FOREIGN AID FOR U.S. PRISONERS

OK before you dismiss this notion offhand - hear me out. According to a recent CRS report for Congress titled "Foreign Aid Reform: Issues for Congress and Policy Options" dated November 7th 2007 it was stated in the section headed CURRENT FUNDING as follows: - "Since the evens of 9/11 amounts requested and approved by Congress for Foreign Assistance have steadily increased. The Foreign Operations budget request for FY2008 totals $24.4 Billion in Foreign Assistance programs, representing a 12% increase from the previous years enacted level of $21.7 Billion excluding FY2007 Supplemental funds. This level of increase is the largest within the Budget requests government-wide. The proposed level for FY2008 represents 1.2% of the total US Budget" Now - I ask you my friends, exactly what are we - the charitable people of the United States getting for this large outpouring of our tax dollars?? Can someone please answer me that question? Is it the love and loyalty of our allies? Is it the respect and admiration of the United Nations? The International Red Cross??

Alright - I'll come back to my thoughts on US Foreign Aid policy in a minute as I turn to a brief discussion concerning the US Prison population. We are all familiar, at least I would think we are, that it seems one of the new US business cores is the building of new prisons. Yet, we still hear how overcrowed they are. Just the other day I was amused to hear about various states attempting to alleviate overcrowding by "deporting" prisoners who happen to be illegal aliens. It appears the prison systems and in turn the state governments can save the taxpayers millions by this practice. At an average of $20,000 per day that it costs to house your average run of the mill inmate, savings can accrue in quick order.

This leads me to why I brought up our US Foreign Aid policy. It seems to me that since we provide various countries with so much in the way of US dollars and other Aid that an exchange program should be initiated. This program would provide so much foreign aid, but these countries would also have to accept certain sections of our prison population. By "certain section" I mean those who are already serving several life sentences, are known sociopaths in which it has already been determined that they are not to see the light of day ect., My point is - ship these incorrigibles out and save the taxpayers a ton of money. They would reside in the prisons of another country, and they could sue their new prison overseers when their soup was cold, their was no TV, or their exercise time was cut short, until they were blue in the face.

One more thing - to Hell with the ACLU - these prisoners have lost any rights they may have had.

It is utterly amazing to me that our Supreme Court is agonizing if a needle prick is cruel and unusual on a murderer who hacked someone to death - go figure!!!

-PA Citizen

PA citizen is a writer for In Defense of America.

Border Patrol steps up recruiting

A NASCAR race car, sponsored by the U.S. Border Patrol. Billboards hundreds of miles from the Rio Grande, promoting a career as a border agent. TV commercials for the federal agency, aired during Dallas Cowboys games.

With the Border Patrol undergoing an unprecedented hiring boom, the agency is going to extraordinary lengths to compete with police departments around the country for an unusually small pool of qualified applicants.

"We've not done anything this ambitious before," said Assistant Chief Michael Olsen. "Our biggest task, our biggest hurdle, is just getting our message out to parts of the country that maybe didn't know we existed."

Previously, the Border Patrol relied heavily on word of mouth and job fairs to find recruits. But it has been forced to get creative to compete with local and state agencies, including the expanding Texas Department of Public Safety, that are mimicking the corporate world with hiring incentives such as take-home cars, paid internships and five-figure signing bonuses.

The multimillion-dollar recruiting campaign was also prompted by a shortage of qualified candidates, blamed on a number of factors. Among them: the strong economy, which can offer jobs that pay more than the Border Patrol's starting salary of about $35,000 to $45,000; the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has reduced the flow of military retirees applying for second careers in law enforcement; and the Border Patrol's own stringent requirements.
Too many applicants lack the clean criminal records and good credit required for patrol duty along the border, where bribes are an ever-present temptation.

Nationally, only about 3 percent to 5 percent of applicants for law enforcement jobs meet the requirements, according to Jason Abend, executive director for the National Law Enforcement Recruiters Association. Olsen said the Border Patrol finds an average of one qualified candidate for every 30 to 40 applicants — a rate as low as 2.5 percent.

With politicians demanding more "boots on the ground" to secure the Mexican border, the Border Patrol is expanding rapidly. It has gone from about 12,000 agents in 2005 to nearly 15,000 now, and wants to reach about 18,000 by the end of the year.

To reach recruits, the agency is posting highway billboards well inland, including suburban Salt Lake City, 800 miles north of the Mexican border, and is looking into other new corners of the country.

