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Debra Saunders on the Stark raving mad congressman from CA and how his remarks might play out for the Dems in ’08.
… In 2008, Democratic hopefuls are twice as likely to have been in law school than in boot camp. …
… Three years ago, Democrats shamelessly donned a military mantle. In a display of craven opportunism, they embraced an argument that seemed phony then, and now has vanished. They argued their candidate was better because he was a combat vet. Today, none of the Dems’ top three candidates has a military record.
Here are three words you won’t hear from the nominee at the 2008 Democratic National Convention: Reporting for duty.
WaPo editorial on Clinton fund raising.
DONORS WHOSE addresses turn out to be tenements. Dishwashers and waiters who write $1,000 checks. Immigrants who ante up because they have been instructed to by powerful neighborhood associations, or, as one said, “They informed us to go, so I went.” Others who say they never made the contributions listed in their names or who were not eligible to give because they are not legal residents of the United States. This is the disturbingly familiar picture of Hillary Rodham Clinton‘s presidential campaign presented last week in a report by the Los Angeles Times about questionable fundraising by the New York senator in New York City‘s Chinese community. …
Which leads to Jonah Goldberg’s LA Times column; Candidate Hillary: the GOP’s dream A campaign against Sen. Clinton may give Republicans the best shot at running as the party of change.
The Captain posts on another prize pick.
The Nobel committee has certainly fallen on desperate times, and especially so this year. First they award a peace prize to Al Gore for his global-warming hysterics, apparently because the science committee understood the extent of his exaggerations in An Inconvenient Truth. They awarded the literature prize to British author Doris Lessing, who disqualified herself for the peace prize by claiming that Americans were just too sensitive about having 3,000 murdered by terrorists on 9/11 …
He also posts on a couple of anniversaries, Beirut and Bork.
Rob Bluey analyzes the close congressional race in MA and shows how GOP tech wizards are catching up to the netroots. One of the wizards is David All who designed Pickerhead’s web site.
The Republican money machine seemed unstoppable just two years ago. The GOP consistently outperformed the Democratic Party, extending years of dominance in fundraising. But two years is an eternity in politics, and the situation today, particularly among presidential candidates, illustrates just how far Republicans have fallen.
There’s little doubt Republicans are paying the price for an unpopular war in Iraq, reckless spending when they controlled Congress, and embarrassing scandals that continue to tarnish their own. Conservatives have gone to great lengths to create a new brand for the party, but such endeavors won’t change minds overnight or even in this election cycle.
Then along came Jim Ogonowski, an anti-establishment and anti-Washington crusader from liberal Massachusetts. Ogonowski ran a remarkably close race (for being a Republican) in the Bay State’s 5th District, losing last week by just 6 percentage points against Democrat Niki Tsongas, the widow of former Democratic presidential candidate and Sen. Paul Tsongas. A loss is a loss, but to come that close in state without a single Republican congressman means he must have done something right. …
Hugh Hewitt posts on an exchange he had with Howard Kurtz on MSM bias and the end of network news.
Thomas Sowell with advice for the college bound.
High school seniors who want to go to a selective college in the fall of 2008 should already be making arrangements to take the tests they will need before they apply ahead of the deadlines for such schools, which are usually in January or February.
One of the consequences of taking these tests is that, if you do well, you may be deluged with literature from colleges and universities all across the country.
Some students may feel flattered that Harvard, Yale or M.I.T. seems to be dying to have them apply. But the brutal reality is that the reason for wanting so many youngsters to apply is so that they can be rejected.
Why? Because the prestige ranking of a college or university as a “selective” institution is measured by how small a percentage of its applicants are accepted. So they have to get thousands of young people to apply, so that they can be rejected. …
Neal Boortz posts on news of amazing health care fraud in FL.
Medical fraud in south Florida is rearing its ugly, expensive head … again. Let’s start with this. A Miami-area medical equipment supplier somehow managed to bill the U.S. taxpayers so often for one wheelchair that it ended up costing taxpayers $5 million.
Here’s another example. A south Florida company billed Medicare for millions of dollars worth of special asthma medication. The owner claimed it was for his local pharmacy. The only problem was the man was not a pharmacist, he was an air conditioner repairman.
It gets even better. Last year south Florida accounted for 80 percent of the drugs billed for Medicare beneficiaries with HIV/AIDS. That figure again? Eighty percent. That’s 80 percent of the total money spent on HIV drugs across the entire country. And yet south Florida only has one in ten of eligible HIV/AIDS patients. …
Volokh post on ethanol foolishness.
Dilbert’s here.