Just got back from a wonderful evening in Washington, D.C. First it was the pre-White House Correspondents Association Dinner cocktail parties, thanks to Jim Geraghty and the kind folks at National Review.

Highlight of the evening? There were a few. Meeting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was one of them.

So was meeting Xander Berkeley and Sarah Clarke from “24″. Xander was nice enough to pose with me for a self-portrait.

Both Elaine and Farrah (yes, Farrah was there as well) looked spectacular in their dresses (pictures possibly to come later). After cocktails it was off to dinner at a wonderful neo-Mexican restaurant in the District.

It was a very cool evening. Hope I can do it again next year.

Via Mark Tapscott:

I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government.”

I’d rather have politicians support the Constitution.

In the Washingon Post, E.J. Dionne says it’s high time that mayors like Mike Bloomberg take the lead on gun control.

At a structural level, Congress has a deep bias in favor of the rural
point of view because the Senate is stacked in favor of rural states. Idaho,
Wyoming and Montana have two senators each, and so do California, New York
and Illinois.
According to the latest Census Bureau estimates, the six senators from
those three rural states represent 2,874,060 people. The six from the three
states that include big urban and suburban populations represent 68,150,148
people. By these figures, you might calculate the rough odds against gun
regulations at 24 to 1.

Also, by this paragraph, you might get the sense that E.J. Dionne doesn’t understand how Congress was set up. Yes, the three urban states Dionne referenced have six Senators, the same as the three rural states. But the three urban states also have a total of 101 Representatives. How many do the rural states have? Four. Two for Idaho and one each for Montana and Wyoming.

That means in terms of total representation, the three urban states outnumber the rural states 107 to 10. And somehow Dionne thinks this is unfair?

Tell it to the Founding Fathers E.J.

By the way, I could go off and refute Dionne point by point, but honestly I’m taking a day off and would prefer to go play with the twins. I’ll let y’all handle that in the comments.

A denial of service attack on some of the biggest voices in the blogosphere.

If you have to silence the other side, your arguments must really suck.

The idea of sending gas rebate checks to taxpayers is just as stupid as the Windfall Profits Tax. Based on how bloated the Federal government is, it would probably cost more than $100 per taxpayer to print and mail all those checks.

I’m rather ashamed my party introduced this as serious legislation.

The Democrats are going to town with this seasonal spike in gas prices. Riding this media created, over-hyped, faux crisis into the 2006 campaign season, the Democrats claim to be the only party that can lower gas prices. Makes sense, right? With two fat cat oil men in the White House, the Democrats are the only party able to resist the temptation of big money from Big Oil.

(Nevermind the fact that government makes more money than oil companies do when the gas prices are high. We don’t want to confuse their issues with the facts people. That’s just bad form.)

How do the Democrats plan to lower gas prices? Why, they introduce the Windfall Profits Tax on those evil Big Oil companies. Because we all know it worked so well the last time it was tried.

The tax generated far less revenue than expected and actually trimmed domestic oil production when it tried a quarter-century ago.

For those of you who never had Economics 101, or went to public school in California, I’ll put this as simply as I possibly can.

Short Supply + High Demand = Skyrocketing Prices and Shortages

So I say let the Democrats have their Windfall Profits Tax. It helped Jimmy Carter get re-elected, didn’t it?

As Democratic leaders were blasting Big Oil yesterday, they apparently also decided that now is not the time for conservation.

“Since George Bush and Dick Cheney took over as president and vice president, gas prices have doubled!” charged Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), standing at an Exxon station on Capitol Hill where regular unleaded hit $3.10. “They are too cozy with the oil industry.”

She then hopped in a waiting Chrysler LHS (18 mpg) — even though her Senate office was only a block away.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) used a Hyundai Elantra to take the one-block journey to and from the gas-station news conference. He posed in front of the fuel prices and gave them a thumbs-down. “Get tough on big oil!” he demanded of the Bush administration.

An Elantra?

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Once again, I missed the anniversary of this blog. The earliest post here is from April 22nd, 2003, although I’m pretty sure there were a few posts before that.

Anyway, happy belated anniversary to me.

Quick quiz: what politician recently said the following.

“During states of emergency, I think police need total control. They don’t need to worry who has guns and who doesn’t. If the [authorities] call for [people] to relinquish their guns, the public needs to do so.”

Chuck Schumer? Mike Bloomberg? Richard Daley?

