The night Mitch McConnell became the leader of the Republican Party... and Kennedy implodes

Hugh Hewitt:

A remarkable thing happened in the United States Senate earlier this evening, and it occurred over a rather unremarkable piece of legislation that was being debated. Conservatives, frustrated at the lack of a genuine leader of their party, may have finally found one in Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell.

After Democratic leader Harry Reid’s MoveOn.org all-night session Tuesday night, a move that resulted only in helping unify the weak-kneed Republicans who were peeling away from continued support of the Petraeus surge in Iraq, McConnell, the Republican leader, served notice to anyone watching C-SPAN that he now runs the Senate.

The Senate spent much of the day discussing the merits, or demerits, of HR 2669, the Student Loans and Grants Act. Maybe it was the culmination of a long week already, or maybe it was the upper chamber being lulled off guard by the increasingly senile senior Senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd, who spent 25 minutes decrying the plight of the helpless fight dog in response to the weird Michael Vick story in the news, but tonight, McConnell and the Republicans decided to take control of the Senate. The Republicans offered amendment after amendment to the bill, catching the Democrats flat-footed. In case you want to hear about the plight of the fight dog, here’s Robert Byrd’s Senate floor address [audio].

(Oh Lord, please let this man retire...soon!)

After a couple of Republican amendments failed, Mitch McConnell took to the floor and offered his own amendment, which was a Sense of the Senate that Guantanamo detainees not be allowed released or moved to U.S. soil. To conservatives, this obviously makes sense. To liberals, especially California’s Dianne Feinstein, one of the chief proponents of the effort to close the detention center at Gitmo and relocate these detainees into the American justice system, especially when tagged onto a student loan and grant bill, you’d think this measure would go down in flames. Except a funny thing happened. The bill was titled in a way that you had to vote yes to vote no, and no to vote yes. The final vote was 94-3, officially putting the Senate on record as saying terrorist detainees shouldn’t be moved to the U.S. Before the Democrats, who clearly hadn’t read the amendment, realized they screwed up, the vote was recorded.

Jim DeMint of South Carolina was the author of the next amendment in line, had just gotten the consent of Bernie Sanders, the presiding officer, to order the yeas and nays. Up stepped Massachusetts senior Senator Ted Kennedy, now obviously aware that he and his colleagues just got bamboozled, and went on a full-throated rant, with reckless disregard to obvious hypocrisy, and blasted DeMint and the Republicans for slowing down the works in the Senate. The rant is worth hearing, so here it is [audio].

(I repeat Lord, please also let this man retire...and soon!)
Thanks to the guys at Beyond the News for the videos, and Allah for the tips.

Billy Currington - Unofficial video for "Good Directions"

'John McCain and his colleagues in the Gang of 14 cost the GOP its Senate majority'

Hugh Hewitt:

... On April 15, 2005 - less than three months after President Bush had begun a second term won in part because of his pledge to fight for sound judges - Senator McCain appeared on Hardball and announced he would not support the "constitutional option" to end Democratic filibusters. Then, stunned by the furious reaction, the senator from Arizona cobbled together the Gang of 14 "compromise" that in fact destroyed the ability of the Republican Party to campaign on Democratic obstructionism while throwing many fine nominees under the bus. Now in the ruins of Tuesday there is an almost certain end to the slow but steady restoration of originalism to the bench. Had McCain not abandoned his party and then sabotaged its plans, there would have been an important debate and a crucial decision taken on how the Constitution operates. The result was the complete opposite. Yes, President Bush got his two nominees to SCOTUS through a 55-45 Senate, but the door is now closed, and the court still tilted left. A once-in-a-generation opportunity was lost. ...

Hugh blogs at TownHall.com

A pittance of time...

From a commenter on a recent Hugh Hewitt post:

Young Men and Women Going Off to War
My son graduated from high school this year. He, like many of his classmates, is now off to college; he's studying business. He's an entrepreneurial young man so this is just right for him. My son considered the military, and we'd gotten the occasional recruiter calls at the house for the last year because of my son's interest. In the end, he's off to college, but the military was a real option. One that my husband and I did not discourage.

My daughter, three years behind my son, wants to go to Annapolis. JAG then Harvard. She's got the grades to do it. We're doing everything we can to see that her dream happens.

