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With the traditional media admitting they find it hard to curb their enthusiasm for Barack Obama, John McCain demonstrated again today that he is reaching out to the new media, giving blogging critics from the right and left the opportunity to participate in the blogger conference calls he has been regularly conducting. The Washington Times noted the phenomenon in an article of May 16, McCain widens dialogue on blogs, reporting that three of the seven questions in the May 15 conference call were posed by liberal-leaning bloggers. Of the half-dozen or so questions McCain took in today's blogger call [in...

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' inflammatory new campaign bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan will be retained by the campaign after making public apologies for past postings that were controversial, to put it mildly. In a surprise, the New York Times played the story on Friday's front page, albeit under the mild headline "Edwards Learns Campaign Blogs Can Cut 2 Ways")...

This article ran in the July/August 2006 issue of The American Spectator. To subscribe, click here. BY THE TIME THE PUNDITS HAD PICKED CLEAN the carcass of the 2004 election, the idea that Christian conservatives played a significant role in the President's re-election had been declared a myth. Looked at properly, argued Charles Krauthammer, the 2004 exit polls revealed "moral values" were "dead last" on the voters' minds on Election Day. It was all an ego-soothing "myth" cooked up by the liberals and the media to extenuate the GOP wipeout. But spinning an election is a lot different from winning...

In a recent USA Today op-ed, Tom Krattenmaker argues that “playing the God card” has backfired on President George W. Bush. The president’s favorability has fallen through the floor, Krattenmaker argues. And surely God would never side with unpopular presidents. “The God’s-on-our-side rhetoric is looking even less credible now, after more than a year of frequently bad news for the president and his administration,” he writes. As for the actual “God’s-on-our-side” rhetoric, Mr. Krattenmaker’s examples are pretty lame. He quotes an obscure alternate delegate to the 2004 Republican National Convention and New York Governor George Pataki (no favorite of the...

A recent report published by the National Bureau of Economic Research provides penetrating insight into the role of religion in America. Outside coverage from ABC News, however, the report hasn’t received the attention it deserves. In the report, Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber identifies a correlation between the frequency with which a person attends church and that person’s income. According to Gruber, a household that attends church with twice the level of frequency as another household has 9.1 percent more income. Gruber’s paper highlights some other interesting findings, according to ABC News: “That extra participation in religious activity...

Kevin Hackett, Democrat candidate for Congress in Ohio’s Second Congressional District wildly over-performed in his attempt to win yesterday’s special election against Republican Jean Schmidt. Hackett earned 48% of the vote in this heavily Republican district, which George W. Bush won in 2000 with 63% and in which he performed even stronger in 2004. Lefty blogs – who helped fuel Hackett’s coffers with small dollar donations – are celebrating another “almost win.” And, of course, they are again playing the victim card. Here’s John Nichols blogging for The Nation: Remarkably, in a district that favored George W. Bush over John...

The sun is setting on the permanent Republican majority that seemed to offer so much promise after the 2004 election. Or so the chattering class would have us all believe. Public opinion polls now consistently show the voters disapprove of the GOP's agenda. Social Security reform appears to be going nowhere. The war turns to quagmire. The judicial fight demonstrates the GOP's lack of control over its own legislative majority in Washington. And will those tax cuts ever be made permanent? Yet no one predicts with a straight face the Democrats will be the beneficiaries of this stalled agenda (which...

Howard Dean ought to have been happy with his fifteen minutes of fame. During the diminutive former Governor of Vermont's mercurial rise to the top of the news cycle throughout the 2004 Democratic presidential primary -- and his equally sudden fall into buffoonery -- Dean easily affixed his immortality on the back of a Trivial Pursuit card. Unsatisfied though, Dean ran for chairman of a defeated, demoralized and directionless Democratic National Committee. And won. Today marks the completion of his first 100 days in office. It's a natural integer at which to take stock of his performance. Unfortunately for Dean...

The Middle East is in turmoil. Oil prices have frayed the nation's economic nerves. A powerful corporate fat cat stands trial for a scandal that could bring him and his whole company down. A story ripped from today's headlines? No, they are the plot points for perhaps the most emblematic of 1980s television shows: Dynasty. And now, sixteen years after the show went off the air, Dynasty: The Complete First Season is available on DVD. Just as the original series was a ratings boom for ABC (it reached number one during the 1984-85 season), the release of the first season...

The Middle East is in turmoil. Oil prices have frayed the nation's economic nerves. A powerful corporate fat cat stands trial for a scandal that could bring him and his whole company down. A story ripped from today's headlines? No, they are the plot points for perhaps the most emblematic of 1980s television shows: Dynasty. And now, sixteen years after the show went off the air, Dynasty: The Complete First Season is available on DVD. Just as the original series was a ratings boom for ABC (it reached number one during the 1984-85 season), the release of the first season...

