Free Republic

"...................But perhaps the most extraordinary story to emerge from the NPS is that of the tour group of foreign seniors whose bus was trapped in Yellowstone Park on the day the shutdown began. They were pulled over photographing a herd of bison when an armed ranger informed them, with the insouciant ad-hoc unilateral lawmaking to which the armed bureaucrat is distressingly prone, that taking photographs counts as illegal “recreation.” “Sir, you are recreating,” the ranger informed the tour guide. And we can’t have that, can we? They were ordered back to the Old Faithful Inn, next to the geyser of...

Democratic Senator Richard Durbin's now-historic comment likening U.S. detention facilities at Guantanamo to the Nazis, Soviet gulags, Pol Pot--"or others"--was not the worst thing said in recent days about the administration's Iraq policies. All this proved was that Sen. Durbin was looking out the window in the fifth grade when the nuns taught analogies. A similarly tossed-off comment by Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, generally regarded as a serious person, was more troubling. After saying "there is rising concern that everything [my emphasis] seems to be going the wrong way" on Iraq, Sen. Feinstein demanded "regular progress reports" from the President...