HEADLINES TODAY
Advantage, DeLay
Tom DeLay has dealt with Ronnie Earle Productions about well as is possible. The Hammer was all smiles for his mug shot today, and turned himself in in a county that doesn't do the number plate act.
In his mug shot, a smiling DeLay is wearing a coat and tie. The photograph doesn't have numbers below his face like many mug shots because the county no longer uses such a system.
The folks at Ace of Spades say he looks like a Rotarian or the insurance salesman whose quarterly numbers won him the big trip to the beach. Not a corrupt politician. And they're right.
Well done. Jim Schermbeck got his mug shot, but it's not exactly the perp trip he wanted.
UPDATE: The Happiest Mug Shot Ever! also foiled the attack ads the Democrats were planning on making for next year's mid-terms.
The Big Con
Rep. Tom DeLay has been photographed and fingerprinted and is free on bond. The professional leftwing activist "filmmaker" Jim Schermbeck now has the ending he needs for The Big Buy. Michael Moore's mini-me is born.
As expected, DeLay's mug shot is already up on The Smoking Gun. There's no number plate, but otherwise it's the perfect visual to lock out Schermbeck's film. The Texas criminal justice system has officially become a police state tool for leftwing cranks.
And 99.999999% of blogs, not to mention the MSM, remain silent about it.
Mini-Update: The MSM isn't silent about it anymore. CNN is already flogging the mug shot by way of the T-shirts it already adorns.
Osama Mama Fights Dirty
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who once compared Osama bin Laden's charity favorably against America's and today speaking against the (now failed) Coburn pork-cutting amendments, threatened other senators within an inch of their cost-cutting lives.
Cluebats to the Feds
The presidential brother is stepping away from GWB on disaster relief and a W protege is differing with the White House on border security. On disaster relief:
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush delivered a stern message to Congress on Wednesday: State and local officials, not the federal government or the U.S. military, should have the primary responsibility for handling natural disasters.---
"I can say with certainty that federalizing emergency response to catastrophic events would be a disaster as bad as Hurricane Katrina,” [Jeb] Bush told the committee.
His brother the president wants the military, currently fighting two wars and going eyeball to eyeball with the ChiComs and North Koreans, to clean up after big storms. It's a bad idea that will harm the military's fighting shape if enacted; Jeb's got this one right. Keep disaster response as local as possible.
Governors from Southwest states delivered a stinging rebuke of the federal government Wednesday for failing to stem the flow of narcotics and undocumented immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border.The criticism came as Congress considers a Bush administration proposal to federalize the first response to hurricanes and other natural disasters.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, and Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona said bluntly the federal government should secure the borders first.
"That has been a disaster for us," Napolitano told the House Homeland Security Committee. "We've lost operational control of the border in Arizona."
Perry succeeded GWB as Texas governor when W ran for the White House in 2000. And he's right; border insecurity is a growing threat. If GWB thinks the Miers nomination is a debacle now, just wait until terrorists exploit the Mexican border to strike Americans. The result will be predictable only in the destruction it will do to W's legacy and to the party he leads.
I don't know why it's so hard for a White House ostensibly occupied by a strict constructionist to understand which parts of the government are supposed to so what. The military fights wars, FEMA attends to emergencies of a non-military sort, etc. Maybe we need a color-coded map or something that spells it out clearly: Federals secure the whole country from foreigners who want to break our laws or kill us; locals respond first after local catastrophes. This administration keeps getting it all backwards. (thanks to MR)
Why McCain Won't Win the GOP White House Nomination, Reason #421
Like George W. Bush, Sen. John McCain often forgets which party he belongs to.
Elsewhere in Washington yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — while appearing with Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) at a US Chamber of Commerce event — said: "There's an element in my party" that likes "to say 'send them back'. Well, my friends, that is not what the Lady Lamp of Liberty is all about."Mindful of conservative criticism of his earned-legalization program, McCain said: "Anyone who calls that amnesty doesn't read the same dictionary that I do. We think it's pretty tough."
Asked if his critics were racist, McCain said he doesn't like to make those kinds of accusations, before adding, "We'll let other people draw those conclusions."