Michael E. Douglas, a Border Patrol assistant chief patrol agent in Washington, said a team of eight agents is canvassing about 13 Southern states to look for new hires.

"We're going down into the Southeast where we haven't traditionally had a lot of candidates. We are hitting minority groups and trying to make them more aware of who we are," Douglas said.
During the 2007 NASCAR Busch Series season, the Border Patrol put its agency name and seal on the No. 28 Chevy in a sponsorship arrangement worth more than $1 million.

And under a deal signed in November with the Dallas Cowboys, football fans around the country will be seeing TV commercials reminding them that the agency is hiring.

Border Patrol officials are also talking about making a slogan for the agency, one they hope would become as ubiquitous as the Marines' "The few, the proud."

Also, the Border Patrol has raised its age limit for new hires to 40 from 37.
Douglas said it may take several months to know exactly how successful the department's efforts are.

Despite such enticements, recruiting for law enforcement jobs is likely to be a challenge for a while, said Merle Switzer, a consultant and retired law enforcement officer in California.

"Right now, I am telling agencies five to seven years," Switzer said.

By ALICIA A. CALDWELL, Associated Press Writer
Article Link

Will the Democrats Find an Adult of Their Own?

OK. So where do things stand in the aftermath of the New Hampshire primary?
On the Republican side . . .

John McCain reclaimed his role as the principal adult in the room — solid, experienced, wise. Across the state, he spoke of the war on Islamofascist terror as the “titanic” and “transcendental struggle of the 21st century.” In accepting victory, he cited the need for fiscal integrity and a strong defense, and eloquently employed words such as “truth,” “respect,” and “trust.” This is the guy who gets it.

Mitt Romney is toast, though he possesses the cash to press on in a failing enterprise. Fred Thompson cannot long survive. Rudy Giuliani probably can’t either — having resolved to forego the early contests and devote his time and energy to Florida later this month and the 23 states holding primaries Feb. 5.

Mike Huckabee tanked in New Hampshire after his surprising success in Iowa. Yet Iowa is not a reliable predictor of ultimate success. Huckabee may win heavily evangelical South Carolina and carry that success into Florida, where he also may do reasonably well if McCain and Giuliani divide what might prove a common constituency there.

Huckabee represents the Republicans’ social conservatives, who have issues with McCain. But McCain trumps him in experience and depth, and it’s difficult to foresee how Huckabee can prevail through the convention — let alone against Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama come fall. The party’s social conservatives seem destined to face this choice: accept a less-than-perfect nominee (e.g., McCain) or resign themselves to a Democratic president reigning in Washington, with a Democratic Congress just down the street.

On the Democratic side . . .

It’s now a two-person race. Angry plaintiffs’ lawyer John Edwards should get out, but he is the Democrats’ Romney — albeit with less money. What may force him to leave is recognition that thereby he would strengthen Obama against the dread Clinton machine.

Obama is a sensational political property — electric, inspiring, a communicator verging on the demagogic, and decidedly left-wing. Many in the press view him, in the words of The Washington Post, as “(John) Kennedy, Santa Claus, and the Messiah all rolled into one.” So do many of those rallying to his banner and his mantra of “change.”

It may take a more disciplined intellect, like Hillary Clinton’s, to force a discussion as to what sort of change Obama has in mind — and such a discussion could determine the Democratic nominating outcome. So far the two are saying fundamentally the same diaphanous thing. Obama: change we can believe in; Clinton: change you can count on.

If Sen. Clinton found her “voice” in New Hampshire — as she said Tuesday night — she may have meant any of several things:

(1) That she has learned the importance of an image softer, more caring, more capable of (yes) tears;
(2) That however she may cast them, her White House years as the wife of Bill hardly qualify her as presidentially experienced; and/or . . .

(3) That devoutly liberal as she is broadly known to be, she can present as a moderate/centrist and begin differentiating herself from Obama by contrasting her record of action with his airy, action-free talk of dream-fulfillment and “post-partisan” hope.

The Democratic result may turn on the extent to which the newly voiced Hillary Clinton is willing to stick it to Barack Obama — forcing a comparison of records and views.

Hillary Clinton must grow, and soon, beyond such campaign pabulum as these bon mots in Manchester, N.H., when she greeted a little girl walking a cocker spaniel: “I will be a good president for dogs, I promise!”

Obama must grow beyond offering the sum of his experience in foreign policy as his madrassa school years in Indonesia and a visit or two to his grandmother in Africa. The very-nice Sen. Obama also needs to grow beyond enlisting recruits such as the very-nice Oprah Winfrey, who says nonsensical things on his behalf, such as: “You can’t be fooled by this experience question because you know it’s not the amount of time you spend with your child, it’s the quality of that time.”

