Ah yes, the evil snowmobile. Liberals hate to see multiple use in our forests and parks. Their ultimate goal is to ban everyone and everything from them.
Canadians, especially those in the English-speaking provinces of Ontario and in the West, appear to have had enough with their country’s slide toward international irrelevance and economic mediocrity. The Conservatives, led by the youthful-looking Stephen Harper, are surging ahead in the polls. Mr. Harper is running on a platform of tax cuts, honest government and rebuilding close ties with the United States.
There are those in this country who truly believe that the Supreme Court is the repository of all that is good and just. There are those who believe that the Supreme Court should be the ultimate and exclusive interpreter of the Constitution because members of the Court are wiser, fairer, more consistent and more far-seeing than members of the general public.
 And then there are those who actually look at the jurisprudence of the Court. The Court has made an incoherent mess of the Constitution. According to the Court, states may restrict cross burning (Virginia vs. Black, 2003) but not flag burning (Texas vs. Johnson, 1989). According to the Court, the federal government may restrict campaign contributions and pre-election political ads (McConnell vs. FEC, 2003) but not "virtual" child pornography (Ashcroft vs. The Free Speech Coalition, 2002). According to the Court, states may not discriminate on the basis of race (Brown vs. Board of Education I, 1954) but may discriminate on the basis of race (Grutter vs. Bollinger, 2003), but may not discriminate on the basis of race (Gratz vs. Bollinger, 2003). According to the Court, Texas may display the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state capitol (Van Orden vs. Perry, 2005) but Kentucky may not display the Commandments in state courthouses (McCreary County, Kentucky vs. ACLU of Kentucky, 2005).
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid held a conference call for Web loggers this week and proudly related how he's working to quash bipartisanship in the debate on lobbying reform. One participating blogger — Steve Clemons at The Washinton Post — reports that Reid described how he put down an unnamed Senate Democrat who came to him with a bi-partisan proposal on "ethics reform."
Reid told the senator that this was the wrong time to be engaged in constructive "reform" proposals with the other side, saying, "This was the time to draw a line and to show how 'our side' differed dramatically from 'their side.'" Reid's staff says the senator merely wants to deny Republicans a "duck and cover" strategy to escape responsibility for the Abramoff scandal.
Lawyers defending five local Democratic activists from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, against charges that the men slashed the tires of 25 Republican vehicles before last year's presidential election say their clients are taking the fall for professional political operatives who they say were leading a nationwide dirty tricks campaign to defeat President Bush.
National party organizers first denied any knowledge of the event, then pinned the blame for the crime on five young volunteers. But defense attorneys say the imported operatives were the real culprits and blamed the locals to save their political careers. The Democratic Party denies there was a conspiracy and even Wisconsin's GOP chairman tells the Chicago Tribune that the theory "doesn't add up."
Democrats think they have found their deliverer. He is the new governor of Virginia, Timothy Kaine. So confident are they that Kaine can lead them to the electoral promise land, they have tapped him to deliver their party's response to President Bush's State of the Union speech. Given the threats posed by foreign and domestic terrorists, Democrats risk exposing Kaine as an inexperienced lightweight who is not in the president's league of knowledge and experience.
TORONTO Has Canada turned upside down in electing Stephen Harper as the next prime minister? Are conservative winds suddenly blowing through cities where gays and lesbians legally marry and the government pays everyone's health bills?
Harper expresses skepticism about the Kyoto climate change protocol and opposes same-sex marriage. He openly supported the American-led invasion of Iraq. All are positions that put Harper, 46, well to the right on the Canadian political spectrum.
By electing this free-market economist from Alberta, a conservative oil-producing province frequently likened to Texas, it may seem that the Canadian people were trying to debunk the prevailing political wisdom of recent years that their progressive-minded country was drawing farther and farther away from the United States.
The election outcome, in fact, can be read as more of a rejection of Prime Minister Paul Martin's scandal-racked Liberal Party than an embrace of Harper's own modest agenda.
Indeed, when the victorious Harper stepped to the platform early Tuesday morning before his adoring campaign supporters, he was careful not to suggest that he planned anything more than careful change.
Implicitly acknowledging that his backing was less than overwhelming, he noted that voters had "asked us to cooperate, to work together and to get on with tackling the real issues that matter to ordinary working people and their families."