Nope. Oklahoma State Representative Mike Shelton. The actual quote:

“During states of emergency, I think police need total control. They don’t need to worry who has guns and who doesn’t. If the governor calls for Oklahomans to relinquish their guns, the public needs to do so,”

No offense to Rep. Shelton, but during a state of emergency, the police won’t have total control. Perhaps this will refresh the Representative’s memory.

In the Carrollton neighborhood, two armed men - self-appointed sheriffs in a white pickup - confronted them. Spotting thieves who had commandeered a forklift and smashed into a Rite Aid store, the two men fired above the looters’ heads and ran them off.

A man emerged pulling a little wagon stacked with Pampers, food, water and soda. He screamed at the men with the guns.

“Who are y’all? Who are you to stop us?”

“I’m an American citizen,” was the reply. “Take your food and go.”

“I need these things,” the looter told me. “I can’t afford to get out of here. But I have to feed my family.

“Look at what I have,” he said. “These aren’t luxuries.”

Not far away, at Cooter Brown’s Bar & Grill, the weary owner stood sentry with a pal to keep the looters at bay. He had a .357 magnum, a 9-mm. handgun, a 12-gauge shotgun and no hesitation about using any of them.

“The cops are busy as it is. If more citizens took security and matters into their own hands, we won’t be in this situation,” said owner Art DePodesta, 30, as he warily scanned the street.

Or maybe this, from the old Nola.com hurricane blog.

“In Uptown, one the few areas that remained dry, a bearded man patrolled Oak Street near the boarded-up Maple Leaf Bar, a sawed-off shotgun slung over his shoulder. The owners of a hardware store sat in folding chairs, pistols at the ready.

Uptown resident Keith Williams started his own security patrol, driving around in his Ford pickup with his newly purchased handgun. Earlier in the day, Williams said he had seen the body of a gunshot victim near the corner of Leonidas and Hickory streets.

“What I want to know is why we don’t have paratroopers with machine guns on every street,” Williams said.

Like-minded Art Depodesta sat on the edge of a picnic table outside Cooter Brown’s Bar, a chrome shotgun at his side loaded with red shells.

“They broke into the Shell station across the street,” he said. “I walked over with my 12-gauge and shot a couple into the air.”

The looters scattered, but soon after, another man appeared outside the bar in a pickup truck armed with a pistol and threatened Depodesta.

“I told him, ‘Listen, I was in the Army and I will blow your ass off,’” Depodesta said. “We’ve got enough trouble with the flood.”

The man sped away.”

The idea that the police can protect you in a time of emergency is, quite frankly, nonsense. That’s not a slam on police, it’s just reality. Look at everything the New Orleans police had to deal with in the aftermath of Katrina. Was it really in the best interest of the city that they go door to door confiscating firearms from law-abiding citizens? For some residents, that was the only time they saw the police… when they came for their guns.

And then of course there is the overriding ideological argument. A state of emergency should not automatically mean a police state. Perhaps the next time a tornado sweeps through Moore (or Cordell or Woodward) we can suspend the 1st Amendment as well as the 2nd? No speaking ill of the job of people like Rep. Shelton, otherwise… well, just watch your back.

I don’t think so.

Edina Monsoon (any relation to Gorilla Monsoon?) chimed in on a post from a few days ago saying:

Top 10 Reason Why I Could Never Be A Republican

10) Republicans believe that American gays and lesbians don’t have a right to marriage, despite the American pledge of “… with liberty and justice for ALL.”

9) Republicans don’t believe that animals have any rights, referring to animal rights activists as “whackos” and “extremists.”

8) Republicans want to reduce or eliminate environmental laws, referring to environmentalistis as “whackos” and “extremiists.” Republicans continually try to debunk the Global Warming theory, refusing to even entertain the notion that mult-billion-dollar corporations may be contributing to pollution and harmfully altering the environment.

7) Republicans want to cap the financial amount for which medical patients can sue when they are the victims of medical malpractice, caring more about the HMOs losing money.

6) Republicans criticize those who advocate peace in the world over, casting them off as maggot-infested, drug-taking hippies instead of kind, caring, thoughtful people.

5) Republicans want laws to be made based on the Bible and Christianity, wishing that America were closer to a religious theocracy than a Democracy.

4) Republicans criticize anything and anyone outside of their conservative, Christian, piously moral sphere.

