PrairiePundit

Times: Well, that didn't take long, did it? After six months of economic hardship and one unusually chilly winter, it seems that Americans are beginning to conclude that perhaps global warming wasn't such a big deal after all. Blowing $30,000 on a solar roof doesn't seem such a great move these days. And for the price of a Toyota Prius you can now buy a three-bedroomed house in Detroit with enough left for a pick-up truck (this isn't a joke - the median house price in Motor City is $7,500). The ranks of America's “climate sceptics” have been growing quietly for some months now. And at the weekend a watershed was reached: the usually left-wing New York Times put the British-born physicist Freeman Dyson on the front of its Sunday magazine. The article inside revealed that Professor Dyson - 85 years old and based in Princeton - not only possesses one of the finest noodles on Planet Earth, but also happens to think that most of what Al Gore and his band of Unmerry Men...

Houston Chronicle: Mexican drug traffickers could be disguising themselves as U.S. federal agents to trick their rivals, a new law-enforcement advisory indicates. Mexico’s Gulf Cartel may have 40 bullet-proof vests emblazoned with “FBI” and “DEA,” according to the advisory, which is circulating among local, state and federal law officers this week. Baseball caps and T-shirts with the agencies’ names have long been a fad among everyday citizens, but ballistic armor raises the stakes and concerns, officials said. “It is believed the Gulf Cartel intended to use the vests as a distraction while they were conducting enforcement activities against their victims,” reads the advisory from an FBI intelligence coordinator. ... “We know the traffickers wear ballistic vests, there is no doubt about it,” he said. “But with them saying FBI or DEA on it; we don’t know what they are going to use them for,” he said of the prospect of cartel members wearing the vests. “We don’t know if they are usin...

From the Times: Iran hits out at troop surge in Afghanistan That is my recollection. They were wrong then and now, but, then they want the US to fail. It is too bad that the Obama administration does not recognize this fact.

Washington Post: The Obama administration decided Tuesday to seek a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council, reversing a decision by the Bush administration to shun the United Nations' premier rights body to protest the influence of repressive states. "Human rights are an essential element of American global foreign policy," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement. "With others, we will engage in the work of improving the U.N. human rights system. . . . We believe every nation must live by and help shape global rules that ensure people enjoy the right to live freely and participate fully in their societies." The United States announced it would participate in elections in May for one of three seats on the 47-member council, joining a slate that includes Belgium and Norway. ... Obama seems to have the belief that casting ones pearls of wisdom before swine can have some benefit. Experience suggest that when it comes to the UN human rights o...

USNI: With tensions already rising due to the Chinese navy becoming more aggressive in asserting its territorial claims in the South China Sea, the U.S. Navy seems to have yet another reason to be deeply concerned. After years of conjecture, details have begun to emerge of a "kill weapon" developed by the Chinese to target and destroy U.S. aircraft carriers. First posted on a Chinese blog viewed as credible by military analysts and then translated by the naval affairs blog Information Dissemination, a recent report provides a description of an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) that can strike carriers and other U.S. vessels at a range of 2000km. The range of the modified Dong Feng 21 missile is significant in that it covers the areas that are likely hot zones for future confrontations between U.S. and Chinese surface forces. The size of the missile enables it to carry a warhead big enough to inflict significant damage on a large vessel, providing the Chinese the capabili...

CNN: While President Obama has insisted that securing Afghanistan against a rise in terrorist groups is a top priority in the war on terrorism, Sen. John McCain said Tuesday that the problems in that country are not as thorny as those in Iraq. "It's [Afghanistan's] not as tough as Iraq, and don't let anyone tell you that it is, because when we started the [2007] surge, Iraq was virtually in a state of collapse," McCain said during a speech at The Foreign Policy Initiative. President Obama announced a troop increase Friday of 4,000 in Afghanistan, in addition to the 17,000 previously announced. Obama said those troops will help train the Afghan army and police. While McCain said he supports the president's efforts in Afghanistan, he would increase the Afghan army beyond the planned levels. "I would have announced a dramatic increase in the Afghan army. I'm talking about a 200, 250 thousand-person army. It's a big country, it's a big populat...

OK, it is silly, but also funny. Is there anything Billy Mays can't do?

Matt Patterson: Ah, spring, when the earth slowly wakes from its winter slumber, a warming welcomed by nearly every living thing. Hard to believe some silly people are deathly afraid of warming weather — worried sick because the earth has warmed a degree or two over the last 150 years. Make no mistake — the earth has warmed. Unfortunately for the climate-change catastrophists, warming periods have occurred throughout recorded history, long before the Industrial Revolution and SUVs began spitting man-made carbon into the atmosphere. And as might be expected, these warm periods have invariably proven a blessing for humanity. Consider: Around the 3rd century B.C., the planet emerged from a long cold spell. The warm period which followed lasted about 700 years, and since it coincided with the rise of Pax Romana, it is known as the Roman Warming. In the 5th century A.D., the earth’s climate became cooler. Cold and drought pushed the tribes of northern Europe south against the Roman...

The AP reports that Mehsud, the leader of a Taliban faction took credit for the attack on the police academy and also threatened " an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world." Such an attack would probably lead to the US directly attacking Mehsud's Taliban with ground troops. AFP has a better report: Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud on Tuesday claimed responsibility for a deadly assault on a police academy and threatened to attack Washington. "We claim responsibility for the attack. This was in retaliation for the ongoing drone attacks in the tribal areas. There will be more such attacks," Mehsud told AFP in a telephone conversation from an unknown location. "Very soon we will take revenge from America, not in Afghanistan but in Washington, which will amaze the entire world," Mehsud warned. ... It sounds like we need to increase our UAV attacks in his area of operation and do a better ...

Andrew McCarthy: A s the U.S. government’s myriad intrusions radically transform our economy, few seem to notice the dangerous progress of the international Left’s assault on American sovereignty. Without firing a shot, transnational progressives are further along than the Soviet Union could ever have reasonably hoped to be, notwithstanding Lenin’s prescient understanding that we would willingly participate in our own demise. In the Left’s sights is the very concept of the American people’s right of self-defense. The New York Times reports that a Spanish court is considering filing human-rights charges, and issuing arrest warrants, against former attorney general Alberto Gonzales and five other Bush administration officials. The putative defendants did not carry out a single belligerent act, conduct a single interrogation, or direct the operation of any military or intelligence agents actually engaged in hostilities. What these former White House, Justice Department, and Pentagon att...

Washington Times: Halfway through a 25-month sentence for theft, Brian Gumbo is literally rotting away - his skin peels because of malnutrition and the muscles in his legs have withered to the point where he can barely walk. Mr. Gumbo, thought to be in his late 20s or early 30s, is one of several inmates videotaped through hidden cameras inside Zimbabwe's prisons. The images, shared with The Washington Times, are of gaunt prisoners with protruding ribs reminiscent of just-freed Holocaust survivors or Muslim prisoners held by Serbian troops during the Bosnian war. "As an investigative journalist, I've seen a lot of human misery," said Johann Abrahams, executive producer of "Hell Hole," a documentary scheduled for broadcast Tuesday on the South African Broadcasting Corp. (SABC). "But when I first viewed the Zimbabwe prison tapes, it shocked me. I was reminded of the German death camps at Dachau and Auschwitz," he said. Mr. Abrahams said se...

John Hawkins: Liberals spend much of their time trying to hide what they believe from the public while conservatives are perpetually frustrated by the fact that the American people don't seem to understand what we really believe. Both problems spring from a single source: liberals lie incessantly. That's not to say that there aren't conservative liars or truthful liberals; there are, but for liberals, lying is the rule, not the exception. There are two reasons why liberals lie much more than conservatives. First off, this is a center-right country and liberal beliefs are much more unpopular than conservative ones. If liberals told the truth about what they believe and want to do, the Democratic Party would practically be wiped out in much of the country. Additionally, conservatives tend to think liberals are merely stupid or emotional, while liberals tend to view conservatives as evil -- and liberals use that belief to justify lying about conservatives. After all, if you...

Daniel Howe: ... The issue is principle and the lengthening arm of government into commerce. How can corporate governance and the fiduciary responsibility of directors to shareholders be so easily usurped to satisfy the political exigencies of the day? Stunning is too mild a word to describe the precedent set here. "Certainly they have a large investment in General Motors," says spokesman Steve Harris, referring to the $13.4 billion-and-counting federal lifeline to GM. "We certainly knew that would involve a certain amount of oversight and involvement of government in our activities." They just didn't know how much. Not since World War II, with the arguable exception of President Harry S. Truman's brief control of the steel industry, has a president exercised such forceful unilateral control over firms in the private sector. And the double-standards? Towering, as if that makes any difference. What does it say that on the same day President Obama made nice at...

Washington Post: The brazen occupation of a Pakistani police academy Monday by heavily armed gunmen near the eastern mega-city of Lahore was the latest indication that Islamist terrorism, once confined to Pakistan's northwest tribal belt, now threatens political stability nationwide. ... "The realization that this problem is now no longer confined to a buffer zone with Afghanistan must dawn on everyone in Pakistan," said Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistani American military expert, speaking from Washington. "Pakistan has the wherewithal to deal with the problem, but does its leadership have the will to do so?" Pakistani officials, normally given to blaming India or other foreign adversaries for fomenting anti-government violence, were unusually frank in denouncing Monday's attack as the probable work of domestic terrorists, who they said were attempting to destabilize the country. ... Witnesses to the siege, including police trainees who managed to escape the compou...

David Sanger: As an assertion of government control over a huge swath of the industrial landscape, President Obama ’s decision to reshape the automobile industry has few precedents. In essentially taking command of General Motors and telling Chrysler to merge with a foreign competitor or cease to exist, Mr. Obama was saying that economic conditions were sufficiently dire to justify a new level of government involvement in the management of corporate America. His message amounted to an inversion of the relationship that had helped define the rise of American manufacturing might in the 20th century; now, Mr. Obama seemed to be saying, what is good for America will have to be good enough for General Motors. In the past, the United States government had briefly nationalized steel makers and tried to run the railroads, with little success. In the last nine months it has taken control of the American International Group insurance firm and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , firing their mana...

Michael Ramirez looks at Obama's GM decision. Obama's debt wreck and lack of knowledge about the car business doesn't inhibit him from taking charge.

NY Times: Arab leaders may be divided over which Palestinian faction to support and what to do about Iran’s rising influence, but they have found one cause to rally around: protecting the president of Sudan from charges he orchestrated the rape, killing and widespread pillaging in Darfur. Arab leaders gathered for their annual summit meeting in Doha, Qatar, on Monday, hoping to patch over their many differences. But they had little trouble agreeing to an effusive embrace of Omar Hassan al-Bashir , the president of Sudan, who was indicted by the International Criminal Court this month for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The court also issued a warrant for his arrest. The emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, greeted Mr. Bashir at the airport with a red carpet treatment, a warm embrace and a kiss on the cheek. Even before the meeting began, Amr Moussa , the secretary general of the Arab League , said the member states would “continue our efforts to halt the implem...

Greg Sargent: Is the Rush Limbaugh strategy giving way to the Sarah Palin strategy? Multiple Democratic strategists say the party plans to increasingly elevate Palin in the same manner it has employed Rush for weeks, using her high-visibility, her social conservatism, and memories of her harsh attacks on Obama during the campaign to tar the GOP as partisan, obstructionist, and backward-looking. James Carville, a key architect of the Limbaugh strategy, says Dems will be seeking to elevate Palin more and more, because she’s “an identifiable person who has a hook,” unlike GOP leaders like Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell . “Her name conjures up all kinds of reactions in people’s minds,” Carville told me, adding that her association with the campaign will be used to portray the GOP as hidebound and to alienate moderates. “She’s an uncomfortable figure for a lot of Republicans,” Carville says. “They want to move beyond her. We like her.” “Luckily, she seems to present us with an op...

