PRESTOPUNDIT -- "Kerry in Cambodia" Wall-to-Wall Coverage

RANDY BARNETT

on "The Moral Foundations of Modern Libertarianism." From the abstract:

"Conservatives, neoconservatives, and those on the left who seek to impose by force their comprehensive conception of "the good" neglect the problem of power - an exacerbated instance of the twin fundamental social problems of knowledge and interest. For a comprehensive moralist of the right or left, using force to impose their morality on others might be their first choice among social arrangements. Having another's comprehensive morality imposed upon them by force is their last choice. The libertarian minimalist approach of enforcing only the natural rights that define justice should be everyone's second choice. A compromise, as it were, that makes civil society possible. And therein lies its imperative."

DON'T WE LOVE THE FRENCH.

Spectators spit on Lance Armstrong.

SCHWARZENEGGER IS NO FRIEND

of limited government Republicans. That's the assessment of Daniel Weintraub of the Sac Bee. Quotable:

"[Schwarzenegger] likes government and is happy to see it grow .. His beliefs on social issues and the environment, meanwhile, are squarely in the Democrat mainstream. His problem is that the Democrat lawmakers who are most vulnerable, who he might be able to challenge and unseat, also tend to be centrists. They are his natural allies. And if he defeats them, chances are the Republicans replacing them will be to the governor's right on most issues. Which could actually make his job more difficult."

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CONFLICT OF INTEREST?

By day he drives American businesses offshore through bogus mega-million torts, by night John Edwards invests in the foreign companies who benefit. Quotable: John Edwards, "invested between $1 million to $5 million .. into the American Funds EuroPacific Growth Fund [which] allocated 80 percent of [its dollars] into giant foreign pharmaceuticals and commercial banks in Europe and Japan ..".

NATIONAL REVIEW --

the case for backing Bush is hard to make if you believe in limited government.

GET THE ORANGE JUMP SUIT.

Sandy Berger was caught red handed committing Federal felonies.

OPEN BORDERS IN THE FIRST 100 DAYS.

That's John Kerry's pledge in Spanish language ad spots running in ten states. According to Kerry in the ad, religion itself demands open borders and more U.S. welfare dollars for non-U.S. citizens. It's all about "faith" he says ..

"I CONFESS:

I do not like Sandy Berger; and I have not liked him since the first time we met, long ago during the McGovern campaign, not because of his politics since I more or less shared them then, but for his hauteur. He clearly still has McGovernite politics, which means, in my mind, at least, that he believes there is no international dispute that can't be solved by the U.S. walking away from it."

-- Martin Peretz.

A GOOD

QUESTION.

"The Wilson story has, of course, had a catastrophic effect on Bush. One thing I've been wondering: how, with most of the facts on its side, did the Bush White House manage to lose the battle over Wilson a year ago?"

BUSH PROMISES TO SOCIALIZE MEDICINE

in his second term. I kid you not. In a speech outlining his agenda for a second term , the President said "[the] government can and should help citizens gain the tools to make their own choices and to improve their own lives .. when men and women have a sound education and the skills to seek new opportunities, and the security of health care, they will achieve great things for themselves and for our nation." Quoted by the NY Times -- "Bush Sketches His Agenda for U.S. in a Second Term".

The promise to give people "the security of health care" can be nothing other than the promise to give us socialized medicine.

Here's a suggestion. If the President wants to provide my family with "the tools to make [our] own choices and to improve [our] own lives" he can send me a government check -- make it 10 thousand dollars -- for a full set of construction tools from Sears -- and a couple hundred thousand more for really serious tools like a new pickup truck, a cement mixer, a dump truck, a scoop shovel and a storage shed. This would allow me to "make my own choices and improve my own life." But these are just starters -- I'd also like books and electonic teaching gear for the kids, sports equipment, cooking tooks, etc. etc. On second thought, Mr. President, I'll just send you the bill.

Any doubt that the man who ran against Gerald Ford in 1976 would be running against this President and his big government / big spending agenda?

(For political theory geeks only -- notice how close Bush's position comes to the account of human freedom known as positive liberty? This is a "new liberal" or Marxist position -- and it is not a conservative or classical liberal position. Draw your own conclusions.)

PUT A FORK IN THE ANNIE JACOBSON

Northwest Airlines Flight 327 story. The 14 Syrian musicians played at the Sycuan Casino & Resort, near San Diego July 1st. The story was broken by a Stanford U. radio station "news director" and his research director. A simple Google search and a phone call produced a story that all of the major magazines, newspapers and cable channels couldn't produce. It turns out the headliner for the band is the the Syrian Wayne Newton.

I'm not surprised that the NY Times, the LA Times and the Dept of Homeland Security couldn't crack this story -- but what about KFI's radio news team? Or the blogosphere?

WHAT SANDY BERGER DID --

THE FACTS as we know them.

UPDATE: InstaPundit has more.

THE GAME IS

CATCH-AND-RELEASE.

Chance the Gardener ALAN WOLFE

GETS FISKED.

JOE WILSON --

pathological liar, nut job. The Daily Howler has the goods. (via Patterico).

UPDATE: The latest from Wilson -- it's the Hillary defense. From today's editorial page of the LA Times. Now Michael Kinsley has joined the Times news side in the effort to bring back from the dead Wilson's attack on a Republican President. Go team Democrat!

UPDATE: Steyn is on the case -- ,

IS GLENN REYNOLDS

the smartest guy around? Certainly the man is unsurpassed when it comes to perceiving the heretofore unseen patterns in our common experience. Consider these reflections explaining why the "teenager problem" has faded. Call Reynolds the genius of the everyday world.

AMERICA MAY STILL BE A CHRISTIAN NATION

but -- for the first time since its founding -- America is no longer a Protestant nation.

DEAD BILLIONAIRES

bankrolled scores of left-wing philanthropies which have played an important role in remaking America's most important institutions as bulwarks of leftist ideology. Over the last 30 years a small handful of mom-and-pop sized foundations have led a surprising counter-revolution, transforming America's marketplace of ideas into a real debate between liberty and the left. The big question. Has the current cycle run its course? James Piereson of the Olin Foundation -- which closes its doors next year -- looks back and ahead .

TIM RUTTEN

of the LA Times -- master of malice, mendacity, and misrepresentation. Enough duplicity Tim, it's time for the Times to come clean and get right with the facts. And here's an idea -- hire Patterico. Overnight the truth quotient of the paper would expand dramatically.

ECONOMIC FREEDOM ON THE RISE

around the globe. Robert Lawson and James Gwartney report on the progress of the global trend toward economic freedom since the Reagan-Thatcher revolution of 25 years ago. Quotable:

In 2002, only 15 of these 104 countries had double-digit inflation rates compared to 76 in 1980.

The use of extremely high marginal tax rates fell sharply. In 2002, not a single country imposed a 60 percent marginal tax rate on personal income; in 1980, 49 did.

In 2002, there were only four countries with a black-market exchange-rate premium of 25 percent or more compared to 36 countries with such a premium in 1980.

Tariff rates were reduced. In 2002, the average tariff rate was 10.4 percent compared to 26.1 percent in 1980.

The size of the trade sector expanded. Between 1980 and 2002, on average, exports plus imports as a share of GDP increased by 25.2 percent.

Many countries have also seen marked improvements in their economic-freedom ratings. Chile’s rating improved from 3.6 in 1975 to 5.8 in 1985 and 7.5 in 1995.

China’s rating rose from 3.8 in 1980 to 4.3 in 1990 and 5.8 in 2000.

India’s rating has improved substantially since 1990. After stagnating between 4.1 and 4.9 throughout the 1970-1990 period, India’s rating rose to 5.5 in 1995, 6.2 in 2000, and 6.3 in 2002.

Ireland’s rating jumped between 1985 and 1995. It rose from 6.2 in 1985 to 7.0 in 1990 and 8.2 in 1995. However, during the last few years, Ireland’s rating has receded slightly, hitting to 7.8 in 2002.

United Kingdom was a big gainer during the Thatcher years when its rating rose from 6.1 in 1980 to 7.0 in 1985, 7.7 in 1990, and 8.2 in 1995, where it has remained during the last several years.

Substantial increases in economic freedom have also been achieved by several other countries, including Botswana, 7.4 in 2002; Ghana, 6.4; Mauritius, 7.2; and New Zealand, 8.2.

ORANGE COUNTY IS BANKRUPT -- AGAIN.

"Retirement payments to Orange County government employees are estimated to cost $1 billion more than current reserves .. The amount of unfunded pensions has nearly doubled from a year ago .. supervisors joined governments across the state in adopting a generous pension hike for public safety workers that, beginning in July 2002, added $400 million to Orange County's future payments. .. Safety workers — among them sheriff's deputies, firefighters, probation officers [and DMV employees] — can retire at age 50 and earn 3% of their final year's pay for each year on the job, up to 30 years. An employee could receive a pension of 90% of his or her salary. Other county workers qualify for retirement at age 62 and earn 1.67% of their final year's pay for each year on the job. Their pensions top out at 50.1% of their salaries. The county spends nearly 40 cents of every payroll dollar on retirement costs for public safety employees and about 13 cents on pensions for other employees.

The LA Times -- "O.C.'s Reserve for Pension Payments Is $1 Billion Short".

