’s election results as a mandate from the people to pull out of Iraq. I think people voted the Republicans out of power for being incompetent at prosecuting the war. Polls as recent at February 20 show about 60 percent of Americans opposed to pulling out of Iraq, and similar margins believing the war there is still winnable. What they want is leadership that knows how to win it. They’ll not find that in the Democrats. (February 21, 2007) USA Today reports that something called The Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University has just finished a study which shows that voter turnout in 2004 was about 4 percent lower instates which had voter ID requirements such as asking a voter to sign his name or produce a valid identification card. Hispanic turnout dropped 10 percent and there was a six percent decline for blacks and Asians. The Star’s headline writer artfully chose wording which put a negative spin on things: “Voter ID Rules Hurt 2004 Turnout.” Richard Wolf, who wrote the story, noted that two researchers told something called The U. S. Election Assistance Commission that “they found little evidence of voter fraud at polling places.” But Wolf did not speculate--so I will--whether that might be due to potential fraudulent voters being scared off by the new rules. In Indiana, which adopted the nation’s stiffest ID law in 2005, turnout increased by 2 percent In November, 2006, compared to 2002. This may well be due to a wildly successful phony document ring which operated in the Indianapolis area a few year ago and extracted thousands of drivers licenses for illegal immigrants from local license branches before being discovered. Liberals are suing in many states to prevent the federal voter ID law from being implemented, but nearly half the states have already done so and half a dozen more are considering them this year. Keeping the doors open for voter fraud is a challenging task, but it’s a cause lefties can really get patriotic about. Rest assured they’re not giving up. (February 25, 2007) William Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat who was videotaped accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from an FBI informant in July, 2005, and in whose refrigerator FBI agents found $90,000 in cash bearing serial numbers matching the cash the FBI gave to its informant to give to Jefferson, has been quietly appointed by Democrat Party leadership to a seat on the Homeland Security Committee. Republicans began squawking as soon as they learned of the move, which must be approved by the full House, and are promising to monitor House proceedings 24-7-365 to prevent the Democrats from clearing Jefferson in a late-night unrecorded voice vote. The GOP is even threatening to demand a recorded vote instead of the midnight squeakings. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Homeland Security was an “appropriate place” for Jefferson to serve, since he represents New Orleans and the committee oversees Hurricane Katrina-related matters. Jefferson’s house and refrigerator were raided by the FBI based on an 83-page affidavit the FBI filed to obtain a search warrant. The Justice Department is said to be still investigating. Jefferson called the fuss “simply politics as usual.” The story got little press coverage, no doubt because the Anna Nicole Smith-O-Rama was taking up so much of our time. The only account I’ve seen of it was in the March 5 issue of The Washington Times, a conservative weekly. (February 28, 2007) Lefties and their drive-by media accomplices are in full-screech over the Dubya Administration’s firing of eight U.S. district attorneys. Don’t any of them remember that in 1993 the Sick Administration, with attorney general Janet Reno and First Friend Webster Hubbell doing the knifework, fired all 93 U.S. District attorneys? These people are political appointees and serve at the pleasure of any president. This is a non-story--unless it’s Republicans doing the firing. (March 10, 2007) Dirty Rotten Right-Wing Trick? A correspondent notes that during a February rally for Barack Obama there were two signs borne aloft behind the stage from which Obama spoke, and were easily visible in the television coverage. The signs read: Muslims for Obama.” (February 27, 2007) Webb’s Forgotten Pistol The story was tucked away on an inside page of the Chicago Tribune and bore a small headline, but at least it saw daylight. “A trusted employee” of angry (when last seen, Webb was fairly shaking with anger and contempt as he delivered his party’s response to Dubya’s State of the Union Address in January) Democratic Senator James Webb was arrested March 26 when he entered a Senate office building carrying his boss’s loaded pistol. Capitol Police made the grab, and said the aide, Phillip Thompson, was charged with carrying a pistol without a license and possessing an unregistered firearm and unregistered ammunition. An unidentified congressional official told the Associated Press that Webb gave his gun to Thompson when the aide drove him to the airport. Thompson then “forgot he was carrying the weapon,” the official