Living in California as we do, it's depressing that the closest thing to representation we conservatives have in the United States Senate is Jon Kyl from Arizona.  What we are left to endure usually comes from our junior Senator, both in seniority and in intellect, Barbara Boxer.

Among the myriad of causes and issues of which she claims to be a champion, she is an abortion absolutist above all else.  Boxer put that on display once again today, when she temporarily blocked the passage of a Senate resolution honoring the visit of Pope Benedict XVI.  The resolution, offered by Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, was deemed offensive to Boxer in two areas, and wouldn't allow the measure to move forward until the language was removed.  One of the clauses dealt with religious expression in public places.  Boxer certainly can't have that.  

But the line in the sand clause to Boxer was this one, which you can read at Politico.com.

Whereas Pope Benedict XVI has spoken out for the weak and vulnerable, witnessing to the value of each and every human life;

That raised the anti-abortion alarm bells with Senator Boxer, and she raced into action.  This cannot stand.  She will not allow the United States Senate to blindly honor someone who values every human life, even someone like the Pope, who actually has spoken out, witnessing to the value of every human life. 

She is as hard left on the life issue as Barack Obama is, which is radical.  Senator Obama was rhetorically talking about his potential grandchild when he made his now infamous remarks about not wanting his daughters to be "punished with a baby."

Democrats continue to maintain the illusion that public anti-war sentiment is going to sweep them to power in November, just like it did in the Congressional elections in 2006.  What they fail to realize, however, is that the Democratic Party is about to nominate someone who is out of the mainstream liberal.  And America, as divided as we keep being told it is, simply isn't as far to the left as the Democratic Party thinks it is.

Most Americans, even ones who are pro-choice, wouldn't go to the lengths of Senator Boxer to deem one of the hallmarks of the Pope's Catholic faith as unacceptable political speech that should not be honored by the United States Senate.

What a horrible night for Barack Obama, and for the Democrats in general.  George Stephanopoulos, along with Charlie Gibson, conducted a great debate on substance, showing any American willing to look that neither Democratic candidate is ready for the West Wing, and that John McCain clearly is.

In an exchange that will be played all through the general election season, Senator Obama was asked about his connections to unrepentent anti-war bomber/terrorist/Weather Ungerground member Bill Ayers.  Obama was clearly flustered by the question, and in responding, compared Ayers to Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn's views on doctors who perform abortion.  Here's the video:



The last time I checked, Doc Coburn neither advocated, participated, nor had a need to repent from any terrorist activity, unlike Bill Ayers, who to this day is proud of his activities forty years ago.  If Obama wanted to unify America, he took another large step in achieving half of that goal with conservatives, who are not going to take this slander on Coburn lightly.   

Both Clinton and Obama stumbled on taxes, especially capital gains taxes, on guns, and on foreign policy.  Obama was clearly uncomfortable on the Wright issue that hasn't been put behind him yet. 

The other exchange that's going to come back and bite Obama is him doubling down once again on the bitterness comment that has caused him so much grief this past week. Here's the video of that:

When people feel like Washington's not listening to them, when they're promised year after year, decade after decade that they're economic situation's going to change, and it doesn't, then politically, they end up focusing on those things that are a constant, like religion. They end up feeling this is a place where I can find some refuge. This is something that I can count on. They end up being much more concerned about votes around things like guns, where traditions have been on from generation to generation.

So if the economy is going great, especially if it's caused by action in Washington, people have no need to focus on things like religion or votes on guns?  It sounds to me like he didn't walk back from what he said to the elites in San Francisco a week and a half ago.  Instead, Obama's answer came out sounding something like, "I made a mistake about what I said in San Francisco, so let me be clear about what I really meant then, and mean today.  When small town people get bitter, it sometimes drives them to guns and God.  Hopefully, I cleared that up."

As has been said around the blogosphere, there was only one clear winner tonight, and that is John McCain.  

Thanks to the amazing skill Barack Obama has shown this week of how easily he can stick his foot in his mouth while trying to speak off the cuff, the country continues to focus on who is or is not bitter, and whether guns and religion and trade policy are just crutches used by small town Americans who can't get what they want out of life. 

