And at New York Times, "Adding Thrills When Flying Upside Down Just Isn’t Enough."
BONUS: Also at Theo's, a really inspired "pic dump" over there as well this morning.
WASHINGTON — Generations of children learned the basics of the American legislative process from a “Schoolhouse Rock” cartoon, in which “Bill” sings, “If he signs me, then I’ll be a law.”Well, ROBAMA wouldn't want to preserve tradition, especially something traditional dealing with the Constitution. No surprise here at all.
But now, apparently for the first time in United States history, a bill has been signed into law by autopen, at the direction of President Obama, who is in Europe on a weeklong trip.
Congress on Thursday passed legislation extending the Patriot Act for four years. With the existing terror-fighting authorities set to expire at midnight Thursday, the White House concluded that a mechanical signature would have to do.
With that, Mr. Obama turned the autopen, a machine that reproduces signatures and is ubiquitous in government and business for routine transactions — letters, photos, promotional materials — into the ultimate stand-in.
He and his lawyers also found a way around a routine but costly tradition, in which White House staff members fly, unsigned legislation in hand, to wherever the president happens to be.
That tradition dates back decades.
The reason we are not a member of the international court is that the work is left to prosecutors who are drawn from a variety of countries who very often cannot understand what the issues are. I do not favor the International Criminal Court, but not even remotely out of fear for myself.At the video clip, Kissinger indicates that the ICC has "started a process where some American officials are reluctant to travel abroad for fear that somebody will launch some sort of indictment against them ..." Yeah, and Israeli officials as well. In 2009 a British court issued an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, former Israeli foreign minister, to stand trial on war crimes charges. It's "lawfare" against the international systems' great power and their allies.
Equating Noam Chomsky – a world-renowned public intellectual, linguist, writer, and emeritus professor at one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the world – to some marginal, goblin-like hate-monger as Horowitz is just plain foolish.
What “threat” of Sharia Law do you speak of? What Israeli “democracy” do you speak of? Your rhetoric is tired and ineffective.
Backround at Reuters: "Wisconsin man charged with plan to attack abortion clinic." The suspect's a nut-job. But in the sick progressive mindset, someone like this is even more dangerous than the September 11 attackers or the likes of Khalid Shaikh Muhammad. See: "The troubled mind of a would-be abortion doctor assassin."
RELATED: Lemieux's got a piece on the Goodwin Liu filibuster fiasco, "Let My Judges Go!"
The piece is getting ripped in the comments:
Where the heck was your similar article when the Democrats deep-sixed a bunch of George W. Bush's nominees!? You Progressives are really something else. The one-sided reporting makes this article complete garbage.And:
It is totally ridiculous to try to portray Liu as anything other than the radical left extremist that he has shown himself to be by his writings. Not to mention the fact that he has absolutely no judicial experience.Progressives only hate the filibuster when it messes up their side. Just ask George W. Bush appointees Miguel Estrada, Priscilla Owens, etc. Democrat filibusters at the time were unprecedented. Lemieux is an America-hating hack. He's lucky to have landed a post with a bunch of liberation theologists, or whatever.
Perhaps Obama should consider nominating people who are not guaranteed to be activist judges who believe that they can interpret the Constitution any way they like.
Also, a Steven Crowder clip at Barking Moonbat.
Robert Gates, who steps down next month after four-plus years at the Pentagon, is making his retirement lap a tutorial on America's defense spending and security needs. His message is welcome, especially on Memorial Day, and even if he couldn't always heed it in his time as Secretary of Defense.More at the link at top. The statistics on "entitlement overstretch" are staggering.
In a series of farewell speeches, Mr. Gates has warned against cuts to weapon programs and troop levels that would make America vulnerable in "a complex and unpredictable security environment," as he said Sunday at Notre Dame. On Tuesday at the American Enterprise Institute, Mr. Gates noted that the U.S. went on "a procurement holiday" in the 1990s, when the Clinton Administration decided to cash in the Cold War peace dividend. The past decade showed that history (and war) didn't end in 1989.
"It is vitally important to protect the military modernization accounts," he said, and push ahead with new capabilities, from an air refueling tanker fleet to ballistic missile submarines.
In the coming weeks and months, the threats to Israel will surely only increase. And with these escalating threats will come also the escalating need for strong and certain leadership.Read it all.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was hoping to avoid his clash with US President Barack Obama this week in Washington.
Four days before his showdown at the White House with the American leader, Netanyahu addressed the Knesset. His speech was the most dovish he had ever given. In it, he set out the parameters of the land concessions he is willing to make to the Palestinians, in the event they ever decide that they are interested in negotiating a final peace.
Among other things, Netanyahu spoke for the first time about “settlement blocs,” and so signaled that he would be willing to evacuate the more isolated Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. He also spoke of a longterm military presence in the Jordan Valley rather than Israeli sovereignty along the militarily vital plain.
Both strategically and ideologically, Netanyahu’s speech constituted a massive concession to Obama. The premier had good reason to believe that his speech would preempt any US demand for further Israeli concessions during his visit to Washington.