AL QAEDA ARE CROSSING OUR OPEN BORDER

with Mexico using hispanic sir names and fake Mexican birth certificates, a U.S. Attorney in Texas has told U.S. Congressman John Culberson, who broke the story on the John & Ken Show in Los Angeles. Why isn't this story on the front page of every newspaper in the country?

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

has a major story on illegal immigration -- and what our government isn't doing to stop it. Quotable:

"Taxpayers each year spend more than $7 billion to educate the children of illegal aliens, $1 billion for health care and emergency treatment, and nearly $3 billion to detain illegal aliens in state and local jails."

"The vast majority of illegal aliens flooding into America — an estimated 1 million a year — draw little attention once they pass through the "border region"

"Nearly half of the 48 al Qaeda terrorists tied to violent acts in the United States between 1993 and 2001 committed significant immigration-law violations prior to those events but were never detained or deported."

WHO PREDICTED THE RECENT BOOM & BUST?

Well, the Hayekian economists, of course. Economist Mark Thornton has the story, which leads the current issue of The Independent Review. Abstract:

"Attempts to measure economic aggregates precisely have failed to forecast the boom and bust cycle accurately, but economists who focused on basic cause-and-effect relationships among economic phenomena were among the most prescient predictors of the 2000 stock-market bubble and crash. While some analysts noted correctly that price-to-earnings ratios were unduly inflated, it was economists of the Austrian school who offered an explanation for why stock-market valuations had become inflated and unsustainable."

See also this article by Roger Garrison and Gene Callahan. (pdf file)

KENNEWICK MAN

will be studied by scientists. The U.S. Justice Dept. loses its politically motivated case against the scientific community. Got to love it.

For the full story of Kennewick Man, don't miss the Tri-City Herald's Kennewick Man Virtual Interpretive Center.

UPDATE: on the role of the U.S. Justice Dept.: "The battle over the bones was often described as a collision between scientific inquiry and tribal rights. At its core, though, it was a new front in the ongoing war over the origin of the human species. The tribes took a faith-based view in arguing the skeleton was ancestral to today's Indians and should be reburied. As Armand Minthorn of Oregon's Umatilla Tribe said: "We already know what happened 10,000 years ago. We know we have always been there. The scientists cannot accept that." It is radical that two federal agencies agreed, twice deeding the skeleton to the tribes on the basis of Indian oral histories and spiritual allegories. This was done out of sensitivity to the tribes. But scientifically it is akin to citing a literal reading of the Bible to block the study of evolution. At trial, the government even argued that if someone found 150,000-year-old skeletons from the dawn of Homo sapiens — an "Adam and Eve," one attorney said — the remains would automatically be deemed ancestral to today's tribes and reburied. Scientists were flabbergasted that "ownership of all human history had been granted to one group," said Cleone Hawkinson, a Portland anthropologist. "Science was under attack. Someone had to stand up and defend it."

IF YOU DID IT

you'd end up in jail. Robert Musil calls for the prosecution of presumptive felon Sandy Berger.

"WHY WON'T THE MEDIA TELL THE TRUTH?"

The LA Times has their mitts on a good question, but for the Times it's a question to dodge, not answer. Instead, their aim is to smear the blogosphere and those who've exposed the deceptions of the LA Times. Kevin Murphy has this thought for the Times: bite me.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES.

"The role of freedom in creating prosperity has been the central discovery of economics over the past two centuries. What still tends to go unappreciated is that individual freedom has an emotional and spiritual value at least as important as its economic value. When one's activities are freely chosen and freely pursued, they create pleasure in themselves, not just through what is produced. That's why Caroline Gutierez of Hyder [Alaska] saw herself as "still on vacation" despite her two businesses and eight volunteer positions." MORE -- "Go Ahead, Call Us Cowboys".

THE RED STATE / BLUE STATE QUIZ.

# America is the world’s No. 1 producer of (a) foreign aid, (b) pharmaceutical breakthroughs, (c) terrorism. 10 blue points for (c).

# If Jesus Christ + Feces = Art, then the Prophet Mohammed + Feces = (a) art, (b) a hate crime. 10 blue points for (b).

# Have you ever, in conversation at a Manhattan cocktail party, referred to your childhood housekeeper as “my many close African-American friends?” 10 blue points.

MORE.

LA'S GANG PROBLEM --

brought to you by illegal immigration: "Before immigration optimists issue another rosy prognosis for America’s multicultural future, they might visit Belmont High School in Los Angeles’s overwhelmingly Hispanic, gang-ridden Rampart district. “Upward and onward” is not a phrase that comes to mind when speaking to the first- and second-generation immigrant teens milling around the school this January. “Most of the people I used to hang out with when I first came to the school have dropped out,” observes Jackie, a vivacious illegal alien from Guatemala. “Others got kicked out or got into drugs. Five graduated, and four home girls got pregnant.” Certainly, none of the older teens I met outside Belmont was on track to graduate. MORE Heather Mac Donald "The Immigrant Gang Plague".

WITH 'WE WON'T WORK' EURO-BOOMERS

headed for the retirement home, a new generation of Europeans goes back to work.

"LORD ACTON WAS INDEED A LIBERAL

-- albeit an old-style one, a liberal in the classical sense of admiring nothing in politics so much as liberty .. And it was precisely as a liberal that Acton perceived, as few others in Europe did, the genius of the American system." MORE Paul Cella -- "f Success and Excess".

WORTH QUOTING:

"From what I've now learned from .. airline industry personnel, it is political correctness that will eventually cause us to stand there wondering, How did we let 9/11 happen again?" MORE -- Terror in the Skies, Again?

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH DECLARES WAR

ON ISRAEL.

"WE AREN'T GIRLIE-MEN"

insists the California legislature. The response to Gov. Schwarzenegger came from the legislature’s five-member Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus.

On Saturday Schwarzenegger told a cheering crowd, "“If [the Democrats in the California legislature] don’t have the guts to come up here in front of you and say, ’I don’t want to represent you, I want to represent those special interests, the unions, the trial lawyers ... if they don’t have the guts, I call them girlie men."

MORE iPOD

for less money.

HONG KONG IS #1.

The 2004 edition of the Economic Freedom of the World Report is out. Quotable:

"Nations in the top fifth of economic freedom have an average per capita income of $26,100, compared to $2,800 for nations in the bottom fifth."

THE BUFFET LINE TO

SERFDOM.

MAKE-BELIEVE

and pretend characters turn up at the center of John Edwards' stump speech to SoCal hispanics. Edwards promised to give his pretend character a big hug -- and a fat government hand-out at the expense of taxpaying workers. This robbing of Peter to enrich Paul was termed "hope" by the Senator, who made a $100 million fortune suing health care providers and dodging Medicare taxes.

UPDATE: Saturday Edward put on a $1,000 a plate fundraiser at the exclusive Balboa Bay Yacht Club in Newport Beach. Yes, we too have our fair share of million dollar malpractice attorneys right here in good old Orange County.

BOSCH TO FRENCHIES --

put in a full work week or lose your job.

"YOUNG AMERICAN OUTSOURCES HIMSELF TO INDIA"

Now, I know what you're thinking. But trust me. This really isn't The Onion, it's The New York Times. Really, really. O.K. then. Go see for yourself.

TERMINATE

THE "GIRLIE-MEN" -- Schwarzenegger instructs California crowd:

"If these [Democrats] won't do the job, I'm going to announce each of you a terminator. Nov. 2 is judgment day. That's when you go to the polls."

That, at least, is how the AP reporter tells the story. The LA Times quotes Schwarzenegger this way:

"I want each and every one of you to go the polls on Nov. 2nd. That will be judgment day. I want you to go to the polls. . . . You are the terminators, yes!"

Amazing that two reporters attend the same speech, and yet report completely different remarks. Someone here is making up sentences -- perhaps both. In any case, here is Schwarzenegger's "girlie-man" line, at least as recreated or artistically imagined by the LA Times reporter:

"[The Democrat legislators] cannot have the guts to come out there in front of you and say, 'I don't want to represent you. I want to represent those special interests: the unions, the trial lawyers.' . . . I call them girly-men."

UPDATE: Hugh Hewett, who MC'ed Schwarzenegger's Ontario rally, has Schwarzenegger calling the Democrat legislators "girly boys". Ouch.

UPDATE II: "By 2006, California could have a dramatically different political landscape, with part-time and more moderate legislators and a more streamlined state bureaucracy, if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's renewed threats against the status quo catch fire with voters. As the governor fights against a Legislature he says is resisting his calls for change, he is campaigning this weekend against individual lawmakers." -- The AP's Jim Wasserman.

UPDATE III The LA Times joins in the effort to chop Schwarzenegger down at the knees: "A strange thing happened when budget talks began dragging and Schwarzenegger shifted into campaign mode to get his way. Democrats didn't seem to care. Increasingly inside the Capitol, there is a sense that when Schwarzenegger goes to a mall in Chico or a Mexican restaurant in Dixon to talk politics, the people flock to see the Terminator, not the governor. There is a corresponding belief among Democrats that the governor's personal popularity doesn't automatically translate into support for his policy proposals."

We'll see in November, won't we.

MEET JOHN EDWARD'S

brother. This bubba ain't no pretty boy.

KARL ROVE

visits California , meets with Schwarzenegger's staff.

MISSING GAS

EXPLAINED. Global warming assumptions off by a margin of 50%.

MY INFLATION,

your inflation: "Each person effectively experiences a different inflation rate, depending upon their own mix of expenditure."

YOUR JOB AT MCDONALDS

-- outsourced.

