Note: This post was revised on July 20, when I added several additional links and some clarifying and enhancing language.

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What is it with the so-called “conservative” establishment’s support of Mitt Romney?

Given what is known about the guy, it’s utterly amazing — and, as I’ll demonstrate in the coming days, disgusting.

Kathryn Jean Lopez has had a hankering for Mitt Romney ascending to national office since the primaries. She’s got it real bad.

Her most recent column at Townhall should be an embarrassment to her bosses at National Review, but unfortunately, I’m fairly confident that it isn’t.

Behold one of the most disgraceful exercises in excuse-making — ever (see the notes below):

….. The “flip-flop” accusation label hit former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney hard during the Republican primary earlier this year. By the end of the cycle, most citizens knew only two things about Romney: that he was good looking and used to believe things he no longer does. What most folks didn’t consider was the narrative. Did Mitt Romney change his position on gay marriage? He sure did. (1) Did Mitt Romney go from defending legal abortion to opposing it? Absolutely. (2) But consider how it happened:

Successful multimillionaire businessman Mitt Romney runs for governor of the Bay State to fix the economy there, a job he knows something about. Other issues, at the time, paled in comparison for him. (3) Fast forward, he’s in the statehouse. The legislature decides it’s going to fund an unprecedented human cloning effort with Harvard University, his alma mater. So he seriously studies what’s going on, he brings in experts. He didn’t let himself get swept up by the snake oil salesmen (remember John Edwards announcing that Christopher Reeve would be alive if not for George Bush’s refusal to fund embryonic stem-cell research?). He realizes that “Brave New World” is not just a novel, but something his state is about to budget for in a whole new way. When Romney actually took the time to figure this out, he changed his mind about abortion, cloning and other destruction of innocent human life. (4) Ditto for gay marriage. Once forced to confront the issue, once realizing the lengths activists will go to make sanctified same-sex unions legal, once the supreme court of Massachusetts instituted same-sex marriage there, he changed his mind. (5)

Good for him. They say it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. Well, it’s even harder for a grown man in public life to say “I was wrong.” He has. (6) Good for him.

It’s not a disingenuous flip-flop for me to take that point of view ….. (7)

Some “flip-flops” aren’t, in other words. As long as your core is clear — as long as you have one — a mature leader can learn. (8) Both presidential candidates would be wise to do so here and there. At least one of them isn’t going to take the beating Romney did during the primaries. And it helps that the other one’s middle name with them is “maverick.” (9)

(1) - Mitt Romney promised the Log Cabin Republicans before the 2002 gubernatorial election that he would not get in the way of what everyone pretty much knew was an imminent ruling in favor of same-sex “marriage” by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court — specifically that “I’ll keep my head low.” It’s right here in the New York Times, in an article that was complimentary towards him about his former Log Cabin Republican-supporting stance, and critical of his alleged move towards being again same-sex “marriage.” I blogged on it here in December.

(2) - Mitt Romney claims to have experienced a prolife “epiphany.” Oddly enough, the person in front of whom he supposedly had his “epiphany” doesn’t recall it occurring that way. It’s dishonest, bordering on libelous, that Romney tried to make his prolife flip-flop more palatable by asserting that Ronald Reagan was “adamantly” pro-abortion while he was California governor, and that Henry Hyde had once been proaboration. Both claims are demonstrably false; this was proven beyond doubt here back in December. Where has everybody who gets their jollies by invoking and defending the Gipper daily been?

(3) - Mitt Romney’s stewardship of Massachusetts’s economy was singularly unimpressive, and he was originally against the 2003 Bush tax cuts. See here, here, and here.

(4) - If he “changed his mind,” Mitt Romney had a strange way of demonstrating it. AFTER his “epiphany,” he signed into law Massachusetts’s state-run health-care law, aka CommonwealthCare, aka RomneyCare. That law enshrined the statutory right to $50 state-subsidized abortions in the Bay State for the first time.

(5) - See (1). I’ve yet to see an explanation as to how someone who “changed his mind” on gay marriage nevertheless responded to a court opinion he did not have to obey (because the court had no constitutional jurisdiction to even take he case), and in the absence of required enabling legislation, nonetheless mandated that gender-neutral “marriage certificates” be issued and that town clerks and justices of the peace issue them. The fact is, as has been explained many times, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts did NOT institute same-sex “marriage” in the Bay State. Same-sex marriage is still illegal there.

(6) - It’s not just “I was wrong.” It also requires “I am sorry.” First, I don’t think he is sorry, and second, I don’t know how anyone can be confident that Romney, after all those years of seeing things otherwise believes in anything he claims. The right has justifiably piled on Barack Obama for changing his mind about certain things after 20 years. Mitt Romney, an allegedly thoughtful, religious man, somehow took 40 years to get a grip on the sanctity of life and the societal importance of one-man, one-woman marriage.

(7) - K-Lo, your picture is next to the term “disingenuous flip-flop” in my dictionary.

(8) - Mitt Romney has no core.

(9) - If the “maverick” picks Romney as his running mate, he negates all of the advantage he has built up over Barack Obama for steadfastness and consistency, and creates all kinds of other problems for himself — problems that will be covered in future posts.

Previous Posts:
- July 16 — The Case Against Mitt Romney: Series Introduction

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In his groundbreaking column, “History and the Judiciary,” carried in its entirety at UndergroundJournal.net, conservative icon Paul Weyrich explains how deep this country’s problems have become:

….. I have listened as a debate is occurring over the proper powers of the courts and the tendency of some Americans to cede to the advocates of unrestrained judicial power victories to which they are not entitled.

I am occasionally referred to as a “founder of the modern conservative movement.” Such an honor places upon me and others to whom such a description applies a special duty to warn our fellow citizens. Americans today are witnesses to the realization of the great fear of our Founding Fathers: the passing away of government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” as President Abraham Lincoln stated, in the United States of America. With respect to the courts, we need a revival of the rule of law based upon the constitutional principles laid down by those who founded this nation.

….. Regardless of our votes, the defining judgments in our collective and personal destinies often are made by persons whom the American people have not elected to rule.

We gave judges their robes and gavels so that they might resolve specific disputes between specific plaintiffs and defendants. We never gave them authority to issue commands to our elected lawmakers, forcing us down roads which we have not chosen to travel.

Judges have no constitutional authority to make laws or to amend our national and state constitutions. They have no authority to redefine words and concepts in our laws to mean what they and their ideological partisans wish for them to mean.

To Americans of previous generations this was obvious and fundamental. But for many in America today, this is meaningless, a mere technicality: judges are supreme because, well, because they just are.

When several judges opined that there ought to be no more prayer in American schools, lawyers, politicians and journalists told us that after three centuries of prayer in our schools, judges had suddenly “outlawed” it. Court opinions interpreting law and social custom magically became the law itself.

….. Likewise, judges ….. opined that the American people may neither protect children from violent murder in their mother’s womb, nor outlaw sodomy, nor restrict their civic blessing upon marriage to nature’s definition of it …..

….. Many of us received in shock and sadness the Goodridge v. the Department of Public Health of Massachusetts opinion on homosexual marriage. Why do self-styled “conservatives,” lawyers, politician and pundits among them, spread the assertion that judges have powers that the American people have never given them?

