Be a shame if anything happened to it. Patrick already weighed in on the story of how the White House is using the threat of closing a military base to twist the arm of Senator Ben Nelson on the health care bill, but there are a few more layers to this onion which need to be peeled away. First of all, bare knuckle, hard ball politics is nothing new in Congress, and both parties resort to these tactics from time to time. Newt Gingrich was famous for it back in the day and was the poster child for...

The Cook Report is already hard at work tracking the polls and prognosticating on which House and Senate seats will go which way in next fall’s elections. Thus far, it seems like the Democrats should be able to hold on to their House majority status. Barely. Well… maybe, anyway. On the surface, things might be considered fairly rosey for the Dems. The report ignores the deemed “safe” seats, and focuses on the races which are “likely,” or “leaning” or...

Call it clever timing or call it desperation. Either way, the taxpayers found an early lump of coal in their Christmas stockings this weekend. With the end of the year approaching, the Senate followed the path set by the House on Thursday and passed a massive, pork laden 1.1 $T spending bill, and now hopes to move forward on upping the federal debt limit by an additional 1.8 $T. You’d be hard pressed to find any good news here, but it seems that even a few of the Democrats have begun to read...

Mid Stream Radio will rear its ugly head again today for our last show of the year, reviewing a couple of the top stories currently absorbing the 24 hour news beast. Hot off the griddle will be the effort by Congress to pass a $1.1 trillion spending bill and raise the federal debt ceiling by $1.8 trillion, along with Cindy’s latest story about how, with little media attention, Republicans continue to win special elections and pry open advantages even in areas where they suffer from daunting...

There are headlines blaring across the maw of the 24 hour news beast about the results of a new CNN – Opinion Research poll on the opinions of Americans about their representatives on Congress. (Follow the bloodbath on Memeorandum.) As with most of these polls, you can, if you wish, satisfy yourself with the rough cut talking points. “GOP has erased party popularity gap in Congress!” Well, yes. The overall party support numbers have dropped to a 40-39 split in favor of the Democrats,...

(See update below) Over the skies of Norway, something was happening besides the President’s arrival to pick up his Nobel prize. A truly strange light show took place which absolutely does not look like any permutation of the Northern Lights that I’ve ever seen. It went on for at least ten minutes, twisting in outward moving spirals with some sort of strange blue-green beam coming out of the center. I have to agree with Allahpundit… in terms of “freaky” this may be the...

Who says that Congress can’t get anything done? Say what you like about partisan gridlock, filibusters, obstruction on health care reform or disputes over military strategy, there’s one thing that the folks on the Hill are good at… spending your money. Dems to lift debt ceiling by $1.8 trillion, fear 2010 backlash In a bold but risky year-end strategy, Democrats are preparing to raise the federal debt ceiling by as much as $1.8 trillion before New Year’s rather than have to face...

Some of you may be familiar with MTV, a television project which, a couple of decades ago, was famous for occasionally showing a music video. Well, it seems that they’re back in the news and have quite a few people upset with them. The focus of all the outrage is their new series, Jersey Shore, yet another in a series of “reality” shows depicting the lives of young people getting up to whatever it is that young people are doing these days. But in this case we are treated to a group...

In an era where print journalism is appearing more and more like the last dodo, looking around and wondering where everyone went, one man still seems to think he can bring the species back from the brink. He is, of course, Rupert Murdoch. Today, in my latest column at Pajamas Media, I take a look at Murdoch’s lofty goals and how he hopes to achieve them. For a perhaps chilling peek at his line of thought, though, here’s a short excerpt. So how does this powerful media mogul plan to make...

This became something of a standard talking point during both the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. As the story went, Democrats cared about seniors and their particular needs. Republicans wanted to cut Medicare and were plotting to kill your grandparents. My, what a difference one election makes, eh? Check out one of the health care amendments which passed in the Senate over the weekend. By a vote of 53 to 41, the Senate on Saturday rejected a Republican effort to block cutbacks in payments...

The New York Times’ Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, has published a much needed, but strangely unsatisfying and contradictory explanation of his newspaper’s coverage (or lack thereof) of the hacked climategate e-mails from the University of East Anglia. Much of his response focuses on answering charges that Times reporter Andrew Revkin was “too cozy” with some of the climate scientists in question when reporting on man’s influence on global warming trends. But in the course...

It looks like it might have. Even as popular opinion has begun to sour on the war both at home and abroad, NATO is going to answer the President’s call for escalation and pony up some more troops. Responding to American entreaties for more soldiers in Afghanistan, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO secretary general, announced Friday that the alliance had agreed to contribute a further 7,000 “new forces” to the coalition there following Washington’s decision to commit some 30,000 American...

As long time readers will recall, I was no fan of the Bush administration for a number of reasons, among which was the insulting lack of transparency and accountability to the public on many matters which had little or nothing to do with national security and should have been exposed to the sunshine of public scrutiny. I wanted to know which members of the energy industry were meeting with Dick Cheney. I lost track of the number of things I wanted Karl Rove dragged before Congress to talk about....