Alas, it was not to be. Instead of welcoming Netanyahu’s unprecedented concessions, Obama dismissed them as insufficient as he blindsided Netanyahu last Thursday with his speech at the State Department. There, just hours before Netanyahu was scheduled to fly off to meet him in the Oval Office, Obama adopted the Palestinian negotiating position by calling for Israel to accept that future negotiations will be based on the indefensible – indeed suicidal – 1949 armistice lines.
So, just as he was about to board his plane, Netanyahu realized that his mission in the US capital had changed ...
Reporting from Washington— In the clearest indication to date that she is seriously considering a presidential run, Sarah Palin plans to launch a nationwide bus tour Sunday from Washington.Also, from Chris Cillizza, "Fast Fix: Is Sarah Palin back? (VIDEO)."
"Gov. Palin and the SarahPAC team will begin a trip through our nation's rich historical sites, starting from Washington, D.C., and going up through New England," said a statement posted Thursday on Palin's political action committee website. "The 'One Nation Tour' is part of our new campaign to educate and energize Americans about our nation's founding principles, in order to promote the fundamental restoration of America."
The website RealClearPolitics, which first reported the story, said the tour could last several weeks and would be divided into separate geographical stretches, according to unnamed sources close to the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential nominee.
The first stop will be at the Rolling Thunder Memorial Day weekend motorcycle rally in Washington. A New England tour would seem to suggest a visit to New Hampshire, which hosts the first 2012 presidential primary.
Palin said as recently as last week that she was still considering a run, but refused to offer any clues as to her timetable for making a decision. Her website said the tour was being funded through her PAC.
Leading off is Pirate's Cove with his latest in "you must be a warmist" series. Plus, nearly NSFW at Theo's.
And don't miss Bob Belvedere's fabulous Rule 5 entry: " A Little Hump Day Rule 5: Lorrie-Menconi."Anyway, here's some link around action: Astute Bloggers, Bob Belvedere, CSPT, Dan Collins, Eye of Polyphemus, Gator Doug, Irish Cicero, Left Coast Rebel, Mind-Numbed Robot, Legal Insurrection, Lonely Conservative, PA Pundits International, PACNW Righty, Pirate's Cove, Proof Positive, Saberpoint, Snooper, WyBlog, The Western Experience, and Zion's Trumpet.
Plus, top it off with with American Perspective, Maggie's Notebook and Zilla of the Resistance.
Let me know if I need to add your blog to the roundup.
BERKELEY, Calif. — Tom Dalzell was thrilled last month when he came across a weird new verb: "rickroll."More at the link.
Then he went online and saw that "rickrolling"—the Internet prank that involves sending someone a link to the music video for Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up"—has been around for four years. That's an eon in the world of slang, enough time to render a term stale.
For most people, being late to a language trend isn't a problem. But Mr. Dalzell, a 59-year-old union leader by day and slang expert after hours, is now in the process of updating the New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. And as informal language evolves faster than ever, Mr. Dalzell is finding it trickier to keep up.
"Yesterday's cutting-edge is today's ho-hum," he says.
The problem: Slang is born when groups outside the mainstream invent their own language—verbal code that can quickly lose its punch once others catch on. That process used to take a while. But now that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter let people post messages for anyone to see, slang gets exposed much more quickly.
"It's really shortened the shelf life," says Mr. Dalzell, who is considered to be a real "big noise," or a very important person, among word whizzes like Jesse Sheidlower, editor-at-large at the Oxford English Dictionary.
I had a great time in class. I was always tired from work but your personality made the class fun, and refreshing ...She's a very nice young woman, a legal immigrant from Mexico who supports strict border enforcement. I don't think she'd approve of students dropping f-bombs, or their professors who award them for it.
So just how do America’s media finest manage to write the exact opposite of the truth? Why, by interviewing Israel’s finest from the media and intelligentsia, and treating as authoritative their views – which basically consist of little more than ‘Bibi is a menace because he is not left-wing, and all not-left-wing people are right-wing and thus an interruption to the natural order of things’.
That’s the prism through which the western media and intelligentsia generally refract so much of their reporting, not to mention their opinions. The western intelligentsia basically has its head stuck firmly up its own fundament. Small wonder the west is being led up the garden path and off the edge of that cliff.
While the president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were debating the shape of a future two-state solution, the Egyptian government was exercising its own options in the region.RELATED: At ABC News, "Israel Struggles to Stop Weapons Smuggling at Sea."
Tomorrow Egypt will open its only crossing into Hamas-controlled Gaza — a crossing that under the “cold peace” it has observed with Israel had remained closed since the Hamas take-over four years ago.
Of course, Gazans had improvised over those years, making their way into Egypt and back home again by way of a series of illegal tunnels — but not so illegal that Hamas didn’t attempt to collect taxes on goods coming into Gaza at their checkpoints...
Israel’s very real fear is over the possible flow of weapons and/or militants into Gaza, putting residents of southern Israel in further danger of ever more powerful rockets coming over the border from Gaza — not a pretty side of the Arab Spring.
Personally, I am at a loss as to how a white t shirt can endanger anyone's safety. It is absurd that a school principal could suspend students for such a lame-ass reason, in effect, acting as judge, jury and executioner. It seems he has punished these students for "thought crimes," even though he doesn't know for sure what they were thinking. He punished them "just in case" they might do something wrong in the future, and that greatly offends my sense of justice.Mine too.