INFLATION

outpaces hourly pay.

THE SCIENCE

of personal space:

This so-called peripersonal space extends to arm's length; people with longer arms have a bigger peripersonal space. And when they use a tool, a rake, a joystick or an automobile, their body schema and peripersonal space expand to include it. Moreover, perceptions change as the body schema changes in response to outside stimuli. A hill looks steeper when you wear a backpack than when you do not.

THE SEARCH

for Copernicus.

THE LEFTIST MEDIA

puts is money where its heart is -- in the coffers of the Democrat Party.

"I WAS THERE, AND IT DIDN'T HAPPEN."

Another Vietnam vet serving with John Kerry says Kerry was lying about Americans committing atrocities. Why this isn't a bigger campaign issue only the Leftist press corp can explain.

LOS ALAMOS --

all operations SUSPENDED. Perhaps the U. of California will finally be removed from an assignment the institution is no longer qualified to manage.

THE EMMY AWARD

nominations just out reveal a new hardline Leftywood ethic which has artistic standards going out the window, replaced by a 1930s Stalinist mentality which favors political values over actual creative merit. Seattle Times reporter Kay McFadden has the story:

"[The Emmy nominations] underscore the growing role of ideology in entertainment .. The recognition afforded ["The Reagans," "The West Wing" & "Angels in America"] is part and parcel of an election year in which the heavily pro-John Kerry entertainment community is launching a show-business assault on the administration of President George W. Bush .. "

WHAT THE KERRY ADMINISTRATION

will look like.

James Rubin is one Kerry guy I really admired on September 11, 2001. He was the first person I heard say it was a war not a legal case.

WHAT HELL

will be like. (Hat tip InstaPundit).

MORE TIGHTENING AHEAD

says FED Governor Susan Schmidt Bies: ""You cannot keep short-term interest rates below the rate of inflation -- it's too accommodative. We've got to get to what we call a neutral level .. I'm confident that the pace we've talked about moving is appropriate .. Inflation will continue to grow as the economy expands."

Let's see. Does that mean the FED is planning to give us both higher interest rates AND higher inflation?

WEALTHY CALIFORNIA MAN

attempts to buy his son's way out of jail.

Let's wreck is day and vote NO on 66.

"DON'T PUSH ME AROUND" --

Gov. Schwarzenegger to the Democrats in the California Legislature.

"FOR FISCAL CONSERVATIVES,

the choice this election could hardly be more depressing." MORE Jeff Jacoby, "A contest between big spenders." Quotable:

"Wiping out the Bush tax cuts in their entirety would raise a grand total of $164 billion -- enough to cut the current deficit by only a third .. Bush's tax cuts aren't driving the deficit. Bush's reckless expenditures are."

"WITH SLEAZY HYPOCRISY .. OOZING FROM THIS PORES,

presidential wannabe John Kerry last week sought political gain by exploiting the memories of dead American patriots, saying, “They were wrong and soldiers lost their lives because they were wrong .. ". MORE " Exploiting America's Dead for Political Gain."

ALL CLASSIFIED RESEARCH HALTED

at U. of California run nuke lab.

TEN REASONS TO FIRE

George W. Bush, and ten reasons to believe these are week reasons.

Meanwhile, contemplating all this, Daniel Drezner is moved to say, "I can't remember an election in my adult lifetime when I've been less enthused with my menu of candidates."

MOVIES, TV, MUSIC

-- discussed. I don't usually visit blogs like that, but somehow this one sucked me in. Hat tip James Lileks.

And this says alot about blogging -- and the blogosphere.

MIKE DITKA

-- moral philosopher.

BUSH WANTS TO BE PRESIDENT

again and that's the best sign so far that he'll win this thing. If you want something, you have to ask for it, and the President, smartly, is doing it:

THE PRESIDENT: Hi.

Q I'm 18, and this will be my first time I can vote.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, let me stop you right there. I'm the first guy to ask for your vote. (Laughter and applause.) Remember that when you get in the booth. (Laughter.)

In a speech yesterday Bush asked 8 times for listeners to vote for him.

By ommission Bush II learned some important lessons from his father. If you want something, let people know you actually want it. It makes a difference to voters that a President desires to be President. That's something Bush I didn't communicate very well when he ran for re-election in 1992. Bush II clearly won't be making that mistake.

IT'S ANOTHER LA TIMES

whitewash.

A MAGGOT THAT EATS OFF THE DEAD

is a fair description of MICHAEL MOORE, coming as it is from the aunt of a slain American soldier whose burial is played for propaganda by the reviled film maker.

GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER

gets George Will'ed: "The musical 'Annie' taught, tomorrow is always a day away. Schwarzenegger, a political rookie, has a precocious understanding of the Annie principle of governance: Voters lavish approval on leaders who arrange for future voters to pay for current consumption of government services .. in the 14 months from May 1 [2004] through next June 30 [2005], there will be a 54 percent increase -- from $33 billion to $50.7 billion -- in [California's] debt backed by general fund revenue".

Chances are AMERICA'S POOR

have much better stuff than your parents had when you were a kid.

Consider this. 64% of today's poor households have a cable or satellite TV hookup. And this. In 1970 a whopping 17% of U.S. households did not have a refrigerator. Today only 1 out of 1000 households fail to have a fridge. Or imagine this. In 1874 households spent 74% of their income on necessities (food, clothing, housing). In 1995 they spent 13% on such necessities.

All of these stats are from Nobel Prize winner Robert Fogel's The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100 : Europe, America and the Third World.

UPDATE: The lesson? "Don't look at wage data, look at consumption data." So adds Tyler Cowen.

KILL A TERRORIST

end global warming.

HUGH HEWITT'S

new book If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It is currently #17 at Amazon. Hewitt is sharing credit with the blogosphere for the book's amazing early buzz.

KERRY'S ECONOMICS TEAM

begins to jell: "On economic policy, for instance, a core group of four once held the key to the policy process: Bianchi, campaign economic aide Jason Furman, investment banker Roger C. Altman and Gene Sperling, former top economic adviser in Bill Clinton's White House. Now, things are more complicated. Three more economists -- London Business School Dean Laura D'Andrea Tyson, Princeton University's Alan S. Blinder and the Brookings Institution's Peter R. Orszag -- are consulted on virtually every policy decision. Former Treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin also weighs in on major policy pronouncements. Another circle, including Akerlof, University of California at Berkeley economist Alan J. Auerbach, Princeton's Cecilia E. Rouse, and Harvard University labor economist Lawrence F. Katz, advises on specific issues. A separate "New York group" -- including investment bankers Eric Mindich, Blair Effron and Steven Rattner -- tutors Kerry on matters of domestic and international finance, while helping to raise money and woo business support. MORE -- Kerry's Inner Circle Expands.

JOHN EDWARDS

looks to have the Clintonian capacity for -- shall we say -- self fabrication.

AMERICA'S MOST PROFITABLE EXPORT

is failing to compete with the Euro: "The former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund notes that the European currency, the euro, is now competing for the underground economy’s business by having 500 euro notes, worth more than 5 times the U.S. $100, the largest bill printed by the Treasury in more than 50 years. He notes that $1 million in $100’s would fit in a briefcase, but $1 million worth of 500 euro notes would fit in a purse — a big advantage in the underground world .. ". MORE Bruce Bartlett -- " The Underground Economy".

"IF JOHN KERRY WINS

the presidency, his household will be the richest ever to occupy the White House. Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, controls a vast fortune estimated by a Los Angeles Times study to fall somewhere between $900 million to $3.2 billion. Through a series of entirely legal maneuvers, Kerry is attempting to conceal from American voters the full extent of his wife's wealth and her corporate holdings — and the fact that she apparently manages to pay a remarkably small amount of taxes .. Legitimate concerns extend beyond wondering just how rich Mrs. Kerry really is, and whether she paid her fair share of taxes. There are also questions about power, influence, and conflict of interest .. Already Kerry's economic proposals seem tuned to serve his wife's economic interests. His proposal last March to end tax breaks for U.S. corporations that do business overseas was designed with a loophole that would let the H. J. Heinz Company — the centerpiece of Mrs. Kerry's family fortune — keep its overseas tax breaks, and get a lower domestic tax rate at the same time .. ". MORE Donald Luskin -- "Teresa Heinz Kerry & Taxable Income".

Schwarzenegger -- headed for a Failed Governorship.

"The governor who promised to attack California’s long-term, structural problems has abandoned that goal in this case in exchange for a couple billion dollars of short-term help with his budget problems. California needs a major overhaul of its entire system for financing state and local government. As part of such a reform, it might make sense to give the locals protection from future, arbitrary changes in the distribution of tax revenue. But instead of leading that discussion and using his power and popularity to enact it, Schwarzenegger is grabbing his $1.3 billion for two years and then trying to lock a dysfunctional system into the constitution."

MORE California Insider

PRESTOPUNDITRY: The evidence builds that Schwarzenegger is selling the long term health of California down the river for the benefit of short term gains in his own popularity. In other words -- deep down -- it's politics as usual.

Corporations battle the division of knowledge

inside the corporation itself using internal futures contract markets.

Good enough, but this is the innovation I'd like to see -- major newspapers opening futures markets allowing bets on which news stories will prove to be bogus. Up side -- this might ultimately bankrupt the LA Times and NY Times.

We Won't Get Fooled Again.