The truth is that the ruthlessly enforced illusion of judicial supremacy did not merely empower judges and disenfranchise the American people. It made journalists, lawyers and clever politicians more influential culturally. Most, after all, are of the same ideological bent as many judges.

And those who were not, the “conservatives,” played within the new rules: judges’ opinions are “the law” in the United States of America.

….. Not a single signer of the Constitution (or of the Declaration of Independence) would have taken seriously the purportedly “conservative” view today that to restrain judges we need to replace them through attrition over decades.

….. For the sake of this republic I urge my friends, fellow leaders and Americans to emphatically repudiate the devastating myth that judges have the power to make and redefine our laws.

….. In the last century cultural elites created an illusion of judicial power that would be unrecognizable to earlier Americans, lawyers and laymen.

….. I fear the conservative elites are putting the final nail in our coffin. I know these men. They mean well. They are not pursuing their view out of malice. They believe what they are doing is right. ….. I look at results, and it seems to me that proponents of the status quo are allowing the legal profession and the courts to impose moral and civil codes which cannot pass federal and state legislatures.

They foolishly are handing absolute power to anti-Judeo-Christian, anti-family ideologues.

Weyrich’s column, written after lifetime of conservatism, is a tacit acknowledgment that much of conservatism has been misdirected for decades.

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July 24, 11PM Note: This next paragraph replaces a muddier one that was previously posted.

Those of us who believe in the constitution and the rule of law must fiercely fight to roll back the poisonous notion of judicial supremacy. We must forcefully argue our points in the public square without compromise; elect those who share and will advance our sentiments; remove from office those who don’t, or won’t; and expose and marginalize those, including so-called conservative movement leaders, talkers, commentators, and lawyers, who don’t or won’t advance our cause. The notion of judicial supremacy is completely contrary to the Constitution Our Founders wrote, and to what they intended.

The executive and legislative two branches, as well as other courts, are not required to, and indeed MUST NOT obey court opinions if they believe that a court’s opinion violates the plain-English meaning of a state or the federal constitution (or legislature-passed statutes consistent with a state or the federal constitution).

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While he was governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, with the help of the supposed “elites” of conservatism who should have known better, did more to support and cement the “devastating myth” of judicial supremacy Weyrich refers to than any single man in America. What Romney did has had profound consequences already, and promises worse. His selection to the vice presidency by John McCain would gravely worsen the situation; Romney’s ascension to the presidency threatens to make surrender of the executive and legislative functions to the judiciary permanent.

More on that is coming tomorrow.

It appears that the New York Times would prefer that its readers know as little as possible about Barack Obama’s abortion flip-flop, while still retaining the ability to claim, “yeah, we covered it.”

As a refresher, here is part of Thursday’s Associated Press report on this particular item in the ongoing Obama Flip-Flop festival, first noted at NewsBusters by John Stephenson:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says “mental distress” should not qualify as a health exception for late term-abortions, a key distinction not embraced by many supporters of abortion rights.

In an interview this week with “Relevant,” a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain “a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother.”

Obama then added: “Now, I don’t think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term.”

Although Obama’s latest position (at least the one he held Friday, unless he has since changed his mind again) is contrary to the official position of NARAL Pro-Choice America (the “NARAL” stands for National Abortion Rights Action League), AP noted that the organization defended Obama’s statement anyway.

But AP didn’t note an important contradiction that ABC’s Jan Crawford Greenburg caught at the network’s Legalities Blog (HT Writes Like She Talks). Obama’s new as-of-this-moment position also runs counter to Obama’s co-sponsorship of the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA):

Women today don’t have to show they are suffering from a “serious clinical mental health disease” or “mental illness” before getting an abortion post-viability, as Obama now says is appropriate.

And for 35 years—since Roe v. Wade—they’ve never had to show that.

So Obama, it seems to me, still is backing away from what the law says—and backing away from a proposed federal law (of which he is a co-sponsor) that envisions a much broader definition of mental health than the one he laid out this week.

Obama’s abortion flip-flop, and its conflict with his past stances, appear not to be among the “News That’s Fit to Print” at the New York Times.

The results of Times searches on “Obama abortion” and “Obama health” (both without quotes) show nothing mentioning the position change. A July 4 Times editorial criticizing the presumptive Democratic nominee on other flip-flops does not mention Thursday’s abortion shift.

Oh, there is one item referring to Obama’s new as-of-this-moment position. It doesn’t come up in the “Obama abortion” search results themselves, but is instead a Times blog reference that appears to the right of those results (”Rove Hits Obama on Abortion Issue“; item above Rove link at the search results page is from October 2007). In that post at the Times’s “The Caucus” blog, Michael Falcone waits until the eighth paragraph to mention Obama’s switcheroo.

Perhaps the Times is hoping that its readers (especially its print-only subscribers), many of whom regard “the right to choose” (i.e., the right to an abortion for any reason) as something close to a sacrament, won’t notice.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

11 p.m. Update: The person involved, John Haskins at UndergroundJournal.net, a free membership site for correctly-defined and delineated conservatism, has given me permission to use his name. This post has been carried to the top to give John’s site a bit of visibility.

June 28: Also, see John’s comment #3 below re Scalia.

June 30: See Comments section about Scalia’s roundabout citation of what could be natural law.

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This is an e-mail I sent to someone who stunned me a bit a few days ago when he claimed that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is not a conservative:

I’m not good at enduring long TV interviews, so I only watched a bit of the Scalia-Rose interview you referred me to.

But I saw enough to understand what you mean when you say that Scalia is NOT a conservative, in this sense: He, like so many others, has fallen into the trap of believing that whatever a majority of his gang of nine says is the last word on things, and that the other branches of government, and the people themselves, must yield to their judgment, regardless of whether or not there is merit in what they say.

I went through Scalia’s Heller opinion (PDF) yesterday, along with the dissents. The dissents are pitiful, as they attempt to twist “the people” referred to in the Second Amendment (i.e., it’s only “the people” who could be in militias) to be different from “the people” referred to in Amendments 1, 4, 9 and 10 (which clearly refer to each and every individual citizens).

But I believe Scalia and the majority gravely erred, as judges have for decades, in not citing natural law, which includes a God-given right to self-defense, as the most obvious argument supporting an individual right to keep and bear arms.

You don’t have comfort as to your continued Life, you don’t really have Liberty (but instead are a prisoner within your own home, office, or place of work), and you’re certainly not fully able to Pursue Happiness, if you are “legally” prevented by your government from adequately defending yourself. Gun restrictions on law-abiding citizens are thus prima facie illicit encroachments on the inalienable rights our Creator has endowed us with as enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.

Our Founders knew what they were doing when they put “the Blessings of Liberty” into the very first sentence of the Constitution. Those aren’t just a few flowery words; they refer to the Declaration’s God-given rights of Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness, and others (given the presence of the words “among these”). God has given us the right to defend ourselves. The government has no authority to take that God-given right away except in cases of national emergency, unless a person has proven himself or herself unworthy by committing crimes, or unless that person is mentally unstable.

