op ed review 6/6

THIS WEEK’S NEWS

Republicans may have a better chance of winning the Senate than the House in the midterm election in November. And their prospects for taking over the Senate appear to be getting better by the day.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/can-gop-win-senate-2010

Gallup’s generic ballot poll shows a 49-43 percent lead for the GOP, the largest lead for Republicans since the poll started in the midpoint of the last century.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/wehner/304621

In Pennsylvania, conservative Pat Toomey is leading liberal Joe Sestak by seven points for Arlen Specter’s old Senate seat, according to Rassmussen.

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/04/rasmussen-toomey-takes-seven-point-lead-over-sestak/

Republican Rand Paul leads the Democrat by 6 points in Kentucky's closely watched U.S. Senate race.

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20105300332

In Nevada, the tea party candidate has vaulted into the lead for the right to face off against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Endorsed by the Tea Party Express and the Club for Growth among others, Mrs. Angle now leads party establishment favorite and former Nevada Republican Party Chairman Sue Lowden.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/3/tea-party-candidate-surges-in-nevada-as-primary-ne/

To shore up his support with unions, Harry Reid is quietly trying to nationalize rules governing every police, fire and first responder union in the nation. “Reid is pushing this monstrosity as a major sop to his union supporters who will greatly benefit from nationalized rules for police and fire unions.”

http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/publius-forum/2010/06/harry-reids-push-to-nationalize-all-copfiremen-unions.html

A Rasmussen poll has Dino Rossi in a statistical tie with U.S. Sen. Patty Murray. The poll also found that Washington voters don’t like the national health care reform bill—52 to 46.

http://www.publicola.net/2010/06/01/extra-fizz-rasmussen-poll-puts-murray-and-rossi-in-dead-heat/

At $13 trillion, the federal debt has risen by $2.4 trillion in about 500 days since President Obama took office, or an average of $4.9 billion a day. That's almost three times the daily average under the previous administration.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/2/federal-debt-tops-13-trillion-mark/

The good news: employment went up by 431,000 last month. The bad news: 411,000 were temporary government workers, hired by the census.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ar_thYFiXUk4

But President Obama said this shows "the economy is getting stronger by the day."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100604/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_economy_1

Inside the Oval Office on Thursday, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer went head-to-head with President Obama as she demanded he take more steps to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, and they failed to make headway on the state's tough new immigration law.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/3/arizona-governor-obama-face-off/

But the Obama administration has enthusiastically agreed to help Saudi Arabia secure its dangerous border areas near Yemen.

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2010/me_gulf0487_06_03.asp

The mother of a Bellingham woman, raped by an illegal immigrant, says her daughter's attack should never have happened.. KING 5 uncovered last week that Salinas has been convicted of several violent crimes in the past, including robbery, assault, theft and selling illegal narcotics. According to court records, Salinas has been deported at least five times.

http://www.nwcn.com/news/Mother-of-rape-victim-speaks-out-95271059.html

Over half of the individuals on the Washington State Patrol's Most Wanted List are suspected illegal immigrants...

http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/06/01/illegal-immigrants-crime-spree-in-wa/

On Saturday, nearly 2,000 people gathered from around the country at the Arizona State Capitol in support of Arizona's new immigration law.

http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_phoenix_metro/central_phoenix/rally-to-hit-capitol-in-favor-of-arizona-immigration-law

"Soaring costs force Canada to reassess health model."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100531/hl_nm/us_health_3

Washington's unprecedented backing for a UN resolution for a nuclear-free Middle East that singles out Israel has both angered and deeply worried the Jewish state.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.5eaf6bbb255b23063c3b3635bd5f7c52.161&show_article=1

Based on the information available three days ago, honest people of goodwill might truly have believed that Israeli soldiers perpetrated an atrocity on innocent peace activists aboard the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara. The information that has since emerged precludes any such belief.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/evelyn-gordon/305651

Longtime liberal White House correspondent Helen Thomas declared that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and go back to Germany and Poland.

http://dailypaul.com/node/136760

Asked to rate various behaviors and social policies as either "morally wrong" or "morally acceptable," 50% called abortion wrong, as against only 38% who said it was acceptable. Even more contentious was the finding, for the second year in a row, that slightly more Americans consider themselves "pro-life" than "pro-choice" (47% to 45%).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704596504575272780104329228.html

A McDonald’s commercial running in France shows a teenage boy talking, apparently, to his homosexual boyfriend on a cell phone, followed by an awkward conversation with his father who does not know his son is gay. According to McDonald’s, the ad “recognizes the diversity of McDonald’s customers in France.”