In the meantime, however, two of the chief Democratic windbags in the United States Senate took to the floor this morning, with their charts and graphs, and decried how essentially the republic as we know it is in jeopardy because of an unprecedented amount of Republican filibusters. 

With the assistance of C-SPAN, it is clear that majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Chuck Schumer of New York, senior senators of their respective states, had senior moments today.

Here is Schumer, not today, but just over a month ago, March 6th, 2008, to be precise:



And here is Chuck Schumer, on the Senate floor today, on the same subject:



Oops.  Something doesn't quite add up, does it?

Here's Harry Reid from Leap Year Day, 2/29/08:



And here is Happy Harry today:



Why the discrepancy, you ask?  The Democrats seem to have a living, breathing definition of the word filibuster.  It seems if the Democrats block judicial nominations, Reid and Schumer count it as a Republican filibuster.  If Chris Dodd, Democrat from Connecticut, filibusters the FISA reform bill, Reid and Schumer count that as a Republican filibuster. If Democrats vote unanimously or near-unanimously with the Republicans to uphold a filibuster and beat a bill, as has happened on almost a dozen occasions, that counts as a Republican filibuster.

Harry Reid, despite the fact he has trouble with two digit numbers, also took to the floor yesterday morning, and made the following remarks about fellow Americans visiting the United States Capitol:

04-14reid.mp3

“Mr. President, someone wanting to visit the Capitol today, there is no place for them to gather. They gather -it used to be out on the East Front - now they gather on the West Front. And the people who work here joke about you can always tell when it's summertime because you can smell the visitors. And what we mean by that Mr. President – they stand out there in the high humidity, heat, sweating, and it’s really – there’s no place for them to go. The bathrooms in this facility are almost nonexistent. There is one on this side, one on the other side, both very small.”

Oh, how nice.  There certainly is no elitism in the Senate, is there?  Barack Obama thinks you're bitter, and Harry Reid thinks you stink. 

General David Petraeus is in Washington, D.C. to give his latest report to the Senate and the House about the progress in Iraq after the surge, and what still needs to be done.  The last time this warrior visited the Congress, instead of receiving the honor and gratitude from a grateful nation that he deserves, his arrival in Washington was greeted by a full-page ad placed by MoveOn.org in the New York Times, calling him a traitor by renaming him General Betray-us.   

This time around, at least one Senator has made sure that General Petraeus will be thanked properly for his service, and you can add your name to that list, too. 

Republican leader Mitch McConnell, over on his campaign site's blog, has drafted a thank you letter to David Petraeus, and has it set up so that you can add your name and brief comments that will be presented to the General. 

Please click here to add your name to the card, and show General Petraeus that the MoveOn view is not how most Americans feel about their military men and women. 

If you've heard some of the audio of Barack Obama reading from his 1995 book, Dreams From My Father, that we've been playing this week, and have a hard time articulating what's wrong with it, Columnist To the World, Mark Steyn, explains it all for you.  Listen to it here.  The full transcript will be available here later.

Mickey Kaus writes about some problems heard in Obama's book here.

Our good friend and fellow broadcaster, Frank Pastore, was a major league pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds during the late 70's and early 80's.  He holds no baseball records of note, but until this week, held a record for 21 years that made him a legend in the Hall of Gluttony. 

During the last trip to Texas in his storied career, he stopped at The Big Texan and ate himself a 72 ounce steak in 9 1/2 minutes.  For a generation, many tried, many failed to claim the speed eating record away from Frank.  Until a professional eater bested him by about 40 seconds.  Read about it here.

Hugh talked to Frank on the air today, dismayed that Frank wasn't already in Amarillo, Texas to reclaim his record.  It seems that he's content with letting some youngster carry on the mantle.  This just can't stand.  Frank needs encouragement to summon the stomach for one more day in the sun.  The following training video might help.



You can do it, Frank.  Beat the stomach.  E-mail Frank at frank@kkla.com.

If you are an aficionado of the American political scene, and happen to be conservative, pop yourself a batch of your favorite popcorn, and watch the following video between Clinton supporter, James Carville, and Obama supporter, Tom Daschle. 



Two hard lefties shooting at each other from point blank range.  Kind of makes you feel warm and fuzzy all over, doesn't it?