"Michael Moore has been making some claims – mentioning me by name - which I believe distort the truth .. WGFA is not an unconditionally anti-war song, or a song for or against revolution. It actually questions the heart of democracy: we vote heartily for leaders who we subsequently always seem to find wanting. (WGFA is a song sung by a fictional character from my 1971 script called LIFEHOUSE. The character is someone who is frightened by the slick way in which truth can be twisted by clever politicians and revolutionaries alike) ..

I have nothing against Michael Moore personally .. but I greatly resent being bullied and slurred by him in interviews just because he didn’t get what he wanted from me. It seems to me that this aspect of his nature is not unlike that of the powerful and wilful man at the centre of his new documentary .. ".

MORE Pete Townshend -- Pete's Diary.

"Boys don't marry boys."

The innocent words of my two year old, discussing the rules of marriage with a 3 year old boy.

I'm sorry if I think that I as a father really do have a stake in this matter.

Let me be blunt. The fact that some have an immeasurably significant biological investment in a world that exists beyond their own lives creates an inevitable conflict of interest and values with those who don't. I state this as a simple fact. What consequence or significance this fact should have is a large question, which can't be answered in this posting.

Who Rules America?

"This week, the United States Senate will take the first step in deciding who gets to define marriage for the entire nation: activist judges – or the American people .. ".

More " Defining marriage: Who decides?".

Scientists identify Sun as cause of Global Warming.

"Looking at the past 1,150 years the Sun has never been as active as it has been during the past 60 years. Over the past few hundred years, there has been a steady increase in the numbers of sunspots, a trend that has accelerated in the past century, just at the time when the Earth has been getting warmer. The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer. "

MORE BBC -- "Sunspots reaching 1,000-year high".

Richard Epstein on Plural Marriage & the Courts.

"When President Bush, for example, talks about the need to "protect" the sanctity of marriage, his plea is a giant non sequitur because he does not explain what, precisely, he is protecting marriage against. No proponent of plural marriage wants to ban traditional marriage, or to burden couples who want to marry with endless tests, taxes and delays. All plural-marriage advocates want to do is to enjoy the same rights of association that are held by other people. Let the state argue that plural marriages are a health risk, and the answer is that anything that encourages monogamy has the opposite effect. Any principled burden of justification for the ban is not met.

But it is said that marriage is different because it is more than a private association; it is an institution licensed by the state. To which the answer is that any use of state monopoly power must avoid suspect grounds for discrimination. So the state must explain why it will favor some unions over others -- without resort to claims of public morals. The restraints on state power are the same as when the state uses its monopoly power to license drivers, or grant zoning permits.

The question here is not just whether the courts will impose their views on the people of the several states. It is whether they will allow a majority of the public to impose its will on a minority within its midst in the absence of any need for a collective decision. The claim for plural-sex marriage is no weaker than any other claim of individual rights on personal and religious matters.

But since many states bans homosexual acts, some ask, why not also ban plural sex marriages? Turn the question around, however: Why ban the former, especially by constitutional amendment, when agreed to by all parties? Incest is a different matter, with the high dangers from inbreeding. [A factually false statement -- PP]. And people and poodles can't tie the knot because one half in the relationship (some would say the better half) lacks the capacity to enter into a contract.

The case against state prohibition of plural marriages becomes clearer when we ask how much further we are prepared to take the principle of democratic domination. Where is the limiting principle on majority power? Suppose that the proponents of plural marriage rights get strong enough politically to require traditional churches to perform plural marriages, or to admit bigamists into their clergy. Or to demand that people accept bigamists as tenants in their homes, even if they regard their relationship as sinful. Now the shoe is on the other foot. I think that the paramount claims of individual liberty should not have to yield to democratic decisions intended to impose an alternative enlightened view of public morals."

Quoted by Virginia Postrel.

Howard Jarvis Ass. to Schwarzenegger -- Put up or Shut up.

"No more Mr. Nice Guy - please! Gov. Schwarzenegger must stand firm on budget. It's why we elected him.

By JON COUPAL
President, Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association

Did you ever see an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie where he was hesitant to use whatever weapon was in arm's reach? Neither have I. Gov. Schwarzenegger - locked in the annual dance of the state budget - has two huge weapons at his disposal which he is not using: his mandate from the voters in last year's recall election and a positive rating from California voters that is over 70 percent. Combined, these weapons represent extraordinary political capital. He needs to start spending that capital to force a spending plan reflective of his administration's proposed budget in January - a budget that relied on less borrowing and more cuts. Instead, the governor is giving ground - some say retreating - while his rapid-fire machine gun is still full of ammo. This is especially true regarding his negotiations with public employee unions. It was reported that union members actually cheered last month when they learned the details of governor's deal with union leaders. Defenders of the governor's newly found "kinder and gentler" negotiation style might argue that the budget process is far more complex than the plot line of an action flick. After all, instead of good guys and bad guys, aren't there simply competing interests at the table, all of which are equally legitimate? In a word, no. From a strictly personal perspective, Schwarzenegger should give the unions no quarter. These are the people who fought tooth and nail against both the recall election and his candidacy. They pulled all the stops - money and manpower - in a failed effort to put Cruz Bustamante in the governor's office Nor should the unions be given special treatment from a policy perspective. These are the folks who have demanded - without compromise - that milk testers and billboard inspectors are "public safety" workers entitled to the richest of pensions. They have openly and willfully harmed school children by refusing to permit local school districts to contract for lawn work or transportation services, which would save scarce educational dollars. As in action movies, the budget battle has some fairly well-defined good guys and bad guys. The good guys here are ordinary Californians who pay more in taxes than they take from government. The good guys elected Schwarzenegger. They sang along to his theme song, "We're Not Going to Take It Anymore!" They loved his no-tax pledge. They abhorred "business as usual" in Sacramento. To be crude, they sent Arnold to Sacramento to kick some butt, not get along with the bad guys. The fact that budget negotiations have stalled may actually be a good thing. It might give the governor an opportunity to disengage and check his weaponry. If he goes to war with his adversaries, is there a risk that he will he lose some political capital? Sure. The "net tax receivers," ably represented by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and ultraliberal Senate leader John Burton, will claim he's become just another heartless Republican. But the governor's short - and truthful - answer to such criticism should be, "I was elected governor to follow through on one simple concept: Don't spend more money than you have." That needs to be repeated often and should end the debate, at least as far as voters are concerned. Schwarzenegger also needs to keep something else in mind: Taxpayers care a whole lot less about government slowing down because of a budget stalemate. To most of the voters who elected Arnold, government represents primarily that entity which takes money out of their paychecks. It is for that reason that he should never have made such a big deal about an "on time" budget. But now that that issue is moot, it may work to his advantage. In a gathering during Schwarzenegger's inaugural, former Gov. Pete Wilson urged him to "use his political capital" when needed. If his mentor's advice isn't enough, Arnold ought to consider the example of another former California governor. Shortly after being elected president, Ronald Reagan was confronted with an illegal strike by the nation's air-traffic controllers union. He fired them all."

No more Mr. Nice Guy - please!

Michael Moore.

The Interview.

"Trouble is" ..

"If not murder, John F. Kerry and John Edwards have accused President Bush of something close to criminally negligent homicide in Iraq. "They were wrong and soldiers died because they were wrong," Kerry said of the Bush administration over the weekend .. The trouble is, both Sens. Kerry and Edwards voted yes on the resolution authorizing the war in Iraq .. ".

MORE LA Times "Kerry-Edwards Stonewall".

California in Crisis.

"1200 retired LA County employees receive pensions of more than $100,000 a year .. ".

MORE California Insider.

And note well, government employees can retire at age 50 with full benefits in most California counties -- including LA and Orange Counties.

400 tons of uranium.

Left behind in Iraq. Patterico ain't happy.

A whopping 431 political appointees

work on the staff of the Office of the President.

Elsewhere, Scaled Composites, staffed by "a few dozen dedicated employees" managed to build and launch a craft into outerspace.

Presby Church -- Blame U.S. Christians for Muslim Terror.

"The resolution warns against “falling into the quagmire of attempting to label individuals, groups, or governments as ‘terrorists.’” Instead it urges Christians “to ponder the message of attackers who are so desperate that they surrender their lives to kill others.” The resolution calls for Presbyterians to “acknowledge our complicity in contributing to the circumstances that prompt individuals to engage in acts of terrorism.” It asks church members to accept blame for: “our disproportionate consumption of the earth’s resources”; “the export of the artifacts of our popular culture such as movies, music, and television programming”; “military responses to terrorism [that have] too often been motivated by a desire for vengeance and not a desire for justice”; and “condemn[ing] the religious faith of those who are different without taking the time to understand that faith.” The resolution recommends “less reliance on the military response to terrorism” and “increased investment in programs that can transform and reduce the root causes of terrorism across the developing world.”" MORE "U.S. Presbyterians Asked to “Acknowledge Complicity” in Terrorism".

Presidential fundraising explained.

"Michael Platt .. has investigated how they value status within their troop. Male monkeys have a distinct dominance hierarchy, and Platt has found they will give up a considerable quantity of fruit juice for the chance just to look at a picture of a higher-ranking individual. This is consistent with field observations, Platt says, which have found that social primates spend a lot of time just keeping track of the highest-ranking troop member. It isn't known exactly why monkeys do this, but the finding might help explain the behavior of human beings who pay $1,000 just to sit in a hotel ballroom with the president. You can draw whatever conclusion you choose from Platt's finding that there is no quantity of juice sufficient to get a male monkey to look away from the hindquarters of a female in estrus .. ".