One of my son's best buddies has joined the Coast Guard. Another buddy has joined the Army. These young men have been to my house numerous times over the last few years and they are both bright. One is a high-achiever - he is focused and knows just what he wants. The military is going to be better because of him. The other young man wasn't sure about which technical school he wanted to go to after high school, and decided that the military would give him options, benefits and purpose. In this case, the military is going to be good for a capable young man.

Throughout the past summer, every week or so my son reported on another classmate who signed up. Some were suprises, some were not. Now, these young men and women are from a wealthy area. We're five miles from the beaches of Southern California! Dude, these dudes and chicks could've gone surfin', for Pete's sake.

They did not have to join the military. But they did.

As a mom, whose son didn't make that choice, I am so deeply touched and impressed by these young men and women, who have options - choices - to do anything they want, and yet still decide to serve this nation. They, and everyone else that signed up for military service, are what make this country great.

(Yes, I expect my son to make this country great, too, through business and commerce, and he'd better darn well have created jobs for his classmates and others who end their service and get into the job market.)

And I know that what happened in my town this past summer also happened in many, many towns across America.

There's a reason why members of the audience gasped at John Kerry's offensive remark. It's because we know the people that he insulted, for the sake of a joke, and they're not worthy of such shabby treatment.

Anybody can make a joke, even John Kerry. But when you pony up to the microphone, make a public speech, trade on your celebrity status and do everything possible to draw attention to yourself, then you'd be wise to take your pot shots at others like yourself - public figures and toadies. Not our service men and women, not when we're fighting a treacherous war that requires every person to keep his or her wits about them.

The US military is all volunteer. No one is being conscripted to fight. Even those who signed up because it was their best economic choice - or because it's a chance to put their troubles behind and start over - deserve our respect for making this decision. The military has a way of educating a young person and making a better person out of him or her. As an organization, this is to be respected as well.

No matter how hard Kerry and the nostalgic media wants this to be Vietnam, it just isn't. And they cannot treat our young people as if they've been forced to do this or made a bad or wrong decision.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T find out what it means um-hum.

Some of the very best blog reading comes from comments like this one... and a great video from Terry Kelly.

John Kerry may have meant to slam George Bush, but at the very least it was a Freudian slip indicating how he and the Democrats really do feel about our military... that they're either uneducated victims or ruthless murderers.

Rush: John Kerry Said the Same Things About the American Military in 1972

What media bias? - A roundup...

USA Today Pronounces Iraq War Not 'Right' Vote

In another grand example of "journalistic" integrity, USA Today has declared the Iraq war a total failure even as we are still in the middle of it all. With that "truth" reported, I'd like to have their crystal ball to get the next lottery numbers, too.

What photo should we run today?

Roughly one in six or seven of my e-mails over the last 12 hours has included an attachment of the famous "Stuck in Irak" banner response to John Kerry. Hugh Hewitt notes MSM newspapers where you can't find the photo and wants to know if it ran in your local paper.

Hume Marvels at How Papers Buried Kerry Story, Cites ABC Quote Highlighted by NB

“The John Kerry flap may have been the major political story yesterday, and even today,” Brit Hume accurately noted in his Wednesday “Grapevine” segment since, indeed, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts led with it both Tuesday and Wednesday night. But he observed, “you might not have known that from the newspaper coverage. Not a single front-page headline in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal or USA Today.

Nothing You See in Drive-By Media Makes Sense

Not only are they talking about Republicans losing, they're now starting to talk about how this country loves the Democrats. I'm sorry, folks, but I don't believe it and I don't see it. The Democrats haven't done anything to earn this victory. The Republicans may have done things to deserve losing, but I even tried to explain that away. It's tough for conservatives in the House to be conservative when their president isn't as conservative as they are, issue by issue by issue. For example, you who hold the immigration issue as your first and foremost important issue, you realize if the Democrats win the House we're going to get an amnesty program. It will happen. They will vote for it. It's the Republicans in the House who have provided the only reason that we don't have amnesty now. They stood up to the Senate bill. I've always assumed, at least people in this audience, are bright enough, informed enough to figure all this out and not be swayed by the daily onslaught of Drive-By Media. That's why I watch this stuff, and so much of it just didn't click with me intellectually, none of it makes sense. The portrayal of Republican voters doesn't make sense in terms of the way I understand Republican voters and conservatives. And that, frankly, is what has me scratching my head and I'm sure a lot of you, too, as our last two callers have expressed it.