Obama must grow beyond statements such as this, too:
“What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income — to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That’s what I’m opposed to — a dumb war.”

Obama and Clinton might productively style themselves after John McCain — a certifiable grown-up. He believes global warming is less important right now, and less susceptible to human remedy, than global terror — and boasts abundant experience in terrorism and national security: “I know how to handle the issues. I’ve been there.”

He understands the war in Iraq, terming it “an American war, and its outcome will touch every one of our citizens for years to come.” Osama? “I’ll get (him) if I have to follow him to the gates of hell.” And the U.S. troops? “I’ll bring ’em home, but I’ll bring ’em home with honor.”
If the Republicans are moving toward nominating a grown-up — an adult — in McCain, prudence would suggest the Democrats find an adult of their own to run against him.

By Ross Mackenzie
Townhall.com

McCain Promises Bin Laden's Head

John McCain promised he would “get” Osama Bin Laden if he were elected President in 2008 in a GOP televised debate two days before the second in nation New Hampshire primary.

““I know how to get him and I’m gonna get him” McCain said on the campus of St. Anselm College on Manchester.

Moderator Chris Wallace followed up on McCain’s promise later in the debate. Wallace asked McCain if he had heard him say he would catch the terrorist.

“Sure,” McCain replied. McCain said he would do so by “improving our intelligence capability dramatically.”

During the debate, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani also tried to puff up his security credentials. “I am the only one here who has had to face an Islamic terrorist attack, at the center of it” Giuliani said.

GOP presidential candidates sparred over national security and other issues for the second time in two nights, as each of them participated in a nationally televised debate sponsored by ABC News, CNN and WMUR Saturday night. Missing from the Sunday evening debate, however, was Ron Paul who was not invited by Fox News to participate.

On January 3, Mike Huckabee won the Iowa caucus. Mitt Romney came in second and Fred Thompson was third. The most recent CNN/WMUR poll, conducted by the University of New Hampshire gives McCain 32 percent, Romney 26 percent and Huckabee 14 percent. Giuliani polled 10 percent.

When the debate concluded a Fox News focus group deemed Romney the winner of the debate by a show of hands.

By Amanda Carpenter
Townhall.com

Michael Ramirez - Funny Because It's True

Political Cartoons of Michael Ramirez

Editorial Cartoonist for Investor's Business Daily

The Tearing of the Conservative Fusion

WASHINGTON -- Like Job after losing his camels and acquiring boils, the conservative movement is in distress. Mike Huckabee shreds the compact that has held the movement's two tendencies in sometimes uneasy equipoise. Social conservatives, many of whom share Huckabee's desire to "take back this nation for Christ," have collaborated with limited-government, market-oriented, capitalism-defending conservatives who want to take back the nation for James Madison. Under the doctrine that conservatives call "fusion," each faction has respected the other's agenda. Huckabee aggressively repudiates the Madisonians.

He and John Edwards, flaunting their histrionic humility in order to promote their curdled populism, hawked strikingly similar messages in Iowa, encouraging self-pity and economic hypochondria. Edwards and Huckabee lament a shrinking middle class. Well.

Economist Stephen Rose, defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 -- because the percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled from 12 to 24, while the percentage earning less than $30,000 is unchanged. "So," Rose says, "the entire 'decline' of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder." Even as housing values declined in 2007, the net worth of households increased.

Huckabee told heavily subsidized Iowa -- Washington's ethanol enthusiasm has farm values and incomes soaring -- that Americans striving to rise are "pushed down every time they try by their own government." Edwards, synthetic candidate of theatrical bitterness on behalf of America's crushed, groaning majority, says the rich have an "iron-fisted grip" on democracy and a "stranglehold" on the economy. Strangely, these fists have imposed a tax code that makes the top 1 percent of earners pay 39 percent of all income tax revenues, the top 5 percent pay 60 percent, and the bottom 50 percent pay only 3 percent.

According to Edwards, the North Carolina of his youth resembled Chechnya today -- "I had to fight to survive. I mean really. Literally." Huckabee, a compound of Uriah Heep, Elmer Gantry and Richard Nixon, preens about his humble background: "In my family, 'summer' was never a verb." Nixon, who maundered about his parents' privations and wife's cloth coat, followed Lyndon Johnson, another miscast president whose festering resentments and status anxieties colored his conduct of office. Here we go again?