said. I neither saw nor heard this story mentioned in any other place. I suspect the coverage would have rivaled the Anna Nicole Smith-O-Rama had some rightwing crackpot Republican been involved. (March 27, 2007) Except For The Facts, There Wouldn’t Be Any Bias The Huge Unpleasantness Said To Have Involved The Dubya Administration’s Attempt To Fire Eight Federal Prosecutors is a perfect example of the media’s liberal bias, even though my lefty friends insist there is no such thing. Mark Laswell of the Wall Street Journal did the research and here’s what he found. During the week of March 12-16, the three network evening news programs devoted 45 minutes to the 2007 prosecutor story (the War in Iraq ran second with 16 minutes), with “ABC World News with Charles Gibson” giving it 13 minutes. In 1993, when the Sick Administration fired all 93 of its federal prosecutors (the legendary Janet Reno was attorney general and little George Stephanopolous was White House communications director), ABC and CBS completely skipped the story and NBC gave it 20 seconds. Actually, this should be a non-story--or at least a tiny, tiny one--no matter what the Administration’s politics. It is instructive to see, though, how the media ignored the story when Democrats did the firing but are foaming at the mouth when Republicans do. (March 29, 2007) Sandy’s Paper Caper Gets A One-Hour Special Fox News, a key pillar in that vast rightwing conspiracy, devoted an hour-long special the night of March 31 to certain antics of Sick Willie’s former national security adviser, Sandy Scissorhands. It was impishly titled “Socks, Scissors, Paper: The Sandy Berger Caper.” (For the uninitiated, the title comes from Berger’s admission that he used scissors to cut up some of the stolen documents he spirited back to his office, and from testimony by a National Archives employee that he saw Berger stuffing documents into his socks—Sandy later was said to have stuffed them in his underwear and inside his jacket pockets.) Despite stonewalling by most of the principals, Fox managed to verify extensive details: Berger made four trips to the National Archives and stole numerous top secret documents; Berger placed numerous phone calls to unknown outsiders while inside the Archives “reviewing” the material; Berger lied to investigators repeatedly once caught; staff at the National Archives, from which Berger stole the documents, willfully and repeatedly violated their own policies and procedures for handling and review of documents by outsiders—Berger was allowed to use a staff supervisor’s large office rather than the camera-equipped, secure room visitors normally must use to review files, and was allowed to bring his own cell phone, briefcase and writing instruments into the room, all contrary to normal rules; Berger admitted in court that he stole the documents, said it was “an honest mistake” and negotiated a ridiculously lenient plea bargain with the Justice Department; it was stipulated that he would be given a lie detector test by the Justice Department as part of his plea bargain. He has never been given the lie detector test and when pressed by a congressional committee investigating the matter, the Justice Department replied in a letter that there “are no new facts” in the case and therefore there is no reason to give Berger the test. A committee staffer interviewed by Fox described the DOJ’s response as “basically, they gave us the finger.” Because Berger was looking at top-secret documents relating to terrorism, and the caper occurred shortly before he was called to testify before the 9/11 Commission, questions have been raised about whether information might have been kept secret from the Commission. Fox interviewed a former Justice Department official who described the arrangement for Berger as “the sweetheart deal of all time” and added that there is no doubt in his mind that Berger committed “a felony—more than one.” Berger was sentenced to 100 hours of “community service,” three years of prison (all on probation, not one second in jail), and a fine of $50,000 (the initial fine was $10,000, but a federal judge later raised it). Berger’s national security clearance was temporarily suspended (he can get it back when his probation is completed) and he walks the streets today a free man. In a society which was honestly serious about enforcing its own laws and serious about national security issues, Berger would be in prison today and for a long time to come, and this story would have been a national scandal. Three brutal realities: (1) the mainstream drive-by media ignored the story then, and continues to ignore it, (2) most of our countrymen don‘t care one bit that a federal crime was committed by a former high-ranking government official—most people regard it just as Scissorhands does, a mistake, an error in judgment, and (3) every government agency which touched this story was grossly derelict in its duty. None of this is shocking. All of it is deeply saddening. (March 31, 2007) I could vote affirmatively for any combination of Newt Gingrich, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush for president (though poor Jeb’s future has likely been ruined by Dubya and his dad). If you stuck an AK-47 in my left nostril and threatened to kill me and all my family, I could vote for a Democrat—but only one—Bill Richardson. All the rest of the Dems I’d say go ahead, pull the trigger. (March 31, 2007) Your Government At Work In 2001 the federal government reported there were about 300,000 fugitive aliens (people who had been ordered by American courts to leave the country) loose in America. Then came 9/11. The government announced big efforts to find and deport these miscreants, and since 2003 over $200 million has been spent on the project .It’s now 2007 and the government reports there are over 600,000 aliens at large. (News item from the April 16, 2007 issue of National Review). (April 6, 2007) Randall Tobias, a Bush Administration appointee, resigned his State Department position within hours after it was revealed he had used an “escort service” in Wonderland, D.C. Tobias told eager reporters there was “no sex involved” and that he had used to service to get a massage at his condo. Tobias, a former Eli Lilly & Co. CEO, showed amazingly poor judgment in this matter, but when “outted” he immediately did the decent and proper thing—he resigned. Contrast that with Sick Willie’s behavior—and that of his army of Clintonista spinners--when the Monica Lewinski Unpleasantness hit the headlines. Beautiful. (April 28, 2007) ABC News is said to possess a list of roughly 10,000 “escort service” customers given to it by a proprietor. Let’s see how selectively ABC decides to make them public in its quest for truth and justice. British Prime Minister Tony Blair is resigning soon. Americans ought to be mourning. Blair was a stout supporter of the War in Iraq and a good friend to our country. He put his career on the line to stand with us. Public opinion there as here turned sour, too, and Blair was forced out of office. (May 20, 2007) The malignancy that is former president Jimmy Carter got back in the news with a public accusation that Dubya and his policies are the worst in American history. It’s amazing that people take this man seriously. Carter himself is among the worst presidents in American history and he is a world-class, meanspirited buffoon to boot. He and Dubya may well belong side-by-side in history’s dumpster. (May 20, 2007) The League Of Extraordinary Scoundrels Spring put a spring in the step of the Chicago Tribune’s Tempo page editor, who celebrated with a massive and highly entertaining article about some of Chicago’s legendary political rascals, clowns, and crooks (and sometimes one was all three). A month’s newspapers could have been devoted to the category, but Tribune senior correspondent Charles Leroux bravely chose only ten to profile. Some highlights: “Long John” Wentworth, a two-term mayor from 1857 to 1861, stood 6-feet 6-inches and weighed over 300 pounds, was famous for consuming gargantuan meals and reportedly drank at least a pint of whiskey a day. When The Prince of Wales came to Chicago, Wentworth introduced him from a Tremont Hotel balcony to a crowd below, saying “Boys, this is the prince. Prince, these are the boys.”; Alderman William Henry, who died in 1992 while under indictment for bribery and extortion; John D’Arco Jr., state senator, son of a “political fixer for the mob” and a felon convicted of bribery, published his own poetry through a vanity publisher; William “Big Bill” Thompson, the last Republican to serve as a Chicago mayor, once brought a horse into the city council chamber, was suspected—though never proven—to have been on Al Capone’s payroll. He once led an expedition to South America to find tree-climbing fish, but the boat only reached New Orleans when Thompson abandoned the project. Thompson “allowed gangsters free rein” after he was re-elected in 1927, died in the Blackstone Hotel; Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna and “Bathhouse” John Coughlin, both lst Ward aldermen in the 1897-1938 period. Coughlin was described as a “big, often outrageously dressed buffoon,” whose statements to newspapers “seemed simpleminded” and who wrote poems which the Tribune published with such titles as “She Sleeps By The Drainage Canal,” “Why Did They Build The Lovely Lake So Close To The Horrible Shore?” and “They’re Tearing Up Clark Street Again.” The two were described as “twins in collecting graft and protection money” in their “notorious, crime-ridden ward,” and who “made indictments go away, doled out city jobs and licenses and zoning variances—anything for a fee.” The duo sponsored the First Ward Ball, whichTribune correspondent Leroux described as “the nexus of public debauchery in which attendance by every pimp, prostitute, madam, pickpocket, etc. was mandatory.” This gala was held in the old Chicago Coliseum and Coughlin opened the 1907 outing by leading a procession of prostitutes. Over 100 policemen attended that night. And finally, Bernie Neistein, a West Side ward boss under Mayor Richard J. Daley, who was mean-spirited before Democrats made the