Mick references Captain Ed's Worst Americans list - a challenge that was actually initiated by All Things Beautiful.

My own list is HERE.

A couple comments are in order. Jimmy Carter's inclusion isn't all that surprising given his history. Underrated as a president, SIGNIFICANTLY overrated as an ex-president. The man obviously takes his own press releases waaaay too seriously.

John Kerry is a pathetic clown. He wishes he were relevant enough on the national scene to justify inclusion on a list of top ten anything. He does not.

Number of Democrats who are co-sponsoring Feingold's censure resolution?

Zero.

The outcry from Republicans was matched by the sound of silence from the Democrats. On Sunday Sen. Carl Levin, who is a serious player when it comes to intelligence, said they should wait until the investigation was completed, and on Monday Sens. Reid and Lieberman hemmed and hawed and said they hadn’t had time to read the resolution. When pressed, Lieberman said he thought they should “try to find a solution instead.” Democrats hung together on the faux security issue of the Dubai stewardship of the ports, but on real national security issues, they get nervous.

A few days ago, I mentioned a rumor that Fiidel Castro may have died.

Val Prieto of Babalu blog actually suggests a way to test the premise:

If we do not see any public appearances by fidel castro within the next two weeks, and specifically, on July 26, fidel castro's revolutionary holiday in Cuba, we will know the jig is up.

I can wait.

The Mayor of Salt Lake City made national news this week with his intense criticism of George W. Bush during the president's visit to the city to address the American Legion (something he did last year as well).

Ross "Rocky" Anderson probably did the President and the Republican party a favor by staging his yearly protest, insuring that the President's visit--and message, would get expansive media coverage.

About a thousand people showed up for Rocky's dog and pony show, which of course wasn't widely reported. Comparatively, 3500 tickets were given out to greet the president at the airport and far more would have come had the attendance not been limited by security concerns.

Bush is really, really popular in Utah. Rocky? Not so much.

In fact Rocky's announcement that he is not running for reelection probably has a lot to do with the general disillusionment within the party over his autocratic, abusive administration style. Incredibly, he has managed to alienate the bulk of the state as well by obstructing a major highway project that doesn't even involve the city of Salt Lake.

The slams on his style were initially chalked up to disgruntled former city officials, but the massive turnover of 41 people in 17 positions at City Hall has shredded that particular fig leaf.

By all accounts, the man is a world class narcissist and his need for attention so overwhelming that he simply set aside his representative role as mayor of Salt Lake City to make a personal political statement. Not surprisingly Salt Lake City is taking it in the pocket book as hundreds of emails from outraged business and groups from all over the country have cancelled conventions and other plans for business-related visits.

"He has to be aware his actions have consequences," James Lyle said Thursday, a day after the mayor headlined a protest during the American Legion convention and called Bush a "dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights-violating president.

"I'm in the South," he added. "We'd say the mayor has bad manners. He showed disrespect for the president."

Lyle is the past president of a Georgia Rotary district and plans to encourage club members in his state and elsewhere to snub Salt Lake City, which is hosting the convention instead of New Orleans in June and expects 25,000 visitors. "I would encourage all Rotarians, especially those in the United States that believe in freedom and supporting our president, to skip the Salt Lake City convention."

The fact that a sitting mayor should recognize that he has some responsiblities to the city he administers, that's not even the worst aspect of his behavior. Anderson's speak was "encoded" with raw meat for the left-wing bigots who attend such events with enthusiam.

James Evans - the Salt Lake County Republican Party chairman, who is black - is accusing Mayor Rocky Anderson of calling him a "slave." During Anderson's speech at an anti-Bush protest Wednesday, the Democratic mayor ad-libbed during the beginning of his speech and called out Evans: "So, to James Evans and these folks who financed this massive radio campaign these last few days [urging Anderson to forgo the protest], let them finally understand, blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism. "A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; or to show slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights-violating president." Saying Anderson is an "expert" with his words, Evans noted the mayor didn't refer to others by name who criticized Anderson for his protest. "I can't believe he just called me a slave. He was saying James Evans is a slave to the Republican Party and to President Bush." Evans is demanding a public apology. "If he were a white Republican male and I were a Democrat and I said, 'Hey, I'm calling you on this,' the media would be all over it."