Harper's modest words in part reflect a man who is shy to the point of being aloof, someone who has always been careful not to show all of his cards. He is known to have a fiery temper, and he barely disguises his distrust for reporters. His sense of humor on the campaign trail was most revealing in its self-deprecating jokes about his lack of charisma.
But the statements Tuesday were also intended to balance two goals that will probably not always fit comfortably together.
To enact legislation, and even to form and maintain a minority government, Harper must build bridges with three centrist and leftist parties that together hold the balance of power in the lower house of Parliament, where his Conservative Party won 124 seats out of 308.
At the same time, he must offer hope to his western base that its patience during years in the political wilderness will eventually take it to a more conservative promised land.
The one area where Harper may be able to make a difference is foreign affairs. He will surely improve the tone of relations with the Bush administration, which has been acrimonious since the Iraq invasion, which Ottawa opposed.
"It's a delicate balancing act," said James Blanchard, a former U.S. ambassador to Canada. "I am sure that Stephen Harper wants good relations with President Bush and the United States, but any Canadian prime minister has to keep a noticeable independence from the United States, or he loses credibility in Canada."
If Democrats are going to argue against that position by saying you're not obeying the 1978 FISA law which requires a warrant every time you listen to an Al Qaeda call, they have lost the argument before it even begins.
Now that doesn't mean the Dems won't try to make that argument and, by pure repetition, hope it wins. But it won't.
So, where are all these people in the States who painted their fingers purple in solidarity with the Iraqis? Are they doing the same thing for the election in Palestine?
So far, recent moves toward democracy in the Middle East have favored Muslim fundamentalists in Iraq and a cutthoat suicide cult in Gaza and the West Bank.
So, where are all these people in the States who painted their fingers purple in solidarity with the Iraqis? Are they doing the same thing for the election in Palestine? Is there a reason to?
Oh, they'll "handle it", all right. Maybe that is why there was no purple paint.
When Mitt Romney spoke to a roomful of reporters at a lunch hosted by the Christian Science Monitor on Thursday, he said the right thing about his current position on abortion, but he said it in the wrong way. President George W. Bush, the master of speaking to evangelicals and socially conservative Republicans, would never have made the same mistake.
In responding to a question by political analyst Charlie Cook, of The Cook Political Report, Romney acknowledged that he only recently decided to accept the pro-life label. That’s certainly a problem for the Massachusetts governor, but an even bigger problem may be that he began his response by referring to “my history on choice.”
Pro-life activists never refer to the issue of abortion as “choice.” That’s a word – a construction – that comes from the abortion rights movement. Opponents of legal abortion refer to the issue as “abortion.” Using “choice” as he did will likely only add to the skepticism among abortion opponents of Romney’s recent conversion, making it more difficult to put the issue to rest in a party that is not likely to nominate a pro-choice candidate in 2008.
what's a shame, that he is lying about his position? or that he doesn't have a chance?  it is a shame that he is lying. it is a good thing that he doesn't have a chance.
The Gray Lady is at it again -- publicly releasing privileged government information, illegally leaked, in an all-out effort to discredit the administration and person of President George W. Bush.
Still, we do not know how the new chief justice and Justice-to-be Alito will rule on Roeand other liberal constitutional travesties of the past. Why, then, should conservatives support them? Because we can at least be sure that they will not start inventing yet new and previously unheard of constitutional rights. That would in itself be a vast improvement over the imperialistic Court majority’s drive to remake American culture and morality. That it will take at least one more justice of the Roberts-Scalia-Thomas-Alito stripe to return the Court to jurisprudential respectability is no reason not to support Judge Alito to the full. Let us rejoice in what we have gained.
"Arafat rejected peace at Camp David because it would have meant giving up the struggle for mere administration. Fatah never really had a place for the prosaic tasks that concern most governments."
and,....
"And so while Fatah and Hamas are rivals, neither has a democratic mentality. Democracy in its everyday manifestation is bourgeois and unheroic. It is about partial victories, partial defeats and issues that are never resolved and never go away."
Kerry promised to filibuster Alito, evidently, and the liberal bloggers and opinion makers have been screeching for him to keep his promise even if it is stupid, even if it is destined to fail and even if it makes Democrats look remote and out of touch with the American voter.
In fact, the attempt to gin up a filibuster does all three, but the far left libs — the ones so lib they're out where the buses don't run — they don't care. They want to die on this hill and they want to die fighting, overpowered, run flat like a beer can hit by a semi, but fighting nonetheless.
WASHINGTON Â— More than a dozen Senate Democrats supported ending debate on Sam Alito Monday, setting up a final confirmation vote for the Supreme Court nominee on Tuesday morning.
 Â
Ah yes, the evil snowmobile. Liberals hate to see multiple use in our forests and parks. Their ultimate goal is to ban everyone and everything from them.
Canadians, especially those in the English-speaking provinces of Ontario and in the West, appear to have had enough with their country’s slide toward international irrelevance and economic mediocrity. The Conservatives, led by the youthful-looking Stephen Harper, are surging ahead in the polls. Mr. Harper is running on a platform of tax cuts, honest government and rebuilding close ties with the United States.
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/JeffKuhner/2006/01/19/183064.html
There are those in this country who truly believe that the Supreme Court is the repository of all that is good and just. There are those who believe that the Supreme Court should be the ultimate and exclusive interpreter of the Constitution because members of the Court are wiser, fairer, more consistent and more far-seeing than members of the general public.
 And then there are those who actually look at the jurisprudence of the Court. The Court has made an incoherent mess of the Constitution. According to the Court, states may restrict cross burning (Virginia vs. Black, 2003) but not flag burning (Texas vs. Johnson, 1989). According to the Court, the federal government may restrict campaign contributions and pre-election political ads (McConnell vs. FEC, 2003) but not "virtual" child pornography (Ashcroft vs. The Free Speech Coalition, 2002). According to the Court, states may not discriminate on the basis of race (Brown vs. Board of Education I, 1954) but may discriminate on the basis of race (Grutter vs. Bollinger, 2003), but may not discriminate on the basis of race (Gratz vs. Bollinger, 2003). According to the Court, Texas may display the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state capitol (Van Orden vs. Perry, 2005) but Kentucky may not display the Commandments in state courthouses (McCreary County, Kentucky vs. ACLU of Kentucky, 2005).
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/benshapiro/2006/01/19/182953.html
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid held a conference call for Web loggers this week and proudly related how he's working to quash bipartisanship in the debate on lobbying reform. One participating blogger — Steve Clemons at The Washinton Post — reports that Reid described how he put down an unnamed Senate Democrat who came to him with a bi-partisan proposal on "ethics reform."
Reid told the senator that this was the wrong time to be engaged in constructive "reform" proposals with the other side, saying, "This was the time to draw a line and to show how 'our side' differed dramatically from 'their side.'" Reid's staff says the senator merely wants to deny Republicans a "duck and cover" strategy to escape responsibility for the Abramoff scandal.
Lawyers defending five local Democratic activists from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, against charges that the men slashed the tires of 25 Republican vehicles before last year's presidential election say their clients are taking the fall for professional political operatives who they say were leading a nationwide dirty tricks campaign to defeat President Bush.
National party organizers first denied any knowledge of the event, then pinned the blame for the crime on five young volunteers. But defense attorneys say the imported operatives were the real culprits and blamed the locals to save their political careers. The Democratic Party denies there was a conspiracy and even Wisconsin's GOP chairman tells the Chicago Tribune that the theory "doesn't add up."
jethro bodine 1/19/06 12:38pm
Since you claim to be an attorney, you especially should know that one-phrase summaries of legal cases are the height of intellectual dishonesty.
Sorry, dude, but judges like the shortest summary they can get their hands on. They are the laziest group of people you'll ever want to meet.
Democrats think they have found their deliverer. He is the new governor of Virginia, Timothy Kaine. So confident are they that Kaine can lead them to the electoral promise land, they have tapped him to deliver their party's response to President Bush's State of the Union speech. Given the threats posed by foreign and domestic terrorists, Democrats risk exposing Kaine as an inexperienced lightweight who is not in the president's league of knowledge and experience.
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/calthomas/2006/01/23/183529.html
TORONTO Has Canada turned upside down in electing Stephen Harper as the next prime minister? Are conservative winds suddenly blowing through cities where gays and lesbians legally marry and the government pays everyone's health bills?