There’s a title I bet you never expected to see over my byline, did ya? But the advent of President Obama’s highly touted “jobs summit” seems like an excellent time to open a discussion which I believe is long overdue. As with many of these big ticket items, I’m afraid I have some observations which won’t sit well with partisans on either side of the political divide, but they should be brought out in the open for consideration. Plenty of people are already weighing...

As we’ve been covering for you in the past, the Environmental Protection Agency has been considering a request from various agro-business entities for a waiver which would allow the expansion of bio-fuel additives to gasoline from the current 10% limit to 15%. The automotive industry has largely called for slowing down this process until adequate testing can be performed to ensure that the increased levels will not cause long term damage to current model cars. This week, the EPA announced that...

How good of a no limit hold ‘em poker player would Barack Obama make if we were to dump him into the World Series of Poker tour with the likes of Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu and the rest of their crew? Don’t ask me how I launched off on that tangent this week, but it’s the premise of my latest column at Pajamas Media, “Obama Just Doesn’t Know When to Fold ‘em.” Whether it’s foreign or domestic policy, the Democrats were handed quite a few strong hands...

I can’t help it sometimes. I feel like a moth drawn toward a flame. When Michael Moore pens a heartfelt letter to the President of the United States imploring him to save the world, I simply have to read it. And I confess… I did. I read every last morsel. And here’s the surprising part… Mr. Moore has actually highlighted (albeit in a completely unintentional way, I’m sure) a very important point. His plea is for Obama not to become “the next war president”...

Patrick already asked some questions about the recent Tiger Woods car accident story, but now we have a statement from the legendary golfer himself. For those of you who missed it over the holiday break, Tiger was apparently involved in a “single car accident” where he damaged a fire hydrant and plowed into a tree outside his home, suffering some non-life threatening injuries, particularly to his face. Police say no alcohol or drugs were involved, so this might have been one of those...

Former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura is back in the news as he prepares to launch a new show on the Tru-TV network. It’s going to be all about conspiracy theories and dark, shady government secrets.This has prompted a few interviews, such as this one in the LA Times, and as always, the big man has some eyebrow raising stories to share. One of them concerned the shelving of his old show on MSNBC, which apparently got the boot because Jesse was …. too liberal? I can think of a lot of...

Well, this should certainly set things to rights in our ongoing dance with Tehran. PARIS — One day after the director general of the United Nations nuclear watchdog castigated Iran for blocking inquiries into its nuclear program, the organization’s governing body voted on Friday to censure Tehran and demanded that it freeze operations “immediately” at a once-secret uranium enrichment plant. The panel also expressed “serious concern” about potential military aspects of Iran’s nuclear...

Attendees of the 83rd annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade were stunned to silence and then sent fleeing in panic this morning as perennial Batman nemesis The Penguin unleashed a shocking, horrific attack on the festive event in front of a gathering of tens of thousands. The Penguin and his henchmen had apparently stolen several of the giant, festive balloons from a warehouse overnight, replacing most of the helium inside with massive doses of nitrous oxide. NBC weatherman and show host Al...

Just in time for Thanksgiving, guess who is back in the news? Yes, it’s Roman Polanski, noted movie producer, escaped felon and pedophile. (Hat tip to Ed at Hot Air.) It seems that old Roman has ponied up $4.5M and gotten himself out on bail. But don’t worry about whether or not justice is being served… he’ll still be doing hard time. In his Swiss chalet. Bail has reportedly been set at 3m euros (£2.7m; $4.5m) for the film director. While on bail, Polanski would have to...

EDITOR’S NOTE: A portion of the original content of this post has been edited to broaden the debate to include mainstream media (MSM) and all blogs (along with associated writers and commenters) that engaged on this topic earlier. Thank you. -TS ********** Joe already reported on it briefly, (and I also noted this from allahpundit) but I think a bit more detail and an apology are in order. For those of you who missed the earlier coverage, it seems that authorities have ruled census worker...

You know what I really hate about the onset of the holiday season? (OK… we really don’t have time or server space for a comprehensive list, so I’ll just cut to the whining subject of the day.) It’s the endless parade of media propaganda telling me precisely how lame I am for not having the latest and greatest doohicky of this or that flavor and how easy and cheap it will be for me to get up to speed. This was brought home yet again this week while I was watching my evening...

Has anyone seen Gerald Walpin recently? You know, I watch a lot of news, (likely far more than is good for me) but I haven’t heard a thing about this. Ok… I’ll admit that I didn’t really even know that we still had an Inspector General. After that whole Pink Panther thing, I thought he was… oh, nevermind. Anyway, in case you hadn’t heard – and judging my the media, you probably haven’t – the Inspector General was fired. Why? Go read this and you...