Scalia’s majority opinion, when considered in combination with the intellectually dishonest and bankrupt dissents, leaves the door open for a future, agenda-driven court to come back and say “No, the militia clause governs the definition of ‘the people’ as used in the Second Amendment. Never mind how ‘the people’ is defined in the other amendments; we think Stevens was right, and Scalia was wrong.” Scalia and the majority needed to roll out a defense based on natural law and our God-given rights to seal the deal once and for all, and failed.

I believe that the judicial hubris I mentioned at the beginning of this e-mail — that the Supreme Court is the last word on what will be — blinded Scalia and his majority to the best defense they had — one that was, and would be, bulletproof (if you excuse the expression) if ever used. His failure to employ it leaves us vulnerable to the whims of a future court.

Tom

That would be:

“We Don’t Want Your Guns.”

The Supreme Court’s minority in the Heller case showed that this is EXACTLY what they want.

Justice Breyer’s dissent, which Justices Souter, Stevens, and Ginsburg joined, demonstrates this:

(From Page 23 of Breyer’s dissent):

These empirically based arguments (against handgun bans) may have proved strong enough to convince many legislatures, as a matter of legislative policy, not to adopt total handgun bans. But the question here is whether they are strong enough to destroy judicial confidence in the reasonableness of a legislature that rejects them (handgun bans). And that they are not.

(From Page 32):

In weighing needs and burdens, we must take account of the possibility that there are reasonable, but less restrictive alternatives. Are there other potential measures (besides a ban) that might similarly promote the same goals while imposing lesser restrictions? ….. Here I see none.

The reason there is no clearly superior, less restrictive alternative to the District’s handgun ban is that the ban’s very objective is to reduce significantly the number of handguns in the District, say, for example, by allowing a law enforcement officer immediately to assume that any handgun he sees is an illegal handgun. And there is no plausible way to achieve that objective other than to ban the guns.

These people are totally unmasked.

Oh, and so is the presidential candidate I refer to as Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama - Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters). His campaign said this in November (final two sentences at link):

But the campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said that he ‘…believes that we can recognize and respect the rights of law-abiding gun owners and the right of local communities to enact common sense laws to combat violence and save lives. Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional.’

Obama wanted guns banned in November; this statement was not disputed at the time. Why should anyone believe that his position is even slightly different now?

The gun-grabbers are one vote away from a Supreme Court majority. (I’m semi-amazed that Kennedy joined the majority.)

Does anyone seriously think that Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominees wouldn’t agree with the Heller minority?

Congressman Chris Cannon of Utah was defeated by Jason Chaffetz in Utah’s GOP Primary last night. The correct word, especially considering that Cannon was a six-term incumbent, is “trounced.”

Illegal immigration was a big issue, and Cannon was on the wrong side of it. The Wall Street “There Shall Be Open Borders” Journal will not be pleased.

With Cannon’s defeat, and a couple of successful insurgencies by the Club for Growth, I’m starting to believe that whoever is going to be president is going to face a slightly more conservative Congress, even if the Dems keep their majority. Even the GOP losses in Illinois and Mississippi were to Dems with non-PRO (Pelosi-Reid-Obama) positions. How much they were pretending is of course relevant and bears watching (see Bob Casey below).

Towards that end, House Republican leader, Ohio 8th District Congressman, and great American John Boehner would be well-advised to use Cannon’s defeat as a club to knock some sense into certain wandering RINOs.

Michelle Malkin has more, with a great assertion — “Now, this is real hope and change from a real maverick–a Republican running unashamedly and unequivocally as a conservative.”

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So Jim Dobson is getting or soon will get grief for his comment that the presidential candidate I refer to as “Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama - Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters) is “dragging Biblical understanding through the gutter.” I’ll be receptive to those criticizing Dobson when someone shows me the passage in the Bible saying that partial-birth abortion is acceptable, or further, that killing a baby that has survived an abortion — something Obama supported as an Illinois legislator — is okey-dokey.

Which reminds me — Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, with his ringing endorsement of Obama, has shown that he is a first-class fake, phony, and fraud on life issues. His late father, who was uncompromisingly prolife, is surely spinning in his grave.

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I’ve been meaning to post this item, which was originally posted in a NewsBusters comment, for some time, as it points to something I had previously missed (yeah, that happens occasionally :–>):

Actually, Gary, revenues increased 181% from 2003 to 2007. Congressional Budget Office data (scroll down a bit at the link) show that 2000 was the previous high-water mark for corporate tax collections, until 2005 through 2007 blew away the previous record.

In 2008, corporate tax collections are down about 10%. After four years of ignoring them, 2008 is when the AP (and a writer at the Wall Street Journal) “somehow” began noticing what was happening. Great point by Gary.

For being such a “tool of corporate interests,” Bush 43 has sure extracted a lot of money from them.

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Maggie Thurber, on the misnamed “Healthy Families Act” that may get onto the Ohio ballot in November:

There is nothing ‘family-friendly’ about a proposition that drives employers and jobs out of the state!

Her first commenter makes a great, sarcastic point:

The good news is that if this act passes, many Ohioans will have additional time to spend at home with sick family members … having no job to go to any longer.

Last year, I voiced objections to this nonsense here and here.

Nice try, Jeff, no sale — The validity, or lack thereof, of the complaint to the Ohio’s State Medical Board doesn’t change the validity of conclusions reached in 2006.

First, an important assertion made by the Dean of Cincinnati remains unrefuted, unless someone proves otherwise. Thus, his conclusion still stands:

She told one reporter that she did not find “Malariotherapy” effective, yet in her report to the Heimlich Institute she laid out plans to rename it, promote it, and do further research on it.

….. Dr. Wulsin now seeks the office of congresswoman, representing the citizens of Ohio. While we all can make small errors of judgment and may disagree from time to time, Wulsin’s activities at the Heimlich Institute go beyond simple mistakes. She knew exactly what she was doing, worked for a period of months, had access to records and resources, and was paid for it. How she was paid should be the subject of further investigation. In my opinion, her failure to stop the “Malariotherapy” by exposing it is reprehensible. If she claims she didn’t know then she is inept.

My pre-election take in 2006 also still stands:

Folks, the CDC and others rightly believe that this kind of human experimentation needs to be relegated to the House of Horrors — not given at least tacit sanction, as it was, by an MD who at some point may have been on the take.

As a congressperson in a technically advanced age, Vic Wulsin will be in a position to not only vote on legislation authorizing “advances” in medical science that are questionably ethical, but she will be able to throw the persuasive weight of her medical credentials behind any effort to do so.

(Now, pay attention closely here, because deciding that Vic Wulsin’s ethical breaches constitute a Dealbreaker has NOTHING to do with whether you, dear reader, are prolife, but they have EVERYTHING to do with whether Vic Wulsin is prolife.)

All of this aside, Vic Wulsin could have a failsafe position in all of this if she were unequivocally prolife. Her past dalliance with Dr. Heimlich could be excused as a big, but not fatal, mistake, as she had no hands-on involvement in experiments. She could in theory, say she’s sorry and promise to sin no more. But Vic Wulsin is anything but prolife, and is in fact pro-abort, pro-embryonic stem cell research, and perhaps even pro-cloning (she refused to answer a Cincinnati Right to Life questionnaire which could have cleared up these matters). This means that there is no reason — none — to believe that she would be willing to put the moral brakes on allowing taxpayer dollars to be used for “promising” but unethical medical studies and protocols that might be stampeded though Congress in the name of “the greater good,” or to make such studies a law-enforcement matter if they were attempted in the private sector.

Based on all of the above, Vic Wulsin has earned BizzyBlog Dealbreaker 1: Serious Lapses in Medical Ethics.

(Recall that a BizzyBlog Dealbreaker is “something that completely justifies a person not voting for you, regardless of your party or your stands on the issues.”)

What the state Ethics Board did or didn’t do changes none of this.

If 2nd District voters knew of Vic’s Malariotherapy Adventures, the vast majority would immediately see her as totally out of touch with their values. Wulsin’s only hope is that, with the silent assistance of the Cincinnati Enquirer, they never find out.

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Source Material:

• Oct. 20 — (Cincinnati Beacon, guest column by Dr. Robert Baratz) Black Box Warning: Wulsin’s Claims of Innocence
• Various Dates — (Cincinnati Beacon) Wiki entry for Victoria Wulsin
• A PDF of Wulsin’s report with Executive Summary is no longer available at the link where it was present in November 2006.

From Alaska (HT Tim Graham at NewsBusters):

Anchorage, Apr 24, 2008 / 03:42 am

Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin on Friday gave birth to her fifth child, a son who has Down’s Syndrome. She said that she and her family had been “truly blessed.”

Governor Palin’s labor began while she was in Texas at the Governors’s Energy Conference where she gave the keynote luncheon address. She was able to fly back to Alaska in time to deliver her son, Trig Paxon Van Palin, at 6:30 a.m. He was born one month early and weighed six pounds, two ounces.

Testing during early pregnancy revealed the baby had Down’s Syndrome. Governor Palin said she was sad at first, but her family now feels blessed that God chose them.

The family released a statement which said, “Trig is beautiful and already adored by us. We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed.”

Graham reports that his church bulletin, not available online, carried an item telling readers that Trig is a Norse name that means “brave victory.”

You have to wonder how this CNN headline and story, which includes a shocking statistic, about the earthquake in China got out (bold is mine):

Parents’ losses compounded by China’s one-child policy

Li Yunxia wipes away tears as rescue crews dig through the ruins of a kindergarten class that has buried her only child — a 5-year-old boy.

Other parents wail as soldiers in blue masks trudge through the mud, hauling bodies from the rubble on stretchers.

“Children were screaming, but I couldn’t hear my son’s voice,” she says, sobbing.

This grim ritual repeated itself Thursday across southwestern China, as thousands of mothers and fathers await news about their sons and daughters.

….. The grief is compounded in many cases by a Chinese policy that limits most couples to one child, a measure meant to control explosive population growth.

As a result of the one-child policy, the quake — already responsible for at least 15,000 deaths — is producing another tragic aftershock:

Not only must thousands of parents suddenly cope with the loss of a child, but many must cope with the loss of their only child.

China’s population minister recently praised the one-child rule, which dates to 1979, saying it has prevented 400 million children from being born.

….. That reality has cast parents like Li into an agonizing limbo — waiting to discover whether their only child is alive or dead.

Joe Stalin, himself responsible for the deaths of countless millions (literally true; the total has been best-guesstimated at between 20 million and 30 million), once said that “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.” What does that make 400 million? It would appear that at least 300 million of those “prevented” children were victims of abortion; this Abortion Facts link reports that over 10 million abortions took place in China in just one of the 29 years since the one-child policy took effect.

Though I suppose the point might be made, I’m not going to try to argue that losing “only” one child of several would make parents’ grief more manageable. I just find it very interesting, given the relative pass the US media has given Communist China during its government-imposed 29-year “one-child” horror, that this story took the angle that it did — and that it got past its editors.

It will be very interesting to see how long this Kyung Lah’s CNN dispatch remains available. Saving it to the hard drive might be advisable.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Gregg Jackson at Pundit Review quotes a contrite Paul Weyrich saying that endorsing Mitt Romney was biggest mistake of his life.

In other words, Weyrich (finally!) understands why Mitt is Objectively Unfit.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Hugh “Objectively — Great, Great Day” Hewitt. You too, Laura “He’s a conservative’s conservative” (blech) Ingraham. You’re not off the hook either, Sean “Softball” Hannity.

This “should” mean that social conservatives won’t get fooled again by any future Romney run. Please let it be so.

Jackson and Weyrich are among those “who signed a letter to John McCain regarding his VP selection that appeared” last week in an Arizona newspaper with timing that coincided with a McCain campaign appearance nearby. The message (PDF image of ad is at link): Don’t you dare pick Romney — “An open letter to John McCain: NO Mitt.”

Whether McCain will heed the call is entirely another matter. Never underestimate the ability of a Republican to commit a monumental blunder.

Note to Bill Keane: I knew about this, but was most certainly not behind it. People with a lot more influence than me were (note to peanut gallery: Please resist the too-easy snark).

Related: This, from Allah at Hot Air, absolutely floored me — “After 18 months of Romney running for president, suddenly these guys have a problem with his record?”

Suddenly my a**, Allah. Also, quite a few Michelle Malkin and Hot Air commenters made you and MM quite aware of what Mass Resistance and others had been trying to get out about Romney, at least as far back as early December.

Update, 2 PM: An e-mailer tipped me to Rush criticizing Commonwealth Care and tracing it to Romney yesterday on his program (Story #4 in the Stack of Stuff) — “As you know, universal medical coverage, universal health coverage is the law in Massachusetts. And, as is the case, with practically every liberal do-gooder idea, and I know Mitt Romney did this, but this is what happens when you accept the premise of the left.” Bingo, El Rushbo.

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The people who don’t like me calling the sole remaining viable male Democratic candidate BOOHOO (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama) aren’t going to like these two things very much. Oh well.

But in the interest of, y’know, puttin’ it out there, here goes.

First, Reuven Koret at Israel Insider, which appears to be a mainstream publication, asked this question almost two weeks ago (i.e., I didn’t) — “Is Barack Obama a Muslim wolf in Christian wool?” Koret notes not-minor discrepancies between the Obama campaign’s denials and the historical record.

This second item is (I hope) a second- or third-degree-removed thing, but somehow I doubt that it is irrelevant.

(Warning: The video you will see if you follow the link contains large doses of profanity and extremely disturbing language. Again, this isn’t my work, but there’s no reason to think it’s not legit.)

Now that you’ve been warned; here’s the link to “Khalid Abdul Muhammad Speaks on the Devil.” Just when you think it can’t get worse, it does.

The close association between the beyond-redemption (barring a last-minute reconciliation with our Maker) hateful Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan appears to be a matter of historical fact, as does the close association between Farrakhan and the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) in Chicago, which gave Farrakhan an award because he has supposedly “truly epitomized greatness.” Muhammad founded the New Black Panther Party (Wiki says that “Muhammad is still venerated by members of the New Black Panther Party and seen as the de facto father of the movement”). Incredibly, the New Black Panthers had some degree of visibility on Obama’s campaign web site(s) until several weeks ago.

According to Wiki, “Muhammad is still venerated by members of the New Black Panther Party and seen as the de facto father of the movement.”

Muhammad also “accompanied Farrakhan on fund-raising trips to Libya.” So did the Rev. Wright on at least one occasion, “which was then illegal under U.S. law.”