Those at the event noted that the "black Republicans are Uncle Toms" allusion got big cheers and did Anderson's appeal to the liberal-left's religious bigotry.

''No more God-is-on-our-side religious nonsense,'' Anderson said at the rally, absorbing waves of cheers and applause from the thousands of protesters as he called Bush a ''dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights violating president.''

The "religious nonsense" crack got big applause and I'm pretty sure people outside of the state don't really understand what was really going on--the left in Utah simply hates the Mormon majority with a passion just short of violence. Rocky was throwing out the code phrases indicating his solidarity with the haters, while he smiles obsequiously as he meets with LDS President Bishop to discuss the church's plans to spend multi-millions to redevelop the downtown area.

Few things make me sicker than the fact that Anderson has tried and continues to try to take credit for improvement s in Salt Lake City's urban environment that are directly attributable to the LDS church or in the case of the Olympics, to the herculean efforts of Mitt Romney.

Rocky will probably have to leave Salt Lake after his term in office expired (curiously--just as the last mayor did...). Perhaps he will find life in San Francisco more to his taste.

Ironically, even the Utah Democrat party won't be unhappy to see him disappear--his ultra-left politics and personal character flaws have done more damage to the party in this state than any other single factor.

Just in case you needed a reminder that Democrat hold no values dear except that value of power, we get proof positive courtesy of the Senate Democrat leadership. A letter sent to Disney management, corporate owner of the ABC network is nothing less than a veiled threat that should the Democrat regain power, that ABC would lose its broadcast license.

Is this the rightwing scaremongering?

I don't think anybody every accused America blog of being right-wing before.

The Senate Democratic leadership just threatened Disney's broadcast license. Not the use of the word "trustee" at the beginning of the letter and "trust" at the end. This is nothing less than an implicit threat that if Disney tries to meddle in the US elections on behalf of the Republicans, they will pay a very serious price when the Democrats get back in power, or even before.

There is a terrific irony here--the mini-series illustrates that the Democrats will sacrifice national security for political advantage. This letter from:

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid
Assistant Democratic Leader Dick Durbin
Senator Debbie Stabenow
Senator Charles Schumer
Senator Byron Dorgan

...is clearly more of the same. First amendment rights are secondary to Democrat ambitions for power.

Let's accept for the moment that the Democrats are right, and the film is a distortion of the record of the Clinton administration. Is it against the law to lie about an administration? Should it be?

If so, the Michael Moore would be languishing in prison right now.

First amendments rights don't protect your right to tell "the truth", they protect your right to say and believe whatever you want.

This is censorship pure and simple--sitting Senators sending a veiled threat to a media entity to prevent the expression of a point of view they don't like.

It demands action. Will it get any?

Two crown princes in the UAE have had suit filed against them in a Florida court (the princes own property in Florida), accusing them of enslaving as many as 30,000 children for the purposes of camel breeding and racing. Camels are raced in the middleeast and jockeyed by very young boys..

Boys as young as two are taken from Islamic countries like the Sudan and Bangledesh.

UAE is an ally of the U.S., but also a major violator of the international laws on human trafficking.

Islam permits the holding of slaves, but not Muslims, who are after all already slaves of God. For camel jockeys and harems, you need Christians.. My guess is that its gotten pretty hard to abduct young Christians in the past, but it looks like it could be soon getting a lot easier in Europe.

There was a time, a brief interlude back in the 1980s, when I held the view that perhaps wasn't all that uncommon, that Jimmy Carter was a bad president, but a nice man. After all, he was wielding a hammer to build homes for the poor instead of playing golf.

My view began to change back in the 1990s when Carter intervened in a handful of international crises (including North Korea) much to the chagrin of the Clinton administration. It began to occur to me that I didn't really know Jimmy Carter, that his public image was as substantial as Rock Hudson's (for you young 'uns, Rock Hudson was a big, good-looking leading-man type movie star who was actually a closeted gay man).