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/67082

Common sense from the SCOTUS: The Supreme Court ruled that criminal suspects must explicitly tell police they want to remain silent to officially invoke their Miranda rights during questioning.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWZiNGY4NTdjZTJiZDQ5MDQxY2YwYzczNzk5ZjBiNDI=

Republican Susana Martinez became the nation’s first Hispanic woman nominated for governor Tuesday night in New Mexico....Martinez was endorsed by former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin...

http://www.cnjonline.com/news/wins-38594-albuquerque-gop.html

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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN

Charles Krauthammer 5/27

Here's my question: Why were we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place?

Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there. As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production. (President Obama's tentative, selective opening of some Atlantic and offshore Alaska sites is now dead.) And of course, in the safest of all places, on land, we've had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

So we go deep, ultra deep -- to such a technological frontier that no precedent exists for the April 20 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

There will always be catastrophic oil spills. You make them as rare as humanly possible, but where would you rather have one: in the Gulf of Mexico, upon which thousands depend for their livelihood, or in the Arctic, where there are practically no people? All spills seriously damage wildlife. That's a given. But why have we pushed the drilling from the barren to the populated, from the remote wilderness to a center of fishing, shipping, tourism and recreation?

Not that the environmentalists are the only ones to blame. Not by far. But it is odd that they've escaped any mention at all. The other culprits are pretty obvious. It starts with BP, which seems not only to have had an amazing string of perfect-storm engineering lapses but no contingencies to deal with a catastrophic system failure.

However, the railing against BP for its performance since the accident is harder to understand. I attribute no virtue to BP, just self-interest. What possible interest can it have to do anything but cap the well as quickly as possible? Every day that oil is spilled means millions more in losses, cleanup and restitution.

Federal officials who rage against BP would like to deflect attention from their own role in this disaster. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, whose department's laxity in environmental permitting and safety oversight renders it among the many bearing responsibility, expresses outrage at BP's inability to stop the leak, and even threatens to "push them out of the way." "To replace them with what?" asked the estimable, admirably candid Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander. No one has the assets and expertise of BP. The federal government can fight wars, conduct a census and hand out billions in earmarks, but it has not a clue how to cap a one-mile-deep out-of-control oil well.

Obama didn't help much with his finger-pointing Rose Garden speech in which he denounced finger-pointing, then proceeded to blame everyone but himself. Even the grace note of admitting some federal responsibility turned sour when he reflexively added that these problems have been going on "for a decade or more" -- translation: Bush did it -- while, in contrast, his own interior secretary had worked diligently to solve the problem "from the day he took office." Really? Why hadn't we heard a thing about this? What about the September 2009 letter from Obama's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration accusing Interior's Minerals Management Service of understating the "risk and impacts" of a major oil spill? When you get a blowout 15 months into your administration, and your own Interior Department had given BP a "categorical" environmental exemption in April 2009, the buck stops.

In the end, speeches will make no difference. If BP can cap the well in time to prevent an absolute calamity in the gulf, the president will escape politically. If it doesn't -- if the gusher isn't stopped before the relief wells are completed in August -- it will become Obama's Katrina. That will be unfair, because Obama is no more responsible for the damage caused by this than Bush was for the damage caused by Katrina. But that's the nature of American politics and its presidential cult of personality: We expect our presidents to play Superman. Helplessness, however undeniable, is no defense.

Moreover, Obama has never been overly modest about his own powers. Two years ago next week, he declared that history will mark his ascent to the presidency as the moment when "our planet began to heal" and "the rise of the oceans began to slow." Well, when you anoint yourself King Canute, you mustn't be surprised when your subjects expect you to command the tides.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/27/AR2010052702988.html?sub=AR

Another good read by Dick Morris:

“America is watching the president alternate between wringing his hands in helplessness and pointing his finger in blame when he should be solving the most pressing environmental problem America has faced in the past 50 years. We are watching generations of environmental protection swept away as marshes, fisheries, vacation spots, recreational beaches, wetlands, hatcheries and sanctuaries fall prey to the oil spill invasion. And, all the while, the president acts like a spectator, interrupting his basketball games only to excoriate BP for its failure to contain the spill……the truth begins to dawn on all of us: Obama has no more idea how to work his way out of the economic mess into which his policies have plunged us than he does about how to clean up the oil spill that is destroying our southern coastline.”

http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/100913-obama-doesnt-have-a-clue

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FROM OTHER COLUMNS

"Our liberty is at stake and we know there are many willing to take our liberty if we let them. They have already seized a good portion, and keep in mind, every dollar they seize is a dollar's worth of our liberty. Every law that they pass causes a greater or lesser injury to our liberty. When is the last time a law was passed that increased your liberty?"