Harper expresses skepticism about the Kyoto climate change protocol and opposes same-sex marriage. He openly supported the American-led invasion of Iraq. All are positions that put Harper, 46, well to the right on the Canadian political spectrum.
By electing this free-market economist from Alberta, a conservative oil-producing province frequently likened to Texas, it may seem that the Canadian people were trying to debunk the prevailing political wisdom of recent years that their progressive-minded country was drawing farther and farther away from the United States.
But many analysts and political observers here caution that it is too soon to draw too stark a conclusion from the vote Monday, in which Harper's party won a mere 36.3 percent of the popular vote. With the Liberal Party receiving 30.2, the New Democratic Party 17.5 and the Bloc Québécois 10.5, the shift in Canadian politics is likely to be far from seismic.
The election outcome, in fact, can be read as more of a rejection of Prime Minister Paul Martin's scandal-racked Liberal Party than an embrace of Harper's own modest agenda.
"It's a very slim mandate, and the party that is holding power is holding it by a thread," said Pierre Martin, a political scientist at the Université de Montréal. "If you have a party system divided into four" major political parties, "one party can take power with a proportion of the vote in the 30s percent range. That doesn't mean the country is moving right."
Indeed, when the victorious Harper stepped to the platform early Tuesday morning before his adoring campaign supporters, he was careful not to suggest that he planned anything more than careful change.
Implicitly acknowledging that his backing was less than overwhelming, he noted that voters had "asked us to cooperate, to work together and to get on with tackling the real issues that matter to ordinary working people and their families."
Harper's modest words in part reflect a man who is shy to the point of being aloof, someone who has always been careful not to show all of his cards. He is known to have a fiery temper, and he barely disguises his distrust for reporters. His sense of humor on the campaign trail was most revealing in its self-deprecating jokes about his lack of charisma.
But the statements Tuesday were also intended to balance two goals that will probably not always fit comfortably together.
To enact legislation, and even to form and maintain a minority government, Harper must build bridges with three centrist and leftist parties that together hold the balance of power in the lower house of Parliament, where his Conservative Party won 124 seats out of 308.
At the same time, he must offer hope to his western base that its patience during years in the political wilderness will eventually take it to a more conservative promised land.
"The westerners will have to understand they will have to make compromises and move to the center," said Michel Auger, a political columnist at the daily Le Journal de Montréal. "But Harper can use the time to build a stronger power base" in the east coast provinces, "Quebec, and Ontario so next time he can build a majority government and put forward their agenda."
The one area where Harper may be able to make a difference is foreign affairs. He will surely improve the tone of relations with the Bush administration, which has been acrimonious since the Iraq invasion, which Ottawa opposed.
"It's a delicate balancing act," said James Blanchard, a former U.S. ambassador to Canada. "I am sure that Stephen Harper wants good relations with President Bush and the United States, but any Canadian prime minister has to keep a noticeable independence from the United States, or he loses credibility in Canada."
O'Connor strikes again! Thanks God she is almost retired.
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/23jan20061100/www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/05pdf/04-885.pdf
If Democrats are going to argue against that position by saying you're not obeying the 1978 FISA law which requires a warrant every time you listen to an Al Qaeda call, they have lost the argument before it even begins.
Now that doesn't mean the Dems won't try to make that argument and, by pure repetition, hope it wins. But it won't.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,182702,00.html
So, where are all these people in the States who painted their fingers purple in solidarity with the Iraqis? Are they doing the same thing for the election in Palestine?
So far, recent moves toward democracy in the Middle East have favored Muslim fundamentalists in Iraq and a cutthoat suicide cult in Gaza and the West Bank.
What's gonna happen there?
That depends. Hamas has been democratically elected. Let's see how they handle it. Free elections don't create a democracy.
Oh, they'll "handle it", all right.
So, where are all these people in the States who painted their fingers purple in solidarity with the Iraqis? Are they doing the same thing for the election in Palestine? Is there a reason to?
Oh, they'll "handle it", all right. Maybe that is why there was no purple paint.
"Is there a reason to?"
Democracy in action.
democracy in name only
Â
When Mitt Romney spoke to a roomful of reporters at a lunch hosted by the Christian Science Monitor on Thursday, he said the right thing about his current position on abortion, but he said it in the wrong way. President George W. Bush, the master of speaking to evangelicals and socially conservative Republicans, would never have made the same mistake.