word part of their cherished mantra. Neistein, in a 1999 interview with the Tribune recounted by Leroux, recalled a long-ago election in which all but three votes in his ward went to Democrats. Neistein found out who the three “traitors” were—a man Neistein had gotten a job, his wife, and his mother-in-law. Neistein got the man fired. Then, he told the newspaper, “I bought the two-flat they were living in and watched as the guy and his wife and their kid and her mother were thrown out on the sidewalk. Later, I sold the building at a $500 loss. It was worth every penny. Neistein giveth and Neistein taketh away.” Neistein was also a talented violinist who serenaded Mayor Daley and fellow bosses at Morrison Hotel post-election victory parties by playing Beethoven. Leroux’s wonderful article nearly convinced me that since I’ve never lived in Chicago, I haven’t really lived at all. I have a hunch that observing through heavy lenses from a few hundred miles away is good enough, though. (May 17, 2007) Fifteen years ago we were bitching about American jobs being exported to Mexico and Asia. Now our politicians are finishing this dirty business by bringing the cheap labor here through unchecked illegal immigration. Joke’s on us. Again. (June 1, 2007) “John Edwards is a male Paris Hilton.”—Mark Williams, described as a “political consultant,” on Fox News. (June 9, 2007) “One thing the Left was right about is that President Bush is a boob. He needs all the help he can get.”—Mark Williams, on Fox News. (June 9, 2007) “The leading voice of the America Is Evil Club.”—Nolan Finley, syndicated columnist, describing former president Jimmy Carter. Lefties have resumed grumbling about resurrecting the Fairness Doctrine. This has nothing to do with fairness. It has to do with the fact that conservatives, in free and fair competition, completely dominate the nation’s radio talk show format. So liberals are doing what they always do when they can’t win in a fair fight—they try to legislate the other guy off the playing field or find a judge who will. (June 15, 2007) Polls show overwhelming public support for border control, and high public anger at government officials for not enforcing existing immigration laws. Yet mid-summer brought us the bizarre spectacle of our ridiculous President joining hands with the likes of Ted Kennedy and John McCain in trying to ram an amnesty bill for illegal immigrants down our throat. Only a vast mobilization of citizens burying Washington in e-mails, faxes, phone calls and protests kept this evil legislation from being passed. The only conclusion we can reasonably draw from this is that for reasons they will not—dare not--admit, America’s political elites have united in their determination to ignore the clearly expressed “will of the people.” The votes of Indiana’s two Senators on the amnesty bill were the opposite of expectations. Evan Bayh, a Democrat, voted against it; Richard Lugar, a Republican, voted in favor. Lugar followed this a week or two later by joining the Left and critics of Bush’s policy on the war in Iraq by calling for a troop withdrawal. I am finished supporting Lugar. He is a decent man, dignified, scholarly, gentle, but he is not a conservative, and in his entire career has seldom if ever taken a position requiring great courage. He should either retire or switch to the Democrat Party. But Wait, Wait!! This is Different!! Romney’s A Republican!! The Mitt Romney presidential campaign has drawn sly whispers from lefty blogs and assorted Democrats inserting “the religious issue”—you know, the one that was laid to rest when Catholic Jack Kennedy ran for president in 1960s—by hinting that some of Romney’s Mormon ancestors may, just may, have had—egad!!—multiple wives. Columnist Thomas Sowell noted this and added that Romney seems to be one of the few current politicians who has had only one wife. (June 30, 2007) A Mere Oversight, Surely Indiana’s property value reassessment was botched so badly that within a couple of weeks of the new tax bills being mailed—many containing raises of 50% or more--Governor Mitch Daniels, a dastardly Republican, ordered an entire new assessment. Once troublemakers got a chance to review and analyze the new valuations, it was discovered that over 70 percent of all commercial property in the county had somehow not been re-assessed at all. Township assessors are responsible for this and it stretches the imagination to ask us to believe that all this business property was simply overlooked by accident. There’s a wonderful opportunity here for the ink-stained wretches down at the Star to do some prize-winning investigative reporting. (July 19, 2007) At a mid-summer gathering of friends on the plains of central Indiana, I conducted an informal poll on whom each guest would vote for if the presidential election were held that day. The results: Rudy Giuliani got three votes, John McCain one, and Fred Thompson, not even a declared candidate, two (with one conditioned on Mike Huckabee being Thompson’s vice-presidential running mate). This and $240 will get you a medium Starbucks coffee. (July 15, 2007) A telling fact: the Democratic Leadership Council, long a moderating influence on the party, held its annual “National Conversation” in Nashville late in July, and not a single one of the 11—or is it 41?