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: