Christopher Hitchens lets Bill Maher and his audience of hooting morons have it.

The "Bush is stupid" joke is about as cheap as wrong as it gets. After eight years, the insufferable Maher is finally called on it.

Warning: Adult language and gestures.

Congress gets its well deserved raise.

What does Speaker Nancy Pelosi have to say about it?

"No comment."

Since when do people have to justify spending their own money?

"American socialite Paris Hilton has declared herself a saviour who shops for the greater good in tight economic times."

Sounds like the writer has declared herself The People's Scold.

British environmental minister calls man-made global warming a con.

Money Q:

“I think in 20 years’ time we will look back at this whole climate change debate and ask ourselves how on earth were we ever conned into spending the billions of pounds which are going into this without any kind of rigorous examination of the background, the science, the implications of it all. Because there is now a degree of hysteria about it, fairly unformed hysteria I’ve got to say as well.

The war against fat people starts in New York. Wait until Ed Rendell hears about this.

It's a bird. It's a plane. It's Super Volcano.

It's been nice knowing SOME of you.

Princess Caroline vs. Blue-collar Sarah and the media.

Victor Davis Hanson writes:

"Outsider and lower-middle-class Palin toughed it out in Wasilla for years of politicking on a 16-year slog through Alaskan old-boy politics; Caroline Kennedy in regal fashion apparently skipped voting in about half of New York elections, and has never run for anything."

Not even a cab. She's always had a chauffer-driven limo at her disposal. What better qualification for the U.S. Senate is there?

A former KGB analyst is predicting the U.S.A. will break apart by 2010, the victim of moral collapse, economic decline, unchecked immigration and civil war.

He started predicting it back in 1998. Given the way things are going, so far, so good.

Question: Did this guy see the coming break-up of his own country back in the 1980s?

Israel retaliates against Hamas: Obama "understands." What a relief!

A not very convincing endorsement of Caroline Kennedy for the U.S. Senate.

Johan Norberg on the dishonest lunacy of Naomi Klein.

According to actor Benicio Del Toro, Che Guevera was Jesus without the turning of the other cheek business.

Actually, Che was Jesus if Jesus was a homicidal Marxist maniac.

Hollywood continues its fascination with Che Chic and gets history all wrong.

Robert Samuelson on the economy: "Our ignorance is humbling."

But then there is Paul Krugman who knows all and never met a government spending program worth curtailing.

You want universal health care coverage? Fine. But it will cost plenty.

The UAW has a golf course? Apparently.

Anybody catch the score of the Eagles game?

Caroline getting Palined by the media. Fair is fair.

UPDATE: Goodwin has more.

The Yeadon NAACP is planning its 14th annual Kwanzaa celebration.

From our story:

Founded in 1966, Kwanzaa was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga, a professor of black studies at California State University.

Yes, well.

Maulana Karenga's given name was Ron. He was a radical black separatist and Marxist with ties to a criminal enterprise called the Black Panthers. Karenga was an FBI informant and a cultist, who was known to torture and abuse women. His greatest hustle was the invention of Kwanzaa. The holiday now is nothing more than a relic of a bygone era of 60s radicalism. It is celebrated by just a few thousand in a country of 300 million. There are probably far more scientologists and Raeleans in the USA than Kwanzaa celebrators.

Karenga's goal was to use Kwanzaa to separate African-Americans from the larger society to establish his own racist cult. It didn't work but Kwanzaa survived thanks as to white liberals, greeting card companies, and the media, as a way to "respect" African culture.

Still, it's ironic that any chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People would celebrate a holiday actually manufacted to retard the advancement of black people in American society by getting them to join a misogynistic racist cult.

For more on the Kwanzaa hustle, click here and here.

Taking the edge off the global warming crisis.

We have more important things to worry about and spend money on.

Unfortunately, America just elected a president who wants to spend more money on EVERYTHING.

This guy was a hero's hero.

Former Daily Times Sound-Off Man, Paul Mulshine bemoans the rise of the blogosphere and the killing of newspapers.

He is a friend but he sounds a little like a buggy whip salesman. And his argument that the majority of people aren't smart enough to do what newspapermen supposedly do so well - condense and analyze the local school board doings - isn't very convincing.

We're as concerned as the next pundit about the future of newspapers, this one in particular. But there will always be a market for news and it will need people who can collect it and then distill it down to its most salient facts.

Given the huge amount of resources that go into producing a newspaper - the trees, the paper, the human effort, and the fuel-burning delivery system - it's amazing so many people still get even some of their news from them.

Romanticizing how newspapermen used to go about their jobs is fine. The world needs romance. But romance has never stopped progress.

The news gathering and delivery business is evolving and electronic media is the future. It's faster, cleaner, and more economical. And there is no reason it can't be as accurate, rich, and fun as the old, dirty newsprint media.

Like anything else, smart people will find a way to make a buck on it and good reporters - and even pundits - a living.

People do weird things. Like this.

Some will say this is what happens when people carry guns.

I say this is what happens when people talk during movies.

UPDATE: It was a guy from Yeadon who was shot.

"Scientists warn Christmas lights harm the plant."

Even the light on Rudolph's nose? Oh deer!

We read Arianna Huffingpoof's adolescent eulogy of capitalism and dismissed out of hand, David Harsanyi read it and demolished it.

Harsanyi writes:

Huffington argues, in effect, that communism and "laissez-faire" (minimal-intervention) capitalism are equivalent ideological extremes.
Sure, one of these philosophies spurred the murder and misery of hundreds of millions worldwide; the other promotes liberty, innovation and welcomes foreigners to lounge around in expansive mansions paid for by their former oil baron husbands.

So we can agree; there is no such thing as a flawless ideology.

Heh!

More proof that Bush is a loser.

But did YOU read 51 books last year?

Woman files lawsuit, claims she was fired for saying "Merry Christmas."

Color us skeptical.

Whether claiming racism, sexism or some other form of discrimination, dismissed workers often file meritless claims. This sounds like one of them.

UPDATE Question: Would C. Scott Shields take the case?

Winning the war on terror, one pill at a time.

"Take one of these, you'll love it." And so will your wives.

What, un-unanimity on Delaware County Council?

Andy Lewis is kicking the MLS in the shins.

Somebody, get him a juice box quick.

The former SE Delco assistant principal was formally reinstated to his job after being falsely accused of inappropriately hugging and kissing two students last year.

After an almost year-long hearing, Joseph was acquitted last month by a board committee after just 25 minutes of deliberation. The charges were brought by now lame-duck superintendent Trudie Bennett and her administration. Bennett's contract was not renewed and her tenure as super will end in June.

The board voted 6 to 1, with one abstension for Joseph's reinstatement.

Joseph was denied the opportunity to read a statement at the public meeting.

Joseph will be awarded back pay for the time he was on suspension, minus unemployment payments made to him and the amount Joseph made while recently working in a bagel shop. Bennett has asked for a full accounting of Joseph's income while he was suspended on the trumped charges she filed against him.

Not only was Joseph forbidden to address the board, but, we have been told, the public comment session of the meeting was ordered edited from the video broadcast on local cable TV.

Ross Douthat also questions the wisdom John Holdren, Obama's new science advisor.

Given that Holdren is something of a doomsday believer it is not surprising that Obama would have picked him.

Holdren bought into Paul Erlich's "Population Bomb," which predicted mass starvation and upheaval, due to the growing population of the world. His predictions were as wrong as wrong could be, but he still has his followers. Holdren is just one of them.

Obama apparently still buys Ehrlich's theory too.

He has also bought into the Al Gore "Earth In The Balance" approach to "global warming." We need a "wrenching transformation of society," Gore wrote and Obama either believes that, or is cynically using it as a pretext for his Trillion Dollar Baby of government works programs.

Current economic woes can be made worse by government interventions into markets and private business. FDR's political hubris and usurpation of power made the depression last longer.

Despite his inexperience, Obama has shown the same hubris, the same faith in government to "fix" problems and the same inability to understand that often forever busy and activist governments make things worse, not better.


Holdren is just an advisor so he doesn't have to submit to senate confirmation, where he would be approved by anyway by Democrats anyway. But at least that would allow Republicans to ask him a few embarrassing questions.

Never mind.

So far, Obama's cabinet picks have been for the most part, within the political mainstream. That his biggest controversy so far has been his selection of anti-gay marriage preacher Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration works to Obama's political advantage.

The hissy fit being thrown by obnoxious gay activists suggests to middle of the road Americans that Obama is doing something right.