I would guess that there’s more than a slight chance that someone can place the Rev. Wright in attendance at one of Muhammad’s hatefests — perhaps even after Barack Obama joined TUCC.

I’m sorry, but because of Wright, and Obama’s steadfast refusal to repudiate him and TUCC, the candidate is wayyyy too close to the Muhammad-Farrakhan poison for comfort.

I’ve waited for a month for something, anything to come from Barack Obama’s mouth, or his campaign, that might enable me to avoid what is now an inescapable (but not necessarily immutable) conclusion. The odds that it’s coming are ridiculously long, and as much as it doesn’t seem possible, the news about Wright’s and Obama’s associations could actually get even worse.

A person who without the judgment to run away from this garbage (and the breathtaking financial hypocrisy; Farrakhan’s too) as fast as he (and his family!) can, but instead hangs around for 20 years (just stop it already with the plausible deniability arguments), is …… (here we go) …… objectively unfit for the nation’s highest office and all that holding it entails.

I’m not saying that this “objective unfit” evaluation can’t be turned around, but I’m at a loss to see how Obama can make it happen, or to imagine that he has the will to do so.

Update: Infidels Are Cool (HT LGF) thinks this is news, and I guess to the general populace he’s probably right. It’s from the same New Republic piece I referred to when noting that when Obama was seen taking notes during a Wright sermon, he was likely doing so in the appropriate area of the church bulletins — the ones he said he never read.

IAC’s “news” is that, according to that New Republic article, Wright is a former Nation of Islam-style Muslim.

Update 2, 6 PM: Debbie Schlussel, from January 30 — “Obama’s Nation of Islam Staffers.” And more.

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Here’s an interesting item noted (and verified) at Jihad Watch that Patrick Poole brought to my attention via e-mail:

….. I am a law student at the University of Cincinnati. Last Thursday our school hosted a Sharia apologist from Saudi Arabia, Dr. Abdulkareem Hamad A. Alsaiygh. He’s Dean at the Center for Contemporary Islamic Studies and Dialogue among Civilizations, Imam Mohammed bin Saud Islamic University.

The purported goal of his visit was to dispel myths that the West has about Islam and Sharia Law. Because of your written work and this website, a group of us were prepared to ask questions that cut through the typical obfuscating rhetoric of this Sharia apologist.

Among other things, our questions forced Dr. Alsaiygh to admit the following:
1. That apostasy is rightly punishable by death under Islamic law and the law of Saudi Arabia.
2. That there will never be a Christian church in Saudi Arabia.
3. That a Christian church is considered a national security risk to Saudi Arabia and other Islamic states.
4. That stoning is appropriate punishment for adultery.
5. That most women raped in Saudi Arabia deserve some punishment for “putting themselves in that situation.”
6. That “interfaith dialogue” could never include polytheistic religions.
7. That Christian evangelism in Saudi Arabia is a subversive act comparable to planning a terrorist attack in the US.
8. And that all these were “moderate” Islamic positions.

That’s a nice 8-point list to recall the next time you hear a “sharia’s no big deal” argument.

Here’s a related “hmmm” item: The web site of Muslims Against Sharia (MAS) has an Omaha address. Omaha was the last outpost of Ahmed Alzaree before he accepted, and then turned down, an appointment to be imam at the Islamic Center of Cleveland (blaming his fate on “bloggers” who exposed his “kill the Jews” end-times sermonizing).

Assuming MAS is legit, which one never knows, was its formation partially a reaction to possible sharia-based preaching by Alzaree at his Omaha mosque? Cleveland may be even luckier than originally thought that Alzaree backed out.

This could be the day’s second BizzyBlog Positivity post — Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) has news from Africa, reported by the Catholic News Agency:

Speaking on Wednesday on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in support of a 2008 bill that would renew the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the congressman said recent reports showed the effectiveness of African HIV/AIDS prevention program based on promoting positive behavioral change.

“Five years after PEPFAR first began, the efficacy and importance of promoting abstinence and ‘be faithful’ initiatives have been demonstrated. The evidence is compelling,” Smith said.

PEPFAR, he said, relies on the ABC model, which stands for “Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms.” Smith cited comments about PEPFAR from the U.S. State Department, USAID, and the Department of Health and Human Services that said the ABC model “is now recognized as the most effective strategy to prevent HIV in generalized epidemics… The legislation’s emphasis on ‘AB’ activities has been an important factor in the fundamental and needed shift in USG (Unitied States Global) prevention strategy from a primarily ‘C’ approach prior to PEPFAR to the balanced ABC strategy.”

Rep. Smith added that a “growing body of data” validates the behavioral changes encouraged by ABC programs. Data from Zimbabwe and Kenya “mirrors the earlier success of Uganda’s ABC approach to preventing HIV,” he noted.

….. Smith also referred to the September, 2007 testimony of Dr. Norman Hearst before the Foreign Affairs Committee. Hearst said, “Five years ago, I was commissioned by UNAIDS to conduct a technical review of how well condoms have worked for AIDS prevention in the developing world.” After he and his associates collected “mountains of data,” he said, “we then looked for evidence of public health impact for condoms in generalized epidemics. To our surprise, we couldn’t find any. No generalized HIV epidemic has ever been rolled back by a prevention strategy primarily based on condoms.”

The Bush behavior-based initiative has helped slow down AIDS in Africa. That’s how a President not obsessed with a legacy, or whether Old Media thinks his legacy is, creates a real one. (Update: Bleep — It’s obvious from reading press coverage elsewhere that the amounts being spent have gotten out of control, and are probably enriching a bunch of totally undeserving NGO types and corrupt bureaucrats/kleptocrats. That, unfortunately, will be a damning element of the Bush legacy.)

Read the whole thing. I will be surprised if you see the abstinence data reported anywhere else.

Posted in longer and revised form at NewsBusters.org.

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This bears watching — The latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the employment situations in individual states shows that Oklahoma’s unemployment rate (seasonally adjusted) has dropped from 4.1% in December, to 3.7% in January, to 3.1% in February.

The Sooner State’s not seasonally adjusted unemployment rate (i.e., based on the raw data) went from 4.2% in January to 3.5% in February. The number of unemployed dropped from 72,900 to 59,700 in one month.

These results have potential national significance, because Oklahoma enacted tough illegal-immigrant enforcement legislation that took effect in November 2007.

Correlation, anyone? If it weren’t for the politically incorrect nature of the possible reason for the improvement, Old Media would be all over this story.

Maybe Ohio, where February’s unemployment rate was 5.3%, should emulate Oklahoma.

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Stuff I don’t have time to comment on (much), but which deserves notice:

• Captain Ed at Hot Air — “Oil-for-Food exec a Russian spy”
• Steven Spruiell (HT TIB All-Stars post at Weapons of Mass Discussion) — “Factory-sized Deception” (the truth about the saturation “corporations like Delphi are cruel, and we’ve gotta stop ‘em” ads run by the Obama campaign during the Ohio Primary in late February and early March); with an interesting sidebar on the ad’s spokesperson.
• Michelle Malkin — “MoveOn: Stop Fox News from taking over the world!”
• Weapons of Mass Discussion — “Ohio Just Raised Your Grandkids’ Taxes.” True, unless your kids vote with their feet.