Independent: Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has signed a law which "legalises" rape, women's groups and the United Nations warn. Critics claim the president helped rush the bill through parliament in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August. In a massive blow for women's rights, the new Shia Family Law negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman's right to leave the home, according to UN papers seen by The Independent. "It is one of the worst bills passed by the parliament this century," fumed Shinkai Karokhail, a woman MP who campaigned against the legislation. "It is totally against women's rights. This law makes women more vulnerable." The law regulates personal matters like marriage, divorce, inheritance and sexual relations among Afghanistan's minority Shia community. "It's about votes," Ms Karokhail add...

Telegraph: Staff at Porfell Wildlife Park and Sanctuary near Liskeard, Cornwall, have been teaching Gambian poached rat Kofi to alert handlers when he detects a mine. Kofi is too small to set off the booby-traps but his acute sense of smell can pick up the scent of the bomb casing. Rats have been trained in Africa to hunt for land mines but Kofi is the first to undergo the program in Britain. Handler Wendy Winstanley now plans to contact the Army and the police anti-terror unit to offer her rats' services for use both home and abroad. She said: "Kofi is amazing, his sniff ability is really incredible. People think of rats as vermin but they are highly intelligent creatures. "They have a more heightened sense of smell than dogs and because they are so much lighter they have less chance of setting off an explosive. ... They need to send Kofi to Afghanistan and let him find IEDs. He could probably also sniff out the bomb builders too. I am s...

Times: The Pakistani city of Lahore, once synonymous with culture and cricket, was reeling from another terrorist outrage last night after a dozen gunmen stormed a police academy and killed at least 13 people in an eight-hour shootout with security forces. Four of the militants blew themselves up, but others were captured alive after their brazen commando-style attack, which bore many similarities to the one in Mumbai in November and another on the Sri Lanka cricket team in Lahore this month. Up to eight police officers were among the dead yesterday and at least 90 were wounded. Ten more who had been taken hostage were rescued by commandos, according to officials. ... Mr Malik added that the gunmen were believed to be fighters loyal to the Pakistani Taleban commander Baitullah Mehsud. The Pakistani Taleban said a little-known group called Fedayin al-Islam was responsible. ... It is pretty typical of Islamic religious bigots to try to cast blame on others by creating new entities tha...

Politico: The Obama administration's harsh treatment of the auto industry is backfiring with some auto state politicians despite a concerted effort to build support for the federal crackdown on General Motors and Chrysler. Skeptical Republicans who warned last fall against the auto bailout had a different reaction: "I told you so." “This is a major power grab by the White House on the heels of another power grab from Secretary Geithner who asked last week for the freedom to decide on his own which companies are ‘systemically’ important to our country and worthy of taxpayer investment and which are not,” said Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker, whose state is home to Volkswagen and Nissan plants. “This is a marked departure from the past, truly breathtaking, and should send a chill through all Americans who believe in free enterprise.” Late Sunday evening, the White House held an hour-long conference call with a half-dozen lawmakers who represent auto industry states, la...

Riley Hunter: In an age when a waiter is a server , an actress is a female actor , and a dubiously-competent socialist cult leader is an American president , it was only a matter of time before the “Global War on Terror” became an “ Overseas Contingency Operation ” (OCO). Thus Spoke Zarathustra this week via a memo sent to the Pentagon and select speech writers, officially establishing Team Obama’s redesigned terminology. The War is over, long live the Operation ! This should show the road-side bombers, suicide bombers, bombers-in-burqas, snipers-for-Allah, and other assorted, blood-thirsty, Jihadist savages that the US really means business now. Victory through euphemism! The unveiling of OCO capped-off a terror euphemism trifecta for the administration. Previously, the Justice Department scrapped the ghastly “ enemy combatant ” to describe war prisoners in favor of the much more uplifting, “detainee.” Additionally, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano─who may be the ...

