MODERATORS:CHARLIE GIBSON, ABC NEWS
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS

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Via Crooks and Liars: The McLaughlin Group: Pat Buchanan Says There’s A 50/50 Chance Of Air Strikes Against Iran By Fall.

Zero tolerance reaches new heights of absurdity when kids who cannot possibly understand a sexual move (unless they are victims of sexual abuse) are being disciplined in school as “sex offenders,” and the school is calling in the cops — as with six-year-old Randy Castro who patted a fellow student on the behind. The officers in their report described the lad’s behavior as “Sexual Touching Against Student, Offensive”. And to my sheer astonishment, while reading his column addressing this matter I find that I agree with Mark Steyn in at least one area: (more…)

ABC News recently reported a lot of support for Obama (and some for Hilary) coming from our troops in Iraq. Neocon warmongers undergo neurological synapse disconnects with such news, so they must rhetorically destroy such “wrong” military opinions.

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Madeline Kara Neumann was only 11 when several weeks ago the she died of entirely treatable diabetes, even as her parents eschewed medical science for prayer. According to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Madeline died due to: (more…)

Glenn Greenwald’s latest book, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics, release date 4/15, is available now for pre-ordering at Amazon:

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The federal Road Home program was supposed to help those who lost their homes in the Katrina mess rebuild both dwellings and lives. But the private contractor who managed this relief effort — ICF International — is going after those who were “overpaid,” seeking return of an average of $35K from each “overpaid” recipient. ICF is bidding for collection agencies to chase after approximately $175 million from these families. (Oh, and “[o]ne-third of qualified applicants for Road Home help had yet to receive any rebuilding check as of this past week.”)

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This degrading experience must be read to be believed. And what of the fellows with a Prince Albert? Would pliers do the trick? Does the thought make ya squirm, guys? (I mean, if the piercing itself does not, would you want to nervously — and with an audience — perform TSA-approved, quick surgery to remove it?)

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As most will recall, a spate of letters laced with real anthrax spores was sent through the U.S. mail in the months after 9/11, further terrifying an already traumatized nation. The media narrative at the time was that the anthrax bore all the signs of coming from Saddam’s alleged stockpile of the toxin; the opposite was true. (Brief ad click-through.)

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With a h/t to Gavin M. at Sadly, No!, I simply pass along obscene scribblings from the devout Catholic, “pro-life” Mark Noonan — formerly of Blogs for Bush: (more…)

The headline says it all: Pentagon says new Iraq fighting arises from surge’s success

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Below I wrote about my Republican, devout Catholic and former Constitutional Law professor Doug Kmiec’s having endorsed Barack Obama’s candidacy. He has just given an interview to Beliefnet in which he expands on that decision, and says that the responses he’s received have been running 4-1 in his favor. Also, declares Kmiec, my emphasis: (more…)

As my author bio notes, I attended the Notre Dame law school. I learned Constitutional Law from Professor Douglas Kmiec, who had served directly under Ed Meese in the Reagan DoJ. Prof. Kmiec was and is a devout Catholic who believes abortion should be illegal, and that marriage should be restricted to heterosexual couples. He has always been a Republican. (I tilted that way myself, then, and at the time shared his views on criminalizing abortion.)

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As one of those penitents who came to initially support the invasion of the Iraq and now regards it as the most irresponsible political decision she’s ever made, I well appreciate my Unqualified Offerings’ host and co-blogger, Jim Henley’s, disdain for those who got it wrong, when he was dismissed as unSerious for opposing the mad venture. Jim posits an alternate universe in which he  meets Kenneth Pollack, who inquires of Jim with regard to Jim’s having been right: “What the fuck was so special about you, anyway?” A few excerpts from Jim’s post, which ought to be read in its entirety: (more…)

We’ve been having an interesting — and I think productive — discussion of race in America in my thread below. The video here of an African-American reporter doing her job, and being brutally attacked by Caucasian barbarians who spouted the usual epithets at her, is a good counter-point to the issue of inner-city black violence. She was hated primarily because she was reporting on her attackers’ relative who is a murder suspect, but her race seems to have thrown them into an enhanced fury.

My co-blogger at Unqualified Offerings, Thoreau, is past fed up with the establishment media’s treating war hawks, torture apologists and defenders of unchecked Executive lawlessness — and who see “victory” in Iraq — as honored pundits to be thanked for their graciously giving an appearance/words/time: (more…)

May have more to say tomorrow, but for now I simply wish to make known that the scholar of religion “Karl” — Jeff Goldstein’s mini-me at Protein Wisdom — has settled the question of whether Barack HUSSEIN Obama is a Muslim mole, or a Christian; Obama is neither. He’s a Marxist.

