Panel blasts Panther case dismissal

Jerry Seper (Contact)

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is demanding that the Justice Department explain why it recently dismissed a civil complaint against members of the New Black Panther Party who disrupted a Philadelphia polling place during last year's election, saying the department has offered only "weak justifications."

Commission Chairman Gerald A. Reynolds, a former deputy associate attorney general under President George W. Bush, said he fears the legal precedent set by the department in its May decision to drop the case might encourage "other hate groups" to act similarly at polling locations in the future.

Mr. Reynolds also charged that other groups might not have been treated so leniently.

"If you swap out the New Black Panther Party in this case for neo-Nazi groups or the Ku Klux Klan, you likely would have had a different outcome," he told The Washington Times in a telephone interview Monday.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/04/panel-demands-panther-answers/print/

Climate Bill to Raise Power Costs 20%, EIA Says (Update2)
By Daniel Whitten

Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Electricity prices would rise 20 percent by 2030 under climate legislation being considered in Congress, according to a draft study by a U.S. energy agency.

The report, to be issued by the Energy Information Administration, also says that polluting companies would initially meet most greenhouse gas reduction targets by sponsoring forestry and agriculture projects rather than cutting their own emissions. Even with the development of technologies designed to capture carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants, gas and nuclear-fueled power generation will take market share, the report says.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601130&sid=asfek4pnFOJY

Baskin Becomes 13th MSM Journalist to Spin Through Revolving Door for Obama

Roberta Baskin, a veteran of CBS News, ABC News, PBS and Washington, DC's ABC affiliate, with a stint at the Center for Public Integrity mixed in, “will join the Department of Health and Human Service's office of inspector general as a senior communications adviser in mid-August,” Washington Post “Federal Eye” blogger Ed O'Keefe reported late Monday. Specifically, O'Keefe related, her job will be “to help drum up media attention for the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team, an HHS-Justice Department task force aimed at combating Medicare and Medicaid fraud.”

My list of journalists who have jumped to the Obama administration -- plus one who traveled through the revolving door from helping the Obama campaign into a news media slot -- is now up to thirteen. Not counting Baskin: Three each revolved through CNN and the Washington Post; two through ABC News; and one each via the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek and Time magazine.

http://townhall.com/myblog/Baskin%20Becomes%2013th%20MSM%20Journalist%20to%20Spin%20Through%20Revolving%20Door%20for%20Obama

5 reasons why Obama will hike middle-class taxes

C’mon, how about some Walter Mondalesque candor from the Obama White House on taxes? Yes, yes, it was 25 years ago this summer that the Democratic presidential candidate self-immolated on the issue at his party’s convention in San Francisco. But surely Americans have become more urbane and sophisticated since then as to what makes for sound economic policy, oui?

[Find out five ways to boost the economy and create jobs]

Nope. If you had any doubt that higher taxes are still poisonous policy in center-right America, all you had to do was listen to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs yesterday. He briskly and precisely walked back the White House from the ambiguous statements made by Tim Geithner and Larry Summers on the Sunday chat shows. “I am reiterating the president’s clear commitment in the clearest terms possible that he’s not raising taxes on those who make less than $250,000 a year,” Gibbs said.

But what’s so clear, Mr. Gibbs? “Commitment” in this context is a schemer’s word, the much-weaker-yet-more-conniving sibling of “guarantee.” Did Broadway Joe express a mushy “clear commitment” to winning the 1969 Super Bowl? Clearly not. In any event, feel free to ignore Gibbs or any other White Housespinmeister who gives the impression that President Obama raising middle-class taxes would be the equivalent of playing himself in a Hollywood biopic — so unlikely as to be fanciful. It’s not and here’s why it will happen eventually:

http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2009/08/04/5-reasons-why-obama-will-hike-middle-class-taxes/

ase Date:  Aug. 3, 2009 Contact: Lt. Cmdr. Chris O'Neil (202) 372 - 4635

Coast Guard celebrates 219th anniversary

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Coast Guard celebrates 219 years of service as America's Guardians Tuesday, embracing their history of ensuring the safety and security of the nation's maritime transportation system, while continuing to modernize for the future. First proposed in 1790 by Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton as a "system of cutters" to generate revenue through the collection of tariffs, today's Coast Guard performs 11 vital missions around the world, including:

http://www.piersystem.com/go/doc/786/297905/

North Korea Says Jailed
Journalists Are Pardoned

URGENT: North Korean media reports Kim Jong Il has granted a 'special pardon' to two jailed American journalists, will leave tonight with former President Clinton

Hodes: Reading Every Bill “Not Realistic”

Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes (NH-02) believes reading every bill in Congress “would slow down the business of Congress to a crawl and it would be hard to get done what needs to be done.”

Members of Congress who don’t read the bills they are voting on “is not necessarily the major problem with the way Congress functions,” he said.

Hodes, who is the sole Democratic candidate in the race to replace the retiring New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, made the remarks during a recent editorial board meeting with the Nashua Telegraph.

