This Week’s Sunshine From the Most Transparent Administration in History

The agency responsible for issuing the permits for and maintaining the safety of the BP rig responsible for the Gulf spill refused to testify before Congress. The President’s social staff prevented Rick Bayless, Top Chef Master, from Twittering about his gig as guest chef for the State Dinner for the President of Mexico (sample scary [...]

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Five Questions For Our Times

1.  Am I the only one who looks at President Obama’s nuclear nirvana-seeking and sees a guy who, somewhere in his past, got an A+ on a term paper arguing that a nuclear-free world is achievable, and has believed ever since that he’s the guy to do it? 2.  If I had a hypothesis-proving time [...]

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The Power of “You Never Know.”

President Obama’s decision today to tie America’s hands when it is attacked is so bizarre on so many levels. It’s of a piece with many other pronouncements of this White House — they look good to their liberal buddies, everyone feels good about themselves, but they don’t really mean anything worth talking about.  Does anyone [...]

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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Health Care Bill

With apologies to Wallace Stevens. I. Among fifty failing states, The only moving thing Was the cost of the health care bill. II. The CBO was of three minds, Like a hopper In which there are three health care bills. III. A health care bill swirled in the cloakrooms. It was but a small part [...]

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Humility and the Political Blogger

Or, How Nancy Pelosi Made Me a Better Man. As all four of my regular readers may have noticed, I’ve got a bit off the radar lately in the blogging world.  My absence was regrettable, but it was also for good reason — I simply didn’t have very much to say, or at least I [...]

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On the Marque, Return to Blogging Edition

Chuck of Head Muscle has kindly hustled me back to the ol’ blog, so you can thank him for the pearls of wisdom herein imparted: When last I wrote, Republicans had 40 votes in the Senate, health care reform was still inevitable, and the President was planning to preempt Lost with his State of the [...]

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Obama’s DOJ: In Favor of Al Qaeda Recruiting Tools Before It Was Against Them

If any of the Obama Administration’s stated reasons for closing Gitmo has emerged as its favorite, it has to be that Guantanamo is a recruiting tool for al Qaeda.  This rationalization is particularly useful for the Democrats, because it simultaneously hints at the underlying cause celebre behind closing Guantanamo – that we do unspeakably evil [...]

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Will Facts Drive Policy, or the Other Way Around?

One of the Democrats’ chief criticisms of the Bush Administration, one that sometimes had merit, was that it refused to alter its strategy or message in the face of new facts.  In foreign affairs, that meant it took us three years to react to the Iraqi insurgency in a manner beyond “staying the course.”  On [...]

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An Alternate Analogy for Health Care Reform

Much has been written comparing the present health care reform effort to prior struggles for the same thing.  But this week’s passage of the Senate’s version of Obamacare brought to mind another recent political circumstance that, for me, says more about the political risks in play than does the failure of Hillarycare in 1993. I [...]

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Starve Them.

No, the title does not refer to what I’ve been doing to my readers for the last month.  Well, it doesn’t ONLY describe that. What it does refer to is the very easy, quite appropriate way for Congress to deal with Lisa Jackson’s attempted blackmail of the legislative branch.  It’s plain as day that EPA’s [...]

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