But gay marriage isn't nearly the threat to America that environmental lunacy is. The cost of Al Gore's green "transformation" of our society truly would be "wrenching."

The assertion that "green jobs" would pay for themselves, blah, blah, blah, is bunk. It's nothing but a con by green activists, who have created their own faith-based science to impose their beliefs on the world.

Give me gay-marriage over a world controlled by these zealots, any day.

UPDATE: In the meantime, Czech president Vaclav Klaus is one politician who continues to stand up to the onslaught of the green political/scientific community.

Caroline Kennedy and NYT Publisher Pinch Sultzberger? This isn't news, but it sure is interesting.

Jennifer Rubin scoffs at the Obama Team report clearing themselves of wrongdoing in the Blago senate seat for sale scandal.

We're less cynical. There are risks involved in an attempted Obama whitewash. If the facts in the report deviate from the facts known by the FBI and Fitzgerald's prosecutors, there could be hell to pay.

There is at this point no reason to believe Obama or anyone on his team, did anything illegal or even unethical. That could change.

NYT science guy, John Tierney gives Obama's science advisor two thumbs down and catches flak for it.

Read the original post as well.

Nice to find a writer at the Times not slavishly devoted to All Things Obama.

Mark Bowden has a good idea for President Bush: Pardon the shoe thrower.

Too bad it's not really his pardon to grant.

Anything political about the AP's choice of Tiny Fey as "Entertainer of the Year"?

Nah.

But how come Darrell Hammond never won for his Bill Clinton impression during the Monica Lewinsky hillarity?

Holman Jenkins says "get ready for a lost decade."

Money Q:

"But once prosperity blows up, the quasi-virtuous policy circle becomes an unvirtuous one as new interest groups come to the fore to exploit an appetite, previously weak, to impose their costly or vindictive wish lists. And even well-meaning policy gets twisted and rendered incoherent."

Harry, the Phanatic, Ball Girls and the trophy - what more could you ask for?

Maybe Chase Utley shouting "Merry (Bleepin') Christmas!"

The case for a full presidential pardon for Scooter Libby is excellently made in a WSJ editorial.

Liberals and the left would howl. Let 'em.

And let right be done.

John O'Sullivan says "I know Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher is a friend of mine. And as a matter of fact, Margaret Thatcher and Sarah Palin have a great deal in common."

The contempt of elites is one thing.

Gay congressman Barney Frank continues his war against liberal tolerance of evangelicals and their weird view of marriage.

According to Hillblog:

"Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) thinks that President-elect Obama picked same-sex marriage opponent Rick Warren to give the inauguration invocation because Obama "overestimates" his ability to unify people."

Maybe it's gay left that overestimates its ability to bully and intimidate people into accepting its political and social agenda for America.

UPDATE: Of course, academic, journalistic and other liberal elites are perfectly willing to be bullied into submission. Normal, everyday people, not so much.

UPDATE II: That said, Obama does probably overestitmate his abilities to unify people. Once he starts having to decisions, which is what governing is, he will start offending people and their special interest groups. By this time next year, espect his popularity rating to be down significantly.

Hey, this is interesting.

Mark "Deep Throat" Felt is the reason Bill "Guilty as Hell" Ayers went "Free as a bird."

Mark Steyn opines on GM, Newspapers, and Princess Caroline.

With 96,000 workers and a million retirees collecting benefits, GM, Steyn writes, "is a vast retirement home with a small loss-making auto subsidiary."

Read it all.

Quantum of Solis.

Heh. Funny. Not so much to big business.

Will the new Labor Secretary look the other way on union corruption?

H. Beatty Chadwick asks Congressman Joe Sestak to use his influence to spring him from jail.

“I recognize the limitations on your ability to become involved in a state proceeding,” he writes. “As an opinion leader by virtue of your office, however, I ask for your assistance to compel a public focus on a confinement that should be abhorrent to fundamental notions of fairness. Pennsylvania should not confine its citizen indefinitely without trial and criminal process.”

Chadwick, 72, could go down as the most stubborn man in American history.

For 14 years, the defrocked attorney has brazenly lied to judge after judge concerning the whereabouts of millions of dollars he shuffled off shore to prevent his estranged second wife from getting any in their divorce settlement. He has set an American record for civil contempt and continues to set a new one every day.

Some years ago, a former Chadwick attorney once tried to convince me his client was mentally ill. After all, who would stay in prison so long over money if not a crazy man?

There is a difference between being crazy and having a narcissistic personality disorder. Chadwick never seemed crazy to me. Just stubborn in the extreme.

Still, I think Chadwick would have done much better to appeal to Santa Claus or one of his elves than to Sestak, in so far at it might have caused an opinion leader, or judge, to think the poor man had gone stir crazy.

He comes up again today for his annual review for a Christmas furlough. As has been pointed out many times before, Chadwick has the key to his own jail cell in his hands but he prefers to defiantly lie to the court.

His choice.

Barney Frank thinks Barack Obama's selection of evangelical preacher Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration is a "mistake" because Warren has said some things Frank finds "offensive."

Frank doesn't elaborate on Warren's offensive comments but they probably have something to do with the fact that Warren doesn't support gay marriage. A view a majority of Americans share with the preacher.

Personally, we think the voters in Frank's congressional district have made a mistake in electing Frank to Congress and then re-electing him after he went trolling for a sex partner in the classified ads. (Frank's new buddy later ran a gay prostitution ring out of the congressman's apartment.)

Frank also supported the government backing of mortgages for unqualified borrowers that, in part, led to the mortgage meltdown. We consider this a bigger mistake. And we are offended by it.

We hope President-Elect Obama decides to rescind Frank's invitation to attend his inauguration. Or, if Frank is so offended, he should himself refuse to attend.

He could, you know, call in gay.

UPDATE: Frank did elaborate a little. He said, "Mr. Warren compared same-sex couples to incest. I found that deeply offensive and unfair."

We'd like to know what Rep. Frank has against incest. As long as both family members are consenting adults, who is he to judge incest is wrong.

UPDATE II: It has been pointed out to us that incest is illegal. But then so was the practice of homosexuality at one time.

It has also been pointed out that incest is "a perversion." Again, homosexuality was once considered as much. The point is society has "evolved" to the point of being generally accepting of homosexuality. What would be wrong about it evolving to accept incest between consenting adults?

After all how did the evolution of society attitudes toward homosexuality take place? The new atttitude was handed down from the top through argument, persuasion, political agitation and ultimately demonization of anti-gay attitudes.

Once the prejudice against incest has been shown to be nothing more than a prejudice - a revulsion that civilized people have without even thinking about it - decriminalizing incest will be the next step.

Ultimately, hip adults will get to the point of not wanting to be confused with someone who commits incest but will be happy to tolerate the practice if it helps them avoid being labeled a bigot and a hater.

As in "No. I don't sleep with my sister... not that there's anything wrong with that!"

George Will gives the Bush Administration a swift kick in the ass on its way out of town.

Turns out W. has more in common with FDR than most liberals like to think.

The Blago scandal squeezes closer to Rahm Emanuel. The two were closer than Team Obama would have us believe.

Robert A. George takes us on a tour of the year's top Democratic scandals.

Welcome to our warm new world.

Good!

UPDATE: Double good.

Hmmm.

"Scientists have found two large leaks in Earth's magnetosphere, the region around our planet that shields us from severe solar storms.

"The leaks are defying many of scientists' previous ideas on how the interaction between Earth's magnetosphere and solar wind occurs: The leaks are in an unexpected location, let in solar particles in faster than expected and the whole interaction works in a manner that is completely the opposite of what scientists had thought."

For some years a few global warming skeptics have argued that solar activity might be a more significant cause to slightly higher temperatures than human activity. This may or may not have anything to do with that.

But that the scientific community was apparently dead wrong about the working of the earth's magnetosphere calls into question the reported scientistic consensus on the cause of climate change.

Or will that beyond debate by a future executive order?

Jonah Goldberg compares the establishment reactions to Sarah Barracuda and Sweet Caroline.

My colleague Tony Phyrillas finds something to agree with "ultra-liberal" Nat Hentoff about: Caroline Kennedy is NOT the most qualified person to fill Hillary Clinton's Senate seat.

Tony runs one of the best blogs available when it comes to Pennsylvania politics. So check it out.

But his description of Hentoff as an "ultra-liberal" is a little off. Hentoff is very liberal when it comes to civil and First Amenment rights. But he is also admirably pro-life, which makes him something of a pariah on the left.

