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Return to the Article November 24, 2009Sarah Palin and the low ebb of the cultural leftBy Claude Sandroff No serious observer or reader could ever label the former governor as our Pangloss of the North.  Sarah Palin's view of politics and of life itself is maturely tragic, as it should be for a true conservative. Starting with a broad ranging, 5,000-plus word Facebook Note, then her recent Hong Kong address to an international investment group, and in more detail in "Going Rogue," she explains again and again that the very essence of "common sense conservatism" is a recognition of...

Some interesting battles breaking out on Twitter this AM, even if I say so myself - having played a big role in fueling them! No need to link all the back and forth, but it amounts to a discussion about what works. The problem as I see it, is too many inside the Beltway Republicans have convinced themselves that they are all that. For some reason, they fear and look to shut down the Joe the Plumbers (who I personally feel has been over-played by now) and the Jackies from the recent Palin book signing dust up with Nora O'Donnell....

King Solomon said in the Book of Ecclesiastes there’s nothing new under the sun. Women have killed or attempted to kill their unborn babies throughout human history, way before 1973, when the Supreme Court found a long-hidden, deeply buried “right of privacy” in the U.S. Constitution to have abortions. Roe v. Wade made the act legal and culturally acceptable. This Generation X-er can’t recall a time when abortion was as high-profile as it’s been in 2009. This year, a nut murdered George Tiller, a man nationally known for performing partial-birth abortions. Several months later, another nut murdered pro-life activist Jim...

The Obama administration keeps making big mistakes that have a devastating effect on its own goals and interests. What is most amazing is how the implications of its actions are just not understood. Already, the current US policy has destroyed any chance not only of progress on the Israel-Palestinian front but of even holding talks at all. Let's review the situation. Israel announced in 1993, at the time of the Oslo Accords with the PLO, that it viewed construction on existing settlements as completely in line with the agreement. The Palestinians, during the ensuing 16 years, never made this a...

The real liberal objection to the war on terror is that it takes away from domestic spending priorities like ObamaCare. The White House says domestic politics is irrelevant to its pending Afghanistan decision, but domestic politicians beg to differ. "There ain't going to be no money for nothing if we pour it all into Afghanistan," the liberal warhorse David Obey told ABC's Jonathan Karl, before threatening a "war surtax" if President Obama does end up granting General Stanley McChrystal's request for 40,000 more troops. "That's what happened with the Vietnam War, which wiped out the Great Society," the House Appropriations...

The flap over breast cancer screening has provided a fascinating insight into the political future of ObamaCare. Specifically, the political left supports such medical rationing even as it disavows that any such thing is happening. No sooner had the Health and Human Services Department's U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommended against mammography for women under 50 than Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rushed to say don't worry. The decision had "caused a great deal of confusion and worry among women," she said, promising that no policies would change. New Jersey's Frank Pallone vowed to hold hearings, and Senator Dick Durbin leveled the...

When I discovered that Chris Matthews of the program Hardball was going to interview Bishop Thomas Tobin on the continuing saga of Congressman Patrick Kennedy, I knew I had to watch. Bishop Tobin has courageously - and with a Pastor’s heart - tried to help Congressman Patrick Kennedy to see the dangerous error of his failure to defend the fundamental Right to Life. I should have known from the “tease” to the segment which I was awaiting where this arrogant, self centered commentator intended to take this alleged “interview”. He repeatedly “teased” to the segment by incessantly repeating the term...

A South Carolina senator has introduced a constitutional amendment that would set congressional term limits. It should carry the image of a certain West Virginia senator who's been in Washington far too long. Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, the amendment's sponsor, is correct when he says "real change in Washington will never happen until we end the era of permanent politicians." Perpetual re-election, based far more on seeding home districts and states with taxpayers' money than promoting and protecting the Constitution and the liberties it guarantees, becomes the life's work of many lawmakers. This sordid convention has no place in a...

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, speaking in that trademark sonorous baritone, utters a simple statement that translates into real trouble for Democratic leaders: "I'm going to be stubborn on this." Stubborn, he means, in opposing any health-care overhaul that includes a "public option," or government-run health-insurance plan, as the current bill does. His opposition is strong enough that Mr. Lieberman says he won't vote to let a bill come to a final vote if a public option is included. Probe for a catch or caveat in that opposition, and none is visible. Can he support a public option if states could opt...

Health Care: The closer the Democratic Congress' radical health package gets to enactment, the less popular it becomes. The American people smell a rat. 'It's not going to be a perfect bill, but it's going to be a very important starting point," Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said on CNN over the weekend after 60 senators voted to open debate on radically transforming the U.S. health care system. That fact is what is increasingly spooking the American people, as well it should, is: Where will this massively expensive "starting point" lead us? The Democrats' health care revolution, which right now...