MORE "Mind Reading".

Economist Tyler Cowen changes his mind.

"Eight [economic] propositions I used to think were correct."

China BOOM.

"China overtook the U.S. last year as the world's biggest recipient of foreign direct investment, drawing $53 billion .. Investment rose to $34 billion in the [first] half [of 2004] .. ". MORE "China Draws 12% More Foreign Investment in First Half".

Global de-magnification.

Environmentalists blame American businesses and consumers -- also call for massive increases in the size of the U.S. government. Whoops. Not yet. Here's the real story.

Anti-Bush press tops press Nixon hatred.

"I think the attack on Bush has been, if anything, more vicious." -- Charles Colson, Nixon aid. Quoted by Greg Pierce.

Thomas Sowell shapes up.

"My own moment of truth came when a roommate at Harvard said to me one day: "Tom, when are you going to stop goofing off and get some work done?" Goofing off! I didn't know what he was talking about. I thought I was working hard. But, when the midterm grades came out -- two D's and two F's in my four courses -- it became painfully clear that I was not working hard enough. I was going to have to shape up or ship out -- and I didn't have anywhere to ship out to. I had been on my own for years and had gone into debt in order to go to Harvard. Moreover, there was no Barbara Ehrenreich to defend me. So I got my act together and graduated with honors .. ".

MORE Thomas Sowell, "'Friends' of blacks".

China Watch.

"China's imports of iron ore have increased from 14 million tons in 1990 to 148 million in 2003. China's imports of aluminum have shot up from 1 million tons to 5.6 million tons. Imports of refined copper have risen from 20,000 tons in 1990 to over 1.2 million tons last year. Imports of platinum have leaped from 20,000 ounces in 1993 to 1.6 million last year .. ".

David Hale in the National Interest quoted by ParaPundit, " China Becoming Much Larger Portion Of World Economy".

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!"

-- Winston Churchill. As quoted by Mark Steyn.

Enron -- brought to you by leftist government.

"California's restructured electricity market was, in fact, the furthest thing from a capitalist jungle imaginable. The government forced electric utilities to sell off their power plants and discouraged them from buying electricity outside of a complicated state-managed spot market. Furthermore, the electric utilities were forced to open their power lines to anyone who wanted to use them -- like Enron -- under tightly regulated terms and conditions. The day-to-day management of the grid was likewise taken from the utilities and given to state regulators. While wholesale electricity prices were deregulated, retail prices remained tightly controlled ... It shouldn't come as a surprise to learn that companies like Enron figured out how to game the system... ".

Jerry Taylor quoted by Peter Gordon "Games To Be Gamed".

New Books.

Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It by Peter Peterson. Currently #14 at Amazon.

Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography by William F. Buckley. Currently #63 at Amazon.

Enviro-Nazis in the land of John Kerry.

"It was one of three encounters during the week where someone from a vantage point of self-righteous indignation angrily berated someone for violating a rule or convention of the beach .. ".

MORE CAFE HAYEK -- "Erosion".

The Carnival of Capitalists.

It's Up.

Our ant-Bush news services.

"A few days ago, the Financial Times was back with more news: An independent British commission investigating the government's use of intelligence during the runup to the war in Iraq, the paper reported on Wednesday, "is expected to conclude that Britain's spies were correct to say that Saddam Hussein's regime sought to buy uranium from Niger." But this, too, has been largely ignored by the American press. Curious, no? Journalists couldn't get enough of this topic when the story line was that Bush and the British had lied. Shouldn't they find it just as riveting when facts point in the other direction?"

MORE JEFF JACOBY -- "A new look at Bush's '16 words'".

Are they anti-Bush because they they are anti-war? or are they anti-Bush because they are anti-America? Or maybe they anti-Bush just because they are Democrats and leftists. Michael Moore is with no doubt all of these. Unfortunately it is often its very hard to distinguish the American press from the likes of Michael Moore. Certainly it would be nice if the press made this all easy to tell. But they don't.

"I am against the war -- the way the president went to war was wrong."

Anyone who would speak this sentence is not fit to be President -- especially when these words come from a U.S. Senator who votes for the war. The man isn't in my view fit to polish the dress shoes of our soldiers in the Middle East. A more concise expression of the complete moral bankrupcy of the 1960's leftist weasle cannot be imagined. This is Clintonianism with blood on its hands.

Truer words ..

"A handful of legitimate scholars doesn’t justify the leftist-makework program for failed 1960’s radicals. It’s hard to argue that there is any groundbreaking research left in English departments. The country would be better off if most college English professors were fired and were compelled to teach junior and senior high school students how to write coherent sentences and paragraphs.. ".

MORE Aaron's Rantblog "University English Departments Are Frauds."

Bloggers vs. The LA Times.

John Leo reports. Quotable:

"The blogging world cackled a bit about the mess the Times made, mostly because many bloggers think the most powerful big-time news outlets are becoming more and more partisan. The Times may be on its way to becoming Exhibit A for this belief."

ORSON SCOTT CARD

nails America's leftist press corp -- the ins-and-outs of how the press distorts America's news. Ever see this news report? "Senator Hillary Clinton, making no mention of the $100,000 she once made by trading cattle futures with astonishing perfection, told a cheering crowd of activists that President Bush's globalist economic policy is hurting poor people in other countries and costing American jobs." Fat chance. But this sort of attack is a ho-hum everyday occurance in the press -- when the top is an enemy of the left. Quotable Card:

"The left-wing news media live in a tiny village of people who all think (or pretend to think) exactly alike. Therefore, to them any reporter or media outlet that rejects their premises must be insane or dishonest, and instead of seeking to refute them with actual evidence, they merely call them names and accuse them of venal motives. The fact remains that on Fox News, and only on Fox News, we get television reportage that gives us at least two sides of every important issue. On all the other TV news outlets--and "mainstream" newspapers--we mostly get coverage that is hopelessly biased. The madmen have taken over the asylum and now, dressed in white lab coats, they pronounce the rest of the world insane."

The consequences of voting.

Tyler Cowen has sensible thoughts on first, second and third party voting.

Sen. Edwards -- the son of MANAGEMENT.

Read all about it .. Mark Steyn on "The tearjerker.". Quotable:

"There may be two Americas, but Edwards's America doesn't exist anywhere from Maine to Hawaii. Even as a lurid Victorian melodrama designed to frighten prosperous soccer moms into voting against hard-hearted Republicans, it sounds ridiculous. In the meantime, Edwards has nothing to say on foreign policy except a pledge to end "war profiteering by Halliburton". Once he discovered that you can't sue al-Qaeda, he seems to have lost interest in the subject, and his shallowness was embarrassing in some of the primary debates. As I wrote here in February, "His basic pitch is that the entire electorate are victims, and his candidacy is the all-time biggest class-action suit on your behalf." John Edwards's approach - the American people are helpless children - is the wrong message for dangerous times. Back when his maudlin 'twas- Christmas- Day- in-the- workhouse shtick was still new, I offered to buy a brand new coat for every 10-year-old coatless girl the Edwards campaign could produce if in return he included one substantive passage on foreign policy in his stump speech. I'm still waiting on both counts."

Ramirez.

"What sets him apart from other politicians is he is a rich lawyer."

Greenspan gave us recession & now inflation.

"The ills that the Federal Reserve is fighting are largely of its own making. Now that it finally is hiking rates, the effects could be brutal for a lot of people. Fity the Fed. With its first quarter-point increase in late June, the central bank is trying to unwind years of leaping financial leverage and speculation without heavy casualties. Ironically, the problem is largely the Federal Reserve's own doing. When Chairman Alan Greenspan made his December 1996 "irrational exuberance" speech, the stock rally was 14 years old, a good time to curb excesses. But rhetoric was all Greenspan deployed. There was no action. The gun-shy Fed didn't even send a sobering signal by raising margin requirements, the amount investors must put up to borrow for stock purchases. So rampant dot-com speculation unfolded. The bubble, rivaling that of the late 1920s, spilled over to make the economy hyperactive. When the Fed finally got serious and started to tighten in June 1999, it was too late. Then, as stocks collapsed, the credit authorities shifted to massive easing to save the economy from a horrible recession and to fight deflation. Unfortunately, this did little to stamp out the excesses, which simply shifted into housing and consumer spending. With low rates, money for mortgages and credit cards remained ample. Tax cuts and leaping government spending helped fuel the spend-a-thon. The value of owner-occupied residences mushroomed from $8.7 trillion in the fourth quarter of 1997 to $15.2 trillion in the first quarter of 2004, bringing along with that much higher debt burdens. The home equity craze allowed people to plunge even deeper into debt to buy flat-screen TVs, boats and vacations. A nationwide fall in house prices, the first since the 1930s, would be devastating to the 69% of American households that own their own abodes. Big mortgage financers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with $1.7 trillion in debts, could require government bailouts .. ". MORE -- Gary Shilling The Fed Is to Blame.

An economist discovers the real world.

"''I soon discovered that the Fed doesn't know precisely where the economy is (because of lagging and often revised economic data) or precisely where it wants the economy to go." -- Economist and former Fed governor Laurence Meyer, from his book A Term at the Fed : An Insider's View quoted in a Boston Globe book review.

$700 per household.