3) Republicans want to outlaw the adoption of children by lesbian and gay people, whereas Christian, married, heterosexual Andrea Yates drowned her 5 Biblically-named children.

2) Republicans routinely side with corporate America and pure capitalism over average, working-class Americans. Republicans don’t believe in setting a national minimun wage on which average working Americans can live. Republicans continually come down in favor of corporations over average Americans. Case in point: Republican radio commentators are actually defending the oil companies’ huge profits while gasoline prices continue to soar at the pumps, prohibiting average Americans to put fuel in their cars.

1) Republicans would prefer walls of concrete and steely metal corporate, smoke-spewing greed over an abundance of green grass, beautiful flowers, fresh air, and a peaceful world in which tolerance and kindness reign supreme.

#10- Kerry said back in ‘04 that he was opposed to legalizing gay marriage. I don’t think you’ll find Mark Warner or Hillary Clinton come out in favor of legalizing gay marriage in ‘08 either.

#9- Guilty as charged. But I’d guess that there are plenty of Democrats out there who think people like PETA and ALF are “extremists” as well.

#8- Guilty as charged. But again, I’m pretty sure you’ll find some Democrats out there who think the hype over “Global Warming” is just that. Hype.

#7- Or caring more about abusive lawsuits that cripple the medical profession.

#6- Maggot-infested? I confess, I’ve never called someone maggot-infested. Drug-taking hippies? Guilty. Actually, it’s not so much that I think people who advocate peace around the world are drug-taking hippies as much as they are America-hating moonbats blind to the actions of tyrants around the world. But your mileage may vary.

#5- Not this Republican, although our laws do take a lot from the Judeo-Christian theology. I don’t really have a problem with this. Beats getting our laws from the Koran.

#4- And you’re doing what, exactly? As evidenced by these Tony Snow quotes, Republicans don’t mind criticizing one of their own. And Republicans don’t mind hiring someone who’s criticized them in the past. Edina doesn’t have a blog of her own, but I wonder… when was the last time she criticized a Democrat.

#3- And Mary McCarthy allegedly sold out her country for partisan political purposes. I’ll offer this deal- Democrats can be in charge of adoptions, but Republicans have to be in charge of National Security.

#2- I’m not thrilled about $3.00 a gallon gas (actuall $3.01 when I filled up this morning). But people are prohibited from buying gas because of the price? Apparently Edina doesn’t understand much about basic economic principles like supply and demand. The reason why oil companies are able to charge $3.01 a gallon is because even at that price, demand is high. We haven’t changed our driving habits. We aren’t all selling our SUV’s and buying hybrids. As much of a pain in the ass as it is, we CAN afford $3.01 a gallon gas. Not that I wouldn’t mind gas at $2.25, but I’m not going to blind myself to economic principles in order to justify it.

#1- Toke up, Edina. Where do most Democrats live? Where are the last bastions of liberalism? Big cities. Where do more Republicans live? Suburbs, exurbs, rural areas. Your silly argument doesn’t pass the smell test.

I almost deleted this comment, but decided it needed to see the light of day in order to be mocked and ridiculed. By the way, a few of the answers I provided were given in the same flippant manner as the charges they address.

Know where your mayor was yesterday? In New York City, chumming it up with Mayor Bloomberg at the anti-gun summit.

Y’all must be so proud.

Well, not quite. Here’s the background.

This is all very strange and extremely troubling. It is happening right here in Houston, Texas.

Andrea Clarke is a patient at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in the Medical Center. She went in there for surgery on a heart condition. After surgery, she developed complications (an infection) and was put on a respirator to help her breath. In order to treat her pain, they have given her enough pain meds to make her unconsciousness.

To make a long story short, the powers that be at St. Luke’s has declared her condition to be “medically futile”. Andrea’s family has 10 days to move her or they “pull the plug”.

There’s more background to the story, but that’s actually a really good summary of the case. The Ethics Committee at St. Luke’s has determined that Andrea Clarke’s condition is futile, one doctor may disagree, but it looks like Clarke is caught in a system where once the hospital says her condition is futile, no other hospitals in the area are going to accept her as a transfer.

As fun as it might be to play House, M.D. on the blog, I won’t. This may very well be a worthy cause for bloggers to get behind, but you know, we’re only hearing one side of the story (and that’s all we’ll be hearing because of HIPAA laws). I’m not trying to discourage anyone from calling or emailing the hospital, but be aware that there’s more to this story than we can know. Even with that in mind, I’ve crafted an email to the hospital.