As the years went by, any good will I had towards Jimmy Carter dissipated like the morning dew in the heat of his meglomania. Bob Shrum hit the nail on the head in his resignation letter to Carter:

"Governor Carter," Shrum wrote in a letter of resignation to the future president, "I have decided that in light of my own convictions and in fairness to you, I should leave the campaign without delay." The letter found its way into Jules Witcover's "Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency, 1972-1976." Shrum went on to tell Carter that "I don't believe you stand for anything other than yourself."

The log of my disappointment was brought on by Victor Davis Hansen's requiem

In his dotage, Carter is proving once again that he is as malicious and mean-spirited a public figure as he is historically ignorant. And for all his sanctimonious Christian veneer, and fly-fishing, ‘aw shucks blue-jeans image, he can’t hide an essentially ungracious and unkind soul.

Carter is getting pretty old, and he will pass beyond soon enough. Sadly it will be very difficult to find kind things to say about him at his funeral, so I guess everyone will lie. In the end, for all Carter's pretensions at humility, the sin that has wasted his life is stultifying pride. Its not an unusual character flaw to find in Washington, but few have taken it to the extremes President Carter has.

Fox and a variety of print media are reporting that the people that brought you "God Hates Fags" is planning to protest the funerals of the Amish girls killed this past week by a crazed gunman.

The Westboro group says the Amish school girls were "killed by a madman in punishment for Gov. Ed Rendell's blasphemous sins against Westboro Baptist Church.

"Gov. Ed Rendell -- speaking and acting in his official capacity to bind the State of Pennsylvania -- slandered and mocked and ridiculed and condemned Westboro Baptist Church on national Fox TV," the group says on its website.

"Rendell also revealed a conspiracy to employ the State's police powers to destroy WBC in order to silence WBC's Gospel message. Co-conspirators identified by Rendell included state officials, citizens, lawyers, legislators and media," the website says.

Westboro Baptist Church said it is "continuing to pray for even worse punishment upon Pennsylvania."

The WBC are Baptist by confession, not by association with any recognized Baptist convention

What I couldn't discover is how this group is financed. The group consists of perhaps 100 members, the vast majority of which are relatives of Fred Phelps. There are rumors that Phelps, a disbarred lawyer and his daughter, who is an attorney, use the courts to extract financial settlements that keep the group afloat and travelling around the country protesting funerals.

The group has an uncanny knack for hitting the exposed nerve, which undoubtedly generates the most opportunities for civil lawsuits (the group has been assaulted many times...). If we want the WBC to "go away", the best way would be to simply ignore them--fat chance of that.

The U.S. Government recently scuttled a deal where the State Department would install 16,000 Lenovo computers (Lenovo is a Chinese computer manufacturer who recently purchased IBM's PC division...).

This wasn't merely chauvinism, the real concern was security.

Chinese-based hackers, especially in the Chinese province of Guangdong, have mounted systematic efforts to penetrate US government and industry computer networks in order to access secret information, according to computer security experts.

The experts and some US lawmakers believe the attacks are sanctioned by Chinese government agencies.

The attacks on the Commerce Department have been so persistent that the affected office, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), has been forced to replace hundreds of computers and set up a new computer system.

The bureau's work is sensitive because it supervises US exports of software and technology for commercial and military uses, as well as commodities.

"BIS discovered a targetted effort to gain access to BIS user accounts," said Richard Mills, a Commerce Department spokesman, without commenting on the origin of the attacks.

"They took a series of immediate action steps to ensure that no BIS data is compromised. We have no evidence that any BIS data has been lost or compromised," Mills said.

Department officials are concerned about the hacking attacks because the bureau retains sensitive commercial and economic information on US exporters as well as data related to law enforcement records.

In a bid to ramp up security, the bureau has restricted employees' Internet access to stand alone computers that are not linked to the bureau's network.

We are all going to have to get a lot smarter about computer security...

