“Tom DeLay is becoming a commentator for CNN, according to John Fund. In today’s WSJ Political Diary, he writes: ‘Despite his antipathy toward liberals, Mr. DeLay joked that he’s happy to work with them. He told me he is about to sign on with CNN as a commentator. “I may be their only conservative on air, but someone has to do it.”‘”
Veterans receive unequal treatment from VA.
“Veterans face serious inequities in compensation for disabilities depending on where they live and whether they were on active duty or were members of the National Guard or the Reserve, an analysis by The New York Times has found. … Those factors determine whether some soldiers wait nearly twice as long to get benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs as others, and collect less money, according to agency figures.”
Top Comic Book Weapons
Via Brian Doherty, the top twenty comic book weapons, notably for our purposes for including a good description of the Green Lantern Power Ring (#2 on the list): “Each Green Lantern possesses a power ring that gives the user great control over the physical world as long as the wielder has sufficient willpower. The user can create damn near anything from the green energy packed in that tiny ring.”
I Was Strapped With Gats
When You Was Cuddling The Cabbage Patch
Good news for DC’s wannabe gun owners (i.e., me) today, as a federal court rules that what amounts to a blanket ban on gun ownership in Washington violates the second amendment of the constitution. I was hoping to rush out somewhere and buy a gun (really!) but apparently I still can’t get one: “The court’s ruling only clarifies some constitutional points and orders a lower court to allow a suit filed by Dick Heller, one of the appellants, to move forward.” Oy.
This is not, incidentally, a tongue-in-cheek post. My feeling is that DC law has been working as hard as possible for the past few decades to try and demonstrate the maxim that when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns. I don’t write about this issue much because, hey, I don’t want to be a wanker, but you can certainly mark me down as glad that Democrats seem to have dropped gun control as a cause here in the 21st century.
Hagel Kinda Sorta Calls for Impeachment
What a typically almost-awesome remark:
“The president says, ‘I don’t care.’ He’s not accountable anymore,” Hagel says, measuring his words by the syllable and his syllables almost by the letter. “He’s not accountable anymore, which isn’t totally true. You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don’t know. It depends how this goes.
You might see calls? From whom?
“Congress abdicated its oversight responsibility,” he says. “The press abdicated its responsibility, and the American people abdicated their responsibilities. Terror was on the minds of everyone, and nobody questioned anything, quite frankly.”
Boy, it’s too bad there wasn’t someone like Chuck Hagel in congress to avoid this abdicating. Oh, wait, there was. He just . . . abdicated.
I mean, whatever, he’s still good for a Republican and I hope he runs against the Three Stooges, but there’s something pretty absurd about this pattern; Hagel talking about himself as if he doesn’t know who he is or what job he has.
House Conservatives Appoint Chief Climate Skeptic To Lead New Global Warming Panel
The House of Representatives voted yesterday to create a new congressional committee devoted solely to addressing the global climate crisis.
Unable to block the creation of the committee, House conservative leaders are now doing everything they can to neuter it. Conservative leadership aides reportedly told Republican members that a vote in favor of the bill creating the global warming panel “would put them out of running for a seat” on the panel.
Worse, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has named Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) to be the committee’s top ranking Republican member. A look at Sensenbrenner’s record:
Sensenbrenner praised as ‘Inhofe of the House’: “If there is an Inhofe on the House side, it has to be Wisconsin’s James Sensenbrenner Jr.,” says the American Conservative Union’s David Keene, referring to Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who calls global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” [Link]
Sensenbrenner led climate skeptic delegation to Kyoto conference: “As chairman of the Science Committee back in 1998, Sensenbrenner led a delegation of skeptics to the Kyoto conference and fought then-President Clinton’s attempt to go along with the Kyoto protocols.” [Link]
Sensenbrenner asked scientist about placing catalytic converters on cows to combat warming: “Does (it) mean to stop this increase in methane we’ve got to put catalytic converters on the backs of cows?” Sensenbrenner asked a climate scientist at a hearing last month. If cows are partly responsible for methane gases, Sensenbrenner said, that “could hit Wisconsin’s economy right between the horns.” [Link]
Sensenbrenner endorsed by Competitive Enterprise Institute: A spokesman for the oil industry-backed Competitive Enterprise Institute called Sensenbrenner “exceptionally well qualified” and “a good choice.” [E&E Daily, 2/17/07]
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) — who last month claimed that global warming may have been caused by “dinosaur flatulence” — was reportedly a finalist for the ranking member slot. Only 13 percent of congressional Republicans say they believe that human activity is causing global warming, according to a recent poll, compared to 79 percent of Americans.
Rove busy shaping Bush’s legacy.
“In an interview this week in his windowless West Wing office, Karl Rove said that there is ‘very little’ discussion about President Bush’s legacy at the White House these days,” the Washington Post reports. But behind the scenes, Rove “has begun trying to put his own distinctive spin on current events and the longer historical view,” specifically asserting that the “Bush doctrine” will be adopted by future U.S. presidents.
Sixth paper drops Coulter.
Greg Sargent at Horse’s Mouth reports that the North Carolina Sanford Herald has decided to stop running Ann Coulter’s column in its Sunday paper. The editor said that his paper, which has a circulation of 10,000 to 12,000, has received 834 emails today asking it to drop her.
An Example
The real question at hand is what’s the dumbest part of David Broder’s column on the Bipartisan Policy Center being spearheaded by Bob Dole, Tom Daschle, George Mitchell, and Howard Baker. My vote is for this:
But beyond the specific policy ideas they may generate, the hope is that the sight of these four diverse characters and strong-minded leaders working together will serve as an example to current senators.
I’m no Senator, but here’s my commitment to Broder and to everyone out there in the grant-writing community. If you want to give me “a staff of 20 and a budget of $7 million a year” I will gladly put partisanship aside and reach across the aisle for solutions. Yes, yes, it’s true — I’m that selfless. Specifcally, maybe me, Ezra, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam could all work together on a $7 million a year bipartisan blog operation. We’d each draw a modest $250,000 a year in salary, and deploy the other $6 million on operating expenses for the group including a really, really nice conference room for us to sit down in while we hash out points of consensus and seek to “synthesize the best suggestions on improving port security.”
Cosmic Rays Cause Global Warming–Not!
For a detailed debunking of one of the last refuges of the global warming denyers, check out realclimate.org.
And more dynamic debunking of the disinformation deluge of the dastardly denyers can be found here.