WASHINGTON -- Despite some of the most atrocious reporting on any national public policy debate in history, public opinion stands strongly in favor of Social Security reform that includes personal retirement accounts. Curiously, the results of a poll released last week that had nothing whatever to do with Social Security may have a bigger effect than any of the others on the current national debate. According to the Gallup survey, President George W. Bush's overall favorability rating stands at 52%, which is consistent with his numbers over the past four years (save for his post-9/11 bump into the stratosphere). Meanwhile,...

Blogs. The very word elicits tension. Or so it seemed at the recent Politics Online Conference 2005, put on last week by the Institute for Democracy & the Internet at the George Washington University. A breakout session titled "Tracking the Buzz through Blogs" demonstrated the intense emotionalism embedded in this new medium, as well as the intellect and diversity of sanity among the men and women (but mostly men) behind the keyboards. The session's panelists were sane enough: Peter Daou, formerly of the Kerry-Edward campaign, now of the Daou Report, Patrick Ruffini, webmaster for Bush-Cheney '04, Nicco Mele formerly of...

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has embarked on a nationwide tour to argue against Social Security reform, especially President Bush's plan to allow younger workers to invest a portion of their income into personal retirement accounts. But Sen. Reid has a problem. His arguments constitute a house of cards erected on shifting sand. And the wind just picked up. For starters, Sen. Reid has promised not one Democrat in the United States Senate will vote for personal retirement accounts. CQ Today reported on February 1st: "Not a single Senate Democrat will support President Bush's proposal to divert a portion of...

The phrase “guaranteed benefits” has been used a lot recently to describe the future benefits under the existing Social Security system. It shouldn’t be; benefits under Social Security are not guaranteed. In 1960, the Supreme Court of the United States in Flemming v. Nestor ruled that you have no legal right to your Social Security benefits. The Court went on to say that your Social Security payroll taxes are just that: a tax, not a "contribution." And your benefits are part of a government spending program, no different in the eyes of the law than corporate welfare or farm subsidies....

Howard Dean’s Shrill Shill By Patrick Hynes Published 1/14/2005 12:05:25 AM On Tuesday Markos Moulitsas Zúniga of the Daily Kos, the most trafficked blog on the web, attacked me personally and erroneously for having written a column in the Union Leader (Manchester, NH) in which I defended New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary. "The author is a Republican, and a consultant. He stands to lose lots of cash if NH loses its leading role," he wrote of me in his weblog. Also on Tuesday the former Director of Internet Organizing for Dean for President, Zephyr Teachout, revealed that the selfsame Markos Moulitsas...

A group that collected signatures on a petition urging the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to consider Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" for an Oscar nomination delivered 25,000 names to the organization today. According to a statement from the group Passion for Fairness, the signatures come from movie fans from all 50 states – "blue and red." After Gibson announced he would not campaign for an Oscar, Patrick Hynes started a web-based petition drive to generate grass-roots support for the film. The petition reads: To the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: It has come...

THE quadrennial effort to usurp New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary status has begun, this time with the official stamp of a Democratic National Committee nomination calendar commission. The commission is headed by former Labor Secretary Alexis Herman and Rep. David Price, D-N.C. Their commission is charged with drafting a new election calendar that would punish the citizens of New Hampshire. While the effort is headed up by the Democratic establishment in big states that seek to dominate the nomination process, it has lately been encouraged by the so-called “reform” movement within the Democrat Party. After the frustrating loss of their candidate...

Following up on his succesful TV debut on Hannity and Colmes last night Patrick Hynes, a freeper whose screen name is Kerry Crusher is scheduled to appear on the the nationally syndicated Mike Gallagher radio show this morning at 10:30 am. You can listen live at this link, but only if you are a "premium member" of the Mike Gallagher website. You can sign up for a one month membership for $4.95 if you choose by clicking this link. The topic will be the "Oscarworthiness" of "Passion of the Christ" as well as (he thinks) some discussion of the "red/blue...

As stated in this thread Freeper Pat Hynes (aka Kerry Crusher) is scheduled to be on Hannity and Colmes at about 9:45.

Patrick Hynes, a freeper whose screen name is Kerry Crusher is scheduled to appear on Hannity and Colmes tonight. The topic will be the "Oscarworthiness" of The Passion of the Christ as well as (he thinks) some discussion of the "red/blue state" political ramifications of the movie. He's been told his liberal counterpart will be a movie critic who doesn't like the movie. For those that don't know Pat is the proprietor of the websites www.crushkerry.com and www.passionforfairness.com. His "real job" is as a media and campaign consultant for the GOP consulting firm of Marsh, Copsey & Scott He has...