In the meantime, my heart and prayers go out to the Clarke family. This has to be incredibly difficult for them, and they deserve support from both sides of the political aisle. I hope and pray that they have a happy ending.

Today in New York City a whole host of mayors are meeting to discuss anti-gun legislation. The National Shooting Sports Foundation asked for a seat at the table, but were turned down by Mayor Bloomberg.

“Our industry has developed programs that are working to reduce criminal misuse of firearms,” Lawrence Keane, senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, wrote the mayor.

“We would welcome the opportunity to educate mayors about these programs.”

He didn’t get very far.

“Are they mayors?” asked Stu Loeser, Bloomberg’s press secretary, dismissing the request out of hand.

Well, it turns out there are a lot of non-mayors at today’s meeting. From the original press release sent out by the Mayor’s office:

This first-ever Gun Summit will be a daylong event in New York City
beginning with a morning symposium outlining best practices from
cities across the country followed by a panel of the nation’s leading
experts on gun crimes. The mayors will also discuss state and federal
legislation and litigation efforts and identify specific issue areas
where they can collaborate. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly will
also make a presentation to the group.

I realize honesty is a rare quality in politicians, but you’d think Bloomberg would at least have the stones to say “This is an anti-gun meeting. Why would we want to invite gun manufacturers?” rather than making an excuse that’s so easily refuted.

**Update**

Jeez. Josh Sugarmann, the head of the Violence Policy Center, is apparently in attendance at this day-long event.

**Update**

Apparently Josh Sugarmann was not at the summit after all. Harvard’s David Hemenway, Joshua Horwitz from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and Daniel Webster from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins.

Excellent video of Cynthia McKinney trying to tell the media what is and is not off-the-record, AFTER they record her calling an aide a “fool”.

Allahpundit points out McKinney’s running for re-election. Great.

Well, not quite. But she’s following Howard Dean’s lead and getting tough on illegal immigration, including support for building a wall.

Michelle Malkin’s got a great new website called Hot Air. It looks like it could be a very cool venture. And hey, she’s linked NRAnews.

Saw another great concert in D.C. last night, and again the artists refrained from talking politics.

Nickel Creek’s Chris Thile said that D.C. is a place where “things get done”, but said that was the only political remark he was going to make, because that’s basically all he knew. You gotta love that.

Sara Watkins made one somewhat political remark, noting that all of the network anchors “look like aliens”. Beautiful, talented, and snarky towards the media. What’s not to like?

Of course when you’re not playing politics, you’re free to play music, and they did a great job. Lots of long bluegrass jams, some surprising covers (Randy Newman’s “Short People” and Britney Spears’ “Toxic”), and some beautiful Americana-style tunes.

I wasn’t too impressed with the 9:30 club, but the band was fantastic.

This column by Charles Krauthammer, and this comment by one of Glenn’s readers makes me wonder if we’re seeing a new breed of fascism.

Take a look at this piece by Markos Zuniga, the DailyKos blogger. In it, he extols the virtue of the military, not just for the men and women who serve, but for those of us who don’t.

The military is perhaps the ideal society — we worked hard but the Army took care of us in return. All our basic needs were met — housing, food, and medical care. It was as close to a color-blind society as I have ever seen. We looked out for one another. The Army invested in us. I took heavily subsidized college courses and learned to speak German on the Army’s dime. I served with people from every corner of the country. I got to party at the Berlin Wall after it fell and explored Prague in those heady post-communism days. I wasn’t just a tourist; I was a witness to history.

My buddy Jeff wrote a fantastic rebuttal to Markos, in which he said:

What Markos describes is the textbook socialist utopia: A society in which an all-powerful state provides for the all the citizens’ basic needs.
Of course, what he neglects to mention is that the sort of collectivist vision of America he’s describing is totally incompatible with little notions like liberty and self-determination.
If we’re gonna look at the Army as an example of an ideal society, we have to observe that it’s essentially a centrally planned economy under rigid authoritarian control. You don’t get to choose your own job in the Army; the Army assigns you to a job. There’s no entrepreneurship in the Army; you don’t get to go off and found your own infantry division. And there’s no dropping out; desertion is a capital crime.
There’s no democracy in the Army, and for good reason. No military organization in human history has let the soldiers vote on whether they have to go to war, or march in formation, or dig latrines. Soldiers receive orders, and they carry those orders out. No questions, no debate, no ballot initiatives, no referenda. Failing to follow an order is a capital crime, too.
Freedom of speech or the press, the right of the people to be secure in their persons, the right to peaceably assemble … all these fundamental liberties that we cherished enough to write them down in the Bill of Rights, every last one of them is denied to the members of the military to a greater or lesser extent. Hell, even the right to due process is abridged for soldiers, through an institution called nonjudicial punishment.
Sure, you get your meals for free. But you can be summarily shot for disobeying an order.
And this is what Markos calls his “ideal society?”