He is his own man. Thoughtful and principled to the core. And he always has been.

Democrats like Sen. Carl Levin are pushing for prosecutions of Bush Admininstration officials who supposedly countenanced of the "torture" of terrorist suspects and prisoners. Levin has recently released a report summary that all but requires such prosecutions to take place. This is nothing but hard-left and partisan second guessing of the administration's attempt in the aftermath of 9/11 to keep America safe from another devastating terrorist attack.

Whatever prisoner abuse that was done, like at Abu Ghraib prison, was committed mostly by lower level and poorly trained soldiers, and not condoned by higher-up military officials and certainly not by the administration.

There are just three admitted CIA "waterboardings" permitted by the administration and these were conducted against three top level al Qaida terrorists. They gleaned information that saved American lives. Yet we are told they never should have been permitted.

Levin's pursuits are nothing more than witch-hunts to further damage the reputations of men who were doing nothing more than trying to protect their countrymen from future attacks. He and his fellow Bush haters twist the definition of "torture" to suit their political jihad against the out-going administration.

There are precious few Americans who wouldn't support and permit the rough treatement of captured terrorists in order to prevent an imminent attack. That this is true, doesn't make most Americans supporters of torture. It means they understand the seriousness of the threat groups like al Qaida and their fellow travellers pose to this country and the civilized world.

According to the WSJ:

"Mr. Levin claims that Bush interrogation programs "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives." The truth is closer to the opposite. The second-guessing of Democrats is likely to lead to a risk-averse mindset at the CIA and elsewhere that compromises the ability of terror fighters to break the next KSM. The political winds always shift, but terrorists are as dangerous as ever."

The journal calls Levin's gambit the "real torture disgrace."

That's damn right.

Our print column on flimflammers present and past is up.

An update on Reyburn's Tavern in Chadds Ford from a frequent patron:

Paul Jr. died 2 months prior his father. Mr. Reyburn did not sell or sign the liquor license over or jointly to anyone. The real thing that was the best thing that was the original thing is now past and concluded. We will miss him forever.

The bar and its service to patrons and locals since 1937 has played its final chapter. Reyburn's birthday was May18th, so he was 100 and just under 6 months old. You were one of a kind Paul, and we will miss you dearly. Cheers til we meet again my friend. Thank you, thank you, thank you. There will never be another place to replace this place.

Did you hear the one about the senator and the Polish jokes?

Oh, you're a senator?

Don't worry, we'll tell it slow.

Meet Daily Times legends Editor Phil Heron, Sports Columnist Jack McCaffery, and General Columnist Gil Spencer at the Granite Run Mall, Thursday (tomorrow) Dec. 18, 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., in front of the upstairs entrance to Boscov's.

Pick the topic and we'll expound on it with eloquence and expertise worthy of men in the newspaper business for a combined total almost 320 years.

Have a question, ask it. Have an opinion? Let 'er fly. Have a shoe, keep it on your foot. We're the journalists here.

BYOB.

Last seen inveighing against the free market for the scourge of surrogate motherhood, Thomas Frank is now blaming the entrepreneurial spirit for Gov. Blago's alleged criminality.

Frank writes:

"Blago's alleged acts bring us face-to-face with what's wrong with American politics, and this time it can't just be brushed off as part of a Republican "culture of corruption." It goes far deeper than that. The rot is structural; it is trans-partisan; and it stinks to high heaven.

"So let President-elect Obama recruit a thousand Patrick Fitzgeralds. Let him turn them loose on Chicago, on Washington, and on every corner of public life where the market-based ideal still survives. Sic semper tyrannis."

But how do we know the prosecutors recruited by Mr. Obama won't be subject to the same human flaws as Gov. Blago. How do we know we won't get a thousand power-mad Eliot Spitzers?

Frank misidentifies the problem here and rather badly.

What is wrong with American politics is that human beings are involved in them. And that is not fixable.

Frank seems to be forgetting that Blago got caught. He got caught because the system sometimes works. Because men as venal and greedy as Blago have a hard time concealing from others there true natures. We have prosecutors and cops to catch such people when they break the law but we will never catch them all.

America has always had it share of theives in high places, con artists, hucksters and snake oil salesmen.

Read Brock Pope's excellent "Charlatan: America's Most Danger Huckster, The Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam." You will quickly realize, with the mortgage loan business meltdown and guys like Bernard Madoff stealing $50 Billion, we still live in such an age.

We probably always will, no matter how many laws we pass, zealous prosecutors we hire or cops we put on the street.

Frank is the flip side of an anarchist.

An anarchist looks at politicians like Blago and says "See, government is the problem. Get rid of it and the problem goes away."

Frank wants more and more powerful government. It is not only the Blagos he wants pursued, he would love to see a thousand more prosecutors let loose on those in private enterprise. Because somewhere someone is getting away with something.

Blago isn't a tyrant. He's a crook, a foul-mouthed crook on the public dole and he's going down like one.

We don't need a thousand John Wilkes Booths assassinating imagined tyrants. And Frank is fool for thinking we do.

Holman Jenkins blames the victims in the Madoff scandal.

Well, they deserve some blame for naively believing such a con artist. There were safer places to put their money. They went with the sweet-talking Madoff instead.

Money Q:

"It is common to wax nostalgic for a time when a man's word was his bond, business was done on a handshake, etc. This is poppycock. It has always been a client's job to sort out the dealer who could be trusted from the one who couldn't. Personal connections may give comfort, but are no substitute for true institutional checks or true experience of a man's character, which many of Mr. Madoff's clients seemed not to have.

"Instead, they went on "reputation," which is to say they acquired their faith in Mr. Madoff more or less the way people acquire their faith in global warming and many other things, from people equally as ignorant as they."

Read it all.

"Let's Buy Pakistan's Nukes."

I'll take two.

Somebody ought to write a song about it.

Tax mania hits New York.

Maybe they should sell open U.S. Senate seats to the highest bidder.

Most Americans oppose bailout for auto industry. Democrats seen as party of corporate welfare.

It's a start.

Steve Chapman is calling it Obama's "My Pet Goat" moment.

But Gov. Blagojevich is hardly a airliner crashing into the World Trade Center.

Which means his taking so long to respond to Blago's indictment reflects even more poorly on the President Elect.

Mick and Mike say

"Look at GM and tell me strong unions are good for the economy."

Spencerblog is in a not-so-strong union; the Newspaper Guild of America.

The Bailout Nazi says, "NO SOUP FOR YOU!"

Update on that puppy drowning in Upper Darby:

It was a lovers' quarrel.

That's explains the Yorkie.

Iraqi "journalist" hailed as "hero" for attempted assault on the President of the United States.

It's gotta' be the shoes.

If you haven't read Frank Witmer's letter to the editor in today's paper, read it here.

It's a winner.

Barack Obama's huge public works stimulus plan has been recently tried before in Japan. It didn't work. The WSJ lays out the history.

Oh yeah, that's how you say "good luck," in Japanese.

No government bailout for Al Boscov. He'll try to return his business to profitability the old fashioned way: Declaring bankruptcy and restructuring.

Money Q:

“What got us in trouble was an opportunity,” Boscov said.
The company bought up too much too fast, he explained.

He admits a business mistake and is trying to work his way back from it. Good luck to him and all his employees.

The AP breathlessly reports: Two trillion tons of Artic ice melted since 2003.

It's almost as if they think there's something WE should do about it.

Birds keep playoff hopes alive with victory over lowly Browns.

Mr. Jonathan Stein over at Mother Jones explains the proper process for a presidential candidate selecting a running mate and why John McCain is a cynical jerk.

Stein writes:

"When you choose a person as your partner on a presidential ticket, what are you saying about that person? If you're acting honestly and in the best interest of the American people, you're saying that he or she is the second most qualified person in the country, after you, to be president. (Or, to bow somewhat to political realities, you are saying he or she is the second most qualified person who also happens share your ideological leanings.)"

Well, let's see, Barack Obama had the same choice to make and he chose Joe Biden.
Did Barack Obama believe that Joe Biden was the second most qualified person in the country to be president besides him?

Interesting that, given the 18 million Democratic votes that Hillary Clinton got to be president and the scrawny vote Democratic voters wasted on Joe Biden. Is it that Obama simply has better judgment than all those millions of voters to know that Good Old Joe was more qualified to be president than Hillary?

It can't be that Hillary didn't share his ideological leanings, their voting records and policy prescriptions were virtually identical.