If you stole $875,000.00 from a charitable organization, and it was know that you did it, what kind of outcome would you expect?

A little prison time maybe? At very least a televised perp walk?

Obviously you don't have friends in Democrat places.

The Department of Investigation reported Thursday that two officials - executive director Charles Rosen and deputy director Jeffrey Aulenbach - and three employees swiped $1.2 million from the charity over a period of years.

Most of the money - $875,000 - went toward an illegal loan for the Air America radio network.

But the corrupt officials also splurged on everything from a $34,500 Volvo convertible to home renovations and even bills for tennis.

Under a plea deal announced by state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Rosen pleaded guilty to felony charges of grand larceny and forgery, and obstructing government administration, a misdemeanor.

Rosen's punishment: He has to repay $38,575 plus a $5,000 fine and is barred from working at a nonprofit for three years. He was accused of stealing $69,216.

Aulenbach pleaded guilty to the same charges, excluding the forgery count, and is repaying $32,363 plus a $5,000 fine. He was accused of pocketing $87,371.

This happened in Hillary Clinton's back yard...and she did nothing.

Elliot Spitzer thinks this is behavior worthy of a governorship.

Nancy Pelosi has said nothing and done even less.

The bottom line is that this is par for the course in Democrat-run jurisdictions--liberals don't do jail even when they steal from children--much less have sex with them...

Look in the dictionary besides Chutspah, and you'll see a picture of Harry Reid--and he isn't even Jewish.

Along with Nancy Pelosi, Reid thought he could tag the Republicans with "culture of corruption" early this year. Even then, his own ethical problems were both wide and deep.

Reid's one-hand-washes-the-other politics has left a trail of slime stretching back to his days in the Nevada legislature. His sons are have followed in the family business, and its not politics.

Even as he was trying to leverage Abramoff for political advantage, he had $66.000.00 in the coffers directly related to his deals with Abramoff, his company and/or his clients.

Now, another scam surfaces.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn’t owned the property for three years, property deeds show.

The Nevada Democrat’s deal was engineered by Jay Brown, a longtime friend and former casino lawyer whose name surfaced in a political bribery trial this summer and in previous organized-crime investigations. He has never been charged with wrongdoing — except for a 1981 federal securities complaint that was settled out of court.

Land deeds obtained by The Associated Press show:

•The deal began in 1998 when Reid bought undeveloped residential property on Las Vegas’ booming outskirts for about $400,000. Reid bought one lot outright and a second parcel jointly with Brown.

•In 2001, Reid sold the land for the same price to a limited-liability corporation created by Brown. The senator did not disclose the sale on his annual public ethics report or tell Congress that he had a stake in Brown’s company. He continued to report to Congress that he personally owned the land.

•After getting local officials to rezone the property for a shopping center, Brown’s company sold the land in 2004 to other developers, and Reid took $1.1 million of the proceeds, nearly tripling his investment. Reid reported it to Congress as a personal land sale.

The complex dealings allowed Reid to transfer ownership, legal liability and some tax consequences to Brown’s company without public knowledge but still collect a seven-figure payoff nearly three years later.

Reid hung up the phone when questioned about the deal in an interview last week.

Not to worry, he just "broke Senate rules", nothing really serious in pocketing over a million dollars by using your political influence to help your friends.

I predict this will get no play in the media, but there are those of us out here patiently accumulating these stories, biding our time. Reid has destroyed himself--he just doesn't know it yet.

How soon before critics on the right question whether the latest AP asshattery against Harry Reid is an aptly timed election ploy? Couldn't Karl Rove come up with something better than this as an October Surprise? Granted, I don't think NoKo or Foley were quite what the administration had in mind...

The most succinct summary goes thus:

The AP's John Solomon, the go-to guy at the Associated Press for any anti-Democratic efforts, and this piece is absolute crap. The crux of the claim:

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn't personally owned the property for three years, property deeds show.

Actually, he did own that land. It just so happened that three years ago, he transfered the property from his own personal name to that of an LLC.