I didn’t miss this item from a week ago, but haven’t blogged on it until now:

Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The three anti-war Democrats made the trip in October 2002, while the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq. While traveling, they called for a diplomatic solution.

Prosecutors say that trip was arranged by Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a Michigan charity official, who was charged Wednesday with setting up the junket at the behest of Saddam’s regime. Iraqi intelligence officials allegedly paid for the trip through an intermediary and rewarded Al-Hanooti with 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil.

Now that it’s been over a week, I have three questions:

1. Isn’t it amazing that the duped (Congressmen “Baghdad Jim” McDermott of WA, Thompson of CA, and former Congressman David Bonior of MI) have, as far as I can tell, expressed absolutely no shame or regret over being duped by our enemy into being his puppet-spokesmen?
2. How typical is it for a congresscritter to just jump on a plane without vetting who is paying for the trip?
3. Isn’t it remarkable how quickly the story dropped off the radar?

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I did miss this when it was first reported — from the March 22 Toronto Globe and Mail:

Taking Christ out of Christianity

That triumphal barnburner of an Easter hymn, Jesus Christ Has Risen Today – Hallelujah, this morning will rock the walls of Toronto’s West Hill United Church as it will in most Christian churches across the country. But at West Hill on the faith’s holiest day, it will be done with a huge difference. The words “Jesus Christ” will be excised from what the congregation sings and replaced with “Glorious hope.”

Thus, it will be hope that is declared to be resurrected – an expression of renewal of optimism and the human spirit – but not Jesus, contrary to Christianity’s central tenet about the return to life on Easter morning of the crucified divine son of God.

(There are ) No references to salvation, Christianity’s teaching of the final victory over death through belief in Jesus’s death as an atonement for sin and the omnipotent love of God. For that matter, no omnipotent God, or god.

….. Ms. (Rev. Gretta) Vosper does not want to dress up the theological detritus – her words – of the past two millennia with new language in the hope of making it more palatable. She wants to get rid of it, and build on its ashes a new spiritual movement that will have relevance in a tight-knit global world under threat of human destruction.

The entire article is no longer available. The first paragraph is at the link; the others were excerpted at The Anchoress, who got to the root of the problem (HT Sister Toldjah):

….. it takes a lot to offend my Christian sensibilities.

….. Do you know why these “progressive” Christians want to “progress” right through the tenets of Christianity into the grim world of neither-faith-nor-reason but self-actualizing instinct and “hopeful” feelings? Why they want Jesus with no Christ, God with a small g and all that? Can you take a guess?

If you said “it is the logical culmination of baby-boomer narcissism and that generations’ tireless effort to deconstruct the universe and put itself at the center of all things” then ding, ding, ding! You win the daily double!

….. Meanwhile - don’t let this freak you out. Don’t be afraid of children-of-all-ages playing dress-up, or the pranks and guffaws of those who are taking the wide road and pretending it’s a martyrdom. We live in an interesting age, where the meaning of things - even of martyrdom - is being muddied up. Nothing to fret about - it’s only what Jesus promised us, after all.

Well, yes and no, ma’am — I don’t freak over the adults’ self-delusion; I do worry about their kids.

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Richard Miniter at Pajamas Media caught the jaw-dropping significance of these two paragraphs in a New York Times report by Qais Mizher out of Basra (HT Instapundit; bolds are mine):

Early last week, when the assault started, I happened to be in Diwaniya, another southern city, as part of my work as a reporter and translator for The New York Times.

Calling on my experience as a captain in the Iraqi Army before the 2003 invasion and essentially a war correspondent since then, I headed to Basra to see if I could make my way into the city and see what was happening there.

Miniter, while noting how vapid and misleading Mizher’s reporting is, emphasizes the jaw-drop:

Got that? The New York Times reporter was an officer in Saddam’s army. Nice. ….. (Iraqi) Officers had to be selected and regularly vetted for loyalty and effectiveness. So Saddam decided that he could trust our intrepid correspondent and so did the New York Times.

Makes you wonder: Would the Times have hired former Nazi officers to cover the three-year insurgency against the American presence in Germany in the late 1940s? Even if they spoke the language, knew the countryside well and said they “never really believed” in that evil ideology?

My question: Who can be confident that the newspaper that gave us Walter Duranty didn’t do that?

Cross-posted in longer form at NewsBusters.org.

I find it more than a little annoying that leading African-American ministers — and this would, from all appearances, include the currently controversial Jeremiah Wright, who has been/was the minister at the church frequently attended by the candidate I refer to as BOOHOO (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama) — support, or at least condone, abortion rights.

So it would be interesting to get the Rev. Wright’s reax to this:

Planned Parenthood of Idaho officials apologized Wednesday for what they called an employee’s “serious mistake” in encouraging a donation aimed at aborting black babies.

They also criticized The Advocate, a right-to-life student magazine at the University of California-Los Angeles, for trying to discredit Planned Parenthood employees in seven states in a series of tape-recorded phone calls last summer.

The whining about entrapment rings very hollow.

It would appear that Planned Parenthood has not completely escaped its eugenics-oriented past. Even if it thinks it has, the real-world result of abortion on demand in the US is that a disproportionate number of babies aborted is African-American:

Black women were 4.8 times more likely than non-Hispanic white women to have abortions in 2005, according to a January report by the Guttmacher Institute. African Americans made up 12.3 percent of the United States population, according to the 2000 census, but black women had 36.3 percent of the abortions that same year, the Centers for Disease Control reported.

Based on this reality, no wonder Alveda King, niece of the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., says that “Abortion is a racist, genocidal act.”

Where’s the Rev. Wright’s outrage against the white-dominated Planned Parenthood (yes, I know about her; PP is still white-dominated)? Their accomplishment of preventing the birth of roughly 12-15 million African-American babies since Roe v. Wade is something Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret “Negro Project” Sanger could only dream of. In fact, if the Rev. Wright is looking for the “KKK of A,” he should begin his search at Planned Parenthood’s national headquarters.

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This story is not getting the attention it deserves:

….. The government now counts more than 700 reports of serious side effects among Heparin users, and perhaps as many as 21 deaths. A leading American maker, Baxter International Inc., has recalled virtually all of its Heparin products in the United States, and companies in Germany and Japan have recalled their Heparin products.

A major focus of Heparin investigators is why the recalled products contained a contaminant that mimicked the drug’s key ingredient. Investigators are also exploring whether the possible counterfeit was responsible for the bad reactions.

Since the key ingredient came from China, the scare has rekindled fears about the integrity of exports from China and the adequacy of inspections by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, prompting congressional hearings.

“I don’t think the pharmaceutical industry knows what it’s doing in China, and I don’t think the U.S. government knows what it’s doing in China,” said Michael Santoro, a Rutgers University business professor who has written about the drug industry’s business in China.

It so happens that over 20 years ago I was on the annual audit of a small company that, among other things, produced this drug. The FDA was a frequent onsite visitor, as was the company’s principal customer. I find it hard to imagine that accidental or deliberate product imperfections would not have been caught by one of the three parties (company, FDA, or customer) well before any product was shipped to hospitals. So I’m more than a little perturbed that the Chinese-produced product is not acceptable.