Funny how Old Joe didn't return the favor when he was running for Prez, saying that Barack wasn't ready to be president. And he stood by his statement when asked about it again. He's since changed his mind. (Nothing cynical about that.)

Fussypants Stein faults McCain for not immediately endorsing his own running mate Sarah Palin for the Republican nomination in 2012. "Absurd," he calls McCain's rationale that there are plenty of other Republicans who might emerge for the job and that its too early to commit to any one of them.

We guess it's not absurd for his fellow leftist pundit Eleanor Clift to suggest Caroline Kennedy might make a viable presidential candidate in 2016.

"Positioning a successor is what a president is supposed to do in his second term," explained Clift. "Still, President Kennedy in 2016? We're getting ahead of ourselves."

Well, seeing as how Caroline Kennedy has never run for or held elective office, yeah maybe Clift and her fellow Kennedyphiles are jumping the gun... by about seven years.

In any case, if you're a committed leftist, McCain is "absurd" and "cynical." While Obama had the best interests of the country in mind when he selected Senator Gaffe Machine over Hillary Clinton to be his running mate.

UPDATE: Not all lefties are thrilled by the prospect of a new Sen. Kennedy. Jane Hampster lets her feelings known at Huff-Po.

Prez shows good reflexes Iraqi journo shows pretty good arm.

Turns out his name is Helen Thomas Hussein.

UPDATE: Roger Simon finds the good news in this dopey, juvenile act.

What a dirtbag!

On the heels of Ruth Marcus' embarrassing column promoting Caroline Kennedy as worthy of appointment to Hillary Clinton's New York senate seat, comes Newsweek's Eleanor Clift.

Clift gives credence to the suggestion Kennedy should not only get the seat but that Barack Obama should consider her as a running mate in 2012.

"Positioning a successor is what a president is supposed to do in his second term. Still, President Kennedy in 2016? We're getting ahead of ourselves."

Oh dear, are we? Isn't there some way Ms. Kennedy can just be appointed President without having to run? Maybe by a straw poll of liberal, female Washington columnists?

As the Atlantic's Ross Douthat has pointed out, if you look at Caroline Kennedy's resume she is perhaps six times less qualified to be a U.S. Senator than Sarah Palin was to be Vice President.

Kennedy has never run for elective office in her life. She serves on boards, mostly because of her name, and has edited a book of her mother's poetry. Does that make her a bad person. No. Neither does it make her qualified to be a United States senator.

Those brilliant writers who dismissed Palin as an ignorant lightweight, are looking pretty silly, not to mention hypocritical beyond words, trying to sell a fragile featherweight like Caroline Kennedy.

"She is a serious person who's been inching out into the wider world...," babbles Clift. She makes Kennedy sound as if she might be mentally handicapped.

Inching out? Oh my. Is the U.S. Senate supposed to be "inched" into so delicately?

On second thought, look what voting for U.S. Senators has gotten us.

By all means, let's like governors like Illinois' Rod Blagojevich and New York's David Paterson (unelected to his own post) do all the appointing to the "world's most deliberative body."

Or better yet, pundits like Clift and Marcus. Who better knows what Washington needs than these two?

"There's been a Kennedy in the U.S. Senate since 1952...," Clifton shrewdly points out.

What would the senate do without one?

Take the quiz from today's Sunday Times.

It's so awesome, take it twice.

Sarah Palin's church damaged by arson. Hmmmm. Hate to ask but does Bill Ayers have an alibi?

Left-wing conspiracy theory to come: She did it.

Victoria Toensing takes U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to the woodshed for conduct unethical and unbecoming a prosecutor.

It ain't the first time.

It was beauty killed the beast and it was the UAW that killed the bailout.

Obama advisor Rahm Emmanuel is sure acting like someone who's got something to hide.

Just because he is not the "target" of the investigation doesn't mean there are not FBI recordings of him saying some embarrassing things in the Blago "pay for play" scandal.

He needs to answer a few questions and sooner rather than later.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm declares the U.S. senators who voted against a bailout of her state's auto industry "un-American."

As far as we know, none of the senators have turned around and declared Granholm's statement to be "Canadian," though she was born there and seems to prefer its more socialist system of government to ours.

Sure sounds like Granholm, a Democrat, is questioning the patriotism of her opponents, something other Democrats have claimed is the slimiest sort of politics.

Interestingly, Democrats have claimed their patriotism was being questioned even when it wasn't in order to announce what a disgusting political tactic it is.

Maybe this is what is meant by the Democrats having a big tent. The party accepts politicians who accuse opponents of being unpatriotic and also accepts politicians who declare such accusations reprehensible, even when they are not being made.

That is a big tent. It needs to be, with so much donkey dung being tossed about.

Chuck Krauthammer writes that the left need not be concerned with the centrist appearance of the President-Elect.

On his domestic agenda he will go left and hard, involving the government in every aspect of the American economy.

He's got the power, the "money" and the Congress to do it.

Sounds plausible... and like the end of America as we have known it.

My print column about a family of six that is being told that two have to go is up.

The place: Sharon Hill
The family: James Patterson, Donna Lauria and their four Doberman Pinschers.

James and Donna are selling their home instead making a Sophie's Choice.

Their neighbor, Shelli Towey weighed in this morning with this e-mail:

Hi Gil,

Just wanted to say a few words about the family with the four dobies. I live next door to James, Donna, Romy and the other three boys. I own the adjoining twin. When I found out my new neighbors were going to have 4 dogs my only concern was the back yard wasn't fenced and I worried as I have cats. The new fence went up before they moved in. 

I have to tell you that I feel really bad for this family. They are great neighbors and these dogs don't bother me. They are quiet, well cared for and you don't even know they are there. They are never left outside unattended and James is out there cleaning up after them as soon as they go back in the house. I don't feel anyone should complain about something if it doesn't affect them. There are lots of dogs in our town that might get free, run in traffic or just bark a lot. 

I feel for this family. They where looking for a nice place to live and thought they had found one. I wish they didn't have to move.

I've lived in this house for over 20 years and was so happy to have nice people move in next door. 

PS. My cats don't seem to mind the dogs either!! They find them entertaining to watch!  

WSJ's resident leftist, Thomas "What's the Matter With Kansas" Frank, goes ape over the surrogate motherhood of one Alex Kuscynski.

Frank writes:

At long last, our national love affair with the rich is coming to a close. The moguls whose exploits we used to follow with such fascination, it now seems, plowed the country into the ground precisely because of the fabulous rewards that were showered on them.

Massive inequality, we have learned, isn't the best way to run an economy after all. And when you think about it, it's also profoundly ugly.

Some people haven't received the memo, though. Take Alex Kuczynski, author of the New York Times Magazine cover story for Nov. 30, which tells how she went about hiring another woman to bear her child.

Read it all here.

What is quite obvious is that Frank was far too sensible and clever to have ever been a part of this supposed love affair with the rich. He favors politcal policies that, if nothing else would bring the sort of beautiful massive equality found in the pre-crack-up Soviet Union.

But it's the bashing and trashing of Kuczynski that gets ugly here.

Frank's characterization of her piece is rife through with class jealously and undisguised hatred.

Yes, there are moral implications to surrogate motherhood. It might have been interesting if Frank had deigned to explore them. Instead he indicts the practice as an example of the free-market gone wild.

But it seems Frank only real objection to surrogacy is that rich women like Kucyznski can take advantage of it.

Spencerblog checked out Kucyznski's piece online. One of Frank's nastiest criticisms of the story is that it dehumanizes surrogate baby mama Cathy Hilling, who happens to be from Harleysville.

But, it is, Frank who dehumanizes Hilling, treating her as nothing more than a benighted tool with which to crack Kucyznski over the head.

More from Frank:

"Then there are the photographs, already infamous: Ms. Kuczynski in a black sleeveless sheath and stiletto-heel pumps, posing next to the pregnant surrogate in khakis and a tousled pink flannel shirt. Ms. Kuczynski holding the baby on the lawn of her Southampton estate, with columns, topiary and servant. The surrogate sitting, barefoot and alone, on a beat-up porch of her house in Pennsylvania."

Frank doesn't bother to name her. But he leaves the impression she is destitute and alone when, according to the story, she is happily married to a William and Mary graduate with whom she has three children.

As for Kuczynski, it seems to me her piece gives Cathy all due respect and affection.

There is one notable passage...