Junk Science: Hacked e-mails from Britain's Climate Research Unit are only the latest evidence of climate fraud. Just ask NASA's James Hansen about the faking of climate data or EPA employees about the suppression of climate fact. For years, noted scientists and other global warming skeptics have been accused of being on the take, their research tainted and funded by grants from Big Oil and other fossil-fuel interests. Now, it turns out, it's the warm-mongers who are fudging the numbers and concealing the inconvenient truth. We don't know who "Deep Throat" is. But according to an interview in Investigate Magazine's...

One of our long-running political stories is the economic assault on the young by the old. We have become a society that invests in its past and disfavors the future. This makes no sense for the nation, but as politics it makes complete sense. The elderly and near elderly are better organized, focus obsessively on their government benefits and seem deserving. Grandmas and Grandpas command sympathy. Everyone knows that the resulting "entitlements" dominate government spending and squeeze education, research, defense and almost everything else. In fiscal 2008 — the last "normal" year before the economic crisis — Social Security, Medicare...

Diplomacy: Just as sanctions tighten on Tehran for its nuclear plans, in steps Brazil to host Iran's leader on a backslapper of an official visit. It's a reckless move that will only make the world more dangerous. Brazil is a country on the upswing, weathering the global economic crisis well and securing its future the right way — cutting taxes, drilling for oil, paying its bills and living within its means. Its GDP and standard of living have risen sharply. Not surprisingly, the country longs for global power and influence. But its foreign policy remains, let's say, "of the future."...

Justice: Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try five 9/11 plotters by a civilian court in New York rather than a military tribunal at Gitmo is already paying dividends — for the terrorists. The five terror suspects want to use their "not guilty" pleas as a chance to voice their hate-filled beliefs and grievances against the West. In short, we're giving them a prime-time soapbox in the most important city on Earth from which to spout their hate and recruit new adherents to their murderous cause. We know this because Scott Fenstermaker, the attorney for terrorist suspect Ali Abd al-Aziz...

No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems — of which getting elected and re-elected are No. 1 and No. 2. Whatever is No. 3 is far behind. Many of the things the government does that may seem stupid are not stupid at all, from the standpoint of the elected officials or bureaucrats who do these things. The current economic downturn that has cost millions of people their jobs began with successive administrations of both parties pushing banks and other lenders to...

This Ammendment established the Income Tax. Amendment 16 - Status of Income Tax Clarified. Ratified 2/3/1913. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. 30 words, only 4 of which exceed 2 syllables. Today - 96 years later - Subtitle A (Income Tax) of Title 26 of US Code (aka The Internal Revenue Code), has hundreds of sections and is thousands of pages long. Go here yourself and see if you can figure out how many pages it...

UW-Madison Professor Alta Charo was right -- women’s health would be sacrificed for overall health care reform. Charo, a faculty member of the university’s Law School and a senior adviser to the commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, predicted in an October speech to Planned Parenthood here that the right-to-life lobby might well get its way on abortion in the health care debate. Sure enough, in the landmark bill that the House passed earlier this month, lawmakers bent to the right-to-lifers and intense lobbying by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to provide stiff restrictions on covering abortions...

Let’s be honest: Israel really isn’t that important. We have economic issues—the unemployment rate is, frankly, European. We have international trade issues—as the figurehead of the free market, we’re a joke. We even have bigger stability issues—just look at South Asia. Honestly, if there are going to be lots of people dead and a chance of nuclear war, it’s going to be in the bloody maelstrom of the Kashmir region between Pakistan, India, and China. Oh, and Pakistan is an increasingly unstable nuclear state, and just so happens to border Afghanistan. Even in the Middle East, there’s the issue of...

November 23, 2009 The left: woofing and barking like a pack of mutts By Dennis Campbell The ferocity of the Left's attacks on those with whom it disagrees is nothing less than remarkable. The slanders and lies, the incessant efforts to find something incriminating going back to kindergarten, and the vitriol poured out on conservatives such as Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck defy reason. The vile and racist assaults on Condoleezza Rice were startling in their viciousness. The former Secretary of State under George W. Bush was caricaturized in the most demeaning, racist ways imaginable. But no...

In an October 1974 cable to Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, following passage of his legislation helping Soviet Jews emigrate, Israel's Foreign Minister Yigal Allon wrote that "your efforts in this matter manifest once again your deep understanding of our needs and your constant support of the cause of Israel." What a difference 35 years make. Nowadays, liberal members of Jackson's party routinely cast votes against Israel, while the leftist commentators supporting them relish vilifying the Jewish state. Whether it's blasting the settlements, criticizing Israel's Lebanon or Gaza conflicts, or deferring sanctions on Iran, the American Left is more unified...

LifeNews.com Note: The following is an excerpt from Sarah Palin's new book, Going Rogue: An American Life. © Sarah Palin 2009. The book is published by HarperCollins and available at online booksellers and most retail outlets.A couple of years ago I began to notice some peculiar yet familiar physical symptoms, like the smell of cigarettes making me feel more nauseated than usual. For a few weeks, I brushed these aside. Then I began to suspect something. There was no way I could buy a home pregnancy test in Alaska. I was the state governor. The supermarket cashiers would know, the...

For the first time in his presidency, Barack Obama has, according to a Gallup poll, fallen below a 50 percent approval rating. It's not hard to see why. No, it'sv not because he's spending too much money. There seem to be many Americans who want him to boost social programs. Less so is it because people perceive him as accomplishing little, because if he pulls off health care reform that would be a big thing indeed. No, the principal reason Obama, who became president by electrifying the electorate, has fallen to earth is that he has become boring. Can anyone...

United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates is the Mephistopheles of the Barack Obama administration - not because of his gift for intrigue, which is slender, but because of his capacity to personify non-being. "Everything that arises goes rightly to its ruin," said Goethe's devil to Faust, "so it would be better for nothing to arise." In his November 20 keynote speech to the German Marshall Fund's (GMF's) International Security Forum on Friday in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Gates portrayed the man who wasn't there. That is the secret of his longevity in public office. Several hundred attendees, including defense ministers and...

It's both amusing and educational to observe a consensus when it suddenly starts to give way at all points without yielding an inch. A couple of weeks ago, the consoling view was that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a man more to be pitied than feared, a full-blown officer in the U.S. armed forces who was too shaken up by the stories of returned veterans to be able to function properly, and a physician too stressed-out to bear in mind that there was such a thing as a Hippocratic oath. Why, even the FBI had interpreted his e-mails to Anwar...

Palin in 2012? by Alan DowdNovember 23, 2009Sarah Palin’s media blitz—including a national book tour, an interview with Oprah, magazine cover stories and cable TV one-on-ones—serves as a reminder that whether you voted for her or against her, whether you love her or despise her, Sarah Palin is a political force to be reckoned with. This is the real reason she drew so much ire from the Left in 2008. And it’s the same reason she may give some Republicans pause in 2012.The 2012 election is an eternity away, but this much we know: Barack Obama will be on the...

The health-care bill in its current form would create a regulatory mess estimated by one Senator to add100,000 new administrators in over 100 new bureaucracies. Many of these bureaucracies will get between doctors and patients. Others are simply a waste of money.... To pay for all this new bureaucracy there will be dozens of new taxes totaling nearly $800 billion and extending to items such as wheelchairs and hospital gowns. Almost every major recent public opinion poll has shown more Americans oppose Obama/Pelosi/Reid Care than support it. Just this week, in The Wall Street Journal, the Dean of the Harvard...

A new Rasmussen poll shows the Arizona Senator in a dead heat with potential GOP primary challenger J.D. Hayworth. BY ALYSSIA FINLEY John McCain may have been the GOP's national standard-bearer just a year ago, but now he's in electoral trouble at home. And this time no one can claim it's because of Sarah Palin. A new Rasmussen poll shows the Arizona Senator in a dead heat with potential GOP primary challenger J.D. Hayworth. Mr. Hayworth served as a congressman from 1995 to 2006, when he lost in a squeaker to Democratic Tempe Mayor Harry Mitchell, who prevailed by hounding...

Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. The Asia trip was not worth Obama's time. Leslie H. Gelb on why the president should shake up his foreign policy team—and make sure the deals are done before he leaves home. President Obama’s nine-day trip to Asia is worth a look back to fix two...

With liberal politicans, reporters pan for gold. With conservative politicians, reporters dig for dirt. The media spotlight that has been used as soft backlighting to illuminate President Obama and other liberal darlings doubles as a tightly-focused laser beam to attack Republicans. Just look at the recent issue of Newsweek magazine with its cover photo showing former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin wearing, of all things, running shorts. If you think that would be more appropriate on the cover of a magazine about running, you'd be exactly right -- it was a photo originally intended for Runner's World.It's not exactly a dignified...