That's what the citizens of Arizona shell out ever year to pay the net costs -- medical costs, jail costs, education costs, etc. -- of illegal immigrants in their state, i.e. costs beyond the tiny amount paid in taxes by the illegals. Read the full report here.

What's the consequence of mass immigration on California? Read all about it.

"I think the overwhelming likelihood is that I would have been forced from office."

Bill Clinton finally comes clean -- "Why I lied." Not for Hillary, not because of shame (whose kidding whom?) -- but to save his own butt. A year of lies and calumny for the sake of himself at the expense of others and the country. And you don't think Hillary Clinton was in on it? You fool!

California Crisis Deepens.

"Preliminary calculations indicate that [Gov.] Schwarzenegger's concessions [to the Democrat legislature] since January have increased 2004-05 spending by $3 billion, raising it beyond the 2003-04 level .. Thus, if the pending budget is enacted, the state will have maxed out its credit cards and will face deficits of $7 billion or more in 2005-06 and around $10 billion in 2006-07 .. ".

MORE -- Dan Walters, "Schwarzenegger's failure makes new taxes inevitable."

Pandering to the lawless.

John Kerry plays by the rules of the racist interest group The Race. Let's face it folks, your citizenship is worth about as much as a bucket of warm spit to these Washington politician.

Asa Hutchinson -- meet John Kobylt.

Here is the not-to-be missed radio interview with Asa Hutchinson (wmx), the under-secretary of the Homeland Security Department -- i.e. the guy who stopped the Federal round up of foreign nationals illegally residing in Southern California. It's 22 minutes of hilarity as Hutchinson a dozen times or more ducks a simple yes-or-no question -- will you or will you not resume the round up of foreign nationals illegally in the United States.

A listen of this is all you need to understand why Kobylt and his partner have 1,000,000 regular listeners in So Cal -- the most listened to program on the most listened to talk radio station in America.

UPDATE: This news story explains what the fist-fight is all about.

UPDATE II: Here's how The Financial Times covered the Hutchinson-Kobylt interview.

Michael Kinsley of the Times -- stupid or dishonest?

I vote stupid.

A dramatic drop in Bush support among Hispanics.

George Bush's "hispandering" has been a big flob -- the CBF's Berkeley bloggers report on a new Gallop poll.

$140,000 for a two-bedroom house.

In Watts. With millions of foreigners flooding into Southern California, the housing squeeze has made home ownership extremely difficult for low income Americans -- even with piles of tax dollars waiting at the ready to assist. Quotable: "Three decades ago, a California family earning about a quarter of the median income could afford a median-priced home. But today, a family would need to earn more than 160% of the median income to afford the same home."

Read the LA Times story here.

Germany's long national workbreak is

over.

Dick Riordan gets PC bit.

In our neighborhood the community Mr. Loraw was the garbage man. We loved him too.

The War on Terror is Job #Five.

So says Presidential candidate John Kerry -- transcript provided in a brilliant letter sent to InstaPundit.

"I'm waiting for the 'Baby Boomers are Dead' stories".

Why late boomers hate the Bill & Hillary boomers.

Quotable: "The [myopia and self-centeredness of The Beattles's song "Fixing a Hole"] remind [music critic] Jim DeRogatis of two boomers born in 1946: Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. In his autobiography, "Clinton takes 957 pages to say he really didn't do anything wrong," Mr. DeRogatis says, while President Bush "still won't say he was wrong" about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction."

Link via Virginia Postrel who writes: "I've been saying for decades that my end of the baby boom has little in common with the "baby boomers" we constantly hear about".

And, of course, don't miss the ever popular Boomer Death Watch.

UPDATE: Late boomer Michael Blowhard has his say.

California Shakedown.

First there was The Trevor Law Group. Now the city of Fresno is the latest victim of lawsuit shakedown artist Morse Mehrban.

Remember -- this is important -- YES ON PROP 64.

Sowell on Sen. John Edwards.

"Senator Edwards has already shown the same blithe disregard for facts as a politician that he showed as a lawyer .. John Edwards must know that "hunger in America" claims are bunk, but he obviously doesn't care .. ". MORE -- Thomas Sowell.

Mexican border tunnel funnel.

Yep, they've found another one.

Yell it out loud: "Allie allie in free!"

Hans Blix goes "existential."

And his arguments bound into the silly stupid zone. European decedance has slid from the appalling to the just plain dumb. Charles Krauthammer reports.

Asa Hutchinson's email box is FULL.

Asa Hutchinson, under-secretary at the Homeland Security Department, has a full mail box thanks to John Kobylt and his 1,000,000 listeners in the Los Angeles area. Kobylt of the John & Ken Show today sought Hutchison's committment to resuming the round up of foreign nationals illegally residing in Southern California. Hutchison had stopped these roundups for political reasons last month. They have not been resumed, and Hutchison refused to announce their resumption. So as of today, the near interior of California is officially an open borders zone for foreign nationals in America.

UPDATE: QandO has a full report.

Jobless claims ..

lowest in 4 years.

Bush -- an "unwillingness to make serious arguments"

"Truth be told, I'm fairly disgusted with the GOP these days. Again, I think conservatives sacrificed a lot when we bought into the notion that the President of the United States doesn't need to be an effective communicator. Yes, it's nice to know that Bush's gut instincts are often right (though they're also often left), but his inability or unwillingness to make serious arguments hurts. And that style informs the GOP style across the board these days. Being the majority party in a system which so effectively empowers the minority party means that everyone has to listen to your arguments, it doesn't mean your arguments automatically win.

So, when the majority party refuses to ground its actions in principle and defend them with reason it will, of necessity, look like it is ruling by whim rather than governing by conviction. With a few important exceptions, Bush's domestic priorities look like an attempt to buy support rather than persuade the public about anything. That works for Democrats because the Democratic Party is, at the end of the day, about bribing the electorate. The Republican Party is supposed to be the party which persuades the electorate that they'd be better off not accepting the bribes. And everyone -- America and the GOP included -- loses when the two parties get into a bidding war like divorced parents over who can spoil Americans more." Jonah Goldberg in The Corner.

Crimes of the LA Times.

It's an LA Times blanket party over at Instapundit.

Glenn quotes Tim Rutten: "If the American news media are lucky, 2004 will be remembered as the year of living dangerously. If not, then this election cycle may be recalled as the point at which journalism's slide back into partisanship became a kind of free fall." And then adds: "Too bad some of his LAT colleagues have already shouted "Geronimo!""

Rutten's column is actually quite dishonest, advancing the standard leftist lie that Fox News is the great partisan devil in the press, while everyone else -- all those partisan Democrats in the big city papers and at ABC, NBC, CNN and CBS -- are dedicated to presenting objective news. Recent studies show exactly the opposite -- Fox actually is the least biased of all the major news outlets in America. It turns out that even Drudge is far less biased than are such folks as the NY Times and CBS News. But I guess that is setting the bar damn far low.

Lefty Journalist speaks:

"We are the social conscience of this country and we have an obligation to use the media." Quoted from the introduction to Brent Bozell's new book Weapons of Mass Distortion : The Coming Meltdown of the [Leftist] Media.

A dozen corrections a day at the LA Times ..

".. signals of a sloppy paper that under [John] Carroll's leadership has gone from hyper-partisan but accurate tip sheet for the Dems to hyper-partisan, sloppily edited and never fact-checked tip sheet for the Michael Moore left."

So opines talk host Hugh Hewitt.

Andrew Sullivan -- the "Bush Republicans".

"What is a "Bush Republican"? I think it has to be a combination of the social policy of the religious right (the FMA, bans on embryo research, government support for religious charities, etc), the fiscal policy of the Keynesian left (massive new domestic spending combined with "deficits don't matter"), and the foreign policy of liberal moralism (democratization as a policy in the Middle East) .. The sad truth is that if Bush Republicanism exists, it's one of the most ramshackle distillations of political expediency ever tarted up as an "ism" .. ".

MORE -- Andrew Sullivan on the "Bush Republicans".

Mark Steyn on Islam & the fate of the West.

"Of the increase in global population between 1970 and 2000, the developed world accounted for under 9% of it, while the Muslim world accounted for 26% of the increase. Between 1970 and 2000, the developed world declined from just under 30% of the world's population to just over 20%; the Muslim nations increased from about 15% to 20%. 1970 isn't that long ago. If you're, say, 50, you wear narrower trousers and shorter hair than you used to, but the landscape of your life – your house, your car, your kitchen appliances – doesn't seem significantly different. But the fact is the world's people are a lot more Islamic than they were back then and a lot less Western. Europe is significantly more Islamic, having taken in during that period some 20 million Muslims (officially) – or the equivalents of the populations of three EU countries (Ireland, Belgium, Denmark). Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the West: in the United Kingdom, more Muslims than Christians attend religious services each week. So we're living through a period of extraordinarily rapid demographic and cultural change that broadly favors the Islamists' stated objectives, a period of rapid technological advance that greatly facilitates the Islamists' objectives, and a period of rapid nuclear dissemination that will add serious heft to the realization of their objectives. If the West is to survive, it will only be after a long struggle lasting many decades."

MORE -- Mark Steyn

WaPo spreads vile bigotry.

