Did you ever mean to say “If you are shy then I have an acre of land in the Everglades.” and have it come out “If you’re bashful I got a snake sitting under my desk here”? I mean, those sentences are so close to being identical, and these kinds of misstatements happen all the time, right?

Well, that’s what you have to believe if you’re still a defender of Connecticut legislator Ernest Hewett, who said the latter on February 20 to a 17 year-old girl at a public hearing and is now saying he meant to say the former. Most press covereage of Hewett’s obviously lewd remark has done an acceptable job of tagging him as a Democrat, with a notable exception being Ken Dixon at the Connecticut Post (HT Hot Air via Instapundit; bolds are mine throughout this post):

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From a Friday Wall Street Journal editorial (bolds are mine):

World Doesn’t End, Obama Hardest Hit
The sequester apocalypse evolves into a ‘slow grind.’

‘Just to make the final point about the sequester,” said President Obama at his press conference Friday, “we will get through this. This is not going to be an apocalypse, I think, as some people have said.” That’s a relief, but it is also a major walk-back, since the “some people” who have been predicting apocalypse are the President and senior members of his Administration.

Normal Americans awoke Friday to find that the veneer of civilization had not fallen away. If the federal government does end up spending $44.8 trillion over the next decade instead of $46 trillion, they may not notice at all. This may explain Mr. Obama’s morning-after concession that “what’s important to understand is that not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away,” and that the gruesome cuts that the President had been invoking are now merely “a slow grind that will intensify with each passing day.”

One reason the grind may intensify is that Mr. Obama spurned GOP offers Friday morning to grant him even more executive discretion than he already has to prioritize federal spending. Or as his own Simpson-Bowles commission put it, he could always choose among the “patchwork of thousands of duplicative programs, nearly impossible to track and even harder to evaluate for effective outcomes.” This he does not want to do.

What he is trying to do instead is implement the sequester as rudely as possible so that he can extract another tax increase.

I know it’s quaint to bring up such things in some quarters, but didn’t Obama swear to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States”? Why, yes he did — twice.

Since he did, isn’t Obama’s clear decision to, as the Journal says, “implement the sequester as rudely as possible,” from all appearances so as to cause the maximum amount of visible harm to the nation and its citizens, directly in conflict with what he swore he would do?

Of course it is.

This column went up at PJ Media on Wednesday evening and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Friday morning.

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As sequestration D-Day approaches courtesy of President Barack Obama, nicknamed “President Armageddon” by the Wall Street Journal, to be followed in a month by the debt-ceiling deadline, it’s important to understand just how completely the nation’s establishment press has not only abandoned its obligations in ways our Founders never anticipated, but has also chosen to become a team of de facto presidential advisers.

The first clue I detected as to what’s really happening was Jim VandeHei’s and Mike Allen’s horrific exercise in deceptive self-pity (“Obama, the puppet master”) at Politico on February 18. I was hoping it was an aberration. I should have known better.
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Rules are here. Possible comment fodder may follow later. Other topics are also fair game.

From Gaston, North Carolina:

Published: Wednesday, February 20, 2013 at 20:26 PM

Four local firefighters who helped save a 3-year-old girl from drowning last June are receiving awards for their dedication.

On June 1, Crowders Mountain Fire and Rescue responded to a drowning call. Ashton Leming was found floating in a neighbor’s pool on Redwood Lane. The toddler was not breathing.

A neighbor knew how to administer CPR and began working to get Leming to breathe. When firefighters arrived, Training Officer Gary Adair took over CPR and worked to clear her airway. He rushed her to an ambulance.

He continued compressions and she coughed up water. Minutes later, Leming was breathing.

For the courageous work that day, Adair joins Capt. Chris Wiker, Scott Parker and Nick Wall in receiving the 2012 Life Safety Award from the Gaston County Firefighters Association. They received plaques Feb. 18.

“An award like this is a dream come true for any firefighter or first responder,” said Chris Stowe, public information officer with Crowders Mountain Fire and Rescue. “By the grace of God, this 3-year-old, by the time the ambulance got there, she was breathing.”

Leming recovered and visited the fire station six days after the incident. …

Go here for the rest of the story.