There’s more, and it truly is a must read.

Look around today. We’ve got academics in Kentucky talking about “exercising your right to free speech” by destroying a pro-life display. You’ve got students at UC Santa Cruz suspected of vandalizing SUV’s with slogans like “guzzle” and “oil equals blood”. You’ve got the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals suggesting that the 1st Amendment doesn’t apply if your speech may “destroy the self-esteem of our most vulnerable teenagers and interfere with their educational development.”

You’ve got the thug tactics of the Brownshirts, the desire for a strong centralized government, a curtailing of certain liberties that these folks deem irrelevent or inconvenient.

The more extreme rhetoric has been limited to the fringe these days. But as Krauthammer (and Zuniga) make clear, the Left seems willing to embrace notions they ought to be dismissing in order to gain power. The scary thing is, they just might do it.

President Bush’s approval rating is at 33%, according to the latest Fox poll. According to Gallup, the most important issue is immigration. According to that Gallup poll, 81% of Americans think immigration is out of control and 79% think something needs to be done to stop the number of illegal immigrants from entering this country.

Howard Dean says it’s the top priority for Democrats in the fall.

“The first thing we want is tough border control,” he said. “We have to do a much better job on our borders than George Bush has done. And then we can go to the policy disagreements about how to get it done.”

Look for Democrats to capitalize on the high gas prices as well.

That’s to be expected, and quite frankly, I think they’ll be pretty successful with it. And the thought of generic Democrats taking control of the Senate and the House depresses me as a conservative, but it doesn’t freak me out.

What freaks me out is what it will mean for the fringe. Markos Zuniga and his “ideal society” aren’t being looked at as a kooky idea. Democratic leaders look at Markos Zuniga as a guy who can help them become a majority party. There will be seats at the table for him and others whose idea of an “ideal society” sounds a lot like a totalitarian government.

Now I realize that I’ve focused mostly on my fears of the Left, and that folks like Nora will inevitably mention that there are fringe groups on the Right that are just as scary to people like her. And she’s right. That deserves another post all it’s own, however, and this one has taken several hours for me to write. I’ll try and get that one up over the weekend.

Cam’s Law of Public Nudity states that those most likely to get naked in public are the ones you are least likely to want to see naked.

I rest my case. If I want to see a fat naked guy… well, I’ll strip down and look in the mirror.

Just wanted to thank Jewelry by Thea for advertising on the blog. If you’re looking for something pretty for an upcoming birthday or anniversary present, check out this Oklahoma-based business (and keep them advertising on the blog so I don’t have to beg you for cash).

… in all the wrong places. You know, Oklahoma doesn’t need stories like this showing up everywhere.

BRAY, Okla. — A man is causing an uproar in his rural southwestern Oklahoma town by advertising that he’d like to pay for a young virgin to be his bride.

Michael Theleman, 45, said he doesn’t understand the problem and thinks he just has some wicked neighbors.

Theleman has caused an uproar in the southwestern Oklahoma town of Bray with his search for a bride. He put a sign in his yard Sunday saying he’ll pay $1,000 for a virgin bride between the ages of 12 and 24.

Why couldn’t this guy be from Arkansas?

Just in case, you know, some old guy comes a-callin’, offering to give you a free mammogram.

I know, you’d think I wouldn’t need to give you this advice. But there are two women in their 30’s who fell for this.

Meet Philip Winikoff. The 76-year-old Florida man was arrested this morning and charged with sexual battery after he posed as a doctor and went door-to-door–black doctor’s bag in hand–offering women free breast exams. According to a Broward County Sheriff’s Office report, two women–ages 33 and 36–fell for the scam, which Winikoff allegedly ran in Lauderdale Lakes.

I didn’t think people could be that stupid, but apparently I was wrong.

Air Arabia loves “South Park”, apparently.

Anybody want to subsidize me going to Amsterdam for this conference?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.