It'd be kind of like me selling Daily Kos, and someone claiming I reaped a windfall from it because I "sold it three years ago". I didn't. Daily Kos became an LLC. As did Reid's piece of land.

And btw, this was all disclosed to the ethics committee. The place were things got sloppy is that Reid continued to disclose ownership of the land as a personal asset rather than ownership in the LLC which owned the land. But that's it. Fact is, the LLC had no other assets other than this piece of land, and Reid disclosed ownership of the piece of land.

Solomon is either being dishonest or an idiot. But watch the wingers and GOP try to gain traction off this story to divert from their coddling of a sexual predator.

Update: Note that there is no charge or evidence or anything that would suggest that Reid used his position of authority to boost the value of the land. That would be troublesome. As it is in NC-11 where Rep. Charles Taylor (R) used earmarks to line his pockets:

So, what is the story behind the stories? Did Reid run over John Solomon’s dog? Maybe John Solomon just serves as a convenient outlet for smear merchants who know that he won’t ask too many questions. Either way you have to wonder whether the AP is best served by keeping this guy around.

Crossposted:

Alan Dershowitz is not normally an amusing fellow, but his column at the Huffington Post today certainly had a comic quality as he struggled mightly to maintain a respectful tone which criticizing Jimmy Carter for raping the truth on a subject dear to Mr. Dershowitz's heart--Israel.

I like Jimmy Carter. I have known him since he began his run for president in early 1976. I worked hard for his election, and I have admired the work of the Carter Center throughout the world. That's why it troubles me so much that this decent man has written such an indecent book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

When faced with a contradictory proposition, one of the premises must in fact be wrong. Either Jimmy Carter is accurate in his assessment of Israel as an apartheid state, or he isn't a decent man.

Dershowitz goes on to specify Carter's errors of fact in considerable detail, and he's right on the facts.

Which means of course that Carter is not the man he thought he was. Carter's carefully crafted image of "decency" was always a little tattered around the edges, but power and influence were enough to keep most of the witnesses silent. Bob Shrum was a notable exception, castigating Carter's selfishness in his resignation letter.

"I don't believe you stand for anything other than yourself."

Carter has such a bottomless need to be loved and respected, that whoring he went after Europe's anti-Americans, offering his stature as a former president for 30 pieces of silver.

Now he sells Israel and the Jews, offering the same trade.

Dershowitz perhaps contemplated that a respectful treatment of this icon of the left would get a hearing for his defense of Israel. He had it bassackwards--respect the anti-Israel, anti-semite, anti-capitalism point of view and you could call Jimmy Carter a pedophile and no one would even blink.

A couple of weeks ago, I noted Alan Dershowitz's altogether to respectful dissent from Jimmy Carter's latest propaganda book.

Dershowitz perhaps contemplated that a respectful treatment of this icon of the left would get a hearing for his defense of Israel. He had it bassackwards--if you respect the anti-Israel, anti-semite, anti-capitalism point of view, you could call Jimmy Carter a pedophile and no one would even blink.

While I wouldn't go so far as to say Carter is a Benedict Arnold, he is very much like Benedict Arnold, a man of demonstrable talent blinded by his own pride and ambition and destined to be vilified by history. Carter was well on the way to surviving his disastrous presidency, but at the end of his life, his devils got the better of him.

Powerline reprints an email by Dr. Kenneth W. Stein, Professor of Contemporary Middle Eastern History, Political Science, and Israeli Studies, Director, Middle East Research Program and Emory Institute for the Study of Modern Israel--not to mention the first director on the Carter institute back in the early 1980s.

Professor Stein has terminated his relationship with the Carter center on the basis of former President Carter's latest book.

President Carter's book on the Middle East, a title too inflammatory to even print, is not based on unvarnished analyses; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments. Aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book. Being a former President does not give one a unique privilege to invent information or to unpack it with cuts, deftly slanted to provide a particular outlook. Having little access to Arabic and Hebrew sources, I believe, clearly handicapped his understanding and analyses of how history has unfolded over the last decade. Falsehoods, if repeated often enough become meta-truths, and they then can become the erroneous baseline for shaping and reinforcing attitudes and for policy-making. The history and interpretation of the Arab-Israeli conflict is already drowning in half-truths, suppositions, and self-serving myths; more are not necessary. In due course, I shall detail these points and reflect on their origins.