Huckabee fancies himself persecuted by the Republican "establishment," a creature already negligible by 1964, when it failed to stop Barry Goldwater's nomination. The establishment's voice, the New York Herald Tribune, expired in 1966. Huckabee says "only one explanation" fits his Iowa success "and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people." God so loves Huckabee's politics that He worked a Midwest miracle on his behalf? Should someone so delusional control nuclear weapons?

Speaking of delusions, Edwards seems unaware that the world market sets the price of oil. He says a $100-a-barrel price is evidence of -- surging demand in India and China? unrest in Nigeria's oil fields? No, "corporate greed." That is Edwards' explanation of every unpleasantness. Mitt Romney's versatility of conviction, although it repelled Iowans, has been a modest makeover compared to Edwards' personality transplant. The sunny Southerner of 2004 has become the angry paladin of the suffering multitudes, to whom he shouts: "Treat these people the way they treat you!" Presumably he means treat "the rich" badly -- an odious exhortation to one portion of Americans, regarding another.

Although Huckabee and Edwards profess to loathe and vow to change Washington's culture, each would aggravate its toxicity. Each overflows with and wallows in the pugnacity of the self-righteous who discern contemptible motives behind all disagreements with them, and who therefore think opponents are enemies and differences are unsplittable.

The way to achieve Edwards' and Huckabee's populist goal of reducing the role of "special interests," meaning money, in government is to reduce the role of government in distributing money. But populists want to sharply increase that role by expanding the regulatory state's reach and enlarging its agenda of determining the distribution of wealth. Populists, who are slow learners, cannot comprehend this iron law: Concentrate power in Washington and you increase the power of interests whose representatives are concentrated there.

Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee -- an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic "fights" against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.

By George Will
Townhall.com

Requirement about American flags is among new state laws

Lee Herold of Rochester has thousands of flags crammed into his store on Second Street Southwest, with nations from Cuba to Sri Lanka represented.

Herold Flags also has a fair share of its best-selling flag, the U.S. flag, which a state law that started Jan. 1 requires must be made in the U.S.A. to be sold in Minnesota.

The law won't hurt Herold Flags because the American flags in stock are already manufactured in the U.S., Herold said.

At the same time, a provision governing novelties and other items featuring American flags was removed from the flag bill before it was passed. As a result, U.S. flag stickers in Herold's store that were made in Taiwan are not covered by the law.

It isn't clear how the flag law will be enforced.

Cont....

By Matt Russell
Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN

Huckabee Insists No Trick With Ad

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee insisted he wasn't trying to pull a fast one when he played a negative TV commercial for the media even as he promised not to air it for voters.

"It was not trying to be tricky; it was trying to be as honest as I could," the former Arkansas governor said Tuesday. "If I'd have really wanted to be tricky, I would have let the ad run three days and then say, 'No, I've had a change of mind."

Huckabee had called a news conference Monday to say he was going negative in Iowa, where he is in a tight race with Mitt Romney, and to play the ad that was going to hit the airwaves.

Instead, he said he had a last-minute change of heart and would not air it. Yet he played the ad anyway, prompting incredulous laughter from the media.

Reporters peppered him with questions about it on Tuesday.

"You know, at the time, I thought it was an important way to prove that we actually had it," he said of the ad. "Probably if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have shown it. And you would have said 'Aww, show it, you don't really have one,' and then you would've beaten me up for not showing it.

"Either way I did it, somebody would have had some interpretation of whether it was right to show it," Huckabee said. "The one thing I don't have any regret about, I have no regret at all about pulling the ad.

"I know we did the right thing, and I have no regrets about trying to say 'Let's change the tone.' That was the right decision."

At that, supporters standing behind the crush of journalists applauded. Huckabee jokingly pretended it was the media clapping.

"Thank you, press, for clapping for me," he said. "You laughed at me yesterday; you clap for me today, yes."

Would it have made Huckabee look mean to have shown the media the ad anyway? "No, because I don't think many people will ever see it. I'm not sure that anybody will."

Told the ad was posted on a blog by Carl Cameron of Fox News, Huckabee asked, "Oh, is it? How did he get it?"

Iowa's caucuses, the first votes of the 2008 presidential nominating season, are Thursday. Polls showed Huckabee surging ahead of Romney last month, but Romney has narrowed the gap with negative ads about Huckabee's record of being more forgiving toward illegal immigrants, granting clemency to criminals and raising taxes. Huckabee has said the spots may have hurt him.