New York's Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer just doesn't know what to think about terrorism. He does, however, know what to say - whatever is politically convenient at the moment. That's not what New Yorkers need to hear with the trial of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed about to land on the docket. Immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Mr. Schumer chaired a Judiciary Committee hearing to figure out how to legally handle terrorist suspects. While smoke still hovered in the air over Ground Zero, the senator was all about being tough. His opening statement included his support for...

Carly Fiorina channels Dede Scozzafava, wields race/gender card against conservative rival By Michelle Malkin  •  November 23, 2009 11:03 AM Grass-roots conservatives, your attention, please: The NRCC and GOP dumped $1 million of your hard-earned money into radical Leftist Republican Dede Scozzafava’s NY-23’s campaign — money that was squandered trashing mainstream conservative candidate Doug Hoffman, who lost the race by less than 3,400 votes. Now, the GOP elite Senate candidate in California, Carly Fiorina, is running against Democrat Barbara Boxer by…trashing mainstream conservative GOP rival Chuck DeVore.Fiorina’s strongest argument against DeVore? He’s a white man and she’s not. Really: Asked why she...

God bless John McCain for having picked Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008. McCain didn’t simply introduce a new politician into the national limelight, but someone who has already lapped him in public consciousness. Palin represents McCain’s most enduring political accomplishment. In tapping her, McCain unleashed the most volatile force into American politics since Joseph McCarthy. And unlike the saturnine McCarthy, Palin seems to succeed effortlessly at playing any role she assumes—in her latest incarnation as author, she produced a best seller even before her tome hit the bookstores, a particularly impressive accomplishment at a moment when the...

A story in The Washington Post’s Metro section last week was actually very positive. Those who read the profile on Bishop Harry Jackson got a full picture of the devoted marriage champion who has fought long and hard to save the institution in the District of Columbia. But the Post’s headline writers gave away their extreme bias in the way they introduced the story: “Seeking to put asunder.” And there’s the rub. To the editors of the Post, it is Harry Jackson who is trying to separate—put asunder—those who have been joined together. In framing the issue thus, of course,...

Editorial The Church and the Capital November 22, 2009 Gay people will eventually win full civil rights — including the right to marry — throughout the United States. Between now and then, there will be many more disputes like the one unfolding between the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington and the District of Columbia City Council over a bill recognizing same-sex marriages that could be voted on as soon as next week. City lawmakers who are negotiating with the archdiocese over the language of the bill should try to settle it without acrimony — but not by abandoning the District’s...

The final paragraph: The U.S. political process must stop its infantile wrangling and show cause for the world to believe that it will defend the financial integrity of the country, before discussion of U.S. default — which will otherwise become audible, soon — spooks the whole world.

Last week had to be a bit awkward for Democrats. They labored to pass a health care bill that, among other things, establishes a government advisory panel to curb health care costs with industrywide medical recommendations. And at just the wrong moment, a similar government advisory panel provoked outrage by recommending that women stop getting so many breast cancer screenings. Unruffled, the Democrats pressed on with their 2,000-page health care bill, going so far as to hold a rare Saturday night vote on whether to proceed to debate. There's a good reason they are in such a rush to pass...

Nine months after President Obama promised that his $789 billion stimulus package would be the most transparent spending bill in history, much of the information available to the public for the Bay Area and the rest of the nation is incomplete or inaccurate. The White House's Recovery Act Web site - www.recovery.gov - shows that $660 million has been awarded to Bay Area transportation projects to create 997 jobs, which amounts to a staggering $661,986 per job. Last week, the site showed that California Congressional Districts 00 and 99 received millions of dollars in stimulus funding even though neither district...

It may come as a surprise to many of his Democratic supporters, but Attorney General and gubernatorial hopeful Jerry Brown has gone to bat for the National Rifle Association. The NRA's cause: urging the U.S. Supreme Court to guarantee the ability of gun owners across the land to keep and bear arms. Last year, the high court struck down a ban on handguns in Washington, D.C., ruling for the first time that the Second Amendment's right to bear arms applies to individuals who keep a gun at home for self-defense. But the court made it clear the ruling applied only...

Reagan-like faith in efficient markets set the stage for the financial meltdown. Great crises have a way of reminding us that acting as though we know perfectly well what the future holds almost always leads to disaster. That's especially true in economics, which tends to underscore the murkiness of the real world by dealing out surprises one after another -- booms, crashes, bubbles, you name it. It's fitting, therefore, that the recent economic meltdown has begun to restore that great apostle of uncertainty, John Maynard Keynes, to his rightful position of influence in economic thought. "Keynes asked why financial markets...