At the hour of ten, Washington, D.C. time, Harry Reid reconvened the United States Senate for another busy week.  Holding his pencil like the late Lawrence Welk held his baton, the hapless majority leader started off the week by defending the Democrats' budget bill in the following way:



Reid stated the stock market was dropping, "as we speak", at 10:07AM EDT.  At that time, the stock market was up approximately 300 points, on the way to the largest one day gain in nealy five years, closing over 416 points.  You think somebody on the Democratic side, another Senator, a staffer, might have leaned in and whispered something to Senator Reid, something like, "Senator, the market's through the roof today, you're making a fool of yourself...again?" Nope.

You could say Reid just had a slip of the tongue, but that wouldn't explain him saying the market was in freefall again in a press conference a little while later.   The one thing you can say about Harry Reid is that he's remarkably consistent.  He almost never lets facts get in the way of whatever narrative he's trying to sell the American people. 

As we've learned a short while ago, the state of New York is embroiled in another sex scandal, this one surrounding former Attorney General and first term Governor Eliot Spitzer allegedly trying to arrange for a high-priced prostitute to meet him in a Washington D.C. hotel room. 

The Governor had been expected to announce his resignation earlier today, but instead read a prepared statement in which he said he had done wrong, but his policies are bigger than any one individual.  He said he needed to take some personal time, but would report back soon. 

Meanwhile, on the national stage, the Spitzer scandal has implications.  He is a superdelegate, and has pledged his support for Hillary Clinton.  The Lieutenant Governor, David Paterson, also is a Clinton superdelegate.  The question that has to be asked is if Spitzer does try to remain in office in spite of the scandal, what does Team Hillary do with his superdelegate vote?  The Democratic nomination has reached the point where neither candidate can realistically achieve the necessary delegate count to claim the nomination outright, so the process is going to fall to the superdelegates.  And if Hillary is going to try and steal the nomination, she surely cannot afford to waste any superdelegate votes out there.  Will Hillary call for him to step down, or will she do the unthinkable, reminding people of all that was wrong with the Clinton administration in the 90's by defending him?

Does anyone else see the irony in Hillary Clinton supporters having to defend Spitzer becuase they need his superdelegate vote?  Does the Obama camp figure this out and press Hillary to reject his vote? 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi decided on February 13th, 2008, that she and her trial lawyer lobby knew more about national security than the Bush administration, all of the United States intelligence agencies, over half of the state Attorneys General, Democrat and Republican, the United States Senate, Democrat and Republican, and an overwhelming majority of House members, Democrat and Republican, and let the patch to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act expire.  As of Midnight the following Sunday, any foreign to foreign communications that happen to go through American company switching can no longer be listened to without a court order, blinding our intelligence and military agencies from acting to prevent future terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. 

What has Speaker Pelosi done with her time since she single-handedly put the country at greater risk by intentionally weakening the national defense?   On February 14th, the House considered 8 suspension bills, and 2 motions to adjourn, about five hours work.  They then broke for ten days to celebrate President's Day. On the 25th, they took up 3 suspension bills.  On the 26th, they started to work on the public housing bill, but withdrew it before final consideration.  On the 27th, Pelosi actually passed something - the energy tax bill. On the 28th, 3 more suspension bills.  Total work week? 15 hours and 5 minutes.

This week, there were three more suspension bills on the 4th, six more suspension bills and the mental health bill on the 5th.  And then we saw today's antics.

The House scheduled amendments and debate to reauthorize Americorps for five more years.  After tediously working through a couple of amendments, former California Attorney General and current Congressman, Dan Lungren, took to the floor and tried to hijack the Americorps bill by instead demanding the House take up the Senate version of the FISA bill.  Even blue dog Democrats want to get this thing done before something bad happens and Nancy Pelosi politically ruins the party.  But no, leadership can't have this discussion now, not when there's lawsuits to be had against the telcos for cooperating with the U.S. government to catch terrorists. George Miller, acting as the chief stooge for Nancy Pelosi, sought and achieved a ruling from the chair that Lungren's amendment was not germane, and therefore out of order.  Lungren and the Republicans appealed the ruling, and forced a vote.  It was narrowly defeated. 