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“You Don’t Say” items of the day:

• “Saddam supported at least two al-Qaeda groups: Pentagon” (the primary coverage is at the Weekly Standard; Headline is from Hot Air, whose new arrival “Captain Ed” Morrissey also pitches in) — of course Old Media reported the opposite.
• “Harvard economists’ study: Media’s anti-war rhetoric emboldens Iraqi insurgents” (Coverage is at US News; headline and analysis at Hot Air, to which Captain Ed has brought additional gravitas; original study abstract is here). It was during Vietnam when the Left starting claiming, contrary to thousands of years of human history, that antiwar protests and rhetoric didn’t matter. Of course it did, and still does. If the enemy is emboldened, it increases the dangers for our soldiers, and the likelihood that our soldiers will be injured or die. It is not a stretch to say that the Left, and the Old Media outlets that carry its water, have blood on their hands.

Memo to Victoria Wells Wulsin Whatever: Assuming you win the OH-02 Democratic Primary today, this isn’t going away (HT The Bellwether Daily via NixGuy), even if your buds at the Cincinnati Enquirer continue to protect you. You’ve had two years to fix this; I’m assuming that you would have, if you could have.

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What this Washington Post article is trying to say, but won’t, is that Victoria’s Secret stores crossed the line from sexy into sleazy several years ago. Now they’re trying to crawl back.

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YouTube is going live.

That’s great, but I hope some alternative outlets do the same. YouTube management has acquired a serious case of political correctness (examples here and here) that in the long run could make bias from the likes of Dan Rather et al seem like the good old days.

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Recent Old Media outrages spotted at NewsBusters:

• From Scott Whitlock, “ABC’s Chris Cuomo: Prince Harry ‘Expendable’” — “‘Good Morning America’ co-host Chris Cuomo joked on Monday’s show that Britain’s Prince Harry ‘has been over in Afghanistan fighting because he’s expendable. ….. The reason that Harry is allowed to be in Afghanistan is because he’s not the heir to the throne. William’s not allowed to be there.’” Cuomo’s remarks were not only tasteless, they are untrue, as William is scheduled “to be depoloyed on the frontline.”
• Martin Finkelstein, “NYT Term for Eco-Terrorists: ‘Anti-Sprawl Activists’” — incomprehensible near-sympathy at the New York Times (”House Fires With a Message in the Northwest”) for the eco-terrorists (term used by the AP) who did millions in damage to four model homes north of Seattle. The homes appear to have been targeted because they were built using so-called “green” techniques; in essence, the eco-terrorists wanted us to know that the mere act of attempting to build something violates their sick view of an ideal world. I wonder if the Times would be so sympathetic to “message deliverers” if any targeted Times Company property?
• Lynn Davidson, “Expert: IDF Didn’t Shoot Intifada Icon Mohammad al-Dura; Media Yawn” — Before the term “fauxtography” was coined, there was the incident that gave rise. It involved the claim that “(Israeli soldiers) killed the boy who was crouching behind his father during a gunfight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian shooters.” It has been shown beyond doubt to have been staged.

It’s tempting to ask for a Democratic ballot on Tuesday to vote for the candidate I refer to as BOOHOO (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama). That would help ensure that the candidacy of the person I refer to as HR4C (Hillary Rodham Cackling Crying Complaining Clinton) is not merely dead, but really most sincerely dead.

The problem is that if Obama wins in November, and his presidency turns out to be as bad or worse than currently indicated, I would have to own up to having contributed to it. I cannot, and will not, bear that responsibility.

So I’ll stay on the GOP side for the time being. Now what?

The candidate I refer to as JS3M3 (John Sidney the Mad Maverick McCain III) will not get my Ohio primary vote.

He hasn’t earned it. He needs to understand that he hasn’t earned it.

In fact, he seems to care very little whether he gets my vote.

He has done little since he became the presumptive nominee on Super Tuesday to bridge the divide he has built over the last decade between himself and mainstream conservatives.

His “repudiation” of Bill Cunningham for daring to use Obama’s middle name should not have been a public rebuke. Take your pick — It demonstrates shocking tone-deafness or callous indifference to what should be his base. McCain, who feels that Obama’s real middle name shouldn’t be used (heaven forbid) because it is somehow provocative (a position I totally disagree with), should have advised Cunningham of the impropriety either after-the-fact to the press or in private.

McCain will come perilously close to losing my vote if what Bob Novak has written comes to pass:

Former White House political guru Karl Rove is urging that Sen. John McCain pick Mitt Romney as his running mate, writes veteran Washington columnist Robert Novak.

According to Novak, Rove and other GOP bigwigs want Romney in the No. 2 spot despite the bad blood that exists between the former Massachusetts governor and McCain, an enmity that grew out of their heated rivalry during the Republican presidential primaries.

Despite the hype about his alleged conservatism, Objectively Unfit Mitt Romney is more liberal than John McCain. A McCain-Romney ticket combines an all-too-likely failure to control illegal immigration; a total surrender on social issues (based on what Romney has done, which is infinitely more important than what he has said); increases the chances that McCain would give in to the taxoholic-spendaholics in Washington; puts a person from a culture that gives little heed to national sovereignty one heartbeat away from the presidency; and sets the table for inflicting the scourge of RomneyCare on the entire nation.

If the Global War on Terror weren’t in progress, and the other party’s candidates so pitifully weak on national security, a McCain-Romney ticket would be a bridge too far to cross. I hope against hope that McCain has the sense not to do what Rove suggests.

Voting for Mike Huckabee could have been a legitimate temptation. After all, he’s the one still running. But in the two months-plus since it was revealed, no one that I know of has tried to claim that the story of Huckabee receiving hundreds of thousands in consulting and speaking fees while governor is wrong, or explain why it’s okay. Without any kind of attempt to defend it, the presumption has to be that it’s indefensible. Team Huckabee seems to think the whole thing doesn’t even deserve a defense. Fine: Mike Huckabee doesn’t deserve my vote. With a BizzyBlog Dealbreaker like this, I don’t even waste my time looking into where a candidate stands on the issues, because it doesn’t matter.

That leaves the only other GOP candidate who maintained his viability up to South Carolina. He is also the only candidate who had both a solidly sensible platform and a track record showing that he actually believed in it.

Fred Thompson gets my vote on Tuesday, because no active candidate has done more to earn it up to and including today than Thompson did through January 19.

I strongly suggest that anyone receiving a Republican ballot tomorrow who doesn’t think John McCain gets it yet send Mr. Maverick a message. Vote for Fred Thompson.

The New York Times is shocked and amazed that not everyone is in favor of bailing out financially troubled homeowners — even in liberal mecca Seattle:

Not only are people in Seattle relatively prosperous, but they have a reputation for being nice, too. Yet no sooner had Mayor Greg Nickels announced the program than opposition surfaced.

Imagine that.

While I’m on this: Plenty of folks have made the point that current homeowners who bought and borrowed wisely during the past five years, or who are doing all they can without government help to make their payments (e.g., getting second jobs, selling assets, etc.) are receiving disparate treatment compared to troubled owners getting breaks. Others have pointed out the potential negative impact on homeowners who are new to the market, as they are likely to find their loans more expensive than they would have been and tougher to get.

