Cartoons to really piss off the Muslims

More at Cracked. Via Ace.

Dems have change of heart

Congressional Democrats shocked the world this evening, apologizing for years of partisan bickering and promising to make amends with the administration. As a symbol of their commitment, the Democratic delegation offered up an all-expense-paid hunting trip for Messrs. Bush and Cheney in the wilds of Maine.

In other news: The vice-president blasts his hunting buddy in the face.

Jimmy Carter, warrantless eavesdropper

Former President Jimmy Carter, who publicly rebuked President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program this week during the funeral of Coretta Scott King and at a campaign event, used similar surveillance against suspected spies.

Thanks Polipundit.

Steyn on self-censorship

On request from Stu Down Under, Mark Steyn writes on those wacky Muslims and the people they threaten to kill:

That's the question the Danish newspaper was testing: the weakness of free societies in the face of intimidation by militant Islam.

One day, years from now, as archaeologists sift through the ruins of an ancient civilization for clues to its downfall, they'll marvel at how easy it all was. You don't need to fly jets into skyscrapers and kill thousands of people. As a matter of fact,
that's a bad strategy, because even the wimpiest state will feel obliged to respond. But if you frame the issue in terms of multicultural "sensitivity," the wimp state will bend over backward to give you everything you want -- including,
eventually, the keys to those skyscrapers. Thus, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, hailed the "sensitivity" of Fleet Street in not reprinting the offending cartoons.

...

One day the British foreign secretary will wake up and discover that, in practice, there's very little difference between living under Exquisitely Refined Multicultural Sensitivity and Sharia. As a famously sensitive Dane once put it, "To be or not to be, that is the question."

Bush Administration bows to insane Muslim mobs

Muslims around the world go nuts over cartoons about Muhammad (see them here). The Bush Administration supports them:

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, reading the U.S. government's statement on the controversy, said, "Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief."

But the federal government subsidizes anti-Christian images!

Harriet, we hardly knew ye

Over at PoliPundit, DJ Drummond still can't admit that he was wrong in his blind loyalty to President Bush and his vehement support for Harriet Miers. He asks:

1. President George W. Bush has a very good track record for his decisions and appointments overall, but especially for his judicial picks. That suggests that there was a sound reason why he chose Miers for the high court. Insulting the woman by presuming she was just a crony, insulting Bush by claiming he feared a fight with Liberals, or insulting the Senate by pretending they would rubber-stamp anyone appointed for the Supreme Court without a reasonable review, are just puerile evasions of the main question - what did President Bush see in Miers that convinced him she was not only suitable for the post, but the best first choice?

2. Prior to the Miers nomination, most leading Republicans and especially Conservatives demanded that a Presidential nominee be allowed a vote - up or down - without attempts to ambush the candidate or obstruct a fair examination and decision on the nomination. When Miers was nominated, many Conservatives abandoned that principle and demanded her withdrawal before even a minute of hearings. What damage, if any, has this hypocrisy done to the Republican Party, and how might such equivocation show up again to the cost of Conservative plans?

3. A key difference between Democrats and Republicans in recent years, is the ability to debate internal issues and resolve them while still respecting minority viewpoints witin the party. That ability, while annoying at times, is alive in the Republican Party, but quite dead in the Democratic Party. For example, there are gay Republicans and there are Republicans who find the gay lifestyle offensive, but they can both support the party. No anti-gay Democrat has a voice in the party of ‘Tolerance’. There are pro-Life Republicans and there are pro-Choice Republicans, but there are no pro-Life Democrats willing to take a stand on that issue. There are Small Government Republicans and there are Big Government Republicans, but there are no Small Government Democrats. The list goes on. Has the Miers debate damaged the Republican Party in the eyes of most Americans, or did their ability to debate a Presidential appointment reinforce the character in the GOP which is so sadly deficient on the Democrat’s side?

My answers:

1) Bush saw that Harry Reid liked her, and he didn’t want a tough confirmation battle. Any claims that she is either a brilliant Constitutional scholar or conservative are completely refuted by her record in Texas as a politician and a lawyer.

2) “Up or down vote” is about being against filibusters. It’s not about questioning the credentials of the nominee. Miers was not filibustered. If President Bush nominated a failed horse enthusiast for FEMA again, would you demand that he go through confirmation hearings and get “an up or down vote"? I wouldn’t. I’d be relieved when the administration realized its mistake and withdrew the nominee.

3) Most Americans won’t remember the Republican debate over Miers. It was a good thing for the party, though. It proved that some Republicans will stand up for principle and insist their leaders do the right thing.

Big vote

Today is a huge opportunity for the Republicans to show they're not a party of corruption and incumbency.

House Republicans vote for a new Majority Leader today, and whom they pick will tell us a lot about how they view the performance of this Congress so far. Are they proud of the record amount of pork-barrel spending? Or that they ran for cover at the earliest criticism of President Bush's plans for Social Security reform?

Go Shadegg!

UPDATE: Well, Shadegg didn't win, but Boehner's a hell of a lot better than Blunt.