"I wish I could say that everyone’s reaction to Max’s birth was as generous. Most people were overjoyed for us. But extraordinary circumstances, I discovered, bring out extraordinary reactions in some people. I least expected jealousy. This from women who looked at me with tight smiles and said, “Well, thank God you didn’t have to give birth to that huge child!” Or, glumly: “You’re so lucky. Pregnancy is overrated.” One announced to a table of people at a dinner party: “My God, Alex. You’ve really gotten away with some stuff in your life. But this takes the cake!” It was as if I had performed some slimy trick and was still able to have my ticket stamped “Mother.”

Kucyznski's surprise at people's jealously is naive in the extreme but it speaks well of her.

Frank's bit of slimy nastiness does less for him.

More than 650 scientists now dispute Al Gore's dire global warming claims.

Meanwhile, Obama in a recent meeting with Gore said climate change is real, undeniable and needs to be acted upon immediately. Not in 10 years, not in 20 years. Now.

Hmmm. It appears the skeptical scientists didn't get The One's memo.

AP reports: "Day Without a Gay" Participation Spotty. And that was dateline San Francisco.

From the story:

David Lang, 44, a San Francisco gymnastics coach who said he conceived of a similar idea right after the election, said he thinks a coordinated job action would have been more successful if organizers had enlisted support from sympathetic employers, labor groups and industries.

"If we are going to make a huge impact and not be laughed at, then we have to take the time and make the time to communicate with all the parties. We could have shut down a lot of the hotels," Lang said.

They were laughed at instead.

Mostly because in most places, gay employees (even in don't ask, don't tell environments) are valued, hard-working and accepted. (Or they wouldn't be working there, duh!)

The event was a flop because of guys like Paul Ellis and his employer Cliff's Variety hardware store.

"My employers have always been there in every possible way," Ellis told the AP. "I didn't feel comfortable discomfiting them when they have gone out of their way to be there for me."

Back to the drawing board for gay activists.

A 10-months Yorkie-Pomeranian mix was killed during a burglary.

“Killing the dog was obviously a ceremonial, sadistic, brutal act,” police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said. “Newman, who was angry at the complainant, was our focus the whole investigation. From the very beginning, we knew whoever was responsible for drowning the dog had a grudge to bear against the complainant. He’s mentally and emotionally sick to drown a dog and leave it on a frying pan on the floor.”


We await the suspect's defense. Those little dogs can be awfully yappy. Maybe something along the lines, "The little fella' just wouldn't shut up."

Then again, based on Chitwood's diagnosis, maybe an insanity defense would be more appropriate.

Gum factory to make way for YMCA or rec center in Havertown.

Get this:

From James Taranto's Best of the Web (Just scroll down.)

Europe OK's 'Torture'

Writing in Policy Review, John Rosenthal tells a tale of police abuse from 21st-century Germany:

In the Frankfurt police headquarters, the atmosphere is tense. Deputy Police Chief Wolfgang Daschner is losing patience. On the previous day, his officers arrested one Magnus Gäfgen, a 27-year-old law student. Gäfgen is suspected of having kidnapped 11-year-old Jakob von Metzler, son of the banker Friedrich von Metzler. Two days earlier, Gäfgen had personally collected a 1-million-euro ransom payment. But there is no sign of the boy and Gäfgen has refused to give police interrogators accurate information about his whereabouts. A police psychologist, observing the questioning, describes Gäfgen's responses as a "pack of lies" [Lügengebäude]. Deputy Police Chief Daschner fears that Jakob's life may be in danger. In a memorandum, he writes: "We need to ascertain without delay where the boy is being held. While respecting the principle of proportionality, the police have an obligation to take all measures in their power to save the child's life."

Daschner decides to act. He dispatches police inspector Ortwin Ennigkeit to the office in which Gäfgen is being held for interrogation. Ennigkeit's assignment: to make Gäfgen talk--if necessary by threat of torture. Indeed, Daschner has resolved not only to threaten Gäfgen with pain, but to carry out the threat if his prisoner is not otherwise forthcoming. A doctor has been found to supervise the proceedings.
In the interrogation room, Ennigkeit tells Gäfgen that a "special officer" is on his way. If Gäfgen does not tell Ennigkeit where the boy is, the "special officer" will "make him feel pain that he will not forget." On Gäfgen's own account, the formula is still more menacing: the officer "will make you feel pain like you have never felt before." "Nobody can help you here," Ennigkeit tells him, according to Gäfgen's testimony. "We can do whatever we want with you." On Gäfgen's account, moreover, Ennigkeit already begins to rough him up: shaking him so violently that his head bangs against the wall and hitting him in the chest hard enough to leave a bruise over his collarbone. Gäfgen's testimony is consistent with the tenor of Daschner's instructions, which, on Daschner's own admission, called for the "use of direct force" [Anwendung unmittelbaren Zwangs].

Gäfgen broke and told police where he had buried Jakob's body. That was October 2002:

In June 2005, the child-murderer and law student Magnus Gäfgen lodged a complaint against Germany with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). In his complaint, Gäfgen accused Germany of having violated his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights and, more specifically, of having violated the prohibition on torture contained in Article 3 of the Convention.

On June 30, 2008, the European Court of Human Rights rejected Gäfgen's complaint and cleared Germany of the charge of tolerating torture.

Also in October 2002, interrogators at Guantanamo Bay asked for permission to use similar methods on al Qaeda terrorist Mohammed al-Qahtani. The Pentagon said no.

Taranto writes: Now that Barack Obama has won the presidency, perhaps it is time for American interrogators to revise their practices to bring them into line with European ones.

'Milk' named best film by New York film critics.

Go figure.

Ross Douthat smackdown of Ruth Marcus and her "girly" endorsement of Caroline Kennedy for Hillary's New York seat is dead on.

Money Q:

"Here's a more provocative way of thinking about it. Caroline Kennedy is no doubt more prepared - in terms of her base of knowledge about national politics, her comfort with the ways of Washington, etc. - to be a United States Senator than Sarah Palin was to be Vice President. But if you consider where the two women started and stack their subsequent accomplishments against one another, Palin's Alaskan career is roughly six times more impressive than Kennedy's years as a high-minded Manhattan socialite and custodian of her family's good name. That doesn't mean that McCain was wise to pick Palin as his running mate. But if you think he wasn't, then you should definitely hope that the Democratic Party of New York hunts a little longer through its ranks before handing a Senate seat to the editor of The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis."

Read the whole thing. The Marcus piece is a true embarassment.

And to think she called John McCain "cynical" for choosing Sarah Palin to be his running mate.

What does that make Marcus? A romantic, dewey-eyed school girl when it comes to the Kennedys, a cynical family dynasty if there ever was one.

He's a handsome devil, ain't he?

Holman Jenkins once again explains that it is the government-imposed CAFE standards that have taken the Big Three automakers to the brink of bankruptcy.

Money Q:

"All this is dragged down by federal fuel-economy mandates that require them to lose tens of billions making small cars Americans don't want in high-cost UAW factories. Understand something: Ford and GM in Europe successfully sell cars that are small but not cheap. Europeans are willing to pay top dollar for a refined small car that gets excellent mileage, because they face gasoline prices as high as $9. Americans are not Europeans. In the U.S., except during bouts of high gas prices or in the grip of a Prius fad, the small cars that American consumers buy aren't bought for high mileage, but for low sticker prices. And the Big Three, with their high labor costs, cannot deliver as much value in a cheap car as the transplants can."

Blogger and Obama supporter Katie Granju doesn't believe Obama right-hand man David Axelrod, who said the President Elect talked to Gov. Blago about who would fill his senate seat and is now recanting that statement, claiming he "misspoke."

Granju writes:

"The correct approach for the Obama team would have been to make it clear that this isn't their crisis to manage. It has absolutely nothing to do with Obama, and he could have driven that point home by being completely upfront. He should have told the truth, saying something like, "Yes, of course I've discussed who would take my vacant Senate seat with the governor, but I had absolutely no knowledge that the guy was at the same time attempting to illegally sell the seat to the highest bidder. That sickens me."  That's what Obama should have said."

Well, given the presumption of innocence and what not, maybe something more along the lines of -

"I had absolutely no knowledge that the guy was at the same time allegedly attempting to illegally sell the seat to the highest bidder. That allegedly sickens me."

Tis' the season for egg nog.

Here's a recipe from some food network foodie named Sarah Copeland.

"Eggnog has gotten a bad rap because people have only had the cooked method and it's a little sweet and thick and they then douse it with all this rum, which takes away from it's essence."