Next Amendment to the Americorps bill was another Republican-drafted amendment to recommit the bill unless all Americorps candidates would have to subject themselves to a background check.  On the surface, that doesn't seem like such a bad idea - we would typically not want to see criminals flooding the ranks of Americorps volunteers.  This amendment sent the House leadership into a frenzy, not wanting to see a vote on this amendment.  After a brief delay in the action, Pelosi and her gang ended up pulling the overall Americorps bill from consideration, and abruptly adjourned for the week.  Another ten hour work week, and foreign terrorists know that for at least one more week, we are bound to an arcane law that is 20 years behind our current technology, providing a loophole for them to plot and scheme.

It will have been 23 days of blinding intelligence to foreign terrorist communications before the House reconvenes next week.  And there is literally one person on which to lay the liability  - Nancy Pelosi.  But she is not the only person who should take the heat.  There are a lot of House Democrats who would vote for this bill in a second, because despite policy differences, they do recognize the importance of getting national security right.  But while many of them have quietly complained to Pelosi since the FISA patch expired, they have not twisted her arm enough.  House Democrats should demonstrate that they put the national security of the country ahead of their party's politics.  They should take the long walk to Speaker Pelosi's office and tell her this is not what they signed up for.  

Our intelligence service has a hard enough time trying to detect and prevent attacks without having to do it blindfolded, deafened and with one arm tied behind their back by one of Nancy Pelosi's trial lawyers.

In case you missed it, John King on CNN's Situation Room explained very clearly why Democratic party officials are not sleeping real well these days.



If Hillary sweeps the remaining twelve states with an average margin of 55-45, she can't win without superdelegates flooding the zone, or cheating to include Florida and Michigan, which were uncontested wins for her. 

If Obama doesn't end up on the stand in the Ratso-Rizzo-Rezko trial and sweeps the remaining twelve states by an average margin of 65-35, he can't get to the nomination without superdelegates flooding the zone. 

What has Howard Dean been doing this week?  We have an exclusive peek into his office at the DNC:

Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats wrapped up another busy three-day work week Thursday morning with a flurry of legislative action.  She passed five bills naming post offices, created the official inaugural committee, and authorized the use of the Capitol Rotunda for the 2009 Inaugural.  With that workload behind her, it was time to call it a week and break for four days until next Tuesday. 

On the bad side, she and her Democratic colleagues couldn't seem to find time on the calendar to bring up the permanent patch to the FISA law, the bill that already passed the Senate in bipartisan fashion and would pass overwhelmingly in the House, the bill that allows our intelligence officials to continue monitoring and tracking the movements of enemy terrorists abroad, and actually helps prevent future terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.  So for almost the last two weeks, one foreign jihadist could make a 30 second sat phone call from one Middle Eastern country to another foreign jihadist in another Middle Eastern country, and because the communication technology routes a lot of this traffic through U.S. switching, our intelligence agencies would have to get a court order to be able to act on this 30 second phone call.  

But then again, on the good side, at least the trial lawyer lobby can continue to safely sue the telcoms if they cooperate with the U.S. government to try and thwart further attacks here.  

Meanwhile, over on the other end of the Capitol, Republican leader Mitch McConnell played another game of Lucy and the Football, with Harry Reid playing the role of Charlie Brown.  Early this week, Harry Reid wanted to bring up, for approaching the 70th time since he's become majority leader of the Senate, another couple of bills authored by Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold that would require immediate steps to withdraw our troops from Iraq.

Reid had figured that he would bring them up for consideration, that McConnell would immediately rally the Republicans to defeat the bill's 60 vote requirement to proceed to open floor debate, and then go out and hold a press conference before moving onto something else.  McConnell, toying with Reid as he's done since the Democrats took the majority in January '07, didn't knock the bills down, allowing them to proceed to the floor for debate, throwing the feckless Reid into a scheduling disaster.

Here's a still shot that is a common sight since Harry Reid's been in charge.



Standing, that would be Reid, Christopher Dodd, Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin, also known as the Larry, Moe, Curly and Shemp of the United States Senate. 

They weren't planning on spending any serious Senate floor time on this issue, but now they had to scramble and start scheduling Senators to come to the floor and rehash the same old tired rhetoric about how disastrous the war in Iraq is, an even harder argument to make when the situation all over Iraq is better than it was two months ago, the last time the Democrats tried to declare defeat.  And two months ago, the situation had significantly improved as well.  