Its a powerful an unequivocal condemnation and one can barely imagine how hard it must have been for Professor Stein to abrogate a long term personal and professional relationship to do justice to his personal integrity.

Notably, I just happened to catch a segment last night on O'Reilly, which replayed what looked like a CSPAN caller show where Carter was the guest. The woman who called in was in a cold rage about Carter's book and she proceeded to rip a strip off of his hide. It was very interesting to see the expression on his face change from that rictus grin he usually has on, to one of shock and anxiety.

It dawned on me that Carter simply didn't anticipate this kind of reaction from the public. The fact that he was a guest on a call-in show reinforces that impression.

The implications are thick in the air--is it possible that Jimmy Carter is so isolated from public opinion that he had no idea that his actions would be received like a fart in church? I have to think that is precisely what is going on. The resignation of his friend and colleague and the blunt accusations of deception and fraud are going to be an even more serious shock than a caller with a gripe.

A defection of this magnitude will only serve to embolden others to speak out. I expect that even his nominal supporters are going to be throwing him overboard.

It couldn't happen to a nicer guy...

...don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Mick previously mentions this story about former National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger’s exploits stealing classified documents from the National Archives. Eventually Mr. Berger was fined but the fifty thousand dollar question was never answered - why did he do it? Theories abound, the most prevalent one is Mr. Berger was trying to hide embarrassing information about the Clinton administration’s preparation against terrorist attack. Without the document or an explanation from Mr. Berger, it looks like we will never know. This is reminiscent of Susan McDougal’s silence in refusing to answer questions about alleged misconduct of the Clinton’s during the Whitewater affair (she was later pardoned by President Clinton of four felonies). Mr. Berger's lawyer makes the claim the matter is closed:

" Mr. Berger made mistakes in his efforts to prepare thoroughly for the 9-11 Commission. But he has taken full responsibility for his conduct, he long ago provided everything that government investigators needed, and he has fully paid his debt to society," the former security chief's attorney, Lanny Breuer, said in a written statement yesterday. "Like the court, the government, and the 9-11 commission, Mr. Berger considers this matter closed, and he is pleased to have moved on."

Because I’ve handled classified information and am familiar with the attendant security precautions, I never bought Mr. Berger’s inadvertent or "made mistakes" defense. It appears the magistrate didn’t buy that defense either since Mr. Berger had to admit he deliberately took the documents as a condition for his plea bargain. The magistrate stopped short, however, and should have required an explanation too. Without that, this matter never will be truly closed.

A New Orleans Grand Jury has indicted seven police officers for their roles in the shootings at the Danziger Bridge during the Katrina emergency.

Perhaps nothing highlights the irresponsibility of the media during the Katrina crisis than this incident. There were no fewer than five revisions of the story.

Events haven't really gotten clearer with time. What is clear is that a mentally retarded man was shot seven times, five times in the back.

Clearly something went terribly wrong, but this comment from an NPR interview suggests that its not going to be easy to attribute malicious intent.

"The New Orleans Police Department was overwhelmed," says Anthony Radosti, vice president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission and a former 23-year veteran investigator with the New Orleans police.

"Radio communication was at a minimum. [The police] felt isolated, abandoned. They had no place to live or sleep. Rumors were just wild. Sniper fire, armed individuals on the street. And in some cases, that information was true," Radosti says.

I'm sure this must be Bush's fault...

Mick beat me to the Latin rendering which still adorns Virginia’s state seal showing the Goddess Virtue standing over a defeated (and presumably dead) tyrant.