Media’s ‘Botched Joke’ Double-Standard: Remember Trent Lott?

The firestorm ignited on Tuesday concerning Sen. John Kerry’s insensitive remarks in front of a group of students in Pasadena, California, once again demonstrates the media’s double-standard regarding jokes made by politicians: if you’re a Democrat, the press get it; if you’re a Republican, fuggetaboutit!

Barack Obama Only "Sounds Like" a Liberal? Sen. Obama gets the Hillary Clinton centering treatment.

"Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has become the prize catch of the midterm campaign. More sought after than virtually every other Democrat, Mr. Obama was fully booked, long ago, on a schedule to take him across a large swath of the country to help his party try to win control of Congress."

Kornblut, like most of the press, slides by Obama's liberal views in favor of forwarding his self-styled pose as a moderate.

Suddenly, the New York Times is worried about dangerous disclosures

The NYTimes blabbermouths are accusing the Bush administration of being careless with national security data?

Ouch. Stop. Sides. Splitting.

... Just another rich and ripe example of how the Times' problem is, you know, that it's too "evenhanded."

Liberal bias in media is no secret, but now it’s proven

To watch the nightly network news, you might think that (a) America is everything that’s wrong with the world, (b) Barack Obama’s emergence on the national scene is like the Second Coming of Christ, (c) the country has turned en masse against the Republican Party in numbers not seen since Watergate, and (d) Kevin Federline may actually have a promising rap career.

ABC News Agrees With Kerry- Troops Are Dumb

Notice how ABC agrees that Kerry's slam on the military was just "a joke"?
And, how could ABC possibly question that our troops are stupid as Kerry "jokes" when the facts show that Kerry is not just insulting but wrong.

Media 'In The Tank' For Liberals

Do journalists have an agenda this election season? It sure looks that way. A study released Tuesday by a media watchdog group concludes that news coverage on network TV skews heavily toward Democrats.

The study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs confirms what we've been saying for a long time: The media's liberal beliefs get in the way of honest reporting of elections and other key elements of our democracy, like the economy.

Why It's Pointless for Me [Rush] To Go on CNN

RUSH: CNN, they're doing their bit tonight with the Michael J. Fox flap. And they're running promos every ten minutes. Every ten minutes. You know if I didn't know better I think I'd become a movie star. I'd think I'm Tom Cruise, they're talking about me so damn much -- and, of course, the promo includes this video of me that totally misinterprets, they misinterpret, purposely, what I did and said about Michael J. Fox in that ad, and I want to say again: We have sent transcripts to CNN. We have talked to them personally. We've explained all that and what it was, and it doesn't matter. You know, many of you, and I understand this, many of you have written me, "Why don't you go on television? Why don't you answer some of this? Why don't you go out beyond your audience?"

Folks, believe me. I'm one person who can't do this. They've all asked. There is a line a mile long of television shows asking me to do this. But, for crying out loud, if even after talking to us and getting transcripts they insist on getting it wrong, what's the point of taping an interview that they could then edit or what's the point of going on live when they have no interest in getting it right in the first place, and who knows what they'll run after I finish? I am not going to give them ammo, and I'm not going to go out and build up their ratings simply by showing up and allowing them to promote it all over the place.

November surprise! NYT plans page-one Iraq WMD splash for tomorrow

Well, on the bright side, at least they’re not making a pretense of being impartial anymore.

Only two possibilities here:
1. They have evidence that someone in the administration knew there were no WMDs.
2. They have evidence that Saddam was further along in his nuke program than we thought.

The election’s in five days so I think we can safely rule out number two.

Watch Fox News... fair and balanced.

Liberal insider: MSM is 'overwhelmingly to the left' and 15-25:1 Democrat...

Dave Pierre at NewsBusters pointed me to a very interesting and candid conversation that Hugh Hewitt had with 25-year WaPo veteran Thomas B. Edsall...

HH: And so, why do you think it’s wrong, somehow, for people to want to hear news that they don’t consider as biased? I mean, that’s what it is. It’s just unbiased news is what people wanted. That’s why conservatives like me got platforms, and our blogs get read, and our columns get absorbed.

TE: One, I don’t think it’s unbiased.