Jerusalem Post: The IDF Ground Forces Command plans to double the number of unmanned D9 armored bulldozers in the Engineering Corps arsenal after the vehicle provided exceptional results during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip in January. The unmanned version of the D9 bulldozer - called "Black Thunder" - was developed several years ago by the Engineering Corps and was only recently declassified. "The unmanned D9 performed remarkably during Operation Cast Lead, clearing roads of mines and explosive devices," explained one officer in the Ground Forces Command. "There was even one vehicle that was damaged, which demonstrates how it did its job since no one was injured." The Black Thunder looks like a regular D9 bulldozer but is equipped with a number of cameras that transmit images to the operator, who controls the vehicle with a wireless remote control . The unmanned D9 participated widely in Operation Cast Lead as well as in the Second Lebanon...

Politico: A trickle of defections has Democratic House leaders wondering how long they can hold off calls for an investigation into the PMA Group and its ties to Pennsylvania Rep. John P. Murtha. Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) got only 17 Democratic votes when he introduced a privileged resolution in February calling for an ethics investigation into “the relationship between earmark requests already made by members and the source and timing of past campaign contributions.” But Flake has kept trying — the sixth version of his resolution comes up for a vote this week — and he’s picked up support from eight Democrats who voted against his initial resolution. And that has Democratic leaders worried. “We are keeping our ear pretty close to the ground on this,” said a senior Democratic aide. The aide noted that there has been “no groundswell of support” for Flake’s resolutions — and that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) remains dead set against an investigation. Still, he said, House Democrats — w...

Janet Daley: Some of the demonstrators in this week's G20 protest jamboree are demanding the "overthrow" of capitalism. Well, there are lots of things than can be done to "capitalism" – it can be undermined, suppressed, sabotaged, even outlawed – but it cannot be "overthrown" because in itself, it has no power. It is the very opposite, in fact, of a tyranny. It is simply the conglomeration of all the transactions made between individual and corporate players in an open market. Some people may gain power through those transactions but that power is transient and contingent on their own financial success: they are not installed in immutable positions from which they can be forcibly removed in a coup d'etat. The question we are wrestling with now – and which the G20 will certainly fail to resolve – is how much the bodies which actually do have power should undermine, suppress, sabotage or even outlaw the practice of capitalist exchange. Those who talk...

Benny Avini: WITH Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu set to be sworn in as Israel's prime minister tomorrow, Western capitals are in a dither about the irrelevant question of Israel's commitment to the vaunted "two-state solution." The "solution" -- based on President George W. Bush's vision of a democratic Palestine living peacefully next door to Israel -- has no relevance to the world as it is now: Palestine is further from developing a viable democracy than it was when W. set forth the idea. Questions of Bibi's commitment to the idea are just a new club for those in Washington who think that distancing America from Israel will somehow solve US problems with the larger Muslim world. It all began with charges from Bibi's rival, Kadima Party leader Tzipi Livni. In refusing to join in the Netanyahu government, she publicly cited his refusal to declare that he is committed to a two-state solution. But the dispute was plainly more about politi...

NY Times: An army convoy on the hunt for traffickers rolled out of its base recently in this border town (Reynosa) under the control of the Gulf Cartel — and an ominous voice crackled over a two-way radio frequency to announce just that. The voice, belonging to a cartel spy, then broadcast the soldiers’ route through the city, turn by turn, using the same military language as the soldiers. “They’re following us,” Col. Juan José Gómez, who was monitoring the transmission from the front seat of an olive-green pickup truck, said with a shrug. The presence of the informers, some of them former soldiers, highlights a central paradox in Mexico’s ambitious and bloody assault on the drug cartels that have ravaged the country. The nation has begun a war, but it cannot fully rely on the very institutions — the police, customs, the courts, the prisons, even the relatively clean army — most needed to carry it out. The cartels bring in billions of dollars more than the Mexican government spends t...