After a couple of days of on and off debate, and very little else going on, Reid began to see the writing on the wall, meaning he wasn't going to get anywhere near the 60 votes he needed to cut off debate and proceed to final votes on Feingold's bills.  So he withdrew them from consideration, and vowed he would live to try and surrender another day, probably in a month when the next war appropriation bills come up.  

On the eve of entering 15 months in charge of the Congress, one chamber is committing malfeasance in dealing with the national security of the country, and in the other chamber, the Democrats have demonstrated all the originality and effectiveness of the Los Angeles Raiders' playbook.
 
If the Republican Party and its conservative supporters would simply put their internal quest for ideological purity aside for a moment, they'd recognize how inept, dangerous and utterly beatable this bunch is at all levels.  It's time to use the window that's been provided to us by Mitt Romney's gracious and strategic exit from the campaign, along with the bloodletting going on between Senators Obama and Clinton, and come together once more as the coalition Bill Buckley built.  There is no reason why issues and substance shouldn't beat false hope and empty change rhetoric every time out.

Leap year day means we have one extra day to stop squabbling about who is or isn't conservative enough to support, and start focusing on the task in front of us. Use your day wisely.

Last week, the New York Times ran a debacle of a story about John McCain that lacked credible sourcing and any hard facts to back up whispered, third-party allegations. It was a story that was deemed unworthy for publication by the Boston Globe, the Seattle Post Intelligencer and Beltway insiders like Morton Kondracke, and even the Times' own ombudsman, Clark Hoyt.  As Hugh cites below, there is a Rasmussen report that of the roughly two thirds of people polled that say they followed the Times story fairly closely last week, two-thirds of them believe it was a hatchet job by the Times to hurt McCain. 

So after their credibility took a huge hit, how do they follow up this week?  Carl Hulse runs a story with the headline, "McCain’s Canal Zone Birth Prompts Queries About Whether That Rules Him Out."  John McCain, it's true, was born on a military base in the Panama Canal Zone to a serving military dad and mom.  But the problem with the Times story is they do not cite anyone who is politically questioning McCain's eligibility. Part of reporting is explaining the who, what, when, where and why.  Mr. Hulse and his editors forgot the who.  He gets comments from a few legal scholars as to what they think the term natural born citizen means, and whether or not these experts think McCain might have a problem, but doesn't get into who's making the allegations, and more important, what the impact of those allegations will have on military families. 

The left loves to tell Americans how much they love and support the military despite being against the war, as was on display once again in the Senate this week, where Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and his friends on the Democratic side of the aisle unsuccessfully tried once again to cut and run in Iraq in the face of increasing progress on all fronts.

But the question should not be about whether McCain is or isn't eligible to run on a potential technicality the left wants to interpret from the writings of the founders.  The U.S. base where McCain was born at the time was U.S. territory. The real question is are the Democrats really anti-military enough to essentially indicate to thousand of families sacrificing for and serving this country abroad, at the request of the United States, that part of their sacrifice includes banning their children from aspiring to run for the top job in the land, the same land they are fighting and dying to protect?

Americans may be split on the issue of Iraq.  Americans may have differing views of what role our military should have in foreign policy.  That's a fair debate.  But Americans will not tolerate a political party that penalizes American citizens' future political ambitions because of their parents' active duty military service.  And the Times' attempt to sling mud stories week after week is going to eventually sound like the paper that cried wolf.

Last week, Hillary Clinton waited until well into her debate with Barack Obama to utter the line of the night that cost her the debate.  She had a scripted line to use about Barack Obama's change as being something you can Xerox, which fell flat and drew boos from the audience. 

Tonight in Ohio, Hillary didn't waste nearly as much time before uttering a gaffe which will probably seal the deal with many of her supporters as the final straw on the back of her candidacy. 

 

The first sixteen minutes were a ponderous back and forth over who's health care plan was more socialistic than the other's.  After Brian Williams tried to wrestle back control several times, he finally stepped in and changed topics to whether NAFTA should continued.  He started with Hillary Clinton, who inexplicably was appalled that she was asked the question first. 