DeLayed Justice
Rep. Tom DeLay not only finds himself squaring off against a prosecutor who fabricates evidence. The judge in his case is a MoveOn moonbat.
DeLay will face a hearing in Austin before state district Judge Bob Perkins, whose political contributions include:$200 to presidential candidate John Kerry on July 14, 2004.
$200 to Sen. Kerry on July 24, 2004.
$475 to Kerry on July 29, 2004.
$200 to MoveOn.org on Sept. 11, 2004.
$200 to the Democratic National Committee on Oct. 13, 2004.
Another $200 to the DNC the very next day.
That hearing/booking is tomorrow. See the post below about its centrality to the whole purpose of the case against DeLay. It's not a part of the process--it's the reason for the process.
Other Action
Able Danger is back in the news, with Rep. Curt Weldon lobbing serious cover-up charges against DIA and DoD.
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Bush is still mired in Miers, who is underwhelming the Hill. This nomination needs to be scuttled asap. The Prez needs to champion a couple of popular issues and start using the bully pulpit. But he hasn't really done that since, oh, about January 2001. Why start now?
What issues could he champion? Property rights vs the Supreme Court, a la Kelo would be one. Porkbusters would be another.
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Four men will be deported in connection with this week's terror threat to the Baltimore Ft. McHenry and Harbor tunnels. According to some reports, three are Egyptian, one is Jordanian. They will be chucked based on immigration violations.
Of course, I must be a racist to suggest that tighter borders in the middle of a war might be a good idea. Right, Sen. McCain?
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Joe Wilson is back in the news today. Ahead of possible indictments in the Plame case, the former ambassador turned poolside sleuth is speaking in the friendly confines of America's universities. Speaking at San Francisco State, Wilson offered up military strategy and lied about his trip to Niger:
American troops should be taken out of combat and used in limited ways only, such as training Iraqi troops and giving air support, Joseph Wilson, husband of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame, said Tuesday night at San Francisco State's McKenna Theatre. ---Besides pulling troops out of Iraq, Wilson said Americans should stop killing Sunni Arabs and bring in other countries to form a coalition to solve the Iraqi situation as peacefully as possible to prevent the country from further devolving into civil war, stabilizing the entire area.
And those other countries would be...? His moral view of the war is inverted from reality. Sunni insurgents are killing Americans along with Kurdish, Shia and other Sunni Iraqis. Our troops should stop "killing Sunnis" when those Sunnis stop killing everyone else.
Wilson, a former ambassador to Iraq and 23-year veteran in foreign diplomacy, told how he had been called a hero by the first President Bush. He was subsequently asked by the Bush administration in 2002 to check intelligence reports that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq for use in nuclear weapons. Wilson's investigation into those allegations showed they were false, a conclusion that other high-intelligence investigators also came to.
None of that is true. His wife suggested him for the trip, not the Bush administration. His trip only confirmed Iraqi interest in purchasing yellowcake. But the meme is light years ahead of the truth, and may put people in jail.
As for Wilson, he's just an old hippie at heart:
Some in the audience urged him to run for political office. But Wilson said he'd been a true child of the 1960s and had ``too many wives and taken too many drugs. And, yes, I did inhale.''
But did he ever exhale?
The Stranger to the Truth Tour continues. Wilson will address “Speaking Truth to Power and the Consequences” on Monday, Nov. 14 at the University of Baltimore.
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Speaking of strangers to the truth, the media lied and hyped and overemoted during and after hurricane Katrina. Most of the reporters who made their names during that fiasco--Shep Smith, I'm lookin' at you--have yet to climb down from any of their excesses.
Now, South Park has grilled them for it:
In the episode, two of the boys, Stan Marsh and Eric Cartman, accidentally crash a boat into a beaver dam, flooding an entire town. In the aftermath, local and national media blame it on global warming, ridiculously exaggerate the extent of the damage, make up stories of rape, murder, "cannibalism," and tell tales of "hundreds of millions" of deaths in a town of 8,000 people.
Follow the link to see a video clip.