Opinion Journal: One of President Obama's applause lines is that his climate tax policies will create new green jobs "that can't be outsourced." But if that's true, why is his main energy adviser floating a new carbon tariff on imports? Welcome to the coming cap and trade war. Energy Secretary Steven Chu made the protectionist point during an underreported House hearing this month, when he said tariffs and other trade barriers could be used as a "weapon" to force countries like China and India into cutting their own CO2 emissions. "If other countries don't impose a cost on carbon, then we will be at a disadvantage," he said. So a cap-and-trade policy won't be cost-free after all. Apparently Mr. Chu did not get the White House memo about obfuscating the impact of the Administration's anticarbon policies. The Chinese certainly heard Mr. Chu, with Xie Zhenhua, a top economic minister, immediately responding that such a policy would be...

CNN: A senior diplomat in the Obama administration Sunday challenged former Vice President Dick Cheney’s assessment of the new administration’s ability to keep the country safe. Cheney was asked two weeks ago on CNN’s State of the Union whether he thought President Obama had made the country less safe since taking office. “I do,” Cheney told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King. “He is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack,” the former vice president added. But U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke, a senior diplomat in Obama’s State Department, said Sunday that he didn’t understand where Cheney was coming from with his criticism. “I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about,” Holbrooke said. ... The context of VP Cheney's concerns revolved around Obama's wrongheaded decision to close Gitmo and various CIA facilities. It also concerned his decision to avoid interrogation techniques the CIA has found...

Guardian: The road passes a shimmering green mountain pasture, then dips steeply to a new US-built bridge. Across the languid Panj river is Afghanistan and the dusty northern town of Kunduz. On this side is Tajikistan, Afghanistan's impoverished Central Asian neighbour. It is here, at what used to be the far boundary of the Soviet empire, that the US and Nato are planning a new operation. Soon, Nato trucks loaded with non-military supplies will start rolling into Afghanistan along this northern route, avoiding Pakistan 's perilous tribal areas and the ambush-prone Khyber Pass. This northern corridor is essential if Barack Obama 's Afghan-Pakistan strategy is to work. With convoys supplying US and Nato forces regularly attacked by the Taliban on the Pakistan route, the US is again courting the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Nato has already signed a transit deal with Tajikistan. It says it expects bilateral agreem...

Telegraph: A special forces unit of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) had planned to celebrate the movement's 45th anniversary by killing Juan Manuel Santos. Ten rebels had disguised themselves as policemen and painted two motorbikes in police colours. Unfortunately, they managed to stencil the word "Policia" back to front on the bikes' fuel tanks. "Ten members of the terrorist group the Teofilo Forero of the narco-terrorists of the FARC have been captured," announced President Alvaro Uribe, who has made the crushing of the rebels and their 40-year insurgency his government's central priority. "They were planning an attack on the minister of defence and members of his family." ... I think most Colombians would think that is a fortunate error. Personally, I love it when a terrorist plot does not come together.

BBC: ... Some believe the military has never given up its policy of "strategic depth": the belief that in order to defend itself against its traditional enemy, India, to the east, it needs a pro-Pakistan government (like the Taliban) in Afghanistan, to the west. Others say it wants a "neutral" Afghanistan. But Kabul is not neutral as far as the army is concerned. Its government is full of factions hostile to Islamabad and closely allied with India, Pakistan's great regional rival. And India is expanding its influence in the country. This is all the more troubling because Pakistan's worried about its borders. Afghanistan has never recognised the boundary drawn by the British, known as the Durrand Line. And the dispute with India over the Himalayan region of Kashmir continues. In such circumstances, the Taliban are an asset, not an adversary for the ISI, says the observer. "The Pakistan army knows that it and the Taliba...