---announced Democrat presidential candidates attended. (August 1, 2007) Bad News The month of July produced the lowest number of deaths in Iraq in many months. Even an occasional lefty was heard acknowledging that the troop surge might—just might, mind you—be doing some good. This is a potential nightmare for Democrats. (August 1, 2007) More Bad News A New York Times/CBS News poll in late July showed an increase in the number of Americans retrospectively supporting the invasion of Iraq. Times editors were so concerned—the Times explained on its website that this result was “counterintuitive”—that they ordered the poll to be taken a second time. Same results. Dang! Just a Guess: He Was Thinking We Should Be Prepared To Take Aggressive Military Action Against The Iranians “What was Joe Lieberman, the maverick Democrat from Connecticut, thinking when he recently said that the United States should be prepared to take ‘aggressive military action against the Iranians’?“ –Mark Hosenball, writing in what could only be mock puzzlement in the Periscope section of the July 2/9 issue of Newsweek magazine. Democrats finally claimed a couple of scalps they’d long targeted when Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and Dubya’s top advisor, Karl Rove, resigned in August. Not much can be said from our side except that Gonzalez was a Friend of Dubya who was guilty of what plagued the administration from the beginning—gross incompetence—and Rove, because of his many successes, drove lefties utterly crazy. Their departure brings closer an end to this long national embarrassment. (August 31, 2007) One of the big newspapers ran a picture of Al Gore in mid-September. God knows why. But there he was, huge sweaty head on him, big as a medicine ball, jowls flapping, finger wagging, mouth frozen in mid-snarl. Still mad as hell, obviously. This is one of the weirdest people ever to hold public office or inhabit the national stage. An utterly bizarre creature. (September 10, 2007) Fred Thompson finally declared his candidacy. His eight-year term in the Senate (he was elected to fill the remaining two years of Weird Al Gore’s term when Gore became Sick’s vice-president, then was re-elected in 1996 for an additional six-year term) left him no legacy except a few maverick votes on legislation. Now the Republicans have a candidate whose credentials are as empty as Obama’s. My guess is Fred will fade fast and have little impact on the election. (September 10, 2007) General David Petraeus presented his promised report to Congress mid-month. The Democrats were calling it a fraud before he even addressed them. The party’s blog voice, Moveon.org, ran a full-page ad in the New York Times calling Petraeus the equivalent of a traitor and a liar. The party’s far left screechers are obsessed with their hatred of Bush. They are a wonderful gift to the Republicans. If the 2008 election is anything less than a full-scale disaster for the GOP, it will be due to the left’s unhinged viciousness. (September 15, 2007) Weird Al received a Nobel Peace Prize for his work and his lies on the global warming issue. He thus joins Le Duc Tho, Jimmy Carter, and Yasser Arafat on the list of the most preposterous recipients of our lifetime. And while we’re at it, can someone explain the connection between a peace prize and global warming? I could understand a climatology prize, but a peace prize? W.A. and the Gorenians are still counting votes in darkest Florida, by the way, and will keep on counting them until he is declared President. (October 14, 2007) El Rushbo Prevails, Even With Half His Brain Tied Behind His Back Lefties loathe Rush Limbaugh. One reason is he’s way, way too smart for them. Dingy Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, recently engineered an angry letter to Limbaugh’s network boss. It bore 41 signatures of outraged Dems—Teddy, Kleagle Bob, Biden, Dodd, Feinstein, Boxer, Durbin, Hildebeest, Schumer, Webb, Levin, that crowd--demanding that Rush be repudiated publicly for his comments about “phony soldiers.” Rush, ever impish, somehow got hold of the letter. He offered it for sale on eBay and relentlessly trumpeted the news to his 20 million daily listeners. All the proceeds are going to a scholarship fund for children of Marines and federal officers killed in the line of duty. Rush is matching the winning bid with his own money. He invited Dingy and his forty lefty friends to provide matching funds, as well. They declined. The winning bid was $2.1 million, a record amount for eBay. Limbaugh’s match pushed the total fo $4.2 million. Dingy and his pack of wackos must be biting off their own arms, they’re so angry. Beautiful, just beautiful. (October 15, 2007) WQAD-Channel 4 television in Moline, Illinois, offers a multi-question quiz on its website which it claims is designed to identify the presidential candidate most closely aligned with