At the news conference, his campaign had placed signs that read, "Enough is Enough," a response to Romney's ads. The slogan remained on a campaign banner Tuesday in Cedar Falls, where Huckabee played the bass guitar and spoke to about 400 supporters at the Elks Lodge.

"It's still valid," Huckabee told reporters. "I said enough is enough of the negative campaigning. That's speaking to me as much as anybody else."

By LIBBY QUAID
Townhall.com

What Are the Top American-Made Cars?

Cars.com's American-Made Index rates vehicles built and bought in the U.S. Factors include sales, where the car's parts are made and whether the car is assembled in the U.S. Models that have been discontinued are disqualified, as are those with a domestic-parts content rating below 75 percent.

Rank
Make/Model
U.S. Assembly Location

1.
Ford F-150*
Claycomo, Mo.;Dearborn, Mich.

2.
Chevrolet Cobalt
Lordstown, Ohio

3.
Chevrolet Silverado 1500*
Fort Wayne, Ind.;Pontiac, Mich.

4.
Toyota Tundra
Princeton, Ind.;San Antonio, Texas

5.
Pontiac G6
Orion, Mich.

6.
Toyota Sienna
Princeton, Ind.

7.
Ford Escape**
Claycomo, Mo.

8.
Chevrolet TrailBlazer
Moraine, Ohio

9.
Chevrolet Malibu
Kansas City, Kan.

10.
Ford Explorer/Sport Trac
Louisville, Ky.;St. Louis

Cars.com

Bush Rejects Defense Bill by Pocket Veto

President Bush on Friday used a "pocket veto" to reject a sweeping defense bill because he dislikes a provision that would expose the Iraqi government to expensive lawsuits seeking damages from the Saddam Hussein era.

In a statement, Bush said the legislation "would imperil billions of dollars of Iraqi assets at a crucial juncture in that nation's reconstruction efforts."

The president's objections were focused on a provision deep within legislation that sets defense policy for the coming year and approves $696 billion in spending, including $189 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also in the legislation were improved veterans benefits and tighter oversight of contractors and weapons programs.

The pocket veto means that troops will get a 3 percent raise Jan. 1 instead of the 3.5 percent authorized by the bill.

Bush's decision to use a pocket veto, announced while vacationing at his Texas ranch, means the legislation will die at midnight Dec. 31. This tactic for killing a bill can be used only when Congress is not in session.

The House last week adjourned until Jan. 15; the Senate returns a week later but has been holding brief, often seconds-long pro forma sessions every two or three days to prevent Bush from making appointments that otherwise would need Senate approval.

Brendan Daly, spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, "The House rejects any assertion that the White House has the authority to do a pocket veto."

When adjourning before Christmas, the House instructed the House clerk to accept any communications _ such as veto messages_ from the White House during the monthlong break.
A Democratic congressional aide pointed out that a pocket veto cannot be overridden by Congress and allows Bush to distance himself from the rejection of a major Pentagon bill in a time of war.

In a message to Congress, the president said he was sending the bill and his outline of objections to the House clerk "to avoid unnecessary litigation about the non-enactment of the bill that results from my withholding approval, and to leave no doubt that the bill is being vetoed."
Democratic aides said they have not ruled out any legislative options, including dropping the language on lawsuits against Iraq and sending the rest of the bill back to Bush.

The sponsor of the contested provision, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said the provision would allow "American victims of terror to hold perpetrators accountable _ plain and simple."
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called on lawmakers to "move rapidly to fix this section" when Congress returns in January so that the underlying bill can be signed.
Democratic congressional leaders complained that Bush's move was a last-minute stunt because he had never indicated his intention to veto the bill.

Bush aides said they had signaled concern about the controversial provision for weeks, although there had been no formal veto threat. They said their concern grew urgent recently after a legal review and feedback from U.S. diplomats in Iraq and Iraqi leaders.

The disputed section of the bill would reshape Iraq's immunity to lawsuits, exposing the new government to litigation in U.S. courts stemming from treatment of Americans in Iraq during Saddam's reign. Even cases that had once been rejected could be refiled.

Bush's aides warned of a dire scenario _ a rush of litigation that could freeze tens of billions of dollars in Iraqi assets being held in U.S. banks. Money at the heart of the Iraqi rebuilding effort would be tied up in court, potentially halting the very stabilization efforts that could get U.S. troops home faster, the aides said.