And Michelle Malkin reminds us we shouldn't be surprised. The left is full of racists and bigots as many of us have experienced first hand. Here's Malkin unloading on racist WaPo cartoonist Ted Rall and bigotted "mainstream" editors:

"Rall is not the far Left fringe. He gets away with this pen-and-ink-stained excrement because he reflects the closet thinking of mainstream media editors across the country and their mainstream liberal audiences. His work is reportedly carried in 140 newspapers. He and his ilk are everywhere. I grew up with his kind. I went to school with his kind. I work in the media with his kind. I have been getting contempt-filled, profanity-laced, "You-are-a-traitor-to-your-race/You banana/coconut/Aunt Tomasina/white wannabe" diatribes from his kind in my mailbox for the past 12 years."

Mexican nationals will get U.S. Social Security benefits.

As if the current system weren't already bankrupt enough, Mexican nationals will be given U.S. Social Security benefits so long as they can con an American bureaucrat into believing that they've worked in the U.S. for 18-months. And of course in reality it won't matter whether the work was done by a Mexican national living illegally in the United States. Or, deed, whether the work was done off the books, with zero dollars taxed for Social Security. And as we know, the Social Security system is a redistribution system, and low wage illegal Mexican nationals will be getting far more dollars from U.S. citizens than any U.S. taxes they might happen to pay.

What's the expression .. "Your tax dollars at work."

I've met the man.

Legendary Darwinian biologist Ernst Mayr is 100. In my estimation Mayr is perhaps the greatest Darwinian biologist of all time. Has anyone put the major components of the theory together in a more coherent explanatory framework? Hhhmmm. Let me think. Well, actually, no.

And don't miss Mayr on "80 Years of Watching the Evolutionary Scenery".

Here are some of my favorite books by Ernst Mayr:

One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought.

The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance.

This Is Biology: The Science of the Living World.

What Evolution Is.

And forthcoming(!): What Makes Biology Unique? : Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline.

Kenneth Starr -- wuss.

That's what we would have called him in junior high. He's the kid who, with no complaints, let others beat him up. In my estimation, not a strong enough man to take on a criminal like Bill Clinton. Anyway, the former special prosecutor has given the Kenny Starr version of "Fvvk yuu" to Bill Clinton in today's WSJ. All high minded stuff and true enough as it goes -- but not the one-two-three head shots and body blows that the situations calls for. This is powerder puff shadow boxing, and Starr's former staff deserves better.

UPDATE: Here's an alternative opinion of Ken Starr worthy of your consideration.

Housing bubble.

Keeps on expanding. The morgage market says, "What Fed rate increase?"

Iranian agents prepare bombings in Iraq.

But hey, it just ain't news.

Justice for the USS Cole.

The trial begins.

30-year morgage dips below 6%.

"Last chance" surge in home purchases and re-fi's sustain the U.S. housing bubble.

China puts brakes on economic boom.

"The torrid Chinese demand for raw material last fall and winter has largely evaporated, as credit-starved companies drew down their supplies and stopped placing new orders. Prices slumped in commodities markets as a result. As the lines of ships waiting to unload cargo at Chinese ports dwindled, ocean bulk freight rates tumbled as well, falling by more than half on some routes after shooting up seven or eightfold last year and early this year .. With state-owned banks suddenly restricting what had been a flood of loans, borrowers are starting to run into trouble in regions that relied heavily on this lending, including the northeast and the region around Shanghai."

MORE -- China puts on the brakes.

Stalking John Edwards.

EdwardsWatch.org brought to you by the American Tort Reform Association.

Southern Appeal has more Edwards links here.

The Dems & the New New Left.

"The trial lawyers represent a whole different strain of activism, which people haven't really figured out yet. Unlike public-policy-preneurs, the new breed of legal sharks are private-sector entrepreneurs operating within the government, although with few checks and balances. These lawsharks learned their profit-maximizing craft not in a legislature, but in a law school. Nobody votes for them, except for juries, and yet most people instinctively cheer for them, because these attorneys pose as champions of the "little guy," and people haven't yet figured out that a) other little guys end up paying the bills for such lawsuiting; and b) the legal tycoons typically keep a third of what they rake in.

In other words, we are all poorer so that a few trial lawyers can get really rich. But until that weird process of upward-redistribution is better understood, Edwards can pose as Mr. Underdog. And he can take pride in his "accomplishments" -- not legislating in the Senate, but litigating in the South, most notably against doctors and auto companies. According to The New York Times, from 1985 to 1997 he racked up $175 million for his plaintiff-clients from 1985 to 1997; his personal fortune is estimated by North Carolina Lawyers Weekly to be at least $38 million.

To be fair to Edwards, he's not just in it for himself; he's in it for other trial lawyers, too. In the Senate, he was Their Man. Not only did he oppose caps on malpractice awards, he supported legislation to allow new lawsuits against HMO's .. After 9-11, he even helped defeat an amendment to the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002, an amendment that would have limited on trial lawyers' ability to sue in wake of a terrorist attack. In other words, Al Qaeda attacks the US -- and after the attack, the trial lawyers can go in to shoot wounded companies ..

According to the Manhattan Institute: "'Trial Lawyers, Inc.' behaves like the biggest of businesses, as it generates cash from traditional profit centers (like asbestos, tobacco and insurance), explores potential growth markets (like lead paint, mold and regulated industries), and develops new products (like suits against the fast-food industry) ..

"Out of total U.S. tort costs of over $200 billion -- more than 2% of GDP -- Trial Lawyers, Inc. grosses $40 billion per year in revenues, or 50% more than Microsoft or Intel and twice those of Coca-Cola."

These big-dollar figures made by big-bucks barristers have taken the favored vehicle, the Democratic party, light-years away from its origins among the sons of toil; the new leading men are sophists of tort. In fact, the Edwardsite trial lawyers have wiped out jobs in whole factories and industries, from tobacco to aviation to construction, as they made their millions and billions ..

MORE -- James Pinkerton.

"Government To Close In Honor Of Reagan."

"Alas, the Federal Government was merely taking a day off. But somewhere up there Ronald Reagan is enjoying the joke."

-- Mark Steyn.

The huge hidden cost of union firefighers.

"In LA County, it now costs nearly $60 in benefits for every $100 in salary paid to firefighters." So says California Insider.

July 7 -- Cost of Government Day 2004.

"Cost of Government Day. n. the date of the calendar year, counting from January 1, on which the average American has earned enough in cumulative gross income to pay for their share of government spending (total federal, state, and local) plus the cost of regulation."

Click here for the full Cost of Government Day report issued today by Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist's outfit.

Greenspan -- flying by the seat of this pants.

"We now have a new book from a former Fed governor that provides a glimpse of Greenspan's Fed. It's much messier than advertised .. Laurence Meyer served from 1996 to 2002. Before that, he taught economics at Washington University in St. Louis and ran a widely known forecasting firm. His book A Term at the Fed : An Insider's View .. focuses on economic issues [and] offers fascinating insights. By Meyer's account, Greenspan and the Fed often fly by the seats of their pants. Despite a staff of 220 economists armed with computer models, the Fed is regularly surprised. In 1996 and early 1997, unemployment (then close to 5 percent) was declining. By the models, tight labor markets should have increased inflation. But inflation was dropping. "We had never seen anything like this before," Meyer writes. There were other surprises. The Fed didn't foresee the Asian financial crisis, the extent of the stock market bubble or the 2001 recession. Meyer doesn't criticize the Fed staff, which he thought excellent. But there were limits to what could be predicted. MORE -- Robert Samuelson "By the Seat of His Pants"

Cadaver show comes to America.

"A pregnant woman lies on her side with a hand behind her head as if posing for a nude photograph. But her dead body isn't the only thing exposed. Her heart, intestines and 8-month-old fetus are visible as well. The woman was one of more than 200 people who donated their cadavers for use in "Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies," which made its U.S. debut Friday at the California Science Center. Intended to teach people about human skeletal, cardiovascular and other systems, the final exhibit includes 25 bodies that have undergone a process called "plastination" in which body fluids are replaced with clear, pliable plastic." MORE.

Should we hand over the word "liberal" to the leftists?

Not on your life. Not, certainly in Australia. Quotable:

"But above all, it is the unbreakable connection between liberalism and free trade in British liberal thought that is most compelling, and that should make us hesitate before conceding the term to the Left. Free trade is central to liberalism because it embodies two of liberalism’s central values. The first of these is the belief that individuals should stand on their own two feet without being propped up by the state. The second is the principle that it is not the job of the state to ‘pick winners’ and to favour particular or vested interests."

$4-5 billion skimmed in U.N.'s Cash-for-Saddam Program.

So says U.N. investigator PAUL VOLCKER. A collection of corrupt nations form a club -- what mental giant came up with the idea that this club wouldn't also be corrupt?

John Edwards & decency.

Andrew Sullivan labels trial lawyer John Edwards "a decent man". Well, you be the judge.

Here's a thumbnail of the case against Edwards -- quotable:

"[John Edwards' book] Four Trials .. discusses the first of Edwards's many lawsuits against obstetricians and hospitals on behalf of babies born with cerebral palsy—perhaps his most lucrative specialty. But the book does not mention the growing medical consensus that in the overwhelming majority of cases, this severe form of brain damage is not the fault of botched deliveries, but instead relates to causes long before birth .. Nor does the book mention the evidence that fear of such lawsuits has spurred doctors to order millions of medically unwarranted Caesarean deliveries in recent decades ..

.. it was never any secret that the tort system does nothing for the vast majority of babies with cerebral palsy, because their cases don't look like winners to lawyers. A North Carolina state legislator proposed, unsuccessfully, to address this inequity in 1991 by creating a special fund for all such families to share, while limiting malpractice awards. Edwards opposed the bill, according to The New York Times, calling it a baby tax. But a baby tax already exists: the malpractice premiums paid by obstetricians. And Edwards did much to increase those premiums."