Baloney.

Spencernog recommends Pennsylvania Dutch Egg Nog, available at your local state store. Lot's of booze in it, brandy, rum and whiskey. 29.5 proof. It's umm, ummm good.

Cheers!

The Chester mother of four and former fugitive used to hang with a rough crowd.

She can think about her non-motherly choices for the next two-and-a-half to five year in the state pen.

Mia Sardella also made a non-motherly choice. She pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter in the death of her newborn son and other charges. Having no prior criminal record she'll likely get less time than Toodles.

The Sardella case made headlines in part because of Upper Darby Police Super Mike Chitwood claiming she was getting special treatment from county prosecutors because of his social status. Her banker grandfather is rich, at least by Upper Darby standards.

Chitwood's real beef seemed to be with Sardella's lawyer, who did what defense lawyer's do - he jealously guarded the legal rights of his client. He refused to let Upper Police run roughshod over those rights and it irked the scumbag-hating and vocal police chief.

Frustrated, Chitwood claimed there are two systems of justice in America, one for the rich and one for the poor. "And anybody who doesn't think that is a fool."

For an experienced police chief to say such a thing is risible.

While it is certainly true that if charged with a crime it helps to be rich so that you can hire the best lawyers to protect your rights, even having the highest paid lawyer is far from any guarantee you can avoid justice.

OK, it worked for O.J. at his murder trial. But then so did having a jury whose prejudices were so shamefully played to. (It didn't work as well, this last time around.)

There is one criminal system of justice in this country and it is fair and unfair to rich and poor defendants every day. But mostly it is fair and impartial.

Chitwood managed to publicly shame the DAs office into charging the 18-year-old with First Degree Murder. But that charge was thrown out by Judge Pat Jenkins almost immediately as being unsupported by the evidence. It was not DA Mike Green's finest hour. But ultimately the system worked.

Sardella will almost assuredly receive a sentence similar to other young, psychologically impaired young women, rich or poor, who have killed their newborns.

And you don't have to be a "fool" to believe that.

CORRECTION: Sardella pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter and other charges, not third degree murder, since corrected.

Not even left-wing kook Katha Pollitt can stomach Bill Ayers and his romaticized revisionist vision of himself.

UPDATE: Slate's Timothy Noah was onto Ayers back in 2001.

Money Q:

Chatterbox (Noah's blog) isn't sure he's ever read a memoir quite so self-indulgent and morally clueless as Fugitive Days. (He's certainly never before read one festooned with glowing blurbs from respectable folk like Scott Turow--"a gripping personal account.") "Memory is a m*****f******," begins Ayers, establishing the book's literary tone and unreliability in one compact sentence.

Throughout Fugitive Days, Ayers reminds his readers that he's had to omit or change many facts throughout his narrative because they describe actions on his part that are, well, illegal. In the turbulent early 1970s, Ayers helped set off bombs in two dozen places, including the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol. Supposedly nobody was hurt--the Weatherpeople always issued agitprop-laden bomb threats in advance--though Chatterbox has never seen a scrupulous accounting. (Ayers never did jail time for the bombings because of prosecutorial misbehavior.) Ayers was also a leader of the Days of Rage, a vandalism spree in Chicago in which bystanders were assaulted, though Ayers neglects to mention that.

To acquire false IDs needed to survive underground, Ayers does confess, "[w]e stole wallets and purses ... without much concern for our victims." Characteristically, though, Ayers dwells not on this latter point but on his foolishness for risking exposure.

Read the whole thing.

Illinois governor indicted in pay to play.

Another "distance job" for Obama.

Let's see Ayers, Wright, Rezko, now Blagojevich.

Jake Tapper has more about Obama's long-time political relationship with the indicted governor.

In fairness, Harry Truman came out of a pretty corrupt cesspool of machine politics in Missouri and he managed to stay pretty clean himself.

UPDATE:

“The breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering,” U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said. “They allege that Blagojevich put a ‘for sale’ sign on the naming of a United States Senator; involved himself personally in pay-to-play schemes with the urgency of a salesman meeting his annual sales target; and corruptly used his office in an effort to trample editorial voices of criticism.

“The citizens of Illinois deserve public officials who act solely in the public’s interest, without putting a price tag on government appointments, contracts and decisions,” he added.

Tomorrow is Day Without A Gay, during which homosexuals are being urged not to show up for work to show how important gay people are to the economy.

Remember, you've got to actually "call in gay," to get credit for participating in the demonstration.

As in, "I can't come to work today, I'm gay!"

And what are all those sick homophobes to do? No matter how ill they are tomorrow, they better show up for work.

Or else, well, you know.

The rest us should all stay home and watch "Bringing Up Baby," here's a preview.

And the Best Internet Christmas Holidays Ad goes to... J.C. Penny.

Hey Dual-Bag, it's funny.

Suspects arrested in home invasion cases.

From the story:

According to authorities, Davis and Humphrey had already told investigators they were “surfing” for Asian-American victims when they spotted the Middletown couple leaving the Springfield Mall in a black Mercedes-Benz.

Isn't ethnic profiling illegal? Nope, only for the government.

Note to Asian business folks: The ideal present for your spouse this Christmas; a firearm.

... back to prison.

Money Q from Chester resident and witness Martina Wimbush:

“It’s another body … another damn body in Chester. What do you do?”

Clintonite Dee Dee Meyers weighs in on the Hillary cardboard cut-out controversy.

Money Q:

"I can’t stop thinking about this picture, and I confess I find it really upsetting. And, no, it’s not because I don’t have a sense of humor. I like to think I have a well-earned reputation for often irreverent, sometimes ill-advised humor. But I’m not laughing now...

"What’s bugging me is his intention. He isn’t putting his hand on her “chest,” as most of the articles and conversations about the picture have euphemistically referred to it. Rather, his hand—cupped just so—is clearly intended to signal that he’s groping her breast. And why? Surely, not to signal he finds her attractive. Au contraire. It’s an act of deliberate humiliation. Of disempowerment. Of denigration.

"And it disgusts me."

As for all those old jokes about her former boss, and his actual groping of actual women, no doubt Dee Dee Myers laughs her head off.

Here's a cool thought: Let Ford save Ford.

From: David Larkins
Subject: Does anyone really care if Obama Smokes?

Look,

Truman, Churchill, FDR...all smoked Cigars or cigarettes...I am a little
sick of the conservative media projecting their righteousness on anyone...

I am moderate to right...but WHO CARES if he smokes if he kicks the
terrorists ass ?

I hope he chain smokes and uses tactical nukes on their ass.

Holy cow!

David Larkins

Is this the sort of conservative media to which Larkins is referring?

Anyway, we're with Larkins.

Anyone feel the need to weigh in on the great cardboard cut-out controversy?

For some reason this reminds me of the old joke.

Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: That's not funny.

Last week we wrote about Yeadon retiree Norma Davis trying to get her new business open on schedule and the members of the United Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 98 who were trying to prevent it.

The union wanted union electricians on the Lansdowne job, which was almost done. Negotiations between the builder and the union failed and the site was picketed by UBEW guys.

Wednesday, a PECO worker declined to cross the line for the scheduled hook-up of the new building's gas line.

Sunday, PECO returned only to be met by unionists who surrounded and blocked access to the pole. Eventually, the police were called in and after arrests were threatened, the PECO workers was allowed to do its job.

Davis' Grand Opening is scheduled for Saturday. The building crew is working almost round the clock to get it done.

"It's going to be close," said Developer George Spaeder.

We'll keep posted.

A thoughtful response to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and the ROTC ban at Columbia University from a gay student.

George Will on Obama's brilliant economic team:

"In his wise book "Capitalism, Democracy & Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery," John Mueller, an Ohio State political scientist, notes that John Maynard Keynes's central theme, according to his biographer Robert Skidelsky, was that "the state is wise and the market is stupid." Mueller continues: "Working from that sort of perspective, India's top economists for a generation supported policies of regulation and central control that failed abysmally — leading one of them to lament recently, 'India's misfortune was to have brilliant economists.' " Many of them were educated in Britain, by Keynes's followers. In America today, everyone agrees that the president-elect's economic team is composed of brilliant economists."

Read it all.

"The puppies kept me warm"

Holman Jenkins says that Barack Obama's great talent is that he is able to behave like a cynical politician while maintaining his reputation for not being a cynical politician.

Unlike Al Gore.

Yes, it is a holiday tradition.