“Hodes said it’s not realistic to expect members of Congress to read every bill word-for-word, as Congress took more than 2,000 votes in the session that ended in December,” the paper reports.

http://www.nowhampshire.com/2009/08/04/hodes-reading-every-bill-%E2%80%9Cnot-realistic%E2%80%9D/

First the story:

Seattle Times

Jim Nicholson thought he was doing the right thing when he tried to thwart a would-be bank robber — but, the Seattle bank he tried to protect thought otherwise.

Now conservative columnist Mona Charen commenting on this matter in her column:

This has to deal with the 'Cash for Clunkers' disclaimer:

Why Revive the Cold War?

Russia and the U.S. were reducing their nuclear arsenals without ‘arms control.’

By DOUGLAS J. FEITH AND ABRAM N. SHULSKY

The Cold War ended nearly 20 years ago. Isn’t it time we abandoned policies specifically designed to deal with it? Arms-control talks are a case in point. Why should U.S. officials act as if only a Cold War-style treaty can save the United States and Russia from a destabilizing nuclear arms race?

Despite President Barack Obama’s strange, pre-Moscow summit remark last month in a New York Times interview that the U.S. and Russia are continuing to “grow” their nuclear stockpiles, both countries have in fact reduced their stockpiles drastically since the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991. Those reductions resulted from unilateral decisions, not from arms-control bargaining.

Thus, on Nov. 13, 2001, President George W. Bush announced that the U.S. would unilaterally reduce its “operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to a level between 1,700 and 2,200 over the next decade.” This was far less than the 6,000 limit allowed under the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). Russian President Vladimir Putin promptly said in December 2001 that Russia would similarly reduce its nuclear forces.

Thus, benefiting from the happy reality that the Cold War was over, each country felt free to cut its arsenal, whether or not the other committed itself to do so. The 2002 Moscow Treaty, which simply made legally binding the reduction pledges each president had already announced, was negotiated as a friendly gesture to Russia. U.S. officials did not see it as a strategic necessity, but Mr. Putin wanted formal acknowledgment that Russia retained nuclear-arms parity with the U.S., though it could no longer be seen as America’s peer overall.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204313604574328430978849134.html

Gay Marriage, Democracy, and the Courts

The culture war will never end if judges invalidate the choices of voters.

By ROBERT P. GEORGE

We are in the midst of a showdown over the legal definition of marriage. Though some state courts have interfered, the battle is mainly being fought in referenda around the country, where “same-sex marriage” has uniformly been rejected, and in legislatures, where some states have adopted it. It’s a raucous battle, but democracy is working.

Now the fight may head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Following California’s Proposition 8, which restored the historic definition of marriage in that state as the union of husband and wife, a federal lawsuit has been filed to invalidate traditional marriage laws.

It would be disastrous for the justices to do so. They would repeat the error in Roe v. Wade: namely, trying to remove a morally charged policy issue from the forums of democratic deliberation and resolve it according to their personal lights.

Even many supporters of legal abortion now consider Roe a mistake. Lacking any basis in the text, logic or original understanding of the Constitution, the decision became a symbol of the judicial usurpation of authority vested in the people and their representatives. It sent the message that judges need not be impartial umpires—as both John Roberts and Sonia Sotomayor say they should be—but that judges can impose their policy preferences under the pretext of enforcing constitutional guarantees.

By short-circuiting the democratic process, Roe inflamed the culture war that has divided our nation and polarized our politics. Abortion, which the Court purported to settle in 1973, remains the most unsettled issue in American politics—and the most unsettling. Another Roe would deepen the culture war and prolong it indefinitely.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574322084279548434.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

"Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." We have heard that many times. What is also the price of freedom is the toleration of imperfections. If everything that is wrong with the world becomes a reason to turn more power over to some political savior, then freedom is going to erode away, while we are mindlessly repeating the catchwords of the hour, whether "change," "universal health care" or "social justice."

If we can be so easily stampeded by rhetoric that neither the public nor the Congress can be bothered to read, much less analyze, bills making massive changes in medical care, then do not be surprised when life and death decisions about you or your family are taken out of your hands-- and out of the hands of your doctor-- and transferred to bureaucrats in Washington.

Let's go back to square one. The universe was not made to our specifications. Nor were human beings. So there is nothing surprising in the fact that we are dissatisfied with many things at many times. The big question is whether we are prepared to follow any politician who claims to be able to "solve" our "problem."

http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/08/04/utopia_versus_freedom

To liberals, actually pointing out when they're lying through their teeth is considered to be dirty politics and, in the case of the Obama Administration, perhaps racist, too. Still, despite the risk of infuriating Barack Obama's dwindling number of supporters, someone needs to point out that he may already be able to challenge Bill Clinton for the title of the biggest liar ever to occupy the White House.

Of course, since I'm a partisan conservative, I don't expect everyone to just take my word for it. So, what I'm going to do is show you some quotations so that you can make your own decision about whether the Obama Administration has been truthful or not. Just read through these quotes, which only represent a small portion of the ones I could have selected, and ask yourself if the American people can take our President at his word.

http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2009/08/04/7_lies_of_the_obama_administration