-Gary Aldrich

"When I was a youngster, a popular putdown was 'If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?' But when people like Michael Moore, Michael Bloomberg and George Soros, say so many really dumb things, it seems a more appropriate question would be, 'If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?'"

-Burt Prelutsky

"You know, we were promised a messiah. All we got was the mess. We're still waiting on the iah..”

-Rush Limbaugh

"[W]hy do so many Bill Clinton stories end with the words 'nothing improper happened'?"

-Ann Coulter

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BOOKS

In a way, this book is the opposite of Barack Obama's famous memoir Dreams from My Father. The future President of the United States wrote of how he had tried to understand all of the non-American bits of his background, especially the Kenyan family of his father. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, on the other hand, is an African brought up in Africa…. Now she lives in the United States, and this book, which follows her earlier account of her life, Infidel, is, among other things, an examination of the virtues of her adopted country

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/charlesmoore/7789292/An-exceptional-womans-rejection-of-Islam.html

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LEFTIST WATCH

“When I was a political science graduate student in the 1980s, the Cold War was still raging, and my university was filled with leftists who were pulling for the Sandinistas, the Nicaraguan Marxists, and other various and sundry Communists around the globe to defeat Ronald Reagan and the United States. These folk used to meet in the local coffee house and practice talking Marxist gibberish to one another. After the Cold War ended, I often wondered what happened to my “Coffee House Marxists.” Where did they go? What are they doing now? It turns out that a substantial chunk of them have gone to work for the Obama Administration. Were it not for the tremendous damage being done to this nation and to the lives of untold millions of freedom-loving people around the world, one could be amused by the daily parade of ineptitude, incompetence and disrespect for America displayed by Mr. Obama’s cadre of Coffee House Marxists.”

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37278

Once a sleepy federal backwater, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) now has primary responsibility for implementing the federal takeover of the U.S. health-care industry, and Pres. Obama proposes to fill a key position there with Dr. Donald Berwick, who exemplifies the worst aspects of the Democrats’ health-care agenda: denouncing the “darkness of private enterprise,” he celebrates the centralization of power, the redistribution of wealth, and the subordination of health-care professionals to political players.

http://article.nationalreview.com/435338/the-real-face-of-obamacare/the-editors

The American people are too simple to choose from "an array of products" in "a system as massive and complex as health care. That is for leaders to do." says Donald Berwick -- doctor, Harvard professor, and Obama's nominee to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), arguably the most powerful position in U.S. medicine, directing the flow of almost one trillion dollars a year.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/leader_with_a_plan_invites_a_h.html

What is it with these left-wing entertainers that have to insult people while they accept their dubious awards? Why can’t these lefties just graciously accept an award and go about their business without going out of their way to let the world know about their politics? But once again, this time with Paul McCartney, we have an entertainer forcing his politics on the world in an inappropriate manner.

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/wthuston/2010/06/05/sir-paul-deep-as-a-thimble-classy-as-a-gushing-groupie/

It's clear that abortionists think of themselves as saviors of women, but would anyone really dare to suggest that infamous late-term abortionist George Tiller was like.... a crucified Jesus Christ? Yes. There it was on Daily Kos on Tuesday, plainly headlined "Dr. Tiller's Crucifixion and Resurrection," a brazen rant on how Tiller was assassinated by the State because he was too "destabilizing to the oppressive status quo."

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2010/06/02/sick-daily-kos-late-term-abortionist-tiller-crucified-and-resurrected-ch

Former Weather Underground leaders William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, as well as Code Pink founder Jodie Evans, helped organize the Free Gaza Movement, which launched the six-ship flotilla from Turkey to Israel that ended in a violent clash with Israeli Defense Forces.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/06/ayers_dorhn_helped_organize_pe.html

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NEWS FROM THE ISLAMIC WORLD

“The two Afghan girls had every reason to expect the law would be on their side when a policeman at a checkpoint stopped the bus they were in. Disguised in boys' clothes, the girls, aged 13 and 14, had been fleeing for two days from their illegal forced marriages to much older men, and had made it to relatively liberal Herat province. Instead, the police officer spotted them as girls, ignored their pleas and promptly sent them back to their remote village in Ghor province. There they were publicly and viciously flogged for daring to run away from their husbands.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/world/story/CF926626AFB7725E86257734000FC242?OpenDocument

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GLOBALONEY

“For years, people have warned that the smallest nations on the planet - island states that barely rise out of the ocean - face being wiped off the map by rising sea levels. Now the first analysis of the data broadly suggests the opposite: most have remained stable over the last 60 years, while some have even grown.”