In responding to a question by political analyst Charlie Cook, of The Cook Political Report, Romney acknowledged that he only recently decided to accept the pro-life label. That’s certainly a problem for the Massachusetts governor, but an even bigger problem may be that he began his response by referring to “my history on choice.”
Pro-life activists never refer to the issue of abortion as “choice.” That’s a word – a construction – that comes from the abortion rights movement. Opponents of legal abortion refer to the issue as “abortion.” Using “choice” as he did will likely only add to the skepticism among abortion opponents of Romney’s recent conversion, making it more difficult to put the issue to rest in a party that is not likely to nominate a pro-choice candidate in 2008.
Romney doesn't have a chance.
That's a damn shame.
what's a shame, that he is lying about his position? or that he doesn't have a chance?  it is a shame that he is lying. it is a good thing that he doesn't have a chance.
How would he be lying?
All he's doing is using the word "choice."
that he is prolife. it is obvious that he is lying when you see him.
What the Sam Hill are you talking about?
How would he be lying? he is proabortion always has been always will be.Â
"....that he only recently decided to accept the pro-life label."
"....that he only recently decided to accept the pro-life label."
yep, that's the lie.
You don't know that. You can't.
I know as well as I can know anything that someone tells me.
If he told it to you over coffee, you might be able to make a more informed judgement than what you're making now.
If he yelled it from a passing car, you could make a more informed judgement than what you're making now.
 with that kind of attitude it doesn't surprise me you believe left wing nonsense.Â
The Gray Lady is at it again -- publicly releasing privileged government information, illegally leaked, in an all-out effort to discredit the administration and person of President George W. Bush.
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/markalexander/2006/01/27/184122.html
Still, we do not know how the new chief justice and Justice-to-be Alito will rule on Roeand other liberal constitutional travesties of the past. Why, then, should conservatives support them? Because we can at least be sure that they will not start inventing yet new and previously unheard of constitutional rights. That would in itself be a vast improvement over the imperialistic Court majority’s drive to remake American culture and morality. That it will take at least one more justice of the Roberts-Scalia-Thomas-Alito stripe to return the Court to jurisprudential respectability is no reason not to support Judge Alito to the full. Let us rejoice in what we have gained.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/bork200511031121.asp
No thanks, not my type. Besides, I am married.
Bork writes like he's standing on a balcony, dispensing his pompous wisdom to the unwashed heathen masses.
What an ego.
Arafat's organization grew decrepit as he aged, but it never became ordinary.
"Arafat rejected peace at Camp David because it would have meant giving up the struggle for mere administration. Fatah never really had a place for the prosaic tasks that concern most governments."
and,....
"And so while Fatah and Hamas are rivals, neither has a democratic mentality. Democracy in its everyday manifestation is bourgeois and unheroic. It is about partial victories, partial defeats and issues that are never resolved and never go away."
Kerry promised to filibuster Alito, evidently, and the liberal bloggers and opinion makers have been screeching for him to keep his promise even if it is stupid, even if it is destined to fail and even if it makes Democrats look remote and out of touch with the American voter.
In fact, the attempt to gin up a filibuster does all three, but the far left libs — the ones so lib they're out where the buses don't run — they don't care. They want to die on this hill and they want to die fighting, overpowered, run flat like a beer can hit by a semi, but fighting nonetheless.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,183055,00.html
Bork writes like he's standing on a balcony, dispensing his pompous wisdom to the unwashed heathen masses.
maybe they, and you, should take a shower.
I'm a elitist, aren't I? That's what I'm reading around here, these days.
okay, unwashed elitist! I hear there are a lot of them in France.
I was there last week. How's that for a coincidence.
No one I know would qualify as elitist. They're pretty regular people.
No one I know would qualify as elitist. They're pretty regular people.
No. But I bet that's how Robert Bork sees me.
No. But I bet that's how Robert Bork sees me.
A legend in his own mind.
Bork should have been a legendary supreme court justice named with the likes of John Marshall or Oliver Wendall Holmes.
But he's not and he should get over it.
WASHINGTON Â— More than a dozen Senate Democrats supported ending debate on Sam Alito Monday, setting up a final confirmation vote for the Supreme Court nominee on Tuesday morning.
 Â
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,183204,00.html
But he's not and he should get over it.