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GE Bailout Piles Rocks Outside Keith Olbermann's Glass House
Tweet Share on Facebook April 24, 2009 Comment (150)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Keith Olbermann, the host of an eponymous news and entertainment program on MSNBC, makes great sport of tossing angry rocks in the direction of conservatives and Republicans. He comes across as very tough when he dishes out his scorn. But, thanks to a new site on the Internet, we may soon be able to find out whether or not he can take it.
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Did Pat Buchanan Just Say That Martin Luther King Would Approve Torture?
Tweet Share on Facebook April 24, 2009 Comment (13)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Pat Buchanan was just debating torture on Hardball and made what is—even for him—an astounding statement. Jonathan Turley was arguing that torture is illegal—we've signed a treaty outlawing and have prosecuted people for it in the past.
Buchanan argued that national security needs to trump mere laws. Then his mind-blower:
"There's a higher moral law here, that's what Dr. King was all about."
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Bill Maher's Angry Rant Is Wrong About Republicans and Mainstream America
Tweet Share on Facebook April 24, 2009 Comment (184)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Bill Maher, following behind Janeane Garofalo and Robert Shrum earlier this week, continues the left's angry diatribe against the tea party protests in today's L.A. Times. His column is one big, ugly, name-calling screed, moving past the tax day protests to call all Republicans "a socially awkward group of mostly white people who speak a language only they understand. Like Trekkies, but paranoid." Here's the most offensive part:
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Better U.S. Schools Could End Recession, Pay Off Debt to China
Tweet Share on Facebook April 24, 2009 Comment (27)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Can we all agree, liberals and conservatives, that the US of A is piling up a mountain of public debt? And can we all agree that nobody wants to raise income tax rates to pay off all those trillions of dollars that we owe?
That is what the infamous tea parties were all about, right Fox News fans?
Well here is one way to pay off our Chinese and other foreign creditors, without raising taxes. It's surprisingly simple: improve our schools.
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Democrats, Republicans Will Agree: Bipartisanship Is Dead
Tweet Share on Facebook April 24, 2009 Comment (5)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
You heard it here months ago, folks. There's no such thing as bipartisanship in Washington, D.C.:
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Pork Barrel Projects Rampant in Congress's Spending for 2009 Fiscal Year
Tweet Share on Facebook April 23, 2009 Comment (28)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Every year, Citizens Against Government Waste, which, as its name implies, is an organization that works to fight waste in government, releases a pamphlet documenting what it believes are wasteful expenditures by the federal government.
The book, which this year runs to 60 pages, helps fuel the outrage now directed at congressional earmarks and other forms of suspicious spending. And it's something that every American taxpayer should read.
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Polo Horses Poisoning: New Details Show Need to Ban Horse-Drugging
Tweet Share on Facebook April 23, 2009 Comment (9)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
The story continues to unfold in the case of those 21 so-called polo ponies (adult polo is usually played on horses, but they're referred to as ponies) and the details point to the unmasking of a dirty little secret in many horse sports.
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Second Amendment Makes Gun Control Unconstitutional, Period
Tweet Share on Facebook April 23, 2009 Comment (210)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
My editors would like me to take a nuanced, clever stance on the Second Amendment.
I cannot.
No means no. Not means not.
Just like the First Amendment.
No infringement on Free Speech.
No mixing Church and State.
No Gun Control.
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Accused Craigslist Killer Offers Larger Lesson: You Don't Really Know Someone
Tweet Share on Facebook April 23, 2009 Comment (11)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
How many times have we heard a long-time acquaintance of an accused killer say something to the effect of, "He never could have done something that horrendous."
As a local news reporter in the 1980s, I must have covered a dozen stories in which it was my assignment to speak to friends, neighbors, acquaintances of accused murderers, burglars, or you-name-it varieties of violent criminals. Not a one of them told me, "Oh yeah, he did it. He's a scary human being."
Yet here we go again in the case of accused Craigslist killer, Phillip Markoff. We don't know yet whether Markoff is guilty of murder, but it's natural for people to speculate whether he could have done it. And, typically, his friends and family are expressing disbelief:
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Democrats' Torture Hypocrisy on Bush Memos Won't Go Unnoted
Tweet Share on Facebook April 23, 2009 Comment (18)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
When you look at all the information that's come out about "enhanced interrogation" over the last week or so, a couple of things strike you. First, that there was a lot of time and energy spent by a lot of professionals—from Justice lawyers to CIA officials to State Department leadership to military doctors—on this issue. This was not a seat-of-the-pants operation by a bunch of freelancers. Years of memos and meetings took place on waterboarding, and there's quite a paper trail. Second, it's clear from that paper trail that honest men and women can disagree. There's just a lot of gray and I think the Bush administration was honestly trying to figure out where the line should be. Rich Lowry put it well: "As a realist, I think those kind of tough calls in murky areas are inevitable in foreign affairs, and especially in a shadowy war against lawless extremists. Sometimes there are no good or easy answers."
