"jaw-dropping numbers"

Charlie Cook says GOP chances are good this fall.

John Kerry:

Why I won't back down on climate change.Duh. Because he's John Kerry.

The Polarization of the Supreme Court

The Court itself is to blame for this. It should have declined to substitute its own political opinions for those of people elected to make policy. By ruling on abortion, they insured that all future confirmation hearings will be polarized and a game of cat and mouse, trying to catch a nominee revealing his/her true opinions on issues. They know very well that nothing they tell the Senate can be used against them once they're sworn in. Unless they start taking judicial restraint seriously, we're going to be trapped in this tawdry cycle forever.

More on the Federal Government's footdragging and interference with the cleanup in the Gulf
Why do we even have the Jones Act in the first place and EPA regulations blocking the best methods of cleaning up oil?

As the government fails to implement such simple and straightforward remedies, one must ask why.

One possibility is sheer incompetence. Many critics of the president are fond of pointing out that he had no administrative or executive experience before taking office. But the government is full of competent people, and the military and Coast Guard can accomplish an assigned mission. In any case, several remedies require nothing more than getting out of the way.

Another possibility is that the administration places a higher priority on interests other than the fate of the Gulf, such as placating organized labor, which vigorously defends the Jones Act.

Finally there is the most pessimistic explanation—that the oil spill may be viewed as an opportunity, the way White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said back in February 2009, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Many administration supporters are opposed to offshore oil drilling and are already employing the spill as a tool for achieving other goals. The websites of the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, for example, all feature the oil spill as an argument for forbidding any further offshore drilling or for any use of fossil fuels at all. None mention the Jones Act.

They can deny foot dragging all they want, but the alternative explanations for this all seem disingenuous and cynically calculated for political ends. There should be more outcry from the entire nation, but especially the media.

I'll bet if some of that oil was headed to Chesapeake Bay, there'd be action.

This is beyond pathetic. If you can vote against anybody who voted Aye on this disgrace, vote against him/her! There's only one real job these people have and they don't have the spuds to do it. They'd rather concoct new excuses for pork and earmarks!

Washington Post Blogger, Anthony Stevens-Arroyo, of Catholic America

Mormons have a lot to teach Catholics about emphasizing marriage as a God-given vocation.

Considering that marriage is essential to exaltation in Mormon theology, I can see where he might think that. But I wouldn't expect the Catholics to abandon celibacy just because Mormons don't believe in it.

Such was not always the case. Catholics are not going to believe that Joseph Smith in the early 19th Century was given a new scriptural revelation in the Book of Mormon. Moreover, the LDS doesn't talk about polygamy in its past anymore than Catholics today talk about clerical pedophilia. But the promise of a successful marriage is central to the Mormon message. It was a key in the 19th Century -- despite the shadows cast by polygamy -- and it remains a basis for LDS success today. It is as if 150 years of aging has produced a fine wine.

As a Mormon, I believe and bear witness to the fact that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is lead by prophecy and through the same authority as the Apostles of the New Testament. In the early history of the LDS church, it was on the edge of destruction through opposition by the clergy of other churches and persecution by apostates. I don't think it would have had the leaders to survive and sustain its growth without plural marriage, which was practiced by its core leaders. They were convinced that their eternal salvation depended on marriage in the temple, which included in many cases, to more than one wife. After God made plain to the prophet, Wilford Woodruff, that the practice was to be abandoned, it became cause for excommunication. There is all kinds of speculation, including this one, as to why God would give such a law and then revoke it, but the important thing is whether one accepts the principle of living prophets and continuing revelation. Then it becomes just a matter of obeying the Lord. And that principle is one that Catholics can understand.

You Call That News?

Harsh Words for G.O.P. From Obama Of course, this just makes him look like a bigger loser when you consider the G.O.P.'s numbers in Congress.

GOP Congress visits to Gulf snubbed by Dems How would this promote the chances of cap and trade?

"Journalists" worried about the privacy of their gossip? I thought they were about speaking truth to power. So are they now all about kvetching and coordinating attacks on people they don't like, too?

And get this…the man, Andrew Sullivan, who…outed…private…Sarah…Palin emails, is complaining that anyone would want this list's content to be outed.

The key to happiness in parenting.

Instead of asking parents and non-parents whether they are happy right now, we might ask whether they are becoming more like the people they want to be. And then we might see children not as factors that may or may not be contributing to our happiness, but as opportunities to practice what most of us -- perhaps me most of all -- need to do more often, which is to put someone else before ourselves.

I think that's true in more than parenting.

Do they teach anything useful in journalism school? I don't know about that, but it seems to me that journalism itself is becoming less useful every day, largely because of the things being spilled by Mr. Weigel. One of the easier conclusions to be drawn from the uniformity of slant and the clique mentality of the D.C. press is this:

Nobody told me this in journalism school. Seriously, though, nobody did! The fact that one part of journalism in Washington was a give-and-take of gossip, and that sources learned to trust one another by bitching about people and projects they didn’t like; . . .

There never seems to be a thought given as to why the founders felt it was important to have a free press. They could only protect it from the power of the state. From the power of Academia and its own groupthink, it should protect itself. All the coziness, drinking together, self-righteousness and peer pressure is a danger that news organizations themselves ought to guard against. It's just as easy to lose one's independence to social pressures as it is to government control, probably much easier.

I think the most appropriate way to memorialize the career of Robert Byrd would be to rename the state of West Virginia in his honor.

J. Christian Adams:The New Black Panther case was the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law I saw in my Justice Department career.

It's dismissal after Obama's election is proof of the blatant corruption of his administration, and its brazen reliance on the willingness of mass media to keep it out of the public consciousness.

Hey, they weren't green jobs!

Politico reports on the Obamistration's cascading failures, and its plans to change its image from that of an unengaged president with a bumbling, bungling staff, to that of a decisive wielder of authority. The headline: Theater of the Absurd.

Senator Byrd is in the hospital. If he has been fully effective for the past 5 years, being a Senator isn't all that demanding a job. We really need term limits, especially for Senators and Supreme Court justices.

"No skimmers in sight as oil floods into Mississippi waters."

The more these reports come out, the more it appears that this is deliberate on the part of the government.

The NYTimes blames the victims. Considering the demonstrated effectiveness of the Feds and the "Pros," I can kind of understand why the governor might be inclined to approach the problem from an independent perspective. Nope, no politics here!