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627633.700-shapeshifting-islands-defy-sealevel-rise.html

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ACTIVISM

The 2010 Washington State GOP Convention will be held in Vancouver, WA June 10-12. It includes workshops, campaign school, and a Michelle Malkin banquet dinner.

http://www.wsrp.org/2010convention.aspx

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ARTICLES

“He’s done it again, Governor Christie of blue-turning-red-because-of-him New Jersey, made every American who loves leadership misty-eyed. Speaking to the Federation for Children in Washington D.C., the good governor tore into public teachers unions with customary resolve. “Parents and children who are being failed by a public school system whose costs are exorbitant and whose results are insulting deserve a choice. We don’t have to look far around the country to know that vouchers and experiments in school choice are working, that they’re producing results…”

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/23902

On Saturday, the Associated Press informed its readers that President Obama cannot be expected to focus all of his attention on the Gulf Coast oil spill. The reason? Presidents have to juggle a number of pressing issues at a time, and what with America being in a recession, Obama simply can't afford to give sole focus to this disaster. The AP wasn't so understanding with President Bush, as you will recall.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/05/30/ap-throws-pity-party-overwhelmed-obama-oil-spill-just-one-priority#ixzz0pRVbnX3Y

The real question now is, "Why has the administration blocked clean-up efforts, of all things?....Could much of the environmental and economic destruction been averted by an aggressive clean-up and containment effort? Who in the administration is to blame? And why? One can only hope that Americans will begin asking these tough questions about what appears to be a willful slowness on behalf of Bama Petroleum to vigorously attack the clean-up and preservation efforts.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/06/is_there_a_political_reason_be.html

The culture war begun in the sixties has, in large part, been won by the left. Nowhere is this clearer than in the feminization of men. The virtues of manhood which had been extolled and celebrated throughout the middle ages right up to the 1950s have been completely expunged from academia and pop culture. The baby boom generation was the last to be taught the values of rugged individualism, risk-taking, courage, bravery, loyalty, and reverence for tradition.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/when_masculine_virtues_go_out.html

The Error of Rand Paul

http://townhall.com/columnists/JosephCPhillips/2010/05/31/the_error_of_rand_paul?page=full&comments=true

VDH: “At a time when Europe is discovering that its democratic socialism does not work, why in the world is the United States doing its best to copy it?”

http://article.nationalreview.com/435383/history-returns-to-europe/victor-davis-hanson

The Obama Administration may have abandoned the space program and the search for life on other planets, but it is determinedly searching for moderate Islamic terrorists all across this planet. So far it has tried to identify “Moderate Taliban” (these would be Taliban who only chop off your feet, not your head) and “Moderate Hizbullah” (who only support bombing Ashkelon but not Haifa). It has yet to get around to trying to locate any “Moderate Al Queda”, but we have to assume that’s next on their shopping list.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/23570

When Sarah Palin speaks, liberal feminists go wild. The woman is like a stilettoed catalyst for backlash from the professional political sisterhood. Much of the bitterness that gushes forth from the lefty sisterhood has very little to do with Palin herself. It’s about the things she represents. She’s a seemingly happy mom, surrounded by her husband and a big family. Pro-life, religious, conservative. political powerhouse. Depending on who you are and what your gripe or wound is, you can add to and subtract from this list.

http://article.nationalreview.com/434723/sarah-palin-a-feminist-in-the-pro-life-tradition/kathryn-jean-lopez

Washington State’s engineering crisis: “(UW Prof.) Bruckner recently visited Beihang University in China, a university that focuses solely on aeronautical and astronautical engineering. It has about 26,000 students. Compare that to the UW's 240 aeronautics students.”

http://www.katu.com/news/94696599.html

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NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES

Oldie but goodie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbnZax_gwr8

Memorial Day tribute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAmyuLEle9U&feature=player_embedded

“We con the world”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOGG_osOoVg

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WISE WORDS

"At the grave of a hero we end, not with sorrow at the inevitable loss, but with the contagion of his courage; and with a kind of desperate joy we go back to the fight.''

-Oliver Wendell Holmes