There has been an endless amount of chatter about the price of gold being too high (it's not) and perhaps representing a bubble. It also seems that fair amounts of ink and windage have been wasted on worries about the gold trade being "too crowded." In my daily column on my own Web site, on Sept. 17, I noted a remark by Dennis Gartman of The Gartman Letter that the gold market was "terribly, egregiously, preposterously, shockingly overpopulated." That day, gold closed at $1,014 an ounce. Here we are, about two months later, and gold is more than 10% higher....

They must really be afraid of Sarah Palin. The liberals in Washington and in the media, they must be absolutely, crap-their-pants terrified. I say that because of the mockery. That’s their grand strategy. Make fun of anybody who disagrees with them. It damages their opponents in the public mind and it gives their party a scapegoat. Hitler mocked Jews, Jim Crow mocked blacks, liberals mock conservatives. It is a public vilification that seeks to address the grand issues of our day through prejudice and stereotype. Anybody who disagrees with the liberals must be stupid, and you prove you are smart...

Carolyn Blashek was in shock, like many of us, on 9/11. She was searching to find something that would assuage her concerns. Her decision was to enlist in the Army. The Army recruiter took one look at this then-46-year-old, 5’ 5”, and 115 lb. woman, and suggested she find another way to channel her energies. That recruiter definitely saved Islamic terrorists from a severe thrashing. Looking for something to fulfill her commitment to help, she volunteered at the military lounge at Los Angeles Airport. Ms. Blashek had a unique experience with a particular soldier on leave, one who really had...

Of all the changes Barack Obama is trying to bring about, there is one that would have stunned and dismayed his most ardent supporters, had they foreseen it during the presidential campaign. After all his talk of American values and loyalty to the Constitution, Obama is positioning himself to become the man who brought indefinite detention to the United States. Under his leadership, we might soon have in our midst a group of people — accused terrorists currently residing at the U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — who are permanently imprisoned, yet have never been charged with or convicted...

Today's report about political developments surrounding the global warming issue is brought to you by the letter "C." 1. C is for "carbon dioxide." Environmental extremists and major news journalists call this gas that is exhaled by all animals, and that is food for plants, a dangerous pollutant. Yet we would all die without it. That makes me sad. 2. C is for "climate change." It used to be called global warming, which many activists with a socialist bent warned would bring more catastrophic weather events, elevating seas, and economic ruin. They said because humans continue to produce greater amounts...

Much has been written in recent weeks about the craven response of the U.S. military establishment in the face of revelations concerning the terrorist nature of Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s recent shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas. The army immediately assumed crisis mode and denied any connections between Hasan’s religious beliefs and his actions, they summarily dismissed the idea of misfeasance in ignoring warnings of a potential fifth columnist in their midst, and they are now instructing high level officers to sing from the Political correctness hymnbook as General Casey now yammers on about the glories of diversity and that...

Kennett, Missouri, is best known these days as the hometown of pop rock diva Sheryl Crow. Sheryl Crow and now Heather Ellis. The latter is no rock star, but she is a bona fide celebrity (or one famous for being famous). Ellis, 24, the celebrated Wal-Mart line-cutter, earned her 15-minutes of celebrity when she accused a Wal-Mart shopper, cashier, assistant store manager, security guard, and Kennett police officers of racism. By the second day of the trial -- which ended last Friday in a plea bargain -- it was clear from mainstream media coverage that pretty much the whole town...

Kevin Anderson is a junior at Southern Lehigh High School near Allentown, Pennsylvania. He is also a longstanding member of Boy Scout Troop 301 in the Lehigh Valley. Kevin needed to do an Eagle Scout project to complete the requirements for the Eagle Scout rank. He decided to clear a 1,000 foot hiking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park in east Allentown, completing a missing link in the 165-mile Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Trail. The completed trail would allow visitors to walk along the Lehigh River. Kevin and his Boy Scout volunteer helpers logged in 250 hours completing...

Last Monday night, I spent an evening at my favorite cigar store with several good friends. We were laughing and carrying on as usual when a man came slowly walking in relying heavily on a cane he held with his left hand. He had a cast on his right wrist and a “World War II Veteran” cap on his head. As he passed in front of me I said “Good evening, young man.” He laughed and told me he was 83. As soon as the veteran said he was looking for two Romeo and Juliets my friend Frank jumped up...

At a time when our country is sick, it shouldn't surprise that one our sickest places is our nation's capital. The poverty rate of Washington, DC, almost 20 percent, is one of the highest in the nation. Its child poverty rate is the nation's highest.. DC's public school system, with a graduation rate of less than 50 percent, is one of the worst in the country. According to DC's HIV/AIDS office, three percent of the local population has HIV or AIDS. The Administrator of this office notes that this HIV/AIDS incidence is "...higher than West Africa...on par with Uganda and...