Yet Democrats fumed that Bush could have worked out the technical fix sooner if he had wanted, without rejecting an entire bill that contains extra help and money for troops.

By BEN FELLER
Townhall.com

A Campaign Day in Iowa

The Iowa Caucuses will be held one week from last night, on January 3. After that few in national politics will darken Iowa's door again until sometime in the middle of 2011.

That's not a knock on Iowa or Iowans. That's the reality of the circus packing up and moving on.
As you know, I am a paid consultant to the Fred Thompson campaign. As we sprint to the finish, I suspect our campaign is very similar in its activities as the other major campaigns so, I thought it might be interesting for you to read about our day.

Iowa does not have a primary, it has a series of precinct caucuses.

Contrary to popular belief, the word "caucus" is not a Greek word which would make the plural "cauci" in the same way that more than one "alumnus" would be called "alumni."

According to the Merriam-Webster Third Unabridged, the origin of the word caucus is from the Algonquian Indian word "caucauasu" meaning "elder" or "counselor."

We're here to help.
There are close to 2,000 separate precincts in Iowa, some are tiny and will have a handful of attendees. Others are large and may have several hundreds in attendance.

Nevertheless, the total number of Democrats who will go to their neighborhood grammar school or firehouse may be in the range of 120,000. On the GOP side the number of caucus-goers may be closer to 80,000.

To put that in perspective, in the 2000 primary election in South Carolina nearly 400,000 Republicans and Democrats participated.

Here in Iowa, every campaign is attempting to contact as many voters as possible using as many different techniques as they can: Mail, phones, paid radio and television, personal appearances and the press.

The Thompson campaign started yesterday shortly before 8:00 AM with phone calls from the candidate to foreign policy experts to discuss the implications of the murder of BenazirBhutto.
He then went to the downtown Des Moines Marriott to appear on WHO radio, the major station in the Des Moines market.

At about 11:00 Thompson did what is called a "Media Availability" or, in the shorthand of campaigns, a "press avail." This is a gaggle of reporters - print, radio, and TV - who stand in a semi-circle around the candidate while they fire questions for about 10 minutes.

This works well for both the media and the candidates because they are informal and can be set up by the press aides in a matter of minutes but give the candidates a chance to get a story moving and they give the media something to file quickly.

On the 15 minute drive to the Thompson Iowa headquarters in a suburb of Des Moines we got a call from Carl Cameron asking if he would be available for a live stand-up prior to a "Meet Fred Thompson" event for about 150 supporters there.

He would and he did that interview discussing the crisis in Pakistan.

Inside the HQ Thompson did his 15 minute stump speech, took another 15 minutes of questions from the audience, shook hands and allowed supporters to take pictures for another 15 minutes then it was back onto the bus for an hour drive to Oceola where he did a "Radio Town Hall."
It occurred to us that doing a town hall at a restaurant in a town like Oceola (pronounced Oh-see-OH-la" allowed Thompson to speak to the 75-100 people who could pack into the limited space.

Cont......Towhall.com

By Rich Galen

Liberal and Gutless

The U.S. House of Representatives conducts routine votes, called "Journal votes," on whether to approve the record of the previous day's proceedings. On 18 occasions this year, the Journal vote has been handled through a roll call. A "nay" vote on this purely procedural matter is, of course, meaningless. But the Washington Post reports that a number of freshman Democrats routinely vote "nay" in roll call Journal votes in order to increase the percentage of times in which they fail to support the Democratic majority.

Here are the six leading culprits, along with the rate at which they vote against approving the record of House proceedings:

Jason Altmire (Pa.) = 94.4%; Joe Donnelly (Ind.) = 83.3%; Chris Carney (Pa.) = 66.7%; Brad Ellsworth (Ind.) = 66.7%; Heath Shuler (N.C.) = 61.1%; Harry Mitchell (Ariz.) = 61.1%

Each of these faux moderates votes with the liberal Democratic majority more than 80 percent of the time overall. Ellsworth is perhaps the biggest phony. He claims that his "nay" votes are "protest votes against little things I heard during the [previous] day."

It's understandable, of course, that Democratic freshmen from swing districts want to distance themselves from the Democratic majority. After all, Congress' approval rating is approximately 25 percent. But it's difficult to believe, in this political age, that "nay" Journal votes will convince constituents that these clowns are independent voters, not reliably liberal members. The ad that backs out the meaningless procedural votes and informs voters of the real extent to which a given member of this crew votes with Speaker Pelosi virtually writes itself. I'd call it "Liberal and Gutless."

Powerlineblog.com