one’s own political views on the burning issues of the day: Iraq/Iran, Immigration, Social Security Reform, Taxes, the Death Penalty, Health Care, and a few others. Peaches and I answered the questions and emerged with remarkably similar candidate preferences. Seventeen candidates (nine Republicans, seven Democrats and one “Other”) are listed. Republican Tom Tancredo ranked first for both of us. The preposterous Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat, ranked last. The test seemed to confirm the obvious: we both are conservatives, but would decline any invitation to brand ourselves Republicans. In my quiz results, Republicans ranked 1 through 9 as follows: Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson, Sam Brownback, Jim Gilmore, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, and Rudy Giuliani. All the Democrats, plus Libertarian Ron Paul (running officially as a Republican) ranked 10 through 17 with Joe Biden at No. 10, followed by Ron Paul, Bill Richardson, Barack Obama, Hildebeest, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, and Kucinich. The quiz does not take into account the question which I suspect will be of profound importance to all non-Democrats on Election Day: Which candidate has the best chance of defeating Hildebeest? (October 29, 2007) Ten Bucks Says Mary Jo Would Have Preferred A Life Jacket Dems in full assault mode against Judge Michael Mukasey, Dubya’s nominee to be the new attorney general, thought they’d found the killer issue when they insisted that Mukasey admit publicly that waterboarding is torture and therefore illegal. Mukasey declined. The party grew so desperate that finally its blubbery senior eminence, the Senator from Chappaquiddick, testified—in broad daylight, no less--that waterboarding was the equivalent of drowning. He added several graphic descriptions of what happens when one drowns. He should know. This no doubt thrilled the Moveon.org crowd, but I doubt it was uplifting to any of Mary Jo Kopechne’s surviving relatives and friends. (November 6, 2007) Hey! A Mere Field Goal Ties It! Former Illinois Governor George Ryan, protesting his innocence to the end, reported to a minimum security prison in Wisconsin November 7. He vows to keep appealing even though numerous appeals have already been turned down and a judge finally told him the jig was up. Ryan is in his 70s. If the rest of us are lucky, he will rot and die in prison. He was found guilty of all 18 counts of corruption brought against him in an Illinois federal court, and he deserves no mercy. It may be noted in passing that Ryan is the third Illinois governor of the modern era to do prison time. Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass observed that this gives Illinois Governors a 3-0 lead over Chicago Mayors. (November 7, 2007) Peaches and I enjoyed a Kodak Moment on Election Day—we both voted for someone who won (an upstart Republican, Greg Ballard)—this time for mayor of Indianapolis. Ballard was snubbed by the county Republican party, the city Chamber of Commerce, and most of the power hitterati. Ballard was universally regarded by the punditry as having no chance. A month before the election, the incumbent Democrat, Bart Peterson, has $3 million in his campaign war chest, and Ballard had $10,000. The local paper endorsed Peterson and said Ballard was completely unqualified for the job. But a huge late summer poll lead somehow evaporated and Ballard’s shocking win was by 6,000 votes, roughly 51 to 47 percent. Ballard is a retired Marine colonel, who has promised to change some things. We have a feeling he will make a lot of people very nervous, and do just fine in his new job. (November 7, 2007) In a little-noticed speech in early November at John Hopkins University, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman (a lifelong Democrat ostracized by his own party in the 2006 election for supporting the war in Iraq) said in public what many have believed for years (and I paraphrase): The Democrat Party has nothing more important on its agenda than its devotion to destroying George Bush and his presidency. His exact words: “Since retaking Congress in November, 2006, the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror, or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East, or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically elected government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush.” Lieberman’s speaking of this truth is close to the ultimate heresy in the eyes of the Democrat left, and in many countries he would be assassinated for saying it. He is a courageous man, a patriot in a time when precious few of them can be found on the left. (November 16, 2007) Question: If Hillary is elected president, what will Bill’s title be? Answer: First Scumbag. (December 4, 2007) Twenty Bucks Says Mary Jo Would’ve Preferred A Life Jacket Fewer people died in Abu Ghraib prison than died in Ted Kennedy’s Oldsmobile.---Wisecrack circulating on the Internet at year’s end? (December 31, 2007) Back to top
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