It is a phrase losing its meaning; the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein is an anomaly. In an article completely undermining its headline “Death, Exile Come with Being a Dictator” the author mentions 19 dictators, other than Saddam Hussein, but only two of these were executed (then again, we all die eventually so the headline writer is technically correct). Many twentieth century dictators never answer for their crimes:

In politics, you know you're in trouble when no one will take your calls.

You know you're a political corpse when erstwhile allies feel its safe to diss you. George McGovern reveals that he voted for Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter.

"I have to tell you something I've never said before publicly. I voted for him in 1976."

More: "I thought he had come in at a difficult time. I didn't know President Carter very well then. And I just felt more comfortable somehow with Jerry Ford. Whereupon my wife Eleanor said, so did I vote for him. We went around that table -- this is hard to believe -- all five of my kids voted for him. So they get seven votes out of the McGovern family for President Ford and Senator Dole, my long-time Republican friend" ("LKL," CNN, 1/2).

Carter appears to have finally jumped the shark with his disgraceful misrepresentation of the Palestinian conflict.

Sing the Star Spangled Banner in San Francisco and you could lose a few teeth.

A singing group from Yale known as the Bakers' Dozen on tour in San Francisco over New Year's Eve was jumped after a party and beaten up pretty badly. The party, which was held at the home of a retired SFPD officer, took a bad turn when two party attendees (who are sons of a prominent local pediatrician) took offense at the group's conservative attire and their singing of The Star Spangled Banner, called them derogatory names relating to their sexual orientation, and then said there'd be a fight afterwards. The singing group is upset that the SFPD doesn't appear to be moving very quickly on the case.

Chris Matthews is desperate. He has a cable news show that nobody watches and nobody really wants to see him getting out of a limo without his pants on, so he has to settle for calling grandpa Cheney a "killer" on the Imus show.

"...this guy Fred Kagan has grabbed hold of him [the president] again and they've using [retired General] Jack Keane to do it, and they’re working through Cheney, of course, who always wants to kill, and they’ve dragged us back into the same mentality that we're looking for any reason to strike, and I think that's the way he is towards Iran right now."

My guess is that Chris Matthews has been watching Rosie O'Donnell's ratings and thinking--"yeah, yeah, that's the ticket..."

Aside from being wrong about everything, the reason you don't want anything to do with the left is that, well they aren't very nice people. Of course if you're a hater yourself, these are your peeps, in which case you have my condolences and call me for the name of a good psychologist.

There might be some hope in the fight of civilized people against the barbarian hordes.

A judge has allowed a defamation lawsuit to go forward against defunct Air American Radio and host Randi Rhodes.

Rhodes accused contractors of engaging in rape and murder of Iraqi civilians at Abu Ghraib prison.

The suit is for a million dollars and 10 million in punitive damages.

Of course liberals don't do jail, or punitive damages...

I had the privilege of voting against Jimmy Carter in the first presidential election I was old enough to vote. After reading Joshua Muravchik’s interesting commentary “Our Worst Ex-President” I only regret that I couldn’t vote in 1976 too. Carter never met a despot he couldn’t agree with; Muravchik’s got the quotes I've got the pictures. Strangely, with all that love and compassion for the downtrodden dictator Carter carries such an animous towards Jews he would be at home with Archie Bunker:

Carter’s special rancor toward Israel remains to some degree mysterious, as such sentiments often are, but it is likely we have not heard the last of it. As the protests and criticisms of him continue, he may well sink deeper into his sense of angry martyrdom, following the path recently trod by academics like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who fancy themselves victims of the very Jewish conspiracies they set out to expose. It is sad that a President whose cardinal accomplishment was a peace accord between Israel and one of its neighbors should have devolved into such a seething enemy of Israel. It will be sadder still if this same man, whose other achievement was to elevate the cause of human rights, ends his career by helping to make anti-Semitism acceptable once again in American discourse.

h/t Powerline

Pilots and passengers take care of their own destiny:

A fast-thinking pilot with passengers in cahoots fooled a hijacker by braking hard upon landing, then accelerating to knock the man down. When he fell, flight attendants threw boiling water in his face, and about 10 people pounced on him, Spanish officials said Friday.