Every year defrocked attorney H. Beatty Chadwick petitions a Delaware County court to be released from prison - it's been 14 years now - and every year he has been turned down.

He is turned down because he refuses to sign the paperwork that would allow for a proper search or the millions of dollars he hid during his divorce proceedings.

He has consistently lied to every judge he has petitioned for release. Despite bouts of Hodgkins lymphoma, he has outlived several of the judges who have heard his appeals and denied them.

One of those judges, Joe Battle, said Chadwick had the keys to his own jail cell from day one. And he has.

He remains in contempt of court every day he refuses to abide the court order that caught up with him 14 years ago - an order he arrogantly and flagrantly ignored - playing a Catch-Me-If-You-Can game with authorities for a year.

He was apprehended in a dentist's chair, taken to Delaware prison and that's where he's been ever since.

I have visited Chadwick in prison. He is no Jimmy Stewart or George Bailey. He may be a model prisoner but he is also manipulative and deceitful.

Now 72 years old, his goal in life seems to be to go down as the most stubborn man in history. He has set the record for the longest contempt case in American jurisprudence. Someone call the Guinness people.

But Chadwick deserves no pity or sympathy. He stays in jail voluntarily. He's made his bed, he can lie in it, as he has everynight for the past 14 years.

Since the election, as predicted by Spencerblog, former terrorist and FOB (Friend of Barack's) Bill Ayers has started shooting off his mouth.

He is now proclaiming he was the victim of a "false narrative," promoted by the right-wing media. His biggest howler is that he was not and never was a "terrorist" and that the Weather Underground was not a terrorist organization.

Eric Posner effectively bats away Ayers' lame attempts to justify the making and setting off of bombs to bring about revolutionary change in AmeriKKKa.

Obama effectively distanced himself from Ayers during his campaign and downplayed to the point of prevarication, the extent of their former relationship.

That was smart. And if Obama is a smart as everyone thinks, he will never have anything to do with Ayers again. Obama used Ayers early in his career to get ahead. Just like he used Rev. Wright to gain street cred in the black community. He doesn't need Ayers anymore.

Ayers however, is using the notoriety brought him during the campaign to sell books and rewrite his own history. Respectable journalists shouldn't let him get away with it.

The Independent reports on an alarming new study.

"Evolution is being distorted by pollution, which damages genitals and the ability to father offspring, says new study."

Highlights from the story:

* The research – to be detailed tomorrow in the most comprehensive report yet published – shows that a host of common chemicals is feminising males of every class of vertebrate animals, from fish to mammals, including people.

* Many have been identified as "endocrine disrupters" – or gender-benders – because they interfere with hormones. These include phthalates, used in food wrapping, cosmetics and baby powders among other applications; flame retardants in furniture and electrical goods; PCBs, a now banned group of substances still widespread in food and the environment; and many pesticides.

* Fish, it says, are particularly affected by pollutants as they are immersed in them when they swim in contaminated water, taking them in not just in their food but through their gills and skin. They were among the first to show widespread gender-bending effects.

* Research at the University of Florida earlier this year found that 40 per cent of the male cane toads – a species so indestructible that it has become a plague in Australia – had become hermaphrodites in a heavily farmed part of the state, with another 20 per cent undergoing lesser feminisation.

* At the other end of the world, hermaphrodite polar bears – with penises and vaginas – have been discovered and gender-benders have been found to reduce sperm counts and penis lengths in those that remained male.

* Indeed, new research at the University of Rochester in New York state shows that boys born to mothers with raised levels of phthalates were more likely to have smaller penises and undescended testicles. They also had a shorter distance between their anus and genitalia, a classic sign of feminisation.

Apparently some scientists think there's something bad about this.

The study gives new meaning to the old saw - If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

(Note to regular commenters: Undescended testes and small penis jokes will be smirked at and promptly deleted. And yes, those include such jokes directed at the blog administrator.)

UPDATE: Hey there's one of those freaky polar bears now.

Bridges, Roads, Computer networks, schools, etc.

Let the kids figure out how pay for it.

My print column on the Rich Joseph exoneration is up.

O.J. get nine to 33 years.

It's less than he gave Nicole and Ron.

One of the better moments of Rich Joseph's hearing in Southeast Delco last night came during the cross examination of Human Resources Director Lynn David.

Finally, after 10 months, David named the female staffer who complained about Joseph for supposedly violating her space and touching her arm.

(It was that complaint that led to Joseph being hauled before Superintendent Trudie Bennett at an Aug. 24th 2006 meeting to insultingly discuss his learning about "bounderies." And was one of the charges brought against him for his dismissal.)

And just who was it who secretly complained about Joseph?

A woman named Mary Arnold, said David.

That bit of news sent a shock wave through the small crowd.

On cross, Joseph's lawyer Barry Van Rensler, asked David if Mary Arnold was still employed by the district.

No, she was not.

And why not?

Her employment was terminated.

And why was it terminated?

For theft of funds from the district.

Joseph's secret accuser Mary Arnold, turned out to have a gambling jones that led her to steal more than $250,000 in district funds.

She was fired two months after she claimed Joseph had somehow invaded her space. She was later criminally prosecuted.

No wonder, Ms. Arnold wasn't called as a witness for the prosecution. She's in jail.

Asked by Van Rensler if she still believed the charges Mary Arnold leveled against Joseph, Mrs. David replied "I still believe her."

She was the only one in the hearing room, with the possible exception of Trudie Bennett.

Unreal.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: In the comments, "Delco Blogger" points out we have our chronology in this matter wrong. He (or she) is correct. The date of the meeting was not 2007 it was 2006 (since corrected). Arnold was arrested a short time later. It took another 18 months or so for Joseph to be charged by Bennett and David with the infraction anonymously alleged by Arnold.

Dan Henninger sings the praises of risk.

We're just linking to this story so we could write that headline.

It reminded us of this incident during John Kerry's 2004 campaign,

Retiree Norma Davis of Yeadon is hoping to get her new business in Lansdowne open on time.

Members of electrical workers union 98 have a beef with her landlord and so are picketing her building's construction site.

Read all about it in today's print column.

Upper Darby Police Super Mike Chitwood lays into the parents of a 3-month old baby who was nearly beaten to death.

It's their lack of cooperation that makes him angry.

"I'm outraged and saddened that a 3-month-old infant can sustain these types of injuries and the parents do not come forth with information. It's sad when you don't get the cooperation of the parents. The investigation is not getting the help we need. I don't know why they are not talking."

Oh yes he does.

In reviewing Sean Penn's performance in the new gay bio-pic, Mark Hemingway asks "Got Milk?"

His answer, nah!

Penn's performance is excellent, writes Hemingway, but the film's scriptwriter misses the real and mixed character of the assassinated San Francisco mayor.

It will make no difference to liberal reviewers or the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (Hemingway predicts Oscar nods galore.) But it will to viewers who get cheated with a white-washed, saintly version of a much more interesting, flawed but ultimately admirable, historical figure.

Southeast Delco educator Rich Joseph is on his way to getting his job back, that is, if he still wants it.

Last night a committee of four school board members voted not fire the former assistant principal based on allegations made by two female students that he inappropriately hugged and kissed them.

Additional charges such as "willful misconduct" and "sexual harassment" were brought against Joseph by Superintendent Trudie Bennett. The board committee found none of them to be credible enough to warrant any disciplinary action.

The decision was a stinging rebuke to Bennett and Human Resources Director Lynn David who pursued the charges against Joseph for more than a year.

Read the rest in today's Daily Times. More on this Sunday in my print column

After the usual delays the "trial" of Rich Joseph, the Southeast Delco educator fired by superintendent Trudie Bennett, continues tonight at 6 p.m. at the district's education center.

More later.

The interesting case of Crystal Dixon, a University of Toledo HR manager who publicly expressed her views on gay rights and was subsequently fired for it.

Guess which side she took.

She is now suing the school.

Read it all.

Dave Kopel defends Plaxico Burress against NYC "unconstitutional" gun laws.

John Fund recounts Attorney General Designate Eric Holder's checkered past as a Clinton flunky.

Especially his weakness when fugitive financier Marc Rich petitioned for a pardon.

This isn't your typical story of a nurse assaulting a handicapped client.

It seems Madeline Michelle Riegler, 50, of Colwyn, couldn't do anything right for her demanding boss, a quadraplegic, so she allegedly tried to calm her down instead by slipping her a Vicodin with her morning coffee.

