If the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico wasn’t so potentially devastating both economically and ecologically, I would offer a cynical remark that three Democratic senators are displaying their infinite wisdom by proposing legislation that would increase the cap of $75 million to $10 billion for damages liable to oil giant BP. Despite British Petroleum LCC Chief Executive Tony Hayward pledging in a conference call Monday that the company will pay all legitimate costs no matter what the final...

Federal agents and police detectives have arrested a naturalized citizen from Pakistan in the botched unexploded car bomb in Times Square. They identified the man as Faisal Shahzad of Connecticut who they said bought the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder several weeks ago through a website ad but did not register it. The unattended SUV was loaded with gasoline, propane, fireworks, two timers and 100 pounds of fertilizer. With smoke puffing from inside the vehicle, a Tee-shirt vendor reported the incident...

The Obama administration has a penchant for laying most of its cards on the table, a poker technique many experts would avoid, and they continued this strange game by telling the world we have a nuclear arsenal of 5,113 weapons. The heretofore stunning announcement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at an arms proliferation meeting before the United Nations General Assembly shattered a taboo dating back to the Cold War. “We think it is in our national security interest to be as transparent...

Unless he can personally reach down and cap the oil leak about a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico waters, President Obama’s visit to first hand inspect the impending damage is political show time. The president flew to the Gulf Coast Sunday 12 days after the oil platform exploded and sank spewing about 210,000 gallons of gaseous crude oil daily with no containment in sight. In a photo op, Obama told reporters “we’re dealing with a massive and potentially unprecedented...

I will leave the slicing and dicing to more erudite critics of comedy but as an observer of good satire, I thought President Obama was outstanding at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner Saturday night. Two jokes in particular struck me as quite telling about the man as president and the man as a father of two daughters reaching the dating age. I’m paraphrasing, but the lead in to his first joke that tickled my funny bone was observing his falling numbers in job performance...

Rush Limbaugh apparently believes those crazy environmentalists blew up the oil rig that exploded and sank 50 miles off shore in the Gulf of Mexico. This, courtesy of Ezra Klein of the Washington Post. I want to get back to the timing of the blowing up, the explosion out there in the Gulf of Mexico of this oil rig. … Now, lest we forget, ladies and gentlemen, the carbon tax bill, cap and trade, that was scheduled to be announced on Earth Day. I remember that. And then it was postponed for...

Senate Democrats with significant input from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have introduced a broad framework towards immigration reform which in my opinion is a decent step in the right direction but misses its mark by miles that would eliminate the problem in its entirety. Ezra Klein, the Washington Post columnist who earned high marks for his explanation of complex health and financial reform legislation, I’m afraid needs more schooling on immigration. He says the Democratic...

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a new law Friday that clarifies certain provisions of the controversial illegal immigrant law she signed April 23 that drew national scorn from even Republicans and threats of economic boycotts by Latino advocates. Rather than asking a suspected illegal immigrant on contact by police, the revision requires law enforcement to question the person on other law infractions before seeking documentation the person is in the state legally. “These new statements make...

Snorted one liberal cable television anchor, “What do you think of that ‘Drill Baby Drill’ thingy now?” referring to recent chants by Sarah Palin and heard frequently by Republicans, conservatives and many voters during the 2008 presidential campaign. Frankly, Virginia, I don’t give a damn about the political fallout of the oil spill tragedy now washing ashore off the Gulf of Mexico. Those idiots are not the ones who suffer in their pocket books and with their lives. The...

A survey of correspondents covering the White House concludes they have a “surprisingly hostile relationship — as contentious on a day-to-day basis as any between press and president in the past decade.” Gee, after listening to Fox’s Bill O’Reilly for years I thought the liberal left wing mainstream press was in the hands body and soul of the Democrats and particularly President Barack Obama. Politico‘s Josh Gerstein and Patrick Gavin agree to that perception and...

The following is a speech written for President Obama in advance of the Senate introducing a climate/energy/jobs bill that Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) had scheduled to introduce this past Monday. “Yes, if we pass this energy legislation, a small price on carbon will likely show up on your gasoline or electricity bill. I’m not going to lie. But it is an investment that will pay off in so many ways. It will spur innovation in energy efficiency that will actually lower the total amount you...

Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle.is expected to sign a law passed by the Legislature Tuesday that authorizes a state agency to ignore repeated requests for certified copies of President Obama’s birth certificate. The law provides an exemption in the public records act to ignore repeated requests from groups or individuals. Hawaii Health Director Dr. Chiyonne Fukino has issued two statements since 2008 verifying Barack Hussein Obama in deed was born in Honolulu in August 1961. Her office says they...

Arizona’s Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik says he will not enforce the state’s new anti-immigrant law because it is unnecessary as well as probably unconstitutional. It’s nice to finally hear some straight talk out of that state rather than the echo chamber of political proponents and opponents.beating the drums and creating mass hysteria. Here’s the video clip from the Keith Olbermann “Countdown” show on MSNBC. With apologies for the Pillsbury commercial,...

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has reignited a civil war in Cape Cod pitting neighbors against one another and drawing the wrath of the Kennedy family, no less, by announcing development of the nation’s first off-shore wind farm. The project submitted by Wind Farms Associates has been nine years under regulatory review and would spread across 25 square miles of Nantucket Sound. The late Sen. Ted Kennedy opposed the project from the outset. His nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental...

If you think the Arizona Legislature has gone mad enacting Draconian anti-immigrant laws, the Oklahoma Legislature also dominated by Republicans are the inmates running the asylum. The Sooner State is $1.2 billion in the red, its pro-life Republicans cut funding for teen child care centers which they support, while at the same time spending 10 times those savings fighting challenged anti-abortion legislation in the courts. Within hours after the Oklahoma Senate voted 36-12 overriding the governor’s...

Threatened with mandatory sessions into the weekend, Republicans caved in late Wednesday after three consecutive days of filibuster votes and agreed by unanimous consent to begin debates on the chamber’s version of finance reform. The joke circulating the Capitol corridors was that Senate Minority Leader Mitch O’Connell, who kept the Republicans in line, did not want to be deprived of returning home to Kentucky to watch Saturday’s running of the Kentucky Derby. The Washington Post...

I didn’t realize it at the time I was growing up in Orange County, Calif., in the 1950s that a large percentage of family friends were members of the Tea Party movement before the name became a part of our national discussion some six decades later. They were white, well-educated middle and upper class folks who recognized the country was headed in a direction foreign to them. No, it wasn’t big government because they had experienced that already with the Roosevelt administration. The...

A homeless man lay in a pool of blood from stab wounds after attempting to rescue a woman being attacked while seven New Yorkers walked and gawked passing by for an hour, police said. Police said it was unknown if Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax, a Guatemalan immigrant, was dead as passersby watched. It took four 911 calls until police and firemen arrived at the correct address and determined he had died of the wounds. Detectives reconstructed the crime scene from a store’s video camera. The footage...

Former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have taken different paths after leaving the White House but neither can escape the wrath of their critics. Chris Mathews on his MSNBC show “Hardball” Monday was both harsh and catty on news that Bush’s memoirs will be published Nov. 9. Matthews, author of several books with paltry sales, sniped that Bush’s book obviously must be ghost-written. David Corn, the man from Mother Jones, opined on Politics Daily, that...

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