In memory of Gilda Radner

McCain's citizenship called into question

"Candidate may not qualify as 'natural born'"

NBC (who else?) reports that the liberal blog world is abuzz with speculation that McCain might not meet the constitutional requirement that only a "natural born" citizen can be president. If he was born in a hospital with with anesthetics, how can he be considered "natural born?" He should drop out of the election now, and save everyone the trouble of fighting over it.

What's that? "Natural born" means that he has to have born a U.S. citizen?

Never mind.

One down, one to go.

Obama's VP search leader quits

And Jim Johnson should, considering the background, as described by the Washington Post: He received more than $2 million in home loans that might have been below average market rates from the troubled Countrywide Financial, a partner of Fannie Mae and a leading purveyor of the kind of subprime mortgages that spawned a national housing crisis. For Obama-type agents-of-change, Johnson is exactly the kind of character they are supposed to despise.

But then there's a second member of the committee, Eric Holder, a Justice Department official involved in the disgraceful and yet-to-be-justified pardons and commutations granted by Bill Clinton on his way of the White House. Two of those pardoned were hippie-era radicals Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, persons that Obama had tried to distance himself from. If Obama didn't know that Holder spelled trouble, then Obama don't know nothing.

Already, Republicans criticism of Obama's "judgment" has become a campaign cliche, but the more that Obama reveals about himself and his friends, the more we have to wonder whether the change agent is a complete dolt.

The hunt is on for something else to rip up in Grant Park

No surprise here; the Chicago City Council today approved a new home for the Children's Museum in Grant Park.

Now that we've got it straight that Grant Park can be torn up on the whim of Mayor Richard M. Daley, as if it were another Meigs Field, maybe we should look around Grant Park for what's next to go. You've got all that empty space in the south end of the park, by Buckingham Fountain and the rose gardens that's just going to waste when it could be home to a horse farm and polo fields for Cindy Prizker's pals.

Or replace the puzzling Magdalena Abakanowicz's permanent statuary park, Agora, and its 106 9-foot-tall, headless cast-iron figures. Named for the marketplaces often used for political and public assembly in ancient Greece, its symbolism is no longer necessary. We don't need no more symbols in praise of of public discourse.

Energy Watchdog Sees Demand for Crude Slowing - WSJ.com

Energy Watchdog Sees Demand for Crude Slowing - WSJ.com: "The lower demand outlook is beginning to jibe with anecdotal evidence in key consuming nations. In the U.S., Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles in March compared with a year earlier -- the sharpest monthly drop since the government began collecting such data in 1942 and the first contraction in that month since the 1979 Iranian revolution."

I bring you this good news (it reduces demand for gasoline, exerting down pressure on prices, and reduces gases blamed for causing global warming) because NBC's news anchor Brian Williams failed to mention it in tonight's newscast. But he did mention another part of the report--that spare OPEC pumping capacity is now lower than it has been since late 2006, which can lead to higher prices.

Here's yet another example of how the astonishingly biased Williams reports the bad news, but not the good, especially if it casts a shadow over the Bush administration.

One more thing:

Williams and NBC, reporting directly from Afghanistan, did a piece on how, since the defeat of the Taliban, girls now are allowed to go to school. No mention, of course, by Williams that it was the lying and hated George W. Bush made all that possible.