Usually, in a debate, you like it when you get more time.  Just ask Christopher Dodd, Joe Biden, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards and Bill Richardson, who many times in the earlier debated looked a collection of Maytag repairmen instead of presidential candidates while the focus was on Hillary and Obama.

Hillary should have relished the opportunity to go first.  Explaining her position wouldn't even have been as important as using the opportunity of going first and framing the views of her opponent, since Barack Obama doesn't give views on anything except the war.  He's a change guy. He's a hope guy.  He's a big picture/concept guy.  Obama doesn't get into specificity, so Hillary could easily have put him on the defensive.  

She didn't.  Hillary Clinton said she was curious about the media in the last few debates always going to her first, citing Saturday Night Live and offering to give an extra pillow to Obama to make him more comfortable.  Groans and boos immediately erupted from the crowd.  Want to know another signal that a campaign has come completely apart at the seams?  Look at the debate prep.  Hillary Clinton didn't just walk into the auditorium in Cleveland tonight and throw caution to the wind.  She prepared for this debate. She had people coaching her on what to say.  The 'change is something you can Xerox' line was scripted.  It laid an egg.  A week later, she tries again to make another sarcastic joke about the media's love afair with Obama. Again, it was an awkward egg laid by Mrs. Clinton.   If I were a campaign manager, and my candidate flopped like that in two consecutive debates, whoever was prepping her wouldn't just be fired, but probably sued for oratory malpractice.

You can tell that Hillary is frustrated that Obama is skating his way through the primary season without any significant scrutiny by the press.  But as vast and skilled as Team Hillary is, there seems to be no one on the payroll that has any idea how to combat it.  She doesn't possess the debate skills to put her opponent on the defensive, and when she's speaking at campaign rallies, whatever legitimate point she makes about the media's messianic complex with Obama gets lost in her shrill delivery.   

She may want to be the first woman in the White House, but she's never going to win by whining.  Because of the charisma chasm between her and Obama, she is being treated as a conservative by what she considered to be her allies in the mainstream media, and she clearly doesn't like it.  

What Hillary has not yet realized is that you can whine your way out of contention all you want.  Lord knows the Republican Party has enough experience with that. But if you want to actually win, you have to do it on issues and ideas, not sarcasm and excuses.   

Anybody out there have any idea whether any foreign radical Islamists contacted any of their allies today to discuss another terror attack on U.S. soil today? Thanks to Nancy Pelosi, as of last night, we legally cannot eavesdrop on these types of communications any longer without a prior court order. 

Regardless of whether or not the country still believes we're in a war against a virulent strain of Islamic jihadists, it should be and is up to the Commander-In-Chief to decide how best to pretect and defend the homeland.  Last Thursday, Ms. Pelosi, using her power as Speaker of the House of Representatives, let her opinion supercede that of the 534 other members of the United States Legislative Branch.  She refused to bring up the permanent fix to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed by a bipartisan majority in the Senate, and one which would have won bipartisan approval in the House. Now the House is on vacation for a week, as is one of the most effective tools of surveillance our country's intelligence community uses.  Why would she purposefully blind America to potential terror attacks that could otherwise be thwarted? She says the President took his eye of the real war on terror by going into Iraq, something which is demonstrably silly on many levels.

How can she have taken her eyes off the war on terror by tying the hands of our intelligence operatives?  Partisan politics.  Part of the patch on the FISA bill includes immunity from lawsuits against telecommunication companies that cooperate with the federal government on foreign surveillance.  Nancy Pelosi's acts as though her loyalites lie more with protecting the interests of the trial lawyer lobby than they do with the successful prosecution of the war on terror.

So if she wields the power as Speaker to scuttle a bill that weakens the country's defenses, as of Midnight last night, she and her Democratic Party must be held accountable for the consequences of that action.  When the jihadists try to attack us again, as they have shown every indication that this is their fervent desire, it must be the Democrats that have to answer for why, in a time of war, they intentionally made our intelligence agencies' job harder. 

Day one, Ms. Pelosi.  How many free days are you willing to give the enemy a chance to plot, plan and organize against us before you allow all of your other colleagues in Congress the chance to do their job, and therefore, giving our intelligence community the tools to do their job? 

Tick. Tick. Tick.