HH: It’s transparent at least. Everyone has bias. I agree with that. Everyone’s got bias.

TE: It’s transparent. Okay, that I would agree. And I agree that whatever you want to call it, mainstream media, presents itself as unbiased, when in fact, there are built into it, many biases, and they are overwhelmingly to the left.

HH: Well, that’s very candid.

Candid indeed! Here's another snippet of interest:

HH: He probably is a Republican. But given that number of reporters out there, is it ten to one Democrat to Republican? Twenty to one Democrat to Republican?

TE: It’s probably in the range of 15-25:1 Democrat.

HH: Can the mainstream media ever be fair as a result?

TE: Well, you know, you’re asking, I think, a wrong question. I think the problem is that there is a real difficulty on the part of the mainstream media being sympathetic, or empathetic, whatever the word would be, to the kind of thinking that goes into conservative approaches to issues. I think the religious right has been treated as sort of an alien world…

It is what it is... which is why so many of us are getting news from other places.

Transcript here. Audio here.

Israel trying to exist...

War in the Mid-East
Hezbollah Declares “Open War” on Israel

• An Israeli naval ship has been lightly damaged by an unmanned Hezbollah aircraft filled with explosives, according to the Israeli Defense Forces.

• The UN Security Council has called an emergency meeting to discuss the Lebanon-Israel conflict.

• Israeli warplanes have destroyed Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut. The terrorist organization has said its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, is safe and unharmed.

• The Vatican has condemned Israel’s use of force.

Developing…

Friday, July 14, 3:44 p.m. EST – In the worst conflict the area has seen in more than 20 years, Israel is now fighting a two-front war. As the majority of world leaders condemn Israel’s recent invasion of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, the crisis in the Middle East continues to escalate.

On July 12, the terrorist organization launched rocket attacks across Israel’s northern border, killing three Israeli soldiers and capturing two. Soon after, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) invaded Lebanon in an effort to force Hezbollah to release recently captured Israeli soldiers. The terrorist group has demanded the release of prisoners being held by Israel. A total of eight Israeli soldiers have died since the attack.

The IDF reported that more than 700 Katyusha rockets have been fired into Israel by Hezbollah. 49 people have been injured since this morning and over 220,000 Israelis are now taking cover in bomb shelters.

Powerline says... it's war.

Hugh Hewitt talks with Dennis Prager and Michael Medved about the war in Israel... here.

David Horowitz discusses... Israel at war:

There are those who have branded this latest conflict a continuation of Israel's War of Independence, and there is no little truth in the assertion. On both of the fronts on which Israel has been drawn into heavy fighting, its enemies can make no legitimate claim to be pursuing a territorial dispute: as of last summer, Israel relinquished its hold on the Gaza Strip; in Lebanon, it pulled back to the UN-certified international border six years ago.

Except that, in both cases, the Jewish state's assailants are indeed pursuing a territorial ambition - to unseat Israel from its own sovereign lands.

Israel has watched Hizbullah build up its offensive capability in the years since the security zone was dismantled - watched it, ever bolder, establishing its positions up against the border fence and saw it developing its missile capability - and chose not to act. That stance was misinterpreted as weakness.

Gillerman confronts Palestinian ambassador in UN hallway... video courtesy of Allahpundit.

Thankfully, Bush says... Israel has a right to defend itself.

Iran and it's Hezbollah allies are behind this... as if the Middle East was a chessboard.

Consider: Israel takes out Tehran's nuclear capabilities... to whatever degree it can. The U.S. takes out Kim Bong Il's rocket pads and storage facilities.

This is happening in large part because of the lack of strength and will that the Islamofacists sense in the U.S. and in Israel right now. Time to show some strength. You can't ration with these people.

Israel was giving up it's land! The truth is that to Iran, Syria, Al Queida, Hezbollah, Hamas... it's not just about wiping Israel off the map. They want Islamic Rule EVERYWHERE. The strategy of Israel giving land back was wrong. They want everything, and to Evil it was simply a sign of weakness and an invitation to attack.

-Home-

Helen Thomas is a loon...

Today's press briefing at the White House was again a highlight for the always-looney Helen Thomas.

I truly don't understand why she remains in the front row during press briefings...or why she's there at all for that matter. Her "questions" are so rediculously loaded and slanted...she's a joke.

Here's some good coverage as Bush Defends Decisions on Iraq War.