But I haven’t seen anyone make the point that those who might have bought during the past five years, could easily have qualified for a loan (given that having a pulse was often sufficient), yet prudently decided not to get in over their heads, and are still renting. These folks, who are not benefiting from mortgage interest deductions, are seeing their higher taxes subsidize those who inadvisably bought.

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I wonder if the people who were pretending (in some cases hypocritcally, BTW) during its early days that the Bush administration was allowing industry to poison us with arsenic are at all upset about this?

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Michelle Malkin’s passionate column on Emma Beck’s suicide over aborting her twin babies in the UK is a must-read.

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Duncan Hunter’s concerns are vindicated, and there’s one more reason to be relieved that Mitt Romney has suspended his GOP presidential run (HT: China Law Blog; Wall Street Journla link requires subscription after the first two paragraphs):

A closely watched Chinese investment in a U.S. network-technology company has fallen to political pressure in Washington, revealing new limits for deal makers who expected foreign buyers to invigorate a fallow deal market.

The tech company, 3Com Corp., which agreed in September to be acquired by private-equity firm Bain Capital LLC and China-based Huawei Co. for $2.2 billion, said the three had withdrawn an application from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or CFIUS, a 12-agency government panel that reviews the national-security implications of foreign-led deals. The decision signaled the government likely wouldn’t have approved the deal, according to people familiar with the matter, fearing that Huawei’s influence could put government secrets at risk.

Romney, of course, built his fortune at Bain, and is still a Bain investor.

Former presidential candidate Hunter raised the security issue revolving around the deal during the campaign, demanded a response from Romney, who is still a Bain investor, regarding the advisability of the deal, and got no response.

Bain’s advocacy of the deal would appear to reflect a culture that is indifferent at best to US security interests. Would a President Romney, who is from that culture, have made sure that a deal like this went through, despite the fact that it would involve, as Hunter said, “forming a business partnership with a corporation known to have direct ties with terrorists and dictators while, at the same time, openly seeking to acquire a major U.S. corporation that performs vital cyber security work for the Department of Defense”?

That’s one more reason why Objectively Unfit Mitt was, and remains, a risk not worth taking.

The rest of the world will probably never understand that Mitt Romney’s candidacy was ended by a merry band from Massachusetts and a small cadre of like-minded others who broke through the clutter sufficiently to get the truth out about Objectively Unfit Mitt Romney when it mattered, and where it mattered. That doesn’t change the fact that it is why it went down as it went down.

Gregg Jackson was among the like-minded others.

Though I disagree with him on Mike Huckabee as a presidential candidate (if someone can successfully defend this, I would consider changing my mind), there really is no disagreeing with him about how conservative talk radio, too many allegedly conservative pundits, and way too many allegedly conservative bloggers let down their audiences, and the country, during the 2008 GOP presidential primary season by mindlessly gravitating to Romney.

Jackson’s Tuesday column should be a mandatory hard-drive saver (I have done so) that will become necessary reference material should Mitt Romney consider a future presidential run. It’s also an unpleasant reminder that several conservative talkers, pundits, and bloggers have lost their presumptive aura of credibility:

….. I for one am getting a little sick and tired of listening to the relentless screeds and caterwauling of these conservative elites who are in many regards totally disconnected from the conservative base — especially the evangelical Christian field slaves who bring in the harvest. Why are the spoiled elites complaining about McCain like a bunch of petulant children when the reality is that, collectively, they share considerable blame for the fact that McCain is our likely nominee?

You see for months these conservative elites have been whitewashing by far the most left wing GOP presidential candidate in American history, Mitt Romney.

Most left wing GOP candidate you say, Gregg? But all the conservative talkers told me he was the most able to unite the Reagan Coalition. I thought he was the most conservative candidate we had?

Gregg then does a great job listing why Romney was the most LIBERAL candidate in the GOP field. He has a couple of items over and above what I noted during the past three months that should be understood, so go there.

Continuing:

….. Had these talkers, pundits, and conservative “leaders” told the truth about Romney’s $50 subsidized abortions, failing government run healthcare plan, $700 million in tax increases, increased funding for homosexual indoctrination starting in kindergarten, illegal institution of same sex marriage by misrepresenting the Goodridge court opinion and lying about the Massachusetts Constitution, support for homosexual Scout Masters etc… voters interested in supporting a true conservative would have likely gravitated toward Governor Huckabee far sooner and in huge numbers. But that couldn’t be allowed to happen. The social conservative voters are the field slaves in this party, not the decision-makers.

….. The truth was that their boy Mitt Romney is the GOP’s closest counterpart to the Democrats’ soulless Rorschach test, Barak Obama, a truly dangerous demagogue.

So, please, enough with the McCain-bashing, Rush, Sean, Laura, and Ann….. Do you think thinking conservatives are any more happy than you are with McCain as the Republican nominee? Not on your life. But the difference between you and us is, this is your fault.

Ding-ding-ding, Gregg has nailed it. Mark Levin also deserves a dishonorable mention.

I’ll also add this: The explosive fury of the talkers et al can be largely explained by the fact that they thought that they had McCain dead and buried last summer, and that they could keep him dead and buried. Oops.

Years from now, especially if he wins the presidency, when historians calmly look back on what has happened, they will probably rate McCain’s comeback as one of the most remarkable in American political history, second perhaps only to Richard Nixon’s in 1968.

As I have stated previously, I have serious differences with McCain that I sincerely hope he works on in the coming months. But there’s no denying the impressiveness of what he has accomplished electorally thus far.

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UPDATE: A whiny Townhall commenter named Jim wrote —

Give it up, Gregg
Your anti-Romney screeds are boringly predictable. And we should trust you more than Rush, Laura, Mark, etc.? I don’t get your very personal vendetta against Romney. You and (Mass Resistance head Brian) Cameneker make quite a pair.

That they do, Jim. They’re a pair of heroes.

When I read the story about Bill Clinton’s appearance in Steubenville, Ohio, and his lash-out at prolife students there, I thought an SOBer might be involved:

Speaking to a protester who held up a sign that read “Abortion Kills Children,” Clinton said while on “our watch” the Clintons were able to reduce the abortion rate without eliminating abortion rights.

During his administration, “We had the lowest teen pregnancy rate since the statistics had been kept when we were doing that.

And guess what? Without overturning Roe v. Wade, or trying to keep people all torn up and upset or calling them killers, the abortion rate went down almost 20 percent on our watch,” said Clinton, who twice during his administration vetoed a ban on partial-birth abortions.

Abortions declined between 1993 and 2000 from 1.5 million to 1.31 million, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute. The number continued to decline to 1.21 million through 2005, the last year of available data from AGI.

That reduction stat calculates to 13% (.19 million decrease divided by 1.5 million), and, regardless, has absolutely nothing to do with anything the Clinton Administration initiated. What an incredible load of rubbish from Mr. Clinton about “saving more lives.”

Anyway, my prime SOBer “suspect” was Franciscan Conservative’s Billy Valentine.

I suspected correctly, as reported by Students for Life:

“I gave you the answer. We disagree with you,” Clinton said. “You wanna criminalize women and their doctors and we disagree. I reduced abortion. Tell the truth, tell the truth, If you were really pro-life, if you were really pro-life, you would want to put every doctor and every mother a