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Mulling over Kevin Carson’s superb post below, I’ve been contemplating why it was that I tilted conservative/GOP in the 80s, and even supported the Robert Bork nomination to SCOTUS. For me, it came down to federalism, and a complete aversion to the manner in which the High Court and liberals had been abusing the Commerce Clause to intrude the federal government into matters that were at least Six Degrees of Separation from Kevin Bacon’s Commerce. FDR’s court-packing threat (which enabled the jurisprudence of the Commerce-Clause-means-any-area-in-which Congress-legislates) was not, to my mind, something cute to be winked at — if George W. Bush suggested such a measure his critics would rightly decry it as outrageous.

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Brad at Sadly, No! is flummoxed that one well-respected liberal blog has turned into a viciously anti-Obama site. More interestingly, in comments to his post, I find repeated the bizarre claim that I’ve quite often encountered elsewhere, to wit: that there is barely any difference between HRC and Obama’s positions.

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A very provocative piece appears in a recent issue the Berkeley Daily Planet titled Commentary: Why I Don’t Support the Troops, and which as memorandum shows has the right-o-sphere raging; Kenneth Thiesen therein argues that one cannot support the troops without also supporting American imperialism and the wars the troops fight to facilitate it. Sayeth Thiesen: (more…)

To the discontent of some of his regular readers, Glenn Greenwald deviates from his usual analyses of FISA issues, neocons, the pathologies in the media & etc., and posts about the sheer inanity of the public’s giving a tinker’s damn who Eliot Spitzer has sex with per se – but he carves out the exception for harping on the hypocrisy factor, and withholds personal sympathy for Spitzer who has prosecuted “prostitution rings” — and with those caveats in place, he asks in his title: Who cares if Eliot Spitzer hires prostitutes? Then inquires: (more…)

After former Speaker of the House Denny Hastert resigned his Illinois congressional seat in 2007 (a district that mainly encompasses Chicago a district west of Chicago), and thus set in motion a special election, John McCain campaigned for Republican Jim Oberweis who ran against Democrat Bill Foster.

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When does a warmongering neocon — and documented liar about his pro-war enthusiams — wax all righteous about the plight of workers and the glory of unions? When he also implicitly (but with implausible deniability) longs for war against the country they live in. My emphasis: (more…)

Michelle Malkin is saddened — nay, grief-stricken — that wingnut hate-radio host Melanie Morgan has been fired from Citadel Radio’s San Francisco Bay-area KSFO radio station. Of course, Ms. Morgan traffics in unusually reprehensible views, even for the right, my emphasis: (more…)

The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.

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Reason’s Radley Balko on why drug warriors — including those in the White House — don’t want to see an antidote to heroin overdose made widely available; it would reduce the number of people who end up in the ER and/or dying. Ameliorating fear by reducing overdose deaths is, doncha know, immoral. If an overdosed person can counter the problem at home, s/he won’t be put in touch with the medical system that will rehab them. Better, oh by far, to risk that they DIE.

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RedState’s Michael Krempasky has wunnerful news. He is engaged to Monica Gooodling, the former senior counsel to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. A graduate of Messiah College, Ms. Goodling then earned J.D. and M.A. degrees from Pat Robertson’s Regent University.

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Pete Guither has the scoop: “[T]he nation’s largest organization of doctors of internal medicine, with 124,000 members,” The American College of Physicians, has called for the govt to stop opposing the medical use of marijuana, and to “drop marijuana from Schedule I, a classification it shares with illegal drugs such as heroin and LSD…”

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Below I set forth my position as a non-conservative, Hayekian libertarian with recourse to excerpts from Hayek’s own rejection of conservatism. I further pointed out via an interview with the former publisher of National Review, William Rusher, that during the Cold War era libertarians and conservatives co-existed in the GOP, in a “fusionism” that was always tense.

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My liberal co-blogger, Angelica, raises the excellent point that not all libertarians adhere to the same set of values. So true, that. When encountering one who claims the label one may in fact be meeting a “glibertarian” apologist for neocon authoritarianism, as well-exemplified by Glenn Reynolds. To put it mildly, I’m not a Reynolds type “neo-libertarian.” Nor am I a Republican (or Democrat).

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K-Lo collects herself and genuflects to the following on behalf of a grateful nation: “Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Andy McCarthy, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham.”

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Greetings fellow bloggers of the liberal or libertarian persuasion. (I tend strongly toward the latter. But especially these days have more in common with you left-of-centers than what passes for the contemporary right.)

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