Marc Thiessen: The Left’s assault on the CIA program continues with today’s front-page story about the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah: “ Detainees Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots .” The story, like so many on this program, is rife with errors and misinformation. For example, the Post states: “Abu Zubaida quickly told U.S. interrogators of [Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed and of others he knew to be in al-Qaeda, and he revealed the plans of the low-level operatives who fled Afghanistan with him. Some were intent on returning to target American forces with bombs; others wanted to strike on American soil again, according to military documents and law enforcement sources. Such intelligence was significant but not blockbuster material. Frustrated, the Bush administration ratcheted up the pressure — for the first time approving the use of increasingly harsh interrogations, including waterboarding.” This is either uninformed or intentionally misleading. In fact, what Abu Zubaydah disclosed to ...

Andrew Klaven: If you are reading this newspaper, the likelihood is that you agree with the Obama administration's recent attacks on conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh. That's the likelihood; here's the certainty: You've never listened to Rush Limbaugh. Oh no, you haven't. Whenever I interrupt a liberal's anti-Limbaugh rant to point out that the ranter has never actually listened to the man, he always says the same thing: "I've heard him!" On further questioning, it always turns out that by "heard him," he means he's heard the selected excerpts spoon-fed him by the distortion-mongers of the mainstream media. These excerpts are specifically designed to accomplish one thing: to make sure you never actually listen to Limbaugh's show, never actually give him a fair chance to speak his piece to you directly. By lifting some typically Rushian piece of outrageous hilarity completely out of context, the distortion gang knows full we...

Times: Missile experts from Iran are in North Korea to help Pyongyang prepare for a rocket launch, according to reports. Amid increasing global concern over the launch, which the US and its allies consider to be illegal, Japan's Sankei Shimbun newspaper claimed today that a 15-strong delegation from Tehran has been in the country advising the North Koreans since the beginning of March. The experts include senior officials from the Iranian rocket and satellite producer Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, the newspaper said. The Iranians brought a letter from President Ahmadinejad to the North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il stressing the importance of co-operating on space technology, it added. ... The launch is a violation of a UN resolution and Iran's embrace of the launch should put that country in violation also. It is already under UN sanctions and this should be added to the reasons for further sanctions.

Stephen Moore: In his press conference last Tuesday, Barack Obama said that America must reject the "borrow and spend" policies of the past in favor of a strategy of "save and invest." Sounds good. So why is Obama proposing to borrow and spend more than any president in the history of the republic? Already in the first 45 days of his administration, the federal government has authorized more debt spending than Ronald Reagan did in eight years in office. Then last week the Democrats' own Congressional Budget Office found that the ten-year deficits of the Obama plan will be about $2.3 trillion higher than the $6.97 trillion the White House is projecting. This is the policy of the party that was swept back into power in 2006 and 2008 promising a return to an era of fiscal responsibility. Welcome to the Obama doctrine. It is built on the high stakes economic gamble that the public and the bond markets will tolerate trillions of dollars of borrowing to pay for ma...

LA Times: For six months, General Motors Corp. and Chrysler have been trying to convince the government that they need billions of dollars in aid, while assuring the American consumer that everything is A-OK. It's proved to be the marketing equivalent of trying to stuff a Hummer into the trunk of a Corvette. The negative PR campaign appears to have reached the right ears in Washington. On Monday, President Obama will announce his plan for supporting the two automakers beyond the $17.4 billion they've received, his press secretary said Friday. Obama is widely expected to offer them further financial help in exchange for deeper restructuring concessions. But car buyers have also been listening, and they've been taking their business elsewhere. Since the first congressional hearings on the auto industry in November, U.S. sales by GM and Chrysler have fallen a combined 45% compared with the year-earlier period; all other carmakers slid only 33% during that time. Taking federal ...