Arnold vs. Flab.

John Fund takes a look at Schwarzenegger's California Performance Review. Quotable: "Gov. Schwarzenegger will be able to implement parts of the review by executive order." As for the rest, it's got to go through the Democrat controlled California legislature. My own call -- don't bet against the flabbly-assed porkers in Sacramento.

They love socialism -- they hate America.

Happy 4th of July everyone! Here's some Thomas Sowell:

"This is not a new phenomenon nor one confined to foreigners. More than 20 years ago, Eric Hoffer said: "Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America." Note that it is not the downtrodden masses but the pampered Ph.D.s who most vent their spleen at the country that protects and indulges them. When a friend who teaches at Harvard put an American flag sticker on his car, his astonished colleagues demanded to know: "What is that?!" An American flag on a car or a home would have brought a similar outcry of amazement and disgust at Berkeley -- and on elite campuses in between, all across the country. Nor is such a posture confined to academia. Movie-maker Michael Moore is going around the world saying that the United States is "a crappy country" and its people "stupid" -- while his movie "Fahrenheit 911" is being praised to the skies in the press and among the intelligentsia, as it puts its anti-American message on the screen. What is there about America that sets off such venom -- among Americans, of all people? One answer might be to look at the kinds of countries praised, defended, or "understood" by the intelligentsia. For many years, the Soviet Union was such a country. After too many bitter facts about the Soviet Union came to light over the years to permit its rosy image to continue, much of the intelligentsia simply shifted their allegiance or sympathies to other collectivist countries, such as China, Cuba, or Vietnam in the Communist bloc or India, Tanzania and other collectivist regimes outside it. It did not make a dent on intellectuals that people were fleeing the countries they praised, often at the risk of their lives, to try to reach the countries they were condemning -- especially the United States of America.

What is wrong with America, in the eyes of the intelligentsia? The same things that are right with America in the eyes of others.

If one word rings out, and echoes around the world, when America is mentioned, that word is Freedom. But what does freedom mean? It means that hundreds of millions of ordinary human beings live their lives as they see fit -- regardless of what their betters think. That is fine, unless you see yourself as one of their betters, as so many intellectuals do. The more the American vision of individual freedom prevails, the more the vision of the anointed fails. The more ordinary people spend the money they have earned for whatever they want, the less is available to the government as taxes to spend for "the common good" as Hillary Clinton recently put it. The more people who raise their own children by their own values, the less is there a place for the collectivist notion that "it takes a village to raise a child," as Hillary has said elsewhere. Too many of our schools are convinced that they are that village. Cars and guns are both instruments and symbols of personal independence -- and both are targets of hostility and even hatred by those who are convinced that they can run other people's lives better than those people can run their own lives. All sorts of claims are made against cars and guns, without the slightest interest in checking those claims against readily available facts.

When America frees ordinary people from the domination of their betters, and prevents them for being used as guinea pigs for the vision of the anointed, the more America insults the very presumptions that enable the anointed to think of themselves as special, as one-up on the rest of us. Countries that impose a collectivist vision from the top down will be forgiven many atrocities, while a country like the United States that lets individuals go their own way will not even be forgiven its successes, much less its shortcomings. As we celebrate both our country's independence and our individual independence on the Fourth of July, we should never forget that this independence is galling to those who want us to be dependent on them."

Is Bush an Austrian?

The President comes out against the yo-yo economy: " "We don't need a boom-or-bust type growth .. ".

"We're witnessing steady growth and that's important .. We want just steady consistent growth so that our fellow citizens will be able to find a job and so that the small-business sector will feel confident about expanding."

David Brooks defends the New Left Times.

"I'm loyal to my people."

My sentiments exactly.

"The day before first reports of Cheney's alleged indiscretion, his Democratic predecessor, Al Gore, delivered a public speech in which he spoke of the administration's establishing a "Bush gulag" around the world and using "digital brown shirts" to intimidate the media. The former vice president of the United States compared the current president to both Hitler and Stalin in the same speech -- a first not just in hyperbole but in calumny -- and nary a complaint is heard about a breach of civility. If you suspect that this selective indignation may be partisan, you guessed right. But here's an even more important question. In the face of Gore's real breach of civil political discourse, which of the following is the right corrective: (a) offer a reasoned refutation of the charge that George Bush is both Stalinist and Hitlerian; (b) suggest an increase in Gore's medication; or (c) do a Cheney. The correct answer is "C." And given the circumstances, go for the deuce."

More CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, "In Defense of the F-Word".

Are pornographic campaign ads the way around McCain-Feingold?

So asks The Wall Street Journal. Quotable:

".. The National Rifle Association has created a satellite radio program that reaches some 400,000 listeners. If the advocacy group runs old-fashioned political ads about candidates within 60 days of an election, it will violate McCain-Feingold. But as long as it is producing news or commentary, the NRA can speak to its heart's content, much as the New York Times .. does every day.

".. Meanwhile, the Federal Election Commission has landed the duty of deciding who else can speak, or not. Last week it delayed a decision on whether Michael Moore, creator of "Fahrenheit 9/11," must stop airing ads about his anti-Bush film, since those ads contain unflattering references to the President seeking re-election ..

".. if a right-wing pornographer made a pro-Bush film featuring erotic scenes and put it on the Internet within 60 days of an election, would the Supreme Court call it protected speech? .. "

The Courage of Cosby.

Courage, character, guts. Anyone who's read Shelby Steele's A Dream Deferred : The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America will understand the significance of Cosby's actions here.

And note well: the AP equates black trash with "the black community". That must be the most racist implicit bigotry I've ever come across in a news story.

Cal Republicans to Schwarzenegger:

Don't be a sellout. Will Schwarzenegger sell out the state to far-left California Democrats? If it makes him look good in the big Democrat newspapers, he just might.

Wouldn't you know it.

Paul Krugman has two thumbs up -- way up -- for Michael Moore's conspirumentary "Fahrenheit 9/11".

The Black Ball.

The U. of Montana school of law has chosen to inforced a 20-year old leftist only teaching policy -- banning Republican law professor Rob Natelson from its Constitutional Law class-room, a post which the overwhelmingly left of center faculty restricts to leftist professors. The post now stands vacant, and Natelson has appealed to the state Board of Regent. Good luck Mr. Natelson.

The U.N.'s cash for Saddam program.

The story of one $60,000 bribe -- and the role of the U.N.'s Benon Sevan.

Leftywood.

"You've spent all day lying on the telephone and screwing your client out of his money and yelling at your assistant for bringing you the wrong kind of water and paying your Guatemalan maid sub-minimum wages ..". What to do to make yourself feel you're a good person? Why contribute some cash to a Democrat politician, of course.

Catherin Seipp does a profile of newly conservative Hollywood writer Rob Long.

Hot seller at Amazon.

Laurence Meyer's A Term at the Fed : An Insider's View. 'His breezy style helps unlock the mystery of national monetary policy and global finance." Somehow that comes out sounding like a contradiction in terms.

Milton Friedman.

On inflation, interest rates and a free society. Quotable:

[Friedman] sees businessmen and academics as the two biggest problems, albeit for opposing reasons. Businessmen want freedom for all other people, only not for themselves. Then they want various subsidies, tariffs, privileges, etc. Academics want freedom for themselves, but not for other people.

Wal-Mart & Productivity.

Daniel Drezner is debating the validity of William Lewis' new book The Power of Productivity.

Quotable: "For example, in retail, the key thesis for Lewis is not just Wal-Mart increasing retail productivity, but the market response to Wal-Mart increasing productivity. The following comes from p. 92-96:

Starting in 1995, accelerated its productivity growth rate from 3.3 percent per year to 5.1 percent per year. The competition, however, increased its productivity at an even higher rate of 6.4 percent per year. When Wal-Mart captured 27 percent of the market in 1995, it could no longer be ignored. The race for survival was on. By 199, Wal-Mart had increased its market share onlu slightly, to 30 percent. One-third of the productivity growth jump in general merchandising retailing came from Wal-Mart's accelerated rate of improvement. Two-thirds came from the competitive reaction of Sears, Costco, Target, Meijer, Kohl's, MacFrugals, etc.... "

Let me confirm Lewis' claim. I work part time at one of these leading retailers, and I can vouch for the fact that the firm is cutting and slashing and re-organizing and doing everything it can to improve productivity -- it has to if it wants to stay in the game.

Who's changed

-- Michael Moore or the Democratic Party? Andrew Ferguson reports.

The coming Republican Civil War.

Andrew Sullivan thinks it's inevitable.

Fed Rate Hike.

The WaPo analysis.

Linda Chavez.

"Explain this to me: The Supreme Court of the United States says the First Amendment protects the right of hard-core pornographers to lure children into "adult" Web sites where they will be exposed to every manner of deviant sexual behavior? Yet that same court says the First Amendment restricts the right of groups critical of this decision from airing ads at election time that oppose presidential candidates who might appoint similarly disposed judges. As incomprehensible as it might seem, this is the state of First Amendment jurisprudence as the current term of the Supreme Court comes to a close .. ". MORE -- Linda Chavez, "Protecting the wrong kind of speech".

"Fahrenheit Fact".

The blog.

Fahrenheit 9/11 -- The Transcript, Part II.

Here it is.