Ian over at Expose the Left has the video here:
(or click on the image below)



He's got more of Ms. Thomas in a powder-puff interview with Wolf Blitzer here... if you can take it.

Mary Katherine Ham has coverage over at Hugh Hewitt:

Oh, man. If you get a chance to watch clips of the Bush press conference this morning, please do. He was on fire.

Helen Thomas proffered a typically balanced, fair question: "All of the reasons you gave for going to war have been proven wrong, so what I want to know is-- why did you really want to go to war?"

He called Helen "flat wrong" about four times--"with all due respect" of course. He had to shush her four times to finish his answer.

He also called out Elizabeth (I'm assuming Bumiller) for being half-asleep during a recent press conference. Oh, fun times.

Here's the transcript from the White House.

It was great to see The President come out fighting. Not so great to see --> (yikes!)

-Home-

NSA Updates...

Pajamas Media has got it covered with their NSA Files.

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Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says "Monitoring the enemy is necessary and appropriate" today at WSJ.com Opinion Journal.

The Financial Times reports on how Gonzales will respond to questioning.

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Stop the ACLU says "ACLU Welcomes Senate Inquiry Into Warrantless NSA Spying Program With Full Page Propaganda."

"It should get interesting today as one side accuses the administration of spying on innocent Americans without any evidence to back them up, and the other side defends what was supposed to be a secret program designed to defend us from the enemy. Why anyone should have to defend trying to spy on the enemy is just ridiculous to me.

Am I a Bush apologist? No, I haven’t heard any viable reason why he hasn’t secured our borders, and there are several other issues I have qualms with Bush about. However, listening in on the conversations of those talking to the people who want to kill us is not one of those issues. Constantly spinning this to compare it to what Nixon did is completely dishonest and has no evidence to back it up. These people are spies on our own soil, and in many cases admitted terrorists. I have seen no evidence that any innocent citizen has been harmed by this program, but I have seen evidence that it has captured admitted terrorists."

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Atlas Shrugs says "I ask only that you read the following treasonous story void of prejudice and passion:" Hugh Hewitt

"The American Spectator's Jed Babbin was on John Batchelor's radio show yesterday, and stated that the intelligence community believes West Virignia Senator Jay Rockefeller is the leaker who illegally supplied the New York Times with the details of the NSA program.

Given that the CIA's Porter J. Goss stated emphatically that the leak had done very serious damage to the United States, if Rockefeller is a suspect, he should be hauled before a Grand Jury asap. When the crime was bribery (Abscam) no one protested that a sitting U.S. Senator ought not to be a target.

If the crime is much more serious --and this is-- purported good intentions should not shield the suspect.via instapundit

Has any member of the press asked Rockefeller point blank if he's the law breaker yet?"

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It is important for America to see the severity, the gravity of these crimes against America. The left may hate Bush, blame Bush, but the Amerian people elected him. So it is the American people the left holds in contempt and wishes to deliver into dhimmitude - dar al islam.


Check this out: "Al Qaeda, not the FBI, is the greater threat to America" by Debra Burlingame

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From Gary Bauer:

"If President Bush's much-maligned program to intercept communication from Al Qaeda suspects abroad to people in the U.S. had been in place before September 11th, the attacks may have been thwarted. That is what Debra Burlingame suggests in a Wall Street Journal column this morning. For those who may not recognize her name, Debra Burlingame is the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on that horrible morning. I believe Debra Burlingame is right.

Two of the hijackers of flight 77 were Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi. The two hijackers lived in San Diego and received more than a dozen phone calls from an Al Qaeda "switchboard" in Yemen. The National Security Agency (NSA) had the numbers being called in the U.S. but didn't intercept the calls because of fear the agency would be accused of domestic spying. "The rest is history."

By the way, in case you are wondering who Debra Burlingame's source is - it is none other than NBC. It aired a story in 2004 by senior correspondent Lisa Myers, who called the failure to intercept the calls one of the "missed opportunities that could have saved 3,000 lives." Today, NBC and all the networks call the same phone intercepts "domestic spying." So, according to "big media" the Bush Administration failed when it didn't intercept phone calls into the U.S. from known terrorists, and it is violating the Constitution now when it does intercept such calls."

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Bush Derangement Syndrome exists...here, here, here, here, here, here, here...