Noticing a powdery residue in her cup, the client accused the nurse of trying to poison her. Then she called the cops.

Reigler is now charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment and neglect of care for a dependent person.

Fair enough.

Reigler says she just got tired of being criticized all the time, accused of stealing things, and yelled at to do things she'd already done.

Now there's a justification for slipping somebody a mickey.

Here's a better response: "I quit!"

Ghost employees. I thought only unions and politicians did this.

Allegedly.

The Merc's Tony Phyrillas notices a pretty sharp editorial in the Reading Eagle about how Pennsylvania can get closer to balancing the state budget.

James Taranto on the Sen. Saxby Chambliss run-off win in Sourth Carolina

Chambliss beat Vietnam veteran and amputee Max Cleland in 2002. Ever since, Democrats have been claiming Chambliss questioned Cleland's "patriotism" during the campaign. He didn't. He questioned his judgement in not standing up to his fellow Democrats on unionizing our Homeland Security force.

For years Democrats and other liberals have been smearing Chambliss for his alleged (and completely invented) smearing of Cleland.

As someone who has actually been accused of being "unpatriotic" not too long ago by a reader for not being sufficiently sweet to the President Elect, it's hard to take such aspersions seriously.

Why Democrats bother to make them up is beyond me.

The AP reports:

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Gov. Ed Rendell is slashing at least $128 million more in state spending as Pennsylvania's financial outlook continues to unravel amid a deepening global financial plunge.



Rendell announced the budget cuts Wednesday in response to foundering state revenue collections that are $658 million behind expectations.



To date, Rendell has announced about $439 million in spending cuts.

Only $219 million to go.

Vicky Thomas reports state reps Nick Miccarelli and Bryan Lentz will be turning their undeserved taxpayer-funded raises over to charity.

Good for them.

Lentz is kicking into the Daily Times Christmas Fund. Miccarelli says he'll be giving his to local food banks and such.

Passenger stabbed on SEPTA bus.

Next up: Metal detectors for public transportation users.

MUSCAT, Oman (AP) -- Passengers on a luxury cruise liner attacked by pirates in the dangerous waters between Yemen and Somalia said Wednesday they were surprised by the assailants' boldness and described hearing the "Pop! Pop! Pop!" of the pirates' rifles firing at the ship.

No one was hurt and the oceanliner easily outran the pirate's vessel.

"We didn't think they would be cheeky enough to attack a cruise ship," Wendy Armitage, of Wellington, New Zealand, told The Associated Press...

Those cheeky monkeys! Would they like to see Simon's bum?

Jamil Whitaker was aiming for Shaheem Pharr when he opened fire in a Chester bar three years ago. He hit him in the butt. But he is also hit 74-year-old Henry Toler in the chest, killing him.

He apologized yesterday for killing Toler, not so much for trying to kill Pharr.

Our Marlene DiGiacomo reports:

"Defense attorney Eugene Tinari admitted there was “bad blood” between Whitaker and Pharr. He maintained Pharr earned his nickname “Shootie” because he had enemies and had been “shot at so many times.”

Wouldn't that make his nickname "Shootee"?

But then, according to Tinari, Pharr was known to be something of a shooter himself.

“He (Pharr) was known to rob people. He was a dangerous individual by all accounts,” said Tinari.

He said his client at one time was seated in his car when Pharr opened fire on him and indicated the animosity between the two worsened.

Yep. That would do it.

Rose Quinn's update on the murder of 55-year-old Arunkumar Ingle is interesting to say the least.

Ingle's daughter and son, who both share his first name as their middlename, have been charged with many counts of violating wiretap law and illegally incepting his e-mails.

However, Ingle's murder goes unsolved.

The reported motive for the children, who are in their 20s, for their three years of spying on their father was their suspicion that he was cheating on their mother. The two reportedly told investigators that they even once followed their father and caught him with another woman.

The Daily Times has been told that Ingle Sr., a Boeing engineer, was planning a trip back to India by himself shortly before he was beaten and stabbed to death in the Middletown home he shared with his wife.

It would seem unusual for a man's grown children to involve themselves so intimately (and illegally) in his personal life.

The investigation into Ingle's death is 11 months old and continues.

The nation's governors, led by our own Ed Rendell, will meet with President Elect Barack Obama today to ask for federal help in supplying them with billions of dollars for infrastructure improvements and medicaid payments for the poor.

Just where will Obama get the money remains, well, pretty clear.

The governors are finding it hard to raise taxes in their states. It's hard, you know, politically and procedurally. But they want the money anyway so they beg Washington.

Instead of the governors asking their citizens to cough up for themselves and their neighbors, they want Obama and his Democratic friends in Washington to run up the federal deficit or raise taxes.

Obama's problem: You can't cut taxes for 95 percent of taxpaying Americans and spend the kind of money the governors are talking about without running huge deficits. Which means, Obama isn't going to actually cut taxes for 95 percent of taxpayers. He won't and he never meant to.

Four years from now some clever Republican is going to ask the voters if they got the tax break Obama promised them during the 2008 campaign and if they're better off than they four years ago.

But voters are a forgiving lot. They will look at Obama's kind eyes and confident smile and they will want to stay the course.

Bret Stephens reminds his media colleagues that terrorists feed on false narratives, bad stories and lousy reporting driven by ideological nonsense.

It's a fair cop.

Bob Owens on six months of carrying a concealed weapon. Interesting.

But then there's the lesson of Plaxico Burress.

Study shows American teens lie, cheat, steal at "alarming" rates.

Also that they fill out surveys about their shortcomings with alarming honesty.

Spencerblog pal Phil House got this from his Cousin Pete.

Anybody got a caption?

BTW Mrs. Spencerblog had no idea who these musicians were. She's young.

Nittany Lions mascot Sheepish over DUI charge.

Money Q:

"The student in the mascot suit receives a scholarship, but Rushton said he did not know how much it was worth. In addition to football games, the mascot attends several hundred events a year and must maintain a 3.0 grade point average."

And something lower than a .08 blood alcohol level when driving his friends around.

Spencerblog says innocent until proven guilty before a jury of his peers.

Which would include Bucky Badger, Purdue Pete and Goldy the Gopher, Sparty, Brutus the Buckeye and Willie the Wildcat.

Hurricane Katrina whines about Obama's keeping of Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The anti-war left is still angry.

So far, so good.

Nobody Makes a Pencil but that doesn't mean nobody writes about it.

Meet Russ Roberts. He writes novels about economics. Boring, right?

Wrong.

Scroll down to the video. Very interesting.

Enter Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, stage right.

Spencerblog says let's blame Hillary.

We recall someone during this election cycle pointing out again and again Obama's donor base being made up of tens of thousands of small donors.

Except it turns out not to be true.

Oh well, as Jack Kennedy said upon beating Richard Nixon: "We're here, and they're there."

A college freshman offers advice to the GOP on how to compete for the youth vote. It's pretty good advice.

Money Q:

"Also, the Republican Party needs to explain that my generation is paying into a broken entitlement system, our borders are broken, and radical Islam is still growing in the dark corners of the world. Al Gore and the Democrats have teenagers convinced the seas are going to rise and flood New York City, but the Republican Party can’t convince us that we’re going to be bankrupt in 50 years?"

Yeah, where's the Leonardo DiCaprio of the entitlement crisis?

You gotta admit, it doesn't get any cheesier than this.

But I will take a dozen of the Biden Chia pets.

UPDATE: According to the ad the Obama plate is "priceless work of art." It's sells for $19.99. Priceless.

Groundbreaking for the MLS stadium in Chester today.

Let's see there will be politicians, developers, sports fans, and sausages.

The Sons of Ben sure are excited.

For us, it makes it all tangible, really,” said SOB Bryan James. “I think this is a really good sign that we’re going to be watching live professional soccer in 2010 in Chester.”

What do you mean "we," paleface?

Dr. Frederic Jarrett responds to Gov. Rendel's response to his WSJ Op-Ed on the medical insurance crisis here in Pennsylvania.

Money Q:

"Gov. Rendell is a master in the selective use of data and statistics. The figures I quoted on the number of physicians in Pennsylvania declining 6% between 2004 and 2006 and the figures on physician age in Pennsylvania are from the Pennsylvania Department of Health, a part of Gov. Rendell's administration, and my other figures are from the National Practitioner Data Bank and the American Medical Association Masterfile. I will stand by the figures I quoted. I hope the governor will stand by those of his own administration."

Who to believe?

Time to "man-up," Ed.